The Way to Eternity

A tall girl with dark black hair, nearly black eyes, and a charming smile all her own walked slowly down the long corridor.

"Good afternoon, my friend, how goes your weekend?"

Thomas smiled up at the tall girl he met in the hallway. Though he was much shorter than she and quite a lot more rotund, they had been the best of friends since their first year at the wizarding school.

"Very well indeed, Lady." His grin spread, as he knew she detested being called this.

"You torture me so! Couldn't you call me by Annabelle? After all, that is my name."

"Lady suits you; your Ravenclaw colors just make you look the appearance of a Lady!" Thomas enjoyed picking on his friend, and she knew he was only kidding around.

"It is hard to believe we will be soon leaving this wonderful school," Annabelle voiced. "I've enjoyed it here so much! But being a seventh year, we only have--"

"LADY ANNABELLE!"

Thomas and Annabelle flinched at the loud voice. Loud and obnoxious was hearing Edward calling out Annabelle's name and walking fast, never running, to catch up to her.

Annabelle despised Edward. From her first year, making fun of his name, to her final year. Only now, things were much more than his being Slytherin and her being Ravenclaw.

Every girl in Hogwarts would have given her right arm to spend the day with Edward, except for Annabelle. And of all the girls for him to pick, over all the others in the school, he had fallen for her. Annabelle. The girl who socialized with Thomas and who had her heart and head in the clouds.

Thomas turned around to face the tall and athleticly-built Edward, with his icy blue eyes and brown hair. Thomas's pudgieness and boring brown eyes and hair had no match up against the girl-magnet that was Edward, but he tried just the same.

"Move, fatty, I'm trying to talk to Lady Annabelle."

Annabelle grabbed Thomas by the arm and pulled him away, calling over her shoulder as she went, "Sorry, Edward, but if you knew anything about me you would know how I hate being called Lady."

Thomas looked sheepish. As the Hufflepuff boy and Ravenclaw girl headed for the outside, they had a hearty reminder that there was to be a Quidditch match today.

"Look, it's all up to you," a Gryffindor seventh year was telling a sixth year. "You're our Seeker so you're going to have to keep your eyes open. We can beat that Edward from Slytherin; having a ton of land and money can't win a Quidditch match."

The year-younger boy was nodding carelessly, his wavy blonde hair bobbing under his wizard's hat. He clearly wasn't paying a bit of attention, and as Annabelle and Thomas passed, he casually sauntered up to walk in step with them.

"Good afternoon, Nicholas," Thomas nodded. "It is a good day for sports, yes?"

"Of course, anyday can be good for Quidditch," Nicholas answered.

"We will be certain to cheer for Gryffindor." Annabelle smiled a small smile at the Seeker. She pushed a strand of her dark hair behind her ear and said, "After all, the only other choice is Edward."

Nicholas's face fell at the mention of Edward's name, and he obviously did not like the Slytherin's Seeker at all. "Oh, do not remind me, Annabelle."

Annabelle's smile grew much wider. "Why, I thank you much for your not calling me Lady."

"Fancy names don't suit Hogwarts students," was the reply.

Thomas had opened his mouth to protest, but smiling Annabelle cut him off, saying, "Then I shall be cheering ever louder for you at the game, Nick."

--------

Edward stormed through the hallways of Hogwarts, looking for all the world as though he were on the verge of murder. Not caring who heard him, he began shouting to himself.

"She cheered so loudly for Nicholas!" he raged. "When I was there, flying just so she could see!"

He made so much noise that one Professor Dusted, teacher of Transfiguration, began to fuss at him. He just kept moving toward the Slytherin common room, though, shouting the entire way.

"What is it, Edward?"

He glared at the speaker: a girl who had always had her eye on him. She was a bit frightening, with her knee-length red hair, but for once he was only glad to have someone to let his anger out on.

"I am so angry with Annabelle, and Thomas, and especially Nicholas," he began.

"Say no more," the girl said. "My name is Oceania. You want revenge, I daresay?"

"You read me like a book."

"I specialize in revenge." She gave a wink. "How terrible shall the revenge be?"

Edward thought a moment, then came up with his conclusion. "I want them killed."

Oceania grinned wickedly. "I like your style, Edward." A moment's pause, then, "Shall I call you Edward? After all, you own a lot of land."

"I dislike the whole school knowing that I am a Baron," he said in a drawling, though bragging, voice. "Edward is fine."

"Very well then, Edward. How would you like to do away with these three? All at once, or one at a time?"

Edward again spent a moment in thought. "Certainly one at a time. I suggest getting rid of Nicholas first, as he is the problem currently. Then Thomas, leaving Annabelle with a while to grieve."

"I do like the way you think!" Oceania exclaimed. "Excellent! I'll be in touch with developing information."

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Edward waited and waited for days that turned into long months for his revenge to begin. He had begun to wonder if Oceania would ever get back to him about it, when she rushed up to him in the hallway after Defense Against the Dark Arts one day.

"It is soon the time to act," she whispered quickly. "I've just caught something disgusting; hurry and you can see it."

They ran along the corridor until Oceania stopped quickly and motioned for Edward to peer around the corner. He did so, and nearly slammed his fist against the wall at what he saw.

Annabelle, face aglow, eyes sparkling, was pulling away from a rather deep kiss courtesy of Nicholas. Oceania's dark eyes caught Edward's, which were currently alight with fire.

"Soon," she mouthed. "On Halloween."

Edward nodded, counting the days until then in his mind. It felt like ages to him as he waited, through Transfiguration, Quidditch practice, his few days until revenge began.

Finally, finally, it was the night of Halloween. Edward noticed that Oceania was missing from the Slytherin table. This cheered him a bit, even when he watched all of the happy friends chattering loudly.

He didn't notice at first, but it wasn't long before he saw that Annabelle was walking around with Thomas, looking a bit worried. She even walked to the Slytherin table, and began asking people the same thing.

"Have you seen Nicholas?"

Just before she reached Edward, a first year Gryffindor student came running wildly into the Great Hall.

"I saw something horrible!" she shouted. "It was terrible!" She sobbed through her words.

Professor Dusted put her arm around the young student and tried to soothe her. "What was it?" she asked.

"It was this girl...but I don't know who..."

The student wiped her eyes and took a breath. "I saw someone get killed," she said dramatically, "in the Gryffindor common room."

A large amount of teachers dashed out the door at these words, and Edward winked at Oceania, who had snuck back in and was trying to look as frightened as most of the other students did.

"Who was it?" a chorus of voices asked.

The first year girl, now crying openly from fear, gulped and answered, "It looked like Nicholas."

Many of Annabelle's friends turned to look at her; she sat with her mouth a slight bit open, her head shaking.

"...Nicholas?" she mouthed eventually. She walked to the door and stood, awaiting the return of the teachers. As each moment inched by, her black eyes began to brim with tears.

After what seemed to Annabelle like forever and a day, the Headmaster of the school entered the Great Hall again. His face was contorted into an expression of worry and concern, and upon seeing this, Annabelle covered her face so as not to show her tears.

Thomas was on his feet, running to put a comforting arm around his friend's shoulders.

"Lady Annabelle," he said gently, "I am terribly sorry..."

"Who did this?" she wailed suddenly. "Who did this? I hope whomever it is will be cursed!"

Edward couldn't supress the grin that spread across his face. However, it was the beginning of his downfall, as both Annabelle and Thomas caught his eye as he sat smiling.

"It was Edward..." Thomas whispered.

Annabelle, now turning to leave the Great Hall, paused. "But that first year said that she saw a girl..." Another pause, then, loudly to the Headmaster, "How did he...how did Nicholas die?"

As though he didn't want anyone to know, the Headmaster replied very quietly, "It was quite gruesome. Unfortunately, I can find no better way to say it than that he was beheaded." As an afterthought, he added, "Almost."

--------

A four-inch blanket of snow graced the grounds around the school, as most students chattered happily about the upcoming holidays. It was a most romantic time for many school couples, walking hand in hand through the chilly hallways. Annabelle's melancholy was obvious in the winter atmosphere, and she was never seen without Thomas tagging along, checking on her. They had grown ever closer since the untimely end of Nicholas.

"Now, now, Lady, I know you are still quite upset, but you should not dwell on the past," he would say to her each day.

Her reply was always the same. "I just feel empty, my friend."

Thomas loved the winter, because holidays meant more food. He was fond of eating; in fact, it was a hobby of his. He had grown to a plump size, though not fat, and was always seen following Annabelle as he munched on an apple or orange. He was the first one up in the mornings of wintertime, and often spent lazy cold days relaxing, walking through the snow.

Annabelle waited for him every day by the Second-floor staircases, where they would find each other and walk together. It was the final day before the winter break that she began to worry, as he had not shown up at their meeting place.

"Perhaps he stopped to sneak some food from the House-Elves," she began telling herself. But by the end of the day, her thoughts had progressed into horrible visions of what may have happened. Still recalling the loss of Nicholas at Halloween, she considered a wide variety of morbid occurrences for Thomas.

As she sat in the Ravenclaw common room late into the night, she heard footsteps coming up the hallway. Peeking out of the room, she glimpsed a fearful looking girl with long red hair hiding in a corner, as grim voices passed. Catching snatches of what they said, her heart sunk, her fears surfacing again.

"...the second death this year..."

"...should tell that Ravenclaw girl..."

She slumped back inside and to her bed, certain that her life must be going up in a pillar of smoke.

--------

Annabelle was not usually a depressed person. In the midst of a crisis, she was the levelheaded one, and often the witty one ready to joke about the problem afterward. But as she walked past the silent Hufflepuff table, she bent her head low to hide her tears.

Two. Two of her dearest friends were gone, killed both in a gruesome manner, and Annabelle knew Edward was up to it. Thomas's horrible fate had been a long, sharp dagger in the back. Though the teachers denied it, she knew that dagger was from the Slytherin common rooms; she had seen it on one occaision as a second year when she snuck into the other three common rooms out of her young curiosity.

Getting through the rest of that year would be a hard feat to accomplish for Annabelle. Without much of a friend left to her name, she was often found slowly trudging, aimless and lost, through the hallways, or bent over old photos, holding back tears. She was unable to speak to anyone, and slept little, for the nightmares that plagued her. Each time she passed Edward, she would give him a look of pure contempt, though he would simply smile back.

Even some girls who did not know her began to worry for Annabelle, and she often sighed at their remarks of such things as "Edward will be after you, you know, Lady," or "You mustn't be so depressed forever, Lady."

Two weeks until the end of the school year, and Annabelle's graduation, she sat up late in a comforable chair in the Ravenclaw common room. She was writing, as was one of her hobbies, in her small diary, her pen flowing smoothly over the paper. She was not tired, though it was in the hours just after midnight, and no one else was still awake. Slowly she had begun to grow more alive again, feeling slightly less torn apart as before. She was able now to look at photos and not cry, and to speak to others again.

But Edward...she would never forgive. He had destroyed a young love between herself and Nicholas, as someone would tread on a rose. He had broken apart a friendship that should have lasted forever...and she could never forgive such atrocities.

Shutting her diary after recording her thoughts for the moment, she leaned back against the chair and shut her eyes. What a year it had been, for someone like herself...

She was jerked out of her ponderings by a shuffling noise, akin to that of someone trying to be sneaky and doing a poor job of it. A sensation of being stared at came upon her, and she stood to go to her dormitory. Before she could turn around, however, two very strong hands grabbed her own and held them firmly behind her back. She gasped, but felt another set of hands reach up and tie a cloth firmly about her mouth.

"I will end this now," a familiar voice whispered, and the telltale sound of a knife being removed from its sheath seemed to resound across the room. Annabelle uttered a gurgled scream, and never again felt the breath of life coursing throughout her being.

Legend has it that ghosts only wander the earth if they are afflicted with some desperate sorrow. If this be true or if it be merely fiction, Annabelle was instantaneously immortalized to a shimmering, floating form. Sobbing, she left her body and coasted up the staircase from the Ravenclaw common room to the Great Hall. She passed no one in the hallway, but would be waiting for the first teachers to enter the Great Hall in the morning.

--------

"My heavens..."

"Hogwarts has ne'er seen a ghost grace its halls."

"Now we have four..."

Annabelle stirred awake. She sat at the head of the Ravenclaw table, her former classmates staring at her through bloodshot eyes. She glanced to her left...Slytherin. Edward, too, was translucent and shimmering, and he made an odd face at her as he pulled a ghostly knife from his own stomach. To her right, she turned to face a smiling Hufflepuff face she recognized all too well: Thomas, now visibly a plump ghostly figure. Unable to contain herself, Annabelle leapt to her feet to see all the way to the other end of the room--the Gryffindor table, where a bemused apparition of Nicholas was hitting himself in the shoulder and causing his head to fall off, breaking into laughter.

"What happened?" she voiced presently.

"Apparently," Thomas smiled at her, "those folk who are unhappy at death are rather...forced to walk the Earth forever. And here we are."

"I've been waiting for you, Annabelle," Nicholas grinned. "I suppose, now at least, Edward cannot separate us."

To this, Edward simply frowned sullenly. He stood and stalked off, large silvery bloodstains glittering in the early morning sunlight that poured through the windows.

And thus eternity is spent, not alone, not fearful, but happily, with friends who will never leave.