AN: I've gone through and edited this story and I'll be gradually posting the changed chapters. Originally, I intended on making large changes, but discovered I didn't want to once I began reading it, so the changes are just for clarity and smoothness.

Chapter 1-The Ghost Story

Albus set down The Quibbler into his lap and quirked an eyebrow. "You want to do what?"

"Start a school newspaper," Leo repeated.

Albus rubbed his head. "Forgive me. I did hear you the first time. I really meant why."

"You know I want to be a reporter! This would be the perfect chance to get a kick-start."

Albus looked across the compartment at his peculiar friend. Not that he didn't love Leo…but the chap was a bit overly enthusiastic about some things. "Listen, Leo, it's a smashing idea, but our school doesn't have any…well, news, if I'm being completely honest. Not like the real wizarding world anyway."

Leo waved a hand away as the train shuddered beneath them. "It can just have one or two stories, and then the rest will be filled with things like cartoons, new spells, potions, ads, that sort of thing. I know loads we could stuff it with. Besides, it doesn't have to be long. It can be short and cheap. "Perfect for broke wizards with short attention spans."

Albus rolled his eyes, but couldn't help smiling. Leo was a character. He was the most sociable and agreeable guy he'd ever met. If he wanted to, Albus didn't doubt the boy could talk circles around him leaving him dizzy on the ground. But he didn't. Albus always left their conversations feeling happier somehow. There was just something magnetic about Leo he couldn't explain. "Mate, where would you get the paper? And who'd give you the clearance? Who would help yo—Oh, no."

"Oh, yes."

"You are not involving me in this."

"Oh, is the son of Harry Potter afraid of a tiny little newspaper?"

"I'm more afraid of a bit fat zero on my OWLS, so you can forget about it. You're a sixth year; you don't have to worry about your NEWTS until next year. Just find someone else."

"But you're a great writer, Al. I've seen it. You describe things with such passion!"

Albus knit his brow. "And where would you find that out? Taken to reading my essays before I hand them in?"

"More like your journal, Mate."

"You WHAT?!"

"I'm kidding," he chuckled. "I read the letters you write over your shoulder sometimes. They're pretty funny."

"How—You do?" He hadn't talked to Leo all summer and here he was suddenly revealing he was much more interested in Albus than he'd ever thought. Was he this way with all of his friends? They certainly weren't best friends. He didn't see Leo much, them being in different classes. Leo wasn't even on the Gryffindor Quidditch team even though Albus thought he'd make a great Keeper. Still, it'd be a shame to lose Leo as the announcer. No one could put a spin on the game quite like he did.

Leo nodded. "And you're a better writer than any of my other friends."

"You tried asking Heather? She followed you around most of last year."

"Yeah, but I was hip to her, trying to make her old boyfriend jealous."

"Really? Figures."

Leo stared out the window, glowering. "I hate girls. They're so stupid."

Albus raised his eyebrows at him, but this time more surprised than critical. Many girls were overly-friendly to him, but he always spurned their advances. He was never rude about it, though, which was what confused Albus. He'd never been around Leo long enough to notice before, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized, Leo didn't have any female friends. Not a one.

Albus cleared his throat. "You think you may be stereotyping there, Mate?"

"I suppose."

"Besides, you may not want to say that with a girl in the compartment with us, eh?"

Leo jumped upon seeing an apparition, sidled tightly at the window, carving itself out of the shadows. She was silent and still as the moment just before waking from a dream. She had eyes as cold as the great North. "Merlin, I didn't even notice you!" he shouted.

She looked over and smiled lightly. "That was my intention. Excuse me." She rose and left without a word as Leo stared after.

"So, I hear Mary's a good writer," Albus continued.

"What?"

"Mary. For your newspaper."

"Oh! Right."

"You may want to talk to her, but if you hate girls, it may not be the best idea."

"That girl who just walked out," he said, not paying attention. "Who is she?"

"Uh? What girl?"

Leo raised his eyebrows, leaning in on his elbows. "What girl? The one who walked out a second ago!"

"Ummm…" Albus had a faint recollection of another presence, but it faded like darkness at sunrise the more time passed. "I suppose there was someone here, wasn't there? Oh, at the beginning you mean? Yes, there was a girl here, but she left to sit with her friends. That's an odd thing to bring up out of the blue, though."

Leo stared at him incredulously. "Not then, just now! The girl who just walked out a few seconds ago! She had black hair, Hufflepuff insignia; looked like a third year."

Albus raised his eyebrows and nearly smiled. Leo was playing with him. Oh, this was so like him. It was odd; Leo wasn't usually this good of an actor. "Very funny, mate. Oh, yeah, that ghost girl who just came through. I saw her. Hilarious."

"No! You really don't remember?"

Albus stared blankly.

"Ugh. Alright, you know what? Let me go get her. She can't have gone far and you're acting bizarre." He opened the doors and looked both ways at an empty aisle. He closed it and sat down, perplexed.

"Trouble?"

"She's gone. Did she go into a compartment next door?"

"You're freaking me out, mate. You know there was no girl?"

"Yes, there was!"

"Okay, okay," Albus conceded, holding up his hands in defeat. "Whatever you say." Leo worried him more than a little sometimes. "I'm going to see where the food cart is; I'm starved. You want anything?"

"Nah," he said, dropping back into his seat.

Albus shrugged and left, with the full intention of finding a certain group of handsome-looking girls to annoy. He would've invited Leo as it was always more fun with two people, but the bloke was never really into that sort of thing. He didn't seem to like irritating people. He was eager, compliant, handsome. Something was off about him, though, that Albus had never seen before. Those words echoed in his mind. I hate girls. They're so stupid. They sounded sincerely harsh like he'd wanted to smack Heather with a board while he said it. He tried to shake it off.

Albus stopped and smiled upon hearing high-pitched screams through the compartment door. Yep. Definitely them. He shoved the door open to an assortment of colorful females who dished out venom about as well as a boy with a broken arm dished out ice cream. But if Albus really wanted to get chewed up and spat back out in a mess on the ground of the aisle, he'd go bother the Slytherin girls. These ones were harmless.

"Hello, ladies," he greeted. "Need some company?"

"None from you, Albus Potter!" Pat spat. "Crawl back into the hole you came out of and leave us alone!"

"Awww. Never have I heard such passionate words from you, Patty-Cake. Does someone have a crush?"

"WHAT?! No! And don't call me Patty-Cake!"

"Then what do you suggest I call you? Little ball of sunshine? Cassy-Cake?" He raised his eyebrows. "Lover?"

Pat's face swelled red. "No, you may call me by my name: Patricia Cassiopeia McLaggen!"

"Fine, then. I rather like it, you know, Patricia Cassiopeia McLaggen. Has a sort-of crisp, syllabic feel to it. My I call you PCM for—"

"NO!"

He held his hands up in mock defeat and took a seat next to an odd girl already clothed in her black robes with her nose near the window. "So, what is it you lot are doing in here?" he asked.

Patricia Cassiopeia McLaggen seethed as she sat stiffly beside Albus's cousin, Rose. "We were just telling ghost stories."

"Ghost stories? Stories the ghosts at Hogwarts have told you? Liars. Every last one of them. Don't believe a word they say. Especially Peeves. Bloke convinced me there was a magical toilet first year."

"Not like that," Rose told him, shaking her head. "They're a muggle tradition. Just scary tales you make up on the spot or urban legends and the like."

"Yeah," Patricia Cassiopeia McLaggen sneered. "Really not your kind of thing."

"Oh, on the contrary," he responded, leaning forward on his elbows to further torment the girl. I quite like something that gets the heart racing."

He flashed a glance at Mary and her cheeks burned red, but Patricia didn't fall into that sort of bait. "Great," she said. She stared straight back at him, leaning forward herself in challenge. "So, why not try cliff jumping?"

He turned his attention to easier bait, the girl with long, blonde hair beside her. "I'll bet you tell the best ones, Mary. I hear you're a great writer."

She beamed. "Well, I am pretty good."

"He doesn't actually want to hear your stupid ghost stories, Mary."

"What? No, really, I do. Don't put your hate for Mary's stories on me, Patricia Cassiopeia McLaggen. Honestly. You should really learn to support your friends."

She fumed.

"I know a myth about the school." The group looked around until their eyes landed on a girl next to him, black against darkness of the night outside the window. The only color on her was the Hufflepuff insignia trying to fight its way past the shadows she merged with and embraced. The only way Albus for sure knew she was there was that shallow voice and the whites of her eyes, shrinking and lengthening as the shadow's eyes twitched and moved.

"A myth about the school?" Rose asked, studying the floor. "Do you know one, Mary?" she asked, looking at her friend.

Mary shook her head. "No, it's that girl…I think. Was it you, Rose?"

Rose shook her head. "That sounds…I don't know."

Albus's eyes tried looking at her, but her image was fuzzy and dark as if he were looking at her through a pair of binoculars and just couldn't focus them. The more he tried, then, the more he lost interest in the image he was searching for. Who was it? What was it? Did it really matter? Who cared? Look at that interesting design on the fabric of the seats here. He'd never noticed it before.

Then, that voice came along again. "It's deep in the labyrinth of the dungeons, you'll find it. My mother told me about it when I was young. If you go far enough, along the right path, you'll come to it, but you can't look for it. That's the trouble. It has a charm thousands of years old that forbids adventurers from touching it."

"What is it?" Rose asked.

"A pond."

"A pond?"

"Legend says if you intentionally try to find its waters, the charm makes your mind drift and float away. You forget what you were looking for and leave. Anyone with the intention of entering the pond will never do so. The people who put the charm there knew it could never be touched because the pond gives you special…abilities."

"Abilities?" Mary asked quirking an eyebrow. "Rose, I know you've never told a ghost story and you don't come from a Muggle family like I do, but you can do better than this."

"It's not me telling it," Rose objected.

"Oh! Right."

"The water is made of pure light and drowns the senses in chaos," the voice continued, starting to echo off of nothing at all. "It burns and tickles and tears at your skin like fabric while sewing it back together into its own design. You want to laugh and cry and scream and sing as your insides are churned and reconstructed. But when you come out…When you come out, you feel new, like a piece of metal that's been melted down and merged with another to form an alloy. A whole new self. They say that's where the first animagus and werewolves were created. From there, they spread through genes and bites until the first died out and the mystery of the pond vanished. Those who enter it do it by accident, walking upset in the dungeons until they're lost in the darkness. They don't think about the pond. They have no idea it exists. Only knowing of it can keep you safe. Some trick of fate makes them plunge directly into it without knowing what happened. Then, they emerge new people. New beings for eternity. Perhaps they can stay normal for the first month, but soon, their teeth grow into giant tusks and their skin shreds into hair while their brains are blended. Perhaps they can walk away without a care in the world, but one day they go through the nightmare of growing small as a bug or becoming just another dog in a kennel before they turn back to themselves, unable to control it at first. You can walk those dungeons forever looking for it to turn you back, but as long as you remember that pond, you will never find it."

The group was silent.

"AHHHHHH!" The compartment screamed in unison as Leo flickered the light back on so the world once again was bright. Albus didn't remember turning it off.

"Merlin, what is it? Your faces are all white. Why were you just sitting in the dark?"

"I—er—ah—ghost stories," Albus said simply.

"Oh. Really?" Leo asked. "That sounds like fun. Haven't done that since I went camping with my father when I was little with some Muggle chaps from around the neighborhood. Someone told a good one then? You're all wide-eyed."

"Someone told a good one…" Albus said, trying to pull himself back into reality. "Er, well, I guess. I don't know. It wasn't really that good in hindsight, I suppose, no. Just about a magic pond, really."

"Yes," Rose agreed vacantly. "Quite simple, but…"

Mary nodded. "Not sure why I'm so shaken up by it."

"Who told it, then?" he asked. They looked around. No one answered. "Well?"

Albus shrugged. "Wasn't you, Mary?"

"No, wasn't me. Pat? Rose?" They shook their heads.

"Well, it had to have been one of you," Leo said, closing the door behind him and sitting beside Albus. "Wait. Albus, are you trying to get me for before? When I said there was a girl in our compartment? You know I wasn't joking about that. She really was there."

"Er, wasn't there a girl sitting next to you, Al?" Rose asked him.

"Someone," he nodded.

But no one was there.