Severus Snape and the Zombie Apocalypse

by TFPC

Thanks to his villainous looks, a young Severus Snape finds himself recruited to participate in a Halloween contest by his horrible cousin Cerys Carnigan. It's all fun and games until someone loses an eyeball. NOTE: Original story begun before the completion of the series. Some canon elements missing or different.

Severus Snape and the Zombie Apocalypse

Severus Snape thought he had the face of a villain. It was all there: thin face, yellow-white skin, violently black hair and eyes, sinister air, the whole package. He was decidedly less than beautiful and he knew it. Society insisted on reminding him of it every day, in fact.

"Look, Snape, you're perfect. Just go out and spook a few first years. It's a few hours of your time, and it's not like you don't scare the pants off them on a normal day, anyway," Rosier said from where he was hanging by his elbow from a towel rack. The bloody wanker was always leaning on things like that. Sev was inclined to think he had some sort of physical deformity that prevented him from standing up straight like a normal person. Not that he was going around condemning others; he tended to list off to one side himself when he tried to maintain proper posture. It seemed to be a teenage boy thing.

"Then why is this day so special?" he asked with a frown, making his reflection look more villainous than ever. "If you're that eager for a scare, go flirt with Bloody Mary in the mirror with the lights off or something."

Rosier left hanging off the towel rack and flopped a clammy arm across Sev's shoulders in a way that could have been construed as friendly but Sev found himself imagining was borderline sexual harassment instead. "Snape, Snape," Rosier said in a pitying manner, "you've really no sense of adventure. Come on, old boy. It's All Hallow's Eve. People want to be scared by vampires and the Dark Arts for fun. Our team has a good start, but we want it perfect."

Sev shoved Rosier's arm off and snapped, "Don't touch me or you'll get your own special taste of the Dark Arts – and believe me, you won't like it as much as you liked Malfoy's little games from when he was still stinking up the dormitory."

Rosier tsked and went back to the rack. "I'm just saying, Snape, it's an opportunity you won't want to miss. Is this really any way to treat a friend?"

Sev felt one of his eyebrows twitch. "Oh, of course not. Pity I've yet to see a friend in here," he said darkly, wishing he could sound a bit more threatening. He picked up his toothbrush. "Now get out, I'm busy."

"Temper, temper," Rosier said with a melodramatic sigh. "Careful with that, Snape, else you'll find there are some people out there willing to break you into obedience."

Sev snapped his teeth together. Rosier left with an airy wave. "Git," Sev muttered, and went back to washing up.

---

Hell's teeth, Sev couldn't get away from the talk about Halloween even in the Great Hall. It was team recruitment day and lines were being drawn, so to speak. Half the teachers were gone and everyone who had deigned to come down to breakfast was clustered at the end closest to the head table so they could shout questions at the headmaster, a dapper (or perhaps simply mad) old man with a beard that always seemed to be tangled in his belt. Apparently he was some famous whatshisface from who knows where, not that this made a difference to Sev. As far as he was concerned, the headmaster was just like all the other teachers: tedious, nosy, ineffectual, and absent – not to mention the fact Sev was fairly certain the man was homosexual. Sev had another sense for things like that, after all the come-ons he'd been fending off from other boys lately.

Girls were still a Complete Mystery, and one that he was fairly sure he would not be solving any time soon. He had them all set up in his head like a potions experiment.

Exhibit A: Lily Evans. Redhead. Bouncy. Wastes much of her spare time shouting at the Wanker of all Wankers James Potter, only somehow they ended up dating. What in all the bloody fecking hells went on to make that happen?

Exhibit B: Mary MacDonald. Evans's friend. Spots. Total flirt. Lately, she'd been caught snogging so many different boys that even the Hogwarts rumour mill was tired of her. Even so, Sev was the only boy she had not tried anything with in their year. If you're willing to hide in the broom cupboard with someone as slimy as, well, pretty much any senior in Slytherin, then what the bloody hell was so bad about him?

Exhibit C: Cerys Carnigan. First cousin of Sev's. Absolutely mad and anti-social. Sev was glad no one else had figured out they were related quite yet. He may have been the result of the union that got his mother disowned, but to be frank, she was more of an embarrassment to the Prince family than he ever could be. She behaved more like a goblin than a girl.

Girls. Barking mad, the lot of them, and all in completely different ways so you never knew what was coming.

Speaking of girls, there was Evans now, daring to bounce her way toward the Slytherin table—and was she heading for him?

He was both appalled and intrigued. To express himself, he crammed some toast in his mouth and stared into space, trying to avoid eye contact. It would be fatal, he knew. Only supreme effort of will allowed him to carry on staring into space when she sat down right across from him and crossed her arms on the table. Did she even know what that did to her chest? No, never mind. Of course she did. All of them must delight in the effect it had on the male population.

"Ahem," she said, trying to get his attention. Without looking, Sev managed to snag the butter knife and poke a hole in his toast under the guise of buttering it. "I have a proposition for you," she tried to say.

"That's nice. Go away," he said.

Rosier, the bastard, leaned over. "Better clear off, Evans, I put him in a bad mood this morning."

Out of the corner of his eye, Sev saw Evans give Rosier a truly filthy look, the one that females always used to make males feel like dirt. Rosier shrank away from her, looking ashamed.

"I'll thank you for that later, I'm sure," she said, and turned back to Sev. "Snape, look at me when I'm talking to you, please."

Sev steeled himself and glared at her. "The hell do you want, Evans? I'm eating here." To prove it, he chomped on his toast noisily.

She just rolled her eyes to the ceiling. "You are the surliest boy I have ever met," she said. "Look, I won't take up much of your toast-eating time if you just cooperate." When he kept chewing, she took his plate and his toast away, then his glass when he tried to drink from it. "I'll hex your ears off if you don't stop ignoring me."

Sev finally focused on her, but strained to pretend she wasn't interesting. "Do go on, it's always riveting when you try to communicate with me," he said.

Evans took a deep breath and let it out slowly, like she was centimetres away from smacking him in the face. Or, he thought with a thrill of horror, turning me into a pincushion. "All right," she said, ostensibly to herself although everyone could hear her, "it's okay, Evans, you just need to deal with this git for a few minutes and then you can go free."

Sev's eyebrow was set twitching for the second time that day. "I'll just pretend I can't hear you, shall I," he said. "In fact, I may do that for the duration of this conversation, if you don't mind."

"I do mind, rather," she said, and leaned forward. Sev had a hard time keeping his eyes on her face. "Here's the deal. Everyone in our year wants to use you in their Haunted Corridor project somehow. Gryffindor has the smartest students with the best ideas, and Potter and Black will do your Transfiguration essays for the rest of the school year if you join us. How about it?"

"No." Sev took a piece of toast from Rosier's plate and examined it suspiciously. There was really no telling what he'd put on it. Was it worth the risk?

Evans blew out air in frustration. "Why not?" she asked. "That's a pretty good deal. I know they're always on your case." When he ignored her, she took Rosier's toast away as well.

"Dammit, woman!" Sev said, irritated, and raked his hair out of his face to glare properly at her. He noted it was greasy again—when was it not!—and figured it was about time he got over his fear of being seen naked by perverts and take a shower. Oh, he hated getting up early. "I'm trying to eat, Evans. Stop interfering."

"Then tell me why!" She started nibbling on her stolen goods. Sev found himself staring with a little too much fascination at her mouth and tore his eyes away.

"Don't eat that, you don't know what Rosier's done with it," he said. Her eyes went wide and she put it down. Rosier grunted. Sev leaned forward and narrowed his own eyes. "You want to know, Evans? Well, then, I'll explain the obvious to you since you're doubtlessly too sleep-addled to figure it out. One," he said, flicking his hand out of his sleeve and holding up a finger, "you insulted my house and my intelligence. I don't need prats doing my homework for me. Two," he held up another finger, "Gryffindor and how it does in a stupid pointless contest is very low on my priority list. Three, I haven't heard any other offers yet."

"I made my offer this morning," Rosier put in.

"Then consider Slytherin rejected as well," Sev said coolly. "In any case, being used by other houses to get free points is highly unappealing to me so—bloody hell, Carnigan, don't do that!"

Carnigan, who had appeared suddenly and silently next to Evans, glanced at him around the rim of his ex-pumpkin juice as she sipped. "Mmm," she said.

Sev slapped his hand on the table. "What is it with people stealing my food this morning!" he griped. "I suppose you're here to ask me to be on your house team as well."

Carnigan put his ex-cup down and grinned at him through her unruly black hair. "Nonsense," she said, as though that were obvious. "I'm a free agent. I plan to set up my own little corridor, free of arbitrary house boundaries." She pushed his ex-juice at him. "Come join me, Snape. Be a rebel. You know you can't resist my animal magnetism."

"Can't resist what's not there," Sev said. "Also, I am not drinking from something you've slobbered all over."

"Just another sign of my love," she said, unperturbed. "Come on. Join me and no one else will bother you."

Evans, like any sane person, was leaning away from Carnigan with a nervous expression. Sev looked at her and then at his mad cousin, wondering who was less appealing at the moment. Evans was all right sometimes. Carnigan put him off every hour of every day. However, Evans had several very unfortunate friends, one of which was making an appearance right at that moment.

"Hey, Snape. What's wrong, can't talk to girls yet?"

Sirius Black. Rumour had it his middle name began with an O, making his initials either very tasteless or very fitting, depending on who you were talking to. Sev was in the latter camp. He eyed this new addition to the conversation with deep dislike.

"Bloody hell," said Rosier, and moved down the table so he didn't have to deal with all the invaders.

Carnigan was eying Black with dislike as well, but Sev chalked that up to the one event last year when Black dared to try to snog her. If there was one thing you learned right quick or else about Carnigan, it was that you never tried to snog her. Black was laid up in the hospital wing for two days afterwards, and not even from any kind of magic. She'd just plain punched him in the face and then broke five of his ribs jumping on him. Fast-talking on the part of her family had kept her from being suspended, but now she was being watched like a hawk. A toe out of line for the rest of her school career and she would be hauled off to who knows where, never to be seen again. Half their year was hoping she would try something.

"Hardly, Black," Sev said sweetly. "On the contrary, they seem to be just flocking to me this morning, eager for the scintillating conversation you failed to deliver."

Evans blushed. Carnigan continued to gaze at Black.

"Can't imagine yours is all that interesting, either, Snape. All the grease dripping off you must be quite the turn-off."

Sev licked his lips and grinned—no, leered at Evans and Carnigan. "I slide right into their good graces, unlike your fumbling attempts," he said.

Most interestingly, both Evans and Black turned all sorts of red. Evans, her face matching her hair, abruptly stood up and left. Black, now with no safe barrier between him and Carnigan, edged sideways a bit and went from pink to green.

"Get lost, Black, before I do your surname to your eye," Carnigan growled.

Evidently taunting Sev was not as urgent as avoiding personal injury. Black vanished, leaving Sev with no one to distract Carnigan from him.

"Still not interested, so why don't you get back to your own table," Sev suggested, reclaiming his plate and getting a new cup, which filled itself automatically.

Carnigan shrugged. "I don't care much. Just here to keep you company in a non-poisonous way."

He eyed her warily. When all she did was look at him, he gave up and went back to his breakfast.

---

Old McGonagall was a terror even on good days, so when Sev slid into his seat and found a grey tabby cat with spectacle markings around her eyes staring at him, he knew better than to make any sudden movements that could provoke her. The cat's tail flicked back and forth irritably the whole time students were filing in. When everyone was seated, the cat flowed off Sev's desk and surged upright into McGonagall's familiar pinch-faced form.

"Good morning, everyone," she said. "Today, we will be doing something a little different." It didn't sound as though she thought this was a good thing.

"Are we carving pumpkins today, Professor?" Black called from the back.

McGonagall sniffed. "Hardly, Mr Black. This is not an arts and crafts class."

Black looked wounded. "I only asked as there was a very large pile of pumpkins right there," he said. "After all, what else would we do for Halloween?"

She turned to regard Black, her mouth thinning. "What we are doing today," she said, dismissing him, "is a combination of Transfiguration and Charms on a volatile material. I suggest you pay attention, as the slightest mistake will result in an exploding pumpkin and a zero for today's lesson."

By the time McGonagall had finished raking all of them over the coals – half the pumpkins exploded in all and the rest had come out scorched, much to her displeasure – everyone wanted nothing more than to slink out of her class and lick their wounds. Even Potter, the self-proclaimed Transfiguration master, was looking pale and nervous by the time the bell rang.

Sev himself felt strung out and wished pumpkins weren't so damn volatile. Unlike the majority of the class, he'd nipped a few bits off his specimen and tested his spell work on them. His area of the classroom had the lovely aroma of baked pumpkin long before the first explosion. His final result was a weakly glowing jack-o-lantern with a surly expression on it and a large black mark across one cheek from a miscast charm.

Carnigan was standing outside the Transfiguration classroom when he came out, looking as lost as he'd ever seen her. He tried not to shy away when she focused on him.

"Hallo, Snape," she said. "Potions is canceled. Place looks like a war between rainbow pixies and vampires broke out. Not pretty."

Sev turned and stalked down a random corridor, not comfortable with talking to her about anything in particular for fear she would make jokes about it. She followed him, of course. "What the bloody hell do you want now?" he demanded.

"Just walking along next to some idiot named Severus Snape," she said.

Sev glanced furtively at her through his hair. She wasn't looking at him, and what little of her face he could see through that black mop of hers was preoccupied by mysterious Carnigan thoughts. "Right," he said.

"Right."

Sev hadn't really had a goal in mind when he'd set out, so he was quite surprised to find himself standing in front of a large still life of fruit where Carnigan had decided to stop. When he stared at her, she gave him a half smile and tickled the pear, revealing the entrance to the kitchens. He followed her in.

"Hallo, Tizzy," she said when a house elf suddenly appeared to attend to them. "Don't suppose you have any more of those bread rolls from this morning?"

"Yes, Miss," squeaked Tizzy. "If Sir and Miss will sit here, Tizzy will be bringing you rolls."

Carnigan seated herself at the little table that had evidently been set up there for visiting students and drummed her fingers. Sev paced a bit, wondering if he ought to leave, then sat down as well. A basket of rolls was deposited on the table.

"You needn't stay if it bothers you," Carnigan told him, picking a roll up.

Sev harrumphed. "It's none of your business where I go," he said. "Why did you bring me here, anyway? It isn't as though you're fond of my company unless you're torturing me somehow." Well, the basket was there and he'd always been hungry lately, he thought. He dug out one for himself and tore it in half. The rich buttery smell of fresh bread was beginning to make him salivate.

"I'm protecting you," she said solemnly. Sev paused with half a roll almost in his mouth and raised both his eyebrows at her. "You know, from the starving vultures who want you for the haunted corridor thing." She grinned at him. "Everyone's scared of me, so I figured, 'Why not be useful for once?' So now I'm your glamorous bodyguard. Get used to it, you won't be rid of me for a while." The thought amused her. "I wonder why I haven't been invited onto any of the teams? I must be missing that little dramatic flair."

Fantastic. Sev wondered if it was worth sticking to Carnigan just to avoid more encounters like this morning. Hmm.

Carnigan was still grinning at him. "If I'm not here, think what could happen. You may fall victim to sex appeal. Evans was certainly getting to work on you at breakfast, wasn't she?"

Sev let his hair fall across his face to hide his sudden blush. "Yes, and then you came along and ruined it," he said.

She chortled into the back of her hand. "Well, she wasn't doing a very good job, given she's not interested in you in the least," she said. "You could very well find yourself locked in a broom closet with some man eater and molested to within an inch of your hormone-ridden teenage life."

"Not a bad way to go," muttered Sev into his roll.

"Well, I don't agree," she said, no longer grinning. "Is that all you want out of life? A little tryst in a broom closet with someone you barely know?"

He winced, recognizing the signs. He'd seen it happen often enough to others to know when she was about to get angry and start threatening to hurt him.

After a tense moment, Carnigan visibly beat back her temper and began working through the bread in the basket with slow, dogged determination, looking at it with a heavy frown as though it had done something offensive. He had no idea what she was thinking, and was not sure he wanted to know, either. Possibly she was imagining the many creative ways she could break his nose into a new shape.

"Well, Snape," she said at last. "If you don't want any help, I will withdraw my offer and leave you for the dogs, so to speak."

Sev ground his teeth together. "That's not what I meant," he said through them.

"Oh? Then what did you mean?" Her tone, politely inquiring, belied the anger he was certain she was feeling.

"Just—never mind." Time for a change of subject. "Tell me, were you really planning to be a free agent in this farce of a competition?"

Carnigan gave him a shrewd look. "Not really," she said. "You just asked in such a sarcastic way I had to reply in kind. I suppose we could try if you wanted, though I wonder how the points would be distributed if we won." Thinking about it seemed to make her happy, to Sev's relief. "Maybe we could demand an alternative prize."

"Like what?"

She smiled brightly at him. "You've no imagination, Snape. Money? Extra privileges? Free get-out-of-detention cards? We could ask for all sorts of things."

Sev's mind leapt to his last detention, consisting of him scrubbing that ridiculous trophy given to Potter for last year's debacle while Filch loomed over him, leering and making threats. Hmm.

Carnigan was watching him closely. Sev shook himself and turned his mind to pondering what he would have to do to actually win. That certainly put a damper on the idea. "Can't be done," he said. "We're two people against seven-man teams with house resources put behind them."

"I'm worth ten of them," Carnigan said, wrinkling her nose. "They're all planning on wearing themed costumes and jumping out at each other. I have something different in mind."

Sev looked at the smile on her face and shuddered, wondering what he'd just gotten himself into.

---

"Snape! Oi, hold up!"

Sev growled to himself as Rosier and that fool Mulciber came scurrying over. Carnigan had run off not a minute before to sign them up as the only inter-house team, and already he was attracting unwanted attention. "Whatever you want, the answer is no," he snapped, and charged into the Great Hall with the hope that the doors would magically slam shut on them. No such luck. They stuck to him all the way to the Slytherin table like a pair of guards.

"Been looking for you since Potions," Mulciber said. He was a buff, fair-haired boy with a few intrepid hairs on his upper lip that resisted any attempts to force them to grow longer and thicker than they currently were. "You with us on the corridor project?"

"I'm afraid I don't join hopeless causes, Mulciber," Sev said.

"S'not hopeless," he protested. "We're setting up in the dungeons. Got an advantage, haven't we, what with the torture equipment someone found last year."

Rosier threw an unwanted arm across Sev's shoulders and dragged him close. "What my friend here is saying, Snape, is that we are in a perfect position to terrify, befuddle, and traumatize our fellow students, and you would be a complete fool not to help us. First prize is top box tickets, fifty points each, and discounts at the Hogsmeade shop of our choice. Think of the opportunities, old boy!" Rosier's eyes glazed over. "Zonko's! Or perhaps Honeydukes—oh, well, I suppose that doesn't interest you, eh? Then how about the school supply shop?"

Sev shook Rosier's arm off and looked around for Carnigan. She wasn't there. From the way everyone else was watching, he didn't think there would be anyone willing to rescue him, either.

"Year's free supply of Honeydukes," Mulciber said.

Rosier snorted. "Mulciber, really. He's more likely to find a lifetime discount at the apothecary more useful."

A girl's voice came from over their shoulders. "I like Honeydukes."

Rosier and Mulciber started and Sev glared. "Clear off, MacDonald. This has nothing to do with you," he snarled.

MacDonald sniffed. "I like that!" she said. "And here I was going to do you a favour. I suppose not, though. Your girlfriend wanted me to pass on a message, but I'll tell her you didn't want it."

Rosier cried, "Girlfriend!" and Mulciber grabbed MacDonald's elbow to stop her leaving. "Do tell," Rosier said. "Snape here finally landed himself a girl?"

Sev nearly choked on his lunch when Rosier slapped him on the back a little too heartily to be sincere.

MacDonald gave Mulciber a chilly look. "Get off me," she said shortly, yanking her arm away from him. "If I didn't owe Carnigan, I wouldn't be anywhere near you lot. God knows what she sees in you, Snape. She said she'll find you when classes are over."

Mulciber smiled unpleasantly at her. "You want another round at the end of my wand, Mary?" he asked. "I know you enjoyed it last time—ow!"

"My apologies," Sev said, lowering his arm. "My elbow slipped. Involuntary spasms, you know."

"Involuntary my arse!" Mulciber said, rubbing his head and glaring after MacDonald left. "You bloody well did that deliberately, you git. What for? I was just having a bit of fun with her."

Rosier leaned over to mutter in his ear, "Watch yourself, Evans is looking this way and she does not appear to be very happy. It could very well mean pincushions for us, my boy."

The three of them looked over to the Gryffindor table, where MacDonald was talking angrily to Evans. Evans locked eyes with Sev and frowned at him disapprovingly, as though she thought he was responsible for Mulciber's behaviour. Sev mockingly toasted her with his cup and went back to eating.

Mulciber looked less than happy himself when he got back on topic. "Carnigan, Snape? Are you mad? You'll end up in the hospital wing if you even look at her the wrong way."

"Carnigan and I are partnering up for the competition," said Sev. "Provided you aren't an obnoxious lout, she's perfectly fine." Not that he knew about that, given that she had called him an obnoxious lout more than once earlier in the year.

Rosier shuddered and looked around, evidently searching for her. "The girl is mad as a hatter," he said. In an exaggerated whisper, he told them, "Did you know I once came across her laughing to herself for several minutes straight? Really now, who does that?"

Mulciber and Sev exchanged loaded glances, mutually agreeing not to mention the time they had caught Rosier giggling to himself in the shower.

"Well, I'm feeling peckish," Mulciber announced, and reached for the plate of chicken in front of Sev.

True to her message, Carnigan was loitering outside Charms when Flitwick finally released everyone. Sev didn't question how she'd gotten out of class early. With Carnigan, it was best not to ask. The response would be either a bunch of Carnigan Nonsense or a smack to the head for being nosy.

To Sev's dismay, Carnigan led him to another classroom where Evans, MacDonald, and a Hufflepuff boy he didn't know were waiting for them.

"Hallo, team," said Carnigan, pushing a reluctant Sev in ahead of her. "Everyone here? Good. Snape, stop looking like you're about to bolt. These three are the manpower you were so sure we didn't have."

MacDonald folded her arms and glowered. Evidently she had been forcibly drafted to the cause. Evans, too – the redheaded girl looked as though she would have liked to leave as soon as possible. The Hufflepuff boy, a fourth year, was staring at them all with an awed expression.

"I didn't think you would go around kidnapping people," Sev said.

"I am perfectly innocent," said Carnigan. "They decided to go along with it themselves. We're all rebels, traitors to our houses. Down with segregation! They're doing that in the United States, you know." To the Hufflepuff, she said, "Hallo, Callum Davis, wasn't it? This fellow here is Sev Snape, and this is Lily Evans and Mary MacDonald."

"Hello," Davis said shyly.

"It's Severus," Sev bit out.

"A name as grandiose as your nose," Carnigan observed. "I like Sev better."

Evans, unexpectedly, said, "I like it, too. It makes you seem like less of a ponce."

Sev drew himself up and stalked to a chair near the corner. "By all means, call me whatever you wish," he growled. "I won't be stopping you."

"Don't sulk," Carnigan said. "All right, now we know each other, it's time to lay out The Plan." She had been drifting over to the door as she spoke, and on the last word she suddenly slammed it shut and made everyone jump. Behind it, a familiar voice cursed. "Out of it, Black, or I'll beat you Black and blue," she told the voice. "Oh, and the same goes for the other two with you." There was some frantic scuffling, then silence.

Evans was annoyed. "Blast them!" she said. "I had told them not to follow me after I dropped out of Potter's group."

"Makes no difference to that lot," Carnigan said. "Snape, you're in charge of security for this meeting."

Sev rolled his eyes, but cast Muffliato and waved his hand to tell her to proceed.

"Thanks," she said. "All right, this is what I want us to do."

---

One week later...

When the last fingers of light had vanished from the horizon, the event commenced. Remus and the other prefects not on teams had been chosen as guides for small groups of students going through the different areas. Teams were under strict orders not to mess with the guides, though Remus knew that would not stop Sirius and James.

The plan – as outlined by Professor Flitwick in the pre-event meeting – was to begin by reading the general rules of conduct and then release groups one by one into the corridor. It was to be orderly and relatively calm until it was time to be scared.

In hindsight, Remus thought he had suspected all along that it wouldn't turn out that way. This was Hogwarts, after all. What he hadn't expected was for things to go wrong so quickly.

The first thing he noticed as the students wanting to go through untold (but relatively safe) horrors gathered was an unnatural chill creeping in. At first, he chalked that up to banked fires and cooler night time temperatures. He realised his error when students began talking about being able to see their breath and he saw the frost growing along the walls.

Lily Evans joined him. "What's going on?" she wanted to know. "It's not supposed to start yet."

Remus stared at her. "Ah, Lily," he said, uncertain. "I thought you were on a team?"

Her lips thinned. Just like Professor McGonagall, he thought. "I had a few creative differences with Snape and Carnigan," she said. "Mary stuck around, but I thought I would make myself useful as a guide instead."

Remus nodded. That made sense. Ever since last year, Lily hadn't even been able to look Snape in the eye, and Carnigan, as everyone knew, was just a bit off. "I'm surprised those two teamed up," he said. "I had thought even Snape avoided Carnigan after she punched him in the face in fourth year."

Lily sighed. "I think he did it to keep from being pestered by other teams," she said. "Of course, what do I know about how Severus Snape's mind works?" She shared a smile with Remus. "Anyway, it seems like one of the teams wanted to add a little atmosphere before the event started." She glanced at the frost.

"Yes," Remus agreed. "It's not even cold, really."

"Just dank and misty," Lily said. They both stood there a bit awkwardly. Remus wondered what to say next. He'd never been any good with girls, never mind pretty ones that were dating one of his friends.

He'd thought the frost was the end of it, at the time. Assigning and organizing groups had gone smoothly, with Remus in charge of several excited fifth years and Lily was with some first years, some of whom looked as though they were about to burst into tears already. He silently wished her luck with that and turned his attention to a small stand someone had thoughtfully set up in the middle of the entrance hall to read rules. Some prefect Remus didn't recognise got up onto it with a dramatic swirl of black robes artfully ripped and ragged along the edges, and a deep cowl casting a shadow across his face. Nice, he thought. Gotten with the theme quite well, this one. The boy called for attention in a low, silky voice that Remus was sure he'd never heard before. His instinct for trouble roused.

Oh dear. Something else wrong. Who was meant to read the rules again? John Dargent from Ravenclaw, wasn't it?

"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen," said the stranger. His voice was clear and carrying, though he was hardly speaking above a murmur. It demanded attention, and it got it in the form of instant, respectful silence. "Welcome to our humble haunted house. Though we welcome you as our cherished guests, I must warn you that all of you are expected to obey the house rules."

Lily found Remus again, looking frantic. "Who is that?" she hissed to Remus.

"No idea," he whispered back, trying to avoid letting anyone overhear. She moved on to ask the next prefect, who shrugged.

Remus found his eyes going unbidden to the stranger, who had freed his hands from large sleeves. They were white against the robes, with long, bony fingers that fluttered rapidly as he gestured. "The first rule," he was saying in his soft voice, "is of utmost importance. Do not get separated from your group under any circumstances. Should you find yourselves lost, left behind, or similarly bereft of the company of your fellow students, you must stand still and allow yourselves to be found by your prefect guides. If by chance you should move after becoming lost, consider yourselves fair game."

Several members of the crowd, Remus included, shivered. Fair game for what? he wondered, then shook his head to clear it. No, teams were restricted to their assigned spaces. Just empty threats.

Nearby, he heard a fourth year girl whisper to her friend, "Who is that?"

Her friend whispered back, "I don't know, but that voice!" The pair giggled softly. Remus decided to stop listening in on them for the sake of his sanity. Another pair, first years, were asking each other if someone had summoned a revenant or a vampire or something.

"The second rule," the stranger continued, "is that no traveler should attempt any shenanigans of their own to scare other groups." Rather severely and much less mystically than earlier, he added, "This includes firing dangerous spells at any of the displays or contestants. Should you do so, your wand will be confiscated. Pray that this is the only consequence for such foolishness you will receive in these halls."

Remus blinked. The stranger was certainly dressing the rules up a bit.

"And finally, my last rule is that whatever happens, always remember that the Great Hall is a place of safety and peace in your hour of need. That is all." He whipped his robes tightly round his legs and leapt off the stand, landed silent as a cat, and glided through the students, who parted before him as though they were under a spell.

Dargent, robbed of his chance to make a speech, cleared his throat and called the first group, a lot of sixth and seventh years planning to go through the house alone, over. The stranger had drifted to stand next to the entrance to the haunted corridor, where he loomed over even the tallest seventh year if Remus was seeing him correctly. It was difficult, as the lights in that area had dimmed to almost nothing and turned him into a shadow against the wall.

Lily grabbed Remus's elbow and leaned in close. "Be careful," she whispered. "I've a feeling someone's decided exercise a bit of artistic creativity."

"Don't worry," Remus replied. "The teachers won't let it get out of hand." He nodded toward the shadow where he thought the stranger had hidden himself. "Who do you suppose he is?"

"Not a clue," Lily said, shaking her head. "He must be a prefect to have gotten his hands on the rules."

Or a friend of a prefect, Remus thought, and scrapped his notion that the figure was Severus Snape with an excellent voice disguise spell. The Snape he knew was twitchy and secretive, not smooth and mysterious, in any case. You might be able to put robes on the person to make them look impressive, but that hardly changed them into someone else. Who, then?

"I can't figure it out, either, and I've been thinking the whole time he was up there," Lily said. "Obviously his voice is disguised, but I don't know anyone that tall. The hands look familiar, though."

"Evans!" Dargent called. "Your lot's up next."

"Talk to you on the other side, Remus," Lily said, and hurried off with her crowd of first years. Remus marvelled at how they looked smaller and smaller every year. Some were only up to his elbow.

"Hey, Lupin," one fifth year in his group said, tugging on his robes. "When are we going?"

"Well, we'll be going through the Hufflepuff team first, so we'll be one of the last teams to enter, seeing as they set up on this floor," Remus said. "After that, we'll rotate through all the teams, with the Slytherin and Gryffindor teams at the end in the dungeons."

The boy scowled. "All the good traps'll be run through, then," he said discontentedly. "We'll be lucky if they go off at all."

Remus was just wondering if he was allowed to agree with that out loud when a soft, silky voice spoke up over his head. "Perhaps you will find new traps to spring, Acker." Remus whipped around to find the stranger looming over him like a solid piece of darkness. He saw a white, pointed chin and thin lips for an instant before the stranger turned his head slightly and the cowl hid his face once more.

Acker stiffened, his eyes bugging out. The other fifth years huddled behind him, scared.

The stranger advanced, making Acker back into the others. "What's wrong, Acker?" he asked. "You seem a bit tongue-tied all of a sudden. Such a pity the rest of us must be deprived of the privilege of hearing your dulcet voice, hmm?"

"I-I'm not scared of you," Acker stammered, his voice quite a bit higher than before. "You're just an illusion, conjured by one of the teams."

The stranger sighed. "How unfortunate," he said, and faded into the shadows once more. It was not clear what he was referring to.

When it seemed he was gone, Remus's group visibly relaxed and began talking loudly and nervously to each other about how good the spell work on the illusion had been. Why, it had even looked solid!

Remus remembered with a thrill of fear the iron grip the stranger had had on his shoulder where the fifth years couldn't see, commanding him to stay silent throughout the exchange.

"Yes, well," he said uneasily, "I think it's about time to go. Let's queue up over there, shall we?" He led them to the rear of the group meant to go next and had them stand in two rows, with himself at the front.

"Awfully quiet in there," said one of his fifth years, a boy Remus thought was named Rob Clemency.

"There's a silencing curtain across it," Acker said authoritatively, nodding to the tiny glowing points of light along the walls indicating a spell at work.

"Right, then. Next group goes in," Dargent said, and beckoned Remus's group forward. "Lupin, you're to go in after five minutes."

Remus looked at the great yawning blackness and thought he might be able to manage that. Acker, on the other hand, groaned.

"Oh, shut up, Acker," one of the two girls, Amy Pierce, said disgustedly. "There'll be plenty of creeping night terrors ready to get you when it's your turn." She swished her sleeve up to cover half her face and said in a spooky voice, "Just like that man said, wooooo!"

"That's enough," Dargent said. "No need to start fighting before you even get in there. Four minutes."

"That man," said the other girl, whose name Remus was entirely uncertain of. "Is it not true that his voice could stop traffic?" Pierce nodded fervently. The boys exchanged puzzled looks.

Acker said, "You know, that was probably part of the illusion, too."

"Who cares?" Pierce said. "All I know is that it was absolutely delicious."

"Oh yes," the other girl agreed. "And from what I could see from the rest of him, mmm. Especially the hips."

Oh God, Remus thought, raising his eyes to the ceiling. Just shoot me now.

"I know how you feel," Dargent said in response to his expression. "I've been listening to it in varying degrees for the past twenty minutes."

"You win," Remus said. "Really. Do you know if he's going in?"

"Yeah, he'll be coming in after your lot, he said." Dargent glanced behind them. "Can't see him now, of course."

Remus sighed and shifted his weight. Five minutes was endless, even worse than Binns's class. Finally, they were let in.

"Good luck," Dargent whispered to him. "You'll need it."

---

"Bang-up job you did, Wormtail, finding us a great spot along this completely straight corridor," Sirius said. He had been made up to look like a mad castaway and was currently lounging on one of the props, a small sofa transfigured into a toothy coffin that oozed illusory slime and gave anyone besides the caster sitting on it the willies.

"There's nothing wrong with it," Peter said defensively. "You wanted a nice, isolated area, didn't you?"

"Well, yeah, but not so we're the last ones anyone gets to!" Sirius said. "I thought we'd set the stage! Scare the pants off them and let them stagger to the next team—"

"Best for last," said Peter, shrugging. Sirius settled further into the coffin, annoyed.

James, or rather the pus-covered zombie of James poked his head out from behind some black curtains. "We're not the last ones," he said. "Carnigan's mad troupe of merry morons (excluding Lily) is at the end of the hall, if you really want to know. I just checked."

"Yeah? How were they?" Sirius asked.

"Wretched," said James. "A lot of black cloth and no one even there. I walked around it a bit but no one came out. Another one of Carnigan's ideas, I reckon."

"I should think Snape would have been better at it if he were in charge," Peter remarked. "At least he would make it creepy-like. Dripping things, you know."

"True, true," Sirius said. "He would make things drip if he got to work rubbing it on his hair." Peter let out a shrill bark of laughter.

James, as he had done since the end of last year, only shifted a bit and said nothing about Snape. "When Lily gets here, warn me," he said.

"Sure, Potter," Sirius said, and pretended to swoon. "Oh, James!" he said in a falsetto voice. "My hero! Oh no, you have see-through bugs crawling on your face. Is that supposed to happen?"

James gave him a thumbs up and disappeared behind the curtain again. Sirius flopped with a vengeance and wondered what was taking everyone so long. Their group was a bit lonely since Lily had left in a huff with her friend Mary and Remus had dropped out to guide ickle firsties. The fourth member of their group, a devious little third year by the name of Holmes, had been sent to spy on other groups. He hadn't returned yet. Peter thought the boy had gotten lost.

"Oh, come on!" Sirius yelled after another couple of minutes of silence. "Is no one coming? It's been fifteen bloody minutes, surely they've let the first group in!"

No reply from James. He was obviously lying low, though Sirius thought that was a bit much when there hadn't been so much as a peep from a frightened firstie the whole time. Peter, meanwhile, was blowing long streams of mist and giggling. Sirius frowned. It certainly wasn't cold enough for breath to show—or so he thought until he realised he could see his as well. Weird. Mysterious.

"This is not supposed to happen," he said when he noticed the frost on the walls. "Oi, Potter, are you seeing what I'm seeing?"

Silence. On his guard now, Sirius got off the coffin and looked around the curtain for James. No one was there.

"Wormtail, have you seen Prongs?" he asked, and turned to find Peter was gone as well. "Just like a Muggle horror," he said, walking around looking for signs of his friends. When there wasn't even the sound of a distant footstep, Sirius backed up against the wall and called, "All right, you've had your fun. I've been successfully pranked. Didn't even see it coming! Come out now, we've got people to scare and children to traumatize."

There! Something moved behind the transformed sofa. Sirius dug around for his wand to see better, only to find it was gone. Invisibility cloak? No, he thought. Too silent. If it weren't for the fact that he could hear himself making a lot of noise, he would have thought someone had put a deafening spell on him. The shadow he could see detached itself from the sofa completely and approached him.

"You know, you would be much more intimidating if you were taller than me," he told it.

"I suppose I would be," said Cerys Carnigan, drawing her hood back and looking up at him with wide black eyes. "And you, Black, would be a bit scarier if you didn't look so scared yourself."

Sirius frowned at her a bit. "Yes, well, I'm meant to be the crazed victim, driven mad by the horrors I've seen and so on. What about you? Disappearing people now, are you?"

"I suppose," she said. "Though this is really so I can sneak about to see what's going on. It's awfully quiet, and all the rest of my group has disappeared, you see. I was wondering if you knew what was happening."

"Not a clue," he said, squinting at her. Was something moving on her face? He edged closer, though not quite close enough to where she would be able to punch him. He nearly laughed when he realised what it was. Evidently their group had gone the zombie route as well. "You've got a bug on your face," he said.

She grinned that mad Carnigan grin at him, the one where she showed all her teeth and squeezed one eye shut. Sirius tried not to shudder. How had he found her attractive again? Well, never mind that. It was all in the past now, along with his broken ribs. "So glad you noticed," she said. "I wonder if you could pull it off me? It's been chewing on my eye for the past few minutes now, and I must admit it's very annoying."

Sirius cautiously approached her and tried to brush the illusory oversized maggot off. Or, well, he had thought it was an illusion until he touched it. He swallowed, feeling a bit sick at the realistic sensation of a pulsing, wiggling body under his fingers, and pulled it off like he would a normal bug.

Evidently it had a stronger grip than he had thought, because he had to tug rather hard, and when it finally came loose, Carnigan's eye came with it. She reeled back with a blood-curdling scream and collapsed, writhing in pain, as Sirius stood shocked out of his wits with a bug and her eyeball dangling from frozen fingers. It wasn't until the bug let go of the eyeball to turn around and bite him that he realised it was all far too real. He hurled it away and knelt next to her, horrified.

"Carnigan!" he shouted, grabbing her and turning her over. She was making awful thin moaning noises now, and something dark was leaking out from under the hand she had clamped over her face. "Oh God, I'm so sorry! Here, let's get you to Pomfrey." He tried to pick her up and staggered when she struggled.

Her hand suddenly clamped onto his face with a grip that was doing a lot to remind him why he tried to avoid being within arms' reach of her. "Black!" she growled, taking her other hand away from her face.

Sirius took one look at the writhing mass of enormous maggots now spilling from her bloody eye socket and decided to faint.

---

It was oddly quiet on the first floor, aside from Acker and Pierce sniping at each other. Remus thought he knew where he was going, but the group had yet to encounter any student-made spooks. There were only distant shouts on occasion. The boys were starting to get bored, while the girls kept talking about the stranger in little giggling whispers that everyone could hear perfectly well. That was what had started Acker picking on Pierce. Though they were speaking at low volume, the quiet made them loud and echoing.

The second girl, whose surname turned out to be Broush, was the group light bearer at the rear. Remus found himself turning back to check on her repeatedly, thinking that as long as he could see her wand light everything would be fine. Broush's light had a pretty, ambient quality to it that made it distinct from other lights, though it wasn't much good for seeing things in the distance.

"I bet he's that greasy fellow, Snape, with a disguised voice," Acker was saying.

Pierce threw her hands up in the air, thoroughly exasperated. "Why do I even talk to you?" she asked the ceiling. "It's obvious you're just jealous."

"Jealous? Me? Of that? Rubbish." Acker dropped back to talk to Clemency, leaving Pierce to sulk just behind Remus.

"Please stay in your rows," Remus said, turning his head again to look at them. "I wouldn't want to lose you."

Broush sighed and said, "But Lupin, we've been walking so long and haven't seen anything!"

Remus stopped abruptly in the middle of the corridor. "Sorry," he said after Pierce bumped into him and backed up, cursing. "Yes, that's why I want you to stay close. There's something going on that I don't have any idea of."

"So this isn't according to some master plan to bore us to death?" Acker asked. In the distance, someone screamed. Everyone shifted uneasily and Remus gestured for them to be quiet so he could hear. The scream had come from the nearby stairwell leading down to the dungeons. Remus thought if he had another moment or two, he would be able to figure out who the person screaming was. It was not to be, however, for Clemency and Acker had broken out of formation and gone clattering down the stairs with hardly a friendly warning. Remus ran after them as quietly as possible, followed by the two girls.

The first floor of the basements was just as empty as upstairs. He caught up with Clemency and Acker and put his hands on their shoulders to stop them from running off again. The person screamed again and Remus finally recognised it: Lily Evans.

He hadn't been wandering around in secret with James, Sirius, and Peter for nothing all these years. With a flick of the wrist, he extinguished his light and whispered to Broush to do the same.

"Not a sound," he breathed in their ears. "Everyone grab each other's hands and don't let go, understand?" He felt a hand that may have been damp from excitement or fear grasp his own, and heard Acker mutter at Broush for touching him. Pierce hissed at him to shut his gob. Stealthily, Remus crept down the corridor, listening for more sounds. He could hear faint crashing noises and tiny pops, the way spells sounded from far away.

It seemed an age before they finally made it to the scene of carnage, but it had really only been about two minutes. When he saw the duel going on next to flight of stairs leading down to the next floor, he found himself grateful for the cover of the darkness just beyond the yellow light being thrown out by the lantern on the floor.

It was Rosier and Mulciber versus the stranger and the stranger was winning, though not in the conventional way. Where the two Slytherin boys were flinging different spells every which way trying to hit the black shadow attacking them, the stranger was only using one spell that was opening large, gaping wounds on them that they didn't appear to notice, so frenzied were they in their fighting. Remus felt more than heard Pierce gasp as Rosier received a massive cut right across his throat and stopped, his mouth gaping open in surprise. Blood spilled almost realistically—in fact, Remus only realised it wasn't blood because it had that strange, unreal sheen to it that all illusions had when viewed under mundane light. Mulciber must not have noticed the signs, because he looked horrified when he saw and backed away as Rosier dropped to the ground clawing at his neck.

"You bastard!" Mulciber shouted, and hurled another curse—one Remus didn't recognise—at the stranger, who ducked and moved out of the way of the spell ricochet.

"Temper, temper," the stranger said in his silky voice. "If I recall correctly, that one happens to be illegal in Scotland."

Mulciber from where he crouched by Rosier's body snarled, "And last I recall, killing someone was illegal!" He raised his wand and began: "Avada—"

The stranger was faster and snapped, "Stupefy!" before Mulciber could finish. The red light hit him square between the eyes and he slumped, unconscious. The ringing silence left behind was only broken by the stranger's panting as he slowly moved to collect the boys' wands. Remus, through his shock, fancied he could see the stranger's hands shaking ever so slightly.

He was brought back to reality when Pierce suddenly ran into the circle of light, breaking the group's line. The stranger whirled and pointed his wand at her.

"Are you all right?" she demanded, heedless of it.

Remus tried to grab Acker to stop him, but he dodged Remus's arm and threw himself at Pierce. "What are you doing, idiot? He's a murderer! You saw him!"

Pierce shoved at him angrily. "You're the idiot! That was just an illusion!"

Remus sighed. That's torn it, he thought, and brought Broush and Clemency into the ring of light as well. The stranger simply stood and watched them silently.

"Illusion! Hell, I've seen illusions—"

"She's right," Remus said, managing to be loud enough to interrupt Acker. "The blood was just an illusion." He glanced at the stranger. "But I reckon Mulciber trying to use the Killing Curse wasn't, was it?"

There was a grim silence from the group.

Then, very sarcastically, the stranger said, "As thrilled as I am to know there would have been witnesses to my unfortunate demise if Mulciber had ever mustered the power to kill me, I must wonder at the intelligence of someone trying to sympathize with the undead." Pierce turned red.

"Undead?" Remus asked, surprised.

The stranger sighed and shoved his cowl back to reveal the pale face, hooked nose, and piercing black eyes of Severus Snape. "Behold, I am vampire overlord number one. Number two is around somewhere." Snape rubbed the bridge of his nose with two skinny fingers and hunched over, assuming his usual bad posture. "Ugh," he said. "Sorry. I'm not—not up for this at the moment."

"Take your time," Remus said, and extinguished the lantern so they wouldn't be sitting ducks for whatever else was out there, and also so he wouldn't have to look at the fake blood all over the floor.

"Well," said Broush feelingly, "that took all the mysterious sex appeal right out of it."

"Don't tell anyone," Snape said out of the darkness. Remus wondered when he'd take off the voice disguise spell, then decided he would probably keep it until the end of the event.

"Don't worry, Snape, I still think you're terribly alluring," Pierce said helpfully, making Acker groan and ask when she would shut up about that.

"Yes, that makes me feel loads better," said Snape. Remus could hear him rustle around a bit and curse under his breath when there was the sound of something hitting flesh. Evidently he'd tripped over one of the bodies. "Not a word to anyone," he added, "or I shall come after you in the night with something incurable to make you miserable with the runs for a week."

"I solemnly swear on the grave of Godric Gryffindor I shan't breath a word of this to anyone," Remus said, placing his hand over his heart.

He started when Snape suddenly said softly into his ear, "Good." He hadn't heard him move at all. It was making him want a light to see with, to be honest, because it was terrifying to imagine being that close to Severus Snape in the dark.

"What now?" Clemency asked. "You've knocked them out and got fake blood all over the place. Are you going to leave them here as a warning?"

"That is hardly of any concern to you," Snape said further away from Remus, to his relief.

"If you think I'm going to leave you alone with someone who just tried to kill you—" Remus began, but Snape growled at him and lit the lantern again to properly argue.

"In case you haven't noticed, Lupin, Mulciber is unconscious," Snape said. "He's hardly a threat to me like this, and I plan to be far away when he does wake up. I suggest you make yourselves scarce as well." He pointed his wand at Rosier and muttered a short chant.

Remus watched in awe as Rosier suddenly turned into what could only be described as a ghoul. His skin, normally pale, turned a greenish grey and began to ooze all sorts of disgusting unidentifiable fluids from the fake wounds he'd sustained. As Snape repeated the process with Mulciber, Clemency said, "Oh, I see! You're turning them into zombies!"

"Yes, seeing as he's 'dead'," muttered Snape, finishing up and depositing a note on Mulciber's chest. "Not to mention wandless for disobeying the house rules." Snape patted what was presumably a large pocket where Rosier's and Mulciber's wands now resided and looked smug. "Now, if you don't mind, I believe we should part ways here."

"I do mind, rather," Remus said truthfully. "We're just trying to find out where all the action is, you see."

Snape paused just on the edge of the circle of light cast by the lantern next to the wall, in the middle of drawing his cowl up again. He turned and smiled a very evil smile at them. "If danger is what you seek," he said softly, falling back into his role, "then allow me to guide you for a short while, my dear soon-to-be-departed guests."

The fifth years and Remus exchanged grins. "Now this is more like it," Acker said, sounding satisfied.

---

Her name was Melinda Maeve and she was usually a terribly brave young girl. Never in her life would she have thought a few pranks by a bunch of snotty boys would bring her to bawl her eyes out in an empty corridor alone, but life, she philosophized, was full of unexpected events. Like being ditched by her entire group after one question too many, for instance.

The strange boy on the platform before had told her to stay still if she was abandoned, so she had. He hadn't said anything about staying silent, however, so she was free to yell as loudly as she wanted. Ten minutes of yelling brought no one to her, so she did the only thing she could think of: cry.

It was the silence that got to her. She'd always hated it when it was quiet, enough so that her parents always had a rattling old fan running in her room when it was time to go to bed, and Professor Flitwick had given her a little charm to sleep next to at night that generated noise only she could hear. When it was quiet, a ringing started in her ears, and she thought she could hear disembodied voices whispering to her. She never knew what they were saying, but the strangeness of it frightened her more than any stupid old haunted house ever could.

It had been so long since she'd started crying. Why wasn't anyone here? She could be trapped here all night!

She was making such noise that she must have covered up the sound of someone approaching, for the next thing she knew, a great curtain of muffling fabric came down in front of her face and a hand began to stroke her hair. "Shh," the person said. "It's all right, I'm here."

Melinda managed to quiet herself a bit, and turned around to bury her face in the person's chest. It was the strange boy who had read the rules, she realised after a moment of listening to his soothing murmurs. When she calmed down enough to see clearly, he knelt to look at her properly. "What's all this?" he asked her. "Lost?"

"I dinnae move a bit," she said, wiping at her eyes and trying to sniff. She couldn't see his face at all, but that didn't bother her. "Just like you said. Not a bit."

"You did very well," he told her solemnly. "Now I'm with you, you can move. I'll take you to the exit, if you like."

"No!" she said, and wiped at her eyes frantically. "I'm not scared. I want to find my group."

She thought she saw him smile at her. "Ashe's group, wasn't it? I'm afraid they aren't close to," he said. "Though if you like, you can help me scare a few people."

This was more her speed, she thought. After all, it was no good trying to scare people who couldn't be scared normally, like her. Best if they do the scaring. "Yeah!" she cried, and grabbed his hand when he stood up. He was a bit taller than she was, so it felt like she was holding hands with an older brother.

He took her to a small classroom not far from where she had been. Once they passed the threshold, everything became bright. Melinda had to stand still and blink as her eyes adjusted.

"Hallo, Davis," a girl said.

"Hey, Carnigan. Found her not far from here. She wants to join Evans's army of zombie first years," the strange boy, Davis, said. His voice sounded very different all of a sudden, and when Melinda looked up at him, she found his cowl had been pushed back to reveal a pale, freckled boy with ordinary brown hair and a wide smile.

A girl with long, wavy black hair, dark eyes, and rather thick eyebrows came over to look at Melinda. "Hallo, what's your name?" she asked.

"Melinda Maeve," Melinda said. "I'm a first year from Ravenclaw."

The girl gave her a funny little grin, with one eye closed like she was winking, and said, "I'm Cerys Carnigan, tonight's instigator of chaos. Nice to meet you, Miss Maeve." She stuck out a hand. Melinda shook it in her best grown-up manner.

There was a groan from the part of the room Carnigan had been in and Melinda saw the infamous Sirius Black sit up. All the girls in her year were in love with his cheeky charm, but Melinda was above that. She knew he was just a pest.

"Oh, bloody hell," said Sirius Black when he got a good look around. "I passed out."

"You fainted," Carnigan corrected him. "Out like a light! It was quite funny, in a pathetic sort of way." She went back over to him, making him flinch. "You are now a member of my army of zombie Hogwarts students, Black. Resign yourself to your fate."

Black groaned again and lay back down. "I give in," he said. "You win, Carnigan. As usual. Go ahead, turn me into a slavering undead version of myself. That was bloody well played, by the way."

"I thought so, too," said Carnigan. "I was surprised you fainted, though."

"Yeah, well, not much else I could do," said Black. "Someone nicked my wand. That wasn't you, was it?"

Carnigan paused, then put her hands against the sides of her face in feigned shock. "Oh, another unsolved mystery!" she exclaimed. "Come here, Miss Maeve, so I can resurrect you as a ghoul with my Necronomicon." She waved her wand to illustrate.

Melinda bounced over and beamed happily. Black propped himself on his elbows to watch and give suggestions about where to place the oozing pustules and gaping wounds.

Davis, who had watched the proceedings with an amused expression, went to the door. "I'm off to be creepy again," he said. "See you in a bit." Melinda waved good-bye to him with a hand that was now missing two fingers.

"So," said Black. "If that was your other team member, where's Snape?"

Maeve recognised that name. It went with a twitchy sixth year boy with black hair and pale skin that she'd heard much about, mostly concerning his evil tendencies.

"Around," Carnigan said. "He hasn't popped in yet, but I suspect he's having an excellent time. I had a third year in here talking about how dead sexy he was just reading the rules and making everyone nervous." She smiled, pleased.

Black snorted. "Snape, sexy? Greasy is more like it." Then he held up his hands as Carnigan pointed her wand at him. "No offence to your boyfriend," he said.

"We're not dating, idiot," Carnigan said. "Now hold still so I can convert you. I'm making you a zealous zombie priest. After this, you can go with Miss Maeve and find her group to terrorize them in revenge."

Melinda giggled and skipped around as gross injuries bloomed across Black's skin. He lost one eye and turned a funny grey-blue, the same colour as Melinda's skin now was.

"A matching set," he said, and winked with his good eye at her. "So, how did a lovely girl like you end up abandoned? Whoever did it must be absolutely heartless, leaving a beauty like you alone."

"Cradle-robber," Carnigan said. Black looked hurt.

"I was asking questions because they were too quiet," Melinda said. "Then they told me to stand watch while they went ahead and left me."

"Those yellow-bellied fiends!" Black said, standing up and accepting the mangled bible Carnigan gave him. "I'll exorcise them for you! Come on, Maeve, we have some dastardly fellows to hunt down." Melinda waved good-bye to Carnigan and ran after Black, who slowed down once he was far away from the room. She caught a handful of his robes when he stopped and looked back. The corridor was so dark, it was difficult to see he'd been zombified. "Whew," he said. "Thought I was going to die there for a moment."

Melinda blinked up at him and noticed there was some kind of bug crawling across the underside of his chin toward a big hole in his neck. Eughky. "How do you mean?" she asked.

Black knelt and looked Melinda in the face, his expression serious. "Listen well, ickle firstie," he said. "Never ever ever piss Cerys Carnigan off. Just a friendly warning, now we're all conspiring together."

"Conspiring? Hardly," said a new voice. Melinda recognised it as the deep, silky voice belonging to the boy who had read the rules. The boy who appeared out of the darkness now was not her new friend Davis, though.

"Snape! I was wondering where you were lurking," Black said, straightening.

Snape's lips curled up in a thin smile that unsettled Melinda. "And here I am," he said. "Speak of the devil, Black. And what's this? A little undead urchin appears to be attached to your knee. One of your affairs finally catching up to you, is it?"

"Shut it, Snape. We're on our way to take revenge on her group for leaving her behind." Black sniffed and began to march past Snape, pulling Melinda with him.

They hadn't got far past Snape when he spoke up again. "You're going the wrong way," he said, sounding smug.

"Don't be ridiculous. The competition is only on two floors, Snape, and this is the lower one." Black retorted, turning around.

Snape glided over to them, his black robes swirling around him like liquid. "We've taken over the entire west side of the castle," he said. "You would do well to go the other way, as all the teams have been making their way to the lower dungeons for the past half hour."

Black frowned. "Hold up, is that legal?"

"No," said Snape, "but tell that to Carnigan and see if she cares about anything other than giving everyone a good scare. Regardless, your little friend's team is now below us."

Melinda watched, awed, as he turned and melted into the shadows once more. Black made a disgusted sound and led her to the nearest set of stairs. "I can't believe it," he said. "Taking over the castle? That git better not have lied about going down."

She let his grumbles wash over her. It was nice to have someone else make the noise for once. He seemed to bear a grudge against Snape, which she thought was funny. Snape seemed all right to her; he was just a little sarky. Her cousin was like that. The best way to deal with him was usually by being cheerful and giving him things to do to distract him.

On the second dungeon level, everything was quiet. Black looked around and grunted. "I knew it!" he said. "He lied! When I get my hands on that big nose of his—"

"Shh!"

He fell silent at being shushed. Melinda listened hard. She could hear the sounds of shuffling feet and the occasional whisper. Black had heard it too, and began towing her stealthily in the direction it had come from, an unholy grin splitting his face in half literally as his zombie flesh couldn't take the strain. A few seconds later, they came across the first group of the night, which just so happened to be Melinda's group. She tapped Black on the arm and pointed. He nodded back and pulled her around so they were half-hidden by a tapestry. In a voice so low she almost couldn't hear it, he whispered, "You walk out so they can see you. Act like everything's normal until they notice something's wrong, then run at them screaming really loudly. I'll come out then and take care of the ones that don't run." She nodded and, with a deep breath to quell a sudden attack of nerves, stepped out and approached the small circle of light her group had projected.

Her slow, shuffling steps put them on high alert. Halfway there, they had begun staring in her direction. It was hard to see thanks to the bright lights from their wands, but she was quite certain they were having trouble making her out in the dark. Their lights fell just short of where she was.

"It's just Maeve," someone said, and they all relaxed. The prefect, a Slytherin named Ashe, didn't say anything.

"Hey, Maeve, you scared us," Aggie said, and giggled.

"You left me," Melinda said, sounding sulkier than she had intended. She stopped just before she stepped into the main ring of light and scowled fiercely at them.

"We didn't mean to," the ringleader of the boys, Gavin Johnston, said. "We just...forgot."

"Yeah," said the others. "We're sorry, Maeve. We didn't mean to."

It made her feel bad about being angry, but it was too late. She was a zombie now, she thought, and she was going to terrify them into running.

Aggie said, "Why are you hanging about in the dark? Come here."

After a moment of hesitation, Melinda stepped forward.

Most satisfyingly, there was a moment of horrified silence and then chaos as nearly everyone let out some sort of cry and about half the group scattered in a panic. Melinda could see some of them covered by some sort of muffling and blinding spell the moment they left the circle of light, making them vanish from sight.

Loudly, she cried, "You left me!" and leapt at the remaining members of her group. Only Aggie held her ground, though she screamed when Melinda grabbed her shoulders. After that, Melinda had to stop, unsure of what to do next.

"Pie Jesu Domine," Black intoned from the shadows then. Melinda pretended to freeze. Black slunk out of the shadows, his tattered bible open to some random page. The prefect aimed his powerful wand light at him, throwing all the glistening wounds into perfect clarity. He watched in horrified fascination as the large larvae-like bug Melinda had seen before crawled into Black's open eye socket.

"Good lord, Black," he said. "That's a wicked illusion."

Black shut the bible with a snap and began fishing around his socket. "What illusion?" he asked, and flicked the bug he'd pulled out at the prefect, who screamed the moment he felt it hit him. He leapt up and danced around like he had ants in his pants. Melinda did her best to not giggle, because Aggie could see her perfectly and giggling would give the game away.

The prefect flattened himself against the wall, white as a sheet. "Oi, Black, no messing with the prefect guides," he said. "That's against the rules we set for the teams, you know."

Black's unholy grin split his face once again. Aggie whimpered. "What rules?" he asked, coming close and pressing the spine of his book against the prefect's chest.

The close up of Black's zombie flesh was evidently too much, because the prefect passed out just like that. Black nudged the prefect with his foot before he came over to Melinda. "How about you?" he asked Aggie. "Want me to exorcise you of that pesky living condition you seem to have?"

Aggie gulped and said, "N-no thank you, sir."

"Well, too bad, it's going to happen," said Black, tapping her on the head with his book. "When you wake up next, you will be doomed to wander the halls of Hogwarts...forever."

Melinda watched in confusion as Aggie's eyes slid shut and she collapsed into Black's waiting arms. He laid her down and grinned at Melinda.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Oh, I exorcised her," Black said brightly, opening his bible and showing a note stuck in it. "Says here I can convert anyone by touching, so they'll pass out and wake up zombified. Look," he said, nodding at Aggie, who was looking decidedly grey and covered in open wounds. "Not bad, Carnigan, not bad at all." He strolled leisurely along the corridor, intent on finding their next victims. Melinda laughed and ran to keep up with his longer strides. This was going to be fun.

---

It's just a stupid school contest, Edmund Wilkes groused to himself as he crept down the hallway with only his wand to protect him. It hardly seemed necessary. What rubbish. Who'll be scared by an empty corridor?

He had, of course, heard all the screaming earlier, but as he had yet to see anyone about, he had dismissed it as mere atmosphere. It was clear none of the groups had any idea what true terror was all about, if all they had thrown at him so far was a couple of shrieks from some distance away from his position. All in all, it was not an impressive performance. Edmund was scarier than any of that all on his own.

That was why he was creeping about under the cover of darkness by himself. He'd foregone the neat prefect-led groups in favour of going it alone, since he figured at this point in his life very little would manage to scare him, and certainly none of that would be found in Hogwarts. Public schools liked to keep their children in one piece for some mad reason. Not like the real world whatsoever.

Rubbish. Nonsense. Malarkey. Bollocks.

There was more screaming from far away. Edmund snorted despite himself and stalked over to the stairwell leading to the second dungeon level, the origin of the noises. Nothing leapt out at him. Was he meant to scare himself with his own imagination or something? Hogwarts' student body had really declined in quality since his father's years. In fact, the whole wizarding community had gone downhill. Lately, the only one who appeared to have any standards was that Voldemort fellow he had been hearing about from Hogwarts alumni who still kept in touch.

There was a thump nearby, followed by a dragging sound. Edmund swiftly hid himself behind a tapestry and bespelled a part of it to be transparent so that he could see whoever came by. Shortly, the small figure of a Ravenclaw girl came into view. She was dragging an unconscious Gryffindor boy behind her by the collar of his robes and appeared to have an eyepatch of some sort over one eye. That eye was weeping some sort of dark liquid. Edmund watched as she slowly made her way past and down the hall to an empty classroom, which she firmly shut behind her and her victim.

When he was certain she was gone, he ventured forth into the hall and nearly slipped on a puddle of liquid that hadn't been there before. He looked down at the patch of black on the almost black stone of the corridor floor.

"Lumos," he whispered. A beam of light hit the dark patch and turned it the red of fresh blood. Before he could lean close to see if it was some sort of trick, a hand clamped down on his arm and he whipped about to find a fat Gryffindor boy, Peter Pettigrew, with mussed hair and wild eyes, staring at him.

"Did you see them?" Pettigrew gasped.

Good acting, Edmund thought, and said, "Saw who?"

"Carnigan!" Pettigrew said, clutching at him and panting. "She took him—she took Sirius!"

Edmund tried to pry the boy's chubby fingers off his arms. They felt unpleasantly hot and damp, even through his sleeves. "Right," he said. "Didn't realise Carnigan was in Gryffindor." He'd heard about her, of course, but there was only so much attention he could spare for school gossip.

"I'm serious!" Pettigrew yelped, and babbled incoherently about eyeballs and maggots and zombies.

"All right, slow down," said Edmund. Pettigrew grew so genuinely hysterical that he was forced to slap the boy's cheeks to get him to stop. "What's all this, then? Did she prank your group?"

"She took Sirius!" said Pettigrew, whimpering. "She—she isn't wearing an illusion! Real bugs! Her eyeball came out! What do I do! I can't find James or Remus!"

Edmund thought back to the dark circle he had thought was an eyepatch on the Ravenclaw girl and felt himself grow cold. It was just a contest, he reminded himself. None of these kids are good enough to raise the undead. He gave Pettigrew a small shake and said, "Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure it wasn't an illusion?"

"I picked up her eyeball," said Pettigrew, holding something out. Edmund directed his wand at it and promptly slammed his back into the wall to get away when a real bloodied human eyeball stared up at him. The optic nerve was still attached to the back. He swallowed several times, thinking he was about to be sick and that there was something very, very wrong going on with this contest. Pettigrew was still looking at him, with wide, anxious eyes that were thankfully still in their proper sockets.

"Y-you ought to return that to her," said Edmund faintly. "She might need it."

"Very kind of you," said a girl's voice next to him. He jumped and found the Ravenclaw girl, Carnigan, standing and looking at him with one eye. The other was a gaping hole that—and this should not have been possible in a school grade illusion by a sixteen year old—caught the light in the very back and gleamed, wet and pink and bloody, at him. Pettigrew shrieked and threw the eyeball at Carnigan before fleeing down the stairs deeper into the school, shouting for help.

"Hello," said Edmund. "That's a very good illusion you have there." Any other time he would have sneered at himself for being so stupid, but there was just something very eerie about the way her empty eyelid drooped over the bloody hole in her face.

"Thanks. Ooo," she said. "That reminds me, I haven't put on my costume yet." She looked down at the eyeball in her hand. "Strange, I hadn't realised eyeballs weren't round."

Edmund gulped and felt himself break out into a sweat as he watched her try to fit the eyeball back into the socket. He saw it go into what should have been part of the illusion and then pop out again and fall to the floor. When Carnigan blinked her good eye and felt around as though wondering where it had gone, he leaned down and picked it up.

"Here," he said, handing the cold, slimy body part back to her. "Give it an extra push."

"Ta," she replied, shoving it all the way in again. It remained staring off to the side as she smiled at him. "That was very kind of you," she said.

Edmund tried to smile and nod. "Any time," he said.

Carnigan's smile widened and she extinguished his wand light by pressing her fingers against the tip. "You should run away while you still can," she said in the overwhelming darkness she had left behind.

When his light flared again, she was gone without a trace. Edmund tried several locating spells, but all of them informed him that Carnigan was at least a floor away from him.

"Oh, God," he said then, and took off down the hall, too panicked to pay attention to the direction he was going.

He paid for it soon enough when he ran into another sixth year Gryffindor, James Potter. Potter fell to the floor in a heap and cried out when Edmund aimed his wand at him. Edmund, in his now growing panic, only gave himself enough time to see dozens of gaping wounds on Potter's bare skin before he took off in the opposite direction as fast as he could run. He ignored Potter's calls to know who he was and what was going on and why were these wounds actually bleeding, because he knew the instant he turned around, something else would be there waiting for him. He didn't want to know what that something else was planning on doing to him.

There was one goal in Edmund's mind now: Get to the Great Hall. The Great Hall was safe. He had to get there. He had to get there now.

But Hogwarts had turned strange and unfamiliar to him in the dark, so he took wrong turn after wrong turn and found himself in increasingly unfamiliar parts of the school until he finally came across a stairwell leading up to the ground floor. He took the steps three at a time and burst right into a crowd of first years and yet another Gryffindor, a girl named Evans, as she was leaning over the still body of one of her charges.

"Wilkes, Edmund Wilkes!" she cried with relief when she saw him. "Help me get him to the hospital wing!" She drew back so that he could see the unconscious boy covered in the same wounds as Potter. They were slowly widening, and the flesh around it was turning from healthy pink to dead grey. When Edmund looked around at the first years, he realised they, too, were sporting similar wounds. Evans herself was missing an arm.

"No," he said, and pelted off in the direction of the Great Hall. He could hear the first years chasing after him in a soundfall of clattering footsteps and high voices calling for him to come back and join them. "No!" he shouted back at them, and took several turns at a sprint before he lost sight and sound of them. One frenzied moment later, he came to the doors of the Great Hall at last.

They would not open. He nearly screamed. He could see a welcoming, peaceful light leaking through the seams of the doors and hear normal voices talking about a normal contest on the other side, unaware of the madness happening just outside. Edmund sucked in a deep breath to shout for help.

"Silencio," said the deep voice of the man who had read the rules to them earlier. Edmund whirled and pressed his back against the doors, mute and horrified as he clapped eyes on the person who had undoubtedly caused all of this chaos. There was no question that this man was a necromancer of the highest order.

He was tall, and clad in the same black robes from earlier with the same white and fluttering hands that were so thin they were simply bone and tendon covered in skin. Edmund felt his throat work in a silent whimper as the man drifted closer and raised in one hand a red ball of light that bathed the area in colours of crimson and fear.

"Congratulations," the man said softly. "You are the first to have made it this far. But I'm afraid I cannot let you pass." He slid closer to Edmund and ran his fingers down Edmund's heaving chest to rest right over his heart. Edmund's fingernails made scratching noises on the door. "Are you scared?" Edmund nodded. "An honest lad, I see. I suppose you've done well—for a coward, that is. Finite."

The Silencing spell was lifted. Edmund promptly turned his wand on the man and shouted the first spell he could think of that warded off the undead. A ball of flame ignited in the man's face, making him leap back into the shadows with an unearthly howl. Edmund stood panting and shaking, searching the darkness for any sign of the man, but he had vanished without a trace. The red light disappeared and something behind Edmund clicked.

The doors, when he tried them again, opened smoothly. Cheery yellow light spilled into the hallway, with the scene inside looking more like a happy holiday card from a tourist trap than ever to him. Jack-o-Lanterns floated in the air and several dozen people were scattered throughout the hall, feasting on sweets while waiting for their friends to return.

Everyone turned to look at him. A first year had the good grace to inform him that he was now missing an eyebrow. He was not amused.

---

Sev was having a great time, save for the fireball in the face Wilkes had given him. Fortunately his vampire overlord robes had flame-repellant charms on them. He was only meant to appear scared of fire, not actually be injured by it. Even Mulciber's little assassination attempt didn't bother him much after the fact. The fool had been upset, after all. He was meant to be, and people reacted in unexpected ways when they were frightened.

It was harder than he had expected to only defend himself with Carnigan's patented zombie charm. Sev certainly hadn't expected to need to use Stupefy on anyone, but Mulciber seemed relatively unharmed afterward. The real problem was that Lupin and those fifth years had seen him at it, not to mention the embarrassing aftermath as Sev struggled to recover from a vicious two-on-one battle. Lupin was easy enough to threaten into silence, but what about the other four?

In any case, Sev was taking a short break and had sent a message to Davis to watch the doors of the Great Hall in his place. Now all he had to do was find the break room Carnigan had mentioned would be available.

He found it eventually, and entered in a swirl of black robes – he was getting a bit too fond of the way they looked when they billowed – to find MacDonald dressing up a couple of snot-nosed fourth years from Hufflepuff. He paused and surveyed them.

"I hadn't realised this was the costume department," he said softly in that voice he had been working so hard to achieve in the past week with potions. The effect was temporary, or so the recipe notes had said. He would miss it a bit when it went. He enjoyed commanding everyone's attention with a whisper.

"Shut it," said MacDonald over the mutterings of the fourth years. "It's easier to get to this room, and no one minds the illusion being spoiled. They want to be zombies." She grinned. "Besides, Black and that little Ravenclaw girl are doing a good job converting unsuspecting groups without going here."

"We're the main zombie army," one of the fourth years said. She was making cow's eyes at Sev.

He ignored her and glanced around. The room was bereft of Carnigan, so he stalked to the grandest chair of the lot and sank down into it with some relief.

"Best be careful," he told MacDonald. "Some of them have been a bit zealous in their attempts at self-defence."

MacDonald glanced at him and pursed her lips. Sev fancied he could pick out the shape of Ireland from the spots on her cheeks. "Lily thought that might happen with the overlords because they can't recognise either of you," she said. "She was in here earlier and said most of the people they've met so far have just run away from the first years because they don't want to hurt them." She narrowed her eyes at Sev. "I reckon that robe might save you from more hexes than necessary, since they don't know who they're against."

"As always, your kind and generous opinion of my humble self moves me to tears," said Sev, sneering even though she couldn't see his face at the moment.

All MacDonald said to that was, "Carnigan will be back soon enough, and she won't like you sitting there."

Just as she finished speaking, the door slammed open and Carnigan came in looking stormy as ever. Sev only just made it out of the way fast enough to escape being kicked. She fell into the chair and scowled heavily at everyone in the room.

"How did it go?" MacDonald asked.

"Ridiculously," growled Carnigan. "Wilkes was so scared the headmaster told me to make it less realistic. I said, 'All I did was drop my eyeball, I didn't make him pick it up,' and he twinkles at me and said, 'I believe that was the problem,' like he found it funny." She started beating her heels on the floor in agitation. "They're always telling me to stop doing so much!"

"Too realistic, are we?" said Sev dryly. "Goodness knows what they do to overachievers at this school...expel them, perhaps, if they're already on probation..."

Carnigan's feet paused. She was struck by something. "Oh," she said, and ceased looking so angry. "Bloody Wilkes the Wimp made me forget that I'm still on probation for giving Black the what-for. It's a good thing I didn't try to break his nose back there."

"Fancy forgetting that!" Sev said with much sarcasm. "Never mind that breaking someone's nose when you aren't on probation isn't any better."

She looked pleased with herself. "Got away with it for years," she said. "Made Snape's nose the nose it is today. Just one of my many contributions to the student body."

Everyone but Sev seemed to find that amusing. Carnigan shot him a sly grin from under her hair.

"A negligible contribution," said Sev. "Consider staging a government takeover in your spare time between breaking noses and I might reluctantly admire you."

"Will do," she said. "MacDonald, they seem ready. Off you go. There are some groups near the Potions classroom that are very confused and in need of mental trauma."

The fourth years and MacDonald filed out of the room. Sev shut the door after then and pulled his hood back. For some reason, he was certain Carnigan was admiring the shape of his bent nose.

She said, "You always know how to cheer me up, Snape," rather more nicely than he had ever heard her say before. "You're right about that probation bit. Should have remembered."

Sev turned and glared at her. "Why are you acting so oddly these days?" he demanded. "You're being far too nice to everyone. It's a break from character."

"Didn't know you cared, Snape," Carnigan said, squinting up at him. "Most don't."

Sev ground his molars together and said, "Don't go around telling people this, but you happen to be related to me. Of course I bloody care. Now out with it."

Carnigan stared. "Related! How?" she asked, so surprised that she lost all of her usual manner and instead looked like a normal young woman startled by a previously unknown relative.

"Cousins," said Sev. "My mother, your aunt, is a disowned Prince."

"Drat," she said, quite dismayed. "Then I suppose it was just my family's instinct for inbreeding that made me think you were good-looking. Genes flock together and all that."

"If you know what's good for you, you'll never say that to me again," Sev said, covering his eyes. "Just thinking about it makes me want to be ill."

He knew, just knew she was grinning now. "What, that you're good-looking? Come now, Snape. It's a universal truth. You'll grow into the nose eventually. Besides, think of all the girls who've come in here so far talking about how much they'd like to be locked in a broom cupboard with you for an hour or so. 'Oh, that voice!'"

"That doesn't bother me," he said. "Just that it's you. We're first cousins, for god's sake. The children would be born with two heads and a tail."

"Just because I wouldn't mind kissing you doesn't mean I want to marry you and have babies," said Carnigan, sounding appalled. "In fact, I don't want children at all."

Sev's head came up. "Really?" he inquired. "I had thought having babies was what pureblooded witches did."

Carnigan looked quite shocked, but turned thoughtful after a moment. "I can see why you would think that," she said. "Traditional, isn't it? No, Snape, that's not what I plan to do when I grow up, although my family does want me to leave school after this year to marry that idiot McNair so they can have an in with his good friend Malfoy." She gave him a fierce look. "Now it's your turn to not go about telling people this, got it?"

Sev rolled his eyes. "I swear," he said.

"On what? Your drunk of a father? No—never mind. I mean to say that I'll be taking my N.E.W.T.'s before Christmas and making myself scarce afterwards. My plans for my life are different from my family's plans, see." She smiled a completely normal smile and clasped her hands together in her lap. "I think I'm good enough to get at least five, don't you think?" she asked him.

Sev blinked, surprised that she would ask him. "I suppose," he said. "But I'm not studying for mine yet, so I wouldn't know."

"I bet you could get Potions and Defence today," she said. "Trust me, I've been studying the material and watching you in class. You're quite good. I'm a bit jealous, actually."

He blushed and ducked his head. Flattery from Carnigan? Unheard of. "I can tutor you, if you like," he said, and almost smacked himself for being susceptible to compliments. Severus the Susceptible they'll put on my tombstone, he thought.

Carnigan's face lit up. "Really?" she said, sounding happier than he had ever heard her. "You will? Thanks, Snape, you're the greatest! Pity you're my cousin with too many hang-ups about incest, though."

"Two-headed babies with haemophilia," said Sev warningly. "It's a bad place to be, Carnigan."

She laughed and said, "I'll love and admire you from afar, then." Her expression dropped and she added in her usual manner, "Like I said, Snape, don't breathe a word of this to anyone else, or I'll make sure you end up in the hospital wing for at least a month."

Sev rolled his eyes again and drew his hood back up as the door opened to admit a gleeful Black with his ickle zombie minion. The urchin was thirsty, it seemed, so they had returned to get a drink of water. Sev swept past the pair and back into the corridor. It was time to get back to scaring the pants off a few witless students.

---

"This is brilliant!" Acker kept saying as Remus's group crept along the corridors. Snape had left them not minutes ago to attend to some other business—Remus could not quite wrap his head around the idea of Severus Snape being in demand anywhere by anyone, but stranger things had happened tonight—and all five of them were now moving slowly towards what Remus guessed was one of the lower level Potions labs. It was difficult to tell in the dark, especially without that animated map James and Sirius had cooked up in recent times.

"If it's really that brilliant, why haven't we seen anything yet?" Broush grumbled.

"This is Snape we're talking about," said Acker. "He probably planted us right next to a giant army of zombies just because he—"

Clemency drew in a small breath and whispered, "Oi, Lupin—light ahead!"

Everyone stilled, watching from the cover of darkness as someone's wand light bobbed closer. It wasn't long before the bouncing light resolved itself into one of the other prefects, a boy named Melvin Peale. He was pale and fearful but otherwise free of oozing zombie wounds. Behind him, Remus managed to make out two other fifth years from Hufflepuff.

"It's safe," Remus whispered. Acker promptly lit his own wand. Peale gasped and the two stood pointing wands at each other for a bit before Peale and his group relaxed. Remus and the others came out of hiding as well.

"Oh, thank God," Peale said fervently. "Lupin! Do you know what's going on?"

"A zombie invasion, obviously," said Acker. Pierce elbowed him.

Peale didn't know what to make of Acker's cavalier attitude towards the screaming nightmare of an event. "Yes, but—I mean—"

"It's fine," Remus said as soothingly as he could. "It's a part of the contest."

Not everyone was convinced by that. "But we saw a dead body!" one of the other fifth years shrilled. She looked to be in a right state with flyaway hair and bulging eyes.

"Did you poke it to find out?" Pierce wanted to know. The other girl's expression clearly said she thought Pierce was mad.

"Never mind that," said Remus, alighting upon a wonderful idea. "I have a proposition to make." He gestured for the others to extinguish their lights and explained his plan to Peale, who listened closely and nodded when he was finished.

"I'm for it," he said. "What say you?"

"I'm not," said Clemency. "What makes you think that's going to work? Snape might've just made them all impervious to everything."

Remus immediately shook his head. "No, the real mastermind behind all of this is Carnigan. Most of what she does makes a mad sort of sense. Think about it: she went to all that trouble to create the spells we saw Snape using on Mulciber and Rosier and setting everything up the way we see it now. The way I see it, she wouldn't miss an opportunity to really show off her skills, and that includes giving her zombies a weak point. I doubt she would force anyone to fire dangerous spells at each other. Snape seems to be using only one spell to convert others, with no jinxes in sight. Clearly she hasn't turned it into a free-for-all."

Clemency was still dubious. "Even so, that doesn't rule out the possibility," he said.

Remus straightened his shoulders and tried to look authoritative. "We'll burn that bridge when we come to it. Anyway, it's just a theory. We need to find someone to try it out on."

The frantic girl began smoothing her hair down as Acker, totally in his element, began coming up with outlandish zombie vanquishing strategies while Remus taught the others how to make witchfire. The beginnings of Remus's zombie hunter army were soon primed and ready to go. Feeling strangely accomplished, he directed them onward in relative stealth.

Fortunately for Acker's attention span, it wasn't long before another group of evil undead minions appeared. The voices of first years could be heard well before anyone saw them. Remus tip-toed along until he reached a large area filled with shambling, oozing ten- and eleven-year-olds with a single taller red-headed girl in their midst.

Lily Evans! Remus thought. Of course she was in on the whole thing. He sized up the enemy force. Evans had grabbed more than one group's worth of first years to join her own. There were around twelve or thirteen people milling about while Evans was doing some incomprehensible wand work to make a previously perfectly healthy girl into a zombie like the rest of them.

Remus was broken out of his thoughts by Pierce. "I feel bad about firing at first years," she whispered to him. "They're so little!"

"It's us or them," Acker hissed at her. "Besides, witchfire doesn't burn at all."

"I know," Pierce muttered, annoyed. "We'd better not have to use anything worse on them than that or I'll kill Carnigan!"

Remus, who wasn't too keen on scaring firsties into tears himself, did some fast thinking and whispered, "All right, don't fire at their faces. Let's spread the witchfire along the ground slowly so they can run away. Try to herd them to the door over there. And remember, red-orange fire only!"

"Got it," Pierce replied, falling back and readying herself. Remus gave them the count of three before signalling them to start.

Ephemeral flickering orange flames directed by their wands crept into the room. They went unnoticed at first until one of the boys looked down and found his foot had seemingly caught fire. Remus felt a thrill of satisfaction; witchfire did not ordinarily spread on its own like that. Carnigan must have integrated it into her zombie enchantment. The boy screamed in surprise and started dancing around. By the time the rest of his zombie fellows had figured out the problem, Remus and the others had increased the size of their flames until the miniature army was facing a wall of fire that nearly reached the ceiling. All of the ones lucky enough not to have been caught in the trap fled, Evans included. The witchfire's unfortunate victims were left behind, Petrified.

Acker and Clemency leapt out into the open with wild war whoops, very pleased with themselves over their victory. "Hah! Take that, undead slaves!" Acker shouted at one of the first years nearby. The little girl was frozen mid-stride. Remus could see her eyes rolling in anxiety.

"This isn't permanent, is it?" Broush asked, prodding her.

"Finite, maybe," said Pierce.

Acker was alarmed. "Don't!" he cried. "If you break the spell, she'll come after us!"

With a pop, the petrification spell broke on its own and the little girl put her foot down. "Oh—drat it all!" she cried, disappointed when her zombie disguise fell off as well. There were other pops around the room as the others were freed. The first years clustered together and muttered to each other. Each had a small lighted sign in front of their foreheads proclaiming them to be 'OUT' of the contest, and a glowing ball of light that informed them cheerily that they were done for the night and were to return to the Great Hall immediately. Moaning in dismay, they left.

Remus found himself beaming, more cheerful than he'd ever expected to be a mere few days before the next full moon. Tonight, he thought, there would be no infamous Black/Potter alliance of doom. It was Remus Lupin's time to shine.

---

"And let me tell you, Maeve: if I had a knut for every curse that git knows, I could buy my own bloody chateau in the countryside and live in luxury for the rest of my life!" Sirius told his first year companion in all seriousness. She gazed up at him, eyes wide. He'd been regaling her with totally true stories of that greasy git Snape for the past few minutes while they searched for more people to terrorize. Three groups had already fallen victim to their undead charms, with the first traveling along with them to scare the second and third groups most obligingly.

All right, maybe he was exaggerating a bit about Snape. But only a bit. And what would a firstie know about that, anyway?

Sirius had not made a habit of hanging out with first years. He was sixteen, after all. A man had to have a little dignity by that age, otherwise he'd end up on the wrong end of a boot, playing whipping boy. Still, this particular first year was kind of cute, with her bouncy brown curls and lightly freckled nose. Oh, and the adorable high-pitched voice with a Scottish accent. She made a good zombie, too. What was her name again? Belinda? Miranda? Something alliterative.

Whatever. Sirius didn't care too much about tiny details like that. Besides, she'd only be twelve by the time he graduated from Hogwarts. He had bigger, bustier fish to fry.

"I dinnae think he was that mean," Maeve said, her voice slow and sleepy. Poor duck, it was past her bedtime.

He laughed. "Even when tha lad were just a wee bairn, he'd be a-findin' things and killin' um," he said.

She gave him a dirty look for mocking her accent, which only amused him more. He had some mercy, though, and left off teasing her to tell her about the time Snape had been pantsed last year and called Lily Evans a Mudblood. She looked appropriately shocked and lapsed into deep thought, probably around how nasty Severus Snape was. That was fine by Sirius. Nothing like teaching a new generation who to watch out for in the student body!

And speak of the devil! There was a vampire overlord just ahead. But which one was it? Sirius gestured for Maeve to be quiet and began creeping up on the hooded figure, intending to pull the hood off and reveal its face. He reached out. His fingertips brushed the cloak.

"Don't even think about it, Black," the figure said, twitching the fabric out of Sirius's grasp. "What are you trying to pull?"

"Nothing at all, your overlordship," Sirius said innocently. "Which one are you, by the way?"

"That is none of your concern," the overlord replied coolly. He leaned over to look at Maeve. "Hey, Maeve. Melinda, right? How are you doing?" he asked the firstie in a much kinder tone. Sirius withheld a sigh of disappointment. It was the other one. Bugger! Where was Snivellus, then?

"I'm all right," Maeve said, her face lighting up when she realised who it was. Not even the zombie illusion hid the glow in her cheeks.

Well, well, well, guess who had taken a fancy to tall, dark, and freckled? Sirius grinned, an idea coming to him. Now was the perfect time to foist the firstie off on someone more deserving, which would free Sirius up for some mischief at Carnigan's expense. "Oh, your overlordship," he said, simpering a little. The ickle overlord, less experienced with Sirius than the greasy git, wasn't suspicious in the least. "Miss Maeve here has been feeling a little tired. Isn't there a break room she can stay in?"

"Sure," said Sirius's unwary target. The friendly manner he spoke with didn't match the silky disguise voice one bit. "I was just on my way there now. Pretty late, isn't it?" He stuck out a hand, which Maeve grasped eagerly. Sirius smiled and waved as they turned to leave. The overlord paused and glanced over his shoulder. "By the way, oh unholy zombie minion, it seems some of the groups have figured out witchfire is our main weakness and have mounted an attack," he said. "I command you to go make trouble in the ranks of our enemies. You should find them on the floor below."

Sirius saluted him, grinning madly. "Absolutely!" he said. "You can count on me." Well, he could count on Sirius to find and hex Snape—or perhaps inconvenience him somehow, as Carnigan had never returned the wand she'd taken.

"I hope so," the overlord said absently. "By all accounts, Lupin's doing a fine job of eradicating all of our undead forces. It wouldn't do to end the event too soon." He and Maeve vanished, swallowed by the soft darkness of the corridor.

Remus! Sirius scowled. Was a certain someone having too much fun without him? Tsk, tsk! He canceled his plans to antagonize Snape immediately and set off to find Moony instead. Why, if Sirius didn't know better, he'd think Remus were playing at being a Vaunted Hero—and Sirius knew that was definitely not Moony's calling in life. His calling was more along the lines of being a friendly, somewhat studious boy by day and Mysterious Flesh-Eating Creature of the Night of the Full Moon, just like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde—only he didn't need a potion to transform and terrorized unsuspecting humans just once a month. Sirius sauntered off, concocting devious plans by the dozen.

He was so busy sauntering and concocting that he nearly tripped over a pair of bodies lying in the middle of the corridor. One of them moaned when his foot made contact.

"Oi," he said. "Seems like a bit of an odd place to take a nap. What are you playing at?" He reached down and felt around until he encountered the distinctive sensation of one of Carnigan's zombie spells on someone's throat. Bah! That took some fun out of it.

There was a scrape and a rustle. "Black?" said the obnoxious voice of that smarmy git Evan Rosier.

"In the decomposing flesh," Sirius said. "You too, by the feel of it."

Rosier was not in the mood to be amused by jokes. There were sounds like he was rolling to and fro, trying to get his bearings. "That bastard," he growled as he rolled. "He attacked Mulciber and me out of nowhere. I think he knocked me out."

There was no question about to whom Rosier was referring in Sirius's mind. No way could some Hufflepuff fourth year take out Rosier and Mulciber at the same time. This had to be Snape's handiwork. Fancy him turning on his own kind! Maybe Sirius had got him wrong all these years.

Hmm.

Nah.

Rosier rustled over to Mulciber and started trying to wake him up. Mulciber obliged by giving a great snort and going onto his side, where, as far as Sirius could see, he curled up in a fetal position with his thumb precariously close to his mouth. Rosier got up and kicked him. "Wake up, you oaf!" he practically shouted.

Mulciber awoke with a pained yelp. "Yeow! Help! I'm being run over by hippogriffs!"

"No, you fool, it's me," said Rosier. "Get up."

"Ugh." Sirius backed away as Mulciber flailed and tried to stand up in the disorienting near darkness. "What in all the circles of hell happened?"

Something clattered when Sirius's foot hit it. Everyone froze. Sirius reached down. "It's all right, it's only a lantern," he said.

"Then light it, idiot!" snapped Rosier. There was a sound of him searching his pockets. "Blast! Where did my wand go?"

Mulciber meanwhile was working out how he had come to be here. "I thought I saw you die," he said to Rosier.

"Well, clearly I didn't," was the cool reply. "Unless this is hell. Oh my God! I don't want to be stuck with you for eternity in hell."

Sirius grinned in the dark. He'd just had an idea. "Sounds hellish," he said. "Can't find your wand? Then allow me." He tapped on the top of the lantern with the corner of Carnigan's bible. Light filled the area. Sirius half-shut his eyes against it and counted to ten while he waited for everyone's eyes to adjust.

Practically simultaneously (and possibly in harmony), Rosier and Mulciber pointed at each other and started screaming and running about in fits and starts, as though not sure where to go to make the nightmare stop. "Your throat! Your throat!" Mulciber howled, clutching at his own while waving his other hand at Rosier's bloody gash.

"Where's your face?" Rosier howled back. He pitched backward, out of range of the lantern, before stopping and trying to calm himself. "Oh, very funny, Black," he said acidly from the safety of darkness. "Haha. I laugh. This is another one of your pranks, isn't it? Mulciber, shut up. It's not real."

Mulciber shut up, though with the way his eyes were popping it was pretty clear he was close to having hysterics. Good thing he couldn't see himself. Whoever had turned him had flayed half the skin off his face.

Sirius gave Rosier a flesh-splitting grin. "Not my prank," he said. "Actually. It's Carnigan's. You may now consider yourselves my zombie minions."

Mulciber moaned. "I think I'm going to be sick," he mumbled, and lurched over to the wall to make good on his promise. Sirius and Rosier made faces at each other at the sounds.

At length, Sirius said, "If you're done making a mess of Hogwarts, let's get to work. I've got a Lupin I need to take down a few notches."

Mulciber spat a few times and wiped his mouth. Rosier crossed his arms. "Give me one good reason why I should team up with you, Black," he said.

"Because," said Black, "I happen to know who did this to you and where you might be able to find him to exact some revenge." Not that he would ever help these two, even if it might have meant seeing Snape get hexed. Besides, Carnigan would get mad if he took out her primary vampire overlord, and there were loads more things Sirius wanted to do before the event was over.

Rosier wasn't stupid. He gave Sirius a sharp look that appeared sinister with all his oozing wounds. "Yeah, right, Black. I don't want anything to do with someone who can take on two of us so easily."

That's because he usually takes on three and a half, Sirius thought to himself. Two mediocre wizards would have been easy compared to the two best sixth years plus Prefect Lupin and Pettigrew. Even Sirius would give credit where credit was due. "Lot of cowards, you are," he said out loud. "Fine. Run back to the great hall with your tails between your legs."

"Thank you, we will!" Rosier said angrily. "Give me the lantern. Come on, Mulciber."

Sirius watched them leave. When the lantern's light was out of sight, he shrugged and moved on to the stairs a short distance away.

It was there he encountered the other vampire overlord. "Trying to sell me out, Black?" went the flickering whisper of Severus Snape just before the first step. Sirius was proud of himself for not jumping.

"Just trying to get in the spirit of things, Snape," Sirius shot back at the black blob about his height standing half-hidden by a tapestry of Gregor the Gangrenous. "And what are you doing lurking about?"

Snape sounded resigned. "Trying to find Carnigan so we can fight off Lupin. At this rate we won't have enough on our side to do the epic battle she's convinced will happen. All of Evans' first years keep walking into the witchfire traps because they're too stupid to look where they're going." He stepped away from the tapestry and took down his cowl. Sirius observed with some disgust the thin sheen of greasy sweat on Snape's forehead. Note to self: Don't let Snape shake his head when I'm nearby. It's liable to get on me and spread like a contagious disease, Sirius thought, completely ignoring the fact that he too was sweating. It was hard work running around after people and although the damp chill Carnigan had set earlier helped somewhat, it wasn't enough. Snape glanced at Sirius's side and said, "Speaking of stupid first years, where's yours?"

Sirius waved a hand airily somewhere behind him. "Oh, she's with that other overlord."

"Davis? Good." Snape pulled out his wand—Sirius stared at it enviously—and cast a locating spell. "Break room," he muttered. "Come on, Black. Carnigan should be in there. The Headmaster forbade her going out too much because she was too frightening," he told Sirius.

"Makes sense," said Sirius, trailing after Snape's billowing cloak. He decided against telling Snape about the eyeball bit of his encounter with Carnigan.

They made it up two floors when they ran into another black-cloaked figure, standing over a body. Sirius nearly made some smart remark about Davis being more dangerous than he looked, but something about the scene tipped him off to something being wrong. Well, even wronger than Carnigan had made it. And there was not much wronger than Carnigan, so that was saying a lot.

Maybe it was the smell. Carnigan had neglected to give any of her enchantments the strong stench of iron, like real blood. Or maybe it was the way the body on the ground was still making choking noises and twitching as if in real pain. Snape sucked in an audible breath and Sirius could feel himself staring mutely. Sirius's heart skipped several beats.

The figure turned around. It was much taller than either Snape or Davis, and a bone-white mask covered its face. And the body…

"My God," Sirius said, stunned. "You killed the Defence professor."

The figure did not respond verbally, instead bringing his wand to bear on the two boys. Snape recovered enough to haul Sirius out of the way of a jet of green light, but it was Sirius that shot the first counter attack using his bible, which was really his wand cleverly disguised and set only to cast Carnigan's zombie spell. It opened up an illusory glistening wound on the figure's wand arm, which startled the figure enough that he stopped and clapped a hand over it.

"Run!" Snape shouted. Sirius did not need any more encouragement. They took off the way they had come, which may have kept them from splitting up and getting lost, but also meant they were sitting ducks. Snape took the liberty of hurling a few extremely nasty hexes over his shoulder as he ran, eliciting a cry of pain from the figure.

Sirius did some fast thinking as they ran. He didn't have a fully functioning wand, but Snape did. Snape also knew a ton of curses and duelled better than a lot of adults. Meanwhile, Sirius knew all the nooks and crannies in the school.

"Oi, Snape! Follow me," he hissed, skidding around a corner.

He could hear Snape panting after him. "What the bloody hell for?" Snape demanded. "We're just one big target—"

"I know some shortcuts but I don't know how to get my wand out of this book, so if he goes after me I'm dead. You have a wand but you don't know the school half as well. Right? Through here." Sirius ducked behind a tapestry and tapped the wall with the book, saying the password in a terse whisper. The narrow opening that resulted could barely fit one growing boy at a time. Sirius felt more than saw Snape squeeze in after him. The secret door closed with a soft grinding noise, leaving them in the dark together.

They stayed there for a time before Snape finally grew impatient and lit his wand. "Is there another end to this thing?" he asked. "Your knee is touching me."

Sirius couldn't help but feel slightly insulted. It was a perfectly good knee so he didn't see why Snivellus had to complain. Besides, he should be the one grumbling about Snape's shoulder touching him. There was probably hair grease on it. Revolting. And his head was scraping the ceiling, too. It was uncomfortably hard to breathe. "Stow it, Snape," he muttered. "And there is another end, I just can't fit."

There was a tense pause. "Are you serious?" Snape whispered incredulously.

"Yes, I am. Sirius and serious. Look, I found this passage when I was in my second year. I was a lot smaller then. I can't help that I've grown a lot of muscle between then and now!"

Snape growled and the next thing Sirius knew, there was the decidedly unpleasant sensation of Snape's spidery fingers crawling their way across his chest. "Give me that book," Snape ordered.

Sirius couldn't even describe how that felt. "Stop groping me!" he wailed. "I'm going to hex you so hard after this your ancestors are going to get boils on the ends of their noses!"

Snape's reply was a very rude suggestion. Sirius gave in and managed to hand him the book by passing it behind his legs. Snape pushed it against the wall and used one hand to open it to around the middle. "Cerys Carnigan, come in," he said. "Now. It's an emergency."

Carnigan's face appeared on the book's pages. "Ooo, love in the corridors," she observed. "No snogging on the job, Sev. Didn't I tell you?"

"Never mind that," Snape said. "There's someone else in the school and he's killed the Defence professor. Black and I are stuck in a secret passage together because he was too stupid to find one that could fit the both of us—"

"Look, Snape, did you want to live or not? This is the best I could do on such short notice."

Carnigan's only reaction to the news was to blink. "Professor Clairborne? Hmm. Where are you? I'll find you."

"NO," said Snape. "Not by yourself." Sirius found himself nodding furiously in agreement. As evil as Carnigan could be, he didn't really want her dead.

Carnigan grinned madly. "Oh, but I'm not! I have Potter, Evans, and half the prefects here. Davis, too." To someone outside the book's view, she said in a very posh accent, "James, old boy, I fear there's a spot of trouble. Would you be so kind as to fetch the Headmaster? There's a good chap." To Snape, she said, "I'm sorry, Sev. When I make my fortune, I'll buy you a whole lorry full of fairy floss for you to make up for tonight."

Snape scowled, his hair falling lank over his face and concealing his expression. "All that will do is give me cavities for the rest of my life," he said.

"I suppose it would. I'll have to think of something else, then," she said. Sirius tried not to shrink back when she looked at him. "I guess I'll do something for you, too."

"Generous of you," Sirius mumbled under his breath. "We're on the second floor behind the tapestry next to that painting with a herd of pigs trampling through it. Hurry it up, won't you? It smells…like…"

He looked over at Snape. Snape was staring at him with wide eyes as the smell of iron filled the cramped space they were in. "It seems the other side of this passageway is wide enough to admit an adult," Snape said with forced calm. "How do we open the door?"

Sirius swallowed and whispered the password. The door grated as it moved aside.

"The second I'm out of the way, duck!" Snape hissed. He squirmed out of the passage and hit the floor, ripping the tapestry from its hangings. Sirius ducked and felt a nasty spell whiff over his head. When he looked back, he found the figure from before squashed against the narrowest part of the passage, wand tip poking out from the small space between his neck and the stone wall. Scooping up the dropped book, he bolted out—stepping on Snape tangled in the tapestry in the process—and legged it up the hall. Only some previously undiscovered sense of mercy made him turn back and help Snape up. Then they ran.

Luckily, Carnigan and her bunch weren't far away. Sirius nearly cried in relief when he saw James's disfigured visage next to a one-armed Lily Evans. And there was Peter. Sirius had never been gladder to see the portly boy in his life. Snape seemed to feel the same for Carnigan and Davis.

Carnigan was smiling, but even to Sirius it looked a bit strained. "That," she announced, "was a Death Eater. One of that Voldemort's lot, I think."

Sirius swore. "What do we do now?"

James, good old James, said, "I told the Headmaster. The other professors are on the lookout." He came over and clapped Sirius on the shoulder. "Good job on hitting him with Carnigan's zombie spell, mate. It's got a tracking type spell on it. She gave the piece of paper with everyone's positions on it to Professor Dumbledore."

Sirius was even more relieved. For a moment he was afraid he would have had to volunteer his pride and joy, the Map, to the cause. That would get it confiscated for sure.

"Did he have a name?" Snape asked suddenly. Sirius gave him a sidelong glance. Looked like the greasy git dealt with shock by turning quiet and sullen.

Carnigan shook her head. "Just showed up as 'unknown adult'," she said. "I reckon he got in with the shipment of sweets somehow." She pursed her lips, displeased. "That man is going to learn why you shouldn't mess with Hogwarts, especially on Halloween. Isn't that right, everyone?"

---

Cerys hadn't wanted it to turn out like this. But really, who would expect a Death Eater to show up and half-kill Professor Clairborne during a haunted corridors contest? Certainly not her. At least Clairborne wasn't dead. Snape and Black had distracted his attacker before the brute could finish the job. The poor man had dragged himself, bleeding, to an empty classroom, where she had found him not two minutes after getting the alert from her minions.

Everything had been going fairly well up until that point, too. She'd gotten Evans to infiltrate the prefect guide meeting, Snape to spell the waiting area and make the guides nervous, and gone about herself taking over the displays set up along the corridors. Davis had been terrifying groups by swooping about harmlessly through the shadows. Evans and MacDonald had taken over several groups to make the basis of the zombie army successfully, whilst Snape took on the older students and gave them something to squeal about. Of course, now she had that mild-mannered boy, Remus Lupin, forming his own army after he figured out that the zombies were weak to fire—common knowledge for anyone decent at Defence—and things had been going beautifully. There were signs of an epic showdown in the works. Then the Death Eater had to go and ruin everything.

Now she found herself tasked with the most frightening thing she'd ever had to do, which was to lure the Death Eater to the place Black said Lupin was waiting. It was dangerous and completely mad, what she was planning, but she thought it was the best way to get the upper hand without sending the student body into a real panic. She just had to get the timing right.

The Death Eater, robbed of his prey, was on the hunt for his two witnesses. Cerys thought he was awfully stupid to still be hanging about after being spotted and hexed. It just went to show that you were only as smart as your dumbest minion. Luckily, she had screened hers for that. Only the cleverest would do for Cerys Carnigan. This one wouldn't stand a chance, provided no one did anything idiotic.

"Eastern passage, Black," she said into her tiny emergency communicator, which was disguised as a pocket bible. "Snape?"

Snape's new silk glove of a voice came purring at her from her bible. Oh, it was luxurious. She was going to figure out what potion he used and make the change permanent if she could. There would be no more of that squawking voice he was born with. "Zombie army all present and accounted for in the Charms classroom," he said. "Tell Black his urchin is asking after him."

Black promptly started cooing. "Tell Maeve Papa's going to be just fine, he's just saving the world from greasy gits is all."

"Stop flirting, you two," Cerys said, making them both splutter. "Status, Potter?"

"Bogey is in sight, making its way past the potions lab," Potter reported, and made staticky noises like a radio.

"Roger, roger, you are cleared for landing," Black said.

"Would you both stop being idiots?" Snape asked. "I know that's asking a bit much considering the sizes of your brains." Cerys shut her bible as the three started to argue. Well, it wasn't precisely arguing. It was Black and Potter taking out their nerves on Snape, who always gave as good as he got. All three boys were incredibly worried for her. Even teenage boys had their moments, for all their immaturity.

She rounded a corner and paused. Just like Snape had said, the stench of blood was rank in the air. A short distance away, barely visible in the shadows, stood a tall figure with a white mask. He was looking out the window as if he thought jumping out of it were an option. She put on Evans's disillusionment charm and crept close as the Death Eater rattled at the window lock.

"Hallo," she said brightly. The Death Eater jumped and whirled to face her, wand at the ready. "Lost, are you?" she asked.

The disillusionment charm meant the man couldn't see her. He waved his wand and stared hard in her direction. She moved sideways, trusting that the spell would keep her from getting killed.

It worked. The Death Eater didn't notice a thing. She took a chance and shot one of Snape's custom-made hexes at him, which would make him almost too dizzy to see straight.

He didn't like that at all. With a roar, he turned and barrelled straight at her like an out-of-control train. She dropped part of the disillusionment and shrieked as she fled. If anyone accused her of being feminine, she would claim she had only done it to draw him toward her. It wasn't as though she was so frightened of him that it had just slipped out. No, that wasn't like her at all. The Death Eater gave chase, shouting, "You wretched brat! I'll show you what it means to hex a servant of the Dark Lord!"

"It feels a bit like being chased by a drunk!" she shouted back. He was weaving from side to side as he ran.

He cursed at her and then tried to curse her. Red jets of light shot past her, never quite hitting her but getting close enough to make her sweat. She rounded several corners in a blur of adrenaline, hoping fervently that she wasn't going to get herself lost. The Death Eater was angry enough that he followed her all the way to the corridor leading to the entrance hall.

Snape was waiting for them. "Protego," he said calmly, blocking one of the errant spells. Cerys made it past him and ran for the entrance hall. She could hear him speaking to the Death Eater. "You, sir, are not welcome here at Hogwarts. Petrificus Totalus!"

The Death Eater said several bad words. Cerys knew it wouldn't be long before he broke free. Snape was likely already long gone by now. That was fine by her. She had only needed a slight delay, after all. Now she just needed to warn Lupin.

---

Remus had been expecting Carnigan to show up for the last fifteen minutes. He'd roughly estimated the time of the final showdown to be about eleven forty-five, since the contest was meant to end at midnight, but for some reason she was bollocksing up all his calculations by waiting to confront him and his zombie hunter army. Acker was whinging again.

"You said she'd be here!" he complained loudly. Pierce, who had been shushing him every time he opened his mouth, set her own mouth into a grim line and said nothing.

Remus didn't quite know what to do. They were all stationed right by the entrance to the Great Hall, witchfire at the ready, and he was beginning to sweat at the idea of twenty Hogwarts students holding him accountable for messing up their fun. Maybe I'm not meant for this sort of thing after all, he thought to himself. I can't do anything right without James and Sirius around. If they were here, they would step up and shout everyone down. Remus wasn't a shouter. He hated drawing attention to himself because the more attention he had, the more likely it was that someone would find out about his only true secret.

I'm such an idiot, he thought. All around him, he could hear people shifting restlessly. Surely Carnigan wouldn't disappoint them all. Would she? It would be just like her to do that.

Before he could really get himself worked up into a haze of self-loathing, something barrelled into him from the side and sent him sliding out into the open. Remus instinctively protected his face before remembering he had a wand and pointing it in the face of his attacker. His attacker, who had somehow ended up sitting on top of him, gave him an innocent look before she grinned madly at him. Remus choked when he realised she only had one eye. He prayed fervently that the empty socket was just a very good illusion rather than an actual injury, because if it was an actual injury, he might panic a bit and start screaming.

"Hallo, Lupin," said Carnigan brightly, leaning over him. Her hair cut out most of the light. "It's you, isn't it? Clever fellow. You know, I like it when boys fight back every now and then. Makes things exciting."

Remus finally noticed that there was a, ahem, person of the feminine persuasion sitting on his decidedly male persuasion and, well, there was some action going on down there. He decided he was going to just die of embarrassment to save himself the weeks of torture afterward when Carnigan finally noticed. "You know," she said, "I didn't expect a final showdown at all when I started this, but now I'm quite pleased by the idea." She sat up and glanced around. Remus's little army was still in their places, frozen in anticipation. To them, Carnigan said, "I'm going to hide you lot so that when the evil overlord finds us, you can really surprise him. But I'm going to have to ask you to use stupefy instead of witchfire, okay? Don't worry, it's perfectly safe."

"Why should we listen to you, zombie?" Acker's voice demanded.

Carnigan swatted Remus's wand aside and said, "Because I've decided to rebel against my evil overlord, obviously. Lupin is much cuter."

Remus stared at the ceiling. "In five seconds, I am going to melt into the floor and never be heard from again," he said. "I swear."

"My poor duck," Carnigan said. "And miss the experience of a lifetime? Don't let the embarrassment kill you before I'm done with you, silly boy." She flicked her fingers at Remus's army and they vanished under a cloak of darkness. When Remus blinked, she was gone as well. He scrambled up and pretended to brush his front off, hoping to hide certain biological functions in his anatomy until said functions went away.

It was then that he heard the very quiet tap-tap-tap of someone walking in his direction. The heat in his face fled and was replaced by a clammy chill. Remus did not really look forward to tangling with Severus Snape by himself. He flattened himself against a wall, wand at the ready, and tried not to have a fit. Snape always leads with his left hand and some sort of immobilization spell, he told himself. After that, he follows up with at least three or four curses aimed at random opponents. Sometimes he switched it up and did a mix of those two combinations, or he would spend the entire time dodging and try to trick Peter into hitting one of the others. Well, there was only Remus Lupin here now, and Remus Lupin was not sure he could last very long with Snape giving him all of his attention.

The footsteps sped up as their owner spotted Remus alone in front of the doors to the Great Hall. Remus waited, his mouth dry, as his opponent eased into the light and he finally saw something that was going to haunt him for days afterwards.

The black cloak was not in tatters. The heavy, expensive fabric swirled around the figure's legs as he strode forward. A white mask with black holes for eyes hovered where the face was supposed to be. Good dragonhide boots thumped on the stone floor with an ominous rhythm that told Remus he was about to die, and not in a Snape-y kind of way at all. Snape would have snuck up on Remus. This man was simply walking to Remus and was going to kill him in a very matter-of-fact way.

Oh, sorry. Didn't see you there, old chap. Here's the wrong end of my wand.

Remus sucked in a deep breath and threw himself to the side just as the Death Eater flicked out his wand and casually threw an emerald green spell in Remus's direction. Remus could have sworn he heard the spell screaming—actually screaming with a human voice—as it hurtled past his ear.

Don't drop my wand, don't drop my wand, don't drop my wand, he chanted in his head as he brought his suddenly flimsy-feeling stick to bear. It felt like the piece of wood was about to slip from his sweaty fingers if he didn't hold onto it very hard. "Go!" he shouted. "Stupefy!"

The others had been Petrified by what had come out of the hallway too, but somehow all of them moved just as Remus had told them to do. The foyer burst into an incredible show of whirling spells of all the colours of the rainbow and even some colours that weren't in the rainbow as twenty students plus a few sent spells of all sorts at the Death Eater. Remus reckoned only half of the students had stuck with Stupefy as Carnigan requested. The others used witchfire, curses, jinxes, and even a few illusions of snarling animals. The Death Eater didn't have a chance. He dropped like a stone and didn't move after the light show was over.

Remus's heart was trying to pound itself out of his chest, he was certain. Carnigan he thought he could stand, and maybe a Death Eater trying to kill him, but both at once was totally fatal.

The other students burst out from under Carnigan's cover spell and began dancing around the Death Eater, cheering. "Take that, evil overlord!" many were shouting.

Remus couldn't believe it. Hadn't anyone else noticed? The white mask and the cloak and the green spell should have been tip-offs! Why wasn't anyone screaming and running away? Why wasn't Remus screaming and running away?

There was a whisper of fabric sliding to a halt by his elbow. He looked up and gasped as the real vampire overlord loomed over him. But here were the pale bony hands drawing the hood back to reveal the Headmaster's smiling face.

"Excellent job, my boy," Headmaster Dumbledore said kindly, offering a hand to help Remus up. "Now why don't we open these doors and tuck in to the victory feast."

Remus, only just now noticing how tired he was, allowed the Headmaster to take him to the doors of the Great Hall. The Headmaster threw open the doors and allowed bright golden light and the sounds of laughter to fall upon the victors. Everyone in the Great Hall broke into applause as Remus's army ran in waving their arms excitedly. Remus lingered and gave the fallen Death Eater a worried look.

The Headmaster squeezed his shoulder. "Everything will be taken care of," the Headmaster said. "You may eat well and sleep soundly tonight, Mr Lupin. Hurry now. They'll be handing out prizes shortly."

Remus found himself joining the throng of Gryffindors headed to their table. James and Peter were waving furiously at him from the far end, so he hurried to grab a seat by James and nearly shrieked at James's zombie look before James told him it was just Carnigan's spell. Peter, his cheeks painted to look gaunt, had his mouth full of sweets to the point of looking like a greedy chipmunk.

Sirius joined them shortly after looking very pleased with himself. "Before you ask, I was the one picking off members of your little army, Lupin," he informed Remus. "I was the high priest, you know."

"Oh, great," said Remus, grinning despite himself. "I'll have to take revenge for that, Black."

"But Remus got the evil overlord in the end," James observed.

Sirius grinned. "Yeah, he did. Long live Lupin!"

Remus's leg started jigging nervously under the table for some reason. He shoved one foot behind the other to stop it and tried not to think about anything other than his pumpkin juice.

"Hey Lupin!" Acker shouted in Remus's ear, making him jump.

"Gah!" Remus whirled to be confronted by his group of fifth years. "What? What now?"

Clemency raised his cup at Remus. "We have triumphed and everyone can sleep well tonight," he said. "And let me tell you, I will never look at that Carnigan girl the same way in the halls ever again."

"Or Snape," Pierce said.

"Or you," Acker added. "You know, I always pinned you for a boring old fuddy-duddy, but actually you're kind of brilliant."

Remus flushed. Sirius took offence and banged his fist on the table. "Kind of? Kind of? What kind of rubbish is that? Remus Lupin isn't kind of anything! He's utterly brilliant and you know it."

"Shut it, Black," said a voice most dreaded and horrible. It was Carnigan, thankfully now in possession of two eyes. "So, Lupin," she said, grinning. "You aren't free next Hogsmeade's weekend, are you?"

Behind her, Sirius was shaking his head furiously. "Er, no," said Remus. Oh, bugger. Now Sirius doing the throat-slashing motions. "I mean yes!" Oh, heavens, what did that look mean? "I mean I'm going with Sirius," he said, just to be safe. Okay, that was definitely the wrong thing to say if Sirius was scooting away from him.

"Too bad," said Carnigan. "You're coming with me anyway. Black can sod off."

"Don't hurt me," Remus said pathetically.

"Wouldn't dream of it. Hallo, Davis." She turned to speak to what was clearly evil overlord #2, a kind-looking Hufflepuff boy who had a little Ravenclaw first year hanging off one arm.

"Professor Sprout just gave me detention for breaking the rules," he said. Remus glanced over his shoulder and spotted Professor Flitwick scurrying between the tables towards Carnigan.

"Wonderful. We did a good job, then," she said. "Professor Flitwick, have you come to give me my prize?"

"Miss Carnigan! An excellent display worthy of an award!" Professor Flitwick squeaked. He seemed awfully thrilled for a person about to give what had to be the most creative mind in the entire student body a detention, in Remus's opinion. "A month straight, my office at 7pm sharp every weekday," he added. "But still, very good job. My!" He bounced off, humming to himself. At the Slytherin table, Remus could hear Severus Snape shouting energetically in his new deep voice at Professor Slughorn for the detention.

"I've got to study!" he was bawling. "What the bloody hell is wrong with all of you old codgers?"

Everyone pretended not to hear that last bit. Slughorn was trying to be very soothing, but it wasn't working because Snape looked about able to jinx with just his glare alone. Professor McGonagall was speaking to Lily Evans and Mary McDonald. Both girls looked annoyed.

"Wow," said James, staring at Lily. "That's just not fair! Their set-up was brilliant."

"That's what happens when you circumvent the rules so spectacularly," said Sirius. "Besides, it's not like they weren't expecting it."

Remus found himself being shoved aside so that Carnigan could take a seat by him. A gold plate appeared in front of her and she began helping herself to all the sweets within reach. "I'm banking on the prize being worth the detention," she said. "If the Headmaster disqualifies us, I'll really be angry."

Remus shuddered. He didn't want to be near an angry Carnigan. After what he'd seen tonight, he had no doubt she would probably win in a duel against Grindelwald himself just through sheer deviousness.

Sirius edged away from Carnigan. "I wouldn't be surprised if he did! You took over half the castle and turned most of the student body into your undead minions." He immediately shut up when Carnigan turned and pinned him with an unpleasant glare.

"Do-gooder," she said. "Now shut up, Dumbledore is about to announce the prizes."

The student body stopped talking excitedly and turned to look at the old man in vampire overlord robes as he reared up behind the table. "Ladies and gentlemen, living and undead, I hope you all had a wonderful time, and if not, that you at least had an interesting time. First prize consists of top box tickets for the World Cup next summer, discounts at the Hogsmeade shop of choice, and fifty points for each member of the group."

Carnigan was so excited by this that she grabbed Remus by the shoulders and shook him a bit. He wondered how badly she might hurt him if he tried to switch seats with someone to get away. "Fifty points each!" she whispered.

"I thought discounts at the chocolate shop would be more your speed, Carnigan," said Sirius, proving he had no desire to live through to the end of the year.

"Shut your bunghole," she growled. "What do you know, Black?"

"Didn't you say you lost fifty points the other week?" Davis asked. "You know, for punching someone."

"Surprise, surprise," Sirius muttered.

"I need to get those back," she said. "Redeem myself, you know. That way I can't be said to be totally infamous."

Remus thought she sounded rather sad about that, which was difficult to swallow considering it was Carnigan expressing that emotion. It hadn't occurred to him that she had feelings. She was just Carnigan.

"Too late," said Sirius.

"I suppose you wouldn't understand, Sirius Black," she said. "You want to be like you are."

Dumbledore had gone on to describe second and third place prizes while their short conversation had taken place. Now he cleared his throat. "It would be remiss of me to not mention that one group did indeed break the rules of the contest, and quite spectacularly at that. It would also be remiss of me to fail to note that in doing so, they brought together the participants in a truly magnificent way and for a moment allowed us to feel as though we were part of something greater than a simple Halloween contest. We have weighed the rule-breaking with the result and have given out an equally weighted judgment. Therefore, it is my pleasure to announce that first prize goes to the House of Carnigan, consisting of Cerys Carnigan, Severus Snape, Lily Evans, Mary MacDonald, and Callum Davis."

Carnigan laughed while Davis whooped. Across the hall, Snape shouted, "And detention! Detention!"

"He won't let that go for a while," Remus observed.

"He knew it was going to happen," said Carnigan happily. "He just likes grumbling. If he gets too annoying I'll deal with him."

"Oi, I thought you were trying to redeem yourself here," said Sirius. "How's punching ol' Snivellus going to help? Not that he doesn't deserve it, of course."

"You really are just a pest, Sirius Black," said the first year hanging off Davis's arm. "Snape is a perfectly nice boy. He'd be nicer if you didn't bully him so."

This was completely shocking to hear from a first year. Sirius clearly didn't know what to say. Remus didn't, either. It may have been because he sort of agreed with her. Carnigan cackled and said, "From the mouths of babes!"

Dumbledore began speaking again. "Second and third prizes were rather difficult to decide, as the first prize winners broke up the groups; however, we have managed to suss out the individuals plucky enough to deserve recognition for their actions this evening. Second prize goes to Mr Remus Lupin, for organizing the student body and fighting back, culminating in a gripping showdown just outside the doors of this very hall."

"What?" said Remus as the table erupted into cheers around him. At least three people decided to kiss him on the cheek, and only one of them was a girl. He wiped spit off his cheek and continued to be puzzled. "But I'm not a group."

"Just take it!" Sirius shouted, slapping him hard on the back and almost knocking him into his pile of sweets.

Dumbledore waited until the Gryffindor table shut up before reminding everyone of the prize. "Mr Lupin will receive a month's supply of chocolate from Honeydukes and thirty points to his house."

Remus found himself remarkably pleased. That was all right as far as he was concerned. "I do like chocolate," he said.

"Third place goes to Sirius Black and Melinda Maeve for being the most terrible and contagious zombies this school has ever seen," Dumbledore said. "They'll each receive twenty points and extra credit points in the class of their choice." He twinkled at them mysteriously.

"We won something!" cried Maeve, excited. "Carnigan, we won something!"

"You certainly have," Carnigan agreed. "You did good, lass. And I suppose Black didn't ruin things as much as he usually does."

"Oi," said Sirius, though he was grinning anyway.

"Don't oi me," she said, drawing her wand. Everyone shrank back, well aware of what she could do with it after the night's activities. She found their reactions funny. "Don't look so worried," she said, and raised it aloft. "Finite Incantatem!"

With a series of pops, her zombie spell vanished. Remus found himself looking at James's make-up job and wondering if a three year old had applied a majority of it.

"Now that was a great bit of spell work," said James, rather admiringly.

"Lily and Sev helped on that one," said Carnigan. "Can't get through life alone now, can we? We need our friends." She got up from the table at last and grinned her mad grin at the latest victim of her affections. "See you later, Lupin," she said, and left.

Sirius slapped Remus on the shoulder as soon as she was out of hearing range. "Chin up, old boy," he said. "What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. Word of advice, though: You may want to wear body armor. And don't make any sudden movements near her or she'll attack. It's her predatory instinct to go after the weak."

Remus groaned. He may have been doomed in romance, but at least he had a month's worth of chocolate to console him. He couldn't help but wonder, though, what was in store for the rest of the year. With You-Know-Who's servants getting bolder and bolder, there was no telling what would happen.

He took a quick look around the table at his friends and relaxed just a bit.

No point in worrying about all of that, he told himself, and went to grab the last bonbon before Peter could eat it.