Chapter 5. FINALLY! Just so everyone knows, that last chapter took me like two million years to write… okay so it only took me a week… but it was 18 pages long on Word.
That's long.
At least for me it is. I can't believe that I had the attention span for that. And by the way, the plot is going to begin soon. I promise.
Anyway, I own no characters, unfortunately, and "Bandgeek527", be grateful for what you already have. I could put you with Snape if I wanted to. Which I might. Hehe. (Evil grin)
So, anyway… dun dun dundun… Chapter 5
"What are you going to wear?" Liz/James asked Mary/Remus as they sat on the couch of the Gryffindor common room. The topic of conversation was naturally Friday night's dance.
"I don't know," Mary/Remus replied thoughtfully. "I was thinking my dark green robes… what about you?"
"I think maybe my purple robes," Liz/James answered.
"What about those blue ones of yours?"
"Yeah, maybe those."
Meanwhile, Sirius/Allison, James/Liz, and Remus/Mary were all talking about the dance also… but in a different context.
"Dances are stupid," Sirius/Allison grumbled. "Why do I have to go?"
"D'ya think Lily will go with me?" James/Liz asked hopefully.
Sirius stood up. "Would you shut up about Lily already? Lily this, Lily that, Lily, Lily, LILY! JUST STOP IT! GOD! ALL YOU EVER TALK ABOUT IS LILY! GAAH! LILY, LILY, LILYYY!"
James/Liz stared at Sirius/Allison in disbelief. A few feet away, the girls-now-guys had heard Sirius/Allison's outburst (who hadn't?), and turned around.
"And so it begins," Liz/James remarked amusedly.
Christian/Peter said, "This has been a major improvement. Last time it only took four minutes. I'm impressed."
Allison/Sirius said, "Sirius."
"WHAT?! WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME? I'M ONLY ONE GIRL!" Sirius screeched, then started bawling.
"Sirius. It's okay. Um… everyone knows that you're only one… er… only one girl."
"I'M SO STRESSED OUT! WAAAAH!"
"We know. Don't worry. Everything will be okay."
"NO IT WON'T! NO ONE LIKES ME! I DON'T EVEN LIKE ME!"
"Sirius, everyone still likes you."
"I HATE MYSELF!"
"Why?"
"Because I'm fat, and ugly, and stupid, and mean, and fat, and disgusting, and EVERYBODY HATES ME!"
"This is embarrassing," Liz/James said.
"No you're not," Allison/Sirius said in reply to Sirius/Allison. "And nobody hates you. Here. We gave these to James before, and they helped him feel better, remember?" She tried to hand him two of the same blue pills that they had given James/Liz, but he refused to take them. She waited a second, considering. Sirius/Allison opened his opened his mouth to start wailing again, but Allison/Sirius reached over, grabbed Sirius/Allison's head, dropped the blue pills in his mouth, and then forced his mouth shut.
Sirius/Allison stopped in surprise for a second, but quickly got over his surprise and started trying to get away. However, seeing as how Allison/Sirius was still holding his mouth shut, escaping was proving difficult.
Everyone waited tensely. Allison/Sirius let go to see what would happen.
Approximately four seconds later, Sirius/Allison broke into a huge grin and started dancing. None of the six students watching was quite sure what dance he was attempting to do, but it looked suspiciously like a cross between the macarena and the cha cha slide.
Allison/Sirius turned very pale and ran towards Sirius/Allison, fearful that someone might walk in and see her body doing the macarena/cha cha slide. "Stop!" she shouted! "We understand! You're happy! Just stop!"
"I love you!" Sirius/Allison said. "I love you, Jamesy, and you, Christian, and you, Remus, and you, Mary, and you, Liz, and even you, Peter!" For Peter/Christian had just entered the common room, closely followed by a tall guy that none of them knew.
"Hello--" the unknown kid began, but Christian/Peter interrupted.
"Shut up," she said to him. He stepped back, obviously taken aback by her rudeness. Then she turned to Peter/Christian. "Just what were you doing, you bloody moron?" she asked Peter/Christian, completely ignoring the other kid. "If you even say the word muffin, if you even think it, I'LL CURSE YOU INTO BLOODY OBLIVION!"
Peter/Christian trembled for a moment, cowering in fear, then said nervously, "Mlfycmpooenahulnsxdouodancnisdys!"
"What?!"
Peter/Christian gulped, then said hastily in the trademark high-pitched nervous squeal, "Malfoy-- came up to me-- in hall-- asked me-- to-- to dance-- said-- yes--"
"WHAT?!" Christian/Peter roared, nearly knocking Peter/Christian off his (her) feet. "MALFOY BLOODY ASKED YOU-- ME-- TO THE BLOODY DANCE-- AND YOU BLOODY SAID BLOODY YES?! WHAT IS BLOODY WRONG WITH YOU?! PLEASE BLOODY TELL ME YOU'RE BLOODY JOKING!"
"EEE!" Peter/Christian squealed. "AAH! It's true! Don't hurt me!" Then he ducked out from the corner in which Christian/Peter had trapped him, ran towards the dorms, went up the staircase to the guys' dorm first, then realized his mistake and headed to the girls' dorm. All eight of them had forgotten about the other guy in the room. All six of the friends that remained in the room-- and the mystery kid-- stared at the seething Christian/Peter. Then the realization hit.
"Oh God," Liz/James said.
"You have to go to the dance with Lucius," Mary/Remus added completely unnecessarily.
"Yes, I realize that," Christian/Peter hissed slowly through gritted teeth.
No one noticed the other kid standing at the back of the room, looking wildly around himself and then burying his head in his hands. They did notice him, however, when he began having an emotional breakdown.
"Who are you?! I thought you were a male. But your voice is too high to be a male's! And then these three-- who also have high voices-- are talking about you going to a dance with Lucius?! Last time I checked, that was a male name! Why did I come here?! Why? WHY?! And then you--" he pointed at Christian/Peter-- "you are insane and violent! What is wrong with you people?! And stop looking at me!" he said in vain to the eight students, who were all staring at him. He said all of this in a Scottish or Welsh accent, and seemed quite desolate.
Then Mary/Remus, although it took a second, realized what he was talking about. "Oh!" she gasped. Then in a lower-pitched voice she said loudly to her friends, "Erm… guys… as in NOT GIRLS… because my name is Remus, and I'm a guy… Maybe we should introduce ourselves to… what's your name?" she asked the mystery kid.
"Aidan," he said miserably.
"Right. Introduce ourselves to Aidan. I'm Remus," she said, hinting a little too obviously to the others to act like the person whose body they were in.
"I would say 'nice to meet you,' but I would rather not be dishonest to you all," he replied dismally.
"Well, you're not one--" Sirius began in his regular voice.
"Sir-- Allison!" Allison/Sirius interrupted in her phony deep voice.
"Oh," Sirius/Allison said. Then in a higher voice he continued, "Well, you're not one for good first impressions, are you?" This offense was directed towards Aidan.
Allison/Sirius listened to Sirius/Allison saying this and thought, Well, Sirius, you're not exactly one for good first impressions either! She was not happy with Sirius/Allison. First of all, Aidan was new, and Sirius definitely shouldn't have been treating him like that. It wasn't his fault that Peter was annoying. Secondly, to make matters worse, Sirius had been in Allison's body when he'd said it, so now Aidan would hate Allison instead of Sirius, who had been the real idiot behind the insults! This made Allison/Sirius so mad that she walked over to Sirius/Allison and slapped him across the face.
"Ow!"
"Well, you deserve--" Allison/Sirius began. However, Aidan broke into her sentence with an overwhelmed, "Men do not slap! AAH! Who are you?!"
Between the long meeting in the trophy room, getting makeup, clothes, and advice on how to act like a member of the opposite sex, helping James/Liz and Sirius/Allison through PMS, talking about the dance, meeting Aidan and everything else that had gone on, it was about 2:30 in the afternoon. Every single one of the "transgenderals" thought it was time to switch back. No one cared about the agreement. It seemed insignificant and stupid now. Liz/James decided to take action.
Under the pretense of a low, manly voice, she said, "Aidan, we'll be right back. James, Sirius, Allison, Remus, Peter, Mary, let's go. I'll meet you guys in the trophy room." She hoped she had conveyed her message to them: It was time to switch back. "I'll get Pet-- I mean, I'll get Christian. Meet you up there." She ran up the stairs as her six friends shoved each other to get out of the common room first.
Once Liz was up the stairs, and the other six were out of the common room, Aidan looked around himself, sank to his knees, and yelled, "Adel'tai! WHYYYYY?!They are such enegnosi!"
As Aidan shouted in a garbled mix of English and his own language that he hated this place and the students he had just met were-- well, we'll substitute bloody morons for what he really said-- Liz had run up the stairs only to find Peter/Christian having an emotional breakdown. When will these stupid breakdowns stop? Liz/James thought. I wonder if we're this bad when we're PMSing. She shuddered. Bleah. I hope not.
"Peter, come on! We're changing back!"
But Peter/Christian, facedown on the bed, would not budge. Liz/James could see his whole body trembling with both PMS-induced tears and the nervous shaking that Peter always did anyway. The he lifted his face up from the pillow. With a tear- stained face and glassy eyes, he blubbered, "Why does everyone hate me?"
Liz/James rolled her eyes. This is getting old, she thought. First James, then Sirius, then Peter… wait. What about Remus? Why hasn't he… oh. I bet he's crying his eyes out right now. She sighed. "Nobody hates you, Peter." She sighed again. "All right, fine. Here're the blue pills." She handed him the pills. He took them immediately. As with the other PMSing guys-now-girls, Peter got a huge smile on his face almost immediately. "I lo--" he started to say, but Liz interrupted.
"Don't start with me!"she said viciously. "Come on. Trophy room. Now. Run." As they passed through the common room, Liz/James didn't even notice that Aidan was nowhere to be seen.
Liz/James and Christian/Peter began to speed towards the trophy room. Well, with Peter/Christian, they couldn't exactly 'speed' (not Christian's fault-- Peter was slow no matter what body he was in), but Liz/James did manage to get Peter/Christian to kind of power-waddle.
Then Liz/James heard a slimy, greasy, disgusting voice just dripping with sarcasm. "Why, hello, Potter," it came, slimily, greasily, disgustingly, and just dripping with sarcasm. "Nice afternoon, isn't?"
Without even turning around, Liz/James stopped, folded her arms, and said, "What do you want, Snape?" She said his name as if it were a swear word.
Peter/Christian wiggled his butt once and ran.
"Potter, Potter, Potter," Snape said. "You think I want something from you? Well, I don't. I don't want anything that's been touched by your disgusting hands."
"Oh, clever comeback, Snivellus," Liz/James said impatiently. "Listen, douchbag, I've gotta be somewhere in about… well… I'd say five minutes ago. So if you don't mind, I'm leaving." She started to walk away. "Oh yeah. I almost forgot." She turned around again. After taking a few steps towards Snape, she punched him in the face as hard as she could. "You're welcome." She started to walk away. "Ew. You really are slimy. That's disgusting. Take a bloody shower."
Snape stared after her in shock as blood began coming out of his face. "Eee!" he squelped, then turned and ran.
Once Peter/Christian and Liz/James arrived at the trophy room for the second time that day, Remus/Mary said, "Oh, thank God! It's about time…" and sighed with relief.
Sirius/Allison said, "Wait, what are you talking about? Why did you tell us to meet here?"
James/Liz echoed, "Yeah, why are we meeting here?"
Liz/James shook her head in exasperation. "Bloody gits," she said. "We're changing back."
"It's 10:45 already?" Sirius/Allison asked stupidly.
"No," Allison said. "It's only 2:45."
And we're changing already? But I'm in a girl's body and I haven't even gotten to do anything!"
Allison/Sirius said, "SIRIUS! GIT!" and started moving towards him, arms outstretched, hands looking like they were ready to close around Sirius's neck and squeeze tight.
Sirius realized he was about to die and nervously added, "… like… put my own makeup on!"
Allison/Sirius said, "That had better be what you meant," even though she knew it wasn't.
Sirius/Allison leaned over to James and said quietly, "My whole life just flashed before my eyes."
Liz/James sad, "Anyway…"
Mary/Remus said, "Oh, please can we switch back now?"
"Yeah," Liz/James said. "Okay," she said, taking charge of the situation. "Everyone do the same thing as before. Just change back the person who you changed before."
The eight students followed her directions, and hurriedly got back with the person that they had previously changed. Yet another cacophony of spells was said, and eight more blue beams of light were seen. When the noise and beams of light had subsided, the eight students were greeted with a very happy sight:
"I'M BACK IN MY OWN BLOODY BODY!" Mary shouted unnecessarily, and also quite ecstatically. She seemed to have a knack for unnecessaryness.
Everybody was amazingly happy to be back in his or her own body. Well, not quite everybody. You see, not everyone was entirely back in his or her own body. In the center of the room stood an incredibly mad, seething Christian. She slowly turned around to face Peter.
"PE-- TER…"
"EEP! Wha... Wha… I… I… I'm sorry…" Peter's voice sank almost to a whisper. No, I lied. It actually sank all the way to a whisper. "Please… don't kill me…"
"TOO LATE, IDIOT!" Christian roared, and instantly began chasing the fat little sped around the room. She almost immediately caught him, because as has already been established, Peter was one of the slowest people ever to waddle the Earth.
Once she had caught him, she grabbed him by the collar, and with a burst of angry adrenaline, picked him up by the collar and held him up against the wall.
"I'M… GOING… TO KILL YOU!"
"CHRISTIAN! STOP!" Allison bellowed as she rushed over and grabbed Christian's arms. "What is the matter? What happened? You're back in your own body! What's wrong?" All she could see was the back of Christian's head, and Christian's hair was definitely all there.
Peter slid down the wall to the floor in relief.
"Peter, go stand watch by the door," Allison told him. Right now she just wanted to get him out of Christian's sight.
Christian hissed, "I'll tell you what's wrong…" and she turned around to face Allison.
Allison looked at her and gasped, then commenced staring in astonishment at Christian's face.
"Uh, Christian…" she said nervously. "There's something wrong with your face…"
As everyone had fallen silent when Christian had started threatening Peter's death, every person in the room was able to hear these words. They all looked over at Christian and gasped, except for Allison and Peter, who had already seen it.
On Christian's face there was… nothing. Just nothing. And it wasn't even the kind of nothing in which the nothing just seems to be caused by invisibility, so it appears as if there is simply nothing there, or you can see through it. No, the space that Christian's face had once occupied was now a dark, heavy nothing, an endless void where tangible darkness swirled infinitely.
"Can you see?" Allison asked. "Obviously you can hear and talk."
"Yes, I can see," growled Christian. "I just chased the bloody git around the room,do you think I can't see?"
"How'd you realize that you… how'd you realize?" Liz asked her in a faltering voice.
"We're in the trophy room," Christian said, her voice sinking to a shaky, miserably monotonous level. "Everything in here is reflective."
Mary ruined the horrible feeling that was building in the room by saying, "Oh my Merlin! Christian, what happened to your face?" quite unnecessarily, as usual, and also a bit late.
When all she got in reply were amused looks, she tried to redeem herself by saying, "I, er, was looking in the opposite direction. Sorry." However, curiosity and her fascination with shiny objects got the better of her, and she asked, "Christian, can I touch it? I'm sorry, but please can I? Maybe I can even figure out what's wrong with it… with you."
Christian sighed heavily and said, "Fine." The only reason she consented to this was because she knew that like Allison, Liz, and herself, Mary was smart when it came to school, grades, that kind of thing. The only thing that Mary lacked that the others had was common sense. She was kind of like James and Sirius in that respect, which was not necessarily a good thing. The difference between the two insane Marauders and Mary was that she was a lot better at getting out of trouble. Actually, so were Allison, Liz and Christian, but the guys didn't know that. Unknown to the Marauders, the four girls actually went around wreaking havoc on most nights. Many of the girls' great plans were credited to the guys, because no one else in the school knew or even suspected that four Gryffindor girls at the top of their class would ever sneak around after hours misbehaving.
"Christian. Christian. CHRISTIAN!"
"AAAAAAAH! WHAT?" Christian was forced to break away from her thoughts. This was largely due to the fact that a) a hand was frantically waving around in front of where her eyes had once been, and b) someone was screaming her name at a volume so loud, she thought her eardrums would explode. Then she remembered that she didn't have eardrums anymore. She sighed in a very melancholy manner. All I have is my hair, she thought forlornly. My stupid hair, just floating around on some sort of-- of-- She tried to think of the word. Some sort of black hole on my face. Then suddenly she realized that while pitying herself, she had wandered off again into the realm that we all fondly know as La-La Land.
"Sorry," she said. "I don't mean to wander off, I just…" her voice trailed off.
"It's okay. We understand," Liz said comfortingly.
Christian sighed again and said, "Thanks, but I seriously doubt that... Mary, if you wanna try and figure out what's wrong now…"
"Okay!" Mary said happily. She ran over to Christian and starting inspecting the nothing. She tried to stick her arm inside, and when she was successful, she smiled and said, "Look! I can stick my hand inside!"
"Thanks," said Allison sarcastically, but not unkindly. "We hadn't noticed."
Mary looked inside the void, and even stuck a small part of her head into the void. Her eyes widened in shock, and she pulled her head out.
"What is it?" Christian asked, fearing the worst.
"Water," Mary said absentmindedly, looking thoughtful.
"Er… water?" Christian asked skeptically. Thinking Mary had gone completely insane, then remembering that Mary and she herself was insane, too, she asked again. "Water?"
Mary looked at her and nodded. "Water. It looks like your face is some kind of portal to another universe or something. Hold on. Let me try to touch it, to see if it's real."
Remus began, "I don't know if this is such a good idea…" but Mary was already nearly halfway in Christian's face. Her muffled voice came from inside, "Yep, it's real alri--" but was cut off suddenly as she began struggling. "Hey! Get off you filthy stupid thing! OW! BLOODY… THINGY! GET OFF!"
Remus, looking alarmed, ran over and began to try and pull her off. Everybody joined in except for two people. Peter, who was standing oblivious by the door, still keeping watch, was one of them. Of course Christian was the other. She didn't really have much practice in rescuing people who were half- submerged in her face.
With one seemingly simultaneous intake of breath, everyone pulled as hard as they could, and Mary came flying out. Rank, dripping seaweed was hanging off her arm, and the smell of salt and rotting flesh passed through the room.
"WHAT in the BLOODY NAME OF MERLIN was THAT?!" Christian asked.
"A giant… octopus thing…" Mary said, breathing heavily. "There were… all these tentacles… wrapped around my arm… and boy was it smelly!"
Christian started to say something, but Mary just plowed right on. "It was all water-- like it was in the middle of an ocean or something. It smelled really bad, and it looked like it was going to storm. This giant blob with all these arms-- these tentacles-- just came out of the water, cause I guess it saw me and it wrapped a tentacle around my arm and was trying to pull me in." She looked at her arm. "And now I have this smelly disgusting stuff on my arm, and I smell." She picked the seaweed off, rolled it into a ball, and threw it as hard as she could against the wall. However, instead of just hitting the wall and plopping to the floor, the seaweed landed on the wall perfectly in the shape of a sort of arch a little taller than a door, and stayed there.
"Whoa," said Sirius. "How'd you do that?"
"I don't know," said Mary as she went over to look at it. "I must be a genius or something!" Christian, Liz, and Allison followed. The guys just hung back, and Peter was still by the door in utter oblivion.
"Wow, I wonder what it is," Liz said, eyes full of questions. She touched it gingerly, and it suddenly sparkled gently. An odd, quiet, incessant humming noise began. The noise seemed to come from everywhere, and was so quiet that it seemed more like the room was buzzing or vibrating than that something was humming.
"What the…" Allison said quietly.
The door suddenly shimmered. Then a light so powerful that it was impossible to look at blasted into the room from the arch. Everyone covered his or her eyes. A huge, amazingly loud and wild wind sprang up out of nowhere. Somebody screamed, "WHAT'S GOING ON?" but nobody heard whoever it was over the wind.
The wind was so strong that it was literally picking the eight students up and tossing them around. Liz and Allison collided in midair, and both went spinning off into opposite directions. As the light faded enough for sight to be possible, Mary went flying past Christian. Christian distinctly heard Mary say, "WHEEE!" She (Mary) slammed against a wall and said, "Ooh, that's gonna hurt tomorrow." However, no one heard her, and by the time she had finished the sentence, she was back to flying around the room, nearly getting killed and having a jolly good time of it.
Christian flew past Peter just in time for her to see him turn green, squeeze his eyes shut, and vomit. She was unfortunate enough to be smashed into a wall, but at least she hadn't gotten chucked on.
The wind started to die down, along with the light, and every single person in the room sighed collectively. Then they realized what was going to happen next. As the wind stopped almost entirely, they fell to the ground, one-by-one for some odd reason. In addition to that, each one fell on top of the one that had landed immediately before them in a perfectly straight pile. First Mary fell, then James, then Sirius followed. Allison came next, then Peter, Remus, Christian, and finally Liz on top. Each time someone new landed, everyone below him or her would groan in pain. The worst part was, none of them could move an inch.
As Liz landed and the wind ended completely, Mary wheezed out from the bottom of the eight-person pileup, "That was NOT my fault!"
Suddenly, the entire pile of people fell apart. Bodies flew this way and that, but since they weren't very high off the ground, it didn't really hurt that much. Sirius landed near Allison. He smiled at her, and she smiled back, then blushed and got up.
Liz said, "Can we leave now?"
Allison said, "Thank Merlin's pointy beard that that's over."
"That was awful," Christian agreed.
All of the students thought that that had been the end.
They were wrong.
So wrong, so dreadfully wrong, that they would never forget what happened next. The worst had yet to come.
The worst came.
From every corner of the room, from every object, wall, even every person in the room, a white-hot heat exploded. The humming grew so loud that the students feared that the mere vibration would bring down the world on them. The only sound that could be heard besides the humming was screaming-- the unholy screams of eight young students experiencing incredible pain. Everything burned. The world was on fire. That is what it seemed like to the eight victims. Nothing could possibly have brought salvation. Nothing could help them to escape. None would survive.
It was at that moment that everything suddenly felt numb, peaceful and clear. Although they could see the white fire blazing around them, it seemed to each of the eight students as if he or she was sinking down into cool clear water, and looking at the sun from the bottom of a still, clear, peaceful, never-ending lake. They would stay here for eternity, but that was okay… Everything would be okay… If you would just let go… let go… don't try to hold on, just go…
Suddenly, unexpectedly, amazingly, everything stopped. Everything. The humming, the fire, the water-- it was all gone. Everything in the trophy room was as it should have been, except for the eight students, who were all lying sprawled on the floor.
They laid there in silence for minutes, just breathing, and feeling thankful that they were able to breathe. Finally, after probably a half-hour of just lying sprawled out on the floor, Liz said without moving, "Whoa." Her voice, like everybody else's, was very hoarse from screaming.
That "Whoa" pretty much summed everything up.
And Christian still didn't have a face.
Liz sat up, looked around. She looked at her legs and arms, just to make sure that they were still there, that they hadn't burned in the fire that had just swept the room. While looking at her arms, she noticed in her wrist a small mark about the size of her thumbnail. It was on the inside of her left wrist, right below where the bottom of the palm meets the arm. At first glance, it appeared to be nothing more than a simple scar, but something made Liz look again. Upon closer examination, she saw that the small white mark was unmistakably in the shape of a crescent moon. Its two points were very long, making the moon almost in the shape of a circle.
Allison sat up, shook the hair out of her eyes, and looked around. She noticed something on the wall. "Hey, what's that?" she asked slowly, bewilderedly. "Is that… is that a door?"
The other seven gradually, one-by-one, sat up and looked over to the wall at which she was staring. When they saw it, they gasped. A doorway had appeared in the shape of the arch of seaweed that Mary had thrown against the wall. Seeming to shimmer faintly with an unearthly light, it was quite ornately decorated. Carved upon it were pictures of animals, people, places, books, and more. Not one of the students noticed the tiny part near the bottom left, where eight of nine tiny faces carved into the odd stone looked exactly like the eight faces that were currently gaping in astonishment at the arch, and the ninth looked very familiar.
Where there should have been a wall behind the arch was an empty, black space, almost like Christian's "face". It was partially covered by a thin, tattered, black piece of cloth that was gently blowing with a wind that none of them felt. However, unlike Christian's "face", the void that occupied the arch contained many beautiful golden-white beams and swirls of light that were flying, tangling, breaking free, and just basically were in constant motion.
"Wow," Christian said. "It's actually kind of… well, pretty."
As the eight Gryffindors gathered around the arch, Mary opened her mouth to say something, but was cut off by Peter's small, shrill, nails-on-a-chalkboard, and now hoarse voice. "EEP! Somebody's coming! It looks like Filch! EEEEEHHHHH!" He ran to a far stack of trophies and dove under it, wriggling around until he was out of sight.
Somebody shouted, "Everybody hide!" Immediately, everyone tried to do just that, but since there were seven students running around the room, one without a face, that proved difficult.
Forced to make a quick decision, Liz looked wildly around the room, and saw no other means of escape. If there had been fewer people, or even if Christian had had a face, she knew the girls would probably have been able to get them out of trouble, but unfortunately neither of those very desirable circumstances were currently present. Apparently Allison had been having these same thoughts, and at the same time as Liz, she screamed, "Everybody into the arch!" No one hesitated a moment, except for Peter, who took a second to get out from underneath the shelf. Everyone ran into the arch in one big mass of people. Just as soon as Peter entered the arch, something happened. First, the void behind the arch disappeared, leaving naught but the wall behind it. Secondly, the curtain dissolved into thin air. Last of all, all of the candles were extinguished in the room for a mere second, then came back on again almost immediately. When the light came back, the arch was gone. It-- along with the students-- had disappeared. It was gone as if it had never been there.
Filch pushed the creaky door that opened into the trophy room. He looked around warily, but saw nothing out of its place. Everything was as it should have been; not one trophy was moved, smudged, or otherwise changed. Mrs. Norris ran into the room and immediately went over to where the arch had been mere moments ago. She batted a small token that was lying on the ground in front of where the arch had been. It was circular, like a coin, except slightly larger in circumference. The token had nine symbols on it. Each symbol was in a small circle, and each circle was by the edge of the token, forming a circle shape. The symbols were: an elegant-looking fish, the front view of the face of a cat, a small flame, some swirly lines, a mouth, an empty circle, a question mark, a circle with two evil-looking eyes, and a crescent moon exactly like the one Liz had seen on her wrist.
Filch took one last look around the room and, seeing nothing awry, closed the door and started walking down the hall. Realizing that Filch was leaving, Mrs. Norris also took one last look, but hers was aimed directly at the place in which the arch had been. She bounded out of the room and followed Filch down the hall.
"Must have been imagining it," Filch said to himself. "No one's been in there for weeks."
