A Hogwarts Legend: Round Two [2]

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen- "TASTE THE FREAKING RAINBOW!"

By the time Halloween arrives, I've punched Harry several more times for agreeing to the Deathday party. The rest of the school are happily anticipating their Halloween feast; the Great Hall has been decorated with the usual live bats, Hagrid's vast pumpkins have been carved into lanterns large enough for three men to sit in and there are rumours that Dumbledore has booked a troupe of dancing skeletons for the entertainment.

It's true, I asked him....

"A promise is a promise," Hermione reminds me bossily. "You said you'd go to the Deathday party."

"I didn't say I'd go, Harry signed me up for this bullshit," I mutter, pressing down on my quill, making a whole in my parchment.

So, at seven o'clock, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Maya, Elinor and I walk straight past the doorway (we have to drag Maya) to the packed Great Hall, which is glittering invitingly with gold plates and candles, and direct our steps instead towards the dungeons.

The passageway leading to Nearly Headless Nick's party has been lined with candles too, though the effect is far from cheerful: these are long, thin, jet-black tapers, all burning bright blue, casting a dim, ghostly light even over our own living faces. The temperature drops with every step we take. As I shiver and do the zip up on my coat, I hear what sounds like a thousand fingernails scraping an enormous blackboard.

"Ah, music! A magic beyond all we do here," I quote, pretending to wipe my eyes.

"Isn't that what Dumbledore said on our first day here?" Hermione asks.

"Yep," I grin, sticking my tongue out. We turn a corner and see Nick standing at a doorway hung with black velvet drapes.

"My dear friends," he says mournfully, "welcome, welcome ... so pleased you could come ..."

He sweeps off his plumed hat and bows us inside.

It's an incredible sight. The dungeon is full of hundreds of pearly-white, translucent people, mostly drifting around a crowed dance floor, waltzing to the dreadful, quavering sound of thirty musical saws, being played by an orchestra on a black-draped platform.

"Wow, that's worse than Justin Beiber's early music," Hermione mutter, ringing her ears.

"Who?" Ron asks, confused.

"You don't want to know."

A chandelier overhead blazes midnight blue with a thousand more black candles. Our breath rises in a most before us; it's like we've stepped into a freezer.

"Why are we celebrating someone's death again?" El asks, looking around confused.

"Not got a clue," Ron mutters.

"I don't get it, but I love it," I say in an overly peppy voice.

"Shall we have a look around?" Harry suggests.

"Careful not to walk through anyone," says Maya, and we set off around the edge of the dance floor. We pass a group of gloomy nuns, a ragged man wearing chains, and the Fat Friar who's talking to a knight with an arrow sticking out his forehead.

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

"Who?" says Harry, as we backtrack quickly.