You're Being Hugged, Harry

by David Silver

21 - A New Gang

Ron thought he had things figured out. The ponies were friendly, and fuzzy, and kinda cute really. They didn't have any magic that they showed off. They just walked along from place to place, like a human, with hooves. They were cute and easy to talk to. Sure, a few got nervous with a new kind of thing around, but after they swapped a few words, they came around and they were just as soft as their pelts.

An important note, but the crystal ones were just as soft and fuzzy as the not-crystal ones. The fur was a little stiffer, but still soft and they'd let you pet them if you proved you were a nice thing to them. Yep, he had figured it out, and he was enjoying his stay in magical horse land.

Until he ran into a new hooved creature. It wasn't a pony. It was wider, and had horns, big and on the side of its head. "Ha!" it barked, removing any doubt that it could speak. "Are you Flurry's toy?"

"Come again? Oh, is Flurry around?" Ron glanced about, but saw no hint of the brightly colored pony anywhere.

"No." Moziq inclined his head. "Friend."

"Ah, hey." He raised a hand at Moziq and moved to the side to stop being in the way of ponies walking past. "I'm a friend of hers too."

"Me know," Moziq said with a chuckle. "She pretty."

Ron blinked softly. "Uh... For a horse, I guess? What are you, speakin' of that?"

"Yak." He thumped his chest with a deep bass of striking a large drum. "Better than yak you know."

Ron had seen a yak. Once. It was in a book somewhere... "The yaks I know don't strike up a conversation about a magic horse. Pretty sure that qualifies you as a magical yak."

Moziq considered that with a hm. "Well. We great enough. Blame magic if you want." He closed in with Ron, blocking traffic on that side of the road, not that any ponies were trying to push the yak out of the way. "Better not hurt her."

"Her who?" Moziq was shorter than Ron, but seemed to have equally the same, if not a lot more mass despite that. "Flurry?"

"Flurry." Moziq tossed his mane. "Watching you." He tromped off with a final grunt, allowing ponies to use the whole of the road to their relief.

"What was all that about?" Ron shrugged and decided to head to the palace. It wasn't hard to find, tallest building around by quite a bit.

What he wasn't expecting was for a friend to drop in, literally. Harry descended from the sky, not like a bird soaring in, but literally straight down, glowing with the same color as his horn's magic. "Ron!"

"Harry?" Ron waved over Harry when he touched the ground, as if he may find some wires. "Did you lift yourself up into the air just to wait for me to drop under you? That's a mighty big effort just to surprise me."

Harry shook his head with an equine snort. "Don't be daft. I've been practicing magic flight, so I was flying, and I saw you walking along." He reared up and clopped his hooves down on Ron's shoulders. "I heard you got into town! I thought you were joshin', truth told. Didn't think you'd actually show up."

"Get off." He meant that at least partially literally as Ron shoved Harry back off his shoulders. "A promise is a promise, ain't it? Besides..." He waved around vaguely. "Check this place out! I'd be a daft loon to say no to checkin' this out. An entire city of magic horses, and other things. Ya got magic rabbits and yaks too, I've met."

"And exactly one magic owl," noted Harry with a raised hoof and a sly look.

Ron snickered at that. "You know he's a rabbit more than an owl, get off it!"

Harry shrugged as he turned towards the palace. "I dunno. He can fly like an owl."

Ron remembered his brief 'flight' with Arnavon. "Fly, maybe, like an owl, definitely not! Suppose you don't need it anymore..." He followed after Harry towards the palace. "But did you ever give him a ride?"

Harry turned an ear at his friend. "I've ridden a tsuki before, yes. They're fast!"

"Oh, fast. I'll give that, no problem there. Fast and... bouncy... Pretty sure no owl flies like that, Harry." Ron tried his best to put that thought aside. "But now you can just... fly on yer own?"

Harry struck a pose, but it faltered quickly. "Ha, yeah, but brooms are faster. Still, being able to do it at all..."

"Is pretty awesome." Ron fired a thumbs up at his friend's achievement. "Core, the spell we learned just makes things go up and down, not all around. It's literally what that poor wizard was trying to make! He'd flip his wig if he saw you doin' that."

"I'll admit." Harry started up the stairs to the palace. "That was part of what made me want to learn it as much as I did. Besides, I was already learning how to fly, with the broom. More practice is good, right?"

"Reckon so..." Ron hopped up to the last step, in the palace proper. "If it'll give you an edge in the game, that's a bonus. Wouldn't say no to learning how to fly in general. Right nifty trick that is."

Harry floated his wand free. "You'll have to learn it the wizarding way. You're not a unicorn."

"Way to rub it in." Ron elbowed Harry from the side, the two laughing without bitter feelings about it. "Maybe next semester then! If nothin' else, they'll let us ride the brooms now, right?"

"They'd better. Got me all ready for it an' all." Harry tossed his head into the palace. "You've been here before?"

"Once." Ron looked from the guard ponies to the waitstaff, all busy living their little horse lives. "I met your mom, classy lady."

Harry colored faintly. "She's a real treat, and the ponies love her. She keeps things running properly." He winked the eye facing Ron. "She keeps the trains on time."

"Get out." Ron laughed at the poor political joke. "Gonna hope yer mum's got more qualities than that."

"I could start listing them if ya want so badly, but that seemed kinda rude." Harry was still leading the way, walking at a sedate pace through the halls of the palace. "Besides, I'm a little biased. You'd get a more fair review from somepony who ain't related to her."

"Well, it ain't gonna be a rabbit." Ron threw up his hands in a grand shrug. "They seem happy about most things. Doubt they'll find much to be unhappy about."

Harry considered the tsuki. "Probably right about that... They have a real dark wizard as their head of state and they're alright with that."

Ron paused his forward progress. "You are yanking my chain right now!"

Harry turned to his immobile friend. "King Sombra's his name. Real nasty fella, but they have things worked out."

Ron shook his head slowly. "Get out... Now, stop me if I'm loony or whatever, but if you know a dark wizard, and he's not trying to hurt you, why not ask him about that spooky fella that was comin' after you? One dark wizard knows how another works, right?"

Harry recoiled. "That's so obvious I feel real daft for not thinking of it. Well, the tsuki, and Sombra, don't live a short hike away. The tsuki can bounce there pretty quick, but they're right fast, now ain't they?"

Ron could remember the rapid travel through the city. "That's one way to put it... So... We hop a ride on Arnie then?"

Harry laughed at that, hopping away. His magic lifted him up, making the hop longer than it would have otherwise been and allowing him to come down some distance down the hallway. "You can ride Arnie, if he says alright. I can fly now. I could use the practice."

"That's the sound of a gloating unicorn," sang out Starlight as she came around the corner up ahead. "And I love it. Enjoying your new trick?"

Ron considerd the new purple unicorn. "Uh, hey..."

"Hey." She waved lightly, then clopped a hoof on her forehead. "I'm being silly. You don't know me, and I barely know you. I'm Starlight Glimmer! One of Harry's tutors."

"The one that knew how to fly," joyfully reported Harry. "She's a real talented unicorn. Doesn't know a bit of human magic, but unicorn magic? She has that down pat."

Starlight rubbed a hoof on her chest with a smug expression. "Unicorn magic already gets everything done. Learning another kind of magic feels a bit silly if it can't do anything I can't already do. The potion making and herbology, though, I'll give it that. I never learned much about that. I bet Zecora would love to trade notes..." She frowned with thoughts of the zebra some distance away. "I should ask her."

Ron hiked a thumb at Harry. "That's awesome, Miss Glimmer. Never met a pony grand wizard before. We were just talking about meeting this Sombra fella."

Starlight recoiled at that. "Him?! Why?"

Harry let out a defeated noise. "I ran into a dark wizard of some kind over there. We were thinkin' maybe he had a few tips for dealing with that kind of thing. You know, dark to dark?"

Starlight sank to her haunches. "Well..." She shrugged lightly. "I can't argue the logic. He wouldn't hurt you. Shoot, I hear he was one of the first ones that saw you, as a colt."

Ron rolled his hands over one another. "About that. Harry here isn't Cadance's kid, that much is clear, and now the dark wizard saw him first? Can I get the full story or is that some kinda big secret thing?"

Starlight waved to Harry a bit more dramatically than required. "That sounds like your cue."

Harry pinned his ears back. "Um, right... I was a little young at the time, but they found me in the snow." He pointed off into a wall. "By the tsuki lands, where you wanna go. They brought the little me to Sombra, and he said to bring me here." He turned that hoof to the ground beneath himself. "And Cadance, being an awesome pony she is, took me in and I became her kid..." He frowned at Ron. "Which I am, by the way."

"Sorry, sorry." He raised his hands in a quick defense. "You know what I meant."

"Hmmph." That didn't make it less of a hurtful kind of thing to say. "Anyway, that's how I met him, way too young to really remember a lot of it now."

Ron considered that, tapping at the ground with a foot. "Now, if he's as fancy as he seems to be... There ain't a lot of reasons he couldn't come here, where there isn't a school of wizards waitin' for him, and you don't sleep with Arnie. Do you?"

"No," flatly denied Harry. "He has his own room."

"Right, so you're way more vulnerable here, if we're bein' honest with ourselves. But he hasn't done showed up even once, right?"

"Not here he hasn't," worriedly agreed Harry with a glance around for that strange dark wizard. "Hope he never does."

"Right, but I'm just thinking." He brought his hands together silently. "What if this Sombra fella's already helping out? Maybe he's keeping that other fella out of things. You know, protecting his turf an' what not?"

Starlight slowly inclined her head. "That is stupid enough that it may be exactly right. Where's Arnavon?"

"Did you call?" Arnavon swung in through a window, landing with a soft thump next to Starlight.

"How you do that... still a mystery." Starlight was smiling despite that. "They need a ride to the tsuki caves. You up for that?"

Harry lifted into the air a few inches, glowing with his magic. "I can handle myself. Ron's the one that needs a ride."

Arnavon smiled with a brilliant joy. "Wait here! I got just the thing." He darted right back out the window in an athletic jump, lost to sight.

Ron could guess... "He went and got a saddle, didn't he?"

Author's Note:

Arnavon is ready to serve the cause! Friends who are boys are protective of their lady friends.

Join the special community of folks who like my stories and/or get your own here at atreon!

Don't want to do an ongoing thing? You could

Join my discord to chat!

Comments

[Booster Spice]

Arnavon went fishing. Shouldnt take long with his RNGifter? .

[howard035]

Riding Tsukis is always fun.

[tsaukpaetra]

Owls are tasked with deliveries at time. That their cargo may potentially be able to self secure is but a side note to the duty. 🙃