Entry for the "Halloween Event: Costume Party Competition" - character: Severus Snape ; costume: Ghost

Entry for the "Halloween Collection Competition" - prompt: 17. (being) Ghost

Severus Snape could not say that he enjoyed being a ghost as much as one could think.

Many people who had been his students during his mortal life and had come back to Hogwarts for some reason, crossing his path there, had told him that they believed him being a ghost could only have improved his possibilities to scare students.

How little they knew the through about his daily life as one of the spirits at Hogwarts.

Time had shown that it was harder to frighten First Years when you could not use billowing clothes for a bat-like entrance to underline the dangerous expression on your face.

In fact, the students were not scared of him at all, something that bothered him more than he wanted it to.

His days had become rather dull in death – being non-corporal, he could literally do nothing but float through some walls or students at random. No potion brewing in his private lab, that had been occupied by some other incompetent idiot for several years now. No reading, except for these rare occasions somebody left a book or Daily Prophet lying open on a table.

Being a ghost was no fun at all, especially when one of the other spirits, or better, Moaning Myrtle, who was still desperately searching for a partner, annoyed him with things he was just not interested in.

How he wished he had not been afraid of dying back then... He could have died and went on to wherever dead people went. But no, instead he had to sit out his afterlife with a bunch of idiotic ghosts. Hell, how he hated this.

At first, he had become rather depressed about it and for some time, he had feared that he could just move into Myrtles bathroom and hang around with her in some toilet, ranting about how horrible afterlife was...

But then, on one evening on which he had felt especially frustrated, he had remembered something that had always lifted up his spirits while he was still alive and he had seen a streak of hope on the horizon.

oOo

"I can't believe they gave you an actual teaching post," Severus mocked while gliding through the wall of the Defense Against the Dark Arts office. "Seems like parents don't want their children to learn anything."

Rolanda Hooch glared at him from behind her desk, dark circles around her golden eyes and her blonde hair a mess, as if she had run her hands through it a thousand times. Spots of black ink were splattered over her blouse and a stack of unmarked essays was lying in front of her.
"Oh, shut up already."

"You look like you have problems... you know, it would be totally fine to admit that this is more than you are able to handle."

He grinned at the woman who rolled her eyes and released a sigh.

"If you weren't already dead, I would kill you now for being such an arrogant git," she stated dryly while she wrote an "Acceptable" underneath the essay she had been reading – the peak of her quill left a small hole in the parchment because she had pressed it down so hard. Severus could hardly cover up his amusement as he looked over her shoulder at the marked essay and said:"This looks more like a "Poor" to me. You are too nice."

And as she actually grabbed her ink-pot and threw it through him, causing it to shatter on the wall behind him, he had to admit that some things were nearly more fun when you were a ghost – teasing a stressed Rolanda Hooch was definitely one of them.