Broadcast #5: Envy
I had to stop going out to parties. Now, ask anyone who knows me; I love parties. I love drinking, and I love talking, and dancing, and going wild. In my younger years, it's all I did. But once I started getting really into this archery business—I mean once it looked like something I could live for—it started getting in the way. So I had to stop.
I tried not to. I practiced as hard as I could while still going out two or three times a week. But by that point I'd gone competitive, and I wasn't growing. All my rivals were getting better and better, and I was staying the same. I mean, while I was out on the street bar-hopping, or back home the next day with a killer hangover, or getting dressed for the night, they were out on the target, shooting.
So there was a choice. Either I kept things the same, or I stopped going out and put everything I had into this… thing that I was really falling in love with. The choice was obvious, but it was still hard; after all, I love parties. But I loved this more.
—Rowland Macmillan, Archery Club EP. 22
Harry had noticed her at the start of October.
Sometimes, when he was in class casting a charm, or brewing a potion, or taking notes, a head would pop out of the wall. It was Ravenclaw's ghost, the Grey Lady. She'd just appear—not always, but often enough—and listen in to whatever it was they were doing, watching over the class like a pale and translucent guardian angel. Although her expression always remained stony, as if she were one of the many statues clinging to Hogwart's walls, she nevertheless kept coming to classes.
No one else noticed of course. Or if they did, they didn't make a fuss about it. The professors surely knew, but they didn't bring it up. The students were usually too absorbed in the assignment, or in whatever distractions they'd concocted. And the Grey Lady didn't make the effort to draw any attention, simply floating at the back of the class, close to the ceiling, silent as a still night.
It was by pure accident that Harry had seen her in the first place. He'd been practicing his reparo in transfiguration class by, against Hannah's warnings, breaking and repairing his own glasses. He'd thought it funny, and his sense of humor had clearly not been shared by the young witch.
Each time he fixed his glasses, he put them on and looked around the room, making sure they worked properly. That was when he, by pure chance, noticed the ghost loitering at the top corner of the classroom. She'd seen him looking, and had promptly faded away. But that was enough, and now that he was aware of her, Harry found it easy to spot her whenever she happened to show up.
Ghosts had been hard to compromise. Wands, living paintings, animated plant-life, sure he could see that. They were strange, but Harry had been expecting strangeness when he got to Hogwarts. Magic, basically. If it was deemed magic, Harry was free to accept its existence regardless of how impossible it should've been, since, after all, the impossible was what magic did.
But ghosts weren't just magic. They were at some point alive. Sometimes wizards, sure, but most ghosts were the spirits of normal, everyday people who were just as shocked about the magical world as they were about their own afterlifes. That's what Harry's Defense textbook said, at least.
Apparently, ghosts weren't even really part of the world. They existed in a sort of veiled state, wherein they could pull the curtain over themselves and become invisible to those in what living people might consider reality. Not an alternate dimension, but a layered dimension which covered the real one like a blanket, a blanket which ghosts could easily and willfully phase through.
Harry didn't understand any of this, of course, but it was a good summary of what he'd read. To him, ghosts were an entirely different creature than what they were in life. There was a person, and upon death they became something else, a ghastly image of what once was. The barrier between life and death was too thick for him, too decisive, and therefore no one could go through it and come back.
Some ghosts, like Hufflepuff's Fat Friar, were friendly enough. Harry could speak to them, laugh at their jokes, wonder at their transparency—like looking through moving glass—and most of all, hear their death stories. Ghosts seemed unendingly interested in sharing their death stories. Some were funny, some sad, some gruesome. If a student tried telling any of his own, the ghosts would usually drift off, or nod politely with clear boredom. The stories of life were beyond them now.
But the Grey Lady wasn't like other ghosts. The others weren't interested in mortal things like classwork. Even ghosts who were muggles in life didn't care to learn about magic. It wasn't like they could do it, so they ignored it, and magic became just another mundane part of their new un-lives. The Grey Lady was interested. She cared enough to come to class, at least, even if she was already dead.
One day, Harry saw her floating aimlessly through the halls. He followed her, on a whim, weaving through the students walking between classes. Every corner she turned, he turned. Every wall she went through, like diving into a ripple-less pond, he found the adjacent door to. When they came upon the Grand Staircase, she began going up, rising like a balloon in the wind, and Harry went up the stairs two steps at a time, struggling with the books he held under his arm.
He followed her all the way up to the Astronomy Tower. It was the highest point in Hogwarts, and the first time Harry himself had been there. Empty, as it usually was outside of classes, though Harry knew that the telescope was charmed to work properly even in broad daylight. When he finished climbing the spiraling staircase all the way up to the domed room at its peak, he found that the Grey Lady was waiting for him.
Up close, she held a frigid beauty, her face strangely shriveled in cold, stony contempt. No wrinkles, but icy lines, sternness having aged her features more than time. And her cheeks were ever so gaunt, sunken, white.
"Following others is rude, little boy," she said, low-pitched, the voice of an opera singer.
Harry hesitated, finding himself alone, but this time it was of his own choice. He'd kept mostly quiet with Quirrell, and with Sprout, but he was smart enough to realize he had only because he could. Here, he had followed the Grey Lady. No plan, no real motivation outside of pure whimsy. Ernie's voice came to him then, I… am curious! And with a bang of realization Harry realized that he was also feeling that same thing that had led him to the forest. Under the surface, barely there, sure, but it was there. It had taken control of his legs before he could even think on it, and now there he was. So he opened his mouth.
"You could've gone invisible," he said.
The Grey Lady was taken aback, though she didn't show it outside of a simple blink. "I was curious as to what you would do," she said, voice unchanging. She drifted closer to him, ghastly robes churning in the air. "So, little Hufflepuff, what to do?"
How ironic, Harry thought. They were both curious little bees. "You know my name," he guessed.
The ghost's face remained the same. "Who doesn't?" she said. "You were the talk of the town some years ago. Harry Potter, am I right?"
Harry nodded. He gulped, feeling suddenly nervous. "What's your name?" he said.
The Grey Lady raised a brow. "I imagine you know it. They call me the Grey Lady."
"I mean your real name."
Suddenly, the Grey Lady flinched back. Her eyes glared, and Harry begun trembling. A force came upon him, a sort of cold creeping across his skin, beamed through her sharp pupils. "And why would you ever need to know that?" she asked, and her opera singer voice reached a treble that sunk deep into Harry's bones, rattling them unlike anything else he'd ever felt.
"I just wanted to know why you come into classes," Harry said, avoiding her eyes. His voice wavered, but he bit his lip and refused to listen to that fleeting instinct that had assailed him. "You're not like the other ghosts."
That seemed to calm her, though the intensity in her gaze was still there. Her face, which had become pure glacial iron, had once again softened into normal stone. She stared at him in silence for what felt like hours, then turned around.
"How strange that you weren't made a Ravenclaw," she said. She floated towards the telescope, looking like she was set to bend and look through its eyeglass. But she didn't. Instead, she looked at the telescope itself, its brass, clockwork design reaching up in a giant cone, popping out of the observatory's shell. "I see you in your classes. How talented you are. It almost makes me jealous."
"I'm not very talented, I don't think," Harry said, thinking of Susan, who was acing all her classes, or even Justin, who seemed to sleep through all of them and pass anyway out of sheer brilliance.
"Wandwork speaks for itself," the ghost said.
"Why are you jealous?"
"I said it almost made me feel jealous," she said, turning around. She began drifting closer again, and Harry had to bite down once more on that instinct that told him, ordered him to run. Heat seeped out of the air as she neared, and by the time she stopped right in front of him, Harry shivered not out of fear but out of cold. "If you must know, I enjoy watching magic. I enjoy watching you little children learn it for the first time. It reminds me of a time long ago."
Harry looked up at her. There was something soft at the edge of her eyes. He'd thought there were no wrinkles, like the ghost was made of ivory, but now he saw crow's feet at their edges. "Were you a Hogwarts student?" he said softly.
They looked at each other. Like a soft breeze, she answered. "Yes."
And a girl appeared before Harry. A girl much like himself, just as young, just as new to all of this. A girl who loved waving her wand and speaking the spells like he did. A girl who loved receiving mail from owls, and who gaped at defying gravity on a broomstick, who fancied her long and wavy robes, who ate chocolate frogs and thought it funny when they moved in her mouth. A girl who had gotten old and died.
And for the first time in a long time, Harry felt sad. Years before, he'd simply stopped crying about living in a cupboard under the stairs. He'd stopped crying about living with another family who seemed to despise him. And he'd never cried about his parents, but now, he felt like doing it. He felt like crying, but he didn't. Instead, he said, "I'm sorry," and he well and truly meant it.
Something in his voice must've come through, because the Grey Lady softened more. Her wrinkles became clearer. "I'm sorry too," she said.
"I practice every night," he said. "Spells, I mean. In the Hufflepuff common room. It's just first-year stuff, but… Well, you can come watch if you'd like."
The Grey Lady looked away. "I don't much like the Fat Friar. He's too loud for my tastes," she said.
"He's not around very much."
"The Fat Friar. Really."
"Well, he's not around all the time."
Here, the Grey Lady smiled. A very small smile, barely a quirk of the lips. It was the most out-of-place smile Harry had ever seen, something completely foreign not just to her face, but to her entire being. And yet, it's strangeness gave it novelty, and Harry thought it pretty.
"We will see," she said. Then, after a moment, "I… appreciate the offer. Thank you, Harry Potter."
"Just Harry is fine."
"Harry, of course." The Grey Lady looked conflicted for a moment, but her eyes evened out once more. The wrinkles disappeared, as did the smile, and her face took on the same structured nothingness she'd held most of the time. "We will see, then."
And she disappeared. Once there, now gone, fading into the air like thin mist. Harry stared at where she'd been, felt his heart beating cold. He thought of how to put this little episode to his friends, then decided to simply not mention it. If they stumbled upon a foreign ghost in their common room, he would just enjoy their surprise.
Follow, favorite, and review.