A Day in the Life of Peeves
Summary: No one ever really takes the time to examine Peeves in any great detail. What is a day in the life of this Poltergeist really like?
Warnings: Rude words, rude behaviour and mentions of drawings of rude things lie ahead. You have been warned!
Special Mention: I was inspired to write a story about Peeves following the tragic news earlier this week. As everyone knows, Peeves never got to appear in the Harry Potter films. What some of you may not know is that there were actually scenes shot for the first film featuring Peeves, but he was cut because the director and producers ended up feeling they did a terrible job on Peeves' costume and makeup. There were, apparently, plans to alter Peeves' look, perhaps for a later film, but this never came to be. Peeves was played by British actor and comedian Rik Mayall, who very sadly passed away last Monday.
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry has been stated by some individuals of dubious mental health to be the safest place in all of magical Britain. And, with the possible exception of the odd mountain troll, cerberus, dragon, basilisk, acromantula, werewolf, Dementor, hippogriff, centaur, blast-ended Skrewt, unregistered animagus, dodgy professor, bullying student, an iffy potion or two, the questionable contents of the greenhouses and the general lack of morals from all quarters, these people are, by and large, correct in that assessment.
It is curious, therefore, that in such a safe place there could ever be a sound that could inspire sheer terror amongst the students. But there was just such a sound.
It was a sound that made all sixth and seventh year students draw their wands and cast shield charms around themselves.
It was a sound that made all third, fourth and fifth year students run and hide.
It was a sound that made all first and second year students want to curl up into a ball and cry.
It was a sound that told all the Professors that their work day was about to get just a little bit more trying.
It was a sound that made the Caretaker's left eye begin to twitch uncontrollably.
"What sound could it be?" - Is what you are currently asking yourselves.
"What sound could possibly instil so much fear, so much terror, so much anger, and so much paranoia?"
Well, actually it is a relatively simple sound. Suffice to say, if you or I were ever to hear it, we'd either shrug it off or look around expectantly, hoping to see either some Morris dancers or some people dressed as Christmas elves.
The sound comes from several small jingle bells, the kind that a child might wave about whilst singing the relevant Christmas song.
In this case though, these jingle bells are attached to a hat, and it is the owner of said hat who inspires so much fear and terror.
The owner of the hat was, of course, Peeves the Poltergeist.
Peeves was the physical embodiment of chaos. He lived, breathed and thrived on causing anarchy and mayhem wherever he went. Be it knocking over wardrobes or suits of armour, throwing water balloons or inkwells, breaking chandeliers, writing rude words on a blackboard or simply blowing raspberries with his tongue, a moment spent near Peeves could never be called dull.
Being a poltergeist means that Peeves does not need to sleep, but sometimes he does it anyway because he likes to dream.
Well, in truth he doesn't actually sleep. Nor does he actually dream. Instead he finds a private, shadowy corner where he lies on his back in mid-air and closes his eyes. He then spends hours giggling to himself as he recalls all the ways that he has caused trouble in the past, as well as coming up with new ways to disturb the peace.
We join Peeves just as he is coming out of one of those sleeps….
Peeves opened his eyes and stretched his arms and legs. That had been a particularly good sleep, and now he was ready for anything.
He rolled into a sitting position and yawned, opening his mouth so wide that a beach ball could have fit in there. He smacked his lips several times, scratched himself under one arm and then drifted off to see what kind of mayhem he could cause today.
As luck would have it, breakfast had not yet started, so he decided to go off and make arrangements to start today with an oldie, but a goodie.
On the fifth floor corridor, next to an ornate vase on a plinth there was a very special secret that only Peeves knew about. One of the stone blocks in the wall was a fake. It looked real enough, but if you went up to it and tried to put your hand through it you could reach into a small storage area beyond.
The space beyond the stone was only about three feet wide, but Peeves was able to store a lot of his treasures within.
After checking that no one was about, he reached in and began to feel about. His hand first landed on his dung-bomb collection. They were always fun and he quickly stuffed one into his pocket before resuming his search. His hand then landed on one of his giant mouse traps. Again they were always fun, but they were not what he wanted right now.
Then he found exactly what he was looking for.
Moaning Myrtle was doing what she did best, having a good moan, when the door to her bathroom suddenly banged open and Peeved zoomed in.
"Get lost spotty face!" he ordered her, mockingly. "I've got work to do!"
Tears welled up in Myrtle's eyes and a sob escaped her lips before she wailed and demanded "Why do you always have to be so mean?" before turning around and diving into one of the toilets and hiding away in the u-bend.
Peeves cackled wickedly and made his way over to one of the sinks. He turned the tap but no water came out. No water ever came out of that tap. Peeves wondered why no one had ever fixed it.
He moved on to the next tap and began filling the first of two dozen water balloons.
The Entrance Hall was crowded and students from all houses milled their way through towards breakfast, which was currently being served in the Great Hall.
As they talked and laughed they failed to hear the approaching sound of jingling bells, so none of them managed to duck for cover.
Their first warning was a loud "Wheeeee!" which Peeves emitted as he barrelled towards them, flinging water balloons in all directions.
Screams and yells filled the air. The crowd surged as everyone tried to make for the relative safety of the Great Hall all at once.
Peeves cackled at the sight of all this chaos and shouted at the top of his lungs "Watch out ickle firsties!" before throwing a large red balloon at a group of first year Hufflepuffs.
Some of the older students were raising shields and those around them immediately began trying to share their protection. Peeves cackled again and zoomed around. He went behind Angelina Johnson's shield and managed to get her, Katie Bell and Alicia Spinnet all in one go.
Then he spun and got Terry Boot and Michael Corner with one large orange balloon.
"Peeves, cut it out!" shouted one particularly brave fifth year prefect.
Peeves blew a massive raspberry at him before soaking him with a blue balloon.
"That will do Peeves!" shouted another voice.
The poltergeist wheeled around and saw that Professor McGonagall had come out of the Great Hall to find out what all the fuss was about.
Peeves blew another loud raspberry and threw his remaining balloons into the air and sped off, leaving them to drop down on the poor unfortunate souls who had been standing directly below him.
Cackling with glee, he sped off along a corridor, literally bouncing off the walls as he went.
Long experience had taught Peeves that, after pulling a stunt like that with the water balloons, it was best if he kept a low profile for a few hours. Not because he was afraid of people trying to seek retribution, but because they would be much more on guard and therefore much harder to get.
Knowing that she wouldn't have any lessons until the afternoon, Peeves decided to hide out in Professor Vector's Arithmancy classroom for a while.
Once inside the classroom his eyes were immediately drawn to the blackboard where a series of very complicated looking arithmancy equations were written out.
Peeves grinned and sped over. He grabbed the board wiper and immediately set about wiping the blackboard clean.
Once that was done, he grabbed a piece of chalk and began to replace all of Professor Vector's equations with rude words.
Today he found himself fixated on the letter 'B' and so set about writing out as many words beginning with that letter as he could think of.
Words like: Bottom, boobies, bogey, bugger, bum and blimbusnerk (I'll not tell you what that last one means, just suffice to say that if a Goblin saw it, there would be a mass rebellion before you could say fwurgle-gloupe (which, incidentally, you should never say in the presence of a mermaid! Merman, yes, mermaid, never! You have been warned!))
In the end Peeves didn't remain in the classroom for very long. The castle was far too quiet for his liking, and he endeavoured to change that.
On the sixth floor, just near the top of the staircase, there stood an antique cabinet that was filled to the brim with old school trophies. This was one of Peeves' favourite targets, and he had a wide grin on his face as he sped towards it.
First he positioned himself on the left side of the cabinet where, by sliding his fingers into the gap between the back of the cabinet and the wall, he was able to slide it forwards s bit. Then he went to the right side of the cabinet and did the same.
By doing this he created a gap just wide enough to allow him to squeeze behind the cabinet and push it forwards, towards the stairs.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Peeves," said a regal sounding voice.
Peeves poked his head out around the side of the cabinet to see who was talking. It was Nearly Headless Nick, the ghost of Gryffindor Tower.
"Oh, and what's old ruffle-neck going to do to stop Peeves?" asked the poltergeist in a taunting tone, before giving the cabinet an extra-violent shove and sent the think crashing down the staircase to the fifth floor, causing the glass to shatter, the wood to splinter and the gold and silver trophies within the scatter in all directions.
Peeves cackled loudly, even as the voice of the caretaker, Argus Filch, bellowed up from below.
"PEEVES! I'll have you out of the castle this time, you mark my words!"
"You do know that I'm going to have to inform The Bloody Baron about this, don't you?" asked Nearly Headless Nick.
Peeves blew a massive raspberry with his tongue and turned to leave.
Then he froze, fear clenching his heart (if he had one) for just ahead of him, the spectral form of The Bloody Baron was rising up out of the floor, his angry eyes fixed menacingly upon Peeves.
"There is no need to inform me of Peeves' latest indiscretion, Nicholas. One of those medals flew right through my head."
"Y-your Bloodiness, s-sir!" stammered Peeves, taking his bell-covered hat off of his head and bowing low like a subservient house elf. "Peevesy meant no harm, sir. He meant no disrespect!"
"Be gone, you wretched creature, and pray that I do not hear of you bothering the residents of this noble castle again today!" bellowed the Bloody Baron.
"Y-yes sir!" stammered Peeves. "O-of course, sir! Peevesy is sorry, he is. Very sorry!"
And with that, the poltergeist sped off, intent upon putting as much distance as possible between himself and the terrible visage that was The Bloody Baron.
Peeves did not have a very good short-term memory. As such, as the lunch period was drawing to a close he was looking out for his next target.
Unnoticed by all, he drifted in through the open doors of the library before floating up to the ceiling within. From this position high above the tall bookcases, he could look down at the study tables and attempt to locate the perfect victim.
He soon spotted them. Harry Potter and Hermione Granger were sitting side by side at a table, surrounded by several piles of textbooks, along with parchment and quills. Peeves didn't know it, but they were researching spells to practice in the next session of the D.A.
It had been a while since Peeves had pranked Harry Potter and so decided to use him as his next target.
"This one looks interesting…" said Harry to Hermione, right before they heard the dreaded jingle of a bell-covered hat and something crashed down onto their table sending their books, parchment, ink and quills flying in every direction.
Before they could stop him, Peeves had ruined both sets of their notes, smashed three inkwells, broken both their quills, torn open Harry's schoolbag and torn the pages out of eight library books
"Peeves!" yelled Harry. "Stop it you pest!"
The poltergeist laughed uproariously and grabbed Harry's nose in a painful pinch.
"Got your conk!" he squealed with glee.
Then, quite suddenly, and even more unexpectedly, Peeves' fun was ruined.
Something quite hard and quite heavy hit him on the back of the head very forcefully, causing him to yelp and spin out of the way of any further blows.
Righting himself he turned and saw that Hermione was on her feet, a thick tome in her hands and a furious look on her face.
Peeves petulantly blew a massive raspberry at them and sped off as Madam Pince came over to help the two Gryffindors sort out the mess before them.
Nearby a group of third year Gryffindor girls had seen the entire byplay and thanks to this the debate over whether Hermione had hit Peeves in order to protect Harry or to protect her textbooks would run rampant within the Hogwarts rumour mill for at least the next five months.
Peeves was sulking and had been for the past five hours. Today was not turning out to be a good day for him to have fun. First his pushing a cabinet down a staircase had resulted in him getting yelled at, and then his attempts at playing with Potty – wee – Potter had ended when the bushy-haired bookworm had hit him on the head with a book.
The poltergeist wanted revenge. He wanted to pull a prank so big that everyone currently going to school in the castle would tell their grandchildren about it.
He couldn't think of anything though.
But sometimes in life, opportunities just present themselves.
Something pink caught his eye and, upon turning to get a better look, he saw that it was Dolores Umbridge hurrying along the corridor towards the Great Hall for dinner.
A wide grin appeared on Peeves' face and he swooped down and followed on behind her.
At the bottom of the marble staircase, Umbridge paused to inspect the large house hour glasses which kept a record of how many points each of the Hogwarts houses had. Needless to say, between herself and Snape, Gryffindor house was currently in negative figures. -147, to be exact.
Everyone else appeared to already be in dinner, so Peeves took his chance.
He plucked the dung-bomb out of his pocket and gave it the gentlest of squeezes, just to get it going gently before he subtly slipped it into the pocket of Umbridge's cardigan.
Umbridge didn't notice and, having finished inspecting the hour glasses, she made her way into the Great Hall, not aware of the green-coloured fumes that were beginning to seep through the fabric of her cardigan.
Peeves floated up and perched himself above the door to wait.
He didn't have to wait long.
First there was a shout as a boy noticed the fumes. Then the screams began, accompanied by the sounds of the benches along each table being pushed back. After that came the stamping of many hurried footsteps.
The doors to the Great Hall burst out and the students stampeded out, most with tears in their eyes, some with their robes lifted up to cover their noses and mouths. Some were coughing, some were retching and some were actually throwing up.
Some tripped over their own feet, some ran into others. It was complete chaos.
And as a great lover of chaos, Peeves cackled uproariously at it all.
Once the stamped had subsided, Peeves ventured into the Great Hall, where he found Professor Dumbledore, along with most of the other Professors and a few of the braver prefects casting air-freshening charms.
Meanwhile Madam Pomfrey was making her was towards Umbridge, who was lying in a twitching heap on the floor, having been knocked over and trampled by the stampede.
Peeves cackled at the sight and left the scene before the Bloody Baron showed up.
Unknowingly, Peeves had just done a massive service to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The injuries that she sustained meant that Dolores Umbridge spent the next two weeks in St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. Once she was released she refused to return to Hogwarts and, once people learned what had happened to her, Cornelius Fudge quickly found a distinct lack of volunteers to take her place.
Sometimes having a poltergeist knocking around can be a good thing. It's just really rare that they prove it.
And that's that one. Hope you enjoyed it!