The Bloody Baron gazed out of a high window onto the Hogwarts grounds. He didn't let himself come up here too often, but he enjoyed the view. He enjoyed being alone. But it never lasted long.
"Baron!" Sir Nicholas burst through a wall. The baron didn't look up. "Baron...sir?"
"Nicholas," he rasped after a long pause. "Surely, after an acquaintance spanning more than five hundred years, you will consent to calling me by my given name?" He kept his back to the other ghost, staring outside still and wishing Nicholas would leave.
"Uh...as it were...with all due respect...I'd rather..." Nick stumbled over his words. Well, the man has always been something of a fop, the baron thought.
"Very well. What petty troubles will you bother me with now?" His expression was stony and his irritation rang in his voice.
"It's Peeves, sir. He's got a pair of first years locked in a broom closet and we can't get them out, sir." Nick wrung his hands and fretted like a woman.
What am I? The baron thought. A bloody babysitter? He smiled a little at his own pun and spun to face Nick at last.
"Lead on, Nicholas. But mind this. If you call me 'sir' once more, by the love of all things magical, you will wish your head was truly detached. Understood?" Nick swallowed audibly and nodded. He left the room as quickly as possible. The baron followed with a scowl on his face.
This is my existence, he mused. This is my curse.
The Year of Our Lord 1348
Gustave deForet was the only surviving child of a French nobleman and an English maid. His father was a baron and a hard man. His mother was weak and stupid. She was the baron's third wife, chosen on a whim when his first wife died in childbirth and the second was found to be barren.
She was a plain woman, with no remarkable features save her wide blue eyes. The baron, Stefan deForet, didn't care. She was a means to an end, a vessel for an heir. Katherine was her name, but Stefan never called her that. She bore him three children, two girls who didn't live long enough to be named, and Gustave. This pleased the baron. He had the heir he wanted and no worries of marriages or dowries.
Gustave was a strong child, and he pleased his father for eleven years. In the summer of his twelfth year, a message arrived for him from a strange school in the north that taught strange things. Gustave was beaten within an inch of his life. His mother was killed. She had been keeping secrets from her husband. Stefan was a hard man.
The baron died eight years later, on the eve of his son's wedding. Gustave was then the baron, and the next day, Branwyn became the baroness. Unlike Gustave's mother, she was beautiful. And he loved her.