• Published 8th Dec 2020
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If Wishes Were Ponies, Book II - tkepner



Harry Potter and the CMC are ready for their second year at Hogwarts. Tom Riddle is not pleased.

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Ch. 19. Hidden

For the first time, both teams in the Quidditch stadium were playing on up-to-the-date brooms that differed only in the tastes of the players and team captains. The Slytherins were playing on Nimbus Two Thousand and Ones. The Gryffindor team, however, was using a mix of new brooms. The twins were on their Nimbus Two Thousands from last year, and the three chasers and goal-keeper were on CleanSweep Sevens. According to the team Captains, the CleanSweeps were better suited for nimbleness — a necessity for those positions. The Nimbuses were more oriented towards straight-line acceleration and high-speed. Perfect for Seekers and Beaters needing to be in a new position that wasn’t necessarily very close to their current one.

It promised to be an interesting game.

It was, just not in the manner that everyone expected.

A rogue bludger had chased Harry relentlessly back and forth across the pitch while he searched vainly for the snitch and tried to avoid getting hit. It had taken him only a moment’s inattention to fall victim to the rogue, leather-covered, lead ball. Malfoy taunting him throughout did not help the experience.

While Harry did manage to get the snitch before Draco, it was at the expense of a broken arm. Which was further complicated by Professor Lockhart muffing a spell and accidentally vanishing all the bones in his right arm, from shoulder to fingertips.

His mum would not be pleased. For many reasons.

Goyle and Crabbe seemed especially pleased at seeing Harry floated off to the Hospital Wing, despite losing the game. Malfoy was too distracted by Slytherin’s Quidditch Captain, Marcus Flint, screaming in his face at losing them the game to notice.

After taking the distasteful Skele-Grow — why did all witchery potions taste terrible? — his teammates, and herd-mates, showed up. They wanted to celebrate their win and commiserate his misfortune with a grand party to cheer him up.

Unfortunately, Madam Pomfrey chased them all out, claiming he needed rest to regrow his missing thirty-three bones.

It took an inordinate long time for him to finally fall asleep.

^-~-^

Harry woke with a small yelp of pain. His arm felt as if it were full of large splinters, all wriggling and moving slowly, like a batch of worms. He blinked, looking around. It was almost too dark to see. With a shock, he realized someone was touching his forehead in the dark.

“Shite!” he exclaimed and tried to move away from the giant eyeball inches from his face.

Tennis-ball sized eyes were peering at Harry through the darkness. After a moment, Harry realized it was Dobby, the house-elf.

He looked miserable in the dim light. “Mr. Harry Potter, sir, came back to Hogwarts,” he said softly. “Dobby tried to warn Harry Potter. Ah sir,” he sighed mournfully, “why didn’t you stay home?”

“What’re you doing here?” Harry said as he pushed Dobby’s sponge away. He leaned up on his good elbow. “Besides, did you see how many adults were with me? Do you really think they would have let me stay at home?”

Dobby looked away and sighed. He turned back to Harry. “Harry Potter must leave Hogwarts! Dobby believed his bludger would be enough —”

“Your bludger?” said Harry, anger lacing his voice. “Your bludger? You tried to kill me with that bludger?” he said fiercely. “You’d better get lost before my bones come back, Dobby, or I might strangle you.”

Dobby smiled weakly.

“Death threats mean nothing to Dobby, sir. At home Dobby is threatened five times a day, at least.”

He blew his nose on a corner of the filthy pillowcase he wore. He looked so pathetic that Harry felt his anger ebb away in spite of himself. He sighed. He knew from his mum’s house-elf, Squeaker, that house-elves were bound to their master’s family, no matter how badly they were mistreated. They would live and die with that family, unless given clothes first.

Of course, badly treated elves didn’t give the best service. They would execute their commands exactly as ordered, but not one iota more than the order required. Plus, as any officer in any army will tell you, any order that can be misunderstood, already has been misunderstood.

The filthy pillowcase that Dobby wore was a badge of pride among house-elves, proof that they weren’t a burden to their master in any way, shape, or form. For him, it was a sign that his family didn’t care about him, that he deserved punishment. Which was why he was here. Any house-elf who would defy his master by assisting an opponent was clearly not sane.

“But not kill Harry Potter! Never kill!” Dobby remonstrated, tears leaking from his eyes. “Dobby wishes to save Harry Potter’s life! Better seriously injured at home, than be here, sir! Dobby only wanted Harry Potter sent home!”

“Really?” said Harry angrily. “It never occurred to you that with magical medicine anything that isn’t fatal is generally just an inconvenience?” He glared at the house-elf, who wilted a bit under that gaze. “Why,” he demanded, “do you want me sent home in pieces?”

Dobby tearfully explained how the house-elves had been mistreated when Lord Voldemort had been ascendant. That he had routinely tortured and killed them as mere entertainment, and encouraged his followers to do the same. How his disappearance at the Potter house that Halloween eleven years ago had had been a new dawn for those down-trodden house-elves. How Harry Potter became a beacon of hope, their saviour. He ended with, “And now, at Hogwarts, evil, true evil, stalks the corridors and dungeons of Hogwarts —”

He stopped, horrified.

“N-no more, sir, ask n-no more of poor Dobby,” stuttered the elf, his eyes huge and almost glowing. “Dark deeds are planned, dark deeds indeed. Harry Potter must not be here when they happen! Harry Potter must go home,” he said emphatically.

Harry sighed. “Like anyone will let me,” he said gloomily. “As I told you, the Princesses want me to come here.” He stared at Dobby. “When somepony who can make the sun rise, set, or make a figure-eight in the sky, at her whim, asks you to do something, only a fool says no. The last pony who seriously dared to disobey her, her own sister, she exiled to the moon for a thousand years.” He looked away for a moment. “I am not a fool.”

Dobby stared at him, eyes wider than usual. They almost looked like they would fall out and roll across the floor. “The Sun? The Moon?” he breathed. “A thousand years?”

Harry nodded. “Her little sister, Luna, took care of the sixty-foot basilisk that used to live in the Chamber of Secrets, last year. She controls the Moon and stars in Equestria. She said she thought the basilisk would make a nice pet to keep the Canterlot nobles in line.”

“Chamber of Secrets?” the house-elf whispered. “It’s empty?”

Harry nodded. “Yep. They have regular tours of the Chamber every weekend.” He paused and frowned at Dobby. “I’m surprised you hadn’t heard about that.”

Dobby numbly shook his head. “Dobby bes not allowed to hear news or gossip.”

Harry sighed and nodded. “So, you see, I can’t leave.”

Dobby shook himself, almost like a dog shaking water from its fur. “Harry Potter must stay safe!” he declared. “Dobby will keep you safe!”

He POPed away.

Harry collapsed back down onto the bed, His right arm tingled abominably, but it was stiff and rigid. Apparently, Madam Pomfrey had cast a spell of some kind that prevented his arm from being jostled while he slept. He took a deep breath and slowly let it out.

Only Celestia knew what that insane little house-elf was up to. He could only hope he survived being “protected.”

Tomorrow he would send a message to his mum, and give her the warning that “evil stalked the corridors and dungeons of Hogwarts.” Plus, how and why he was in the Hospital Wing. As he had heard mentioned in one of the movies they had watched over the previous summer, this was way above his paygrade.

^·_·^

The days went by just as quickly as they had the previous year. His mum dropped by several days after the Quidditch game and its aftermath, and stayed for dinner. She was quite displeased with what he had written her, and spent the afternoon yelling at the Headmaster. However, as the Headmaster had pointed out, what had happened had been instigated from outside the Castle, and he couldn’t track all the house-elves simultaneously all the time. With as many house-elves as were employed by Hogwarts, it wasn’t possible to spell the castle against them, or it would severely impact the castle’s habitability.

Trying to ward the inhabitants of the castle against violent intentions wouldn’t work. They’d be retrieving students from Hogsmeade daily, as every student at one time or another would be angry enough to want to harm another student — especially girlfriends or boyfriends when they discovered their “love” had cheated on them. Of even just suspected that they had cheated. Not that they would actually carry out such intentions, but the spells couldn’t tell the difference.

Harry and the herd studied magic diligently, as did the Equestrian Firsties. Being the cream of the crop of students in Equestria meant they were picking things up at a ferocious rate. Especially as most of them were what many of the Gryffindors referred to as swots — that is, extremely studious.

Unfortunately, this also meant some of them were quite clever at getting into things they shouldn’t. Every weekend at least two Equestrians were kicked out of the Restricted Section in the library — despite Madam Pince, the librarian, being the only one with a key to the room!

Which meant, in turn, that they asked their questions of the professors while in their detentions instead of just wandering through the aisles in the library, picking books at random.

Why the professors thought they were punishing the over-achievers with extra lessons was a mystery to the ponies. The unicorns and pegasi took the detentions with Professors Sprout, Flitwick, Lupin, and McGonagall as remedial lessons to help them improve their grades. The earth ponies felt the same, except the detentions with Professor Sprout were highly prized as they explored the limits of what she knew about plants, and the effect earth ponies had on plant growth.

Professor Snape refused detentions with them when he discovered what the four assigned to him one evening did after cleaning the classroom by hand as he had instructed. Bored, unsupervised while he was distracted reading assignments in his office, they had reorganized his potion ingredients — by smell.

The fillies worked just as industriously to help the other two Equestrians who hadn’t yet found their cutie marks — which sometimes ended up with them in a detention. Or covered in tree-sap. No pony quite understood why they kept finding bottles or barrels in so many rooms, but they did. Knocking over a bottle was understandable, especially if you didn’t notice it was tucked at the back of a shelf. How you could get a wooden barrel to spontaneously erupt and shower the room with sap was a mystery. But the Cutie Mark Crusaders somehow managed that feat.

Scootaloo darkly complained that the castle was pranking them with the tree-sap.

Harry blamed Discord.

The first-years continued to push the boundaries of what was expected. Despite assurances from all the other years, and the professors, that they were wrong, the Equestrians still considered detentions to be “extra” lessons. The professors were off-balance at the discovery, and clearly flummoxed at the realization that what they considered punishment, the first-years were looking on as rewards. The points lost to the detentions were always recovered in the classes with how quickly the ponies picked up the lessons and answered the questions.

Professor Kettleburn didn’t know whether to be proud or horrified that the Equestrian unicorns had managed to catch one of the younger unicorn fillies in the forest and had her in one of the unused classrooms. His first instinct was to dock them an incredible number of points for the dozen rules, at least, they had broken. Then he wanted to reward them an equal number of points as a reward when he realized they had taught filly to shoot red and green sparks from her horn. The filly seemed quite pleased with herself and not al all upset with her abduction.

He made them release the filly back to its mother. Who, oddly, hadn’t seemed all that upset about the incident, either.

It didn’t help that when they assigned a detention to a student, several usually showed up for the “extra” lessons. It was a situation that was both gratifying that the students were so eager to learn, and frustrating that the professors couldn’t seem to control their students’ enthusiasm for mischief.

New “secret” passages continued to be found at irregular intervals. One wall that used to pretend to be a door, was now a real door. Two steps in and you were waist-deep in the lake — which was getting rather cold! The Astronomy tower now had a slide to the ground floor hidden behind a zodiac chart. Then there was a hidden trapdoor directly in front of a landscape of a lake. Sneeze while standing on it, and you fell straight into a large, warm swimming pool.

The professors had followed the wet-trail left by the firstie who found it, when she first trudged out of the dungeons. But, sadly, it ended in a blank wall that stubbornly refused to give up its secret. It didn’t matter. Most students preferred the trapdoor drop.

Still, it was a nice, and popular, discovery. There was a lot of sneezing students wandering the castle for several days after that — but no new discoveries.

Oliver Wood had frequent Quidditch practices, of course. With all the other things taking up their time, how the herd found time to do their assignments puzzled Harry, sometimes. Book-walking certainly helped, though! He didn’t think the professors understood, just yet, how powerful a tool that was in learning.

Sweetie Belle continued to “invent” new potions that were always a surprise. A swelling potion that shrunk ponies to half their normal size, a strengthening potion that made ponies weak, a potion that gave everypony beaks, and another that gave everypony toad-like skin — for that one, most of the girls, and Malfoy, secluded themselves in their rooms and refused to leave until the potion wore off overnight.

As a result, everypony in their Potions Class was becoming quite accomplished and quick at casting a shield charm and the bubble-head charm — some even managed to do it soundlessly! Only rarely did they guess right on which they should cast first. However, it was good practice. Plus, sometimes the . . . alterations . . . induced were fun . . . sometimes. The most hated one gave everypony flippers for hands and feet for the evening. Dinner that evening was . . . awkward . . . to say the least.

On the other hoof, Neville hadn’t melted a single cauldron. Nor exploded a potion. Under Professor Slughorn he was positively thriving in potions. His love of Herbology was evident in his understanding of how different components of a potion interacted.

Scootaloo had the honour of discovering Lady Rowena Ravenclaw’s library. Why she decided it would be a good idea to fly down a chimney left everypony puzzled. “Eh,” she said by way of explanation, “I was slaloming around the chimneys, bored, when I noticed this one chimney didn’t have any heat or smoke coming out of it.” She shrugged. “I was bored. So, I decided to see where it went, and where I would end up.”

She sighed. “It was just a room with big desk and lots of scrolls stuffed in little cubby holes. Surprisingly, there wasn’t any dust anywhere. It looked as if the owner had just stepped out.

“It had an enormous window overlooking the grounds, and a smaller one that let me look into what I later realized was the Ravenclaw common room.”

“How did you know that?” asked a first-year.

Scootaloo rolled her eyes again. “ ’cause that’s where they told me I was when I left the room! The entrance is behind her statue in their common room.”

She sighed. “Unfortunately, the door wouldn’t open again once I left.”

“What if you got stuck in the chimney?” Apple Bloom said with a shudder. “No one knew where you were!”

Scootaloo rolled her eyes, “I’d call for a house-elf,” she said. “Duh. One of them could easily POP me out.”

The others all nodded, understanding.

“Still, next time, tell someone before taking off into someplace unknown,” Harry said quietly.

The Headmaster was especially pleased about that discovery, and gave Scootaloo ten points.

The window to the common room was apparently a series of one-way-transparent stones. It had let the Founder monitor her House’s common room, and the students in it, without being noticed.

No one had, as yet, found the method to entering her study, which was beside the Ravenclaw common room chimney. The professors were stuck with either flying down the chimney as a pegasus would or having a house-elf pop them into it. Only the Headmaster could use apparation.

Harry had his doubts about that exclusivity. He was sure that his teleport would work just fine, but he first needed to take a look at it. He was surprised that teleporting was so slow at catching on. It was a tremendous improvement on apparating. However, witches had shown themselves reluctant to try anything new. It was better to stick with what they knew than experiment with something else, seemed to be the sentiment.

The house-elves knew of Rowena’s office, of course, they kept it clean, after all. But they had been told never to tell anyone, not even the Headmaster. As the order came from a Founder, the castle magic had informed subsequent generations of the ban. Now that it had been found, the order had been cancelled.

Unlike Salazar Slytherin’s Chamber of Secrets, Ravenclaw’s Library had not been pillaged by previous sleuths. Rowena’s diaries, notes, and many priceless manuscripts and scrolls were still intact, as if only set aside by her the previous day.

Copies were placed in the Hogwarts Library, where scholars and students were reading them avidly. To Scootaloo’s surprise and delight, she was awarded a special plaque for finding the Founder’s hidden room.

Naturally, this discovery led to a flurry of pegasi diving down chimneys and popping out of cold fireplaces all over the castle. Not that the pegasi were all that interested, at first. Some of the other students, however, were more than willing to bribe the flying ponies to do the checking for them. Probably because they were too big to fit, themselves, and doing it while riding a broom was impossible.

Other upper-year students teamed up with first years and used levitation charms to explore the attics and chimneys. The firsties were, naturally, smaller than the older students and less likely to get stuck in a tight place.

Sadly, no other “hidden” rooms were found with that method, although they did discover a rather unusual number of disused sleeping quarters for professors or guests.

In an interesting development, the newly discovered rooms appeared on the map in Headmaster Dumbledore’s office, as well as the more extensive one in the Prefects’ Monitoring room. It seemed that the map only acknowledged Castle areas that had been “in use” when the map was first initialized last year.

The Prefects did not appreciate the number of new hiding places they had to check for couples engaged in illicit activities during the day.

This left only Godric Gryffindor’s Armoury and Helga Hufflepuff’s secret room — possibly a solarium? — undiscovered.

The hunt was on!

^·_·^

Elly was stumped. For the last month she had kept noticing an unsettling disparity with one of the Slytherins. His feelings were . . . too erratic. They varied from boredom or relaxed, to afraid, worried, and anxious — normal for most students with assignments to hand it — to upset, enraged, and downright near-violent. It was almost like two people in one body, at different times of the day. There seemed to be no pattern to it at all.

She hadn’t yet narrowed it down to one student because the Slytherins were remarkably inexpressive — most had a “public” face when they weren’t in their dorm. At least that was her conclusion based on how often the expression of any particular Slytherin was at times radically different from the feeling he or she was projecting. The other three Houses were much more carefree about showing their feelings through their expressions.

The Slytherins faces, by comparison, were almost wooden.

Complicating the situation was that the Slytherins always seemed to move in packs of at least three, and usually the whole groups of boys or girls, or both together.

On the other hoof, she had narrowed it down to a select three boys in her year. Because they were Slytherins, it was difficult to get close enough to single out which of the three was responsible for the feelings.

But his feelings of rage and desire for violence were worrying, to say the least. Especially after what had happened last year. That time it had been a professor working through an older student. Was the same thing about to happen, but with a younger student? The last thing she wanted to see was the Equestrian EUP Guard take up permanent residence in the castle. It was bad enough with the so-called Professorial Aides, even if they did seem to be more interested in magic and their students than sniffing out lings.

Tracking the three was difficult without using anything more powerful than a notice-me-not. Which wasn’t all that unnoticeable for a first- or second-year. Unfortunately, her or her lings constant attention would make her stand out — she didn’t have a reason to hang around them. She couldn’t change to something they wouldn’t notice to follow them, like a cat or rat, because the castle had that stupid ling-detection spell on it. Changing her appearance to look like someone else was fine, but anything more than a cosmetic alteration knocked out the ling, they had discovered. They couldn’t even imitate one of the pony forms.

Mapping the limits of what they could accomplish without getting caught had been tiresome, but easy. Going too far meant the ling was zapped and instantly returned to base-form as a young human. Having the other three carry away the unconscious ling each time that happened had kept them from discovery. Doing it in a hidden passage had also helped. As had doing it during the day when the Castle Map was not in use looking for illicit activities between consensual, although underage, couples.

Not that the lings had wasted time while she was distracted by the Slytherin mystery. She had given them very extensive tours of all the hidden places she had discovered. Unfortunately, the pegasi first years had found most of those places, too. The only ones still a secret were the rooms and passages hidden in the walls and dungeons that didn’t have fireplaces installed.

Helga Hufflepuffs office, situated overlooking the greenhouses, was mostly empty, with the floo tightly shut and the chimney on the roof hidden behind an aversion spell. The books were merely very old versions of current books in the library. Even her diaries were dull, except for the parts about the squabbles between the other founders that she had noted down in detail. She was quite a gossip, it appeared.

The only items of interest to the lings were the passages from her office to the four greenhouses, which had limited use if you weren’t in her office or didn’t want to go just there.

Godric Gryffindor’s office was just an armoury with a desk that overlooked the castle’s main entrance and courtyard. It was filled with swords, knives, bows and arrows, crossbows, and cauldrons filled with oil suspended over holes by the front wall. It was warmed, apparently, by the one wall that was a dozen chimneys that led down to the kitchens below the Great Hall. He didn’t seem to have left much in the way of diaries or letters. The only books were those that described defensive techniques for the castle, and using physical weapons against both the non-magical and the magical. Not to mention combining magic with those physical weapons — such as causing arrows to explode on contact with anything, even magical shields. Very dull stuff, and not very applicable to the modern day for the magicals of today. Using a sword or crossbow was too . . . muggle . . . for the modern witch or wizard.

She had to snort at that. The ponies knew the value of a good sword or knife in a magical fight. The element of surprise was always a valuable tool in any fighter’s repertoire. The witches did not know what they were forsaking, she sadly reflected.

But that was all to the good, from her point of view. The witches’ and wizards’ surprise at being on the receiving end of a physical attack as well as a magical would be invaluable to the lings.

Should such a confrontation ever occur.

She planned that over the coming hols she and the other lings would drill relentlessly in the close-fighting techniques that Godric had written down. While their instructors in the Hive had taught them two-legged combat skills, Godric’s writing were far above those simple techniques.

Using ling techniques to sneak close, and physically take down an unsuspecting opponent could save the hive. They certainly had done so in the past, in Equestria. But that was risky in this new world with the ling detection-and-stun spells scattered around haphazardly. Which meant they had to master the methods used by a true professional in the art of using tools instead of claws, fangs, and subterfuge.

Not using magic to sneak around meant no one would pick up their activity, too, unless their victim was being actively watched by others.

They took care to leave everything as they found it, after each currently short weekly session. While the lings thought they were the first ones to discover these hidden places, there was no proof someone else hadn’t. Even if no one had, that didn’t mean someone wouldn’t in the future — and they wanted to leave no clues about themselves.

They had already started studying the scrolls carefully, but always returned them to where they had been found. The same with the weapons. Careful application of cleaning charms removed any physical evidence that they might leave.

Lings were very good at hiding their presence. Anyone finding the room would think it had been the elves doing the cleaning.

It also made for good practice on their hiding-in-plain-sight techniques. Humans, like ponies, it seemed, would see what they expected to see, if you provided the correct visual or sight cues.

^·_·^

In the second week of December, Professor McGonagall posted the signup sheet for those who wanted to go home for the holidays. Which turned out to be the entire Gryffindor House.

Both Charlie, the dragonologist, and, Bill, the Gringotts curse breaker, were being sent to Equestria by their bosses as a working holiday. The standing invitation for the Weasleys to visit Equestria, at no cost, meant their parents could go there, too. Not that cost was a problem anymore with the income from the children’s exploits. But old habits are hard to break.

So, as long as the others were there, having the Hogwarts contingent join them was no inconvenience. The Weasleys could renew their tradition of the whole family being together at this time of year for the first time in a number of years.

Almost the same was true for the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff Houses, with even most of the O.W.L. or N.E.W.T students leaving. It seemed the Ministry hadn’t yet realized just how much book-walking had improved the students’ understanding of theory or memorizing of details. As a result, they hadn’t adjusted their testing, thus far. But even if they did, the students still had the advantage. It would probably take a few years, as each subsequent class had that much more time to use the book-walking spell and improve that much more than the previous year was able to achieve.

Which meant those students preparing for their tests were having a markedly easier time than their predecessors, with the attendant lower stress. Madam Pomfrey definitely noticed the decrease in students with anxiety and lack-of-sleep issues.

Slytherin, by comparison had a significant number of students stay. In their year, alone, they had Vincent Crabbe, Gregory Goyle, Draco Malfoy, Theodore Nott, Millicent Bulstrode, and Pansy Parkinson stay. In fact, the Equestrians in that house were a significant number of the Slytherins who went home!

The rumours coming from Ravenclaw about the Slytherins suggested that many of those students’ parents were experiencing . . . money troubles. Several had downsized their living arrangements, while others had had to adapt to severely reduced income or circumstances. They wanted their children at Hogwarts while they navigated these new treacherous financial waters in which the families now found themselves.

It was all good in his book, as far as Harry was concerned. The Slytherins with financial problems in the family were more subdued than in the past, much less boisterous. Which made things less stressful in Hogwarts for him — and almost everypony else, too.

Excellent.

^·_·^

Author's Note:

The potion that does the opposite effect of what it’s supposed to do was Senko’s suggestion.

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