The Voice (edited)

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By the time Halloween arrived, I was regretting allowing Harry to make the rash promise to go to the death day party. The rest of the school was happily anticipating their Halloween feast; the Great Hall had been decorated with the usual live bats, Hagrid's vast pumpkins had been carved into lanterns large enough for three men to sit in, and there were rumours that Dumbledore had booked a troupe of dancing skeletons for the entertainment. Even the bloody Slytherins were looking forward to it.

"A promise is a promise," Hermione reminded me bossily. "You said you'd go to the death day party."

"Harry forced me!" I whined, "It shouldn't count!"

But at seven o'clock, Harry, Ron, Hermione and i walked straight past the doorway to the packed Great Hall, which was glittering invitingly with gold plates and candles, and directed our steps instead toward the dungeons.

The passageway leading to Nearly Headless Nick's party had been lined with candles, too, though the effect was far from cheerful: These were long, thin, jet-black tapers, all burning bright blue, casting a dim, ghostly light even over their own living faces. I loved them to be honest. The temperature dropped with every step we took.

"Is that supposed to be music?" Ron whispered.

It sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard. We turned a corner and saw Nearly Headless Nick standing at a doorway hung with black velvet drapes.

"My dear friends," he said mournfully. "Welcome, welcome . . . so pleased you could come. . . ."

He swept off his plumed hat and bowed us inside. It was an incredible sight. The dungeon was full of hundreds of pearly-white, translucent people, mostly drifting around a crowded dance floor, waltzing to the dreadful, quavering sound of thirty musical saws, played by an orchestra on a raised, black-draped platform.

A chandelier overhead blazed midnight-blue with a thousand more black candles. My breath rose in a mist before me; it was like stepping into a freezer. And I've had the bad fortune to do that a few times.

"Shall we have a look around?" Harry suggested.

"Careful not to walk through anyone," Ron said nervously.

We passed a group of gloomy nuns, a ragged man wearing chains, and the Fat Friar, a cheerful Hufflepuff ghost, who was talking to a knight with an arrow sticking out of his forehead.

I wasn't surprised to see that the Bloody Baron was being given a wide berth by the other ghosts. He gave me a happy wave though, seeing as i was one of his.

"Oh, no," said Hermione, stopping abruptly. "Turn back, turn back, I don't want to talk to Moaning Myrtle -"

"Who?" Harry asked as we scrambled back the way we had come.

"She haunts one of the toilets in the girls' bathroom on the first floor," said Hermione.

"She haunts a toilet?" Ron asked, looking amused.

"Yes. It's been out-of-order all year because she keeps having tantrums and flooding the place. I never went in there anyway if I could avoid it; it's awful trying to have a pee with her wailing at you-"

"Look, food!" said Ron.

"Don't," I said, grabbing them back, "I hear ghosts can taste strong flavours, it'll all be rotten."

We had barely turned around, however, when a little man swooped suddenly from under the table and came to a halt in midair before them.

"Hello, Peeves," Harry said cautiously.

"Nibbles?" he said sweetly, offering them a bowl of peanuts covered in fungus.

"Move them, Peeves, now," I growled, and he squeaked and did as I said. I had never figured what about me scared him.

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