“Suho, come on! No one’s gonna care what you look like when you’re screaming like a little girl through the forest!” Luhan shouts down the boys’ hallway.

The haunted trail had started at 7:00 p.m., and it is now 8:30 p.m. They are late. All because someone couldn’t find “the sweater that brings out my eyes” or “the beanie that keeps my ears warm because their so sensitive.” Luhan wants to get there before they run out of cotton candy. And butterbeer.

Butterbeer is good.

Finally the door to Suho’s dorm opens and out steps Suho, beanie on head, sweater tucked in. And a strange device in his hand.

“What is that?” Lay asks, apparently not familiar with the device either.

“It’s a camera.”

“A what?”

“A camera. You know, to take pictures with. Only the people don’t move.”

“Ohhh.” Luhan remembers hearing about the device in Muggle Histories his fourth year at his old school.

“Can I borrow that?” Luhan asks. “Just for the night?”

“Sure.”

“Be prepared to not get that back,” Lay mutters as the trio finally heads down to the grounds.

Sehun muffles a scream as Kai whispers, “Gotcha!”, into his ear as he passes.

Sehun glares at him, punching him lightly in the arm.

“Lighten up, Sehun. Or do you still have icing shoved up your ?” Kai adds the last part in a muffled laugh.

Sehun just glares, refusing to acknowledge the peasant.

Apparently seeing Sehun covered in pink icing had been hilarious for Kai. As soon as the disgruntled Slytherin had walked into their room, Kai had erupted into roaring laughter, falling off of his bed in the process of rolling around holding his sides. Sehun sniffs indignantly just thinking about it.

“Come on, let’s go walk the haunted trail,” Kai says, jumping around the common room.

“The offer is,” Sehun pauses, “tantalizing, but no.”

But before he can react, Sehun is suddenly dragged forward by a spell that Kai has craftily thrown over his shoulder. And Sehun has no choice but to follow him.

“I am a man. I am a man. I am a man.”

The repeated mantra Tao keeps muttering is starting to get on Sehun’s nerves.

They are just starting to enter the Forbidden Forest and Tao is already grasping Sehun’s hand with sweaty fingers.

Tao had at first refused to walk with the others, saying that, “As long as he’s here,” he would not, “breathe the same air.” Sehun had thought he was being dramatic. Especially when Tao had started walking ahead of their group across the grounds.

But one high pitched scream had emitted from the forest and Tao had come crawling back, calling for, “Sehun gege”, his former nickname for Kris. (Or as Tao now called him, “he devil.”)

The four had entered the trail in a strategic formation. Kris is in the front with his obvious bold build, hoping to intimidate any magical creatures they might come across. Kai and Tao are in the middle, Tao occasionally scrambling to cling onto Sehun, and then switching back to Kai. Sehun brings up the back.

They have just reached a fork in the path that leads in seven different directions. A prefect comes down the path marked, “Six”, looking disheveled and exasperated. “Sorry about your wait. There’s trouble down that path. You’re supposed to select the path that is your year,” he says.

As the four start down the sixth year path, the prefect shouts at them, “Careful, there’s a group down there. I think they snuck in a younger. He fainted. Don’t blame ‘em though, looks like he’s twelve.”

Luhan gets more than he bargained for.

Sure he can sit through a scary film, and yeah, he can withstand a good prank, but as it turns out, he would probably be the first one to die in an actual horror story.

It had been going good at first.

They had made it past the boggart and the fake dementors. (Lay had produced an unusually bright unicorn patronus.)

But the fun had all ended when Luhan had gotten close to the pixies. Cornish pixies. At first he could just hear little giggles echoing throughout his skull. Almost childlike.

“Do you hear that?” Luhan had asked Lay and Suho as they had crawled together along the dimly lit trail.

“What?!” Suho had looked at him with wide eyes, already seeming about to cry.

Lay had rolled his eyes. “Nice try Luhan, but we’re not that gullible. At least, I’m not,” he had said, glancing at Suho, who had looked like he was having a conversation with himself.

“He’s coming!” a singsong voice had echoes in Luhan’s head, making Luhan stop dead in his tracks.

“Luhan, are you okay?” Suho had turned around, noticing Luhan’s paler than usual skin.

And that’s when Luhan had seen them. His siblings.

Suho had screamed.

More than a thousand blue-skinned Cornish pixies, with their bulging eyes and needle teeth flashing as they had shouted, “Brother! Brother!”

And that’s when Luhan’s world had gone black.

“Nooo, it’s coming to get me umma,” Sehun moans as he clings to Kai, his eyes turning a light pink in anxiety. (It should probably be mentioned here that Sehun is a metamorphmagus, although no one but Kai, Tao, and Kris knows it.)