Madam Malkin looked up when the door to her shop chimed again. There was nobody in her shop right now- a rather infrequent occurrence, at that time of year. The Hogwarts letters had to have been sent out a few days ago; there had been a steady stream of Hogwarts students coming in- somewhat noticeably fewer first-years than normal, and at that point, only a couple upper-year students had needed new robes. Funny, there were usually at least three times as many of those.
Immediately upon seeing them, she figured the two girls entering her shop would probably make her top ten list of strangest customers on their looks alone. They were both Hogwarts first-year age, and wearing color-coordinated muggle clothing. That itself wasn’t all that unusual; about five out of every ten years, she’d get a set of twins, and they would tend to do that. The truly unusual part about them would be their hair. They were both wearing muggle clothes, but their hair was very clearly magically done; there was no way a muggle dye would hold those vivid colors so neatly separated in the wind outside- and those colors were most definitely not natural.
One had wavy blue and white hair, with the division between the colors visible- and sharply defined- all the way down to where the tip of her hair peeked out from behind her waist. The other had long, straight, and dark blue hair, with pink and purple stripes all the way down it and a split at the front that gave it the appearance of a solid wood wig that someone had hit with an axe. It still moved smoothly when she did, though, so that clearly wasn’t actually the case- even though that split stayed, her hair moving almost like it was made of fabric.
No adults came in with them, she noticed. A quick glance out the window explained it- Hagrid was walking towards Fortescue’s. He didn’t like entering, as his bulk would almost always knock something over in her small shop, so he’d developed a habit of sending whatever muggleborn first-year he happened to be escorting in… and going to get them ice cream while he waited.
“Hogwarts, dears?” she greeted.
“Ahh, yes,” the blue-haired girl nodded.
“I take it you already know what we need for that?” the wavy-haired girl asked curiously.
“Yes, I do,” she smiled, guiding them to the stools in the back of the shop. “Just one at a time, please,” she instructed- and, as the blue-and-white-haired girl hopped up on the stool, she made a quick guess as to the size that would fit her and pulled it out, before slipping it over her head. Unlike some fairly rare muggleborns she’s had in here, that have no idea what she’s doing, the girl cooperated fully, quickly running her arms into the sleeves and holding them out for her.
Then the other girl spoke up. “Huh. We ought to be able to get away with just one or two- I imagine Rarity can make-!”
Madam Malkin was in the middle of an involuntary wince at the girl’s willingness to go someplace else when the first interrupted, looking down from the stool.
“Absolutely not! Madam Malkin here is a tailor, a profession unique to this world. Her job is to take this no-doubt mass-produced base and make it fit as well as possible… such that, when you get a bunch of Hogwarts students right next to each other, they all look the same. Can you imagine Rarity being willing to make fifty of the same thing?”
“Of course not, Lyra! I’d only be asking her to make three!”
“Twilight, can you imagine Rarity being willing to make even three of the same plain thing? Hay, even one would be torture to her! And that’s three… what, per each equestrian coming? Which would push it to over ten thousand of effectively the same thing!”
The blue-haired girl- apparently Twilight- opened and closed her mouth a few times. “... Well… Okay. But I’m sure we could find a tailor in Equestria.”
Lyra sighed, rolling her eyes. “Twilight, tailors are like computer scientists. They don’t exist in Equestria, I’ve checked.”
Twilight blinked. “Computer scientists? What’s that?”
“A profession on this side. I’ll have to introduce you to computer science at some point.” A scowl. “I haven’t seen anything computer-driven in Diagon Alley, so I’m starting to think it’s just the muggles.”
Madam Malkin let the silence fall for several seconds before speaking up. “I can’t say I’ve ever heard of Equestria before,” she began.
Lyra chuckled good-naturedly. “I can’t say I’m surprised. Equestria has been- and still is, actually- magically isolated from your world. Until a week and a half ago, that is, when I opened a gateway to connect the two. Then a few days ago, a bunch of owls made their way…” She gasped suddenly. “I almost forgot! Do you know about how many new students Hogwarts gets every year?”
“Hmm?” Madam Malkin muttered, finishing up with the lower hem of the girl’s robes and moving up to one of the sleeves. “I usually see around forty first-years each year, and often a hundred to one fifty upper-year students. Why?”
“... Oh. Then, ahh, I might recommend finding some seasonal help… and stocking extra, and fast. We’ve already confirmed over two thousand Equestrian students this year, and they’ll all be coming here for their robes.”
She froze after that, for a second, before resuming. “Two… Thousand?”
Twilight nodded. “Yep. And every last one of them was invited directly by Hogwarts.”
Lyra nodded as well. “The latest estimate for the final count, at the acceptance deadline, is anywhere between eight thousand… and about eighteen thousand, depending on who the owls get to.” She sighs. “And, if we assume that the Gate is still open for next year and it resumes sending invitations to the ones that couldn’t be invited by the deadline this year, and so on, I think the estimate is that it would take around eight years to invite everyone eligible, after which point it would- theoretically- drop below the maximum, and start inviting everyone as they became eligible, as I imagine it has done on this side for years.”
“I hope Hogwarts knows what they’re doing,” Twilight muttered.
Madam Malkin chuckled briefly, stepping back to get a better look at Lyra; she’d finished the sleeves. “That should be you done, my dear,” she indicated.
Lyra promptly lowered her arms to a normal position, and gave her robes a twirl. “Nice, I like it.” She then slipped them off, handing them to Madam Malkin, and stepped off the stool. “Will you need to pin the other two, or will the one work as a template?”
“It’ll work as a template,” Madam Malkin informed her, accepting the pinned robes and laying them on the counter.
As she did so, Lyra turned towards Twilight. “Your turn, then.”
Madam Malkin smiled, making her initial size guess- she was mighty well practiced with that- as the girl trotted up to and stepped onto the stool, before approaching to start preparing the robes. Twilight cooperated just as fully as Lyra had.
Twilight’s fitting went silently, though it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence. Both girls, despite Lyra’s declaration that tailors didn’t exist in their homeland, clearly had some not insignificant experience with being fitted. They did both seem amused, though, like it wasn’t quite going down as they were used to- which, if she was honest with herself, she wasn’t surprised by, either. Lyra did say they had designers, and both of them seemed to know this ‘Rarity’ rather well.
Then, it finally came time for her to draw her wand, finalize the hems of both robes, duplicate the measurements onto two more robes and a cloak each, and magically apply names to the labels on all of the above. Seeing the two girls staring unblinkingly at her while she had her wand out was… unnerving, so she did her best not to look at them until she was finished, and pocketed her wand.
“... Huh,” Twilight muttered. “I… I don’t think I’ve ever seen ambient magic used that efficiently before.”
Lyra put a hand to her chin. “The magic bond mighta been part of that, but I want to say at least some of that efficiency wasn’t specific to that bond.”
Twilight looked at her. “Wait, there’s a magic bond?”
“Yeah. There’s a symbiotic thaumic bond between her and her wand. Very low-key, but it peaked while it was in her hand- so it’s probably something that either only she can use, or that she can get the most utility out of.”
“Ahh, something like that,” Madam Malkin muttered, packaging the two girls’ robes separately and making her way to the register. “I’m not familiar with how it works, but I know you’ll never get as good of results with another wizard’s wand. Ollivander will probably tell you more than I can without asking, whenever you get your wands.”
Lyra held up a bulging pouch she almost certainly hadn’t been holding a minute ago, shaking it slightly to make the coinage inside tinkle. “Sounds good to me. So, how much?” The pouch looked to hold at least a couple hundred galleons.
She named the total… Then, with a distinctive crash that shook the shop, Twilight suddenly had a very large bag of coins on the floor next to her.
“Heh heh,” Twilight muttered, opening the top to pull out a single golden galleon; the total was just over a galleon.
“Ahh…” Madam Malkin muttered.
“We’ll each pay for our own robes and stuff,” Lyra chuckled. “We’re shopping together, but buying separately.” She glanced at Twilight’s bag. “And Princess, I still think you didn’t need to hunt up the biggest bag you could find and stuff it with as much of the treasury as you could fit.”
“Hey, it’s not the biggest I could find!”
“Only because the biggest wouldn’t fit in your pocket.”
Twilight blushed, looking away, while Madam Malkin silently counted out their change.
As Lyra accepted her change, she spoke to Twilight again. “How about this: We can use my gold for the rest of our purchases today, it should be enough. So long as you repay me- from that- at the end.”
Finally, both Lyra’s pouch and Twilight’s bag- the latter of which would have fit both of the girls, had it not been full of gold- disappeared tracelessly, and they thanked her and headed out of her shop, carrying their new clothes.
Madam Malkin let out a small sigh, watching them as they went. Definitely the strangest two customers she’d ever had. If she knew one thing, it was that Hogwarts was in for the year of their lives.
… And Lyra’s packaged robes just vanished into thin air as they reached the door, Twilight’s following suit as they made it outside.
She smiled. Hopefully, the students won’t be the only ones learning at Hogwarts this year, and strange abilities like that could then be shared across wizardkind.
I liked this new chapter. Will it follow the same idea of Draco becoming friends (and possibly life partners) with Harry and Hermione rather quickly? Or will you go a different route? Either way, can't wait for that chapter.
Interestingly, with a bit of forewarning Madame Malkin shouldn't have that much of an issue meeting demand. Magic allows for quite a bit of cheating to hurry along the fine details, the main issue will be cost of materials.
The fourth Blade pierces the void to open the gate...
The spear of Skill forms the fourth part of the GATE
I didn't notice this before, but Lyra and Twilight are in human forms equal to a typical Hogwards first-year- in other words, eleven year olds? Maybe a bit more explanation here would be warranted as to why adult ponies appear as very juvenile humans?
I can confirm that this chapter was publicly available there before it appeared here.
10145933
... This is actually a great example of when I should have proofread my edited note... That "in theory" was actually referring to the sentence before that one, and was from before I inserted the one in between. I knew it'd go up on time on Patreon, I set that automatic system up almost a week ago. It will have gone public around 1 1/2 hours earlier than this, at exactly 12:01 PM (because for some reason, Patreon doesn't want to let me schedule it to go up on the hour).
10145925
Yes, they are. That's something that got discussed a lot in the comments on The Gate (and only a little in the story), but I plan on having someone (maybe Hermione, she'd be likely to notice) point out that they're not behaving like eleven year olds, and ask...
10145870
Yep. We can assume she will have, to get them all processed in, say, the week between Harry's first letter and his arrival in Diagon Alley, avg. 15 seconds or so per student (assuming constant flow from open to close, 8-hour days, and a 7-day week)... Note that the actual window is likely going to be around twice as long, offering 30s per customer. Which is not much, but she should be able to manage, given seasonal help... and this forewarning to acquire the materials pronto. Other 'specialty' shops, such as Ollivander's, I'm not so certain; Flourish and Blotts, and most the other, more traditional stores, will basically just need to stock extra and hire seasonal cashiers. But Ollivander's... I don't know, maybe he'll visit the Ministry that night and use time distortion? His shop isn't really that conducive to 'extra help'...
10146011
Well Malkin's main advantage is that she's creating uniforms, which are by definition identical, and robes to boot, which are largely unisex. All she really needs to do is acquire 2000 roughly first-year-sized robes, and then use her expertise in tailoring charms to size them correctly.
As to Ollivander, perhaps the reason that his shop is so full of random wands is because he's felt driven to overproduce throughout his career, and now it turns out that he has managed to create a wand for every Equestrian student, right on schedule. Seems like the kind of thing he might do...
10146034
Yep. Problem (for Ollivander) is, when he's got only 30 seconds to find the right one per student, he'll need something- like time distortion- to give him the time he needs. And assistants won't work, because he clearly uses perfect recall more than anything else to know what/where each given wand is... meaning, those wands may or may not be sorted or organized. It'd take longer to train an assistant than it would to serve all the Equestrians alone.
... And 12-13,000 is (my) estimated final count of students, the number they'll actually have. Each student needs, at Madam Malkin's, three sets of robes, a cloak, and a hat... which are really only stock counts to her, as magic makes the additionals easy.
The only complaint I have about this story is the long title. I mean don't get me wrong it fits the story I just prefer shorter titles
10146062
Yeah, me too... Unfortunately, not only was The Gate taken by its predecessor, but it doesn't describe it very well.
You'll see me referring to this one as OtIoPW rather frequently.
I never really saw Ron as manipulative. He's selfish, and thanks to his mother he had a bad case of poor proud. Poor proud is when people see even the slightest gift or helping hand as an insult.
I'm curious as to how the school actually handles the large influx of students? To be honest, I gave up on the earlier version because I found it too hard to follow. I was looking up how many students Hogwarts had, and JKR was quoted as their being around a thousand students. Both in the books and the movies, we simply don't see the evidence of those numbers and the Griffindor first-year class for Harry was abysmally small. A number of people have tried to work out the number of students and come up with a variety of numbers all falling well short of a thousand. I tried looking up numbers for the hall as depicted in the movies and found a number of historical references for similar halls. It seems that the school could potentially handle around four-thousand inhabitants housed in various locations and likely stacked like cord-wood with bunks, but the hall itself could only handle at max capacity five hundred and fifty souls - based on historical numbers for similar installations and these are the more generous numbers I came up with.
I really think you should down-play the number of accepted students per year. Swamping Hogwarts with multi-thousands of Equestrians per year is just problematic.
Think of it this way: Hogwarts sends letters to human wizards at age 11 and location england. It doesn't send letters to everyone in the world. It makes sense that it would only send letters to ponies that meet some criteria, whatever "age 11 and local" translates into through the gate.
10145925
Yes, I know computerneek replied to this one, but I'm gonna add my 2¢ anyways.
From an editor's PoV, I think one of the greater failings of The Gate was the lack of explanation of why the age thing happened. During the 1992/2022 summer holidays (Philosopher's Stone is set in 2021/2022 in this fic to allow for modern muggle technology), Lyra completely sealed off Britain from Equestria because she realized her mental age regressed the longer she stayed young. It's implied she managed to fix it, since she'd never reopen it until she knew her mind wouldn't be altered, but it was never touched upon until then. It was a contrived failure on the part of the story.
One of the main reasons for that was a lack of plan. As an editor, I can safely say that this rewrite has a plan. Stupid things like Dumbledore knowing that Quirrel is Voldemort and letting him run around for the next few months won't happen.
The Basalisk won't be slain immediately in Book 2. This is because we have a plan.
TL;DR That was a barely touched upon point of The Gate and here it will be expanded upon.
Well, they have something on the right hand side of the unguarded, third floor corridor that can cause a painful death to student - instead of in the hidden dungeon somewhere else.
Looked like Madam Malkin was still in the daze here, because normal people would take note when the one in front of you claim to be a princess.
Are we sure this isn't their looping selves?
10146143
Whatever Rowling states outside canon, the school has exactly 5*2*4*7=280 students at any given time.
... Because Harry's year explicitly has 5 girls and 5 boys per house, and we can assume that such a perfect distribution- if important enough to be explicit- holds throughout the rest of the years.
As for how Hogwarts will handle them... Yeah, there's going to be a lot of magic involved. And I plan to cover that, however briefly, in some of the coming chapters.
10146214
Yes, that would make sense... But, it wouldn't give me this outrageous premise...
If it were to be "local" through the gate as well, it'd basically only get Ponyville, and we'd have something on the order of Magic School Days or If Wishes Were Ponies... Great stories, don't get me wrong, but not what I'm going for here. So, I'm putting it up to a design gimmick in that spell whose designers didn't expect it to need to deal with interdimensional gateways... that, when it encountered one, happened to put the entirety of Equestria "in britain"... and a quirk of the magic steps in to magnify the number of candidates massively...
Don't worry, that will be discussed, at some point.
10146261
... Yes. Lyra & Twilight have just managed to reverse engineer Pinkie Pie's mane.
... Or something. In this case, in my headcanon, Lyra was the one that originally designed the hammerspace, and gave it to Pinkie a long time ago... and she just gave it to Twilight too for the purposes of this adventure. But yes, it's a very similar... technique, I think?
10146330
It was a joke, btw.
10146332
I'm aware. And a good one at that, it made me laugh =D
10146322
I wasn't aware that there were any numbers given in the books. It does at least explain why there'd be so few teachers.
10146389
They aren't given explicitly in the books, but in Pottermore and other supplemental material- even names given for all of them in Harry's year. If Rowling wanted a thousand per year, she should have made about thirty students per house per year... which would push two-house classes to 60 students apiece, making them impractical (as it is, they're 20 students each, and considering most modern classrooms have 15-30 students...)
Combine the house pairings, and the apparent one-session-per-week for each class (we know Potions is a double that only appears on Fridays, for example), and we get 14 class sessions per week per instructor (2 per year, each covering 2 houses)... Which, at just three per day (and one day with only two), is plenty reasonable.
Are you trying to make consistent worldbuilding out of Rowling's unplanned mess? Sheesh.
Methods of Rationality does the best worldbuilding fixing of that setting that I've seen. Of course, it changes so much along the way.
I just leave it as "Rowling never intended it to be anything more than a child's look at a world of magic, and it just grew as it grew up."
10146834
Exactly.
Which means, the way I'm taking it, the books are official canon above all else- and within that rule, I basically pick and choose what's "canon". and what can't be... Then, what'll change for my story.
For example, did you know that Ollivander's shop says "Makers of fine wands since 382 BC"... Which suggests the store existed since back then, which is blatantly false, as that's 400 years before London began... and the Leaky Cauldron is explicitly the first building in Diagon Alley.
Oh, or how Harry's birthday is definitely Tuesday, July 31st, 1991 in the Philosopher's Stone... nevermind that that day never existed, but instead, Wednesday, July 31st, 1991 did.
The books are riddled with so many plotholes- both relative to themselves and explicit against reality- that I actually have an entire channel on my Discord server dedicated to just that.
... Things like, flying lessons. They took place on a flat lawn on the opposite side of the castle from the forbidden forest, but when Neville took off, his broom drifted out of sight over the forest. And when Harry caught Neville's remembrall a foot from the ground, in order to stop before crashing into the ground, that broom would've had to exert deadly forces on the order of 70g... He could've just not bothered slowing down, slammed into the ground at full speed, and experienced similar forces. Thus, when McGonagall says Charlie Weasley couldn't have done it, I'm not surprised. Harry himself shouldn't have been able to do it, because physics. Oh, and when Neville fell off his broom from twenty feet up, and landed flat on his face? Broken wrist... nothing about his nose. Nevermind that a technique-less landing from that far is deadly.
Interesting, Lyra's more sensitive to magic than Twilight? Sure, she's weaker, but I wonder if they're tied in the theory and spellcrafting fields.
10147261
Wizard children are extra rubbery, haven't you heard?
10147422
I know... but still, some of the feats are ridiculously unrealistic- for example, with, say, sixty pounds pushing down on the center of the broomstick at 70g, even if his body could withstand it, and assuming the force from the broom's flight magic was equally distributed across the handle, it'd snap in half. There's just so many problems with that scene... And of course, it's not the only one.
And... Kinda. If you've read The Gate, you know about Lyra's "unique advantage", which gives her a unique perspective on magic. She's probably actually less sensitive, but has the ability to scan and/or manipulate magic in ways no other unicorn- including Twilight- can.
10147425
I'd say "magic" and be done with it, although since Lyra, Twilight and others will try to study it, so I can see why you'd be worried about it.
Fair enough, I do remember it.
"Makers of wands since 382 BC" just means that the family has been doing it that long, not that the store has been there that long.
Consider just how much stock he has; how many centuries did it take, and how empty will the store be once hogwarts gets all these students.
PLEASE tell me you'll have a scene where he comments on how empty the store is now, only to be told that there's an equal amount coming next year :-)
Beyond that? Bludgers in a sporting game where people don't have super padded clothing? Clearly, wizards are as tough as earth ponies. Makes sense, they have no horns or wings, but a "cheat wand" instead.
Which gets to the whole (forgot which story had this plotline) point of "Earth ponies can now use magic?!"
My personal favorite: If the wand chooses the wizard, what if two wands want the same wizard? What if nothing in the store wants that wizard?
10147623
Yep, that got pointed out, with the family-doing-it thing. The sign being on the store only suggests the store had been there that long, doesn't state.
As for his stock counts, feel free to see my blog post on the subject.
As for the empty store comment... That's distinctly possible, though not terribly likely for him to actually be worried, given the numbers on the blog post. Of course, a smaller average production rate would be more realistic, so I may recalculate...
I think the earth-pony-wands thing was exclusive to basically every HP crossover that put earth ponies in Britain... Magic School Days, If Wishes Were Ponies, this one and its predecessor The Gate, ...
As for the wand choice thing? Good question. Might be a main reason Ollivander has such a massive stock... and no competition. Might also be because of some other mechanic related to the wands... I have a plan for that.
Any idea how long the "next chapter" button will stay broken?
10149731
Considering that this chapter went up day before yesterday, and it's on a weekly update schedule... Five more days, to Tuesday. And if you're on my Patreon, I expect to be posting Chap. 5 to patrons sometime tomorrow (once my other editor gets back to me, I only finished writing it earlier today), so it'll go public- including on here- Tuesday.
Alright. So, right after Da&Dr takes me to one world, I come here for another.
10150176
Da&Dr?
The current story starts at https://darthsanddroids.net/episodes/1816.html
Be sure to read the commentary underneath the comics.
My concerns:
The massive MLP population coming to school.
Who got invited and who didn't?
Are you going to have characters just jump on and out? Kind of like Star trek guests of the week?
Are there more pony students that human?
What does that mean for the human students leaning magic?
Can they learn pony magic?
Are you going to have pony magic still separate from unicorn Pegasus and Earth?
The power disparity between characters:
You've got the sisters and discord, highly doubt discord would stay at the school in a new universe.
What time on Earth is this taking place?
Are you going to retread the HP touchstones?
Are prophecies a thing in your story?
How many HP characters are you going to use?
Is Lyra the main character?
Is she going to just continue to expound and be handwave things?
I ask these things because in every other crossover, it's a small cast dealing with a situation. Some things are assumed and others are spelled out.
I can't assume anything with this and it confuses me.
Why is Lyra allowed to keep the gate in her back yard?
Where is it in HP?
Why hasn't the HP government done something?
Why are the ponies being treated with so much trust?
I want to read more from you. But I don't know how much I can take of just missing info.
10155621
Well...
Admittedly, this is the most questions I've ever had asked at one time... and while I do plan on having a number of them addressed later in the story, I believe simply saying "wait and see" would be unfair to those that tend to notice details like this, like you... or me. Especially considering the slow update cycle.
And on that topic, I'm sorry to say, I'm not sure what you meant by "retread the HP touchstones"?
10155678
I want to thank you for your response.
When I wrote touchstone, I meant cornerstone. Story beats.
The crucial turning points of Harry's life. Facing voldy, getting to the chamber of secrets, such and such.
10155707
I do intend to keep the major canon events, yes, albeit somewhat significantly modified. Butterfly effect is a thing, but it won't stop contrived events from happening, and it's not an excuse to rewrite the entire continuity.
Cool updates.
More like "in fanon" than "in canon". I don't get where this all come from in HP fandom. Same with Mineta from MHA.
That's good to hear.
Rairty can get away with consitently unique peices and occasional repair and adjustment because clothing is not a requirement or a need in most situations.
I don't know what the intent with Lyra was but she's very obnoxious in these opening chapters. She created the gate; sure whatever, that's the premise. She's depicted as super good at human athletics; bizarre but I guess it's supposed to be comedic. She's constantly explaining all the magic and clearly intended to be a super genius of some sort; this might be less annoying if she wasn't explaining everything to the series's big magic nerd, making Twilight seem clueless. She even waves off explaining computer science to the only pony who has literally used a computer.
And then she has to correct Twilight about Rarity's reaction to something, and that felt like kind of the last straw. Why is Twilight even there if Lyra is going to posses 100% of the information about literally everything, up to and including Twilight's friends?
10369419
Yes, she's a bit... overbearing.
The reason why I did the Rarity thing, was because almost every other HP/MLP story had Rarity make school robes for everypony, sometimes even voluntarily (as in, asking to do it). And as Lyra explains, I can't see that happening... at all.
According to JK Rowling, a galleon is worth around £5
11796503
Yes, according to Rowling who actually admitted she's not good with math...
According to actual valuation research, it's worth about $100. In this story and many of my others, it's worth exactly $98.60 USD, since that's the currency I'm used to and it gives me a solid reference from which to define the prices of various other items.