The choices a man makes will define him, Nearly Headless Nick knew this well. He knew the difference between a good and a bad choice rather well, or so he would proclaim to first years that came to him for advice. He had five hundred years of wisdom, he would reassure the nervous young children who were waiting for him to spurt out some form of miracle.

Nick did not even realise he was beginning to distance himself from the ones he loved. He hardly talked to Abime anymore, his letters mere dust in the fireplace beside Nick's bed. Riley spent her days with her husband, not even bothering to send a letter to an old ghost, she had forgotten him. Liza had her husband; making up for thousands of years of separation was a hard thing to do. Nora tried to touch him, come near to him, have things the way they used to be, but Nick did not respond. Letters were burnt without being read, owls ignored, calls from across the castle unheard as Nick found himself completely and utterly alone. Except, of course, for the correspondence he received from one Rita Skeeter.

To everyone else, Nicholas de Mimsey Porpington was just another ghost without a cause, a jovial chap when times called for it, but otherwise he was resigned to wander the castle aimlessly. But in his letters to Rita, he lit up. The old Nick shone through, her intimate letters kept in a box under his bed, his eyes lit up whenever her owl tapped at his window. She was special, she was different from every other person on this Earth. Her letters were filled with love and hope, tears and sadness, news. She didn't treat him like a casualty patient, and in return he let himself out only to her. It wasn't by choice that Nick distanced himself from his friends, but it was by choice that he found Rita Skeeter to be his dearest and closest companion.