A/N: Hey, all! So all the previous chapters have been written from Merope's point of view, and so, for the first time, we have a chapter written from someone else's point of view! You're gonna get to see a whole lot more of the other students, which is really exciting. Oh, and can you all do me a favor and tell me how you like the develpment of the characters so far? Because I'm afraid they're kind of flat at this point. MJ will be rounded out a little more in chapter four, but I would really appreciate the feedback. Although all in all, this is one of my favorite chapters. Especially the last bit.

Reviews:

Bluejay123: You have no life?! I sit at the computer and hit 'refresh' ten zillion times until a new review pops up! Trust me, you're fine. And I really appreciate you're input, so please don't stop reviewing!! And yes, I'm pathetic. I think I've mentioned this before, but I love Eporem too! I'm so glad she's been well recieved; she's definetely my favorite!

girl of ireland 44: Love your word choice! Ha, ha, that Transfiguration teacher is a bit loony, isn't he? I wonder what's up with him, too...hmm...anyways, thanks for the input on Calvin! He makes me laugh too. Wow, ego trip, huh? And I'm going to stop talking now so you all can read this chapter!

Chapter Three

Unchained Serial Killer

"Dan," James hissed, wrenching open the hangings of Dan's bed. He had been up for hours, unable to sleep, contenting himself with staring at the little dots on the Marauder's Map.

"Urgh…" Dan rolled over in bed, pulling his covers up over his head.

"Come on, get up!" James pulled the covers back off of Dan.

"Cut it out, James!"

"Seriously, man, wake up," James told Dan.

"Shut up, Potter!" shouted the boy in the bed next to Dan. James was quite sure his name was Nathaniel Stevens.

"Sorry," James whispered. He crept over to the windowsill where a jug of water was perched. He brought it back over to the bed and poured it over Dan.

"What the hell!" Dan shouted, shooting up and looking as though he wanted to strangle James. "Do you have any idea what time it is?!"

"Do YOU have any idea what time it is?!" Nathaniel Stevens retorted loudly, wrenching open his hangings. "For your information Danielle, it is three in the morning and unless I turn into a bat or a vampire in four seconds I should not be awake. One. Two. Three. Four. Oh, well what do you know? Not a bat! Dear Lord, I hope I'm a vampire so I can suck the blood from you're skinny little girl neck!" Nathaniel jerked the hangings shut again.

Ignoring Nathaniel's outburst James turned back to Dan, though was sure to whisper this time. "Look at this." James pushed the Map at Dan.

"Brilliant. The Map. I don't think I've seen that in, oh…five, six hours?"

"Cut it out, Dan, it's MJ." James pointed to the girl's dormitory. It showed three dots, labeled Andrie Anderson, Jean Emmerson, and Nalane VenTuri, but no Mary Joan Weasly.

"Come on, James, she's probably in the bathroom or something," Dan sighed. "I'm going back to bed. Now."

"No, wait. If she's going to the bathroom, then why is she here?" James pointed to MJ's dot, which was pacing a corridor far from Gryffindor Tower.

"Who cares? She's a nutcase, let her be a moron. She's gonna get caught in a second, anyway, see? There's Lupin coming down the hallway, right at her." Dan pointed to the dot labeled "Remus Lupin" that was approaching MJ's dot. James looked at it for a while, and watched in shock as MJ's dot stayed stationary as Lupin's passed her and walked through a tapestry and away.

"What!" James yelped. "No way!"

"Potter, I was serious about the vampire thing!" Nathaniel yelled.

"What now?" sighed Dan.

James ran over to his trunk and rifled through it, searching frantically for his invisibility cloak. It wasn't there.

"MJ's got my cloak!" he whispered to Dan.

"Are you really surprised?" Dan said exhaustedly. "She's always taking stuff from us…"

"But this is the cloak!"

"James, calm down and go to bed."

"She took it!"

"I distinctly recall you taking the Map from Evelinne."

"Okay, that's different," said James. "She's my sister, and she stole it from Neville in the first place."

"It's really not that different. MJ's your cousin."

"Dan—".

"Look, when you live with MJ for eleven years, you get used to the stupid things she does. Relax. It's not like she's stealing it. She's gonna give it back."

"What if she rips it?!" hissed James.

"James, I don't think it can rip."

"She breaks everything!"

"MJ knows how important the cloak is. She's probably got some cracked up scheme that she'll need it for later. She'll be careful with it."

"I'm gonna go find her," James decided, "and you're gonna come with me."

"That's what you think."

"You're such a wimp," James told him.

"No, I'm just not a moron."

"Oh, get up." James tugged Dan out of his bed and pushed him to the door.

"James, if we get caught, I'm going to make MJ kill you."

"Shut up and we won't."

James slipped the Map into his back pocket as he and Dan crept out of the dormitory, down the stairs, and out into the hallway.

"What are you two doing?" demanded the Fat Lady.

James and Dan looked at each other and didn't answer.

"Well, just don't expect me to let you back in!" the Fat Lady called after them as the two dashed down the hallway. They rounded a corner and stood under a torch on the wall as James unfolded the Map again.

"Okay." James found MJ's dot; it was going up the stairs to the Astronomy Tower. "What's she doing in the Astronomy Tower?"

"I don't want to know," Dan grumbled. "C'mon, I wanna get back to bed. Are there any teachers coming our way?"

"Lupin's in his study, Filch is in the dungeons, and Mrs. Norris is in the Charms corridor." James traced a path up to the Astronomy Tower with his finger. "If we go through that tapestry then we've pretty much got a clear path."

"Wait. Peeves," Dan reminded James. "Where's he?"

James consulted the Map. "Annoying the owls in the Owelry. We're safe."

Dan and James pushed through the tapestry on the wall and up a set of stairs, and then another. Suddenly, Dan stopped and flung out his arm to halt James as well, knocking the wind out of him.

"Bloody hell, what—"

"SH!"

James listened intently. He could hear a faint sobbing sound coming down the stairs.

"What now?" he mouthed at Dan.

"How should I know, this is your idea!" Dan mouthed back, exasperated.

James tugged on Dan's shirt and they both started down the stairs as softly as they could, when suddenly James tripped.

"ARGH!" shouted Dan as James fell on top of him. The two of them bounced down the rest of the stairs making more noise than James thought was humanly possible.

"Who's there?" asked a girl's voice thickly. The speaker rounded the corner and James and Dan froze. It was the ghost of a girl a few years older than the boys, with thick, round glasses.

"Er…hi," said Dan.

"Who are you?" she sniffed.

"I'm…er…James, and this is Dan," said James, edging up the staircase. "We'll…er…we'll just be going now…"

"Of course, nobody cares how I'm feeling right now," the ghost sniffed. "Nobody ever stops to talk to me."

"Oh. I'm…er…sorry," Dan said, walking up after James. "Goodbye."

"Why doesn't anybody care!?" wailed the ghost. James and Dan cringed; the noise was sure to wake everybody. "Nobody wants to talk to me! Nobody cares about Myrtle, NOBODY!"

"No—stop, stop crying, please!" James said hoarsely. "What can we do?"

Myrtle sniffed a little, seeming to calm down.

"Well, it all started in my first year," she said reminiscently. "I was going to Transfiguration, minding my own business, and then that nasty Olive Hornby walked right up to me and started making fun of my glasses! In front of everybody! Oh, the humiliation! I felt like disappearing off the face of the earth! How could anybody be so mean?" Myrtle paused, as though waiting for an answer. Dan and James looked at each other; this was not what they had bargained for.

"Er…maybe she didn't know you cared that much?" Dan guessed.

"Of COURSE she knew!" Myrtle exclaimed. "She kept right at it! Later on that week, when we were in the Great Hall, she thought it would be funny to steal all my books! When I got them back, she had crossed out my name and written 'Freaky Glasses' in instead! And then, in my second year…"

Dan was looking daggers at James; James could tell this was not where he wanted to be. James, however, couldn't think of a way to get them out of this.

"Here's the deal," Dan hissed to James. "You're gonna sit here with nutso girl and I'm going back to bed."

"If I've gotta stay here with the basket case then so do you," James whispered back.

"This was your idea. Not mine. Yours."

"…and I just never knew why, because Mariko Okada wore glasses too, but Olive only made fun of me."
"Who's Mariko Okada?" asked James absently.

"Oh, she was in my year," said Myrtle scornfully. "A Hufflepuff. She had these huge glasses, but Olive Hornby never went near her."

James looked at Dan and kicked him.

"Oh. Why do you think that was?" James said, feigning interest.

"I expect it was Quidditch," Myrtle scoffed. "She was quite the Chaser. She was always taking that big red ball and putting into that stupid hoop…like that was a big deal…you two don't play Quidditch, do you?"

"Actually, James is really good at Keep—"

"No, of course not, no!" James cut across Dan, who was smirking at him. "We hate Quidditch, right Dan? All those balls and rules…we prefer chess." Dan rolled his eyes.

"Good." Myrtle looked at them for a moment. "What are you two doing out of bed anyways?"

"We're looking for Dan's sister," said James, deciding that telling the truth wouldn't hurt them now. "She's out of her dormitory and she stole something of mine, and I want it back."

"How do you know she's out of bed?" asked Myrtle shrewdly. James looked at Dan, who looked back with a you're on your own, buddy stare.

"Er…twin telepathy," James invented. "Yeah. Dan and MJ…they're pretty tight."

"Uh huh," Dan added, "see, right now she's thinking about…" Dan squinted and distorted his face as though thinking really hard, "about how stupid James is."

"Your glasses are stupid."

"What?" James asked.

"MJ thinks you're stupid," replied Dan.

"No, not that. Shut up for a minute, it wasn't you."

"What's going on?" asked Myrtle fearfully.

"SH!" James hushed her.

"Freaky glasses, freaky glasses!"

"Who's there?!" Myrtle demanded in a high, strangled voice.

"Myrtle…Myrtle…"

"Dan, what are you doing?" James hissed.

"Nothing, it isn't me!" Dan looked extremely frightened.

"Go away!" Myrtle told the voice. "I haven't done anything to you!"

"How could you forget how you haunted me? How you hunted me down, day after day, making my life a living hell?"

"Olive?" asked Myrtle incredulously. "Olive, you know full well this was entirely your fault!"

"I was so afraid of you I didn't eat, and I didn't sleep. You've killed me, Myrtle. You killed me!"

"What's going on?" Dan demanded.

"WOOOOO!" Olive Hornby's ghost shouted, and Myrtle wailed. She floated as fast as she could out of the tapestry that Dan and James had come in from.

"Er…Olive?" said James cautiously, "We haven't done anything to you…please don't hurt us…"

Then, Olive started laughing. The laugh was sounding less like Olive Hornby and more and more like…

"MJ! What the hell!" Dan groped at the air for a while before grabbing hold of the invisibility cloak and pulling it off of MJ, who was still doubled over laughing.

"What're you mad at me for? I saved you from that moron!" MJ said once her laughing had subsided. "You were so scared, you both completely bought it!"

"I did not!" Dan said superiorly.

"'What's going on?' 'I'm not doing anything!' 'Please don't hurt us!'" MJ mocked them.

"Please," Dan scoffed, "we knew it was you the entire time. Right, James?"

"Yeah," said James, trying to sound convincing, but MJ didn't buy it. "Give me back my cloak," he demanded.

"Calm down, Mr. Tight-ass," said MJ. "It's fine, see?" She held out the cloak for him to feel. James grabbed the cloak from her and examined it.

"How'd you get it?" James asked shrewdly.

"Don't ask questions, ask answers," MJ told him vaguely.

"What?"

"The limits of your language are the limits of your world."

"MJ—"

"A friend is worth a thousand words. Tell yours they've used them up." MJ took back the cloak. "Now if you'll excuse me, I've got places to do and things to be."

"You mean, places to be and things to do," Dan corrected.

"No." MJ pulled the cloak over herself.

"No, no, no, no, no." James grabbed the cloak. "Where do you think you're going, young lady?"

"'Young lady?'" MJ stopped and turned to James. It struck James quite suddenly how much taller she was. "I'm four months older!"

"Give me that." James wrenched the cloak out of MJ's grip.

"Hey!" MJ pinched him.

"Ow!" James exclaimed, and MJ took the cloak back.

"Ha, ha."

"It's mine, it was my dad's!" James protested, lunging for the cloak. MJ dodged and James fell.

"It's part mine too, it was my uncle's!" James grabbed a corner of the cloak and they began a sort of tug-of-war game, ending with James in a headlock. Dan watched, laughing, to James's displeasure.

"Okay, so I've got the cloak and I know where your pressure points are," MJ told James firmly, "so I'm going to tell you what you're gonna do and you're gonna do it."

"What if I don't?" James asked. Dan was smirking.

"I'll scream, throw the cloak over myself, and watch you get caught," said MJ.

"You suck," James grumbled.

"And you're bad at Quidditch, but you can't win everything."

"I'm what?" James sputtered. "I'm better than you are!"

"Whatever helps you sleep at night, little Jamie."

"Dan, help me out here," James demanded.

"Dan, go back to bed," MJ told him.

"Good night, little Jamie," said Dan, waving good-bye and walking away.

"It's James!" James hissed.

"Get under the cloak," MJ ordered. She forced James under and pulled the cloak on.

"Where are we going?" James wanted to know.

"Hell, probably."

"Is this going to be illegal?!" James balked.

"Define 'illegal,'" said MJ unconcernedly.

"Not legal!"

"Very specific. Get out your map. Where the hell are we?"

"I don't know, I can't see anything, stupid."

"Well, if your not going to be helpful then I think you should shut your pie hole!"

"You know what I think?"

"I don't care what you think."

"Yes, you do."

"No, I don't."

"Yes, you do." James stopped suddenly and looked straight into MJ's eyes. "You do care what I think," he said in a spooky voice. He moved his hand in a circle around MJ's head. "You will care about everything I do. You are going into a trance. You are under my complete control. When I snap my fingers—OW!" MJ grabbed his hand and bent his fingers backwards.

"You are the weirdest kid I've ever met." MJ pulled the map out of James's back pocket and whacked him on the head with it. "Now seriously, shut up. We'll get caught, it's a wonder we haven't al—"

"Who's there?"

MJ and James froze.

"I heard voices. Who's there?"

The voice sounded vaguely familiar to James. It was a girl's, not a professor's. She couldn't be older than third year.

"I have a knife," she called down the hall. James and MJ looked at each other, and though the lighting was dim, James new that MJ was looking the same way as he was. He squinted down the corridor to size up the girl, but he couldn't see anything.

"James, do you trust me?" MJ breathed, trying to make as little noise as possible.

"Not a bit."

"Sucker." MJ yanked the cloak off of James, pulled it around herself, and ran towards the staircase they had come through. James heard the slapping of her sneakers get softer and softer until he couldn't hear her at all.

"What was that?" the voice demanded.

James stayed silent. He backed slowly into a wall, trying not to make any noise. There was a lantern flickering dimly above him, he realized, that was just bright enough for him to read the Map. He reached into his back pocket to get the Map, but nothing was there. He suddenly remembered MJ whacking him with it a few moments ago and cursed her in his mind.

"I was serious about the knife."

James said nothing.

"I can see your shadow. If you don't identify yourself right now I'm going to throw it at you."

James's breathing was getting shallower as he stayed rooted to the spot, bracing himself for the blow, but it did not come. With relief, he realized that the girl was bluffing.

But then he heard footsteps. She was coming towards him. Without thinking, he sprinted down the corridor, threw open the first door he could find, and dashed down the steps. James ran through corridor after corridor blindly, going down stairwell after stairwell, not caring how much noise he made. He tripped down a few stairs and found himself face-to-face with a yellow-eyed, very old cat. She looked at him once and then streaked off. James gulped; that had to be Mrs. Norris, the evil cat that belonged to the ancient Mr. Filch. His parents had warned him of them.

James ran down the hall, looking for a place to hide, and suddenly—magically—a door appeared in the wall that he hadn't noticed before. He wrenched it open and gasped: inside was what appeared to be the largest collection of junk he had ever seen. It was as if all of the broken or stolen things in the world had accumulated there. It was like MJ's bedroom, only on a much larger scale.

"Where did you say—"

James slammed the door shut; that was surely Mr. Filch, wheezing about medieval torturing devices and punishing students. He then turned his attention back to staring in wonder at the massive accumulation of junk before him. There were stacks of broken quills, ink bottles, used up parchment, cheat sheets for exams, even textbooks that looked as though they had been thrown up on or put through a paper shredder. But there was more than that. There were things James new to be banned from Hogwarts—things he had never been allowed to touch. There were also things that James new to be Dark or dangerous.

He edged away from a lethal looking skull and made his way through the aisles, looking in awe at all that was before him. Then—

"HA!" Something pulled James's robes up over his head and pushed him down. He untangled himself and looked around to see who or what had done it. In front of him was a pair of scuffed-up white sneakers.

MJ, of course, James said to himself. He reached out and grabbed at thin air. Then, he felt the invisibility cloak sliding between his fingers and pulled it off, stuffing it in his pocket before MJ could take it again.

"Come on, MJ, what was that about?" James pushed MJ.

"What? I do that all the time," she shrugged.

"You know what I mean," said James, referring to ditching him with the knife girl. MJ shrugged again.

"Every man for himself."

"I nearly DIED!" James shouted, exaggerating a little.

"Yeah, but you didn't, and that's all that matters." MJ sat down on a splintered cabinet and started fiddling idly with random objects around her. "I'm sick of hearing about me ditching you, so make yourself useful for once and don't talk about it anymore. It's pissing me off."

"Everything I do pisses you off."

"So stop doing stuff." MJ replaced what looked to be a small hourglass on a golden chain in the box she had retrieved it from.

"This is amazing," said James, staring around at everything. He turned back to MJ. "You know what this place is?"

"The remnants of the world's largest garage sale?" replied MJ, standing up next to her cousin.

"Dad told us about it, remember?"

"Your dad or my dad?"

"My dad. This is that lost things room."

MJ paced around for a minute.

"Did you want to come here?"

"What?" asked James. "I dunno. Not specifically. I don't not want to be here."

"Well, neither did I." MJ stopped pacing. "That means the Room of Requirement wants us here."

"Why? I haven't lost anything."

"Neither have I." MJ looked at James, a puzzled expression on her face. Then, her face lit up. "Wait. Yes, you have!"

"Whatever you took, give it back now," said James, annoyed.

"No, I already have. The invisibility cloak!"

"Then what's the big deal?"

"The room doesn't care about you," said MJ, "it transformed for me."

James thought about it, and it made sense. The room had only transformed for him because he needed his cloak, but MJ was already there.

"What does it want with you?" asked James.

"No idea," said MJ. "I think I'll ask your dad."

"Right." James took out the Map and scoured it for teachers in their area. "Coast is clear." MJ reached for the cloak, but James turned away. "Not this time." He threw the cloak over them, but kept a very firm hold on it as they walked out of the Room of Requirement.

My beloved daughters,

How has your first day been? I hope it has been splendid. However, due to recent events, I need to speak with you immediately. It is to private to say in this letter, so just be sure to be in front of the Slytherin common room fire on the night of the youngest of you three's birth at three in the morning. Ensure that you are alone.

Love,

Your doting father

A/N: Ah, who could this mysterious note be addressed to? Any guesses? HAHAHA!