Eternal Despair (Harry Potter/OC)

𝟠: Enemies of the Heir; Beware

The next morning, Harry arrived in the common room, hurriedly changed his clothes, and joined Hermione, Enzo, and Ron.

"A deathday party?" said Hermione keenly when Harry had finished dressing and joined them. "I bet there aren't many living people who can say they've been to one of those. It'll be fascinating!"

"Why would anyone want to celebrate the day they died?" Ron grumbled, having abandoned his Potions homework to play cards with Enzo.

"Sounds dead depressing to me," Enzo mumbled, glancing out the window where rain still lashed against the now inky-black panes. Inside, however, the Gryffindor common room was bright and cheerful, with firelight casting a warm glow over the countless squashy armchairs where students sat reading, talking, doing homework, or, in the case of Fred and George Weasley, trying to see what would happen if you fed a Filibuster firework to a salamander.

By the time Halloween arrived, Harry regretted his rash promise to attend Nearly Headless Nick's deathday party.

"See? This is why I never immediately accept a party invitation," Enzo lectured.

The rest of the school was eagerly anticipating the Halloween feast. The Great Hall had been decorated with the usual live bats, Hagrid's enormous pumpkins 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 entertainment.

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

So at seven o'clock, Harry, Enzo, Ron, and Hermione walked straight past the doorway to the packed Great Hall, which glittered invitingly with gold plates and candles, and directed their steps toward the dungeons.

The passageway to Nearly Headless Nick's party was lined with candles as well, though the effect was far from cheerful: long, thin, jet-black tapers burning with bright blue flames cast a dim, ghostly light over their living faces. The temperature dropped with every step they took. As Harry shivered and pulled his robes tighter around him, he heard what sounded like a thousand fingernails scraping an enormous blackboard.

"Is that supposed to be music?" Ron whispered. They turned a corner and saw Nearly Headless Nick standing at a doorway hung with black velvet drapes.

"I'm pretty sure it's a torture method," Enzo responded.

"My dear friends," Nick 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 pearly-white, 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 mist before them; it was like stepping into a freezer.

"This is even worse than my sixth birthday," Enzo groaned.

"Well, shall we have a look around?" Harry suggested.

"Careful not to walk through anyone," Ron added 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 talking to a knight with an arrow sticking out of his forehead.

"Oh, no," said Hermione, stopping abruptly. "Turn back, turn back, I don't want to talk to Moaning Myrtle."

"Who?" asked Harry as they backtracked quickly.

"She haunts one of the toilets in the girls' bathroom on the first floor," Hermione explained.

"She haunts a toilet? No wonder she's miserable," Enzo remarked.