CHAPTER 41: THE SLIM SHADOW STRIKES
The sky was sunny and bright. Somewhere, somebody was playing a sensual tune on a saxophone.
"From the day I first laid eyes on you," James whispered. "I just haven't been able to push you out of my mind. I know, I know… You think I'm too young. But age is just a number. When I look at you I actually… see myself. I'm not as innocent as you think, in fact, when I see that sweet round bottom of yours I just want to run my hands along those firm curves-"
"Please stop talking to Margie Perergine's trophy like that," said Sirius.
They were in the trophy wing again.
"It's not Margie Peregrine's trophy, it's all our trophy. Isn't that right, baby?"
"It says Margie Peregrine on it."
"That's because they can't fit all our names there! Ok they could fit all our names there easily because it is that big but they are lazy. Sssh, sweetie, we will ditch him, in due time, it will be just us."
"We have to go," said Sirius. "And prepare that presentation for tomorrow. We should probably come up with something presentable even though there is no point to it."
"Oh yeah. Why are we bothering again?"
Because they did not have the balls to tell McGonagall she could suck it, that was why.
James's eyes went back to the trophy. His hands went back to the protective glass.
"Every time I see you I want to hold you tight and press my lips against you and explore you from the inside!"
Sirius had to pull him away from there.
"You shouldn't be back there! You should be with me! LET'S ELOPE TOGETHER!"
The library was busier than ever. Remus was sneaking books back in the reservation cart while Miss Owl was engaged in a flirty conversation with Powers.
"How's tonight, in your chamber?"
"Oh behave!" Powers chuckled, then panicked. "No! No! My chamber isn't very good, you see I just got everything under control."
"What did you get under control?"
"Nothing, Beathag baby! Well… It's the timer. It's been acting up and… The fabric of time has been damaged. There's a small hole in it, that is situated in my chamber right now. I do have it covered! But a void creature managed to escape and I need to find a way to return it there. So, your place?"
Professor Powers's office was guarded by Lord Godric's daughter Marion, sporting her brother's robes and wielding the legendary Arrow of Light that was said to destroy black magic in all its forms. Pet griffin by her side.
"Ok master hacker, get to it," said James.
He meant Sirius, but it was Remus who got to it.
"Extra large."
The painting moved aside.
"How did you know the password?" Sirius asked.
"Extra large is the universal password to every portrait guard here. Dumbledore told me about it."
"Dumbledore told you what the universal password is?"
"He told me there was a universal password. And that he had it written down somewhere."
They stepped into the room. The portrait guard closed behind them.
The question was now how they accessed his private chamber.
"Extra large," James went around saying. "Extra large. Extra large."
"I wonder how long Dumbledore will trust you," said Sirius.
"He never said I wasn't allowed to look for it," said Remus.
"Did he also never say you're not allowed to observe when he's not in his room?"
"Look. He's just not very secretive or obsessed with keeping things behind locks. He has nothing to hide."
"'Nothing to hide'? Agree to disagree."
James was still going around saying extra large to things.
"Extra large, extra large…"
A pair of pink spotted fluffy car décor balls hung on the wall. Remus cupped them.
"Cough," he said, then coughed twice.
The wall opened up a door-wide gap, leading to his private chamber.
The room was in every way designed to inspire a particular kind of mood. The bedsheets on the spinning heart-water bed were pink and purple, the lighting was a dim red and all the board games were for adults only except the twister mat.
"Twister!" James got down on the mat and spun the arrow. "Right hand on red. Oh no I fell over!"
Sirius spun the thing.
"Left foot on blue. Ok your turn. We're playing twister."
Remus turned away from the lava lamp.
"Did you see the lava lamp?"
"Wow! A lava lamp!"
James went to admire the lava lamp.
"I've always wanted a lava lamp."
Sirius joined them at the lamp.
"Cool lamp."
"You should probably not play more twister," said Remus.
"Yeah it's boring."
"I think the hole in the cosmic fabric is under that mat."
Sirius went back to the mat and began to pull at it. It was stuck to the mat.
"He sewed it to the floor!"
"That must be why he wanted to borrow the stitcher," said James.
"When was that?"
"When he asked to borrow the stitcher."
"What were you doing with it?"
FLASHBACK TO THE TROPHY CEREMONY
Margie Peregrine and Ursula Vulture stood on a table waiting to receive their gold and silver trophy. James was under that table. He stole the silver trophy, stitched: LOO-HOO-SEHER on it, then returned it.
END FLASHBACK
Sirius spun the arrow.
"Right hand on red!"
His hand went on a numbered circle marked with the word: hand.
"Oh I do think I see now! Right foot on yellow…"
"Did you see what was in the lava lamp?" Remus asked.
"Yeah lava."
"Was it lava? Or was it: THE GLOOP?"
He had a book with a page open that said: THE GLOOP.
"What's the gloop? What is that book?"
"I found the abyssal grimoire on that desk there. I think the escaped void creature could be the gloop, and that it is inside the lava lamp now. He must have made some kind of binding mojo lava lamp."
The gloop just glooped around in the lamp water, like a piece of blood red gloop.
"I think there was a gloop on Spells & Curses once," said James. "A gloop was unleashed by the evil necromancer and it just went around glooping and turning people into gloops."
"That's not what the gloop does."
"Then what does it do?"
"It gloops around and steals people's faces."
After a private fantasy, Sirius grabbed the lamp.
"Ok let's go with the gloop!"
"Wait a tick," said James.
In his fantasy, McGonagall was talking in the Great Hall. Something came glooping down from the ceiling, onto her face. Everybody screamed and panicked.
End fantasy.
"Ok now we can go with the gloop. Does the book say how you defeat the gloop?"
"To drive back a void creature to the void, you have to channel all your mojo and direct it at the gloop," said Remus.
"That is weird that Powers hasn't done that, he eats so much mojo berries."
"That's the problem. When you time travel a lot, it makes the mojo wear very thin. His mojo is very weak. You can't fix that with mojo berries."
"My mojo is strong I bet! Is there a way to check that?"
"Yeah there's a test kit right over there."
James opened a wooden chest containing a crystal- the mojo crystal. He held it in his hand. It glowed bright, meaning his mojo was well and intact.
"Are you just going to walk out with that, right under Lady Marion's nose?" Remus asked.
"Lady Marion isn't going to rat on us, she's our patron! Right? That's got to be against some code."
"What if," said Sirius, "we could make it seem like a Slim Shadow did it."
"Jesus Christ," said James, "THERE NEVER WAS A SLIM SHADOW!"
"Legend says the Slim Shadow will leave an ambigram of its name," said Remus. "But nobody has ever seen such an ambigram."
"Would you know how to write such an ambigram?"
"Yeah my stitcher pen does ambigrams."
The next morning McGonagall announced, that Powers wanted to make an announcement.
"Smashing!" he said when he showed up to make his announcement. "Um… yeah! So there's been an incident. I have lost my lava lamp. If you see a lava lamp with something blood red glooping inside it, it is mine. It looks like a normal lava lamp but at the bottom it has this safe knob with numbers. It is to keep the gloop in. I thank you."
James and Sirius were under the table trying to open the lava lamp.
"He said there's a safe knob with numbers," said Sirius.
They looked under the lava lamp, and found the safe knob.
"My money is that the number is 1969!" said James. "Because 69 is a rude number!"
"That's what I was going to suggest!"
They tried it, and lo, it was correct.
"Yess!" they said and looked inside the hollow lava lamp.
It was empty. And when they looked at the lamp from the outside, it was also empty.
"It escaped!" James whispered.
They looked around. Saw no sign of it anywhere.
"Today we will have some visitors," said McGonagall. "A group of children from the nursery will be given a tour along with the elderly from the old folks home."
Later in the afternoon, during a short recess between classes.
"Nobody appears to have lost their face," said Sirius as they were walking along, looking for the gloop.
"It would have gone for our faces first if we let it out," said James. "Which must mean it wasn't us."
"Come on I wanted those points! It's got to be somewhere!"
A bunch of five year olds came walking by, each with a kitten or puppy, fronted by their teacher and joined by the elderly from Sunset Home. McGonagall was giving them the guided tour.
"This vase here is the only remaining vase from Lady Helga's original collection of vases that she ordered from a Greek vase maker. That is supposed to be her favourite badger. Her badger would get in the vases and that's how they broke. So that is very interesting that you give the children kittens and puppies."
"It is very good for their development according to studies from Ottawand," replied Miss Honeybee from the Fairy Ring Nursery. "Our collaboration with the shelters is very unique."
"What if a child is allergic?"
"Then we give that child a lamb."
A lamb sneezed.
"What do we have now?" James asked.
"PE," Sirius replied.
"Awesome! Everybody loves PE! I hope we're playing dodge ball!"
The group of children and elderly went about their way, and so did the chaps.
Then several voices screamed in such a way, you would think they had just seen The Gloop.
The scene of distress was at the foot of the telescope tower.
"What's going on?" James asked, looking wildly around. "Where is The Gloop?"
"The Gloop?" said a distressed Consertina Weepingbell. "It is no gloop!"
"If it's not the gloop, then what is it?"
Everybody turned towards a mysterious symbol on the wall. The symbol was an ambigram of the word: SLIM SHADOW.
"We were all just heading to astrology class when we saw that!" said Fletcher, distressed.
"I heard old Daisy!" said Susan Primrose. "It was like I was at home at the farm, and our cow Daisy was right next to me!"
"I heard my cat Timothy!" said Mona Weed.
Miss Ball the astrology teacher turned up to see what the hubbub was about.
"I saw the shadow of a beautiful woman in the periphery of my eyes," said Phil.
"And when Beau wrote Slim Shadow right there," said Fletcher, "all the lights went out for all of us! And when it came back, it was gone, and the ambigram was over there!"
"For real?" said James.
"Nobody at Hogwarts is that beautiful," said Phil.
"What's going on here?" Miss Ball asked.
"We saw the Slim Shadow!" said Roy.
"The Slim Shadow? But there is no such thing as the Slim Shadow. I looked it up. There is not a page about it."
"Then you didn't spell it right Miss Ball because there is, too, a page about it if you spell it right."
"Alright, alright. Maybe you saw one, maybe you didn't. But it does not appear to be here now. So, shall we go up then?"
Then it so happened professor Powers turned up.
"Hello Esmeralda baby! You are looking smashing! Do I make you randy baby? Do I? Oh behave! So did I hear somebody mention the slim shadow?"
"That was just a joke that was going around before a lot," said Miss Ball. "I honestly thought it was dead. I don't get boomer humour."
"The Slim Shadow is not dead, Miss Ball!"
"I meant the joke."
"The Slim Shadow is no joke, Miss Ball!"
"It isn't?"
"The Slim Shadow can't have been here! It would have devoured you all! It is but one symbol that can keep you safe from it. Let me show you in my Abyssal Grimoire here."
He opened up The Abyssal Grimoire. All the kids searched themselves, for crown corks with a symbol on them.
"You were all protected then" Powers exclaimed. "Well that's good!"
"But that thing," said Miss Ball, "In that page, that is called the...Umnum?"
"This creature of the void has many names. Some call it the Mnm, others call it the Slim Shadow.
I didn't know about it until very recently either. Then I was reading the Abyssal Grimoire and there it was! It's not the first time I've failed to close a hole in the cosmic fabric… It's not the worst of void creatures! If the entropy slug got out… But anyway. The name was a different one but the description was just like it- it imitates sound, its shadow can take various shapes and spotting one means death."
"Does it want to harm us?"
"Oh you bet it does! The Slim Shadow will find some place to make its home and once it has you there it will absorb you and then all that is left of you is your dead, limp shadow."
An eerie mystery voice went: Quid pro quo, Mr Powers!
"Lord Evil! I have been looking for Lord Evil forever!"
But it wasn't Lord Evil, it was The Slim Shadow imitating Lord Evil. The shadows of one hundred ravens swept over the wall, then up the stairwell, to the telescope tower. Somebody's mum shouted from way away, that they had made a pie.
"It's gone to the telescope tower!" said Rora.
"But all the children are up there!" said Miss Ball. "With their kittens and puppies and the elderly!"
"Oh no!" said Roy. "Not the kittens!"
Miss Ball grabbed professor Powers.
"Do something! Stop it!"
"I can't, Esmeralda!"
"Why not?"
"Because the only way to make the Slim Shadow show itself is to whistle and I can't whistle!"
"Oh God! Those poor innocent kittens!"
James and Sirius ran up the stairwell and threw themselves at the door a couple of times and when that didn't work like in the movies they just opened it.
The children were looking around in awe, wondering where the ice cream van was, that was playing the melody.
"What's going on?" Miss Honeybee asked.
"I don't know," said McGonagall. "Only Robbie Purrins would meow like that. What are you two doing in here?"
"Uhhh…"
The light began to flicker. A big black shadow crept up the wall. It wasn't exactly like a shadow, but like a layer of oil. It came up like a huge wave, about to fold over them all, and bake them into itself.
"Look away!" said McGonagall. "Spotting one means death!"
Miss Honeybee gathered the children around her, eyes down.
James and Sirius began to whistle. A lot. Eyes down.
But during a quiet couple of minutes they could not help but peek. When they saw that the Slim Shadow was still there they thought they were dead! It began to twitch and jerk and they could not look away!
The Slim Shadow contorted, trembled and made weird sounds as it shifted into a cross between an exotic jungle worm and a camel.
"Nooo," it hissed. "NOOO!"
Then it very much died.