I thought I'd submitted this one ages ago but apparently not. I think it may have been lost in the great PC purge of '24.

The Christmas holidays were over and the students had returned to the halls of Pigswills Academy of Adult Arcanists. In the Garmrdyrr common room, the air was mutinous. This was typical for First Year students. While the first semester was too adrenaline-filled for self-refection, the festive period gave them the opportunity to ruminate on the horrors of the Wizarding World. The casual cruelty. The medieval attitudes to enslavement of House Elves and other magical races. The brutal Quidditch injuries. Gone was the initial sense of wonder; all that remained was the fear. One of the older students, a farmer from Dorset, had even smuggled a loaded shotgun onto the grounds.

"What the hell kind of school has a House whose defining trait is 'evil'?!" he demanded. "Once they're sorted into Skutterlyn, they should be expelled on the spot or locked in the dungeons. Look at us. They've taken a quarter of us already, turned them into familiars or worse - and we're only halfway through the first year!"

"Acceptable losses," soothed Kwesi, a 116th-year student. She was one of the 'Old School' clique, those students who failed their tests year after year, allowing them to stay indefinitely to shepherd their House's new arrivals through the gauntlet of graduation.

"I say we leave," spoke up one First Year.

"Yeah. We make for the Forlorn Forest and keep going until we hit a Scottish town," said another.

"That isn't an option," Kwesi said sharply. "The Ministry will find you. We don't allow unlicensed wizards to roam. "

"I'd rather take my chances with them," retorted one. "Skutterlyn are eating us alive."

"Stick together, practice your counterspells and you'll survive," she said.

The older student with the shotgun waved it angrily. "Bugger that! We take the fight to them. Start picking them off. We can use the entrance to their Common Room as a bottleneck."

"That is not the Garmrdyrr way," Kwesi urged.

"Why? Because we're so 'pure of heart'?" a First Year sneered sarcastically.

"No. Because we need them alive," Kwesi replied. "Because, for the last four hundred years, we have been farming House Skutterlyn. Yes, they may capture, even kill some of you. But that's an acceptable price to pay. After all, there are worse fates in this world than death."

As if somehow in demonstration, Kwesi turned. With an 'accio skirt', she fluttered the hem of her skirt into the air, baring the pair of vividly Skutterlyn-green panties between her cheeks.

"The thing you must understand is that the Skutterlyns live in constant fear, even among their own kind. Their love for power means they will kill each other if they can. Fear of betrayal and death defines their House." Kwesi smiled. "It's typically around their third year that their necrophobia reaches the state where they begin to plunder the Dark Arts for a hedge against it. Not long after, they will create their first Horcrux."

The First Years frowned at that word. Kwesi wasn't surprised they were unfamiliar with it. It wasn't a concept that the average wizard would be aware, being unlawful, Dark magic. Most only learned of the concept when they discovered the 'How To' pamphlets on Horcrux creation surreptitiously slipped into their satchels - pamphlets that Kwesi herself printed and distributed. Or the keys to the Forbidden Section of the library that Kwesi copied and left around within Skutterlyn reach.

"To create a Horcrux is to divide one's soul and place it in an object, thereby anchoring yourself to the material world. If it was good enough for He Who Must Not Be Named, it is good enough for House Skutterlyn. They take their souls and lock them away inside books, diadems, rings... panties. The castle is lousy with them. Listen closely on a quiet night and you'll hear those lost, trapped souls crying out from the walls."

Kwesi hooked a finger into her underwear, which twitched and squirmed away, trying weakly to squirm off her backside, though a firm clench pinned them in place. "When I first arrived here, a century ago, I was older than I am now. There was one Skutterlyn girl, Vivienne, from the esteemed Selwyn family. When she looked at me, she saw only a frail, old 'mudblood'. It's a true miracle I survived for as long as I did. Vivienne was very vain. Blood as pure as they come and she loved to flaunt it with the finest clothing. When it came for her to make her horcrux, she placed the best parts of her soul inside her favourite pair of panties. Of course, Skutterlyn's are also arrogant. The moment she made her horcrux, she thought she was invincible. She left them unguarded and I paid a House Elf to rifle through her panty drawers and swap them out."

Kwesi laughed. "The first decades can't have been easy for that piece of her soul, still aware in their prison, stretched tight around my sweaty old ballsack. I've fed on that piece of her for a century now, carefully siphoning off her essence to fuel myself, though never enough to extinguish her entirely. As for the original Vivienne, she lived out a rich, full life, safe in the knowledge that she was protected from death, unaware of the sweaty, living hell that her soul already existed in. With the passing of the decades, I began to look more like her, precisely as she did at the moment she created her Horcrux." She drew a hand through her golden tresses. "What do you think? Not so much of a mudblood now, eh?"

The First Years had fallen into silence.

"When Vivienne's mortal body finally croaked, assured of her resurrection, her soul was drawn back to its sequestered fragment. I can only imagine her shock when she her final resting place to be trapped between her own arse, too weak and drained to ever reconstrue herself," Kwesi chuckled. "So it is not that we are 'pure of heart' that we allow House Skutterlyn to continue to exist. It's because we know, even if they think they are winning in this life, they will spend an eternity in the next serving as our soul batteries."

"Oh," said the one with the shotgun.

She allowed the skirt to slip back over Vivienne. "So, now that you know, the treasure hunt begins. As I said, this castle is riddled with lost Horcruxes, lost souls. Your task will be to find one and feed on it."