Briallen Bevin and the Clocktower Guard

Chapter 11: The First Clue

Thursday was Briallen's favorite day of the week for a number of reasons: Quodpot practice was in the evening, so she got to sleep in late; her first class was with Marisol, then she had a break, and then she had another class Marisol; she had lunch with her grandfather; and she had a day off as Professor Conleth's student aide (not that she could have gone in that day if she wanted, since the professor had made her take a week off). Today she had another reason to be excited, though - she and Lucan were receiving their first clue in Reynard's scavenger hunt.

She had been craving some excitement, which contradicted her on-going desire to show the world she was capable of being dependable and mature. But she had been so good these last few weeks, and it was Halloween now - she was expected to have a bit a fun and maybe break a few rules or get a detention or two.

Professor Morra was currently contemplating helping Briallen to achieve the latter as she reminded Briallen, yet again, to pay attention in Spell-Working that morning. Marisol giggled and Toby bit his tongue to keep from laughing, while the professor shook her head at all three of them.

Briallen couldn't help herself from day-dreaming that day, and she'd just had an excellent one in which she and Lucan had to ride a dragon out of Gringotts after breaking into a special vault to acquire their clue piece, which was the wand of Merlin himself. She was too excited to wait until lunch for them to work on their clue and decided she was going to find her scavenger hunt partner after class.

She also decided she should pay attention to Professor Morra, who was speaking to the class again. "And now that we've finished work on our congealing spells and charms, I'd like to move on to hardening spells, in particular the Duros Spell. Unlike congealing spells, hardening spells cannot be cast on any type of liquid. It can only be used on that which is solid in its natural state, aside from a living creature. Would anyone like to suggest an example of something that would benefit from a hardening spell?"

"A soggy piece of bread!" shouted a boy from the back of the room. The class laughed, and so did Professor Morra.

"That is technically correct! A soggy piece of bread is an excellent example. If someone cast the Duros Spell on it, they would end up with a stale piece of bread, hard as a rock. Unfortunately that'd also be quite pointless, though I thank you for your contribution Mr Isbill. The most common use of a hardening spell is to petrify wood for use in potions."

"What's the point in petrifying wood if you're just going to cook it in a potion?" Toby asked Marisol in a whisper.

While Marisol could be best described as boy-crazy and just a little ditzy, she was a true Wenlock, in the sense that she had an answer for everything (whether or not she was right) and now was no exception. "Petrified wood has different properties than regular wood, silly!"

"That is absolutely correct, Marisol. The point in petrifying wood for potions is that petrified wood has completely different properties than wood in its natural state. It's quite unusual to make a potion with living wood. We use fresh or dried fruits, flowers, and leaves, of course, but wood is different from any of those - there are so many possible properties in a piece of wood, you can't really be sure what you'll come out with. That's why witches and wizards mostly just use wood for wand-making, and why we petrify it when used in other ways."

Briallen had to force herself to concentrate to what Professor Morra was saying, and it was a good thing she did, as the next thing the professor said was that there would be a quiz the following Tuesday on the uses of hardening spells. Finally class let out.

"I still think Duros is a silly spell," said Toby matter-of-factly, once they'd left the room.

Marisol chuckled and shook her head. "So what are we doing for Halloween this Saturday? Tinna says there's going to be a wicked party in the north wood - invite only."

"Wicked?" asked Briallen, unfamiliar with the use of that word in such a way.

"You really need to start socializing more!" said Marisol, flabbergasted by her friend's question. Even Toby laughed at Briallen. "You're on the Quodpot team, which means you're an athlete, which means you should be popular..."

"What Marisol is trying to say is that she only overheard Tinna talking about a party, and wasn't actually invited and she wants you to try and get us invited," Toby explained helpfully.

The idea of a costume party out in the north wood made Briallen nauseous. For two months she hadn't had any nightmares - she'd been too busy to have nightmares, but now... She wasn't ready just yet to go back out into the woods. "I don't think I'll be able to. Those parties are thrown by the older kids, for the older kids."

"You should still try! Anyway, have you and Hayden picked out your costumes yet? I assume we're still going trick or treating at least, right?" asked Marisol.

Marisol sat down on one of the couches in the communal common room in the first floor of the portrait hall, and Briallen sat next to her. Toby wandered off to the snack bar to order them all some hot cocoa from the vending elf.

"Me and Hayden?" said Briallen, confused. She hadn't thought about costumes at all, or even Halloween, until last night. And she had just assumed that she, Marisol, and Toby would be dressing up together like they had the year before.

"Well, yeah. Shane and I are going as Brenda Lance and Cordry Teabo."

"Cordry Teabo?"

"Hello! Her new boyfriend! He's the drummer for Vacuumed!" Marisol looked at Briallen liked she were crazy. "By Merlin, you really do need to catch up!"

"How am I supposed to keep up? She's got a new guy every week!" snapped Briallen. Marisol stared at her, shocked. With a sigh, Briallen dropped her head in her hands. "I'm sorry for biting your head off like that. I've got a lot on my mind, you know I didn't mean it." Marisol sniffed and shrugged.

"You've been acting really weird for the past few weeks," said Toby seriously, setting their cocoas down on the table in front of them.

"It's just school and Quodpot," Briallen mumbled into her mug just before taking a long sip of the silky chocolate drink.

"No, it's more than that. You had practice and homework before, back in September, and you weren't this... snappy, then. Did something happen? Did someone forget your birthday? If it's about the party, we were planning one but-"

"No, no," said Briallen, stopping Toby from needlessly apologizing, and from stumbling onto her secret - her secret that nobody knew anything about but he seemed to suspect. "I know everybody was busy, and I'm used to not having birthday parties anyway. I guess it's just the weather."

Marisol and Toby both rolled their eyes this time. The weather had become Briallen's excuse for everything even remotely relating to people's emotions, and since the weather had been mostly bad for the last few months, she of course believed everyone was mean and bitter and out to get her, including Professor Conleth, as she'd explained to her friends the other day at lunch.

"So you and Shane are going as Brenda and her new boyfriend... what about you Toby?" asked Briallen, doing her best to act as she would normally.

"Me, Dax, and Abe are going as the Three Musketeers," Toby confided with a wide grin. He'd wanted to be a musketeer the year before, but there hadn't been time enough to find the proper costumes.

Briallen was somewhat insulted that neither of her two best friends had bothered to ask her to be a part of their theme costumes. She didn't even know if Hayden had a costume or not, and Halloween was in only two days. "I guess me and Hayden will, um..."

Marisol waited a moment to see if Briallen would finish her sentence, and when she didn't, Marisol chimed in, "I heard him say a few days ago that he wanted you guys to go as Robin Hood and Maid Marion. And that he was looking at costumes at that toy shop in The Village. Maybe you should ask him."

"I will," said Briallen with a nod. She liked Robin Hood well enough, though she resented the idea of being damsel-in-distress Maid Marion. To avoid being the only kid at Halloween without a costume, however, she was willing to dress as anything, even a werewolf. She shuddered at the thought. "You know, I'll go find him now."

"Oh, good!" said Marisol, clapping her hands together happily. "He's been so down lately, you know, because he hasn't gotten to spend much time with you, as your boyfriend and all."

Briallen knew what Marisol was hinting at and she looked poignantly at her innocently wide-eyed Latina friend. Toby seemed oblivious, thankfully, otherwise Briallen would have been blushing more scarlet than the sofas they were sitting on. She didn't actually plan on going to find Hayden, though. While she acted as her friends expected her to act, her thoughts were on the first clue.

Briallen bounded up the steps to the library. Lunch wasn't for almost two hours, but there was twenty minutes before the next block started and she was hoping Lucan had decided to go to the library for some early research.

There was a surprisingly large number of kids in the library when she entered. Mrs Shan even had two house-elves helping her check out books at the front desk. It was clear some classes still had mid-term exams to administer.

Briallen looked for Lucan but didn't seem him in the mass of students in the main part of the library. She began going down the rows of bookcases and looking in through the widows in the doors to the study rooms. Finally she found him in the very last study room. She took a deep breath, to calm herself, and then went in.

The deep breath didn't help.

"Tell me the clue, tell me the clue." The words burst from her mouth like steam from a kettle as she jumped into the chair closest to Lucan, startling him.

He stared at her wide-eyed, which always made Briallen uncomfortable because with his eyes wide open she couldn't avoid looking directly into them. This bothered her because his eyes were so dark it was almost impossible to spot his pupils. As images of demons and werewolves flashed through her mind, she stammered, "Please."

Lucan lowered his eyes and mumbled something Briallen didn't understand as he pulled a small white card, no bigger than the average business card, out of his robes' inner pocket. He placed it carefully on the notebook he'd been writing in when Briallen first entered, and Briallen saw now that he'd been writing about the clue, not doing his homework. She leaned over and silently read the clue card:

I'm in abyss at most times,

I am rooted to the earth,

I'm in actuality the sublime,

I am glistening in mirth.

I'm as omphalos, in shape and size,

but I'm natant in my other guise,

and I'm incandescent as the moon,

So I'm treasured by the wise,

but I'm exquisite most when in tune,

which is only why I rise.

She sighed irritably. She wasn't a fan of riddles. The only ones she'd ever actually known were the ones her grandpa Ben used to tell her before he died, and she always struggled with them. But those riddles were easy compared to the one she'd just read, which looked more like nonsense than English.

"What on earth does all that even mean? None of it makes sense," she muttered, reading it again.

"It's a riddle, it's not supposed to make sense right away. I've already started trying to decipher each line. Natant means something like swimming, and guise could mean a sort of manner or habit. The line refers to its other guise, telling us that sometimes this thing lives in water," explained Lucan slowly and carefully, making sure Briallen understood what he was saying. "And the first two lines of living in abyss and being rooted to the earth suggest a cave... so sometimes it lives in water, and at other times it lives in the earth, in caves."

"It could be a dragon!" whispered Briallen in shaky excitement, convinced her day-dream was coming true. She was so ecstatic at the thought of catching a dragon she was breathing erratically, and shaking with energy she was just waiting to spend on the dragon. Lucan snorted but then tried to cover it with a fake sneeze. Briallen glared at him. "It could be a dragon! There are water dragons and land dragons!"

"Reynard said, specifically, to bring him each clue piece once it was found. We couldn't very well bring him a dragon. They're illegal to own, not to mention there is no way we could capture one. It can take at least seven fully qualified dragon wranglers to take down one adolescent dragon! And we're just two scrawny second years. Use your brain, Briallen, really. It's why I chose you for my partner." He muttered his last sentence with a sighed.

"I am! I'm thinking outside the box," snapped Briallen. "And I was just trying to be helpful."

"I know," replied Lucan quietly. "Now, seriously, what do you think? Is it in any way... Muggle-ish to you?"

"Muggle-ish?"

"Does it remind you of anything from your Muggle upbringing?" he said, exasperated.

He was unaware he'd offended her, though she was unsure why she was offended. Instead of answering his question, she offered, "Look, it says 'as omphalos.' That means it's like something, right? Well, omphalos sounds like a name, so maybe it's talking about a person?"

"Alright, now that is helpful. We'll start there at lunch... I'll make you a copy of the clue before I go," he mumbled, already tearing a sheet of paper from his notebook for Briallen. He scribbled the clue down quickly and then folded it and gave it to Briallen.

"I know we're not supposed to tell anyone about the game, but do you think we can at least ask someone about the clue?" asked Briallen while they collected their things from the table.

"Best to stay on the safe side and just not tell anybody anything. I have a feeling Reynard would somehow know if we said anything."

They looked at each other knowingly. Reynard made them both wary, especially after his outburst over Briallen, and the fact he knew wandless magic. She was suspicious but looking forward having fun, and so she pushed her suspicions from her mind.

While Lucan went to his next class, Briallen went out to the pitch to practice Quodpot with Toby, Abe, Cass, and, amazingly, Kimmy, during their free period.

She had gotten much better at Quodpot since the start of school and though her broom-work still left something to be desired, she was great at catching and throwing. She and Rex actually complemented each other in that way - she was the broom-challenged catcher and thrower, and he was the flyer with the butter fingers. It also meant they sometimes competed more against each other than against the opposing house teams. Whenever she could be found outside flying, he could be found outside, throwing and catching.

Even now, when Briallen was sure he was supposed to be in class, Rex was next the pitch, practicing his throws using a BowderBall. His girlfriend, Grace, sat in the bleachers next to him but she was watching Briallen, not Rex. Briallen ignored her. She knew joining the game would bring unwanted attention from the Platt Princesses, and that since there were no rules something bad was bound to happen.

But Briallen wasn't going to start anything. She was going to wait for them to initiate a fight so that she could claim self-defense.

Toby threw the BowderBall they were practicing with at Kimmy, who immediately took her hands off her broom and brought them up to protect her face and screamed shrilly. The BowderBall spun circles around her, occasionally popping out of its rotation to bop her in an arm or in her stomach.

Cass and Toby laughed nearby. "You have to catch it, Kimmy!" Toby shouted at her. "It won't hit your head, it's not enchanted that way!"

"I don't want to catch it!" cried Kimmy.

Briallen had no idea why Kimmy even agreed to go out to the pitch with them in the first place. Even Abe, who was cautious and timid in nature, eagerly helped Briallen practice Quodpot with actual Quods and not just the soft, little BowderBalls. She flew over to Kimmy though to get the BowderBall away from her. She took hold of Kimmy's broom to steady both herself and Kimmy before she began trying to grab at the small, red ball spinning in ever faster circles around Kimmy.

She wobbled to left suddenly, and turned Kimmy's broom with her. Kimmy screamed louder and brought her hands back down to her broom handle right away and tried to pull away from Briallen. Briallen tightened her grip on Kimmy's broom and tried to keep the other girl from pulling away. The two girls spun left and right and up down. Kimmy was so absorbed in trying to get out of Briallen's vice grip, and Briallen was so absorbed in trying to get Toby's BowderBall away from Kimmy, that neither girl noticed the Bludger that was hurtling towards them.

Toby, Cass, and Abe began screaming at them to move out of the way. Kimmy stopped struggling when she heard them and looked around her. The Bludger was almost at them and moving very fast. Still screaming, Kimmy launched herself at Briallen and the two girls toppled to the ground, just as the Bludger hit the end of Kimmy's broomstick, causing both brooms to spin off and hit the ground.

Toby was the first to land and the first to reach Kimmy and Briallen, who were sprawled on the ground. Briallen sat up and began screaming at Kimmy, "What's the matter with you?! I was trying to get that stupid ball away from you and you go and attack me!"

Kimmy's cheeks were stained with tears that were still flowing, and she was clutching her ankle and whimpering. "I'm never playing this game with you ever again!" she cried in great heaving sobs.

"She was trying to duck the Bludger, Briallen, not attack you!" said Toby, pointing to the large Bludger stuck in the ground just a few feet from where they'd landed.

"There's no one playing Quidditch," said Briallen as she examined the Bludger. It was still moving, trying to dislodge itself from the earth surrounding it. Briallen threw herself on it and then yanked it out of the ground. It struggled against her but she held tight.

"It just came out of the sky, out of nowhere," explained Abe.

He held the two pieces of the school broom Kimmy had borrowed from the broom shed, while Cass held Briallen's personal broom. Half of the school broom's handle had splintered off, and the twigs of both brooms were bent or snapped. A small part of the tip of Briallen's broom handle had also splintered off. Briallen frowned at the brooms.

"I bet it was Dante," said Toby as he scowled in the direction of a large willow tree that sat between two sets of bleachers next to the pitch. Dante sat under the tree with his nose in a notebook and two large tomes next to him.

Grace still sat in the bleachers near where Rex had been practicing his throwing, though they were both now watching Briallen and her friends, and were smiling and laughing at them. She also noticed Julian Hawkins leaving the equipment tent. He wore his Quidditch padding and had a broom in his hands.

Three of her opponents in the scavenger hunt, all wanting badly to win. Three people she knew had no problem fighting dirty. It could have been any of them that set the Bludger loose - Reynard did say there were no rules. She wished she could share her thoughts with her friends, who were currently busy helping Kimmy to stand. But that was Reynard's demand - don't tell anyone about the game.

"I think she broke her ankle," said Abe, worried, as he helped support her.

"She'll be fine," muttered Briallen. "Mrs Krause can fix broken bones overnight."

"Thanks for your concern!" cried Kimmy sarcastically. She turned back to Abe. "Help me to the nurse's office, please?" He agreed and they began wobbling slowly away.

"I'll come with," said Cass, with one last quick glance at Briallen.

Toby and Briallen followed their classmates at a distance, stopping when they got the equipment tent so that Briallen could return the Bludger to its proper trunk. With effort, she managed to put it away and then they made their way to the broom shed. During the day a house-elf manned the broom shed, so that students wouldn't go in and out of the shed all the time or forget to return their brooms. If a student wanted a broom, they had to check one out, an hour at time, from the broom shed elf who was very protective of his charges.

"We had an accident," Toby explained to the broom elf with an apologetic grin. The broom elf didn't smile back, he only grunted, took the two pieces of the broom, and asked for the name of the person who rented it. "Kimmy Moseley - it wasn't her fault though. Someone threw a Bludger at her."

The broom elf made an illegible note next to Kimmy's name and then said, "Off with yous!" They heard him mutter 'little vandals' as they left.

As they were walking back to the school to clean up for lunch, Briallen had to bite her tongue to keep from telling Toby everything about Reynard's game, and from explaining to him that she thought the Bludger was meant specifically for her. She didn't have to though as Toby had come to that conclusion on his own.

"I think it was Dante. He's been attacking us left and right, trying to get back for the Boggart last year, I think," he mused while they walked into the dining hall. It was still too early for lunch but they sat down anyway.

"I think you might be right. He's such a snot, and not even smart enough to come up with something unique. He just throws things at you and hopes you get hurt," said Briallen, putting her broom down on the table in front of them. "And look what he did to my broom! Grandpa's going to kill me, seriously. I haven't even had it for a year!"

"You're just lucky you and Kimmy ended up switching places because that thing was going straight for your head. And that's no BowderBall - that Bludger would've done some serious damage!"

Toby was right. That Bludger was meant to knock her out, possibly to make her quit the game. Her opponents underestimated her though, and the attack had only made her even more determined to beat them all at the game.

She wasn't sure if it was the idea of being hit in the head with a Bludger or exhaustion, but just then a powerful headache made her wince in pain. She brought her hand to her head and tried to shake it away.

"You okay?" asked Toby, concerned.

"Fine, I'm fine, really," mumbled Briallen, her head still in her hands. "Just a headache."

"You've been getting those a lot lately," he said slowly. For a moment, Briallen thought he might know her secret, but she looked into his eyes and realized he was still searching for it. Everyone else was oblivious to her odd behavior, everyone except Toby.

And she had to find a way to fix her problem before he found out. She knew how sensitive he was about friends keeping secret from each other and she feared he might never forgive her for keeping such a big secret from him.

"Really, Toby, I'll be fine. Hey, help me think of some costume ideas for me and Hayden," she said with a fake smile.

Toby knew she was changing the subject but he played along, and began suggesting silly things like Mr and Mrs Frankenstein, or a Quod and a cauldron, and made Briallen laugh. When lunch finally began and Hayden arrived, followed by Marisol and Shane, Toby and Briallen were laughing so hard they were pink and had tears streaming down their faces.

"What's so funny?" Hayden asked, desperate to be let in on the joke the two friends shared.

"We," began Briallen, before stopping to laugh again. She paused and took several deep breaths while fanning herself with her plate. "We were talking about Halloween. Costumes and stuff."

Hayden's eyes lit up. "I have costumes for us! I knew you were busy and would probably forget so I did everything!"

"What?" asked Briallen, her smile slowly turning to a frown. Her parents always said relationships were about making decisions together, so Briallen didn't understand how or why Hayden could choose their Halloween costumes without even speaking to her, or even asking her if she wanted to dress up with him.

"I'm Robin Hood and you're my Maid Marion!" He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her before kissing her forehead. "I'll bring you your costume tonight after dinner, and then walk you to Quodpot practice. I can stay and watch tonight! I finished all my homework during Humanities, since Professor Westcar was sick and we had a sub."

"Oh, okay," said Briallen with a small smile and a nod. He sounded so proud she didn't want to burst his happiness and tell him that she'd rather be Robin Hood.

"I've already got my Brenda Lance costume figured out!" blurted Marisol in one long stream of words. Shane sat quietly next to her, occasionally watching her as she described their costumes. Briallen silently wished that Shane was her boyfriend and Hayden was Marisol's, convinced that she was better suited than Marisol to have a silent, shy boyfriend.

But by the end of lunch her thoughts were solely focused on Halloween. She'd forgotten Reynard's game, her run-in with the Bludger, and Hayden's unintentionally controlling ways. Tomorrow night they were going trick or treating and collecting large amounts of candy, and she was very excited.

O * O * O * O

"Whoa, Briallen's wearing a dress!" announced Noelle in humorous, and phony, amusement as Briallen walked out of their shared bathroom wearing her Maid Marion costume.

Briallen stuck her tongue out at her friend who was covered in glitter and wore a pair of fluttering wings on her back. Chante and Kimmy giggled from Chante's bed, where they were working on doing each other's faces up with overly glamorous make-up. Briallen still wasn't quite sure what their costumes were, but the girls kept saying silly words and phrases like 'gat' and 'cat's meow,' which didn't seem to fit what they were wearing.

"I wear a dress almost everyday for school," said Briallen, rolling her eyes. She was in front of her dresser mirror now, trying to figure out how to put on the silly hat that came with the outfit.

The dark blue dress she wore had been enough of a hassle for Briallen to put on. The costume was a 'one size fits all' dress, which meant in the wizarding world that it was excessively large until you put it on and it could shrink to fit you. She was swimming in fabric trying to find where her head and arms were meant to be, and when she finally did find the correct holes, the dress re-sized itself so quickly it pulled the hem out from under her feet and caused her to fall on her face on the bathroom floor. The hat was even more frustrating though because it didn't look like any hat she'd ever seen and she had no idea how to wear it.

Noelle finished applying another generous layer of glitter to her face, wiped off her hands, and went to help Briallen. "Just let me braid you hair - and put some glitter in it!"

"Okay... but no glitter," replied Briallen quickly. She was glad it was dark out already because Noelle had so much glitter on her now that if she walked out in the sun she risked blinding everybody.

Noelle sighed and nodded her head, crestfallen. While Noelle braided her long hair, Briallen looked over a sheet of paper Marisol had given her, with tips on spells for doing make-up. When she and Hayden had first started dating, Briallen approached Marisol and asked her friend to show her how to put on make-up, because she wanted to look nice for Hayden. But after being poked in the eye with Marisol's wand several times, Briallen gave up. She no longer even cared whether or not she looked pretty for Hayden.

But it was Halloween night and everyone, even many of the boys, wore make-up on Halloween. She decided to try just the mascara spell. Holding the sheet of paper in one hand, and her wand in the other, Briallen said, slightly haltingly, "Aquilaum Oculus Capillus!"

A puff of smoke came out her wand. Briallen waved it away and looked in the mirror to see how it had worked. Her eyelashes looked as they always did but her eyebrows were black as ink. Chante and Kimmy were laughing so hard, Kimmy nearly fell off her friend's bed.

"I'll fix it," said Noelle soothingly as she put a hair tie at the bottom of Briallen's braid. Noelle raised her wand a said a spell Briallen hadn't heard before. Frantically, Briallen checked her reflection again and was relieved to see her brows were their normal dark brown. "I don't know make-up spells, though, so I can't do it the right way for you."

"I can!" said Chante with just a little too much enthusiasm.

"Thanks, but no thanks. I have to go meet, you know, my friends," said Briallen as kindly as possible as she grabbed her wand and an empty pillowcase and rushed out of the room before Chante forced her to be her make-up guinea pig.

Briallen loved Halloween, mostly because of the crazy costumes so many of the kids wore at Bergamot. Most of the costumes were much more realistic than Muggle costumes thanks to magic. She was surrounded by rock stars, fairies, vampires, dragons, and gnomes. On her way to the dining hall she noticed several girls in her year were dressed as Circe with long, silver hair and sparkling white robes, and she suspected this was only because they had just began learning of the famous witch in their History of Magic class.

The dining hall was chaotic, but thankfully Marisol had been smart and suggested that they all meet by the front doors instead of in the dining hall. They'd be skipping dinner, but they were going trick or treating anyway - and making more room for candy, according to Marisol.

A pair of arms were suddenly wrapped around and Briallen she started, and spun around to yell at whoever was touching her, only to see it was Hayden. He wore a green top and trousers, with brown leather boots, a funny hat with a feather in it, and a quiver full of (blunted) arrows. It took Briallen a moment to take it all in, and when she had, she burst out laughing at her boyfriend's funny costume.

"I know I look a bit like a dork," said Hayden with a bashful smile. "But we were supposed to look dorky together - you're missing your silly hat!"

"I didn't know how to put it on, so Noelle did my hair for me," Briallen argued playfully, still smiling.

"Is Noelle wearing a lot of glitter?"

"Yep, she's a fairy princess - a glittery fairy princess. She tried to put some of that stuff on me, but I said no."

"I don't think she gave you much of a choice in the matter, then," laughed Hayden. "It's all over you hair and your back!" He pulled away from her and held up his palms, which had been resting on Briallen's back, and showed her the glitter that covered them. Briallen groaned and began trying to brush the glitter off of her.

"You look nice, Briallen!" said Marisol as she bounced over to her friend. Shane ambled casually behind her. "I like the glitter! I was going to wear glitter too, but I thought it'd be too much sparkle with the sequins." Marisol wore an orange, sequined outer robe, over a white shirt and carefully torn jeans, just like the outfit their Brenda Lance dolls came with. She brought her wand up to her mouth like it was a microphone and began to sing, poorly, "All I wanted was a good wizard who would care for me, not a wizard who's just a great big cry baby!"

Shane looked at the floor, blushing, while Briallen and Hayden laughed. "Let's leave the singing to Brenda," joked Briallen. "Where's Toby?"

"He's staying for dinner and then going out with Dax and Abe, and I think Elodia and Noelle might be going with them too..." said Marisol with a shrug.

"Well if we're not waiting for anyone else, let's go already," said Shane, his pink cheeks dimpling with a smile. "We'll get all the best candy before them!"

The four of them ran outside to one of the carriages waiting to take kids to The Village. Pushing and shoving each other playfully, they piled into the first empty carriage they found and made their way to the nearby wizarding village.

After two hours of trick or treating in the strong valley wind they were exhausted, and Shane was no longer the only one with pink cheeks. The wind was biting, and it had even snowed at one point, but they were determined to visit every house in The Village. By the time they'd finished and stepped into The Bubbling Cauldron for some warming refreshments, their pillowcases overflowed with their bounty. After collecting a few sickles to pay for four mugs of warm butterbeer, Hayden left them all at a table near the center of the room and went to the bar to collect their orders.

"I will give you all of my pecan gnomes, because Shane and I don't like those - yuck - in exchange for your Cocoa Pipes, since I know those make you sick," Marisol told Briallen authoritatively, making a note on the pad of paper she'd pulled out of her purse. "And I'll trade you five chocolate galleons for one chocolate peach."

"Sounds good," agreed Briallen. "So, what are you guys doing after we warm up?"

"Definitely not the hedge maze," said Marisol, shivering. While she didn't actually participate in the fight with the snatcher in the hedge maze the year before, Marisol was still unsettled by the idea that snatcher had gone into the haunted hedge maze to kidnap her. Briallen nodded in agreement. She had taken part in the fight and it had landed her in a month-long coma and put her off of haunted mazes for good.

"I think we're going to The Yellow Room," mumbled Shane with a shy smile.

Marisol smiled happily and giggled, and then quickly said to Briallen, "You and Hayden can come along too, if you want."

Marisol knew full well Briallen's aversion to the frilly pastel café just down the street from the train station, and how all the yellow and pink made her sick to her stomach, but she was being polite and asking Briallen along anyway. Briallen shook her head just as Hayden returned with their butterbeers.

They continued discussing how to divvy up their candy haul while they warmed up, until finally Marisol couldn't wait any longer and dragged Shane away to go to The Yellow Room. Shortly after, Hayden and Briallen left as well.

They walked hand in hand down to the train station, where the carriages waited.

"This was a much better Halloween than last year," said Hayden slowly.

"Yeah, no one's tried to kill me yet! That's always nice," laughed Briallen. Hayden chuckled a little but he disliked it when Briallen joked about her near-death experiences and tried not to encourage her to make light of them.

He helped her into a carriage and climbed in after her. Once in their seat, he wrapped his arm around her and the carriage pulled away from the station. "I like that we've been able to spend time together, finally..."

"This is just a little break. I start up my student aide duties again next Wednesday, and then we have our last Quodpot match of the semester just before Thanksgiving, so I'll be training for that a lot... and then finals!" Briallen groaned and put her hand to her head. She really needed to start studying in order to bring her grades up before the semester ended. As it was now, she felt she'd only barely make high enough grades to stay on the Quodpot team.

Hayden groaned a little too, but for a different reason. He had obviously expected to spend a lot of time with Briallen when she agreed to be his girlfriend, but they hardly ever really saw each other. He shifted in his seat to face her.

"Briallen?" he begged quietly.

She brought her hand away from her face and looked at Hayden, expecting him to start lecturing her again on the importance of rest and relaxation.

Instead, her cupped her face in his hands and gave her a real kiss for the first time.