Penwick

When the groundskeeper had finished loading the last batch of pumpkins into a low sled that morning, only a few dozen had been left in the patch. These were the malformed, bruised, misshapen and discoloured ones, fit for pumpkin juice but not for decoration. They were not even fit for tonight’s steaming, flavourful soup, spiced with yellow curry, served with a side of cream, and garnished with finely chopped parsley. Too wicked and wayward were they, too crooked inside and out. Had they not been left tonight, their dark purpose might have been avoided...

A stale cold permeated the grounds that morning, a windless chill had laid down the first thin coating of snow along the ridges and edges of the dark garden soil. By midday, a gaggle of students had last passed by the patch, clutching their scarves and breathing hot air into their hands as they hastened into the castle’s warm embrace. Slowly the sky had darkened overhead and all the while the pumpkins in the patch had been left to their own brooding thoughts of deep roots and dense earth. Not before the tolling of the seventh bell did they awake from their deep slumber.

Shallow were the footprints pressed into the earth, no heavier than a roe’s, and difficult to make out in the fading light. Perhaps if Iris Perkins had seen them, she would have made it safely back to the dining hall in time…

—-

The black earth crumbled in Santiago's hands, this was good soil, smelling faintly of dew and compost. Perhaps he would be tempted to pocket some of it for whatever growing and potting projects he had going on, no one would miss a few handfuls of dirt, right?

"Wait, why is it empty?"

His voice disturbed the eerie silence that had fallen over the pumpkin patch, but the grounds gave no audible answer. His senses of touch and smell gave no answers either and merely told him what he would already know: what he held in his hands was dirt. Good dirt for growing, but dirt nonetheless. Finding nothing unusual there, the fifth-year looked around.


His eyes, having adapted to the dark by now, would make two observations. First and foremost, the slight unevenness of the earth in patches, betraying two pairs of light footprints, disturbed and interrupted in places by other movement, but still clear enough to be traced where they had not mingled with Santiago's and Enid's own. One set of footprints came out of the dark beyond the grounds, moving into the patch. These were small and light footprints, clustered closely together, like that of a small child. The other pair came from the castle, the same way he and Enid had come, and lead into the patch, where they looped back in on themselves, as though someone had been pacing up and down. Then they seemed to change direction all of a sudden, heading further away from the castle and fading away. The last he would be able to see of this pair was near the edge of the pumpkin patch, furthest from the castle, where the ground was too firm to hold the imprints of anyone who had gone that way.

And there he would see it, barely visible from the edge of light caused by Enid's lantern.. Laying on the border between patch and dirt path was something small and white, like a tiny stick. If he would reach for it and take it he would smell tobacco and perhaps even recognize it. It was an unlit Vapour Wand, a small cigarette sold at Huffler's Puffers and not infrequently resold at huge markups by delinquents to gullible young students.

While Santiago used touch, smell, and sight to make his discoveries, Enid instead relied on her hearing. Drawn by the soft rustling in the shrubs she would hold her lantern toward the source of the noise, perhaps expecting a lost hedgehog or a squirrel stuck in the brambles. What she found instead was the very thing they had set out to find in the first place: a pumpkin.

A soft glowing, pulsing light radiated from within, illuminating its fixed, grinning features. Its misshapen surface was discoloured in places by patches of green and its menacing face was roughly carved as though created in haste or with disinterest. It didn't look like it had even been properly hollowed out yet as bits of pumpkin and seeds were spilling out of the corner of its jagged-teeth mouth like drool.

Finding an enchanted jack-o-lantern was nothing too out of the ordinary at Penwick around this time of year, even badly made ones, but Enid's inquisitive mind would notice that this one was behaving very strangely indeed. While most enchanted pumpkins levitated, glowed, and made the ocassional noise to startle unsuspecting first-years, this one moved.

At least, it was trying to. The rustling she had heard was simply the product of the small pumpkin trying again and again to hop forward, but its curled stem had snagged on something in the shrubbery. It was determined to go somewhere, that much was clear, but unless it was freed from the shrubs it would never reach its destination, and given enough time whatever charm possessed it would fizzle out. As a matter of fact, Enid might perhaps be tempted to hasten that process by casting Finite Incantatem. Then Santiago would have his pumpkin and they could leave this bitter cold dirt patch behind them, get something to eat, and maybe get a few people to gawk at their elaborate outfits.