A/N: Written the Halloween Competition. This actually turned out way longer and diferent than I thought it would be...

I, Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy, had a feeling that something creepy was going to happen tonight. I know what you're thinking. The son of a former Death eater, a wizard who has seen things muggles would gape at, scared? The answer would be yeah, I am. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Why don't we start at the beginning?

It all began on a normal day at Hogwarts (those are the worst. Everything happens on normal days) when he had been doing homework with his two best friends in the library. Normally, they would've been in the Slytherin common room, but winter was approaching and the lighting was terrible in there. Rose, the ever studious one, had slipped into the muggle section for some light reading and had come back with a book on Muggle traditions.

She was flipping through the pages disinterestedly when she suddenly froze and called their names excitedly.

"Scorp! Al! Come over here." She grinned.

Albus, who had accidently knocked over his ink pot at her exclamation, cursed quietly before making his way over.

"What is it Rose?" I asked, impatient. "I'd love to get my Potions essay finished sometime this day."

Rolling her eyes at me, she shoved the book under my nose. My eyes quickly flickered across the words on the page. There wasn't anything important on it. As I voiced my thoughts, she shook her head and sighed at me in exasperation.

"Right here, look. 'Trick-or-treating is a very odd muggle pastime where they ask for treats from strangers. It only happens once a year, during Halloween.'"

I raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. "So?"

"It sounds kind of interesting actually." Albus commented lightly. "I mean, free candy? Why not?"

I gave him my best betrayed look. "Albus!"

"Don't call me that!" he gave me an irritated look and a light shove.

"Get over it already." Rose sighed, waving him off. "Anyways, I was thinking we should go trick or treating on Halloween!"

I stared at her. For a brilliant witch, she sure could be dense sometimes. "Rosie, we're in Hogwarts. How are we supposed to do this?"

"We'll dress-up in costumes and knock on the doors of our housemates for treats." She decided.

"But wait," Albus butted in, "They won't have any candy."

We all fell into silence. Rose visibly deflated. And that was the end of everything.

.

.

.

Or, that's what I would like to say, but at that moment, James had overheard and immediately swung to our table.

"Fear not, little brother and minions," he said dramatically, "James is here to save the day!"

Albus slammed his head onto the table and groaned. "What do you want James?"

James grinned mischievously. "I can't do anything about that trick-or-treat hocus pocus you were talking about, but you've given me a great idea!"

"And what is that?" Rose asked warily.

"We should celebrate Halloween, the muggle way!" He said.

Albus and I glanced at each other in surprise.

"That's all?" I asked curiously. I had heard enough about his pranks from Albus and Rose to learn that they were never mild or tame.

"Yeah, that's all." He nodded. "And to celebrate Halloween the muggle way, we're all going to dress up in costumes!"

I shook my head. No one was going to do it, even if the most popular guy in the school said so.

How dearly wrong I was.

The morning of Halloween dawned bright and cold. As I sleepily stumbled out of bed and down to the Great Hall, I had to rub my eyes several times to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. Then I slapped my cheeks a bit to double check. Finally, pinching my arm convinced me.

This was reality.

Beside me, Rose and Albus also gaped at the Great Hall. There were the normal decorations such as a thousand floating candles, and huge pumpkins. What were unusual were the students, decked in all sorts of costumes.

Ghosts, vampires, pillows… there was even a pair of first years dressed up as tomatoes! Even the Slytherins, looking a bit sulky, had dressed up for the occasion. It seemed, in the middle of such oddness, that we were the only ones in plain robes. Up at the staff table, I could see Professor McGonagall rubbing her temples.

Looking around the room, I spotted Dominique walking briskly towards us in a pink fairy costume.

"You guys aren't in costume." She stated. We nodded.

"Well, this won't do." She sighed, wagging her finger at us. "You know Halloween in the day when the veil between the world of the dead and the living is the thinnest don't you? Without a costume, you'll be virtually unprotected!"

"Have you been talking to Fred and James again?" Albus asked suspiciously.

"Yes. Why?"

Rose groaned. "It's nothing." She gave us a just-go-along-with-this-nonsense look.

The girl hefted up the book she was carrying and flipped a couple of pages. "It says here to form a circle of salt to protect from zombies, witches, and old boyfriends." The girl grabbed a salt shaker and promptly made a circle, ordering us to stand inside.

"And then, we have to say a spell and then voila! Instant protection." Dominique said, chanting the word.

I shifted on my feet, bored. The last thing I expected was for the circle of salt to glow in shades of brilliant blue. I definitely didn't expect, once the light died down, to have what seemed like all of the girls in the Great Hall crowded around the three of us. There were also a couple of boys and a smattering of books on the outside of the ring that had formed.

"What is going on here?" Professor Sprout asked in alarm, getting up and hovering worriedly around the clump of people surrounding us.

But Rose, the cleverest out of all of us, quickly realized what was happening.

"Dominique!" she yelled furiously. "You reversed the spell! Now zombies, witches, and old boyfriends are attracted to us instead of us being protected from them!"

That explained the books. A nearby tome read 'Zombies: Tales of Inferi in the Muggle World'.

Dominique looked fairly panicked by now. "I can't find anything to reverse the spell!" she called. "I'm really sorry guys!"

By now, McGonagall had arrived at the scene. I relayed what happened to her, struggling to raise my voice over the girls (and guys) that were screaming indignantly as they tried to move away from us. But it was no use. We were like magnets. No matter how far they got away, in the end they were only dragged back by an invisible force.

Beside me, Albus was muttering mutinously. "It must've been James. I knew he wouldn't settle for anything mild!"

I agreed wholeheartedly.

A couple of hours later, the chaos had mostly dispelled. The people surrounding us had slumped down in depression and class had been cancelled for the day. Dominique, feeling guilty for causing the mess, dutifully sat in the great hall with us. The Ravenclaws in the group wanted to go research the spell, but all of us, who numbered more than a hundred, couldn't possibly fit through the doorway. Not to mention we all had to walk together if we did that.

I was idly counting the candles in the room when Albus suddenly jerked up excitedly and asked for the book. Confused, his cousin gave it to him. He started flipping randomly until he got the page where the spell was.

"Guys," he said to Rose and me, "The spell became reversed when Dominique said it normally right?"

My eyes widened in realization. "Following that logic, it should be reversed if we say it backwards."

As we hurriedly got out our wands, Rose went to grab a salt shaker. At our questioning looks, she explained. "I think it makes sense to have the circle. I mean, it was what lit up when she said the spell right? It's possible the spell uses the salt as some sort of conductor, or multiplies its usage."

Quickly, by passing the salt shaker around the edge of their group, they managed to make a passable circle. Really, it looked more like an oval but pfft, details.

Dominique scrambled up. Every looked towards her expectantly, awaiting their moment of freedom. She complied, chanting the spell backwards and immediately, the spell's hold was released.

As the three of us stretched after being forced to sit down for so long, we separated from the large group of students and conversed in a huddle.

"We're Slytherins." Albus said.

I agreed. "We're not going to let them get away with pranking us."

Rose's eyes glinted dangerously. "I already have an idea."

Not even an hour later, James and Fred were starting their months' worth of detentions and the incident was already beginning to be called The Halloween Catastrophe.