Half-Blood Means Two Things || Marauders Era | Percy Jackson ||

|| 23 - The Challenge of Halloween Night ||

Peeves gave me a look that reminded me too much of Griffin to feel comfortable.

Then, right on schedule, Peeves went invisible and floated through the back door to the Great Hall. Thankfully, he'd left the door open ever so slightly, so I had a direct line of sight to the professors' table.

I pulled put my wand and stood over the 240 forks divided into four boxes. "Wingardium Leviosa," I whispered.

Screams greeted my ears, but I didn't break eyesight with all of the forks that levitated into the air. I'd been perfecting my Levitating Charm, so when Peeves had suggested James the Pureblood to do this part, I had nearly thrown a punch.

As I floated the forks through the door, careful not to touch anything, I couldn't see where they were going but I knew the Marauders were directing them.

But how come no one is seeing this, Charlie? you may ask.

Well I'll tell you why. You see, Peeves in all his poltergeist-iness, had blown out every single candle and source of light in the Great Hall. Not even the natural light from the bewitched ceiling was allowing any light because the bats had panicked when the kids screamed and fluttered to the ceiling, blocking out the light.

I could see the low glow of the poltergeist as he flew all around the professors' table drawing the attention of every student and staff in the room, leaving the Marauders free to replace every single fork with these new forks.

Everyone was so entranced with Peeves's performance of screaming, hitting professors and singing to remember how easy it was to light a wand. Besides, the way Peeves was glowing made it seem like we were watching a movie, and he was the ghost haunting the castle... which I guess he was. Maybe Hermes was blessing this prank, or maybe he wasn't. Either way, seeing Peeves mess with Slughorn was too entertaining to ruin, so the room stayed dark save for Peeves's natural light.

And if any student saw Peeves swap out the professors' spoons for new ones, they made no comment.

Less than half a moment after the last fork had levitated through the door into the Marauders' own spell, the lights flew back on with a simple flick of Dumbledore's wand.

You see, not only had we timed my exit perfectly, we had timed the swap of forks exquisitely. At the very moment Peeves had swooped in and blown out all the lights, Dumbledore had vanished all of the supper foods, meaning every student had set down their fork. Assuming everything had gone to plan, James had used a spell his father taught him to summon all of the old forks all while I had been slowly levitating the forks into the Great Hall at ground level. Once the forks were in the room, Remus, Pettigrew, and Black had all used their own levitation spells to direct each new fork to replace the old forks. And since Peeves had thrown the room into complete darkness using a mixture of chaos and his own ghostly powers, not a single person was any wiser.

Now you must undoubtedly be wondering why we had gone to so much trouble to replace the forks.

Were they bad forks, Charlie? Do these forks have a weird potion in them, Charlie? Is this one of Black's lame ideas, Charlie?

And these are all great questions, but no.

When we had met with Peeves in the trophy room, he had explained a certain wizarding tool to me.

A portkey.

I know, it sounds weird, but it's actually an amazing wizarding thing. Basically, it's an everyday object with the ability to transport one or more people to a completely different spot. They were, simply, teleporting objects.

And every student at Hogwarts had just gotten one.

When James had explained the concept to me, I'd been completely bewildered. That had to be illegal, I'd said. If any old person could get their hands on portkeys and send an unsuspecting person to a volcano or something, well that just seemed like a major life-threatening flaw in such an amazing thing... and this is coming from an American.