Invisibility Cloak
Group: Formidable Ferret
Posts: 1726
Joined: 30-October 03
From: Worcester MA.
Member No.: 10
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How I Was Nearly Defeated by Visions of Kippers
The living occasionally wonder exactly what, besides haunting and floating about, a ghost does all day. I’m Sir Nicholas de Mimsey-Porpington, and I can tell you.
A ghost has several jobs, to start out with. A ghost becomes a ghost, as you know, because there’s something he hasn’t finished. Occasionally, they’ll finish, but, if you’re like me, and everybody you’re supposed to finish up with has passed on and over, you’re out of luck, tough toenails, and so on.
The first job is, as said, the finishing-up of all those half-baked things you had to do in life. As said, I really can’t do that anymore, since the Duchess, bless her, went ahead and had them all executed over it later and took the chance away from me.
The second is to guide the living. Well, those of the living that need it, anyway. You see, a lot of the living know just what they’re doing and haven’t any need for us at all. Some, however, are in great dire straights, and since they’re ever so much more important than we are, having not kicked the bucket and so on, we’re obligated to give them a bit of a lift.
The third is simply to haunt. I do a fair bit of haunting, and let me tell you, it isn’t as easy as people make it out to be. It’s not all floating about and wailing – they have gouls to do that, you know. It consists of a particular ‘round, assigned in the Lounge every year, that you’ve simply got to follow or suffer a time of not being able to manifest. Now, being invisible and inaudible doesn’t sound all that bad, but in practice, it’s simply horrid! It’s as though you’ve gone, and you can’t do anything at all but give people a chill, and that’s simply not Quidditch!
Well, enough about that, you can just tell I’m the one that always goes on in the Lounge meetings, what? Yes, I’ll explain the lounge and all that, too, hold your ghost horses!
All of us Hogwarts ghosts, who are in Hogwarts for various reasons not all of which are pleasant, meat up once a month in the Ghost lounge. It doesn’t really exist, by mortal standards, but it does for what we need, which is simply a spot where we can be and where those who haven’t hopped the twig can’t.
We meet, we chat, we float through various rotten bits of food, and those who are for that sort of thing try floating through rough woolens and things in the attempt to remind ourselves what socks felt like. And somewhere in the middle of that, we discuss just whose to do what, because, frankly, too many ghosts spoil the boo.
This particular meeting, we ended up discussing which humans to take under consideration for guidance, and which to simply annoy out of their minds. As usual, the Friar tried to take on everybody at once – I think the main reason he didn’t pass on, was because he wanted to get back at whomever it was that gave him an overdose of good heart. Of course, he must’ve had too much of a good heart to do much about it, as he’s still here.
The Baron and Myrtle fought bitterly about whose turn it was to do nothing at all, and it was unanimously decided that it was high time the girl actually did more than her Haunting, and got out in the castle to work like the rest of us. And the Baron did deserve a month or so off, considering all he puts up with with.
As you can probably imagine she put up quite a fuss, not to be endured really, rushing about and caterwauling, crying and blaming just about everybody for any and all problems she might have had in this life the last life, and even the next, small chance she has of ever seeing it.
At long last, the Friar and the Lady managed to calm her down enough to a moping sort of state, and she agreed to mentor a student in trouble. Now, this is where things got dicey.
You see, my and the Baron had noticed that the Weasley girl was in a bit of a bad place, and Myrtle should have had some sympathy considering, but, no, she wanted a boy. She insisted that she should have a boy.
We tried getting her to haunt Goyle or Crabbe, but then again, helping them with their studies, or anything else, is pretty much a lost cause, sad to say.
The Baron graciously said she could have Snape while he was on vacation, but that set her off on another rant about she was worth more than other peoples’ leftovers, and so on and so forth, et cetera.
Finally, I had enough of her excuses, and assigned her to the Weasley girl since even she couldn’t think of a boy good enough for her, told her no excuses, and the rest of the board carried the motion.
She went rushing off in a flood of ectoplasm tears – and I thought, as I often had, that if I had the chance, I would go and haunt whatever was left of that Riddle kid for all I was worth, just to get him back for sticking us with her.
Well, the Friar said, and I agreed, that somebody ought to watch her and make sure she didn’t make a hash of it, and whom do you think they stuck on the job? Me, that’s who. No consideration at all, they have, after all, they all knew she’d be dead mad at me for sticking her with the Weasley.
Well, as predicted, she did go ahead and make a hash of things, starting by making the poor girls day even worse than it was, you know, giving her chills, and moaning to her about her own problems instead of giving advice, and making it absolutely impossible for her to use the school plumbing alone.
Needless to say, I was a bit miffed by this, considering Myrtle had been declared my responsibility. I filed a complain with the Council, claiming that she’d overstepped her boundaries and had become downright abusive and haunting to the very living being she’d been put in charge of.
She was sentenced to three weeks of nonmaterialization, which got her in a twist since, as she wailed, she had been so looking forward to mocking the Granger girl as well – something about a hairball, we never did quite make it out over the sobbing.
The others did warn me to be on my guard, but as a ghost, its so deucedly hard to be afraid of anything. After all, you’re dead? What can anything do to you? Especially a fellow ghost, who’s so far gone she doesn’t leave the loo!
As you’ve probably guessed, I was far too sanguine, and she wreaked a rather horrid revenge. (She reeked, too, but the Lady says that joke is too bad to include, so I won’t. The Friar has a fancy name for this; calls it preterition.) You see, everybody knows I’m far to nosey for my own good, always sticking my neck out into things. (This joke I am allowed to include, because the Baron thinks any mention of my botched death is funny. If I ever, ever, find out how he met his rather messy end…)
I’ll admit I was lured by the very simply expedient of her rushing ahead of me, dematerialized as she was, causing the dropplets of the chandeliers to tinkle. Wondering where the draft was coming from, and remembering that dreadful incident in 1495, where the door was left open and the Headmaster caught a horrid chill and died … well, I felt it my duty to investigate.
She lead me straight into a room I had never been in before, and that’s when I caught sight of the thing.
It was a mirror, to put it simply, and the must nasty horrible and rotten excuse for ghost torture if you’d rather not. I saw in it, my heart’s greatest desire. My hearts greatest desire involves kippers, the Duchess, and – it’s rather embarrassing actually, and so I’ll skip it.
I will say, however, that I must have spent a good month simply staring at it, and wishing it were true, and plotting impossible ways to make it come true. If you’re wondering how I could’ve spent a month just watching something else, you’re obviously still very much alive. I’ve been dead for five-hundred years, and let me tell you, it’s extreemly easy to get carried away when you’re dead, what without the distraction of a body’s needs of eating and sleeping and all.
Finally, I snapped out of it when I heard the grating noise of metal against stone, followed by a ghastly scream. I went to investigate, reluctantly I might add, because the vision of the kippers was enticing, and there Justin was, staring like an idiot at the gaping whole in the wall, as though petrified. I went to look at what had caused the grating to fall, and a few seconds later, he was petrified, since a whole hulking basilisk turned up and turned him into stone.
I suppose, in the end, we were all rather lucky. I didn’t suffer overmuch, it was rather interesting and even quite pleasant being relatively solid again, in spite of not being able to move, and I did save Justin Finch-Fletchly from death, not that it’s that bad, but you know how the living are about it, and he saved me from what might have been an eternity in front of the mirror.
Now that its all over, Myrtle has really been expelled from the Council, which we ought to have done in the first place considering it took a group effort to make her even show up.
Justin and I have become fast friends of a sort, and he’s been assigned to me. He’s rather grateful in his own way, as I am to him, and I keep him company while he studies. He kept me company on several fruitless expeditions to find the Mirror again. It seems Dumbledore’s gone and hidden it somewhere, which is, I suppose for the good of the world. After all, you never know what Justin might have seen in it!
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"Quid rides? Mutato nomine et de te fabula narratur!"
- Horace.No gnomes know gnomes that know no gnomes. <div><a href=http://zymurgy.chatango.com/?button target=_blank><img border=0 src=http://zymurgy.chatango.com/i?1></a></div>
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From Random Elements A Story Make, bi-weekly challenge
Mar 17 2006, 02:39 PM
