AUTOPHOBIA - G. WEASLEY

Second Year: Deathday Party

✯ CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR ✯

❝They'll think we did this.❞

October 31st, 1992.

HALLOWEEN CAME ALONG quicker than any of them would've liked, and Estella and Harry were both really starting to regret the agreement they had made with Nearly Headless Nick.

The rest of the school was happily anticipating their Halloween feast; the Great Hall had been decorated with the usual live bats, Hagrid’s vast pumpkins had been carved into lanterns large enough for three men to sit in, and there were rumors that Dumbledore had booked a troupe of dancing skeletons for the entertainment.

"A promise is a promise," Hermione reminded them bossily. "You said you'd go to the deathday party." 

So at seven o’clock, Estella, Harry, Ron, and Hermione walked straight past the doorway to the packed Great Hall, which was glittering invitingly with gold plates and candles, and directed their steps instead toward the dungeons.

The passageway leading to Nearly Headless Nick’s party had been lined with candles, too, though the effect was far from cheerful: These were long, thin, jet black tapers, all burning bright blue, casting a dim, ghostly light even over their own living faces. The temperature dropped with every step they took. As Estella shivered and drew her robes tightly around her, she heard what sounded like a thousand fingernails scraping an enormous blackboard and covered her ears.

"That noise sets my teeth on edge," she said, shivering. "I hope they don't plan on doing it all night."

"I think it's supposed to be music," Ron whispered. They turned a corner and saw Nearly Headless Nick standing at a doorway hung with black velvet drapes.

“My dear friends,” he said mournfully. “Welcome, welcome… so pleased you could come…” He swept off his plumed hat and bowed them inside.

It was an incredible sight. The dungeon was full of hundreds of pearlywhite, translucent people, mostly drifting around a crowded dance floor, waltzing to the dreadful, quavering sound of thirty musical saws, played by an orchestra on a raised, black draped platform. A chandelier overhead blazed midnight blue with a thousand more black candles. Their breath rose in a mist before them; it was like stepping into a freezer.

“Shall we have a look around?” Harry suggested, which Estella was pretty grateful for. Standing still did not make them any warmer.

“Careful not to walk through anyone,” said Ron nervously, and they set off around the edge of the dance floor. They passed a group of gloomy nuns, a ragged man wearing chains, and the Fat Friar, a cheerful Hufflepuff ghost, who was talking to a knight with an arrow sticking out of his forehead. Estella wasn’t surprised to see that the Bloody Baron, a gaunt, staring Slytherin ghost covered in silver bloodstains, was being given a wide berth by the other ghosts.

“Oh, no,” said Hermione, stopping abruptly. “Turn back, turn back, I don’t want to talk to Moaning Myrtle—”

Estella gasped and took a step backwards. Harry and Ron were staring at them funny.

“Who?” said Harry as they backtracked quickly.

“She haunts one of the toilets in the girls’ bathroom on the first floor,” said Estella. "And she's very annoying -- hence why we call her moaning Myrtle."

“She haunts a toilet?”

“Yes. It’s been out of order all year because she keeps having tantrums and flooding the place. I never went in there anyway if I could avoid it; it’s awful trying to have a pee with her wailing at you—”