Disclaimer- Not. Mine. All. JKR's.
Chapter 9- The Halloween Ball & Fireworks
Clever's POV
I couldn't help but be afraid of the costume as I pulled it on. I was blindfolded, so I couldn't see anything at all. All I knew was that I was wearing a very tight costume, some sort of tutu and I was pretty sure that I was wearing both a hat and a mask. Chatty sat me on the bed whilst she got dressed, and then returned to fix my hair.
I complained loudly the whole time.
She turned the dial on the CD player up, blasting out cheerfully over-the-top pop music. Very Muggle. She hummed along, clearly not realising that I was dying of boredom.
I scowled more and more as she brushed my hair. Brushed and brushed and brushed. Because of course, my hair, which I had worn plaited for the past few days, was as frizzy and impossible to brush as could be. "Ow." I cried again, as she pulled the brush free, causing me immense pain. In the end she sprayed it with tons of some sort of spray, until I could feel my now wet hair deflating. Then she brushed it, and put my in tiny rollers and covered my head with a towel.
"Now. Makeup."
"MAKEUP?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME!" Chatty ignored me as she lined me eyes and brushed a strongly smelling powder on my cheeks.
"Stopitstopitstopit." I muttered.
When she eventually finished, pulling the blindfold from my face and pushing me in front of the mirror, I was shocked at what I saw.
I was a cat. Not just any cat, but a black, tutu wearing, proudly-sporting-a-green-tee-shirt cat. My hair wasn't the usual mess I knew; in fact it was curled delicately around my face, and the usual gingery-over-the-top look was gone: my hair sparkled. You could see my blue eyes clearly against my pale skin, while my cheeks were red as usual.
But it didn't look too bad. The gold cat mask sparked. The funny cat headband was a good contrast to my hair, nestled in the ringlets. Somehow Chatty had got a pair of legwarmers on my feet, but thankfully I was still wearing my favourite shoes.
Chatty grinned at my shocked expression. "See." She smirked. "I am good at designing costumes." I laughed.
She smiled as she fixed her hair into spikes. It was sprayed black, shiny and there was a thick layer of glitter on it that shimmered in the light. She was wearing an almost princess blue dress- like the dress Tiana wore in the Princess and the Frog. The gold tiara and glittery earrings shone. Her skin was very pale, an almost translucent white. There were shadows under her eyes, which were gold from contacts, and rimmed with black lashes.
I laughed. "You're a vampire. A twilight vampire."
"Why of course! And I'm Alice." She rubbed glitter on her arms and pulled on long white gloves. She sipped on her drink and looked at the clock. "Nearly time. C'mon lets go!" She stumbled on the steps but danced out, the epitome of pixie craziness.
The common room was alight with glowing candles in pumpkins, other candles on all surfaces. Cobwebs hung from the walls and banners draped. People were cheerful as they sat in groups, wearing costumes that varied from goblins to aliens.
We sat and waited for the boys.
When they finally managed to make their way down the stairs, I was laughing so hard I thought they would take me away to a mental hospital. They both looked like they had had showers and washed their hair (shocking, I know) instead of spraying themselves all over with deodorant.
Cheeky was wearing a spacesuit. Not just any space suit, but a pink spacesuit with all the buttons and all the gadgets and gizmos on it. There was a giant purple helmet on his head with gold stars on the side. So realistic was this costume, from the buttons to the big boots and arms, that Cheeky could barely move his arms. He glared at Chatty.
"Real funny. Just because my name is Space you had to put me in a giant helmet." But he was only joking. He seemed to enjoy walking in that odd, on-the-moon way.
Charming had a bit more trouble getting down the stairs. Maybe it was the fact that he had a lot of prickly leaves as a hat. Or the fact that he was very wide from the spikes. Because Charming was, quite simply, a pineapple. And a very realistic one at that (if his face meant anything), because the sides looked very sharp.
"A Pineapple!" I half shouted, before falling off my chair as I was laughing so hard. Chatty stood up to fix his hat, smiling.
"Perfect." She grinned. "Exactly like I expected it to be. We all look great!"
"Great?" Charming spat. "I look like an orange moron!"
Chatty pouted and sniffed. "I think you look good."
Cheeky put a comforting arm round her. "We all do. You did a great job with the costumes Tee."
She smiled. "We'd better be going, if we want to get there in time."
Thus ensued the task that was getting Cheeky and Charming through the portrait hole and out into the common room. Charming tried to get through, but as the hole was very small and his costume very round, when he tried to climb through, he got stuck. Cheeky laughed hysterically at the sight of Charming struggling to move his arms, which were pinned to his sides.
Compromising, we managed to get him out of the hole and back into the common room, and then I climbed out and tried to pull him through. Suddenly, the novelty of the pineapple suit wore off as my hands stung from the spikes. "You just had to make him a pineapple!" I yelled, pulling on Charming's arm.
"Ow Ow Ow Ow Ow!" He yelled. "The spikes are being indented into my stomach and other very vital places!"
Eventually he was out in the corridor, and sitting sulking by the wall while Chatty and I tried to get Cheeky through. Fortunately, his costume was equipped with a very useful button that allowed it to be deflated and reflated whenever we chose.
Smirking, he stepped out into the corridor wearing a much deflated space suit, which we then had to reflate. For some reason, when we reflated it, it required a long amount of time, and made him look fatter than ever.
Then, Cheeky pulling on his space helmet, Charming flicking and rearranging the leaves on his head, and Chatty curtsying to no one in particular, we charged down the corridor to the great hall, where the Halloween Ball had almost begun.
Cheeky's POV
They put me in a spacesuit. Not just any spacesuit, but a pink and purple space suit. With stars. I was grateful at least for the helmet being slightly tinted, or else everyone would have seen my blush. It was pink. Very damaging to my social status.
But there was something about space. Not just because that was my name (but that was pretty awesome.) My dad had loved space. That was why my sisters and I had such weird names, why the inside of our house looked like a rocket ship had exploded space-ness everywhere. My dad even worked in one of those giant muggle space stations. He would visit at the weekends. His dream was to explore outer space, see all of it. Too bad he never got to fulfil his dream.
So I grew up in a house with 6 sisters. Just about survived. It is not easy having to sit at a table when all the people at it can talk about is makeup and clothes, not cool stuff like Quidditch.
And I'll admit it, it was a good costume. Chatty had made it well - it even fitted.
And who cared if it was embarrassing. Everyone was wearing stupid costumes.
When they finally opened up the doors to the Great Hall, I was honestly shocked.
The walls were hung with festive decorations: cobwebs, ancient tapestries, shadowy figures. Long lines of candles were strung under the clear black sky, pumpkins and smoking goblets on the tables.
It was overflowing with students all crazily dressed. There appeared to be a giant combination of an elephant and a rhinoceros towering above the rest of the crowd, presumably made up of several students, and someone else had come as a tree, the whomping willow by the looks of it, and a full scale model, complete with (real time?) moving branches. I wasn't the worst costume, at least.
I accidentally crashed into the Slytherin seeker (Scorpius Malfoy I think his name was), who appeared to be dressed as Harry Potter, which caused Clever to burst into giggles. She also emitted a very strange high pitched sound, which sounded suspiciously like a combination of "Squee!" and "Yayness!" upon spotting someone, apparently her cousin Rose, dressed as a teddy bear with six inch fangs, a bow which apparently doubled as a hand grenade with wings, and a (23rd century) bazooka. We were treated to an exceedingly fast and squeaky lecture on this, which none of us could understand. We eventually just decided that there was no way us lesser mortals stood a chance of understanding the inner workings of a mind such as hers, and that she was going hyper and there was nothing that we could do about it.
Hugo, a fairly reticent Gryffindor boy who was also Clever's cousin (was she related to the entire school or something?) wandered past dressed as a fearsome pirate, the effect of which was slightly ruined by the fact that he kept tripping over his own swords. It seemed the clumsiness ran in the family (or at least part of it) as Clev was always dropping stuff or bashing into it.
As she did with a camel, which yelled angrily at her and was easily recognisable as Fred and James (a brother and yet another cousin! This was getting ridiculous!). Any minute now we were going to run into Albus (her other brother) dressed as a pumpkin.
It was to my slight surprise that we did actually run into him (well, he tripped over Clever's tail, which she had somehow enchanted to swing around at her command, and which appeared to be very useful for surreptitiously snatching drinks from tables), and he was in fact dressed as a pumpkin. An orange one, admittedly, while I had been expecting purple, but a pumpkin outfit nonetheless.
I recognised my own sister Moon's flying pig fetish, as she and her twin, Stella, flapped about over our heads in pig costumes with wings that had had a spell put on them so that the actually flew. Chatty's brother Indiana could be seen skulking in a corner dressed as a pointy eared alien in a blue shirt, at the sight of which Clever nearly exploded.
I spotted what appeared to be a walking ball of fluff but revealed itself to be the ultimate evil one (Jenna, in other words), who then continued to try (and fail dismally) to flirt with Charming until our saviour came in the form of Professor Longbottom dressed as a ninja pirate (the teachers had come too) who began to lecture Jenna on her overdue Herbology homework. Madam Turpin walked passed dressed as either a penguin or an insane chicken, I was not quite sure which, and I was fairly sure I saw a turnip somewhere in the crowd, although it could have been a prawn, as this spacesuit was incredibly hard to see out of, though this fortunately meant that it was also quite hard to see in to, which meant that no one could recognise me, which was always a good sign when you were in a pink spaceman outfit. Charming did not have the same luxury, and a pineapple could well be said to be worse. Although at least it wasn't pink.
"Are we supposed to be dancing or anything?" I nervously asked. Even though I had grown up surrounded by girls, I didn't really know much about balls, and most certainly couldn't dance. Although I somehow doubted most people could, in an outfit like this.
"No, you silly person. We are supposed to be blowing up the Latin department."
"But we don't have a Latin department." I was slightly confused. Fine, very. "And that hasn't answered the question."
Clever gave an exasperated sigh. "It's called sarcasm. Does it look like we're supposed to be dancing?"
"Umm... well..." I looked around. Some people, the ones closer to the stage, were, while the rest stood awkwardly round the snack table (like us), talking. Some were laughing, others trying to sneak some of the large supply of sweets into their bag, some trying to spike the drinks with something much worse. I made a mental note to stay away from the green and purple punch.
Somehow the school had hired in the Rolling Cauldrons, one of the most popular wizards bands today, and they were standing on the stage performing an extremely loud and incredibly good rendition of the Muggle classic "Yellow Submarine", although no doubt Clever would claim that the original was far better. She was quite happily whistling along to it though, so she couldn't have thought it was that bad.
I had had to remove my helmet in order to eat the food, but it was a reasonable sacrifice to make for all the awesome sweets. The full Honeydukes selection was there, including Jelly Slugs, Fudge Flies, Ice Mice and gazillions of Chocolate Frogs all piled of the table around food like éclairs and mini cupcakes.
It was about ten minutes later that the world exploded.
Well, fine, not exactly the world per se (don't ask me what that means. Clever's the one that speaks Latin. She's also probably fluent in ancient Greek, but that's irrelevant.), just the ceiling. But that was bad enough. It certainly caused as much chaos as the earth exploding, if not more, as if the world had blown up there wouldn't be any people to panic and cause general mayhem.
And there was certainly a lot of panicking. The elephant-rhinoceros fell over backwards, probably injuring the people inside and also squishing the poor people that it fell on. There was general screaming and people rushing about like insane, demented, headless chickens on a sugar rush, caffeine, and also a large cocktail of other, less innocent drugs.
And then even that universal constant of how humans deal with disasters ceased to be, as a wave of silence swept across the hall, paralysing everything in its path. For the source of the whole incident was now visible, standing on top of the drum kit. I groaned, and tried to savour my last minutes at Hogwarts.
Because the cause of all this mayhem, of course, just had to be Clever's demon teddy bear, or Fluffy as she insisted we call the thing. I could have sworn that she said that it was in an escape-proof box, but that appeared not to be the case.
"Oh no." Clever said, as she observed Fluffy as it observed everyone else. "Why did I have to enchant that teddy?"
We watched the bear, as with supreme skill, it began to chuck very hot fire-balls at the head of a group of chickens. "Fire?!" I yelled. "We are fighting a teddy bear with fire powers?!"
On looking around the room, I found to my disgust that no one was even considering stopping the thing, and most people thought that screaming and yelling "It's alive! It's alive!" was helping.
We knew it wasn't, because the bear was laughing and began to add jelly to the fireballs, so as well as being potentially burnt to death, we all were faced with the possibility that we would be very sticky.
I groaned. "Well. We might as well try and stop it." So we (Charming, Chatty, Clever and I) sunk down into our super-hero/spy poses and got ready to fight the demon teddy; in fancy dress.
"Here, Fluffy!" Clever called soothingly, approaching the bear slowly, like one would go to a wounded animal. "Good girl. Now put down the fire. Yes, down." A few minutes later, she definitely regretted this as she was covered in jelly.
Charming then disappeared into the crowd of people around the door, just as Chatty and I started wondering what our game plan was. "Where are you going?" I yelled after him, but he didn't respond, just ran out of sight.
A few of the more drunk students hadn't noticed that anything was wrong; so sat on their table drinking and laughing. One of them, boastfully laughing and edged on by his friends, chucked an old bottle at the bear. It hit her on the head, and the bear growled and turned menacingly towards the boy.
Then, in front of our more than startled eyes, Fluffy the bear grew. Grew and grew, until she was as tall as the elephant thing. She took one giant step towards them, but was instantly stopped by someone climbing on his back and hitting her. Chatty in fact. Pulling her shoes from her feet, she had jumped, dress and all, onto the back of Fluffy and whilst not trying to calm her down, was distracting her by hitting his head.
"You. Will. Not. Squish. Them!" She cried, prodding and poking. I joined in, hitting the teddy's ankles with a chair.
And then Charming charged back in, having abandoned the hat and most of the spikes on his pineapple costume holding all our water guns.
"Water?! That was your genius plan?" I cried, trying to stop Fluffy from treading on me, which meant running in circles.
"It's not water!" He yelled, chucking me one of the water guns. "It is a shrinking potion. Stole it from the store-cupboard."
"Genius!" Clever yelled, as she too grabbed a water gun and tried to spray it at Fluffy.
Fluffy did not seem to like this idea very much, as she took that moment to start singing.
If any of you have had the misfortune to hear a mermaid sing, I would like to tell you that this was worse, a lot worse. The screeching sound ripped round the room, shattering glass and making the few remaining people scream louder than ever. Oh dear, were we in trouble!
We all covered our ears quickly; dropping the potion filled water guns until they hit the floor of the great hall. Clever struggled forwards to try and get to Fluffy, but tripped over the water gun and ended up sending the whole mixture up into the air.... where it spun round and round.... and landed on our heads. Well, more particularly the heads of Fluffy, Chatty and I. And then we started shrinking.
Well, to us it looked rather more as though the world was growing, but I was aware of the unfortunate contents of that water gun, and knew that it was the other way around, and could only desperately hope that they could find an antidote, and that in the meantime we were not shrunk too small. Although being squished seemed to be the most pressing danger at the moment.
A table hit my head on the way down, and that was the last I knew for quite some time, except a few very strange and unpleasant sensations.
Charming's POV
The bear was now very small. As were Cheeky and Chatty, so we carefully put them in the nearest empty pumpkin. Then, Clever and I picked up the terrible dangerous teddy and carried it to the nearest table. I held it down, as it squirmed. Clever muttered a spell, and then, quite suddenly, Fluffy the bear was no more. Quite still and small in fact. Scooping her up, Clever tucked her into her pocket to dispose of, and we headed off to the Hospital Wing to make our friends grow to their usual height.
People were beginning to come out from under tables, and the Rolling Cauldrons began to play a fast cheerful tune, pleased that the bear was subdued and (as Clever sobbed into my sleeve) dead.
Clever's makeup ran down her face as she carried the bag with Fluffy's head sticking out. I was carrying the pumpkin, and in it were the pixie sized Cheeky and Chatty, both unconscious. I laughed at their perfectly still faces and their tiny hands. The tiny spaceman and vampire in the bottom of a smirking pumpkin.
"We need to hold a proper funeral for poor Fluffy. And not just a short one, a real one! With flowers and an organ!" She then began to list all of the people who should invite, but I had stopped listening.
The pineapple costume I was wearing was annoying me, as I saw my reflection in the Halloween-dressed statues.
We eventually arrived at the Hospital Wing, and soon enough Cheeky and Chatty were their usual size and conscious. Upset, but conscious.
The party was still in full swing in the Great Hall, but we decided that we didn't want to go back, so after initializing our food snatching scheme, we hid outside in the shadow of the castle, laughing as we ate cakes and smiled at the moon.
"What a strange birthday this has been." I muttered, chewing on my pumpkin pasty.
They nodded, as Clever began to tell us random facts about the stars (as she did when no one was talking).
Soon the fireworks started, and we were dazzled by the bright colours and whizzing, whooshing pictures in the sky- much better than muggle fireworks.
Comfortable on the ground, we almost wouldn't have moved if Chatty hadn't jumped up and gasped.
"I forgot, my mum wants me to get some photos of you guys, to show her." She pulled out a camera and turned it on, the lights flashing and beeping.
"Is it supposed to do that?" I asked curiously - I had never seen a muggle camera before.
"Yeah." She smirked as I examined it. "Say Cheese!" She cried as she held the camera out to take a picture.
The bright flash dazzled me for a minute, as it did to the others.
"Whoa." Cheeky said, shutting his eyes. "What was that?"
Chatty laughed. "Geez, you would think you guys had never been around cameras before."
"We haven't." Clever explained. "But I know that if you develop it right, you can make it move."
Chatty rolled her eyes "Like I could do that," and then turned to take another picture. This time, we were ready, so laughing and smiling we pulled faces (sticking our tongue out and bugging our eyes- Cheeky was making us laugh so hard it was nearly impossible).
The camera flashed on the end of another good day.
Hope you enjoy! This was a really quick update, I am personally very proud. Leave a review, tell me what you thought!
Little game- Count the star trek references! There are a lot, and they are all Kat's.
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love, Ali and Kat.
