On her re-education efforts, Taylor didn’t target people for being bigots by itself, that was counter productive. Even if she found it distasteful, someone not liking wizards born out of non-magical parents wasn’t something she could realistically change. Her method targeted those who decided to impose that opinion on others. And by now, most of the students had learned to keep their malice to themselves, aside from a few standouts in green, or a few standouts in red.
Gryffindors found it hard to accept that their discrimination and bullying should warrant the curse’s attention.
There was this bleach blond pointy faced boy, a Malfoy, that didn’t seem capable of learning. His favorite words were probably ‘mudblood’ and threatening people with ‘my father something something’. Whenever he opened his mouth, it was to call someone names based on some perceived bloodline status or to brag about how rich daddy was. Bragging about being rich wasn’t something Taylor acted on, but the name calling was. The situation was such that Taylor had pixies trailing him all day long, ready to dunk mud on his head whenever he inevitably spewed his racist bullcrap.
The professors, of course, noticed all of that.
On principle, Taylor avoided spying on professors aside from Snape, but he had attended one staff meeting to discuss the ‘curse’, and the general consensus among the faculty was that this was a student prank, a seventh year perhaps. And because there wasn’t any real injury aside from bruised prides and no school faculty was ever targeted, there was also no urgency to deal with it.
Snape, of course, had been livid during the whole meeting, demanding action and an investigation given that his house was the most affected among the student population. The looks the other professors gave him was something Taylor would cherish for a long time.
The whole thing made the potions master even more annoying to endure in his classes, but school life had become better, not only for her but for others as well, so Taylor thought it was all worth the hassle of enduring Snape’s snapeness.
In the weeks leading up to the Halloween feast, the school descended into a sort of Christmas-gift-about-to-arrive mood, with most of the students barely able to contain their growing excitement and enthusiasm. Chief culprit for that was the now confirmed rumor about the dancing skeletons crew.
It was hard to believe almost two months had passed already. Taylor had been so busy it felt like a blink of an eye. Another blink and it would be Christmas already. Taylor hadn’t talked with Luna about inviting her and her father to Christmas dinner yet, nor did she have any gift for her friend and mum.
She had been wracking her brains trying to think of what she could gift Luna and her mum on Christmas (it was still weeks away but better be prepared), when the idea of weaving clothing from silk metaphorically smacked her on the face.
In the form of dreams.
She’d been dreaming for a week straight about brunette Taylor weaving silk costumes. It would have been very embarrassing if it wasn’t annoying.
Having worked on the silk strips for the tea-party gave Taylor the confidence to work on bigger projects. So, discreetly, Taylor used her bugs to take Luna’s measure, then added a few more inches to everything so she wouldn’t grow out of it too fast. As a basis for the gift, she used what she had in hand: the pink pajamas. Luna would probably enjoy that, wouldn’t she?
That also made Taylor realise she needed silk pajamas as well. So a set turned into two: One pink for Taylor and another silvery for her friend, to match Luna’s eyes.
As for her mum, there wasn’t anyone in the castle that had her exact figure, the closest she could find was professor Vector. Mum’s shirt and scarf wouldn’t be a perfect fit, but it was the intention that counted, right?
There was another interesting thing that was going to happen at the same time as the Halloween feast: Sir Nearly Headless Nicholas Deathday party.
The tea party with the Grey lady had left Taylor with a cautious foot regarding that particular brand of festivities, but it did seem like something she’d enjoy attending at least once. She asked that to her mum in a letter, because Taylor wanted to attend both, but unfortunately she couldn’t be in two places at once — the bugs didn’t count. Mum, aside from the normal questions about how school was, the bullies and incompetent professors and if Taylor was having fun, suggested she bring that up with her friend; maybe Luna would have an opinion.
And so she posed the question to Luna.
“What do you think we should do on Halloween: the feast or the Deathday party?”
They hadn’t been invited to the party, but Taylor reckoned nothing stopped them from just dropping by unannounced. It might seem rude, or maybe the ghosts would like the surprise.
“Partying with the dead seems fun,” Luna said, and Taylor nodded. “but we might not have another chance to dance with skellies and there will be another Deathday party next year.”
That solved that conundrum. Dance with skeletons it was.
With that matter settled, Taylor went back to her normal routine. She had started sneaking pixies into the library at night to read books while the other students were busy elsewhere. It wasn’t easy reading in the dark, it took a fair bit of practice, but she made do. At first, she wanted to learn how to exorcise ghosts to deal with Peeves, but soon she got distracted with the many interesting manuals and parchments and reports and research she found. Then she learned about the restricted section and had tried to take a book from there, but there was some sort of spell protecting the tomes and the pixies had to scarper in panic to avoid discovery.
On top of it all, Taylor kept up with her magical practice. After expelliarmus, she decided that a fourth year charm was something she needed: protego, a shield charm. She hadn’t worked out how to cast that one yet because her alone time to practice was far and few between. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Luna to keep secrets, by this point, Taylor was pretty sure Luna at least suspected something, and that she was trustworthy. It was that she’d made a promise to mum and Taylor wanted to keep it.
So she stole a few minutes here and there to practice higher year charms, nonverbal casting (she could lumos seven out of ten times already) all the while practicing the normal repertoire of basic first year charms. Taking inspiration from her bully register, Taylor used Dum to start a spell compendium. Students, specially those from established magical families, knew a lot of different charms and hexes and curses.
Taylor didn’t have time to learn all of them, she was too busy as it was, but she kept a ledger on any new spell she heard being used in the castle. Along with that, whenever she managed to, she also noted the effect, the words chanted, the wand movement. She felt almost like a proper wizard with her budding grimoire.
And then Halloween arrived.
Students were buzzing and talking and barely able to contain themselves. The great hall had been barred off while preparations were made and Taylor had kept her bugs out of there so as not to spoil the surprise.
Taylor got in her school robes and for once, put on the silly pointy hat, and hand in hand with her bestie, and an even fatter Nap on her head, she dragged Luna toward the Great Hall and to the feast.
The Great Hall had transformed.
The first thing Taylor noticed were the pumpkins: they were everywhere! There was even a Jack-o’-Lantern the size of a small hut stashed in one of the corners. It looked big enough that she could duck inside it. Was that why it was so big? Were there secrets hidden inside? Bats, live ones, flew above the crowd, gobbling any flier Taylor dared to bring inside. The ceiling showed a full clear sky and a bright almost full moon and many many stars that Taylor was sure didn’t exist; she hadn’t ever seen those in the Astronomy class.
Black candles with black flames cast flickering ghostly lights all around. In one of the corners a row of tables had been set against the wall, teeming with all manner of pumpkin foods and beverages: Tea, juice, pie, sweets and so much more.
The four long tables had been removed, and up where the professor’s desk usually stood, was now a raised platform, with a smiling, sharply dressed Flitwick and a chorus of croaking frogs providing the music for the feast. Impossibly, the croaked song was really good, and Taylor found herself bobbing to the tune. Luna had to gently guide her out of the entrance; so enthralled she was with everything.
Sometime into the night, the singing frogs left and a skeleton band took their place, much to the students' delight and cheering. Their music was more upbeat, and when the troupe of colourful dressed skeletons marched through the door and started dancing, Taylor followed on without realising what she was doing: she didn’t know how to dance.
That didn’t seem important at that moment.
Taylor danced and danced. She tried to follow Luna’s moves, a sort of twirling, arm waving motion that shouldn’t look good but did so anyways. When she noticed she couldn’t keep up, Taylor just moved like her body wanted to. She shook and twirled and waved and bobbed and laughed. She danced with ghosts who hadn’t attended the Deathday party, she danced with skeletons who seemed more than willing to take her spinning chaotic movements and add to them. Mostly, she danced with Luna. They twirled, and laughed, and danced and danced.
It was cathartic.
Taylor hadn’t realised how tired she’d become in the past two months. All the surveillance, the constant bully dodging, the non-stop magical practice, the endless homework. She let it all go, at least for that night, and just enjoyed and danced and had fun and drank pumpkin juice and ate pumpkin inspired sweets and ducked inside hut-sized lanterns looking for treasures.
It was closer to eleven when the feast ended and students thundered out of the hall and towards the dormitory. The whole castle population felt lighter. Students laughed, clapped backs, shook hands, hugged and seemed more like normal kids, not the wizards in training ready to cause mischief they usually were.
Then the throng of people turned into a water clogged corridor on the first floor, and lo and behold there was Magical-Hero Harry and his posse.
In the walls, drawn in blood, was a glowing message about a chamber of secrets.
Hung by the tail above the bloody words, looking very dead, was Mrs Norris.
Malfoy, of course, had to do his bigot bit. “Enemies of the heir, beware! You’ll be next, Mudbloods!” he called out, walking from among the crowd.
Taylor didn’t have any easy silk to trip the prat, nor did she dare to use pixies to drop mud on his head with this many people around. She had a fly zip into his mouth while he was laughing and taunting students. That worked better than she expected. The laughter stopped abruptly and Malfoy grabbed his throat, looking panicked. People around looked and pointed and Taylor heard more than a few muttered ‘curses and comeuppance’.
The blond idiot tried to run away, but his shoes slipped on the wet floor and he fell face first. Students looked in abject horror and fascination while Draco was having a fit.
That looked worse than what Taylor had intended to do. She just wanted to shut up the prat, not have him choking to death. She dislodged the fly, making a mental note about what was and wasn’t acceptable retaliation.
Argus Filch came out barging through the crowd next. He saw the cat and balled his eyes out at the loss of his pet. Then came the professors, then the headmaster.
Nap spread her wings and hooted. It was utter chaos.