Chapter Text
On Halloween of their sixth year, Harry, Hermione and Ron skipped the Halloween feast. They instead spent the evening with their favourite professor, Remus Lupin, in the Defence Against the Dark Arts office.
For Harry and Lupin, it was a way to honour the date of James’ and Lily’s disappearance. For Ron, it was a moment she could be true to herself, in the presence of the only people who knew she was a girl. For Hermione it was a way to support both her best friends.
It always felt odd to Harry, being at Hogwarts on Halloween. The very place James and Lily disappeared from 15 years ago. The place where a one year old Harry was soon after discovered crying alone in his parents’ quarters.
Harry didn’t remember being at Hogwarts as a one year old.
“We only found him five hours later, when we heard a snore coming from his empty bed. He’d fallen asleep under his invisibility cloak!”
They laughed as Lupin finished his story. It was always great to hear stories of his parents when they were teenagers themselves. Though now in his sixth year, the stories were even more bittersweet.
Lupin dropped out of Hogwarts in his fifth year. And that’s where his stories of James and Lily ended. He never saw them get together as a couple.
Which is why the rest of the evening devolved into Lupin telling stories of his travels around the world instead.
It was a good evening. The house elves brought them food and drinks. His best friends sat on either side of him, sides pressed together on the too small couch. And Lupin looked glad to spend such an emotional date with company instead of alone.
All in all, when they started to nod off in their pile on the couch, Harry felt warm, and happy.
His half sleep was disturbed by a vibration that rapidly grew stronger, until the whole room was shaking. He grabbed his wand, Hermione and Ron doing the same. Not that he knew what to do with it. Was it an earthquake?
“Get under the desk!” Lupin yelled. “If the ceiling comes down—”
The loud crack of stone sounded through the room. Harry looked up in panic, only to find the ceiling untouched. Hermione screamed. He followed her gaze to the floor, where a large fissure cracked and split, moving rapidly towards them.
They fell over each other in their hurry to get to the door, but the hole formed faster than them. With a collective yell, the floor dropped out from under them, and they fell into the ominous darkness of the defence classroom below.
Harry woke up in a dark room covered in dust. He coughed and sat up. His eyes had trouble adjusting to the darkness. He grabbed for his wand, only to grasp at an empty pocket. Oh shit, he’d been holding it when he fell.
He scrambled around blindly, until he finally felt wood under his fingers. His wand tip lit up bright with a quick lumos, showing that not just the floor was covered in dust, but the air was still saturated with it. He must have woken pretty quickly if the dust hadn’t settled yet.
“Hermione? Ron? Professor Lupin?”
The airborne dust dampened the sound of his voice. He kept his breathing shallow to avoid breathing in too much of it. “Guys?”
The longer he went without an answer, the more nervous he got. He stood up and tried his best to see through the dust. How odd. There was far less rubble than there really should be.
He shuffled carefully towards the front of the room. Along the way, the dust began to settle a little. Something he’d mistaken for a pile of rubble groaned and twitched. He ran up to the shape only to find Ron. “Ron!” He dropped to his knees next to her.
She blearily blinked open her eyes and squinted them at the lumos waving in her face. “Harry?”
“Oh thank Merlin you’re alright.” Harry aimed his wand away from her face when he saw no head-wounds or anything like that. “You aren’t hurting anywhere?”
Ron shook her head. “What the hell happened? Where’s Hermione?”
Harry glanced around the room again. The clearer the air became, the more apparent it was that something was wrong. The place was dusty, sure, but it didn’t look like the site of a collapse. “I don’t know.” He aimed his wand upwards, and did a double take. The ceiling was there, perfectly in tact.
“Harry?” Hermione’s voice came from deeper into the room. Something settled in him at hearing it clear, not even groggy from being knocked out.
“We’re at the front of the room,” Harry said. He stood up and gave Ron a hand up as well. They were in the clear part of the room a professor could use to pace around unobstructed by desks. To the right of the area was a door. It looked like Lupin’s DADA classroom in layout at least.
From the place Hermione’s voice came from, a wand lit up. It moved to them, zig-zagging between desks. Ron lit up her own wand in the meantime.
Hermione joined them, her hair covered in dust. She didn’t look hurt, at least. “You two alright?”
They nodded. Hermione bit her lip and looked at the ceiling. “Something is very off here,” she said.
“No kidding.” Ron glanced uneasily around the bits of the room they could see in their wandlight. “Did the floor really collapse?”
Harry once more scanned the room for rubble, but found nothing. “Could it have been an illusion?” The only sign of the collapse was the dust, and most of it had settled in a thick layer on the floor and desks by now.
“I don’t know,” Hermione said, an uncommon phrase from her. “We should find Professor Lupin first.” She flicked off her lumos and cast a homenum revelio. The magic swept through the room, making both Harry and Ron shiver at the sensation of shadowed eyes swooping overhead.
A faint glowing marker appeared in the far corner of the room. “He’s there,” Hermione said. But in what state? If he hadn’t woken up yet—?
They sped to him as fast they could, causing the dust to stir up around their feet and the edges of their cloaks. In the corner they found Lupin, lying on his back, eyes closed. Harry was relieved to see him breathing deeply, though the fact he hadn’t woken up yet was worrying in itself. Did he have a head-wound?
“Rennervate,” he cast the spell with no small amount of fear. Ignoring Hermione’s warning to check him for injuries first. Lupin’s eyes opened. His slack expression made way for wary confusion.
Hermione knelt next to him. “Professor, are you hurt?”
Lupin checked himself, then shook his head and stood up. “I think I’m alright.”
Now that they were sure no one was hurt, they could figure out what happened to them.
“This is definitely the DADA classroom,” Lupin said. Hermione had opened the curtains, which let in a little bit of light, allowing them to see the room more clearly. Not that it added much. The heavy storm they’d started this Halloween with hadn’t stopped yet. It was so dark because of the rain it was unclear if it was day or night. “But I don’t think it’s my classroom.”
Lupin was right. While the layout and size was right, the particular decorations that made the classroom Lupin’s were all gone.
Instead of diagrams of magical creatures, there were faded posters detailing wand-movements. One pictured a man with blood leaking from his eyes in a perfect duelling stance.
“Creepy,” Ron said.
No one had an explanation for the ceiling or the lack of rubble beyond the collapse being an illusion or some sort of shared dream. Neither of those explained the state of the classroom, or how they got there if they didn’t fall through the floor of the office above.
“Let’s just get out of here,” Harry said. “Maybe it’s some prank.”
The others agreed. Lupin left the classroom ahead of them, only to freeze with a gasp with barely a foot through the door. He tried to block their view with his arms, but at his gasp, Harry had already glanced over his shoulder. And what he saw made his blood run cold.
Laying underneath the window, curled up and small, was a corpse. The moving light-sources of their wands highlighted the wide unblinking eyes, the slack jaw. The hallway stank of piss and iron. Sticky, shimmery blood pooled under the corpse’s head.
Behind him he heard Hermione whimper, and Ron curse.
The corpse wore a Hogwarts uniform.
Harry took a step closer, as if in a trance. Its pale skin looked waxy and unreal. None of this made sense.
Lupin blocked Harry from getting closer. He was breathing heavily. “Don’t disturb them,” he said, voice hoarse. “We can’t contaminate the scene.”
Dark red eyes watched them from the shadows at the end of the hall.
While one of the people he was watching began to cry, Tom only paid attention to the boy who looked like he wanted to approach the corpse. That wasn’t a common reaction.
There was something Interesting about that boy.
As he thought that, the boy in question turned to him, and he quickly hid behind the corner.
Harry squinted into the darkness at the end of the hallway. For a moment, he thought he felt someone watching him. He imagined glowing red eyes, stalking their prey. Ridiculous. The situation was getting to him.
Hermione was crying. Ron held her hand in a death grip that Harry thought more likely to hurt than comfort. Lupin kept himself between the three of them and the body, despite the fact it was too late to hide it from them now.
“Expecto patronum,” Lupin said. Out of his wand flowed a bright blue light, coalescing into the shape of a wolf. It was large enough to reach Lupin’s chest with its nose while still standing on four legs. “Tell Minerva McGonagall there’s been a student death on the first floor outside the DADA classroom.”
Harry had seen Lupin cast the Patronus once before. Last year in class, to demonstrate what sort of spells could get them bonus points on their OWLS. It was a pretty and wonderful spell, but Harry hadn’t attempted it himself since Lupin said it was above NEWT level stuff. He didn’t know they could carry messages though.
The wolf shook its head at Lupin, then dissipated. Lupin frowned. He tried again, only to get the same result.
“Maybe she’s too far away?” said Harry.
Lupin’s frown deepened. “Unless she’s out of the country, that shouldn’t be possible.” Harry’s hairs stood on end. Did that mean something happened to the headmistress as well? Judging by Lupin’s grim expression, he had the same thought.
Lupin created another patronus, this time sending it to Flitwick. Again, the wolf refused. Movements increasingly frantic, Lupin went through all the other professors.
None of them worked.
“Does this mean—?” Harry asked.
Lupin shook his head. “I probably cast the spell wrong or something.” The answer was a weak excuse, and they both knew it. His spellwork wasn’t the issue here.
“How about we try the floo?” Ron said. They turned to the two girls still standing in the doorway of the classroom. Hermione had collected herself, but was holding onto Ron’s hand as strongly as Ron was earlier.
“There’s a floo in my office,” Lupin said.
They went back through the classroom. The DADA classroom was connected to the office above by a staircase accessed by a side door. In their second year, when they had Gilderoy Lockhart instead of Lupin, the stairs came down into the classroom itself. Perfect for him to make his dramatic entrances. Lupin didn’t like to be stared at, so the stairs went back to normal, out of view from the students.
The office was just like the classroom. The same familiar layout. The same windows rattling in the storm. But unfamiliar decorations. The comfortable couch they’d nearly fallen asleep on earlier that evening was gone. The silenced cage of pixies was nowhere to be seen. Not even Lupin’s cactus sat in the windowsill.
Lupin crouched at the fireplace and fiddled with it so he could start a proper fire. While he did that, Harry, Ron and Hermione took it upon themselves to explore the room.
Harry grimaced at the one painting in the office. It was a painting of a corpse. Where normally portraits in Hogwarts were as full of life as the students, this one was eerily still.
“It’s no use,” Lupin said, standing up. His voice was grim. “The floo won’t connect.”
“So we can’t contact the Aurors?” Ron asked.
“Look at this,” Hermione said. She leaned over the desk to look at something. Harry joined her to see what she found. It was a clipping from the prophet. An old one. Harry’s eyes widened as he read the headline.
21 June 1943 | Student death at Hogwarts
It couldn’t be a coincidence, could it? He skimmed the rest of the article, but there wasn’t much to be read. It looked like the clipping hadn’t been taken well care of. Water damage made large parts of the article unreadable.
This morning, Headmaster Armando Dippet revealed the tragic news of a student death on Hogwarts grounds. The details of the situation are thus far unknown.
We’ve been asked to keep the identity of the student in question private for the moment in respect to their family.
Harry struggled to make out the words because of the water damage. The next two paragraphs were completely unreadable. All he could make out were a few words.
———Foul play———hidden———Dippet.
The words became legible again halfway through a sentence.
——ources at the school suggest the culprit might be a student.
“That’s horrible,” Ron said.
Hermione looked deeply troubled. “I’ve never heard of this incident before.” She looked at them accusingly as if they’d personally kept the information from her. Harry held up his hands. He’d never heard of it either.
“I would have remembered something like that if I ever read about it,” Lupin said.
Hermione huffed. “I can’t believe something this important isn’t in Hogwarts a History.”
Despite the topic, Harry laughed. “Not something they’d want to advertise, is it?” He shared an amused look with Ron.
Silence fell among them for a moment. The silence felt… wrong. The walls of Hogwarts were made of thick stone, but even at night you could always hear at least some noise. Cats sneaking around. Rats scratching in the walls. Teachers on patrol. And if all that failed, the snoring of the portraits would prevent any true silence from falling in the castle.
This was true silence.
He didn’t like it one bit.
“Could there be some magical field preventing us from contacting anyone outside?” He asked, if only to break the horrible silence.
Hermione bit her lip. “That wouldn’t stop us from contacting the other teachers.”
Something nauseous swooped low in his stomach at the reminder, and what it could mean. They couldn’t all be dead, right?
“Maybe something is blocking the patronus entirely? Or like, all outgoing magic or something.” Ron said.
Lupin nodded. “I’ve never heard of something like that, but Dark Wizards have surprised me before…” He glanced between them, then at the newspaper. “We’ll try again from outside the grounds. We can send one directly to Auror Bones.”
Harry looked at the window, and the rain outside. He normally wouldn’t fancy going outside in weather like this. But with everything odd about the castle so far, he rather liked the idea of leaving. Besides, he’d gone out in worse weather for quidditch practice.
They went down through the classroom again, the fastest route to the main doors. Hermione, at the front of the group, hesitated at the door. Right, the corpse. She visibly steeled herself before stepping into the hallway.
Lupin called for them to wait a moment before they sped out of the hallway. He stopped about three paces from the corpse and waved his wand over it. Next to the tall professor, the curled up body looked extra small. While the spell took effect, he sent them a reassuring look. “Information for the aurors,” he explained.
Words formed above the corpse, glowing a faint pale light.
Heidi Macavoy
Hermione gasped. “Isn’t she that Hufflepuff that went missing?”
Lupin nodded grimly. “Four years ago… Minerva told me about it. They thought Lockhart might have kidnapped her.”
Harry’s stomach twisted. “They said he quit.” Then again. They were second years back then. Maybe they didn’t want to traumatise them.
“Neither of them were ever found,” Lupin said. He waved his wand again, brows twitching in confusion. “It doesn’t make sense. This says she only died days ago.”
Harry took a step closer. Lupin glanced at him, but didn’t stop him. The corpse did look fresh. Or at the very least not years old. Could she have been alive all those years she was missing, only to die days before they found her? No, Harry only had to look at her size to discount that. She was so small. No bigger than a third year.
Ron made a distressed noise further down the hall. “Let’s go, we need to inform the aurors, right?”
Lupin stepped back from the corpse. “Right.” He gestured Harry to come along. He took one last look at the small curled up form, before following.
As they continued, Harry lagged behind the group. He tried to think through the situation as it appeared. They were in Hogwarts, but it was wrong. There was a corpse, but it was too fresh. They fell through the ceiling, yet it wasn’t even cracked. It didn’t make any sense.
Unless this whole thing was one big illusion. But he didn’t think that was possible.
Even in the hallways, the castle was eerily quiet. Looking at the portraits at least showed why they weren’t making any noise. They were all empty.
Could they be in another part of the castle? Maybe there was something going on they wanted to look at. He wondered if there was a painting somewhere that could fit all the portraits in Hogwarts. A large room where they could have meetings about the students they saw sneaking around?
Some three hallways from where they started, they were assaulted by a ghastly smell. Ron gagged. Harry pulled the collar of his cloak over his nose.
When they turned the corner the source of the smell became apparent. Ron gagged more violently and turned away. Harry took in the sight unmoving.
It was another corpse. This one not nearly as untouched by time as Macavoy. There was barely anything left of its skin. What was there had dried and hardened, stretched taut over the skull. There was nothing left of the cheeks, showing a set of wonky teeth for all to see. Dark holes stained with dried blood were all that remained of its eyeballs.
Again, the body was clad in a Hogwarts uniform. How could a corpse this old just be lying here in the middle of a hallway? Had someone moved it? Stored it in a closet for years only to display it now?
Or were they knocked out in that classroom longer than they thought?
Harry shook his head and looked away from the corpse. Ridiculous. They couldn’t have been there for years. And that wouldn’t explain the age of Heidi’s body anyway.
Unless the murderer was experimenting with embalming methods.
Hermione looked at Lupin with desperation. “Should we write down their names?” She could barely look at the corpse, and still she was thinking of the person it used to be. “What if this one’s a missing person as well?”
Ron shuffled, uncomfortable. She glanced at the end of the hallway. “The aurors—”
“—Are better off knowing as much as they can about the situation before going in,” Hermione interrupted. “Right?” She looked at Lupin for approval.
Lupin nodded. “It can’t hurt, in any case.” He waved his wand through a complicated motion. A few seconds later, the same faintly glowing letters appeared.
Stanley Shunpike
“Another familiar name…” Hermione muttered. She scribbled the two names in a little notepad. (“Just for quick notes,” she’d said when Harry first spotted it last year. She held the ballpoint guiltily, like it was a crime to bring such muggle instruments into the sacred halls of Hogwarts. “I use parchment and ink for everything else!”)
The name pinged something in Harry’s mind as well, though he couldn’t put his finger on it. Maybe an upperclassman? “You remember him?” he asked.
Hermione shook her head. “No, the name is just familiar.”
“Can we keep going?” Ron asked desperately.
Hermione looked at her guiltily. “Yeah, let’s go.” She stuffed the notepad and pen back in her pocket.
The longer they walked, the more he agreed with Hermione they should keep track of who they found. Stanley wasn’t nearly the last corpse they came across, and this was just the first floor.
Shane McCormick
Ben Copper
What in Merlin’s name was going on? They just kept walking, faster and faster, eager to get out of there as fast as they could.
The walls showed signs of spell and curse damage. They had to turn and make a detour when one hallway turned out to be inaccessible because the floor was caved in. Tell tale blast cracks of an explosion spell gave them an idea of what happened there.
Vinnie Proudfoot, read the next name. For the first time, Ron reacted to a name with recognition. “I know him,” she said quietly, “he was one of Percy’s roommates.” She swallowed. “Shunpike and McCormick… I think they were his friends. Percy thought they dropped out for some idiotic world tour or something.”
“When did they go missing?” Harry asked.
“Uhm,” Ron thought for a moment. “It would have been our first year, I think.”
“I remember now,” said Hermione, “Percy used to scold them almost as much as Fred and George.”
Harry still didn’t remember. The upper years barely existed to him back in his first year. They were tall and scary, and sometimes laughed loudly. The only ones he had any contact with were Ron’s brothers.
While Hermione and Ron walked ahead, Harry gestured for Lupin to stay back a little to talk privately. Lupin looked at him expectantly as he slowed his pace. His throat suddenly closed, and he couldn’t get the words out. He swallowed painfully. “That’s five missing students,” he said. “Do you think—” he bit his lip, then blurted it out, “do you think this happened to my parents as well?”
Whatever it is that happened to these students. They went missing from Hogwarts, only to turn up now. In this place that was Hogwarts, but not.
Lupin stared ahead, eyes far away. “You might be right,” he said. He opened his mouth to say more, then closed it again. Harry didn’t push him. Lupin was like this often when it came to his parents. Harry doubted he would ever hear half of what Lupin had in his mind.
The fact that Lupin didn’t deny his theory as ridiculous though… It made him feel anxious. The shadows seemed deeper. If James and Lily were really here… If the same thing happened to them… then it might be their corpses they encountered next.
From then on, Harry and Lupin were both insistent to look in every room they passed to check for corpses. Ron and Hermione didn’t ask why. No doubt they figured it out on their own.
And while he made sure they couldn’t possibly miss a body for their list, Harry was also a lot less eager to look at them. Where they were interesting and sad at first, now each one represented a possible confrontation with his parent’s deaths.
All his life, Harry had thought in the back of his mind that they were alive somewhere. Happy, hopefully, even if that happiness was without him.
It was only in his first year, during a conversation with at the time Professor McGonagall, that he learned James and Lily weren’t the type of people to abandon their son to party on some tropical island. And while Lupin had only known them as teenagers before they ever got together, he was also appalled at the story the Dursleys told him.
It was only then that he began to entertain the notion that his parents might not have left of their own free will. Maybe they were stuck, or… dead.
This last thought had become increasingly likely in his mind the older he got. Still, he liked the idea of them being alive and happy somewhere far better.
These dark halls, with their empty paintings, spell scorched walls and literal skeletons in closets… it was nothing like the pleasant beach Harry liked to imagine. He didn’t like the thought of his parents being here at all. Alive or dead.
They passed by the first floor bathrooms. A location that should not have been notable at all. And yet here they were, staring at it.
The walls were plastered in warnings. Some on pieces of parchment spelled to the walls, others scrawled directly onto stone in big letters.
‘No entry’ ‘danger’ ‘death awaits you’ ‘avoid bathrooms!’
Some of the messages were coloured a dark, brownish colour. Harry didn’t need the iron smell in his nose to confirm it was dried blood, but it certainly helped.
As if the warnings weren’t enough, an honest to Merlin skeleton lay in the doorway.
“What happened here?” Hermione whispered.
Lupin sighed wearily and ran through his spell again over the skeleton. The bones were still splayed out in the shape of a person, though some of them were a little displaced. Draped over them were the tattered remains of a Hogwarts uniform.
Lupin shook his head and muttered something Harry couldn’t understand before using a different spell. “Too old,” he said, louder. Hermione had her notepad out already. The way her hands twitched suggested she was itching to ask Lupin to teach her those spells, but knew now wasn’t the moment. “This will take a little longer.”
Ron groaned. She paced to the wall furthest from the scene and pressed her head against the stone. Her face was frightfully pale. Harry was glad when Hermione joined her, laying a hand on her shoulder and whispering something he couldn’t make out. He wouldn’t have known how to comfort her.
Harry left the girls to it and crept closer to the skeleton. With it wearing the Hogwarts uniform, he could at least be reasonably sure it wasn’t one of his parents. Besides, the skeleton looked small. A third or fourth year, if he had to guess.
On closer inspection, it wasn’t just bone left. Bits of desiccated skin still clung to the skull, which lay face down in the doorway. He brightened his lumos a little to see better. The back of the skull was cracked. Like it was hit by something strong or heavy.
Was this the cause of death, or did it happen after they died?
He caught Lupin looking at him with a complicated expression. He couldn’t tell what the man was thinking. That frown set his nerves on edge. He backed away from the body to find something else to do.
Ah, there, something dark on the floor just next to the door. A black book.
He picked it up. On closer inspection, the book cover wasn’t black on purpose, but it looked like it’d been in a fire as some point. The cover was blackened beyond recognition. Only when he opened it did he recognise what book it was. It was a potions book. The same one they used in last year’s potions class with Professor Slughorn.
Harry sighed. He liked Slughorn a lot better than the new Professor they had this year. He flicked through the book for lack of anything better to do. To his surprise, he found notes scrawled all over the margins. Some parts of the text were even crossed out, only for corrections to be written in painstakingly tiny lettering above it.
He found himself reading the notes with interest. He’d experimented a bit with modifying potions recipes himself. Slughorn encouraged it, but he never thought of anything as drastic as this.
He flipped through a few more pages. A particular note stood out to him.
‘For enemies’ the note read, with below it an incantation. He glanced at the skeleton a few metres away, the back of its skull caved in like shattered porcelain. He decided to commit the spell to memory. He might just need it.
He flicked to the beginning of the book again. ‘Property of the Half Blood Prince’. His lips twitched. Well, it was a better nickname than ‘big D’.
He put the book down again when Lupin moved. “Benjy Fenwick,” Lupin told Hermione. “The spell says the bones are thirty years old, if we can trust that.”
With Heidi Macavoy’s body seeming just days old, it was a valid concern. Still, did that mean the bones were even older than thirty years? Just how long had this been going on?
Whatever Hermione had said to comfort Ron, he wasn’t sure it worked. Though at least she was moving again. She led their group in a fast pace in the direction of the stairs. He was glad they didn’t encounter more corpses, because he didn’t think they could have convinced her to stop to write down the name and location.
There was a palpable sense of relief from the group when they reached the stairs. Harry breathed easier now he could see the entrance hall with its big doors there on the ground floor.
Ron, in her eagerness, nearly slipped down the stairs, just barely caught by Hermione.
“You slipped on this,” Harry said, picking up a piece of parchment. He turned it over. Messy words were scribbled on it in ink.
‘The wailing ghost is not an illusion’
Harry stared at the words. Wailing ghost. He’d never seen a ghost. He showed the message to the others.
“Hogwarts used to have ghosts,” Hermione said, “it says so in Hogwarts a History.”
Harry looked at Lupin, who shook his head. “Long before my time,” he said.
Ron shuffled impatiently. “I’ll let you read grandmother’s diary if we go now,” she said, “she met the ghosts.”
Hermione’s eyes sparkled, and she sped down the stairs, dragging Ron by the arm. Harry and Lupin followed them, just as eager to get to the doors.
Ron banged against the doors. The handle didn’t work. Alohomora didn’t work. An explosion courtesy of Harry didn’t work.
Harry stood a slight distance from the doors, waiting for Ron to be done so he could try a different brute force curse. Hermione sat on the floor not far from him, head in her hands. The rhythmic bangs of Ron’s fists against the doors echoing through the entrance hall.
“They won’t open,” an unfamiliar voice said.
Harry snapped around, weary and confused when he couldn’t find the source of the voice. It sounded like it came from somewhere in front of him, but there was nothing there.
“Even if they did open, you still couldn’t escape,” the voice said. Harry was right, the voice did come from between him an Ron. As he thought that, a pale shimmer formed, growing from a faint mist to something resembling a human, but transparent. Harry stared. The ghost stared back.
The others cursed and gasped, Hermione scrambling to her feet. The ghost paid no mind to any of it, just stared at Harry.
“What do you mean by that?” Harry asked.
The ghost slowly took on more features, though it never became less transparent. He could make out the vague shape of a face. The mouth gaping open, unmoving, even though it was speaking words. “You’re not in the real Hogwarts. This is… another dimension.”
The ghost drifted a little closer. It wore the Hogwarts uniform, like so many of the corpses they’d found in this place that apparently wasn’t Hogwarts. “A realm of death,” the ghost said. “There is no escape.”
A chill went down his back. That— couldn’t be true, could it? They didn’t even do anything. How could they end up in another dimension?
Something warm settled against his side. It was Hermione. Her face was pale, and he could feel her shaking. He was glad she was with him. “How did we get here?” she asked.
The ghost slowly moved its attention from Harry to Hermione. The way it looked at her set him on edge. “How did any of us get here?” the ghost’s slack jaw lifted. Its face pulled into a facsimile of a smile. “I suppose Hogwarts just decides to take a few of us, sometimes. What day is it out there?”
They glanced at each other, then back at the ghost. “Halloween,” Hermione said.
The ghost’s smile stretched. Too wide. “Hogwarts likes to take us on that day especially. Then, or at the end of the year.” It laughed, a hollow, echoing sound. “Put all that work into preparing for exams only to die before getting your results!”
The air around the ghost grew colder. Harry and Hermione backed away, but the ghost only followed them. “You’ll die as well,” it said. “And when you die, you’ll feel the pain of your death for all eternity!” It laughed again. Silvery blood leaked from its mouth. A gash formed in its neck. “You’re better off taking your fate into your own hands. End it quickly and painlessly.” It gasped, causing more blood to leak from both its mouth and neck. “She sure won’t grant you that mercy.”
Before they could react further, or ask questions, the ghost vanished. Leaving them with one last long moan of pain.
Hermione sank to the floor next to him. He didn’t have it in him to react. He felt frozen. He couldn’t move a muscle. Then Ron was there, kneeling next to Hermione. And a large hand settled on his shoulder, warm and comforting despite the fact it was shaking as well.
Harry looked up at Lupin. He’d never seen the man this worried before. He gave a stiff nod to show he was fine. Lupin patted his shoulder once, then let him go.
He looked at the doors. Stuck in place like mere decorations on the wall.
There is no escape.
Chapter end
Corpse List:
1992 — Heidi Macavoy — 2nd year Hufflepuff — 1st floor, outside DADA classroom — Damage to lungs from failed healing spell, bled out.
1991 — Stanley Shunpike — 6th year Gryffindor — 1st floor — Eyes gouged out, throat slit, bled out.
1991 — Shane McCormick — 6th year Gryffindor — 1st floor — Strangled to death.
1991 — Vinnie Proudfoot — 5th year Gryffindor — 1st floor — Lost an arm and leg attempting the animagus transformation to hide, got neck snapped.
1990 — Ben Copper — 7th year Gryffindor — 1st floor — Cracked skull against wall.
1965 — Benjy Fenwick — 4th year Ravenclaw — 1st floor girls’ bathroom — Blunt force trauma to the back of the head.