Yes, I'm slow. I know and I'm sorry. I got stuck again and I even had the end written out. I think its becoming a bad habit. So anyway I hope you like the chapter.
7th Year
Chapter Nine: Halloween
Suki tried to go back to sleep where she lay in the middle of her bed propped up against the headboard, but the tiny sounds of her four guests intruded on her, making it impossible to sleep. Yukina sat near the window, humming softly to herself as she felt for the Ice Maiden that had come so close to kidnapping her friend. Lavena and Kurama sat together near the door talking softly with each other and Botan would not stop fidgeting where she stood on the other side of the bed. With a frustrated sigh, Suki rolled over and pulled the blanket closer to her, trying to keep the ever present cold away from her.
Personally she thought four guards was unnecessary, especially when two did not fight, but Yukina had refused to leave and Botan apparently did not have anything better to do. Suki was just glad that Kuwabara had not joined their little party; he was too loud and Suki was starting to feel sick.
As if she had heard what she was thinking, Yukina stopped her humming and came to gently sit on the edge of the bed. "Are you all right Suki?" She asked softly. Suki did not trust her stomach enough to even try and answer.
Fortunately she was saved from trying to answer as Hiei and the Spirit Detective, Yusuke, opened the door and came in.
"I don't know," Yusuke was saying. "Maybe she wanted to borrow a book. Why else would she go to a library?"
Suki flinched slightly at the sound of Yusuke's voice. He was too loud too.
Lavena's snort was much softer on Suki's ears. "For information genius." She told him. "She was looking for something."
"Fine," Yusuke griped. "But what? What would she need to look up?"
"How am I supposed to know?" Lavena shot back, irritated at Yusuke's ignorance and her own lack of sleep.
"Please you two, quiet down, people are still sleeping." Botan said just above a whisper. "We don't want to wake anybody up and have them wonder why we're all in here at five-thirty in the morning."
Reluctantly both Yusuke and Lavena went quiet.
"Well now what do we do?" Lavena asked after a long, slightly uncomfortable, silence.
"We try and find out what the Ice Maiden wanted, besides Suki." Kurama said from his chair near the door. "We need to know if she's planning something and it may tell us what she and the shadow demon have in common, if anything."
Yusuke scratched the back of his head. "I guess Kuwabara and I will check out the door she got through later today. Maybe you can check the forest Hiei and see if she's out there or something." Hiei did not reply, but gave a short sound of reluctant agreement. He would rather be closer to Suki to make sure that whoever it was that had stood outside her door last night would not get any closer a second time.
Suki did not hear any of this. She had finally succeeded in blocking out all of the little sounds that had been pestering her. However she still could not sleep. She felt awful, like her stomach was trying to turn itself inside out.
Her stomach gave another little twist and Suki jumped out of bed as fast as she could, which admittedly was not that fast, and ran into Hiei where he stood leaning against the wall. She grabbed at him, trying to keep her balance while keeping her eyes closed. She did not realize that everyone had stopped talking and was now staring at them since she had managed to tune out all noise and had refused to open her eyes. She did not even hear herself moan pitifully before she stumbled towards the bathroom, Yukina following her worriedly.
*******
"Why are we wasting our free time on this again?" Kuwabara whined again as he and Yusuke walked along the dimly lit hallway that lay in the lowest level of the school.
"So that we can find this lady and go home sooner!" Yusuke yelled at him for the third time.
"I thought we had to stay here to watch out for that Harry kid, not find some lousy kidnapper." Kuwabara said.
"Shut up." Yusuke told him, not that it did much good. Kuwabara kept talking, but Yusuke tuned him out shortly later. "Hey," he eventually said, cutting Kuwabara off mid-sentence, "isn't that it?" Kuwabara looked over at the single door that sat locked against the cold in an even darker hallway than the one they were walking in now.
"I guess so." He said as they walked closer to inspect the wooden door. "I'm not surprised they used this door. I bet nobody comes down here except on special occasions, like Halloween or the end of the world maybe."
"Yeah," Yusuke agreed only half listening. "Let's see where this goes, maybe she stuck around long enough to leave us a clue."
"I don't know I don't feel anything down there. She probably left before we even got up."
Yusuke smirked at his friend. "Well, before you got up anyway."
"Shut up." Kuwabara told him as Yusuke snickered and pushed open the door. "I can't help it if nobody came and told me that some Ice Maiden broke into the castle."
"I thought you were supposed to be the one with the sixth sense. Why didn't you feel her?" Yusuke asked still teasing.
"I was sleeping!" Kuwabara yelled loudly as they walked down the stone steps that were behind the door. "If Hiei couldn't sense her when he was in the room with Suki why should I have felt it halfway across the freaking castle?"
"Huh, good point." Yusuke muttered grudgingly. "Well," He said with more enthusiasm as he and Kuwabara came to the bottom of the stairs. "What do we have here?"
A long unlit stone tunnel stretched out before them. "She's been through here Urameshi, probably not too long ago. She wasn't as careful masking her energy down here. There's a trail, but it's still kinda weak." Kuwabara said as he took a few steps farther into the tunnel.
"Well at least we know where she went." Yusuke said calling his spirit energy into his pointer finger and holding it high above his head as an impromptu flashlight. "Come on," Yusuke called impatiently as he started walking again. "Let's see where this leads."
Kuwabara still hung back. "I don't know about this man," He said. "I got the feeling something else is down here, and it ain't too friendly neither."
Yusuke laughed at the other man. "Oh come on Kuwabara. You don't think we can handle anything that tries to get us? Now come on, I want to hurry this up so I can get back and catch up on my sleep."
"Yeah, I'm coming." Kuwabara said sounding unhappy as he followed Yusuke down the dark tunnel.
*******
Despite Kuwabara's caution, the only thing that came out to grab him was Yusuke. He waited until all light from the open door had disappeared before he let his spirit energy dissipate. Then he jumped out of the darkness, frightening Kuwabara and making him scream.
That however, was the most interesting part of their trip. The tunnel led to a dead end and even though they searched for nearly half an hour, they were not able to find any hidden outlets that the Ice Maiden could have used as an escape.
None of the others could guess how she could have gotten out after they discussed it later that night either. In the end their best guess was that she may have laid a false trail to confuse them and then double backed to some other exit. That would also explain why she had relaxed her cautiousness enough for them to find the trail in the first place.
They did not get another chance to find the Maiden either. Over the next three weeks neither she nor the shadow demon appeared, although Harry was still as listless as ever so they knew that the Shade was still around at the very least, even if it was only laying low.
"Ugh!" Yusuke cried in frustration one day during lunch. "We've been sitting here for almost two months and nothings happened. Why are we waiting on them to act before we find them?"
Kuwabara and Botan looked up from their food. "Because we have no idea where to look." Botan said.
"And we have not just been sitting here." Kuwabara said with a depressed look at the homework he was trying to finish.
"What the-?" Yusuke said in astonishment looking at both his friends. "Why are you worrying about that stuff? We aren't really at school." He told Kuwabara before he turned on Botan. "And how about you try that big scary forest that's lurking just outside the school that's leaking demon energy?"
"We can't just walk into the forest like we live there. The demon might have friends nearby. Plus the forest has its own occupants, most of which hardly tolerate the school much less any intruders like us."
"Yeah it's called 'Forbidden' for a reason Urameshi." Kuwabara said ignoring the homework advice as he finished off his Transfiguration paper.
Yusuke was tempted to tell the other man to shut up and mind his own business, but Botan's answer seemed in greater need of fixing.
"You don't think we can handle any more lower class Shades that come around?" Yusuke asked peeved that she thought he could not handle something as weak as a shadow demon. "And who cares about the weirdo's that live in the forest. We can handle them too."
Botan sighed in exasperation. "Yusuke, we can't do that. This is one of the few places where these creatures can live safely without fear of being found out by the human race and because of certain agreements between the Spirit world, the magic world, and these various creatures, we are not allowed to enter without permission."
"Well how do we get there permission then? They must want that nasty little bug out of there home if they don't even want us in there just to poke around."
Botan tilted her head in thought. "You may have a point Yusuke. I'll send a message to Koenma to see if he can set up an appointment to meet with the forest's inhabitants."
"Fine," Yusuke whined, "just hurry up." He said getting up to leave the Great Hall with the rest of the student body as they went to their afternoon classes.
Botan let out her breath in a whoosh after Yusuke left; Kuwabara trailing behind with his nose buried a book that Hermione had given him to help him with his class. Yusuke still did not seem to understand that messages of any sort, especially those dealing with the very rule restricted Spirit world, took time. In fact it seemed that the more rules there were involved the longer it took for anyone to read and reply to the message as well.
Slowly Botan stood up as she organized in her head all the things she needed to do today besides send Yusuke's request. She still needed to finish looking through her assigned section of the library to see if she could find any book that the Ice Maiden may have looked at. After the guys had discovered that the Ice Maiden's main destination had been the back of the library, they had all split the rest of the room into sections and then assigned each person a section to go through, just incase the Ice Maiden had sifted through any other books. So far no one had had any luck, but that may have been due to the fact that no one had been able to search through the back most part of the library where all of the classified books were located. Even Kurama had not been able to break the spell that lay around, on, and in the books. He described the spell as being too sticky for him to pull off. Every time it tried to stick to him, activating the alarm that would tell the librarian as well as the rest of the school that someone was trying to sneak into the restricted section.
"There's only one maiden that's strong and skilled enough to break that spell without a second thought;" Suki had told them after they had discussed the situation. "The Ice Leader herself has decided to grace us with her presence. She must be getting desperate."
"Desperate indeed." Botan thought as she walked through the crowded halls towards Professor McGonagall's class. It had been three weeks and the Leader still had not reappeared. However desperate she was she still seemed willing to wait however long it took to capture Suki and reverse the D'ta's genetic change.
Botan suddenly groaned as she remembered something else she needed to do. The students surrounding her gave her strange looks, but walked away quickly, not wanting to be associated with her outburst.
Suki's stupid homework! Ever since she'd gotten here she had been handing out papers and assignments almost every class. But even though the normal students had to wade through the class paperwork, Suki had overloaded Botan, Yusuke, and Kuwabara with rigorous assignments that would have killed their grades if this had actually been their school.
Botan started walking again, feeling like her head was about to explode. The next time she saw Koenma she was going to tell him she was taking her vacation. She needed a break.
*******
That evening after classes, Botan ran squealing into the Gryffindor common room where Yusuke, Kuwabara, and a few others sat doing homework. Everyone turned to look at her, but only Yusuke and Kuwabara did not look back at their work as she came to flop down next to them.
"What's with you?" Yusuke asked as Botan continued to giggle.
"We're having a party!" She cried happily throwing her arms up in the air not bothering to keep her voice down.
"We are?" Kuwabara sounded half asleep as he propped his head up on his hand so he could look at the joyous ferry girl.
"Yes!" Botan said excitedly. "Every Halloween they have a big party with some kind of show at the end. Oh isn't it wonderful? Finally there's something to look forward to! Oh I can't wait, something besides homework and reading and…"
The rest became too indecipherable as Botan began to bounce up and down on the floor. Yusuke and Kuwabara only nodded as they watched her freak out over a party before going back to their work.
*******
Botan bounced for the next week and a half. She never stopped even in class, although all her professors kept ordering her to stop, especially Suki whose temper seemed to be thinner then usual. She nearly screamed at Botan after the seventh time she asked her to sit still. She ended class early after that, saying that she did not feel well enough to continue. Botan said she felt sorry for the smallish woman and hoped she felt better soon. Then the blue haired woman bounced out of the room, her pony tail swinging out cheerily behind her.
The rest of the class followed her at a slower pace, filing out of the room eagerly, but steadily. Suki put her head down on her desk and waited for the majority of her class to leave.
"Mr. Potter?" She spoke silently, only moving her head enough for the young man to hear her. "I need to speak to you." She listened as the small shuffling noises stopped for a moment as Ms. Granger and Mr. Weasley forgot their bags and looked over at their friend. "That means the two of you need to leave." She told them, still keeping her head down.
Slowly, reluctantly, the two others left the room, dragging their feet the whole way.
"Make sure to close the door behind you." She told Ron, who hesitated, but eventually did as she asked.
For a moment, Suki kept her head down, enjoying the silence. Children, it seemed, could not be quiet. It made Suki a little worried about her own children and future silence, but a small noise reminded her that Harry was still in the room.
Taking a deep breath, Suki sat up and gestured Harry to bring a chair forward and sit in front of her desk.
"I'm afraid that you are failing Mr. Potter." She told him trying to get through this as quickly as she could. "I want you to come in for tutorials in the evening, starting today. Are you free after dinner?" She asked sharply. She had not been feeling well even before Botan and her bouncing and the traces of the shadow demon's energy that clung to Harry were only making her feel worse. She could not wait until Hiei or one of the others got rid of the awful little splotch. Not only would it be kind to the poor young man the blot was terrorizing, but hopefully she would be able to make it through the day without needing an emergency rush to the bathroom. Then again it might not be the smudges of vile energy Harry had unwittingly left around the room.
Harry nodded dumbly, neither looking at her nor speaking.
Getting a bad feeling, Suki tried something else. "Or how about before breakfast, just a little after dawn?"
Harry only nodded again, as stoically as before.
"Oh, I know," Suki said wondering if the boy was listening at all, "we could get together at three in the morning to talk about why you're failing miserably and then talk for the rest of the time about pretty ponies that go clipity clop around fantasy land and eating clouds and singing happy little songs about sugar bunnies."
Harry started nodding again, but then he stopped, looking confused. "What?" He asked.
Suki let herself smile. "So there is a little life in you after all." She said, pleased that the Shade still had not completely subjugated Harry's will, otherwise the boy would have no chance of fighting back. Maybe she could help him with a few other things besides fill in the blank homework.
While Harry was still partially free from the Shade's dark influence by his shock at Suki's random statement, Suki leaned forward and grabbed Harry's hands in a steel-like grip, using the contact to send her energy beneath the cloak of the lower class demons energy. Harry startled, only recognizing that her hands where freezing.
Suki however, saw Harry's eyes clear for the first time and did her best to speak swiftly and clearly so that Harry would understand in a short amount of time; Suki would not be able to prevent the shadow demon from reasserting itself for long.
"Harry," Suki said softly, so he would have to listen hard to understand. "I understand that you don't feel like getting up out of bed in the morning, much less talking with your friends or going to classes, but you must try and resist the darker influence, understand? You must fight it off Harry Potter."
Harry stared at his teacher. Darker influence? How did she know that?
Her blue eyes bored into Harry as she waited for an answer. "O-okay." He said, not sure what else to say under such scrutiny.
But her eyes only turned to ice and she squeezed his hands harder. "You have to mean it Harry. You have to want to live."
Harry finally met his professor's ice blue eyes and was caught frozen by the intensity of her stare. The fierce clarity of her almost glare shook the remaining remnants of dark and depressing tangles from Harry's mind and for the first time since, oh lord it felt like years, Harry felt like himself again.
"Do you want to live Harry?" Suki asked a bit more uncertainty in her question.
"Yes." The word popped out of his mouth before he could think about it, so he thought about it after he spoke. "Yes I do want to live." He reaffirmed.
Suki skewered him with one bright blue eye, like a bird. "Then why have I only seen you mope about ever since I got here like some sort of melancholy ghost?"
"I-I-" Harry stuttered trying to think as he talked. "I don't know. Before I even came to school I've felt like I've been…stuck." He said trying to make himself as clear as possible.
"Do you feel free now?" She asked cutting him off before the shadow demon reasserted itself again, stealing away the boy's willingness to even listen.
Harry nodded.
"Then you must try to hold onto this feeling Mr. Potter. Cling to it as hard as you can."
But the shade was already wriggling under the Ice Maiden's hands and making cracks in her own energy that surrounded Harry. "But why?" He questioned, blinking as if he was honestly trying to remember the answer.
"Because we're going to help you Harry," Suki said tightening her grip on Harry's hands and sending out another blast of energy with her words so he could understand it better then the fact that gravity held you down, "you just have to hold on."
Harry nodded and Suki let go. Her hands hurt and she placed them palms together in front of her, hoping her naturally cold body temperature would help relieve some of the pain.
"Besides that," she added turning into his professor once more, "I'd like you to come by every other day after dinner." Harry nodded again, but Suki could see that his eyes were dull again, half shut and unblinking as he agreed. The shade had retaken control, numbing him like ice water.
Suki inclined her head and waved him away. "That is all. Good night Mr. Potter."
"Good night Professor." Harry mumbled as he stood then opened the door where Ron and Hermione were standing outside waiting for him.
Suki waited a few moments after they had closed the door just to make sure that no one else was going to come in. Then she slowly pulled her hands apart, and hissed at the red blisters hiding on her palms, fingers, and thumbs. No wonder her hands hurt as if she had just stuck them into boiling water.
She folded her hands back together and pushed herself up from her chair. It would take awhile for her hands to heal, longer then if she was trying to heal someone else. It was another of the D'ta's mysteries; why an Ice Maiden could heal others better then herself, but so far no one had come up with a sufficiently stable theory.
Suki did not try to touch the door knob; she just kicked the door three times and waited patiently for it to open. When it did she carefully slipped through the gap and pushed it closed with her foot.
*******
"What happened to your hands?"
Suki rolled her eyes and sighed at the annoying question.
"I burned myself, what does it look like?" She snapped at the poor ferry girl in front of her.
Botan looked shocked at the shorter woman's sudden temper. Suki took a deep breath to try and steady herself. "Sorry." She apologized. "You haven't been the first to ask that question today." No, the first had been Yukina when she had asked her to wrap her hands. She had lost track after Lavena, who she had seen in the library when she had gone to finish looking through her section of books. She expected Botan was number eight or nine and that by the end of the night the list would grow to fifty or sixty, what with the entire school coming to tonight's Halloween party.
She was actually on her way to the Great Hall for the feast when she ran into Botan, Kurama, and Lavena in the hallway. Since Lavena had already asked and Kurama had either heard or was smart enough not to ask, Botan was the one to ask the obvious question. Fortunately, whether it was because of her own distracted nature or Lavena's open curiosity about what surprise show the headmistress had scheduled for after dinner, Botan was soon sidetracked by her conversation with Lavena.
As the other girls talked, Suki dropped back to walk with Kurama. For a moment they walked in silence, listening to Lavena and Botan chatter happily.
"Have you heard from Hiei lately?" Suki eventually asked in a quiet voice. Much to everyone's surprise it only took a week for Koenma's answer to reach the castle, a remarkably short time considering Spirit World procedures. With the Spirit Prince's written permission, as well as a short explanation of what was going on, Hiei had left the next day to try and find the leaders of the various groups of magical creatures. The whole point in finding them was to try and convince them to meet with the Spirit Detectives so that Yusuke and the others could try and convince them to let them search the forest for the shade and, if they were lucky, the Ice Leader.
Unfortunately it seemed to be taking longer to find the leaders then any of them had expected and no one had heard from Hiei since the day he left, four days ago.
"No," Kurama said softly, "I'm sorry. I'm sure he's all right though; he is Hiei after all. Most likely the inhabitants of the Forbidden Forest are making him actually work to find them."
Suki grinned, picturing a very frustrated Hiei running among the foreign trees as the creatures hid either from fear or caution.
"Yes, you're probably right." Suki admitted, trying not to worry, especially pointlessly. Hiei was more than able to take on a Shade. She was a little more worried about the Ice Leader, but apparently she had disappeared…
Suki let herself be distracted by the floating Jack-O-Lanterns, live bats, humongous pumpkins, and other holiday decorations as a wave of noise from the student body swept out of the open Great Hall doors as she and the others rounded the corner into the Hall.
The smell on the other hand almost made her gag. It was not as if the food smelled bad, it just smelled. Suki assumed this was what normal people felt like when they were sick and whoever was helping them as holding soup under there nose, but since she had never actually been sick before she did not really know.
"Suki are you okay?" Kurama's quiet voice made open her eyes. He, Lavena, and Botan were staring at her as well as a few of the students sitting nearby.
Suki pulled in a mouthful of air, refusing to use her nose. "Yeah," she lied feebly, hoping they would not notice. For the most part they did not, but Lavena, and probably Kurama although she could not see him, kept looking back at her as she coolly walked to her place at the head table.
Suki spent the rest of the meal talking with the professor next to her and ignoring her food. By the time everyone one else was finished eating though she did not feel much better and was sorely wishing she had not agreed to the demonstration Headmistress McGonagall had requested.
As if she had asked her too, the old woman stood up and addressed the student body. "For this evening's entertainment, Professor Suki D'ta has graciously offered to give us a demonstration, of some sort." She added the last part as she sat, as if she was unsure what was going to happen, even though she had asked Suki to do it in the first place.
Suki had composed herself somewhat while the Headmistress spoke but she still felt pale and slightly sick as she stood, nodded to the headmistress, and went to stand in front of the long table where the teachers sat.
She did not explain what she was going to show them. Instead she simply took her stance and summoned her energy.
Even in the back where she stood against the wall with Kuwabara, Yukina could feel the cold flow of air flash outward in a circular wave away from Suki's body.
Kuwabara leaned down to speak quietly to Yukina. "What's she doing?" He asked, showing genuine curiosity over what was going on.
Yukina smiled up at the human man; he was kind and open with her. She had come in as the Headmistress stood up and, not wanting to disturb anybody, she had stood rather than taken a seat. Kazuma had stood up and waved at her when he saw her, gesturing to his seat offering it to her, but she refused. She did not want to force him to stand. But instead of sitting back down, he had come back to stand with her.
"She is performing one of the basic defense moves that are only taught to the D'ta. It's one of their long term experiments." She informed him.
Icy mist now spread out from the small woman's body, billowing out in clouds that appeared to come from her feet. The students and faculty closer to her were starting to shiver as tiny ice droplets began to form, hanging in the air around her. Candlelight from the overhanging pumpkins hit the floating icy dew, spreading rainbows and colorful light in random and bedazzling patterns, earning a few gasps of awe from her audience, both professors and students alike.
But a sudden violent rumble elicited more gasps. Suki's eyes shot open as she tried to retain control over the frozen water surrounding her. Yusuke, Lavena, and Kurama shot to there feet along with a few confused others. Dread speared Kuwabara's gut and he shoved Yukina between him and the wall yelling, "Get down!"
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then a sudden viscous outburst sent the far wall exploding inward in a thousand chunks of stone and mortar. Most of the students screamed as pieces as big as themselves rocketed toward them. But even before the echoes of the roar had faded away, the staff and a majority of the older students, including Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville, and Ginny, stopped the rocks in midair; freezing them before they crushed the students.
The rocks either dropped to the floor with loud echoing thuds or hung in the air like gray over-sized Christmas ornaments.
Nothing could be seen through the hole except the night's pitch blackness and everyone stood there, tense and confused.
Then the darkness began to writhe and wriggle, spreading like black ink across the stone floor.
"Don't let it touch you!" Harry cried as he stepped forward and fired a spell at the shadow.
And then all chaos broke loose.
I think it's a good ending; you only have a vague, adrenaline-rushed sense of what happens next. I'll try to be quicker about the next chapter. Please leave me a review. Please!
