The Last Spirit
And yet…
It stretched out its hand to me, and I have expected the skin to be scabby and gray, slimy like it had come from the depths of the ocean and horrible like the pits of hell. But instead, it was dark and shone like moonlight, the glimmer of a real ghost's hand. Silver blood stained the front of the midnight robes, and the gleam of silver eyes caught the torchlight in the deserted hallway. I thought it was the Bloody Baron, but even then I was not sure. How a ghost could wear something real and material was beyond my reasoning, and I had a lapse in which I thought my mind was betraying me, leaving my helpless body behind in a crumpled mass on the hallway floor.
"You are the Ghost of Christmas Past, if you are indeed a ghost," I said. I did not hear one hint of questioning or fear in my voice as it came back to me in the shadow, echoing as if I was the only one in the room.
The spirit did not answer, but pointed onward with its hand.
"Let me guess," I said in mockery. "You are going to show me the shadows of what has not yet happened, but will come in time before us, right?"
The ghost gave a slight inclination of its head. I took this as a yes.
"Lead on," I said. "Might as well get this over with."
Suddenly, I noticed that my voice no longer had an echo. In eerie realization, I stood in a deserted hallway, a different one then I had once been in, as black as the cloak of the ghost.
Despite my sense and steady mind, I was becoming afraid.
"Will you speak to me?" I asked of the spirit, who was standing by my side.
It gave me no reply, but just continued to point. "All right," I sighed. "Fine."
We continued through a maze of halls and stairwells, into the very heart of Hogwarts. We passed a hall with windows reaching out to the courtyard, and with a shock I realized that it was dusk and not the midnight that I had become accustomed to.
Malfoy was standing in the hallway, flanked by his dear friends Crabb and Goyle, and had several other Slytherins surrounding him. I could hear the gentle clinks of Galleons shifting in their robe pockets.
I didn't need the direction from the spirit; I went over to them anyway. Approaching them, I cleared my throat to make sure that they wouldn't get in trouble for being caught doing something against the rules, and when they didn't hear me I coughed. They didn't turn and I took another step forward, then stopped again. The heel of my hard boots did not make a sound on the floor. They could not see, hear, or feel me. I was just a ghost of the past in their presence.
"Yes, he's dead all right." Malfoy drawled, smiling proudly.
"When did he die?" Inquired a rather hideous female fourth year.
"Last night, I think." Malfoy's platinum hair was gleaming in the approaching starlight.
"What happened to him?" Crabbe asked; that was the most intelligent and well thought out thing I had ever heard him say. "I thought he would never die."
"God knows," said Malfoy, with a yawn.
"What happened to his potion ingredients, his money, his…things?" asked a bright eyed second year, fingering the Galleons in his pocket greedily.
"I don't know," Malfoy answered. "If he left them to me, hell if I'd know."
Everyone around him laughed, but I couldn't understand why.
"It's likely to be a very cheap funeral," Malfoy said again. "I don't know of anybody who would go. He's probably not even dead; he'll probably end up as the new Slytherin Ghost. Well, dead, but…you know what I mean."
The crowd nodded in agreement, hanging on each of Draco's words.
"I'll go if there's food," Goyle said, not surprisingly, to the others.
"Well, I don't know, I'm not much for mourning the old bastard," Malfoy stated. "But it's not like he didn't consider me a friend. I might have gotten my foot into the door. Maybe I can just take over for him after I graduate." He grinned. "And finally get that Defense Against the Dark Arts job. I'll be the one who lasts."
There were mumbles "sures" echoing through the gathering, but Draco ignored them. "Well, see you all later then."
The crowd dispersed, and I turned to the spirit for an explanation. I was very confused, wondering if I still had my right mind. I didn't think I had had it since the clock struck midnight the first time.
The crowd had disappeared and I was in a dark room. The only part that was lit was a four-poster bed, like every single bed in Hogwarts, and in it was a man. All I saw was a toe peeking out of the blanket at the footboard, and nothing else. The man wasn't breathing.
A flash of silver distracted me and I glanced up. A ghost was standing on the other side of the bed, and it was not the Bloody Baron. It a figure laden with chains and sorrows, one I recognize but refused to register familiarity in my mind.
"What is this?" I asked, gazing at the Bloody Baron.
The spirit replied in no way, but very soon I found myself in a crowded room, and by the smell and the employees, I figured that I was now standing in The Three Broomsticks- a popular pub in Hogsmead. Directly in front of me, at a round table almost hidden by a large, dying Christmas tree, three familiar figures huddled.
I stepped to the table and kneeled next to it, staring straight into the faces of its occupants, remaining unnoticed. The three were Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger, and they were all whispering among themselves. Fortunately, with my advantage of not being able to be seen, I was able to listen in on their conversation.
"Well, what do we have?" Hermione grabbed the heavy rucksack from her side and poured its contents onto the table. Out came a flood of possessions, trinkets to gadgets, bottles and flasks. Three heavy books landed with a dull thud on the pile of objects.
"We'll see when Bagman gets here," Harry said, grabbing an eagle feather quill from the mess and running it through his fingers. "But don't we want to keep some of this? You know, when our needs call for it?"
"Good point, Harry," Weasley replied, beginning to examine a flask nearest to him.
Within ten minutes they picked through their findings and stowed them away in Granger's sack, then waited patiently. Suddenly, a cloaked figure stopped down to the table, a generous belly pushing the limits of the robe, a ruddy face beaming from the shadowy overhang of the hood. Ludo Bagman's bright eyes looks with greed upon the objects stacked up before him on the table's surface.
"Hullo, Mr. Bagman," Harry said quietly, but brightly.
"What do you have? My sales are running low; nothing else is keeping me alive. Ever since I got fired from the charity for…" He stopped himself, his face reddening in embarrassment.
"It's okay, Mr. Bagman," Hermione assured him. "We know you didn't steal the money."
"Shhh!" Bagman jerked his head around, making sure no one was watching. Of course, no one was. "No one needs to know it's me here!"
Weasley's face scrunched up in disbelief. "Fine."
Ludo's face brightened again. "Wow, you really outdid yourselves." He picked up a flask filled with a venom green liquid, and then examined an ancient looking book with interest. "I'll give you three hundred Galleons for the lot."
"Deal." Potter pushed the pile toward him, and Bagman quickly and carefully placed everything in his bag.
Bagman nodded. "Thanks, kids. I don't know what I would ever do without you. See you, soon." Bagman ruffled Weasley's hair, and they all frowned as he left.
"Well, it's something for nothing. At least we could help him out, I feel sorry for him. When he didn't do that well last Christmas, the charity refused to believe that no one was donating and accused him of stealing the money and potion ingredience."
"We know, Harry!" Hermione exclaimed. "It's not like we've never heard it before."
"Well, what are we going to do about the other stuff? I guess it won't be long before they find him…"
I turned to the Ghost. "Why am I here?" I asked, genuinely suspicious of the three student's behavior. If I could have been seen, I would have turned them into the Ministry right then and there for selling stolen goods.
Suddenly, the tavern was gone. I recognized myself to be back in the Burrow, it being only slightly different then when I had last seen it, but the shadows of dreariness flowing through the interior and blackening the windows and the heavy hearts of its inhabitants.
I was standing in their family room on the lower floor. A fire was roaring in the fireplace, and the twins were sitting on the floor picking through a few dilapidated books, unusually grim looks on their faces. Mrs. Weasley was polishing her wand, and from the extra shiny gloss, I thought that it had already been shined more times than was necessary.
"It's starting to hurt my eyes," Mrs. Weasley said, setting her wand down on the end table. "The brightness makes them weak, your father doesn't need to see weak eyes when he comes home. He's on his way." She gazed over at a grandfather clock-like object that stood in the corner, three hands pointing at "home" and the largest one pointing at "traveling".
"He's become slower," Fred commented, not looking up from his book. "His Apparitions are beginning to get sloppy, taking longer than they used to."
There was silence, then Mrs. Weasley said, in a steady cheerful voice that only faltered once: "He app- he was always so happy when he had Ginny with him. Showing her the steps, and he always went so fast."
"I know," Twin #1 said from behind a book titled "Magical Pranks for the Downtrodden".
"Little Ginny loved it so much…" Mrs. Weasley further observed. A chime sounded from the clock. "Your father's home!" she exclaimed, jumping up with quickness surprising for a larger woman.
"Hello, everyone!" Arthur was cheerful enough, speaking kindly and lovingly to his family, patting each twin on the back. All four of the absent boys, Charlie, Bill, Percy, and Ron, were moving in the picture frames on the mantle.
"You're late," Molly said as Arthur hugged her tightly. "Did you go?"
"Yes," he said, releasing her and collapsing into his favorite old chair. "You should have seen how beautiful it was. The green grass wasn't even frozen in the winter chill. "
"I miss her," one of the twins said solemnly.
The family fell silent, and only the crackle of the small fire could be heard.
I unexpectedly felt a tugging on my sleeve. "We are leaving, then?" I asked the ghost expectantly. It's cloaked head nodded, and I gazed at the silent family with interest. "All right, but I hope this terrible dream will end soon. I can not begin to guess at who and how many people are dead at this point in the future."
The spirit gave me a push, solid - odd how he could touch me, and I fell onto my knees onto grass. I guessed that I was no longer in the Weasley's living room, and I looked up to see that I was kneeling on cold, wet, green grass, the wind howling in my ears, the trees in the distance swaying and creaking. My skin stung with the cold of the winter chill, my black robes were stained with mud, and my nose instantly, and humiliatingly, started to run.
I crawled on my hands and knees through the frozen and overgrown grass and came to rest on a slight swell in the ground. It had been fairly recently dug, for the grass was only a fuzz in the soil.
The transparent, gray finger came down to point at a stone the lay a few feet ahead of me, silver-blood stained robes refusing to flap in the breeze.
I grumbled and swiped the grass and weeds, which seemed to grow from magical aid around the stone, aside and read the name carefully.
The understanding, which I had refused to come to earlier, appeared to me with a wrenching bite. Malfoy, who I had thought had liked me, was bashing on me in the hall. Hermione, Ron, and Harry had been selling my things that they had stolen to an impoverished Bagman, who had lost his job partly because I refused to donate to his charity. The Weasleys had lost Ginny because I refused to pay Arthur the wages he deserved and declined the offer to help on any research that could be done for her illness. I was the man that laid dead in the four-poster bed in my dungeon room, and I was the burdened ghost who watched my lifeless body in the dead of night.
The future had been shown to me, and Voldy was right.
"Then I am past hope, if this is the future that waits for me," I muttered to the Bloody Baron, who stood over me like an icy, unmoving, and uncaring statue. "What was the point of this at all?"
The spirit stared at me, it's stillness in the howling wind sending odd impulses down my nerve endings.
"If there is a point…it means I can change the course of the future?
"I am a proud man," I admitted to the stone spirit, unbelieving of my willingness to open up to the creature. "Even though the causes were good, spying on the Dark side made my heart bitter. I turned away from everything I held dear. In childhood, I had no family to speak of, and the girl that invited me into hers married someone else and died soon after graduation. If you think that these things do not give me reason to turn to only myself, then you have no reason to being me to this place."
I took a deep breath and continued, and despite the pride that I held about me like an iron shield, hot tears started to form in my eyes. "I am sorry," I whispered, hoping the ghost couldn't hear me. "I am sorry for all the hearts I've broken, the friends I've hurt. I'm sorry for being such a terrible and cruel person. And though this may not come easily, I am willing to change. The misery of an afterlife roaming the halls of Hogwarts as a forgotten spirit is beyond the tortures of the earth." Tears had started to roll down my cheeks, threatening to cling to my face in the cold. "I am willing to change, one step at a time.
"Bloody Baron, I'm willing to change."
The spirit nodded and then stilled. Around me, the graveyard darkened and faded into blackness. The cloaks disappeared as the body of the ghost formed into solid wood, shrinking, collapsing, and dwindling down into a single bedpost.
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Review, please! Next chappy hopefully coming BEFORE Christmas. And if not, Happy Christmas to you all!