Exorcism Part III: Séance
Sybill Trelawney sat at her desk, sipping a daiquiri martini rum cocktail. Half of her body was severely burned and bandaged from her unintended trip to the boiler room. In order to take the edge off the pain, she had been taking a few medicinal sips of some of the spirits.
"So, you see, Sybill, we decided to let you direct a séance (because we know you like that kind of stuff) as a get well present." Professor Summersong sweetly lied as though she truly possessed no soul. Or at least no shame.
"Oh," Trelawney sniffed, "You guys are the best and only friends I've ever had."
Snape looked darkly at the length of curtain cord that lay close at hand. No…it wouldn't work. She could, after all, pester him eternally through her use of séance. The only way was for her to go first and, as oblivious as Dumbledore was, murder was a little too hard to talk your way out of.
"Right then, loves, away we go!" Trelawney swayed from side to side, gathering random items from around the room.
She set a red satin cloth and a crystal ball atop her finest square table.
"Now we must all join hands in a circle sitting around the table on the floor cushions." She held out her hands expectantly.
"Knock yourselves out, girls." Professor Summersong muttered and she and Snape shoved Bridgit and Cora towards Trelawney so they wouldn't have to touch her.
Instantly, Cora's eyes teared up and she started to sniff.
"Oh yes, dear, bringing back the dead is very emotional. I'll quickly fetch some tissue." Trelawney left to another room.
"You don't have compassion! What's wrong?" Bridgit asked her friend.
"Trelawney's hands burn and smell like rum and Professor Snape's hands are cold and clammy and slimy." She sobbed quietly.
"I have poor circulation and I'm quite sensitive about it!" Snaped growled defensively.
"Yes, and you don't see me complaining, now, do you?" Professor Summersong leveled her student with a fierce teacher glare.
"I get to hold Trelawney's bandaged hand and Professor Summersong's hands smell like vanilla." Bridgit smiled.
"Don't remind me." Snape sulked, wanting to be away from anything related to goodness and happiness.
"Here we are." Professor Trelawney breezed back into the room.
She placed the tissues behind Cora and then they all joined hands and began the séance.
"Spirits of the deep," Trelawney's misty voice boomed, "we of the mortal realm do now summon thee to commune with us in the circle of sharing. We summon you- who is it we're summoning?"
"Godric Gryffindor." Professor Summersong said from between clenched teeth.
"Ah, an educational field trip. Smashing! We summon you, Godric Gryffindor, to our mortal realm and command you to appear before us now!" She finished with a dramatic flourish.
Almost instantly, a green light emerged from the crystal ball and as mist spread about the room in a creeping effect, a voice from beyond began to speak to them.
"This call cannot be completed as dialed. ONE of the members of your circle of sharing has A SKELETON IN THEIR CLOSET. Please reshuffle your party and try again. Thank you for using Telekenisis."
"One of us has a skeleton in our closet?" Bridgit repeated as they all broke the circle.
"Hmmm…" Professor Summersong looked introspective.
Oh fiddle-dee-dee. It must be my secret family. She thought to herself.
"…" Said Snape.
Curses! It must be that time from Harry Potter's third year at Hogwart's where I fed Lupin sugar water instead of anti-werewolf-transforming potion… But I'd do it again in a heartbeat! He then chuckled to himself.
"Gggh." Cora made a small choking noise, her face clearly displaying her discomfort.
Oh no! How did it find out? Now everyone will know that, when I was little, I loved ballet and wanted to be a pretty princess. She winced.
"Oh." Bridgit looked downcast.
It must be that kid from the orphanarium what I almost killed when I got mad at him and accidentally lit him on fire. She felt the shame of her shadowy past.
"Oh my, I wonder who it could be." Trelawney hummed and hawed to herself. "Oh well, nothing to be done about it now. I guess I'll just be going on my way now." She said while exiting her own classroom.
On the way out, she tripped over nothing and began to fall. In desperation, she reached out to grab anything to prevent her from said falling. Since Snape had jumped out of the way, she was forced to cling to an old tapestry. She ripped it from the wall in her descent, revealing a stone door. Triggered by the removal of the tapestry, the stone door began to open slowly. A cascade of beer bottles tumbled noisily from within its depths. Professor Summersong picked up one of the bottles.
"Disco Brew? That hasn't been around since the 80s." She inadvertently betrayed her age.
"Yes, how fascinating. Nothing to see here." Trelawney said, trying to quickly close the door.
A skeleton tumbled out, riding down the hill of beer bottles like a ghostly toboggan. It rattled to a stop on the cobblestone floor.
"Sybbil." Professor Summersong gasped. "You have an actual skeleton in your closet!"
"It's not what it looks like!" She tried to hide the fact it was wearing a Hogwarts' school uniform.
"Are those the remains of a student?" Snape demanded in a firm, authoritarian voice.
"No! It's not what it looks like!" She protested again. "I didn't mean for him to die. I just locked him in there for a quick detention and then forgot about him. His cries for help were muffled by the empty beer bottles that served as his tomb. By the time I noticed the funky smell, it was too late and little Tompkins was no more!" She dry sobbed, leaning against the wall. "Why, Tompkins, why?"
"Well…that's more than I wanted to know." Bridgit admitted.
"Last one out has to take responsibility!" Professor Summersong screamed as she ran out the door.
"Dibs out!" Bridgit and Cora shrieked, hot on her heels.
"Sucks to this!" Snape bellowed and leapt from the room as if it were about to consume him.
"I'm the rotten egg." A forlorn Trelawney said at length, all alone.
She stood up, dusted herself off and prepared to hide the evidence. This time, someplace better…Hagrid's pumpkin patch.
"Well, that was a complete waste of time." Cora started up a conversation.
"What shall we do? We need another person to do a séance!" Bridgit sighed.
"And who exactly is going to lead said séance?" Snape sniped.
"Well, Bridgit and I took basic divination, which covers a fair bit of the curriculum that Hogwarts does. However, Sammy and Reagan took advanced divination. Reagan was much better at it than Sammy. Maybe we should ask him." Cora suggested.
"That would work." Professor Summersong agreed.
"Fine. Necessity demands and I suppose they are better than Sybbil." Snape conceded…eventually.
"Then away we go!" Bridgit started running down the hallway.
"No running in the halls! Ten points from Gryffindor." Snape yelled after her.
They found Sammy and Reagan sitting next to the lake, leaving black roses in memory of the giant squid they used to poke and had been eating as sushi for the past week. Damn you, cheap school lunch programs!
The four of them explained their predicament at length, because they had trouble agreeing on all the details and had a tendency to interrupt each other. When it was eventually made clear what they wanted, Reagan reacted instantaneously.
"WHAT? No! This whole thing is contrived and stupid! I disagree with it and refuse to take any part in it whatsoever." Reagan folded his arms in a huff.
"Fine, whatever." Cora dismissed her colleague. "Sammy, will you help?"
"Well…" Sammy looked uncertain.
"You're not actually considering buying a ticket to this lunatic cruise, are you?" Reagan demanded.
"But the founders of Hogwarts are involved in this. Whatever we find, it will be big. No one had any idea that Peeves was Slytherin's son. Any new information will be a historical breakthrough!" Sammy's eyes shone as she tried to put a good spin on her desire to satisfy a morbid curiosity.
"Fine! You're all morons!" Reagan stormed off.
"He's been unusually cantankerous today." Sammy looked after him in concern.
"Yeah, he's been a major grump ever since we told him we'd almost died in the banishing of a minor nuisance from the castle." Bridgit mentioned.
"It must be that time of the month." Sammy suggested.
"Uh, right." Cora patted her friend on the shoulder, remembering Sammy's lack of a biology education.
"I wonder if he needs some hygiene products?" Bridgit looked after him in concern, having a similar educational background to that of Sammy.
"Enough of your high school semantics! Back to the task at hand." Snape prodded the topic with sharp, pointy sticks.
"So I'll take it as a yes, Ms. Hellstorm." Professor Summersong took her by the arm and started dragging her back towards the school.
"To the defense against the dark arts room! It's the only room with a crystal ball other than Trelawney's!" Bridgit shouted.
"No way we're going back there." Snape agreed.
As a single untalking unit, the five of them made their way to the defense against the dark arts room. Once there, all were distracted by the pervasive whining of Snape.
"Your room has windows? That lead to light and salvation?" He reached out longingly to touch the transparent panes of glass.
"Yes, but your room has a wonderful assortment of pickled things in jars." Summersong smiled sweetly, offering small consolation.
"And your chair," He continued, "it swivels and it's padded. All I have is a wooden stool. So cold. I hate everyone."
"That's right, turn that frown upside down." Professor Summersong encouraged him, clearly not listening as she searched for a scrap of red cloth and her crystal ball.
"Don't be sad, Snape!" Bridgit implored her least favorite teacher.
"That's professor." He hissed.
"I need some red cloth. Does anyone have any ideas?" Summersong called out.
"My corset back in my room is red. Well, it has yellow on it too, but it's mostly red!" Bridgit's face lit up.
"How about your bandana? You know, the one you're wearing right now?" Sammy suggested.
"Oh yeah!" She took it off. "How's this?"
"That will work fine! Thanks, Miss Firecatcher."
"Don't sugar coat it Tigerlily. The sooner she realizes that she's useless the less crushing the realization will actually be." Snape cut in to truthfully surmise Bridgit's mental abilities.
"Well at least she's not hideous." Sammy glared coolly at her social superior.
"Fifty points from Ravenclaw. Why was it I agreed to have you here again?" Snape wondered aloud.
"Can someone help me move this body?" Trelawney's voice drifted down the hallway.
Snape's eyes widened. He quickly slammed the classroom door shut and locked it tight. No more Trelawney for him. Not ever.
"Okay, we're ready to begin." Professor Summersong handed the items to Sammy, who placed them on top of a student workbench. There were no fancy divination tables here.
"I think I pretty much remember what to do." Sammy muttered to herself.
"I am brimming with confidence. One idiot's guess is better than an alcoholic's knowing." Snape reluctantly handed out his acid-flavored compliment.
"Everyone join hands to form the sharing circle-"
"That's actually what it's called?" Snape interrupted Sammy.
"Hey, I didn't name it." Sammy said in her defense. "Anyway, join hands and- ugh! Who feels like slime?"
"Twenty points from Ravenclaw and another twenty if you don't hurry it up. I have papers to grade."
"How long could it possibly take to fail everyone?" Cora demanded.
"Longer than you'd think." Summersong answered.
"Hey! I was expecting a decent grade from your class. I actually try in that one…sort of." Cora objected.
"Sorry dear."
"So, hands! Check! Okay. We here summon thee, Godric Gryffindor to the sharing circle to talk amongst the living."
"Wow. Trelawney really managed to draw that one out." Cora muttered.
A green light extended from the top of the crystal ball. After a few moments of silence, they were rewarded with the figure of Godric Gryffindor rising from the glass instead of the shrill operator's voice.
"Who summons me from the land of bread and milk and honey and flowers?" He demanded in a powerful voice.
"Sammy does." Bridgit gestured towards Sammy with her head.
"Thanks Bridgit." Sammy died a little inside.
"What do you want?"
"We need to know the truth of what happened to little Staniel GQ Slytherin so that we can help his tortured soul pass on. It's very selfless, really." Cora explained.
"Ah, so I see Staniel has still been unable to find rest." There was a great sadness in the man's voice.
"Tell us the truth. The story he gave was so lacking in…sense." Summersong implored him.
"Very well. The tale I impart to you is a heavy one indeed." He prepared to tell his story.
Peeves: A Tale of Actualness
'Staniel was a typical lad of ten. Hyper, immature and a basket case. We all liked his little brother, Glennifer, better. Since he was close to coming of age, Staniel had been trying to gain his father's attention and approval, a natural stage for this point in his life. Unfortunately, Slytherin had been broken up by his wife's death by vulture attack and so had buried himself in his life's work, like so many before him and so many after shall do when confronted by pain. He was often gone on archaeological digs in other countries and the children were left in the care of myself, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff.
On the day in question, Glennifer was riding a toy broom around the house while Staniel was sitting quietly in a corner reading a book about ancient wizard civilizations in Rome. Suddenly, the quiet in the house was broken by the screams of little Glennifer. He had tumbled from his broom in the dining hall and broken his arm. The three of us rushed to his side to see what was the matter. All three of us tried to console and heal him, as Glennifer was very upset. Unbeknownst to us, Staniel, in frustration, had gone to find something to entertain himself with in a quieter wing of the estate. Unfortunately Helga had neglected to lock the door of Salazar's study after her ritualistic dusting of the place. The room contained dangerous and rare archaeological artifacts, which is why Salazar never failed to keep it locked. We assumed that the forbidden nature of the room is what drew Staniel to it.
Likely curious about the things he had seen in his book, Staniel was drawn to a clay vessel. He was just a small boy then and hadn't the necessary means to distinguish a Roman funeral pot from an Egyptian Soul-Stealing pot. They were shaped very similarly with only minute differences, so when he found it in his father's study, he picked it up and opened it.
A strange feeling ran through the air of the manor, although at the time we had no idea what it could have been. We fixed little Glennifer's arm and gave him a potion so that he could take a restful nap. Mere moments after we had set the lad to rest, we heard strange voices and screams from the west wing. It was not one of our better babysitting days.
Running into the study, we found Staniel wracked on the floor in agony, clutching his own head.
"What's happened, Staniel?" Hufflepuff cried.
"Stay back!" Ravenclaw prevented Hufflepuff from approaching the boy. "He has opened the Egyptian Soul-Stealing pot and has taken all of the doomed souls from within into his own being!"
"Dear God! They must be tearing his mind apart. No one can handle having hundreds of minds in their body, all fighting for dominance." I shouted.
"We must exorcise them right away!" Hufflepuff withdrew her wand in the blink of an eye.
"No!" Ravenclaw stopped her yet again. "Are you mad? You'll kill the boy! That's the trap of this ancient device. It sets the souls inside into the body of the person who opens it. The souls then attach to the person's own soul so when they are exorcised, they take the person's soul out with them. To exorcise him is to sentence him to death!"
"What can we do?" Hufflepuff demanded, clearly distraught.
"Aghhhhhhh!" Staniel continued to scream in a most blood-curdling way as his mind was torn apart.
"We have to do something! We can't leave him like this. It's hell for him!" Ravenclaw shouted.
"Stay back!" Staniel's body screamed. "Don't touch me!"
"Well, what of the pot? Should we destroy it?" I suggested.
"I don't know what would happen if we did that." Ravenclaw admitted.
"It's a better option than what we know will kill him." Hufflepuff looked at the boy in sadness.
"We must do it!" I decided, since I was strictly a man of action. "There's no other way."
I headed for the pot, but Staniel suddenly leapt to his feet and lunged at me, his hands coursing with a strange, unearthly energy.
"ARGH!" I screamed as the energy seared my flesh.
I managed to wrench myself away from that inhuman grip and tumbled to the ground in shock.
"Godric!" Ravenclaw shouted.
"Stay away from my pot!" Staniel's vessel screamed.
By giving the many spirits a single enemy to unite against, order had somewhat come to Staniel's being. Unfortunately, that order came from all of them trying to kill us. Staniel attacked us with a ferocity that none of us had ever experienced before. For all our magic we were useless against the rage of the soul pot. Beaten and bloody, we saw little other option than to resort to the unthinkable.
"Staniel, please!" Hufflepuff begged of him in a last attempt to save his soul. "Take control of the swarm! Stop this madness and come back to us. Your father loves you and wants you to come back!"
Her attempts were valiant if not stupid and useless. Staniel lifted her from the ground and threw her against the wall. She bounced heavily and landed hard on top of the Soul pot, smashing it. A ghastly scream of a thousand voices filled the house. It was a good thing we'd put Glennifer to sleep. That kind of thing can traumatize a kid. Thousands of souls poured from Staniel's mouth and dissipated into the air as they were set free. We thought we'd done it, but alas, we were mistaken. For it was true that no human could bear having hundreds of souls in their body and Staniel was no exception. His mind had been ravaged and the shock was too much for his mortal coil to bear. He collapsed to the ground, dead.
It was virtually impossible to broach such a subject with Salazar. Thankfully, he started the conversation.
"What the hell happened to you guys? Are you alright?" He asked when he returned later that evening, seeing our bloody forms.
"My friend, a horrible thing has happened." I sadly imparted to him the tale of his son's demise. "You really should put better locks on those things." I added.
In hindsight, perhaps I should have been more sensitive.
"No! How could this happen?" Salazar demanded, eyes flaming. "How could you let this happen to my son? There are three of you! THREE! You had TWO children to take care of. What of Glennifer? Is he dead too?"
"He's okay. He broke his arm, but we fixed it." Hufflepuff nervously offered the truth.
"Staniel…" Salazar lifted his son's body into his arms.
After a brief moment of mourning, he put his son down and stood to face us, his eyes oddly hard.
"Get out of my house." He hissed.
"Salazar-"
"GET OUT! GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!" He roared, shoving us out the door. "I will find a way – some way, somehow – to take my revenge on you."
Then he slammed the door and we never saw him again.
Until Monday. I tell you, working with him after that was kind of awkward.'
"That's so sad." Bridgit's eyes watered. "Poor Staniel. He only wanted to be loved."
"Too bad he was a moron." Cora muttered.
"That is quite different from what we heard." Professor Summersong admitted.
"I would imagine that his mind is no longer so complete." Gryffindor surmised.
"He told us that you burned him alive in a country burning coven and that the four of you ate him." Snape gave Peeves' own version of the story.
"What? That's disgusting! Stupid little nit." Gryffindor growled.
"Is that all we need to know?" Sammy asked.
Everyone else nodded.
"Very well. Then we dismiss you, Godric Gryffindor. Return to the abyss from whence you came."
"You know, it's not that bad!" Gryffindor objected as his visage was pulled back into the crystal ball.
Once it had faded, everyone released their hands as though they were playing hot potato.
"I never want to do that again." Sammy shuddered.
"But we have to!" Bridgit insisted.
"What?"
"I agree. What are you talking about?" Snape added.
"The ending! For the story." She offered. More blank looks. "We need to summon the soul of Salazar Slytherin. That's how the story has to end! The trouble was caused by a misunderstanding between father and son! If we can make Peeves meet with his father and allow them to talk and reconcile, the hole in Peeves' heart will be filled in and he can finally pass on to the other side." Bridgit explained.
"Well…I guess that could work. Although I'm not sure how having one's mind destroyed has anything to do with a father and son dispute." Professor Summersong thought to herself.
"It's not like we have a better plan." Cora pointed out the obvious. "Besides, Peeves is convinced that his crazy version of events actually happened and there's no way he'd believe us if we told him the truth, so this may be his only chance at finding peace or whatever."
"No better plan than Bridgit's…how sad is that?" Sammy shook her head.
"Very well then. We shall summon Slytherin and he and Peeves shall have a little tête-à-tête. Then we shall commence with the failing." Snape summed up their hasty plan.
They prepared themselves for the arduous task of capturing Peeves and getting him to go somewhere he didn't want to. It was not going to be an easy exorcism, that much was certain.