Deep in the bowels of Hogwarts, a creature stirred from its slumber, awakened from its sleep by the influx of magical energies produced by summoning and unsummoning of ghostly apparitions. It was drawn by the leaking enchantments and the resonance in the æther ever closer to the battlefield – but what was its purpose, and why was it drew ever onwards?

-----------------------

A brilliant explosion rocked the classroom where Gil was battling the Grim; his groupies had used their powers to merge into one giant groupie, who's powers were far beyond that of any normal groupie. Looming twelve feet tall (thankfully Hogwarts was built on a grandiose scale!) the spirit spoke, "We, like, chasten you and, like, cast you out of, like, the mortal realm!"

The air filled with the motions of unseen spirits, arcane symbols glowed in the air, and the sounds of murmuring from the world beyond permeated the room. Suddenly, the Grim, who had basically done nothing for most of the exchange between Gil and his Groupies suddenly looked up, suddenly, and spoke, all of a sudden!

"Heed my words!" the Grim said, "I have been once undone, if you succeed in undoing me here, know this! You have called! I have been reborn! I shall not remain undone, and my redoing shall be your undoing! You have tampered with that which should not be tampered with! Expect my return when you least expect it!"

"Wait!" cried Gil, tossing back his silvery locks, "are you Sirius?"

The creature looked as if it were going to respond, but suddenly the ghostly form of Gil's mega-groupie threw herself upon the Grim. "You will not, like, bother Gil anymore!"

The two struggled, the weight of spirits rested heavily for one moment, until the Grim, a being made of shadow, became yet more dark and shadowy, until eventually it melted away wholly, leaving nothing but the panting giant groupie, and Gil, who was mostly recovered from the struggle, but who now had a giant, undead groupie to deal with.

"Gil, now that we have, like, saved your half-life, you should wed us in consideration of our great deed that we, like, did for you!" said the giant groupie. Mega Groupie started towards Gil, holding out her large, spiritual arms, ready to embrace him, and clasp him to her ethereal bosom.

"Groupies, no! My life is one not meant for the bonds of conjugal affection! If I were to marry, my life as a punk rawk star would be over – the parties, the drugs, the butterbeer! All gone! A wife would not allow such things!"

"Oh Gil! We do not wish to, like, hurt you and things!" cried Mega Groupie. "We would, like, let you still party and become drunken on, like, butterbeer!"

"The imminent divorce which would ensue from such a marriage would provide me with inspiration for musical lyrics, yes, but it would be better suited for the Country and Western musical audience than anything else."

"Country and Western!" shrieked Mega Groupie. "Say it isn't, like, so!"

"Yes, groupies! If I were to wed you and subsequently divorce you, even if the laws of Great Britain allowed for a ghost to wed a half-ghost, which I doubt that they do, my music would devolve into Country and Western music! I cannot tolerate this!" Gil said resolutely.

"Like, neither can we!" sobbed Mega Groupie. "We, like, renounce our martial plans upon you and stuff." The giant ghostly apparition shrank and divided into several crying groupies. "Goodbye, Gil!" they cried in unison, and began to fade away, back into the ethereal.

Suddenly, the door behind Gil swung open, and the aforementioned creature from the opening of the chapter stood in shadow! It gazed upon the scene, and viewing the now-melting ghosts, cried shrilly, "I shall save you, sir!"

The creature waved his hands and wiggled his fingers, all of the desks in the room rose up and flew towards the circle of groupies – who being ghosts and already departing from this plane, provided absolutely no resistance – the desks slammed into Gil!

"Ow, my most of me!" cried Gil, as the desks slammed into his very thin and frail body, his waiflike frame betraying him – if only he were Hagrid! Hagrid's body, through years of alcohol abuse, being beaten daily the year prior by his full-giant brother, and in taking care of giant, abnormal, ravenous creatures for decades, was basically immune to physical damage. Gil's body was especially frail, due to his lifestyle of not eating or doing physical activity because of depression, a general sense of ennui, and his being a half ghost – the perfect choice for crushing underneath a giant pile of schooldesks.

"Oh no, sir! You are now hurt! I have hurt you, sir! Instead of helping you!" the mysterious and totally not predictable creature wailed. The doorway was filled with its shadow, but as it took a few steps to the side to better ram its head into the doorframe, a good dozen hats or so fell off of its head, revealing that it was, in actuality, a house elf! "Dobby has hurt you! Bad Dobby, bad!" he screamed as he inflicted irreparable damage to his cranium.

"Listen, whoever you are, just take these desks off of me!" said Gil, his voice muffled by a desk leg that had found its way partially into his mouth.

"Oh, sir! Dobby will fix it, Dobby will!"

The house elf again raised his hands and wiggled his fingers in the air, the desks whizzed through the air, back to their proper places – potions would never be the same, as more than half of the desks were broken, and at least one was only a pile of splinters.

What was most broken, aside from most of the bones in Gil's left side, though, was the dark, withered excuse for a heart that Gil had – for his prized possession, Darke Thorne, was broken into two – no more would his riffs inspire desire in women and envy in men, nor would they banish the undead from the world of the living, nor summon spirits into the world of the living!

"Ruin!" cried Gil. "Despair!"

"Oh, sir! Dobby has hurt you, sir! Dobby is a terrible house elf!" Dobby ran up and tried to grab the strings from Darke Thorne to strangle himself with, but as he touched them, he shrieked, "Oh, it pains Dobby to touch it! I cannot use this to hurt myself, it hurts too much to use it!"

"That sentence made no sense," said Gil.

"Sir, you are expecting a house elf to make sense?" cried Dobby, tears falling from his giant, freakish eyes.

"Oh. Right," Gil said, trying to stand up, but the massive injuries preventing him from doing so. "I'm afraid to ask you to help me stand up…" he started.

"DOBBY WILL HELP YOU SIR!" he shrieked, again wiggling his fingers in the air. Gil was magically lifted into the air, and dropped onto the floor, causing all of his broken bones to shift around, and hurt even more.

"Help! I am being murdered by an overzealous house elf!" cried out Gil, as he fell to the ground once again.

Suddenly, from behind Dobby, came a resounding voice, a voice which Dobby well knew, the voice of Harry Potter. "Dobby, cease this, your struggle to aid Gil! Return to whatever task you were assigned previously, and I, Harry Potter, shall see to it that Gil is taken care of!"

"Oh, Harry Potter, sir! You're so wonderful in every possible way that Dobby could never be wonderful in!" Dobby continued sobbing to himself as he left the room.

"Once again, I have saved the day, thanks mostly to other people doing most of the work, and me coming in at just the right time to fix the one thing that I, a young devil-may-care wizard could fix!" Harry beamed.

"Oh Gil!" cried Mel, "you are hurt! You are wounded in various places and perhaps maimed for life! This is horrible, I cannot believe that the Grim did this to you."

"It was not the Grim," he said sternly, "but instead a house elf."

"Oh, how embarrassing," said Mel, tears in her eyes. "I shall never speak of it again. In America," she said aside to Harry, "we do not have house elves, we have indentured servant elves. Come, let me heal your bruised and broken body. If I work night and day, and perhaps ask for the assistance of Madam Pomfrey, I can heal you just in time for your concert in Hogsmead."

"Harry Potter, my body is broken and bruised, but worse than this, my bass is broken. Normally, one who is fully living cannot touch my bass without experiencing vast amounts of pain, but you, you who have come under the killing curse and yet live, perhaps you might be able to hold it and not be pained." Gil said in sorrow, his concern for his bass superseding his concern for his mortal shell. "It must be repaired before my big show."

Harry Potter looked down at Darke Thorne, its gleaming strings, its blood red paint, its dark ebon metals – it sang to him, even in its broken state. He bent down to pick it up, but would he be able to pick it up? How did one fix an Underworld Bass? Was there some sort of Underworld Guitar Store one could go to? The only thing he knew was that he was about to find out.

-----------------------

"Aha!" cried Dumbledore. "As it turns out, I did not invent Grim-B-Gone. However, my Headmaster senses inform me that the specter is gone; I'll let everybody out of the Great Hall now."

Dumbledore reached over and pushed a button on his desk; floors away, the unopened doors of the Great Hall that had not been charmed open by Mel's especially potent door-opening charm opened and students who had not already left via the previously mentioned charmed-open door left via the non-charmed-open doors that had just opened.

"My work here," concluded the half-moon bespectacled wizard, leaning back in his chair, and shoving a half dozen lemon sherbets into his mouth, "is done."

-----------------------