Lexi grumbled impatiently, something about mirrors and Hufflepuffs. Nobody could really hear what she was saying as she grabbed the hands of her classmates and took off, dragging them along to the right. "If we don't find her down this way, we'll double back! But I'm not going to stand around and abandon my cousin!"

Alice and Lexi were family, sure they were just cousins and not sisters or anything, but family came first, and there was nothing to stop Lexi from finding her family. Her strange, quirky, mousy-haired puffle; that's who was waiting for her, for them to come get her, to save her from herself and whatever else was down in these dungeons.

They ran, and although it seemed like hours, they had only been running for a few minutes. The time seemed to slow down and drag out, confusing all of the students that got stuck down here. The sobs that echoed down the hallway seemed to be getting louder, it sure sounded like Alice. Once you heard her cry once, you would recognize the sound anywhere.

And then they saw her, huddled in a small ball on the floor, crying her eyes out. It seemed so normal, so Alice, but she looked so small and frightened of everything. Lexi let go of her friends and fell to her knees beside Alice, gathering the timid brunette in her arms. "Alice it's okay, I'm here. It's Lexi, you're alright, I'm never going to let anything hurt you again." She promised, holding her cousin close and feeling Alice's sobs shake her own body.

"We're all here, we're all okay. There's nothing to be afraid of, I've got you Alice, don't worry." She said, trying to reassure her as best she could. She didn't know what Alice had seen, but whatever it was caused her pain, enough to make her wail like this. Normally she didn't cry so terribly, the last time she had cried like this was when Jethro, Lexi's owl, had maimed several of Alice's goldfish and left the tiny, broken bodies on her floor. But Alice loved those goldfish, and so did Jethro's stomach.

Lexi looked up at Ted and Dessa, "We really have to get out of here now. I can't stand this place... Do you think anyone's noticed that a couple of first years have gone missing? I mean, it's been over and hour since we walked in here."

It wasn't long before Alice heard the soothing voice of her cousin, and her tight hug. But then, her voice struck a cord with her. It brought her back to the evil Lexi had done in the mirror. Killing her brother and the sort. So, Alice squirmed away from Lexi, her sobs still loud.

"The last person I'd ever want to see is you! The evil you caused, you terrible, terrible," Alice couldn't even mutter her insult she was going to say, before combusting into tears. "YOU KILLED HIM! Just like that!" She shouted, sobbing back into her knees. Alice had yet to notice the other two, as she was still struggling with the image in the mirror that was now gone.

Just as she did with bad dreams, she tried to prove it impossible, but Alice couldn't this time. It had all been so real. All that was said was possible. All that she did was possible. And that's what made it so scary.

Ted barely had time to get his head together post-scare before Lexi seized both their hands, dragging them off to the right. He wanted to warn her that they needed to think this through or they'd just get more lost, which wouldn't help anyone, but it took all the breath he had just to stay on his feet.

By some stroke of luck, they managed to catch wind of Hunter's sobs and Lexi honed in like a bloodhound. She dove into the comfort-hug with such speed and determination that she didn't even seem to notice the second Hufflepuff girl she'd nearly bowled over on the way. The new girl was taller than any of them and looked  bit older, perhaps a second-year. She also shared their ashen faces, staring up from the floor as though she'd forgotten how to stand at the worst possible time.

"Lex, honestly," Ted said when he got his breath back, wondering when he'd become The Responsible One. "I know you're worried, but you need to be more careful."

He knelt to offer the other girl a hand up. His fingers still trembled with the memory of fear. "I'm sorry. We're all a bit on edge, understa--bloody hell!"

Ted followed the girl's gaze to find yet another blasted mirror, this one set low to the ground. Little werewolf Lexi, her coat an oddly bright shade like an over-exposed photograph, snarled at them from the other side of the glass. Ted's jump-scare was punctuated by Alice's terrified scream -- "YOU KILLED HIM! Just like that!" -- but, as he came down from it with wand in hand, he realized that the reflection wasn't nearly as potent as the were they'd seen before. There was something ghost-like an unreal about it, trapped on the other side of the glass with no way to escape. For whatever reason, it couldn't get to them now.

Ted lowered his wand with an aggravated sigh and pulled the little mirror off the wall. "I am getting so bleeding sick of mirrors," he muttered, leaving the thing face-down on the floor and turning back to the second-year. "I guess you're stuck here too, eh? My name's Ted. That's Dessa Share over there, Lex Mcgee, and...well, you might already know Hunter. What's your name? And how'd you get stuck in this mess?"

Lexi grabbed Dessa and Ted before they could further consider which direction to go, and began dragging them down one of the long halls. Dessa opened her mouth to protest, but then Alice's cries began to ricochet through the air around them, filling the tunnel with sound. Lexi picked up the pace, and Dessa quickened as well, till they were practically jogging.

They rounded a bend and Alice came into view, huddled on the floor and sobbing her eyes out with such wild abandon that it made Dessa's own chest hurt. She wanted to wrap her friend in a hug, but Lexi swooped in first, and Dessa realized that Lexi was quite possibly the only person who could comfort her cousin right now; so, Dessa hung back by Ted, who was talking to another Hufflepuff who had been nearly bowled over by Lexi in her frantic attempt to comfort Alice.

She watched as Ted helped the girl up and introduced their ragged little band of firsties. "Yeah, hi. It's awful down here, isn't it?"

And then Alice started screaming for Lexi to get away from her, and Dessa whipped her head around, confused. Lexi was always the person who could comfort Alice best, and yet now she was shoving her away?

"The last person I'd ever want to see is you! The evil you caused, you terrible, terrible," Alice had screamed at her. Screamed, moved away... Lexi was beyond confused, why was Alice screaming at her and moving away as fast as she could? "I didn't cause any evil Alice," she said, keeping her distance. "We're all confused down here and there are bad things but-"

"YOU KILLED HIM! Just like that!" She screamed, cutting off Lexi. What? She killed who?

"Listen to me, I'm Alexandra. We got married when we were five, I fell out of our tree when we were seven and sprained my wrist, we put makeup on your brother, we wrote love letters to the neighbors this past summer! I've been with you almost every moment of our lives, I've never killed somebody. Never. And I don't plan on it. I'm just your average twelve year old first year. I. Don't. Kill. People." Lexi explained, trying to cut through whatever hallucination Alice was having to make her believe that it was really just her.

She reached out like she was going to hold Alice's hand, but instead dropped a yellow and black striped tie. "You see this? This is yours, you dropped it upstairs and I've been carrying it for you. Did you look at your arm? That bloody mess of a scarlet and gold tie is mine." Lexi sighed, still sitting calmly and trying to deal with her heavily traumatized cousin. "I've been with you the whole time, and you've been with me. Don't you forget that."

"Alice, I don't know what it was that you saw, and I know it was probably terrible. But I'm here now, and it's gone. The nightmare is over, I promise." She said with the smallest of comforting smiles. "I promise."

Alice looked up at Lexi. "It was so real. How am I supposed to know that you're the one that isn't real, and maybe she is!" She collapsed back into tears. "It was so real, Lexi. So real." She picked herself up, trying to stop the sobs. "I tried to prove that that was impossible. But I couldn't. What just happened in that mirror was totally real."

She hugged her cousin tightly. "I'm sorry. It's just so hard to prove you didn't do those things. Those terrible, terrible things." She shuttered. "And it's frightening, because I know your capable of those things. I know it." Alice swallowed the tears, hugging Lexi again tightly.

"I know you are my cousin. And I know you won't hurt me." She said.

"Bloody hell!" Dahlia called out as she was practically trampled by the concerned Gryffindor, "Don't mind me!" She scoffed but took Ted's hand when he offered it. At least one of them had noticed her. She brushed off the back of her skirt as the male student introduced them all. She glanced at the eagerly talking cousins, she had seen Hunter around the common room and even around her older sister but didn't really know her.

"My name's Dahlia." She didn't offer her surname feeling it wasn't necessary. She looked back at the cousins again who were now hugging, the smaller Hufflepuff was crying, obviously terrified by the vision the Boggarts had shown her. She looked back at the other first years, "I was following a friend, she's down here too." She shuddered slightly at the memory of Zombie Drea shambling after her.

Her green blue eyes settled on the curly haired girl in Gryffindor robes, "It's not awful down here, this is your worst fears personified." She looked around at the young terrified faces, "I don't know where exactly we are, how we got here, or how we get out but we're in the middle of a serious Boggart infestation, something like this, there's probably hundreds of them, feeding off of every fear to come through this castle."

Obderedria had no idea where she was. There was only unnerving blackness and pain. The discomfort from a severe illness. Having nothing but the negative stimulus was disorientating as she tried to comprehend the fear around her in the timeless darkness.

Sobbing. Who was sobbing, her mother? There was a scream and a crash, the chaotic noise as if a table hand been upended, plates breaking on the floor along with other devices. A shout, in some strange language--

--No, it was a spell. She didn't know what kind of spell but it sounded as if a wizard was casting a spell, something she now recognized after a year of schooling. When was this?--

--She had been attacked? with her mother? There was the day she couldn't remember from back to school shopping, mum had the mysterious healed bruises on her torso and she forgot about Hogwarts--

--But that unseen tormentor wasn't the same. Not the one with the spell during the sobs and the crash--

She felt dizzy and light headed in the darkness, stumbling in a direction she hoped was forward. Away from the sound worse that the crash, the sobs or the scream. Away from the moaning.

Like blinking, she found herself in the dim grayness of the tunnels she had been lost in. The plush Hufflepuff looked like a rather worn stuffed animal that had been played with roughly. Soaked in sweat and the grimy water dribbling from the walls, hair and clothes disheveled, a dulled but wild horrification in her brown eyes and an air of deflation from her usual posture. She wanted to be away from this. She wanted to be safe under the patchwork quilt on her bed in her dormitory. After a shower and a hot meal and an ice cream, an ice cream with a lot of chocolate. She wanted to stop crying, her cheeks rough with dried saline. Hopefully she hadn't soiled--

"Dahlia?? Ted??" In the middle of the dungeon hall she saw her roommate and that first year who could change the color of his hair that found hers so interesting. They were surrounded by other kids, students a grade under her. Obderedria felt so drained she didn't have energy to run to meet them as she staggered their direction.

--She let out a fresh shriek ripped from her lungs, pointing at the cluster of students. "B-B-B-Be-Beh--" From behind them the terror was back again. The walking dead doppelganger of Obderedria in a state of ironic decay like spoiled beef jerky. A boney hand lashed out to grip someone.[1]

1.

Anyone!