May 23rd, 2003
Salem Witches Institute of Magic



“Stacey! Becca! Hurry it up!”

A storm had blown into Salem’s Peak, a sea spray faded as it made its way inland. A black mass of charged electrolytes, ripe with lightning. Storm season was always big around the magical village and school. Not only for the highly magical atmosphere but Salem Witches Institute of Magic was known for progressive research into weather manipulation. And late spring often had a release for the most volatile of weather.

From afar, it looked like a group of five younger students were marching with an encumbered load. They were three and fourth years, except for the leader: Anadotti Squiggs, a sixth year about as short as her underlings. You could recognize her by her long, knee length raven hair plus the fact that she was in the lead and wasn’t carrying anything heavy. Trailing behind were two girls, Stacey and Becca, carrying a long apparatus that looked like a television aerial. The aerial was tilted at a sharp angle, owning to Stacey being the shortest girl and the fourth year Becca even towering over Anadotti. Then there was a stout blond, Annette, carrying a loaded cauldron. Right behind the leader was a stick-like rat-faced girl with huge glasses, Donna. Her bag was stuffed with papers, other instruments for the ritual the group was about to attempt and two bottles of a neon blue liquid.

“How much further?” whined Annette, struggling to not spill the contents of the cauldron. “We’re really far from the school. I don’t think it’s safe.”

“Shut up!” said Dotty. She snapped her fingers. “Donna, Blue Toad!”

Donna fished a half drunk bottle out of her overstuffed bag. Only Mistress Anadotti, being the leader that actually knew what they were doing, got to drink Blue Toad whenever she wanted. The rest of the girls were lucky to get a shot.

”Annette has a point, Dotty,” Becca said. “We can’t go too much farther. We can’t be out all night or we won’t make it to class in the morning.”

”Who cares about class in the morning?” said Donna, further cementing her status as Witch #2. ”If I hear Ms. Valdaine harp on me one more time of not getting my chemical equilibrium homework balanced, I’ll use the Babel Curse on her.”

”The Babel Curse?” shrieked Stacey, plodding under most of the weight of the aerial. ”You wouldn’t! Not on a teacher, I mean. It was funny on that chipmunk, and that moron Tim Tomlinson, but if you do that to Miss Valdaine she won’t be able to teach!”

”That’s the bonus of it! They’ll have to cancel class and we’ll get an open morning!”

”Donna has a point,” said Annette. ”I have Transmutation after lunch, I wouldn’t mind a rest after eating before Potions. Transmutation always makes me nervous and then when the smell hits me in Potions I get nauseated.”

“You girls realize that tomorrow is Saturday…” Dotty let that last point linger into their minds. Anyone that got tired of school as easily as she did had amazing orientation for the days of the week. “So we can be as late as we want and sleep in bed all day tomorrow if we want, they can’t tell us what we should be doing on the weekends!”

”Right,” said Donna.

”I still have Quodpot practice in the morning,” said Becca.

“Will you knock it off?” Dotty drained the last of the Blue Toad before adding “besides, Ms. Valdaine is kinda cool. For a teach.”

”You like her?!” Donna was stunned, and wondering exactly how to pander to Mistress Anadotti’s change of mood.

“I said she’s ‘kinda’ cool,  jeep! She turns into that grizzly. Being a giant bear would be awesome.”

”It must be painful, though,” said Becca.

“You would be a giraffe!” said Dotty. “A freakin’ tall giraffe that bangs its head on the ceiling!”

”Hey, the dorm was being renovated! I can’t help being the tallest in my quad!”

Stacey stopped moving. ”Maybe we should go back, we could get in trouble.”

“So?” said Dotty. “Of course we could get in trouble, there’s all those stupid rules. What makes this different from meeting in the Abandoned Cellar under the stairs?”

”At least we were inside. But we must be past the boundaries of the school grounds. If the Headmaster caught us—”

“Shut up! Don’t say any more!”

The fear of the Salem’s head was already spreading through the ranks, it came up at least once a coven meeting. ”Headmaster LeB—”

“Don’t say his name!” Dotty commanded. “I’ve thought it out, that’s how it works. He only shows up if you say his name or think about it.”

”But I’m thinking about it right now!” shrieked Annette.

“Stop thinking about it, you lump! Nobody think!”

”He doesn’t need to come after us, there’s that giant gator of his,” said Becca.

”Stupid head!” said Donna. ”It’s just a piece of taxidermy! It doesn’t do anything!”

“Don’t talk about that either!” said Dotty. “I’ve seen it move.”

”Err, right mistress,” said Donna, backpedalling.

The squabbling was interrupted by a downpour of rain that caught the girls by surprise. They shivered, nearly dropping their loads.

”I’m cold!” said Annette, placing the cauldron on the ground.

“Cover that schpit up!” Dotty gestured to the pot. “The rain’ll dilute it and then it’ll be useless!”

Annette and Donna rushed to cover the cauldron. Behind them Stacey stumbled, her end of the aerial crashing to the ground.

“What the frock?! You bunch of butterfingered monkeys! Do you know how long it took to get that thing off the Meteorological Tower? Don’t break it!”

”What’ll happen?” Stacey sounded exceptionally worried.

“I’ll hex you with diarrhea like you wouldn’t believe,” Dotty said, to cover up the fact that she had no clue what to do to fix the aerial should it bust. “Alright you pansies, set it up right there by the cliff.”

Dodging the rain, the party clustered by the clearest and highest edge of the cliff. The girls got into place as Dotty had instructed them the weeks before hand. While they worked Dotty stood to the side to bark orders, lighting a cigarette using her wand.

“Donna, the jar.” The ratty girl, after casting her glasses impervious to the rain, fished a large glass jar out of her bag, the size of an office garbage can. “Set up the aerial in it. Annette, pour in the potion.” The circumference of the aerial filled most of the jar. The potion filled up quicker than Annette could react to and the stuff spilled off the sides.

”My shoes! Damnit Annette!” Becca received the brunt of the splash, her shoes bleached white and started smoking.

“Sorry!” came the feeble apology.

“Jeepers, Annette, that took two weeks to brew!” This was going to be impossible with these fools at the helm. “Donna, where are my notes?”

The loyal wretch arrived with a mass of parchments and a Lumos so Mistress Anadotti could read. Unfortunately the splattering rain caused the ink to blur.

Dotty was in a rage. “I thought I told you to make the sheets Impervious!”

”Sorry Mistress, but I thought you did? You are the better spellcaster.”

“I can’t be bothered to fix my own notes during Siesta Time, that’s your job. Annette, get over here and fix it, you’re always spilling liquid parchment on your essays.”

Annette look mortified. ”Um…I can’t, Dotty, I forgot my wand.”

“What?!” The cigarette fell from Dotty’s mouth. “What kind of idiot forgets to keep their wand on them at all times??”

”I didn’t think we would be gone that long.”

Dotty snorted with indignation. This was supposed to be a simple venture, catch a lightning bolt in a jar of special potion that they could later turn into a never ending supply of electricity to electrocute their enemies. She had a list, from that know-it-all “Flan-Flan” Breckinridge to Tim Tomlinson and that utter b-witch princess Ophelia Osborne, which could do with a good fry up. Teach them to call her a “smelly easy female hobo” in words to that effect.

She surveyed the shoddy work of the evening. “The aerial’s too short. It needs to get higher. Engorgio!”

The aerial began to stretch upwards, leaning heavily towards Stacey, bracing the pole on the edge of the cliff.

Stacey looked scared, the giant beam of metal growing above her. ”Dotty? I don’t think I can hold it much longer…”

”Let me switch with her, Dotty,” said Becca. ”I’m the stronger one.”

“No! Stay put and hold it steady!” Dotty was cross. “Use that upper body strength Becca!”

”It’s too wet, it’s slipping!”

“Girls, help them!” Donna and Annette rushed to help, although Annette slipped and bumped into the aerial. Stacey was pitched backwards, her feet still on the cliff edge but clinging to the aerial for dear life.

”Help!”

”Mistress, the counter spell!”

“Um, um,” Dotty’s mind spinning out of control on adrenaline, she’d never imagined everything going wrong like this. Her mind was frozen, she couldn’t think of the right spell to use. One came to her.

“C-Confringo!”

And that was the last domino in the domino run of doom. The aerial exploded and the top half and Stacey disappeared from the edge of the cliff.

Every girl ran to the edge. ”STACEY!”

“Stacey! Answer us!” But there was no sound from the darkness below. Lightning did flash in the sky, taunting the coven’s original intent. The light did not illuminate the depths.

”What did you do, Dotty?!” Becca asked, thunderstruck.

“I-I-I just wanted to get rid of it!" She stammered. "I didn’t want it to crush Stacey!”

”Why doesn’t she answer?” asked Annette.

”She’ll be fine,” Donna said, although she didn’t sound reassured. ”They thought my brother was a squib and he was a cliff diver, but his magic came through when he missed once.”

”But Stacey isn’t a cliff diver!”

”The point is that she’s a witch,” said Becca. ”But she could still be injured, we need to get down there.”

“There!” Dotty pointed to a narrow ledge that split downwards. The coven climbed down the cliff, Becca, Dotty, Donna and Annette. The climbing became slipping, the rain washing the dirt into a mudslide. Becca kept her balance but the other girls landed rough on the gully rocks.

”Ow! My knees,” said Annette.

“Suck it up,” said Dotty. It was even darker down here, hard to see. Rain splattered her face. “Becca! Did you find Stacey yet?” There wasn’t a reply but she saw the taller figure several feet off.

The girls climbed to their feet and when they got closer to Becca she turned around, stone faced. Her voice was empty. ”Her head…it hit a rock. I don’t feel a pulse.”

The collapse in each of the girls was immediate. Becca continued to stand there. Annette broke down, her sobs adding to the wet of her clothes from rain. Donna refused to believe it until she stepped over to look at Stacey’s body, then she stepped away to retch.

”What are we going to do?” Annette cried.

”We’ll…I could carry her back,” Becca offered.

”No, let’s just get back to campus.” Donna wiped her mouth with the back of a sleeve. She started to climb up the muddy trail.

”You mean leave her?” Becca asked. ”You’re despicable!”

”Not leave her,” Donna tried to explain. ”Let’s just…get back to school and in the morning we’ll say Stacey ran off last night and we don’t know why. Then they’ll find her.”

"Her body is stuck under the other end of the aerial, it'll be obvious that she couldn't have dragged out this far without help!"

"So hide it."

"Where?!"

”What should we do, Dotty?” Annette asked. Dysfunctional coven or not, the girls always looked to Anadotti to resolve disputes.

Dotty had been silent, thinking. She stepped up to look at Stacey’s fallen form under the broken aerial. When she turned back to look at her coven there was a smile not at all appropriate to the situation on her face.

“Change of plans, girls. Instead of catching a lightning bolt, let’s make a zombie!”

They were mortified, even Donna. ”What?!"

“It’ll be perfect! I’ve looked into it, it’s always best to do fresh after the kill. It’ll be the five of us again, Stacey as our zombie.”

Annette screamed. Becca tried to argue. ”True resurrection isn’t possible, Dotty! You can’t bring Stacey back, it’ll be just as bad as killing her!”

“She’s already dead, why not try? When’s the next time any of us will get a chance to try this again? Come on, it’ll be cool! Someone go up for the stuff.”

The other girls ran, no sign that they were going to comply any more. Donna stood there with a look of revulsion and horror on her face. It had been cool, hanging out Anadotti, breaking rules, and talking about doing Dark stuff. But it had been talk, Donna never imagined that actual death would be the result of their activities.

“Come on Donna, go get the stuff.”

Donna backed up, stumbled, and then spun around to flee with Becca and Annette.

“Fine!” Dotty yelled after them. “Pansies! I’ll do it myself!”

She crouched over Stacey’s body, the new obsession to do something absolutely wicked. There was a certain spell, she thought she could recall it. She muttered to herself there, over her dead friend, in the rain under the cliff.

---

Becca, Donna and Annette ran back towards the school at remarkable pace, especially for Annette. The trip has been silent by some unsaid agreement not to talk until they were far away from Anadotti and Stacey. Their minds reeled, the shock of the traumatic event still fresh. Becca spoke first.

“We’ll have to tell someone, Donna. What Dotty’s doing.”

“That’ll implicate us!” Donna replied. “Just, let’s just sneak back into our dorms and pretend the whole thing’s a nightmare.”

“I want it to just be a horrible dream,” Annette said.

“It won’t because it’s real! It’s happening! Whether Dotty wanted Stacey dead or not, she’ll do worse trying to revive Stacey. I’m telling a teacher!”

“No!” Donna anchored herself to Becca’s arm. A final attempt to save her own skin, all loyalty to Dotty had been flushed away with the falling rain. “You can’t!”

“I’m not going let anything happen to Stacey!” said Becca.

Annette cried out, a banshee-like wail, she just wanted this to be over. At the corner of the campus, the girls were making enough racket to wake anybody least of all the alert staff or Hall Monitor on patrol.

“She’s gone! We didn’t mean it! It was an accident!”

Donna made to jump Annette to silence her but Becca held her back. That new age coven of Salem witches, delinquents experimenting with the worst magic had to offer, was no more.

Sebastian trod cautiously through the darkened passageways that made up the Salem Witches Institute of Magic. After nearly six years teaching there, Sebastian could have negotiated the campus with his eyes closed, which was useful, because using light-emiting spells such as lumos was usually frowned upon until absolutely necessary. Any students who had decided to go for a nighttime stroll would see the light from the wand and have ample time to flee. Relying on ones own vision was much better for this task, Headmaster LeBeau had informed him when going through Sebastian's various jobs as a teacher at Salem.

Regardless, he still clasped his wand in his left hand, the spell at a forefront on his mind. Lumos was one of the first spells Sebastian had learnt at Hogwarts, and over the years he had perfected it to a point where he could cast it silently alongside its counterpart. He had even taken the time to make his own alternative version which shone pale blue rather than the traditional white. He had learnt from a few talks by theatre directors in Stratford that blue lighting was used offstage because it did not disrupt the audience, and thus something he had made sure to intergrate with his lumos spells while up late and studying for his NEWTs back at school.

“No! You can’t!”

“I’m not going let anything happen to Stacey!”

The sudden voices cut through the night air like a hot knife through butter. Catching him by surprise, Sebastian instinctively gave his wand a wave and, in a split second, the tip was lit with blue light which flooded the passage in a turquoize wash. Scanning the corridor in front of his, he couldn't see anyone, but the distinctly female calls seemed to be coming from a direction not far from Sebastian's current location. Holding his wand to his side, he quickly set off in the direction of the hollering.

A few short corridors later, and Sebastian rounded another corner, almost running into the three girls heading in his direction. Veering sharply to avoid them, he fell against the wall, his wand clattering to the floor with a bump and his glasses falling crooked on his face. Groaning to himself slightly, he reached up to adjust his spectacles before pushing himself off the wall and back to his feet. The light from the wand still illuminated the room, and as he reached down to pick it up, he took in the trio in front of him.

Sebastian recognised them all from his Charms classes, and had seen them around the campus at times with Anadotti Squiggs and a first year called Stacey. The five seemed to have developed a small clique, all looking up to the older Anadotti. "Good evening Rebecca, Donna, Annette." Sebastian looked at each in turn, his wand now back in his hand. "What are you three doing up at this hour, yelling loud enough to wake the statues?" It was only at this point that Sebastian noticed the expressions on their faces - it was almost fear, mixed with blind panic. "Is everything... alright?"

Professor Cadmon was accosted by a sea of sound, everyone trying to talk at once.

"Professor Cadmon! - Dotty she - we didn't mean to - it was all her fault - Stacey - we were at - I bumped into her, I didn't mean to - the cliff, too close to the edge - she'd Imperiused us! Duped I tell you - she fell - we needed to tell someone - I should have called for Headmaster LeBeau - mad drunken rage! - and then she fell - there was an earthquake and the cliff snapped - I wanted to carry her back but Dotty - she's gone! - then there was a zombie - but I told her you can't resurrect - we're all minors! Gullible impressionable kids, it's not our fault!"

---

"Why isn't the damn spell working?" Anadotti fumed.

She'd gone back up for the backpack of materials Donna had left behind. It was even slipperier on the way back down, Dotty was splattered with mud all over her clothes, hair and face. This should have been easy. It looked like easy magic when read from a book, a set of spells and steps. Was she getting them out of order or just mispronouncing the words? She tore through pages of notes, copied or in some cases ripped from library books. The rain turned them to tissue paper and her mud stained fingers further smudged the pages, making the task an exercise in comprehended unintelligible writing.

It would be really cool, Dotty thought to herself. Stacey would be an even better minion. Do whatever Dotty wanted, immune to pain and most spells. That would scare the crap out of Ophelia Osborne if Stacey crept into her dorm, unstoppable in intent.

The air was chilling, Dotty's rapid breaths coming out as fog scattered by the rain. Her skin was numb from the cold, her teeth chattered. Another attempt at a spell, her chattering teeth mincing the syllables of the incantation. More failure. She kicked the broken aerial in frustration then swore loudly, her foot almost shattered from the impact.

She wanted more Blue Toad, but the remaining bottle from Donna's bag had broken from the fall down the ravine, the other junk inside was tinted blue. Dotty licked what she could from the neck, just a few drops. The neck was flung elsewhere. Nothing else important in the bag, so Dotty used her wand to set the bag on fire, which took to roaring despite the rain because of the Blue Toad acting as accelerant. That would warm her up.

With proper light to see what she was doing, Dotty crouched back over Stacey's form, shuffling her zombification notes. The scent of burning tobacco reached her nostrils.

Damn it all! She'd forgotten about the cigarettes! Dotty scrambled over to the burning bag, magical flames she couldn't think of the counter spell to. With much batting with her hand into the painful flames, like a cat with a ball of string with catnip rolled up inside, Dotty got the burnt pack of cigarettes fished out. A fruitless toil, as the remaining sticks were spent. That joined the broken bottle elsewhere.

She was going to get this to work...eventually...

Sebastian's eyes darted from one girl to the other as the three voices overlapped one another, making it increasingly hard to make out what they were saying. Fortunately, his time teaching excitable first years meant that he, like most teachers, had developed a knack for picking out individual voices. This didn't mean, however, that what they were saying made any more sense to Sebastian.

"Gullible impressionable kids, it's not our fault!"

Seeing this as a good place to try calm the trio, Sebastian held his hands up in front of them, signalling silence in the same way as he did in his lessons. "Quiet, please, all of you!" His voice was raised, though not yelling. "One at a time." Pausing for a moment to let his words sink in, Sebastian then turned to Rebecca. Of the three, Sebastian guessed that she was the one most likely to give him a calm answer.

"Rebecca, take a deep breath," his eyes instinctively glanced to Donna and Annette as he said this, as if telling them to do likewise, "and tell me exactly what happened." There were a few choice phrases in the girl's ramblings which he wanted covered. "Who is Stacey? Who fell, and what do you mean by resurrect?" As Sebastian said them out loud himself, however, the words sank in like a rock.

"And hurry."

Becca did as she was told, shooting Donna a look while Annette kept sobbing in the background. "Anadotti led us over to the gully. We were just trying this advanced magic about harnessing lightning, when Stacey--third year, my dorm--she fell over the edge! It was an accident but, but...Dotty thinks she can turn Stacey into a zombie!"

The last words came out very quickly. "Please please alert the headmaster, Mr. Cadmon! We tried calling for him earlier!"

---

For the umpteenth time, Anadotti slipped into the gully mud after tripping over a rock moving from Stacey to her other gear. "Bloody Tea and Biscuits!" she screamed, having moved onto 'British' swears.

"Anadotti led us over to the gully. We were just trying this advanced magic about harnessing lightning, when Stacey--third year, my dorm--she fell over the edge! It was an accident but, but...Dotty thinks she can turn Stacey into a zombie!"

As Rebecca told Sebastian the horrifying tale, the professor's eyes gradually widened. If Rebecca was telling the truth, then things would need to be acted on fast. At first, however, he didn't believe it, but as he saw the expression on all three of their faces, and heard the terrified tone in Rebecca's voice, he knew that she was telling the truth. He wished that they weren't, he really wished they weren't...

"Please please alert the headmaster, Mr. Cadmon! We tried calling for him earlier!"

Nodding, Sebastian glanced around, trying to get his bearings. Finally figuring out in which direction he needed to take the three girls, he turned back to them. "OK, Rebecca, Donna, Annette; follow me. Everything's going to be alright, but we do need to locate Headmaster LeBeau immediately." Though he did his best to suppress it, he couldn't help but let a small twinge of fear claw its way into his voice. Turning around to face back down the hallway, Sebastian held his wand a little in front of him, letting the light illuminate both the corridor and the group.

He moved at a swift pace, glancing behind him occasionally to ensure that the three girls were still with him. Fortunately, the headmaster's office was located nearby, and it didn't take long for them to find themselves standing in front of Ferreole LeBeau's quarters. Giving the trio of students one last look, he began rapping his knuckles on the door, calling to alert the headmaster as he did.

"Headmaster LeBeau? Headmaster LeBeau? It's Professor Cadmon. Please open the door, it's urgent! Headmaster LeBeau?!"

He wondered what he was going to say, how he was going to explain the situation to the headmaster. This was something one simple didn't prepare for, mostly because it was something one never expected to have to deal with while teaching. Salem was a place of learning, a place where students were supposed to be safe from harm. To think that a student could... No, Sebastian told himself, he needed to keep focused on the now, and right now they needed to speak with the headmaster.