"Confidence issues and all sorts, hmm?" Her eyes flicked over to the blonde as she took a heart swing. Gods, she loved the burn. "Rather. . .interesting, espeically with a name and history like hers."

From what she remembered of the younger student, she was illegitimate, with an unknown father, with only Lady Greengrass's word to say that she was pureblood. That in itself was doubtful, especially as the young Greengrass liked to spread her favors, it seemed. If she was able to be married off, with the reputation she had, husbands ought to keep an eye on the children to make sure they were his-- never something fun, and one thing that would be sure never to happen with Rhaelle, if only because there was no chance of anything.

"You've got my eyes glued to you, then, in whatever ways you'll take that to mean." She raised her eyebrows and dropped them, the mask doing the same. It was always fun to rip someone down a little, and the ball would be as good a place as any. "We'll pay attention, and we can babble at each other so it seems we're talking about her, if it'll get your rocks off a bit."

Her moral high ground, she knew, was low. What of it? She'd known what she was getting into, still preferred it. Rumor-wise, there had been little about her until she'd married Daeron.

Halloween was Mordred’s favourite opportunity to cause a bit of mischief. It was absolutely ideal for the bratty little prankster to a mask on. It would allow him to cause trouble without people being able to identify him as the miscreant. If he was at all lucky he could even shift the burden of blame onto someone else and have fun watching them squirm. It was also useful for wondering around and mingling with people to try and gather information about people. The spectacled lad found that people usually let their guard down when they wore masks. Like the masks could protect them somehow.

It was this that made the young lad excited about the Ball, and about all the pranks and chaos he might be able to perform at the ball, about all the trouble he could make or things he might be able to find out. The mischief maker decided to go in a killer clown costume. It was maybe a bit too cliched but he felt that it worked well for him. He had a white mask on with a large, red, twisted grin painted onto his lips, a red nose, black and purple patterns around the eyes. He also had a wig of green hair.

He also wore a clown outfit, one side was red and black strikes and the other side was white and black stars, each point made to look like it was like it was dripping with blood. He had white gloves on that, again, made to look like they were covered in blood. However he decided to keep his normal shoes on rather than clown shoes, he felt that wearing long shoes might be a bit tedious and dangerous for him in the Great Hall. He might end up tripping because of it. He didn’t care about anyone else mind.

With a bit of an arrogant swagger the 13 year old entered the Great Hall and scanned the room looking for victims. There was a weird first year dressed as a cat of some sort, and the Weakwood siblings. He could pick on Donald, he was always such an easy victim, but his sister was too close to him and he didn’t fancy picking a fight with two people. Instead the Slytherin boy decided that it would be best to merge into the crowds and see if he could overhear any interesting conversations, or ideas. He might even find out something incriminating enough about someone to use to blackmail them. That would be sweet.

The sudden sound of a nearby voice startled Alyssa, causing her to actually drop both stress balls, while at the same moment eliciting a squeak from the fifteen-year-old. A moment passed, before she jumped off her chair to scramble to grab the squishy spheres before someone stepped on one and slipped. "Sorry, Professor!" she squeaked, as she grabbed the basketball and smiley face from the floor. She should have expected socialization, I mean, it was a party!

"I...it's not so bad," she managed, glancing around as she stood, straightening her skirt and shifting over to the picnic basket and picking it up. "My father helped me figure out a little bitty secret to include in the costume, after all." Holding both stress balls in one hand, she lifted one side of the picnic basket's lid - revealing that within, a werewolf costume mask seemingly stuffed with fabric lurked. Clearly fake, by the latex shine of the skin, and clearly muggle-made. But some things, wizards just couldn't get right. Masks tended to look to real, too accurate, and Alyssa didn't want people to think she actually had a wolf head in her basket!

"How are you, Professor?"

@samuel

AVA COSTUME

The annual Halloween Ball was always something that Ava looked forward to. Honestly, the whole thing was straight down her ally with the costumes. It was an entire event dedicated to making some sort of outfit that you had concocted that showed off your skill. She hadn't actually made the outfit herself - her skill set didn't actually lay in making clothes, that was a bit over her head, but she had put the thing together, having ordered the different parts over the summer to ensure they had gotten in on time. It had taken her a while to settle on a costume, but once she did, one of the mudbloods who worked for their family had sent the costume from the house to the school as sadly, muggles didn't ship to Hogwarts - she would go shopping far more often if they did. Then again maybe it was a good thing for her allowance they didn't.

It had taken her some time to get ready, apparently too long, when she came from the girls' side of the dorms to find that @munchzilla89 had apparently gotten inpatient with her and had, as such, abandoned her to go on her own. What a loyal twin, she thought bitterly, as she had already sent her friends away, planning on going down with him. She should have known better than to expect him to wait, Ava figured, tucking her wand into her skirt as she made her way to the hall.

Once there, she glanced around, smiling happily now over her flightly burst of annoyance now that she was presented with multiple people to talk to, though she did take note of her brother across the hall talking to two of his teammate, @deon and @ujin.  Most were already engaged in some form of conversation, she having arrived sort of late, and though she didn't really want to butt in, she didn't want to stand her alone either, so she picked her way over to Amelia Aziza Travers, where she froze, her hip cocked slightly to the side. The two girls' costumes could easily be total opposites, with the loose dress Amelia wore compared to the tight hugging leather of her own. "I like the apple," she'd start, "Very nice touch. Can you still eat it?"

Outfit

Honestly, Beathan wasn't sure if he even liked Halloween, and definitely didn't like the crowds of people found at Balls, yet he'd opted to attend anyway. Mostly out of a desire to see his siblings, because they had so few opportunities to spend time together outside of classes. He wasn't sure if @bluebird or @queenalice had even arrived yet, but he hoped they had, because he'd be all alone until he found them and he didn't want to spend too much time surrounded by strangers. It had been difficult enough to find a costume to wear, but then all three of them were going to match--sort of--so it had made things easier. Beathan wasn't much enthused by the apparently necessary wings for his costume, but he supposed they helped make it more obvious as to what he was dressed as. Wearing all white wasn't much of a costume by itself, after all. He drew the line at charming them to move, however, and nothing anyone said could change his mind. The wings by themselves wouldn't draw too much attention, but moving ones certainly would.

Beathan found a corner to hide in and wait for Blue and Aileas to find him, because he wasn't going to wander the Hall for them any more than he was going to make his costume wings move. Which is to say, not at all.

She had allowed the Friar to escort her, as Sir Nicholas had led her into the Great Hall for the Sorting. Sir Patrick had attended with him, and while Sir Nicholas was still no part of his Headless Hunt, they were on well enough terms that she did not think it would cause distraction and arguments.

Attending wasn't out of any particular yearning to see students guised as various people and beings, nor out of any great desire to be social. Rather, it was to see if any further incidents would occur, and to attempt to reason. From what she had heard from many, when logic was near about reached and the Gryffindor sent to the Hospital Wing, the Minister of Magic had been summoned by one of the professors, which was when Hogwarts had been locked.

She rather doubted her tongue might be of much help, should another student be injured, yet it was best, all the same,
to try for something. Like all other spirits of Hogwarts, her loyalty was towards the students in the school, and it was her duty and responsibility to see them safe.

The Friar wandered them through and around, giving enthusiastic small talk as he traveled about. After approaching a particularly rambunctious group of First years, he allowed her her arm, and she let herself drift upwards, a pearl silhouette among the dark ceiling.

Outfit

She hadn’t really been sure that she wanted to come to this thing, though that tended to be her opinion of most dances at this school. Recently, they’d had a way of being just a bit more interesting but Halloween was… well, every witch at this school used the holiday to push the boundaries of the dress code, and she was bored. She was bored of this place, of the classes, of everything. Scarlett was ready to graduate. She’d been ready last year, but then there had been… that distraction. Shagging someone that she shouldn’t be shagging. It had made everything more interesting, had made classes more tolerable. This year, she was still shagging that person she shouldn’t be shagging, and it was still making her life more interesting… it just didn’t make these dances any more exciting. She hadn’t been planning on going, especially since @rory was going with Dion, but she supposed she could find other people to talk to. She had a few other people she actually considered friends, and if it came down to it, she could leave early—and if she was particularly lucky, someone would have spiked the punch by now. She was certainly running a little bit behind schedule.

This just wasn’t something that she thought was fun anymore. She didn’t mind dressing up, she actually did like Halloween. She just thought that it got a little more annoying each year, with the same people, dressing up in the same predictable costumes. It was getting old. She was ready to go somewhere else, be someone else. Do something else… she wasn’t really sure what, but she knew that she wasn’t going to find out here. Scarlett was ready for more than all of this, even if she didn’t know just what came after. She just still had to get through the rest of this school year, and it seemed to be moving dreadfully slow. It was only October—how in Godric’s name was it only October, and it felt like they had been here for much longer than just a couple of months? Hopefully everything would move along just a bit faster, even if she wasn’t exactly looking forward to going home for Christmas either. She supposed she was just at a point where she didn’t want to be here, but she didn’t want to be home either. Scarlett wasn’t really sure just where she wanted to be at all. She hoped this night ended up interesting enough not to be a complete waste of time though… preferably without any maiming.

Scarlett thought that had to be on everyone’s minds. The last dance had been where a Muggleborn had been mutilated in the middle of the ball, by the headmaster of all people. That had been a turn of events no one had been expecting, but with no Muggleborns here this year, Scarlett thought this dance would probably be a lot less eventful. Less dramatic. There would probably be the same bullshit drama there was every year, but nothing more than that. She wasn’t sure if that was good or depressing. It wasn’t like she wanted anyone to get maimed at the dance, but you certainly couldn’t say that ball had been uneventful. This one probably would be. Still, she thought there was a chance for a little entertainment, so she headed into the Great Hall and took a look around. It didn’t take her too long to see Aurora, with @dion and Rhaelle Senya Maenlarys, and headed in that direction. She thought there might be a better chance that they had brought alcohol of their own than someone braving spiking the punch. “Tell me someone has booze.” She said, once she’d made it over to them.

halloween ball

OUTFIT

These dances were usually interesting enough—though for Caerus, it normally depended more on the company than anything else. In most other ways, they were the same. The decorations were always more impressive than the time before, the food was always good. But the people were the same, and no one got any more ambitious with costumes either. He was guilty of that. He had gone for a devil, which pretty much was just him grabbing a mask and calling it a night. He just didn’t see much of a reason to dress up more than that. What mattered to him tonight, at the last Halloween Ball he’d be at for Hogwarts, was having a good time with people that he actually liked to be around. There was a reason why he’d come to this thing with @lasimir. He was probably the best friend that he had here, so it was a little… ironic, he supposed, that there was a chance that they would eventually be family too. Not in any kind of extremely close way, obviously. LJ wasn’t marrying his sister or anything, they weren’t about to be brothers. But his uncle was dating LJ’s aunt, so if that kept going the way it was going, then his aunt would be a Nott, and they would technically kind of be family.

Caerus figured it probably would end up that way. He didn’t claim to know all the details, because obviously he didn’t, but they seemed to be serious enough. They were expecting babies for Merlin’s sake, so there would be more Notts running around. Frankly, he didn’t know as much about their relationship as LJ did. His father didn’t talk to his brother all that much, and he knew that LJ was often at his aunt’s house, so Caerus was decently sure that LJ had more information about all of this than he did. But that was fine. It wasn’t as if he was dying for the details. He just thought that it was hardly a bad thing that his family might be related to LJ’s at some point, and that they were at least going to share family members. Caerus’s cousins, for LJ they would be… he wasn’t sure, actually. He figured he’d think of them like they were cousins, even though he thought the technical term for that would be… second cousins. Maybe. Hell, he didn’t know, but it wasn’t as if all that mattered. “Good.” He said, half distractedly before he focused in on what LJ had actually said. Sera was here. That actually was good. Coming here was hardly easy, and a dance was hardly her idea of a good time. Yet here she was anyhow.

“Hey.” He said, with an easy grin, once @petrova had reached them. Her costume was certainly one of the more elaborate he’d seen so far—and not at all in a bad way. He was used to the typical here… bunnies and cats and whatever the hell else witches here tended to do. It wasn’t as if he was much better, with his definition of a costume being grabbing a mask but still. He liked the costume. His gaze moved around the room for a moment, wondering if this dance was going to be like the last one—with maiming and torture, or more like ones in the past, where the most interesting part of the night was finding out who had the best booze snuck in, and if anyone was throwing any after parties anywhere interesting. As a prefect, booze and after parties weren’t exactly what he should be thinking about, but hell, he was good about the rules for the most part. When the right people were watching anyway, or when he needed to be. “What are the chances that tonight will end up interesting? Any bets on mutilation?” He didn’t think he’d place high odds on it with no Mudbloods to focus that attention on, but it was never completely out of the question.