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Author Notes:

I disclaim anything you may think you recognize about people's costumes.

"Give me a U! Give me a Go! Give me a P-O-O! What's that spell? U-Go-Poo! What's that mean? Go! Go! Go! Go!"

Harry groaned aloud as Meghan jumped up and down, waving her sign with the large purple "U" painted on it. Beside her, a grinning Graham held up the "Go" and Natalie, giggling helplessly, raised and lowered the "Poo" to control the volume of the chanting from the rest of the yearmates. "Remind me why we never threw her to the wolves?" he asked Draco and Hermione.

"We tried." Draco shook his head. "They threw her back."

"I'm going to guess that's the antidote to the other stuff Fred and George sell?" said Hermione as Hannah and Susan ceremoniously swung open the doors to the now-completed toilets of Sanctuary.

"Out of the way!" bellowed Ryan Premeles of Hufflepuff, hopping towards the open doors as fast as possible with his legs crossed. Katie Chi, of Ravenclaw, stood off to one side with her friends, smirking.

"I'm going to guess you're right." Harry watched Ryan disappear through the doors. "I hope I don't need to do something about that."

"We'll keep an eye on it, but unless it escalates, we should be all right." Draco leaned back against the stone wall beside him. "Those two have been playing little pranks on each other ever since the Silly Duel last year, and it hasn't got out of hand yet."

"Key word, yet," Hermione reminded him. "That doesn't mean it couldn't tomorrow, or the day after that. Or the day after that."

"Thank you for those optimistic words of wisdom."

"Just trying to keep your feet on the ground, brother dear."

"Enough," said Harry, swiping his hands in opposite directions. "The last thing I need is you two going after each other."

"Does that mean we get to go after you?" inquired Draco.

"Only if you're prepared for my swift and terrible revenge."

"Oh, I'm terrified." Draco held out a hand and regarded its rock-steady stillness in the air. "See how badly I'm shaking."

"Ginny said she'd help."

"Well, shite."

"Don't you dare do that here!" Hermione smacked Draco sharply in the ear, making him yelp. "That's what the toilets are for!"

Selena Moon, emerging from the small crowd just in time to catch this exchange, blinked. "I was coming over here to commiserate with you on the fact that we're stuck with them through various tricks of friendship, family, and Pride-bonds," she said to Harry, indicating Meghan, Graham, and Natalie with a tilt of her head. "Now I think I should be offering you my deepest sympathies. You're in it much deeper than I am."

"Oi!" Draco protested. "He started it!"

"And I'm finishing it," said Hermione, giving her brothers a look. "Enough is enough. What are you going to the party as, Selena? Will Roger be there? I'd heard the Hufflepuffs arranged for some outside entertainment and extra security, but I didn't know through whom…"

"They did, and yes, he will." Selena grinned. "He said he wasn't going to miss something that sounded like that much fun just through the technicality of not being a student anymore. We couldn't decide on a pair of costumes, though, so we aren't going as an obvious couple like some people are…"


Aletha closed the cupboard on the more dangerous of her Potions supplies, shaking the latch to be sure it had reengaged. It opened to the same password as her office door, since anyone who had access to her private space was also a person she would trust with the makings for the more worrisome brews she was teaching this year.

Which means, technically, that I've allowed a thirteen-year-old girl, and her fifteen- and sixteen-year-old siblings and friends, free access to some of the most poisonous items known to wizardkind. But that's the thing about the Pride. It would very seldom occur to any of them to do anything alone by now, especially anything both dangerous and against the rules, and if all eight of them agree that it ought to be done…

She chuckled under her breath. Occasionally, it just means that eight teenagers are as wrong as one would have been. More often, though, they balance one another out, keep one another from going too far outside the lines. They complement each other's strengths and weaknesses very well.

They're rather like the Pack that way…

Someone knocked on her door at this very opportune moment, shunting that train of thought onto an unused side track before it could go any further. Exhaling a breath of relief, Aletha conjured a mirror quickly onto the wall, checked her long braided wig and sleeveless blue-violet dress to be sure they were sitting straight, then vanished the mirror and unlocked the door in the same motion as she called, "Come in!"

Sirius opened the door, stepped inside, and stopped short as he caught sight of her. Aletha thought his widened eyes and the breath he sucked through his teeth were the best compliment she could have received. "Why, thank you, my lord," she said teasingly, dropping him a little curtsy. "You are too, too kind to this humble palace slave."

"I don't see any slave here." Crossing to her side, Sirius offered her his scarlet-clad arm. "Only the most beautiful princess in all the lands."

"Flatterer." Aletha shoved him playfully on the exact spot where the gold Eye of Horus was embroidered on his wrap-around jacket, then took the offered arm. "Don't think this gets you any better class of refreshments."

"Better than Hogwarts food? Is that possible?"

"Point. Don't think it gets you stationed by the punch bowl, then."

"Damn." Sirius snapped the fingers of his free hand. "I was hoping to collect a little extra money in bribes."

"Since when does anyone need to bribe you to let them spike a punch bowl?"

"Since I grew up and got responsible."

Aletha looked at him out of the corner of her eye.

"All right, all right," Sirius grumbled. "Since Moony reminded me before I left that I don't need to give Snape any new reasons to consider me an overgrown teenager with more hair than sense."

"That's better." Aletha squeezed his arm comfortingly. "There will be other times, love. Other parties, other punch bowls."

"Point taken." Sirius grinned. "Let's get upstairs and see what these kids have been up to for the last two months."

"Yes, let's."

Fleetingly Aletha wondered why Sirius seemed so very cheered up by her reminder, but dismissed it from her mind in favor of assuming the proper dignity of a Princess of Nubia, being escorted to a royal ballroom by a rising young general of Egypt. For this one night, Aida and Radames would have the happiness their story forbade them.

And may our choice of characters for the night not be prophetic. However romantic it may be to die in the arms of the man you love, suffocation by being walled into a tomb is still not the way I would choose to go…


Ron straightened his glossy bowler hat by feel, watching as Seamus fussed with the khaki trench coat and fedora which went over the main portion of his costume. "Explain this to me again," he said. "You're a frog… who also happens to be a reporter?"

"I wanted to add the reporter bit because otherwise he doesn't wear any clothes, and you just know how much fun they'd all have with that." Seamus tugged the knot of his tie a bit looser. "Thank Merlin for magical ventilation. I'd be boiling under here otherwise."

"I'm not wearing any clothes," Harry pointed out, experimenting with different elevations on the small spell which held his long, gray tail clear of the floor.

"You've got fur. It's different."

"What he's got is no fashion sense." Draco tugged down the sleeves of his burnt-orange suit over his foxskin gloves. "Besides, I've seen Ginny's costume. No one's going to be looking at him anyway."

Harry bared his teeth, which he had lengthened and sharpened with a fractional Animagus charm, and growled deep in his chest.

"Or maybe they will." Draco stepped back and almost ran over Dean, who dodged aside in a flurry of sky blue, maroon, and white. "Sorry."

"No problem." Recovering his balance, Dean Summoned a large hammer from his bed and shouldered it. "Just for fun," he said as the other boys gave it wary looks. "Bit of a play on the name. Lindz is going as a West Ham fangirl, so we should have some fun with that."

"Shame I couldn't find a Miss Piggy." Seamus peered around the dorm. "Say, where's Neville?"

"Meghan's helping him finish up in the common room." Harry pointed to the door. "They're going to have to levitate that chair down seven flights as it is, there's no point in dragging it all the way up here too."

"We're mad, aren't we?" Ron asked, picking up his umbrella.

"You have to ask?" Draco snorted. "We're wizards, Ron. What else would we be?"

Laughing and making increasingly obscene suggestions about the answer to Draco's question, the sixth year Gryffindor boys descended the staircase on their way to the first-ever Hufflepuff Halloween Extravaganza.


"There's a story in that somewhere," Sirius muttered to himself, watching a dark-haired Slytherin girl dressed as Little Bo Peep, complete with a tiny sheep drowsing in the baby sling she had rigged around her neck, towing Roger Davies, in cowboy hat and chaps, across the Great Hall with her crook. "But I could say that just about anywhere I look, tonight."

Fur, feathers, and frills competed for space on the dance floor and around the refreshment tables with scales, sequins, and satin, while stark black and white jostled against every color combination imaginable, including some Sirius had never thought would work. Clearly the students, and not a few of the professors, of Hogwarts had only been awaiting an excuse to let their wildest dreams manifest in fancy dress.

I do believe I'm flattered by what Minerva decided to wear. To his secret and incredulous delight, McGonagall had arrived halfway through the first hour of the party in the tailored suit and hip-length coat of her crime-solving Valentina Jett alter ego, Athena McElheny. Just as long as she doesn't decide to hit me with that makeup spell again…

And then there's Albus. Sirius turned his head slightly to spot the Headmaster, chatting amiably with Snape, who wore his usual funereal black and looked decidedly bored by the spectacle before him. Only man in the school whose fancy dress is less showy than what he usually wears. I didn't even know he owned a set of grey robes. Suppose he could have conjured them for the evening, though. In any case, that and a long staff—probably had someone transfigure his wand for him—and presto, one wandering wizard of Middle-Earth.

"Excuse me, please," said a girl's voice.

Sirius jumped and looked around. "Oh, sorry," he said, stepping aside to allow the blonde girl in pigtails and Hufflepuff robes access to the bowl of dip he'd been blocking. "Wait, why aren't you…" He frowned, irritatingly sure he knew this girl but unable to come up with her name. "What are you dressed as?"

"I'm a homicidal maniac." The girl smiled sweetly. "They look just like everybody else." Popping a crisp loaded with dip into her mouth, she skipped away licking her fingers.

"…right." Sirius edged around the end of the table and between the curtains which had been hung around the Great Hall for the occasion, locating the Weasley twins at the other end of the service area. A quick sniff once he was close enough told him Fred from George, and he waved the latter over when the pair broke from their quiet consultation with Lee. "Did I just see your girlfriend out there?" he asked.

"Probably." George pushed his mask back on his head and held his hand level with his shoulder. "About so tall, yellow hair, bumblebee badge?"

"Sounds like what I saw. But I thought she was—"

"She is."

"Then how did you—"

"Special permission," Fred put in from over his brother's shoulder. "Dumbledore made us up a couple of enchanted hairbands after we reminded Professor Sprout one of our team's a Muggle."

"The spells wear off by tomorrow afternoon, so there's no chance any other Muggles could get hold of them and see things they shouldn't." George smiled fondly. "Isn't it funny how such little things can make people so happy?"

"Little things," Sirius agreed, though personally he thought being allowed inside a school of magic might not be quite so little for a Muggle girl.

On the other hand, she's dating a wizard from a family of wizards, helping to run his brother's magical restaurant, and introducing their trouble-making team to various Muggle forms of wreaking havoc to go along with the magical ones they already knew. Who knows? Maybe a visit to Hogwarts really does count as little beside all of that.

With a shrug, he turned to get back out to his station. The party was just getting warmed up.


Luna, in the long dark wig and short-skirted blue dress which transformed her into the frighteningly intelligent schoolgirl Matilda, was just showing off how she could levitate a piece of chalk when a squeal from the other end of the Great Hall sent her, Draco, and Terry Boot and Su Li (dressed respectively in the rusted armor of Sir Luckless and the flowing robes of the witch Amata) whipping around.

"You have angered Circe of the lovely tresses!" shouted Daphne Greengrass, her Grecian-style robes rippling as she gestured with a wand rather more elaborately carved than any normally carried by a Hogwarts student. "Pray my wrath is of short duration!"

"Squee!" was the only response from her conversation partner, which was understandable. He, or she, had just turned into a pig.

"Miss Greengrass," said Snape quellingly, stepping forward. "We have rules."

"It wears off in a minute or two, Professor." Daphne squared her shoulders and darted a malicious glance back at the pig. "And Smith was very rude to me."

"Nevertheless." Snape extended his hand, and after several tense seconds, Daphne sighed and handed him a small bag of powder she extracted from one of her pockets. "Thank you."

"I'm never sleeping in my dormitory again," said Selena in awed tones as she came up to the group in her frilly shepherdess dress, baby Zach sleeping in his sling, cushioned by his sheep costume. "Where did she get that stuff?"

"From the Weasley twins?" Su suggested. "They do seem to sell just about anything you could want."

"Including Headless Hats." Terry jerked a thumb at an elaborate gown of Tudor styling, which appeared to be running through the Hall without an occupant, though bloodcurdling shrieks were emerging from the place where its wearer's head normally would have been. This was likely due to Peeves' hot pursuit with a large rubber axe, alternately cackling like a maniac and singing snatches of "Henry the Eighth". "He'd better hurry up if he's going to get all six in before the party's over, that's only number two he's after now…"

Across the Hall, the small pink pig Daphne had left in her wake exploded back into Zacharias Smith, very flushed in the face and looking more disgruntled than usual as he straightened his black-and-yellow Wimbourne Wasps robes.

"He's not a very polite person for being a Hufflepuff," Luna remarked. "But I suppose you can be hard-working and loyal without being nice."

"Should just have made the transformation permanent," said Draco under his breath, making everyone within earshot snort with laughter.

"Oh. My. GAWD!" shrieked a girl in Hufflepuff robes, bursting into the center of their small circle. "Look at the little SHEEP!" She darted up to Selena, peered down at Zach, then lifted her blonde and pigtailed head with an awestruck expression. "It's… it's so CUTE! And FLUFFY!"

She dashed away, leaving behind her a moment of stunned silence. Zach blinked awake and began to fuss. Several yards away, Theodore Nott, dressed as a Hungarian Horntail, flinched and edged further from the source of the sound, dragging Chinese Fireball Astoria Greengrass with him.

"Luna," said Selena weakly after a few seconds had passed, bouncing Zach to calm him down. "I didn't realize you had a cousin in Hufflepuff."

"I don't." Luna stepped closer and dangled a tendril of her wig over Zach's face, brushing his nose with it until he stopped crying to grab at this intriguing new object. "Haven't you met George's girlfriend?"

"You mean that was… wow." Selena peered the way Crystal had gone. "She looks different with her hair up. And I wasn't expecting her to be here."

"Why not?" Roger asked, coming to Selena's side and handing her a bottle of butterbeer. "The rest of us came."

"Yes, but she's a M—" Selena stopped mid-word. "I'm being pureblood again, aren't I?" she asked with a one-sided smile.

Draco shrugged. "You can't change what you are any more than she can," he said. "What you can change, and you are changing, is the way you think about it and the things you do."

"That's what the year is for, besides breaking the spell," Luna added, rescuing her wig from Zach's grasp. "When you do anything over and over for long enough, whether it's brushing your teeth or casting a spell or being kind to other people around you, it becomes a habit and you keep doing it without really thinking about it. We're trying to get everyone out of their old habits."

"As the actor said to the nun," Terry murmured, prompting Su to smack him on the top of his helmeted head. "Ow. So what else is on the slate for tonight, Roger? Got to be something good with you and three Weasleys here."

"Well, I can't give it all away, that wouldn't be fair." Roger grinned, nodding towards Percy Weasley, surprisingly elegant in the fitted coat and breeches of a late eighteenth-century exquisite, who was now taking music requests from a pair of Gryffindors dressed as Dangerous Dai Llewellyn and the Chimaera which had eaten him. "But keep your eyes open that way and you might see some of it coming…"


"Is that Parvati?" Ron asked as a screaming blur sped past. "She's meant to be that witch who invented Beauty Potions, right? So why has she got a big whacking piece of cardboard around her?"

"You're thinking of Sacharissa Tugwood, and no, she's not, not exactly." Hermione smiled. "She's Sacharissa Tugwood's Chocolate Frog card."

"She dressed as a Chocolate Frog card? Really?" Ron laughed, then stopped. "That's not such a bad idea. Not that I don't like ours," he added hastily. "Especially yours. You look… you look really good."

"Really good? Is that the best you can come up with?"

"With your dad standing across the room watching us?" Ron nodded towards Padfoot, who nodded back before returning to his conversation with Professors McGonagall and Black. From the movements of their hands, Hermione suspected they were discussing the Gryffindor Quidditch team's chances in the first match against Slytherin. "I'm not stupid enough to say anything he could overhear. What's Parvati running from, anyway?"

Hermione turned to follow her friend's line of flight. "There," she said when she spotted the problem. "I can't tell who they are from here, but there's a pair of them."

"A pair of…" Ron looked where Hermione was pointing and snickered once. "Mummies? Really? That's creative. And it looks like they've just used toilet roll for it, too. Hold on a second, I bet I can see…" His eyes unfocused, then refocused differently, rather like Luna's when she was Seeing. "Yeah, I can. That's awesome. They sort of shine through the stuff, the shapes of their faces do—"

"So who are they?" Hermione asked patiently.

"Oh, sorry." Ron blinked several times, pressing two fingers against the inside corners of his eyes. "Thought I'd said. It's Crabbe and Goyle. Big surprise. Do you think we ought to go and do something? I mean, if she's that frightened?"

"She's with Lavender and Colleen," Hermione pointed out, inclining her head to the spot across the room where the goddess Cliodna (or rather, her Chocolate Frog card) and Perenelle Flamel were offering tissues and a cup of punch to the sobbing Sacharissa. "I think she'll be all right."

As she started to turn back, a spot of silver caught her eye. "Ron, can you see ghosts?" she asked, watching Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington, dressed in translucent armor, furiously fencing with a similarly-clad Fat Friar to the delight of a large crowd of first and second years.

"'Course I can. But they're the opposite color—or it's not really color, but that's the closest thing it's like—whatever it is, they're the opposite of people." Ron slid his arm around Hermione's shoulders and laid his fingers against her cheek. "Only makes sense, right? People are warm, ghosts are cold."

"Only makes sense," Hermione repeated, leaning into the embrace, her heart thrilling and marveling in equal measure that both the movement and the words felt completely natural.

Last Halloween, would I ever have believed this was possible, any part of it? Either Ron thinking so quickly, so clearly, or my being so willing to, well, cuddle with him in public? I don't know that I would have.

What a difference a year can make.

I wonder how much will change between now and next Halloween?


"Remember the last time we saw Parvati with a mummy?" Harry asked Neville, leaning against the back of Professor Xavier's wheelchair.

"Third year Defense, with Mr. Moony." Neville grinned, dapper in his suit and full bald cap. "Where he let me and Colleen lead off against the boggart. Shame we couldn't get Snape into my gran's clothes again for the occasion…"

Meghan nearly spilled her punch down the front of her black Stuck-Tape jumpsuit, which she and Neville had carefully textured to look like leather.

"He is the only person here who's not in fancy dress," Harry said thoughtfully. "And that's not very polite to the Hufflepuffs. They went to a lot of trouble to make this a fun night for everyone."

"Harry," Ginny began in a warning tone, then sighed. "Just don't get caught, all right?"

"Since when do I get caught?"

"Since one of the people who taught you everything you know about pranking is here and Snape's been digging around inside your mind for the last eight weeks so he might be able to know you're coming somehow?"

"He hasn't been able to get as far lately, and just knowing how I think shouldn't give him that much of an advantage. But I take your point." Harry flicked his wrist, catching his wand carefully in one fur-covered hand. "Especially about Padfoot. I'll be careful."

Crouching down, he took a moment to admire the view of Ginny's legs afforded by this vantage point, then slid underneath the table beside which Neville had parked his chair, transformed fully into Wolf, picked up his wand in his teeth, and began to slink along the table's length. His nose told him when he had reached the proper point, and he stopped, listening to the voices above him.

"…must say, Nicolas, I'm quite surprised to see you here," said Dumbledore jovially. "I had thought you were dead."

"No one is truly dead whose memory is honored, Headmaster," Blaise Zabini replied coolly.

"Well played, young man." Dumbledore applauded softly. "Are we in your way, or do you have everything you need?"

"I should be all right, thank you, sir. Professor."

Wolf slipped out from beneath the table and retransformed, snagging his wand as it fell from his merely human teeth and peering cautiously over the table's edge. If Snape or Dumbledore should happen to be looking his way—

But he was in luck, as both of them were watching Zabini walk away, a tray of snacks and drinks in his hands, headed in the direction of a small knot of girls on the other side of the Hall. Quickly, Harry got to his feet, called up the memory of his first Defense class in third year, and pointed his wand at Snape. An incantation of the Half-Blood Prince's, one of those which had the notation nvbl written beside it, seemed called for here.

Exstaetheris! he shouted mentally, as though he were using the word to throw Snape out of his mind.

A rush of colors flowed from his wand's tip and swirled around Snape, settling after a moment into the image of a long, green dress with lace trim, a moth-eaten fox-fur scarf, and a pointed hat with a vulture perched on its brim. Harry wanted to cheer aloud—it was his first truly successful nonverbal casting—but settled for a glance down the table, where Neville was pumping his fist over his head in victory and both Ginny and Meghan had their hands pressed firmly over their mouths.

Someone choked on Harry's other side. He looked over his shoulder to see Padfoot doing his best to stifle his snickers in his sleeve. Behind him, Professor Black gave Harry a small, cool smile and a nod, then swiped her finger across her throat. Harry blinked twice, signifying assent, and released his wand, ending the spell and sending the wand back to its place up his sleeve, just as Snape began to turn towards him—

With a clatter, Harry snatched up the closest tray of food and extended it in Snape's direction as the black eyes focused fully on him. "Kabob, sir?" he said as innocently as he could manage, focusing his mind on the other truly memorable image from that long-ago lesson. Slytherin House in their underwear, Slytherin House in their underwear, which was bad enough back then but now—oh, perfect, Harry, you just had to go and think of what they'd look like in their underwear now, didn't you?

"No, thank you." Snape curled his lip. "The meat looks… overdone."

Harry nearly dropped the tray as the full extent of what he was seeing struck him. "I… well… yes. I'll just have one for me, then. Sir," he said to Dumbledore as the Headmaster gave him a small smile, and set the tray hastily back on the table before snatching a kabob and starting back towards Ginny and the others as quickly as he dared.

I was wrong. Snape is in fancy dress. It's just that you have to get right up close to him to see it…


Percy glanced around the Great Hall, surveying what was, for this evening, his domain and finding it good. All is going well. The attendees seem to be enjoying themselves, the food is excellent as always, and Fred and George were even able to slip away for the time they needed to go down to Sanctuary and lay their protective charms over the entrances. He smirked faintly. If the length of the correspondence I've seen them carrying on with our eldest brother is any indication, some of those charms should be quite nasty indeed.

Professor Sprout, dressed as Babbitty Rabbitty, caught his eye from one end of the Hall and whipped her fingers in three small circles.

And that would be our cue to start the evening's entertainment. Percy waited until Crystal, in her borrowed Hogwarts robes, was looking his way, then nodded to her. She nodded back and reached up to pull her two pigtails tighter, the agreed-upon signal to the twins that they should get to their places for the opening of the little show the Red Shepherds had put together.

Doubtless there are children of Death Eaters in our audience, and they will report to their parents precisely what we wish them to report. That the Red Shepherds are a silly group of just-barely-adult wizards and witches—and one Muggle—who are fit only to perform childish tricks at parties.

Stepping down from the small dais where he had been standing, Percy started for the drinks table, noticing in passing his sister laughing near-hysterically at something Harry Potter was whispering in her ear. Although Percy couldn't say he was comfortable with the mid-thigh drape of her crimson skirt, nor with the plunging neckline of her off-white blouse, she was still more covered than half the girls in the Hall, and he found her and Harry's paired costumes quite appropriate to his current line of thought.

"Why, Red Shepherd, what shiny spells you have!" "All the better to destroy you with, my dear Death Eaters…"

Percy finished his short journey with a broad smile on his face, which he made haste to wipe off and replace with an expression of suitable worry as he spotted Crystal, rooting around in the tub of magical ice which occupied fully half of the table. "Gone," the Muggle girl said in disgust, pulling a single bottle out of the tub. "Every last one gone, except this. I told you we should have brought more!"

"What's gone?" Percy deliberately pitched his voice to carry, and heard conversations stopping or dying away even as he spoke. "I'm sure we can find more of it somewhere."

"Not easily." Crystal thumped the bottle down on the table. "It's the butterbeer. This is the very last cold butterbeer! How are we supposed to figure out who gets it?"

At the back of the Great Hall, behind the teachers' table, a chainsaw revved.

Several girls screamed as Fred stepped into view, dressed in a loose blue jumpsuit, his face entirely covered with a hockey mask, the chainsaw growling in his hands. The noise redoubled as the Hall's main door slammed open, revealing George garbed and armed in precisely the same manner. Step by perfectly mirrored step, the students clearing a path for them with little gasps and squeals of gratified fright, they closed in on Percy, Crystal, and the butterbeer, chainsaws snarling, clearly ready to tear one another limb from limb for that final drink—

Drawing his wand, Percy transfigured both chainsaws into bouquets of flowers, drawing applause from the assembled students. "You know what Mother always says about edged weapons," he reproved his brothers.

"Only to use them outside the house." Fred pushed his mask back, and another wave of applause went up as their audience recognized him. "But we're not in the house. We're at Hogwarts!"

"Can't we even use them a little?" pleaded George, lifting his mask in turn. "If we promise to clean up afterwards?"

"Oh, why not let them?" Crystal asked Percy, as Danielle and Lee made their way through the crowd to the edge of the cleared space around the drinks table. "It might be fun for everyone to watch."

"You may have a point." Reversing his earlier motion, Percy restored the chainsaws to their original state. "We're going to have a clean bout, now," he told the twins, pointing his wand at each of them in turn. "No fouls, no foolishness, and remember there are first and second years present. Let's keep the mental scarring to a minimum."

Both twins saluted him with their saws, then faced one another, lowered their masks, and pulled their cords in time with one another. Both chainsaws growled back to life.

"Ready," Percy said, raising his hand. On either side of him, Danielle and Lee drew their wands. "Steady."

Fred and George held the chainsaws upright in front of their faces, waiting for the word.

"Go!" Percy slashed his hand down through the air. Simultaneously, Danielle and Lee snapped their wands through a three-stroke movement. Turning on their heels, Fred and George charged towards the freshly conjured blocks of ice and began to carve frantically.

Laughter and cheering swept through the Great Hall as students and professors alike realized the true nature of this competition. Some of those in the back were conjuring boxes or finding places on the tables so that they could see better. Fred, Percy noted, appeared to be creating an image of the same bottle which was even now in contention, while George had chosen the slightly more ambitious figure of the person who was holding it…

"Would you mind?" Crystal murmured, extending the bottle towards him. Percy tapped it with his wand, and the cork popped up, landing in Crystal's outstretched hand. "Thanks." Leaning back on her heel, she took a long, appreciative swig.

His brother George, Percy decided, was either a very lucky or a very unlucky wizard.


"And by the time they're done, it's going to be gone," Meghan announced in a loud whisper, squirming in her excitement. "Crystal's going to drink it all and there won't be any left!"

"Easy, Pearl." Neville patted her leg. "Remember this chair's only taped together. We don't want it to fall apart before the twins can see it for their contest."

"Right. Sorry." Meghan stilled, craning only her neck to see over the heads of the crowd from her perch on the arm and back of the wheelchair. The long fall of her white wig streamed across Neville's shoulder, and he brushed a few strands out of his face but let the majority of the hair stay where it was.

He'd been a bit surprised, over the course of the night, not by the students they'd had to explain their costumes to, but by the ones they hadn't. A startling number even of the Slytherins had recognized Professor X and Storm, and not for the first time, Neville wondered how many wizards who claimed to be pureblood were anything but.

Well, if the year goes the way we hope it will, they can claim it all they like. No one will be able to prove them wrong, not with magic anyway. There's always looking up family trees, but everyone knows about… He sniffed slightly, channeling his gran. "Unofficial" children. As long as they're willing to surrender a bit of dignity, they can claim they're descended from one of those, or even that they are one themselves, and there you are.

He was under no illusions about what the year wouldn't do. It wouldn't grant them an instant victory over Voldemort and the Death Eaters, or even an assured one. What it would do, what it was doing even now, was solidify the core of the DA as a fighting force, reinforce their bonds to one another, and chip away at the foundations of Voldemort's power.

The more weapons we can take away from him without ever facing him or his followers in a duel, the greater chance we all have of coming home alive after the battles are fought. His throat tightened momentarily at the thought of his dad. And there you have the final purpose of the year. To remind us what we're fighting for, in the end. To help us see past the war and the battles and the fighting to the living and the joys and the sorrows that we have to keep doing and having through it all.

Because the minute we stop doing that, Voldemort wins.


"So we're certain that's fancy dress on Snape's part?" Ginny asked Harry in an undertone as they watched the twins putting the final touches on their sculptures and Crystal daintily polishing off the last few sips of butterbeer. "He does live in the dungeons, after all. And I don't know that I've ever seen him outside in the sunlight."

"Do you really think Dumbledore would've hired him if he were one?" Harry countered.

"Why not? He hired a werewolf."

"That's different and you know it." Harry slipped his hand into Ginny's hair and tweaked a bit of it. "Werewolves are only dangerous one night a month. Whereas vampires—"

"Are always thirsty for blood, can't stand the sunlight, must be invited into a house to pass its doorway, are repelled by garlic and silver and a half-dozen other things," Ginny recited in a singsong tone. "Honestly, with the number of things that chase them away or keep them out, I'm surprised even Muggles would think they're dangerous."

"It might be worse if they didn't… " Harry straightened up as Fred shut down his chainsaw and removed his mask. George put a few finishing touches on his carving, then did the same. "Hold that thought. Here we go."

Percy began to walk around the two ice sculptures, tapping a finger against his lips thoughtfully. "Very nice," he said, brushing a shaving of ice from the shoulder of Fred's butterbeer bottle. "Good shape, interesting texture, very symbolic. Somewhat simplistic, though. I give it eight out of ten." Turning on the mixed wave of cheers and boos, he strode over to George's depiction of Crystal. "Now this, this is quite good. Recognizable, vital, engaging. Not perfectly executed, but the flaws are part of its charm. Nine out of ten."

"Yes!" George dropped his chainsaw and shot his arms straight up in the air, acknowledging the crowd's cheers, as Fred slumped dejectedly in place. "Victory is mine! Now where's my prize?"

"Here it comes," said Crystal sweetly, skipping over to him and handing him the bottle. "All yours." Stepping back, she clasped her hands behind her.

George put the bottle to his lips and tipped his head theatrically back. When nothing happened, an expression of dismay shot across his face, and he straightened quickly and turned the bottle upside down over his other hand. "But…" he stammered, staring at the nonexistent flow of butterbeer. "But…"

"Ha!" Fred pointed at his twin, his face lighting up with maniacal glee. "No ill-gotten gains for you!"

"I thought you loved me," George said mournfully to Crystal. "How could you do this to me?"

"I can do lots of things." Crystal giggled. "Like this."

She brought her hands out from behind her back. Each of them held a fresh, unopened butterbeer.

"You both get to win," explained Danielle, coming to stand beside Crystal and accepting the butterbeer from her friend's left hand. "This time, anyway."

Fred and George looked at each other, then shrugged and stepped forward, each claiming a butterbeer with one hand and a girl with the other. Percy took his place between them, and in perfect unison, all five bowed.

The applause lasted, Harry later estimated, for the better part of three minutes.

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Author Notes:

Don't ask me where the random chainsaw ice sculpting came from. I really don't know. It just showed up in my head one day and refused to leave, so here it is.

Thank you to all my wonderful readers who have showed their trust and support of me by purchasing my original novel, A Widow in Waiting! While I realize that historical fantasy may not be everyone's cup of tea, I did try to put a little something for most readers into the story. Also, please remember, the better my sales of AWiW, the more you get not only of the Dangerverse but of my next original series.

That's right, I am now working on a different original series, a more contemporary fantasy series called the Elemental Heirs. I have not abandoned the Chronicles of Glenscar (the series AWiW is the first installment of) or my personal anthology, Cat Tales, but Elemental Heirs is very near and dear to my heart, and I hope it will be to yours too.

You see, Elemental Heirs is what I'm now calling it when the Dangerverse goes original.

More information on this will be forthcoming as I get more of the details settled in my head, and get more words down on paper, or rather on the screen. If you want to encourage me, keep reading, keep reviewing, and if you have the money, buy a copy of AWiW. It's available at Amazon and Smashwords, along with all other major e-book retailers (please note that the Smashwords copy has the same extra back matter as the print copy available through Amazon's Createspace), and signed print copies or signed bookplates to put into your print copy are available through my Etsy storefront.

Thanks as always, everyone, and here's a little snatch of prophecy from the Elemental Heirs world to whet your appetite:

Four Houses, all alike in dignity,
In this fair world wherein we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where mages' blood makes mages' hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these four foes
Two pairs of star-blessed lovers take their life,
Whose daring and adventurous overthrows
Will, if they live, bury their Houses' strife…