October came around quickly, and I was happier than I'd ever been in my life. Since starting at Hogwarts a month ago, I'd made four best friends, and I was learning about all sorts of magic. I was finally beginning to have an idea how to get around the castle, and all the little wacky things the castle had hidden, like trick stairs, walls pretending to be doors, and the names of all the people in the paintings.

My second werewolf transformation at Hogwarts happened near the start of the month, and once again, my friends were all very suspicious. At least this time I stayed in the shack for the day afterwards to recover, but this time I missed two days of school, plus two nights due to needing the extra night to recover.

"Sorry, it's my mother's illness," I lied when they asked during Potions class on the morning when I first came back. "She got worse."

"I'm so sorry, I hope she gets better," Monifa said sympathetically. She and Peter seemed to be buying it, although Sirius and James were a lot more suspicious, and they were giving each other a strange look at my excuse.

For most of the month, nothing happened. Sorry, stuff did happen, like I did my classes every weekday, did homework and sat with friends on the weekends, just the usual things a Hogwarts student would do.

Then the week leading up to Hallowe'en came along, and excitement was buzzing all through the castle. There was going to be a huge feast on Hallowe'en night, and during the day we would be allowed to dress up as something creepy. The older students were saying that this was a huge privilege, as students were only allowed to dress up if Hallowe'en fell on a weekend, so most years they would not dress up, and instead have to do schoolwork on Hallowe'en before the feast.

For the entire week before Hallowe'en, Hogsmeade was open to all students (which, again, was very rare as usually first-years and second-years were usually not allowed to go into Hogsmeade) to buy costumes.

James, Sirius, Monifa, Peter and I all went to Hogsmeade on the Wednesday afternoon to get our costumes, chatting with excitement.

"What are you guys going to dress up as?" James asked, as we walked through the gates to Hogsmeade. When we arrived, we saw a bunch of students crowded around a barbed fence. We walked over to the students to see what was going on. I saw what they were looking at, and it was a wooden shack.

My heart dropped. No. No, no, no, no, no. They were looking at… my shack. Well, the school's shack, but the shack that I went to during my transformations. Why were they looking at it?

"Earlier this month I heard sounds coming out of the shack," a fourth-year Ravenclaw student said. "It was like, a howling sort of noise, and there was screaming."

"I heard it too," a sixth-year from Hufflepuff. "Sort of… shrieking?"

"The shrieking shack!" a third-year Slytherin said excitedly. "We should call it the shrieking shack!"

"It's definitely haunted," said the Ravenclaw who'd first spoken about the shack. "Talking about haunted, lets go get our costumes!"

The students all walked away from the fence, talking excitedly about the 'shrieking' shack, and their Hallowe'en costumes.

"D'you guys reckon the Shrieking Shack is haunted?" James asked.

"Yeah," Sirius said. "I wish we could be here when the ghosts were making the noise. What about you guys, do you believe it's haunted?"

"Yes," I said. "It's probably haunted."

Monifa rolled her eyes. "It's not haunted. The teachers probably just put sound effects in for Hallowe'en."

"Yeah, but the students said it was earlier this month," Sirius said. "And if it was for Hallowe'en, don't you think they'd be playing the sound effects today?"

"You're right, Sirius," I said, nodding violently. "It's definitely haunted."

"Whatever," said Monifa, rolling her eyes. "Let's go get our costumes."

We walked into the costume shop, which was the only shop open for students to visit at the moment. Luckily for me, Nana had heard that we got to dress up this year, and had sent some money for me to spend on my Hallowe'en costume.

We looked around in awe. There were hundreds of different costumes to choose from, hanging all through the shop.

"How are we meant to choose?" Peter asked, wide-eyed.

"We should all go as the same thing," Monifa suggested. "Like… werewolves!"

My heart rate seemed to quicken to a million beats per minute. Please, anything but werewolves. I really hated werewolves.

"That's a brilliant idea!" said James. Before I knew it, we were all buying werewolf costumes, and were back in the dormitory parading around in our costumes.

I felt extremely uncomfortable, but of course I didn't say anything, and paraded around the room with Sirius, James, and Peter.

Hallowe'en came around soon enough, and all the teachers would be at their classrooms for us to go trick-or-treating to during the day.

It was absolutely brilliant, except for the fact that we were in werewolf costumes. But it was nice to spend the whole day running around the castle and eating sweets with my four best friends.

We had gotten all the sweets possible by the early afternoon, and spent the rest of it pigging out under a tree near the Great Lake.

"You know we have the feast after this," I said, my mouth full of chocolate. "We're going to be full as hell."

"I could never be full from sweets," Sirius said, sighing and lying down. "And apparently that's the feast — more sweets."

"Holy shit, I'm gonna vomit by the end of this," Monifa said, although she continued to stuff her face with fistful after fistful of sweets.

"I think it's great," said Peter, letting out a huge burp.

"No one will sleep tonight," I laughed. "We'll all be too hyper."

"Awesome," James grinned.

At 6 o' clock we all went to the Great Hall, said goodbye to Monifa, then walked to the Gryffindor table, and immediately started eating away at the sweets.

After the feast, we were sent to our dormitories to go to sleep, but in the first-year Gryffindor boy's dormitory, no sleeping was going on at all.

All four of us were screaming our heads off, laughing and playing tag.

"LETS SING A SONG!" Sirius screamed, tears of joy pouring out of his eyes.

"LA LA LA LA LA!" I yelled out, laughing.

"POO POO!" James giggled.

"SING SING SING SONG SONG SONG!" Peter shouted.

We were all acting like absolute idiots for an entire hour until we all started dropping like flies. Peter went first, collapsing on his bed, panting, and then vomiting.

"OH NO PETEY DID VOMITTYYYYYY!" James yelled out.

My energy was the next to drop from 100000% to -10000000000%. I didn't vomit, thankfully, but I felt like absolute crap and was dizzy as hell. It didn't take much longer for Sirius and James to be laying down in bed silently, looking queasy.

"Happy Hallowe'en," I smiled, then went straight to sleep.