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Calliope and Thalia and Their Inspiration by lucilla_pauie

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~o0o~ Halloween Scares ~o0o~





Minerva glared so murderously at the gargoyle that it jumped aside without being prompted with the password. Minerva stepped onto the revolving stairs and harrumphed.

Of course she hadn’t forgotten Halloween. It was a week away. A full week away. What was the need to fuss? And even if she forgot it, what then? It was only Halloween. Nothing significant. She might not be like she was a year or a decade ago, but she was not fit to be sent to a yarn-filled cottage yet. The students observed a ridiculous holiday licensing overconsumption of sugar, not Samhain. It wasn’t as if any mandate from her was needed. The house-elves would serve the sweets and the staff could wave their wands and decorate in a wink. There was no need for preparations and absolutely no need to startle Minerva into fearing she was going senile. She was not.

She arrived at her office and marched straight to Albus’s portrait. She turned it over only to find it empty. Minerva harrumphed again.

She sat down at her desk and dealt with correspondence. Gringotts had asked for an Accounting of Funds. This was standard, nerve-grating procedure. Always, with only some grace period after the beginning of term, the goblins wanted an accounting of every knut spent from the Hermione Granger Fund. Rolling her eyes, Minerva conjured the appropriate scroll, made a copy, and tapped her wand on that copy, sealing it and plopping it on her out-tray.

Just as she banished the original back to the archives, she heard laughter behind her. Minerva twisted in her seat to face Dumbledore. He was chuckling with as much satisfaction as amusement. Given what he’d taken to meddling with these days, Minerva faced her desk again without asking what he was chortling about now.

“Oh, such fun, Minerva!”

Minerva determinedly ignored that. For the first time, she considered retiring.





“My darling Thalia,

You can’t know how heartbroken I am that I am writing to you instead of holding you and kissing you and talking to you in person. I hope that happy event comes soon. I wish you would write to me. Calliope has told you about me and your grandfather, hasn’t she? He sends you the flowers. Only, we don’t know what you like yet, so we sent you a stem of everything. More gifts are to follow. But before we send them, please let us know if your mother won’t mind. We don’t want to antagonise her.

Tell me about yourself. If you will write, that will bring great happiness to

Your loving grandmother.


Lia leaned to her left in order to see past the vase of assorted flowers in front of her and grinned at Callie. Callie grinned back. “You mentioned being jealous of my flowers.”

“You told them about me?”

“I told them I’d discovered you. They knew about you, of course. I just wondered if they’re in on the agreement, if that’s why they haven’t ever seen you or written to you. And voila!”

“So it’s just our parents.”

“Just our parents.”

“And the convenience/complication of you being in France and me being here.”

“Yes. But then, if Grandmother went to see you, you might have been in France for some time already.”

Lia pushed her plate of breakfast aside and thumped her forehead on the table twice, and then thrice. “Don’t confuse me so early in the day. Blast.” She sat up again. “I wonder why no one from my side has ever written to you. I’ve told them about you. In fact, I told them I’d been horrid to you and they let me know I was a right little hag for it.”

Callie laughed softly. “Well, I can guess why they haven’t... joined in. Can’t you?”

It took Lia a second, and then it was her turn to laugh. “Right. My mum. And maybe Dad, too. But--”

They were cut off by another owl arriving for Lia. But this one was a fake owl, which opened its beak and squawked like a chicken before disappearing in a puff of orange smoke, leaving behind its delivery. They used these owls for newsletters and catalogues.

“It’s from Uncle Fred and Uncle George!”

“We have a Wizard Wheezes in Paris. I’ve only been there once, though.”

“Listen: Dear Lia, We miss you. Why don’t you drop by at the Hogsmeade shop? Wrangle with your mum to bring you. Or your dad! Merlin, we’re disappointed in you. If Mum or Dad worked at Hogwarts, we would have been in Hogsmeade every day. Well no, we’d have died of boredom. Anyway, drop by, all right? Bring your friend. What’s her name? California? Calipash? Calico? Your uncles Gred and Forge will be there until Halloween.”

“Is that possible?”

“We’ve spent a decade not knowing about each other and you’re asking if going to Hogsmeade is impossible?”





“That’s not possible.”

“Why not? I can take them.”

“No, you can’t. Don’t spoil it for them. Look, Thalia, if I meant for you to see Hogsmeade before your third year at Hogwarts, I would have taken you long ago, or let your uncles take you.”

“Lucky for Callie, her father’s not such a killjoy. You can take Thalia, love.”

“Thalia is not going to Hogsmeade sooner than her peers.”

Draco and Hermione glared at each other.

It was a highly uncommon event, two students standing in front of the staff table, consulting their parents, who looked as though they were about to lift their forks any moment and duke it out. The staff table and the House tables watched avidly.

“I’m sorry, girls. I’m not being a killjoy. Hogsmeade is a reward for completing your first two years at Hogwarts. In your third year, you take electives and visiting Hogsmeade is again a reward, an impetus, a stimulus in undertaking your new workload. Something to look forward to. You take that away if you go there just because you happen to have connections to the faculty and the shop owners.”

“But you owe us,” said Lia sullenly and haughtily, “for not telling us all about our connections.”

“Don’t speak to your mother in that tone.” Both Lia and Hermione jumped the tiniest bit at Draco’s sudden sternness. “Don’t tell us we owe you anything. It’s not your place. And until you’re of age, nor is it your place to decide where you can or can’t go, regardless of what we supposedly owe you.”

“I’ll invite Fred and George over,” said Hermione, appeasing. “They can bring what they want to show you and you can have a visit at Hagrid’s.”

Thalia was still too stunned by Draco’s rebuke. Callie pulled her away just as the bell signalling the start of classes rang.

Hermione lingered over her tea. “I wasn’t being a wet blanket, was I?”

“No, you were right. I haven’t been to Hogsmeade either before our third year. My parents took me everywhere else.”

“We do owe them, though.”

“I know that. I wasn’t too hard on Lia, was I? She is an insolent little--” Draco punctuated that with an embarrassed-sounding chuckle.

Hermione nodded like she knew what Draco was thinking and agreed fervently that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. “But you didn’t hex her.”

They grinned at each other. As they rose from the table to get to their classes, they noticed the rose for the first time. It hovered across Hermione’s abandoned plate. She plucked it from the air and looked for the identity of the giver, but there was none. No tag or card. Before she could bring it to her nose-- who doesn’t bring a rose to their nose?-- Draco took it from her hand, dropped it back on the table and pointed his wand at it.

“Specialis Revelio!”

Nothing happened. He picked it up and gave it back to her, but not before sniffing it and snorting with disdain. “No scent. Whoever gave you that has little to no taste.”

Hermione blushed a little and kicked herself inwardly. Before he had snatched it, she’d thought the rose had come from him.

As the day progressed, however, she began to be confused. Who was giving her roses? She’d found another on her classroom desk, another appeared when she sat for a bit in the staff room and she nearly tripped over one when she stepped out of the loo.






“Blimey, Hagrid never changes a thing, does he?”

“Of course he does. Do you want to be sipping stale tea?”

Fred and George were in the gamekeeper’s hut, making themselves comfortable, ignoring Lia and Callie as if the two girls were just slabs of ham sharing Hagrid’s armchair. And then, after they’d remarked on the rock cakes’ potential (they could disguise it as petit fours), they started theatrically and motioned for Lia and Callie to join them at the table.

“How long have you been spying on us, you naughty chits?”

“Don’t think you can hold anything over us, our bribes are too ridiculously delicious to pass up.”

“This is Calliope Grace Malfoy, Your Majesties,” said Lia, curtsying.

“Hey, we thought we should wear crowns when we visit. We’re royalty here, you know. Ask Peeves.”

“Hello, Callie. I’m Uncle Gred. Oh, just look at them, Forge.”

“I’m looking.”

“Except for the colouring, and perhaps some spleen differences, they’re practically interchangeable.”

“Practically interchangeable.”

“And holy Crup, judging by their ugly, sly grins just now, I think we’re in business.”

“We’re not ugly!”

“So you admit we are in business?”






Draco had been prepared for some resentment from his students. He deserved it after his unfair treatment of them last Friday. At the very least, he expected them to be cowed. As he didn’t want a roomful of Longbottoms, he’d decided to make it up to them and set them on their ease again by giving them the hour off.

But he hadn’t imagined this.

The very few number of adolescent females who acted like normal he could count on one hand. By the time lunch rolled around, he considered taking McGonagall aside and asking her whether the girls from fifth year up shouldn’t be sent en masse to the hospital wing to get them checked for Befuddlement and maybe love potions.

He had noticed some of the girls being infatuated with him, of course, but none of them had actually flirted with him as they did today. It was bewildering. And disturbing. The only upside of it was Hermione’s equal bewilderment. And apparent annoyance. Girls kept coming up to the staff table and asking her or Annetta a question, only to bat their eyelashes at Draco, who sat between the two women.

“Stop glaring at me,” said Draco, smirking. “I don’t know what’s got into them.”

Hermione went back to stabbing her potatoes. Annetta laughed.

Priscilla August, the Head Girl, approached just then.

“If you have a question for me or for Professor Morfosa, it can wait until you meet us in class, can’t it? Or at least until we finish supper?”

“No, ma’am, I’ve come to ask Professor Malfoy something. Sir, can you come to Hogsmeade with us? Well, just me, actually. None of my other friends are as avid with Potions. There’s a new shelf of Aztec ingredients at the Apothecary and I--”

Priscilla trailed off. Professor Granger was scything her with a glare. The Head Girl bobbed her head as a goodbye and sashayed away. Draco drank from his goblet hastily, to drown a mad urge to laugh.

“You haven’t answered the poor girl,” said Annetta, sounding amused.

“She can just ask me again later.” He turned to his left, to see how Hermione took that in. He saw the red rose materialise over her plate. His grin vanished.






“If you have anything to do with this, I’ll banish you to the Trophy Room.”

“If I have anything to do with what?”

Minerva’s nostrils flared at Albus’s feigned innocent curiosity and came close to actually growling. “Classes are getting disrupted by flirting and roses.”

“Come again?”

“Girls are flirting with Professor Malfoy. They do everything short of touching him and propositioning him! I even heard this shy Ravenclaw second-year asking him if he was tired because he’d been running around her mind lately. Meanwhile, Professor Granger is getting inundated with roses.”

Albus was too overcome with laughter to reply. And when he could speak again, it was only to say, “Hey, Everard, let’s go tell Cadogan! He loves those lines.”

Both of them left without further ado. Minerva did growl then and opened her biscuit tin for some much needed comfort. Perhaps the school would return to normal after they gorge on sweets tomorrow. She couldn’t take much more of this madness. Just that morning, she’d only just stopped Draco from-- Morgana, Draco Malfoy had looked like he wanted to separate Quillian Ellington-Shaw from his limbs. He had given the poor boy a whole months’ worth of detention, threatened him with expulsion and stripped him of Head Boyship. At that, Minerva stepped in, restored the boy’s position and saved the boy’s life by frogmarching him away. All Quillian had done, it appeared, was help Hermione to her classroom and compliment her perfume. That last was inappropriate, but Draco had been too harsh and too murderous in proportion.

Minerva almost regretted inviting those two to her staff.

Almost. She’d never admit it to Albus, but she was also wondering at how it would all end, even though she was too much of a Headmistress keen on order and normalcy to enjoy the chaos of getting there.





The Head students were doing rounds. Every now and then, they checked their surroundings, but more for privacy than for students out of bounds.

“You’re an idiot. A lady’s perfume is something you don’t comment on, unless you have every right to do so, and you certainly don’t do it within hearing distance of the bloke who’s supposed to have the right to do so.”

“You goaded me into doing it. And you know I have a weakness for scents--”

“You’re blind and an idiot is what I know. Professor Granger doesn’t even wear perfume.”

“Yeah, she smells like... like books. Ink. Sharp and a little sweet.”

“As sweet as me?”

“No, of course not. But then again, why are you asking? You must be so sure of yourself if you can ask blokes to accompany you to the Apothecary. Not exactly attractive, that.”

Priscilla laughed. “Oh, stop it, you goose. I didn’t really plan on it. But I wasn’t about to lose to the three other Houses. All of them have come up to Professor Malfoy already. I just winged it. And then of course, Professor Granger just about obliterated me with her eyes.”

Quillian smothered his own amusement, although that was difficult. Prissy laughed seldom, but when she did, it was glorious and infectious. “I nearly lost my badge. It’s not funny. And I think if I’d been nearer their age, Professor Malfoy might have pounded the crap out of me.”

“Never mind. We’re done with that operation. Those girls said it will be different for Yule. Aren’t you glad we’re having such a fun N.E.W.T year?”





Halloween was sunny, a little blustery and unseasonably warm that weekend. Students spilled onto the courtyard, on the grounds and milled on the banks of the lake. There was also a Quidditch game, Gryffindor versus Slytherin. It couldn’t have been more perfect for Callie and Lia and their two accomplices. They commandeered the empty Slytherin common room and did their business.

Two identical pink boxes sat on one ottoman. Pink boxes labeled,
Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes
Wonder Witch
Hair Colouring Potion
Permanent Unless You End It

No More Grey!
No Showing Roots!
No Regrets!




On the table sat two big translucent bottles, also pink, labeled ‘Wonder Witch Hair Colour Restorer’. In the clear potion floated several strands of hair. In one bottle, blond, in the other, brown.

Near the table sat Callie and Lia, hair under caps. Dionelise and Kia had gone off together to wash their hands. Meanwhile, the twins eyed another potion, this one in a tiny vial. The dose would be one gulp for each of them.

“This is no longer a prototype, they said?”

“Yeah, they’re launching it tonight. We’re the very first to try it.”

Callie removed the tiny cork decorated with a glass ball carved with a circle and tiny branching lines, like veins. The circle was a pupil. The ball was an eyeball.

“Mad-eye Magic.”

“I’m a little scared, priss.”

“Me, too, swine, me, too.” Callie tipped the vial into her mouth and then passed it to Lia. The potion tingled on their tongues. They swallowed at the same time.

The effect was immediate and just as tingly. It subsided in three blinks and Callie and Lia stared at each other, giggling.

Dionelise and Kia came back, now with their hands free of hair colouring goop.

“What’s the joke?” said Dionelise.

“Can you tell who’s who?” said Lia, smug.

“You drank the potion!” said Dionelise, immediately removing their caps and goggling at them. “And duh, of course Callie’s the blonde now.”

“Double duh. Even your parents will know Callie’s blonde now,” said Kia. They all turned to her incredulously. She rolled her eyes, went to Callie and turned Callie’s right wrist for them to see.

“Oh thank goodness the flibbertigibbet’s observant. How are you going to fix that, priss?” Lia took a quill and tapped a dot on her own wrist.

“Easy. A Concealment Charm. Look. Clocca. It’s what Grandmother does to freckles that crop up.”

“I hope this doesn’t join your other plots-gone-wonky. What next?” said Dionelise.





The score was sixty-nil to Slytherin. Draco sat beside her in the tower seating the faculty and was radiating smug vibes so strongly that if it wasn’t for the invigorating autumn breeze that blew every once in a while, Hermione would have suffocated.

“This is different,” he said, leaning toward her ear so he could be heard over the tumult of cheering and booing as Slytherin scored again.

“That you’re winning?” said Hermione, leaning away from him and nearly toppling off the bench.

He pulled her back upright and casually kept hold of her wrist, tucking it under his arm. “That I’m here watching instead of playing, you daft woman. And that you’re right here beside me instead of on a separate tower, wearing red while I’m in green. Or are you wearing red, just not conspicuously?”

Hermione ignored that. “I actually missed this. There was no Quidditch on our seventh year. Professional games are different somehow, not that I went to more than a couple.” Giving up the futile struggle to recover her arm, she said, “Is it true you almost killed my Head Boy?”

“No.”

“What a very enlightening answer.”

Draco opened his mouth, perhaps to elaborate, but all that came out of him was a soft involuntary huff as another rose appeared from thin air and settled on Hermione’s lap. She grabbed it before the wind spirited it away.

“For heaven’s sake. Who’s the bloody coward who keeps pestering you with those roses but never even lets you know his name, much less his face?”

“I don’t know.” She hesitated. “It’s not you?”

He snorted. “I might go for ‘less is more’ and send you one rose instead of a bouquet, but I’d damn make sure that rose gives off the perfume of a dozen. If you close your eyes, would you even know you have a rose in your hand right now? Dammit.”

Gryffindor had scored. Hermione dropped the rose and clapped her hands. When another gust swept the rose off and drove it under the seats, she didn’t care.

“Have you gone out with many fellows then?”

“Pardon?”

“How often do you have dates like the one last weekend?”

“Well, I can ask you the same. As evidenced last weekend as well, Callie needs a woman in her life in certain--”

“She has my mother. And her mother.”

“Oh, I wish.” Hermione kept her eyes on the game. She pretended that her eyes itched a little because of the wind. “I haven’t really gone out at all. Julius just asked to see me about some things from the Ministry. I went just so he’ll stop hounding me.”

“We were young. We are young. Hell. Was it-- did you have a hard time during those first years? I didn’t ruin your life, did I?”

Startled, Hermione looked at Draco. He seemed intent on the Slytherin goal, even though the players were all congregated on the opposite side.

“Don’t flatter yourself. No one ruined my life. No one can. I won’t let anyone do that. Did you have a hard time with Calliope?”

He seemed to find the question ridiculous. “No. And you had plenty of help, too, didn’t you? Almost too much?”

Hermione smiled. “Yes. I had to fight to keep Lia to myself, actually. Believe me, if I wanted to go out, I need only have said so. I simply didn’t want to.”

“But you went to work. No one asked you out?”

She only went to work away from home after Thalia turned five and of course she’d been asked but what was the point saying she had no interest seeing other men? None of them interested her. She sighed. “Draco, I have never had a boyfriend and I don’t have a boyfriend either. Satisfied?”

A sudden surge of noise shook the stands. The game was over. They both looked dazedly toward crimson-clad players hovering in a writhing knot of limbs to their left. It was apparent which Seeker had captured the Snitch.

“If I ask you out, would you say yes?”

Hermione laughed. And he called the rose-sender a coward. But she wasn’t sure of her answer and the noise all around and inside her ribcage made it hard to think. “If I say no, are you going to crumple to ash?”





The Gryffindor table was rowdy and full. They’d all come down to the Halloween Feast and stayed rather than hauling food up to their Tower. Thinking back later, this should have clued them in. Nothing had compelled Quidditch victors to stay below before.

The feast was as scrumptious as usual for Halloween. There had been no special arrangements this year but the decorations were stellar and the Great Hall looked different because the candles burned an eerie red and blue. The Headless Hunt made an appearance. And then, just as the ghosts bickered as to who should stage his or her death this time, all the candles blew out. The fires on the braziers along the wall flickered.

The remaining light glistened on the creature that crawled in through the doors.

It looked like an upturned, misshapen piece of giant red jelly. It had no face and no limbs. It moved like a snail over the flagstones, making slurping noises which was clearly heard in the sudden silence.

Everyone turned to look at Hagrid, who paid no one any mind, too busy staring in wonder and fascination. Meanwhile, the students nearest the doors were backing away as the creature approached, pushing and falling over backwards and off the benches. Those who fell were swallowed up. Or rather, in. The creature crawled over them and no trace of them could be seen in the trail of slime the creature left behind.

At first, the students watched with glee, thinking this was part of that year’s Halloween entertainment. The Headmistress also watched, and turned to her staff to voice her slight disgust over this invention. But the staff were also looking at her.

They all looked at each other. And then at the... the jelly. At the students who continued disappearing into it as it advanced. And the jelly seemed to grow bigger with each new ingestion.

When the students saw the teachers draw their wands, the screaming was instant, loud and long.

Everyone scrambled out of the way of the jelly, climbing over the tables and tried to get out of the Great Hall. Tried and failed because they only got stuck in the slime. They stood there and flapped like flies on flypaper. Those who remained unstuck cowered and plastered themselves on the walls. The jelly seemed undecided whether to turn left or right. Or maybe it was feeling the effect of the many curses lobbed at it by everyone not turned to jelly by fear.

“Hades take it, look at those two idiots.”

Because Draco was right beside her as they both fired hex after hex at the creature, Hermione was well able to hear him. She followed his line of sight and blanched and cursed at the sight of Callie and Lia just yards away from the jelly, alternately firing sparks at it and lobbing whatever they could get their hands on. The jelly already looked like an animated giant piece of dessert, what with apples and tarts and chewable bats sticking to it. Callie levitated an empty turreen and sent it flying. It landed on the jelly’s head and sat there like a gold hat.

The jelly turned and began advancing toward Callie and Lia.

“Shit!”

“No!

Several things happened both slowly and instantly.

Draco and Hermione ran. Distance was nothing when those who crossed it were launched by love and fear. Callie and Lia were each grabbed and snatched away from the jelly’s path by their parents. Callie by Hermione, Lia by Draco.

The jelly exploded, covering the Great Hall--and everyone in it-- with globs of rainbow-coloured slime and feathers. The students who had been ingested swam in a pool of gunk on the spot the jelly had been. They were all grinning even though they looked like they’d just been birthed.

A disembodied voice boomed, “Halloween Greetings from Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes!” Peeves cackled in the background.

Draco and Hermione, still clutching Lia and Callie, fell down gasping for air.
Chapter Endnotes: This took a bit longer than I expected and allotted for it because I got constipated over coming up with the scenario in which the agreement’s wrath will be triggered. Sometimes Callie and Lia leave me in the lurk like that (My last block with this story was also because I ran dry with pranks). I’ve written and scrapped several scenes, including an ‘Accio’ rescue. Dammit, if that works in canon, no one would have died. In the end, I went with this. Inspired by The Blob, which I’ve read about in Jerry Spinelli’s ‘Love, Stargirl’. The Blob is an alien creature. It looks like, yep, a blob. I don’t know if Fred and George got their Jelly Monster idea from The Blob, too. Along with Mad-Eye Magic, they’re launching it that Halloween. Isn’t it grand having a thing like that to bring with you to boring get-togethers? It only oozes around (and ‘ingesting’ everything in its path) for ten minutes and then, PWOOSH! Instant slime party.

From what I’ve deduced from the books and the production notes in Harry Potter Film Wizardry, Hogsmeade’s business hub is a winter one, operating during school term. There are many such ‘school/university towns’ which become sleepy during the summer. If there’s been evidence that the Weasley kids and Draco have been to Hogsmeade before their third-year, I haven’t seen it. :)

I’ve outlined this. If I stick to it, CATATI will have 25 chapters in all. Only seven more to go!

The companion to this piece detailing the purse hoopla is up! The Abduction of Persephone.