TriNymphs - Chapter Twelve - No Backup (Disclaimer on my profile)
Alex and Holly showed up five minutes late for their next class, Defence Against the Dark Arts. They entered the class to see a balding, sixty year old man standing at the front of the class. They snuck in unnoticed, but Melissa, who showed up ten minutes later, was not so lucky.
Who would've thought that Chelsea'd be the only one on time for class? Certainly not I.
Lyssa stumbled into the class, her short, mousey brown hair in disarray, and smudges of charcoal on her face.
"Miss... short first year girl... Do you have a reason for being late?"
"Peeves held me up, I'm sorry I'm late Professor," she winced.
"I would expect a five year old to be able to deal with Peeves," Professor Copper scoffed, "Now take your seat." he waited a minute, "Professor Quirrel is off gallivanting across Europe, I'm filling in for him this year. I expect you to call me Professor, Professor Copper, or sir, at all times." He spoke to the new student in his class (Alex) as he looked around the room in a very condescending way. "Now that the late students are all here," he paused to glare at Melissa, Alex, and Holly, "We'll get started."
He turned towards a slimy buck-toothed ogre-looking creature at the front n' centre of the class. "These are Ghouls. They generally live in attics or barns that belong to wizards and why aren't you taking notes?" He scowled, and had to wait while the class got out quills and papers.
After class the whole gang (meaning the triplets, Katie and Holly) were walking toward the great hall, as it was lunch. The topic of discussion between the girls, was their Professor. He had not smiled once, or looked anything short of pissed off, the entire class. When they got to lunch they noticed him looking just as, if not more, pissed off, up at the teachers table.
But now that we've established how nasty nasty Professor Copper is, we'll skip ahead a month to Halloween. There was a costume contest, the judges being the head boy and girl and the prefects, as the teachers frankly had better things to do. Or, that was their excuse anyway.
Chelsea dug some of the muggles clothes out of her trunk. It was an hour before the feast and other such merriment educing activities, and she had just decided on her costume. The Malfoys all had muggle clothes in the event that they had to walk down a muggle street without being scrutinized by muggles. So Chelsea put them on, and said she was a muggle.
Alex got out a pleather jacket, jeans, and a t-shirt with a graphic of fleur de lis on it. She put them on, messed up her hair, and said she was a rock star.
Lyssa decided against dressing up, and as she was in a different house as her sisters, she got away from it for once. Though she did have to hide out in the common room all day.
"How dare you not wear a costume for Halloween Melissa!" scolded muggle Chelsea.
"I am wearing a costume." Lyssa said. She was in the school robes, as were all the people who weren't getting dressed up.
"So what are you."
"Well, I decided for this year, I'm going to be a normal person." Considering she was surrounded by children dressed up as fairies and muggles in kilts and swimsuits, it wasn't that hard.
Silence for a minute, as Chelsea stared at Lyssa. Then it was, "Not good enough," and she enlisted Katie's help in dragging Lyssa to another room to change.
Twenty minutes later Katie, Chelsea, and Lyssa finally met Alex and Holly in the great hall. Lyssa was a butterfly, in a green n' glittery jacket with wings.
"Damn, took you long enough to get here." Holly was irritated.
"We had to get Lyssa in a costume," sighed Chelsea, then she poked Lyssa in the forehead.
In the Great Hall, the normal house tables had been abandoned for the night in favour of several regular tables. The ceiling was a very beautiful pink and purple mix, as the sun was just going down, however, it wasn't easy to see that as there were thousands of bats and humongous pumpkins.
They were among the latecomers, and found an empty table just as Dumbledore rose and started talking. "Happy Halloween." he said, then sat down.
One of the house tables remained, though there was no way to tell which one, and as Dumbledore sat down, food suddenly appeared, almost overflowing, on that table, buffet style. The whole left side of this table was dedicated to ice creams, gumdrops, lollipops bigger than most people's heads, and other such Halloween like foods.
Once everyone had sufficiently stuffed their faces, Dumbledore stood again. "The costume contest will start in ten minutes, will the head boy and girl and all prefects that are participating please get ready.
The food on the middle table disappeared and a line formed in front of a rather smaller table that the judges were sitting at.
"C'mon let's get moven'." Holly had to yell over the music that started playing. Like many a Slytherin she had a big ego, therefore she was set on winning the contest. She was dressed up like a muggle movie murderer by the name of Freddy.
They made their way over to the back of the line, Lyssa only waited ten minutes, then left to go talk to some other Gryffindors. This was not her scene.
The rest waited in line twenty minutes to finally get their turn. A Ravenclaw fifth year girl dressed in a medieval ballroom style dress was the winner. After they had to listen to Holly bitching about it. Chelsea and Katie left to go talk Quidditch with some of the other fanatics, Holly wasn't their friend. Why should they have to put up with her?
All in all, it was an awesome party. Like all the Halloween parties at Hogwarts were. But eventually, the night of loud music, and giant pumpkins spewing industrial amounts of candy had to stop, and everyone went back to their common rooms to (at least in the case of the Ravenclaws) have anxiety attacks over the homework that they hadn't had time to do.
Katie and Lyssa were heading back to Gryffindor tower, they were passing through the fifth floor, when suddenly, they heard screaming coming from an unmarked doorway to their left.
"Did you hear that?"
"Course, what d'we do?"
"Go see what it is?"
"Really? Ya think" An apprehensive look came into Katie's eye. "Is it safe. Should we get backup?"
Then the screaming intensified, and they both decided that no, they did not have time to go get backup. Damn.
They opened the door to an old unused classroom with desks stacked up and piled against the wall and heavy dust on the floor. It was empty, but they still heard the screaming. It was louder, but still in a different room. They checked an assortment of class rooms surrounding that one, but still couldn't find anyone.
They were standing in the hall, having already gone through every room on that floor, excluding Professor Coppers office of course, and were trying to figure out what they should do. But then the person, who by the sounds of it was a boy about their age, started screeching "Help me!"
It most definitely sounded like it was coming from the first room, so they went in there again, the air was musty, and the room was cold, and filled with dust and spider webs, and made their skin crawl.
It was dusk, and the room was filled with moonlight. Perfectly creepy, but useless for seeing things. They waved their arms around over their heads, trying to find a chain to turn on a light bulb, but in the end had to settle for a lamp conveniently placed on one of the desks.
They lit it and saw a crisp set of footprints in the midst of the dust. They led to the opposite corner of the room, then there was a clear spot under the desks like someone had crawled under them. Against their better judgement, Katie and Lyssa got down on their knees and started to crawl after them, under the desks.