Ten minutes after the end of the First Year's potions class...

For once in their lives, a class for the first years went off without a hitch. No one's cauldron exploded or melted or vomited slug guts onto the floor, nobody ate anything they weren't supposed to eat, and the unusual bodily coloration stayed safely in the realms of the metamorphmagical where it belonged.

Ted and a number of other first years had lingered behind to help clean up. It'd taken a while because not all of the Scouring Charms had been up to snuff, but with everyone working together it'd proven fun anyway. The atmosphere as they left the Potions halls was cheerful. Groups of friends laughed together, chatting about the events of the day, and the animosity between them all was minimal. Ted, his turquoise hair as bright and messy as ever, lingered in the center of the group, listening to everything and tossing comments around whenever he had something to say.

They'd been walking the dank dungeon corridors for quite a while before anyone realized that something was wrong. Ted, not really absorbed in anything, might have been the first.

He stopped and glanced around the empty hall. "...Hey guys," he said, loud enough for everyone to hear. "Hold on a second. Aren't there supposed to be stairs here?"

---

Interested? Check out the plotting thread here!

"I was just wondering if, you know, there's anything you could add to a potion that won't ruin it but make it taste better."

The green tinted heads of Hufflepuff (Obderedria and Heliotrope) were on their way down to Potions. "What would you rather have a boil cure potion taste like?"

"Fish," replied Heliotrope.

"It already smells like fish!! No, I mean a different flavor, what about---ooh, do you smell that?" Obderedria paused at a t-junction, nose raised into the air. "You can smell the kitchens from here, they're already at work for lunch. It smells like ham...or fish 'n' chips."

"Give it to me raw and wriggling. You keep nasty chips."

Obderedria placed her teeth on her lower lip. She supposed if she had been raised in a lake on a diet of cold fish the fried variety wouldn't sound appealing either. She closed her eyes to strengthen her sense of smell, taking a few steps towards the aroma. Some kind of potato was the side dish, there was some kind of glaze, or it was going to be flavored batter for the fish? Crispy golden--blacked soot, something was burning!!

"*Achoo!*" Obderedria sneezed into her sleeve. Ew... "--wait, what's so bad about chips?" She turned, expecting that Helio was waiting there or just a few steps ahead--

--but there was nothing but dark wall.

"Helio? Hello?" Obderedria turned around again. The scent from the kitchens was gone. It was like the hallway she had entered was cut off from the former hallway. Only she was in a different one. The dungeons were dim but she'd never walked down one this gloomy before. There wasn't even the echo of distant students walking to other classrooms.

Ok, she was lost. She couldn't be too lost because she was still in the castle--right?--and during her first year it took her a while to navigate the castle. Usually in those cases she always tried to go straight and if she ran into a friendly enough portrait they could usually offer directions.

There weren't any portraits down here though. Just dark brick and darker glass--mirrors?--that sort of but not really cast reflections.

Starting to feel just a bit worried, Obderedria continued to walk straight.

"...Hey guys, hold on a second. Aren't there supposed to be stairs here?"

Dessa halted her chattering at the sound of Ted's worried voice, and glanced around. The ceiling was lower, and seemed almost shiny with some sort of viscous, unidentifiable dark sludge. The walls were glistening with the condensation that appeared only deep underground. Slowly she ground her happy gait to a stop, grasping the arms of those closest her to stop them as well.

She looked at Ted and bit her lip. "Erm, yeah, I believe so..." she craned her neck, as if there was a possibility that a staircase would suddenly appear and they could be on their merry--emphasis on this word, because for once all the first years seemed to be getting along--way.

Alice had stopped as well where Ted and Dessa had. She was puzzled. There used to be a staircase there, but now, now there was nothing. "That's really weird." She added, as she turned her head looking into the abyss. It was very dark, and it seemed that cold air was emanating from the abyss, almost the way basements feel.

Dessa latched on to Alice, and Alice latched back, worried that some monster or something would jump out, devouring them. But, of course, that was only a thought. It was not going to actually happen. Or so Alice hoped. That was the last thing she could possibly ever want to come from that. "Oh god." She muttered, the fear setting in. "I am not a fan of this right now."

Lexi cocked her head to the side, noticing as well the really wierd place they were in. She'd never seen this before, and from the looks of the other first years they hadn't either. Alice and Dessa looked plain scared, but Lexi was in a really good mood so she decided to have some fun with her friends. She stood close behind the two girls and worked her magic.

She let out a yelp and fell to the floor, "Something's got me! Alice! Dessa!" She yelled, pretending to fight off some unknown thing. Then she laughed and stopped, because anymore and she was scared Alice would kill her.

"Just kidding, so guys! Where d'ya think we are?" She said, standing up and brushing her cloaks off.

Dessa started at the sound of Lexi's panicked voice and whipped around, only to find her friend laughing merrily at her own joke. Smiling wryly, Dessa raised an eyebrow. "Very funny, McGee. Don't pull that one too often though, or eventually we might just stop turning around...even if something actually has got you...." She glanced at Alice and laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder. She knew that while she herself had only been momentarily startled, Alice was likely to be more shaken up.


"Just kidding, so guys! Where d'ya think we are?"

No amount of peering around yielded an answer to this question, so Dessa shrugged. "Obviously in a place without that staircase we need..."

Dahlia was making her way down to the potions dungeons, her head stuck in a book. Now that she had managed to collect the acromantula silk that she needed for her wall climbing potion she was doing further research into the supposed Library of Rowena Ravenclaw. After all the potion took a month and a half to settle, at this rate she wasn't going to be able to use it until closer to Christmas Holidays. She briefly wondered if she could convince her parents to let her stay at the castle during the holidays to give her more unobstructed time to look for the hidden treasure.

She glanced up from her book to make sure she was heading in the right direction and caught sight of a familiar pair of green tinted heads, she closed her book and called out to her room mates, "Drea! Helio!" She hurried her steps as they turned a corner. Perhaps her friends had some unknown insight as to where she should look for the secret entrance to the Library. The year before she never would have asked, assuming she could find all the answers she needed in a book but as her friendships grew stronger with her fellow Hufflepuffs she found it easier to ask her friends for ideas and advice.

However when Dahlia rounded the corner she couldn't find either of the girls. In fact she seemed to have turned a corner into a completely different section of the castle. Dahlia placed her hand on the stone wall, it was cold and damp and there was a layer of grime on the stone itself that she had never seen elsewhere in the castle. She narrowed her eyes, she had never seen a corridor in such disuse before. She wasn't about to think she had been everywhere in the castle but there was something about this place that suggested that no one had been here before, at least not in a very long time.

She wrapped her arms around the front of her chest and continued down the corridor (since the corner she had turned around seemed to have disappeared) every so often she passed what she suspected had once been mirrors but the glass was dark, covered in grime and had corrosion spots you often found on antiques that weren't well taken care of, "Helio?! Drea?! . . . Anyone?!"

"Helio?! Drea?! . . . Anyone?!"

The faintest of words floated down the darkened dungeon air. Slowly. As if sludge on the walls made it difficult to transmit sound, although that didn't make any sense at all.

Were these words an echo to her earlier call? It couldn't be--why would she call out her own nickname when looking for other people?

Obderedria shivered in the clammy chill. She'd heard Slytherins brag about how their common room poked out into the lake--even Helio had confirmed the opposite, occasionally peering into the dormitory when she swam close to the castle--and this almost felt similar. A place that was too moist.

Where had the echo come from? Who was it? The sound was too distorted to make out the speaker. And Obderedria's navigation plan of going straight was not helping. The passageway twisted and jointed far too often--and how could four immediate lefts not return her to the same spot??--and the reflective walls weren't helping. Obderedria remembered going to an amusement park with a maze of mirrors. This dungeon was almost like that only instead of infinite reflections of the people going through it there was just the suggestion of further branching dark hallways that didn't exist.


Obderedria turned on the spot again. There was that same echo from earlier and there was a new one too, both coming from different directions. "Is anyone there??" Her breath caught in her throat. What was worse, she had lost her orientation in this dizzying dungeon yet again. Which way was forward, which way was back?

Biting her lip, she picked one of two archways that looked to lead on, although it could just be a corrosive mirror. It was only when she was two inches away that Obderedria caught sight of her hazy reflection. She reached out and her hand touched cold glass. It wasn't that much of a reflection, she could barely make out her face or the contrast of the colors in her hair--

--something ran into the glass from the other side!! Obderedria fell backwards and screamed.

Later, Ted would never admit it, but Lex's little act nearly gave him a heart attack. He regained his composure in a few seconds, glad that nobody noticed with their attention on McGee. He cleared his throat. "We're in Hogwarts, of course. Safest place in the world. Which means that nothing here is going to hurt us. Right? So there's no reason to be scared."

As he spoke, he gave Hunter an uncertain glance out of the corner of his eye. She seemed the most freaked out so far and he kind of wanted to make her feel better, but after the incident in yesterday's Transfiguration class, he wasn't entirely sure how to talk to her anymore. He didn't want to give her the wrong idea, at least not until he figured out what the right one was.

"You know how the stairs are. I bet this one just decided to stretch out a bit. It'll be around here somewhere. Come on, we don't want to be late for Herbology."

He tightened the grip on his backpack and lead the way, taking a right at the first hallway they hit. The hallway here seemed...different, somehow. The atmosphere was thicker, denser, more humid. The walls and floor were slick with moss growth. Were they under the lake? Had they even gone that far?

Ted turned back to query the others, but before he could, a scream shattered the air like glass. The reverberations faded quickly, swallowed by the air. Ted swallowed his words.

"...Lex? Was that you?"

Lexi shook her head quickly, dismissing Ted's question. "I didn't scream, wasn't me." She said, and it wasn't. There was someone else down  here, someone else who was just as frightened and lost as them. She ran ahead of the group a little ways, looking to see if there was anyone else. She turned back, disappointed that there wasn't another person.

"There must be someone..." she left off, staring intently into one of the mirrors next to her. It was her, but it wasn't. Same height, same clothes; but the mirror-Lexi had piercing yellow eyes and her smile betrayed the pointy teeth that she had developed. Lexi reached up to cover her mouth, muffling the gasp that she emitted. Mirror-Lexi smiled and waved, but it was an evil smile, sinister looking.

"Does anybody else see her?" Lexi whispered, pointing to her doppelganger. "Somebody tell me I'm not crazy. Actually, tell me I'm crazy. I don't want her here."

Alice dug her nails into Dessa. "Dessawegottagobackwegottagobacknow." She said quickly. "I don't like this Dessa. I don't like this!" She said frightened. Alice sounded like a frightened child on halloween. Well, she was, kind of. It just wasn't halloween. "Lexi, are you alright?" She called out, worriedly.

They had just heard a girl scream! Anything could happen to Lexi in there! And Alice was not going to let her die in there. It was time for Alice to buck up and be a big kid. That's what Jane was always saying. And this was her moment. She took a deep breath. Alice let go of Dessa and started venturing the way Lexi went.   

Dessa yelped as Alice's nails sunk into her flesh. She moved to sooth her friend, who was talking fast about how she wanted to get the heck out of there, but before Dessa could so much as stroke her hair, Alice had detached herself and was moving toward the general direction of Lexi's voice.

When Dessa heard Lexi's question, her blood ran cold. She had no  idea what Lexi saw, only that it was something that wasn't really there. Was something about this place causing Lexi to hallucinate? Would they all follow suit?

Was it just her imagination, or did the space around them seem to be growing dimmer by the minute? Dessa squinted and  began moving towards Lexi and Alice as well. "Lex? Al? Ted?" she called out. With each passing moment, the darkness closed in further. "Guys? Is anyone there? I can't see!"

Lexi could hear the others call her name, she could hear footsteps coming her way. Whether they were a friend's, or from something much worse, she couldn't tell. The fiery haired girl was still mesmerized by her mirror image, that was so warped that it wasn't her.

"Hello Alexandra," Mirror-Lexi said, her voice sickeningly sweet and her smile vicious. "So nice of you to join me down here. It's gets lonely you know, you never liked me. You hate me don't you. I'm the reason that you're life is ruined. But you don't seem so scared of me like this, but how about now?""

"Stop it! Get out of my head!" Lexi yelled, her hands reaching up to her head as she tried to cover her ears. But it didn't do her any good, she could still hear the voice.

Lexi had her eyes squeezed shut, but then the silence from the mirror made her open her eyes, and regret her decision immediately. Her werewolf form was in the mirror now, long gone was the girl, replaced by a monster. It's yellow eyes flashed and it snapped it's jaws at her. She screamed, this time an honest to goodness scream as she tripped backwards and cowered against the wall. Tears were freely flowing out of her eyes as she sobbed, hearing her friend call her name.

"Alice!" She screamed, "Help!" She heard her cousin's foot steps get closer and closer, and she saw the flash of brown hair at one end of the hallway. Mirror-Lexi continued to torment her as normal Lexi sobbed and curled up by the wall, hyperventilating and wishing she had skipped potions. "Alice!!!"

"Lex, be careful," Ted warned as the girl hurried around the corner. "Don't go too far, we don't know what's up ahead."

Part of him wanted to follow her, or rush on ahead. If the scream they'd heard had been from someone in trouble, then they had to help them. But another, stronger fear was building, too: concern for his friends. Harry had always told him that Hogwarts was the safest, most wonderful place in the world, but look at all the trouble he'd gotten into here, all the times he'd nearly been killed. And his parents...

No. That had been battle. War. Unusual circumstances. Hogwarts was safe. They were normal kids. No one had any reason to be after them. If they could just keep their heads together, they'd get out of this. They were going to be fine.

He'd no sooner thought that than he felt Hunter brush past him. She rounded the corner after her cousin and, a second later, Lexi screamed. Ted went for his wand. "Lex! Dessa, come on, we have to -- Dessa!"

He'd turned just in time to see Dessa enveloped in what looked, from his direction, to be opaque gray fog. Ted ran at the cloud, determined to pull her out, but it held him at bay. Its gas was not solid, but his body couldn't get past the first thin layer and, no matter how hard he pushed, he couldn't force his arms further than elbow-deep. "Dammit...! Dessa! Can you hear me? Dessa!"

Dessa's eyes began to burn, whether from the fog or from tears, she couldn't say. She fumbled in her pocket for her wand, but couldn't find it. Hysteria clawed at the insides of her throat and she threw her hands in front of her, hoping to push away the darkness, but her efforts had no effect. "Where are you? Where is everybody?" her voice wavered more than she would have liked. She knew she had to be brave...she'd heard Lexi scream a moment before, she had to get to her friend...

A tendril of the darkness seemed to solidify, like liquid smoke, and it reached out and curled around her wrist. The grip was light, but the feel of it was ice cold. She struggled, trying to shake it off, but could not. Panic bubbled inside her, turning her blood to acid. "Please! Help!" she called, trying to keep the fear in her voice under control, and knowing she was doing a poor job of it.

She heard an indistinct voice shouting. It could've been familiar, but she felt as though she was hearing it from underwater. "Who is that? Is there anybody there?" She struggled forward, and as if the darkness had been waiting for this moment, it threw itself into action, tightening a icy tendril around each of her limbs, until she was unable to move. In some distant part of her mind, she knew that this wasn't real. It couldn't possibly be--just moments before they had been walking down the hallway, and then Lexi had started hallucinating. Surely, Dessa herself was hallucinating as well. Surely if she just waited she'd be fine. Surely--

Her "surely's" vanished the moment a funnel appeared in front of her, sucking away darkness. At first she thought it would reveal light on the other side, but instead it began to  reveal a shape.

Dessa dropped all pretense of staying calm as she stared at her father's dead body.