"Can we talk things over now?"
Hermione looked up from the book she had been reading to face Ginny who had just climbed through the portrait hole and who came marching towards her now.
Hermione had had her dinner in the common room as her ankle still hurt. Madam Pomfrey had told her that it was best to cool the ankle and other than that let it heal on its own. She had put a bit of cooling crème on it and sent a house-elf to bring some food up to the Gryffindor common-room so that she wouldn't have to walk down and back up all the stairs.
It was already quite late because Ginny had been to a Quidditch training which had taken her longer than she had expected, taking into consideration that she was the Quidditch captain now. A fact she still hadn't got used to. As Hermione glanced at her watch now, she realized that it was already half past eleven. She stifled a yawn as Ginny approached her now, and took her books from the armchair next to hers and looked at her friend expectantly.
"I've thought about everything," Ginny announced as she flopped herself into the armchair, "Every single one of these strange events happened, when I was around. First Peter grew some tentacles in DADA, when I was supposed to practice with him. Then our Transfiguration-essay went flying through the classroom and your essay was suddenly changed to something you hadn't written. And then you were hit by a Jelly-Leg-curse when I was standing behind you.." She trailed off.
"Don't forget the Hufflepuffs, whose hair turned red, when we walked passed their table." Hermione interrupted her.
"True," Ginny said, "But whoever has done all these pranks, probably wants me to get the blame for them."
Hermione nodded.
"And I've already found a suspect," Ginny announced, "Do you remember the first day of term, when I threw an apple at Peeves and he didn't get the chance to get me back for it?"
Hermione nodded again but opened her mouth to say something. But Ginny continued without letting Hermione interrupt her, "I think it was Peeves who did all these pranks to get me into trouble!" She concluded.
"That was my first suspicion, too," Hermione got the chance to say now. "But it's impossible."
"What? Why is it impossible?"
"Because poltergeists cannot perform real spells like the Jelly-Leg-curse or the one that hit Peter for that matter. They can only cause trouble and mischief. I've looked it all up." She lifted the book she had been reading before Ginny had arrived.
Ginny frowned. "But who else could have done it then?" She asked.
"I don't know," Hermione replied, "But I'm sure we can find out when we try to approach the problem very accurately. Let's write down all the facts we know so far." She looked around for a piece of parchment but couldn't find any.
When she lifted herself up from her armchair, she gave a wince of pain.
"Wait, I'll get you some parchment," Ginny said and jumped up and went upstairs to the girls' dormitory. All of the other girls were already fast asleep when Ginny entered the room. After all it was already just before midnight. Ginny tiptoed to her bed next to which stood her school bag. She picked it up and went back downstairs.
But when she went to approach Hermione, she didn't see anyone sitting in her armchair. Ginny looked around the common-room but it was empty. When she took a closer look at Hermione's armchair, she gasped in shock. Where Hermione had been sitting was no longer a bushy-haired girl but a big, bright orange pumpkin!
Ginny stood for some seconds and just stared at the vegetable, not wanting to believe what she had immediately known when she had seen it: Hermione had been turned into a pumpkin!
What was she going to do now? With Hermione at her side she had been positive that they could solve this mystery. But now, without Hermione, this didn't seem very likely anymore.
She certainly needed some help. And the first person she thought of was Luna. Struck by a sudden idea, Ginny ran up the stairs to their dormitory again and opened her trunk and rummaging through all her stuff, until she finally pulled out her purse. She opened it and after a few minutes held a gold coin between her fingers. Then she tipped her wand at the coin and thereby sent a message to Luna to meet early the next morning.
She knew that it was too late to meet now. Especially as they were in different houses and could only meet in a classroom or in the corridors. But Ginny was sure that Luna still checked her DA-coin regularly and would be there tomorrow.
When she had informed Luna, Ginny went downstairs again to pick up the Hermione-pumpkin and carry it upstairs. After thinking about where to put her for a moment, Ginny decided to place the pumpkin in Hermione's bed and closed the curtains. Then she put on her pyjamas and went to bed herself. But she didn't fall asleep easily. Had she really done the right thing? Or should she have informed Professor McGonagall or Professor Dawlish? But they would have probably suspected her again. And if she and Luna couldn't solve the mystery together and turn Hermione back to her normal self tomorrow, she could still take her to a teacher.
And with these thoughts in mind Ginny finally fell asleep.
Ginny woke up the next morning at half past six to the sound of her magic alarm-clock, which jumped up and down on her bed and sang a muggle song. The other girls from her dormitory groaned in their sleep and Ginny quickly reached for her wand to silence the alarm-clock before the others woke up. After she got dressed and ready for the day, she picked up the Hermione-pumpkin and carried it downstairs through the portrait-hole and walked along the corridors towards the Room of Requirement. When she got there, she found that the door had already appeared and pushed it open.
This time the room was entirely covered in cushions, had numerous bookshelves on the walls and was filled with the sound of singing birds. Luna sat in a corner, looking at a book with pictures of weird creatures and hummed along to the sound of the birds.
When Ginny entered the room, Luna looked up and then looked mildly surprised as she saw that she was carrying a pumpkin.
"Why have you brought a pumpkin with you?" She asked, without greeting Ginny.
"Oh, it's horrible!" Ginny exclaimed, "This isn't a real pumpkin. It's Hermione!"
"Hermione Granger?"
And then Ginny told her the whole story from the beginning, from her suspicions to the point when she found Hermione as a pumpkin in the common-room.
"And now I really don't know what to do anymore! I'll never be able to find out who played all these pranks without Hermione's help!"
Luna looked at her friend and remained silent for a moment.
"Hm," she said after thinking for a while, "It might not have been a poltergeist. But maybe it was something similar. You know, the ones we love will never truly leave us..."
"What do you mean? That..." But then something dawned on Ginny. She thought about the pranks again and about the red hair. "Do you mean," she said slowly, "Do you mean, it could be..." She was almost afraid to say it out loud. But Luna nodded encouragingly.
"It was Fred?" Ginny whispered.
That moment several things happened: A wind was getting up in the room which made their hair messy. At the same time they could hear a laughter, which Ginny now recognized immediately as her late brother's. Then a big bang made the two girls jump and Hermione was standing in the spot where the pumpkin had been lying seconds before and finally a pearly-white and slightly transparent image of Fred Weasley materialized in front of them in the air.
"Took you quite a while to figure it out, didn't it, little sister?" He asked and grinned at Ginny.
"Fred!" She exclaimed, half laughing, half crying, "But – how...?"
"You mean how did I become a ghost?" Fred asked, "Well, I'm not quite sure how it happened. I only know that I missed all of you after, well, after I died. Especially George, my partner in crime. Then, suddenly, I was back at Hogwarts but soon I realized that I seemed to be a ghost but nobody could see or hear me. But I could still perform magic..."
"But ghosts can't perform magic!" Hermione interrupted.
"Well, it worked for me," Fred replied, looked at Hermione with a concentrated expression on his face and suddenly her face turned purple. Ginny and Luna laughed out loud and Hermione looked at them confused.
"What?" She asked, totally oblivious to what had happened to her face.
"You seem to have a strange taste for make-up." Fred said grinning.
Hermione turned towards one of the windows and gasped at her reflection.
"See?" Fred said, as he turned Hermione's complexion back to normal, "I don't know how it works, but I know that it does. Anyway, I realized that I was invisible and nobody could hear me. And then, out of nowhere, I knew that somebody had to find out about me to be able to talk to me. And, no Hermione, I don't know how I suddenly knew that! So I thought the best person to find out about me would probably be my little sister so I started playing pranks when she was around, hoping that she would recognize that it was me, especially by my handwriting." He winked at Ginny, who still looked quite taken aback.
"I still cannot believe it," Hermione said weakly, "If this is really true, how come nobody has ever heard of anything like this before?"
"You mean, how come you've never read about it?"
"Well..."
"But Hermione," Luna said, "There are some things which simply cannot be explained. But that doesn't mean that they're not true."
"Well said, Luna!"
"But does that mean that you're a real ghost now?" Hermione asked, she really wanted to know.
For the first time since he had appeared Fred looked sad. "No, I'm only allowed to come back for the week of Halloween. So I'd like to ask you a favour. I really miss George quite a lot. Can you ask him to come to Hogwarts tomorrow? After all it's my last day here until I come back next year."
"Oh," Hermione's face brightened up, "We are meeting him and Ron and Harry tomorrow anyway in Hogsmeade. I'm sure Professor McGonagall wouldn't mind if they came to visit you here in the castle."
"So, McGonagall is your new Headmistress now?" Fred asked, "Lucky for me I'm not at school anymore."
Ginny chuckled, "Yeah, but she still teaches Transfiguration, though."
"I guess, she still hasn't found anyone who is up to her standards in this subject yet," Fred said.
Hermione frowned, "Anyway, I think we should go to her now. It will also give me an opportunity to explain to her what happened to my homework."
Fred and Ginny exchanged a look and started laughing, not stopping for a while. Now that Fred was around again, Ginny realized how much she had really missed her brother and his stupid jokes!
Finally they went to the Headmistress's office and after explaining everything to her, they were all looking forward to the next day.
Note: I hope you enjoyed my story! I have changed some facts about the wizarding world to make my story work. Therefore I've made up some facts about ghosts and poltergeists which I don't really know much about. But I hope you didn't mind me doing that.
Please let me know in a review if you liked my story!
