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𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐒 𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐍𝐄𝐃 𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊 𝐎𝐍, Thomas found himself alone in the parlour. Even Mr. Boddy had disappeared from the desk where he had been napping. Thomas was about to call out for the others when a loud, shrill scream ripped through the Shrieking Shack and set every hair on Thomas's body on end.

Thomas rushed out into the foyer, tracking the scream up to a room on the second floor. He skipped over steps as he ran up the staircase, but by the time he reached the room where the screaming was coming from, Jackson, Penny, Luc, Madelynn, and Willow were all fighting for a chance to see through the crowded doorframe.

Once Thomas was finally able to push through, he found a pale-faced Jesse standing on the other side. Laying at his feet was the body of a blonde-haired boy with a silver dagger plunged through his back.

"I didn't do it," Jesse whimpered.

"What happened?" Thomas asked as he attempted to catch his breath from his jog up the stairs. "Who is that?"

"I don't know," Jesse answered, still frozen to his spot. "When the lights came back on I found myself here with this dead guy!"

Penny leaned down next to the boy and pressed two fingers against his neck, careful to avoid the pool of crimson blood surrounding him. When she couldn't feel a pulse, her eyes traveled down the rest of his body until they landed on the ornate hilt of the dagger. "Wasn't this the dagger that Colonel Mustard received in her present?"

Madelynn pushed forward so that she could get a better look. "It is..." she answered slowly. "But I dropped it when the lights went out and when they came back on I was in a completely different room on the third floor."

"So anybody could have grabbed it," Jackson frowned, crossing her arms and leaning against the doorframe.

With Madelynn's help, Penny began to carefully push the boy over onto his side so that they could get a better look at his face. His skin was a sickly gray and his hazel eyes were plastered open in an eternal stare-down with death.

"Hey, I think I recognize him..." Jackson muttered. She pushed herself off the doorframe and took a few cautious steps towards the body. "I'm pretty sure he played on the Ravenclaw quidditch team. Don't you play on the Ravenclaw team, Miss Peacock?"

Everybody's eyes turned to Willow, who was standing silently in the corner as she surveyed the proceedings.

"Wait, how do you know that Miss Peacock is a quidditch player?" Thomas asked Jackson, his eyes trailing back and forth between her and Willow. "Do you two know each other?"

"I don't know her, but I've seen her before, along with Mr. Green," Jackson responded, alighting a series of surprised gasps from her fellow groupmates. "I play on the Gryffindor quidditch team."

"Does that mean that you also play quidditch then, Mr. Green?" Madelynn asked, looking up towards Luc.

Luc took a moment to respond. "Yes, I'm the captain of the Slytherin team."

"So do you know this boy?" Thomas asked Willow. "Was he your teammate?"

"Yes, but we weren't close," Willow answered. "He was a first-string keeper and I'm a second-string seeker. He was also out for a while due to an injury from his broom acting up."

"'Broom acting up'? How does that even happen?" Jackson scoffed.

"I don't know," Willow answered with a shake of her head. "But there were rumors that there was foul-play involved. I wasn't on the pitch at the exact moment, but I was there the day it happened. It wasn't pretty."

"I think you guys are missing an important question," Penny pointed out to the group. Everybody's eyes leapt from Willow to Penny. "How did he get in here? Didn't you say that you thoroughly searched this place before we arrived, Mr. Wadsworth? And all of the doors are locked."

"You're right..." Thomas muttered to himself as he began to pace around the room in deep contemplation.

"Maybe he missed him," Jesse suggested.

"Not possible," Thomas responded with a shake of his head. "Mr. Boddy and I looked in every corner, every cabinet, and every cranny...Speaking of, where is Mr. Boddy?"

The group of witches and wizards swept their heads around the room in search of the black cat when a "meow" brought their attention to the hallway.

"Mr. Boddy!" Thomas sighed in relief, rushing out of the room to grab his cat and cradle him against his body.

"Me-ow," Mr. Boddy said as he has crushed by Thomas.

"Well, what are we going to do now?" Jackson asked. "There's a killer loose in the Shrieking Shack and we can't leave."

"The killer could very well be one of us," Madelynn pointed out.

"I didn't do it!" Jesse repeated, his face once more becoming pale.

"I propose that we take the body and the dagger and return to the parlour," Thomas announced. "From there, we can strategize on what to do next."

A mumbled chorus of agreement sent the group back down the stairs. Thomas, Luc, and Willow each helped to drag the boy's body to the parlour, where they rested him face-down across one of the couches. The hilt of the dagger glinted in the dim light, pushing everybody to the opposite corner of the room, as far away from the body as they could get.

"Now are we all in agreement about putting the weapons and wands in the chest?" Thomas asked, gesturing to the dead boy on the couch.

Everybody nodded their heads and moved to give their wand to Thomas except for Penny.

"But what about the key?" Penny asked.

"What about it?" 

"Well, who is going to hold onto the key to the chest?" Penny expanded. "If Colonel Mustard is right, and the killer is one of us, then we can't trust anyone with the key because then they have access to the weapons and the wands."

"She makes a good point," Willow agreed. 

"How do we know that it really was one of us?" Jesse spoke up. "How do we know that he didn't do it to himself?" 

"How do we know that he didn't stab himself in his own back?" Luc retorted. "I think it's pretty self-explanatory."

"It could have been an accident," Jesse said with a shrug of his shoulders. The rest of the group shook their heads and sighed. 

"Well, is there anybody that we can rule out as the killer?" Thomas asked. "We could give them the key." 

Penny shook her head and pinched the bridge of her nose. "The body was found in the same room as Professor Plum, with Colonel Mustard's dagger in his back, and a possible connection to Miss Peacock, Miss Scarlet, and Mr. Green."

"I know nobody is going to believe me," Jackson began. "But I didn't kill him."

"Neither did I," Willow added.

"Nor I," Madelynn said next.

"I'm not the killer," Luc scoffed.

"I didn't do it!" Jesse shouted again. 

"That just leaves you and me, Miss White," Thomas said, turning to look at Penny. "Rock-paper-scissors for the key?" 

"You guys are going to leave the fate of our lives up to a game of rock-paper-scissors?" Madelynn asked in disbelief. 

"Yup," Thomas responded matter-of-factly, resting his fist on his open palm as he and Penny began the game. 

The first round went to Thomas, who used rock to beat Penny's scissors, but Penny took the second round by covering Thomas's rock with paper. The tension in the room grew as they began the last round. Everybody huddled in closer to see who would win and get control of the key. 

"Looks like I'm the lucky champ," Thomas beamed as he triumphantly sliced Penny's paper with his scissors. 

One-by-one, Jesse, Jackson, Willow, Penny, and Madelynn stepped forward to place their wands and gifts into the chest. A deep grimace contorted Willow's face as she carefully pulled the dagger from the boy's back, wiped the blood on his shirt, and added it to the collection of wands and weapons. 

Before Luc deposited his own items, he stopped to address Thomas. "I'm going to be keeping a close eye on you, Wadsworth," he said, pointing two fingers at his eyes and then at Thomas. 

Thomas set his wand in the chest last. He then locked the giant, golden padlock into place before dropping the key into his jacket pocket with a satisfactory pat. 

"Now what?" Madelynn asked. 

"Well, it is quite late," Thomas began to answer after glancing at the clock on the wall. "Perhaps we should get some sleep so that we're prepared to start digging into our host tomorrow."

A loud chuckle erupted from Jesse's throat. "That's cute that you think I'm going to be able to sleep." He continued to laugh so hard that his eyes began to water. "I am permanently scarred by the events of today."

"Where--" Jackson began to ask when Jesse's laughter started to finally die down, but another bout of giggles interrupted her. She glared at Jesse until he stopped, and once she was sure that it was quiet, she continued. "Where are we supposed to sleep?"

"The letter I received has rooms assigned to each of you throughout the Shack," Thomas answered. 

"No, no, no," Madelynn said, adding her own nervous giggles to the atmosphere. "I'm not sleeping in a room by myself when we still can't prove who the killer is."

"But if one of us is the killer, then whoever shares a room with them will likely be next," Willow pointed out. 

"At least we would know who the killer was then," Luc suggested with a snide smile.

"You know, I'm starting to hope that you get stuck in the room with the killer," Willow retorted, turning to glare at Luc. 

"I've got an idea," Thomas announced, waving his hands in front of Luc's and Willow's faces to break up the argument. "We all sleep in the parlour. That way we can all keep an eye on each other."

"Um, can we sleep in a room without a dead body?" Jackson asked, her eyes glancing over at the boy slumped across the couch.

Thomas turned to look back at the body, almost having forgotten that it was there. "Oh right, yes. We'll all sleep in the dining room, then." 

After gathering extra pillows and blankets from a closet in the hallway, the group of witches and wizards began to settle into the dining room, which sat across the hall from the parlour. The dining room was almost twice the size of the parlour and featured a long, wooden table that could sit nearly twenty people in the center. A large, glittering crystal chandelier hung from above the table and the floor was made of stone slabs like you'd find in a medieval castle.

Thomas and Mr. Boddy, Penny, Jackson, and Luc all found their own spots in different corners of the room to make their beds, while Madelynn and Willow split the table and laid their blankets and pillows out on top. Jesse created a blanket fort underneath the table with a napkin sign that read "NO KILLERS ALLOWED" stuck to the outside.

There was an unspoken unanimous agreement to leave the lights on, but even with the added comfort of the warm lighting, the group still found it difficult to fall asleep. The silence of the space was interrupted every so often by somebody twisting and turning in their makeshift bed, trying to get comfortable. They had all been too frightened to change into pajamas or perform their nightly routines, so they were stuck sleeping in the clothes that they had arrived in.

After thirty minutes had passed, Jesse peeked his head out from his blanket fort and glanced around the room. "Is anybody still awake?" he whispered into the dense air.

"Yes," a collective hiss came from everybody else in the room. 

"Anybody wanna play some games to get to know each other like they do at camp?" Jesse asked with a hopeful tone.

"This isn't camp, Plum," Luc snapped.

"Not unless it's murder camp," Penny added quietly to herself. 

"I'll start," Jesse said, ignoring their comments. "So we know that Miss Scarlet is a Gryffindor, Miss Peacock is a Ravenclaw, and Mr. Green is a Slytherin, so Colonel Mustard, does that mean that you're a Hufflepuff?"

"How did you know?" Madelynn asked, her spine snapping her up straight in surprise.

"Color scheme," Jesse answered semi-jokingly. "But also because I've seen you around the Hufflepuff common room. I'm a Hufflepuff too." 

"Oh fun!" Madelynn beamed. "So what houses are you in, Miss White and Mr. Wadsworth? Assuming you both go to Hogwarts, that is." 

"Ravenclaw," Penny answered. 

"Slytherin," Thomas responded. 

"Great," Jackson sighed, dragging the backs of her hands over her face once she realized that she was the only Gryffindor. "I'm outnumbered."

"I've got a question," Willow announced, pushing herself up onto her elbow so that she could see everybody more clearly. "What's with these names?" 

"Yeah," Madelynn agreed. "I'm definitely not a colonel."

"I'm not a professor," Jesse added.

"I'm not a peacock," Willow said.

"And I'm not white!" Penny shouted, causing a ripple of laughter to echo around the room as everybody joined in. 

The laughter settled their weary minds and anxious spirits until one-by-one they each dozed off into a deep sleep. The night was kind to them, offering them peaceful dreams that put sleepy smiles on their faces beneath their warm blankets.

But as they slept, something stirred. 

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A/N: Now the real fun has begun! This is my first time writing an apply fic, so hopefully I'm writing your guys' characters as you envisioned them. Please let me know if there's anything that you need me to change. Otherwise, I'm having a lot of fun with this and I hope you guys are too!

Who do you think is the killer?