Harry can only stare.
He’d gotten off the train, carrying his oddly weightless trunk, and placed it on the ground next to him so he could wave to Ron; his other hand held Hedwig.
Then, he’d seen the impossible. Or, at least, what he’d thought would be impossible.
His Uncle Vernon is on Platform Nine and Three Quarters.
With one of the luggage trolleys.
And…
“Wingardium Leviosa,” Vernon mutters, pointing his wand at Harry’s trunk.
Harry can’t believe his eyes.
Or his ears.
“What in the world?” he asks numbly.
“C’mon,” Dudley begs him. “I want to see how high we can fly.”
“Now, now, Dudley,” Petunia pats his shoulder. “Remember, we can’t go doing that where any, ah, non-magical folk can see. The Statute of Secrecy is a thing.” She looks up at Harry. “If a bit stupid of a thing, if you ask me.”
Harry blinks. “Ahh… Well, um… Hermione?” He looks in her direction, but she doesn’t seem to be paying him much attention.
Malfoy then steps up next to him, leaning casually against his shoulder. “I wonder how long it’ll take before she recovers,” he chuckles. Hermione’s parents are taking turns levitating her trunk back and forth across their trolley, amusing themselves with Hermione’s dumbstruck expression, her eyes tracking it back and forth. Then he looks up. “As for the Statute of Secrecy, we hide because muggles will hunt us for our magic, everyone knows that. Unless…” He glances at Harry. “Bonbon did say something about turning muggles into wizards. Is that…?”
Harry nods. “I think,” he mutters.
Petunia scowls. “They can’t exactly tear it down, I’d have to admit. But non-magical society is ready to accept witches and wizards. Especially now that Lyra’s perfected her ‘Whiskey Tango’ thing.”
Malfoy shrugs. “There really isn’t much we can do about it. Like I said, everyone knows that. Nobody’ll believe muggles are ready for magic.”
Harry looks at him. “You believe that?”
Malfoy nods. “Hermione’s a muggleborn.” He chuckles, glancing over at Hermione, still watching her parents magicing her trunk back and forth. “Or, she used to be, at any rate. All it took after I made her acquaintance was about fifteen minutes before she disabused me of that notion.” He looks casually at Harry. “Did you know, the occurrence of the disowning of muggleborn wizards by their parents upon receipt of their Hogwarts letters has been declining steadily- and reached zero three years ago?”
“Ah, no, I didn’t.”
He shakes his head. “Neither did I. Until she told me, and showed me the reference materials she used to get that info.” He gazes wistfully at her. “You know, she’ll grow up to be a fine woman some day, won’t she?”
Harry nods. “Yeah. Yeah, she will.”
Malfoy tilts his head, grinning evilly as he looks sideways at Harry. “Did you know, in Equestria, polygamy is perfectly legal?”
“What-!?” Harry asks, simultaneous with Vernon.
Malfoy bursts into laughter.
“Alright everyone,” Vernon greets the breakfast table, lowering the one letter from the day’s mail that hadn’t arrived through the mail slot. “It’s finally through, we’re officially allowed to use magic in the house.” He snorts. “Well, only me and Petunia are, technically, but I don’t care about that- and what they don’t know won’t kill ‘em. Anyways, we’re going to have to pretend magic doesn’t exist tonight; your Aunt Marge is coming for dinner, and I’d rather she not find out about it.” He taps another letter, one of the ones he’d simply snorted at earlier.
“Got it,” Harry and Dudley state together.
Dudley looks at Harry. “That mean you can start teaching me magic tomorrow?”
Vernon chortles. “In theory, yes. I’d rather you waited for next year, though, Dudley- Lyra tells me to expect Hogwarts to send you an invitation.”
Harry shrugs. “I taught a class last year,” he states. He’d found out, after they got home, that Dudley doesn’t know any magic- and his aunt and uncle only know Wingardium Leviosa and Lumos. They hadn’t been able to find a safe place, outside the residential areas, to practice any magic, so that’s where they stand now.
“You did?” Vernon asks incredulously. “What did you teach? PE?”
Harry grins in spite of himself. “Nah. They actually don’t have that at Hogwarts. I taught Defense Against the Dark Arts- so, some of the many ways one wizard can defend themselves against another.”
“How did you know what to teach?”
“I learned it myself a day or so before I taught it,” he answers. “Princess Luna is a great teacher.”
“P-Princess?”
Harry nods. “She’s in Slytherin, and she likes to know people.” He gazes up at the ceiling. “Though, with Professor Quirrell gone, we might actually have a halfway decent Defense Against the Dark Arts professor next year.” He shrugs. “I guess we’ll find out.”
“What kind of magic does Defense Against the Dark Arts cover?” Petunia asks.
“Disarming, shields, and a bunch of countercurses, mostly. We did a few offensive spells, but they were all simple, relatively harmless ones- like the leg-locker curse, or the full body bind.” He shudders. “You do not want to know what Scootaloo managed to do with that one.”
“Ahh, I’ll take your word for it,” Petunia mutters.
“Right then,” Vernon nods. “Everyone’s wands still hidden?”
Petunia and Dudley nod, but Harry places his on the table. “I’ll take care of it after breakfast.”
Vernon raises an eyebrow at him. “And the rest of your school supplies?”
“Should be out of sight,” Harry muses. “I don’t think she’ll be looking in my bedroom. Probably wouldn’t hurt to cover them with a, uh, perception filter, though.”
“A perception filter?”
He nods. “That’s what Lyra calls it. It’s technically called a ‘muggle notice-me-not’, in that it’s effective against muggles but not anyone with magical awareness, but she tells me it classifies as a perception filter.”
“A magical awareness?” Petunia asks.
He nods. “Wizards, mostly. Squibs- muggles born to wizarding parents- also have a magical awareness, and can see through a ‘muggle notice-me-not’. But I’m pretty sure Marge is all muggle- she won’t see a thing.” He looks at the ceiling. “Though, she might wonder about how clean that room is.”
Vernon lets out a snort of laughter. Over the last week, since Harry got home from Hogwarts, Dudley has helped him clean out all the trash from his bedroom. As a matter of fact, the heap in the garage had grown so large Vernon had ordered a full dumpster placed in the driveway for an evening; they’d filled it to the top with eleven years of broken trash. The dumpster company had returned to cart that eyesore off just last night- and the house feels so much bigger than it did a week ago. “She can wonder all she likes- so long as she doesn’t wonder what that is.” He points at Harry’s wand.
Harry nods. “No problem.”
Vernon nods. “I rather suspect she was more naturally hateful than influenced by that… soul fragment thingy you have, Harry- she hasn’t seemed to have changed any since you went to Hogwarts.”
“Soul fragment thingy?” Harry asks, then blinks. “Oh, right. Lyra did mention that… a fragment of Voldemort’s soul, bound to my scar. It’s gone, though- she destroyed it.”
“She did? But-!” He looks at Petunia.
“That letter Dumbledore left us when he left you on the doorstep said it’d be impossible to destroy it without killing you too.”
Harry nods, smiling. “Lyra found a way around that. I believe she described it as…” He taps his chin, trying to remember. “Ah, yes. She killed me, then saved me before I had time to die.”
“That doesn’t sound quite right,” Vernon mumbles.
“Well…” Harry scowls at the table. “It was something about magic fields. The specific way she killed me was important, as was the way she saved me. Um… She ‘reset my magic fields’, something deadly to any non-Equestrian. Then, before I had time to die but after the fragment disappeared, she… uh, I don’t know what the ‘papa tango’ is, but she did that, and it reformed my magic fields in a different way.”
Petunia nods. “Right, her codewords. She had a book she’d anchored her ‘Whiskey Tango’ to; that’s how she made us wizards. She also mentioned something about a ‘Papa Tango’ being a bit more invasive, and too powerful to safely anchor to a movable object.”
Harry blinks. “... Ahh. Well, it was that same papa tango that gave me this hair, so…”
“It really does look better than it did before,” Vernon chuckles.
Harry blushes, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, I know. At least it’s easier to take care of.”
“It is?” Petunia asks, confused.
He shrugs. “Don’t ask me how, but all I have to do to get it to look like this each morning is to shake my head- and cleaning is as simple as getting it wet, no shampoo required.”
“Hmm,” Petunia hums. “Yeah, that is a bit strange. Maybe we should ask Lyra sometime.”
Harry blinks, and nods. “Yeah, she probably knows. Good luck getting her to hold still long enough to answer, though.”
Very suddenly, Hedwig swoops in through the open kitchen window, to land on Harry’s shoulder, dropping a letter for him to catch.
Vernon glances up at Hedwig as Harry catches the letter. “Any way to predict when wizard mail shows up?” he asks.
Harry glances up. “It’s usually at breakfast,” he answers. “If we need our mail held for a few hours or something, it’s as simple as telling our owls. Speaking of which,” he turns to Hedwig. “My Aunt Marge is coming for dinner today. We can’t let her see you, or any other owls.”
Hedwig gives a soft hoot.
He sighs. “Yeah, I know. Should only be for tonight, though.” He glances back up at Vernon. “Right?”
Vernon nods. “Correct. She’s only passing through the area.”
Hedwig gives another hoot, before looking pointedly at the letter she’d given Harry.
Harry shrugs. “Well, that’s solved.” Then he looks down at the letter, unfolding the piece of parchment. “And it would seem, uh, Malfoy is expecting a response to this.”
“Malfoy?” Vernon asks.
“Schoolmate,” Harry answers. “He and Hermione are, currently, the only two aside from myself to experience the Papa Tango.” He grins, glancing up at Vernon. “Remember the silver-haired boy at the station? That’s him.”
“Uhh… Oh, the one that commented on polygamy in Equestria.”
Harry sighs. “Yeah.” He reads the letter.
“Anything important?” Aunt Petunia asks.
“A little. His dad has contacts in the Ministry, so he knows that number four, Privet Drive, was formally classified as a wizarding residence just last night… and wants to know if he can stop by to celebrate tonight.” He looks up. “He comes from a long line of pureblooded wizards- and won’t have a clue how to pretend magic doesn’t exist.”
“Ahh,” Vernon mutters. “How late is ‘tonight’?”
Harry shrugs again. “Dinner, probably.”
Vernon sighs. “He’ll probably have to wait for tomorrow, then. It’s… It’s not a ‘passing through’ thing for him, is it?”
Harry shakes his head. “Nah. He could probably teleport straight from his living room to ours if he wanted to. Alright, um…” He lifts his wand. “Accio pen!” He drops the wand, catches the flying pen, and starts scrawling a response on the back of Malfoy’s note, before looking back up. “Think tomorrow will be okay?”
“Should be,” Vernon muses.
“Got it,” Harry mutters, finishes his response, and returns the note to Hedwig. “Thanks,” he informs her, before she takes it and takes off, back out the window.
Vernon stares while Harry uses his wand to return the pen from whence it came. “I still wonder how you do that,” he informs Harry.
Harry blinks. “With the pen?”
Vernon shakes his head. “No. That owl landed on your shoulder, and took off from the same, but you hardly even noticed.”
“Dad does have a point,” Dudley mutters. “I know I weigh a few times as much as you, yet I can lean on you and expect more resilience- and strength- than the wall.”
“Uhh…” Harry mutters. “I… I have reason to believe that’s a side effect of the papa tango thing,” he states. “Some kind of crazy strength boost. I think it’s magic based, and if it’s even possible to turn it off, I don’t know how.” He sighs, and shrugs. “It does mean I’m pretty hard to hurt, though. I think.”
Vernon scowls at him. “It’s that ‘I think’ that I’m worried about.”
Harry nods. “Me too.”
You managed to make the Dursley's nice.
What will you do for Dumbledore's improvement?
Prepare for sensational news, a shining new era is tip-hooving nearer, Voldibutt is defeated and things are getting weirder, be prepared!
Just read through this and I'm rather surprised Hermione isn't a colt in pony form. Hmm i wonder how Draco would feel if after taking advantage of Equestrias polygamy laws Silversong wound up the first one becoming pregnant? Ponies do have an estrus cycle rather than a menstrual one after all.
9699124
Give him some old-fashioned muggle-borne common sense?
9699885
That's a very good question...
Unfortunately, nothing like that will be happening for quite a while- they're all eleven-going-on-twelve.
You know, I've read most of the various Harry Potter crossovers, and this is honestly one of the strangest things that's happened in any of them. I'm surprised at how well this works.
9700111
I could be pedantic and point out Draco was the one admiring what Hermione would probably grow up to look like. However I agree they'll need some years to grow more used to being the filly/mare or in Hermiones case colt/stallion in a relationship anyway.
Especially since in my head canon it's not an overwhelming animal loss of control but a subtle series of mental and biological influences. A filly/mare who's experienced it has no problem controlling herself and one who's not in a relationship might at worst realize she actually feels more for a pony than she thought. However one with a special some pony and no experience can easily find herself going further than she intended without realizing it. Rather like human teenagers actually only unlike humans it's not year round.
9701170
Yep!
... Though it may be worth note, Hermione is a filly too, and hence has nothing new (in terms of gender) to get used to...
Then again, Bonbon did mention a temporary genderswap spell back when Draco was first transformed. Which has all sorts of implications for, ah, interesting family structures.
9701403
Canonically, it's due to "too much magic in the air," but your explanation is as good as any. On the subject of electronics, though, I can't help but notice that everyone is using smartphones and tablets in 1991.
As for Lrya, that's still seems like a major overreaction, especially considering Twilight is a Princess and Lyra is ostensibly part of the Secret Service. That kind of casual violence seems out of place for Equestria, and no one bats an eye.
9701386
Huh I got the impression it was the different gender roles turning boys into fillies and girls into colts. This raises the question of why both Harry and Draco are more female as far as the magic is concerned then as they're pretty different personality wise.
9701430
I thought it got retconned to insects that eat background magic and when it's not enough settle for electrical devices?
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The thing is the excuse of magic messing with technology was directed to muggle listening devices which would be a fairly sophisticated electronic device. Magic does not mess with electricity (besides magic can generate electricity) it messes with technology which I believe is anything with complex circuitry built into it. So a camera flash and a car would be fine, heck even a simple radio is fine as is it is mentioned that students are listening to wizard radio at Hogwarts. This would mean a simple two-way radio would be okay as well. And of course, anything purely mechanical would be okay because it wouldn't rely on any electronics to actually work.
So something like a TV or smartphone wouldn't work around a magic rich environment like Hogwarts but a helicopter and non-electronic camera would be fine because they're mostly mechanical.
9701464
They are known to attack muggle devices because they can feed off electricity but that doesn't mean they are responsible for technology not working around magic.
9701479
Even though in canon Hermione explicitly states a walkie-talkie wouldn't work at Hogwarts (that's the simple two-way radio).
I chose to do it this way because if it's strong enough to make electricity jump through integrated circuits, it's going to be strong enough to shut down the human brain. Very powerful electromagnetic forces can and do do that to people in real life- and that's what you'd need to get it to jump through an insulating material! Either that or get it to jump through the air, which suggests that things like, oh, simple electronics like the car, equipped with an alternator that generates way more than the charge controller needs to charge the battery... at deadly voltage. Oh, right, charge controller, one of the many computer components of the car!
So I make it interference, fit to ruin those signals. Early electronics were either lightbulbs or radiocommunications devices... the latter of which would have been trashed by interference, and labeled nonfunctional because it didn't appear to do its job.
To be honest, I don't know why I'm arguing my side anymore. We already had an extensive debate on the subject in the comments of some earlier chapter or another.
9701464
Yeah, no- I haven't been using their human forms at all in designing their equine forms... I've been taking their personality and looking at Equestrian norms to ask "Okay, where does this fit?". All three of them have fit mares better than stallions, by my interpretation of the norms of each of those. This does tend to support Equestria's primarily-female population distribution...
As for the personality difference, that's probably why Harry is dark-colored and Silversong is, well, silver.
9701532
But that's basically how it's explainied in the books:
It's not that magic shuts down electronics it just causes them to not work properly so yes interference.
The human brain does not work the same way as an electronic device, something that knocks out electronics, like an EMP, won't necessarily knock out a human brain.
As exlained by this Reddit post:
So assuming magic is operating like an EMP it can mess with electronics without also messing with people's brains.
9701555
People keep complaining about how little HP is getting changed versus MLP...
9701562
Well yeah, but it comes down to the believability of the change. It's one thing to introduce a solution to the problem but you just flat out ignored it by stating that wizards were too dumb to check if magic actually messed with electronics. The problem is that's not very believable because while it's true some wizards, mostly purebloods, do ignore muggle tech the vast majority of wizards, by virtue of being half-blood or muggle-born, grew up alongside muggles and therefore are far less ignorant of muggle tech. So you can't just say "oh nobody ever thought to check" because it isn't believable.
There is no way no kid is never gonna try to bring something like a calculator with them to school.
Honestly, RESS introduces a similar problem. With such a hyper-competent force how does Equestria keep coming so close to being conquered? Why isn't Lyra, the all-powerful sorcerer supreme, not an alicorn?
9701574
See the discussion I mentioned... that was covered.
Gotta say this is a pretty interesting story but there are just so many dumb things that happen in it. I mean they caught Voldemort only to just let him go? It just makes it impossible to take the story seriously after something as stupid as that.
Then, of course, the other issue is that the story doesn't take advantage of its premise as the only ponies that get any focus are all hyper-competent Mary-sues with even poor Fluttershy getting all the character sucked out of her in order to present her as some unflappable gun-toting badass.
Basically, it's an interesting and fun story as long as you can get passed how often characters make stupid decisions for no rational reason. And that the premise of "a large number of ponies interacting with a new world" is largely ignored in favour of the same "ponies dominating wizards" nonsense that every Magic School Days rip off likes to do.
9701648
I just remember that I'm reading this for fun.
Did this Story die? hasn't been updated in a while compared to it's previous schedule
9737907
Writer's block, I'm afraid. Don't worry, I'm still working on it- getting close to ready to declare the next chapter ready, actually.
9701648
9702249
For me, every canon-related points died when Discord and Luna plus Lyra attended the same school together.