Chapter 3: Nine Years
The next nine years were busy, Dumbledore would have to admit. Princess Celestia was intrigued by his willingness to actually consider her people’s needs and, while she wasn’t completely married to his world yet, she cheerfully worked with him to prepare for the transfer on a ‘contingent’ basis… for the first seven years of it, at least. The last two- Dumbledore had the incongruous thought that they were also the last two years before Harry would come to Hogwarts- they had agreed to finalize the movement, and began the attunement of the portal.
Throughout the entire time, the Princess sent a few more scouts each year, resulting in a slow but steady stream of her Equestrians flowing through Hogwarts, just four or five a year. These same Equestrians would be entering the workforce post-graduation, and were going to be their keys to a smooth quadrupling of the worldwide magical population.
After all, there were a total of approximately one million witches and wizards on Earth, with about eleven thousand of them located in Britain.
Equestria, on the other hand, had over three million citizens, every single one magical. On top of that, judging by a poll Celestia sent out to her people in 2019, some eighty percent of them would be entering British society through Hogwarts!
Throughout those nine years, Dumbledore silently pushed various new laws through in preparation of their appearance… often well-camouflaged as something completely different.
Some of them didn’t need camouflaging. There were multiple anti-discriminatory laws on the books, thanks to decades of posturing and compromises- so anything he put forwards that the pure-blooded nobles saw as anti-muggleborn, they would rubber-stamp.
As an excellent example that had actually been Celestia’s idea, the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery had been struck from the books as preventing aspiring pure-blooded students from keeping up their skills at home. After all, without practicing, they would forget much of what they learned, forcing teachers to spend an excessive amount of time on review each year. So were the various laws that, together, required any given student to achieve passing scores on at least three of their OWLs to retain wand rights outside of active schooling. That had been a slam-dunk after he had proved that it was possible to pass three OWLS without even owning a wand, with any three of History of Magic, Astronomy, Herbology, and Potions.
In their place stood the new Statute of Wand-Use Privileges. No longer would students be reminded they couldn’t do magic at home; instead, they would be allowed to do magic at home, provided they stayed within the Statute of Secrecy. That way, pure-blooded families would no longer have to pretend their children weren’t practicing magic over the summer.
And of course, the part that had let him paint it as anti-muggleborn: Wands were much more tightly controlled because of that Statute. New students were allowed to acquire them and take them home, as usual… but in order to keep them, they would need to pass annual testing to verify that they could use the wand safely. Thus, even though muggleborn had a better safety record than pure-bloods (a fact he carefully hadn’t pointed out), the ‘smart pure-blooded children’ would all take their wands home to study while the ‘dangerous muggle-born’ would be forced to surrender their wands for the summer. Students studying at a registered school- such as Hogwarts- would be able to use their wands for school purposes while at the school; students studying at unregistered schools, or being home-schooled, would have to visit the Ministry of Magic itself and pay a ‘study fee’ for the privilege of using their wand in a Ministry-approved testing and practice area for a day.
Normal take-it-home rights could, of course, be reinstated by passing the test the following year- and once they came of age and passed that test while of age, further testing would become optional.
Unless, of course, they were caught doing something dangerous (to others, they were allowed to endanger themselves) or (highly) illegal with their wand (Dumbledore carefully didn’t mention that muggleborn rarely ever did anything bad, yet hundreds of purebloods had turned Death Eater). If they did, their wand rights would immediately be revoked and their wand- or wands- confiscated and, depending on the severity of the offense, destroyed. Such revocation would require much, much stricter testing to lift, depending on the offense that caused it.
All the way up at the International Confederation of Wizards, The Statute of Secrecy was reworded so it was clear that doing magic in front of muggles that already knew about magic, and those related to or living with a witch or wizard, was perfectly fine.
A part of Dumbledore’s mind wanted to insist that these changes were only going to benefit the Equestrians, who were- mostly, at least- grown adults in children’s bodies, yet when he inspected them himself, the changes were long overdue.
Why hadn’t he thought of them long before?
A jungle of other laws, some sneaky and some not, helped to boost magical industry to a point that products were starting to come down in price- and the pure-bloods were ecstatic, as they were now able to hold onto more of their family wealth, though the craftsmen in question were… understandably less so.
He made sure not to pass the most impactful of those laws until after mass Equestrian attendance was guaranteed- but they really needed to be passed as soon as possible in the face of such attendance. They were designed to help alleviate the nightmare that would be the Hogwarts Shopping Season of 2021, the first year with a large number of Equestrians in it- and, incidentally, Harry Potter’s first year.
During the prior schooling year, he visited the portal and- mindful of how lethal it would be for him to cross- helped them to finish attuning it to Hogwarts’ attendance search magic… and limit the number of new students it could send invitations to.
The first year, the 2021 school year, would have an estimated eight hundred Equestrian first-years in it, or about twenty times as many as usual- nearly three times the normal total student population of the Castle!
The Elves were warned, Hogwarts’ supply lines were warned, and even the craftsmen in Diagon Alley were warned- and since he warned them with official proclamations from Hogwarts, several of those craftsmen pushed themselves to the very brink of bankruptcy in an effort to make sure they had enough stock for the massive surge of students.
They still didn’t have enough stock, with two notable exceptions- Ollivanders’ Wands and Madam Malkin’s Robes for All Occasions- but at least they’d have enough to where students would be able to place backorders at the shops and expect to receive their needed items before getting on the Hogwarts Express.
He sent a few less-official letters to some of his favorite craftsmen- which included both Ollivander’s and Madam Malkin’s- advising them that he was expecting an unconfirmed doubled number of first-years for the following year, and if he was right, they’d need double- or, in some cases, triple- the stock the following year. He made sure to mention in those letters, in an ‘off-hand’ sort of way, that building such a stock might be difficult with the current, reduced prices.
Those nine years weren’t idle for the… entity that had used to be Lord Voldemort, either. As a matter of fact, they were also quite interesting. For one thing, even though the spell she’d used was supposed to preserve her sex, all three of her reincarnated… selves were girls.
For another, she found she enjoyed being those girls… even if she sometimes wished she hadn’t made so many. All three of her were viewed as at least a little bit strange by their families and peers; while she did have three brains to work with, she still only had one mind, which had the peculiar effect of allowing her to react to things- particularly surprise- with the wrong body.
Of course, she didn’t dare tell any of her three sets of parents that she was actually three people with one mind. Not even the muggle set.
There were, of course, a few interesting factoids she’d uncovered over the years before the first of her would go to Hogwarts in 2021. For example, while the first and third of her were nearly three years apart by a margin of a month and a half, they would be only two Hogwarts years apart. Why? The first of her was born on September 19th, 2009, meaning she’d turn twelve a mere eighteen days, a hair over two and a half weeks, into her first year at Hogwarts. She was also a muggleborn with loving parents, a completely new experience for her despite having grown up in a muggle orphanage in her first life. She’d carefully suppressed her magic in that self, preventing any accidental magic from showing, in an effort to live out that entire life in the muggle world; unfortunately, her Hogwarts letter arrived a couple months before her twelfth birthday. She had to be very careful to avoid looking disappointed at being offered an opportunity to learn magic, especially as she’d spent so much of her time learning anything and everything she could. It’d look weird if the only thing she didn’t want to learn about was magic!
That said, she figured her parents were right to be doubtful when the letter showed up. They’d never seen her do anything that could be considered ‘magic’, after all- and she hadn’t done any when they weren’t around, either!
The suppressed Accidental Magic had to go somewhere if she didn’t want to turn herself into an Obscurial, though- and fortunately, she had just the place: Her other two selves. Primarily the second of her, born August 11th, 2011- twelve days after her targeted birthdate. She would incidentally be one of the youngest first-years at Hogwarts when she went there in 2022, whereas the first of her would be one of the oldest. As the youngest of a family of seven children (she couldn’t help but laugh whenever she thought about that), and the only girl in the family besides her mother, she’d developed an ‘older-than-she-looks’ type of personality and become the terror of the house.
She’d practically whipped her brothers into shape- though she hadn’t even tried to restrain the Twins enthusiasm for pranks, merely direct it in a more constructive direction. Perhaps they would be the end to her family’s financial woes?
She tried to keep the third of her as ‘ordinary’ as possible, especially as she had been born to one of the oldest pureblood families there were- and a ‘Grey’ one at that, one that had refused both to turn Death Eater… and to fight against them. One of the neutral families that simply wanted to sit back and keep the world functioning while they let people like Voldemortis and Dumbledork- that’s what they called them- figure out who was going to rule it.
She’d had to laugh- all three of her- when she’d found out that ‘Voldemort’ was actually French, and meant something like ‘flees from death’.
Unfortunately, though, for one person living in three bodies, ‘ordinary’ is a thing of the past. Not that she’d ever been an ordinary child, even the first time around; she’d always had abnormally active Accidental Magic, and she’d always been highly intelligent, too.
On top of that, the third of her- born July Thirty-First, 2012, exactly on her target birthdate, and even an hour before midnight- was her main source of information on the magical political landscape. After all, the second of her lived in a family that didn’t talk politics much, beyond ‘this is what Dumbledore says’ and ‘Dumbledore’s restructuring the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office’- and the first of her had no contact with the magical world until her Hogwarts letter arrived.
She had to wonder, on many occasions, what Dumbledore was thinking. Her father supported many of Dumbledore’s measures, but she wasn’t sure that she would have, without first finding out what he was doing with them. By reading between the lines, she figured out that he was either trying to cause the magical economy to collapse… or trying to prepare for some massive influx of new members. Why?
Then there were the various laws that decoupled age from so many restrictions, tying them to ability instead.
Why?
It was like he was preparing for a massive influx of adults in childrens’ bodies! It was like he’d completely forgotten about Voldemort!
Was he, perhaps, preparing a mass-resurrection ritual to bring back the people Voldemort had killed? Or something else of… dubious goodwill?
Because he was definitely planning something, and she could only guess at what.
She heaved a collective sigh as Minerva McGonagall, the latest Deputy Headmistress and Professor of Transfiguration at Hogwarts, visited the first of her to make her parents stare by demonstrating magic… and decided to act like it was old news to her, like she’d learned to control her Accidental Magic early.
She technically had, after all.
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Thats a tricky trade off, sending enough Scouts over to research and prep, especially if theyre having to split resources between wizarding and muggles, and enough to give a far better chance of sucess if reality decided its going to suddently take a shortcut, and sending too many too quickly and having The Luggage breaking out of Harrods.
Hmm. So, Ginny; is that actually Hermione, pretending to be a normal human while learning (... Hermione as a reincarnated Voldy would explain her spell ability), and ... the third one?
Oldest pureblood family, and neutral ...
Ok, what was the insight of Voldy that gave this accurate of a guess? Even Sherlock would have trouble putting that one together.
11674459
Probably the insight of warring against the man for a lot of years, yes. And a lot of practice in predicting his plans... and whatever insight Grindelwald uknowingly imparted on him throughout the possession as well...
And yes, her three identities are intentionally kept vague. They're specified eventually, though.
Ooh, so pushing through good laws with phrasing, nice going Dumbles. And while I know exactly who girls 1 and 2 are... who is girl 3? Also haha, she totally predicted Dumbles' plan without even knowing-
I read one-in-two HP story before(it had genderswap too), I read many MLP-HP crossovers before, but this is something new.
I'm looking forwards to see what all this buildup is going to amount to.
This sous sound very promising, this far!
Timing?
...
That would total 14 years from prophecy to Harry in school?