Most wizarding students spend their summers divided between doing holiday homework and doing very little at all. In most regards, Harry Potter was most certainly not any ordinary wizarding student, and this summer certainly proved it.

For starters, since Uncle Vernon’s sister Aunt Marge had made plans to visit the Dursley residence for several days, the spare bedroom needed to be brought up to her exacting standards. That meant all of the things in it that might disturb, disorient, or otherwise bother the bothersome old woman needed to be moved somewhere out of the way. And that meant into Harry’s new room, which was crowded enough already with Dudley’s discarded rubbish.

In Harry’s opinion, which bore no weight, of course.

To make matters worse, the woodwork in the spare bedroom needed a good scrubbing, and Harry was designated as the scrubber. Several summer days of wearing oversized rubber gloves and applying a watery brown liquid to anything that looked wooden left Harry barely enough strength to crawl into bed at the end of the day, and his nose constantly ran. Then there was wallpaper for the inside of the house, and paint for the outside, and cleaning the windows between inside and outside until they almost looked as if there was no glass in them at all.

None of it was what a young boy who had just reached thirteen years of age would like to spend his daytime hours doing, which left his teenage activities at night even more inexplicable.

He was studying.

Barely a week after returning from Hogwarts for the summer, Harry had opened his first packet of holiday assignments. It seemed that the instructors had been worried that their students would be at a loss for useful activities to keep them active during the peaceful summer months, and as a show of support, they sent along no end of essays, problems, quizzes, and assignments to help fill those lonely teenage leisure hours.

So by day, Harry hung wallpaper or struggled with carpet, while at night he stayed bent over his cousin Dudley’s old broken desk, despite the way it tilted to one side. It only left a few hours to sleep before Aunt Petunia would wake him up and send him to make breakfast again, in a tight daily cycle of drudgery. He could imagine his friends from school flying broomsticks in the Weasley’s back yard or staying up all hours playing Exploding Snap or Gobstones, but he had little time for even imagining.

Harry supposed he could blame Hermione for most of his scholastic woes. She had constantly lectured to anyone within earshot that homework had to be completed as soon as possible, because waiting until the last minute inevitably led to ‘just a few changes’ being requested by a professor. Turning it in first before the changes came out confused the professors, or so it seemed. Plus, the date of his return to Hogwarts was creeping closer, and the last thing Harry wanted to distract him from that blessed day of freedom was to fill the days just before it filling pages with frantic scribbling.

Thankfully, Fred and George Weasley had provided him with a going-away present at the end of last school year. At first, Harry did not believe it was a serious gift instead of something out of Zonko’s Joke Shop. Ron Weasley was his best friend and would never pull a prank like sending him ink that would explode or turn into worms or some other humourous transformation. His two brothers, however…

After overcoming his perfectly rational reluctance to opening it, he found a dozen bottles of Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes Muggle-Repellent No-Blotch No-Snoop Spell Ink, guaranteed to leave wizarding homework totally unreadable by Muggles. Supposedly, any non-wizard who spotted any writing done with the lavender ink would regard them as some sort of humorless governmental speeches, while drawings were taken as childish cartoons.

Harry did not particularly believe the label. Ron’s brothers had come up with some of the most twisted practical jokes. Then again, it was ink, and he had a lot of homework to do.

Then came the evening after he had completed a two page essay on Dragon Bloodslugs, a particularly nasty parasite that liked to burrow under scales and could cause dragon colonies to suddenly collapse if not controlled. The next morning, his Aunt Petunia came across the roll of parchment while jabbing Harry awake with one long sharp finger.

When he saw the essay clutched in her hands, Harry was expecting the worst. His aunt and uncle had kept Harry under their thumbs as much as possible over the years as if they could squish the magic out of him. It seemed inevitable that Petunia’s next action would be to shriek at him until he was securely locked in his cupboard under the stairs again, which had not been large enough for him before his latest growing spurt.

To his surprise, she merely scowled at the precious essay for entirely too long, then tossed it into the rubbish bin with a lecture to Harry about keeping his room clean. Since nearly all of the clutter was Dudley’s broken toys or outgrown possessions, and he would have gotten into far more trouble for throwing any of it away, Harry merely took his lumps silently while making breakfast.

His situation was a mixed blessing. Obviously, the possibility of Harry becoming some sort of Muggle politician speechwriter had not crossed their minds, because after all it had not ever crossed Harry’s mind either. And also obviously, the ink worked just as Ron’s mischievous brothers had advertised. Without his aunt and uncle bothering him about ‘that blasted wizard nonsense’ in the evenings, he had the opportunity to get his wizarding homework done. The problem was that his pile of homework seemed to be growing whenever Harry turned his back. He would no sooner send Hedwig out at night with three or four scrolls tied to her leg than there would be a pecking at the window from one of the school owls, bringing five assignments to him.

Detailed potions setups with all of the ingredients and instructions laid out in sequential steps, including estimated times. Seventeen paragraphs on the use of Shrivelfig Extract in the treatment of magical maladies. Star charts for the next and last five years needing all of the planetary movements plotted out, along with a monthly paragraph on each one detailing the influence their phases would have on the weather. A seven scroll of parchment assignment requesting a prediction of what would have happened in the Goblin Revolutions if Gorflog the Gross had not choked on a piece of dumpling and fallen down a set of stairs, stabbing himself twelve times in the process.

The weeks and days seemed to hang in place, differentiated only by the scratching of a quill at night or scraping of sandpaper during the day. Hedwig noticed his distress also and refused to carry more than two assignments a night back to school, which left a pile of parchments heaped up behind the desk, with his legibility growing more and more scribbled with every frantic evening of study that he fell behind.

Until…

The latest assignment was to draw wand movements for every spell Harry had learned in his first two years at Hogwarts, which was actually a bit of a break compared to his normal workload. Since students were forbidden to use their magic outside of Hogwarts, he had left his wand in the desk and checked his work by waving a yellow pencil. He did not speak the words that went with the spells, because he did not want to attract his aunt and uncle’s attention. However, one thing he did not consider was that a wand was merely a focus for a wizard’s magic, and that a new pencil could under some circumstances be considered a pointed cedar wand with a graphite core, seven and a half inches long.

And more important for reasons that would become obvious later, a writing implement.

To be fair, the accident was really Hermione's fault. And Malfoy, too. They could share the blame in a few weeks when Harry went back to school. Maybe a little of the blame should fall on Fred and George too. And certainly the teachers who had assigned him the wand-working homework really deserved some of it.

He had been waving the pencil rather thoughtfully while trying to remember just exactly how Malfoy had used his own wand to summon a snake during their duel last year, when the pencil hit the inkwell. It was not a hard impact, just enough to make the glass bottle skid down the tilted desk and slosh upside-down over the back in a spray of liquid purple. The mess of dripping ink would have been bad enough except it mostly poured onto the hidden pile of backlogged homework that Hedwig had not delivered to the school yet.

Harry said a word.

It was not by nature a magical word. However, rough experience had taught him that uttering the word in the Dursley household always caused his aunt to appear moments later as if by magic. Perhaps Petunia shared a few tiny family traits with Harry’s witch mother, but whatever it was made Harry dive for his bed and yank the paperclip chain on his makeshift lamp. In a matter of moments, he was beneath the covers and feigning slumber, and a bare second after that, his bedroom door opened.

There were several sharp footsteps that echoed around the room, slightly erratic as Petunia had to make her way through the narrow path between Dudley’s discards and the piles of guest bedroom furnishings. She made a brief stop at the desk to sweep all of Harry’s recent work into the dustbin with a sniff, then paused at the side of his bed.

The unseen inspection seemed to take his aunt a very long time, but after another disapproving sniff, she tugged one corner of his sheets up over an exposed elbow, then picked her way back out of the bedroom and closed the door. Harry held himself very still to ensure Petunia was not still watching before taking a brief peek out from under the edge of the sheets, thankful that the cluttered bedroom had no sign of his aunt.

“That was close,” he whispered, easing himself out of bed and over to the desk, where he stopped cold.

Harry’s wand was secured inside the desk, but a proper wizard only needs a wand to cast spells. Even a young wizarding student like Harry could recognize the effects of a spell in the process of casting itself. Dripping and dribbling bits of lilac ink carried brilliant sparks around the back of his desk, and Harry managed to hit his head when he ducked underneath it to do… whatever one does when ones pile of homework was in the process of unmaking itself. If Harry had been a much more experienced wizard, he might have been able to identify and stop whatever was fizzing to completion before it exploded and brought his aunt and uncle storming into the room.

Then there was a small popping noise, no louder than a soap bubble, and the sparking lights inside the rumpled pile of paper abruptly went out. It was far from what Harry expected. Most spell failures in school involved whizzing pieces of the experiment and flying fellow students all over the room, then a quick trip to Madame Pomfrey’s hospital wing to assess the damage and point loss.

Tonight, the consequences were far worse than just losing House points. At any second, he expected a letter from the Ministry of Magic, also whizzing in the window by way of an overstressed owl.

There was no whizzing this time, only some rustling deep inside the pile of papers. Harry scrambled for the desk drawer, but did not actually grab his wand because his previous experience with the Ministry of Magic rules forbidding underaged wizards the use of magic outside of the school. Also, whatever was making the noise was small, about the size of a rat or an Eeeping Whimbugger, both of which were relatively harmless. He picked up his pencil instead, and used it to move aside sheets of dripping parchment until he found the source of the noise.

It was a tiny little purple unicorn, small enough it could have sat on his hand.

At first, he hoped it was some sort of stuffed toy, perhaps something left by Aunt Marge’s dog on her last trip. Then the tiny unicorn looked up at him with big eyes, smiled, and spoke in a pleasant, high-pitched voice.

“Hello. My name is Twilight Sparkle. Who are you?”

Harry stared at the tiny magical creature for a time, then looked over at the bedroom door. He was almost certain that his aunt or uncle would take this particular time to step inside his room and shout at him. Still, the night remained silent, and the unicorn doll looking up at him did not say anything either.

“That can’t be a real unicorn,” he whispered to himself.

“I think I’m a unicorn,” she replied, although she was looking around at the cluttered room with a growing degree of bafflement. “I’m not quite sure myself, now. I could be a projection, or a hippounculus, or—” She poked herself on the leg with one hoof. “Okay, I have sensory feedback, so that narrows the field substantially, and also proves I’m not sleeping. I have all my memories up to last night, my original body, if smaller than I would expect, and all of my teeth,” she added a little muffled as if she were poking around the inside of her mouth with her tongue. “I’ll have to set up a series of experiments using thaumic constants to determine if my present diminutive size is different than standard, or if I’ve changed species somehow. Oh, no! I don’t have my library or any of my tools! Do you have a laboratory I can borrow? Please?”

Thankfully, Harry had recently received a package from Hagrid that could probably shed some light on the complicated and wordy subject at hand, if one small problem could be overcome. He dug The Monster Book of Monsters out from the loose floorboard of his room and considered the thick strap he had tied around the middle. It was a reasonable precaution, both considering the source of the gift and the fact that he had found his textbooks for potions and magical history class looking slightly gnawed one morning.

He had barely gotten the book out into the open before Twilight gave a far-too-loud cry of joy and launched herself off the floor in a flying tackle. Her impact knocked the book out of his hands, and when it hit the floor, she cuddled up to it and rubbed her face against the cover.

“Oh, book, book, book,” she cooed. “My only comfort in times of stress, I’ve missed you so. And reference, too. My favorite kind.”

Harry took a long look at the bedroom door, partially in the expectation of seeing his aunt storming back in, but mostly to give the ecstatic unicorn a few moments of privacy. The way she had been hugging the book was more than a little unsettling, and he could have even sworn Twilight had been snogging the book before he got his back turned. He had never understood girls in the first place, and to find one that was more interested in books than Hermione was a greater shock than having a small magical unicorn in his room.

“Unicorns,” she murmured in a much quieter voice after a few moments. Harry looked down and marveled at the way Twilight Sparkle had managed to open the book and read through it in such a short period of time, while he had struggled just to subdue it enough to strap the fierce thing closed. The tiny unicorn was running her hoof down the page while a strange purring noise came from their vicinity, although Harry could not tell if it came from the book or the creature.

“Umpleby.” She turned the page. “Urchin, frost. Urchin, fire. Urlocks. Ustilagor. Wait a second.” Turning the thick page back, she scratched the book along the index until the two stuck-together pages separated. “There we go, good book. Unicorns.”

“The unicorns in Hogwarts were much larger than you are,” said Harry after a period of time reading over her shoulder. It was a clean shoulder, with a thin and uniform coat of fine purple hairs that showed she was cared for and did not have to struggle with living in the wild. Hagrid had taught him a lot about wild creatures during his time at Hogwarts, and if this creature lived in a forest somewhere, it certainly bore none of the signs. For a bookish (literally) creature the size and color of his Aunt Petunia’s lilac bath soap bottle, it appeared harmless, and even smelled faintly like lilac shampoo. “I’ve seen unicorns before,” said Harry quietly, although he did not want to explain how Voldemort had been drinking the blood of the innocent forest creatures. Somehow, he did not think the lilac-colored… thing would take it well. “You don’t seem much like them. Other than the horn, of course.”

“I’ve always been a unicorn,” countered Twilight Sparkle in her pleasant high-pitched voice without taking her nose out of the book even in the slightest. “I think I would know if I wasn’t. Or at least I was one before I came here. This book helps, but I wish I had my library to research what happened.”

“I’ve only got a few of my reference books and some pamphlets that Luna Lovegood sent me on Nargle repellent charms under the floorboards,” explained Harry, only to find he was talking to the tail end of the unicorn, who had dove into the opening in the floor with such enthusiasm that he was afraid she might go through the plaster ceiling of the living room downstairs. “My aunt and uncle locked all the rest of them in the cupboard under the stairs.”

“Rest of them?” Twilight’s tail stopped moving, which was a little disturbing since that was about all he could see of her.

“My spellbooks,” he explained. “The Standard Book of Spells from my first and second years, a bunch of rubbish books from Lockhart, about six books on herbs and potions that Hermione made me bring…” Harry trailed off, because he was imagining how his best female friend would react to a collection of precious knowledge being kept away from her.

Twilight Sparkle seemed like a smaller concentrated Hermione. With fur.

“School books,” she squealed in the darkness under the floorboards. “I can draw a baseline of this world’s magic, compare it to my own, and extrapolate out a comparison matrix in order to differentiate the thaumaturgical parallels and set intersections of …”

To be honest, it had been a very long day. Harry was exhausted, weeks of his homework was ruined, and all he wanted to do was fall down on the bed and sleep. He most certainly did not want to chase after the rat-sized creature when she darted across the floor and over to the closed bedroom door, which he thought would stop her. The last thing he expected was for the doorknob to glow a light purple, the door to pop open, and the tiny pony to dart into the hallway beyond.

Harry quickly followed behind her after a failed grab for the little creature that left him skidding on the hallway carpet. He barely scrambled to his feet as they both went down the stairs with the tiny pony clattering ahead of him just out of grabbing range, only to have her practically vanish when he tripped over a loose piece of carpet runner on the last step.

“Boy!” bellowed Uncle Vernon from where the Dursley family was gathered around the telly, watching some comedian make a fool of himself on stage. “What is all the noise about?”

“Nothing, Uncle Vernon,” said Harry, trying not to look at the floor where the pony had vanished.

“You’re trying to get at your stuff, aren’t you!” For a big man, Vernon sprang up from the couch like a gazelle and strode purposefully over to Harry. “This studying you’ve been doing lately is just cover! You’re sneaking books out of your trunk, aren’t you!”

“No, Uncle Vernon,” protested Harry, falling back another step as his uncle pushed forward and produced a key out of his pocket.

“Good thing I’ve got ‘em locked up. Unless that school of yours has been teaching you to be some sort of criminal, that is,” he blustered, trying to work the key in the lock while Aunt Petunia came up behind him with a scowl of her own for Harry.

“Honest, I haven’t touched the books in the cupboard since I came back from school.” Harry tried his best to subtly look around the floor to see if the little unicorn had been squashed beneath one of Vernon’s big feet. Since it had been created out of magic, it was not really alive, but it would have made an unmissable mess. And of course, Harry would get the blame, have to clean it up and get yelled at for most probably days.

“There!” declared Vernon, yanking the cupboard door open and nearly hitting himself in the nose with the loose padlock. He had to dig into his pocket again for Harry’s trunk key, which had been surrendered reluctantly last month since Harry really had no need for it at school. After all, there he could use his wand to open and close it. “Ah-HA!” shouted Vernon once he yanked open the trunk, only to find it just as packed and stuffed with Harry’s school things as it had been upon his arrival at Privet Drive.

“Is there anything missing, dear?” Petunia peered around the edge of the door much the same as Harry had seen her peeking at the neighbors.

“Keep it quiet!” called out Dudley from the living room where an announcer was waxing poetic about the joy of canned luncheon meat. “The commercial is almost over.”

Vernon’s sneer grew deeper, and he prodded Harry with one sausage-like finger. “Don’t you think you can put one over on me, boy. I’m watching you, and the first whiff of trouble it’s back into the cupboard for the rest of the summer. Do you understand?”

While Harry nodded, behind Vernon something small and purple nimbly crawled up into Harry’s trunk and vanished inside. Harry just kept nodding while Vernon slammed the lid and locked it, muttering vicious threats under his breath. It took all of Harry’s concentration to keep from looking at the trunk, or talking back when his uncle locked the cupboard door and chased him upstairs to go to bed.

Since Twilight Sparkle was made out of magic, it really would not hurt her to be trapped in Harry’s school trunk for a few days. Besides, if the creature was some magical glitch from his homework and loose magic, there was a fairly good probability that she would vanish by tomorrow morning and he would not have to deal with it. And far from being unhappy, the creature would be ecstatic to be trapped in there until then. He could imagine all of his spell books floating around the unicorn like some sort of book fortress inside his trunk. Besides, he would not have wanted to pry her attention away from the books without his dragonhide gloves and some fireplace tongs.

So without anything else to do at the moment, Harry settled down in his bed and thought about his new temporary housemate. In minutes, he was fast asleep, dreaming about showing the unicorn off to his friends in school.

All of the girls wanted to pet it, although Hermione screamed, of course.

Morning did not come easily. It did arrive as normal, with Aunt Petunia’s sharp finger poking him in the shoulder and her harsh voice in his ears. That was about where normal stopped. When he opened his eyes, his aunt’s face appeared to be host to a series of conflicted emotions instead of its normal sharp scowl.

“It’s about time,” she huffed. “Just because I told you to clean up your room is no reason to spend all night doing it just so you can skip out on your chores this morning. Now get downstairs and start breakfast. Come on, move it.”

Harry’s path to the door was a lot straighter today, although he was stumbling down the stairs before he realized that all of the items in his room had been stacked to either side, leaving space to walk for a change. Since today’s chores involved mostly grass clipping and bush pruning out in the yard, he did not get back into the house until noon. Even then he was only able to take a quick peek inside the quiet, organized, and unicorn-less space before heading back out to weed the daisies and haul several bags of noxious fertilizer to the flowerbeds.

Aunt Petunia did not want to break a nail, and Uncle Vernon was at work, probably yelling at somebody, which left Harry to do all the digging and distributing and raking. It was a lot harder work than the greenhouses at Hogwarts, although it was safer because there was little chance of significant injury due to an errant mandrake plant. It made the afternoon pass by much faster if he imagined the wilted flower bushes as Rampaging Rosebushes, and checked them for magical parasites while pruning.

Normally, it was Harry’s job to make dinner. With all the dirt and bits of bushes clinging to him, Petunia chased him upstairs to take a shower and wash behind his ears before he started. It gave Harry another chance to peek into his reorganized room, which still seemed far too quiet and organized to be the cluttered space he had been stuffed into a year ago, like he was another one of the unwanted and broken pieces of furniture from the Dursley family.

Harry barely managed to make it downstairs before his uncle came blustering in the front door, his mood greatly improved by having made a large sale of drills at work today. He only cuffed Harry on the back of the head once for not getting a clean glass for his drink and shouted at him during dinner. Washing dishes and cleaning the kitchen let Harry get away from the family gathered around the telly, and once things had been put into their places, he slipped back to his room.

His room. Having a sense of order in the clutter made the place just a little more like Harry’s own attempt to order his chaotic life. And for a change, he was absolutely certain the room was organized to the point of absurdity. Alphabetized too, if his casual glance was any indication. Even his homework, splattered with dried violet ink dribbles and ruined, was stacked into a neat pile on the desk for his attention this evening. Something was certainly up, although it seemed to be a good kind of up for a change.

“A week’s worth of work to rewrite this,” he mused while flipping through the pages. “I wish I could use my wand to just remove the spilled ink instead.”

“Why can’t Twilight do it for you?”

The voice was very much not Twilight Sparkle, which was bad. Then again, it was not Aunt Petunia, which was good. A little looking around the desk revealed a small purple creature very much unlike Twilight Sparkle, who was dragging a scroll up from the floor by climbing the desk, looking much like an ant with a leaf on his back from the way that his overlarge burden draped over him.

If it had been some sort of ant, Harry would have been less startled. The creature actually appeared to be more like a lizard, although the general shape and build made it resemble a dragon of some sort. The problem was that even newly hatched dragons were taller than a pencil, and dragons did not talk. Or at least if there were some sort of talking dragon, Hagrid most certainly would have brought one into the Care of Magical Creatures class, and most probably kept it behind his house afterward. So by simple logic, this had to be some sort of creature related to Twilight Sparkle, and therefore just as harmless. Or so Harry hoped.

The tiny lizard flopped the parchment on the tilted desk and let out a deep gasp before holding up a clawed forefinger. “Just… a… moment… Mister… Potter.”

Stuck between not-good and not-bad, Harry looked around the reorganized room to no avail. At least this creature’s addition was the extent of the changes, because the area seemed unicorn-free, and only had gained one of what appeared to be some sort of talking lizard. It did not appear to be too much worse of a situation than last night, and not much progress either. Well, other than the cleaning and organizing.

“What happened to Twilight Sparkle? What happened to my room?” asked Harry in a low voice as not to attract any attention away from the Dursleys downstairs, who had the telly turned up like normal.

“She teleported all your books up here and cleaned your room while you were sleeping, so she’s exhausted. I’m Spike,” said the little lizard with an outstretched hand, which felt sharp and prickly from the claws when Harry shook it. “I’m Twilight’s number one assistant.”

Out of instinct, Harry looked over at his Monster Book of Monsters which Twilight had tied to the foot of his bed with a thin leash and a collar.

“I’m a dragon,” continued Spike. “Although not like any of the dragons she showed me in the book. Twilight hatched me during the test she took to be admitted into Princess Celestia’s school.”

“When I first went to Hogwarts school, all I had to do was put on a hat,” said Harry, feeling a little disconnected. He rubbed his scar, which had given off a quiet twinge, and tried to organize his thoughts.

“Was the hat some sort of test also?” asked Spike.

“Um… I don’t think anybody has ever failed wearing the Sorting Hat,” explained Harry.

Well, that certainly attracted Spike’s curiosity, which turned into a long description of Harry’s first day in Hogwarts, an explanation of Norbert, the baby dragon that Hagrid had hatched that first complicated year, and a number of other events that seemed so far away now. He even told the little dragon about Voldemort, both the first time when he fought the Dark Wizard in front of the Mirror of Erised, and when he battled the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets. And at the very end, Harry felt comfortable enough to show Spike the fresh scar on his forearm left by the basilisk fang and the lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead that Voldemort had made when he killed Harry’s parents.

It was oddly pleasant to actually tell somebody outside of the wizarding community about his last several years of excitement, in particular talking to somebody who believed him. In return Spike told him the most bizarre tales of his life with Twilight Sparkle, starting from when she had traveled to a town with the strange name of Ponyville and saved Princess Luna from being possessed by Nightmare Moon. From there, the stories just got more wild, from giant star-bears to a being of pure chaos trapped in stone, all the way to her brother marrying a pony princess (and not telling her about it ahead of time, which Spike said was still a sore spot and something that he probably should not bring up in conversation).

On the whole, Hogwarts sounded like a much safer place to be than around Twilight Sparkle.

By the time he finished talking with the little dragon, it was far later than Harry had expected, with no time to work on his delayed or ruined homework. Stifling a yawn poorly, he stuffed the inkstained papers into a spare pillowcase, then pushed it under the bed so his aunt would not throw it away or burn it in the morning.

“I guess I’ll start recopying my work tomorrow, Spike. Thanks for picking it up and sorting it.” Harry settled down in bed, then opened one eye as the sound of rustling pages began to sound from beneath a threadbare couch that had a few springs sticking out of the seat.

“I’ll tell her to keep it quiet,” said Spike, hopping off the desk and scurrying away. “Goodnight, Harry.”

“Goodnight, Spike.” Harry nestled down beneath the covers, then began to get out of the bed when he thought of a question he had not asked the little dragon. After a moment of thought, he slipped back under the sheets.

Asking just how Twilight Sparkle had managed to get back into his room, and how the little dragon had shown up too would wait until morning.

“Excuse me, darling. Could you lift your arm please?”

Harry obediently lifted his arm while blinking away sleep. It took a lot of blinking in the dim light of dawn, although all the blinking he was doing did not make what he saw in his bed look any more believable. It was another magical unicorn, small and graceful enough to have sat on his hand, only this one had her horn lit up and was floating a cloth tape with some sort of numbers on it around his forearm.

“Oh, yes,” she said as she moved the measuring tape, taking large, bouncy steps across the bedsheets to keep from falling. “You have done some growing since you purchased those robes in your trunk. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to let them out enough to make them fit correctly.” The small white unicorn made a few notes on a scrap of parchment, then nudged Harry with one hoof. “Stand up, please.”

“Why?” Harry’s eyes darted to his clock, then to the bedroom door. “My aunt will be here to wake me up in a few minutes. You need to hide.”

“Oh, tich, tich,” said the small creature with a dismissive wave of one hoof. “Spikie told me all about your distasteful relatives. Now stand up straight.”

“They’ll kick me out of my room,” he hissed while standing up as directed. “I’ll be back in the cupboard for the whole summer. They hate magic.”

“Hate?” The small unicorn stopped draping the measuring tape around his shoulders and looked up at him with puzzled blue eyes. “How can anypony hate magic? It’s so useful, and dashing and—”

“And they can’t use it,” explained Harry, although he put his arm out when prompted so the unicorn could run the measuring tape along it. “Most people here can’t use magic. The ones who can have to keep it a secret, or… bad things will happen,” he finished rather hesitatingly, since ‘bad things’ was such an understatement compared to the events in his magical history book, or even his own personal recent history. After all, the basilisk fang scar in his arm still twinged at times, a not so subtle reminder of his own role in the conflict between Voldemort and any who would oppose him.

The bedroom door behind him banged open, and Petunia stormed in, looking more perturbed than usual. “Get up, you lazy boy! We’ve got…” His aunt slowed to a stop and looked at Harry, who still had the measuring tape draped across his arm. “What on earth are you doing with my sewing things?”

“Curtains,” blurted out Harry, since it was the first and only thing that came to mind. “I thought that when Aunt Marge came to visit, it would be nice if her room had nice curtains. Because that would be… nice.”

“Curtains?” Petunia sniffed, then her eyes darted down to his rumpled bedcovers where the white unicorn had been just moments before.

“And maybe a new bedspread,” added Harry while he tried to make his lumpy bed, putting his pillow quickly over the largest unicorn-sized lump. “Something with tassels like you like. You know. In case my career as a bureaucrat fails, I could become a… tailor.”

“Another occupation that would let you sit on your rear all day, I suppose.” Petunia hustled Harry out the door and downstairs, complaining all the way about his choice in alternative careers. He went along without any complaints because at least it got his aunt out of his bedroom, even if it meant spending the entire day with her picking out atrocious fabric and carrying packages from the stores.

True to his worst expectations, Harry spent the morning being dragged from store to store, trying his best to look interested when Petunia went through the discard piles and bargain bins in search of the perfect curtain material. How in the world she managed to pick just the most awful shade of orange was beyond him, and was his fault, of course, for deciding to explore the world of tailoring instead of going back to that terrible school. Harry had to wonder if there was any career he could pick that would make his relatives happy. Vernon certainly would go through the roof if he expressed any interest into selling drills, and Petunia… Well, Harry knew she had some sort of career before marrying Vernon and having Dudley, although there was no sign of such around the house.

Perhaps if Harry had been a girl, his aunt at least would have accepted him more than the present, even if the thought was disconcerting at least. Dudley would have been even more obnoxious, just like he was to any girl in school or outside. Thankfully, his cousin was spending most of the summer outside of the house, presumably repelled by the household chores that Harry had been forced into, even though there was not the most remote possibility of him being asked to lift one chubby finger to help. So it became Harry’s lot to stagger into the house all loaded down with fabric, nearly cut his fingers off with the scissors while snipping out the drape patterns, and poke his hand on several of the pins while Petunia nattered over his shoulder, telling him all the things he was doing wrong.

Then it became time to sew. Harry had never touched the sewing machine before, mostly because he had a rather cautious relationship with most complicated mechanical things since his natural magic and complicated machinery did not like each other very much. Still, it was something he needed to do in order to distract Aunt Petunia, because the sewing machine was warm, as if it had been used while they had been out of the house shopping. And he had a sneaking suspicion he knew who was responsible. So with concentration and more effort than Harry had ever put into any of his wizarding classes, he managed to survive the experience, and even wound up with a set of passable curtains for his trouble.

If Harry learned anything today, it was that he did not ever want a career that involved any sewing. The hideous burnt-orange curtains bunched where they should have hung, and the pale plastic lace looked more like it had been glued on when he was done, although Petunia judged the result tolerable. Harry’s experience led him to believe it was due to the number of trips she had made to the liquor cabinet, which left him struggling to hang up the resulting lopsided curtains while she greeted Uncle Vernon downstairs when he came back from work.

“You know, even Ah can tell them curtains is right ugly.”

Harry looked down to see yet another little pony sitting by his left foot, small enough that she could have sat in his shoe without leaking out the sides very much and about the same shade of orange as the curtains. This one was not a unicorn, or at least if she was, her horn was not visible above the very American cowboy hat she was wearing. Since Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were very audible downstairs, talking about the events of the day, Harry did not immediately panic at seeing one of the magical creatures outside of his room. He did lower his voice before getting down on one knee to examine the creature more closely and said, “Hello, there. My name is—”

“Harry Potter,” said the little pony, grabbing onto his extended hand and shaking one finger vigorously with far more strength than he expected. “Spike done told me all about you and your family. Reckon they ain’t the best a’ kinfolk, but you can’t pick who you get, can you? Name’s Applejack, of Sweet Apple Acres in Ponyville, the finest apple orchard in durned well everywhere.”

“That’s all well and good,” said Harry, trying to ignore the way the curtains had begun to sag on the bent curtain rod. “But why are you here?”

“Twilight brung us to help you. Well, she did some unicorn hocus-pocus that I didn’t understand one whit of, and that put Rares and me here, only we ain’t really here if’n I understand her right. More like a shadow of ourselves, just a pinch of our regular magic that we won’t miss over there, like’n borrowing one apple off a whole tree.”

“That makes sense,” said Harry, relieved that he did not have to retrieve any of his spell books from Twilight Sparkle’s grasp in order to look up any complicated terminology. If more of the teachers at Hogwarts explained things in such a down-to-earth fashion, his classes would have been far easier. “So when you go back, or that is your magic goes back to where you came from, will you remember any of my world?”

Applejack took off her hat and scratched behind one ear. “Well, tell the truth, Ah didn’t quite follow Twi when she got goin’ real good. She’s my best friend, but she’s got a way of thinkin’ everypony is just as bright as her.”

“I know just what you mean. I’ve got a friend like that too.” Harry looked over his shoulder at the slumping curtains and turned back to his job. “I really don’t know how much you can help with as small as you are.”

“Ah ain’t really the curtain-hangin’ type, either,” admitted Applejack as she scrambled up the orange cloth just as nimbly as if she were a mouse. “That ain’t sayin’ I ain’t gonna help, it’s just that Twi and Spike was a little concerned about something else. You see, I lost my parents when I was just a little ‘un too.”

Harry stopped with his hands on the bent curtain rod, feeling the cool metal bend a little further as a wave of familiar anger swept over him. “I don’t want to talk about my parents,” he fumed. “I’ve been lied to about them as long as I can remember. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia told me they died in a car crash, but they were murdered.”

“By Voldy-mart,” said Applejack, sitting on the top of the bunched-up curtain and looking down at Harry. Her green eyes glittered slightly in the shadows, making Harry uncomfortable due to the memory of his mother’s eyes in the Mirror of Erised. “Now I ain’t sayin’ my parents was killed. Truth is, it was an accident, and weren’t nuttin’ I could do about it. That didn’t keep me from beatin’ myself up on the inside every night. Eventually, it made me turn my back on my own flesh and blood. Run away to my Aunt and Uncle Orange just so the pain would go away, and shut myself off from Big Mac and little Apple Bloom. Uh, them’s my brother and my little sis.”

The silence that followed allowed Harry to slacken his grip on the curtain rod and just breathe through the pain in his chest and the throbbing ache of his scar. After several breaths, he managed, “I don’t have any brothers or sisters.”

“Ah know. Spike done told me that too. He don’t got no blood kin at all, so he was all tied up in knots about how angry you seemed. We all get mad sometimes, and he’s no exception, but since he’s a dragon, his mads are a mite worse than others. We all treat him like a child so much that we forget how dangerous he can be. Why once…”

The small orange pony paused on top of the curtains like some sort of parrot, took another long look at Harry, and began to smooth out the curtain so it would slide on the rod better. “Sorry,” she murmured from between the cloth in her teeth. “Sometimes Ah get all tied up in me, and there ain’t no time for my friends.”

“I know how that goes,” said Harry. “I didn’t have any friends until I went to Hogwarts.”

“An’ now that you have them, you don’t know quite what to do with them.” Applejack chuckled and braced herself on the curtain in order to try bending the rod back into shape. “Little like our Twilight Sparkle, without the point on your head.”

“I… suppose you’re right.” Harry braced himself against the other end of the rod and tried to match Applejack’s pressure. “I’ve got all this anger inside, and I don’t want to vent on my friends because I’m afraid of driving them away.”

“You sure as shooting can’t talk to your kinfolk neither. They’d just yell at you some more.” Applejack hitched up a loop of curtain and tested to see how well it moved back and forth on the straightened rod. “Rares and I done been watching you and your aunt this afternoon while you been sewing. Half the time she was keepin’ me from going down there and giving her a piece of my mind, and the other half it was my turn to hold her back.”

It was most certainly the same kind of give and take that Harry had with his own friends, only with Hermione or Ron taking turns encouraging or discouraging his reckless actions. And it did feel better to talk to the little orange pony about things he never would have brought up to a Muggle or fellow classmate.

They swapped stories about their families quietly, so as not to disturb Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia downstairs, which made getting the drapes to hang correctly of secondary importance. They did not look that bad for a first attempt, despite Petunia’s color choice, particularly when compared to the rest of the house. Witches and wizards did not have nearly the same trouble matching colors since they mostly preferred shades of black, while Applejack almost blended into these curtains with her similar coloring and blonde mane that matched the tassels.

“I’m glad you’re here for however long your magic lasts,” said Harry impulsively. “It’s nice to have somebody to talk with. Nobody should be alone during the summer.”

“You’ve got your aunt and uncle,” pointed out Applejack. “Even that big lug Dudley, though he ain’t much for company. It ain’t really alone. Just lonely.”

“Boy!” Uncle Vernon’s voice bellowed up the stairway like an angry foghorn. “Get down here and help your aunt with dinner. Dudley is bringing his friends over tonight and we’re grilling steaks.”

“Not as lonely as I want at times, Applejack,” muttered Harry under his breath. “Coming, Uncle Vernon,” he called out. “I just want to get Aunt Petunia’s drapes looking… good.”

“Ain’t gonna do that without a couple matches,” said Applejack under her breath. “You just go on downstairs and we’ll take care of the curtains, Harry.”

“Really?” Harry put his arms down and gave them a shake to get his circulation back.

“Of course,” said Applejack. “What are friends for?”

Steaks were one of Harry’s secret joys in the Dursley household. They were nothing like the steaks served at Hogwarts, of course, and since Harry had quite enough of house elves in his house last year due to Dobby’s interference, he was willing to cut Vernon a little slack over his marinating and grilling technique. In addition, Petunia really did not like steaks, so when Harry took the dirty dishes into the kitchen, he could always tell who had which plate. Dudley and his friends tended to chew their steaks (double portions, of course) all the way down to the bone, Vernon cut his very precisely, and Petunia made a good effort at hers before smearing some mashed potatoes over it and dropping her napkin on top.

Those stolen bites of steak he received while washing dishes were more delicious than anything he ever had gotten in the Hogwarts main hall, because they were his, spirited out from under the noses of his cousin and any of his greedy friends. This time while he was quietly chewing, the victory seemed blunted by the thought of the little magical ponies upstairs. Were they eating out of Hedwig’s bag of owl pellets instead of grazing… or whatever tiny magical ponies did for food?

Since cleaning the grill took far longer than his normal after-dinner chores, Harry had a few minutes alone in the kitchen while the telly blasted away in the other room. That let him sneak a few vegetable peels, a bit of parsnip, and one wilted leaf of lettuce into his pocket, then make his escape upstairs to his room without being caught by Dudley or his friends, who liked a brisk round of Harry-hunting after dinner to allow their meal to settle.

“Twilight?” he whispered, once the door was closed and he had stuck a chair under the knob, just in case. “Applejack? I brought you some food. If you eat, that is.”

“Over here, Harry.”

Three small ponies and a smaller dragon were sitting on Dudley’s broken desk, only the permanent tilt to the tabletop had been fixed somehow, and quite possibly the sides had gained a coat of paint. His homework was stacked up in the center of the desk just as neat as if Hermione Granger had snuck into his house and taken some time to get everything just right, down to the precise red marks of corrections marching across the pages.

“I… see you got the ink spill out,” he managed to say to Twilight Sparkle’s bright, attentive expression of impending book-related topics. “Thank you.”

“Afore Twi gets started,” said Applejack, giving Harry’s pocket a penetrating look, “you mentioned something about grub?”

“Oh! Yes. It’s not much,” said Harry as he got out the vegetable peelings. It may not have been much to Harry, but all three ponies perked up and in minutes were eating out of his hand. Literally.

“I really wish we had some plates,” said Rarity through a mouthful of parsnip.

“Durned fine apple products,” said Applejack with most of a peel dangling out of her mouth. “A little dry to be just gettin’ the outsides, but all we’ve had today is a bunch of agapanthus blooms Twi done floated up through the window, so we sure as sugar can’t complain.”

Harry put the last leaf of wilted lettuce on the desk before peering out of the window at the flower bush below, which looked a little grazed even in the dim porchlight from the front door.

“I’m sorry if we harmed the bush,” said Twilight Sparkle, who was sharing Applejack’s apple peel. “We were going to get some food from the kitchen—”

“No, no,” said Harry rapidly. “That’s fine. My aunt can spare a few flowers. They’re a little droopy anyway, no matter how much fertilizing and weeding I do around them. I’ll see about trimming some tomorrow to even them out. And sneaking you some food from the kitchen so you don’t have to bother. It’s just…”

He turned around and regarded the ponies sitting on the desk, still happily eating the table scraps. It really needed to be said, because the longer they stayed in his aunt and uncle’s house, the more likely they were going to get caught, and that would end badly.

“You’re wantin’ to know when we’re going home, aren’t you?” asked Applejack. “Ah can understand. We must be one heck of a bother in your situation.”

“There’s just one teensy little thing,” said Rarity, with a shoulder nudge to her fellow unicorn. “Tell him, Twilight.”

Twilight Sparkle turned a darker shade of purple, more close to violet, and stammered, “I d-don’t know.”

“Excuse me?” With a cautionary glance at the closed bedroom door, Harry lowered his voice. The last thing he wanted was to raise the curiosity of the people downstairs. “You brought them here,” he indicated with the poke of one forefinger at the two other ponies. “Can’t you just send them back the same way?”

“It doesn’t work like that,” protested Twilight in an anguished voice that seemed to indicate oncoming tears. “I hoped that reviewing your spellbooks would give me a better understanding of your world’s magic and the way I got here. That’s why I summoned Spike, just to prove it could be done reliably, but pushing is totally different than pulling the magic here. It’s like there’s some sort of directional permeable barrier separating us from our home dimension, so I summoned Rarity and Applejack so I could get a better idea of how it functioned.”

“That sounds… reasonable,” said Harry. Summoning charms were Fifth Year, and although he and Ron had skimmed some of the textbooks in the hopes of being able to summon the occasional late night snack at Hogwarts, they had given up rather quickly when faced with their overwhelming complexity. “So why aren’t you researching now?”

“The poor dear needed a break,” said Rarity rather firmly. “And we are certainly not letting her go back to researching her horn off until she’s taken some time to relax.”

“And ain’t nothing that relaxes Twi like school,” declared Applejack, tapping one hoof against the stack of parchment on the desk. “She done went through and corrected all your studywork, so all you need to do is get on over here and recopy it.”

“And retake the quizzes and rewrite your essays to solve some really horrible logical fallacies,” said Twilight Sparkle, who had obviously perked up at the sound of what seemed to be her favorite activity in the world. “Go ahead and sit down so we can get started. I’ll finish my research while you’re sleeping, and we should be gone by morning.”

“Wake up!” hissed a voice in Harry Potter’s ear. “Twilight said her warning spells detected your aunt moving around, so she’ll be here in a few minutes!”

“Wha?” Harry sat up and groped around on the bedstand table for his glasses, only to have a small yellow pony hand them to him. Or hoof them to him? It was confusing, and made only worse by the early hour. “What’s going on? I thought—”

When Harry got his glasses on and took a look at the ponies hovering in front of his nose, he was quite tempted to take his glasses back off again and clean whatever colorful dirt had smeared on them. Both tiny little ponies appeared to be pegasi, quite exotic creatures who were not native to the British area, although he had heard of a small herd being kept in France somewhere. The thing was that pegasi were large creatures, bigger than horses and with powerful appetites, while each of these creatures were about the size of an adult bird and colorful enough to make Harry’s eyes hurt.

While the yellow one cringed back and dove under the bed, the colorful blue one continued to fly around in front of Harry’s head, urging him to get up and face the day, a blithing annoyance that made him swing a few halfhearted swats in its direction as he swung his legs out of bed.

“Wake up, boy!” Aunt Petunia stormed in through the bedroom door and scowled at where Harry was taking one last swing at the annoying blue pegasus, who had managed to vanish the instant the door began to swing open. The only sign of the pony who had been buzzing by Harry’s face was the faint rainbow trail she had left behind, making a translucent line that pointed straight up into the ceiling light fixture.

Thankfully, Petunia did not seem to notice, because she was more intent on getting Harry started with breakfast and his morning chores. It was not until he had set the table and gotten a rasher of bacon in to fry before two consequences of the morning’s pony wake-up call became obvious.

Twilight Sparkle had summoned even more ponies.

In a few days, Aunt Marge would visit.

In order to survive the visit and go off to Hogwarts afterward, all of the ponies had to go home. Then again, surviving their presence in the house until then was going to become even more difficult. That fact was becoming increasingly obvious, mostly because of the yellow pegasus peering at the stove from her perch on top of the fridge.

“That’s not… meat, is it?”

“Yes,” hissed Harry with a furtive look around. Dudley was not awake yet, of course, but from the noise upstairs, Uncle Vernon would be down in a few moments, most probably just before the bacon was done enough for his taste. “It’s not pony, though. We don’t eat ponies.”

No matter how aggravating.

“Oh,” she said with a flutter of her wings and a sideways scoot that put her behind an empty plastic carton that had gotten tossed above the fridge for lack of a better place to put it. “I didn’t even think you ate ponies. I mean you’re so big and we’re so little, and besides, your teeth really aren’t suited for carnivorous diets. NotthatIlookedinyourmouthwhileyouweresleeping, that is,” she added with a nearly solid stream of squeaky words.

“It wouldn’t be the worst thing that’s happened to me,” muttered Harry. He rolled the sausages to keep them from burning on one side before getting out the bread. Then things began to happen at a rapid rate when Vernon came stomping down the stairs, all blustering about an important weekend meeting the executives at the drill factory were having, and that he really did not have the time to wait for Harry to finish making breakfast. He still did, though, although standing almost on Harry’s heels and eating his breakfast as fast as it was produced. When his uncle moved to the front door in a rush with Aunt Petunia right behind him, Harry managed to spare a quick peek at the yellow pegasus above him, still hiding behind the plastic carton of top of the fridge.

“You’re still here?” he asked. “Hurry up and get back to my room before they see you.”

“Actually, I was hoping to get a piece of bread. There are some birds outside of the window—”

“Here,” said Harry, shoving a fresh slice of toast up to the pegasus and watching her zip away with her burden. He really did not have time to watch, because Dudley was due down the stairs on his way to breakfast at any moment, and Petunia was on her way back into the kitchen to criticize the way he was cooking. Harry had almost managed to get it out of his mind by the time Dudley was waddling his way to the dining room table, followed by Aunt Petunia carrying his full plate. That is until the bright blue pegasus with the colorful mane peered down at him from on top of the fridge.

“Hey, sorry for not introducing myself earlier. I’m Rainbow Dash.” There was a brief pause as the tiny pegasus let her anticipatory look slide into a sharp frown. “So I suppose you haven’t heard of me, then. Anyway, Fluttershy didn’t bring any butter for the bread, and I was wondering—”

“Here!” hissed Harry, slapping a good chunk of runny butter on a piece of toast that had just popped up. “Now hurry before they see—”

There was a blue blur, the toast was gone, and Petunia poked her sharp nose into the kitchen.

“What’s that noise?” she asked. “Are you talking to yourself?”

“No, Aunt Petunia. I just… burnt myself a little on the pan.”

“Well, hurry up and finish cleaning. You’ve got garden duty today. Something got into my agapanthus yesterday and tore them up.” Petunia walked out of the kitchen over to the sliding patio door where she could scowl at the plants in the back yard to see if perhaps any of them were likewise suffering the effects of magical pony grazing.

“And some jelly,” added Rainbow Dash from where she was hovering over the fridge with the slice of toast balanced on her head. “I mean toast with only butter is like so bland. Do you have any strawberry jam?”

Harry jammed the spreading knife into the jam jar and slathered the toast with a good coat of preserves, then whirled around when Petunia scurried back into the kitchen behind him.

“Some pest has been gnawing on my prize rosebushes also,” she declared. “You’ll need to prune them and agitate the roots so they will spring back.”

“Yes, Aunt Petunia,” said Harry while thinking that nothing in his aunt and uncle’s yard would be able to spring anywhere without a Catapulting Cabbage or a Bounding Bean planted there.

The rosebush did look more than a little ragged, although the damage was limited to the rose petals instead of the leaves, like rabbits tended to do. If there were not at least a half-dozen tiny ponies up in his room, two of which could fly, he might have assumed the damage was from a wandering garden gnome or magical flowerflysome. On rare occasions, magical creatures did attack muggle plants, which normally resulted in a visit by one Ministry of Magic bureau or another and a group of muggles being Obliviated. The last thing Harry wanted was any Ministry wizards poking around, because keeping magical ponies of any variety in a muggle’s home by an underaged wizard most certainly would have been grounds for expulsion from school.

Keep the Dursley’s happy. Get the ponies to go home. Head to Hogwarts in a week and laugh about this with my friends.

“Hi there! I’m Pinkie Pie!”

Harry nearly jumped out of his trainers, which would have been a neat trick if a tiny pink pony had not been sitting on his right foot, looking up at him with enormous eyes. His first reaction was to look for Aunt Petunia, because a bright pink pony in the back yard was not something she would easily overlook, or that he could explain before the shouting started.

“I saw you over here by the rosebush and I said there’s somepony who really needs a party only you’re not a somepony but a somehuman who probably needs a party just as much as a pony because you look so depressed and work so hard but I couldn’t find any balloons although I’ve got the cake in the oven and the confetti ready so don’t come in the house for a few minutes until we get everything set up. Okay?”

“But—” managed Harry before the tiny pony’s ears perked up, her tail twitched, and her left rear leg thumped twice.

“Cake’s done!” she announced. “Gotta go put the frosting on.”

There was a whirl of grass clippings and no more pink pony anywhere Harry could see. He hurried into the house, where the scent of a baking cake wafted gently out through the open door, and looked for his aunt.

“Shh,” she admonished from the couch. The telly was on, and Petunia was holding a tissue while trying her best not to cry. On the screen was the latest drivel from Home and Away, a foreign programme with a cast of dozens of forgettable characters engaged in horrific acts of violence and betrayal against each other on a daily basis, much like the real world, only with commercials. Last year, without Harry to boss around, Petunia had become quite involved with the afternoon showings, and seemed to be catching up from the episodes she missed due to Harry’s seamstress training.

“Just need to use the bathroom,” whispered Harry as he headed for the stairs.

“Don’t take too long,” called back Petunia over her shoulder without even looking. “I want my rosebushes and the agapanthus pruned, the roots stimulated, and the fertilizer applied by the time Vernon gets back from work or there will be no dinner for you this— Oh, you fool!” she called out to the telly. “He’s been lying to you and your sister!”

To be honest, Harry did need to wash his hands and use the bathroom, but strangely enough, the door was closed nearly all of the way. His uncle was at work, his aunt was downstairs, and Dudley had taken off with his friends to ride bicycles, which only left—

The toilet flushed, there was a buzzing like a honeybee, and the door opened to reveal three even smaller ponies, about the size of healthy mice. Quite unlike mice, one of them was on a tiny scooter of some sort, with the other two riding in a wagon being pulled behind, and they shot out of the bathroom as if they were propelled by a magical firework. Thankfully, they did not zoom down the stairs, which would have been dangerous for them as well as standing the chance of attracting Aunt Petunia’s unwelcome attention. Instead they darted across the hallway and into Harry’s room, taking the last sharp corner with a tiny squeak of skidding wheels and the near-inaudible screams of the passenger ponies.

Two years at Hogwarts had made Harry think he could get used to about anything.

Not quite.

After using the bathroom, he washed his hands, despite how futile the gesture was going to be when he went back out into the yard and started spreading the noxious black lumps of fertilizer. The stuff was so lumpy that it had to be broken up with a spade before being mixed into the dirt at the roots of Petunia’s prize plants, and Harry was not sure how effective it was anyway, other than how well it made him smell like dung for several days.

That still left the mystery of the energetic pink pony and the scent of cake, which really needed to be aired out of the kitchen before Petunia caught wind of it. His unexpected guests should have been in his room, but it was empty of any ponies, as far as he could see. Harry even went as far as to look in Dudley’s messy room, and after a cautious peek at Petunia sobbing in front of the telly, peered into his aunt and uncle’s room. Still nothing.

He crept into the guest room, which had been declared to be as ready as it could be for the arrival of Aunt Marge in a few days, and therefore now off-limits for Harry, but it seemed empty too. Or at least until he went over to the window to peek outside.

“SURPRISE!”

In a flash, tiny ponies were everywhere. They poured out from behind the bed, dove out of the curtains, and jumped out of the closet. There must have been a dozen of them at least, all dressed up in party hats and the pink one had fired off some sort of cannon that filled the air with confetti. It was both the most excited Harry had been all vacation and the most frightened.

“Were you surprised because I made sure everypony was hidden before we jumped out and even though it isn’t really your birthday anymore Twilight said we could have an after-birthday party to make up for it and—”

Harry bent over and pinched the little pink pony’s lips together to get her to shut up. “You have to get out of here,” he hissed. “My aunt is going to hear you!”

“Not with my spell going,” declared Twilight Sparkle, who was standing by the guest room door and looking out into the hallway. “It’s a variation of your Muffliato charm that will keep all the noise inside the room while your aunt hears you working outside. I know how easy it is to get caught up in your studying, and since you’re made good headway on getting your backlogged homework caught up and corrected over the last few nights, you deserve a party.”

“With cake!” declared Pinkie Pie.

It was very difficult to argue with cake, particularly when the cupcake in question had been frosted and decorated within an inch of its life, and tasted like heaven. And thankfully the ponies, despite their increased numbers, ate just fine off the half-dozen cupcakes left over. Then there was a game that involved pinning pony tails to a paper cutout, several guessing games, a ball toss done with ping-pong balls, and an offer of a pony ride that Harry turned down with as much laughter as the rest of the tiny ponies. Even all together they stood a fair chance of being squished under his weight, so the inverse of it was tried, and Harry carried the ponies around the room on his shoulders, which was taken with great laughter and merriment by all. Harry had been worrying himself to a frazzle over his homework, and getting carried away by the party was just what he needed.

Until he realized what time it was.

“Oh, no! Uncle Vernon will be home any minute and I haven’t done any of my chores outside!”

“No problem, Harry.” Applejack came sauntering in through the open door with a dozen other ponies behind her, all leaving tiny dirty hoofprints in their wake. “We worked it all out with Twilight earlier. Some of my kin came up and took care of your chores while you was here at the party, and now Twi’s gonna cast the spell to send us all home. That way you got your chores, your homework, and your party.”

“I’m going to miss you!” declared a lime-green unicorn who wrapped herself around Harry’s ankle and started to cry. “It seems like I’ve known you forever!”

“Lyra!” declared another tiny pony with the most impossible poofy pink and purple mane. “You’re been here two hours, and most of that time you’ve been buried in his books! Now come on!” She trudged up to the unicorn and bit down on her tail, dragging Lyra away despite her continuing tears and protestations.

“Gather around, everypony.” Twilight Sparkle arranged herself in the middle of the colorful herd, standing on a shoebox in the middle of the throw rug with her wings spread out and her horn lit up like a tiny nightlight.

“Wait a minute,” said Harry. “Did you have wings before?”

“Nope,” she said with a giggle. “They just showed up. The Twilight Sparkle back in Ponyville must have gotten them just a little bit ago. Aren’t they fantastic?”

“They… Yes,” declared Harry, who took a step back off the throw rug and away from the packed-together pony collection. After all, they were going home, and the last thing he wanted was to get caught up in whatever spell the now-winged unicorn was about to cast. Somehow, he thought it would probably involve the distasteful task of taking care of their bushes and shrubs until they figured a way to get him back to his human home. The ponies certainly seemed happy about their upcoming trip, and called out little tidbits of advice to him as Twilight’s horn began to glow brighter.

“Goodbye! We’ll miss you! Make sure to flush the toilet! Are you sure I can’t stay? I’ve got her, Twilight!” Every one of the departing ponies gave Harry a smile and a wave as a surge of purple magic swept over them with a light so bright that Harry had to look away.

Then it faded, and when Harry turned around…

They were all still standing there, looking at Twilight Sparkle.

Harry Potter looked at the herd of tiny ponies still standing on the throw rug in his uncle’s guest room.

Some of the ponies looked back. Some were staring at Twilight Sparkle. Several were exchanging small coins, as if paying off a bet. A few of the smaller ponies were running loose while equine parents tried to catch them.

“Your uncle just pulled into the driveway,” said Lyra from where she had climbed up the curtains to look out the window. “I think he ran over the fat kid’s bicycle.”

“Twilight!” declared Rarity from her position right next to her friend. The fashion unicorn’s face was set in a fixed and completely false smile, and she was whispering out of the corner of her clenched jaws. “I’ve got orders to complete in Ponyville today. Cast the spell to send us home. Now, please.”

“I’m trying!” Twilight’s horn flashed like some deranged camera and the little winged unicorn began turning around in circles on top of her shoebox. “This integral of the spell should send us home, unless this is not a simple transposition, which it isn’t of course. How stupid could I be! We’re all fractional representations of our original bodies, so the magical potential—”

“Your aunt has gone outside to calm down the fat kid,” said Lyra, still glued to the window. “So neat.”

“Now, don’t put pressure on her, Rarity.” Applejack moved up next to the shoebox and tried to act reassuring. “We all’s got confidence in you.”

“The math is all wrong!” wailed Twilight Sparkle, who plunked her tiny rump down on the shoebox and began working on an epic breakdown. “Math betrayed me! It isn’t supposed to do this! All the formulas don’t balance! We could never get home at this rate, and it’s my fault!”

“Look, it’s not the time to assign blame!” said Harry, who stole a quick look out of the window. “My aunt and uncle are coming back inside, and they’ll blow a fuse if they find you all in here!”

“Not helping,” said Rainbow Dash, who flew up to Harry’s face with a scowl. “Twilight’s doing the best she can to get us home, and— Urk!”

Harry grabbed the speedy pegasus out of mid-air like a snitch and darted over to the door, being careful where he was putting his feet. “Everybody, over here. Into my room and hide under the bed. Hurry!”

The stampede was well underway when Harry scurried down the stairs, hoping to catch Uncle Vernon and divert him away from the pile of ponies. If Harry had been in a good mood, or at least less of a furious one, it might have worked. At least it distracted him from the rattling sound of dozens of shod hooves in full flight across the hallway carpet runner when Vernon opened the front door and spotted Harry at the bottom of the stairs.

“Boy!” he blustered. “Is this what I come home to? The back door is wide open and there’s mud all over the floor! Well, go close it and get out to the car!”

With a sudden sinking sensation, Harry realized that he still had Rainbow Dash clutched in his hands, and that only convenient placement of the bannister rail blocked Vernon from seeing the brightly colored pony. Praying under his breath, Harry let go of the pony and darted to the back door with the trail of little muddy hoofprints showing the path of the ponies who had done his yard work and brought some of the yard back with them. He closed the door and tried not to react to Vernon’s ongoing complaint about Harry somehow having left Dudley’s bicycle out in the driveway, then tolerated the inevitable clout on the back of his head without grumbling. It was not until Harry was attaching the car’s seat belt that he realized something that almost made him dive out of the car.

All of his panicking about the ponies had been for nothing.

Twilight Sparkle was going to figure out what she had done wrong and send all of them home while Vernon and Petunia dragged him to various bicycle shops on the futile task of finding one that Dudley would like, or at least not complain much about. It would certainly take hours, and with all of the humans out of the house, the ponies might even clean up their dirty hoofprints before they left.

The idea gave him the willpower to survive an evening out on the town with his relatives, through the stores filled with bright, shiny bicycles that Uncle Vernon would never buy for him. Even that was made tolerable by Harry’s fond memories of riding on a broom during quidditch practice, a sensation that his obese cousin would never be able to experience, ever.

That warm feeling about flying cooled somewhat when the Dursley’s took their son into a restaurant after shopping. Harry was left outside by the car to watch the bicycle’s cardboard box that had been strapped to the car’s roof, just in case someone were to steal it while they were enjoying a meal. It was the first time he had been left alone in the last few days, even if it was in a parking lot with the scent of petrol all around and passers-by giving him an odd look as if he were a homeless child. He would have much rather been crouched over his desk, trying to keep up with Twilight Sparkle’s rapid recitation of magical theory or nodding along as Lyra quizzed him on wizarding history.

For such small fragments of magic from a truly weird dimension, each one of them was a fascinating window into a new world. It would have been a great experience to take Twilight Sparkle to Hogwarts, aside from having Hermione yell at him. And the Ministry going sparse. And most probably each of the teachers having different plans for his new colorful companion, including Snape, who would likely dock Gryffindor a few hundred points for having a pet that was not on the Hogwarts permitted list. Then again, if the correct permissions were requested from the correct wizards, he probably could bring a harmless magical creature into Hogwarts.

Yeah, harmless. Like Aragog.

Still, there had to be something in their presence here which was against the rules. The Ministry of Magic seemed to believe that everything magical was forbidden except for those few things that were permitted, with the correct number of permits purchased, of course. And of course there was no way the Ministry had a permit for keeping a Unicorn, Size Tiny, Type Extradimensional. Alternately, there was no way he could sneak Twilight into Hogwarts as perhaps a rare Pointy-Headed Rat, or Hooved Cat.

No, there was no need to think about it. Besides, the tiny unicorn had already gone home, with all of the other magical fragments of ponies from her town in Ponyland.

The trip back to Privet Drive was windy because Harry had to leave his car window open and hold onto the box containing the unassembled bicycle strapped onto the roof, just in case. It would make for a troublesome weekend with Uncle Vernon fussing over the instructions and complaining that there were parts missing, with Dudley hanging around and whining about how long it was taking. Still, there was half a drumstick in the doggie bag that Aunt Petunia had brought back from the restaurant, so he could always sneak down to the kitchen in the middle of the night and have at least something for dinner. Well, other than the cupcake he had eaten at the party.

“Hold up your end of the box, boy!” scolded Uncle Vernon while they were unloading. He did not shout at Dudley, of course, because the big lump had already darted into the house in search of the telly to catch the end of his favorite programme. Harry was at least grateful that he did not have that whining voice in his ear, which was made more difficult when Vernon’s grip slipped and the bicycle box landed on his foot.

The one shining light in the day’s events was that Uncle Vernon would never ask for Harry’s help in putting together Dudley’s bicycle. He would spend most of the remaining evening out in the living room, cursing and swearing at the missing parts and claiming the instruction sheet was written in some foreign language. Then tomorrow morning he would drive to the drill factory where he worked and bring back one of the men, who would put the bicycle together in less than an hour. That would leave just enough time before the end of the day for Dudley to take it outside and damage it somehow, most likely by leaving it in a ditch somewhere.

It was late enough that Harry slipped upstairs to use the bathroom quickly before the rest of the family headed off to bed, then managed to make it into his empty bedroom with only a moment to spare.

Only to find his empty bedroom less empty than he had hoped.

“I needed help,” admitted Twilight Sparkle from her perch on Harry’s desk before he could get a word out. “I know I haven’t always been good about asking for it when I’m in over my head—”

On the floor, Spike doubled over and held both clawed hands over his face, while the half-dozen or so small unicorns around Twilight universally rolled their eyes.

“—but I’m getting better about it,” she finished with only a small glare at her dragon assistant. “This is Lyra, Twinkleshine, Lemon Hearts, Minuette, and Moondancer. And… um… Trixie?”

The six colorful small unicorns all nodded at Harry Potter and gave a few words of encouragement, except for the light green one, who seemed to be entranced by his hands, and could not take her eyes off them.

“Other than Trixie, these are my study group from when I was a foal in Canterlot,” explained Twilight. “They’ve all gone on to other things since then, but I was hoping they could assist with my research in how to return us all home. Well, send our fractional distilled essences home, before our bodies there miss the magic that we’re made of.”

“I got a paper cut looking at your notes,” said Moondancer. “I bled. That’s a little more than just some essence borrowing.”

“I know!” Twilight giggled a little, which made Harry glad she did not have any sharp cutting implements, or at least none that he could see. “It’s a whole new world of transdimensional physics! I’m theorizing our passage created a one-way tunnel through spacetime with direct parallelism with our original bodies.”

“Hey, Twilight!” pipped a small voice from the floor. “I managed to get Apple Bloom and Scootaloo summoned here again! Rarity showed me how to do it,” she added quickly when she got their attention. “Or at least this Rarity, since I think there’s about three of them now.”

“Doesn’t parallelism only mean two?” asked Twinkleshine.

“Everypony, please!” called out Twilight in a voice far too loud for Harry’s nerves, particularly since he could hear Aunt Petunia in the bathroom across the hallway. “I told you to stop summoning other ponies!”

“But you summoned your school friends!” protested Sweetie Belle from the floor.

“And the Great and Powerful Trixie,” announced Trixie.

“That’s different,” said Twilight, although she slowed down as she continued. “I summoned one of each of my school friends to help me research the solution to our dilemma so we can all go home.”

“I thought you already summoned Lyra at least twice,” asked Harry, looking out across the ponies scattered across his bedroom floor. “That one over there, and the one hiding behind the bed leg.”

“I… um… Well, that’s beside the point,” continued Twilight, gaining speed. “You can help with our research, too. How much experience do you have with cross-thaumic force tensor quadratics?”

“That’s advanced Arithmancy, isn’t it?” asked Harry. “I think we start the basics this year.”

“Advanced Runic interactions?”

“I have the option of taking Ancient Runes next year,” said Harry. “Is that the same thing?”

“Simple ley-line flow and analysis?” asked Twilight hopefully.

“What’s a ley line?” The look of despair on Twilight Sparkle’s face most resembled Professor Hooch about the third time Neville had flown his broomstick through the same stained glass window in school. “How about… I just sit here and work quietly on my homework by myself. I know you like helping me study, but I think your research is more important right now.”

“I’ll help him, Twilight!” volunteered Lyra almost immediately, or at least the Lyra who was standing on the desk. She settled down next to his stack of uncompleted homework and used her horn to float over a book while the other unicorns scurried away like hooved rats.

There was a rather large stack of assignments left to complete. Harry still was confident that Twilight Sparkle would be able to send all of the unwanted visitors to his summer life back home. The two facts taken together made it obvious that he needed to get to work.

Returning to Hogwarts with a stack of undone homework would be bad. Not the kind of bad that would get him expelled, or forced to stand outside the gate until he had completed each sheet, but when the new school year’s assignments were piled on top, he might not catch up until the first snow. Hermione might have liked being smothered beneath paper, but Harry had quidditch and other such enjoyable activities planned.

“So two sheets of parchment on the first assignment,” said Lyra, leafing through his list. “Twelve basic symbolic translations, seven different potion interaction reports, a dozen different lists on the uses of the seven primary household charms.” She gave a low whistle while continuing through the homework list. “Who did you… um… get angry?”

“Voldemort,” said Harry. “He tried to kill me when I was just a baby. He killed my parents, but I survived. He tried to kill me at Hogwarts twice now.”

Lyra looked up with her golden eyes as big as saucers. Well, small saucers. Harry hurried to calm her down, because the ponies seemed too innocent and trusting to be faced with his unfiltered life. “He’s gone now. He put a… part of himself into a diary—”

Trying to explain Tom Riddle’s diary, the basilisk, and the Sword of Gryffindor took a while, made only worse by having to backtrack and explain what had happened to his first Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Lyra sat through it all, attentive and sympathetic even if she looked quite disturbed by his experiences. The conversation made his homework on Scrubbing Charms and the like seem very inconsequential in comparison, and she agreed that they were not very applicable to his larger problems. After all, Harry had not used any spells to fight Voldemort the first time, since his own touch had proven so deadly to the disembodied dark wizard. And he had never held a sword until that terrifying night in the basilisk’s lair.

After some discussion, they came to the conclusion that his studies were probably still useful in case he was attacked by dark wizards and found it necessary to give them a serious case of hiccups, or perhaps a good cleaning. With that in mind, and since his new magical tutor had calmed down, they went back to working on his assignments. The other advanced unicorn study group continued on without regard to the wizardly homework, with only the occasional popping noise or whiff of lavender smoke from their direction to mark their progress, although no marked reduction in the pony population of the room.

As they worked through the evening, it felt nice for Harry to have a study buddy who was not as ‘focused’ as Twilight Sparkle. Despite her inexperience with the specifics of wizarding magic, Lyra soaked up his lessons almost as fast as Harry could write. They worked through the report on potion interactions, fairly breezed through the household charms parchment, and made a good start on symbolic translations before stopping for the night. He wanted to go on, but Harry could not see straight, and he was starting to write in something that resembled ancient runes, sideways.

Giving a yawn, Harry pushed his completed homework to the back of the desk and tried not to twitch at the sound of an owl landing on the window sill. The ponies scattered all around the room froze for a moment, most likely because Hedwig was large enough to snack on them if it wanted, but after a few mutual distrusting looks, the owl turned to Harry and hooted, holding up one leg.

“More homework?” It only took a minute to untie the thick letter from Hedwig’s leg and send her off into the darkness with an Eeylops Premium Owl Treat clutched in her beak, after which Harry unfolded the letters and groaned. “This is twice as much as we managed to get done tonight!”

“Maybe we can work on it tomorrow during the day,” Lyra put forward hesitantly.

“Not a chance. Aunt Petunia will be in a foul mood because parts of Dudley’s new bicycle will be scattered around the living room tomorrow, and she’ll take it out on me. I’m going to be fertilizing and pruning rosebushes until dark.” He rubbed one hand against his pajama leg. “The thorns always stick under my skin, and I can’t use my dragonhide gloves because she’ll recognize them.”

He flopped down on the bed, then got back up when a lump under his covers protested. After chasing out the three or four ponies who had made themselves comfortable, he settled back down and rolled over on his back with one arm over his face.

“But on the other hoof?” prompted Lyra. “Bon Bon always says there’s a sweet chewy center in the middle of the most bitter chocolate, you just have to bite down on it.”

“No chocolate before bedtime,” came a unicorn’s thready voice from under the bed. “You already brushed your teeth.”

“It’s only metaphorical chocolate, Minnie,” responded Lyra while rolling her eyes. “Anyway, things happen in our lives, like giant space bears stomping through town, or—”

“Trixie said she was sorry about the bear many times!” sounded another voice from under the bed.

“—or,” continued Lyra with more force, “having a bunch of unexpected ponies dropped into your bedroom at the worst possible time. We make the best of our situations, because we can’t go back in time and change anything.”

“Technically, you can, but it doesn’t—” sounded Twilight from under the bed, only to have her fellow unicorn research assistants suppress her interjection from what Harry could hear of their objections.

“Tell you what,” said Lyra with a yawn. She flopped down on Harry’s pillow and scooted over a little to leave space for his head. “Sometimes when things go badly, you just have to trust other ponies and hope they get better. See what it’s like in the morning.”

It sounded like a good idea to Harry, even if she was taking up space on the pillow. He rolled over and nudged her a bit to repossess a little more pillow space, then closed his eyes, allowing the rustle of paper under his bed and the warmth of the unicorn snuggled up to the side of his face to lull him—

He reached up and confirmed by touch that there were now two ponies curled up on his pillow, one of whom was the hornless one with the elaborate manestyle who had seemed unusually attracted to Lyra. He was getting used to finding more ponies than he expected, so setting back down into his pillow again, he moved Lyra’s horn so it wasn’t poking him in the cheek, closed his eyes and listened to the rustle of paper below the bed until he fell asleep.

“Hey.” A small hoof nudged Harry Potter on the cheek several times with increasing force. It took him a moment to realize that the nudges meant Twilight Sparkle had not been able to send the magical ponies home, and a second moment to remember that Aunt Petunia would be along at any moment. He struggled to an upright position, put on his glasses, and fumbled for his trainers, which one of the ponies had apparently unlaced in the middle of the night and put right next to the bed.

And cleaned.

And put in new laces.

Having ponies in his room was both terribly frustrating and… weird. They seemed a little like miniature four-legged house elves, and about as much trouble. At least when he managed to get his eyes open and look around, there did not seem to be quite as many ponies scurrying around the room as when he had gone to bed. And the clock showed he still had about ten or fifteen minutes before Aunt Petunia would barge into his room to wake him up, although the weekend had just started, and the schedule changed at her whim.

As he yawned and laced his trainers, Harry became slowly aware of yet another pony perched on the headboard of the bed. This one was wearing golden armor with a fuzzy blue crest on his helmet, and standing at attention while holding a short spear much like a pencil crooked in one foreleg. The pony looked him straight in the eye, seemed to resist the urge to criticize Harry’s baggy t-shirt and trousers, then lifted one hoof to the side of his helmet.

“Big Perch to all patrols. Clay Pot has begun his day. Status report on the facilities?”

The pegasus seemed to listen for a few moments, then turned back to Harry. “Sir, the facilities are clear, the toilet paper has been refilled, and we have procured a new toothbrush to replace your defective one. Both Uncle and Aunt are still in bed, while Tubby is downstairs watching the magical entertainment box. You are cleared for your morning ablutions, provided you make haste. We have observed Aunt moving in a rapid fashion yesterday, and she may awaken at any time.”

“That’s… fine,” said Harry, still trying to soak it all in. “And you are?”

The tiny armored pony saluted. “Commander Hardhooves, Captain of the Canterlot Protective Unit, Guest Section. We are responsible for Twilight Sparkle’s security while she is in Canterlot, and that’s why I believe she…” The armored pony hesitated, which Harry could understand totally. After all, if he had some small portion of his magic pulled to an alien dimension and reconstituted as a tiny person where the natives were so different, he would have been more panicked than any of the tiny ponies had been so far.

“She summoned a bit of your mystic bits here,” completed Harry, trying not to wince at what his Hogwarts teachers would think of his terminology, or how Hermione would roll her eyes. “So what are you guarding her against?”

“Actually, we’re guarding you,” admitted Hardhooves with an embarrassed scratch at the back of his neck. “And coordinating the situation, since there are so many civilians involved. Plus, I think having us around makes her feel a little less nervous.”

“She said every pony she summoned allowed her to learn more about the spell,” mused Harry before cold realization soaked in. “How many of you did she summon?”

“Five,” said Hardhooves, which allowed Harry to begin relaxing until he continued, “Out of the day shift, of course. Then the five on night shift, two alternates, the support staff, and the gardeners.”

“Gardeners?” asked Harry, terribly afraid of where the conversation was going. He glanced out the window and was held in astonishment while the tiny pegasus continued.

“Princess Twilight said she couldn’t concentrate with you out in the yard, slaving away at the bushes instead of working on your backlogged homework. So she brought up a few of the castle gardeners to help the farmers from Ponyville she brought up earlier, and—”

“Done,” declared a small brown pony who trotted in the bedroom door with Minuette the unicorn right behind him. “I must say, some of the bicycle parts had gotten bent somehow, but a little bit of ingenuity—”

“And some magic,” added Minuette under her breath.

“—we got it put together and ready for you, along with fixing the bent-up bicycle in the garage. Even added a few minor improvements,” completed the pony, arranging his hat at a jaunty angle.

“It’s not my bicycle!” hissed Harry, trying not to lose his temper. “That’s Dudley’s bicycle! He’s already downstairs! His favorite morning television program is on! Did he see you?”

The small brown pony drew himself up in indignation. “Of course not! Do you think I’m a common temporal mechanic?”

Whatever Harry was about to splutter in response was cut off by Commander Hardhooves suddenly getting an intense expression and barking out, “Everypony take cover. Aunt is on the move, repeat, Aunt is on the move. Garden detachment, report.”

Ponies went scurrying everywhere in Harry’s room, much like a nest of puffskeins that Harry had once seen Molly Weasley sweep up while dusting. In several seconds, the only pony that could still be seen was the tiny pony commander, still whispering into his helmet.

“Garden detachment, respond! Aunt is coming! Get all civilians to sheltered positions before she sees you. Come in, garden detachment!”

Harry looked out of the open window, his eyes widening with shock. There were dozens of colorful ponies scurrying about under the bushes of the front yard, doing all the gardening tasks that Harry would normally get stuck with on weekends. Thankfully, none of the neighbors seemed to be out and about yet, but he could hear Aunt Petunia’s footsteps on the hallway outside of his room, and in just a few moments, she would see just what he was—

“Hide!” hissed Harry, stuffing his pillow over the tiny armored pony before leaping onto the window sill. It was a long way down, but he had fallen off his broomstick further, and by hanging onto the edge of the window with his fingers, he reduced the shock of landing from painful to just slightly stunning. Thankfully, there was an evergreen bush to break his fall, although it had served that exact same purpose a year ago when Uncle Vernon had fallen into it, and Harry was not sure how much more squashing it could take.

And to his relief, there did not appear to be any ponies in the bush who had been crushed beneath him during his awkward landing.

“Ah see you’re up early,” said Applejack, who sauntered up while Harry was sucking in a breath. “Good to see somepony so enthusiastic about getting to work, even though the sun’s been up for more than an hour now.”

“My aunt is in my room,” Harry hissed while staggering to his knees. “She’s going to see all of you, and my life will be over!”

“Oh!” Applejack whirled in place, put one hoof in her mouth, and let out a sharp whistle that probably could have been heard in Hogwarts. Every pony in the front yard looked back, then scattered into bushes and tufts of grass that Harry could have sworn were not able to conceal a fleabeetle.

“Where are you at, you lazy boy!” Aunt Petunia’s voice filtered down from above, giving him just enough time to begin nipping broken agapanthus fronds off the bushes and give a short prayer of thanks that the rosebush had not been under his window.

“Out here, Aunt Petunia,” he called back. “I wanted to… take care of this bush before going into the back yard.”

Petunia’s sharp features soon graced Harry’s open window, and she scowled her way around looking at every plant in the front yard, including the young elm tree that had a rather large nest in the branches.

“Chirp, chip,” said the suspicious bird nest in a most unconvincing way.

“Well… finish up out here and get into the back yard where nobody can see you,” snapped Petunia. “Did you even start breakfast like you were supposed to?”

“Um… Uh…” Harry spotted a pink pony sheltered under a nearby bush, who was nodding frantically so fast she was nearly a blur. “Pinkie— I mean yes, Aunt Petunia,” he blurted out,

“I hope you made something good,” she grumbled. “Your uncle was up half the night putting Dudley’s bicycle together.”

Harry was not quite sure if what Vernon had been doing could be classified as putting the bicycle together instead of just shuffling the parts around, and he most likely had not stayed up more than a few minutes more than his usual habit. Still, Harry kept his mouth shut and bent back to pulling the last few wilted leaves and crooked stems off the agapanthus plant before heading inside. After all, he wanted to see what was for breakfast too.

“Whoa.” Harry had seen smaller breakfasts laid out for entire Houses at Hogwarts, or at least the narrow confines of the Dursley’s kitchen made it seem so. Every single horizontal surface that could hold plates of pancakes was stacked solid, piled high, and dripping with syrup. At first, Harry tried to figure out why Dudley had not seen the horde of tiny ponies dashing around the kitchen making all this food, but with the way his chubby cousin was glued to the telly, an elephant stampeding through the living room could have easily been missed.

“What have you been up to?” snapped Petunia from right behind Harry, which made him start. “Using up all of our kitchen supplies before your Aunt Marjorie visits tomorrow!”

Harry was running out of excuses… actually had run out of excuses a few days ago and was now just making things up as he went. What was worse, there was something about Aunt Marge’s visit that he had forgotten in the chaos that the tiny ponies had brought with them. He had even written a note about it, somewhere in the maze of scribbled parchment upstairs in his room.

“Let me get these pancakes to Dudley before they get cold,” he blurted out. It would at least give him a minute to think, or two minutes because Dudley sent him back to the kitchen twice to get butter and the right kind of syrup. With each trip, it seemed as if the collection of pancakes and waffles in the kitchen became smaller. The reason became clear when he saw a colorful tail under a plate vanish around the corner of the stairs, so he quickly grabbed a napkin as an excuse to make one last trip to his cousin.

“Here you go, Dudley. Do you need anything else?” he added in as pleasant a voice as Harry was able.

“Hush up,” snapped Dudley. “I can’t hear the programme!”

Aunt Petunia was scowling by the doorway to the kitchen, apparently oblivious to the last few plates of pancakes creeping across the floor behind her, each with their own tail. “Well?” she huffed.

“Did you want some pancakes too, Aunt Petunia?” Harry scurried around her and picked up one of the last two remaining plates, trying his best not to smile when she began looking around the kitchen for the other missing plates that had been right there a few moments ago.

Banishment to the back yard was not the punishment that Aunt Petunia thought it was. That’s not to say it was a picnic, because he still had hours and hours of shoveling and raking the disgusting fertilizer ahead of him. But with all of his little helpers, the work went about the same as if he had been back at Hogwarts, laboring in the greenhouse with Madame Sprout. Except for a lack of carnivorous plants.

“Now this is the life,” declared a sweaty Applejack, who was holding the base of the rosebush while Harry dug up the dark earth around it. “Out workin’ in the sunshine without a care in the world.”

“Aunt!” declared one of the watchful guards, leading to a rapid scurrying around the yard just before Aunt Petunia poked her thin nose out of an upstairs window. She looked around with her regular scowl seeming just a little deeper than usual, snapped a few orders at Harry, and vanished back inside.

After a few moments, the rest of the ponies came out from their hiding places and resumed work, including Applejack. She braced the rosebush straighter and continued, “Of course Ah suppose every rose has its thorns.”

“All I see is thorns,” grumbled Harry, who was sucking on his thumb where he had pricked it while grabbing for the falling rosebush.

“Yew got your kinfolk, your life, and a place to call home,” countered Applejack. “There’s plenty of ponies — and I suppose people too — who can’t say that. You got friends too, from what you said earlier, and money.”

“True.” Harry jabbed the spade into the ground and turned over another lump of fresh dirt. “I also have a very powerful wizard who wants me dead.”

“Voldy-mart,” said Applejack with a frown. “Makes me wish we could take our Elements of Harmony and give him a good rainbow shower.”

Harry thought about the concept before discarding it. Even if by some wild stroke of fantasy it was possible to bring all of the six ponies and their magical artefacts here, and by an unlikely chance they managed to find and use them on whatever spectre of Voldemort remained, the aftereffects would be… unspeakable. The Ministry of Magic would have kittens, to say the least, while thousands of elderly witches and wizards would most likely die of heart attacks from the cuteness. And, of course, The Boy Who Lived would immediately become The Boy Who Brought Colorful Cute Ponies, and he would never live that down if he survived to be two hundred years old.

“Speaking of showers, where did the hosepipes go?” Harry looked around the yard for the expected coils of green hose to no avail. All the work they had done in the yard needed to be soaked in so the nutrients from the fertilizer would be absorbed and the roots would not dry out. In school, the Fifth Years and above would use the Aguamenti charm on their plants, although Harry’s class had not learned it yet, so Professor Sprout kept their homework correctly watered. Muggles used garden hosepipes, which seemed so odd to the Weasley family and so ordinary to Harry. He wondered how Arthur Weasley was getting along with their garden, which flourished and overgrew the small plot of ground behind their oddly proportioned country house.

“What’re you looking for?” Applejack tromped the loose soil around the base of the rosebush and continued, “Ah sent Rainbow and the rest of the weather team up to get us some good old natural precipitation, if’n that’s it.”

“Natural…” Harry looked up and saw the billowing clouds starting to gather in clumps, which seemed to have tiny little specks of color around them if he squinted just right. “Pegasi can control the weather?”

“Sure as shootin’ they can. Why, Rainbow Dash is the best durned cloud wrangler anywhere. Ah told her we just needed a long soak after we got done with the back yard, but knowin’ her an’ seeing how many clouds you got up there, she’s going to water half the countryside.”

Weather magic was not taught at Hogwarts before Sixth Year, if Harry remembered Hermione's moaning about it correctly. She had some ideas about improving it, much like every field of magic that she talked about. Since the weather around Hogwarts did not seem to be influenced by important events like upcoming quidditch games, Harry had always thought there must have been some pretty good reasons why wizards left the sky alone. To make matters worse, since Hogwarts taught spells to control the weather, and nobody did, that meant that the Ministry of Magic monitored such spells.

He was so hosed.

“You have to stop them,” hissed Harry. “Muggles will see them, the Ministry will find out and they’ll track you all back here and they’ll expel me from Hogwarts!”

“Ain’t nopony gonna see Rainbow if’n she don’t want to be seen,” said Applejack. “You probably should get inside before it begins. She likes starting things with a bang.”

The rest of the tiny ponies around the yard appeared to be getting ready for the rain too, from collecting tools to getting the empty bags stuffed into the trash bin. A distant rumble of thunder drew Harry’s eyes up again, and he forced his breathing to slow. If he did not know there were tiny winged ponies up in the sky, he might be able to discount the flickers of color he saw flitting around the edges of the rapidly moving clouds as some sort of reflections of the afternoon sun.

He stood out in the fading sunlight until the first bits of mist began to drift down, just in case he spotted Ministry broomsticks up in the clouds. Then when the rain started to fall in occasional bursts of huge drops, he scooted under the eves of the house to take off his shoes. The mud in the tracks of his trainers would fall off inside the house and Aunt Petunia would make him vacuum, which would make Dudley complain about the noise and demand he ‘vacuum quieter’ somehow. That is unless the Ministry of Magic showed up before then to cart him away.

A rolling peal of thunder rumbled around the sky, giving Harry a momentary tightness in his chest. He didn’t particularly like thunder. It reminded him of unpleasant things that floated around the edge of his memory without ever coming out into the open. Lightning was deadly and random, striking where it wanted and resisting most efforts to control it. The Daily Prophet had a particular corner on the second page where they liked to feature witches or wizards who were out flying in inclement weather before crossing a bolt of lightning. Most of them survived, of course, because it took a lot to kill a wizard, but the resulting photos left little to the imagination.

“Are you afraid?” A yellow pegasus with enormous eyes delicately touched down on his knee and folded her wings up. If she had not said anything, Harry might not have even noticed, much as if she had been a passing butterfly resembling the teeny pink marks on her rump. Fluttershy, that was her name. Despite her bright colors, she was the last pony that Harry feared his aunt and uncle would spot, because she seemed to have developed hiding into an art form.

“A little,” admitted Harry. “Thunderstorms are always so violent, and you never know if lightning will strike the house. When I was small and the power used to go out, it was so dark in my cupboard that I could almost taste it. I kept thinking the noises of my aunt and uncle stumbling around the house with a candle were some terrible and dark monster out to—” Harry caught the look of impending fear on Fluttershy’s face and quickly edited his words “—hurt me. I guess the cupboard was both a prison and a refuge.”

An ear-splitting crack of thunder matched the brilliant flash of lighting cleaving across the sky, illuminating all of Little Whinging that he could see through the mass of pink and yellow that clung to his face and trembled against his glasses. Fluttershy was almost rigid with fear, and twitched with every new crack and rumble of the ongoing storm, even after all the lights in the house flared up and went dark from a lightning bolt that hit somewhere in the neighborhood.

Harry really did not know what damp pegasi were supposed to smell like, only that Fluttershy had a flowery/herbal/sweet scent like she had been sipping on nectar like bees. He was more concerned by sharp little hooves scratching against his glasses, and put a hand up to hold onto the terrified tiny thing. She trembled under his fingers, although less after he stroked the back of her neck and held onto her for a while.

“Sorry,” she whispered just barely above the fading rumble. “Lightning here is loud.”

“That’s… understandable.” Harry glanced around to make sure he was not being watched, because having the Ministry of Magic find out about the ponies was starting to look like a distant second place finisher. If Dudley saw him petting a tiny pastel-coloured flying pony, he was not sure if his cousin would run screaming to Uncle Vernon or just keep the incident as some sort of blackmail material for the rest of his life.

They sat there together for a time while the pegasus-powered thunder and lightning played itself out above the dark cloud cover, and Petunia and Vernon clattered around the house behind him. From the sounds of it, Dudley was no help at getting the lights back on, but it did let Harry keep track of his relatives by simply keeping a small portion of his attention on the constant complaining while the rest of him was free to… pet.

“Do your pegasus friends have a chance to—” Harry considered the flitting bits of color in the sky, which looked a lot less like the drudgery of watering and more like some sort of equine quidditch match.

“Oh, Rainbow doesn’t get a chance to play with wild weather at home,” said Fluttershy in a quiet whisper. “Other than storms out of the Everfree Forest, and she pushes them away from the town so they don’t break things. It’s good to see her having fun.” Another crack and rumble of thunder made the trembling pony tunnel deeper into Harry’s shirt.

The rain started up with a quiet hiss, quite different than the frequent flashes and bangs up in the clouds. Thankfully, there was enough of an awning over the back patio door that Harry did not get immediately soaked, and the rain tended to muffle the ongoing pegasus playground noises. It was strangely peaceful, mostly because of the pony petting, but also due to the wet scent of damp earth and plants that began to sweep through the yard, as well as not having to sweat under the midsummer sun. The longer he sat there with the pony in his lap, the more other ponies came out of hiding to gather around him and watch the rain also.

The sun was just beginning to set somewhere outside of the thick cloud cover when the lights came back on in the house, and the ponies promptly began to scatter. During his quiet time, several of the ponies had cleaned the dirt out of his trainers and returned the damp soil to one of the wet rosebushes, so there was no reason why Harry could not go right back inside to prepare supper.

Well, other than he really did not want to.

“I’m going to miss you,” he said, carefully setting Fluttershy down away from the glass patio window so his aunt and uncle would not see. “I was getting all stressed out by having so many of you here without seeing the advantages. It’s been so nice to have somebody to talk with.”

“I’m glad you were here too,” said Fluttershy, who was taking nervous glances into the house where Vernon and Petunia were scurrying around. “It would have been so frightening if we had to talk with your relatives. They’re so big and loud.”

“That’s it for now!” declared a loud voice above Harry. “Everypony inside and into the shower so we can get toweled off! Hey, what’s for dinner?”

Harry Potter looked up at the colorful tiny pegasus who was hovering by one of the back windows while a stream of soggy pegasi flowed into the house behind her. Even with the brief glance he had, it was obvious that there were far more of the ponies now.

That tense sensation of knotted muscles began to creep up Harry’s back again, and he could feel his temper rising, made only worse by the purple winged pony who bounced off the window sill and tumbled to the ground a few feet away.

“Rainbow!” The little alicorn staggered to her hooves and glared upwards.

“Sorry, Twi!” The pegasus grinned and darted into the window with a fading, “Early birds get the hot water!”

“I am so going to remember this tomorrow morning when we go home,” said Twilight Sparkle under her breath. She turned with an obvious smile to Harry and cleared her throat, only to get cut off.

“You’re going home tomorrow morning?” asked Harry quickly. “You’re sure this time? Absolutely certain? Because I don’t think my aunt is going to believe that many pegasi out in the backyard tomorrow are just colorful birds with hooves.”

“Absolutely positive,” chirped Twilight. “I established a full baseline for the transmission matrix by summoning the weather team from Ponyville and took leyline transits while we were laying out the storm. Um… It may rain off and on for the whole week after we’re gone, if that’s not a problem, because I had to tie—”

“A week is fine,” assured Harry. “We get a lot of rain anyway. Just as long as you’re sure nobody saw you up there.”

“Absolutely.” Twilight gave a sharp nod. “Now, about dinner this evening. I’m starving. All this flying really worked up an appetite.”

“I’ll make a nice rice pilaf with mushrooms,” said Harry. “It expands easily into more servings than my relatives can eat, and I’ll just call the cooking an ‘accident’ like normal. They’ll never notice.”

“Boy!” came the sound of Vernon’s bellowing from inside the house. “Why haven’t you started cooking yet! And why is Dudley’s new bicycle out in the front yard’s flower bed?”

“Whoops!” Twilight quickly put a wing over Fluttershy and lit up her horn. “We’ll just get out of your way.”

There was a flash of light, and the yard was empty of equines again, although Harry had to consider one thing when he went inside to begin his evening ordeal at the stove.

I wonder if I could just keep one of them?

It was still raining the next morning. The clouds had a solidity to them which made Harry think it might still be raining next month. He suspected that if it was still raining in Little Whinging next year when he returned from Hogwarts for summer… No, the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes would have certainly cleaned it up by then, and if… When Twilight Sparkle sent all the ponies home this morning, that would keep the Ministry of Magic from blaming him.

When. When. When. Harry Potter was determined to stay positive, and that included his homework. He had spent extra time last night pouring over the pending pile of purple pedagogy with the assistance of Lyra, and the constant rain had kept any school owls from bringing him more assignments, so he had made positive progress. Aunt Marge’s train was not due at the station until around noon, which gave him an hour or two bent over the desk this morning to put a few more sheets of parchment into the completed stack. He actually was starting to look forward to a few days from now when he would return to Hogwarts just because of the reduction in workload.

“Boy!” Uncle Vernon sounded more angry than usual as his voice drifted up the stairs. “Get out to the car or we’ll be late picking Marge up at the train station!”

“And that will have to do it, Lyra,” said Harry, shoving his last sheet of homework into the pillowcase with the rest, then stuffing it under the bed despite the pony protests from the sleeping nighttime guards that emerged from the shadows afterward. “Sorry, guys. I have to help bring Aunt Marge’s luggage back to the car. I guess this is the last time I’ll be seeing you, and… um…”

He hesitated with one hand held out to shake, only to have Lyra wrap her entire body around his fingers and squeeze. “It’s been a lot of fun to work with you, Harry,” she said while hugging. “I hope I remember this after Twilight sends us back home.”

“I hope so too,” said Harry. He ruffled the little unicorn’s pale mane before heading for the bedroom door. “Keep an eye on Twilight when you get back,” he added in a low voice. “She needs all the friends she can get. Um… But don’t let her summon any more ponies. Or send any here when she’s in Ponyville. Or—”

“Boy!” blasted Vernon’s voice again.

“Take care,” whispered Harry before slipping out the door. “Coming, Uncle Vernon.”

Unnoticed behind him, a blank Hogwarts permission slip for Hogsmeade trips drifted off the desk and silently to the floor.

Rain was a multiplier, or at least that was what Harry was starting to think.

It certainly multiplied Vernon’s usual mood with constant complaints about the blasted road and the blasted rain and the other blasted drivers who did not have a clue on the proper driving technique during a rainstorm. Proof of that was the way they refused to get out of his way when he honked the horn, and took all the good parking places at the train station. It turned out to be quite a stream of vitriol, and Harry was thankfully not the focus, leaving him to wonder if perhaps prolonged exposure to the Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes Muggle-Repellent No-Blotch No-Snoop Spell Ink was rubbing off. Or maybe all the times Harry had used his invisibility cloak at Hogwarts had something to do with it.

It was not as effective as the real invisibility cloak, unfortunately. He still had to endure Aunt Marge’s sulfuric glares where she took out her frustrations about the long train trip on the most convenient Harry Potter nearby, and he still had to struggle with the luggage cart piled high with Aunt Marge’s paisley suitcases, and topped with several huge boxes for Dudley’s birthday long past. At least it kept him out of biting range of Ripper, the overweight and cranky bulldog which Marge was carrying to keep his delicate paws away from the dirty train station floor.

Personally, Harry knew most bulldogs were supposed to be affectionate and loving. He suspected that Aunt Marge’s not-so-secret affections for her next-door neighbor at home made it so she kept the worst-tempered of the chubby dogs with her when she traveled.

“Watch the presents, boy!” For a moment, Harry could not tell which of the chubby Dursley’s had snapped at him. He had been distracted by some sort of… movement in the rainy parking lot, a shadow that was where it did not belong and was not there when he looked again. A cold prickling ran up his spine that had nothing to do with the rain, right before one of Dudley’s presents began teetering on the edge of the luggage pile.

He grabbed for the colorfully wrapped box and pushed it back on top of the luggage trolley before checking again, but he still could not see anything. Dodging a halfhearted snap by Ripper, Harry kept pushing the trolley in the direction of the car.

It had probably been a stray dog.

The strange feeling made Harry think of Hogwarts, for some reason. Perhaps it was the burst of energy from being in danger without a wand to defend himself. The Dursley house was many things, but a place where he could die at any minute… no. Going back to Hogwarts made riding in the back of the car with the drooling bulldog tolerable, because in a few days, he would not have to worry about annoying relatives or angry dogs. Well, angry dogs with less than three heads.

After facing Lord Voldemort, the least Harry could do is tolerate Aunt Marge for a few days. Even if he no longer had a whole horde of tiny ponies to reassure him, he could hold that warm feeling inside, just like he held onto the feeling of his friends from school. The look on Ron’s face when he first got a look at Harry’s scar. The squinched-up expression on Hermione’s face when she was correcting a particularly horrid section of Ron’s homework. The absolute forced innocent expressions on Ron’s brothers when they were hatching up some new scheme. Trying to figure out just how Neville managed his latest potion disaster. The prospect of holiday weekends in Hogsmeade with all…

Oh, bugger it.

The timing could not have been worse. He could not bring up the subject on the way home because Aunt Marge knew nothing about Hogwarts or Harry’s magical background, and Uncle Vernon was in a steaming mood, as if he was blaming the rain on Harry.

Well, admittedly that was something Harry was indirectly responsible for, but it was not important at the moment.

In the odd times on the trip to the train station when he was not complaining about other drivers, Vernon had lectured Harry about making sure nothing strange would happen while his sister was visiting. There had been the normal threats, spiked with the possibility of keeping Harry out of school if the worst happened. That was unlikely, with all the trouble of Harry’s first Hogwarts letter, but not an impossibility. After all, Harry had nearly been killed twice at the school, and the wizarding community might be familiar with the phrase ‘Third time’s the charm’ and just decide it was safer to leave him with the Dursleys.

The thought made Harry’s breathing more difficult, until he touched his sodden, oversized sweatshirt and felt the plastic-protected crinkle of his third Hogwarts letter, listing all the books and materials he would need for his upcoming year. Just a few more days until the Weasleys’ traditional trip to Diagon Alley to buy supplies for their own children. Uncle Vernon would be overjoyed to dump Harry out by the Leaky Cauldron where he could meet with them, and it should be no great difficulty for Harry to wheedle out a stay at the Weasley house for the few days before the school term began.

Maybe even Hermione would be there, and she could help get Harry’s backlog of holiday homework flogged into submission. Ron, Hermione, and Harry, all together again. It was so close, although the warm feeling of reunion with his friends did not damp the chill of the unsigned Hogsmeade permission letter.

Dinner was… strange. Again.

Harry had some experience with Aunt Marge during her previous visits, so he was used to a certain degree of icy contempt from her. Thankfully, she spent so much time doting on Dudley and trying to spoil him rotten-er, that she seemed to forget all about Harry when he was not directly in her line of sight. And since Uncle Vernon put on a fine spread for dinner with great stacks of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, buttery mashed potatoes, enough thick gravy to float a raft, and three kinds of pie, even Harry had enough to eat without needing to pick through the leftovers.

It was a trade-off. He had to put up with the verbal abuse that made his stomach turn in order to eat his fill, or at least as much as he was able. Hogwarts seemed so far away, even if it was only going to take a few more days of this misery for him to be once more on the train headed for the welcome school. Uncle Vernon had turned Harry down cold when he had asked about signing the permission form earlier, although it had been a fairly oblique approach to the matter. Maybe if Harry implied that these trips to Hogsmeade were dangerous, and that students could be severely injured during their visits?

“Still here, are you?” Harry had been lost in his own mind while Marge was talking, and looked up to see the bothersome old woman eyeing him suspiciously over the dirty dishes.

“Yes,” he replied, because he really did not think he could say “No” without some energetic verbal maneuvering and his invisibility cloak.

“Don’t say ‘yes’ in that ungrateful tone, boy.” Marge’s chubby lips pulled back in a sneer, although Harry could not hear a word she was saying, because his eyes were drawn to where Ripper was rolled over on his chubby back under the table…

…and was having his tummy rubbed by a tiny yellow pegasus.

“Why didn’t you go home?” he hissed before looking up and recognizing the startled gazes of the gathered Dursleys. “I mean…”

“Speak up, boy!” snapped Aunt Marge. “What kind of behavior do they teach you in that school? Where do you send the boy, anyway?” she added, turning her scowl in the direction of Uncle Vernon.

“St. Brutus’ home,” said Vernon with a furtive look at Harry. “It’s a fine institution for hopeless cases.”

I need him to sign my permission slip, I need him to sign my permission slip…

Harry managed a brief nod when Aunt Marge turned her piggish dark eyes back in his direction, although he nearly choked when he saw Fluttershy’s huge eyes staring at him from under the table, as if she believed Uncle Vernon, and that she had befriended some sort of insane monster by accident. What was worse, Harry could see other ponies hiding out in the dining room, behind potted plants and under bookshelves where they had undoubtedly been snacking on leftovers from the massive meal. In fact, several of them were under the table with Ripper, which led Harry to suppose that some of the bits of ham Aunt Marge had been slipping to the dog had been misdirected to a more equine destination.

“I said, do they use a cane at St. Brutus’, or are you deaf too?”

“Oh!” Harry tore his eyes away from the betrayed looks of the hidden ponies. “Yeah, they do. I’ve been beaten loads of times.”

I can explain to the ponies later. And they can tell me why they’re not gone yet!

“Excellent.” Aunt Marge settled back into her chair with a faint creak of stressed wood and more than a little smugness. “I won’t have this namby-pamby, wishy-washy nonsense about not beating children who deserve it.”

That changed the expressions on all of the hidden ponies. If they were real-sized, Marge most certainly would be in danger of getting a hoof-massage in the worst possible way.

“You’re a good man to be taking care of this wastrel, Vernon,” she added, picking up her empty wine glass. “If he had been dropped on my doorstep, it would have been off to the orphanage in a jiffy.”

“We considered it,” said Uncle Vernon, who had made his way over to the liquor cabinet and was getting the good bottle out, which was an indication to Harry just how much shouting he was in for later. “Can I tempt you with an after dinner nip?”

“Just a small one,” she said, holding her glass out. “A bit more, come on,” she added after Vernon had put in a short splash, not stopping her intent observation of the pouring process until the glass was half-full. “Excellent nosh, Petunia. It’s usually just a fry-up with me, what with twelve dogs.”

Harry tried to blend into the background while he was picking up more of the dirty dishes. After all, the colorful little ponies managed to hide, and he had spent most of his early years at Hogwarts trying to blend in like a chameleon on a plaid skirt, that is to say rather poorly.

“Do try a little drop of brandy, Rippy-pooh?”

Harry whirled around, nearly upsetting a stack of dirty dishes. Aunt Marge was leaning down, tipping her glass of brandy to be sloshed into Ripper’s bowl, only the bulldog was still on his back getting a tummy-rub, and another pony had taken his place. Although the mulberry-colored mare was drinking as fast as she could, all it would take was Marge looking down and—

“Blrregfast,” said Harry in a rapid burst of syllables that bore no connection to his scrambled mind. “I mean… breakfast! I should know what you want for breakfast. For tomorrow.”

Marge tipped her glass back up, and nearly had the little pony drinking out of it fall in face-first, before her equine friends dragged her further under the shadows of the dining room table. Aunt Marge shook her head so hard her jowls trembled, then lifted her glass to take another drink… only to find it empty.

“Trouble you for a bit more?” she asked, holding the glass out to Vernon, who was staring daggers at Harry. “Oh, don’t be troubled about how this one turned out. It’s all to do with blood.” She licked her lips while the brandy was being poured and added, “Bad blood will out, after all.”

Harry did not dare say anything in return, even if he could unclench his jaws.

After a brief sip of brandy, Aunt Marge asked, “What is it the boy’s father did, Petunia?”

“Nothing.” Petunia had the most peculiar expression, which was difficult to see because she had turned away from Harry. “He didn’t work.”

“He was unemployed,” added Vernon while corking what little was left in the brandy bottle.

Marge scoffed. “And a drunk too, no doubt.”

“That’s a lie,” snapped Harry, who would have instantly regretted it if he had not been so angry. Every eye in the room was on him, both large and small.

“What did you say?” Aunt Marge rose from her chair, much the same way a giant might rise from the forest floor.

“My dad wasn’t a drunk,” shot back Harry. The anger felt good. Warm. Comforting.

The wineglass that Marge was holding shattered, spraying shards of glass all over the table. Petunia lunged forward with a napkin, although thankfully the only thing dripping from Marge’s thick knuckles was spilled brandy.

“Don’t worry,” chided Marge while trying to fend off Petunia’s napkin. “I have a very firm grip.”

“I think it’s time for you to go to bed, boy.” thundered Vernon, who looked as if he were about to come around the table and drag Harry upstairs.

“Quiet, Vernon,” snapped Marge. There was only one creature in the world that could cow Vernon Dursley from angry action and that was his older and slightly larger sister. Harry would have appreciated that more if Marge did not enjoy pushing Harry around more than the rest of his obnoxious family. “You, clean up this glass.”

It beat being dragged upstairs by one ear, although not by much, so Harry grabbed the dustpan and broom anyway. Unfortunately, it put him close to Marge when she spoke rather directly to her brother.

“Actually, I’ve seen this kind of behavior all the time when breeding dogs. It has nothing to do with the sire. The female is always to blame.”

Harry bent to his cleanup task with as much concentration as he could, despite grinding his teeth. If there was ever a time for Petunia to stand up for him, this was it. His mother had been her sister, after all. They may have fought, and Petunia certainly resented it when Lily received her Hogwarts letter, but they shared the same bloodline. The wizarding world put such emphasis on family and blood. Voldemort even made it the centerpiece of his movement. Only Pureblood wizards were selected to become Death Eaters, after all.

The silence from Aunt Petunia was deafening.

Marge had paused in order to take a deep drink from the replacement glass of brandy that Vernon was quick to produce, and when she resumed speaking, it was with a wide gesture.

“If there’s something wrong with the bitch, then there’s something wrong with the pup—”

“Stop it! Shut up!” Harry jumped to his feet and glared at the quarrelsome old woman

That did not discourage Marge at all. Poking at him with a sausage-like finger, she took a step forward. “Right. Let me tell you…” She jabbed the finger again at Harry, only stopping when she saw just how large it had become.

One at a time, Marge’s fingers expanded, then the rest of her hand, then her arm.

“Vernon!” Aunt Petunia cringed away from their rapidly expanding houseguest. “Do something!”

Pearls shot across the room as Marge’s expanding neck broke the whole string, and contrary to Harry’s expectations, the subject of his accidental spell actually was rising up into the air.

“Stop!” commanded Vernon, although it was not completely obvious if he was ordering whatever it was turning his sister into a balloon to cease, or was directing the order in Harry’s direction. It certainly did not work, because Marge bounced once off the ceiling and began to drift in the direction of the open patio doors leading to the back yard.

The warm glow of revenge began to fade away from Harry, replaced by a deeper chill. All of the effort he had expended in the last months to keep from using Wizard magic had all just been blown straight to Azkaban, which was where he would be headed if he did not get away from this cursed place before the Ministry of Magic showed up!

While Aunt Marge bounced along the ceiling and the Dursleys chased after her, Harry bolted.

Have to get my books! Can’t leave anything behind!

He barely noticed the padlock on the cupboard under the stairs fall away when he yanked open the door, and the wooden splinters from the doorframe crunched under his trainers when he dragged out his trunk. Heavy as it was, it felt practically weightless as he dashed upstairs. All he could think of was grabbing his school things and flinging them inside

Only to find his empty bedroom less empty than his wildest nightmares.

It was a town. An entire town of tiny ponies crammed into his room, like a plague of rats, only cuter. There must have been hundreds of them, packed in under, over, and around every bit of the Dursely’s discarded junk and household furnishings. Blue ones and pink ones and orange ones and more colors than one of Fillfast’s Polychromatic Bubbling Fireworks. What was worse, groups of the ponies were the same as if they had been run through a duplicating spell.

In particular there was a yellowish group each bearing the most extravagant pink and blue curled manes that bounced in time with their aggravated pace while a greenish unicorn chasing after them protested, “But Bonny! I didn’t know Twilight had already done the spell to summon you when I did it! Besides, you’re all Bon Bon! Can’t we just… share or something? Oh, come on! It’s not that bad!”

“Spike,” he murmured out of the corner of his mouth, trying not to release the anger he felt bubbling up from inside. “Where’s Twilight?”

Somewhere in the sea of ponies, a small purple arm reached up and waved. “I tried to stop her,” called out the little dragon from under the herd. “She gets all frantic when things go wrong, and I don’t think they can get much wronger.”

“Marge!” called out Uncle Vernon from the back yard! “Come back!”

“Look at her gain altitude,” said one of the tiniest ponies from her perch on the windowsill as she hopped up and down while buzzing her wings in the middle of a group of other flightless pegasi. “I didn’t know humans could fly.”

“I’ve never blown up a human before,” said one of a group of tiny unicorns next to her. “Do you think we can get him to tell us how he did it?”

“But we ain’t got nopony to blow up!” protested a third group in unison. “‘Asides, Applejack would just yell at us.”

“It’s magic I’m not supposed to use outside of school!” fumed Harry while grinding his teeth. “The Ministry of Magic is going to send me to Azkaban! And expel me from Hogwarts! I’ll never see my friends again!”

“I thought we were your friends too,” said Fluttershy, who had moved over to pat him on the laces of his trainers in what was supposed to be a sympathetic gesture. “Twilight meant well, and I’m sure she has a plan to fix things.”

“She most certainly does.”

Two larger ponies came striding out from under Harry’s bed, and from the immediate reaction of the surrounding ponies, they must have been incredibly important. The herd fairly divided in front of them as they walked, giving Harry Potter a good look at the new arrivals.

One was as white as snow, with a literally flowing mane drifting along behind her, while the other was so dark blue she was nearly as black as her own flowing mane, which seemed to be made out of the darkness of space and the glittering of minuscule stars. Both of them had the wings and horns of Twilight Sparkle, but bore them with the casual confidence of someone who had lived with them for their entire life.

They stopped a short distance in front of Harry and regarded him with a mixture of amusement and compassion that quenched the fire of rage in his heart, then each gave a short bow.

“Ah, you must be Harry Potter,” said the taller of the two ponies. “I am Princess Celestia, and this is my sister, Princess Luna. Twilight explained your situation in her letter, or at least as much as she knew. Allow me to apologize for the actions of my student.” Her eyes slowly traced the room from side to side, then looked back up at him. “But I think there is another who needs to apologize first. Luna, if you may.”

The shorter of the two alicorns made her horn glow brighter, and a struggling house elf began to emerge from under Harry’s bed. A familiar house elf, wearing more socks that seemed as could fit on his body and with tears pouring out of his enormous tennis ball sized eyes.

“Dobby,” said Harry as realization swept over him.

“Dobby is sorry,” sobbed the despondent house elf. “Dobby only wanted you to have a friend while you were away from school. You always looked so happy there with your friends, working on your lessons.”

“So you were behind my receiving so much homework too?” Harry waved a hand at the stack of assignments teetering on the nearby desk. “If I hadn’t been so busy, I wouldn’t have accidentally— Wait,” he added. “You summoned Twilight!”

“It is all my fault,” admitted Dobby. “Harry Potter was supposed to write your friends for help every day, but that did not work! Then you spilled your ink and Dobby thought bringing just a tiny piece of a new friend would help you make more friends.”

“I…” Harry could not help but look around at all the sad ponies surrounding him. “You did, Dobby. But now they need to go home before I get into trouble. Into more trouble,” he added as the distant cries of his ascending aunt drifted in through the open window. “If that’s even possible,” he added in a low mutter.

“Dobby understands.” The house elf stood up as a smile began to emerge out from under his tears. “Dobby is just glad Harry Potter was able to find so many new friends this summer.” The general depression filling the room lifted, and a few small cheers could be heard in the herd. It warranted a response other than just feeling sorry for himself or snapping at the sniffling house elf who had only wanted to help.

“I never would have made so many friends without the Princess of Friendship.” Harry Potter reached under a nearby chair that several ponies where pointing at and removed a cringing tiny alicorn, who looked as if she were going to melt away from embarrassment. “Thank you, Twilight Sparkle. And thank you, Dobby. Now,” he added with a quick glance at the dark window where Uncle Vernon could still be heard cursing out in the yard, “please send them home.”

“Very well.” Dobby snapped his fingers, and the tiny alicorn that Harry Potter was holding vanished. Only Twilight Sparkle disappeared, and none of the others.

“Dobby?” Harry looked around the room at the suddenly confused ponies. “They’re not going home. Uncle Vernon will be up here any second, and they’re not going home.”

“Dobby is trying!” The house elf snapped his fingers several times with increasing frustration.

“That is because they were brought here by pony magic,” said Princess Celestia as she lit her horn. “Allow me.”

The tiny white alicorn grew as light filled the room, and when Harry could see again, both Celestia and Luna were taller than he was. Between the three of them and the Dursley’s closely stacked rubbish, the room was getting even more crowded.

Thankfully, all of the tiny ponies were gone.

However, there still were two much larger ones remaining.

“Ah, much better,” said Celestia, looking around the floor and seeming glad that she had not squished one of the tiny things with her now-large hooves. “Now, Dobby, was it?”

The house elf appeared, looking considerably chagrined although at least he was not crying anymore. “Yes, ma’am?”

Celestia smiled. It was as if the sun had risen in the room, and everything was going to be all right again. Even Dobby perked up and blinked away the last of his tears when the winged unicorn brushed her nose against his long hairy ears. “You are a good friend, Dobby. I am proud that you selected my student to bring her friendship to Harry Potter. He is fortunate to have you as a friend in his school.”

“And now you have to go too, Dobby.” Harry took a glance out the window where Uncle Vernon was still shaking his fist at the vanishing dot that was Aunt Marge. “And take the homework too, please.”

“Oh, of course, Harry Potter.” Dobby snapped his fingers and vanished, along with nearly all of the uncompleted homework on the desk.

Which only left one problem in his room. Well, two, if the few pages of homework did not count. Ok, three if one were to count Aunt Marge floating up into the sky outside.

Princess Celestia gave Harry’s room a long, quizzical look before shaking her head and turning back to him, while Luna had not stopped looking Harry in the eyes since they had arrived. At their full size, or at least what he hoped was their full size, they were an impressive pair of alicorns, and heavy enough to make the floor creak under their weight. They certainly had a powerful magical nature to capture a house elf and solve Harry’s little problem with such ease, but he found himself hoping the two extradimensional alicorns would finish whatever they had left to do and depart before the Ministry of Magic showed up.

Taking a half-step forward, Celestia announced, “Now my sister and I shall return to Equestria, and leave you with a lesson well learned.”

“What would that be, sister?” asked Luna, who cocked her head and looked up at her larger sibling even as Petunia’s downstairs shrieks of anguish floated up the staircase.

“Um… Well, there’s certainly a lesson in there somewhere,” said Celestia, looking a little less confident. The bellowing of Uncle Vernon in the yard seemed to give her an idea, and she moved forward with hollow clomps of her hooves on the wooden floor and a distinct number of creaks from the support timbers.

“Very well, Luna,” said Celestia with a short snort. “Since you seem to have things well in hoof here, discuss the lesson while I go downstairs and calm the young Mister Potter’s relatives. It is the least we can do for having caused him such problems.” The sharp thump of the closing door made Harry turn to the shorter princess and regard her skeptically.

“Does she know what she’s doing?” asked Harry. “I mean—”

“My sister has spent many of your lifetimes dealing with troublesome diplomats, quarrelsome nobility, and upset idiots of all types,” said Luna. “I’m sure she will be able to handle your aunt and uncle with her usual aplomb.”

There was a piercing scream from downstairs, sounding very Petunia-like, followed by the sound of a shattered vase.

“So when does your school start?” asked Luna, edging toward the open window.

“In just a few days,” said Harry. “What about your sis—”

The sound of another vase breaking filtered up the stairs, followed by what sounded like a plate and the water pitcher from the kitchen, along with other breakable items. “Vernon!” shrieked Aunt Petunia. “Get in here and stop this… thing!”

“I assure you, madam— Watch the salad bowls! If you would just stop— Be careful with that! Oh, nonono!”

“Not the telly!” screamed Dudley.

A terrible crash followed, much as if a china cabinet had been upended, and it was soon followed by Vernon’s angered bellow and even more crockery breaking.

“Would you have someplace away from your home to stay while waiting for school to begin?” asked Luna, who began to conjure a stream of silver sickles out of thin air and stuff them into Harry’s pockets as the cacophony of sound from downstairs rose.

“The Leaky Cauldron has rooms to rent,” said Harry rapidly. “But I would need to put my books into my trunk from—”

There was a flash of blue light, and Harry’s trunk dropped in the middle of his bedroom floor, popped open, and all of the books that Twilight Sparkle had hidden around the room converged on it like some sort of bibliographic tornado.

“—and I need to let Hedwig out—”

The snowy white owl gave out a startled hoot as the cage door flew open, and a moment later she had vanished out the window in a flurry of wings while Luna was attaching the cage to his closing trunk and talking as rapidly as she could.

“Anything else Harry Potter no very well then let us be—” There was another sharp flash of blue light just as Harry grabbed his wand, and the two of them were outside on the sidewalk by the street, surrounded by the flutter of falling pages of homework.

From where they stood, he could still see the open patio door of his house. Both Vernon and Petunia were flinging themselves into defending their household from the strange winged unicorn that was trapped inside with them, who was making calming gestures with her hooves and giving out sharp yelps of pain whenever a Muggle missile struck her. Thankfully for the outnumbered alicorn, the battle did not involve Dudley, who appeared to be climbing the dining room light fixture in an unusual display of dexterity and unexpected athleticism.

“Luna!” called out Celestia as she grabbed a couch cushion in her magic and used it to fend off Vernon’s fireplace poker. “A little help here?”

Luna merely shook her head and turned back to Harry. “Do be careful at school, Harry Potter,” said the dark alicorn. She had to bend down just a little in order to look him right in the eyes, and the smile that followed seemed as inevitable as the moon rising. “I see great things in your future, young human. You and your friends will change the world.”

“Not the tail, Ma’am!” echoed a distant shriek. “Luna!”

“We shall see you in your dreams.” There was a soft flash of blue light, and Luna was gone, although he could hear her contribution in the ongoing fight back at the Dursley residence while he scrambled to collect the loose pages of homework still fluttering down around him.

Then as the volume of the ongoing muggle/pony battle rose behind him, he dragged his trunk along the damp sidewalk at a brisk pace, trying not to look as if he were running away, and most of all, trying not to look guilty about the fat woman flying high in the sky above him.

It felt so good to be back at Hogwarts, even with the news that Sirius Black was trying to kill him and not knowing what Voldemort was planning this year. At least he did not have to explain the events of the last week or the equine creatures who caused them to his aunt and uncle, because Minister Fudge had used his position to cover for him, and undoubtedly the Obliviators modified the memory of all Muggles involved.

After the new First Years had been sorted, everyone had tucked into a magnificent meal which could not compare at all with the scraps he had to eat at home. All of his friends had stories about their summer vacations, with all of the places they had gone and their exciting family activities, leaving Harry mostly quiet while eating until he could not handle another bite, then stuffing a few dinner rolls into the pockets of his perfectly tailored robe for a midnight snack.

If not for the comfortable school robe and the completed homework he had jammed into his trunk, Harry could have believed the little ponies were just some sort of dream. He was looking forward to telling his friends all about them.

Later. Sometime when he had earplugs for Hermonie’s reaction, preferably.

For now, he just wanted to enjoy his time back in school and revel in the feeling of being surrounded by friends who had fingers and toes. Even though he wanted to stay up talking at the dinner table until far too late, the prefects collected the students from each House and sent them off to their bedrooms, where Harry finally changed into his pajamas and slipped under the covers. There was a long year of school ahead of him, and he could not be more prepared.

After a few minutes with the lights out, Harry became aware of something moving on his pillow. At first he thought it might be one of the other students’ pygmy puff, but when he peered into the darkness, he saw a familiar set of golden eyes looking back.

A very small set of eyes.

“Sorry,” whispered Lyra. “It was cold in the trunk. And I didn’t bring anypony along,” she added quickly. “Just me. It would be nice to have my friends here, but I know how much trouble we caused.” She pouted in the shadows of his bed curtains. “You don’t mind me sneaking here with you, do you?”

Harry thought about all the terrifying things he had faced at Hogwarts. Tiny curious unicorns who played the harp and helped with homework were far, far down on the list. He scooted over and left her part of his pillow while settling down to sleep. “No,” he mumbled. “Just tell me before Hermione sees you. I need time to get my earplugs in before the screaming starts.”