((Eileen's.))
"My poor, dear girl."
Normally, from a ghost, this would sound morbid- as they did in general begin taking the pain of society as quite amusing after the first hundred years or so. Paler even than most of her kind, and clad in a high-necked silvery robe with an ornate belt and a rigid updo, the shadow of what had once been Lucille Greypoole (long ago rechristened Lamenting Lucy by the students) sat upon- or rather, floated several inches above- one of the desks in the tidy and otherwise almost empty Charms classroom. Meanwhile, its recently returned professor gazed out of one of the long windows.
Sabine was taking her return to America very well, in most eyes. A year had done a great deal to the memories of her students, and few remembered well enough to tell the difference between Professor Trefethen's natural melancholy and the gloom that seemed to linger about her now. As always, she was quite calm about matters- and when one of her closer colleagues commented on her lack of motivation of late, she waved it away as a symptom of readaptation and gave a pleasant smile.
"It's funny, but things that seemed so crucial in Britain seem to be so frivolous now." The coffee pot in the staff room had not gathered a fingerprint from its most avid patron since the year before. "It's lost its taste for me, I believe."
As it was, Sabine tightened her grip on the windowpane, even going so far as to rest her forehead against the polished, elaborately carved wooden frame. Crisply, with all the conviction of one asking whether the other wanted one or two lumps of sugar: "Lucy. Will it be like this until I die?"
The spector was silent for a moment, deciding whether to retort indignantly. "No," she said finally. "It will be longer."