Chapter 2: The First
“And you don’t happen to be Professor McGonagall, do you?”
Lyra’s statement took McGonagall by surprise not because it was unexpected but because, judging by the girl’s tone, she already knew she was right. “Ahh, yes,” she muttered. “I… take it you’re already familiar with magic?”
She nodded. “And if you’re about to tell me I’m a witch, I already know that too.” She shrugged. “Assuming I’m right and that’s what you call magical girls around here, of course.”
“Magical… girls?” McGonagall asked. She’d had plenty of muggleborns talking about ‘magical girls’ that wore funny costumes, jumped from rooftop to rooftop, fought against strange monsters, and had complex spells they would always yell out to the world every time they cast them from their bare palms, despite not technically needing to. She’d done some brief research a few years before, and found that they were merely fiction.
“Yeah,” Lyra continued. “You know, girls that have magic and all? And can wave wands around?”
“Oh,” she nodded. “Yes.” She sighed, and glanced up and down the street. “So… This is Diagon Alley, the shopping district for witches and wizards.”
“Do you know how many students Hogwarts has invited?” Lyra's friend asked suddenly.
She blinked. “Not particularly,” she muttered. “Usually about forty, though.”
“Well,” Lyra scowled. “As of right now, there’s whatever there normally would have been plus three thousand, twenty… six from where we’re from, including us.” She paused for a brief moment. “Twenty seven.” Then she glanced at her friend. “And this is Twilight Sparkle, by the way.”
“From… where you’re from,” McGonagall parroted.
She nodded. “Yup. We’re from a parallel universe- and after we opened the gate, the owls started coming. It’s amusing how easy it is to tell how many have accepted, even without meeting them or intercepting their mail, just by looking at the gate.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Parallel universe?” she asked.
She nodded again. “Yup. Though admittedly, the only reason the gate was open for a couple of weeks before the letters started coming was because your world is so interesting, with both the magical and non-magical worlds living effectively side-by-side, secreted away from each other. You see, every other world I’ve seen- including our own- falls into one of three groups: the ones where everyone has magic, the ones where nobody has magic, and the ones where the people with magic dominate the people that don’t.”
“Uh-huh,” she muttered.
“I haven’t had the time to explore nearly as many worlds as Lyra has,” Twilight told her. “But I have seen a few, and she’s not wrong.” She shrugged. “A lot of the mixed worlds don’t fit that description exactly, but they’re all tending towards it; those are the three ‘stable states’ we’ve seen. As near as either of us can tell, this one is tending in the other direction.”
She sighed. “You do know that Amon Cork proved the Multiverse Theory false in nineteen eighteen, don’t you?”
Lyra shrugged. “Well, he was wrong. Our interdimensional gateway- which proves the multiverse by traveling across it- is about a ten minute walk away. It’s sealed against anyone not from our side, though, since it’s lethal to such. Even the owls- though how they’ve been getting between the worlds, I don’t know. Maybe they’re interdimensional travellers themselves?”
McGonagall just shook her head. “Aside from that.”
“As mentioned, there’s over three thousand students so far invited from where we’re from,” Twilight stated. “At this rate, we’re expecting as many as fifteen or twenty thousand before the deadline. We’re in a position to be able to head that off, and reduce attendance from our land to double or even single digits- but does Hogwarts need us to do that, or will it be able to handle potentially tens of thousands of students at once?”
McGonagall raised an eyebrow at her, but didn’t comment on it.
“You seem to be full of disbelief.”
She nearly jumped at Professor Dumbledore’s statement over the Hogwarts Castle ward network. “Well yeah,” she answered.
“What happened?” he asked. “Does she already have her supplies?”
She let out a small, irritated huff of breath. “She says she’s from another universe, and that we’ve invited several thousand from there.”
“That would explain where the owls went. Let me check the attendance lists.”
“So…” Lyra began uncertainly. “Should we just assume you’ll be able to handle our numbers, whatever they are, and get our stuff, then?”
McGonagall sighed. “We can start with Gringotts,” she told them. “We’ll need to get you some money.”
“Oh, we’ve already done that,” Lyra smiled. “Got a lot more than I was expecting, as a matter of fact.”
Twilight chuckled. “Yeah… Good thing we brought extra bags. Though, I wasn’t expecting to need quite so many just for money.”
Lyra shrugged. “Just means we can come back and buy half the bookshop once everyone’s through, doesn’t it?”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “Oh, you jest,” she accused.
“No really,” Lyra told her. “I’m sure you noticed the lopsided rate?”
She nodded. “Yeah. He surprised me with that offer.”
“I think he was thinking about the coins’ material value,” Lyra told her. “In any case, we’ve got well over a twenty times advantage, by my estimate. So no, I’m not joking. You could probably buy the entire bookshop, if you wanted to.”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “So what would an even rate be? How much for a bit?”
“Five knuts.”
Twilight blinked. “Five… knuts. Yeah, that’d be a forty nine point three times advantage in currency alone.” She scowled. “How much do you think the bookshop costs?”
“We’re going to be shopping for books, not bookshops,” McGonagall remanded.
“Still, though, how much would it cost?”
“This way to Madam Malkin’s Robes for All Occasions,” McGonagall commanded shortly.
“Got it,” Lyra muttered, pouring the last of her ice cream down her throat before picking up her quills. Then she glanced at Twilight. “Forty nine point three?”
Twilight grinned smugly. “Four hundred ninety three knuts to the galleon,” she answered simply.
Lyra blinked, then slammed the heel of her hand into her forehead. “I knew that,” she groaned. “I knew that! Why didn’t I draw the connection?”
“Because you’re not me,” Twilight told her.
Madam Malkin knew instantly what to ask when she saw the two funny-haired girls entering her shop with Professor McGonagall.
“Hogwarts, dears?” she asked the girls.
“Yup!” the first, with the brighter hair, cheered. The other smiled amusedly at the first and nodded calmly.
Malkin then glanced briefly up at McGonagall; it was unusual for her to guide students in without their parents, and it usually meant they were orphaned- whether by abandonment or otherwise.
The Professor, however, seemed to be having a bad day. She was already leaning flat against a wall, eyes shut tight and a put-out expression on her face. However, she did not send her the nonverbal signal that the girls would be on Hogwarts’ budget, or even a limited budget at all, so she could offer her normal, preferred, tailored wares.
She smiled back down at them, judging their sizes and plucking a plain robe off a rack; they looked about the same size. “Who first?”
The two girls looked at each other, and shrugged, before the lighter-haired one stepped forward. “Me,” she smiled.
Professor McGonagall let out a heavy sigh as she looked back up at Hogwarts Castle. The two girls had been a bit eccentric and very mature for their age. They had apparently already gotten nearly two thousand galleons from Gringotts, in exchange for whatever currency they had brought in.
Getting them wands had been… scary. Which was alarming; she’d helped hundreds, even thousands of first-years through Diagon Alley over the ages, and not a single one had done more than a loud bang or some sparks when they first made contact with their chosen wand.
Lyra’s had veritably gone off and nearly blown out the far wall off of Ollivanders’ shop. Then, Twilight’s had gone and one-upped it.
But, the two girls had their stuff. They had told her about all sorts of magic where they were from, of the sort that simply didn’t exist- they even told her it didn’t exist! And of course, they’d refused to tell her where their alleged interdimensional portal was because it was deadly to anyone not from the other side.
Before they had reached Ollivander’s, Dumbledore had verified that nearly twenty thousand invitations had been sent already, but hardly three and a quarter thousand had agreed so far. He had commented, over the wards, that the sheer size of the Book of Attendance suggested there would be at least a few more years like this one- he apparently believed their story about coming from another land, though she could tell he wasn’t so sure about the interdimensional part.
So, McGonagall had been directly authorized by Dumbledore to see if they could set up a student instruction program instead of cancelling so many students.
Fortunately, that answer had been a yes. At least, Dumbledore thought it was fortunate- McGonagall wasn’t so certain.
But the details had been set, and everything was moving forwards- manageably, Dumbledore claimed, even though she could tell he was worried about what their appearance might do to- or for- his Plan.
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Them not being able to do Equestrian Magic does definitely short things out. Nice chapter.
Not being able to do Equestrian magic means Lyra and Twilight will possibly have the idea of making a magic translator, emulator, if they look into the muggle world in detail? In the early 90s, WHSmiths had some very intresting offerings besides physical stationary.
Not being able to use their magic will make things WAY more tame and integrate them way more than they were before, instead of effectively taking over. Interesting choice!
You did a great job, regardless of upload problems! It's getting interesting, and I can't wait to see what they'll do next!
Well. No pony magic here, is a big first step.
Ridikulus-ly overpowered wand magic instead?
So your girls are world travelers, exploring random worlds, being changed into "appropriate form" in the process, and learning all sorts of ways to make trouble?
... Are the CMC in this story? :-)
(Of course they are)
love this little detail.... so important too
Ooooooooooo
I like how the wizards are more sceptical, then in the last version.
Though I wonder why Dumbledore believes them.
10855963
Well, they outnumber Wizarding Britain by like a dozen times... and that’s just the ones that accepted. There’s really only one explanation for where such a large population could have come from... that is to say, a magically isolated location that is no longer isolated.
It's like 1 galleon =5 lbs, that's canon conversion rate by the way. How much bits weight?
10856679
Good question.
The conversion I'm using is 1 galleon = $100 USD (70.88 GBP right now), which is a researched conversion rate (not by me) based on the wizarding currency value of various objects in the world, rather than some arbitrary "this is the value of the galleon".
I am well aware that this would make the Equestrian Bit composed of so little gold that it would be tiny. I am also aware that wizards seem to value gold less than muggles do, in that they make their casual daily spending money out of it and so obviously have either some way of getting more fairly easily (probably Goblin- or Ministry-controlled, to be fair) or some way of producing it... WITHOUT the Philosopher's Stone.
10856679
A bit is in the area of three hundred grams from the appearance in the show. [That is about half a pound]
I sincerely doubt that a galleon is FIVE pounds of weight... That comes out as HUGE. [not to mention uncomfortably heavy, already the bit is going to leave dent in any table it drops on.]
10857443
Well... at least the gold coin in the wizarding world is used to buy things of value... In Equestria one APPLE costs two bits...[And let's not go into gems...]
10878137
He's talking about GBP, not lbs, I think. Which is the canon conversion rate, if he is... though not one consistent with the story. I use a value of 1 galleon ~= $100 (to Gringotts, it may actually be more or less than $100 worth of gold), since this is approximately the value it actually has in the Harry Potter series, based on (several) independent studies to that effect and at least one verification.
More specifically, the value I use is $98.60, since that makes a sickle $5.80... and a knut exactly equal to $0.20. A hard definition like that makes it much easier for me to decide on the value of various objects found in the wizarding world based on similar objects in the real world, with due adjustment for whatever magical effect the wizards have applied- and how much more expensive it might be when mass production is unavailable.
10878138
This is why, in OtIoPW at least, Celestia had three Philosopher's Stones in a Vault in Canterlot, which she used as the Equestrian Mint. Yes, that devalues gold in Equestria- but its natural rarity then makes it impressively difficult to counterfeit, doesn't it?
This is actually why it's so pure here- all the impurities... got turned to gold as well, as part of the currency production process.
My value of the Bit isn't based on the apple, actually- it's based on Applejack's cider prices, which place the Bit at something like $1- or, judging by Lyra's and Twilight's comments, exactly $1... in Equestria.
Don't underestimate women's tuition.
Now, this is hilarious, Commedy Gold!!
I like the restriction, makes it more appealing when they have things to learn.
Though what would be the point of learning? can they bring the magic methodology back? Something like harmony magic only working on equestria but not the other way around?
equestrian operates with a royalty overseeing everything. this is much more aligned with cannon than secret service of first version
THIS! YES! I've seen so many stories where ponies come to the HP world and are immediately magical masters. There's just no label for how boring that is!
The whole draw of a story is the conflict/resolution cycle. If everything can be solved with less effort than it takes to pee, then your story is a boring waste of time. I don't want to see the Basilisk or Voldemort taken care of in the first 2-3 chapters by Unicorn XYZ, the same way I don't want Tirek or Chrysalis killed or captured by Wizard XYZ.
Magic should be strongest in its home world and weakened in others, but if you swap their worlds, now magic is diminished or exponentially more difficult to use. Different world, different rules, you see. This makes for a more interesting story, as these characters will all still have the knowledge to wield magic like masters, but now lack the ability. Requiring them to think outside the box to solve their problems and not just "Presto-Chango" their way through life.
I'm looking forward to logic, reason, guile, and just pure bullshittery saving the day.
11209659
... Well, there's certainly some of, um, all of that. Especially in the fight scenes. But I'm pretty bad at writing fight scenes, so the story doesn't focus on the fights- I think I've got all of... What? 2 major fight scenes overall?
I've actually designed an entire magic system that accommodates both Equestrian and British magic, and explains both of them. It gets explained in chapter... Oh, right, that one actually hasn't been published yet, but still- ponies come to Earth to become powerless, though there are some signs that they still have some magic (You may have seen them already, ex. The Pinks)... But wizards can't go to Equestria at all, it's deadly. This system also- conveniently- accomodates expansion in really whatever direction I want, while even explaining some of the more obscure canon factors of both Equestrian and British magics- like, for example, why do squibs and muggleborn wizards exist...