[mp] hallow's eve in hogsmeade

"No, no, no, I'll protect you if anything jumps out at you," Danny insisted with emphasis on the fact that she would be the scaredy cat. Definitely not him. It was another Halloween festival at Hogsmeade and of course Danny had wanted to floo in just for the event. He loved Halloween, maybe even more than celebrating half-Christmas with Jere, and that was saying something.  The spookiness of it all, jack-o-lanterns grinning back at him from inside shop windows, giant black spiders charmed to crawl over rooftops and drop every so often on unsuspecting victims, and the suspense of being scared to death at any moment. He lived for this kind of fun!!

He was even dressed to the nines in his best costume. He was wearing a huge triangle shaped costume that he had chosen specifically because he knew Freya would love it.. or be jealous of it. He was a giant piece of pizza, complete with a flat pepperoni shaped hat covering his dirty blonde hair. It was a little awkward going through doorways, having to shimmy sideways and all, but what was the point of Halloween if you couldn't look like a slice of God's favorite food?

The street was filled with people, some in costume, some in not, but the atmosphere was festive. Shops decorated and selling themed food and drink, the haunted house glimmering darkly in the distance. Danny tugged on Freya's arm, excited to get there. "Come on, it won't be that scary. I heard only one first year fainted from fright," he said with a grin, laughing at his joke and waggling his brows trying to antagonize her.

@Freya Trickett

“You don’t have to play tough with me, Willy,” Freya said, patting a reassuring hand on Danny’s chest. Or well, she was aiming for his chest, but it was a soft, material pepperoni her palm landed on. “You know I’ll keep you safe.” The blonde held up her fists, indicating she was ready to fight off a giant spider or whatever it was that she was protecting him from. In her costume though, Freya Trickett looked anything but tough.

She’d debated about whether or not to dress up, but in the end her fun-loving nature would not have let her attend a halloween event in casual clothes. She would have been far too jealous of everyone else’s costumes once she arrived – she just knew it. So she’d opted for something relatively simple – a red riding hood costume (with added fake blood, of course). Her dress was pretty short, but it had long sleeves and wasn’t low cut at all. Her boots were long. Her red cloak and blonde hair fluttered behind her as Danny dragged her through the crowd.

She let him pull on her arm, and she did her best not to run into any of the small students who were out tonight. “Aww look at the little inferi…” Freya laughed, pointing out a few little kids (first years?) who were dressed as the dead. Naturally, the blonde was reminded of seeing real inferi in her seventh year, but she did her best to push those thoughts aside, and for the most part she was successful. Halloween – and Halloween with this particular Halloween partner – had a kind of infectious festive air that made these things more simple.

"So this is it huh?" she asked as they approached the house. It didn't look all that spooky, but Freya couldn't help but laugh – a mix of nerves and excitement – as they came up to the front door.

"I'm not playing tough, I am tough. Toughest pizza around!" he defended his honor, calling out loudly and thumping his chest with one hand, sending Tricky a grin as a group of younger girls giggled at his antics and skittered away. Just like their old school days, making a fool of himself in front of an audience and loving it. Still, there was some appeal to Tricky protecting him. He glanced over at her, glancing at her little red riding hood costume again and then laughing. It didn't look like she would hurt a hornworm. "What happens when the big bad wolf comes to get you?" he asked with a smirk.

The young students in their costumes were cute, but just reminded him of their own Hogwarts days. "Remember when me and Jere went as howlers and just kept yelling insults at everyone?" he laughed at the memory and felt a twinge of... sadness? He missed those simple days of trying to get up on time for class and stuffing his face full of food. Well, it wasn't much different than now except trying to get to the Ministry instead of class, but things seemed weightier somehow, more complicated. For someone who tried to be as carefree as possible, even Danny missed the freedom of his youth.

The reminiscing mood didn't last long for him though. The haunted house loomed in front of them and he was excited all over again. "This is it!" he repeated, excited and eager to go in. "Of course, you can wait out here if you're too afraid, Tricky," he taunted, knowing he would never actually let her live that down. Besides who was he supposed to cling to inside while pretending like he was protecting instead?

Freya gave him a look. “Don’t I skin it or something?” she said, some petulance in her voice as she answered his question with a more literal answer than his smirk and that devilish look in his eye were asking for. “Have you even read the story?” Freya flicked some hair over one shoulder dramatically, playing haughty. It didn’t last long, though, and soon she was laughing again.

“What was that – third year?” she asked, smiling a bit at the memory. Of course, at the time she hadn’t been smiling – if she recalled it correctly, Danny had called her fat right to her face. Thank Merlin for the healing powers of time, though. Nowadays, it was just a distant, cute memory.

“Ladies first I guess,” the blonde said, reaching for the handle. She was still grinning, but again, it was a blend of excitement and nerves. Freya was playing tough and all, but they both knew she’d be screaming at the first jump scare. “Coming?” she asked, stepping inside. “Not so bad so far…” It was just a long hallway, with several doors. Simple. The front door slammed automatically behind them and Freya jumped, then shot Danny and his stupid pizza costume another wide grin and burst out laughing.

"What?" Danny asked in confusion. "Skin what?" He gave her the patented Willbond 'I have no clue what you're talking about' look that was more common than the 'I actually know what you're talking about look'. But he laughed anyway at her flicking her hair over her shoulder with sass. "There's a book?" he asked with a bright grin, shameless. Her laugh spurred his on and soon the moment was past.

"Second? I dunno," he guessed with a shrug. At the time, the years had been so distinct, every day felt like an eon, each year like a century. But now it felt like everything had been squashed in together, the years and memories and laughs and pranks all overlapping into something more compact than it had felt before, more distant. He almost didn't like it, but he was too much of a go with the flow kind of guy.

Ladies first? He immediately stepped forward as she reached for the handle and then sent her a wide smile. "Just kidding," he said as he waved an arm for her to go first. Now that her back was turned, he glanced around, sucked in a steadying breath, and then was quick to follow. He wasn't exactly scared, but the anticipation was already killing him. He did kind of like it though at the same time!

Danny stuck close to her (safety in numbers right?), his hand hovering against her back as they stepped inside and walked forward. The door slamming behind him made him jump and bump into Freya, holding the tops of her arms to steady her as if she had stumbled into him. He grinned at her laugh and just nodded. "C'mon, this way," he said nodding further down the hallway. As they approached the first door, Danny went into ninja action mode, his hands out like in front of him, ready to karate-chop anything that burst out at him, but just as he was turning to Freya to say "Don't worry, I got it covered," the door opened swiftly and two ghostly figures burst through the doorway cackling loudly, circling them for a moment before sweeping away through the next wall, waiting for the next victims.

He had tried to karate-chop them in a ill-conceived defense, but as soon as they were gone, he glanced back at Freya. "You good?"

Freya screamed when the ghosties appeared. It still made her jump even though she’d seen a hundred ghosts pop in and out of walls at Hogwarts and elsewhere; she thought it had something to do with the fact that she was actively anticipating being scared. She immediately burst out laughing, though, covering her face with her hands as she nodded at her friend. “We’re Gryffindors, right?” she asked. She was still giggling between words, though. “House of the brave! Totally untouchable!”

She’d referred to their house designation in the present rather than in the past out of habit, but it was likely it had something to do with them being back at Hogsmeade again. Hogwards was just up the road! Freya had felt a touch weird coming here at first, like she was crashing the kids’ party or something, but of course it was nothing but fun. Jeremy should have been here tonight, she thought, but he was with his girlfriend instead. She’d worried that things might be weird with just the two of them here – empty or something – but so far it hadn’t been weird at all.

“Can you even fit through here?” Freya asked, still grinning as she mustered some courage and pushed the door open the rest of the way properly. It swung inwards, revealing… nothing but darkness. “Uhh if you’re too scared to go into the dark room, Dan, we don’t have to… Y’know, if you’re too freaked out…” She felt like a kid again, on her toes, waiting for the next thing to jump out at her.

Freya screaming and then laughing at every scare made him laugh too, it was automatic, infectious. Even as she covered her face with her hands at the scare, he couldn't stop the smile on his face. "Right! Hearts of lions right here!" he said, calling out loudly, as if taunting the haunted house itself. Not that he was really convincing in that regard considering the next moment he was jumping at a noise that turned out to be nothing. Or at least nothing that he could see.

At her question, he glanced at the door and then back at his costume and had to turn sideways again to get through the doorway, but stopped before he went in, peering into the complete darkness. "I'm not scared," he boasted even as he kept glancing around, hoping his eyes would adjust or something to give him some kind of clue what was in there.

"Besides, there's only one way out now," he said, purposely making his voice all deep and ominous before he grabbed her hand to pull her along as he shuffled sideways through the doorway in a few steps into the darkness.

Again, the door slammed shut behind them and Freya squeal-laughed, feeling high on the adrenaline of it all.

There was a tiny part of her that felt something a little akin to dread; it was the strangely lingering effect of having experienced very high-stress situations in traumatic years at Hogwarts. Freya knew that there was no way Ari could do something like this, for example – they didn’t always talk about it so explicitly, but her brunette friend had some deeper-rooted trauma that Freya was sure would be brought out in scenarios like this. With Danny cracking jokes, and a little bit of mental effort on her part, though, it wasn’t too difficult for Freya to push the feeling down, and away.

The room was almost silent except for their breathing, but there was a strange whispery-slithering noise that seemed to come and go. “Oh my god did you hear that?” she stage-whispered, making sure to cling to his hand as she stayed close to him. Her other hand hovered by her side, ready to draw her wand from where she’d tucked it into her boot. Just in case things got too spooky.

After nothing happened, Freya reached out, searching for the wall. "Aaah! It's slimy," Freya laughed again, retracting her hand and wiping it quickly on Danny's pizza. "Jemmy's gonna be so mad he missed out," she said.

"What? Hear what?" he repeated quickly, sticking his head out as if they would improve his chances of hearing whatever it was. He knew he couldn't be good either way. They had voluntarily entered a haunted house attraction after all. But with Freya clinging to his hand, he felt like he needed to do something to help them get out of this pitch black room.

"They did say we could use Lumos right?" he whispered to her as he pulled his wand out of pizza pocket, but her squeal made him jump. "Slimy? What's--not on the pizza!" he reprimanded her as he felt her hand swipe across his chest and his own hand traced a similar path, grimacing when he felt the slime. "Kind of smells like strawberry jam," he added as much as he didn't want his costume soiled, he almost wanted to taste it. On second thought, why not? He lifted a finger to his mouth and then made a spitting noise a second later. "Nope, not strawberry jam," he concluded.

"We can tell him all about it... if we survive," Danny said on a laugh as he lumosed, lighting up the room only to see giant slimy insect eyes glaring at that from every part of the wall. Just then the walls started to move in on them as well. "Are the walls moving??" he said, speaking the obvious before tugging Freya toward the only exit, a door splatted with what looked like blood. Not a great option usually, but it was their only one at the time.

He forgot to turn sideways as he opened the door so his costume caught on each side of the doorframe but he got himself unstuck and they were into the next room. This one had lights set into the walls, each one illuminating a different statue, all as still as death, but all splattered in blood. There was one single door at the end of the room. "Seems simple enough," he said as he took a cautious step forward

“I don’t think so,” Freya said, but she didn’t protest when he had his wand out. “It’ll be really embarrassing if you die from fright, you know,” she told him thoughtfully. “But don’t worry, I’ll make up an excuse when I tell Jer, like I’ll say you died saving me from a giant spider or…” Freya’s chattering died off slowly.

“Oh nooooo,” she said, her hand covering her mouth again as he lit up all of the creepy crawlies covering the walls. “Oh Danny you didn’t lick that, did you?” she asked with a snort, her fingers curling involuntarily as she cringed at the idea. “Ewww…” She glanced down at the slime she’d left on his pizza chest and bit her lower lip, still smiling.

She laughed as he got stuck in the doorway, but as much as she was grinning, she was all full of nerves too; his wand arm was on the other side of the doorway, so there wasn’t much light in the slime room anymore. Freya “helped” him get through the door with a rough shoulder-barge. She stumbled in after him, slipping her hand casually back into his as the door shut behind them once more.

Freya laughed, feeling a bit more bold now. “Ooh, I don’t like these,” she said, a part of her wanting to grab her wand out too. If she did, though, she knew she’d start blasting stuff as soon as she started freaking out or got too excited, so it was probably better for everyone if she left it where it was.

As Danny took a step forward, the statues shifted, their stony heads turning towards the pair. “Oh my god,” Freya said, a nervy grin reappearing on her face. “Pizza and red versus the creepy statues. What do you think? Should we run?”

He was extra chatty with the suspense and anticipation crawling through him so he interjected one-liners as much as possible like "Make sure to tell him I was brave until the very end" and "Of course I licked it. For science." and "I thought it was supposed to be ladies first" completely neglecting to think about the fact that he had pushed his way into the next room first all on his own.

Freya's laugh echoed around the quiet room and his skin felt itchy as their eyes followed them. It was a good thing she had slipped her hand back into his because he might have just bolted, running through each room without looking back, only stopping to breath once they were safely outside, but he found himself grinning as he slid his gaze towards her.

"Let's see how fast Little Red is," he said just before he started running only to find the door getting further and further away like an illusion and a blast of air shooting towards them each time they passed one of the statues. "What the..." he muttered, squeezing her hand. "What do we do?"

“Oh, okay –” Freya tightened her grip on his hand as they started running, though she privately thought that running while holding hands didn’t make much sense at all. Especially when Danny was already clearly inhibited a bit by the costume he’d ended up choosing. She could see the slime on the edges of his pizza outfit from getting stuck in the door from the corner of her eye; she had no doubt it’d be ruined by the end of the night. She was laughing as she ran, jumpy from imagining the statues grabbing her or something. But then she realised she wasn’t being chased, and her excited fear shifted to confusion.

“At least they’re not moving?” Freya said, slowing to a jog, then a stop. The door was just as far away as it had been at the start. “So… A puzzle?” She asked, confused. She pulled her hand from his so she could pull up her boots, which had slipped a little at the top. She felt to make sure her wand was there, and was comforted by its presence. Straightening up, she put her hands on her hips. “C’mon pizza boy,” she said, “think…”

He clearly needed to tag along with Greg to the gym a bit more considering he was already a bit out of breath just from that short run. Danny frowned in confusion at the door on the other side of the room and tried to take another step closer, but again it looked like it was moving further away again. "I don't get it..." he said dumbly and glanced back at her, watching as she fixed her boots.

Danny almost wished it had been strawberry jam or that he had stashed some real pizza in his fake pizza costume because he was starting to get hungry. Snacks always helped him think better. At Freya's insistence, he nodded and brought his hand up to his chin in his classic 'Danny's thinking' pose. Not much usually came from it but maybe tonight would be different.

"...Nope I got nothing," he announced, almost proudly.

"What if we try to go back through the way we came?" he asked and started to step in that direction but the two statues closest to that door blew gusts of air so he took a step back. "Okkayyy.. so not that way then. What else then?" he asked, glancing around as if the answer would be written on the walls or something. Clearly he wasn't sorted into Ravenclaw for a reason.

“Oh man I really don’t want to die in here,” Freya whined. She was joke-complaining, laughter in between moments of playful sulking. It was a fun way to burn off of some of the tension of being here… In a haunted house. “I mean, death by giant spider is one thing, y’know, but death because we’re too dumb to work out a puzzle made for kids is a totally different thing. D’you know what I mean?” she was chattery and nervy, but she was still having fun.

The blonde brushed some hair behind her ears, then adjusted her cape so it sat properly on her shoulders. It was a little chilly in here – especially with those weird puffs of air blowing from time to time as they passed certain statues. Actually… Freya moved over to one of the statues thoughtfully, cringing a bit as it moved to face her. She tried a few more, until she came to one that was a bit different… “No puff of air from this one!” she declared triumphantly.

"Don't worry we won't die in here," he told her reassuringly and then in the next second he was turning to one of the statue bros. "We won't die in here, right mate?" he asked for confirmation but all he got was a stony gaze back. "Besides, Jere and I made a pact that if one of us dies stupidly, the other will come up with a great cover story so he'll make us look good. No worries."

That still wasn't helping them get out of there.

Danny watched Freya as she played peekaboo with the statues and then got bored and tried again to take a step toward the far-away door, grunting in disappointment when he realized again that it wasn't getting him anymore. "Wha--huh?" he asked as he turned towards her standing in front of a statue. Maybe it's like a secret door or something?" Danny asked as he started feeling up the statue, looking for a lever or a latch or something. "Hope you don't mind," he said politely smiling at the statue that was giving him eyes.

"Oh, there's something he--" he stopped as there was a sudden whoosh in the room and the statue moved aside to reveal a stone staircase leading down, lit up in eerie green lights with a layer of fog covering the bottom of the stairs so you couldn't quite see where it led. He glanced at Freya with a grin. "Ladies first?"