Chapter Eight: The Cat

Draco makes plans to thrash the Slytherin Quidditch Team, the boys celebrate Samhain with a bunch of dead people, and the Chamber of Secrets is opened.


Whatever progress Harry had made took a serious backslide following the night of his detention with Lockhart.

His nightmares, which had slowly begun to fade, returned as vicious as ever.

The two Valerians had returned to pacing the base and entrance of the Tower for most of the night, often returning in the early hours of the morning to rest for an hour or two, but, like the year before, their real sleep happened during class.

With the Valerians out of the common room, Harry didn't often go back to sleep after waking from one of his nightmares, at least not until Draco and/or Blaise followed him down.

It wasn't uncommon for the Valerians to find two, or even all three, curled up on the couch when they returned.

Yoko wondered what instinct drove the three of them to behave in the manner they were, but neither of them had an answer, and could only speculate that it was because of their shared miserable childhoods driving them to seek out a baser form of comfort, a comfort that didn't lie.

A comfort the Valerians had unintentionally trained them to use.

In the darkness of the common room one night, curled up and hidden away, Harry admitted to Draco that he could practically feel the jaws of something coming, closing in on him, and he was feeling more unprotected than ever without Her with him.

Draco had assured him that Fallen and Yoko wouldn't let anything happen to him, but the reassurance falls flat because Harry is very aware that if danger returns to Hogwarts again, the priority is going to be their own charges, not Harry.

Fallen had been seriously short-tempered in the days immediately following Harry and Ron's detentions, having likely come to the same conclusion: that eventually, he and Yoko were going to have to choose.

XX

Though it took over two weeks, Harry's nightmares did begin to taper off again.

Draco wasn't sure whether to attribute the slow recovery to time, or to the little slips of scrap parchment Harry had taken to carrying around.

"Considering he only heard about it last year, I'm surprised at how quickly he grew to this Rite," Draco commented one night, watching Harry abandon his Potions essay to scribble something else on a torn-off piece of his Transfiguration essay.

'I'm not,' Fallen replied, cracking one eye to watch Harry as well. 'Unfortunately, loss is a rather large part of his life. More of his family than not are currently Beyond your Veil and to be able to communicate with them, even one-sided, is likely a blessing for him.'

Draco ducked his head as Harry returned to his essay.

He didn't need to ask who Harry was writing to this year.

'You know,' Fallen mused as the fox came to curl up between himself and the fire. 'At this rate, we're running out of holidays to safely celebrate with Harry that won't potentially trigger a flashback.'

'Shut up!' Yoko hissed at him. 'Don't borrow any more trouble!'

XX

Not everything was bad, of course.

The weather was a sopping mess almost as soon as October arrived, but Draco, a competitive little bastard at the best of times, came into the Gryffindor team with something to prove, either to his team or to his cousin, because at the practice immediately following the revelation that Katelyn was playing for Slytherin, he handed Oliver three rolls of parchment and told him to pick the best one.

\/\/\/

"The best one?" Oliver repeated, staring at the three rolls stupidly.

Draco rolled his eyes. "You do want to win, right? Slytherin has better brooms, but there's more talent currently on Gryffindor. Did you hear that Crabbe and Goyle were picked up as Beaters? There's brute strength there, but no strategy. The twins can come up with on the spot changes in their heads and that's creativity, not simply experience."

Fred and George glanced at one another, spines straightening.

A Malfoy had just complimented a Weasley.

Even for Draco, it was unusual, as the Second Year normally only complimented Ron, and even that was begrudgingly given when Ron handed him his ass during a particularly lengthy chess game.

"What are you asking me to do with these?" Oliver asked, picking up one of the scrolls like it was going to bite him.

Draco's eyes narrowed. "Are you seriously telling me that no one has ever handed you plays to pick through before?"

"It's uh…not really something we're good at," Angelina admitted.

Draco rolled his eyes. "Well, that's embarrassing for you. Haven't you all been playing this game for years? I came up with this after three practices."

Angelina and Katie were obviously offended, but Draco turned his attention back to Oliver and ignored them, inciting a sharp inhale from one of the girls.

Harry pressed his lips together to avoid snickering out-right, not sure who he would piss off more by doing so.

"Pick one of those plays, give it to Bell and Johnson to go over before the next practice, and you tell me what our odds are of taking on seven Two Thousand and Ones with one of them." Draco challenged.

Whether it was Draco's challenge or the drive to beat Slytherin, any pretense Oliver had of not even looking at Draco's apparently Chaser-based plays went out the window.

He opened the scroll and was lost to the rest of the team for almost five minutes.

/\/\/\

Now into the second half of October, Oliver had drilled each of the plays into his Chasers with the relentless drive of someone desperate to win.

The twins had 'accidentally come across' one of the Slytherin practices, and admitted that Draco was right, the Nimbus Two Thousand and One was fast but it wasn't nearly as overwhelming now that Draco had pointed out its flaw: the player.

To say that Slytherin was talentless would be, not only a lie, but a foolish one, but they weren't nearly as talented as those on Gryffindor. Once they'd gotten past the speed of the broom, the twins reported that the tactics the Slytherin team used hadn't changed much, and the only thing they were likely going to need to watch out for, would be the normal underhandedness Slytherin was, at this point, practically known for.

If Katelyn and Flint thought that the speed of the Two Thousand and One was going to scare their opponents, they had another thing coming.

Gryffindor was rising to their challenge.

XX

A few days before Halloween, still more muddy than not, and exhausted, Harry, Draco, Fallen, and the twins were returning to the Tower for a real shower, before going their separate ways to find their friends.

"Draco," Fred said, pulling the Chaser to his side, heedless of the low, half-hearted growl from Fallen, and the instinctive tensing of their target. "That brilliant mind of yours is a godsend."

Draco rolled his eyes. "Tell me something I don't know. Like how to beat your bloody brother," he retorted, leaning away from the muddy teen with a grimace.

"Ah," George said, pausing and raising a finger as though he had wisdom to impart, leaning around Fred to get a better look at the blond, "you're on your own." He said bluntly, grinning at him.

Harry let out a startled bark of laughter, before quickly pressing his lips together when Draco shot him a glare he clearly didn't mean.

"Thanks to you," Fred continued, nudging his brother out of his space and speaking as though George hadn't, "we're going to wipe the bloody floor with Slytherin!"

Draco scoffed. "Did you think, my first game, against my cousin, no less, I was going to risk losing?" he asked. "Do you have any idea how irritating your tryouts are?"

Harry shook his head, smiling, before getting distracted by Nearly Headless Nick, the 'Gryffindor' ghost.

Nick was, as most of the castle ghosts, obviously not from this era.

He wore a plumed hat on his long, curly hair, and a tunic with a ruff. The ruff concealed his namesake, he'd been improperly beheaded and was 'nearly headless', his neck hanging on by the barest of skin flaps.

Also, like most of the castle ghosts, Nick was a transparent white, allowing Harry to see through him to the torrential rain that hadn't had the good sense to wait until the Gryffindors had finished practicing before coming down.

Fallen watched the brunette approach the troubled-looking ghost before his attention was drawn back to Draco and the twins.

"So," George asked, all signs of his merriment forgotten as he watched Harry and Nick. "How is he really?"

Draco eyed them carefully. "Some days are worse than others," he told them. "The nights leave him exhausted."

"He sleeps better in the common room," Fallen said, more to Draco, who understood the unspoken reason Harry slept better there, than the twins.

Fred shook his head. "Never thought I'd see the day," he said.

"Mm," George hummed in agreement. "Us working with a Malfoy of all people to help somebody else."

Draco's hackles rose.

Fred ignored it and pat him on the shoulder. "You're good for him," he said, continuing down the corridor.

George repeated the gesture as he followed his brother. "Keep up the good work, Draco."

Draco blinked after the two Weasleys, before looking down at Fallen. "What was that?"

Fallen chuckled. "I think that was you getting complimented by the twins." He said needlessly, sitting and returning his attention back to Harry and Nick.

Draco shook his head and frowned at his friend. "What is he doing?" he asked, reading the sunken shoulders and too-polite smile on Harry's face. "Why don't I think I'm going to like this?"

'Because you're brighter than you look?' Fallen asked innocently.

Draco glared at him, but the effect was lost.

The wolf grinned at him, then tilted his head, an ear twitching.

"Filch is coming,"

Draco frowned, looking between the end of the corridor and Harry, who was only just waving to Nick and coming back to them, the ghost floating away and looking far more pleased than he had when Harry had approached him.

"I just agreed to go to Nick's Deathday Party and I'm not sure why I did it or how it happened," Harry said, indeed looking very confused.

Fallen shook his head. "That would be because you're a kind-hearted moron," the wolf said with no heat. "Come, you both need showers. You're beginning to smell like you look and Filch is still on the warpath."

Both Gryffindors grimaced.

Filch had been suffering from the flu for the last week and a half and had been meaner than normal because of it.

"Filth!" Came the enraged, hoarse scream, from the other end of the corridor.

Fallen rolled his eyes and wordlessly ushered the two pre-teens to carry on, leaving the wolf with the foul-tempered caretaker.

Harry and Draco exchanged looks once they were around the corner and promptly started snickering, trying desperately to keep it down.

If there was one confrontation they wanted to see, it was one between Fallen and Filch.

Both could be equally foul-tempered and there was a rumor that Fallen had 'paid a visit' to Filch the year before that had not ended well for the caretaker.

XX

It was half-past two in the morning on Samhain when Draco finally managed to push his blankets off and usher himself out of bed.

It still felt weird to be waking himself for the Rites, when he'd always had a house-elf or his father to do it for him.

He wasn't entirely surprised to find Harry already in the common room when he joined him there, a stack of blank parchment pieces clenched in his hand.

The brunette hadn't come up to the dorms the night before if the still made bed was any evidence, furthered by the fact that he was still wearing yesterday's clothes, and was currently pressed up against the side of an armchair that had been pushed at least an extra two-to-three feet from where it originally sat. He had his knees drawn up to his chest and his arms wrapped around them.

Fallen was half-hidden in the shadows by the portrait hole, red eyes gleaming in the firelight as he watched Draco cross the room and drop to his knees beside Harry, the parchment, ink well, and quill falling, not-quite carelessly, to the carpet beside him.

"Did you start without us?" Draco asked.

Harry nudged the towering stack of parchment scraps with his toe instead of answering.

Draco took one look at his friend's face and turned away, uncapping his ink well. "What's wrong?"

Harry was quiet for several minutes, and Draco was sure he wasn't going to answer the question before he'd finished his own messages to the dead.

"I can't get any closer," Harry whispered.

Draco glanced at the distance between Harry and the fireplace.

'Tread carefully, Draco,' Fallen warned. 'This is not a new fear and not one to take lightly.'

Draco mentally amended his response. "Do you want me to do it for you this year?" he asked carefully. "I don't think She would fault you for not being in a good place…."

Harry looked at him and Draco bit his tongue.

There were tears in his friend's eyes and tracks down his cheeks.

He'd been like this for longer than the last few minutes.

"I knew it was a problem," Harry admitted. "Mr. Weasley had to Apparate with me to Diagon Alley because I couldn't go near the fireplace at the Burrow. I wanted to fix it before everyone else came down, but I can't."

Draco pulled him into a hug and glanced over Harry's shoulder. "What do I do?"

Fallen blinked, before closing his eyes and stepping forward, out of the shadows. "Harry."

Harry tensed and tried to pull away from Draco, to turn and look at Fallen.

Draco loosened his grip for a second, before tightening it and keeping him at his side, forcing Fallen to circle the armchair and the children.

"She's right there," Harry mumbled into Draco's shoulder, one eye on the wolf as he came into his line of sight. "Her Element is right there, and I can't-" he sniffled loudly, and Draco hid a grimace in Harry's hair at the snot and tears he's sure are now on his robe. "What if I can never get close again?"

"Harry, this fear is temporary," Fallen assured him. "You faced off against a wizard three-times your age and at least double your power and stood your ground. That tells me you're too strong-willed to let this keep you from Tar-from Her for long. Your connection with her, regardless of the length of time you knew you had it, is too strong." Fallen lowered his head so they were more eye-to-eye. "Given time, you will overcome your fear of fire."

Harry burrowed into Draco's shoulder.

"I don't understand. Why is he scared of fire?" Draco asked.

'You're too young to know the specifics,' Fallen told him, 'all you need to know is that Harry currently connects fire with the death of Tarana. One is synonymous with the other. Given time and patience, he will learn to separate the two.'

Draco sighed. "Are you sure you don't want me to do it for you?"

Fallen and Draco watched as Harry thought about it, pulled away from Draco, and slowly got himself together.

"I don't want to be weak," Harry whispered. "If you do it for me…."

"No one will see this is a weakness, Harry," Fallen told him.

Harry used his sleeve to wipe his eyes and ignored the quiet judgment from Draco. "I will," he answered.

"Together then?" Fallen asked. "Like walking from the Entrance Hall to the Tower. Use Draco to anchor you to the present."

Harry looked at Draco.

Draco rolled his eyes. "Don't be stupid," he told him. "Would I be offering to do it for you if I couldn't do this much?"

Harry huffed a wet laugh and rolled his eyes, so Draco figured his point had been made.

Since Draco only had a few pieces of parchment written out, Harry curled back in on himself and waited, closing his eyes so he couldn't see the fire before him.

Fallen had retreated to the portrait hole and was watching the two of them, part of the room, but not part of the Rite itself.

Only a few minutes had passed, before the sound of many feet on the stairs brought both Second Years to their feet.

The Weasley twins were the first ones down, as awake as ever, stretching and playfully nudging Ron as he followed them, barely awake.

Blaise and Neville shuffled down the stairs after them, one with several ink wells and quills and the other with a pile of parchment that had obviously been haphazardly gathered together, because some of them were smooth and well taken care of and others were obviously crumpled up and later smoothed out.

Harry and Draco exchanged confused looks.

"We heard you, last year," Fred told them.

"Reminded us of some people we want to talk to," George added.

"And we figured there were some big paws to fill, without Her Highness around," Fred said, dropping onto the couch and taking a quill and inkwell from Blaise.

"Unless you don't want us to," Neville said, glancing between his year-mates. "We can do ours later."

"No," Harry whispered. "It's fine."

Fallen nudged Yoko as the fox lay between his front and back legs, preventing the sitting wolf from lying down.

'You did this, I assume?'

Yoko chittered quietly, smirking. 'I may have mentioned something to one or two of them,' he hedged.

'Yoko-'

'I'm aware these Rites are not ours, Fallen,' Yoko interrupted. 'That isn't what it was about. This was about them. The more people he surrounds himself with, the faster he seems to recover. The faster they all seem to recover….'

Fallen snorted. 'For an assassin, you certainly jump to conclusions,' he told the fox. 'I was going to call you brilliant, and then you went and babbled. Now you're just irritating.'

'Fuck you, too,' Yoko snarked back.

Both fell silent, however, as Harry slowly pushed himself to his feet.

Even from where they sat, apart from the others, they could see the white-knuckled grip on Draco's wrist, dragging the blond along with him.

The scratching of quills and the quiet mutters of the Weasley family all fell silent as they watched Harry take two steps and balk, pushing back against Draco behind him.

Draco didn't move, forcing Harry to stay where he was.

Yoko raised his head.

The two Second Years were so still and the tension of will-he-won't-he was so thick that Neville snapped the tip of his quill and no one so much as glanced at him.

Harry was shaking from head-to-toe when he stepped forward again, breath coming in sharp gasps.

Fallen's eyes narrowed and he and Yoko wavered on the cusp of whether they should call a halt to Harry's attempt, as opposed to doing more psychological damage to him.

Harry was still over an arms breath away, when he threw his parchment - the whole stack of it, as opposed to the usual way of doing so one at a time - into the fire.

At least one piece missed the majority of the fire and Fallen tapped his Element to shove the partially burning piece of parchment further into the fire to save the carpet from catching, but no one said a word about Harry's 'terrible aim' or his inability to get any closer.

For the Weasleys, who had watched Harry actively avoid the fire in their home barely two months earlier, it was a milestone and no one was foolish enough to ruin it, even as Harry released Draco and all but sprinted back to the armchair, pulling his knees back to his chest and burying his face in them.

XX

Almost two hours later, when the Twins had 'coaxed' Harry out of the common room and up to his dorm for a couple of hours of sleep, and the Valerians had slipped out to either spend time alone, feeling the loss of Tarana, or taking a last lap of the Tower entrance, the fire in the hearth, which was never truly out, abruptly did so, burst back to life as green and black flames, and then went out again.

The common room would be frigid come morning when the Gryffindors finally wake up for their classes, but no one will be able to explain why, when the fire had been burning brightly for the Burning, it had doused itself in the early morning hours.

XX

As the morning of Halloween truly dawned, Harry was wondering if it was possible to conveniently forget that he'd agreed to go to Nick's party.

The Great Hall was always 'enchanting' to look at, but given the massive pumpkins, each large enough to sit three grown men into had been carved into terrifying facial expressions; and live bats were nestling in the ceiling rafters, it was heading into becoming even more impressive.

There was even a rumor that Dumbledore had hired a group of dancing skeletons as entertainment for the feast that night.

Draco shook his head and pointed a fork at him at lunch.

"You made the commitment," he said, though he didn't sound any happier about it than Harry did. "Now we have to stick to it."

"Well," Blaise murmured, watching a colony of bats swoop over their heads in response to a particularly loud noise from the Slytherin table.

Draco frowned.

The night that Harry had agreed to go to the Deathday Party, Blaise and Draco had agreed to accompany him, less because they wanted to go, and more because it had, at the time, just begun to dawn on the brunette that if he went, he'd be away from friend and Valerian, alone in a sea of dead people who wouldn't be able to protect or help him.

Technically, neither Draco nor Blaise had made the same commitment to Nick that Harry had, and could choose to join the rest of the school at the Halloween feast instead.

Draco glanced behind him at Fallen, who merely twitched an ear to show that he'd registered Draco's attention, but didn't find the conversation worthy of his own.

"How boring is this going to be?" Draco asked.

'I couldn't tell you,' Fallen answered. 'I've never met a ghost that celebrated the day they died enough to throw a party.'

Draco sighed.

'You could always choose to go to the feast, Draco,' Fallen pointed out, as though Draco wasn't already thinking about it.

"I could," Draco agreed, glancing at Harry, who looked more miserable than he had earlier that morning. "I'd probably feel bad if I did though,"

"We could always just make an appearance at Nick's party," Blaise said. "Stay long enough that Nick knows we're there and then come up here."

"You may want to do that regardless of whether you're upset about missing the feast," Yoko pointed out. "What are the odds that a party for ghosts is going to have food for the living?"

XX

At seven o'clock, the three heirs waved off Ron, Hermione, and Neville at the entrance to the Great Hall, which suddenly seemed even more inviting than normal, and disappeared down into the dungeons.

The passageway leading to the party had been lined with candles, but it looked far less inviting than Harry was sure Nick had intended them to be because they weren't the golden inviting flames of the Great Hall.

These were long, thin, jet-black candles with bright blue fire.

"Ghost lights," Fallen told them. "Will o' wisps, among other creatures, use them to lure in unsuspecting mortals, usually to their deaths. Never trust a blue flame, unless you know where it came from."

If the dim, ghostly lights were uninviting before, they were even more so now.

It wasn't helped that, with every step further into the dungeons they took, the colder it got.

Abruptly, Fallen and Yoko both came to an abrupt halt, with Yoko rearing up to put a paw over one of his ears.

"Gods above and below, is that supposed to be music?" The fox asked, horrified.

Fallen eyed the three children, honestly reconsidering whether he wanted to join the trio at this party or not, potential threats aside. He and Yoko could park themselves three steps back and not be assaulted by the nails-on-a-chalkboard noise that was, supposedly, passing as music.

'It's got to be the only way in or out of the hall, right? They'll be safe there. Right?'

Yoko whined even though he couldn't have possibly heard Brandon's comment. 'This is gonna suck so hard, Fallen.'

'Pity you can't turn your ears off,' Brandon taunted.

'I wish I could cut out the tumor you represent,' Fallen sneered back.

Brandon laughed. 'You'd be bored without me, you useless wolf.'

Fallen seriously doubted it, but the two Valerians pushed their way through the screeching noise, catching up to the three Second Years just as they were reaching the point where their own ears could catch the sound.

"Holy-"

"Ow."

"This is going to suck. They call that music? It's more like two cats dying." Draco flinched, glancing at Harry. "Figuratively."

"It's pretty accurate." The brunette agreed though Harry's green eyes were flat when he unintentionally caught Draco's.

He quickly averted his gaze and stepped forward, leading his friends and the two Valerians towards the racket.

XX

All too soon they were being bowed through a doorway hung with black velvet drapes by Nick.

"My dear friends," he said, far less cheerfully than he'd ever sounded before, someone managing to appear both depressed and excited when Fallen and Yoko followed their charges out of the gloom. "Welcome, welcome…so pleased you could come…."

With each of the boys struggling to avoid clapping their hands over their ears to drown out what had to be thirty musical saws because they certainly couldn't be instruments, it took them several minutes to take in the rest of the hall.

In a complete one-eighty of the Great Hall above them, the hall still managed to be an incredible sight.

It was lit by a chandelier boasting at least a thousand similar candles to the ones in the corridor, lit by the pale blue ghost-light, which gave the frosting breathes the breathing creatures released a glittering, otherworldly glow of its own.

The hall was full of hundreds of pearly-white, translucent people, leaving the three Gryffindors and two Valerians as the only ones at the entire party with a pulse. The hundreds of ghosts made the hall almost unbearably cold, almost like walking into a muggle walk-in freezer.

They were all thankful that Draco had insisted that they all wear their winter cloaks, though they also wore their dressiest slacks and shirts beneath them, which for Harry meant his cleanest t-shirt and slacks he'd borrowed from Blaise, the closest to his size.

"Remain polite at all times," Draco whispered to Harry, leading the brunette around the edge of the hall by his elbow. "This isn't a school function so some of them might refer to you as Lord Potter, but most of them were probably dead long before any of the Sacred Twenty-Eight were even a thing, so we should all be fine. Bow to the women if they talk to you, avoid dancing with any of them."

Harry swallowed nervously.

Other than his friends, the only ghosts he recognized, other than the obvious Nick, were the Hogwarts ghosts in attendance.

The Fat Friar, a cheerful representative of Hufflepuff, was talking to a knight with an arrow sticking out of his forehead; and the Bloody Baron, a gaunt man covered in silver bloodstains with heavy chains around his wrists.

Neither were ghosts he wanted to talk to, and he imagined the same could be said for any of the other ghosts at the party.

"Don't worry," Blaise murmured on his other side. "I'm sure that Nick invited you for your status, not because he actually intended to interact with you, we probably won't have to stay long. We can always say we're hungry. The food here is…inedible."

'And smells it,' Yoko murmured to them, wrinkling his nose.

They were approaching the far side of the hall now, where a long table, covered in black velvet, held the food for the gathering.

From where Harry was, he could see the large, rotten fish that scattered up and down the table on silver platters; cakes, burned charcoal black were heaped on salvers in between; and a great, maggoty haggis sat by a slab of cheese covered in mold.

In a place of pride at the center of everything, was a massive gray cake in the shape of a tombstone. Tar-like icing formed the words, 'Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington, Died 31st October 1492, though they could hardly see it from where they stood.

Blaise went dangerously pale as a portly ghost crouched low and walked through a plate of rotten salmon, mouth held wide as he passed through it.

Harry, morbidly curious, opened his mouth and was saved from asking, a likely embarrassing, question, by Draco, who elbowed him sharply in the ribs.

"Thanks," Harry mumbled, rubbing his side beneath his cloak.

Draco snorted. "Manners, Harry," he whispered. "I know you have them."

"What are we going to do, offend them?" Blaise muttered. "They're dead."

"It's good practice," Draco insisted.

"For what?" Harry asked skeptically. "You think I'm going to need to be polite to someone in the immediate future? I'm pretty sure I've got more practice at that than you."

Draco made a moue of distaste but didn't answer, which made Harry smirk at him and Blaise to snicker.

No sooner had they managed to get away from the stench of the table, did they come across a rather unwelcome sight.

Peeves.

Peeves wasn't like the other ghosts of Hogwarts. For one, he wasn't a ghost, he was a poltergeist. For another, he didn't look anything like a ghost. He was pale, yes, but not translucent and, whereas the other ghosts' clothes were the same pale and pearly-white - with the occasional silver accent - as the rest of them, Peeves was wearing a bright orange party hat and a revolving bow tie.

His wide, wicked face was split in a broad grin, which spelled trouble for anyone around him.

"Hello," Harry said cautiously.

Peeves was the least helpful creature in the entirety of Hogwarts and considering Filch and his cat, that said a lot.

"Nibbles?" the poltergeist asked, offering them a bowl of peanuts covered in fungus.

Draco was fighting a losing battle with his face as he tried not to wrinkle his nose at both the offering and the accompanying stench.

"No thanks," Blaise said, shrinking behind the other two slightly.

Blaise and Neville had been frequent targets of Peeves' pranks at the beginning of the last year.

Yoko and Fallen stepped around their charges, black edging around the irises of the wolf's eyes.

Some of the glee left Peeves' face, though the grin didn't so much as twitch.

"Can we help you?" Fallen asked.

"Was just wondering if you'd seen Myrtle." Peeves said.

Yoko's eyes narrowed. "Are you picking on her again, Peeves?"

Peeves looked offended, an expression that was sorely at odds with the glittering glee in his sharp, wicked eyes. "Me?" he asked, putting his free hand against his chest. "Never!"

"Don't you have enough people to make miserable?" Yoko asked. "You have to pick on one of the few people here who are already miserable?"

Peeves tilted his head. "OY! MYRTLE! Eeeeeeeeee-"

Draco and Harry couldn't help the wide smirks as Peeves was, literally, blown away, shrieking and dropping moldy peanuts the whole way.

Fallen shook his head sharply, shaking away the black in his eyes, as a squat ghost of a girl glided over to take Peeves' place.

If Peeves had looked delighted to be at the deathday party, she looked as miserable as Yoko had claimed her to be.

Her glum expression was mostly hidden behind her lank silver hair and what that didn't hide, was nearly taken over by her thick, pearly glasses.

"Hello, Myrtle," Yoko said pleasantly. "How is your year going thus far?"

Myrtle shrugged.

"Well, I suppose getting out of your toilet helps," Fallen said. "A change of scenery is always a good thing."

'Fallen!' Yoko hissed.

The wolf blinked at his companion, before looking up at the ghost, who's miserable face had fallen even further.

"Guess that's all I'm known for then?"

"Well, we're all boys, so I suppose we wouldn't really know much about you, would we?" Draco said, trying to avoid looking at the Hufflepuff badge on her translucent school robe.

Myrtle's eyes narrowed on him, trying to figure out if he was being mean or not.

Draco's mask must have held up against her scrutiny because she brightened considerably and dropped to hover a little closer to the blond.

"Would you come and visit? I could tell you about me?"

Harry choked but managed to turn to the table beside him before Myrtle could glare at him.

"Sorry, we don't really do well with rotten food," he said, smiling weakly.

"You're making fun of me," she said, retreating from Draco.

"Not at all," Draco said, before cursing his father's lessons and the stupid parties he'd been required to attend that made that comment come out before he could stop it. "I'd love to visit."

'Oh, Draco,' Fallen muttered, far more amused than Draco thought was necessary, given the hole he knew he'd just dug himself.

"Shut up," Draco hissed at him. "Please tell me she haunts somewhere I can't go."

'You're in luck,' Fallen said, their bond flooded with his amusement. 'First-floor girl's bathroom. She's one of, if not the youngest, ghost of the castle.'

"Unfortunately," Draco said, smiling with all the false pleasure he could, "I'm not exactly allowed in the girls' bathrooms." He gestured to himself.

Myrtle's face fell considerably. "Of course," she said. "Who'd want to visit Fat Myrtle?" she asked. "Ugly Myrtle?! Miserable, moaning, moping Myrtle!"

"Enough," Yoko said sharply. "You are none of those things and you shouldn't listen to anyone who tells you differently."

The tears welling in the ghost's eyes spilled over and she darted away.

Draco breathed a sigh of relief.

Blaise snickered beside Harry and leaned in, as though to impart a secret. "Ooh, Draco's got a crush!"

Harry shook his head. "More like she's got one on him." He replied, leaning more into Blaise's space, as though Draco might retaliate for the teasing.

Given the look on his face, it wasn't totally out of the question yet.

"I hate you both," Draco said, tossing his nose into the air and moving away from them.

"Don't worry," Blaise called, he and Harry quickly catching up. "We won't tell."

"Shut up!"

"Do you think Severus would approve?" Harry mock whispered. "I mean, she's a Hufflepuff."

"I will smother you both in your sleep!"

Fallen and Yoko followed the trio, shaking their heads, but far more amused by the teasing than Draco was.

XX

Draco's teasing went on for a full twenty minutes, and it held off the boredom for about that long.

Shortly afterward, the boys, stomachs rumbling, began to search out Nick so they could give him their excuses and leave.

It wasn't going well, given the entire attendance was the same color, right down to their outfits.

Thankfully, Nick found them first.

"Enjoying yourselves?" he asked them.

"Of course," Blaise said, glancing at Draco, brown eyes dancing.

"It's been a lot of fun," Harry added.

Draco bit his lip. Nothing as kind was going to come out of his mouth, given the teasing he'd been putting up with.

"Not a bad turn out," Nick said proudly, looking over the gathered ghosts on the floor.

"We were actually just looking for you," Draco said. "While the party's been wonderful, we do have to go. Given our history, we should probably make an appearance at the feast, just so Professor Snape and Professor McGonagall don't think we're getting into any more trouble on Halloween."

Nick's expression was a mix of crestfallen and understanding. "Of course, of course," he said, clapping his hands. "I was just about to make my speech if you could wait a little longer…."

The boys exchanged glances.

"I'm sure we can wait a couple more minutes," Harry said, mentally apologizing to his angry stomach.

"Wonderful!" Nick said, brightening considerably. "I'll just go and warn the orchestra-"

Even as Nick was turning away from them, however, the orchestra was already coming to a complete stop.

Musicians and guests alike were looking around in excitement, as a hunting horn sounded.

Fallen yawned and Yoko scratched behind his ears, neither all that bothered by the call.

'That seems awfully pretentious, doesn't it?' Brandon said.

Nick seemed to agree. "Oh, here we go," the ghost said bitterly.

As though he'd summoned them - which his deadpan expression said he clearly hadn't - a dozen ghostly horses, each ridden by a headless horseman, suddenly galloped through the wall.

The assembled ghosts clapped wildly as they came to a stop in the middle of the dance floor, several of the horses rearing and others plunging.

The three Gryffindors, taking the cue from the Valerians at their sides, clapped politely, but no more.

Even that little encouragement, however, caused Nick to give them a betrayed glance.

The leader of the pack, a broad-shouldered ghost, with his bearded head held under one arm, stopped blowing the horn as he dropped from the saddle. He lifted his head high in the air, so he could see over the assembled crowd, causing the rest of the attendees to laugh.

Draco's eyes narrowed.

Apparently spotting Nick, the ghost strode through the crowd, squishing his head back onto his head.

"Nick!" he said loudly. "How are you? Head still hanging in there?"

Amused at his own joke, he gave a hearty laugh and clapped Nick on the shoulder.

Yoko's lip curled.

'Oh, I don't think we're going to like this one, Fallen,' Brandon said. 'That was a low blow if I've ever felt one.'

"Welcome, Patrick," Nick said stiffly.

"Live 'uns!" Patrick said, spotting the trio behind Nick and giving a huge, obviously fake, jump of astonishment, causing his head to fall off again.

The crowd roared with laughter.

"Very amusing," Nick said darkly.

"Don't mind Nick!" Shouted Sir Patrick's head from the floor. "Still upset we won't let him join the Hunt! But I mean to say-"

"That your standards are rather exacting?" Draco interrupted.

The entire hall fell silent, eyes on the young mortal amidst them.

Out of the corner of his eye, Fallen noticed the Bloody Baron approaching and tilted his head to give the Slytherin ghost more of his attention.

The Bloody Baron, however, had a lip twisted in amusement and was looking between Sir Patrick, still without his head, and Draco.

'Oh, this could be good.' Brandon said gleefully.

"Of course!" Sir Patrick cried. "Look at him! Not very frightening at all!"

Draco's lip twitched. "Oh, I don't know, I think if given the right scene, he could be very frightening."

Someone picked up Patrick's head and it slowly made its way back to the rest of his body. "That right?" he asked. "Bet he asked you to say that!"

"Actually, he was the only one invited," Draco said, jerking a thumb in Harry's direction. "I couldn't figure out where my invitation had gone, so came along. Draco Malfoy."

Patrick blinked at the blond, narrowing his eyes as though it would help him see better.

"Malfoy?"

Draco hummed. "So, what exactly is so great about your Headless Hunt? I mean, you can't really do anything, can you?"

Patrick reared back, offended. "Pardon?"

"Well, hunting implies that you actually hunt things. I mean, I've never been on one, by Father has. I imagine it would be pretty hard to have a hunt if you can't actually interact with what you're hunting." Draco glanced at Nick. "Am I wrong?"

Nick blinked at him. "No, but the Headless Hunt doesn't actually hunt-"

Draco snorted. "Rather ridiculous title than, isn't it? I mean, wouldn't it make more sense to call yourselves the Headless Horsemen, or something?"

Fallen's lip curled. "Title already taken," He drawled, helpfully.

Draco nodded. "And I suppose it is a little less impressive-sounding, isn't it…? Though really, when Nick was talking about the Headless Hunt, I was honestly looking for something a little more…impressive, I suppose. He and the Bloody Baron are the only ones who understand some of the things my Father teaches me, so I figured if he was even remotely impressed by you, you had to be at least somewhat worth meeting."

"I take it you're unimpressed, boy?" Patrick asked some of his amusement burned away by Draco's words.

"Very," Draco said with a shrug. "If I wanted to watch someone's head roll, I could have stayed in the Great Hall. They've got skeletons doing the same thing up there, you know, and no offense, fleshless skulls are a little more terrifying than something I can't touch."

Blaise hummed thoughtfully, tapping his chin with a finger and eyeing the Headless Hunt, who were moving restlessly under the back-and-forth gaze of the assembled guests.

"And I suppose being nearly headless isn't necessarily as familiar as being completely headless. If a muggle were to be approached by one of you, they wouldn't be half as scared as they are of Nick, I mean, his head just hangs there. All by itself, staring at you almost upside down."

"It was pretty unnerving," Harry added helpfully, glancing at Nick, "my first year when he just…pulled and it hung there, swinging for a second, while he explained how he came to be nearly headless."

Patrick was looking between the three boys and Nick, as though wondering what Nick had promised them to get them to sing his praises so well.

Draco shrugged. "Well, I suppose since you're now the main attraction, there's no reason for us to stick around." He turned to Nick, bowing slightly. "Thank you very much for the invitation, Sir Nicholas. This debate was by far greater entertainment than anything Dumbledore could have put together for us. We look forward to another invite. Some of my family could do with some of your lessons on decorum."

Blaise coughed, but it sounded far too much like 'Katelyn' to be anything close to realistic.

'Hush you,' Yoko rebuked, though he was too amused to mean it. 'This almost makes putting up with that poor excuse for music worth it. Can you imagine how much better he'll be as he grows older?'

"That's a frankly terrifying thought process," Blaise told him, shaking his head.

Patrick lowered his head as Draco led the other two heirs towards the door, talking animatedly about the skeletons they were planning to see in the Great Hall and comparing the likelihood of them taking their heads off like the Headless Hunt was doing behind them, likely to recapture the attention of the crowd they'd lost when Draco had finished debating with Patrick, or maybe it was back when they'd started the debate and it was pretty clear that Draco wasn't going to give the ghost a chance to retaliate.

"The boy has his opinions, Master Wolf," the head said to Fallen as he followed.

Fallen tilted his head to eye the one next to his own. "Of course he does," he said. "He's a Malfoy. They always have opinions."

"A lot of what he says sounded eerily familiar."

Fallen gave him a fanged smirk. "The King was no less impressed with you when we met you on that field, Sir Patrick. Your title doesn't mean much to the living anymore, not when the Wild Hunt brings such terror to their minds. And he may have drawn some comparisons when I mentioned such an encounter to him."

"And did Nick think bringing a Malfoy to the party was going to help his cause? They'll forget about this in an hour."

"Didn't you hear?" Fallen asked. "Draco wasn't invited. He crashed because Harry Potter was invited and he wanted to know what was so important that the Boy Who Lived got an all but engraved invite, but the Malfoy Heir didn't. This had nothing to do with you until you rubbed yourself in his sparring partner's face."

Patrick side-eyed Nick, snorting. "Him?"

Fallen scoffed. "Don't let the sharp dress fool you, Patrick. Sir Nicholas was born in a time where you needed to be verbally vicious, but not appear as though you were doing so if you wanted to avoid being on the losing end of a duel. Doubly so as he was a wizard when they were actively being hunted. Even for the Malfoys, that's a skill that has fallen into disrepair, if you will. In a game of words with Sir Nicholas, you'd lose before the game was even begun, and Draco knew that when he opened his mouth."

Fallen turned and, with a flick of his tail, disappeared out of the dungeons in search of his companions.

XX

"If we're lucky, there might still be some dessert on the table," Blaise said, shrugging his cloak off his shoulders and folding it, as best he could while they were walking, so it hung over his arms.

Draco shook his head, taking his own cloak off. "I've been dragged to some seriously boring parties, Potter, but that one takes the cake."

"And you made me dress up for it," Harry said, equal parts amused and irritated that Draco was trying to pin the blame on him. "Also, didn't you just say that you weren't invited? You didn't have to be there with me."

Draco and Blaise exchanged glances before Draco turned his focus back to his cloak, so he didn't wrinkle it too badly as they walked.

They were halfway up the stairs up to the entrance hall when Harry came to an abrupt halt, hand on one of the stone walls and brow furrowed.

"Harry?"

Harry was pale, all traces of amusement gone from his face when he looked down at Fallen. "I hear it again."

"Hear what?" Draco asked.

Fallen ignored him, he and Yoko tilting their heads to try and catch any hint of the same voice Harry was hearing, ears twitching.

"What's it saying?" Yoko asked, taking a couple of steps to stand even with the brunette.

Harry shook his head. "It's fading. Going away…." He looked up at the ceiling. "This way!" he called, darting up the stairs.

"Harry!" Draco called after him, huffing when the Valerians took off after him without a word of explanation to him or Blaise.

Blaise looked at him and with an irritated huff, the two ran after them, balling up their cloaks so they wouldn't trip on them, ruining their efforts to keep them from wrinkling too badly.

XX

They had run nearly the whole of the second floor, before Harry abruptly came to a stop, half-bent over and panting, his friends not much better.

The voice itself was gone, but he could still hear the echo of it, hissing high, hateful, and hungry in his head.

"Did you hear it?" he panted, looking at Fallen as he straightened, wiping sweat from his forehead and wishing he'd taken his cloak off, not that it appeared to have done Blaise or Draco any favors. "Please tell me you still hear it."

Fallen licked his lips. "Harry-"

"I'm not going insane!" Harry yelled. "I'm not!"

"And when," Fallen snapped sharply, "did I say I thought you were?"

Harry flinched.

"There are several reasons why neither Yoko nor I could hear the voice you've heard, Harry, and one of them is simply because you three were making too much noise and neither of us dared to take the lead in case we couldn't hear it."

"And while it may certainly be that you could be the only one able to hear this voice of yours, that doesn't mean you're going insane." Yoko soothed.

"What voice?" Draco asked, looking angrily between his guardian and his friend. "What the bloody hell was that about?"

Harry clenched his fists, avoiding his friends' eyes. "I-"

"We'll get to that," Fallen said, dismissing Draco for the moment and ignoring the way his charge turned red at said dismissal. "What did the voice say, Harry?"

"Pretty much what it said last time. It was looking to rip something apart, to kill. Said something about how hungry it was."

Yoko glanced at Fallen. 'Something that hibernates?'

'That's a long list.' Fallen told him. "Was there anything else?"

"Just before I lost it. It said it smelled blood."

Fallen cursed quietly. "All three of you get to the Tower. We'll deal with getting you food later. Right now, I want you safely behind that portrait until we can rule out a threat currently roaming the halls."

Harry and Draco exchanged horrified looks, remembering all too well the mad dash to escape Dark the Christmas before.

Blaise wasn't much better. This very day a year ago, he and Hermione had been cornered by a Thralled troll and Dark in a bathroom, with Yoko their only defense.

"Yoko…."

"We'll be following you," Yoko assured his charge. "Just keep moving."

Draco grabbed Blaise by the wrist and tugged him behind him as he and Harry started running towards the stairs again.

Fallen tipped his nose into the air, searching for any hint of blood on the breeze, but there was nothing.

Yoko paused, watching him from the corner of the corridor, one eye on their fleeing charges while he waited for the wolf. "Anything?" he asked.

Fallen shook his head. "There's no blood on the air," he told the Assassin. "At least not yet."

"If there's a threat of that nature in the school again, we'll need to inform Dumbledore, if no one else," Yoko told him. "The students are the only ones here that could be hurt if whatever this is wants blood."

"That's not entirely true," Fallen reminded him, the two of them loping down the hall after their charges. "Though I suppose in the long run they would be the only ones that matter. The future of the Wizarding World, being maimed or killed at Hogwarts?"

"They'd close it down," Yoko agreed grimly.

XX

Draco was the first to balk when his shoes found not stone, but water.

"What the-"

"Looks like something's leaking," Harry said, pulling his own sneaker out of the massive puddle of water with a grimace.

"Should we take another-"

"Mrs. Norris!" Blaise gasped.

The other two Gryffindors' heads snapped up, away from the veritable flood, and saw what had so horrified Blaise, lover of all things animal.

Mrs. Norris was hanging by her tail from the torch bracket, and above it, written in foot-high words, a grim message from a long-dead Founder:

THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED,

ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE.