Disclaimer: Anything you recognize, I do not own
As Halloween arrived, Hope was regretting her decision to go to the deathday party. The rest of the school was happily anticipating their Halloween feast; the Great Hall had been decorated with the usual live bats, Hagrid's vast pumpkins had been carved into lanterns large enough for three men to sit in and there were rumors that Dumbledore had booked a troupe of dancing skeletons for the entertainment.
"A promise is a promise." Hermes reminded Hope bossily. "You said you would go to the deathday party."
"Technically, she said we would." Hope pointed at Cassie, who was fixing her hair and looking regretful herself.
At seven o'clock, Hope, Regina, Cassie and Hermes walked straight past the doorway to the packed Great Hall, which was glittering invitingly with gold plates and candles, and directed their steps instead toward the dungeons.
The passageway leading to Nearly Headless Nick's party had been lined with candles, too, though the effect was far from cheerful: These were long, thin, jet-black tapers, all burning bright blue, casting a dim, ghostly light even over their own living faces. The temperature dropped with every step they took. As Hope shivered and drew her robes tightly around her, he heard what sounded like a thousand fingernails scraping an enormous blackboard.
"Is that supposed to be music?" Regina questioned.
They turned a corner and saw Nearly Headless Nick standing at a doorway hung with black velvet drapes.
"My dear friends." He said mournfully. "Welcome, welcome... so pleased you could come..." He swept off his plumed hat and bowed them inside.
It was an incredible sight. The dungeon was full of hundreds of pearly-white, translucent people, mostly drifting around a crowded dance floor, waltzing to the dreadful, quavering sound of thirty musical saws, played by an orchestra on a raised, black-draped platform. A chandelier overhead blazed midnight-blue with a thousand more black candles. Their breath rose in a mist before them; it was like stepping into a freezer.
"Shall we have a look around?" Hope suggested, wanting to warm up her feet.
"Careful not to walk through anyone." Regina muttered nervously and they set off around the edge of the dance floor.
They passed a group of gloomy nuns, a ragged man wearing chains, and the Fat Friar, a cheerful Hufflepuff ghost, who was talking to a knight with an arrow sticking out of his forehead. Harry wasn't surprised to see that the Bloody Baron, a gaunt, staring Slytherin ghost covered in silver bloodstains, was being given a wide berth by the other ghosts.
"Oh, no." Cassie suddenly whispered. "Moaning Myrtle."
Even Hope, cut off from the magical world most of her life and during the summer, knew who Moaning Myrtle was. She haunted one of the girl's bathrooms, which was out of order because she kept having tantrums and flooding the place. Hope had never gone in there anyway if she could avoid it; it wasn't easy to have a pee with a ghost wailing at you...
"Isn't she the one-?" Hermes began.
"Yes." Hope and Cassie cut him off, steering him away so they didn't run into the ghost. "Just walk away-."
"Look, food." Regina interrupted eagerly. On the other side of the dungeon was a long table, also covered in black velvet. They approached it eagerly but next moment had stopped in their tracks, horrified. The smell was quite disgusting. Large, rotten fish were laid on handsome silver platters; cakes, burned charcoal-black, were heaped on salvers; there was a great maggoty haggis, a slab of cheese covered in furry green mold and, in pride of place, an enormous gray cake in the shape of a tombstone, with tar-like icing forming the words:
Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington
Died 31st October, 1492
As they watched, a portly ghost approached the table, crouched low, and walked through it, his mouth held wide so that it passed through one of the stinking salmon.
"Can you taste it if you walk through it?" Hope asked curiously.
"Almost." The ghost replied sadly and then he drifted away.
"I expect they've let it rot to give it a stronger flavor." Hermes put in knowledgeably, pinching his nose and leaning closer to look at the putrid haggis.
"I'm gonna be sick." Regina moaned.
"Let's move." Cassie suggested, looking rather peeved at the state of the party.
They had barely turned around, however, when a little man swooped suddenly from under the table and came to a halt in midair before them.
"Hi, Peeves." Hope told him, trying to keep the dread out of her voice. Unlike the ghosts around them, Peeves the Poltergeist was the very reverse of pale and transparent. He was wearing a bright orange party hat, a revolving bow tie, and a broad grin on his wide, wicked face.
"Nibbles?" He asked sweetly, offering them a bowl of peanuts covered in fungus.
"No, thanks."
"Heard you talking about poor Myrtle." Peeves said, his eyes dancing. "Rude you was about poor Myrtle." He took a deep breath and bellowed: "OY! MYRTLE!"
"No, no, no!" Hope said quickly, trying to salvage the situation. They didn't need another flooded bathroom or sworn enemy. But it was too late; a squat ghost girl with lank hair and pearly spectacles had glided over.
"What?" She asked sulkily.
"How are you, Myrtle? It's nice to see you out of the toilet." Cassie said in a very diplomatic tone of voice.
"They was just talking about you." Peeves whispered slyly in Myrtle's ear.
"Just saying how lovely it is to see you out and about tonight." Cassie continued hurriedly. Myrtle narrowed her eyes at Cassie.
"You're making fun of me." She moaned, silver tears welling rapidly in her small, see-through eyes.
"No, honestly, was I not just saying that?" Cassie looked over at her friends with an expression that they caught onto quickly.
"Oh, yeah."
"Just a minute ago."
"I heard you say that."
"Don't lie to me!" Myrtle gasped, tears now flooding down her face, while Peeves chuckled happily over her shoulder. "D'you think I don't know what people call me behind my back? Fat Myrtle! Ugly Myrtle! Miserable, moaning, moping Myrtle!"
"You've forgotten pimply." Peeves hissed in her ear. Moaning Myrtle burst into anguished sobs and fled from the dungeon. Peeves shot after her, pelting her with moldy peanuts, yelling: "Pimply! Pimply!"
"Mother would keel over if she saw me at a place like this, upsetting people left and right." Cassie complained.
"You're right. So let's go." Regina agreed. But, at that moment, Nearly Headless Nick drifted towards them through the crowd.
"Enjoying yourselves?"
"Oh, yes." They lied in unison.
"Not a bad turnout. The Wailing Widow came all the way up from Kent... It's nearly time for my speech, I'd better go and warn the orchestra..." The orchestra, however, stopped playing at that very moment. They, and everyone else in the dungeon, fell silent, looking around in excitement, as a hunting horn sounded. "Oh, here we go." Nearly Headless Nick said bitterly.
Through the dungeon wall burst a dozen ghost horses, each ridden by a headless horseman. The assembly clapped wildly; Hope started to clap, too, but stopped quickly at the sight of Nick's face. The horses galloped into the middle of the dance floor and halted, rearing and plunging. At the front of the pack was a large ghost who held his bearded head under his arm, from which position he was blowing the horn. The ghost leaped down, lifted his head high in the air so he could see over the crowd and strode over to Nearly Headless Nick, squashing his head back onto his neck.
"Nick!" He roared. "How are you? Head still hanging in there?" He gave a hearty guffaw and clapped Nearly Headless Nick on the shoulder.
"Welcome, Patrick." Nick replied stiffly.
"Live 'uns!" Sir Patrick cried, spotting the four second-years and giving a huge, fake jump of astonishment, so that his head fell off again. The crowd howled with laughter.
"Very amusing." Nearly Headless Nick muttered darkly.
"Don't mind Nick!" Sir Patrick's head shouted from the floor. "Still upset we won't let him join the Hunt! But I mean to say. Look at the fellow-."
"I think." Hope put in hurriedly, at a meaningful look from Nick. "Nick's very... frightening and-."
"Ha! Bet he asked you to say that!"
"If I could have everyone's attention, it's time for my speech!" Nearly Headless Nick announced loudly, striding toward the podium and climbing into an icy blue spotlight. "My late lamented lords, ladies, and gentlemen, it is my great sorrow..." But nobody heard much more. Sir Patrick and the rest of the Headless Hunt had just started a game of Head Hockey and the crowd were turning to watch. Nearly Headless Nick tried vainly to recapture his audience, but gave up as Sir Patrick's head went sailing past him to loud cheers.
"We have technically fulfilled our promise." Cassie reminded Hope.
"So we have. Let's go."
The quartet backed toward the door, nodding and beaming at anyone who looked at them, and a minute later were hurrying back up the passageway full of black candles.
"Pudding might not be finished yet." Regina mused hopefully, leading the way toward the steps to the entrance hall. And then Hope heard it.
"Rip... tear... kill." It was the same voice, the same cold, murderous voice that she had heard in Lockhart's office. Hope stumbled to a halt, clutching at the stone wall, listening with all her might, looking around, squinting up and down the dimly lit passageway.
"Hope?" Her friends had stopped and turned to look at her.
"It's that voice again! Shut up for a minute." Hope told them urgently.
"What voice?" Hermes asked frantically.
"Shut up!" Hope hissed, trying to listen.
"So hungry... for so long..."
"Listen!" Hope ordered. Her three friends just stood there, watching her like she had gone out of her mind.
"Kill... Time to kill..." The voice was growing fainter. Hope was sure it was moving away, moving upward. A mixture of fear and excitement gripped her as she stared at the dark ceiling; how could it be moving upward? Was it a phantom, to whom stone ceilings didn't matter?
"This way." She called to her friends as she began to run. Up the stairs, into the entrance hall... It was no good hoping to hear anything there, the babble of talk from the Halloween feast was echoing out of the Great Hall. Hope sprinted up the marble staircase to the first floor, her friends clattering along behind her.
"Hope, what are we-?"
"SHH!" Hope snapped. Distantly, from the floor above, and growing fainter still, she heard the voice:
"I smell blood... I SMELL BLOOD!" Hope's stomach lurched; the voice had risen to a shout and she felt like she was going to be sick at the sound of it.
"It's going to kill someone!" She cried. She ran up the next flight of steps three at a time, trying to listen over her own rapid footsteps and pounding heart. She hurtled around the whole of the second floor, Regina, Cassie and Hermes panting behind her, not stopping until they turned a corner into the last, deserted passage.
"What was that all about?" Regina demanded, wiping sweat off her face.
"There wasn't anything to hear." Cassie added with a huff, her hair falling out of it's previously perfect up-do.
But Hermes gave a sudden gasp, pointing down the corridor.
"Look!" Something was shining on the wall ahead.
They approached slowly, squinting through the darkness. Foot-high words had been daubed on the wall between two windows, shimmering in the light cast by the flaming torches.
THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE.
"What's that thing hanging underneath?" Regina asked, a slight quiver in her voice. As they edged nearer, Hope almost slipped; there was a large puddle of water on the floor. Hermes grabbed her and set her upright again and together they inched toward the message, eyes fixed on a dark shadow beneath it.
All four of them realized what it was at once, and leaped backward with a splash. Mrs. Norris, the caretaker's cat, was hanging by her tail from the torch bracket. She was stiff as a board, her eyes wide and staring. Cassie let out a shrill shriek, backpedaling even further and slipping in the water. Regina turned pale under her freckles and, if they weren't holding onto each other still, Hermes and Hope would've fallen over.
"Let's get out of here." Regina whispered urgently.
But it was too late. A rumble, as though of distant thunder, told them that the feast had just ended. From either end of the corridor where they stood came the sound of hundreds of feet climbing the stairs, and the loud, happy talk of well-fed people; next moment, students were crashing into the passage from both ends.
The chatter, the bustle, the noise died suddenly as the people in front spotted the hanging cat. Hope, Cassie, Hermes and Regina stood alone, in the middle of the corridor, still faced with the grisly sight in front of them. Somehow, Hope knew that her night was about to get even worse...
Aries Malfoy jumped forward in the crowd, his blue eyes wide as he stared at the scene.
"Enemies of the heir beware?" He read aloud, loudly. "You'll be next, Mudbloods!"
A/N Not much change from the original chapter, but it was another necessary chapter to move the plot along. I hope you enjoyed anyway!