Angela Cross and the End All Spell

Angela Cross and the End-All Spell

--a Harry Potter Universe fanfiction--

Chapter Sixteen

**From Chaos to Shadow**

Somewhere in darkness...

"Query: these thoughts... Are they hers?"

"Response: we cannot say. Already, strangers have passed into our midst. Yet from our grasp as they went we smelled the scent of old power."

"Query: and now?"

"Response: now the scent grows. It is weak, stifled behind barriers we cannot cross on our own."

"Acknowledgement: but it is there, yes, we too sense it. She is trying to wake it."

"Assertion: she will never be able to fully realize what was given to her. She does not have the vacuum of soul the other did, so long ago/yesterday/tomorrow."

"Query: have you seen it?"

"... Response: no, we have not. Something clouds our vision, something hides her path from us..."

"Taunt: then you cannot say for certain."

"Justification: we have established she will be within our grasp soon. You can see that as clearly as we can."

"Acknowledgement: yes. But for her fate to be hidden from our eyes... This is a dangerous path indeed. Query: shall we bring her, and finally risk the unknown/unknowable, or leave her to her realm, and remain diminished as we are?"

"Response: we shall bring her."

"Response: we are bringing her."

"Response: we have brought her."

"Acknowledgement: agreed. She will step/is stepping/has stepped beyond the barrier, and is coming to us, to return what was ours under contract and under right."

On a chilly Wednesday morning, just as the sun began to crest over the horizon of the mountains, Angela woke up to the sound of bedlam from down the stairs.

Pulling back the curtains of her bed, she saw that she was not the only person to be startled by whatever racket was going on down the stairwell. The girls she shared her dorm with were sliding out from under their sheets, quickly throwing on their robes to ward away the cold and, curious, were heading down to see what was going on. Not sure what was happening, the young Gryffindor girl followed suit and went to see what the hubbub was all about, groaning at the fact it was so early and hoping this was well-worth waking up for.

She had dreamt something, but what it was vanished from her mind like wisps of smoke whenever she tried to grab at it. Angela brushed it off, it was nothing but a dream anyway...

When she and the others arrived at the common room, they discovered the source of the calamity: the room was swarming with small, bright-blue insects, and apparently some of the earlier risers, such as Percy Weasley, were trying desperately to either zap them out of existence with their wands or simply trying to smash them flat with books. Even more surprising were the seven upperclassmen that were floating in midair next to the ceiling, bobbing about like balloons and laughing ridiculously at everything they laid their eyes on.

On the other side of the room, the boys were emerging from their end of the dorms, bleary-eyed and wondering what all the racket was.

"Some fool unleashed a swarm of billywigs in the common room," growled Percy as he swatted wildly at the little bugs. "Or fools, rather. Jordan, where are Fred and George?"

All eyes quickly turned to Lee Jordan, the Weasley twins' best friend, who had arrived at the scene with all the other Gryffindor boys. Lee just shrugged and shook his head; he looked as bleary-eyed as everyone else, though his pajamas lacked that slept-in appearance of the other students' clothing.

"I swear, Lee, if I find out you had something to do with this-"

"Hey, they're your brothers, mate, it's not my fault if you forgot what day it is."

There was a quick whispering amongst the students, though only the first-years present were looking confused; the other classes were either giggling, nodding in realization about something, or suddenly looking at everything around themselves in total paranoia.

"Oh no," said Ron Weasley worriedly; he was apparently the only first-year that seemed to understand what was happening.

"What?" asked Harry Potter, who was standing at Ron's side. The other first-years looked to him for answers as well.

"I can't believe it, I totally forgot, it's the twins' birthdays today!"

Everyone just continued to look at Ron, who quickly realized no one understood the significance. "April 1st? April Fools Day?"

Many of the upperclassmen didn't wait for Ron to finish, as they already knew from experience what this day would ensue; most of them bolted back into the stairwells and into the safety of their dorm rooms, followed but the sudden sound of clanging and some funny squelching noises and the cries of surprise. Ron pulled Harry back into the stairs and out of the way of the billywigs that were growing more and more agitated with the remaining upperclassmen's efforts to curb their movements.

One of the Muggle-born girls asked Hermione what a billywig was and why those students were floating around in the rafters of the common room, to which Hermione responded with a quick clearing of her throat, "Native to Australia, billywigs are-"

And that was as far as she got before she let out a little yelp and slapped the back of her neck reflexively. When she pulled her hand away, she was surprised to see a half-inch long blue bug smashed upon her palm; disturbingly to everyone present, Hermione began to giggle upon the sight. The other Gryffindor girls backed away from her as she began to laugh more and more, pointing at what was left in her palm, then at the back of her neck, and then at the other students who were floating upon the roof, then at her giggling self; she was apparently telling her classmates that billywigs caused uncontrollable giddiness and made you levitate, at which point her feet left the floor and she joined the upperclassmen in midair, pointing at everyone below her and laughing her head off. Percy just groaned and pulled his scarf farther up so that it wrapped most of his head in protection from billywig stings.

Not wanting to join Hermione, the remaining first-years ran in a mad panic for their bedrooms. While the fate of the boys was unknown at this point, two more Gryffindor girls began to laugh and giggle ridiculously on the way up and then left the ground; Angela was reminded of the 'spoonful of sugar' scene from Mary Poppins, but didn't feel like spending the rest of the day chuckling like a fool and floating around her dorm. When she and her classmates made it to their beds, they leapt onto the mattresses and slapped the curtains shut, only to quickly discover what the clanging and squishing sounds were from the upperclassmen earlier: apparently, the twins also spent the night hexing the bed posts to hurl custard pies at anyone who closed the curtains abruptly.

With four tins of custard pies stuck to her head, Angela sat in her bed fuming, wondering just how she was going to make George and Fred pay for this. Undoubtedly, she would have to wait in line since she could hear through the muffled curtains the complaints of the other girls who were probably sporting pies of their own.

After around twenty minutes, Prefect Junt made her way into the girls' dorm and told everyone the coast was clear; the resulting line for the showers was downright absurd, as every single Gryffindor that wasn't floating about in midair was covered in custard pie. It was a downright miracle that the twins hadn't done something to the showers, but the general consensus was that if no one could get clean, then no one would be out in the halls later where the twins undoubtedly had more mischief planned.

As the day progressed, so did the resulting madness around the property. The floating Gryffindors were back to their normal selves soon, as the effects of the billywig sting didn't last for more than half-an-hour - in the end they probably got off easier than the ones that had been spared the Mary Poppins routine. Filch looked like he was going to have a nervous breakdown as he traveled from corridor to corridor, hunting for traps and tricks that had been left about. As for the inevitable shower gag, Kathy and the rest of the Ravenclaw students had arrived at breakfast with their skin and hair dyed beet-red; it was no surprise there were a lot of hats and scarves being worn at the Ravenclaw table that day. Angela suspected from Kathy's shaking fists that she would have been red at that moment even without all the dye from the showers, which apparently had some delayed-reaction coloration to keep people from being suspicious of the showers initially. Hufflepuff had been spared any dorm room chaos, as their surprise came during breakfast, when they found out their tables and benches had been coated with Fendelman's Fantastic Frictionless Lacquer during the night: any attempt to sit on the benches resulted in them sliding off and sprawling to the ground, no matter how flat the surface or how much effort the students put in to gripping it (in fact, the more effort they put into it the swifter the fall was), and any food that appeared for breakfast went sliding off onto the floor or onto laps; considering how large breakfasts in the Great Hall could be, there was a lot of ruckus coming from the Hufflepuff table that morning.

The class that went the whole morning without incident was Slytherin: the only consolation the other students had was that whatever Fred and George had done to them, Slytherin would get ten-fold when their time was up; the Slytherin students seemed to be well aware of this fact, jumping at any every little sound they heard. No one knew where the twins had vanished off to, but wherever they were could certainly not be far enough away from Filch or Professor McGonagall, who were so flustered they looked as though they had taken dips in the Ravenclaw showers that day.

Classrooms were not safe from the April Fool's Day onslaught; while reports were varied around Hogwarts, Defense Against the Dark Arts was an easy target considering Quirrell's erratic nature. Halfway through class as he was lecturing, his podium broke out playing Tchaikovsky's '1812 Overture' at about the same volume as a Howler, giving half the class a simultaneous heart-attack and leaving the instructor's lesson in ruins for the rest of the period. There was talk of the doors to Snape's classroom being sealed shut with Spellotape, the blackboard in Professor Vector's room being coated with the same frictionless lacquer as the Hufflepuff lunch table so that nothing could be written on it, and the large cushions in Divination teacher Professor Trelawney's classroom being filled with exploding stinkweed, resulting in probably the largest and most effective whoopee cushions the school had ever seen. Also circulating around was the rumor that the Slytherin common room had been sealed shut and no one could gain entry; the stone door that led inside simply wouldn't respond to the password anymore.

As the pranks were now getting way out of hand, a school-wide manhunt was launched to track down Fred and George and put a stop to the calamity, but Percy muttered embarrassedly that when they didn't want to be found, the twins were as good as invisible. Still, that didn't stop the instructors who had had their classes disrupted from using every means at their disposal to search the school. Angela (and every other Gryffindor first-year) was a little nervous about attending her next class, Herbology, as who knew just what the twins had in store for that period.

"Maybe you should just skip class," said Kathy, whose color had waned from red to just deep pink now. "I don't think anyone could blame you for that today."

"But I like herbology," said Angela disappointedly as she put cucumber slices on her sandwich. Seeing as how the lunchroom was far too dangerous right now, a lot of the student body just took their lunches outside; with the weather getting better and better, sitting out by the tree overlooking the lake again was as good a spot as any to keep out of the line of fire. "Besides, Professor Sprout isn't the kind of person that listens to excuses of any kind: three weeks ago, Geoffrey Hooper accidentally locked himself in his trunk on a dare, and Professor Sprout made Seamus actually go to his dorm and drag him to class inside the trunk so he could hear the lesson. My guess is she's expecting everyone to show up, no matter the circumstance."

"Good old Hufflepuff work ethic," said Jason. His uniform was still stained with hash-browns, half a bowl of Cheerios, and smelled like orange juice.

Angela and Kathy just looked at the boy incredulously. James, staying out of the conflict as always, drank a bottle of pop and admired the view.

"What the heck are you talking about?" Angela said dubiously. "You're like the laziest person I've ever seen."

"Hey, I do all my assignments."

"At the last second," said Kathy. "Yesterday you were trying to concoct your homework for Double Potions while Snape was walking into the room."

"But I got it done. And it worked."

The girls just sighed resignedly and ate their food.

"Anyway, at least we already got our pranks, James still has to wait for whatever your Gryffindor pals have cooked up for Slytherin."

Everyone looked at James, who shrugged unknowingly. "No idea," was all he said after a pause, finishing his soft drink. "Probably has something to do with our locked dorm."

"You can always borrow my clothes if you're stuck out of there forever," Jason said helpfully.

"You mean I can have my clothes back," James said laughingly. "You borrowed my slacks, my shoes, and that shirt you're wearing right now when you spilled that ochre ink all over yourself last week in Dark Arts, and what is that crap on it right now? Is that pancake syrup??"

"Hey, you can't blame me for that," Jason said defensively, "you all saw what happened this morning."

"We still have a little while before Binns' class, why don't you go change or something? Or at least have my clothes washed before you give them back to me..."

"And have someone drop bowling balls on my head or something when I go to my room? Forget it, I'm staying outside until they either slap the cuffs on the dynamic duo or I have no choice but to go to class. 'Nuff said."

As it turned out, Professor Sprout did indeed expect everyone to class, and when a quarter of the class skipped she looked like she was going to go on the warpath; assumption was a dangerous thing when it meant assuming Herbology classes would be cancelled for anything less than the end of the world. Angela was just thankful she wasn't part of the group responsible for losing twenty-five points from Gryffindor that day. As Herbology was offered to different classes and houses at different times of the day constantly, Professor Sprout had already been pranked once that day when someone replaced the contents of five different plant supplements with something called Skele-Gro, which resulted in three flutterby bushes, a puffapod, six leaping toadstools, and half the more mundane plants in the greenhouse developing oddly shaped exoskeletons and ribcages.

As the sun set at the end of the day, the entire school was very much on edge, especially the Slytherins who had yet to receive their stunt. None of the tricks were particularly dangerous or harmful, just really, really annoying, but it was still enough to make the student body hunger for Weasley blood. Ron tried to keep out of the public eye as much as possible, as anytime anyone got a glimpse of him he was bombarded with questions about the whereabouts of Fred and George, who he of course had no idea about.

That was, however, until Oliver Wood came running into the Great Hall during dinner. The Hufflepuffs had been forced to eat their meal while sitting on the floor as their table had not yet been remedied, while everyone else just kept quiet for any peculiar sounds that might pop up as they ate. It would have been very strange to anyone just entering to find the Great Hall totally silent save the clanks of utensils on plates, but odds were good Oliver was more concerned with his bit of news than the current hush.

"Found them," he said as he approached the teachers' table at the end of the hall, weaving his way through the isle of yellow-and-black adorned kids.

It was not the location anyone had expected for the duo: as Oliver proceeded to proclaim to the faculty, Fred and George were discovered locked in a Quidditch broom closet, arms and legs flattened to their sides, their entire bodies rigid and unmoving with surprised looks on their faces. As if to make the point, Hagrid came in following Wood with both twins propped on his shoulders like stiff pieces of cordwood and placed them on a quickly-cleared spot upon the Gryffindor table with a light thud.

"Oh my!" exclaimed Professor McGonagall as she ran around her own table to look at the boys. Madam Pomfrey made her way past McGonagall and looked them over quickly herself to make a diagnosis as all the other students and faculty looked on.

"They've been hexed," she said matter-of-factly, though not in any distressed manner. "Full Body-Binds, been stuck this way since last night from the looks of it."

The entire room began to mumble amongst itself as the slowly-dawning realization of what this meant came to mind: being incapacitated as they were, the Weasleys apparently had nothing to do with the April Fool's pranks.

"But... if they didn't cause all the commotion today... who did?" asked Professor Sprout, at about the same time the room gave a heavy shudder. Goblets shook, tables creaked, a loud rushing sound resonated throughout the halls, and suddenly a draft of cold air flooded the Great Hall, if only for a moment. All eyes turned towards the doors to the hall, which were still open following Hagrid and Wood's dramatic entrance, and to everyone's surprise a thin sheet of water slowly spread along the flagstones outside, as though someone had just spilled a few buckets of water on the ground. The water didn't seem to stop, though, as it slowly expanded into the Great Hall and continued on casually throughout the first floor of the castle.

More mumbling began, this time louder than before as everyone wondered just what all the noise and shaking was, when Argus Filch came running up to the large double-doors with a funny squelching sound from his boots, completely exhausted and absolutely drenched, but wearing a delightfully vicious smile on his face.

"Caught the culprit *cough*... caught the little bugger in the act! Finally!" He clenched his hand in glee as water dripped off of his hair, jacket, and clothes. It looked as though he had just gone for a swim while fully dressed.

He stepped forward, his boots squishing with the sound of water in them, and all eyes present were abruptly met with the form of the Bloody Baron, Slytherin's house ghost, as he rose through the floor. He had a more-sour-than-usual expression upon his face, and people began to guess why when his hands finally passed through the water upon the stone floor: Peeves was wriggling about wildly in his grasp, throwing one whopper of a tantrum; in contrast to the silvery, transparent form of the Baron, Peeves was as always nearly opaque and wore peculiar, loud colors on his suit. His tiny black eyes were darting around nervously, though he'd occasionally shoot the ghost a pleading glance.

"Let me go! You've got the wrong spook, your Baronship! I was just passing through, wrong place at the wrong time was all! C'mon, I'm on the level here, I'm innocent!"

"Found the little hobgoblin floating about in the Slytherin common room," said the Baron in a hoarse, throaty whisper that seemed to carry with quite some power despite its low volume. "I'm going to have a field day with you, Peeves," he said, his expression not softening one tiny bit, eyeing the poltergeist maliciously.

"But I'm telling you, sir! Old Peeves never did anything wrong, you've got to believe me!"

"And I suppose the sledgehammer you were playing with just fell into your hands?"

Peeves suddenly became a little more flustered. "Well, er, now that I can explain, I mean, it was sitting right there, and, well, what was I supposed to do - after all who just leaves a sledgehammer sitting around in front of a nice big window unless they want some hammering done, and-"

"Baron, if I may," interrupted Professor Snape, an eyebrow raised and an apparent air of apprehension in his eyes, "what exactly was Peeves doing in the Slytherin common room?"

Silence.

"Answer the good professor, you filthy little rat," growled the Baron as he shook the poltergeist about like a rag doll, "before I make a pincushion out of you."

"Well..."

It turned out the Slytherin common room was located deep beneath the castle, and actually sat below lake-level. There were cries of outrage as the entire Slytherin student body found out just what he had done.

"It'll take days to drain all that water out of Slytherin's dorms, and that's after we get someone to patch up that window," Filch said, glowering at the poltergeist who was now just smiling weakly in a pale sweat and shrugging.

"You certainly outdid yourself today, Peeves," the Baron said, holding the little spirit at eye level with himself and drawing his saber. "What you made the rest of the school go through not withstanding, turning my house into an indoor swimming pool was a very, very bad idea..."

For the first time since he was brought before the entire school, Peeves actually looked bewildered. "Er, what was that about the rest of the school?"

"Get 'im!"

"Rip him apart!"

"I get first dibs on his head!"

"Bloody little ponce!"

"I'll tear you limb from limb, Peeves!"

Peeves' answer would have to wait as every Slytherin student in the room jumped over their table and charged him, wands out and absolutely murderous looks on their faces. Facing around two-hundred-and-fifty teenagers with a sudden lust for blood, even dead blood, was more than the poltergeist was willing to deal with at the moment.

"Ah, just remembered, pressing engagement somewhere in Borneo. Or maybe in Far East Asia, can't say. Family business, very important, can't afford to wait. Ta!" With that, Peeves raised his arms and slid right out of his jacket and out of the Bloody Baron's grasp, springing off the ground and promptly bounding over all the Slytherin students, somersaulting deftly out the door but not before sticking his tongue out at everyone present with a frown and giving them the raspberry. Despite McGonagall's cries for everyone to calm down and take their seats, the Great Hall was very quickly emptied of Slytherin students, ghosts and faculty members as they charged the doors and pursued the little man down the hall, dozens and dozens of footsteps rampaging through the water-filled passageway as they went like a herd of buffalo. The Hufflepuffs didn't wait to take advantage of the opportunity and quickly moved their plates to the Slytherin table for the rest of the evening.

Consensus about what Peeves had done was after that point mixed. Slytherins unsurprisingly ensured the poltergeist was not going to be seen around the school property for quite some time lest he be the subject of many unpleasant hexes or the Bloody Baron's sword. Hufflepuffs just brushed it all off and went on with their lives without giving the whole thing much concern, while Ravenclaws were thoroughly peeved with Peeves and how he disrupted not only their own learning environments but those of all the other houses, including Slytherin. Gryffindors, for the most part, gave up being angry and just laughed amongst themselves that Peeves had pulled off such a whopper on the old green-and-white, though this was not a unanimous feeling amongst the class. Hermione was certainly sharing the same sentiment as Ravenclaw and didn't hesitate to share this view with anyone in earshot, while Angela was not quite ready to condemn a whole population of students just because they wore a snake on their robes, even if she did have a beef with some of them; James, after all, proved a bunch of bad apples didn't mean the whole barrel needed to be thrown out.

"Why so glum, Angee?" asked George, who had been freed from his full Body-Bind and was now busy celebrating what was left of his birthday with the rest of his classmates. He pulled up a chair next to hers by the common room fire and began to gulp down something from a bottle labeled 'Better Beater's Butterbeer'. "Not a bad way to spend one's fourteenth, locked in a closet, though at least I hear Peeves kept it interesting in our absence."

"Eh, it's just all the Slytherin-bashing, I don't like hearing about it. I mean, that's their home, and Peeves totally ruined it. And everyone here's just treating it like a big joke."

"Criminy, I'm sitting with some kind of saint here," said George with a roll of his eyes and a chuckle. "It's just a few nights sleeping on cots in the classrooms and they have to wear the same thing a little longer than usual, what's the big deal?" Angela looked at him incredulously, showing him that his justification was thoroughly lacking for her tastes. "Well," he said, "if it's any sort of consolation, there's nothing in the Slytherin common room or the dorms that can't be dried out and fixed with a couple choice spells, alright? And their trunks were all locked shut in advance anyway, and those things are airtight, so-"

George stopped himself in mid-sentence, which was enough for Angela to catch it. "Wait," she said, knitting her brow together as she looked at the Gryffindor boy, "how would you know if their trunks were all locked first?"

"No idea, my dear," he quickly recovered, "I was locked in a broom closet, remember?"

Angela wasn't buying it. "You did do all those things! Somehow you pulled off all those pranks even when you were frozen solid!"

George just kept his mouth shut and smiled wryly.

The girl wasn't sure if she should be impressed or utterly horrified. Then she promptly remembered being pelted with pies and having her eardrums once-again smashed against the rocks by Tchaikovsky's cannons and cymbals in Quirrell's class, and realized what she should be feeling was the unadulterated desire for revenge.

"Your friend Lee, he froze you both after you set up all those pranks!"

"Ssh!" George hushed, "Not so loud, you're bound to give me a bad name."

"What I should give you is a black eye, you jerk!" she exclaimed, not caring just who heard her. "You realize after having my ears shot to hell so many times in the last month I can't hear properly out of my left side anymore, even with Nurse Pomfrey's help?? It could take weeks to fix now."

At this, George actually looked a little ashamed; it was obvious his intent was not to hurt anyone, but his being neglectful certainly didn't make Angela any happier.

"And what were you doing in my bedroom at night making my bed want to throw pies at me?"

"Hey, I'm sorry," he said with an apologetic shrug. "It's just sort of a tradition with my bro and I, we like to ring in another year of being a Weasley in style." Angela was suddenly reminded of her mother and her lame excuses for her thoughtlessness; with the growing similarities with Sheri and the twins, she began to wonder if she and the Weasleys were in fact related after all. "Look, I promise, next year we'll tone it down, alright?"

This was so much like her mother it was downright scary; Angela had the grim sensation of having to accept a compromise as she did with Sheri instead of being able to change any minds. "... George, I swear, if you do anything this destructive again, I will kill you. I will kill you and then burn the evidence, you know I can do it."

George raised his eyebrows slightly, trying to gauge if she actually meant it; the popularity of the event may have diminished over time, but the fact Angela could cast spells capable of leveling school property was still common knowledge. After a second, though, he realized she wasn't really serious; he didn't doubt she'd make him pay if he didn't keep his word, and for all he knew she would still make him pay one way or another, but turning him into a charcoal briquette was not on her agenda. Yet.

"I swear," he said, putting his hand up to his chest, "neither I nor my brother (who isn't here in the flesh at the moment but is always here with us in spirit) will intentionally do anything to make your life a living hell. And we'll do our best to avoid doing it unintentionally, too."

It was a compromise, but at the moment Angela didn't see any other choice but than to accept it. After a moment she sighed and waved her hands in grudging acquiescence, feeling a little disgusted with the Weasleys and with herself for just letting it slide.

"Anyway, you should understand a little about just why Fred and I did it."

"Why's that?" she asked, not feeling particularly sympathetic.

"Well, this was not just about our birthdays. It was also a little payback."

"What, you mean with the ghost?"

"As you'll personally recall, he tried to make us the patsy with Filch's cat, so we did him a turn. Worked out quite nicely, I'd say."

"So you did all that stuff: the pies, the bugs, the breakfast table, flooding Slytherin's rooms? And then pinned it on Peeves."

"Actually, he took care of the last part on his own. Little rat couldn't resist a window and a hammer, just had to leave the right pieces in the right places and the rest as they say took care of itself."

"Mm." Angela still didn't like it, but she had to admit the execution was rather brilliant, like a well-played game of chess. She tried to avoid thinking any positive thoughts about the boys though.

George took another swig of his butterbeer and then tacked on: "So... You're not going to tell anyone, are you?"

"Oh please."

Somewhere in darkness...

"Assertion: it is now."

"Acknowledgement: agreed. We sense it as well. She is coming to us."

"Assertion: something else has awoken. Similar in scent to the one we granted the pages to."

"Assertion: he means nothing. He has sought our aid before, but craves only eternal existence and power, he fears death."

"Acknowledgement: he fears his own nature and his own destiny. And with his minion now dead he is weaker than ever, both in body and in spirit. We do not seek minions such as he."

"Query: what of our original minion? Where is his scent?"

"Response: unknown. His mind has vanished under a cloud, and we no longer see his destiny."

"Assertion: his destiny was never clearly seen by us to begin with, just faint wisps of what he desired, little more."

"Query: are the two destinies linked, then? Are they one and the same?"

"Response: this we do see. The two have battled/are battling/will battle. Their paths become one."

"Response: then our course is more directed than before. The girl has the power, but none of the skill."

"Rebuttal: you are seeing incorrectly. She has both the power and the skill."

"Rebuttal/Query: are you both blind? She has the skill, but none of the power. She is useless after all. This is where the paths of the girl and our former minion meet."

"Assertion: this is quite frustrating. We must dissect her immediately and weed out the stray destiny before we become lost in this miasma."

"Acknowledgement: agreed."

"Acknowledgement: agreed."

"Acknowledgement: agreed."

Professor Quirrell had in fact been serving the dark wizard Voldemort.

This little sentence resonated through the school for days while Harry Potter had lied in a coma in the hospital wing.

The last couple of months had been relatively uneventful as the school year came to a close. There had been a week when Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger had been caught outside after hours and lost fifty-points each from their houses (rumor had it that the foursome were trying to smuggle a dragon off the property), and while Malfoy caught a little flak from his house, the Gryffindor trio were about as shunned as shunned could be after that instance; if Angela had thought the students were mad at her after her mother had sent all those Howlers her way, she quickly realized just what levels of rejection her house was capable of when they were really pushed.

This snubbing continued all the way through exam week in the first sweltering week of June, but as every student on the property was busy pouring over books, practicing spells, memorizing the recipes for potions, and otherwise studying to the point of near-catatonia, this was something of a mixed blessing - especially for Hermione, who had developed a murderous glint in her eye for anyone that disrupted her non-stop study routine. James had developed a very similar gaze, though he was even more manic than she was for some reason; considering he had practically aced his last set of written exams, no one except Jason seemed to understand just what he was going on about. Jason just stayed out of James' way in the meantime, spending his own spare time conducting mock space-battles by levitating saucers and plates with his wand and running around them madly, imagining he was in an X-Wing fighter. Kathy and Angela were considerably more diligent with their study time and avoided the boys who had become major distractions in the closing weeks of the term.

Exams came and went, with Angela and Kathy feeling rather confident they did well, James in some kind of annoyed funk that probably meant he wasn't as secure about his efforts (constantly muttering something unpleasant under his breath about the practical portions of the tests), and Jason wondering if Captain Picard was going to be stuck as a member of the Borg collective or if the Enterprise crew would save him in the next season of Star Trek.

It was the day after exams that the news had burst out and spread like wildfire to every end of the castle and beyond, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione had succeeded in vindicating themselves in the eyes of their classmates and indeed the entire school: that prior evening, the threesome had snuck into the forbidden third-floor corridor at night, eluded a number of highly-specialized traps and challenges (including Hagrid's giant dog Fluffy), and prevented Professor Quirrell, who it seemed was actually a servant of the evil wizard Voldemort, from obtaining some kind of stone with immeasurable magical properties: something called the Sorcerer's Stone, that was said to be able to bring his former employer back from the grave. The stone had been hidden deep within the school since September when all the students first arrived.

The fact that her original mentor and for that matter her Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher was dead after trying to bring a murderer like Voldemort back to life was rather shocking; according to Professor Dumbledore, who had called together a meeting of all the students and faculty so he could put to rest any rumors and set the record straight, Harry Potter had killed Quirrell in self-defense when the wizard tried to steal the stone. The fact Potter, who had just recently woken from a three-day long coma and was now resting up in the hospital wing, was capable of killing anyone, even bungling, stuttering Professor Quirrell, was enough to make one or two people feel a little apprehensive for his continued presence in the school, but considering the general consensus regarding Voldemort and how many people despised this evil man, not many tears were shed on the former instructor's behalf. Angela, meanwhile, just felt bad about the whole thing: it did explain to her some of the curious events of the previous year, such as why Dumbledore tended to be so suspicious of Quirrell and why McGonagall had been reassigned as her mentor. And perhaps something about his dual-nature as a spy for Voldemort had something to do with why he was susceptible to the Forget Me True spell that protected the Book of Black's existence from being revealed, as well. But Voldemort was well-renowned for his ability to control people, and Quirrell never seemed particularly evil, just spectacularly weak; perhaps he was manipulated or coerced into doing what he did. She also felt a little guilty that she didn't try harder during the year to get to know Quirrell, perhaps if she had someone would have found out what had happened to him and maybe freed him of any potential external influence. The tendency for the school's population to be so immediately judgmental made her wonder if this was how the wizarding community was like as a whole, and it was a thought she didn't linger on as it began to make her even more depressed over Quirrell's death.

Quite the contrary to how they had been treated before, the Gryffindor trio were now heroes, and were promptly showered with all sorts of gifts by their classmates. Ron took a collection of candies and chocolates (and one toilet seat from Fred and George, who thought Harry would find it funny) and delivered them to his side at the hospital wing, though not before snacking on some of the chocolate frogs Kathy had thrown in for Harry; the only thing that held the Ravenclaw girl's retribution at bay was the fact that Ron was partly responsible for stopping the villain from returning.

"Man, that was crunk!"

"You said it."

"Like you both cared about it anyway."

James and Jason were in major funks following the end-of-the-year feast. Angela was rather happy, but then again all the Gryffindors were in good spirits that moonless evening. The curfew for the school had been extended until midnight, something Argus Filch wasn't too pleased about but, as Professor Dumbledore told him calmly, it was just one night out of the school year.

The foursome were sitting out by their tree overlooking the lake as a variety of fireworks were being launched off over the water. Magical fireworks were an amazing sight, as they didn't just blast outwards or stream upwards or make loud popping sounds: many of them transformed into shapes, some spun around endlessly in the sky (Jason, unsurprisingly, likened those kinds to UFOs), and many would make all manners of sounds from draconic roars to little twinkling sounds like a series of gigantic wind-chimes. So far Angela's favorite was the one that exploded into the shape of a sailing battleship, which then proceeded to discharge more exploding fireworks from its side cannons. The display helped to alleviate some of the annoyance the boys were feeling, but not enough to completely wash it away.

"Hey, I'm always up for some good, fair competition," James said in response to Kathy; for some unfathomable reason he was still wearing his sunglasses, even though it was already pitch black out, and no amount of goading from the others could convince him to take them off - not that they seemed to impede his ability to see anyway. "We would've been first if Gryffindor didn't just get like a million bonus points at the last second."

"Pfft, you still came in second," Jason sounded grumpily, "at least your house didn't end up dead last." He changed his voice to do a fairly decent approximation of the headmaster: "'And - how many points is Hufflepuff ahead by, two? - and two-point-oh-five points to Gryffindor for remembering to wash behind your ears when bathing! Eat my dust, Hufflepuffs!'"

"Well Ravenclaw came in second-to-last and you don't hear me throwing a fit."

"Bah, that's because you guys won the Quidditch cup this year."

"Oh be quiet, you two," Angela said, getting annoyed at the boys' ceaseless whining, "you're making me miss all the good fireworks."

"'Ello there, kids," said a black silhouette the size of a mountain as he walked up the embankment towards the group. "Enjoyin' the show?" Hagrid was met with a unanimous and enthusiastic 'yes', though Kathy quickly added on how nice it was of him to join them.

Occasional flashes of light in a variety of colors caught the edges of the man's massive frame as he looked up and smiled; an intricate series of fireworks created the form of a giant bull that was running across the sky, leaving gleaming green hoofprints that slowly drifted downwards as it crossed the heavens, eventually fading completely from view.

"Um, regardin' yer mum throwin' them little ponies a' yers into the fire like that earlier in the year..." Hagrid broke off, a little embarrassed.

Angela looked up at him, surprised he was bringing that up now after so long. "Oh, don't worry about that," she said with a resigned chuckle, more for Hagrid's sake than her own as she was still a little sore about the whole thing, "that's my mom. She does stupid stuff like that, I don't blame you if that's what you're worried about."

Hagrid rubbed the back of his hairy head, her words not quite quelling his embarrassment. "Well, I do feel a might responsible fer not payin' more attention t' her now that you mention it, an' I wanted t' give you a little somethin' t' make up fer it."

"Oh you don't have to give me anything," Angela said, quickly hoping that somehow Hagrid had managed to magic her melted ponies back to life.

"Now, now," he said, putting his hand up, "it's the least I kin do. Gotcher present back at my place, if you an' yer pals would like to see it."

The foursome just looked at each other curiously and then, following Angela and Kathy's lead, everyone left their comfortable spot under the tree and marched behind Hagrid to the other side of the school property under illumination of flashes of color and light from the display above and the faint lights from the castle to their left. After a short trek around the property they finally reached Hagrid's hut, barely visible save the few lanterns hanging within the windows.

"Now wait 'ere, I'll be right back," Hagrid said cheerfully as he creaked open his door, just enough for him to step in while trying as best he could to prevent anyone seeing inside; while it was still plenty wide for the group to see in had they wanted to, the man's gigantic frame and long furry coat were more than enough to compensate to prevent further viewing through the doorframe. As deftly as he could, he slid in and shut the door behind him with the clank of a lock, as though he was worried the children would follow him in before he got the surprise ready.

"So you're getting a present from Hagrid?" asked James.

"Maybe it's an advance present for his soon-to-be daughter," joked Jason.

"God, no," replied Angela, not because having Hagrid as a step-father wouldn't have been cool but because the last thing she wanted was for Hagrid to be permanently saddled with Sheri.

"I should hope not," exclaimed Kathy, who probably felt the same way as Angela, though odds were her motivations were more centered around Hagrid not being saddled with anyone else. It was enough to make Angela giggle a little at the thought.

The banter from the children stopped quickly as a loud thud could be heard from the left side of the hut. Had Hagrid gone out the back and was coming around with her present? Angela quickly remembered though that the hut had no back exit, and both she and Kathy looked at each other with sudden worry.

Another thud. And another. And another. And now deep growling could be heard.

His heads rounded the corner before the rest of him, and the kids promptly stepped back, all eyes wide in shock as Fluffy slowly padded around the hut. His three sets of eyes were looking at the children angrily, and his growling got more and more pronounced; it was obvious he thought he had found four intruders encroaching upon his home.

"Uh... that dog has three heads... and is the size of a bus..." Jason said, slowly stepping away from the hut and an obvious tremble in his voice.

"It's Hagrid's dog Fluffy, the one that was guarding that stone Professor Dumbledore told us about," explained Angela, backing off slowly with the rest of the group.

"Its name is Fluffy?" James asked incredulously.

"Just move away from the house. He probably thinks we're trying to break in or something. No, Fluffy! Bad! Sit!"

The monstrous animal just kept walking slowly towards the four, easily gaining ground on them despite the fact it wasn't doing more than making single steps. Its growling was getting more and more pronounced, drool dripping from his disturbingly large maws, and one of the heads threw a couple of booming barks their way.

Kathy stopped backing up and glared at the dog. "No! Stay! Bad dog, stay!" She threw her hand up and tried to get the dog to stop approaching them, giving it her trademark stare while standing her ground.

All she succeeded in doing though was attracting the attention of the dog completely on herself. Fluffy growled even more, and Kathy quickly realized the tactic she used to keep the student body in line wasn't going to work on this giant dog.

"Stay?" she said, now backing away slightly as Fluffy turned towards her and began to back her in a direction away from the others.

"Kathy, don't run!" yelled Angela, sure that if Kathy bolted she would be picked off almost immediately. Kathy, now looking quite scared, didn't run, just backing off slowly as Fluffy began to take larger steps.

"He's going to go after her!" yelled Jason.

Indeed, Fluffy stopped walking and now reared his hind legs just enough to signify he was going to leap at her. Everyone could tell what was going to happen, including Kathy, who realized walking slowly away was no longer an option and broke into an outright run towards the Forbidden Forest beyond.

Jason, James, and Angela, wanting to keep Fluffy from charging her, quickly began to wave their arms and yell and holler as loud as they could to get the dog's attention, but it didn't work: Fluffy immediately broke out into a gallop and began to close the distance Kathy had made in almost no time flat.

With a sudden and unexpected burst of truly amazing speed, James ran - almost flying, it seemed - the distance between the group and Kathy and just as Fluffy's jaws came at the young girl he went tumbling with her out of the way in his grip. The giant dog went sliding on the grass past where Kathy had once been, trying to stop itself and looking to where James and Kathy were lying on the ground. James quickly pulled Kathy up while the dog turned itself, its three heads barking furiously now and getting ready to charge them both now.

Angela pulled back her shirt sleeve quickly and held her palm out, aiming into the air a bit. She wasn't about to try and kill Fluffy with a column of fire, but perhaps if she could muster enough power in a blast she could frighten him off and attract enough attention to get some help (unless everyone would think it was just another firework). Concentrating as hard as she could, visualizing the pillar of flame in her head and exactly how strong she wanted to be, Angela took in a deep breath and spoke the words aloud.

"Vas Flam!"

Poof!

One bright puff of red and yellow flame popped from her hand, about the size of a beach ball, and then vanished almost as soon as it came, as though the beach ball had been popped. Angela glowered, cursed under her breath, and felt downright silly that her friends had seen her pull of the fire-blast so ineffectually.

The flash and muffled sound of the blast had been enough to draw some attention, however: Fluffy turned his three heads around and caught sight of Angela, growling at her ravenously. How Hagrid had ever managed to raise this dog without being killed she had no idea, but it wasn't something she had time to dwell on as the mastiff spun around and ran at her.

Angela bolted as fast as she could, making a break for the door the Hagrid's; she would be safe inside. As she ran and reached the entrance, she could hear the large man, who was now aware something was going on outside.

"What's all that racket, then?? Is that Fluffy I 'ear??"

The young girl reached for the door just as the clanking of Hagrid undoing the locks could be heard, but upon hearing the heavy stampede of feet Angela quickly pushed herself away from the door just in the nick of time. Fluffy had caught up with her and it was through pure luck she managed to get out of his way as he slid to a crash against the hut at the same time Hagrid opened the door.

Had the large man been prepared for what happened he might have been able to avoid being hit or maybe even brace himself properly against the impact; despite being smaller than the dog, he was well-renowned for his strength and fortitude. But as it was, the door he opened immediately slammed back in his face and knocked the large man back into his hut with the crash of pots and pans audible through the windows along with a lot of annoyed, high-pitched yapping from inside. Fluffy, meanwhile, recovered quickly and resumed his pursuit of Angela, who was now making a run for the Forbidden Forest; the trees were spaced close enough together that Fluffy might have a hard time chasing her through the brush, though the dog had shown it was more than capable of uprooting trees if it had half a mind to do so.

It would be a moot point, though: she was almost to the treeline when her foot caught a root and caused her to go stumbling forward, not a complete fall but just enough to bring her to her knees. With the dog's long legs and great speed there would be no way she could recover in time to make it into the forest. Right behind her she could her the thunder of paws, the heavy breathing of three giant mouths and the barks that let her know she was about to be devoured alive by an animal so inappropriately named 'Fluffy'.

"Wingardium Leviosa!"

The barking continued, the heavy breathing hadn't stopped, but the thudding of paws running at full throttle against the grass has suddenly ceased. What's more, the sounds the dog still made weren't getting any closer. Angela turned over to find Fluffy only two or three feet away, still snapping at her madly and trying his darndest to grab her up with one of his three maws. He was a little higher up in the air, though, his swinging paws a foot or two off the ground. Behind him was Jason with his wand in hand and an extremely strained look on his face.

"Move!" he yelled in an irritated, efforted tone through clenched teeth. "He's too heavy, I don't know how much longer I can hold him up!" Indeed, Jason's arm was shaking wildly and he was bracing it with his other hand as the wand tried to remain pointed at the big animal.

No sooner had he said this than Fluffy began to dip lower, his paws just barely touching the earth beneath him, and as one of his claws made contact he managed to suddenly push himself just a little closer to Angela, still barking and forcing Angela farther onto her back. She shuffled as fast as she could backwards, still towards the forest, as Fluffy inched himself towards her with every paw-stroke; his feet were getting closer to the ground now and every movement he made brought him just a little closer to making a snack of the young Gryffindor girl.

James and Kathy quickly ran up and grabbed Jason's arm, trying to help him hold the dog up, and they succeeded in keeping Fluffy's feet from completely returning to the ground. However, even their combined efforts were still not enough to completely remove him from the grass and the dog continued to swim slowly towards Angela who was still forced to crawl back as fast as she could to avoid being eaten.

Into the trees she scuttled, the ground changing abruptly from grass to dried dirt and mulch and bits of twig. The tall trunks began to grow thicker around her even after only moving into the woods a dozen feet, and Fluffy's efforts to get her were beginning to meet some resistance as the forest grew too thick for him to entirely pass into. Angela scampered back a little faster, gaining a small amount of ground on him, and quickly backed into a tree which finally gave her a means of getting to her feet quickly. The shadows from the tree canopy kept the forest shielded from the light of the fireworks still going on by the castle, only a vague, terrifying silhouette of the dog's snapping heads being caught in the occasional flash in the sky. Angela prepared to run a little deeper into the forest, as undoubtedly her friends would not be able to hold the dog at bay much longer; it was common knowledge amongst the students that the Forbidden Forest was dangerous, but if she didn't go in too deep, just enough to keep the giant dog from being able to reach her, perhaps she could double around until she came out closer to the school or perhaps until Hagrid managed to recover and stop Fluffy from making an evening meal out of anyone.

And then, before she could consider any another options for escape, everything went black. Something in the shadows grabbed her, and without pausing yanked her downwards and outside of reality.

Angela's last thought that moment as she was drowned in the inky gloom was recalling that the forest was outside of school bounds.

And then she was gone.