Chapter 1
Boring. I was so glad I didn't have to spend all holiday at Hogwarts. It was nice to give Ron's mum some good news, but back in the castle I felt lonely and everything seemed cold (which for a kirin was weird). I wandered the halls remembering the previous two years, and slipped into one of my usual hangouts to get some relief.
"Harry Potter." The voice sounded that perfect mix of teenage girl annoyance, pure hatred, and mirth that was Moaning Myrtle. "You came back." It sounded less accusation and more, well, I didn't want to think too much about how relieved she sounded.
"Yeah, Myrtle. I said I'd come back." Walking into a stall, I closed the door and sat down, only for Myrtle to poke her head through the door to look at me. "Myrtle, I need a little space in here."
She looked at me in confusion. "You don't wear clothes anymore, Harry. Why would you need—?"
"I do, Myrtle. Please?"
She giggled, rolled her eyes, and pulled her head back through the door. I was just dealing with things when she asked, "Did you miss me?"
Just ignore her, Harry. Just deal with things and don't—get—angry. It was stupid to try to hold back anger. Kirin got angry. Every little slight and annoyance was another piece of kindling. I got done with things and opened the door to the stall. Walking over to the row of sinks, I used my horn to grip one and gently turn the cold water on.
Using my horn for magic like that helped relieve the pressure of my anger just a little. The tap might have started to get a little glow to it, but that wasn't enough to melt it.
It was safe to do with metal taps because, as the steam that rushed out of the tap first showed, water was great at cooling things. I washed my hooves and turned the tap off with a hoof.
She was hiding somewhere. I sighed. "I missed you."
She floated out of the floor, with a smile on her transparent face, right in front of me.
"I hope it wasn't too lonely?" I asked.
"It was horribly boring. You wouldn't believe how big and empty this castle is without all the other ghosts." Myrtle stopped in front of me and frowned. "Why would you care?"
Stopping too, because walking through ghosts felt terrible, I looked up into Myrtle's angry eyes. "Because you helped us, because you're the only ghost left here, and because I thought we were friends."
She stared back still, then she let out a sigh that was far more Myrtle-like. "You make it hard to be annoyed at you." Floating backwards and turning, Myrtle let me walk past without having to go through her. "How long until everyone comes back?"
"Everyone got their letters a few days ago. They should all be arriving over this week. I guess I'm the first?" The clip-clop of my hooves on the stones echoed from the bathroom and into the huge hallway. I turned for the main stairs and started walking.
"There's a few others already here—they never left. Horrid people who never have time for poor, poor Myrtle." She stopped when I did and looked at me in surprise. "What?"
"I just—" I shook my head. "Sometimes I forget what happened to you, Myrtle. You're allowed to feel hurt and betrayed"—I took a slow, deep breath—"but you're prettier when you aren't." Starting off again, I felt a little surprised at how the words had come out. It felt good to say them, even if I knew I was blushing under my fur.
I got all the way down the hall, around the corner, and down the next one to the foot of a staircase before Myrtle caught up with me. "You said I was pretty."
Scales and fur. Well, fur that was scales. My own body was this weird kinda pony, I'd found out, but the best thing in all Equestria was that I could blush and no one could really tell. "Did I?" I didn't walk up the stairs—like some kind of normal pony or human—I bounced and leapt off the banister to another nearby set of stairs. I completely lost track of where I was going in my bounce-dance among the mad staircases.
"Harry!" Myrtle had to fly around, over, and sometimes through the staircases to catch up to me. "Harry!"
On the ledge of the entrance to the Gryffindor tower, I paused and looked back to Myrtle. She wasn't frowning and she didn't look angry—she was smiling. "You might as well come in. There's no painting or ghost to stop you."
She finally caught up with me in the Gryffindor common room. "Harry! What did you mean by calling me pretty?"
I turned to look at Myrtle, her smile fading a little into a tight line. "I promised a pony that I would be honest and always talk from my heart. You are pretty, Myrtle, when you smile." The hard line turned to a wide-eyed look of shock and then a smile. "Like that."
If I'd seen a ghost blush before, I probably would have remembered it. Myrtle's attention seemed to shift and she looked around. "I must be the first Ravenclaw ever to see the inside of Gryffindor tower."
"Honestly? I think the houses are a bit silly." As I said it, Myrtle gasped. "Well, really! In the big war everyone was fighting to defend Hogwarts and each other. Some of the best fighters were the Slytherin. You should have seen the Hufflepuffs—they fight dirty. And the Ravenclaws were all sure of themselves too."
"But Gryffindor led the way?" Myrtle asked, her tone sounding like she was done with hearing about houses too.
"Not really. We were all just trying to hold together." I shrugged and started gesturing around. "So, this is the common room. Upstairs is the dorm rooms. Starts off with oldest on the first level, then going down to first years at the top. There's a bathroom in the middle of them all."
"A bathroom?"
She sounded so excited—I hated to bring her down. "A boy's bathroom. Some showers and a few stalls. The stairs on the other side is for the girl's tower. It's all one tower, but the magic keeps it all apart and together."
It took me a moment to realize she was up to something. When I turned to look her way, it was to see Myrtle about to kiss my cheek. My eyes widened, though, because in turning it made her lips connect with mine. We both stared at each other for a moment. Then a longer moment. Then both of us jumped backward at the same time—well, she kinda floated backward.
"Why'd you turn?!"
"Why'd you kiss me?!"
The sounds of hooves in the stone hallway that led to the common room broke us both free from the moment. I spun around to face the doorway and could now hear Ron, Fred, and George all talking loudly to each other.
Ron was first to step into the common room, looking confident and wearing some kind of big cloak that covered him from his neck back. He looked around and saw me. "Harry!" He rushed over as if I didn't have a ghost right beside me.
A quick glance revealed I didn't have a ghost beside me—Myrtle had left. "Ron! Can you believe we're third-years now?"
"Didn't think we were gonna make it?" Ron asked.
"I didn't think Hogwarts was gonna make it. Fred, George! You back for real or just dropping off Ron's stuff?" I looked around Ron at them, both had large chests they were dragging in.
"Hold ya horses, Harry. Someone else wants to talk to ya." George (at least it looked like George) used his teeth to pull a book out of a pocket of his cloak and put it on the table in the middle of the room. "Alright, come out and say hi."
Swirling pink light spun out of the book and launched itself, like a flare arcing through the sky after a football game, landing on the floor beside the table and forming a rough outline of a person. Not just any person, though— "Ginny?"
She looked like a hand-drawn sketch of Ginny, only she was really there. The lines that made her up weren't black, though, but pink. "H-Harry. It's the best I could figure out. Well, it wasn't really me, it was Twilight Sparkle who came up with it, and then Cadance taught it to me and—"
"Twilight came up with—Oh! This was the big project she was working on?" I could remember how she'd spent several days on this. Several days without actually sleeping, leaving the basement, or eating (in the kitchen, at least, Spike had taken her food down to her). When Ginny just stared at me as if I'd said something crazy, I realized she might not have known I was spending the holidays with Twilight. "Uh, I was living in Ponyville with Twilight and Spike."
"Spike?" Ginny asked.
I grinned. "Yeah. He's a cool dragon that stands about… He's a little taller than I am, but he's also the best cook you've ever met—except your mum, of course." I walked around Ginny. "The spell makes you look a little odd, but how do you feel? Can you use magic like this?"
"Hey, Ginny," Fred said, "you should give Harry a demonstration!"
Ginny looked like she was fed-up with something. "I'm not going to do that in here."
"You're probably right," George said, "Harry has already burned down one tower, and all my stuff is in this one."
"But you should see her, Harry. No one could beat Ginny at dueling. She faced off against, like, a dozen wizards who were all tryin' to hurt her friend." Ron reared up onto his back hooves and pulled his wand out—waving it around like he was doing battle.
"I just don't want anyone important to get hurt," Ginny said.
Ron dropped down to one foreleg and slipped his wand away again. "Well, no one did!"
That's when it hit me that, like Myrtle, Ginny still looked human. I didn't want to say anything about it, or about her sort of weird shape. Everything seemed like it was a hundred times more complicated than second-year. "When are the others getting here?" I asked.
George shrugged his shoulder and lifted his luggage up on the table beside Ginny's book. "No clue, but McGonagall said—"
"… she said our new house head would be comin' down." Fred rolled his eyes when he saw what George was getting out of his bag. "I can't believe you still have that thing."
Holding the salamander's log up with one hoof, George carried his pet over to the fireplace. "You leave Ember alone. He has a very sensitive tummy."
"That's because he has a taste for fireworks now. You saw what he did when he found my stash of cherry bombs?"
"You literally put them in candy wrappers. How was he to know they weren't candy?"
"That's quite the pet you've got there." The new voice came from the entrance to the common room, prompting us all to turn and see—a gaunt, red-headed man that I remembered coming through the portal just before everything went crazy. "I'm Professor Remus Lupin, and I'll be head of house Gryffindor for this school year as well as teaching defense against the dark arts."
"You know Sirius, don't you?" I asked.
"I am very good friends with your godfather, Harry, and I also knew both your parents. They called us The Marauders."
From the corner of my eye I saw George and Fred exchange a significant glance. They knew something or had something to do with Professor Lupin. I could have asked them right away, but I didn't want my bed getting filled with spiders every night for the rest of my time at Hogwarts. "So, uh, how are the houses going to work this year? Aren't we going to be short of students?"
"The headmistress said that it's more important to make a show of strength—to prove to everyone that Hogwarts is still the institution that will not be halted. As for what that means for Gryffindor, we'll have regular bedding assignments for every year, even if that means some of you have a lot more space than required. Now—" He froze mid-sentence, and I could see why.
Addera slithered in, her tail swishing along the old carpets as she approached the fireplace first and spread out her coils. "It is good to hear tradition will be upheld."
"You're, uh…" Lupin seemed a bit lost.
"Addera, sir," George said, walking over and standing beside Addera, then leaning against her.
Fred took up the other side. "She tried Slytherin for a few hundred years, but you know how it is with them…"
For a moment I was worried what Addera would do with the twins. Putting both her leg-arms around them and letting out a hiss that sounded like a giggle wasn't what I'd have expected. "It is good to be back, Fred and George Weasley." I had to remind myself that they'd helped her get her glasses.
"I'm starting to realize why the headmistress wasn't surprised by my little—" Lupin cut himself off, like he hadn't meant to say that out loud. Great, more mysteries in Hogwarts. I'm sure nothing strange will happen and land me in the middle of it. Again. "Alright then, we'll be having more students arriving over the coming week. There are some first years among the families that made it through the portal before it closed, so we'll have students in all year levels. I expect you all to welcome them to Hogwarts and—when the hat is done—Gryffindor."
"When's the sorting ceremony?" Ginny asked.
Lupin must have been told about her, at least. He turned to face her odd shape and gave his best smile. "It will be Saturday, once we have confirmed all the new first year students have arrived."
"So what now? Should we have a party to celebrate Gryffindor surviving another year?" Ron asked.
"I believe that will be an excellent idea, however I can't stay for it." Lupin's announcement silenced everyone—even Addera, Fred, and George, who had been talking by the fire. "I'll have the house elves bring your dinner up here."
He turned and left, but the moment he was out of the tower I heard Addera and the twins start to laugh. "What?"
"'Arry! Didn't you see? Mr. Lupin has been sneakin' in some spellcasting," George said, before he poked Addera in the ribs and made her break out into more laughter.
"Yeah," Fred said, "he seemed awful proper for someone with such a pretty tail."
"Well, of course he's turning. It's been months since he got here. I'm surprised he's shown this much restraint." Sounding a little annoyed with her brothers, Ginny let out a sigh. "I suppose I might as well stay out here. No point going to the girls' wing when there wouldn't be anyone else there. Harry, can you put my book into the shelf over there?"
"You can't move it?" I asked.
She shook her head. "No. It's hard to explain, but if I try to pick it up, it puts a massive strain on my magic and—and I can't do it because I'll pass out."
"Uh, okay. Well, I'll stick to using locomotion charm. I tried using unicorn-like telekinesis, but all it did was set things on fire." Casting the spell, I picked the diary up and carried it to the bookshelf and slid it between two similar books. "I put you between two similar books. I don't think anyone would even notice."
The world was in turmoil according to Princess Luna's senses. She was asleep, but in the elemental waking-sleep that served as her window into everypony's dreams. Equestria itself was calm—there was a troubled sleeper here and there, but she had promised her sister not to pop-in on anypony just because they had a test the next day or they were concerned about a friend who has the sniffles.
There were no nightmares apparent in all of Equestria, which meant it was Luna's turn to reach beyond its borders. Ponies hadn't spread nearly so far before her incident, but now she could feel happy ponies sleeping in a wide band across a huge swathe of the planet.
Not all were sleeping, however. There were some that slept only fitfully and careful to avoid full rest. The one time she'd touched their dreams, they'd been full of fire and violence. It was like the old days when monsters roamed Equestria—only these weren't nightmares. These strange ponies were the perpetrators of violence and used it against—Luna wasn't sure what exactly they were using it against, but she had a vague sense of righteousness to it.
Rodney Johnstone's dreams were hard to focus on, difficult to get more than the slightest rapport with, but she didn't need to when she had Azalea Bloom. It was a perfectly pony name, of this Luna was sure, but the bearer of it was originally human.
Stepping into the woman's dream, Luna was prepared for a lot of things, but her seducing Rodney Johnstone was about fourth down her list. "Azalea?" Luna asked. "Azalea Bloom?"
For Azalea, being pulled out of her fantasy—only removed from the actual act with Rodney by a handful of minutes—was a bit of a surprise, but not once she realized whom was doing so. "Princess Luna!"
"Please, don't be formal. How are your ponies and—and changelings faring?" It was hard to reconcile that some changelings had turned traitor to their queen's cause. Luna held to the hope that maybe she could be part of helping one of Equestria's enemies change their ways—like Twilight had done for her.
"We are holding up. The moss down here is far tastier than it has any right to be, and Mandible has organized the changelings with us into an early-warning group that alerts us witches and wizards to incoming threats." It sounded dry and tiring, and that made Azalea want to reinforce something. "The changelings have been helping a lot. It's tiring to feed them, but there're a lot of us and they can spread their feeding out."
"It sounds like you are doing well. We are still working on a way to get you out. My sister's top researcher is attempting some incomprehensible teleportation-guiding spells that make my head hurt. We haven't forgotten you." Luna hated that she couldn't just use her magic and free them, but fighting the changelings on their home ground would not be a fight Equestria would be able to undertake and expect no casualties.
"We know. I'll let the others know you are working on it still. We're trying to stir things up ourselves. Nib has been sneaking back into the hive to see about recruiting another nest-group of changelings. We estimate we could support about two-times more than are currently down here, and that many fighters might allow us the luxury of expanding upward." Pausing a moment, Azalea felt a twitch in her dream-world. "I think I'm waking u—"
Popped out of the dream, Luna sighed. "Well, that's one group that is fine for now. Let me see if I can find anypony else."
Reaching out again, Luna found a small group of ponies quickly this time, but there were other dreamers nearby. Normally she wouldn't have felt the dreams of non-ponies, but the fiery dreams she felt were like a black hole to her—and Luna was dragged into them.
The moment she entered the dream, Luna realized she had little control here—she might even be trapped. Clawing at the dream itself with her magic, Luna tried to escape, only to have a hurricane of heat focus on her.
"What are you? You're not one of my ponies!" Rake, full of fury and power, glared at the tiny creature that had invaded her dream. She stomped over to it, letting fire pour from her mouth. "I should eat you and grow stronger off your magic!"
"Wait! You have ponies with you?" Luna tried to put a shield up against the smoke and heat, though it was barely working. When she mentioned ponies, it was like a wave of fresh air. "Did they just appear through a portal? I'm trying to find—"
Rake shrank herself down a little and tried to avoid spilling so much fire. Curiosity was her weakness, or so most dragons considered it. "Do you know of Charlie? Of Simon, May, Beatrice, Belladonna, or Stefan?"
"I don't know of them directly, but I am a princess of Equestria—I want only to help and protect ponies." Putting every ounce of her heart into the missive, Luna bowed her head to Rake. "Please, I don't wish to steal from you. I only wish to ensure they are alright and pass their names on to others who came through the portals."
"It—It's hard to remember details in here. You can access their dreams?" Rake asked.
Luna tried to remember everything she knew about dragons, and most of that pointed to flattery working wonders. "Not with you dreaming nearby. You are—Your dreams are too powerful."
Snorting a burst of smoke from her nostrils, Rake lay down and put her head on the same level as Luna. "Flattery will get you everywhere with most dragons. If I wake, you can talk to them?"
Blinking in surprise at the quick use of logic, Luna nodded.
"Then—"
Again the dream popped around her and Luna was left stunned at how friendly the dragon had become. Now, however, she had to work to find those other dreamers. The dragon seemed protective, for which she was thankful, but Luna needed more information before she was prepared to sing the dragon's praises. Spotting an adult dream, she dove into it.
Charles Weasley was surprised to find a tall pony sitting in his mum's kitchen with him. She had a horn and wings and, if he was any judge of character, she had a regal bearing that was helped by her crown. "Uh, I am fairly sure I didn't dream you up."
"I am dream-walking. I came to check on you and those with you. Do you require assistance?" Luna didn't recognize the room she was in but could see it was built for humans. "The dragon guarding your dreams was—"
Intrigued at the information, Charlie locked-in on it and wanted to know everything. "Rake? How was she guarding our dreams?"
"Please, I may not have much time. I know roughly where you are, but I need to know if I need to send an army to rescue you." Luna tried to focus on the problem at hand, but she could sense the world around her bending unnaturally as Charlie questioned too much with his logical mind.
"Rake and her brother are protecting us. She's a friend." Charlie walked over to Luna and looked at her wings. "Can you fly with these?"
"The names of the others? They might—" And again Luna was shoved from the dream. Once more in the dream-between-dreams, she let out a sigh. "At least I know they're safe and with substantial friends."
Turning her attention to the weaker dreamers far away, Luna tried to reach for them only to lose her focus before she could so much as touch their dreams. Resigned to her current contacts, she scanned through Equestria again and found a pony in the midst of a nightmare.
When Luna reached for the troubled stallion, however, there was something blocking her from making contact. A sickly black cloud hung around his dreams and nothing she could do would penetrate it. "Something foul is ahoof in Equestria."
Slipping out of her own half-dream, Luna picked up her notepad from beside her bed and began recording all the details of her evening in it. The names of those she'd contacted, incomplete as they were, she'd share with Minerva McGonagall, but the most troubling was the stallion with a dream-sickness.
Draco Malfoy was the first to arrive into the Slytherin common room. Looking around, he blew out a snort at how dingy and dark the place was. Focusing on his feathers, he created a ball of yellow-white light just above his head and kept tugging his case toward the hallway that led to his suite of rooms—and stopped.
There was somewhere else he could stay. Hogwarts castle itself had offered him a room to stay in that would separate him from Slytherin and the games its students usually played. Just four months earlier he wouldn't have even considered trying to distance himself from Slytherin, but the system of the houses just seemed so small now. It felt like something imposed rather than something that grew naturally.
"What do you think, Bess?" he asked, lifting his wing and looking at the little reptilian head that poked out. "Should I stay here or make my own path?"
Bess looked at her friend and tried to wrap her head around the problem. The way she saw things, snakes should be solitary—she flicked her tongue to convey that.
"Right. Well, since I'm not a parselmouth, I guess I will just pretend you gave me support to do what I feel is right." Turning his head, he kissed Bess on her little blunt snout and made his choice.
It wasn't, in the end, a hard decision. Slytherin was all about using people and holding things over them. Before he'd always had his family, but he'd lost all that and now he had what they would all consider to be a fault—he was a boy, a colt, in a filly's body.
He hadn't survived two years of high school not to know he'd get not just ridiculed for it, but it would be seen as a sign of weakness.
Turning for the door, Draco started hauling his possessions out again. He left the Slytherin common room and headed for the main stairs. He got up two flights before he spotted movement that wasn't the stairs swinging around. Before, he'd have never even acknowledge them but, after his time with Twilight Velvet, it seemed wrong to just ignore ponies. "Potter, Weasley."
"Where're you goin', Malfoy? Don't you Slytherins prefer the dank dungeon?" Ronald Weasley asked. He couldn't help but noticed that Draco was definitely not on his way down to his house's common room. "Come on, Harry."
"Go on, Ron. I'll catch up." Harry Potter looked at the boy he'd always thought of as an enemy, and sighed. When his friend gave him a curious look before shrugging and walking off, Harry looked at Draco. "I heard what your parents did. It's—It'll be hard, D-Draco," he said, Draco's first name feeling unfamiliar in his mouth, "but if you want to talk, I—"
"I don't want pity, Potter." Draco looked upwards from where he stood, waiting for his current stairs to swing into position to advance. "I get it, but we're not friends." With that, he stepped onto the next set of stairs smoothly and made his way up and studiously ignoring the shocked look of Harry behind him.
It wasn't until Draco was in the hallway leading to his own private room that he breathed out a sigh. "I don't get it, Bess. Did he think just because we'd both lost our parents everything would be alright between us? He's a bigger fool than ever."
Bess agreed, but wasn't so committed to answering as to get Draco's attention. Their rapport was such that she could quietly agree and know that he would understand.
Approaching the spot, Draco walked past where he knew the door to be, then stepped backwards toward it. When he turned his head to look, there was a doorway there that reminded him of Twilight Velvet's front door.
Using a hint of telekinesis, Draco opened the door and stepped into the room. How Hogwarts knew what the inside of Twilight Velvet's home was like, he had no idea, but it reproduced it so perfectly he could even see several of the books he'd read sitting on the shelf of the living room.
"I don't need all this. Could you just have a ground floor and move my room to where the main bedroom is?" Draco asked. Looking around, he saw the stairs seem to retract in on themselves and fade away against a blank wall. He hauled his case over to where Twilight and Night's room would have been and opened it. "Thank you."
Draco froze. It was probably the first time he'd spoken those words in Hogwarts, or so he could remember. Being a pony was rubbing off on him in all sorts of odd ways, and only by reflecting on his interaction with Harry and Ron did he realize how much. The old Draco would have been dismissive and completely ignored them. Instead, he'd almost been neutral and, if it wasn't for the familiar setting—he might have even said hello to them.
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I am very happy to see this starting up again. And kudos; I don't think I've otherwise seen any friction being written between Fred and George!
Also, I wish to nominate Bess for Best Familiar. She's adorable.
11174659 Huh, I must have had a brain-fart moment there. Fixed now. And, yes, Bess is best familiar.
Nice! Good to see this story continuing. Enjoying it so far.
This is a good start and Draco is right to avoid the other Slytherins since they will use Draco's situation against him. I wonder what was blocking Luna's access to the stallion's dream.
Your updates make me late for work. Looks good so far. The Intermission chapters set up a lot of ground work for this school year's story. I love how you flipped the ponies-go-to-Hogwarts trope and made Hogwarts come to ponies. Can't wait to see where you go from here.
Have Fred and George been introduced to certain Muggle offerings yet, like the complete Wizards Of The Coast collection?
Draco has got one hay of a dedicated offering there. Just how much an upgrade has Hogwarts aquired, achieved?
this sequel is starting out really really good.
yeppers it sure is and it is going to be nasty.
i will be watching vary close for updates
Woot!
Glad to see this come back.
Maybe draco should learn him some snake language. I forget if that's something that can happen in your story, but he should do it anyway, because I'm feelin a lil bit sassy.