“Say what?” Dumbledore asked, over the Castle wards. He’d just turned around to head back to Hogwarts- a mere two minutes before, Snape had reported that his door monitor spell had been triggered. Someone was entering the sequence.
“Three more entering,” Snape repeated. “Could be lackeys, I think it was those Gryffindors. Which included Potter, if I’m not mistaken, so hurry back.”
“In the meantime,” Professor McGonagall volunteered, “we’ll go in after them- get them out alive.”
“Very well,” Dumbledore answered. “To get past fluffy, you’ll need to play him some music.”
Of course, even when Silver had tried, there had been no stopping Harry when he saw the open door. He’d charged forward, drawn the flute neither of the girls knew about, and played Fluffy to sleep.
When Harry wouldn’t listen to their relaying Bonbon’s command to fall back, Bonbon changed tactics, and told them to go with, to keep him safe. She was also, of course, on her way- and had even told them what to expect after Fluffy.
Apparently, it was a two hundred meter drop to a Devil’s Snare.
“It’s a soft landing,” she’d told Diamond, down in the Slytherin dormitories, “but it will attempt to kill you. Either get away from it before it can grab you or light a fire to drive it off.”
So Silver, who had yet to find the limit of the Equestrian levitation Hermione had taught her, had gone first. Her magic had effortlessly ripped the plant away from her, then had similarly effortlessly caught the other two, placing them gently down on the stone floor next to her.
Then there was the room full of keys. For some reason, once Hermione examined the lock on the door and described the key, it had taken Silver a matter of seconds to locate the key, and snag it with her magic.
The chess game had been… scary. They’d replaced a few pieces, then started play- then Silver, who was guiding the black pieces, had missed that she was in danger, and her piece was ‘taken’. A white bishop had stopped in on her square, raised its arm, and swung.
She had ducked- then, when it swung again, thrown it from the board with her magic. The rest of the pieces had moved to pounce on her, so she had panicked- and a few moments was all it had taken for her magic to convert all of the pieces to piles of broken marble around the edges of the room.
Then there had been the room with the troll in it. It was already out cold, though.
Then the room with rows of potion bottles in it. It had taken Hermione only a few seconds to solve the riddle, though she spent almost a full minute double-checking her work.
So Harry had gone through first.
Then, out of curiosity, Hermione and Silver had both walked through the purple flame… and promptly returned to the room, to find the bottle to go through the black flame refilled.
So Silver had sent Hermione through the black flame next, and dodged both ways through the purple flame again.
Finally, she swallowed the potion for the black flame, and stepped through it.
When she reached the other side, she didn’t like what she found. Harry was tied up on the floor, and was trading words with the back of Professor Quirrell’s turban. Hermione had been… she supposed ‘tied up’ still described it, but she looked almost like a mummy, wrapped up in a truly ridiculous amount of rope and knots. She was untying herself with her magic, albeit slowly.
Then, as she stepped further into the room, a voice answered Quirrell’s question.
“Use the boy,” it said. “Use the boy.”
Quirrell didn’t look, but snapped his fingers to untie Harry. “Potter! Come here. Tell me what you see in the mirror.”
Harry glanced up at Silver, pointed at his feet, and then at his wand, lying on the floor about a foot away from him.
Silver blinked, remembered that Harry was an Etrah, realized that the room was well under fifty feet across, and used her magic to quickly remove Harry’s shoes and socks.
Harry scrambled to his feet on the stone floor, and turned to Quirrell. “Why should I?” He demanded.
Quirrell turned. “Because-!” He froze upon seeing Silver, then snapped his fingers again.
Silver suddenly found herself bound with ropes… that her magic made quick work of, snapping them clean in half.
Quirrell snarled, and snapped his fingers again.
Except, Silver was ready for it this time. Combined with her Cutie Mark talent, that meant the large number of ropes appearing out of thin air to bind her again missed, as she leaped out of range just in time. She rolled when she landed, and came right back to her feet. “What are you doing here?” she demanded. Even knowing he was a Professor at the school, she found his attacks against herself, Harry, and, presumably, Hermione to be inexcusable.
Besides, the man seemed to have two voices- that were certainly not controlled by the same mind.
Quirrell drew his wand, raising it to point at Silver.
She wasn’t sure what to do. Dodge the spell?
“Expelliarmus!” Hermione cried suddenly.
Quirrell’s wand left his hand instantly.
Silver glanced towards Hermione. She was still tied up, but she had her wand out, floating a foot away from her in her icy blue aura and pointed straight at Professor Quirrell.
Right, Hermione was an Aethr- she could do that as far as six feet away. Though the magic aura part was most certainly not Aethr magic.
Quirrell snarled, and snapped his fingers to resummon his wand.
“He can do that?” Silver asked.
“I guess,” Hermione answered. “He’s a Raeth.”
“Well this looks climactic.”
Everyone turned immediately to look at the door, to find who had spoken.
“Lyra?” Hermione asked. “What are you doing here?”
Quirrell cast a spell at her, but she blocked it with a gleaming golden barrier, the exact color of her magic aura. “Oh, me? I’m just looking after my future children-in-law.”
Harry gave her the stare. “Did you have to do that?”
Lyra shrugged. “What, are you going to deny it? Diamond’s, ahh, partnerfinding magic activated a week ago.”
“So she can feel what I’ve felt all along,” Silver stated.
“That early? That’s unusual,” Lyra muttered, then she shrugged. “Then again, just about everything about you is unusual.”
Quirrell was getting furious. “Crucio!” The bolt of light also bounded off of Lyra’s energy barrier.
Lyra looked at him. “Oh puh-lease, that’s an Unforgivable Curse. And you do not want to find out who’s looking out for me. The hard way, at least.”
Silver blinked. “Who is?”
Quirrell instead decided to escalate. “Avada-!”
Then, he… disappeared, with an echoing BOOM.
Bonbon stepped out of the fresh rectangular hole in the wall next to the black fire. “That would be me.” She glanced at Lyra, then across at the wall next to the Mirror of Erised. “How flat do you think he is?”
Silver looked… and gasped. The piece of the wall from Bonbon’s rectangular hole was flat against the wall there- and looked to have slammed into it with some significant speed.
Lyra shrugged. “I don’t know how durable British adults are just yet,” she stated, “but I’d wager to guess he’s pretty flat. That was about mach seventeen.”
Bonbon wrinkled her nose. “Eh. Still not good enough.”
Professors Snape and McGonagall stepped through the hole behind Bonbon. “Mach seventeen?” McGonagall asked.
“Yep,” Lyra answered. “That wall crossed the room- and hit Quirrell mid-killing-curse- at about seventeen times the speed of sound.”
Snape blinked. “No human could survive that,” he stated. “No matter what potions they drank.”
Lyra peeled the wall away from the other wall, on the side facing away from Harry, Silver, and Hermione, wrinkled her nose, and pushed it back against it again. “Yeah. Very, very flat.” She looked up at McGonagall. “I hope you weren’t planning on taking prisoners.”
An interesting chapter. Eh, so long Quirrel, hasn't been nice knowing you. I can't wait to see what happens next.
LOL the stone wasn’t in the mirror anyway!
Bonbon had it
Well, that'll do it alright. Might not even need all that much cleanup at that speed, relatively speaking.
At least Diamond knows now, that helps some, hehe.
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True, Bonbon took it, but she gave it to Lyra, who probably stuck it in the Canterlot Royal Vault a while ago.
Well...that's one way to create artwork. Gruesome but might still be of some value to an art collector. Some might call it graffiti though.
Well that was... quick. I suppose if we're going to be DBZing the ponies, this outcome would make sense.
Man got pancaked
Silver's pretty versatile for an 11 year old. Mach 17 wall though, sheesh. The pointblank sonic boom from that would like make the children quite deaf until they went to the infirmary though. And Likely shattered the wall it hit, we're talking about a slab of rock going at 5.8km/s. If it weighted, let's put it as really light, 200kg, that's about 3.4 billion joules. And that's a low estimate.
Or an ungodly FUCKTON of energy, if you will. The room still existing is a testament to how their internal castle walls were made to withstand heavy bombarment from modern day weaponry.
Hell, 100m/s would be more than enough to pancake Quirrell. Ponies REALLY don't play nice, but this does indicate Bonbon is on the super-genius level just like Sunny and Twiggles.
10371128
Yeah.
... Let's be fair, Lyra's presence is probably the only reason nobody else was hurt, including the deafening thing. The shockwave from its passage that close would probably have creamed everyone else, if not for a magic spell to deaden it.
And of course, for those with no reference for just how fast Mach 17 is: The International Space Station, which orbits the Earth in about 92 minutes, is traveling at about Mach 22.5. So, Bonbon can't quite throw things into orbit... but she's not far.
And yeah, the simple fact that there was still a wall to peel away from the other wall does tend to indicate that, however much Hogwarts may have tolerated Bonbon's destruction of that interior wall... I mean, that thing was moving about 1/3 as fast as the average asteroid striking the Earth's surface (You know, the things that make craters- min. 11km/s, avg. 17km/s), and massed quite a bit more. The magic of Hogwarts must've decided not to allow either wall to burn up or disintegrate...
Which of course, suggests- in a very, very indirect manner- that the ponies aren't the toughest party in the room.
And now he's dead.
Well that was a gigantic waste of time.
10371153
Yeah...
Harry really should've left well enough alone, shouldn't he?
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And it'll lead straight into a lovely discussion about theft, as there's really no other way to describe removing a powerful magical artifact from an isolated and heavily enchanted vault.
Dude, if you hit a wall, made of almost anything, with a force big enough to propel it to mach seventeen, then is a force big enough to pulverized said wall and actually make your hand go through without said wall not moving a milimiter, unless bonbon used magic, in which case, said wall should have pass through every wall, and go several hundreds meters, in dust form.
If that wall fragment weights a ton, its kinetic energy at M17 equals 4 tons TNT equivalent.
At that speed, he wouldn't be flat, he would be a spray of red mist in the air.
Just had a thought. Tom can hear all of this through Quirrell, can't he?
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Yeah... there was presumably a lot of magic involved. And not just on Bonbon's part- see my response to Neece below.
10371260
Your probably right but you have to wonder how big the section of wall vs his body size was. It cold be more a squidgy jam atm rather than aerosol since it really didnt have time to spread.
10371260
Yeah... Unless magic, but even that couldn't save him very easily. I've chosen to have the magic allow him to maintain structural integrity a little better- explicitly to keep the gore levels down. I don't like reading (or writing) gore... But yeah.
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No, actually, he can't; I may or may not have mentioned before, but the telepathic network built into the Castle Wards is exclusive to Dumbledore and the Heads of House. As such, Tom- and, by extension, Quirrel- doesn't even know it exists, let alone that this information is being passed through it. Not that it'd help him any if he did- at this point, he's already past Fluffy.
10371380
Combined with the amount of energy imparted... He, and the wall that were thrown at him, would've been completely vaporized in the transaction (the thrown wall when it hit the wall opposite him, rather than hitting him, but still)... making him a mite bit more "mist"-like than any aerosol.
That said, I've chosen to keep gore levels down by saying "magic" and keeping everything in solid, combobulated form- that is to say, Quirrel's body, thanks to magic, remained intact enough to be smashed flat against the other wall... and neither wall vaporized, crumbled, or otherwise came apart. Oh, and when it hit the wall, it didn't cause him to spray out the sides from the enormous pressure placed on his body- he stayed all behind it, cartoon-style flattened.
Though the wall she threw didn't seem to behave very much like stone after it landed, if Lyra was able to peel it away from the other- makes it sound almost like rubber...
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Yeah, you mentioned it. I just forgot. It would have been a little help in that it would have informed him that the Stone wasn't actually there.
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Assuming he was able to access it in the last chapter, mere hours (in-story, at least) before this happened? Oh yes, that would've kept it from happening at all- and we might even have had a two-year DADA instructor....
I'm going to assume they were exaggerating speed-wise. What with that kind of speed, the projectile would have continued going through pretty much everything causing a voilent eruption of debree. Taking into concideration that a bulit travels between mach two and three.
10371398
Not unless you changed the canon fact that any body possessed by Tom was already dead. Tis why he needed to drink unicorn blood. Quirrel's body was in a constant state of decomposition.
10371404
I'm aware of this. And she actually wasn't exaggerating.
Instead, there was apparently a lot of magic in play, to keep things from coming apart. See... this one, for details:
10371144
10371405
First time I've heard of that. But yes, he'd have to go somehow, even if it came down to being fired for being an ineffective teacher, after over 99% of his students (which numbered 40 from each year, except potentially the first years, that might've had more) reported that they didn't learn anything in his class, and had to do their own research to find something to teach their classes, where applicable...
I got an honest to goodness chuckle out of Quirrell going splat. Nice.
10371411
Again, established fact. Will have to go back and check the book but I'm pretty sure it came up in the Harry/Albus conversation in the medical wing after Harry woke up.
10371416
Yep. And of course, Lyra even warned him... albeit in a way that many would ignore anyways, but...
10371418
I suppose...
Whenever I reread/relisten/etc, I tend to ignore that part. I know Dumbles says that Voldy left Quirrell to die, but that's about all I tend to listen to.
Meh, not like it's all that important anyways. Maybe they'll come back in 3 days to find a pile of dirt between the two walls, rather than a flattened human body?
10371424
Alas, I checked my copy and it wasn't mentioned in that convo. It must be somewhere. Bumbles just mentions the love protection being anathema to something incapable of love.
Eh, he is splattered.
Mach 17... not even mach 17 since it was said to be about mach 17. At that speed Quirrell was probably dead just from the g forces put on him. That wall needs to be replaced at the very least. There is no way even with magic that you will be able to get ALL of him off that wall.
10371499
He'd probably be vaporized by the shock compression displacing and super-heating all of the atmosphere between him and the wall before impact.
10371652
That too. But I'm using "magic" as an explanation for why that didn't happen, because I don't want to deal with the gory mess that move would normally have made.
Did I missed something in a blink? When did this happen?
well, that battle ended on a flat note
10371652
Ah science what would we do without ye in explaining Kinetic energy transference
Though does that mean the nitrogen in the air combusted
With how fast it was going
A whole new level of 'Rest in Pepperoni'.
10372112
Yes, it's possible it was moving fast enough to cause nuclear fusion in the nitrogen in the air. I don't understand the math necessary to figure out if it really was, but it's possible.
On the other hand, it was definitely moving fast enough to have that plasma shroud of "reentry effect".
I admit to being somewhat disappointed in this chapter. I get that Quirrelmort isn't really supposed to be more than an intro boss--and he probably hasn't had much time to dabble in whatever the Equestrians bring to the table--but to see him get steamrolled so completely is kind of disappointing. If this happens in every one of his pending incarnations, then where's the conflict or threat to having him around at all?
Don't get me wrong now, I'm willing to entertain a story that's effectively the Equestrian equivalent of "Humanity, Fuck Yeah!" but I'm also reminded of the following;
10372424
I've heard it most often as
But yes, I understand where you're coming from. And next time, Voldemort will actually know what he's up against... be able to prepare for it, and make some operation or another, even of Bonbon's, potentially very difficult... or even a failure. Quirrel... Well, he really had no idea what he was up against, and paid the price.
10371704
Nothing has outright happened yet, but in this story, one of the inherent bits of Equestrian magic is what Lyra just called partnerfinding magic. It's essentially a form of Soulmate magic. And in previous chapters, it's been said that Draco/Silversong felt it for Harry, Hermione and Diamond, I believe the Brits had discussed it between them at least a little, but not with Diamond yet. There were some statements made in previous chapters about them and herds. And this was just Lyra making a comment based on the fact that Diamond had noticed it as well.
Also, in this story, Lyra and Bonbon are Diamond's foster parents, after Spoiled was jailed for foal abuse, and Filthy decided he couldn't raise her, though they still interact. Or at least I seem to recall reading that, though I can't find the actual point it is stated right now.
The grammar here is a bit wonky. I believe it should be:
The only part that needs to be changed would be where the first sentence ends but I changed some other things that are more personal preference than needed to accurately convey the story.
10372661
... The period placement is correct as-is, actually. The "for some reason" was about Silver's ability to so quickly identify and snag the key out of the air.
10372835
Would the 'for some reason have to do with Sivler's cutie mark? I'm totally confused by that since I don't recall it ever being revealed but I did skip Silver's resorting because of the warning in that chapter.
10373097
Yes, it would... and you're right, about the first thing to happen in Chap. 31 (the resorting) was her cutie mark. Basically, she's automatically good at anything she tries, so long as she knows how to do it in the first place.
Hoo boy. ... Not my favorite chapter.
Pretty sure it was only attempting to hold intruders, not kill them. Wild snare might strangle you, but as the first real "threat", it should just be holding intruding children until someone can come and get them.
Of course, that's like saying that as soon as our trio (in canon) came in there, the heads would be notified. Not that it wasn't the end of story climax scene, and by the time the professors got there, it was over.
... Hold on. If Dumbledore/etc had *any* detection wards down there, and could appartate down there, shouldn't they have shown up as soon as Tom/Voldy got to the mirror in the first place?
...
Must have been teleport shielded, just to stop Voldy. Still doesn't explain why no adults got there during the whole villain run.
Next:
... alllright ... and no one notices her untying? She's the one with equestrian+ levels of magic with unicorn ability despite being a pegasus tribe ... Alicorn/favorite character evidence?
Ok. So full stop time.
First, removing shoes and socks would be noticed.
Second, it's at this point that I'm realizing: If british wizards have inherent abilities corresponding to the tribes, why has no wizard in history ever noticed, why has no wizard in history ever realized that they can work magic just by being on the same rock/section of ground as their wand?
(For that matter, if Harry was a natural on the broom, and in canon got away from Dursley by getting up on the rooftops once (is my memory faulty here?), why isn't he a pegasus instead of an earth wizard?)
Automatic success seems really overpowered here.
Ok, ... how?
Yep. Unicorn. But she's not a unicorn. So Alicorn.
Anti-climatic? It's like you sent a group of 7th level characters into a boss battle balanced for a party of first levels.
... Err, 7th year students into a fight balanced for first year students?
Anyways, overkill is overkill. Shade!Tom had better have gotten a LOT of information out of this, and be a whole lot more informed for his background work in 2-3, and return in 4. Please don't make him a wimp.
10373741
Not my favorite either. And yes, there are a few plotholes that I've... chosen not to address. Like the tribal abilities thing.
And yes, next time, Tom won't be a wimp. After that fight, he has at least an idea of the amount of force he's up against.
Haven't you played some KSP? Just have her stand on a fan while throwing, the fan will give enough extra lift.