For someone who looked like he did, Tanner could blend in with a crowd surprisingly well. He was up and roaming the halls in a school uniform that Madame Pomfrey had found for him. She had also cut his hair, which he had consented to in exchange for a very large and messy ice cream sundae and being allowed out in the first place. It was the neatest he had ever looked, but it was unraveling fast. His hair was already shaggier than it had been when he left the infirmary, the shoes and socks had been abandoned at first opportunity, his shirt was untucked and his tie was loosened. Despite it all, he managed to fit right in. The Hogwarts students assumed he was from Elmskill, the Elmskills thought he was from Hogwarts.

He wound his way through the crowds and stopped by a statue to scan the corridors around him. He saw a flash of white that could only be Lorelei and shrank back a bit in case she should look his way. She was arguing with an older man who looked startled, but unbudging. Tanner felt a premonition tingle into life deep down in the roots of his incisors that said there was a storm brewing.

He missed Esme and Rosie. He honestly would've been glad of anyone to tell him what to do at this point. I haven't been in charge for so long, I hardly know how to think for myself, he thought, amused. Can't have that! He stepped back into the flow of bodies and started sniffing the air as discretely as possible. He was looking for any trace of old or weak magic. Magic stank like everything else when it began to rot. He fell into step behind some giggling girls with green ties and followed them for awile so they could draw attention from him.

He caught a whiff of something that reminded him of the miasma and stopped, making a hulking child blunder into him from behind. The boy's face contorted in annoyance and he drew breath to say something probably rude. Tanner fixed the wizard child with his yellow eye and growled low in his throat. The boy stared, then hurried away, leaving Tanner to focus on the scent. Pinpointing one smell in the sea of odors would give him a roaring headache later, but he kept after it anyway.

Tanner wandered past the potion dungeons where the smell made his eyes sting. He lost the trail for awhile and had to circle to find it again. Now that the halls were emptier he was tempted to shapeshift. It would be easier to locate and process the scents in wolf form, but then Mrs. Norris appeared and glared daggers at him. Grumbling to himself, Tanner left that corridor. This wasn't that different from hunting vampires through catacombs and schmancy old houses. Only he wasn't as tense for an attack and he could think as noisily as he wanted without fear of alerting the old telepathic leeches.

Finally, his pointed nose caught the scent again and he followed it down another hall that branched into more hallways. Those halls became dark staircases that led down into darkness. Tanner went back to find one of the enchanted torches and wrenched it off the wall. A prim-looking girl in a painting winked at him and the fluffy little dog painted on her lap started to bark. He took the torch and started back down. The stairways led down into cluttered basements. The basements opened up into tunnels. Tanner decided he wouldn't turn back until he started to see cave paintings.

He opened his senses up and something began to seep into them, like spiders. The headache he knew had been coming kicked in the door. His stride slowed to creep. The light from the magical torch began to flicker and when it finally went out, the darkness didn't. A glow the color of nuclear Halloween played over the tunnel walls. Tanner sighed. He had seen that color before, but was in no pain yet, so decided to have a look anyway.

The tunnel opened out into a pit. Tanner walked to the edge and peered down into it. Sure enough, it was the Morthahg. It sat at the bottom of the chasm, reaching like an octopus to wrap burning tendrils around the foundation stones of Hogwarts. Something had to be holding it back. It would take careful control to keep the Morthahg so focused, busily breaking barriers without attacking, even with such sprawling mass of magic so close. Tanner looked at it for a moment, the turned quickly away.

He was back in the basement when he caught a warm, bright scent that was familiar.

"Over here," he called and he stood there waiting until a little ball of magical light came close enough to reveal him. It was Hermione, looking dusty from wandering in the basement. "You don't learn, do you?" he asked before she could speak.

"You would be the first person to accuse me of that," she said stiffly. "I saw you run by and then there was the torch missing and the painting told me where you had gone..." Her voice trailed off as he gave her his best silent stare. "Are you all right?" she added more timidly. "What are you looking for?"

"Trouble. Just like you."

"I was not! I didn't want you to get in trouble again-"

"And being found in a dark basement, all alone, with the pretty young girl I am already suspected of attacking and tearing open won't get me in any trouble." His voice had dropped to a combination of sarcasm and menace. "Will it?" Hermione opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again.

"We're the first people down here in years, judging by the dust," she said. "I only came because I was following you and no one was following me. Who else do you expect to show up?"

"I already met the Morthahg," he jerked his thumb back towards the darkness behind him. Her eyes widened. They darted to the patch of black and back to Tanner's face.

"You couldn't have..." she said. He held up the torch.

"It'll never light again," he said. "It just got weaker and weaker until it died and then there was that lovely orange glow to light my way." Hermione reached out to touch the enchanted metal and pulled her hand away quickly at how cold it was.

"D-down there??" she asked, looking back the way he had come.

"Yep. Nestled in like a maggot in a bullet hole." The pale light from her wand kept him from being able to tell exactly what color she turned at that, but her color definitely changed.

"We have to tell everyone," she said when she recovered. "But how is it possible?? Hogwarts has all the barrier and wards, even if they were nullified, it would alert someone, someone would know, someone would-"

"If they do, they haven't told. Magic means nothing to the Morthahg."

"How did it get here??"

"How should I know?"

"What is it after??"

"Magic. Chaos. It's after all the little disorders that live here. It wants to suck up every spell and enchantment like noodles and leave your precious castle a stone ruin, piled high with magic-less, maybe comatose, human-shaped piles of meat."

"That's...that's..."

"Awful. Yes."

"What will we do??"

"Up to you, darlin'."

"Wh-what?" she stared at him. "You don't even care??"

"Oh, I care plenty. It's you that hasn't asked the important question."

"What will happen if the barriers go down?? Those enchantments are hundreds of years old!!"

"What are they keeping out?"

"I... don't know, really... Muggles. Dark wizards..." She gasped suddenly. "Dementors!"

"Vampires?"

"I don't know. Why would vampires come here at all?"

"Suppose they had a taste for magical blood? What better place to set up a harem of blood-dolls?" He was now talking mostly to himself, but his hand wrapped around her arm and he started steering back up the stairs to the lit halls.

"That's crazy!" she sputtered.

"Only by human standards," Tanner almost chuckled, picking up his pace. "And when was the last time we had to fight one of those...?"