Hope watched noelle light up the tunnel. She could tell that Noelle and Sabbath weren't the most thrilled about checking out the dark damp tunnels. Especially after what they had just gone through. She pushed her way in front of the two love birds.

"We don't have to if you guys don't want to. We can always do something else. That's no problem. Or I can go first." She grabbed her cousin's hand, giving her a wide smile. She peeked around Sabbath and Noelle at kitty. "do you want to check it out or would you like to do something else?" She didn't want Kitty to feel left out.

"I can go first if you want," said Kitty in answer to Hope's question. "All year I've been trying to solve the mystery about what's behind the Tapestry while not even knowing that there was something behind the mirror. Maybe they are connected?" Of course she was still a little nervous about going in the dark, but she wouldn't be alone right?

Smiling tentatively at the three of them, Kitty approached the tunnel and stepped inside.

"Hey, Hey, hold it a minute there, princesa" He took hold of Nells waist and lifted her down before she could disappear down the tunnel (and she really was a lot lighter than before). He knew she could be miffed that he'd pulled her back, so after placing her on the ground, he held up his hands, "Before we rush in, just hear me out... Nells don't you think its a good idea that we tell someone where we're going before we go?" He looked her in the eye, raising one eyebrow to convey the deeper message. This had been one of the major problems of their last adventure. He was sure she'd understand it.

"How about you shoot off one of those paper birds with a message, just to be on safe side?". He had full intentions of watching the spell closely too, that was a pretty cool trick and he wanted to learn it.



"Girls wait up, we're going to send a message about where we're going first" Sabbath offered his hand to Kitty to help her climb back down. He didn't think she'd like waiting in the dark tunnel alone while Nells got out her wand to cast it.

Sabbath wondered if Nells would need paper to write the message on. He felt his robe pockets, all he had on him that they could use was an old envelope sent from home. He got it out, removed the contents, which he replaced in his pocket, and flattened it out. "Here we can write on this". He handed it to Nells, with a slightly sheepish look on his face, the envelope was pink and had little red love hearts all over it.

To hide his embarrassment Sabbath climbed onto the tunnel entrance and waited there looking out. There was no way he was letting the girls get in there before him, sheesh!

Noelle had her game face on. She was in the zone, pushing back all her fears and thoughts when she felt hands on her waist, pulling her back. She tensed immediately. She was kinda of mad at how easily she could be moved. She needed to work on that. It would be too easy for someone to grab her again.

Noelle was set on the ground and she crossed her arms before she realized that Sabbie was right. She looked at the others because Hope had been the one to block them now and then there was Kitty trying to squeeze in first. It was cute but annoying with all the protectiveness.

Oh right bird note.

Noelle looked at the pink heart paper and lifted a brow at Sabbie but didn't say anything. He was free to do what he wanted, just as they talked about. Looking for her quill in her knapsack, she scribbled a note to Noah telling him where she was and who she was going with. She told him if she didn't come see him in a few hours to let someone know. Then she signed it and folded it like a bird. Charming it, a charm she'd watched her mom do countless times, it started off down the corridor to Noah.

"Okay, note sent. Let's do this before I can't." She looked at Hope and gave her an encouraging smile that told her she was going to be okay. She hoped she would too.

The Gothic girl paused and watched as Noelle sent the enchanted note away. "Safe to go now?"she asked, arms folded and looking from Sabbath to Noelle to Hope. "I don't think there is anything dangerous, unless Professor Black decided it was a good hiding place." She meant it as a joke, but she realized too late that Hope might have been the only one who got it.

Hope waited for the charmed envelope to flutter away. She knew that Noelle had given her the look because she was being too protective. She might've been younger than her cousin, but that didn't mean that she wasn't just as protective. She had always been that way. And ever since they were taken, Hope had gotten worse. She knew that she needed to let Noelle do her thing so she backed off. PLanning to go in behind her. Sabbath could bring in the rear to make sure that nothing was going to get them from the back. Even though she was sure nothing would.

She grabbed Kitty's hand, as she giggled about the little joke she had just made. "I'm sure there's nothing down there. But we can always have our wands ready. I learned a few charms from DADA. That way if we need to we can send some spells off and run for it!" She was doing her protective thing again... You need to back off. She reminded herself.

"I'm following you Noelle." She smiled at her cousin. Hoping she got the message loud and clear. She turned and smiled at Sabbath and Kitty as well. This was going to be fun!

Sabbath listened to Kitty and Hope as the three girls approached him at the tunnel entrance. He held up his arm to assist each of the girls as they climbed up into the tunnel. He had no idea who Professor Black was. He was sure he'd never heard that teacher's name before. "Who's professor Black? he enquired with amusement at their giggles, "and what's so funny about him?" .

As he waited for their reply he took his wand from his robe pocket, uttered lumos, held it out before him and as he edged forward into the abyss.

Noelle didn't get it. She looked between Hope and Kitty as the joke passed between them. She was about to ask what that was about when Sabbie took the words right from her. She nodded in agreement of his question and looked at the two again.

Bracing herself, she pulled herself into the tunnel after Kitty with Sabboe's help. She held onto his hand a second or two longer than she needed to once she was inside the tunnel. He was her rock, of course. She charmed her wand with "lumos" again as she followed Kitty down the tunnel, trying to keep her thoughts light and not to think about how similar the dampness of the stone walls and the darkness was eerily close to the dungeons.

"Can you see anything ahead of you Kitty??" Noelle asked, keeping her voice at a very calm level, to make sure No one knew she was scared. But she was. Goosebumps lit her arms in wait of someone to reach out and grab her in the darkness.

She shouldn't have done this. It's too soon. But there was no turning back now. And she didn't want anyone thinking she was weak.

Hope grabbed Noelle's hand as she entered the tunnel. She thanked Sabbath for his help and tried to look at the light flickering off the stone wall. She couldn't see a thing. Getting her wand out too, she muttered "lumos". Her wand lite up the tunnel a little better. It didn't look like there was anything ahead of them.

She noticed that Noelle's arm was now covered in goosebumps. She patted her cousin's hand, hoping that she got the message that she was behind her all the way! Literally. And Kitty had her front. Even if they had only just met. And of course Sabbath and all his manliness was with them too.

When Sabbath had asked about Professor Black Hope waited for Kitty to answer. She of course knew. Maybe she should enlighten them? Or maybe not.. It wasn't a story that Noelle and Sabbath needed to hear right now."Professor Black is just a rumor. Nothing important." She was hoping that they wouldn't get too curious. If Kitty told them who she was, or who she was rumored to be they wouldn't be doing this.

"I can't see anything" replied Kitty to Hope's question. "But have you noticed that there is a lot of soil in this part of the tunnel?"

The Gothic girl smiled to herself when Noelle and Sabbath asked who Professor Black was, but since it was dark and she was in front of them they couldn't have seen that. It confirmed her suspicions about them not being at Hogwarts the whole time - because who wouldn't know who Professor Black was? Professor Black (a.k.a. Ursula Black) was the Divination teacher for this term. She was a Hag who had lived on the castle grounds inside s smelly old tent until that fateful day when it the first Divination lesson when she tried to eat the entire class. The teachers had arrived in time to drive her away and thankfully no one had gotten hurt, but she hadn't been caught yet. Kitty knew she would have nightmares about her until she was caught.

But then Hope told them it was just a legend. Kitty came to an abrupt stop in the tunnel - if Hope had been standing right behind her she would have bumped into her.

Kitty approached Hope and whispered in her ear so that Noelle and Sabbath couldn't hear (unless they were really trying to eavesdrop) "Excuse me? A legend? Don't you think we should tell them? All the teachers are on the look out for her, and everyone knows about her. But I won't tell them now if you don't think we should."

Then Kitty caught sight of something moving in the soil between the stones in the floor. "A worm!" she cried joyfully and bent down to pick the worm up from the ground. "Isn't he cute?"

"We can tell them later. I don't want them freaking out while we are in the tunnel. Or maybe we should tell them..." Hope figured they should know. It could save them. Just in case she showed up. "I'll let you tell them. You are a better story teller. I can already tell." She gave Kitty a smile.

When Kitty bent down to get the worm, Hope looked over her shoulder. She didn't want anything to surprise them. She had been in the divination class. It was so scary. And now she was a little spooked.

As he'd been walking he'd determined to busy his mind in an attempt to distract himself from negative thoughts. He was tossing over the paper bird spell in his mind, Although he was pretty certain he'd learnt it just by observing Nells cast hers. He thought Nells could also do with something to take her mind off what he knew would be passing through it. "Hey Nells, tell me if I've got the wand movement right?" He practiced the incantation and movement for the paper bird with a deliberate error and waited for her correct him.

Sabbath laughed at Hope's ridiculous attempt to cover up the truth, the fact the she was hiding something was written all over her face and then there was all the whispering between her and Kitty. "C'mon you two, cough it up. You're not fooing anyone with this rot about legends" He stopped and waited expectantly for the explanation to begin as Kitty stoopped to pick up a worm, of all things! Cute is not the word Sabbath would have used to describe it.

Noelle touched the wall and felt the clamminess of it. She shuddered because negative thoughts filled her brain. She shut her eyes tight and kept walking in an attempt to force out those negative comments. She was about to loose it. She needed to keep a grip.

Thank Merlin for Sabbie. She heard his voice talking to her and her breathing shallower out just a bit. She kept her eyes closed though. Too ... Anxious to open them just yet. She still semi pictured them both in the dungeon. Noelle had closed her eyes just like this and Sabbie had to bring her back down then too.

"Mmhmmperfecr." She mumbled. She tried concentrating on ther things like who this Professor Black was. She heard Hope and Kitty whispering because she was using her ears to walk rather than her eyes. But she hadn't heard them stop so she ran into Hope, hopefully not hard enough to knock her over.

"S-Sorry" Noelle stammered and finally opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was a worm. Two inches from her face. Noelle made a face and took a step back, right into Sabbie.

"Thank you" said Kitty in response to Hope's compliment about her being a good storyteller, and she her small smile. Now Sabbath was asking to hear the story too, so Kitty had no reason to not say it.

She came to a pause and sat down on the floor with her worm. Then she began: "Professor Black was our Divination teacher - but she is also an evil hag! She lived in a smelly old tent out in the middle of the school grounds. I wasn't scared of her at first, because I was certain that the Headmistress wouldn't have hired her if she was dangerous. So on the day that it was our first Divination lesson I went down to her tent to visit her with another Ravenclaw student. But almost right away she threatened to eat us both alive! We barely escaped with our lives but by then the rest of the class was coming down. I ran back and tried to spy on her from a rock but her pet crow told her where I was and she pulled up to the front by the cauldron. When Haddie and I tried to escape she froze us like we were statues and she threw a Hufflepuff boy into the boiling pot! Don't worry he was okay."

Kitty's eyes sparkled with the delight of telling the story, not at the bad things that had happened to them. "The Hag was going to eat us all and she probably would have, but then the Headmisstress and two of the teachers came and saved us. They tried to arrest the Hag but she escaped with the help of her evil crow sidekicks. She's probably still out there somewhere in the Forbidden Forest biding her time and plotting a kidnapping of one of us. The headmistress ordered that the teachers patrol the castle to make certain she doesn't come back."

Seeing the reaction from Noelle to her worm, Kitty placed it back on the ground gently. "Do worms frighten you? Sorry, I didn't know."

Hope listened to Kitty tell the story. She had hoped to not scare Noelle and Sabbath, but who was she kidding? She wasn't a good game facer. Or liar for that matter. The old Hag was crazy. But she knew that she would never let anything happen to her cousin again. She screwed that up big time last time. It was all her fault..

Her thoughts were running away with her, when Noelle ran into her. She steadied her cousin, but in the process ended up loosing her balance and ran smack into the tunnel wall.

*SMACK*

She grabbed her face immediately. Her nose was hurting so bad. She tried to play it off. She sat down and acted like she was paying attention to Kitty's story, but her head was starting to hurt. She didn't know she could hit it that hard just by falling face first into a wall. HAHA of course she could. She was Hope. A clumsy little girl.

Sabbath knew something was up with Noelle, she hadn't even noticed the deliberate error in his spell casting, and it was unlike her to be that unobservant. He watched her in the dim light in the same way he had done many times over the past few months in that dingy cell as he tried to determine if she was ok.

He knew her mind wasn't in the moment when she bumped into Hope ahead of him and reeled backwards at the sight of the worm. As he had already been watching her, Sabbath easily caught her as toppled back into him. "Woah, Nells, Are you ok?" he asked her quietly, holding her until she regained her footing. He kept his arm wrapped around her shoulder as Kitty began her story of the hag.

Sabbath listened quietly until Kitty was finished. A thought had just occurred to him. "That's really odd, the stuff about the hag having crows as companians and such, he said, furrowing his brow. "Do you know what! I know exactly who the hag reminds me of" he said, glancing around them all,...."The Morrigan".

He stated the name expecting that the others in the group had heard the same childhood stories and would understand what he was talking about. "She's just like her, isnt she, exactly like the story of the Morrigan, that one your family tells you as a child?" he looked around the group for agreement.

Whoops. Poor Hope. Noelle hadn't meant to bump into her so hard. And why had she reeled back at the sight of a worm? She needed to get out of her head. She felt Sabbies arm go around her and heard Kitty's sorry. "Its okay! I'm sorry. Was lost in my head for a moment.

Noelle's eyes turned to Hope, and her nose. "Are you okay? I didn't mean to." She was sorry. So sorry. She hoped she hasn't hurt her.

Her attention turned back to the story. And the hag. Oh. Noelle flashed a look at Hope because she knew that that's where the three had gone to Knockturn Alley looking for, and maybe it was the one at the school here. How weird. "So she's gone now? Or could she be lurking around?"

Turning slightly to look at Sabbie, she blinked. "i haven't heard of them."

Hope centered herself and smiled at her cousin. Which hurt her face so she dropped the smile. "I'm fine. It's my own fault. I was so into the story I wasn't paying attention. Are you ok? Now that she was thinking clearly, she realized that Noelle wouldn't of been so distracted. And in her head? She was reliving the dungeons... maybe they needed to go back. Of Noelle was thinking about it she knew Sabbath was.

When Sabbath mentioned his childhood story Hope's face scrunched up. She had no idea. She shook her head. "Sorry. Never heard of it."

Kitty flinched when Hope banged her head was about to ask her if she was okay, but decided not to when she said she was okay - not wanting to be annoying by having her repeat herself.

"I never heard of Morrigan," answered Kitty to Sabbath's question. "Who is she?" Then Noelle asked if the Hag was still around. "She's still lurking around somewhere but no one knows where. All the teachers are on the lookout. If she's still around then she's probably in the Forbidden Forest or by Hogsmeade - or she might be in a different country by now. But I don't think she'd dare come into the castle in broad daylight, not with all the teachers around." The Gothic frowned in confusion. "But I'm surprised that you haven't heard about her. I mean, she was our teacher and she was at the star of term feast and everything."

Sabbath let the girls comfort each other after their headbump while he wondered about the connection between the old folk tale of the Morrigan and the Hogwarts Hag. He was also aware that Kitty had probably twigged about who he and Noelle were and where they'd been this past semester, as her queries were getting more specific. Even still, he wasn't going to go into that story right now so he deflected the conversation...

He looked around quizzically at the group huddled together in the dim light. "Really none of you have heard of the Morrigan?" his brow furrowed as he concluded that maybe it was a particularly muggle mythology. "Well, as far as I can remember from the old stories, The Morrigan was a shape shifter, she could change from Hag to maiden and to crow form. Of course, we always thought she was just a story, but now I'm here in the magical world, I wonder if anything's possible" he said, with a shrug.

"Anyway, the Morrigan was always surrounded by crows, her familiars, because she was the one who chose who died in battle. It was said, she would appear on battle fields, to choose the souls who were going to perish, but I guess that doesn't fit at all, because I'm sure the Hogwarts grounds have never been the scene of a battle, have they?" he asked rhetorically.

Kitty listened respectfully and with growing interest as Sabbath escribed to them the Morrigan. "I wonder how long hags live," said Kitty thoughtfully. "The Morrigan sounds a lot like Ursula Black, but you say she lived a long time ago right?"

"And you're right, Hogwarts has had MANY battles, not the least of which was the Battle of Hogwarts when Voldemort attacked. Since then there have been a few other attacks though no0ne as bad as that one."

Hopes anxiety for the Hag sky rocket. But she keeps her composure. She looks at Noelle, hoping the story wasn't freaking her out. Well, more freaked out than she already was.

"Wow that's so crazy! I bet it's not true though. Right?" She looks between kitty and sabbath, hoping for reassurance. "She won't really eat our souls right?"

Noelle leaned against the wall of the small corridor as Sabbie and Kitty went back and forth about the hag and the story. She raised her brows at all that was said, but was glad all wands were raised at the people talking. Since she wasn't talking, no one would have to see the fear on her face. She was trying to cover it up, and she hoped it was covered up.

Taking a deep breath, she slipped her hand behind her and looked for Sabbie's hand. It was dark in the tunnel, so no one would notice.. Hopefully. She just wanted a bit of comfort. He'd been her comfort in the dungeons, and she was having a hard time deciphering between the two right now.

"Well.... I'm sure someone will find her." Noelle said, not wanting to seem like she wasn't paying attention. As for the story, she didn't really have much to say about that.

Hope seemed worried, which Kitty didn't blame her for. "I don't know if Professor Black could eat our souls or not, I don't think so. If the Morrigan could do that then I think she must have been a different hag, maybe related to her. Black just wanted to eat our bodies." Eck. Kitty felt grossed out just saying that.

"I'm sure they will find her too," she nodded at Noelle, noticing how distressed she looked also.

"Um...do you guys want to go back? Maybe we should."

Sabbath felt Noelle's hand slip into his in the darkness, he gave her hand a reassuring squeeze, he knew she was uncomfortable here and the conversation about eating souls and bodies wasn't helping at all. "Listen, I'm sure the tales of the Morrigan are just that, folk tales. And you know what, even though the hag was crazy, in the end she's still an old biddy and the castle defenses and the protections at Hogwarts are no match for her. I think we really don't have to worry".

He stepped in closer to Noelle, and rested his hand on her shoulder "I don't know about you guys, but I'm getting pretty hungry. It doesn't look like theres much going on down here, its just a manky old tunnel. What do you say we head up to the Great Hall and grab something to eat?" He glanced throught the darkness at them all to see if they were also keen, but his eyes came back to Noelle, he knew the Gryffindor in her needed an option to get out without seeming like a scaredy cat. He was giving her the out if she wanted to take it.