The current Hexy level is Green

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This is what stunk the most about living without the ease of the appearance changing amulet. Casey had to physically wake up in the morning and put on his 'normal self;' an operation like putting on socks or dressing. An effort had to be made now, everyday, unlike the ease of just 'being' Casey all the time. Unlike the amulet, the new method to look normal couldn't be worn the whole day. It got incredibly itchy.

So, increasingly at times, there was less effort to be had to just be Hexy. May as well fasten the magical wig (irremovable as long as the wearer wishes) and the casual clothing if by default the self was halfway to a different identity.

Luckily, the little 'club' Hexy was in readily offered a distraction.

So there was Felinae, Hexy complete with cat mask, black cloak, and several pouches arranged around her waist like a belt. Each a dull grey mokeskin bag with undetectable extension to hold all of the tools that made up the 'Action Items Kit.' Because to fit in a secret society, you may as well go all out.

"So Avialae isn't coming? Figures it wouldn't be up her alley." She consulted a few bits of parchment, read in all manner like a case file. "This is something experienced by a third year Slytherin named Bruno Mastiff. Complete idiot but to make this up would be beyond him. It's supposedly happened to other students but his account is the most notable. He was tasked with getting the answers for an upcoming term final in Potions. Bungles the whole mess up trying to find the professor's prep room. But what happens to him is more interesting for us.

"He stumbles into a room he calls 'the lair of a monster' and unspeakable things happen to him. Or just anything we doesn't want to admit. He survives the monster attack although he ends up smelling like rancid cheese and rotting fish. Two others claim to have stumbled across the same monster." Hexy rolled up the parchment, the voice distortion from the mask taking a sultry tone to match her unseen smirk. "Obviously they didn't have their wand on them or have never paid attention to a Defense class in their lives." The parchment was put away.

"So, interested to see what this 'monster' is?" she asked the other Gwyllion Fae member, Canidae.

Katy was dressed smartly and functionally, well except for the billowing black cloak.  She'd never quite gotten used to some of the more billowy fashion trend of the magical community.  She had only her wand with her because, she felt that was all she really ought to need.  That's why she studied so  often and religiously did her homework.  What she truly lacked was the practical experience.

Which is how she ended up down in the dungeons with Felinae.  She was somewhat grateful it was just the two of them though.  the bird and the cat were so busy trying to one-up one another that very little had gotten done and Katy had gotten thoroughly irritated with the whole situation and her supposed-to-be partners in crime.  But here they were hunting down some sort of creature that hounded a 3rd year.

"People are stupid when they're scared, especially students," she said in response to Felinae's derogatory remark about the 3rd years.  It remained to be seen whether either one of them would be able to do any better.  She'd like to think she was better than that but how could she really be certain if she was untested.  At least here like this if she made a complete fool of herself no one would know it was her.  It removed a lot of the pressure.

Katy nodded, looking fierce and aggressive in her canine mask.  "Let's go find this thing," she affirmed.  She began walking down the corridor, her footsteps echoing softly off the stone because she couldn't afford to buy new, quieter shoes.  She paused and cast a muffling spell on her feet before turning to the cat.  "Where do we go?"

"Mmm." Felinae nodded in agreement. Alvis usually lost his nerve in front of something scary or unusual, whereas she kept thinking on the edge. Not scared but stressed in a useful format.

Admittedly, Canidae was more impressive than previously thought. Few ever thought of casting a status changing spell on themselves in defense, usual thinking was attack or raising shields. Hexy's own footsteps were rather catlike and quiet, so muffling was unessecary. What might be handy would be a super sensory charm, whether on the mask or herself but she wanted to get used to heavy casting in full Gwyllion Fae regalia until she determined if that was needed.

"According to Bruno, he got lost after trying to orientate himself in the supply hallway between the potion classrooms." She quietly opened the door to the empty classroom, gesturing to the doorway only used by the professor that sat opposite. "There's probably lots to the hallways back there that students don't use."

Katy took a deep breath and opened the door.  Hogwarts Castle was ancient, commissioned by some of the greatest wizarding minds in history.  There was a part of her that was absolutely certain that everyone since them combined had only managed to scratch the surface of what the stone walls contained.  So a network of unused tunnels beyond the potions rooms didn't surprise her as much as it intrigued her. 

The hallway beyond the door was dark, probably because it was after class hours and it was unlikely that the professor would need to use it until Monday unless she had detentions to serve.  Katy hoped not.  Getting caught snooping in off limits places after being caught performing that ritual with Sasha would probably earn her a quick and unsympathetic  expulsion.  Katy had studied the maps in Hogwarts, A History, which had a very basic layout of the known and mappable parts of Hogwarts Castle.  So she had a general idea of where the other classroom was.  No idea where anything else was though.  So when the corridor split into two directions, she and Felinae took the one that led deeper into the dungeons.  Katy cast lumos when they turned the corner as the glow of the Potions Classroom torches disappeared. 

The air was cold and dark down here, trapped so far beneath the ground.  It was a relatively straight forward path though, all things considered.  There weren't too many twists and turns and they were definitely on the right path.  At the bottom of a narrow but impeccably made stairs, the walls and ceiling pulled away dramatically onto a large hall.  Katy increased the strength of her light spell and stepped carefully as she entered.  The walls were lined with deep stone shelves that reached at least twenty feet  up, almost to the ceiling.  Every so often the shelves were interrupted by columns that formed channels with old pipes laid into them.  They came from the above and disappeared beneath the floor, which sported several threadbare rugs.  The shelves had boxes, jars, and rolls of parchment.  She frowned at them, deeply curious, but passed them by. 

"It's so big that you'd never know it was here if you didn't cast a larger light spell," she murmured.   There were four doors off of this room, one of them was the one they entered through and the two of the others just held small rooms stuffed unidentifiable junk.  So they took the corridor behind the final door.  It led another series of rooms, even taking a few wrong turns now.  But after  much longer, she knew the ought to be getting close.  Her skin was crawling and the jumble in her gut was from more than just the excitement of out-of-bounds exploration.  The air... felt wrong.

The air was thick, congealed with dust. Maybe not literally like a sandstorm but there was a grit to the air, something that made it heavy. It weighed down the lungs although Hexy had yet to feel any labored breathing. The air spoke of being unoccupied from living beings. Even the house elves probably never came here.

Twined with Canidae's light, the light from the cat masked one passed over each archway to other rooms, sizable but cramped with old furniture and things. A load of junk in her opinion. Hogwarts liked to display its treasures instead of forgetting them in lost basements.

"Given our approximate location," she began, conversationally, "these were probably used by the Founders when they began constructing the castle. Maybe even as early classrooms before all the towers were erected." The storerooms became bigger and oddly positioned. No wonder these halls had been touched for some decades. When Snape had been Potions master many of his students were creeped out enough to avoid whatever was beyond the door he used to enter class.

"A standard light is getting too weak." The glow of her wand tip faded before a new spell cast a shimmering ball of light, like a small sun, around the largest nexus of hallways they had come to. The light illuminated the scope of each room as it circled the space. Hexy was thinking about what the annoying little Mastiff might have come across. One possible thought was if it had something to do with those younger years that claimed to be trapped in a dungeon that played out their greatest nightmares. They had disappeared by the stairs to the Potions quarter. But that seemed accidental, unlikely for the Gwyllion Fae to run into as they were going out of their way to explore someplace out of bounds and there were none of the telltale signs, such as...

Dampness...

Hexy scrutinized the orbit of her little sun. Each door it passed looked similar, long shadows cast into dusty interiors; except one that shimmered when the light was cast on it. She noted the position of the room so when her glowing light returned and faded, the beam of a plain Lumos was pointing in that direction. She strode across the enter the room, her feet climbing onto overlapping carpets. The walls strangely gleamed, being covered in a thin layer of moisture. How curious.

"It reeks." Hexy did not usually identify things by scent. The moment any number of her allergies affected her nose she lost her sense of smell. However nothing had yet to agitate her so she could smell the rotting musk. "It gets any worse we'll need Bubblehead Charms."

This was by far the dirtiest of the rooms they had come to, with floating motes falling in her moving beam of wand light. The atmosphere certainly evoked the sense of the liar of some strange monster.

"Ghwau-hu-hu-ha-ha-hee-hee-hee!"

Hexy turned rigid, wand snapping back to where the mad screeching laughter broke the silence, ready to fire. Her wand illuminated a skull in a domed display, teeth chattering in time with the peel of laughter. The tense air kept in her lungs came out in a sigh of relief.

"It's like something out of Borgin and Burkes." The cobwebbed covered artifacts in this room had a Dark motif, as if instead of wandering the lower levels of Hogwarts they had come to the basement of the prominent Knockturn shop. She stepped away to examine something else.

Then paused, turning to Canidae. "Does the ground feel...spongey to you?"

She cast the spell light at her feet. They were standing in a yellow fatty mass that squished, covered in frostings of purple muck.

Katy pulled up short at the doorway to the room.  She put her hand to her nose out of disgust but only touched the cold metal muzzle of her dog mask awkwardly.  She tried to breath in through her mouth but it was too late, the smell was stuck in her nose now.  She coughed and turned away briefly.  By the time she gave her full attention back to the room, Felinae was disappearing into the room in a bubble of light in the dark of the school's abandoned dungeons. 

"Ghwau-hu-hu-ha-ha-hee-hee-hee!"

The sinister laugh echoing around them caused her to almost jump out of her own skin.  Up until now the only sound they'd heard was the sound of their own voices.  This definitely didn't belong to Felinae.  "What was that?" Katy called out to the other girl.  She took a few steps into the room, peering into darkness warily with her wand drawn and defensive.  It was just a false alarm though, a scary skull under a glass like a dark artifact from the shops in Knockturn Alley.  Not that Katy had ever been there before.  She'd heard about them though from some of the others gossiping and bragging in the common room. 

"There's nothing wrong with the floor," Katy insisted, confused.  She looked down and, sure enough there was nothing but stone beneath her feet but she was still twenty feet or so away from Felinae.  She walked forward to join her compatriot.  She didn't make it before her wand illuminated something multi-colored and oozing.  With a horrified grimace and shout, Katy threw herself backwards.  She stumbled and fell backwards onto her bum but she managed to catch herself with her hands, preventing a knock on the head.  Her wandlight highlighted only a small portion of the thing and beyond that, Katy could see portions of Felinae lit by her own wand.  "Get over here!" she called out.  Whatever it was, dangerous or harmless, they shouldn't be separated.

How clumsy of you was not said but instead "You...okay over there?" The light shining over the space between Hexy and the fallen compatriot showed that they were both right on the floor. She was standing on the squishy half while Canidae was still one rug and flagstones. There was a defined border at the change in flooring, a lumpy bump like some sausage or internal guts a small fence. Climbing over it Hexy had taken it for a rolled up carpet.

"This is just bizarre." There was no fear to her voice yet, only the kind of fascination reserved for gruesome observations. "What are you so worried about? This is more like residue than anything...else..."

The walk back to Canidae accelerated into a trot. Back where they had come in the door was shrinking. Not shrinking, but something unfurled over the archway, lolling like a great tongue. As if sealing the door so they couldn't get back out.

"Confringo! Bombarda!" The jets of light from her spells struck the thing covering the door, the same squashy yellow mass that squelched when the explosions took affect. She saw the substance warp and blow outwards from the explosion, only to morph back into a stable barrier, the holes refilling. Though more purple muck splashed onto the floor from where the obstruction had been ruptured.

"Damn-it!" She got closer to survey the attempted carnage. The mass pulsated slightly. There was a growth like a boil though scraggly and soggy, a ribbon of some ribbed material forming a malformed loop. "Just great. What the heck is it if it's spell resistant?"

More importantly, what did that mean for getting out of here? Although that thought was interrupted by something like blood leaking down from the ceiling, up where the obstacle had veiled the exit like a descending curtain.

Katy cursed and stepped to the side as large glob of ooze descended from the ceiling.  It hit the floor with a plop and her shoes and Felinae's shoes were splattered with bits of it.  Katy stared at the covered doorway and then turned to look back into the room.  The light from their wands didn't go very far and the majority of the large room was still shrouded in darkness.

Everything smelled like decay, wet and heavy like a swamp.  It wasn't the smell of the dungeons she was used to, cool and dry.  Her skin prickled with the feeling of wrongness.  They were being hemmed in.  Back into the room, there was purple muck on the floor.  In front of them the door was covered.  And above them...

Another glob descended from the ceiling, hanging from a long strand of sticky goo.  Inside the bulging end was a variety of  misshapen objects, including an old powdered wig, a candlestick, and an animal skull.  They were suspended there for but a moment and then with a little bob, the whole thing burst and spilled its contents onto the rug.  With the tip of her wand, Katy poked the pile curiously.  The stench was worse here.  Wiping, purple goo off her wand and onto the cloak, Katy stood up and looked back at Felinae. 

"There might be another way out.  The dungeons are like a giant maze so there could be something further in.  But we have no way of knowing if this gets worse further in."

Even if her sense of smell was failing her, a blessing in disguise, Hexy's gag reflex was another story as more yuck descending from the ceiling. Something about a goop covered wig disgusted her more than rancid oily slime and purple gunk.

"Forward, then." she would have held her hand to her mouth but her mask blocked the way and that would have been a sign of weakness. Righting the path of illumination from her wand, she looked forward towards an open door past the tables of junk, looking back just a moment to see...

"No, just no..." The contents of the globule Canidae had broke had assembled, the gunned up wig plastered on the skull, something with a snout and sharp teeth, with the bent candlestick for a neck. At the end of a white ribbed fiber like the one on the covering that blocked their exit.

A spell blast knocked the pieces apart. "We need to move quickly," Hexy said, nerves playing to the edge. The next room did seem swampy, as if someone's Portable Swamp had burst in an unexpected way, the plants more unnatural than anything seen in Herbology.

"Keep your eyes open for any exits," she said as the ground became soggier.

Katy jerked backwards and pulled a face when the pieces began to twitch and assemble.  Miscellaneous peices of rubbish squelched out of the goo on the floor to give the body substance.  Morbidly curious,  Katy leaned in.  Her head tilted as she looked into the empty eye sockets of the animal skull.  Could it see her?

After a sharp 'No!' from her companion, a jet of light blasted the pieces of the thing apart.  Katy frowned but followed Felinae into the next room regardless.  She disliked how Felinae blasted spells off left and right without asking questions.  What was that thing?  Did it mean them harm?  Now they would never know.

"You really shouldn't throw those kinds of spells until you have a better idea of what's going on," Katy said irritably.  "What if that stuff is poisonous?  We don't know what will happen if  you just go blasting it around."

The ground began to seep up around the edges of her shoes.  Katy didn't look down but she could feel it.  If she looked now, she might lose her nerve.  Holding her wand aloft and scanning the walls for an exit, Katy wondered aloud, "Do you think it means us harm?"

Damn this place. It was as if they had wandered into the septic tank of the castle, only magical waste had a lot it needed to explain for all these goos, dark artifacts and mutated plants. So...fungal. A piece of trivia tickled the back of her mind. Dementors were said to breed like fungi in the dampest and darkest places of despair. Hexy felt more disgusted than despaired. Although not having a clear sense of direction in the space annoyed her as Salazar knows what came up to their ankles under giant weeds that looked like...dandelions made out of spaghetti, or some kind of pasta shape.

"So what if it's poisonous? Bubble Head Charm," Hexy replied, like the quick response on an oral pop quiz. She stopped to focus on casting one, a pocket of cleansing air crept up half her mask in a pear shaped bubble that also covered the eye sockets.

The ceiling was glowing blue as fuzzy hairy tangles of some kind came down like stalactites. Besides the spaghetti plants were flytraps with gigantic jaws, bulging pitcher plants in pustule pink, cacti with...Blood Pops for spines? And flies. Swarms of insects that weren't bothering them, yet, hanging in clouds around the pitchers and flytraps. Oddly the plants, though they were kinds known to digest bugs, didn't seem to swallow the bugs. Some of the buzzing shapes were too large to be regular flies.

"Glumbumbles,"[1] she said softly. An all too familiar bug. That's how the healers had been convinced to accept the muggle Darla O'Doherty into St. Mungo's, pinning her coma on supposed Glumbumble exposure.[2] "Don't let one bite you. Especially not someplace like this."

Hexy started trudging one way then stopped. "What do you mean, 'it?' That monstrosity back there when the objects were...possessed?" she said for lack of a better term. "All of this? The chamber down here? Do you think it's alive or something?"

1.	HP Wiki
2.	An Appeal for a Strange Condition - June 19

"Why not?" Katy shrugged, eyeing the swarms of bugs.  Her lip curled in disgust and she edged away, cautious of getting bitten.  She didn't know off the top of her head what a glumbumble was but if Felinae told her not to get bitten then it was probably a good idea. 

She looked at her companion and shook her head.  "Why would objects just begin to assemble like that?  Is it really a coincidence that they took the shape of something with which we could identify?"  She made a face at the memory of the soggy wig dripping purple goo and the gaping smile of the animal skull.  "Sort of, anyway.  Hair, two eyes, a mouth.  I dunno."

Katy peered into the darkness.  "It certainly feels like someone, or something is behind this doesn't.  That goo blocked the entrance."  In reality they could have just tripped some sort of ancient trap by entering the room but there was an ineffable feeling about this whole thing that tickled at Katy's senses, and not her physical ones.  She could just feel intent around her, although not specifically kind or malevolent.

"You mean a haunting?" Hexy rather doubted a spirit was at work. She couldn't even imagine Peeves coming up with something like this if the poltergeist had a full set of elaborate notes. With poltergeists the pranks were more immediate performances, not hall after hall of yuck someplace no one had dared venture in a while. "If there was a ghost it wouldn't need to shamble a puppet. It's a ghost. It already has a form without having to make aberrations out of goo and skulls."

Though Hexy's additions of spirits weren't really the same as evidence for the decor being alive. On technicality.

Movement had become restricted to wading. Hexy had the disturbing sensation they were sinking into the floor and not in the 'misapplied portable swamp' way she had once experienced. She trudged onto a mound sticking out of the muck, higher and a bit firmer than the surroundings. She intensified the brightness of her wand-light, sending the beam out into the alien environment in the school's basement, looking for exits. The light, unfortunately, attracted the attention of the glumbumbles.

"Incendio!" she shouted, setting something between them and the insects and arguably shrub shaped on fire to ward them off. It was at that moment that she didn't notice the thing sneaking up on her out of the gloom until it snagged her by the waist. The coil of a massive purple worm. A worm and not a snake, unless the snake's scales were shaved off. Whatever it was it pulled her off her feet.

Katy scowled.  "It doesn't have to be a haunting, you know," she grumbled.  Being muggle-born, Katy had a good idea of just how much she didn't know about the magical world.  She wasn't entirely certain that there was anything beyond the realm of possibility if the right magic was applied.

The quagmire of the floor seeped up around her shins, causing every footstep to trudge through the muck.  Felinae had managed to find a small hillock of some kind and crawled onto it.  Katy was right behind her, still trying to haul herself out of the mess when the glumbumbles attacked.  Katy saw them and her eyes widened with fright.  She looked down to see why her foot wasn't coming loose of the mess and saw something slide past her in the dim, flickering light from the fire Felinae set.  Her stomach clenched with disgust and she barely had time to say anything before it shot out and wrapped around Felinae's waist. 

"Watch-"  That was all she managed to shout before her companion was yanked off her feet.  Katy lunged. She became almost completely submerged but she managed to close her hand around Felinae's wrist.  She tried getting to her feet but slipped and fell deep into the mess again.  The wrist was nearly tugging out of her grip but panic clenched her fingers tight despite the slippery substance coating both of them.  Katy's other hand fumbled but managed to free her wand.  She aimed a stinging hex at the tentacle and then pulled on Felinae's arm again, trying to free her. 

The force of being pulled unexpectedly was enough to make Hexy nauseated. And this was not the place to be nauseated. There was the splash in the stagnant bilgewater where Canidae had fallen. Then she was up and grabbed Hexy by the wrist of her non-dominant hand.

Hexy felt like throwing up. She felt like her wrist would snap. How could she be caught unaware like this? Dueling Club victories and skimming ahead of the class in defense had given her the bloated expectation that she would have the reflexes to respond in a critically dangerous situation. And now her wand arm was pinned in a useless position.

There was a jet of red light. Stinging Hex, said the back of her mind. It hit her organic restraints and she fell from the slackened grip. Splash, just like Canidae.

She was sore all over and filthy. A competent person would have fired off a spell or remembered which pouch around her waist had just the tool needed to fight. She didn't want to be here anymore but it would take such an effort to stand.

"It--" And that's when the two Gwyllion Fae members were accosted by large purple tentacles. Tentacles that felt like nylon tubes filled with jelly. Without suckers.[1]

This was no longer an inquisitive grope. This time Hexy was dragged by her feet further into the grotesque jungle of oddities that had planted itself in the basement of Hogwarts. Being pulled further in felt like the anti-thesis to a shower as she was dragged.

Then she was upside down. The tentacle was wrapped tight around her middle so her clothes didn't fall over her head. Now she smelled the full stench of the place, this was the epicenter of the stinkiness. Below her something filthy brown bubbled in a giant vat. A gravy boat? No, a bathtub.

She tried to look at the surroundings. But there was only one other attention drawing feature beyond the overflowing tub bellow. Staring at her was a giant eyeball. A giant, cross lidded, bloodshot, vein-throbbing eyeball at the end of a stalk, purple like the tentacles that had both of the fourth years dangling.

And there was a voice. "Where..." the voice came from everywhere and nowhere. It couldn't possibly be coming from the eye? "...is the spotted one?" The eyeball twitched between Hexy and Canidae.

1.	Pre-cleared