"T'ree days short of a full moon," a bright waxing moon shone in the sky as Naomi's voice coiled above a boiling cauldron sitting in a secluded and leafy corner of Hagrid's garden. A stream of water glided off a small rockwall and into a deep and narrow stream that encircled the cauldron, Naomi, and her friends.

The normally raven-haired witch now let her red hair[1] wildly twist behind her head and into some vines latched onto a soft tree root while she laid back with her head resting on her knuckle and with old tome propped up on her knee; the dim light of spiderweb trapped fireflies glowed against the pages of the book. Veronica was fixing her nails while Miss Lotti, Naomi's spider, wove braids of golden thread into the witch's blonde pig tails[2]. And Lua was surrounded by a menagerie of crops and items she happily rummaged through like the clever cat[3] she was dressed as, and played around with any odd little thing she found interesting.

"You'd t'ink an Everlasting Cauldon[4] wouldn't want so many full moons for somet'ing interesting," Naomi said again as she turned a withered and creased page of the book, whose cover came alive at the girl's criticism. The front cover of the thing then moved and twitched as an eye snapped open in the center of the cover and twirled around; it was purple, catlike, and playful. Naomi then lifted her hand off the book as the pages fluttered to one side of the book until it settled on  page that brought a satisfied pout to Naomi's silky black lips, "Oh... add t'ree billywig stingers."

As the Gryffindor added the stingers to the cauldron a golden smoke danced around their little garden recess and the air began to light up with small colorful sparks.

Naomi gave a small smile as she streched her toes, and relaxede in the lightshow before she began flipping through the book again, "All right what do we do next? 'Dere's really only coven stuff in here now..."

1.	Poison Ivy
2.	Harley Quinn
3.	Catwoman
4.	A potion that can only be brewed on certain nights, and you can just keep adding things to it to do cool or fun stuff, thought that it would be a fun Halloween thing to do.

Ronnie wasn't the world's biggest fan of spiders, although she would be the first to shove a squealing Huxley out of the way to grab a spider and flick it out the bathroom window. For whatever reason, the feeling of Miss Lotti separating and braiding and gently combing was incredibly relaxing to the little witch, and she hummed cheerfully while the arachnid worked her magic.

"Make me an everlasting lip gloss and we'll talk," she muttered, touching the tip of her wand to her lips again. "This stupid charm wears off so fast."

The nighttime- and the dark in general- was always a little spooky to Veronica, which was a shame for someone with a best friend like Naomi. Ny would probably have had them do this at the bottom of a crypt if only they'd have had one available.

She cocked her head to one side, leaning to take a better look at the cauldron. "Shit," she said with a grin that showed off her pointy eyeteeth. "I think a junebug just fell in there."

Lua grazed her fingers over the little bottle of periwinkle dust she’d fished from the hallowed, plastic jack-o-lantern, and left it in the leaves beside her knee before plunging a hand back into the pumpkin to find the billywig stingers. She added them one, two, three, with a pleasant smile that was perhaps softer than Catwoman’s usual femme fatale demeanor, but nevertheless fitting for a girl dressed as a sneaky, expert thief. (Not that Lua Taylor was in the habit of stealing.) She tilted her head, grinning sideways over the gold smoke at Naomi, finally offering, “I think the moon is very strong tonight.” Maybe Halloween had something to do with it, a strange give and take of energy in the air.

Halloween was a favorite holiday, from the pumpkin bread, to the pumpkin juice, to the costumed Hogwarts students whose undying love for breaking dress code meant many creative and impressive characters roaming the castle (all weekend, if they could help it.) Lua had sent a very large owl back to London with sweets and cards and nicknacks for her entire family.

“Do you think an Everlasting Lipgloss would be hard to wash off?” Probably not with magic, or magical products. As long as they didn’t test it on animals, Lua thought it was brilliant. She sometimes paused, of course, when it came to the many animal ingredients they used in Potions. Her older brother had mumbled something about the circle of life and the Lion King to make her feel better. He also thought that being able to brew ‘potions’ was the third coolest thing in the universe, and that Lua could make the world a better place by combining certain herbal ingredients with her standard homework brews. She had not, so far, tried this.

Speaking of animals... “Oh, no...” Lua’s lips parted in surprise and she leaned over the cauldron to look after where the supposed junebug had gone. “Rest in peace. Maybe he’ll come back because it’s Halloween.” A ghost junebug... she wondered if Sir Nick would find it overly annoying, which only made Lua smile (affectionately!).

She moved back to the book, trailing a painted fingernail down the list, past the billywigs, until she spotted a familiar option for their next ingredient. It was the one that had caught her eye. She took up the bottle of periwinkle dust and uncorked it, sprinkling a tiny bit into the cauldron, whose pretty gold smoke and lights were already, arguably, reminiscent of fairies (not the fanged sort). The contents of the cauldron became pastel, and bubbled with momentary, glittery violence before calming. Ghostly butterflies and winged things flew up from the brew, joining the gold smoke before disappearing in pretty wisps near the dancing lights. They were not junebugs, which had no wings, and if one had fallen in, it was a mystery whether it had contributed to the pretty phantoms, but Lua liked to think it had. She reached out a half-gloved hand to a purplish gray butterfly, which fluttered over her finger before fading.

"Everlasting lipgloss?" Naomi's black lips peeled into a smile as a chuckle tickled her throat, "So it can change flavor everytime you kiss a guy?"

Then the june bug fell into the potion and Naomi pursed her lips at the thought that it might be ruined--but Lua wasn't too concerned about that. She moved toward the book and added another ingredient to the potion, causing it to breathe out gold smoke and ghostly butterflies. Naomi sat up and gave Lua an approving smile.

"Clever."

"Now maybe we can do somet'ing like a coven," Naomi poked her glittery black tipped nail under one of the pages and flicked it to the side, and then leafed through a few more pages the same way, "Like dance around 'di cauldron..." The book then began flipping through its own pages again and stopped on a chapter about covens--and also a page about body paint and a complete and utter lack of clothes.

Naomi cast her wary gaze from Lua to Ronnie before adding, "...But not naked," then she started flipping through the chapter and let her voice carry over the sound of lapping water that flowing around them, "Anyone have some other suggestion to get 'dis book to land on a less ridiculous page about covens?"

Ronnie, too, extended her fingers to the pretty ghost butterflies. Their golden glow bouncing off her freshly-painted nails made her smile not in a cruel way or a sultry way as she usually did, but genuinely, like she had when she had been younger and less out to snare people.

She snickered. "Lord's sake," she replied, "I'm more flavor'n any of them lads can handle anyways. The loss of blood to the brain would kill 'em. We ought to be out to invent a belt that keeps their knickers fused to their skinny arses an' get us some peace and quiet."

"...But not naked."

"Spoilsport," Veronica grinned, picking through the odds and ends she had brought as possible additions to the cauldron. She had selected a few things to bring along because they were standard- albeit potent- ingredients with which to elicit magical reactions. Some others, however...

She dumped her bag out on the ground, pawing through the minibar-style bottles of various alcohols and her many unmarked pill bottles full of God-knows-what. "I want some nice, glittery stars," she said, mostly to herself. "I wonder what... hmm..."

Lua continued to watch the cauldron change and the butterflies evade their grasps, giggling at the idea of a classroom full of their male schoolmates squirming in their seats after being fitted with belts as testy as horcruxes. It sounded somewhat painful when she thought about having to use the loo. She felt a little bad for them.

She looked down at the pages as they fluttered beneath Naomi’s fingers. The best covens must dance. Choreography optional. Nakedness didn’t bother her, but she had learned from an early age that most people expected others to be clothed in public. Her gaze drifted between her friends, and she grinned at Ronnie’s cheeky pronouncement. “No one would see us... unless some of the Salem students decide to come trick or treating out by Hagrid’s. There aren’t really many places to trick or treat, even though the castle is huge. It’s all one address, isn’t it?” Maybe the centaurs. Lua knew they weren’t supposed to wonder off and start chatting up the centaurs, but she didn’t think they were as scary as legends filled with pink-swathed frog ladies suggested. “Maybe they could join the coven, too. The Americans.”

But, “We did work hard on our costumes,” she added, glancing at Naomi again with some sort of reassurance. Stripping before midnight might be slightly anticlimactic. Body paint and a cat mask... it was a tempting idea. Camouflaged Catwoman? Lua reached for the book and attempted  to tickle it, as one might do with the Monster Book of Monsters. It shivered, and proceeded to flap harder. She giggled and withdrew her hand, as if pulling away from a hot stove. “You’re very frisky,” she told the book. “It would be brilliant if you could calm down a little.” Oddly, it began to calm a little. She shrugged at Naomi, raising her eyebrows in unison and smiling.
 
She plucked a clear bottle from the grass as it rolled toward her boot and brought it up to inspect.  The label was immediately familiar. “My brother likes this one.” She'd tasted it. “It tastes sort of smokey.”

She didn’t know whether it would produce stars, but it seemed to make him feel like one. She bit her lip in a soft smile and added it back to the pile of liquors and other bottles that the Slytherin had splayed over the grass. She waited patiently for Ronnie to pick the next ingredient; so far, nothing had disappointed.