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COSTUME CHAOS

act one ━ chapter eleven

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━ HALLOWEEN
CELEBRATIONS ━
october 1993

"I'M SORRY BUT I JUST REALLY DON'T GET IT."

"What don't you get?"

"Your whole costume?"

Morgan took another look in the mirror. She thought it was obvious, at least amongst their year group and especially in their house. Bea, who stood behind her now, glanced over Morgan's shoulder to inspect the latter's costume for another opportunity to try and deduce who Morgan was trying to be.

She had her newly-acquired Gryffindor Quidditch robes on ─ the ones she could hardly part with, not even for a minute, which made her costume even more perfect ─ and her hair was in pins and hidden under a scruffy brown wig. She held a prop witch's broom from the joke shop in one hand and a packet of shortbread in the other. A hand-made paper badge reading Captain in a gold font, against a red background, was haphazardly pinned on her left.

She couldn't make it any more obvious if she tried.

"Are you me?"

"No, Beatrice," Morgan groaned, turning away from the mirror to face the girl again, "I'm not you."

Bea's face soured (whether at the costume or at the fact that Morgan wasn't trying to impersonate her, Morgan wasn't sure). "Why have you put on a weird accent?"

Morgan's arms flew up at her sides. "I'm supposed to be Scottish!"

"Did William Wallace go to Hogwarts?"

Morgan pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers. If it was going to be this hard to identify her costume with her best friend guessing, she was already dreading the rest of the Halloween festivities.

"I'm Oliver," Morgan said, now rather disinterested about the holiday all together. She had also returned to her normal, English-speaking voice since the Scottish attempt was completely lost on Bea, who still looked confused. Morgan frantically pulled at the fabric where her makeshift badge was stuck. "Oliver Wood? The Gryffindor Quidditch Captain?"

After another short moment of thought, Bea finally came to, and realisation dawned on her face. "Oh," she drawled, "him. Yeah, makes sense now."

Another moan from Morgan. "It only makes sense now? What stopped you before?"

"I dunno," Bea shrugged, cocking her head to the side to look at Morgan's get-up from a different angle. "The wig's a bit off in colour, I guess."

"But the Hogwarts robes and Scottish accent were totally baffling?"

Bea nodded, "Yeah, pretty much."

When Morgan and Bea made it downstairs into the Gryffindor common room, they were met with an array of colours and various props flying about. A diverse variety of costumes was on display and a hefty amount of makeup too.

Morgan spotted Oliver on the sofa nearest the exit talking to the Weasley twins and a few other members of the Quidditch team. She decided to ignore the lack of recognition Oliver gave her when she approached. Maybe her costume really wasn't as obvious as she originally thought?

So as not to dwell on this fact, Morgan looked Oliver up and down, her eyes squinting at his very beige costume and odd choice of a cowboy hat and whip?

"You're . . ." Morgan had hoped the answer would present itself as she slowly dragged out the words. She cocked her head to one side and alas, it did not.

Oliver's brows knitted together as he held out his arms and gave her a little turn. "Indiana Jones?" He said after making it back around after the full three-hundred and sixty degrees.

"Right," Morgan replied. She had no idea who this strange person was and Oliver was becoming increasingly upset by this fact. "I definitely wasn't going to say a farmer."

"Before you ask, Morgan," Fred interjected from where he was perched on the sofa, eating a cupcake decorated for the Halloween season despite not having his breakfast yet, "no, 'Indiana Jones' is not some Scottish folk God ─ we already asked." Fred used his fingers as little bunnies for the foreign name that none of the wizards present knew of.

Oliver turned to look at Fred. "I guarantee you she was not going to ask that."

"No, I was," Morgan responded unfazed. "That was my second guess."

Oliver was growing more offended by the minute. The boy was simply baffled. "You seriously don't know who Indiana Jones is?"

As an only child, Oliver had made himself accustomed to Muggle media and entertainment very early on in life seeing as Quidditch was something he couldn't do as easily in his free time outside of school. His Halloween costume for this year was a staple of his childhood that only one Muggle-born so far had complimented him on.

"A pirate?" Morgan guessed. Oliver shook his head. "A politician with no concept of dress code?" This guess just confused the boy and he became worried about what it was about his attire that made her think this. "A . . . farmer?"

"No!" Oliver sighed exasperatedly. Since when did farmers wear cowboy hats and use whips to herd sheep? "He's an archaeologist and adventurer? Played by Harrison Ford? Seriously famous?" He couldn't be more obvious if he tried. Then again, Morgan felt the same thing about her costume.

Morgan shrugged. She had no feelings towards his fancy dress. None of the nostalgic happiness Oliver had got when he originally bought it. Now he was just feeling disappointed in the state of the wizarding world. "Too much Muggle talk for me."

Oliver momentarily put his head in his hands but after making a dramatic display of dragging them down his face in grievance, he sighed and regained his composure. "Moving swiftly on before you offend me even more."

"Oh," Bea chuckled, appearing beside Morgan and placing her hands on the latter's shoulders, "buckle in, Sweetheart."

Oliver's brows furrowed. "What's that supposed to mean?" He asked dubiously before he slowly looked up and down Morgan's costume and concern drifted onto his features. "Wait, what are you supposed to be?"

"You can't guess?"

His eyes narrowed and Morgan started to get a little bit too excited. "Hang on," he sing-songed and Morgan knew in that moment, he had figured it out.

Unable to contain her excitement, her arms flung out to her sides and she exclaimed, "I'm you!"

Oliver did another sweep of her outfit as she gave him a twirl. When she made it back around to the front, all he did was fold his arms across his chest and stare down at the petite girl. "Huh."

Morgan's face neutralised. "Not the reaction I was going for, but okay."

Oliver hummed peculiarly. "I don't know whether to be flattered or creeped out."

"The first one," Morgan hurriedly replied. "Definitely the first one."

"Nah, mate," Fred chimed in. Once again. "I think you should report her for stalking or something. Nobody can like you that much."

Oliver peered over his shoulder at the ginger boy. "Ouch."

"It was a really easy costume," Morgan told them with a shrug, and, in Fred's opinion, offered no more explanation as to why she decided to dress up as his captain, "and until Bea mocked me for it, I thought I could do a pretty good Scottish accent."

This piqued Oliver's interest and the boy turned back to look at her, expression sceptical, arms even more tightly crossed than before. "Go on then."

Morgan flushed red. She was not anticipating the stern look on his face as he challenged her attempt at his accent. "I don't want to offend you."

"Then you shouldn't have dressed up as me," he deadpanned. Oliver was going to force her to reveal this accent even if he never let her go down to breakfast.

"Right," Morgan felt caught. "Well. What should I say?" She asked, and it was rather obvious that she was just trying to delay saying anything in a Scottish accent because really, she didn't care what he made her say, she didn't want to say anything at all.

Morgan was beginning to regret taking the easy route in the costume department this Halloween.

Fred, still intrigued by Morgan's costume ever since he heard her announce it, decided to offer a suggestion to her question because there was one phrase Fred had heard Oliver say a lot.

"Fred! George!" He shouted in his version of Oliver's accent. In fact, Fred had heard it so frequently, that he had pretty much mastered the Scottish lilt. "Stop being lazy pricks and get out of bed! It's already five o'clock for fuck's sake!"

Oliver was hardly impressed by Fred's impression of him, even if both Oliver and Morgan thought it was pretty accurate.

Morgan gulped. If Oliver was mad now, he definitely didn't need to be further offended by her. Maybe Bea was right ─ maybe her Scottish was so atrocious, she certainly didn't need to show it off to any native Scots.

"I'd rather not," she said to Fred sheepishly in response to his suggestion.

"Well, you better get used to that kind of language, Samuels, if you're gonna be on our team," Fred told her with a shrug. "Cap seriously doesn't like us."

"No," Oliver objected, "I don't like laziness."

"Sorry to steal her away, boys," Bea appeared once more, ending their conversation, as she placed her hands on top of Morgan's shoulders and began to back the latter away from the group in the corner, "but Mary Queen of Scots and I have breakfast to attend to."

As Bea smiled not-so-sweetly, and Morgan rolled her eyes, both girls began heading for the lounge's exit, when Oliver called out to the girl. "Hey, Morgan. I'll go with flattered," he told her, grinning. "I actually love the costume. Even if the accent needs work."

Morgan couldn't contain her smile but couldn't hold the eye contact much longer before her friend ushered her out through the portrait hole. At least she got to wave goodbye while she still had time.

While the real explanation behind Morgan's costume came as a surprise to Beatrice, nothing could have prepared her for what awaited her in the Great Hall.

"There's no way."

Bea stopped dead in her tracks in the middle of the aisle, blocking numerous people's paths. The cause of her astonishment stood a few feet ahead of her, having just got out of their seats upon Bea's arrival.

Kira looked absolutely elated. "Oh, but there is a way," she grinned from ear to ear, outstretching her arms to fully display her part of their group costume in all its glory.

Bea looked at the four of them ─ Kira, Casper, Greg, and Edie ─ one by one just to take it all in.

Each wearing a different colour (Kira in pink, Casper in green, Greg in blue, and Edie in orange), Bea's closest friends had grouped together and dressed as the four Beatles, from the Sgt. Pepper's album cover. Casper even wore Lennon's famous circular glasses, and they each wore a fake moustache to top it all off.

"I think I make quite a dashing McCartney, don't you think?" Greg said, fighting back his smirk as he brushed his moustache with his fingers. Bea could tell that Greg had been waiting anxiously for this very moment when they revealed their costume choice to Beatrice.

Kira then whipped out a pair of drumsticks from behind her back. "Not as dapper as my Ringo, I'm afraid, Roy." She pretended to play the drums in the air.

Bea was still in disbelief. "While I appreciate your commitment," she said, approaching them all for a closer look, "I hope you all die in a ditch." Pushing past them all with the most sarcastic smile, Bea took a seat and ignored them, hopefully, for the rest of breakfast.

Morgan now saw her opening. "Why wasn't I involved?" She asked disappointed. The look on Oliver's face no longer had the same satisfying effect on her anymore, now that she had seen what her friends had chosen as their Halloween costumes.

"Because you said you already had your costume planned," Edie explained with a light shrug that added a sort of sympathetic note. She held a miniature guitar in her hand to signify her Beatle ─ George Harrison.

"Yeah, and there's only four Beatles, Em," Casper pointed out.

Morgan pouted. This was a fair explanation, but she still wasn't happy to be excluded from their year-long inside joke immortalised in costume. "I could have been Yoko?" Morgan suggested. She knew it was a shit alternative but at least she would have been involved and she couldn't think of anyone else.

"No one likes Yoko," Kira deadpanned, shaking her head, unimpressed with Morgan's suggestion. She moved swiftly on. "So," Kira rubbed her hands together excitedly as they finally settled down at the table for breakfast, "what's the plan for later then?"

"Hopefully lock you four up in the Dungeons so that you never see the light of day again?" Bea mumbled under her breath in a way she most definitely wanted everyone to hear.

"Oh, yeah, that's fine by me," Casper nodded. "At least a couple hundred people have seen our costume by now so that wouldn't be a problem." He finished his sentence with an ear-to-ear grin directed at Beatrice.

"I think I found the Room of Requirement if you still wanted to have a party," Greg said casually before shovelling a spoonful of cornflakes into his mouth. As he slurped on the milk, silence fell throughout the rest of the group as they all stared at him.

Due to Kira's enthusiasm for the holiday, they had been talking for weeks about what their plan was for Halloween. If nobody else threw a party, they decided they'd through their own one if it came to it. The venue prospects were the Room of Requirement ─ which they hadn't even seen before ─ and the Astronomy Tower ─ which sucked due to size and the fact they had to go up an obnoxious number of stairs just to get to it. But they all felt (mostly Kira) that they owed their school a duty of hosting at least something.

They had yet to be successful in snuffing out a party, mainly because most houses kept their parties under wraps these days due to such large turnouts which, in turn, led to being found out. The last Halloween celebrations the group had discussed were to chill in one of their common rooms and eat ungodly amounts of sweets while telling supposedly scary stories and pissing off their housemates by keeping the lounge completely in the dark.

They were quiet until the sound of Kira placing her goblet unsteadily onto the table echoed, breaking the lull. "Sorry, is anybody else confused?"

"The Room of Requirement is the secret chamber that—"

"Yes, I know what the Room of Requirement is, thank you, Greg!" Kira cut the boy off before he could continue as she scrunched up her eyes in annoyance. "What I don't understand is why you didn't tell us about it until now?"

"I only found it yesterday," Greg mumbled.

"Well, perfect!" Edie clapped her hands together to diffuse the tension that had risen. "We can spend the day getting supplies and hopefully, by tonight, we will have told enough people."

"We're not cool enough to host a party," Morgan shook her head solemnly. She had barely even attended one.

"That's what I was thinking," Greg agreed as he pushed his cereal around in his bowl.

"Speak for yourselves, losers," Casper side-eyed them both with a scoff.

"You're in this friendship group, Casper," Greg pointed out with a suspicious look.

"Yeah, but I'm on the Quidditch team," he said sourly as if this fact was the glaringly obvious reason behind his fame, "and this automatically puts me above you all on the social hierarchy."

"I'm on a Quidditch team?" Morgan told him with furrowed brows. And although it felt amazing to say for the first time, she couldn't get over the fact Casper just completely glossed over the whole early-life crisis she had been going through the weeks before.

"Yeah, but you haven't even had your first practice yet," Casper argued. "I don't even think you're on the Gryffindor team board yet."

"Since when have you looked at our team board?" Morgan questioned. "In our common room?"

Casper side-eyed Morgan from behind Edie who sat between them, as he munched on his toast. "I'm in there just as much as you."

"Can we get back to the crisis at hand please?" Kira asked. She hadn't since touched any of the food on display for breakfast and had her hands clasped out in front of her, resting on the plate that should have been filled had she not been so consumed by the crisis at hand.

"Not the word I would use," Greg said, "but go on."

"I understand that some of us don't have the level of popularity that others do," Kira started, earning her some distasteful looks, none of which prompted her to stop, "but if we're going to throw the biggest party of the year—"

"Which we won't be," Bea chimed in because so far, they didn't really have any concrete plan as to how to throw a party of the scale Kira was envisioning on such short notice.

"Which we will be," Kira corrected her with daggers for eyes, "then we need to put our heads together and think fast."

They sat in silence, Kira staring at them all expectantly. A few glances were shared, but, to the girl's dismay, no ideas were shared.

"Well?"

"Can I be excused?" Morgan asked, desperate to escape the awkwardness that had fallen because no one was taking this spontaneous Halloween party as seriously as Kira was. "I only went to my first proper party this year so I don't think I'll be much help."

"You make a valid point," Kira nodded sincerely, "but you're the smart one so no, you cannot be excused."

"Two things," Greg said, jutting his finger into the air as he made his points. "One, I'm the smart one of the group," he said ignoring Morgan's insulted glare, "and two, you don't need to be excused, Morgan. This is the Great Hall, not a restaurant."

Morgan hummed as she considered this fact, unsure as to why she was submitting to Kira's demands to keep her there. She didn't say much else.

"Look," Kira huffed, her shoulders sagging, and although she looked like she was preparing for a sombre heart-to-heart with her friends, the same friends in question knew that it was just going to be a dramatic monologue in which they were guilt-tripped into agreeing to whatever she said.

"All I'm asking is that you support your best friend's Halloween wish—"

"Halloween wishes don't exist, Kira," Greg pointed out expressionless, yet to look up from his breakfast.

Kira shot a glare at the boy but continued on after a second of silent scolding, "To have an absolute rager and make this a Halloween to remember!"

"I don't care about Halloween."

"I'm not really that bothered."

"I kind of want an early night."

Kira shut her eyes gently for a moment to gather her composure. When she opened them, she greeted them all with a pleasant smile as her last-ditch attempt at convincing them. "Next time one of you is excited about something, I promise to pay extra attention to it and be nice to you for however long said thing lasts."

"What happens when the thing ends?" Bea asked with a quizzical expression. Surely Kira didn't think this was the selfless deed she seemed to be describing it as.

"I return to my usual unenthusiastic self," she said plainly without much more explanation. "I guarantee you'll all have fun by the end of the night."

Trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, Casper slowly put his mug of coffee back down on the table and stared down at her. "And what exactly are you contributing, Fleet?"

"I'm the event planner," Kira said as if it were obvious. "I'm the one making you all contribute. It's tough work. You guys are seriously boring and not making my job any easier."

"Well, I was the one to locate the venue so consider my contribution fulfilled," Greg said, surrendering his hands before resuming eating his breakfast so that Kira could no longer target him.

Kira then looked at them one by one, expectantly, waiting for the train of offers to come flooding in. And to the girl's surprise, it actually came.

"I'll get the decorations," Bea started, the first to give in to Kira's hopeful glances. She knew Kira was going to have a party anyway, so why not be involved?

Now that Beatrice had started the revolution Kira had been waiting for, Casper decided to offer his contribution: "I'll figure out the teachers' whereabouts for tonight."

"I'll get the food," Edie grinned.

With one last item yet to be ticked off the list, and with one last person to offer their assistance in Kira's elaborate Halloween bash, each of their heads slowly turned to Morgan who was currently delicately cutting her bacon in half, wishing that they would all just ignore her.

When it was obvious that they wanted one thing and one thing only from the Gryffindor girl, she made a scene of letting her cutlery loudly clatter onto her plate as she groaned. "Fine," Morgan conceded. "I will ask my of-age brother to get us alcohol."

"See?" Casper grinned, nudging her playfully in the side. "You're not useless, Em."

"Fab!" Kira grinned from ear to ear, clasping her hands together celebratory. "But, most importantly," she said, her expression turned serious as she leant over the table to emphasise her annunciation, "you have to tell everyone you know, people. We have a party to put on."

❋❋❋

STRANGELY ENOUGH, ASKING HER BROTHER TO ILLEGALLY buy her underage friends alcohol for their very prohibited party later that evening wasn't the most outrageous thing that Morgan did that fated thirty-first of October.

Morgan was on her way back from asking Jason if he would very kindly pop into the Hogsmeade's liquor store and then drop it around the Gryffindor tower when it happened. She was in a good mood for once because Jason had agreed to her request only under the condition that she would do his homework for a month because Morgan was already way ahead of her year group in every subject.

The it in question was running into someone Morgan Samuels had been avoiding for two months.

"Morgan. Hey."

Herbert didn't seem at all distressed to bump into her in the hallway. Not like the panic that was settling in her stomach. He was surprised, sure, but not at all distraught like she was.

It wasn't one of Morgan's usual routes. She rarely went anywhere near the Ravenclaw tower because Greg was the only one out of their friend group that was against house mixing (which means he'll go in their common rooms but Merlin if they ever went in his). Which is probably why the catastrophe of running into Herbert happened ─ she was so good at mapping out her journeys around the castle so that he would never run into her.

Mission: failed. All hard work of stealthy avoidance: erased.

"Urm, hi" was all she seemed capable of saying. She thought she was smiling but her eyes couldn't stop twitching and her grin was incredibly lopsided.

"How have you been?" He said, moving off to the side of the corridor to get out of the way of passers-by and motioning so that she did the same which only made Morgan feel more uncomfortable because how long did he think they would be catching up for? "I feel like I haven't seen you for ages."

Morgan doesn't know where the confidence came from, but she heard herself saying, "You dumped me, Herbert." Because it was exactly where her mind went when he said that. She even felt the muscles in her face contort disgustedly. "Did you think I was going to follow you around?"

"Right," he flushed red. She had embarrassed him or at least made him feel so guilty it showed on his face, "sorry."

Morgan's lips flattened out into a straight line in an awkward smile, and she stood there, rocking slightly on her feet wondering why this interaction hadn't ended already.

"Are you doing anything tonight?" Herbert asked, lifting his head up as if he was glad he had finally come up with something to say to fill the tense void.

Morgan gulped. She hesitated and then she said, as if on auto-pilot: "I'm throwing a party."

Not a complete lie. She was certainly helping throw the party but really, if Kira wasn't so determined to have it, Morgan wouldn't exactly have gone out of her way to advocate for it. Maybe it was an attempt to make Herbert think that she had transformed into this cool, mysterious, laid-back girl that he most definitely should regret dumping.

None of that part was true.

She also didn't consider what the consequences of mentioning not-her-party would be.

"Oh, cool."

Morgan had become so panicked that her ex-boyfriend was talking to her for the first time since he randomly dumped her that she had morphed into a robot with a mind of its own.

Exhibit A: "Did you want to come?"

Morgan didn't know what came over her. It was like she looked into his eyes and was hypnotised as if he could get her to do anything just by being there, by being him. She was possessed, entranced by all the good memories they had shared that were coming back to her just by staring into his eyes.

"That would be great," Herbert grinned, and his keen nods told her he had been waiting for those exact words. "Thanks, Morgan."

"No problem," she said monotonously, trying hard to blink so she could wake herself up.

Herbert then cocked his head to the side and then cautiously asked: "Can I bring a friend?"

Another gulp. Exhibit B: "Sure."

What had she done? She had taken Kira's instructions way too literally and it was only a matter of time until she invited Professor Snape for Merlin's sake. Better him than Herbert, at that thought.

"Brilliant," Herbert grinned, before squeezing Morgan's shoulder in the most excruciatingly friendly way possible. "Thanks, again. See you then."

By the time Morgan had processed what she had done, Herbert was gone, and she was staring at the floor, saying goodbye to nobody.

Tonight would be certainly interesting.