(A/N: A Hallowe'en special! This was supposed to have been posted on Hallowe'en, but I was exiled for the last week for posting that ill-fated Robin Hood parody. So here it is, a week late. The Robin Hood parody can be found on a literary forum and my livejournal; there are links to both on my profile. I do hope this chapter is scary enough for you....but I do believe it will be.....)

Chapter 6: A Mean Hallowe'en

It was Hallowe'en, and a woman with long, wavy hair opened her door, to see two rather odd-looking children standing on her doorstep. They looked like children, because they were small, but the way their bodies looked was wrong, and their faces were rather grown up. To her mind, they looked rather more like dwarves than children.

The right one was dressed as a pirate, in a very elaborate, professional-looking costume. From under his green and silver bandana very blond hair streamed out over his shoulders. The left child was dressed as a vampire; it had a very pale face, huge amounts of black robes, and long black hair. His dark eyes glittered ominously.

"Trick or treat!" the pirate kid said, in an odd sounding voice. The other one opened his mouth to speak, and promptly made a gash in his lip with his huge canine teeth.

"Ow!" it said, and then something that sounded a lot like "Damn you, Lucius, and your imbecilic ideas!" in a gurgling voice, before hiding his face behind a bit of cloak. When he emerged again, the gash was gone.

What a strange pair, the woman thought, but smiled at them anyway, and fetched a basket of sweets. The children came quickly closer, and she thought she saw a mischievous flicker in the cold grey eyes of the pirate kid before everything went suddenly blank.

Later that evening, a pair of odd-looking children hid in a small park at the outskirts of the city. One of them, dressed as a pirate, tore off his bandana, shook loose his hair, and said "Ha!" loudly. Then both of them took something from their pockets, aimed it at themselves, and within moments were transformed from children into full-grown men.

"Sweet Merlin, I'm glad to be rid of those teeth. I don't see how vampires stand them." The tallest one grumbled, shaking dust from his huge black robes and cloak.

The other one, still dressed as a pirate, merely grinned, and opened his bag. "So, what have you got?" He said to the other, who had taken up his bag and was peering into it.

"Er.... Two boys, some fathers, three women, and four girls." He said. Squealing noises were sounding from inside the bag, as though it held a colony of mice. "You?"

"I have three boys, two fathers, one elder brother, and what is probably someone's mother, though I'm not sure with the costume she's wearing," The one dressed as a pirate said. He closed his bag again, a content smile on his face. He sighed, walking up to the other man, and put an arm around his shoulder. "You know, Severus, I really, really love Hallowe'en." He said, and they walked off into the darkness.