Chapter Text
Ominous October 2025!!
Trick of Treat Prompts
Team Mystic
Day 1. The couple’s shadow stops mimicking their movements and begins to move on its own.
Bingo Card Moonlight
Square: I2 Sentiment Castle
Square: I4 FiendFyre
Word count: 1300
“Are we sure this is the right place, Hermione?”
Harriette looked around the castle. It looked darker than she'd imagined a Muggle castle to be.
Hermione checked the forms again.
“Yes. A couple reported here that their shadows had gone loose and were not reflecting them anymore, but rather like malevolent ghosts.”
Harry gasped. “What? That's what the report said? Why didn't you say that from the beginning!”
Her friend frowned. “I'm pretty sure I did.”
“No, you didn't! You said there were reports of the supernatural around this castle! Nothing else.”
“You didn't ask!”
“I'm dating a ghost! You didn't think to inform me about something like this in detail! I know I'm on rotation in your department only, but honestly!”
Hermione looked to the ground. “I'm sorry Harriette. It slipped my mind. Usually everyone reads the file. It didn't occur to me that you might not have.”
Harry shook her head. “Hermione, we need to leave right now.”
“What? We can't leave, we have to figure out what's happening here and report back.”
“We don't have to figure out anything. I know precisely what's happening and we need to go.”
“Is this about Peeves? Is he connected to this? Harry, I know you're SOMEHOW dating this poltergeist but this isn't a way for you to excuse him just revealing magic to Muggles.”
“This is older than magic, Hermione and Muggles will be fine. We shall not if we don't go away.”
“Fine.” The older girl held out her hand and together they turned towards the door. The last Muggle had closed it just a few seconds before.
A soft breeze past them. The door was locked. The lights started flickering like crazy. Upon the windows, they could see the trees swaying with the force of a wind that hadn't been there minutes earlier.
“Maaagic,” hundreds of voices resounded around them, giggling in delight.
“Too late,” Harry whispered.
“Too late for what?” Hermione questioned, wand in hand.
“I don't have time to explain in detail. We need to try and get out of here. The way Peeves explained it to me was quite elaborate, but the gist is, Muggles will live if they lose their shadows in this castle, but we won't. It will feed from them onto us, into our magic. It's a sentient castle filled with hundreds if not thousands of spirits. Muggles wouldn't notice them. But we would. The only way to get out of here is to set it on fire. Fiendfyre.”
“None of us are particularly good at it,” Hermione whispered.
“I know. I have better control of it though. You have to get out of here. It will take but a minute to burn through that door but in thirty seconds they will realise that I'm not going to stop and they will come at me. You need to get to Hogwarts. You need to get Peeves here.”
“What if he's not there?”
“Then, come back with someone with great fire control.”
“I feel I should be the one staying.”
“I have a greater chance at controlling it better and you know it.”
“Maybe you can negotiate, being his girlfriend and all.”
Harriette smiled sadly at her friend. “If only it worked like that.”
The wind was picking up inside too and they could see the shadows moving towards them.
“Now!” Harry shouted, casting the spell.
Through the fire, Hermione jumped and Apparated away, leaving Harry to deal with it. She could feel the ghosts clawing at her, she could sense the castle coming alive and trying to grasp at her magic, feeding from it.
The worst thing of it all, was that the power surging through, the pure evil trying to kill her originated from the very man- the very ghost she'd fallen in love with.
She should have recognised the castle sooner... she should have recognised the castle that Peeves had warned her to stay away from because it would surely kill her….
It was his pride and glory and she had put a hole into it to save her friend. Frankly, they'd been dating just short of six months and while they'd been friends for years, she didn't know how exactly he'd react to this. Would he want to save her? He had killed the Dark Lord for her…
Harriette shook her head. She had to stay focused. The fire couldn't spread to the Muggle areas around.
The Castle moved up the floor and she fell straight on her knees, wincing from pain. The walls were getting closer too, and the floor was rising spikes. The ghosts were still trying to break her shadow. That's how he found her.
……..
Hermione jumped through the flames and Apparated straight onto Hogwarts entrance hall, immensely grateful for Minerva's insistence of her having privileges to Apparate within the castle.
“Peeves! Peeves!”
“Granger!” A delight cackle was heard and sure enough the poltergeist was floating next to her. “Coming for some mischief?”
“Harriette- castle -trouble- shadows,” she managed to spit out.
“What?”
“We were investigating this report… shadows behaving we-”
Peeves disappeared, not waiting for her to finish. Hermione Apparated to the Ministry to get back up.
….
In all his many years of existence Peeves had never been more afraid. If Harry was indeed in his castle…if the castle hurt her or worse if it killed her… He didn't know how he could live with himself. He was immortal so that posed an issue.
The flames were well contained, he noted as he arrived. With a flick of his hands, the castle and ghosts stopped in their tracks. He stopped the fire too and rushing in, he found her barely conscious, but alive. Thankfully, her shadow was still intact.
“Harriette-”
She opened one eye at him. “I blew a hole through your castle. I could feel it's yours. The power…”
He chuckled. “I'd have blown a bigger hole in it if something happened to you.”
“Just a bit of a graze,” she murmured and he realised her entire body was covered in blood.
“Love, I'll take you to the hospital.”
“No!”
“Madam Pomphrey?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. Come on, please.”
…..
Harriette woke up in the hospital wing to a plethora of gift baskets and one poltergeist mourning over her. If she wouldn't have seen it she wouldn't have believed that ghosts could cry. He wasn't looking like his usual goofy self but rather like the powerful ghost spirit she'd gotten used to.
“I didn't know you could cry,” she whispered. Her throat felt so dry.
“Harry,” he murmured. “I didn't know I could cry anymore either. But the fear of losing you…I never saw fear as something terrible until your life was on the line.”
“I think I'm fine…my shadow…”
“It's intact. They will all apologise to you later. I should apologise too. I've given instructions everywhere to not harm you…just now…I should have done it earlier.”
She smiled. “It's not the castle's fault. Nor yours.”
“How long was I out?”
“Three days,” he managed. “I was afraid you'd never wake up. That one of the ghosts had lied, that somehow they'd hurt you. I was going to torture them to find out but I didn't want to leave you and then I was afraid I'd be hurting you if I stayed without feeding and then I was afraid you'd die if I wasn't here so I've just been…”
“Shhh,” she whispered and grasped his hand. “Come sit with me.”
“But-”
“Come sit with me.”
He got into bed with her, and she placed her head on his shoulder.
“I'm ok.”
“You're ok,” he murmured as if he couldn't believe it.
“I was thinking we could go mushroom picking again,” she added.
He chuckled softly. “Anything you want.”
“Tonight?”
“Anytime you want, love.”