New Years Plugs and Promises and Ponies with Wands · 9:16pm Dec 29th, 2018
Welcome to Georg’s end of year blog ‘Oh, God. I didn’t get nearly any of the things done this year that I intended. Maybe I can fake it.’ We’ll start with a few story plugs that I REALLY like, and end with my promise to myself that I’ll get Sweetie Belle - Hogwarts Exchange Student done next year. As a bonus, at the end of this post I’m including a snippet where Sweetie and her new friends go to pick out a wand. Remember Raindolph from Three Tail Hairs? He has a speaking part, as well as another part that you should recognize near the tail end of the bit.
--Foals and Mortals by Carabas - Ponyville. Hearth’s Warming Play. Fire.
--Synthesis by Starscribe - SciFi Mystery and Ponies. Wonderful.
--With Celestia as my Witness by Irrespective - Taken literally. Quite literally. Loved helping edit.
--The Ketchup Ascension by Mythic Knight - Baked Bean ascends. Everypony is baffled. Until they taste the ketchup.
--And last but not least, No Nose Knows by Irrespective which has just finished a top to bottom re-editing. I think that even if you’ve read it before, you can read through it again and enjoy it twice as much now. I get a kick out of urging other authors into doing horrible things to their characters. Sitting on their shoulders and pointing with my pitchfork is just fun!
As promised, here’s the snippet out of the upcoming Sweetie Belle - Hogwarts Exchange Student where the three of them go to Ollivanders’ wand shop. As background, Sparrow Lilley is an American in the worst sense of the way, Wycliffe Nott is the son of a mortally wounded Death Eater, and Sweetie Belle should probably be under a restraining order prohibiting her from the general vicinity of any tea shops in England.
- - ★ - -
The argument began as soon as they had stepped outside of Gringotts’ bank and continued all the way up the street while they dodged around other shoppers and carts. Sweetie Belle stayed mostly out of it because she was too busy looking around at the fascinating wizarding things for sale and wondering if just perhaps she should go back to the bank and get out another handful of Galleons, just to be safe. Maybe two. Or three.
“You’re being completely… female,” said Wycliffe Nott in a tone of voice that was probably supposed to sound more adult and authoritative, but wound up just taking his pleasant soprano into a forced tenor register and made Sweetie wonder what he would sound like while singing.
“That’s because I am female,” countered Sparrow Lilley without breaking stride. “And I’m right. Everybody with red hair we’ve met so far — my family excluded — is a Weasley.” She dodged around one of the tea shop’s tables and looked around at the few scattered customers. “I’ll prove it, once we find somebody else with red hair.”
“Aye, you go do that, lassie,” rumbled Uncle Ruadh, who had been following the three prospective students along with Missus Selkirk and Sparrow’s father. “G’won over to Ollivanders and get your wands while I take my idiot brother and this beautiful lady for a cup of tea. Now, now,” he added in a mild chastisement ahead of Missus Selkirk’s objection, “you know Mister Ollivander is very particular about having anybody but the student around when he’s having them pick out a wand.”
“But…” Missus Selkirk waved one hand at the front of the store across from them, which was festooned with a freshly painted sign that read ‘Ollivanders - Makers of fine wands since 382 B.C.’
“Now, go on,” chided Nel Lilley. He gave his daughter a gentle push as he turned to the tea shop and guided Missus Selkirk in the opposite direction. “We’ll be right here if you need us.”
As the three of them trudged across the cobblestoned street, Sweetie Belle could not help but lean down a little to whisper to Wycliffe, “Are you sure this Mister Olive-hander can find me a wand that works?”
Wycliffe nodded. “Father said Mister Ollivander could make a wand for a left-handed bowtruckle. He made regular visits to our lands, before I was born, that is, gathering wand materials and— Hey, what’s your friend doing?”
Sparrow had skipped along ahead of them in the direction of two young humans standing in the shade of a nearby building. They must have been very good friends because their arms were wrapped around each other and they were kissing fairly intently, so their new visitor went unnoticed until she spoke. Loudly.
“Excuse me, but is your name Weasley?” asked Sparrow with enough volume to be heard quite a ways down the alley.
“Whay?” The young red-headed human seemed set back, and looked back and forth around the alley several times before answering, “Yes, I’m Ron Weasley. So, you’ve heard of me?”
“No, it’s just that we’ve bumped into a number of people with red hair today, and they’ve all been Weasleys,” explained Sparrow. “Except me. Are you a Weasley too?” she asked the frizzy haired young witch who was still wiping her lips with the back of her wrist and trying to arrange her rumpled clothing.
“Not yet, no,” she said. “I’m Hermione Granger. You’ve heard of me, right?”
“No,” said Sparrow. “My name is Sparrow Lilley, and you probably haven’t heard of me either. But you will.”
She then turned and skipped back to where Sweetie and Wycliffe were just opening the door to the wand shop, stuck out her tongue at them, and pranced inside. Wycliffe insisted on holding the door open for Sweetie, which she thought was very nice of him, and followed her into the shop, allowing the closing door to cut off one last alarmed-sounding question from the Weasley boy outside. “What do you mean, not yet?”
The wand shop was a curious mixture of old and new, stacked nearly to the ceiling with pasteboard boxes most likely containing wands. Although with some of Ponyville’s mixed inventory stores, that was not a certainty. Some of the boxes were dusty and faded nearly enough to be from when Celestia was a foal, while a nearby table behind the counter was covered with fresh wands, still looking damp. The counter was a massive, blocky thing, covered in small tracks and scratches, with dark blotches of char marks and deep scorches much like Sweetie Belle’s kitchen table back home. Two of the fresh wands were sitting in the middle of the counter on a velvet pillow, which looked just as battered as the marble top beneath it.
“There’s nobody here?” Sparrow bounded across the floor of the wand shop and leapt partway over the counter to look behind it. “Helloo!!”
“We’ll be right there!” sounded a voice from the back of the shop, combined with some smashing, a little bashing, and one loud crash. “Just a cluster of Whomping Willow twigs that got loose. Nothing serious.”
“It would appear they have set wands out for us to try already,” said Wycliffe. He stood on his toes and picked up one wand from the countertop, giving it a tentative wave. “Not this one. Or this one either,” he added with a brief wave of the second.
Sweetie picked up the first wand that Wycliffe had placed down on the counter and gave it a wave just like he did, with the same lack of results. “I guess this isn’t mine either,” she said with a frown. “It feels… weird, for some reason.”
“Let me try!” Sparrow bounced down to the floor and scooped the wand out of Wycliffe’s grasp, turning it in her long thin fingers with a grin. “Hey, it’s all springy, like Zorro. Ha!” she declared, taking up a fencing stance and waving it like a sword. “En gard! Souffle! French toast!”
“Don’t point it at us. It might go off,” said Wycliffe with a frown as he took the wand away from her and passed over the wand Sweetie was playing with. “Point this one over there and try it. Although it’s not really that dangerous, since we’re just students, and the worst we could probably do is sparks or—”
Sparrow took the wand while the smaller boy was talking and arranged her grip. Pointing it into the shop, she shouted, “Abracadabra!” at the top of her lungs…
And the wand exploded.
Sweetie Belle, due to her experience with the Cutie Mark Crusaders, managed to spot the upcoming blast just quick enough to tackle Wycliffe to the ground before the detonation that sent splinters of wood ricocheting around the inside of the shop and splattered little bits of sap against her back. Sparrow was not quite that lucky, and emerged from the resulting cloud of smoke coughing and hacking, with bits of wand wood sap-stuck to her face and t-shirt. What was worse, the explosion had not been limited to the defective (in Sweetie’s opinion) wand, but at least a dozen boxes in the shop had likewise exploded into ragged stubs just like the one Sparrow was still holding in her smoke-stained left hand. Shattered boxes and their contents went everywhere in the store, and a haze of shredded pasteboard began floating to the ground like a strong snowfall.
Through the sound of falling boxes, Sparrow said a particular word that Rarity had told Sweetie Belle never to use except when poked with a pin. Then the slender girl looked at the shattered stub of a wand and waved it several times to put out the flame that was still burning on it. “Oops. They’re not supposed to do that, are they?”
Be honest, you made that character specifically so you could call him Wy Nott.
Also, Sparrow may end up getting banned from Ollivander's after this. An impressive achievement.
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Hadn't quite expected that story to cross with this one. Any chance Sweetie will recognize Olivander's apprentice?
In a previous life, I was a Harmonist. The Heron joke about not being a Weasley yet was like a stake through the heart. I understand why you did it it, but ouch.
4987828 Why not? It worked for Heinlein.
4987834 I also practice my evil laugh at home. It doesn't work. I still have to take out the trash, only evilly.
4987856 Most probably. It would spoil the joke if she didn't.
4987989 In a previous life, I owned a harmonica. I couldn't play it then, either.
4987828
Since Ollivander has provided wands to generations of wizards, I expect he will chalk this up as "a day with more than average spoilage" and increase Sparrow's price by 10%.