Chapter 10
Only two owls fluttered into the Great Hall to deliver mail, and neither one went for Professor McGonagall. It was the first time in two weeks that had been true.
The sigh across all gathered was clearly audible.
“So that happened,” Dumbledore muttered.
Professor McGonagall turned to Professor Dumbledore. “Are we past the deadline?”
Dumbledore blinked, and looked down at his watch for a second. “Ahh, yes, we are.” The answering sigh of relief, from all of the other staff at once, made him smile. “So, what’s the final count?”
“Way too many for a single class,” Professor Flitwick stated.
Professor McGonagall nodded as well, brandishing her wand to summon a few dozen large scrolls. “Yes. We’ll have to count them next.”
The sun was going down outside by the time the gathered heads of house finished their work in the staffroom. They had counted the number of names on each of the scrolls the teachers had used when opening letters- and had just set the spell working on the sorting scroll. It was expected to take much of the remaining month to complete the scroll, but at least it wouldn’t require any more human intervention to fully alphabetize the names onto a single scroll.
Professor Dumbledore added the forty or so numbers together, and rechecked his work, before looking up at the rest. “It would seem we’ll be having an interesting year,” he mused.
“Oh?” Professor McGonagall asked.
“Did we get six hundred students or something?” Flitwick asked.
Dumbledore shook his head. “Twelve thousand, two hundred ninety-six. First-years.”
McGonagall blinked. “Where are we going to put roughly three thousand first-years per house? The castle might self-resize, but it doesn’t go that far.”
Snape sighed. “I hope we won’t have to deal with six thousand students in one class?”
“Definitely not,” Professor McGonagall answered promptly. “It’s too late to explain it away as a mailing error, or to delay the Hogwarts Express, so we’ll have to rearrange the schedules.” She scowled. “Though, it will be… difficult, at best, to have enough time to teach them all, even if we go for class sizes of a hundred- including upper years, which would end up with all four houses in one class.”
Flitwick winced. “We’d have, what, minimum a hundred and twenty class sessions per week?”
“That’s… impossible,” Sprout scowled. “The greenhouses won’t fit more than thirty at a time.”
“Not to mention that there aren’t a hundred and twenty waking hours in a week, weekends included,” Dumbledore sighed. “I’ll have to put a few ads in the Daily Prophet… and hope someone bites.”
Snape and Flitwick both scowled. “That…” Flitwick began.
“Sounds like a great way to invite a disaster,” Snape grumbled. Then he tilted his head. “Perhaps we could set up an extended teaching program, have our NEWT students to help with the instruction?”
McGonagall tilted her head. “Possibly. There aren’t enough of them, though- we’d have to throw in the OWL students as well. All the way down to the third years, even, and that’s still asking a lot of them.”
Dumbledore nodded slowly. “... True. Across all the required subjects, we currently have a teacher per… oh, sixty students or so, including upper years. In order to handle twelve thousand five hundred total students, we’d need… what, two hundred teachers?”
“And we can’t expect nearly as much teaching activity out of even an NEWT student,” Flitwick chimed in, “or we’d overwhelm them with their own schooling as well- and be virtually guaranteed to get a sub-par educational experience for all involved. Call it one every, oh, five students, if we go entirely on an extended teaching program.”
“Which computes to twelve hundred,” Dumbledore calculated. “And we’ve only got two hundred forty returning students- even including second years, and the ones that shouldn’t be at the head of a classroom for any reason.”
“Hmm… Well, given Professor Binns’ style, we could probably set his first-year classes in an expanded classroom, and batch them by the thousands,” McGonagall muttered. She looked up at the rest. “His classes don’t have any practical components, so he uses a lecture-and-homework method, which works fine for large numbers at once. That should help simplify things at least a little bit.”
“That leaves Charms, Transfiguration, Potions, Herbology, Astronomy, and flight lessons,” Dumbledore nodded.
McGonagall nodded as well. “Madam Hooch often complains about having too much free time- and since first years aren’t allowed their own brooms, nor on the teams, she could probably teach them in waves through the year. Twenty per class, as per normal, with twenty sessions per week, and she tells me it usually takes about three sessions for most students to catch on. Call it four hundred students every three weeks or so- and with our thirty-six-school-week year…” She scowled. “That’d only take care of forty-eight hundred students through the year. Add a few more sessions, and increase class sizes to thirty, and she will be able to get them all.” She shrugged. “The rest of us, however, have much more to teach.”
“What about Princess Twilight Sparkle?” Sprout asked suddenly.
“Pardon?” Snape asked.
“Well, she was working with Lyra- and that Equestrian Secret Service agent- to help the shopping experience go smoothly. Perhaps we could send her a letter, see how plausible an extended teaching program amongst the first-years would be? Just because, we already know at least some of our Equestrian students are already masters of their own, just… not with what we have to teach. I’d be willing to bet at least some of them will soak it up like a sponge, and be able to pass it on.”
Dumbledore nodded. “And of course, Princess Twilight Sparkle would be the only one likely to know about that kind of thing. Worth a shot.”
Snape winced. “Eh.”
“We’ll have to contact the Ministry too,” Flitwick mused. “Inform them of the… anomalous attendance count, and request additional funding. A hundred and five galleons won’t be enough to cover any one of our subjects with this many students, let alone all of them.”
Dumbledore sighed. “Yeah.”
“And none of that solves the problem of where they’ll sleep,” McGonagall scowled.
The room fell silent for a second, before Snape spoke up. “If the castle self-expansion won’t be enough, can we help it along?”
McGonagall winced. “We could, in theory, but I doubt it’d work out very easily, and we’d risk a lot of damage to the castle. Completely aside from the time required to walk across a dormitory large enough to fit three thousand students.”
“Hmm,” Dumbledore muttered. “You know how the dormitories for different years or genders in the same house all occupy the same physical space in the castle?”
McGonagall tilted her head. That was true; the ancient spellwork of the castle made excellent use of the ‘space’ the dormitories occupied, multilayering the space so that every dormitory of the entire house- across all years and both genders- technically occupied the same physical space, and was only accessible by the entrance. Even the division rooms, that the seven dormitories for each gender connected to before the stairway to the relevant common room, occupied that same physical space. “True. That spatial multilayering is theoretically limitless, so if we further subdivide the first-years by… oh, last name, then first, as many times as necessary, we should be able to set them up with traditional five-student dormitories.”
“Oh!” Flitwick squeaked. “We’ll probably want to separate the British students from the Equestrian ones. They’ll feel mighty lost if we sprinkle them throughout the Equestrians, never be able to connect with anyone in their own room.”
“For that matter,” Dumbledore mused, putting a finger to his chin, “we could take the current split between rooms, and add a door- for the Equestrians, to be subdivided like that. And have the first-years door be explicitly labeled British first-years… Or at least, non-Equestrian.”
“That… Should work,” McGonagall nodded. “We’ll want to get the spellwork started as soon as we can, to make sure it has the time to set everything up.” She sighed. “It’s entirely possible we won’t see anywhere near as even a distribution between houses in the Equestrians as we have seen in British students in the past.”
Draco Malfoy stared at the ceiling.
It was three days after that fateful shopping trip. Just that day, he’d gone out with his parents for something they couldn’t have gotten during the Hogwarts shopping rush… and he’d found himself looking for those strange girls. Not the blue-and-white-haired one Diamond had introduced to him as Lyra (and subsequently smacked, when the girl had started staring again), but all the other, totally unfamiliar ones… and Diamond herself.
He hadn’t been able to find any of them. So, lying awake in bed and staring at the ceiling, he was trying to figure out why he had felt disappointed when he hadn’t been able to find the terrifying girl.
Sure, the cake had been nice. Diamond had introduced him to Pinkie Pie, the baker, and ordered him as much butterbeer as he wanted. She’d said something about alcohol that he hadn’t understood, beyond that the ‘virgin butterbeer’ she was ordering tasted no different from the regular, and unlike the regular, he could have as much as he wanted of it without getting drunk.
She'd then taken him around the room, and introduced him to various people. And of course, the way she occasionally said it as “Po- er, people” was nothing shy of cute.
She’d introduced him to a few very important people… who all, for some reason, seemed to be coming to Hogwarts this year.
There was Princess Luna, Diarch of Equestria. Diamond had half-bowed to her, before stopping herself and apologizing. When Draco had made a full bow, Luna had explained Diamond’s odd bowing behavior, saying something about ‘on vacation from princesshood’, and how she wanted “everyp- everyone” to treat her like they would anyone else.
There was Princess Twilight Sparkle, who she introduced as a princess but didn’t treat like a princess. For some reason he never learned, Princess Twilight had mentioned wishing ponies would quit bowing to her… then blushed cherry red and clammed up. Diamond had laughed it off and changed the topic, but he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that she was doing it deliberately.
Then she’d brought him to the booth with Lyra in it. She’d introduced him to her ‘moms’, Lyra Heartstrings and Bonbon… who were both the same age as she. Then, when Lyra stared at him, she’d smacked the girl. Lyra had argued with her briefly… until Bonbon said something about ‘as bad as Spoiled’, that made all the color drain out of Lyra’s face in evident terror. When he’d asked what ‘spoiled’ she was talking about, Diamond had answered quickly.
“We don’t talk about her.”
She’d said it with such a finality that he’d had to wonder if that was how they referred to The Dark Lord, instead of ‘You Know Who’ or the like. So, he hadn’t asked.
At that same booth, she’d introduced him to two other girls, Cloudchaser and Spitfire. The latter of which, reportedly, was the captain of the ‘Wonderbolts’... which she had characterized as the Equestrian ‘Air Force’, whatever that was. He’d pretended to understand more than just that it made the girl a very dangerous girl.
He’d then been introduced to a series of lesser figures. Three mischievous-looking girls, named Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle, and Applebloom. A boy with a scowl at least twice as wide as it should have been, simply named ‘Discord’, and the shy girl with the pink hair seated next to him, Fluttershy.
Eventually, she had introduced him to another boy, seated peacefully at the side of the room and relaxing while he sipped his butterbeer, that she called her father: Filthy Rich.
If he was entirely honest with himself, that wasn’t the strangest name he’d heard that day.
The boy had definitely come from a rich family; he had that refined look to him. But, he’d also been the same age as Diamond, so couldn’t possibly have been her father. He did put on a look of amusement when she labeled him as such, and asked Diamond if she was having fun. If he was entirely honest with himself, the boy did behave more like what he would’ve expected of an adult. He didn’t ooze the noble-of-the-land that his father did, and that he was required to ooze himself, but his behaviors did put him squarely in the social elite, in the rich sector.
Then Diamond had told him that Filthy owned and operated a bank in her hometown… which, even when he asked, she wouldn’t tell him what the town was called. After that, they’d found an empty booth in the corner of the pub to chat in for the rest of the time.
There had been some interesting revelations. For instance, when he’d asked the question that had been bugging him- in his father’s voice- ever since he’d accepted the cake, she hadn’t had a clue what he was talking about with ‘blood purity’. He’d taken that as a bad sign, and purposely not jumped to conclusions as he explained the whole pureblood-versus-muggleborn thing.
She’d laughed, and informed him that she and all the rest of the Equestrians belonged to ‘none of the above’... and that, while they might have no ‘wizard blood’ in their veins as he would know it, not a single one of them had a non-magical ancestor that had lived within the last ‘few thousand years’. Reportedly, ‘nop- nobody’ knew about anything that had happened before a certain point, but they did know that at least some magic had already developed by that point… and everyone had it.
He had also heard that Twilight was the scholar of the entire town, and that if he had questions for more details, he’d have to ask her instead. He’d asked, and confirmed- she was indeed talking about Princess Twilight.
He scowled at the ceiling. So, why had he found himself hoping he’d meet that girl again, that girl that was on a first name basis with a member of her royalty? Neither he nor his father were on a first name basis with any other nobles, up to and including Minister for Magic Fudge!
Was it because she was on a first name basis with a member of her royalty, yet seemed so careless at the same time?
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Ah, cultural vocabulary, so very hard to modify a lifetime's worth of speaking habits in just a couple weeks.
The age component of the gate is going to cause some interesting relationship questions, hehe. And exacerbate what will be seen as cultural quirks of the Equestrians, given the number of adults amongst the group.
The bit about the doors and the folding of the dorms was an interesting idea, as long as none of the students start thinking segregation. I wonder if they couldn't have left it at two doors for first years, one boy and one girl, and had the doors respond to multiple passwords to open into the different spaces. No, that'd cause all sorts of issues with groups of people trying to get into their dorms at once. Not to mention just how many passwords they'd have to "program" at once.
Edit: And the fact that that many passwords at once means people can just randomly guess words and likely end up in someone's dorm.
That spatial stacking is an impressive idea. Better make sure it's real durable though, you wouldn't like it if one of those enchantments broke down all of a sudden...
Looking forward to another chapter! This one was very well done, I feel sorry for Draco and the Staff Members in their confusion. Draco especially, with Diamond running around saying people supposedly her age are her parents...anyway, good job!
Ahh, Draco is slowly but surely inching close to the truth. I rather like the focus being on him and Diamond instead of the usual Harry and the CMC.
And Filthy divorced Spoiled, huh? I wonder how he got together with Lyra and Bon Bon after that.
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Like a trash compactor several castles sized, all in one instantaneous squish.
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He didn't...
That's a bit of my headcanon: Filthy and Spoiled... Well, in my headcanon, Spoiled was a foal abuser. Emotional foal abuse.
Filthy didn't know about that, and didn't realize anything was wrong- and in so doing, didn't do anything, making him guilty of negligence.
The two offenses are not equal. One is actively harming the child, one is failing to acknowledge their troubles. The American legal system would lump them both under 'child abuse'... but I can see the Equestrians looking at it differently.
Either offense is enough for any Equestrian court to decide that both of them are- individually- incapable of caring for a foal. Spoiled, as a willing abuser, would have gone to prison- and Equestria being Equestria, that's an offense bad enough to horrify the entire population- making it just as much protective custody as incarceration.
Filthy, when the case came to light (and he found out exactly how much Spoiled was hurting Diamond) practically begged them to take her away, to someone that could care for her properly- because unlike Spoiled, he truly loves her, he's just... good with bits, and most definitely not ponies, hence his reliance on Spoiled to take care of Diamond. Thus, Diamond was removed from their care- and he was given visitation rights... Spoiled was not.
As for how Bonbon and Lyra got to be called 'mom'... They're the ones that took her in.
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I see. So that's your back story. I can definitely see Bon Bon adopted a foal since her and Lyra cannot have one of their own.
Good call. If you want organizing, who is better than the Princess of List.
Cadance found her first human target.
My first thought, is that this seems to be a much better approach to the whole number of students issue. They are realizing the issue with the need for extra teachers well in advance of students arriving, and even having a reasonable approach to the whole "Where we going to put them all" problem.
And more of Draco's background and characterization, turning him from just a poorly fleshed out foil to an actual character.
"Patreon, Discord."
Well, we certainly met Discord. When was Discord introduced to Patreon?
So there are roughly 2500 dorm rooms, or 625 per house. You can overlap the rooms, but where do you put the doors?
I can think of a few possibilities:
Same as above, except the space in the room is negatively curved. Negatively curved, or hyperbolic, spaces are famous for packing an incredible amount of space into a small radius. If the fundamental distance (roughly the scale where the curvature really starts to matter) is, say, 10 meters, the common rooms would only need to be 60 meters in diameter. If the fundamental distance is 5 meters, the rooms would only be 37 meters across.
I suppose the wizards might not be aware of hyperbolic geometry. On the other hand, they have space folding spells -- they have more of a reason to invent it than we did!
Personally, I'm biased toward option 3, because I love hyperbolic geometry. But it probably isn't a good idea for this story. It's tricky to describe, and brings in advanced math. Also, if the wizards could give the common room negative curvature, they could have just done the same thing to the dorms!
Practically, I think option 1 is the best. It's easy to explain, works well, and doesn't require advanced math. And the numbers work out really well. The specific scheme I described (split into 5, four times, to get 625 dorms per house) handles 12,500 students total, and there are 12,256 Equestrian students.
I can only think of a few problems:
Each house produces a third of a megawatt of body heat. And if all of the dorms are overlapped, all of the heat that diffuses through the walls is going to the same place. So how are they going to keep the dorms cool?
(If they discover this the hard way, and the dorms get unsafely hot, then the previous point kicks in, and you get an epic disaster!)
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Yes, Option #1 there is what the teachers are talking about. As for the problems...
1. Simple: Make the common room bigger. They can do that without too much difficulty, I hope...
2. This is something I've chosen to ignore for that very reason- it'd shatter my entire premise. Maybe they just made the door extra wide?
3. This is a very good question. Perhaps they just vent it all into the wards, and make Hogwarts' defenses mighty powerful? Or use it to power the multilayering effect?
4. Like regular bathrooms. That said, canonically, there are no bathrooms inside the common room/dorm areas; I've chosen to alter this, for really the same reason as #2. How they would work in a layered space, I have no idea.
Realizing that Lyra is prancing around and "adopting" children who already have parent(s) is kinda WTF-moment, not gonna lie. I wonder if she "adopted" Scootaloo and made sure that Scootaloo and her parents would never meet again, too.
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Well... my headcanon goes a little deeper than that. Diamond had an abusive mother, and her father cared but specialized too hard on financial expertise. So when Spoiled got caught in her abuse (which he wasn't aware of), he basically begged them to put Diamond in foster care, declaring himself unfit to care for her (which he'd just realized). So they did that, and Lyra/Bonbon ended up being her foster parents, while Filthy was granted visitation rights because he wasn't abusive and truly cared- he simply wasn't any good at it, and felt she could be happier with someone that actually knew how to care for her.
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Weird headcanon, but I am all for a happy ending, and Filthy realizing that he is not a very good father in technical terms makes sense. Though giving her up for adoption seems a tad extreme. I would have though he would find someone to help raise her, and have them live together, instead of sending her away completely...
Please tell me if I misunderstood.