The Adventures of Icarus, the Invisible Poltergeist

The Adventures of Icarus, the Invisible Poltergeist

Part the First: In Which I Am an Evil Genius

This was all James Potter’s fault. Most things were, in those days.

James had never shown any particular interest in Muggle Studies until the middle of our fifth year, which was also when he developed an interest in a certain Miss Evans. He borrowed three years’ worth of textbooks from the school library, browbeat everybody he knew who had taken the class into tutoring him, and somehow charmed the examiners into allowing him to sit for the Muggle Studies O.W.L. Being a genius, he passed with flying colors and enrolled in the N.E.W.T.-level class at the beginning of our sixth year. Being the sort of genius who was also a complete idiot a fair bit of the time, he tried to impress Lily with his new expertise.

A few weeks after the beginning of term, he sat down next to her in the Gryffindor common room and asked without any preamble, “Doesn’t your Prime Minister get tired of having nothing to eat but elketricity and carrots?”

I slid down lower in the armchair where I was sitting, hid behind my Astronomy homework, and strained to catch the rest of the conversation. Peter Pettigrew and I, who were casual friends of Lily’s, had kept up a steady stream of pro-James propaganda over the summer. We had done our work so successfully that she occasionally deigned to have a conversation with him these days, but after that James was on his own, and he usually managed to screw things up on a massively entertaining scale.

“Where,” Lily asked coolly but civilly, “did you get that idea?”

“We learned in class today about how the Muggle Prime Minister lives inside of the veletishion, and everything in there feeds on the elketricity that comes through the wires.”

“Television,” Lily corrected him absently. “And – Never mind.” She stopped short, no doubt realizing that further corrections would put a premature end to a prime source of amusement. “And the carrots?” she inquired with an admirable level of gravity. “Where do they come in?”

“Well, the vele ... er, television is part rabbit, isn’t it? Professor O’Malley said it had rabbit ears.”

Lily continued to maintain an admirable level of gravity. I, on the other hand, was not quite able to stifle a snicker.

James walked up to my chair and tried to wrest the Astronomy textbook out of my hands. “What are you laughing at, Moony?”

“Nothing. I just, er, think it’s amusing how one of the moons of Saturn orbits in a different direction from the others,” I said, picking a random fact from the textbook and trying to look innocent.

Unfortunately, James was familiar with my Innocent Face by now. “I’ve just made a fool of myself again, haven’t I? Tell me what I said wrong.”

“All right, I’ll tell you, but on one condition. You have to let me borrow your Invisibility Cloak and sit in on the class next time you have Muggle Studies.” I had never taken the subject myself; Ancient Runes and Care of Magical Creatures were more in line with my interests, and as I lacked my friends’ ability to memorize a page at a glance, I had never felt the urge to pile on an insane number of electives. This was the first time I’d had any indication that I was missing something important.

“Deal,” said James. “But you have to tell me everything you know about television ... Half-Blood Boy.”

I was, in fact, the sort of half-blood who had two magical parents, and the only Muggle relative I was particularly close to was my Gran Caroline, who was not exactly a typical representative of her culture. She had been living in sin with a wizard for more than twenty years, she usually went around in witch’s robes because she said they were more comfortable than dresses, and she could put away enough Ogden’s Old Firewhiskey to drink most wizards under the table. She did, however, own a television, and I was well aware that there weren’t any Prime Ministers inside it.

I shared with James as much technical information as I knew, which is to say, not much.

“A plug is this thingy with prongs that you push into a wall –”

“You shove a rack of antlers into a wall?” (James had had deer on the brain ever since he figured out how to turn into one.)

“No, not that kind of prongs...” After a while I gave up on the technical information and told him about Monty Python. He seemed to appreciate that part more.

James was as good as his word, and the following week I sat in on Muggle Studies under the Invisibility Cloak.

This course was widely reputed to be a soft option, especially for Muggle-born students, and most of the sixth-years were busy whispering and passing notes. Peter was drawing caricatures of his classmates in the margins of his textbook; Sirius, who had signed up for the class for the sole purpose of annoying his relatives, was leaning back in his chair looking bored. In fact, the only person other than James who appeared to be taking the class at all seriously was Sirius’ weird cousin Bellatrix, who sat ramrod-straight in the front row, clutching a notebook with “KNOW THINE ENEMY” written on the front cover in four-inch-high red letters.

Professor O’Malley entered the classroom, carrying an object draped in an immaculate white cloth. It looked about the size and shape of a juice pitcher, but he handled it with the air of one bearing the Holy Grail. “I have a special treat for us today,” he announced. “At great difficulty and expense, I have procured a precious specimen of one of the rarest of Muggle artifacts, one that has no precise analogue in the wizarding world, although perhaps the best way to describe it would be to say that it is a debased variety of cauldron...” He lectured on the history of cauldrons for about ten minutes, during the course of which about half the class fell asleep, and then reached forward with a hand that trembled slightly and an attitude of great reverence. The students who were still awake watched breathlessly as he removed the pall of white samite and unveiled:

A blender.

Must ... not ... make ... a ... sound. I stuffed my knuckles into my mouth and tried not to look at the Muggle-born students in the room, who were having quiet hysterics.

“Sir?” asked James, looking up from the notes he had been scribbling earnestly. “Why does the Muggle cauldron have a hat?”

Professor O’Malley explained that the hat in question was actually a lid, and that it was a safety device. The Muggle cauldron was used for making particularly volatile potions, one of which – known as a “Cuervo margarita” – had been known to incapacitate fully grown wizards.

I snorted involuntarily. Several students’ heads turned toward the apparently empty chair where I was sitting. I decided that while my foray into Muggle Studies had been both fun and educational, it was time to make a quick getaway before I got into trouble. Unfortunately, as I was trying to edge quietly out of the room, I tripped over a chair.

“Peeves?” asked Professor O’Malley, polishing his spectacles and squinting at my corner of the room. “Is that you? I command you to show yourself!”

As troublesome as Peeves could be, I’d never known him to disobey a direct order from a professor. I thought fast. “Nehewww poltergeiiihiiist,” I intoned in my eeriest voice. “Inviiihisible one.”

“Invisible poltergeist?” O’Malley peered at my corner even more intently. “What is your name? Where did you come from? Why are you interrupting my class?”

I couldn’t think of any satisfactory answers to these questions off the top of my head, so I grabbed a handful of chalk and threw it at the opposite wall. While everybody was still staring at the chalk instead of the place it had been thrown from, I took off running and slammed the door shut behind me with a poltergeistly bang.

Back in Gryffindor Tower, I curled up in bed with a packet of Chocolate Frogs and a paperback novel entitled Murder by Manticore. Having the dormitory all to myself was a rare luxury, and I intended to savor it. I had enjoyed only a few minutes of solitude, however, when Sirius burst into the room, grabbed me by the shoulders, and shouted, “You ... are ... an ... Evil ... Genius!”

Coming from the infamous Mr. Padfoot, this was high praise indeed. “I do try,” I said modestly.

“What are we going to have him get up to next?” asked James, who had been right behind Sirius.

“Next?” I asked, wondering what I had unleashed on an unsuspecting world.

“Well, of course!” said James. “Everybody in class was talking about what the invisible poltergeist was going to do next. He has a public now. We can’t disappoint them.”

Sirius nodded gravely. “This could be the biggest thing since the time we slipped the Polka-Dot Potion into the pumpkin juice at the Slytherin table.”

Peter stumbled into the dormitory, slightly out of breath. “Everybody wanted to know what the poltergeist’s name was,” he said. “What should I tell them?

“We’ll call him Ibrahim,” said James. “Ibrahim the Invisible.”

“He’s a Muslim poltergeist?” asked Peter.

“Why not? I think there should be cultural diversity among poltergeists.”

“Does he have to fall down and face Mecca five times a day?” asked Sirius. “Because that would be a really good opportunity for Peeves to goose him.”

“Oh. Good point. We’ll call him Icarus.”

I looked up from Murder by Manticore and frowned. “Wasn’t Icarus that Greek bloke who flew too close to the sun and drowned?”

“Yeah. So?”

“So you need to be careful about those symbolic-type names,” I said. “Sometimes they come back to bite you in the arse. Just trust me on this one.”

Peter looked intrigued. “You never told us the werewolf bit you in the arse.”

I sighed. “He didn’t, he bit me in the foot. I was speaking metaphorically. But anyway, he’s my invisible poltergeist, and I think he should have a nice, pleasant, normal name. Like ... I don’t know, Bob.”

“We can’t call him Bob the Invisible,” said Sirius positively.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because ghosts are supposed to have alliterative names.” Sirius ticked them off. “Peeves the Poltergeist, the Fat Friar, the Bloody Baron, Nearly Headless Nick, Moaning Myrtle. It’s a tradition. You can’t go against tradition.”

“Professor Binns,” I said.

“The other ghosts call him Ho-Hum Harold. Nick told me.”

“And there aren’t any normal names that begin with I,” James concluded triumphantly, “so it may as well be Icarus.”

Around three o’clock in the morning, I remembered about the Grey Lady. I hate it when that happens.

Part the Second: In Which Mr. Padfoot Meets the Woman of His Dreams, Mr. Prongs and Mr. Wormtail Go into Business, and Miss Evans is Not Amused

Rumors about the invisible poltergeist spread rapidly through the castle, delighting a few of the first-years but dismaying almost everybody else. Peeves, in particular, resented this encroachment upon his territory. He launched into a display not unlike that of a male peacock, only with pranks instead of tail feathers, and it became almost impossible to walk down the corridor without getting a bottle of ink dumped on your head, or a stack of books knocked out of your arms, or a banana peel dropped under your foot. (Subtlety, as Nearly Headless Nick was fond of saying, had never been one of Peeves’ strong points.)

Icarus the Invisible kept up a steady stream of mischief as well, but his style was less flashy and more devious. He did things like booby-trapping the stone door that led to the Slytherin common room so that it played “Never Badger the Badger” every time somebody passed through it. This was the Hufflepuff fight song and, in the opinion of its originator (me), a particularly brilliant touch, as it seemed guaranteed to divert suspicion from us.

The Fat Friar commented that he rather liked this young Icarus chap, but none of the other ghosts seemed especially pleased with the new arrival. The Bloody Baron spent his days stalking up and down the halls, glowering in random directions in the hope of striking the fear of Merlin into his invisible rival. Even our own Nearly Headless Nick cornered James and me one evening to remonstrate with us.

Nick coughed. “I do not mean to be at all impolitic, young gentlemen, but I cannot help observing that conditions in the castle have become rather inhospitable. May I take the liberty of suggesting that you desist from your present course of action –”

“What course of action?” I asked, trying to look wide-eyed and innocent and entirely unaware that Sirius and Peter were off wreaking havoc under the Invisibility Cloak at that very moment.

“You will excuse me, but when one hears that some, er, particularly unorthodox item, such as an invisible poltergeist, has been introduced into the castle, one tends to think of your names first.”

“I don’t know why our names should come into it at all,” said James. “It’s obviously a Hufflepuff poltergeist. You heard the song.”

“Forgive me, gentlemen, but you have been known to be somewhat devious in the past,” replied Nick, a silver smile playing about his lips. “Now, as I was saying – nothing wrong with a spot of youthful high spirits – why, I myself, back in the days of Merry King Edward, the fourth of that name – but I digress. What I mean to say is, navigating the halls has become most hazardous of late, and classes are being disrupted. In my opinion –”

But James, who had been waiting for the opportune moment to show off his new repertoire of Monty Python sketches, interrupted. “You don’t get to have an opinion! You’ve passed on! You are no more! You have ceased to be! You’ve expired and gone to meet your maker! You’re a stiff! Bereft of life, ye rest in peace! Your metabolic processes are now history! You’ve kicked the bucket, shuffled off your mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible! YOU ARE AN EX-KNIGHT!!!”

Nick, in his gentle, silvery way, looked distinctly put out.

“You’ll have to excuse my friend,” I said. “He doesn’t mean to be rude, he’s just discovered one of the finer manifestations of Muggle popular culture.”

Nick, a born diplomat, bowed and dropped the subject. Professor McGonagall took a more forthright approach to the situation. “There is no invisible poltergeist haunting this castle,” she said sternly at the beginning of our next Transfiguration class. “The next person who says so much as one word about this nonsense will forfeit ten House points.”

I didn’t even have to look at James and Sirius to know she had just made a grave mistake. They considered this sort of thing a challenge.

James managed to excuse himself from class by the simple expedient of Transfiguring one of the chairs into a hyena, and allowing it to bite him. (If you are wondering why he didn’t simply ask to go to the toilet, I can only refer you to my earlier remarks about geniuses who are complete idiots a fair bit of the time.) Sirius, the only one of the rest of us who had enough nerve to touch the hyena, made a brave attempt to hold it down while Peter and I did a rather half-baked job of turning it back into a chair. During the commotion caused by this operation, James slipped back into the room under cover of the cloak and started throwing erasers.

“Mr. Black!” snapped Professor McGonagall. “Come up to the front of the room and hand over your wand, please.”

Sirius obeyed. Everybody obeyed McGonagall when she looked like that. While she was dressing him down, James sneaked around to the other side of the classroom and dumped a goblet of ice water all over Drusilla Dearborn, the most annoying girl in our year.

Drusilla let out a shriek that made me wonder if she was part banshee, and Professor McGonagall went very red in the face. “Mr. Lupin and Mr. Pettigrew! Come up here!”

Meekly, we handed over our wands, took a seat at the front of the classroom, and were ordered to spend the rest of the class period writing “I will not cause a disturbance in class” two hundred times.

Just then, two things happened. A potted plant toward the back of the room levitated six feet in the air and started doing back flips, and the chair that had been a hyena bucked violently and snarled.

Professor McGonagall fixed the three of us with a glare that would have done a basilisk proud, but said nothing for a moment. She was obviously trying to work out how on earth we had managed to cause either of these events without our wands.

“Thinking of strip-searching us, Professor?” asked Sirius with a wicked grin.

There were a few muffled gasps and giggles from around the room. Even Sirius couldn’t get away with saying that. Could he?

McGonagall rested one hand on her hip and eyed him appraisingly. “In your dreams, Mr. Black,” she said. “In your wildest dreams.”

The classroom exploded.. I caught a stifled snort and a faint scuffling noise from the doorway as James made his exit, no doubt moments before giving his presence away by laughing. After that, all was quiet ...

Except, of course, for the Hyena Chair, which continued to get uppity every few minutes.

 

                                                            *          *          *

“I think I’m in love,” announced Sirius as we left the Transfiguration classroom with a week’s worth of detention and a whole new repertoire of stories. He waited a grand total of two seconds, and demanded, “Aren’t you going to ask me who I’m in love with?”

“All right,” said Peter dutifully. “Who are you in love with?”

“With Minerva.” Sirius sighed dreamily. “What a woman.”

To our surprise, it looked like Sirius – who was notoriously impervious to the feminine charms of anybody who was actually accessible – really meant it. He stepped back into the classroom to help Professor McGonagall clean up the wreckage, served his detentions with a broad grin on his face, and scrupulously avoided doing anything to further annoy our Head of House.

Most of the time McGonagall appeared to be blissfully unaware that she had made a conquest half the girls in the castle would have sold their souls to attract, but I caught her watching her new helper once with a certain twitch about her mouth that told me she knew exactly what the score was, and found the situation highly amusing.

Our Padfoot’s reformation was still in effect a few days later, which explains why James recruited Peter, instead of Sirius, as a partner in his new money-making scheme.

I didn’t know a thing about it until I caught them sitting at a table in the common room under a sign that read “GHOSTBUSTERS, LTD.” For only ten Knuts, they’d give you advice on which route to take to class if you wanted to avoid Peeves, plus their personal guarantee that Icarus the Invisible wouldn’t bother you.

“But, but that’s protection money,” I protested. “What you’re doing is practically racketeering! Do you have any idea how much trouble you could wind up in?”

“We’re only providing a service,” said James.

Peter nodded. “A legitimate service. There is a poltergeist in this castle, and he really does cause problems for a lot of people.”

“Yes,” I said, “and it’s our fault that he does.”

“Irrelevant and immaterial,” said James. “We aren’t telling Peeves to go around pranking everybody, he does that on his own. And we’re the ones with the Marauder’s Map, so we have information about his whereabouts that nobody else does. There’s nothing illegal about selling information.”

“There isn’t?” I asked dubiously.

“Of course not,” said Peter. “You’re the one who wants to be a professor, right? What do you think professors do, if it isn’t selling information?”

“That’s different,” I said. “The whole point of being a professor is to teach your students until they know everything you know and don’t have to be taught any more. You’re keeping a valuable source of information all to yourself so people will keep coming back to you.”

“All right then, what about the editor of the Daily Prophet?”

“What about him?”

“He has sources of information that he keeps to himself, doesn’t he? And he wants people to come back and buy a new paper every day, right?” Peter shook his head and clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “I’m surprised at you, Moony, accusing a perfectly respectable journalist of being a racketeer.”

I gave up. There was never any arguing with Peter; if he’d lived in ancient Greece, he would have been one of those Sophists who hung around the agora convincing you that your father was a dog. (Besides, they offered me a share of the profits, and I am nothing if not eminently corruptible.)

I pulled up a chair and joined them behind the table, and a few minutes later, Sirius wandered in looking pie-eyed after his latest detention and dropped down next to me. We were having a nice companionable evening of petty extortion when Trouble came storming into the Common Room. She had red hair and an adorable little first-year on either side of her.

“Just WHAT is the meaning of this, James Potter?” she demanded. “Lizzie and Johnny, here, say you took money from them for poltergeist insurance.”

“Well, what’s the problem?” asked James. “Icarus hasn’t attacked them, has he?”

“No, he certainly hasn’t, because HE DOESN’T EXIST! You MADE HIM UP and then EXPLOITED innocent children, and you ought to be ASHAMED of yourselves! You’re nothing but ... but a bunch of fraudists!” (Lily’s command of the English language always went straight downhill when she lost her temper, which was often.)

“You wound me, madam,” said James. “I assure you the poltergeist exists, and I am scandalized by your implication that our services are less than legitimate. When have you known our intentions to be anything but honorable?”

“What about that time you put all your mistakes from Potions class in fancy bottles and started selling them as perfume? HMMM?”

Peter shrugged. “Some of them smelled really good. No sense letting them go to waste. All our customers were satisfied ... until you ruined everything by confiscating them.”

Lily bristled. “For your information, I was doing my duty as a prefect – unlike SOME people I could mention!” (She gave me a look so pointed it could have drilled holes in rocks.) “It’s dangerous to go around putting defective potions in the hands of people who don’t even know what they are! I still don’t know what was in the one Fabian Prewett sent off as a Christmas present for his sister, but I’m sure it can’t have been anything good!”

“It was meant to be a Fertility Potion,” Peter admitted, “but I don’t think it would have actually worked, because I know it wasn’t supposed to smell like lilacs. Besides, I asked Fabian if his sister liked babies and he said yes, so no harm done.”

“NO HARM?” Lily turned a dangerous shade of red, and I remembered that she’d become quite impassioned about women’s rights when we were discussing the potential abuses of reproductive potions in class. I cast about for some way to get her off the subject before she launched into a full-on Wizengamot campaign speech, but it was Sirius who inadvertently defused the situation.

“D’you think Professor McGonagall likes perfume?” he asked, apropos of nothing that I could see. This was so unexpected that it momentarily stunned Lily into silence.

James snorted. “Not the kind we were selling, mate. Can you see McGonagall with a basket of kittens?”

Sirius smiled vaguely. “I think that would be rather sweet, actually. Tabby and black kittens.”

I peered into his eyes. “You’ll have to excuse him. I think the invisible poltergeist ate his brain.”

James nodded solemnly. “A tragic end for such a promising youth, and only ten Knuts could have prevented it. Alas, my fair Miss Evans, I advise you to take warning from his fate and buy some poltergeist insurance, lest the same thing happen to you.”

“You’re all off your heads. And I’d better not hear about you doing anything like this again.” Lily tossed her head and flounced away, but much of the edge seemed to have gone out of her temper. As soon as she had disappeared up the girls’ stairway, we heard her giggling hysterically.

James grinned. “I count that as a success, gentlemen.”

“I’m not so sure,” I said. “There’s a difference between laughing with you and laughing at you, and it’s my opinion she’s still laughing at you.”

Part the Third: In Which Various Persons Discover the Delights of Pornography, and Dr. Faustus Learns to Dance

During our next Hogsmeade weekend, James and Sirius used their ill-gotten gains to purchase, among other items, a magazine called Voluptuous Veela Vixens.

“Where’d you get that?” asked Peter admiringly.

“The newsstand in Hogsmeade,” said Sirius, studying the centerfold. He seemed to have become momentarily distracted from his crush on Professor McGonagall. “They didn’t even ask me if I was of age.”

As my friends pored over the magazine, I tried very hard to look like an Experienced Man of the World who was Above Such Things. I had a girlfriend of sorts: Adele, the daughter of one of my father’s former colleagues at Beauxbatons. We’d fallen in love during the course of a dizzying two-week holiday over the summer; since then, our relationship had consisted mostly of exchanging long letters in French. I suppose a young man of less diffident nature and more ordinary circumstances would have found this state of affairs frustrating, but it was an excellent arrangement as far as I was concerned. I didn’t have to tell her about my problem with the moon, and our correspondence afforded few opportunities for making a fool of myself, as long as I remembered about the peculiar properties of the word baiser.

Despite the fact that Adele lived in another country, I felt obligated to behave like a Good and Faithful Boyfriend; in other words, somebody with absolutely no interest in voluptuous veela vixens.

“Those aren’t really veela,” I said airily, leaning back on my bed. “It’s all trick photography.”

“How can you tell?” asked Peter.

I reached for the magazine and expounded at great length on how to identify a doctored photograph. It was a subject of which I knew absolutely nothing, but it gave me an iron-clad excuse to examine the vixens in question very carefully.

Meanwhile, Sirius unwrapped his other purchases from the newsstand.

“Polly the Puffskein, a Pop-Up Book?” asked James with a smirk. “Finally started reading at grade level, Padfoot?”

“It’s a birthday present for my cousin Nymphadora, you twit. She’s going to be three.” Sirius riffled through the paper bag and frowned. “Only I can’t find the card I bought to go with it. Any of you guys seen it?”

“What did it look like?” asked Peter.

“It had a purple unicorn frisking around on the outside, and on the inside I wrote, I was going to get you Playwitch, but I guess you’re not really interested in men, so I thought you’d like this better. With love from Sirius.”

“Isn’t that a little ... er ... risque for a three-year-old?” I asked.

“Oh well,” said Sirius, “it’s not like she can read yet, and I always get a kick out of scandalizing Andromeda. She’s my only decent relative, but she is an easy mark.” He started turning over his things in a futile search for the card. “Oh well, it’ll turn up sooner or later.”

 

                                                            *          *          *

Peter found Voluptuous Veela Vixens such compelling reading that he insisted on bringing it along the next afternoon, when we took our turn at being Icarus.

James and Sirius had virtually monopolized the Invisibility Cloak in recent weeks, and I had to remind them firmly that Icarus had been my idea in the first place, and besides, I was the one with the prefect’s badge and the potential to make their lives very unpleasant. I think it was the second point that swayed them.

The idea had come to me during one of my rambles through a seldom-visited part of the castle. At the base of one of the more obscure towers stood a grand stairway, now seldom used and covered with dust, flanked on either side by statues of Dr. Faustus and Helen of Troy. On my last visit, I had examined the statues and determined that they were free-standing rather than attached to their pedestals; and I had immediately conceived of a way to make the next passer-by’s day a little more surreal, which I explained to Peter as we made our way back to the tower.

Covered by the Invisibility Cloak, Peter cast a lightening charm on Faustus, wrapped his arms around him, and started walking him out of his niche. Being lighter of build and better at Charms, I had the more difficult part. I shinnied up one of the pillars of the stairway, found a precarious but partially concealed perch atop a gargoyle, and made Helen step out of the shadows by remote control. She wobbled a bit, and Peter accidentally bumped into her with Faustus and nearly knocked her over, but I righted her with a flick of my wand. The two statues took their places opposite each other and we practiced making them dance. Their movements were slow and jerky at first, with Faustus trying to do a waltz and Helen a tango, but we learned how to coordinate them and, in time, to lend them a little grace.

Footsteps at the top of the stairway announced that we were about to have a far larger audience than we could have hoped for. Professor Flitwick was leading a group of his N.E.W.T.-level students down from the tower, where they had been practicing Weather Charms. Unfortunately, the classes in question were the sixth- and seventh-year Slytherins, our arch-enemies. Faustus froze in his place, and I could picture the panicked expression on Peter’s face just as clearly as if he hadn’t been under the cloak.

You’re invisible. Invisible! I mouthed at him from my place under the roofbeams. After a moment, Faustus began to move again.

The class nudged each other and stopped halfway down the stairway, staring at the dancing statues.

One does not ordinarily think of the practical joke as a form of performing art, like the theatre or the ballet, but I maintain that Peter and I pulled off a work of art that day, with no little help from our audience as the blank looks of astonishment on their faces gave way to wonder.

Professor Flitwick charmed up some music, a quick-paced yet vaguely melancholy Elizabethan air, and several of the castle ghosts drifted into the hall. Nearly Headless Nick and the Fat Friar began to sing in surprisingly rich, substantial harmonies.

O mistress mine, where are you roaming,

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?

A living voice blended with the ghostly ones: Celestina Warbeck, later famous as the Singing Sorceress, then a sixth-year like the rest of us.

O stay and hear, your true love’s coming,

O stay and hear, your true love’s coming,

That can sing both high and low.

Nearly Headless Nick bowed to the Grey Lady, and they joined the statues on the dance floor in a swirl of misty skirts and silent shoes.

Trip no further, pretty sweeting,

Journeys end in lovers meeting,

Every wise man’s son doth know.

Simon Wilkes took a startled-looking Narcissa Black by the hand. A moment later, Evan Rosier pulled her sister Bellatrix into the dance, and a few of the other Slytherins followed suit.

What is love? ‘tis not hereafter,

What is love? ‘tis not hereafter,

Present mirth hath present laughter,

Present mirth hath present laughter,

What’s to come is still unsure.

If I remember nothing else of my school days a hundred years hence, I want to remember that scene: dust motes filling the air and glinting in the November sunlight; couples of mist and marble and flesh whirling around together in perfect concert; and the rest of the Slytherins, nearly all of whom would be dead or damned in a few years, looking on spellbound.

In delay there lies no plenty,

Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty;

Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

As the last notes faded, the Fat Friar crossed himself and murmured, “Remember now the Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not. Bless us all.” The dancers dropped one another’s hands and stood around looking self-conscious, and Peter and I returned the statues to their pedestals. By twos and threes, the Charms students drifted away; and when they had all gone, my partner in crime stepped out from under the Invisibility Cloak and I clambered down from the ceiling.

“I’m glad the others weren’t there,” whispered Peter. “I mean, I do like them and all, but...”

I nodded. “But they wouldn’t have been able to resist doing something nasty to the Slytherins, and that would have ruined it.”

As we were walking back to our common room, Peter patted the Invisibility Cloak, which he had bundled under his arm, and said, “Uh-oh.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I think I must’ve dropped the magazine while I was dancing around with that statue. We’d better go back and get it.”

We returned to the stairway just in time to see Bardolph Avery and Severus Snape scuttling down the corridor with the magazine, looking gleeful at this unexpected visitation from the Porn Fairy.

Part the Fourth: In Which Peter Discovers a New Use for His Animagus Form, and Peeves Gets His Revenge

“What are we going to do?” whispered Peter.

As far as I could tell, we had two choices. We could chase after Avery and Snape and demand that they return our copy of Voluptuous Veela Vixens; or we could just tell James and Sirius we had lost it, apologize, and offer to pay for another one. The first option would result in our immediate and painful deaths, and the second one wouldn’t. There was no contest at all as far as I was concerned.

I’d reckoned without Peter. “I don’t want to go and tell them I’ve screwed something up again,” he protested, looking up at me with a wrinkled forehead and an expression of earnest appeal. “I’m so tired of this, Moony. Why can’t I ever do anything right?”

“You do lots of things right,” I said automatically, feeling as if we’d had this conversation one too many times already. “You did the dancing bit brilliantly, and you can draw better than any of us, and – ”

“Yes. You know that. But somehow the things I get right are never the ones that count.”

He had a point there. “So what do you want to do?” I asked.

“We could sneak out to the village and get another magazine. We’ve already got the Invisibility Cloak with us, and I have some pocket money from my aunt.”

“You’re mad.”

“Why?”

Regrettably, I couldn’t think of a really good reason why. “Oh, all right.” We both squeezed under the cloak and made our way to the secret passage under the Whomping Willow, crawled out of a window of the Shrieking Shack, and strolled down the street to the newsstand, doing our best to look like we’d already left school and were out for a casual walk on our lunch break.

“All right,” I said. “Go on in and buy the magazine, and I’ll stay out here and keep a lookout for teachers.”

“I can’t go up to the counter and ask for Voluptuous Veela Vixens!” said Peter, blanching slightly. “You buy it!”

“I’m not about to ask for it either! You should do it, since you were the one who lost the magazine. Besides, it was your idea to get a new one.”

“But you look like you might be of age, and I don’t.”

Much to my dismay, I had to admit he was right. I entered the shop knowing exactly how Nick must have felt as he approached the chopping block. The clerk was a forbidding-looking older woman, which made it all much worse.

“I’d ... I’d like a packet of chewing gum, please,” I said, hoping I might somehow be able to slip Voluptuous Veela Vixens into a list of innocent items without attracting notice. “And the evening edition of the Daily Prophet. And The Adventures of Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle. And, er’m, Voluptuousveelavixens.”

“Eh? Speak up, boy!”

I felt myself blushing hectically. “Er, Quidditch Illustrated.”

Behind me, I heard Peter groan.

Muttering something about how young people these days never understood what it was like to be old and hard of hearing, the intimidating clerk collected the magazines I had ordered. I was just gathering my courage for a second attempt when I saw a large brown rat dart behind the counter and start tugging determinedly at a copy of Voluptuous Veela Vixens with his teeth.

As soon as he was within striking distance of the door, I left my purchases on the counter, scooped up Wormtail and Voluptuous Veela Vixens, and didn’t stop running until we were just inside the Hogwarts gates, where I threw myself face-down in the withered grass, half laughing and half gasping for breath.

Peter de-rattified himself and grinned. “That was dead easy,” he said, as if he hadn’t been shaking in his shoes at the prospect of making the purchase a few minutes earlier. “Nothing to it.”

“Easy for you,” I said. “I can’t transform on purpose, remember? And even if I could, I’m not exactly inconspicuous. I think most people would notice if a rather large wolf came into their shop and started nicking girlie magazines!”

“Oh well. It was an adventure.”

I scooped up a handful of yellowed leaves and threw them at him. “So’s death, if you listen to Dumbledore. Remind me never to let you talk me into having any more adventures.”

“EW!” He sat bolt upright. “There was a SLUG in there!”

“Not my fault!” I protested, but he was already stuffing more leaves into my face.

We spent a friendly half-hour bombarding each other with leaves, until at last I thought to look at the magazine we had stolen. “I think we have a problem,” I announced.

“What?”

“This is the November issue. The one Sirius had was October.”

“We could tell him the magazine is charmed to automatically update itself every month,” suggested Peter. (If you think this sounds like a story nobody in their right mind would believe, you didn’t know Peter. When he really got going, he could talk you into thinking the sky was orange, the sun was green, and the spirit of Merlin would escape from the stone where it was imprisoned and personally smite you if you didn’t let him copy your History of Magic homework.)

“Then we’d have to steal another one next month,” I pointed out.

“Oh. Good thinking. Perhaps we could say they’re ... they’re a special kind of veela who are really good at self-Transfiguration?”

“That will give Sirius ideas about McGonagall,” I said. “He doesn’t need encouragement.”

We were still debating various courses of action when James came along, in high good humor after a successful Quidditch practice. Peter thought the story of my misadventure at the newsstand was too good not to share, so we ended up doing what we should have done in the first place and telling him everything. (Everything, that is, apart from the fact that the original magazine was currently in the hands of Avery and Snape. We thought that bit would be bad for his blood pressure.)

“Put the new magazine with Padfoot’s things, and ten Sickles says he’ll never notice the difference,” said James. “Want to bet?”

I shook my head. “Haven’t got that kind of cash to spare. Besides, I’m sure you’re right.”

We tried the experiment, and sure enough, Sirius never gave any sign of noticing the switch.

“Funny thing about veela,” James commented philosophically. “They’re really hot and all, but when you look at them for a while, you realize they’re all alike.”

 

                                                            *          *          *

Gradually, our interest in playing pranks while invisible waned, and Peeves appeared to reach a cautious truce with us ... which just goes to show that you should never trust Peeves. One morning at breakfast some weeks later, I looked up to see him speeding across the Great Hall in an imitation of a post-owl, or as close to a post-owl as a little man in a loud checked suit and bowtie could possibly come. He was carrying our lost copy of Voluptuous Veela Vixens, which he dropped in front of Professor McGonagall’s plate ... along with a greeting card. Even from where I sat, I could see that there was a purple unicorn on the front of the card.

I elbowed James and Peter and directed their attention to the High Table. “I was going to get you Playwitch...” I muttered.

James’ eyes widened as he caught my meaning. “... But I guess you’re not really interested in men, so I thought you’d like this better...”

“... With love from Sirius,” gasped Peter, spitting toast crumbs across the table. “Oh no.”

“Oh yes,” said James, grinning broadly as McGonagall rose to her feet, a small red spot on each cheek.

I glanced over toward Sirius, who hadn’t looked up from the Daily Prophet crossword while all this was going on. He was shoveling down cornflakes in a state of merry innocence and looked for all the world like Eve half a minute before the serpent showed up in the garden (apart from small details such as not being a beautiful naked woman, of course). “The question is –” I lowered my voice – “do we warn Pads or wait for him to catch hell?”

“What kind of friends do you think we are?” asked James. “We wait for him to catch hell, of course.”

McGonagall, still holding the copy of Voluptuous Veela Vixens in one hand, shaded her eyes with the other and surveyed the Great Hall with the keen stare of a hawk ready to strike at the slightest motion in the grass. James and I assumed expressions of absolute guilelessness, and Peter took shelter behind a sheet of newspaper and prepared to slide all the way under the table if she swooped down upon us.

To our astonishment, she plunged toward the Slytherin table. Snape had managed a passable poker face, but Avery’s expression was enough to condemn both of them. She seized a Slytherin by the shoulder in each hand and marched them out of the Great Hall with a grim look on her face, and we all began to breathe again.

“Why’d she go after them?” James asked, blinking a little. “I mean, I’m not surprised that she wouldn’t really believe Pads was stupid enough to write that on a card and sign his name to it, but I don’t see why Avery was looking guilty as sin.”

Peter and I explained what had become of the magazine we lost, both talking at once and much too fast.

James wrinkled his nose when he finally gathered what had happened. “D’you think they just happened to lose the magazine again and Peeves picked it up, or ...”

“Never,” I said decisively. “Peeves hasn’t got that kind of subtlety. No, the Slytherins found the card somewhere and put him up to the whole thing.”

Peter gave me a shrewd look. “You just want to believe that so you don’t have to feel guilty about enjoying this.”

“Yeah. Maybe a little.”

“Guilty about enjoying what?” Sirius asked, having finally finished the crossword.

James looked at Peter, and Peter looked at me, and I looked at James. “You explain.”

By the time we had told the whole story, half the Gryffindor table was staring at us in amazement, and even Lily couldn’t suppress a smile when we got to the part about the message on McGonagall’s card. I thought she’d be less amused when we told her about Snape and Avery catching it, but James’ impression of a goggle-eyed and guilty Avery was a thing of beauty. Yes. At long last, he’d succeeded in making her laugh with him instead of at him.

“You’re in, mate,” mouthed Sirius as we discreetly drifted away and left them alone. “Good luck.”

The last thing I heard as I walked away from the table was James showing off his latest bit of wisdom from Muggle Studies. “You know, I really admire your culture. I think your ingenueers are amazingly clever. Professor O’Malley was just telling us about how they make fellytone tails all curly so your voice has enough time to slow down before it goes into the wall. Otherwise, I suppose it would be like getting a Howler every time you used the fellytone, wouldn’t it? ...”