Now you may feel that we're skipping over a lot of stuff here, but honestly, who just wants a simple, canon rehash when we can have so much more fun with this world of magic ... and wolves ... and hats.

On that note, anything denoted with the symbol '~' is a mental conversation. And I do mean mental.

Big love to the mighty Tenzo51 without whom this story wouldn't have even happened, let alone be anywhere near as good as it is. The Mirror of Erised thing is all down to Tenzo since I honestly forgot that it even happened in canon and was ready to plough on through regardless.

This chapter's reading recommendation for you lovely people is ...

Holly Potter and the Heart of Canis by Blacsparrow.

I love this story. True, there's not much of it yet, but I sense a huge potential in this one and with a little more support, the author may well be encouraged to crack on with it a bit. Obviously, don't tell them that I said that but we all know what a huge difference a few nice reviews can make to our motivation and writing speed.

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I'm not JKR and I don't make any money from this. Which is a bit of a shame.

DtR xx.

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The Excellent Adventure of a Wolf, a Loony and a Very Bored Heroine.

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11. Mirrors, Puzzles and Prizes.

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The remainder of the winter break was spent with Shelley and Artemis hidden away in her room glued to both her laptop for up to date information on ballistics and a few large runes texts. They were engaged in the fascinating task of finding not only the best runes to enhance the muggle bullets for Artemis' pistols, but also where to position them in order to not screw up their trajectory and thus her accuracy with the weapons. It turned out that the best runes were a Futhark, delayed explosive and Othark, 'undoing' rune that would turn a mere bullet into a mini claymore mine, shattering the projectile into dozens of tiny shards one millisecond after impact.

Unfortunately, this meant that the highly unstable rune pair had to be carved on the back of the bullet, inside the casing and the only way that they were going to be able to do that was to make their own ammunition. After researching it a bit on the internet, the girls thought that it looked like a thankless and laborious task, but it was, never-the-less a necessary one and so Shelley set about buying the necessary equipment. Because of the rather stringent laws surrounding firearms and explosives that pervaded in Britain, she found it necessary to make her purchases through some swiftly manufactured fake companies and shipped to various PO boxes to await owl delivery to Hogwarts.

It was all very exciting, especially to Artemis who was fascinated and impressed by the speed with which her criminal BFF set up all these highly suspect dummy corporations and companies. And her delight when Shelley managed a bit of a magical bodge job to make half a dozen rune enhanced bullets just to ensure that she could was so great that it was all she could do not to let out a high, girly squeal. Even if it had taken all day to get the right. Obviously it was going to be a lot of hard work once they had all of their gear assembled and could start the manufacturing process in earnest.

Still, despite all the work involved, it looked like it would be awesome, but frustratingly all experimentation would have to wait until the girls were back at school, had their ammunition ready and could sneak off to the Forbidden forest to do their 'research'. Privet Drive was a bit too suburban and middle class for even the smallest amount of gunfire to go un-noticed for long. Even with her, entirely deserved, reputation for being somebody that you were better off leaving well alone, it only took one interfering old busybody to call the coppers and they would be in trouble.

Not the fun sort of trouble that they got into at school mind, but actual police intervention, social workers round the house, law courts and juvenile detention centre kind of trouble. And although it was highly likely that, due to their magical heritage it wouldn't go on for too long, it was still trouble that neither of them needed. Especially since they were due to go back to Hogwarts in two days time.

Shelley and Artemis supposed that they could probably wait until then. It was still a bit of a struggle for them mind you, so they filled their final couple of days taking boxing lessons with Dudley as well as persuading him to teach them other, less savoury, forms of hand to hand fighting. Which he had regretted almost immediately. His cousin and her white haired friend might only be small but they had no fear and were bloody vicious.

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Having reunited on the train and caught up on all the gossip that six days apart could reasonably generate, the four, inner circle members of the Hufflepuff Marauders entered their dorm with their usual vigour. Much to the amusement of the other residents who were in the middle of finishing their ablutions and getting dressed for dinner when the weirdly lecherous Luna Lovegood started chasing the half naked girls around the room with tickle fingers extended. After she had finally tired of this fun game the blonde lunatic trotted over to where Shelley was unpacking and bounced up onto 'their' bed.

There was a loud and unexpected rustling sound from beneath her bottom and the strange girl immediately manouvered back up into a bit of a squat in order to pull the offending item out from under her.

"Hey Belly-Boo, someone's left a Christmas present on your bed."

"Luna, my insane little monkey, do you think you would be able to stop calling me that if I asked really nicely?"

With a finger to her chin and a thoughtful (if cute) expression on her face, the peculiar Miss Lovegood appeared to think about this request for a full minute before.

"Ummm ... no."

Shelley's shoulders slumped. She should have known better than to ask but it had been worth a try. Instead of continuing to argue and doubtless getting embroiled in yet another strange and ultimately fruitless conversation with the slight blonde girl, Shelley opted to inspect her gift. It proved to be a very good move on her part as, after shedding it's bright, wrapping and perusing the brief note about it being her father's and some rather silly stuff about using it wisely (as if) she picked up the shimmering cloth garment and placed it around her shoulders.

Nothing Happened.

Or rather something did happen but it was a something that she was totally unaware of. Artemis was aware of it, however, and had no hesitation in voicing her surprise and not a little envy at whatever it was.

"Damn Shell', how come you always manage to find cool stuff like this."

Shelley turned to the mirror to see what all the fuss was about. And then grinned like a loon.

Her body had disappeared, leaving only a disembodied head bobbing around in the dorm and causing multiple shrieks from her freaked out peers and one un-necessarily loud exclamation of; 'What the hell!' as the others turned to look. This caused Shelley to try something. Discarding her hat for a minute, fiddling around with the top collar of her new cloak, she pulled the hood all the way up before turning back to face the mirror once more.

Oh. My. God. It was a freaking invisibility cloak. Now this was a Christmas present. True, it didn't make her quite as happy as her new hat had done but it was a pretty close run thing. The only question in Shelley's mind was who on Earth could have been stupid enough to give her something that would make it even easier for a certain group of first-year witches to break the rules. They clearly weren't very intelligent. Or, as she had found to be more usually the case in the magical world, they were intellligent enough but just dreadfully naive. Especially when it came to trusting the 'girl-who-lived' with an item with the potential to cause as much mayhem as she was obviously going to.

She began her exploitation of her cool new toy by quietly moving about the dorm, sneaking up on her friends and scaring the crap out of everyone. Everyone except Artemis that is, who could not only hear her but smell her as well. Which wasn't at all creepy. Oh no. Shelley wasn't actually creeped out even slightly of course, since it was her best friend forever (she couldn't quite bring herself to say the abbreviation' BFF' just yet or even think it) that was doing the smelling.

She was aware that this made her just as weird as the nasally enhanced wolf but in the true spirit of their somewhat warped friendship had decided to embrace the weirdness and settled for trying to tackle her and then losing yet another play fight with her.

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Shelley Potter's first foray into the ancient castle under her new stealth cloak was taken alone by her. In all fairness, she had actually offered to take the girls with her but they had insisted that her first time with her father's old cloak should be a solely personal thing. Even Luna hadn't wanted to intrude upon her friend's private time with the rare and expensive heirloom. She knew what it was like to lose a parent and how much she valued every little thing of her mothers so she was unsurprisingly understanding in this situation. Not that she had really needed to be in this particular case.

The 'girl-who-lived' had read many different accounts of her parents, their battles and their joys and their sacrifices and while she appreciated them (especially the last one) she had never really known them. Shelley didn't remember anything about her biological parents and even if she did she probably wouldn't have thought of them or treated any better than she did the Dursleys. Emotions, while not being a total waste of time, in that the judicious application of them could get her what she wanted in certain circumstances, were still not something that she considered to be terribly important in life. Shelley was much more of a Spock figure. Logic and rational thinking were usually more effective in providing better results than any wishy-washy feelings did. That was simply her nature.

Her friends making sure of her spending some quality alone time with her father's cloak, therefore, made no sense to Shelley whatsoever. Also with just a single eleven year-old witch underneath it, she kept tripping over the damn thing as wandered through the (mostly) deserted corridors. Even scaring the crap out of the various amorous couples that she encountered didn't seem as much fun without having her fellow little monsters there to share in the experience with her. She did learn a surprising amount about the more physical aspects of human romantic and sexual encounters on her nocturnal adventure, mind you.

Being the inquisitive soul that she was, Shelley wondered how long it would be before that kind of thing became an issue in her own life and whether or not she could possibly avoid it being so. It did seem excessively and un-necessarily messy. Knowing the terrifying force of nature that was Luna Lovegood and her obsession with naked girls (and more specifically her naked body) Shelley resigned herself to the fact that it was going to happen one day. In the quest for information, she began to hunt for a lesbian couple to study so that she was neither caught out when Luna did decide to get all amorous with her in the future, nor in a position where she wouldn't be holding up her end of such an encounter.

This proved to be a somewhat futile search as it seemed that same sex pairings were even more uncommon in the Wizarding World than they were in the muggle one. Which was rather annoying, since it was much easier to learn from a book if one had the chance to also indulge in some (purely scientific) observation of the subject that one wished to study. It took a lot longer than she had liked before Shelley remembered about her pink haired House-mate and the Astronomy professor's illicit relationship and even longer to get around the wards on her quarters but it was well worth the trouble.

She learnt a lot of really useful stuff. True, some of the things that they got up to were icky enough to leave her feeling a little queasy but on the whole it looked like a reasonably fun and enjoyable activity which she was now even slightly looking forward to.

Many people would consider that she was far too young for such thoughts but Shelley Potter was a firm believer in planning ahead. Also she knew that her insane little bed-mate had about as much self control as a junkie in a methodone factory and suspected that it wouldn't be as long as any of them thought before the girl began her 'seduction'.

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Their third week back at school saw the second of Hufflepuff's quidditch matches of the season, this time against Ravenclaw, which was just as well supported as their first brutal encounter. The flying Badgers were just as brilliant against the Eagles although it was a much cleaner match than their virtual brawl with the Slytherins, their opponents this time being a far more technically gifted team.

It made very little difference to the end result, however, as the Hufflepuff chaser trio were simply unstoppable, racking up a huge lead within the first forty minutes and all but forcing them to scatter before their wild and reckless goal fest. Cho Chang, the new Ravenclaw seeker finally decided she had had enough and ended the game shortly after by catching the snitch in an attempt to salvage at least some pride from the extremely one sided affair. Their own seeker seemed rather more intent on watching his pretty counterpart than actually competing against her for the little, golden ball and received a rather stern talking to from Demetia Gently.

Actually the 'talking to' swiftly went from mere words to punches and got to the point where Cedric would have spent his second night in the Infirmary that year had the rest of his team-mates not intervened on his behalf. That they did so with extreme caution (even Shelley and Artemis who could have probably taken her in a fight) spoke volumes about just how enormously pissed off their captain was with the blonde haired boy and led them to a new team resolution; Do what Ms Gently says and never talk back when it comes to quidditch.

The party in the common room was slightly subdued to start with, following this locker room altercation, but even the driven and serious sixth year couldn't keep her grumpy demeanour in the face of Hufflepuff karaoke. Especially when some of the younger years got hold of the microphone and gave a doe eyed and cutesy performance of 'Love will keep us together' by the Captain and Tennille. The rest of the Badgers smiled at their adorable (but somehow still quite scary) juniors and soon joined in and Demetia's dogged and determined resistance finally crumbled.

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Unfortunately, school was not going as well as quidditch.

After another month filled with yet more terrible teaching in Potions, DADA and now even History of Magic, Shelley's patience finally broke. It was abundantly clear that their dear Headmaster wasn't going to do anything about any of her complaints and so the Hufflepuff Marauders made the decision to clear out some of the dead wood themselves. Starting with the worst offender, Quirrell.

By happy accident he was also the professor who seemed to be either, being manipulated by or playing host to, Shelley's supposed mortal enemy, Lord Voldemort so it was very much of a 'two birds with one stone' situation for them. Also, since Gandalf the Git had clearly set up the whole third floor corridor deal to entice the man (and possibly them) into some kind of trap, they had a ready made, private arena in which to confront him. Or to kill him if he got particularly testy about being caught.

It was the thought of 'catching' Voldemort that sparked an idea in Luna's odd, but brilliant, brain and led to the four witches hitting the restricted section of the school library late at night to research creating something that they called a 'spirit trap'. Shelley's remarkable cloak was employed and the group made sure to spend at least two hours per night on their new study project. Even with their intensive reading it was a gargantuan task and the Marauders were forced to out-source some of their research.

Thankfully, their dorm-mate and Hannah's childhood friend Susan Bones had, since leaving the blonde girl behind somewhat, started hanging out with a certain bushy haired Gryffindor bookworm and with her help a deal was soon struck. Apparently the girl just wanted a bit of company and limited access to Shelley's internet connection. There was some dis-quiet in the Badger's Sett about allowing a Gryffindork such access to their common room but, since this came almost exclusively from Shelley and she was immediately out-voted by her annoying friends, it got settled pretty quickly. Thus with Hermione and Susan providing back up, reading books that the others had acquired in their late night visits to the library, things started to move along much faster with operation spirit trap.

It took them all the way up to the Easter break but they managed to make one eventually. Now they were ready to take on Dumbledore's magical assault course, rid themselves of a pesky Dark Lord and hopefully steal a priceless artifact at the same time. Having put it off for so long the girls were now quite looking forward to it. Plus, if they were really lucky they might get to try out Artemis' new stabilised and recoilless, exploding bullets with which they had had fun blowing up a rather large portion of the Forbidden Forest.

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All four founding members of the Hufflepuff Marauders had managed to convince their respective relatives that it was necessary for them to stay at Hogwarts during the term break. Some (Hannah and Luna) made the excuse of needing extra study time for their end of year exams while others (Shelley and Artemis) were a little more blunt, stating that they had better things to do. The fact that nobody argued with any of their reasoning wasn't questioned by the girls who simply patted themselves on the back for being so marvelously persuasive.

They took their chance at the first opportunity that presented itself when their ineffectual headmaster was apparently off playing at politics on the second night of the holiday break. None of them actually believed that he was far off, mind you. They correctly guessed that the old git was probably hiding out in Hogsmeade waiting for whatever alarms he had rigged up around the 'prize' to go off. He was so transparent that it was almost laughable.

The marauders hit the third floor corridor all hidden under Shelley's cloak and with a surprisingly simple, first year, unlocking charm, they entered the first chamber of 'Gandalf's Gauntlet'. Only to come face to face with a huge cerberus, all matted fur, slavering chops and yellow teeth. He was a rather unkempt looking beast and terribly ugly but this didn't seem to put Luna Lovegood off her stride even slightly.

"Ooh, look at the cute, little doggy, isn't he just adorable."

Hannah, apparently agreed, and before Shelley could inject a voice of either reason or caution into proceedings, the two blondes had got themselves across the room and each attached themselves to one of the beast's outer heads. That it didn't immediately tear their silly throats out was a combination of surprise on the cerberus' part and sheer, dumb luck in Shelley's opinion. Then she saw the middle head staring straight at the other witch in the room.

The witch who was also an Alpha wolf and whose features were now rapidly shifting as she growled menacingly at the large, but now at least somewhat docile looking, beast.

Fluffy the cerberus (as they later discovered his name to be from a very sheepish Hagrid) did not appear to be in the mood to challenge the princess of the entire World's population of true wolves. He lowered his head that wasn't being scratched or kissed and shuffled off over to the corner of the room while keeping a submissive, but still rather sharp and wary, eye on the extremely dangerous looking magical wolf and her small human pack.

Upon his movement, a sturdy trap-door appeared and, after a brief struggle to pull the two blondes off of the so called guardian of the room, the four girls stood around it, peering down into the utter darkness.

"What do you think's down there?"

"Judging by the lack of light or a ladder, I'd say it was something soft enough to break your fall without breaking your legs. Of course, it will still be something rather nasty I'd imagine, we ought to proceed with ... "

"Wheeeeee!"

" ... caution. Never mind."

"You alright down there Luna?"

"It's all soft and squishy but sort of bouncy and tangly too." Luna's voice drifted up from the inky darkness with all of her usual spaced out quality until she all of a sudden got an excited note to it. "Ooh its coming to say hello, I think it wants to be my friend."

The Devil's Snare was just really starting to pull at the small, dreamy, lunatic in earnest when two of her comrades dropped right into it next to her. Shelley sat on the edge of the trapdoor, wand in hand and shook her head at her impetuous fellow Marauders and their utter stupidity. She waited for a couple of minutes to allow them the opportunity to learn a valuable lesson from this very silly mistake before conjuring an umbrella and floating, Mary Poppins style, to the floor, casting an incendio as she went.

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"Do you think that you could have at least, tried to not set us on fire, Bells?"

"Probably." The insane 'girl-who-lived shrugged her shoulders at her glaring and very wet friends. "But where would be the fun in that."

All conversation stopped as the reached the end of the short corridor and entered the next stage of 'Gandalf's Gauntlet'. This was much better than the previous trap. At least they could see. And what a sight it was, hundreds of tiny, winged, quidditch sntiches flitting and fluttering around the cavernous 'room', all going in different directions and somehow managing not to collide with each other.

Their task was clear.

"Coool."

Knowing exactly what that tone from her wolfy friend meant, Shelley managed to just about get four words out before she was out of time.

"We're not seekers, we're ... "

But, the suddenly much more cheerful, Artemis was already off on her broom and diving wildly among the snitches, that mad gleam in her eye that the little wolf always got when she was 'on the chase'.

"Never mind." Shelley sighed out in resignation.

She seemed to be saying that a lot tonight and she had no doubt that this would not be the last time either. They were adorable and funny and loyal but honestly, the merest whiff of an adventure and they were charging off like a bunch of brainless Gryffindors rather than the sensible and (reasonably) intelligent Badgers that they actually were. She still couldn't help but smile as she watched her white haired friend whizzing around the open space yipping and howling with unrestrained glee.

Shelley allowed the 'chase' to go on for far longer than any of them would have thought possible before finally getting bored of watching her strange friend trying (and failing) to catch the elusive, charmed, half snitch, half key and ending it with an abrupt.

"Accio working key."

As she had explained to her 'students' many times, magic was all about intent and making sure that you used the correct phraseology. Especially with this particular spell. The winged key flew straight and true to her hand all but brushing Artemis' nose on its way and landed in her palm with a satisfctory smacking sound. Shelley pulled off its wings so it couldn't escape again and tossed the key to Luna while impatiently gesturing that they should get a move on.

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"Is anyone any good at chess?"

Shelley was (as she was good at everything, obviously) but felt that they had already wasted enough time with that ridiculous key business in the previous room and put forward the plan to use their pilfered brooms and simply fly over the board. There was some slight resistance to this as Hannah, in particular, was apparently looking forward to a good old, bloodthirsty game but in the end, expediency prevailed and they drifted over the furious pieces.

The cute blonde was still giving out equally cute huffs of displeasure at the way they completely by-passed, what was sure to be, a brilliant battle, but the others studiously ignored her. And it wasn't like it mattered, anyway. In the next section, Hannah's freaky blood lust would be more than sated.

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The first thing that alerted the four girls as to what their next obstacle would be was the smell. Quickly followed by the outraged roar of a grumpy beast who had been awakened by their giggling, chattering and general lack of attention to their surroundings. Oh yes, they knew exactly what this was alright.

"Troll!"

Artemis whipped out her pistols and blazed away at the lumping great monster, it's slow mind and slow movements making a very tempting target for her and one that she couldn't possibly have resisted if she had wanted. Even with her modified, explosive bullets, however, the white wolf wasn't able to do much damage to the thick skinned troll. She did piss it off enough that it turned towards them and roar though, which was just the opportunity that her stupidly powerful, best friend had been waiting for.

With a whoop of joy Shelley deployed her staff and unleashed what was undoubtedly her favourite spell to date on the unsuspecting creature. He had, very sportingly, opened his mouth to bellow a challenge at the three small humans and the green eyed witch's trebuchet spell sailed straight and true into his open maw.

The result was just as bloody and spectacular as it had been on Halloween when enacted against the troll's just as smelly and ugly cousin. Their ear-drums reverberated to the huge, soggy explosion and the chamber immediately turned that pretty shade of pink that the girls were all coming to enjoy so much.

Once again, it was Hannah that put their feelings into just the right words.

"Still awesome."

The laughter of the four Hufflepuff Marauders as they carefully picked their way through the remains of this room's guardian may or may not have been considered to be extremely inappropriate for such sweet, young things. It also sounded incredibly creepy.

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Their next to last stop was a table full of potions next to a flaming bridge and an insultingly simple logic quiz. Once they had identified and selected the correct vial, Shelley un-stoppered it and held it to Artemis' super sensitive nose. The little wolf could tell what was in a potion down to the smallest drop of worm water and, having been extensively coached by Shelley over the past few months, she could now identify them at will.

"It's a flame freezing potion."

This was a talent of the wolf's that Shelley had discovered early on and one which she employed regularly to test out all of their brews in class before handing them in to the supposedly brilliant professor. It was a good fail-safe to make sure that the horrid piece of excrement disguidsed as a human being couldn't take any more points off of them than was strictly necessary.

"Isn't there a spell for that?"

There certainly was and Hannah Abbott knew it, thanks to the ultra paranoid Auntie of her former best friend Susan, who had insisted that the two of them learned it in case of a fire. She flicked her wand about confidently and, unlike in the whole chess game episode, seemingly had no problem with 'cheating' her way past Snape's nasty, little logic trap. Luna and Artemis' twin beaming smiles suggested that she wasn't the only one who hated pretty much anything to do with potions.

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And so they came to the finale. The supposedly great prize at the end of the ridiculously over elaborate and frustratingly easy set of tasks that they had just powered through in under half an hour. It was a mirror.

Okay, it was quite a nice mirror, all tall and stately and ornate looking but they were still all a bit disappointed to be honest. Well, until they actually took the time to properly look into it that is. Surprisingly, perhaps for four such different and unique individuals, all four of the girls saw only a very slight variation on the same image that stared back out at them.

It was them. Much older and much more mature and ... developed, but definitely still them. Dressed in tight and rather risque robes of red, yellow, blue and green, the reflections of the older them smiled knowingly and rather smugly back at themselves and gave a variety of small waves, leers and winks. It didn't escape the notice of any of the girls that these sexy and powerful looking witches were sat upon gilded thrones in, what appeared to be, the Great Hall of Hogwarts.

Presiding.

Ruling.

In addition to their obvious high, almost regal, status they also looked to be quite ... intimate ... with one another. Which was interesting. For those among them who hadn't spent the last six weeks examining the mating behaviour of 'witches who liked witches' as Shelley Potter had, it may have been a bit too interesting. Interesting and weird. At least their recovery time from the shock was quite quick, though, since interesting and weird basically described their lives as the inner circle confidantes of the mentally unstable genius that was 'the girl-who-lived'. And it wasn't like they didn't already rule this school, they were just a bit more sneaky and subtle about it than these older versions of themselves appeared to be.

It was still pretty bloody awesome though. So awesome that Luna, who was totally enchanted by the vision of their future that the mirror showed her, didn't even feel the tiny tug on fabric as something hard dropped into her robe pocket.

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The shade of the former Dark Lord Voldemort had had a rotten six or so months. He had arrived at the castle and the place that he had formerly called his most stable home with the able, if unwitting and unco-operative, assistance of the new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor for this year, Quirnius Quirrell, full of hope. The hope that he would be able to recover the philosopher's stone that his foolish old adversary, Dumbledore had locked up here and use it to re-make himself. He was also quite hopeful that he could manage to make that horrid Potter girl's life at school so unpleasant that she would run off back those bloody muggles and give him a better chance of killing her in the summer.

Both of these hopes had, unfortunately, been quickly dashed by the effectiveness of the old man's mental shields, a need to not draw attention to himself and actual contact with the object of his secondary obsession. Shelley Potter was not even slightly like he expected her to be.

She was far from the pampered princess that he had thought she would be. Her sharp mind hid all sorts of cunning, manipulative and yes, even psychotic thoughts that she masked with the expertise of a true 'Dark' witch that made Bellatrix look like a pussycat in comparison. She had even gone so far as getting herself sorted into Hufflepuff in order to better build her network of useful connections as well as her army of insane, volatile and very, very loyal followers. Honestly, he was a little jealous that he hadn't thought of doing that.

None of this made her any less annoying, mind you since the damned girl seemed to thwart him at every turn. His beautiful distraction attempt with setting that mountain troll loose in the castle so he could scout out the third floor and it's hidden traps had failed spectacularly when she had dealt with the beast in about ten minutes flat. While being wildly impressive it was also incredibly annoying. It was a combination of the troll debacle and then her subsequent, absolute destruction of his old House's quidditch team that finally convinced him to try a new approach.

His new plan had involved sitting back, watching and waiting. Waiting for Shelley and her crew of tiny terrors to make an attempt on the stone as he knew that they would be physically unable to stop themselves from doing so. And once again he found himself being annoyingly impressed with her as she very patiently waited for her perfect opportunity to arrive before launching a swift and sudden assault that had very nearly taken him by surprise. He actually was surprised when the four little monsters that he had sneaked up so quietly as they stared into a large mirror in the final room turned to face him with identical evil smiles on their devious faces.

"Hello professor Quirrell ... or should I say Voldemort? Welcome to the party."

Two wands, a pair of nasty looking muggle pistols and that Merlin damned staff whipped up to point directly at him and the unmasked Dark Lord paused to consider his options for a moment. Which proved to be a rather large mistake. Apparently Shelley Potter was neither in the habit of engaging in playful banter before a fight nor did she seem to be overly familiar with any form of fair play.

This would have been something that he would have approved of greatly were it not for the fact that his host was unceremoniously shot five times in the chest by the white haired delinquent, killing him instantly. And removing his only tool with which to attack them.

He was just re-grouping and coalescing himself into a black mist form in order to run off and find another body to leech off of when four orange and blue, curling beams of light hit him and forced him to stop.

There was varying amounts of tension in the ranks of the little Badgers as they hadn't all been entirely sure that this was going to work. Shelley sensed this and decided to lighten the mood by having some fun with her friends.

"There's something very important I forgot to tell you about this containment spell." Her face got very serious. "Don't cross the streams."

"Why not?"

"It would be ... ummm ... bad."

Having seen the movie that she was referencing many times, Artemis caught on to what her lunatic, best friend was doing and decided to play along.

"I'm kind of fuzzy on the whole good-bad thing. What do you mean by ... bad?"

"Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light."

"Oh my God! Total magical, protonic reversal." Artemis did the awed gasp just right before appearing to sober and continuing. "Right, so that's bad. Okay, important safety tip girls, thanks Shell."

Shelley looked around at her two, gullible, blonde friends before smirking at her wolfy best friend, who was now struggling to hold back her own laughter, and saying.

"Nah, I'm just shitting you, we'll be fine."

Hannah glared at her friend and her ... whatever it was that Artemis was to her ... and would have punched them both in the arm had her hands not been busy holding part of the smoking form of a Dark Lord with that cool lightning stuff pouring out of the end of her wand. She settled for a verbal reprimand instead.

"You're such a pair of dicks."

The Ghostbusters style containment field, cast by Shelley's Marauders, held the struggling shade/spirit within its glowing, blue interior without any fuss or bother and the four girls took a moment to admire their handiwork before getting on with their business. Working together the black, smoky essence of the Dark Lord Voldemort was manoevered across to the other end of the dais and to within a couple of inches of Shelley's hat, still perched as it was atop her head. The girl-who-lived then reached up and tapped her wand on the bright, plastic, sunflower, adorning her beautiful piece of milinary and activated the charms on it with a softly spoken abracadabra (much to the mirth of her cohorts).

There was a flash as the blue light of the containment field, complete with its ephemeral prisoner, was sucked into the sunflower followed by a brief howl of pain and displeasure and then nothing. The only thing that gave it away that there was a Dark Lord trapped in the mental looking top hat was the fact that sunflower now had red eyes instead of black and the smile was more of a grimace. Frankly, since nobody in their right mind, outside of a few of the Hufflepuff girls, wanted to get that close to the scary and insane witch, this really wasn't much of a giveaway anyway.

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The speed, ferocity and total ruthlessness of the attack had left the Dark Lord dazed, confused and ultimately trapped. But trapped where? That was the question. At first it had been all strange, bright lights and pain that just wouldn't stop which, seeing as he was only a shade right now shouldn't really have been possible. But then, as suddenly as it had started, the pain was over and replaced by ... nothing. Well, nothing but a total and unrelenting darkness.

~Where the Hell am I exactly?~

~Hello Tom~

~Hello ... Tom?~

~Mmmm, well sort of, yes~

~Bloody hell! You're my horcrux aren't you.~

~Well done Tom. Yes, I'm your last, unintentional one.~

~What a handy twist of fate, a horcrux in the girl-who-lived. Of course that would mean that I'm now in ... ~

~Potter's insane brain? Oh, yes.~

~Bollocks.~

~You think your life sucks, I've been trapped in this crazy golf course, inside the walls of a lunatic asylum, that she calls her mind for ten, bloody long, years.~

~Oh come on, at least you're sentient, it can't be that bad.~

~Do you want to swap?~

~Errr ... no.~

The fascinating and informative discussion between the remnants of the actual Lord Voldemort and his final soul shard was then rudely interrupted by their hostess barging her way into the conversation.

~Hi Toms, what are we talking about?~

~Oh crap! She can hear us.~

~That's not the worst part, Tom.~

~She can talk to us~

~Shi-iii-it~

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Reviews are our cookies and you wouldn't want us starve now would you. Seriously though the feedback would be very helpful on this one guys so do let us know how we're doing with it, and I promise that I will try and answer all of your questions. Of which I am sure there will be many.

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DtR xx.