Chapter 12

Bakura chanted, hands held over a brazier filled with burning coals. To one side he could feel Marik's dark aura, to the other the reassuring presence of the pharaoh. Eyes closed he began to weave the spell that would both awaken and bind the spirits. The power bleeding into the spell would give the spirits of this place semblance but no real power. Their only true power would be in the fear that they inspired and the carelessness that that created.

Around the castle things woke. Many of the objects taken for granted every day gained a purpose and began to move so as to form traps that would seize the unwary. A suit of armor gained a pair of glowing red eyes and began to move towards the nearest life force. Ghostly forms detached themselves from the books in the restricted section of the library. Paintings that had been blank suddenly took on a life of their own as shadowy shapes appeared in them, carrying out bloody rituals.

Shadows swirled where no shadows should be, and things gibbered in the corners or from behind closed doors. Fog rose up to blanket the buildings. The sky darkened, thunderclouds gathering to obscure the horizon. By dawn there would be no place that was free of the slowly growing terror, and the remembrance of what Halloween used to be before the holiday had been tamed.

And in the Great Hall the brazier sunk beneath the ground and three boys smirked at each other in triumph before sneaking back into their beds, their dreams undisturbed by the nightmares plaguing the other denizens of the castle.

"It feels sort of... spooky." Harry ventured to say at breakfast that morning. His day had began with icy shivers going up his spine and thin tendrils of mist winding in through a crack in the windowpane.

His dreams had been of the graveyard again, only this time he was somewhere else. He had looked around, trying to see what was happening, why he was there, and his attention had been caught by a glow of greenish light to one side. He had followed the light until he came out in the center of the clearing where he had fought Voldemort. Things had been cleaned up, the graves had been fixed as best as they could be, and there were only a few traces left of the struggle.

What had terrified him though had been the ghosts rising up from the graves all around him and the transparent figures standing in place ready for the ritual. They glowed with the same sickly green light that had brought him here. And then Cedric appeared in front of him. He had begged for help but Harry had been unable even to see any danger. His parents had come and thanked him for freeing them... before being pulled into the mist that had been rising stealthily all around him.

The vapor had begun to envelop him also, and he had felt a pull as though it was trying to take him somewhere. He had struggled, terrified, and had woken up to the mist swirling about his room with the realization of failure.

"It is All Hallows." Yami said casually, bringing him out of his thoughts. "This is the day when spirits walk. They try to take those who they care for, or those who have hurt them and pull them into the world of the dead with them."

"Take care that you don't follow them." Bakura put in, eyes serious for once. "For once gone, you can't come back without blood."

"And their world is no place for a mortal." Marik agreed. "Visiting it, even in dreams, can be dangerous."

Harry stared at them, terrified by the suggestion and then back at his food. He was not looking forward to his dreams tonight.

The rest of the students filtered into the Great Hall. It was early, but apparently all had been woken, as Harry had, by nightmares. Some of them sported bruises, showing that they had not been as lucky as Harry had and had fallen foul of some of the nastier traps hidden around the castle. The yamis had done their work well.

Even the teachers had been affected by the magic-inspired terror. Professor Sprout had closed the greenhouses because the plants had savagely tried to attack her. Evidence of this was in the long gashes along her hand and arm, as though thorns had caught and torn the flesh.

Snape refused to allow his students to make any potions because whenever anyone tried the potion went horribly wrong. Several scorch marks showed where the least of these problems had been and students in the hospital testified to the rest. McGonagall stuck to theory because she didn't want the students to get scared and do the spells wrong, or hit the wrong thing, Trelawney predicted nothing and stayed huddled into her robes, eyes huge, and even Binns gave them a free period.

The Augureys that Hagrid had brought to show the class were ominously silent and subdued, succumbing to the feeling that pervaded the school. By this time nearly all of the students sported cuts and bruises from the newly formed traps, or just from walking into things while watching ghosts glare at them.

One particularly unlucky girl had fallen backwards down a flight of steps while staring in horrified fascination at one of the new paintings. She was in the hospital wing with a cracked skull. Ron's hand was black and blue where a bookcase had fallen on it and Hermione's face was covered in scratches from Crookshanks' claws. Harry had gotten off lightly with only a few scratches from a normally ordinary tree he'd collided with early in the day.

Practically the only ones left untouched were the yamis. Crabbe and Goyle were also unharmed, which shocked the school seeing as Malfoy was covered in bruises. Apparently they weren't smart enough to be scared.

The three yamis were rather happy with their work. Their spell would end at dawn the next day but the effects of their spell were rather amusing, especially as they weren't affected. The day was meant to be a day of terror, of darkness, and of blood, but they were used to blood and darkness was their element.

But the real show was yet to come...

That night, as the students gathered in the great hall a thunderstorm started up out of nowhere. Rain poured down, right through the ceiling getting everyone thoroughly soaked, then, just as quickly as it had begun the rain stopped and the sky became a matte black with no hint of stars to lighten the darkness.

As the students gaped around themselves trying to figure out what was going on a greenish mist began to rise around them. Tendrils of mist wrapped students up, while disembodied voices whispered to them. Somewhere in the distance the Augureys began a long mournful wail.

Wolves added their voices to the Augureys' cry and the tension grew higher. Suddenly the noise stopped. The students relaxed, and then screamed as ghosts poured out of the walls. These weren't the ordinary ghosts. These ghosts were evil looking. Even the Baron would be scared of these.

They poured out of the walls, rose from the floor and drifted down from the ceiling, their expressions promising a fate worse than death for any who got in their way. The green mist trailed along in their wake awakening dreams, no, nightmares, of being trapped in a room that kept growing smaller and smaller. And you knew that when the walls got small enough you'd wake up. Except that you didn't.

And then the lights went out. All the candles that had been hovering above the tables vanished, leaving the sickly glow from the ghosts the only illumination. The students' will finally broke and they panicked, fleeing from the hall into the corridors where shadows swirled around them, trying to pull them in, and from there to their common rooms in a blind panic. The stampede of bodies resulted in some injuries but no one – including those injured – seemed to even notice. They were too busy trying to get away from the horrors all around them.

When finally they reached their common rooms they found that the fires had died down to a bed of coals that was still somehow comforting. They stared into the fire for a while but quickly began to grow sleepy and stumbled off to their rooms to be plagued with nightmares from their worst imaginings. The night was ending and so was exerting all its power to make certain that it would be remembered.