Chapter 23: Liar, Liar, Ghost on Fire

Words: 3,801

Recap: You know...it's a real struggle to be a bodyguard when the on you're guarding is looking for a death wish. For Zeus's sake, how in the world does venturing the Forbidden Forest spell anything but Painful-and-Unusual-Death-Waiting-for-you? However, turns out the Wisps and Jack were hiding there all along. Which is a...good news? Anyway, with Firenze helps, me, James, and Sirius managed to escape with barely any harm with an ominous fortune tell as a parting word.

So, we got back to the castle, went to our dorms to sleep the night off and everything went all fine and dandy right?

I wish.

As it turned out, Professor McGonagall had been waiting alongside Pringle in the Entrance Hall for our return. We got the earful of a lifetime with an added 50 points taken from our respective houses. The points I could take, but the mouthful of a lecture we got hit us hard that night.

"Of all the ridiculous thing a student could do, your three are the most suicidal. Sneaking out at almost midnight, going off to the forest without supervision, and staying there for so long- and look at you!" The Professor gestured to the dirt and muck caking our shoes, leaves and twigs caught on our sleeves and pant seams. "The state you're in speaks volumes about the danger you placed yourself!"

Sirius worked an offshoot free from his hair, a faint, self-conscious flush touching his cheeks.

"Mr Potter, Mr Black, I expected more from you." The witch focused on the purebloods, huffed, and narrowed her eyes at the two. "You're both from families of considerable standing, and should act as role models for your fellow students. You should be ashamed."

The boys cowered under her stare, a quiet snort escaped me before I found myself stuck with the very same dagger eyes.

"Jackson, this is not the first time you've been caught violating school rules. Now, I'm not sure how the American wizards go about their business, but here at Hogwarts, we do not condone such blatant disregard for not only your own safety, but that of your fellow students. "

I fought back a cringe, biting the inside of my cheek to hold my tongue.

"But Professor," James started to say, "We didn't just wander off! We got news, we know where the Will 'o Wisps are hiding!"

"They're in the forbidden forest with a large ghost floating above a pumpkin!" Sirius added with equal seriousness.

Instead of quelling her anger, McGonagall looked even more scandalized. Her gaze felt like she could burn right through us and if she tried, could probably scare off a pack of hellhounds "Oh, I know where this is going. Trying to escape detention by lying I see. You must think I'm a easy to fool if you believe that trick would work on me. Well, you're not getting off that easily, you three will have detention and we'll ingrain into your foolish minds as to what happens if you disobey the school rules."

After that terribly long speech, she sent us to bed.

And I was greeted with another dream.

I had once more became Stingy Jack but, I looked different. Older. My ruddy hair was stark white, like chalk, the same for my beard and mustache. Looking down, I saw that my hands were just as wrinkled as my face and I knew it would quivered had it moved. How do I know this much detail? Well, that's because I'm looking at myself.

Since I'm dead.

And also a ghost.

I was always curious what being a ghost feels like, after you know...death. I should really be panicking, shouldn't I? But since I'm not exactly me at the moment, I couldn't do that even if I wanted to. Rather, I barely could do anything in this form. I never imagined having weightless arms and legs and I instinctively floated because nothing was tying me down. Not gravity, nor my weight. I also lost my sense of touch, anything I wanted to touch only made it pass through me. Losing few of my senses, the world already felt different to me. The air around me was still, making myself feel hollow. The smell of the air didn't permeate anything distinct.

However, as confused, lost, and, out of balance I was with being a ghost. I couldn't quite withheld my sympathy that he died alone. No family, no friends, just his body and the constable that was pulling the white sheet over my-his body, then carried away, ready to be buried among all the other graves.

I-Jack turned his back and began float and run. Run to where, he didn't know. He just knew Death would finally be able to take his soul to the underworld, in eager he suspected, for he had alluded Death twice and he would surely make sure of his suffering. So Stingy Jack planned to run, to hide, to elude Death as long as he could. The hollowness he felt was replaced by a rush of excitement at the prospect.

So he ran-floated-flew-whatever ghosts do, away.

Which was quite perplexed me since that wasn't how the story ended, at least not in the fairy tale book I read. Before I could be shown more, the scene shifted and I was back in the Forbidden Forest. The cloaked woman I suspect was Circe, standing before a great white ball of flame, larger than the blue wisps at least, and floating in front of the Pumpkin Jack.

"I see you haven't cast your spell on our promised target," Circe said, but in a soft and wistful way. The kind of tone you would talk with when you're half-asleep and blurting embarrassing stuff that ends up spread amongst your friends. (Yes, I'm talking to you Leo! Don't think because you died once I don't hold a grudge against you!)

There was no reply from the ghost and no echoing sounds that alerted her, "I don't care if you haven't got your strength or mind back fully. If you do not uphold the end of your bargain, I will send you back in your pumpkin and I can do so without the conventional means, do you understand?" she said still with the wistful tone, far contrasting the harsh words she spoke.I heard nothing from the other side. "Fine," she continued, "I'll wait, but be warned, this will be your last chance."

I stood hidden within the trees as I eavesdropped, not wanting for Circe to detect me and shoo me away like a pest again. I could have sworn though that I locked eyes with Pumpkin Jack, who had been hovering silently above his pumpkin, he then mouthed the words I least expect to hear from him.

'Help me.'

I took that moment to wake up. Feeling as worse as any day when you awake from a demigod dream. I looked around the room and found no one. I looked at the time next and cursed when I saw it was almost noon and no one bothered to wake me.

Dressing up in a hurry, I ran outside the chamber, ignoring the warning calls of Hufflepuff's portrait. I did not continue running, remembering the many scolding I got from the teachers and the warning eye from Pringle, but I made a long pace with my stride while walking through the hallway until I froze when I heard the mysterious sound again. I began to realized it was always this hallway that I heard it and now that I concentrate of it, it became much more clearer to me. Edging closer, I pushed my ear against the walls. Treading slowly while keeping my ears on it.

The sound grow closer and louder as I kept edging on, and once I was sure the spot where it came from I also confirm what kind of sound it was.

It was the sound of snoring.

Someone was snoring within the walls.

And I thought things couldn't get any weirder.

On impulse, I tried knocking on the wall. The snoring stopped, and surprising me coming out of the wall was the ghost Nicholas-whatshisname and he said "Who is it?" We locked eyes with one another, blinking wordlessly before the ghost shortly made a girlish scream as he subsided to the wall once more.

"Wait, wait, don't go. We need to talk!"

Nick popped up again, "No, we do not. I have nothing to say to you or anyone. In fact, I need a new hiding place now." He started to came out fully and gliding through the hallway in a rush as he looked around for what I could tell a new hiding spot. Out of context this all sounds like a serious game of hide and seek.

"Look, I know about Jack 'o Lantern."

He paused and twirled so fact, his nearly headless head twip to the side and I have full view of what a beheaded human neck looks like and I blanch at the sight. "You do?" He asked with round saucer eyes. It was strange looking at him with his head sideways.

"Ah, first can you…" I gestured his head and realizing what I meant, he put his head upright. "That's better. Yeah, I figured it was him that's causing you all running scared. I heard he can absorb the essence of ghost if you get hit with his spell."

"Oh worse than that Dear Percy, he doesn't just absorb our essence, he will enslave us! Turning us into one his Wisps Minion or as I like to call them that."

"Wait...so all those Will 'o Wisp are all-"

"Ghost that used to roamed on the earth? Indeed they were."

I took in that information and couldn't help but try to count just how many Wisps we had encountered. How they were the soul of people and lost their essence, their identity and couldn't be judge by the Three judges in the Underworld. More determined to stop him I looked up to Nick and with as much as seriousness I put in my tone I asked "How do we stop him?"

Nick looked very taken aback at my words, "Dear me Percy, you shouldn't. While your cause is one that can mistaken you for a Gryffindor, I cannot let a child such as you trying to play hero. You should leave this to the adults to handle the case."

"Oh right. The very adults you don't seem to want to share this information and cowered in fear in hiding. Very Gryffindor of you Sir Nicholas." He winced, since I obviously hit the nail on this, but I sighed, thinking this isn't the time to be making enemies, or at least someone-less-of-a-friend. "I'm sorry, but this is important Sir Nick. If it makes it any better, I'm not just a normal wizard. Heck, I'm not fully human."

The ghost tilted his head a bit and caused him to be nearly headless again but I don't try to correct him, "What do you mean Child?" he asked.

"I don't know if you know what I mean, but I'm a Halfblood Sir Nicholas. And not the pureblood, muggle blood kind if you know what I mean." Sir Nicholas gazed quizzically at me then his eyes widen like a saucer followed by a dawning look that sent enough message he knew what I was. "So, you know I'm not 'playing hero' as you call it. If anyone other than the teachers could handle this mess, it's me so please Sir Nick!"

He was silent, silent for a moment long before he righted his head and copied my sigh. "I don't know much about Jack so this is only hearsay, but he's called Jack 'o Lantern not because of the Wisps that left his wake, but because his mischief had been deemed so terrible. One of the gods sealed him up in a turnip. Got loose once before, I heard and it was a nightmare to both human and ghost alike and this time he was sealed again in a pumpkin by your kind. Reason why they changed making faces on vegetables turned from turnip to pumpkin,

"So all we need is a vegetable and we can seal him back?"

"Oh I'm sorry Young Hero, but I know even less about the Sealing Spell used at him. You have more luck from Peeves than me, surely he would know about him more than any of us ghosts. Doubt he would tell you anything though without a hard bargain."

"Wait, Peeves?! Why him?"

"Since he's the oldest out of us all off course. He's been here since the making of Hogwarts or so he said. But no ghost doesn't know him so it's more than likely that he's telling the truth for once."

I had only been half listening by then when suddenly the clues that was given right under my nose had been there all this time. It all become to make sense.

"Percy!"

My train of thoughts broke out when my name was called, before my eyes Nick had disappeared but I didn't care about that when I turned to find a distraught Lily, her eyes were puffy and red that matched her hair and her cheeks were trailed with recent tear marks. I was about to ask her what's wrong but she cut me off before I could.

"It's Sev, they got him!" Lily cried.

My stomach fell at the words and I rushed alongside with her to the infirmary. Praying to Hecate that Lily's tears was for nothing and that Sev just might have hit his head or something.

I couldn't be that Lucky. Madam Pomfrey made one look at us, eyes locked with two pairs of green eyes of different shade and decided with a sigh by opening the curtain that hid my best friend's body laying on the bed. Like the others, he was mumbling and frowning while his eyes stayed close. He looked close of wanting to wake up but I knew, no matter how much I shook him he would not wake that easily. Lily cried again and I let her bury her face to my shoulder.

"What happened?" I asked Lily. My tone was oddly calm in contrast to the burning fury coursing through me.

"It's my fault," she finally let out between sobs, "They were trying to get me and Sev...Sev was..."

I turned to Lily, held her head up so she would meet my eyes and wiped her tear with my thumb, "Hey, hey, it's okay. Take a deep breath and tell me from the beginning, okay?"

Lily nodded, taking a deep shuddering breath with her eyes closed, calming herself down and began explaining with a more steady tone, "I had just finished my herbology lesson, I forgot some of my stuff and had to separate with the others. It was when I was about to catch up with my friends when I then saw Severus across the hall. I wanted to say hi, but he was running toward me, looking frantic and he kept yelling about 'It was you, it was you all along!' I wasn't sure what he meant by all that."

"Then we both saw it," A resign kind of smile graced her lips, "A Will 'o Wisp."

"I thought that was the end of me until you can find a solution, but…" she bit her lip, took a shuddering breath before continuing, "But Sev pushed me away and got hit instead. The Wisps, it just...went through him and the next thing I know. It vanished and Sev was swaying and trying hard to stay awake before slumping down. I tried to wake him up, I tried, but it was too late. Sev was-"

"Hey, don't blame yourself for this."

Lily shook her head, her eyes still in tears, "How could I not? That Wisps was meant for me and Sev got-"

"Because if the situation was reversed you would have done the same thing for him," I countered and Lily didn't refute me this time.

I looked back at Sev's sleeping form, "Still...what was he talking about, saying 'It was you, it was you all alo-" I cut myself off at the thought and looked at the rows of sleeping victims of witches then looking back at Lily with wide eyes when the realization hit me like a truck.

"It was you all along."

"What do you mean?"

"The target. It was you. Oh, this makes everything make sense. Lily, don't you see? What every one of them has in common excluding Sev is that they're witches and they were somehow one way or another close to me. Does that remind you of anyone?"

Lily was confused for a while before she too realized, "Me. They were after me all along."

"Yes. I don't know if the Wisps are stupid or has a very bad eyesight, but they kept missing the target with only those two things guiding them. They were using me like a guidepost to you and kept getting the wrong girl."

"But...why me? What's special about me..."

I looked her in the eye, briefly thinking about how to answer and said, "I don't know. But they're not getting you. Not now, not ever. Come on!" I grabbed her hand and made to run. Her confusion overwhelmed her sadness and guilt.

She promptly asked "Where are we going?"

"To find the Liar, because he got a lot of explaining to do and he's not doing it without pain." and to check if Celestial Bronze has any luck drawing blood on a pesky poltergeist in mind.

. . .

Finding Peeves was easier today than we had imagined. He was busy setting up a prank that involves with stolen boxers as decoration among the portraits, much to the painting's dismay.

"Peeves!" I cried out, my anger tone and face evidently showing.

Either Peeves was thick or didn't care, because one look at me and he laughed. "Bad Luck Percy, Bad Luck Percy is here!" he yelled out while twirling the air. Taunting at us before giving us the raspberry.

Lily wasn't patient for his antics that time. She draw her wand and with great precision managed to cast his pants on fire. That's an extreme way of showing a liar. It would have been funny if we weren't so angry right now. I was a bit surprise at the impulse she use and the raging fury her eyes showed.

He managed to put out the fire by himself but Lily used the same spell as Sev to bind him when he had his back turn, and pulled him to us. Immediately I draw Riptide and aimed it at the middle of his head

"You lied to us!"

He let out a nervous giggle, "About what? I lied about a lot of things."

"You said only the old ghosts here who knew about Jack, that you barely knew about Jack when in fact you're the oldest ghost around!"

"Ah, so you've heard of that. And what does that tell you other than I lied about my age."

"I thought it was weird how the Will 'o Wisp appeared when we were interrogating you," Peeves gulped and his smiled turned to look more forced which mean I'm pointing at the right point. "They were monitoring you, weren't they? Making sure you don't say the right thing. The fact you didn't care about showing yourself like the other ghost isn't because you didn't believe them. It's because you knew he won't hurt you in exchange that you keep something from us."

"Oh damn it all, you figured me out." he said with a roll of his eyes and a sarcastic tone thick, "What are you going to do now? Because like I said you ain't going to get anything from me and no amount of treats from you would make me talk."

Before I could even say that I'm willing to give more that treats, Lily surged in front of him and grabbed the lapel of his collar so they were face to face, "Listen here you self-centered empty-headed pig-dog poo through a wiper!" she spat at him with venom that made me took a step back, "One of my best friend just took a curse meant for me, now unless you want another fire shot at a more private part and burn every hair and follicle your disgusting poltergeist skin could cover until you couldn't grow another hair back!"

All was silent as both of us paled at her words, and her very serious tone. Peeves gulped and for the first time looked genuinely nervous, I glanced at him and decided to give him more push, "You should listen to her. She's actually really crazy and will do just that."

"Okay, okay, I'll tell. Anything but burning...that!"

Lily brushed her back and straighten it after her angry fit had made it disheveled, calming herself down at once as well. "Now, tell me what you know about Jack."

"I'm sorry but I can't, I swore that I don't tell about the truth of Jack 'o Lantern, I may lie but me don't break any swear I don't, no sireee...BUT!" he said before either of us could follow our threats, "I didn't say anything about leading you to someone who can tell you everything!"

Lily and me looked at one another and decides to concede it's just as good of a compromise. "Who is it?" Lily asked him.

He grinned "Why Ol' Jack himself off course and before you say anything, I promise nothing will happen as long as you avoid the Wisps."

"You're mad or stupid or both if you think we'll ever-"

"We'll do it, let's go." I said to him, making Lily looked at me with round eyes as if I had gone loony, but I whispered to her to trust me. "Oh, and Lily be a dear and put a rope to his mouth as well, we'll take his opinion when we need to."

She did just that without so much of a twitch in her expression and to the annoyance of Peeves as his moth struggle against the ropes. He then led us a feet away with a rope tied around him, far enough so he was out of earshot.

"By the way Lily," I whispered to her, "what do you mean when you say his private parts?"

Lily tilted her head at me, "His head off course. I was planning to burn his hair off until he was permanently bald. What other meaning is there?"

"Ah...well...let's not tell him that then."

AN: NEXT CHAPTER, THE REVELATION! FINALLY THE SECRETS ARE ALL OUT.

STAY TUNED!

Hope you all enjoyed the chapter, don't forget to R&R :)))