The Houses Competition
House: Hufflepuff
Class: Transfiguration
Category: Standard
Prompt(s) chosen: [Character] Peeves [Word] Empty
Word Count: 1464
Ghostly (Im)patience
The empty halls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry were alive with the cackling of a not-quite-so-stable ghost. Many a student had insisted he was a malevolent poltergeist but they just didn't quite get his sense of humor. Oh how he detested the Bloody Baron more than the students who thought his practical jokes were bad! If there was ever an astral wet blanket, it was most certainly the Slytherin House ghost. Not that there were not the living versions to contest with either, there most certainly were!
"No one likes a good joke these days! But I'll show them! They'll laugh so hard they die!"
Figures in the nearby paintings watched the spirit float on by playing with the ghostly jester's cap on his head. Eyes that danced with mischief, malice and another undecipherable emotion shot this way and that as if sizing up the hallway for another series of elaborate pranks.
"That old squib and his cat will laugh too! Always trying to ruin my fun! I have as much as a right as any ghost to be amongst the students! Always so serious and buried in worthless parchment, they aren't allowed to be children at all like that! They're little more than empty books on legs with how empty their skulls are!" The spirit continued to grouse as his frilled clothes fluttered in an invisible wind. "They think a good prank is a whoopie cushion and some itching powder in the lining of a robe! Have they any imagination?! I think not!"
"The poltergeist has gone mad, Delores," One of the men in the paintings said, shooting an arrow at what appeared to be an approaching army of Goblins on the back of saddle mounted wolves. "Why the Headmaster hasn't put the old boy out to pasture yet is beyond me. His little 'pranks' as he calls them have only escalated in the previous few years and it is only a matter of time before someone comes to grievous harm."
A prettily dressed woman in a Renaissance era dress peered across the way from underneath the parasol that was shielding her from the painted sun in her landscape, swans gliding gracefully on the surface of a lake. "Oh hush now, Baron Von Striker! The poltergeist is by no means a deliberately malicious man. He likes to have fun; we both know this to be true. He has been here far longer than all of us and every professor that has walked these hallowed halls has inevitably come to the same conclusion—he is the very essence of the childlike wonder and mischief of the patrons here. Speaking ill of the poltergeist is to speak ill of the children!'' The painted woman said with a haughty sniff before turning her head away from the armored man firing his bow upon the Goblins charging him. "I will not be part of such an endeavor!"
The spirit paused, listening to the argument between painted people, his transparent body turning between the two to look as they spoke. "Yeah, listen to the lady! You wouldn't know what the word fun meant if it took a sword and shoved it up your—"
"Mr. Poltergeist, while I agree with your point, you would do well to watch what you say around a lady," said the portrait of a seated elegant looking older woman with silver hair. Her frame was decorated in silver and gold, three spaces down from the armored man firing his bow at the wolf-mounted goblins.
"He started it!" the spirit whined, pointing an accusatory astral finger at the painting of the armored man with the bow and arrow. "He threw the first stone!"
"How can I throw a stone when my hands are as empty as your phantasmal body?" the painted man, the one called Baron Von Striker, said with a scoff.
Something akin to rage simmered in the poltergeist's translucent eyes as he contemplated showing the painted jerk just how 'phantasmal' his body was. "At least I'm not weak to being lit aflame" the spirit shot back with a malicious smile spreading on his ghostly face.
"Now, now, Mr. Poltergeist, do not stoop to his level. He has ridden too long in the saddle to recognize that manners are a requisite within the walls of this institution," Delores, the painted woman said as she looked to the ghostly man. "I would greatly appreciate it if you would be less vulgar, it upsets my delicate stomach so."
The ghost rolled his eyes, thinking that painted people don't have stomachs to be delicate about. Still, she was one of the less prissy painted women and did not speak down to him for looking for a little fun among the student body. "Fine but only because you asked so nicely," the spirit said.
Floating along, the spirit shoved his head through every door making note of all changes to the various rooms so that he could use them to full prank potential. Some rooms met his preconceived expectations, like the Transfiguration classrooms and abandoned Alchemy Labs that had long been dormant after the elective class was removed from the roster when several students died from a cauldron explosion, while other rooms most certainly did not. "What does it take to get rooms stocked with what they're supposed to contain around here? I get that there's barely a living soul in here beyond those walking sticks, such as the squib and his mangy cat until the school years but this is ridiculous! I mean, it feels like a mourning vault."
The heavy footfalls of a nearby person made the ghost freeze in place before darting through the walls to hide.
"We'll find him, my sweet" Argus Filch said with a rather dark scowl on his face. Dark eyes looked around, the stone hallway lit only by the lantern in his hand revealing little more than one of the schools other ghostly inhabitants, one of the nicer ones in the form of the Hufflepuff House ghost and the magically enchanted paintings lining either side of the hallway. "Nearly Headless Nick said he saw the troublesome—"
A screech like the crash of unrelenting steel-on-stone echoed like cannon shot.
Filch turned on his heels and ran toward the source of the sound, his faithful feline companion and friend Mrs. Norris by his side. "The blasted devil has slipped! We have him now!" the caretaker cackled.
When the sound of foot and paw fall were gone, the spirit stuck its head out from the wall and looked both ways.
"Making trouble for Mr. Filch already are you, Peeves?"
The spirit froze as he saw the blood stained figure of the Bloody Baron. Deciding his plans could wait until a moment when the Baron was not around, he fled the scene through a wall that served as the supply closet for one of the abandoned Alchemy Labs.
Out on the third floor, Filch and Mrs. Norris' heads were turning this way and that rapidly as another screech sounded not too far from them.
"We have you now you devil! Mess with my sweet like you did and it's the box for you!" the squib caretaker cackled before taking off into what was once an Alchemy classroom. In the haste to punish the ghost for what had angered Filch so much to hunt down the poltergeist, he failed to notice the slight sheen of moonlight dancing off a sliver of wire that his foot broke.
In a cacophony of bangs, booms and cursing a lot took place. First was the falling of paint cans followed by a tearing sound and feathers raining down from the ceiling. One minute later Argus Filch and Mrs. Norris looked like a tarred and feathered duck dipped in rainbow paint.
The enraged screams of the squib and equally enraged yowls of his feline companion echoed throughout the castle as the squib declared he would exercise Peeves if it cost him his life.
At the same time in a house that looked like it was thrown together by different architects, a set of twin red haired boys woke from a dead sleep at the same time like they had been zapped by lightning.
"Gred, there's a disturbance in the force. Someone is getting credit for our work."
"Forge, what in the name of Magic is the force? And you're talking nonsense. It's summer break, we aren't at school to set any pranks up. Any pranks we did have up were taken down and put away. You need to go back to bed."
The first redhead gave his twin an incredulous look as he rolled over and went back to sleep. "I swear someone is trying to get credit for our work… My Marauder senses are tingling…"