Chapter 10: With a Troll in the Dungeons (or Out of Bounds)

October 1991

Azkaban

Severus

(AN: In which we see that Severus is still not a very nice person and we answer the eternal question of what happens when you give a psychopath to the dementors.

…This scene is here purely because I like writing Snape/Bellatrix. He just hates her so much and she doesn't care even a little.)

Severus Snape apparated to the northernmost point of mainland Scotland, a salt-blasted cliff-face called Dunnet Head. There was a lighthouse there, and sometimes muggle tourists, but never at this time of night. Invisible to the tourists, there was also a small hut with an attached broom-shed, home to a single lonely rookie from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. This was the closest thing the official prison of Magical Britain had to a human guard.

It didn't need any others.

Azkaban prison was located nearly five miles from shore, barely in sight of land. It was protected by sheer cliff faces, much like those of Dunnet Head, but some mad wizard once upon a time had covered these in iron plates and hollowed out rooms in the rock, transforming the island into a fortress unassailable by boat. Neither portkeys nor apparition were allowed in the prison, so the only way to make an official visit – though people seldom wanted to visit – was by broom. Less official methods of entry – fumation, shadow-walking, or invocation – were foiled by the five miles of salt-water across which it was damnably difficult to use Dark Arts.

Visitors to the prison were required to submit to a search by the lonely rookie DMLE guard, and to leave their wands behind. This was the main reason visits were so rare. Official ministry-approved parties would be escorted by aurors, who kept the other guards away, repeatedly casting the Patronus charm in the face of hundreds of dementors – soul-sucking demons of unknown origin. Most wizards might trust an auror with their lives, but not with their souls.

Severus, much to his misfortune, had "enjoyed" the opportunity to observe Azkaban security from both sides at the end of Voldemort's War, before his role as a spy was verified (he suspected that this was intentional on the part of Dumbledore). He had noted with a degree of cynicism that passed for amusement on Azkaban that there was a major flaw with the security procedures for the island – they assumed that any visitor would choose to stop at the guardhouse.

This, he thought, was a rather moronic oversight (therefore on par with his expectations of the Ministry). He had brought a broom with him, determined not to submit to the search and surrender his wand. He was not worried that he would not receive permission to make his intended visit – though several official eyebrows might have been raised over the request. He simply agreed with all other sane wizards (especially those who had been to Azkaban before), that he would be damned if he was going anywhere near a dementor unarmed.

Dementors were poorly understood creatures. It was said they fed on positive emotions, sucking them all right out of a person's head anytime they were near, and had the ability to remove a person's soul by sucking it out through their mouth. It was taught that they could only be repelled by the Patronus charm, which created an avatar of positive emotions to fight the creatures.

This was not, strictly speaking, true. There were several light battle spells which had proven effective against them, and there were rumors out of Miskatonic of Black Arts rituals to the Destructive Power which could give one the ability to control them. In any case, most wizards knew that the only effective defense was the Patronus charm, and they looked no further.

Several brighter students in every fifth-year Defense class (at least when the "professor" was sufficiently competent to reach dementors as a topic of discussion) asked how a shield made of a dementor's favorite food could repel them. Skeptics were also prone to asking how it was actually known that the soul existed and that dementors could "suck it out". Severus had never managed to find acceptable answers to any of these questions, and was, eventually, forced to conclude that no one actually knew for sure.

What they did know was that the proximity of dementors caused one to relive one's worst memories over and over. Sorrow, guilt, and self-hatred often drove those imprisoned to starve themselves to death within a year, and madness was almost guaranteed with prolonged exposure. It was a most effective way to make criminals repent their crimes – a fate worse than death.

The woman Severus was there to visit had been arrested in early November of 1981 – nearly ten years prior. Her name was Bellatrix Lestrange, and she was condemned for torturing Frank and Alice Longbottom to the point of irreversible brain damage with the Cruciatus Curse. A single use of that curse could land you a lifetime sentence in Azkaban. It was specifically designed not to be blocked by any spell, and worked by activating and overwhelming every nerve-ending in the body simultaneously. It was, quite simply, the worst physical pain it was possible to feel, if it was done correctly.

There was no doubt that she had done it, and that she had done many other equally horrible things over the course of the war. She was, after all, Lord Voldemort's protégé and right-hand woman. Muggles would call her a sadist and a psychopath. She had no pity for her victims, and claimed to regret none of her life's choices. Though it was not widely known, Bellatrix had been calling the shots for the Death Eaters as a group for nearly three years before the fateful Halloween of the Dark Lord's fall. The Dark Lord himself had become increasingly unstable, and Bellatrix, who knew an opportunity when she saw it, had placed herself between the Lord and his followers, acting as his main lieutenant and "relaying" "his" orders.

She was housed in the level reserved for the worst offenders, which correspondingly had the greatest dementor presence.

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Severus stalked down the hall, face lit faintly by the light of his patronus as it guarded him from the guards. Bellatrix had the nerve to be asleep (or to be pretending convincingly) when he reached her cell. Her curly black hair was wild and disheveled, and she wore the same grey uniform as all the other prisoners. She was thinner than he remembered, but nowhere near as emaciated as many of the other captives.

"Bella. Wake up. I didn't come all this way just to watch you sleep."

She stretched in a way that might have been seductive if they weren't in Azkaban, or if she wasn't the woman he despised above all others. She leaned back on her palms and fixed him with a mad grin. It hadn't changed appreciably in the past ten years. "Hallo, Sev. Long time no see. Why are you here, if not to watch me sleep?"

"Straight to the point? You used to like a bit more foreplay, if I recall."

"Small talk is overrated, but if you insist: What news of my dear sister and her spawn? How goes teaching in that hellhole? Old goat still alive and kicking? Got much of a love life? I am as you see me – one day the same as the next. I think that should cover it."

Severus rolled his eyes. He doubted she cared, but what the hell? It wasn't as though she was going anywhere. "Narcissa is fine, so far as I know. Your insufferable nephew has started Hogwarts. Narcissa has spoiled him rotten, and Lucius has imparted a sense of entitlement to rival his own." Bellatrix snorted at this. Her disdain for her brother-in-law was well-known among the Death Eaters. "The old goat is still alive, most unfortunately. But he's no better a legilimens than he ever was, so at least there's that. Slytherin is still Slytherin. The students think themselves clever, of course, but, as always, they lack subtlety and forethought. I despair for the future. And if you must know, I'm fucking the astronomy professor."

"Not old Stephan Feldsmiffler?" said Bellatrix with an evil smirk. "Always thought you liked girls, but good for you…"

"No, you wretched bint. He died ages ago. Collateral damage when the Defense Professor of '84 blew himself up. It's a witch."

"Oh? How have the DADAs been knocked off recently? Last you mentioned last time was the one that got eaten by an acromantula."

Snape grinned viciously at the thought of his former colleagues' deaths, then thought, Dark Powers, am I really so desperate for conversation that I'm enjoying the thought of chatting with Bellatrix? But he answered nonetheless. "The one after that was nosing around the dungeons and 'accidentally' stumbled into a Dark Arts trap ward in one of the empty storerooms. Can't think how that got there."

"Poor Sev. You hardly ever get to torture anyone anymore. How sad for you. Almost as bad as being here. Wait, you have to deal with Bumbles. You might have got the worse deal."

"Indeed. His skin melted off, dreadful thing." Severus was slightly surprised that Bellatrix was even making the effort to pretend to care, but he supposed her opportunities to talk to anyone were few and far between. "Then there was the one who was assaulting female first and second-years. He's in here, downstairs somewhere. In 1988...ah, yes. Took the students out to the lake to hunt for a kappa or something and was violated by the Giant Squid. She refused to return. Then there was the one who was caught stealing gilded frames and minor treasures to sell to Dung Fletcher, and last year's just got pregnant."

"Hmm… fascinating. So it's still 1991, then? Or '92?"

"'91. Sixth of October."

Bellatrix nodded and changed the subject. "By the by, do you recall, in the third phrase of the arithmantic description of the General Theory of Motion Charms, if it's two-aleph gamma delta theta all over the sum of the area below the curve describing power input over time up to the power peak, or if it's just gamma delta theta over that section of the curve?"

Severus hid his exasperation: no one should be able to do arithmancy after ten years of dementor exposure, but then, no one should be able to hold a reasonable conversation after ten months of this place. He was only slightly more surprised by the fact that Bellatrix was actively thinking about abstract concepts than he had been five years ago, when she had asked whether he'd seen anyone die horribly recently. (The minister had insisted that he come up to identify two dead Death Eaters. The aurors had gotten them mixed up, the insufferable idiots.)

Knowing Bellatrix, her apparent sanity was specifically calculated to drive any visitors around the twist.

"I see you're just as sane as ever, Bella, dear."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that. I'm running out of things to stave off the boredom, you see. The guards don't even have interesting conversations up here. It's all 'go' 'come' 'mine' and 'yes' or 'no'." She made a rattling, growling noise at a dementor which was trying to sneak past Severus' patronus. It backed off immediately with a rattling hiss. "Yeah, same to you, France! Scram or I'll set you on fire again."

How the hell had she set a dementor on fire? And of all the things to name a dementor, why France? He decided he didn't want to know. "So you're revising sixth-year arithmancy and learning to speak to dementors?"

"Well do you see anyone else to torture around here? I'm bored, Sev. Bored, bored, bored," she added in a sing-song tone. "I also translated Hamlet into Gobbledygook, and reworked about half the Dark Arts spells I know into Siren Song." Severus raised an eyebrow at this. He had known Bellatrix was brilliant, but reworking spells into another language was hard. Exponentially moreso when it was a non-human language. She smirked at him. "I found the themes of Hamlet worked well with the sixth Century takeover of Clan Torgeld by the fifth Kraight Bonegrinder. Would you agree?"

"I take back my earlier assessment of your sanity." She laughed. It was the same sound he was once accustomed to hearing across the battlefield, harsh and cruel. "The Bellatrix I knew," he added, "Would never have admitted knowing muggle literature or creature languages."

She rolled her eyes at him. "Much as I detest the lower life-forms, I did have the benefits of a proper Black education. One must know one's subjects, as auntie Walburga used to say. And the Dark Lord is gone somewhere, and I'm bored. So what do you want?"

Now it was Severus' turn to smirk. "Do you recall the last time I was here, when I informed you that you were not suffering properly?"

"Yes, five years ago or so? You were quite irate. Are you still pissed about, oh, whatever it was?"

Severus glared at her. "You used me as your whipping-boy for the last two years of the war! You're not supposed to be sitting here playing word games and threatening dementors! You're supposed to be reliving your most horrible memories and slowly going mad regretting your past mistakes!"

She grinned. "Awww, poor Sevvie-poo. Still a swotty little bastard, I see. It's not going to happen. Dementors are boring, and solitary confinement is dull, and the other prisoners are even worse conversationalists than you, but I already lived through my worst memories. I know all the terrible things lurking in my soul, and I like them. There is nothing dementors can do to me. It weirds them out."

Severus pinched the bridge of his nose. This was even worse than talking to Mary Elizabeth about the Snake Incident. "Only you, Bellatrix, would creep out dementors."

"Eh, it's something to pass the time. They'll be shot of me when the Dark Lord returns. Last chance, Severus Snape: why are you here? If you're not going to answer my arithmancy problem, the least you could do is state your business."

"Funny you should mention the Dark Lord," Severus said with the hint of a smirk playing around his lips.

Bellatrix sat up, fully engaged for the first time since Severus had arrived. "Is there news? Where is he? What can I do? Tell me!"

"No news, at least not of his current whereabouts or whatever happened that night. I have, however, discovered a most fascinating bit of information about his past…" Bellatrix was hanging on his every word. He could almost taste her interest. "Tell me, Bella, dear: Do you know the Dark Lord's name?"

"Of course I do. Just because I refuse to speak it as a matter of respect does not mean I don't know it. Do you think I'm an idiot?"

"Not Voldemort. His given name."

Bellatrix was quiet for a long moment. "Tom." Severus was somewhat surprised. He had not thought that even Bellatrix would know that. "He came to my fifth birthday party," she continued, "And father introduced him as Mr. Tom. That would have been early in 1956. He had just returned to Britain and was looking up his old contacts." She giggled. "I asked him if he brought me a present, and he conjured a blood quill from somewhere or other. I asked him about it years after – he said it was supposed to be a punishment for my impertinence in asking for a gift." She smiled at Severus. It was perhaps the creepiest thing he had ever seen her do, which was saying quite a lot. "I had forgotten that. I suppose it counts as a happy memory."

Bellatrix had known the Dark Lord since she was five? That… explained rather a lot, actually. Well, all the better. "And his surname?"

She shrugged. "I was never told. He said he wanted to divorce himself entirely from the person he was as a child – he did not have my advantages, you see, of being trained to his position from a young age. I gather he made several embarrassing mistakes along the way and wanted to distance himself from that."

Snape smirked. "Not quite. I happened to learn recently from our Esteemed Headmaster that the Dark Lord's given name was Tom Riddle."

"Riddle?" Bella's voice was suddenly hard.

"Indeed. A muggle name if ever I heard one."

"I don't believe you."

"How would you have me prove it?"

"You can't. It's not true. The Dark Lord is not a mudblood! I will kill you for the insult to his name!" She waved her hand at Severus, and a jolt of fire flew through the air. He hesitated in surprise – he hadn't realized she was working on wandless magic – but managed to deflect it just before it would have hit his face. "He is the Heir of Slytherin! He cannot be a mudblood! It's not true!"

"It is true. His mother, yes, she was a Gaunt, but his father? Muggle scum, I assure you. I came all the way out to this powers-bedamned rock just to share it with you. Now, perhaps, you will find you have a terrible memory to relive after all. Think, perhaps, on all the times you obeyed him, all the times you defended him. Think of all the times you fucked that mudblooded hypocrite. Think of his mark branded on your arm and writhe in the knowledge of your own… contamination."

Bellatrix wailed, apparently accepting Severus' reason for telling her the awful truth, then collapsed to the floor in a ball, clutching her knees and rocking slightly.

Severus tried to get her attention again, just to twist the knife a bit more, but she had gone completely unresponsive. Good. Perhaps the dementors were getting to her after all. He would have expected her to put up more of a fight.

He whistled a jaunty tune as he went to look in on Sirius Black. If he could make the would-be murderer cry before he left, his day would be complete.

Hogwarts

Mary's October was, if she had to describe it in a single word, lonely. It was odd to think so, because she had never had friends before the summer, and still did have Lilian and Aerin to spend time with, but Hermione had been her first friend, and she was sad that they weren't speaking. She didn't know if they would ever speak again. Hermione wouldn't even stay put so that Mary could apologize to her. Every time Hermione noticed Mary approaching in the library, she gathered up her books and walked away. In class, she acted like Mary didn't exist.

The situation was made even stranger by the fact that the Drs. Granger had been as good as their word – Mary had stopped writing them after Hermione stopped talking to her, and they sent Iris with a note checking whether she was alright and asking what had happened. So Mary was still talking to Hermione's parents, but not Hermione. They kept telling her to be patient and give Hermione some time to cool off before she tried to make up for whatever "bad thing" she had done. Mary wasn't sure it would be that easy.

After nearly a month of awkward evasions, Aerin of all people decided that enough was enough. Mary never learned exactly what she said to make Hermione give her another chance, but apparently it involved cornering her in the library with the help of a few other Ravenclaws. On a Wednesday evening, a week before Halloween, Aerin informed Mary that she ought to go try to talk to Hermione again after dinner.

She received the dressing-down of her life – apparently Hermione did not accept that there had been no other way to get Malfoy off her back than to threaten him with a snake – but at the end of it they were friends again.

"I missed you, Lizzie," Hermione said, almost too quietly to hear. Mary could only imagine what it had been like for Hermione – at least she had Lils and Aerin to talk to. Hermione had shut out all three of them.

"I missed you, too, Maia."

The two girls stood around awkwardly for a long moment, until Hermione broke the silence by asking what Mary had been up to all month.

Mary explained that they had explored all of the castle as well as they could in the evenings, and were thinking of trying to get down the Forbidden Corridor to see why it was forbidden. Hermione almost stopped talking to her again right there.

"I can't believe you! I stop talking to you for a month, and you go right on breaking the rules!"

Mary couldn't help but laugh a bit at that. "I thought you were not speaking to me over threatening Blondie. It wasn't actually against the rules."

"I was – don't change the subject! How was it not against the rules?"

"Well, I guess going into the forest was, but no one ever thought to make a rule about bringing in venomous snakes, because you can't, most of them, or threatening other students, because Slytherin house would die of boredom if you couldn't make power plays, or against using a snake to do it, because there are so few parselmouths." Hermione was staring at Mary in utter disbelief. Mary grinned. "Snape even gave me a few points because it was effective, though he said that my plan was 'lacking in grace and subtly.'" Mary imitated Snape for the last bit, and Hermione couldn't help laughing.

She rolled her eyes. "Of course he did. I suppose I should have believed Lilian when she told me your only rule was 'don't get caught.'"

"Well, no, that's rule number two, but it's the important one. And Malfoy and everyone else was breaking rule one, so…"

"Fine! But it's not okay that you threatened him like that. Mum says you shouldn't ever make a threat you're not willing to follow through with. Would you really have asked that snake to kill him?"

Mary hesitated for a long moment. "No, I guess not."

"See? And you shouldn't be looking for trouble down that corridor either!"

"Aren't you even the least bit curious?"

"Of course I am! It's been driving me mad all month. But I trust Dumbledore put that dog there for a reason!"

"And left a locking charm on the door that you can undo with an alohomora? That's practically an invitation!"

"You'd have to be a complete idiot to take up an invitation like that."

They continued to argue about the Forbidden Corridor in quiet corners for the rest of the week. It was infinitely preferable to the silent treatment. Mary (and Lilian and Aerin) could not be swayed – they would explore that corridor. In the end, Hermione's curiosity got the better of her, and she agreed to come as well.

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Saturday evening found Mary and Lilian back in their sneaking-out clothes, ghosting through the shadows to their rendezvous point – the fifth-floor entrance to Ravenclaw tower. Aerin and Hermione met them, as planned, just after eleven, and the four of them began to creep down toward the third floor. They had to hide from Filch on the fourth floor, and just as they were coming up on the corridor, they heard the sound of footsteps and whispers behind them. The girls ducked into an alcove, behind a statue of a witch holding what looked like a bouquet of turnips, and pulled their cloaks over their faces.

"Are you sure you know where Filch is?"

"Course we are."

"Shut up, Katie!"

"Fifth floor,"

"South wing,"

"By Ravenclaw."

"Fred! George!"

"It's fine, Alicia!"

"Yeah, relax."

The voices faded away and the girls crept back out of the nook. No sooner had they approached the door, however, than they heard more voices.

"Are you sure they were headed this way?"

"Wilkes, I'm warning you. One more word!"

"Boys! Keep it down! Spinnet said they were going out tonight, so they had to be going down! We just have to catch up so we can find their passage out."

"Aye, aye, captain."

There was a muffled smacking sound, as though the girl had hit the boy for his comment.

These voices, too, faded away.

"Was that Morgana?" Lilian whispered.

"I think so. And they were following the Gryffindors," said Mary, equally quietly.

"Want to go see what they were up to?"

"Kind of, yeah."

The Slytherins started creeping toward the stairs.

"Hey! Where are you two going?" Hermione asked. It had taken so long to get her to agree to come explore the Forbidden Corridor (against her better judgement), and now they weren't even going to do it?

"Come on, that will still be there next weekend. Don't you want to know what half the third year is up to?"

Hermione bit her lip, but Aerin grabbed her arm and started towing her along with a decisive "Yes."

"Fine, fine. Aerin, let go, I'm coming."

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The girls trailed Morgana and her friends through the castle, stopping every so often to listen around corners when they thought they'd lost them. They didn't, and apparently the Slytherins didn't lose the Gryffindors, either, because they were eventually able to watch the older students slip outside through a narrow spinning door (disguised as an empty alcove) near one of the side-entrances to the castle.

They waited a minute so that the Slytherins could get a bit of a lead, and then followed again. As soon as they were outside, it was clear where the line of students, silhouetted by the light of the nearly-full moon, was headed – directly to the Quidditch pitch.

"What are they doing?" Lilian whispered, but apparently she was not quiet enough, because a boy's voice answered from behind them.

"That's what we would like to know." The four girls looked around to see three third-year Slytherins with their wands trained on them. One of them was Morgana. The other two were Perry Wilkes and Adrian Lestrange, boys Mary and Lilian had never had cause to talk to.

"Erm…" Hermione said, her instinct to answer any question asked in her vicinity clearly warring with her common sense.

Mary, meanwhile, was more concerned with the fact that she had clearly just seen seven silhouettes moving across the lawn. "But you were in front of us!" she objected. The older students ignored her.

"Following you, obviously," Lilian blurted.

"Why were you following us?" Morgana asked impatiently.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time?" Aerin offered. The boys laughed, but Morgana fixed a glare on Hermione. She knew the weak link in a group when she saw it. Mary could only hope to be as good an interrogator one day.

The younger girl caved after only a moment. "We were out and heard the Gryffindors sneak by and then you lot and we wanted to know what was going on."

Mary smacked her in the shoulder. "The second rule is don't get caught! That means you're not supposed to admit that this isn't part of the plan."

"I'm not a Slytherin, Lizzie!"

"You're making me and Lils look bad!" The older Slytherins were cracking up by that point.

Adrian took pity on them. "It's fine. No one expects first-years to be really sneaky, anyway," he said, with all the confidence and experience of his two years' senority. "We were following the Weasleys."

"Research, don't ask," added Perry.

Mary and Lilian nodded while the Ravenclaws looked confused. "The Weasleys are the Gryffindor pranksters," Lilian explained. "These three are ours."

"Oh, so you're not really friends?" Hermione asked Morgana, thinking of the train.

The older girl shook her head. "More like friendly rivals."

"Come on, they've got to be almost all the way to the Pitch by now," Perry said impatiently.

"You can come as long as you're quiet," Adrian told the younger students.

Morgana did some sort of charm on all of them that felt like being wrapped in an overly-warm blanket, and much to Mary's surprise, they were suddenly camouflaged against the grass of the lawn. She held a hand up to the sky to see her skin become dotted with white "stars". "Wicked!"

Morgana shushed her and the seven students began to creep toward the Quidditch Pitch, keeping low to the ground. They had not gotten very far when a brash Weasley voice from overhead commented: "You lot are going to take forever at that pace."

His twin followed up with: "Yeah, are you coming flying or not?"

"That's what you're up to?" Adrian asked in an irritated tone. "Night flying?"

"Obviously."

"We don't,"

"Pull pranks,"

"Every night."

One of the Gryffindor girls floated over. "Of course not. That would be too predictable." Her friend laughed.

"Come on, hurry up!"

"We have enough people now for Quaftan."

"What's Quaftan?" Hermione asked.

"It's like Quidditch, but with no snitch and no bludgers," explained one of the Gryffindor girls.

"Like football on brooms?"

"Why do all broom sports start with a 'q'?"

Hermione's question was ignored. The twins answered Mary though. "Good question, Not-Mary!" exclaimed the one who was executing very slow barrel-rolls at head height.

"Next question?" asked the one who was hanging from his hovering broom by his knees.

"It is a mystery for the ages," confirmed Morgana. The older Slytherins had been holding a whispered conference, and had apparently reached some sort of decision. Morgana cancelled her camouflage charm, and the boys started racing for the broom shed. "You coming?" she asked the younger girls.

Mary and Lilian agreed enthusiastically while Aerin just shrugged and nodded. Hermione looked a little concerned, but eventually agreed to come along as well. They played Quaftan for a while (Slytherins and Hermione vs. Gryffindors and Aerin – the Gryffindors won, as the Slytherins were stuck with all the first-years), then follow-the-leader, then the older students had a competition to see who could do the best trick (Adrian won with a one-handed hand-stand), and then Mary won a diving contest, skimming the ground with her outstretched fingertips after a fifty-foot plunge. Hermione shrieked and told her off for nearly killing herself, but the boys were joking that they should make her come out and go after a few practice-snitches after that, and Morgana said she should go out for Slytherin's seeker the following year.

Eventually only the twins were doing anything, playing catch with the quaffle while the others floated around the goal hoops and chatted. Adrian invited everyone to come to the Halloween revel the following week. Katie and Alicia looked kind of uncomfortable with the idea, but Aerin said that she would come, of course, and Hermione was curious about wizarding holidays. Mary and Lilian would have gone regardless, just because they had been invited by older Slytherins. Fred and George insisted that they would come as well, even though Katie pointed out that their family was light and Christian.

"So what?" they asked together.

"We can still honor the dead,"

"And we love a good party!"

"And," Morgana added, "I'm not convinced that these two aren't Avatars of the Chaotic Power."

"Aww, Morgan!" said a twin with a fake sniffle, wiping an equally fake tear from his eye.

"That might be," the boys were drifting toward Morgana, and she was looking a bit wary.

"What are you doing?"

"The nicest thing,"

"Hey! Hey! Stop it! What are you –" Morgana's protests were cut off as the Weasleys sandwiched her between them in a terribly awkward mid-air hug.

"Anyone's ever said about us!"

"Get off me you assholes!"

The twins laughed along with everyone else, but let her go.

"You know,"

"You love us!"

Morgana aimed a kick at the nearer twin. He dodged and made a rude gesture at her.

"You all ready to go back?" Alicia changed the subject. "We've just been sitting around for a while now, and I'm tired."

The twins shared a look. "Yeah,"

"Suppose so."

The posse trooped back across the lawns, much less sneakily than they had left the castle. It was nearly three, according to Perry's tempus charm, and even Morgana didn't think that anyone else would be out so late. She was, perhaps unfortunately, incorrect.

"What," said an exceedingly dry voice behind them. They froze as one and slowly turned around as the voice continued to speak. "Precisely, are… eleven students… from every house but Hufflepuff… doing out of bed in one night?"

"Erm…" said Hermione, exactly as she had when Morgana confronted them hours earlier. Mary stepped on her foot. "Ouch!"

"Good morning, Professor Snape," said Adrian, clearly at a bit of a loss.

"Mr. Lestrange. Mr. Wilkes. Miss Yaxley. Miss Potter. Misses Moon. Miss Granger. Messers Weasley. Miss Spinnet. And Miss Bell. I ask you again, what are you all doing out of bed so late after curfew?"

"Nothing, sir," chorused the older Slytherins. The younger girls followed this with stumbling, guilty-sounding 'nothing's of their own while the Gryffindors stared at them in bemusement. One of the twins started laughing, but stopped when his brother kicked him in the shin.

"Very well, then. Fifty points from Slytherin, twenty from Ravenclaw, and a hundred from Gryffindor. Now get back to bed."

"What! That's not fair!" said Hermione, apparently unable to keep her mouth shut.

One of the twins clapped a hand over her face from behind, and said, "Yes, sir." But the damage was already done.

"Five points from Ravenclaw for your cheek, Miss Granger."

Just then, another figure materialized out of the dark. "Oh, come on, Snape. That really wasn't fair."

"Shut up, Sinistra," Professor Snape snapped.

"You can't take twice as many points from Gryffindor as Slytherin just because you don't like them."

"The Gryffindors were the only ones who refused to answer my question," the head of Slytherin responded smoothly. "As such, I must assume they were up to mischief of some sort, as the others, by their own admission, were not."

"Bullshit!" said Professor Sinistra with a snort of laughter.

It was at this point that Morgana interrupted. "Professor Snape. Professor Sinistra. Good morning. What brings you out to the lake… together… at such an hour?"

If looks could kill, Professor Snape's glare would have struck the older girl down where she stood. She smirked back at him. After a moment he rolled his eyes and bit out several sentences. They sounded almost painful. "Fine. No points will be taken for this little misadventure of yours. None of us saw any of the others. Clear?"

There was a chorus of 'yes, sir' and 'crystal' and one 'aye-aye, professor.'

Then Morgana had the audacity to add, "And, sir?"

"Five points to Slytherin. Now get to bed!" He waved them off toward the castle impatiently, and they heard him saying to Professor Sinistra as they left "I told you I would handle it, Sinistra!"

"What was that about?" Hermione asked as they re-located their secret passage into the castle.

"Professors Snape and Sinistra hate each other, right? But they're kind of together, and neither of them wants anyone to know. So if you catch them together and don't say anything about it, Snape gives you a favor, so keep it quiet and he won't take those points away," explained Perry.

"And he gives Slytherins five points any time they outmaneuver him," added Adrian. "It doesn't happen very often." Morgana was grinning, but she didn't say anything. The students split up when they entered the castle, and the Slytherins made their way back to their common room silently.

Halloween 1991

Hogwarts

The next few days were a welcome return to the routines of late September, at least as far as Mary was concerned. The girls attended their usual classes (Professor Flitwick taught them a levitation charm, which seemed much more magical for some reason than the simple sparks, light charms or basic personal hygiene charms they had been working on), studied etiquette and the differences between muggle myths and actual magical creatures (Hermione's latest pet-topic, after discovering that there was a cerberus in the castle) in the library after dinner, and generally enjoyed the fact that they were on speaking terms again.

Things were a bit more tense between Mary and Hermione than they had been before the Snake Prank, but Lilian, who had long-since realized that neither of the other girls had much experience with friends, assured them that this was normal, and that it would pass, given time. They avoided talking about snakes, the Forest, and exploring where they weren't supposed to be, and Hermione slowly became more comfortable with her Slytherin friends again.

Surprisingly, at least to Mary, Hermione was more than willing to discuss the Revel they had been invited to by the older Slytherins, and she was fully intending on attending, despite the fact that it was out of bounds and after hours. She was terribly interested in traditional wizarding holidays, and could hardly wait to see what the older students were planning.

Mary and Lilian had only a slightly better idea than Hermione of what the celebration was about – the older Slytherins (between grumbling about the lack of proper official celebrations) had been drawing the younger students aside and telling them about the party, but mostly they were told not to mention it to anyone and to be ready and waiting for further instructions on Thursday.

Mary wasn't sure exactly how the wizarding religion worked, and Lilian was not very helpful, since her family were not active pagans or traditionalists, or whatever the politically correct term was. They did know that the holiday was also called Samhain, and that it was a celebration of the dead and one of the major holidays for Dark wizards. Hermione had looked it up and found a little information on the Dark Powers, which seemed to be some kind of gods (the Chaotic Power was one of them, which made Morgana's comment about the Twins much funnier), but all of the more specific references to the holiday rituals were in the Restricted Section. What might be expected to happen at the Revel was anyone's guess, as far as the trio was concerned.

By Thursday, everyone was excited, regardless of their plans for the evening. Everyone was going to the Halloween Feast, and it was the tenth anniversary of the end of the War, which was a much bigger deal for the older students, who could actually remember what it was like, but by no means insignificant for the rest of them. For example, Mary now knew that it was the day her parents had died, and she had not.

Mary had been most displeased to learn that the wizards also had a holiday on the first of November called Mary Potter Day to celebrate that event. At first she had thought it some kind of sick joke, but apparently it wasn't, as the Professor called her into her office to discuss it on Tuesday evening. What, she had to ask, was wrong with just calling it V-day or something? The Professor hadn't really had an answer besides "politics".

Halloween had always been Mary's favorite holiday. It was the one day a year when Aunt Petunia had to allow freakishness in her house (she did try to get Dudley to dress up as a fireman or police officer rather than anything supernatural, but she didn't often succeed – last year he had been a ridiculously obese vampire), and there was often enough candy floating around that she could steal a piece or two. She loved wandering around the streets after dark and watching the other children trick-or-treating and making mischief. She was never given any sweets herself (Aunt Petunia had vindictively told the neighbors every year that Mary had diabetes and couldn't be trusted with sugar), but sometimes Mrs. Pearson at Number Seven would give her an apple, which was almost as good. Halloween was the one day a year when everyone else was pretending to be a freak, so she fit right in… and there was no way that she was going to let stupid Mary Potter Day or the newfound knowledge of her parents' death date ruin her love of the holiday.

Mary and Lilian entered the Halloween Feast with the rest of the Slytherin first-years. There were only a few amazed gasps, but anyone who was watching them closely would have noticed their wide eyes and poorly concealed delighted grins. Even Draco Malfoy could not entirely hide his expression as they watched thousands of bats swooping around the tables and giant, floating jack-o-lanterns full of candles, with the waning moon just visible behind a massive bank of clouds. It was, in a word, perfect.

The students took their seats and the Headmaster made a short speech, which Mary paid no attention to whatsoever, still watching the enchanted clouds rolling across the ceiling. The food appeared suddenly in the golden serving dishes, just as it had at the start-of-term banquet. Mary was amused to see that several deserts had been served along with the main course. Hermione, who had mentioned that Halloween was the one day a year when she was allowed to eat sweets, would be very pleased.

Mary was just filling her plate when Professor Quirrell came sprinting into the hall, his turban askew and terror on his face. Everyone stared as he reached the Headmaster's chair, slumped against the table, and gasped, "Troll – in the dungeons – thought you ought to know."

And then he fainted dead away.

There was an uproar. At the Slytherin table, from what Mary could hear, it was more concerned with the likelihood of Quirrell telling the truth (and wasn't it suspicious that he didn't stutter at all, and wasn't it odd that he just fainted like that – suspicious, wasn't it? – had to be an act), but someone at the Hufflepuff table was shrieking that they were all going to die, and several Gryffindors looked to be putting together a plan to go hunting the troll. It took several purple firecrackers exploding from the end of Professor Dumbledore's wand to bring silence.

"Prefects," he rumbled, "lead your houses back to the dormitories immediately!"

About half of Slytherin House tried to catch Professor Snape's eye simultaneously. He grinned at them – or perhaps bared his teeth at them would be a more accurate description (it was not a pleasant expression) – and headed for the doors. Mary heard his dry voice speaking quietly in her ear, much like Miss Farley had done at the end of the first feast.

"Slytherin House, follow your prefects. Miss Rowle, Mr. Burke, evacuation plan Beta-Funf."

The seventh-year prefects immediately shot green and silver sparks from their wands, and Mary heard a younger man's voice – probably Burke – saying "Slytherins head for the main doors. Rendezvous outside on the front lawn. Avery, you've got first-years, Rosier take second. Farley, third; Moon, fourth. Carpenter, Carmichael, and Lisbon, you're reps for the upperclassmen. Make your head-counts and report to Avery and Rosier. Avery is in charge of organizing search and recover if necessary. Rosier makes tactical decisions. Move!"

Mary and Lilian were swept up in the tide of Slytherins rushing to the main hall doors. Mary was pretty sure she saw Professor McGonagall shoot them a look – probably for ignoring the Headmaster, but really, if there was a troll in the dungeons, why would they go back to their Common Room, which was also in the dungeons? That would just be daft.

Safely outside on the lawn, the first-years congregated around Miss Avery, who dutifully made a head-count. All were present and accounted-for. Two of the fifth-years, a sixth-year, and four of the seventh-years were missing, but when Avery did her tracking spell, it indicated that they were nowhere near the dungeons, so she and Mr. Rosier decided that they probably didn't need to be rescued.

After a few long, boring minutes of standing around, Lilian asked aloud, "I wonder what Miss Rowle and Mr. Burke were doing."

Her brother overheard and called over, "They're locking down the Common Room and Potions Labs." He walked a bit closer before continuing, explaining for the benefit of all the first-years. "Case B Scenarios are those where the majority of the House is in the Great Hall or class or otherwise out of the dorms. Class 5 Scenarios involve a major threat to the school. German suggests that the threat is physical destruction or demolition. Evacuation Beta-funf requires us to get you all out of the school, and the seventh-year prefects are to go and lock down the potions labs and dorms so that the damage is minimalized. Professor Snape must have been worried that the troll would break in and either blow up the foundations or bring the Hufflepuff Common Room crashing down into ours. They're right above us, you know." Only Slytherins, Mary thought, would have worked out and encoded a series of evacuation plans for anything so absurd as a troll threatening to take out the foundations of the school.

Just then, they heard a magically magnified female voice shouting, "Slytherin, retreat!" from a first-floor window.

"SHIT!" yelled Rosier, his own voice suddenly much louder as well. "Everyone away from the doors! Upperclassmen hide younger students, then yourselves. DON'T FORGET SCENT, FOOTFALLS, AND TRACERTRACK! Once you're disillusioned, head for the Quidditch Pitch." He began following his own advice, cracking the second-years sharply on the top of their heads with his wand and muttering half a dozen incantations over the lot of them. "Get going, you lot!"

Mary tried to call out for Lilian, but Avery had already silenced her, and Lilian was invisible or something. It was even better than the camouflage spell Morgana had used on them, though it felt cold and slimy as it dripped down from the top of her head. The other students were quickly becoming little more than heat-shimmers, nearly entirely invisible in the poor light. She halfheartedly began to jog toward the pitch, but stopped when the main doors burst open, a twelve-foot-tall creature with a great lumpy body and a tiny bald head was running from several of the professors, the Headmaster among them. Four jets of red light hit it simultaneously and it collapsed to the ground, not ten yards from Mary.

It had dropped an enormous wooden club, so heavy that it made a dent where it landed (much like the troll itself). Mary wasn't entirely sure that the creature needed a weapon at all, as the stench coming off of it was nearly enough to knock her out. She couldn't imagine facing it indoors. The Headmaster levitated the creature and walked it toward the forest, while Sprout, Flitwick and an old witch Mary hadn't met retreated to the castle and closed the doors.

Sean Moon appeared out of thin air and cast some sort of charm, then began reversing the spells on the younger students and sending them to the pitch with the announcement that the prefects were on their way, and would take another head-count once they arrived. Mary found Lilian when they were both visible again, and they did as they were told, discussing in hushed tones the evening's events and whether the Revel would still happen, and if there might, just possibly, be food there.

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As it so happened, there was food, but not at the Revel. Mary heard later that the Headmaster had declared that their feasts would be re-located to their common rooms, but someone, maybe Professor Snape or the seventh-year prefects, had intercepted the elves and had their food sent to the pitch instead. In what had to be one of the strangest meals Mary had ever eaten, the various Slytherin cliques had served themselves from a banquet table which appeared with a dozen elves in the middle of the field, and sat in small groups in the stands, chattering amongst themselves more freely than she had seen at any other meal.

Fred and George Weasley showed up about an hour into their odd feast. Their arrival was widely remarked-upon, but no one told them to leave when they found seats near Morgana and her friends. Several of the older students broke into the broom shed and showed off their flying skills when they had finished eating, while everyone else just sat around chatting. The moon was very high in the sky by the time one of the prefects – Rosier, Mary thought, though it could have been Burke, with the light behind him – came to a halt facing the section of the stands where most of the Slytherins were sitting.

He made his voice just loud enough that everyone could hear him say: "The hour is upon us! To the Revel!"

And then there was a sudden streaming of people out of the pitch, toward the forest and the Senior Woods.

When they arrived, Mary saw that several of the "missing" upperclassmen had apparently busied themselves building a massive bonfire and preparing some kind of ritual space. The flames of the bonfire burned white-hot – Mary couldn't bring herself to go anywhere near it.

The same prefect (definitely Rosier, in the light of the fire), announced himself as the Master of Ceremonies, and began what Morgana later explained was an invocation of the Dead. "We are gathered here on this, the ancient day of the Dying of the Light to celebrate those who have passed beyond the Veil! We celebrate the necessity of death and the wonder of it, even as we remember those who have gone ahead! We make our sacrifices to the dead and to the Power which governs their passing! Rise up, my friends, and bow before the Deathly Power, for tonight… we dance with the dead!"

Nine upperclassmen took their places around the ritual diagram cut into the ground of the forest clearing, surrounding the bonfire. They chanted in languages Mary didn't know, and one by one made offerings to the fire – fruit, meat, wine, some kind of hard alcohol that burned bright blue, and several other things Mary didn't recognize. All throughout, the fire burned higher and the feeling of magic in the clearing grew clearer, plucking at the edges of her own power, edges Mary had never felt before. The lines of the diagram cut into the ground were glowing silver and… black? Could black glow? She felt alive – more alive than she had ever felt before. Was that right? The second-to-last person in the circle cut the throat of a small, fuzzy animal and made an offering of blood, or maybe life. The presence of magic rose to a fever-pitch, almost unbearable in its intensity. The last person drew a knife sharply across her own forearm with a shouted phrase, then threw the blade into the fire.

The knife should not have spun as it did, Mary thought, but heedless of physics and natural laws, it flipped through the air and landed point-down at the very center of the inferno, and with that, the flames went blue, and began to draw heat in, burning cold. The magic gathered in the air was screaming, streaming into the fire as though into a void. As one (and neither Mary nor Lilian could say later how they knew to do so), all the celebrants not standing in the ritual circle declared, "We bear witness!" and the nine in the ritual responded "So mote it be!" and then things went very weird.

As far as Mary could tell, time seemed to stretch oddly, and there was a distinct feeling of being out of her own body. The clearing was filled with ghosts, or something like ghosts, maybe, spirits? The girl who had cut her arm before throwing the knife into the fire was in some kind of a trance – she walked into the blue fire and stood there, arms outreached, head thrown back, chanting as though to the stars. The spirits or the dead or the ghosts flitted through the students, leaving vague memories in their wake. And the students danced. There was no music, or at least none to be heard by human ears – but the magic moved them. Mary, in a brief semi-lucid moment, thought that this was quite the oddest thing she had done since she joined the magical world. And then, in a flash, the moment was over. She did not think, she simply moved, along with everyone around her, stomping and clapping and turning in time, coming together and moving apart to an unheard beat as memories of ages past flitted through her mind.

It was never clear, even afterward, how long they danced with the dead. Perhaps hours, or maybe only minutes. It seemed like forever and no time at all, as the students fell to their knees, exhausted by magic and dancing and visions which none of them could remember later. The spirits disappeared back into the fire, and it burnt itself out. The girl who stood in the flames fainted (probably), but two boys caught her before she could fall the ground.

Mary realized at some point that she was holding hands with two people, their heads together at the center of an odd triangle as they lay, flat-out on dew-soaked leaves. She raised her head just enough to see that the two people were Hermione and Lilian. She had no idea when Hermione had arrived, but she was glad she made it. She met their eyes and squeezed their palms as tightly as she could, and the three of them shared the thought, though they didn't know how they knew it was shared, that there was something to be said for the kind of friends who could find you in the middle of a hundred other people, when the world was crashing around you and magic ruled the night, and nothing made any sense at all. Mary knew, in that moment, that these girls would stand by her side, forever, maybe. Until death and beyond.

After all, there are some things you can't share without creating some kind of bond, and coming through your first major magical ritual unscathed and brought together by mad, wild magic was obviously one of them.