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“When are you going to tell us where we’re going Hermione?” George whined.
“When we get there.”
“I still don’t see why I had to come.”
Nudging him with an elbow, Fred said, “Because I did, dear brother.”
“She’s your girlfriend. Not mine.”
“Too right, she is.” Fred beamed a smile at Hermione and held out a hand to her. George rolled his eyes.
The walked down a winding path at the edge of the forbidden forest. Technically, since Fred and George were no longer students it wasn’t forbidden to them anymore. Fred had been surprised when Hermione asked them to meet her in Hogsmeade on a week night and even more surprised when she broke school rules by veering off into the forest.
“I thought this was an emergency,” George said.
Glancing back, Hermione said, “It sort of is one. There’s a party I promised I would go to.”
Before George could open his mouth to reply, the trees in front of them parted to reveal a clearing. The clearing was teeming with ghosts. Fred had never seen so many in one place before. They clustered together anachronously: medieval monks in shaggy robes chatted with Egyptian priests with brightly painted faces, two French aristocrats in powdered wigs sneered at a relatively pair couple in trench coats, cavalrymen rode stocky horses through the air above. There must be hundreds, all squished together under the moonlight.
“We came all the way out here for a ghost party?” George said.
“Well, yes.” Hermione twisted one long curl around her finger, untwisted it, and twisted it again. “Sir Nicholas asked me to come for their Halloween festival. Apparently, Hogwarts hasn’t hosted it for decades. I thought it might be fun.”
“Oh, definitely. Let’s just stand here for hours and listen to some peasant who has been dead a few centuries tell stories about the bloody goblin rebellion.” George turned around to leave. “I’d rather eat bubotuber pus.”
“Ah, at last! Hermione, dear girl.” Nearly Headless Nick floated toward them. “We’ve been waiting for you!”
Tilting her head to the side, Hermione said, “You have?”
“Of course. Didn’t I mention? Every year, the hosts of our Halloween Haunt invite one special witch or wizard to do the honors of lighting the bonfire.” He looked down at his empty, transparent hands. “Since we can’t. This year, the honor is yours.”
Suddenly, Fred noticed how quiet it was. All the ghosts had stopped what they were doing to look at them. Parting, they revealed a campfire in the middle of the clearing, already filled with stacked logs.
Hermione blushed and pulled out her wand. “I won’t keep you waiting then.” With a swift flick, a tendril of flame licked at the firewood and caught. A gentle glow spread outward, landing on the nearest ghosts. As the light touched them, it refracted. Bouncing between the walls of their skin, the light intensified and magnified. Within the space of a second, every ghost was filled with the prismatic firelight. At the edge of the forest around them, the ghosts cast magnificent shadows of color that shifted and whirled with every movement they made.
And then the ghosts began to move. At first, it began as small movements, the listing of a hand or tilting a head. From there it grew and grew into an intricate dance that painted the woods with color.
“I take it back. This is better than bubotuber pus,” George said after several minutes.
“I told you it would be fun,” Hermione said, smiling widely. “This is so different than a muggle bonfire.”
At this, Nick turned and grimaced. “The Halloween Haunt is no ordinary bonfire.”
Smiling wickedly, Fred stepped in front of Hermione. “Actually, aside from the colors –“
“-it’s a bit boring, mate,” George finished. Hermione dug her heel into Fred’s left foot.
“Boring!” Nick said. Several ghosts nearby stopped dancing. “The Haunt isn’t boring at all! It is the coming together of lost souls. Our one chance a year to celebrate the beauty that comes with our deaths.”
“Yes, but do you actually do anything–“
“-aside from move about a bit–”
“Or is this just it?”
Nick hovered a few inches higher, raising his nose in the air. “And I suppose you think a muggle bonfire is better? What exactly is it that makes it so entertaining then?”
Fred and George simultaneously turned to Hermione. The clearing was still. All eyes were on her. Softly, she said, “My parents used to tell ghost stories when we went camping.”
Nick floated back down. “Do they? How wonderful! Muggles have come such a long way, the poor beasts, since the days when they burned witches at the stake.” He glanced back at a distorted, half-melted ghost. “To think that muggles tell tales of our glorious deaths!”
“Actually-“ Hermione began.
All at once, the ghosts began arguing about who would tell the first story.
“My head was flung fifteen feet when they decapitated me!”
“Mine went twenty feet!”
“That’s nothing; I was boiled alive!”
“I was eaten by a dragon!”
A fight broke out somewhere in the middle of the crowd, over whose oozing battle wound was more gruesome. Hermione calmly raised her wand and shot a spark into the sky.
“That’s not quite the kind of ghost story I meant.”
Nick straightened his head, lining up his spinal cord with a dull crack. “What other kind is there?”
“Normally, they’re scary,” she said
A knight in full plate armor seated on his horse laughed. “Ghosts aren’t afraid of anything.”
Fred draped his arm around Hermione’s waist. “Are you sure about that?”
George grinned, wrapping her arm across her shoulders. “What was that muggle invention you told us about Hermione?”
Leaning closer, Fred whispered, “I remember. The vac-hume.”
“That’s the one, Freddie.”
“They say that muggles invented them just to trap ghosts.”
A collective gasp spread through the closest ghosts. Hermione rolled her eyes. “They invented vacuums to trap dust.”
“And ghosts!” George interjected. “Every muggle has one, stashed in a secret cupboard in their house.”
“Ready to suck up any spirits that come haunting.“
The knight snorted. “What utter tosh. We could just float right through this vac-hume, whatever it is.”
A wicked grin cracked across Fred ’s face. “Nope. These ingenious muggles found a way to completely seal the inside. Nothing magic can penetrate it.”
“Not even a ghost.”
Nearly Headless Nick’s head wobbled precariously before tipping onto his shoulder. “But what do they do once they’ve trapped you?”
“That’s the worst part,” Fred said. “They leave you in the vac-hume.”
George let his gaze meet each set of eyes, slowly panning across the room, before saying, “Forever.”
A sudden panic rippled across the crowd, which caused Fred and George to burst out laughing. Hermione covered her mouth with her hand, letting the smallest giggle escape between her fingers, before gently smacking each twin's arm.
“You two are incorrigible!”