An undetermined time in the evening...

Nobody knew what the greatest Halloween costume was. For the simple reason was that the greatest costume had never been seen, could not be seen, a metaphorical riddle that had a simple answer Casey now possessed.

An invisibility cloak.

Not the True Cloak of Invisibility, nothing could match that, but damn if enough money didn't pay for the closest thing. 100% Demiguise hair weave backed by a further Disillusionment Charm and the eye-blinding Bedazzling Hex to better the chances a would-be viewer would overlook the cloak. Guaranteed to last at least 20 years of regular use, baring damage. It came with a lightless box to store it in, a method that preserved the demiguise hair. The box collapsed into a hidden compartment in Casey's trunk.

It had taken him the whole summer and a couple months into the school year to track one down. It had to be the best and the best was hard to come by. Cloaks could be gotten legitimately but that rose flags if you weren't a hitwizard or senior auror. And the underground market was plagued with faded and worn cloaks, stolen and re-stolen instead of made. Casey whiled away the wait studying his Invisible Book of Invisibility. He already mastered a trick for making his writing invisible and impenetrable. Of course at some point he would be able to cast his own Disillusionment that would make the cloak redundant. But why not have the ability right away if you could? Surely it will help him in the future as maintaining the charm required considerable effort into the first casting. So when Dingy had reported that the Cloak had been delivered Casey dropped all of his Halloween plans. Not that there had been much to drop.

I want to wear it. When you own an Invisibility Cloak it just has to be used. What fun, what adventure! And the strategic side of him agreed. He had to confirm it worked right away...

Casey put it on and watched himself disappear in the mirror, the folds of the cloak rippling into nothing like a sheet of water. In that moment of watching himself vanish he was elated. He felt as powerful as the mightiest warlock, in some sense complete. Joyous enough he might manage a corporeal patronus in that moment but this wasn't the time. He had sneaking around to do...

---

Already he was learning, the walk up from the dungeons past scattered bundles of students and their holiday festivities. How to stay off to the side, how to keep soft footsteps, how to keep his excited breathing under control. The current level of din was enough to mask the unbodied source of the noises he made but when he was going to be all alone, silence would be important.

Wearing the cloak seemed to enhance his vision. Nothing like the single gifted light from the Hand of Glory, just his own mind paying more attention to details he glanced over before. The gaps, the nooks, the spaces where nobody would be. Being invisible you could hide there an indefinite length of time.

He sat in one such place, fully covered, on the plinth of one of the statues about the Ground Floor. Observing others unseen. The ultimate realization of how he was different from them. Mightier and more cunning. He could unleash any spell right now and nobody would know where it came from.

An unseen smile grinned wickedly. This was an opportunity not to pass up, as Casey looked around for a target.

Zoe walked out of the Great Hall and towards the staircase leading to the higher levels of the castle, dressed in an elaborate costume.[1] Her shoes clacked against the stone floor, which echoed slightly in the mostly quiet area, making it easy for anyone to know she was coming.

Her were currently outstretched, showing off the ten-foot wingspan, flapping every now and then so they wouldn't drag against the air and slow her down. She couldn't do this in the Great Hall, there were too many people. It was much more comfortable than having them folded.

Rounding a corner, the girl began to approach a statue. Her mind was wandering, thinking of other things, as she knew the route so well and was able to easily navigate it. There was nothing odd about the statue, Zoe had seen it a hundred times, so she didn't even turn her head to look at it.

1.	Description of costume.

Salazar's Shiny Blazing Pate!

Since when were dragons allowed at Halloween? It wasn't a real dragon but a very elaborate costume. It must have cost a sizable Slytherin fortune but Casey didn't recall anyone in the house talking about making this. And whoever it was must have been around his year, given the height.

There was something almost poetic about this. Acromantulas had been the first task for this Tournament but dragons had been the first of the one previous.

If the castle had deemed fit to present Casey with a larger target, it would have been the half giant dressed as a Leviathan.

As the dragon costume approached Casey readied his spell with the softest of mutters. A Wingardium Leviosa set to have the dragon's wings flap and pull her back down the hall.

The sudden force on the wings of her costume put Zoe completely off balance. The wings weren't built to hold her weight, no matter how hard they flapped they would only break if they tried. Still, the young witch was pulled back slightly, and being in high heels didn't help at all.

The Ravenclaw stumbled, putting one foot back to try to steady herself and not crash to the ground. Off of pure instinct to catch herself, Zoe willed the wings to flap and push her back forward. The enchantment worked against the charm, soon overcoming it and pushing her back forward. This didn't help her regain balance, instead moving gravity from pushing her backward to forward.

Tumbling, Zoe reached out her hands to break her fall. This kept her from hitting the stone floor face first, and somehow the claw-like fake nails she was wearing didn't break or come off, they obviously had some sort of charm on them. The dragon mask she was wearing came off of her face, the metal sounding against the stone, ending up several feet away. Her wings were stretched out.

Grunting slightly as she slumped to the ground, Zoe tried to get herself up. Her wings flapped to help her lift her body. She drew her knees closer, propping herself up on her elbows and then getting into a sitting position on the floor. Her hair, which was straighten and silkier than usual, was in her face a bit, and she smoothed this back with the palm of one hand. The Ravenclaw must have looked quite odd, in an almost damsel-in-distress position, her contacts making her look blind.

"Hey, who did that?" Her voice echoed through the mostly empty hallway. Peeves couldn't pull off something like that, that had to have been a spell. "Who's hiding? I'm warning you, I do have my wand!" A rather brave statement for how vulnerable she seemed, as well as a complete lie. "Damn, where's my mask?" Zoe mumbled, looking around her.

Torret! It was surprising to find her as the one under the whole dragon outfit but at this revelation Casey found his target could not be more fitting. Zoe always had this irritating self righteousness that fueled her condemnation of him.

Although what to do next now that she was ruffled and suspicious? Casey unfortunately had vocal pitch like a boy soprano but that meant he could go falsetto rather easily. Pointing his wand at a suit of armor he muttered "Ventriliquo."

Working by line of sight, the spell allowed his voice to come out of the suit of armor as he kept his wand to his throat, akin to Sonorus.

"Wide load coming through!" Casey managed to squeak in a voice even higher than his register. "Zoo-ee Torrent thinks she's a dragon, what fun! Someone should fetch Sir Codugan!"

The best imitation of Peeves Casey could manage left his throat sore, meaning the cackling laughter cut off with a rasp. With a hand over his mouth Casey barely got another spell cast and the suit of armor clattered off its plinth, leaning to the side like a puppet with broken strings.

"Zoo-ee should know that knights are meant to slay the dragons!" Under his invisibility cloak Casey was silent mix of coughing and laughter, not only for Torret's surprise but the own lunacy of what he was doing.

What in the world?! A suit of armor near her beginning to talk only left the young witch more confused as to who had attacked her. Zoe stared at the talking armor in first surprise, then confusion, until the laughter came. A laugh different from Peeves, whoever was trying to pull this off was doing an okay job. The armor tilting confirmed her suspicion, Peeves would never had the objects he controlled falter like that.

As the armor continued to speak Zoe got to her feet again, walking over to the mask and put it on. The mask made her feel more powerful, her facial expression couldn't be read behind it and it emphasized her dragon-like appearance. "Nice try, but you're not fooling anyone." She reached into a pocket of her dress and extracted a red and black sweet holding it between the claws of her thumb and pointer finger. "And for once, how about the dragon beats the knight, or in this case, the armor he would wear?"

Zoe brought the claws to her mouth, releasing the piece of candy they were holding so it dropped onto her tongue. The Ravenclaw could taste the mix of peppermint and hot cinnamon. It was a combination of two candies from Honeydukes that Lily had made for her. As she sucked on it, smoke began to trickle from her nose, coming out in thick puffs every time she exhaled forcefully from her nose. Her hair, which now covered her ears, hid the smoke coming from her ears.

A burning feeling formed at the back of her throat, and Zoe came closer to the statue. She suddenly opened her mouth wide, and a bright red flame burst from it. Smoke continued to rise from her nostrils. The flame stretched a good ten feet in front of the girl, holding the heat and light of real flame without burning a thing. Zoe felt as if she was puking up hot soup, sure that it was burning her whole mouth but retaining no such damage.

She pounced at the side of the armor with one hand, the claws clicking against the metal, providing enough force for the armor to tumble to the ground. The sound of it falling and coming around filled the whole hallway. The piece of candy fell from the Ravenclaw's mouth, having been pushed out by her tongue. Zoe turned in a full circle, looking for her attacker, flame still spewing from her. They passed over everything in the hallway, the other suits of armor, the walls, and even the hidden person.

It took a good minute for the flames and smoke to die out. Zoe would have spoken, but her tongue was numb, as was the rest of her mouth. A tickle in her nose from the remains of the smoke would have interrupted her anyway. The girl wrinkled her nose. "Ha-tchew! Heh.... chew!" Her head bobbed slightly with each sneeze, Zoe stifling a third one into the back of her hand. "Ugh..." Lily hadn't told her this would happen. She rubbed at her itchy nose with the back of her hand.

"Whoever is there, you might as well reveal yourself or at least let me go on without disruption," Zoe said after a few moments, beginning to walk forward.

With a throat feeling like bubotubors had crawled down it, Casey was abandoning the vocal components of the prank just to enjoy Torret's utter confusion at the proceedings. She was making a brave effort, challenging that someone else was behind these events. True, but she was facing the wrong direction.

That was one thing Casey enjoyed about Torret. Even when she thought she was right she was wrong with not knowing the full story. From the other end of the month with the Hogsmeade Weekend till now, that was two for two where Casey had bested Torret's best deductions with further deceptions.

Only...why wasn't she scared, or having the sense to run away? What was with that smile and whatever she was chewing? Although all was on the spur of the moment, Casey wanted to believe he was a mightier wizard than a simple Halloween entertainment.

And that was when Zoe Torret belched fire.

His first instinct was dragon's flame, given her whole costume. As the flames based the knight the armor fell to pieces where it stood, Casey canceling the spell in effect. The stone scratched at his hands and shoes as he struggled backwards on the plinth around the statue, ever careful to not let an appendage rip the invisibility cloak or protrude out from under it. Casey barely managed to take cover behind the statue, hands to his mouth to block out raspy breathing, heart pounding faster than the Warlock's own Hairy Heart. The air became burning orange and hotter than an oven for a brief moment. Then it passed, Casey's skin tingling at the sensation of cold air.

Miraculously the cloak had not been signed. Latter when Casey had the benefits of retroactive observation of the circumstance he would recognize that the fire had been imitation, convincing of light and heat but magical fire that did not burn. But for now Casey was maintaining every effort to remain hidden. Perhaps a bit more cowardly aspect of self-preservation than what Slytherins liked to show (or at least display before other Slytherins) but Casey had the benefits of not being visible so quite literally no one would notice.

"Whoever is there, you might as well reveal yourself or at least let me go on without disruption." A very bold statement from Torret by Casey dared not risk another spell. He probably couldn't manage being in a mild case of shock and exhaustion. His continued silence was proof of unsaid surrender.

And that was when Casey learned a very important lesson. Just because you had an artifact of great power or the ability to exercise that power for your enjoyment, even if your opponents never saw you coming, that didn't make you invincible.

After a couple of steps Zoe stopped to look back. Silence filled the air. She breathed out one last puff of smoke from her nose, smiling at her victory. "Thank you." She would surely be getting her wand from her dorm once she got there. At least she'd be able to better protect herself from any other pranks, not having to use the flashy candy effects.

She had to remember, it was just a prank. Nobody was out there to attack her. "Happy Halloween," the girl called out to the hidden person, before proceeding forward. The identity of the pranker quickly became unimportant to her, which was lucky for the hidden person.

The hallway was once again filled with the sound of her heels against the stone floor, the diminishing echo soon one of the few signs she had been there.

End of thread