Ghoulish Guests and October Fun
"Every scarecrow has a secret ambition to terrorise." - anon.
Happy Samhaine/Halloween/All Hallows Eve! Have a frightfully bewitching night ;-)- Ebony
It was the sound that had woken her.
Innocuous, subtle, but somehow even in slumber it had penetrated her mind with such a profound sense of wrong and bad that she startled awake as though a gunshot had gone off.
Something wasn't right. Not at all. But what?
Hermione bit her lip thoughtfully as she glanced around, trying to remember the date. Ah, maybe that was what was wrong? It was Halloween. All Hallows Eve. Samhaine. As Harry 'delightfully' pointed out whenever the topic was up for discussion, October 31st never brought anything good beyond the sweets that inevitably littered the House tables in the Great Hall. She wished she didn't share her friend's pessimism for the date, but he had been proven invariably correct.
For them, at least, Halloween was apparently cursed.
The sound rang again, rousing her drowsy thoughts back to full gear. Right, the sound. That was what had woken her. Not the date, though that could certainly account for at least a part of the twisted knot in her stomach. Struggling by now to keep her eyes open, she pondered what about it was so amiss.
When it sounded again, she realised with a sick jolt.
It was a bell.
A tiny, fairy-light, tinkling chime of a bell.
Deep in her mind, a memory stirred, and Hermione struggled to keep it from diving back into the depths.
Something really not right about this.
But Hermione soon realised that the bell, while the thing that had woken her, was not the only thing that was wrong.
'Dust?' she thought, trailing her fingers along her quilt. Now that she was looking, she could see a fine layer of the dust on each bed in the dorm, glittering silvery in the moonlight.
Moonlight?
A quick tempus revealed the time; 4:17am.
No, not dust, she observed as she again ran her fingers against the substance. Sand. Very fine, powdery sand. That was silver-coloured. And glittered.
'So not normal.'
Why was it familiar though? The million-galleon question. Something to do with her childhood.
Growing up, Hermione had loved books. That was no secret. Practically everyone in Gryffindor knew. What only one other person knew was that it was because to Hermione Jean Granger, books had been her friends. Her only friends. Until Hogwarts. Likewise, she was the only one who knew what Harry was capable of. She didn't push him, because eleven years had made it a habit to hide his true abilities and she knew, with the wise outlook of one who had matured long before her peers and perhaps before her time, that it would be a long time before the habit was broken.
Perhaps it was just as well; Ronald could be . . . fickle, maybe? Heart of gold, that one, but still . . .
'Harry.' The thought returned suddenly and urgently, and Hermione shook her head vigorously. Silver sparkles rained down onto the bed, and she shook her hair even harder. Until the sparkles stopped. Suddenly she felt so much more awake.
That niggle made itself known again.
'Harry.' Her mind repeated insistently, and she got out of bed, found her slippers, and padded past the sleeping girls she shared the dorm with.
The truth was that the staircases didn't allow either boys or girls to visit their counterparts' dorms. But the difference between Gryffindor's boys and girls, as was so often the case, was that the girls had worked out the loophole. It was really quite simple. Ask Hogwarts. The castle was sentient, after all, and if she - it was definitely a she vibe the castle gave off - deemed it appropriate, Hogwarts would let them up. Perhaps understandably, Parvati and Lavender and Romilda never got any further then the first step. Hermione was different.
Entering the boys' seventh (technically eighth, like her own) year dorm proved her lingering suspicions true; a fine coating of silvery powder dusted each bed. Harry was sitting up, half-asleep in that adorable way of his and blinking heavily at his blanket with unseeing eyes.
'The dust.' She realised with sudden clarity. Hastily she rushed over, almost tripping over the contents of Ronald's trunk scattered on the floor, and clambered onto the bed at Harry's side, frantically batting at his hair. "Get it off, get it off!" the high-pitched whisper galvanised the boy-wonder into action.
Once it was all gone, bright green eyes were far more alert and wary. "'Mione?" his voice was raspy with sleep.
"It's the dust." She didn't know why she whispered, just that it was a good idea. The sense of wrong and bad increased.
Nodding once to show he understood, Harry scooted further down the bed and swung his legs out of the muddle of sheets and blankets. Then he looked back at Hermione. "Did you hear it too?"
Wordlessly, she nodded.
He frowned. "I can't think where . . ."
Hermione shook her head. "Me neither." Ronald didn't know about this aspect of the bond between them; Harry and Hermione were so much like siblings that it had become something like the bond Fred and George shared . . . had shared. A twinge of sadness pulled at her thinking about Fred, and how his twin must be in so much pain even now.
Only Hermione knew Harry held a fondness for books, though he rarely read non-fiction, preferring long fantasies and heroic adventures. Fairytales had enchanted him as a child, allowed him to escape his cousin, because of course Dudley would never even be seen dead in the library either at school or in public, let alone living.
Fairy tales . . .
Fairy. Bell. Dust. The synapse fired.
"Oh no." She moaned under her breath. As if to punctuate the unfinished thought, the bell-chime echoed tauntingly, now further down the tower. "Harry, it's a -"
"Scarecrow." He finished soberly, green eyes locked on the door. It was clear he had reached the same grim conclusion.
The Scarecrow. The main culprit behind the faerie kidnappings of children. A tall, spindly, ragged Fae creature, toting a little silver bell and a patched pouch filled with fine silver sand. Folklore stated that they were Sandmen turned dark, or else the sand was stolen from Sandmen by the Fae for the express purpose of kidnapping children and leaving changelings in their places. The bell encouraged sleep with its hypnotic chime, the sand ensured it with its seductive power.
They were dangerous, not because they were deadly (though if they kept a person under their spell for long enough then that person would, eventually, die in the enchanted sleep), but because it was so difficult to resist them. And once they acquired a target, they were frighteningly persistent in their attempts.
Remus had once told them, when they had asked, that it was speculated that they did in fact exist, but the creatures themselves had so rarely been seen that like many Fae they were thought a mere myth.
Mere myths did not spread sleeping sand over the Lions' Den and ring bells merrily around Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
When Hermione tuned back in to her physical surroundings, Harry was sending off a patronus; the stag looked at them both in visible concern before leaping through a wall. "What are we going to do?" She asked. "Everyone's asleep!"
"Maybe not." Harry chewed his lip, eyes glittering with a shrewd light.
Hermione also knew how close she had come to having a Slytherin for a friend and a brother.
"It sounds like it's still in the tower." Harry continued, now watching her. "Maybe it's not got to the rest of the castle yet."
She paused. "Then who did you send that to? And who is it after?"
Harry shrugged at the second question, answering the first. "Malfoy." They both knew, through Neville, that wizarding-raised children were brought up on such stories as the true Fae. If Malfoy was awake then maybe he might know . . . "Think, 'Mione. Your memory's better than mine. What harms a Scarecrow?"
The muggleborn witch thought carefully back. "They're Fae, so cold iron hurts them." She answered slowly, the memories surfacing sluggishly. "And . . . magical fire." She added, much firmer. Harry had, by now, retrieved the Marauders' Map. Green eyes flickered feverishly across the parchment until they came to a horrified stop. "There." His finger landed on a spot just down the corridor from the entrance to Gryffindor Tower; the miniature inked scroll was blank, but floated along above a trail of what looked like sparkles rather than footprints. And behind it . . .
"She's a first year!" Hermione breathed, appalled. The little girl's name and footprints followed docilely along after the disturbingly blank scroll. Fae magic at work to conceal and not quite managing it, maybe? A distant part of her wondered if she could tweak the map's magic to cover this. "The professors?"
He shrugged. "I don't know." He replied, in time for a silvery-blue-white wolf to come bounding through the wall that Prongs had used.
Potter, you had better be telling the bloody truth. It hissed in Draco Malfoy's irritated tones. Do you know what time it is? Never mind. The wolf shrugged. We're gonna try and get to Sev's office. Let us know your plans?
The wolf faded after giving them a haughty expression that did a poor job at concealing worry. That was the problem with patroni; they were sentient too. They held that much of their creator through the memories that formed them that they took on a personality of their own, usually from the hidden aspects of the caster. You couldn't hide much with a patronus; they tended to give you away.
But Hermione was very glad the tentative truce between the Snakes and the Lions seemed to be holding up when it counted. "A wolf?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.
Shrugging, Harry pulled on his own slippers. "I'm not asking, but I thought it would have been a snake too."
Watching Harry pull his invisibility cloak from beneath his pillow - she would never call him paranoid again - Hermione thought she really shouldn't be all that surprised. Harry had, after all, saved Malfoy a few times, as Malfoy had saved him in turn. And Harry had been like a cub to Remus and Sirius both, and Malfoy had heard them both refer to him as such during the war, so maybe . . . it really wasn't such a shock.
"Did you try waking any of the girls?" Harry asked her, expression taking on a calculating edge. This was where he differed to her; Hermione was book-smart, and her memory nearly flawless, but Harry could read people much better. Not to say that he wasn't smart. He was. Could be. When he wanted to be.
She nodded, shook her head, nodded again. "Wouldn't wake." She had given them all a quick shake as she had passed their beds. They hadn't even stirred.
Harry cast a speculative glance around the room. "Ron's probably a lost cause." He decided at last. "That boy could sleep through a cannon blast." He bit his lip. "Nev and Seamus are the lighter sleepers after me."
Seamus, as it turned out, was blinking blearily at his bed canopy by the time they made it over there. Nev was as paranoid as Harry from the war, and a multitude of spells around his bed had kept him half-awake as well. Seamus, it turned out, would be extremely grateful to the superstitious aunt on his mother's side that had provided him with the charm to protect against Fae influence; maybe she wasn't quite as addle-brained as Seamus had always thought. Dean and Ron were, as suspected, a lost cause; the former was kissing his pillow, and the latter mumbling about pork chops.
The rest of the Gryffindor dorms were in much the same state.
Hermione sent her otter patronus to Professor McGonagall, while Neville shot off his own and made it head straight for Ravenclaw with orders to check on Luna. In the meantime, the four of them wracked their brains to recall every passageway they had ever discovered to get towards the dungeons. Luna ended up meeting them halfway.
The bell's tinkling chime accompanied them the whole way.
The Snakes met up with them at the entrance to the dungeons. "Pretty much the entire dorm is warded against things like this." Zabini shrugged nonchalantly when the Lions gaped at the group of five. "We're just the only ones who came." Pansy and Millicent nodded.
The jingle of a little bell echoed from the entrance hall.
"If it gets the first year to the forest you might as well wave goodbye." Theo Nott warned brusquely as the teens hurried as quietly as they could. The Headmistress's cat patronus slunk into view. Myself, Pomona, Filius and Hagrid are aware. Hagrid is heading off the forest. We three are making our way to you. Do not do anything too foolhardy. It cleaned its paw as it evaporated into thin air.
"Magical fire, right?" Pansy double-checked as they approached the clearly open front doors. She received a round of nods. "Well, since the firstie is a Gryff it only makes sense you guys get the first hit."
"Is this really the time to debate this?" Blaise muttered as they ran out onto the lawn.
Hermione didn't wait for an answer, her wand flashing even as she shouted "Lacarnum Inflamaré!"
Flames ignited just in front of the gangly form, catching on ragged clothing and causing the creature to give off an inhuman shriek as it batted frantically at smouldering cloth.
"Impressive Granger." Theo noted with a grin as Draco shot off a patronus to distract the Scarecrow and let them catch up. Theodore concentrated hard on a nearby rock that became a nasty-looking eagle owl and sent it ahead to help out.
"Accio tintinnabulum argenteum!" Came from Harry as Draco shot off a non-verbal fire spell of his own.
"Very impressive, Potter." Millicent praised just as a suit of armour came clanking passed. Something small and silver zoomed the other way, followed by an indignant screech and a terrified scream.
"Kid's awake." Grunted Neville, focused on limiting the spread of flames across the ground.
"Got it." Blaise and Seamus announced as one, already moving off to intercept the livid Fae being and retrieve the young first year.
It was going to be a long day.
o.O.o
Thank Merlin for the weekend!
Hermione, Harry, Neville and Seamus collapsed wearily onto the sofa in the common room. Seamus and Harry were a bit charred owing to the fact that the Scarecrow had charged directly at them. Blaise had taken a more direct hit, resulting in a brief visit to the hospital wing for burn salve with Pansy, who had broken her wrist when a backswing of the Scarecrow's arm had thrown her into a tree. Millicent was a bit scuffed up from playing keep-away with Draco and the bell - the whole reason Harry had been charged in the first place - and both McGonagall and Neville had both taken hits from the Whomping Willow - Neville more so as he had thrown their aging Headmistress out of the way. Theo and Professors Flitwick and Sprout had eventually settled for shielding the girl, who had been so paralysed with terror - and faerie magic - that they hadn't been able to get her to budge one inch. Luna was the only one relatively unscathed, as she had managed to avoid the Scarecrow's attentions.
Their only clue that they had fallen asleep was that one minute it was still dark, they blinked, and then it was light and Ron Weasley was standing over them with raised eyebrows and confusion on his face.
"Did I miss something?" He asked, puzzled. "Why didn't you wake me?"
The Gryffindor common room was treated to a collective groan in response.
"I hate Halloween." Harry muttered darkly, rolling over and tucking himself back into a little ball between Neville and Hermione to go back to sleep.
Long day indeed.
Author Notes: Tintinnabulum argenteum - silver bell.