Chapter 44: Harmonia
Hailey walked slowly, but steadily, across the endless clouds beneath her feet. It was an extremely strange environment… but one she knew how to return from. All she had to do was apply a Pinkie Transform to Hermione’s Misty Step spell- which was already, essentially, a Granger Warp applied to apparition.
It wasn’t one she’d always known how to return from- and it wasn’t even her first time there, technically.
But for as indistinct as any given direction was, she knew where she was going. It wasn’t that hard; if she picked up a handful of cloud and applied a Pinkie Transform to the magic allowing her to hold it, the cloud would form into an arrow pointing her to where she wanted to go.
Then of course, she could walk forever in this place without actually moving, unless she applied a Granger Warp to the magic letting her walk on the clouds.
She paused, bent down, and scooped a handful out of the clouds. A quick Pinkie Transform told her she’d been veering a bit too far to the left- so she dropped it, reapplied her Granger Warps, and continued on with a corrected heading.
It seemed to take forever- but eventually, she encountered a stone pillar. Her cloud arrows were all pointing at it- but, Hailey knew, she needed to reach the top, not the bottom, where she was.
And it was almost twelve miles tall.
She chuckled. This was the easy part.
She spread her wings, applied a Granger Warp to the magic granting her strength, and without moving her wings at all, rocketed up the pillar like a small missile. As she flew, the mist grew thicker and thicker, until all she could see was pure white.
So, she dropped all her spells and folded her wings.
Seconds later, a whole new world faded into existence around her. She drifted downwards and landed gently on a marble-tiled floor.
“Hailey?”
She looked up, and smiled. “Yes, Harmonia?”
“How- what? So quickly?” Harmonia asked, apparently dumbfounded.
She nodded. “Yup. I already knew all the techniques, just didn’t have the magics.”
“... Ahh. You know, I was about to start designing my speech for your arrival.”
Hailey smiled. “Isn’t time subjective up here?”
She paused. “Well… Yes, it is. But sometimes even I forget that, you know? It’s just so fascinating to watch the harmony of the timeline plodding on down below.”
“It is,” she agreed.
She sighed. “Anyways, you’re here for a reason, aren’t you?”
She nodded. “I am.”
“Alright then. Tea?” She tapped a teapot, on the tray she’d been carrying across the opulent entryway.
She shrugged. “Sure, why not?”
Harmonia chuckled, and led the way across the tiled floor into a carpeted sitting room. There were more bookshelves in this one room than in the entirety of Hogwarts, all arrayed against one side of the square room. Harmonia picked a coffee table with a couple of comfortable armchairs set on opposite sides, set her tray down, and sat down herself, before pouring tea.
Hailey sat down in the other chair. “You have a nice home,” she observed.
She nodded. “Yeah… that kinda happens when you watch over about forty different worlds, and guide them all to harmony. I mean, you’re aware of the Elements of Harmony, right?”
She nodded as well. “The most powerful force of good in all of Equestria,” she recited.
“Yes, exactly.” She paused to sip her tea. “Thing is, the more harmonious a world is, the more power it represents- and the more power I have available to me. Some of that power is, believe it or not, reserved for my home- that’s why it’s so opulent, rather than a smaller dwelling. I don’t need nearly this much space, even if it has come in handy quite a few times- and I care about my worlds more than I do myself. I mean,” she smiled, “I know I have to take care of myself- but why treat myself to luxury with power that I could use to help your world be just a little bit happier?”
“Why indeed,” she agreed. “Amazing tea, by the way. Is it something I can replicate on the surface, or specific to the Astral Plane?”
“Ah… Yes, actually, you should be able to replicate it. Might need the skills of Professor Snape or the like, though, since while it’s really simple up here, the ingredients required…” She sighed, and drew a note from her pocket, which expanded into a small booklet as she handed it to Hailey. “Here’s the recipe.”
She accepted it, pocketing it. “Thank you.”
Harmonia smiled. “It was actually I that brought the Equestrians to your world. Yours was- and still is, actually- the least harmonious of my worlds, and it’s been on a steady decline… while Equestra is, by far, the most harmonious. They supply something like ninety percent of my housing budget, actually- and are so powerful that it wasn’t hard to urge them to start exploring the multiverse… then guide Lyra, however gently, into stumbling upon Wizarding Britain at the perfect time to draw her interest.”
She nodded. “So… what about me and my, er, book-transforming?”
She chuckled. “Oh, that. That was…” she paused. “Unexpected. And actually not my doing, either.
“You see, each world has its own set of deities. Equestria’s are long gone; the last one was Princess Celestia’s mother, who sacrificed herself a couple thousand years ago, back when Equestria was one of my less-harmonious worlds. Back when I had very little power to guide any world.
“But she sacrificed herself to ensure that Celestia could live on, and guide their world to a more harmonious state. Every god or goddess is aware of the power of Harmony for their own world, and will generally strive to create it in one way or another. Selene was…” she sighed. “Her plan was effective. At the time, I was concentrating on my most harmonious world, trying to get them just a little more, so I might actually have the power to start truly guiding. Unfortunately, I had to use most of the power I got to sustain myself in a tiny little shack with only the bare necessities in it.
“But Selene changed that. Before too long, Equestria garnered my attention- and started contributing to my power. I was able to plant a number of ideas in Celestia’s head- how to get rid of the Wendigoes, how to create a flourishing economy, and so on. It wasn’t long before the world became strong enough for a creature of chaos- Discord- to appear… alongside harmonious elements such as, well, the Elements of Harmony. They still weren’t powerful enough to aid other worlds directly until fairly recently, when Discord was unchained once again… and tamed.” She chuckled. “They turned their world’s most disharmonious element into a harmonious element.
“But, to return to your question. Your world still has four deities, each gently pushing the world slowly towards harmony- and dealing with problematic people, such as Voldemort, mostly with perseverance. The last thing any god or goddess wants is for the world to rely upon them.”
“Is Professor McGonagall one of them?” Hailey asked, tilting her head.
She blinked. “Ahh, yes, actually, she is. She’s also the one that stepped in when Voldemort was attacking you- and caused you to become a horcrux for not just him, but for both your parents as well. That- having fragments of their souls bound to you by a Goddess- is what gave you that odd transfiguration ability.” She chuckled. “Even McGonagall, Goddess Ravenclaw, didn’t see that coming.”
“She’s the head of Gryffindor House,” Hailey observed.
She nodded. “I know. But…” She tilted her head. “I mean… you’re still a horcrux for both your parents- and as a matter of fact, their main souls follow you around as well, allowing them to emerge as partly-physical ghosts whenever you give them power by exciting the fragments bound to you. I imagine… Yes. Your world doesn’t have the power necessary to bring them back, but if you don’t mind losing their ghost-selves, I should be able to resurrect them into Equestria.”
“You… should be able to.”
“Yes. They would be younger than you, though not by much.”
She chuckled. “I don’t have a problem with that, as long as they don’t.”
She nodded. “Alright. But we haven’t hit upon your reason for coming here, have we?”
Hailey shook her head. “No, we haven’t.”
Harmonia smiled. “What was it, then?”
“Well, I wanted to ask a few questions.”
She chuckled as well. “Alright, ask away.”
“So… why did you make me Ascend?”
She blinked. “I woulda thought… Though… Yeah, that one wasn’t very obvious, was it?” She sighed. “You saved dementor-kind.”
“I… saved them.”
“Yes. I don’t think I’m the right person to explain it to you, but thanks to you, they are no longer trapped in an endless loop of despair- and since they were the most despairing, disharmonious group on your world…” She shrugged. “I was wondering if you deserved an ascension after you met Sadarina on the train, but after that? Your Patronus reached all the way to Azkaban, and saved every single one of them.”
“The wizard prison hasn’t, ahh, breached, has it?”
She shook her head. “No, it hasn’t. They’ve been saved, and patroni no longer drive them off, but they’re still prison guards- and every last one indebted to you for their very lives.”
“... Ahh. So what about Hermione?”
“Ahh, Hermione,” she nodded. “She was a project of mine for a little while. When she first reached the Leaky Cauldron, she got her first real taste of magic from Pinkie Pie, and even asked her about why her methods were nonfunctional- which created an opportunity that I pounced upon. You see, she didn’t just want to study British magic- she wanted to study any magic, and I helped her to be able to study Equestrian magic before she ever went to Hogwarts. Then-!” She sighed, smiling. “She invented the Papa Tango. Even I wasn’t sure what to call it- but I did do a little tweaking of my own to it.
“Had she cast it in its original form, Silversong would never have come into being, and you would never have gained a voluntary transformation ability- because it would have preserved your physical sexes. When she saw what it did with Silver, she panicked, thinking she’d messed up- but then she analyzed my changes, and realized what they were.
“The Papa Tango is an incredibly powerful transformation spell capable of rewriting you all the way down to who you are, not just what you are. She was afraid of hurting someone, so she made absolutely certain it didn’t change any of the ‘who’, and tried to change as little of the ‘what’ as possible. With my little tiny adjustments… it changes the ‘what’ quite a bit more- but does so based on the ‘who’, which has a result that it will often magnify the personal Harmony by many times. Especially in yours and Silver’s cases, where the ‘who’ was at such odds with the ‘what’.”
Hailey scowled. “So… what about her ascension?”
She nodded. “That was… fun. From the moment she first built it, long before I tweaked it, the Papa Tango was built to do something even I thought was completely impossible. Then she cast it on Silver… and brought the magic of Equestria to Britain, irrevocably. Which means that all I have left to do is sit back and watch, really, as the magic of harmony spreads throughout your world and guides it into a more harmonious state all on its own.” She sighed. “That right there warranted an ascension. She did what I thought was impossible, and you really can’t get any better than that!” She chuckled. “Unfortunately, she hadn’t tied herself to Equestrian magic, so I couldn’t ascend her. Your world didn’t- and still doesn’t- have the Harmony levels necessary to achieve ascension.
“For that reason, I couldn’t have been more delighted when she suggested the Polyjuice Potion. You’re aware that it’s not supposed to be used with animals, right?”
She nodded. “Yes?”
“Well, that’s because animal and human magics work very, very differently, and the potion is really bad at translating magic. The same is true between human and Equestrian magics, too. So I guided young Silversong into discovering her female self a few days prior to the main event, through the use of her little spell.” She chuckled. “She was cooking up a spell to make herself a Parselmouth. Never would have managed it without my help- especially since it’s simply not possible on an all-British base, so I helped her to- unwittingly- design the spell to force her into her part-Equestrian form before taking effect. Two days later, and she didn’t even need my suggestion to start pulling out her own hairs to drop into glasses of Polyjuice Potion. Even to suggest you and Ron take it too- that was fun.
“Now, normally, a British wizard using Polyjuice to look like an Equestrian would end up much like an animal transformation. However, the Papa Tango spellwork hadn’t collapsed off of Silver just yet- it was just inactive… and that was the magic the Polyjuice Potion attempted to translate. It took very, very little effort to get the Polyjuice to work properly… and block the magic reversal, resulting in the effect of applying the Papa Tango to the three of you, albeit with reduced power. That’s why it took so long to take hold, then took a whole week to act, instead of a mere three days.”
She scowled. “What about mine?”
She chuckled. “Well, the techniques you used, oh Goddess of Reports, created an extremely concentrated magic field around you- which cast off so much excess energy it only took a tiny touch to guide it into the Papa Tango, accelerating it to…” She paused. “I think it took about three seconds.”
She blinked. “Oh. So that’s what that was.”
She laughed outright. “Yes, Hailey, that is what that was. The Dursleys would probably have panicked and caused a massive uproar had you gone home and spent a week with a sixty-five degree body temperature, like the other two did.”
She tilted her head. “Why didn’t they start an uproar?”
She shrugged. “Well, Molly Weasley is pretty good at family medicine, but she didn’t realize there was anything all that unusual about Ron’s fever- so by the time she was getting ready to take him to St. Mungo’s to start an uproar, he had already recovered. As for Hermione, they called a muggle hospital full of cowards, then went to the family doctor- whose daughter happens to be Angelina Johnson, a phoenix-born who has a normal core body temperature high enough to boil water, despite a ‘normal’ magic-regulated skin temperature.” She shrugged. “They came to the conclusion it was something magical, and weren’t aware of St. Mungo’s, so waited it out. I think Emma Granger was thinking about sending a letter to Dumbledore when she recovered.
“Speaking of when she recovered, she was an Aethr- so of course she started analyzing her magic with the same new spellwork she’d based on the Papa Tango, trying to figure out what had changed. That was all the excuse I needed to give her the ascension she had earned so long before.”
“Huh. What about Pinkie?”
“Pinkie? Ahh. She was already very close to ascending in Equestria- then she came to your world and taught Hermione. Hermione then figured out how to bridge the gap between the worlds, and taught that to Pinkie- but she continued on, experimenting, creating… and teaching it to you, because Pinkie didn’t really stick around enough. Then you did your Goddess of Reports thing, met Pinkie, taught her what Hermione taught you…” She shrugged. “That was enough. She expanded on both of the above- and in designing or finishing a number of different spells for you, she crossed the threshold and earned her own ascension.” She chuckled. “Then you started inventing spells yourself, based on what both of ‘em had taught you. That was another time I was wondering if you were about to earn an ascension, but you didn’t cross the threshold. That time.”
Hailey chuckled. “That time,” she agreed. She tilted her head. “I’m curious who else you’ve been wondering that about?”
She sighed. “I can’t tell you that, Hailey. It wouldn’t be fair to give you spoilers like that- and besides, I’ve been wrong more times than I can count.”
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Did she become a head of Gryffindor in order to become a bridge between the house of brain and the house of body? More importantly, did Dumblefore know about any of this?
I am really curious at what kind of reaction the other wizarding communities displayed when Hailey casted that gigantic Patronus.
Why am I not even a bit surprise at this information?
Wait...so will Pinkie be an alicorn when she goes home? Or is the ascension Harmonia's talking about different from alicornication?
11107839
No, Dumbledore has no idea.
11107871
Pinkie has been an alicorn in Equestria for two whole summers.
I know right
… that’s an interesting concept
11107890
Oh...I guess that's what I get for not rereading...
edit: ...Geez, sometimes I'm such an idiot. I have no idea how, but I wound up replying to myself when I meant to reply to you.
11108032
Oh my, that's a good one.
It happened during the "Goddess of Reports" in Chap. 32... Which, re-analyzing, means she's only spent one summer as an alicorn. It's too easy to mix PoA up with GoF since I'm publishing one and writing the other right now! But it was down to a side mention. You can bet it'll be more important... eventually.
It was worth waiting to read this when I wasn't distracted, because I understood all of that. Hooray for answers!