A Series of Unfortunate Encounters

A Series of Unfortunate Encounters

"My dear sir - what troubles you? There is a blush so deep on your cheeks... what incenses you so?"

"It's Peeves! That lily-livered, gutless, pusbag Peeves! Some day, Nicholas, some day I will get him - catch him - and Dumbledore will kick him out of this school so fast it will make his vapor-filled head SPIN!"

Sir Nicholas de Mimsy Porpington huffed himself up to his largest translucent self, and said shortly, "Well. At least he has the luxury."

"Oh, Nick - I meant no offense!"

"Indeed."

Filch sighed, tired of Nick's ---theatrics, and leaned back on his moth-eaten green La-Z-Boy chair he'd dragged to his living chambers from the Hogsmeade dump. Mrs. Norris jumped onto his lap, and he scratched behind her ears automatically. She purred, snuggling deeper into his lap.

Nearly Headless Nick shifted uncomfortably, a slight graying blush appearing beneath his eyes.

"I just can't deal with him anymore!" Filch said, sagging deeper into his chair, exhausted. "I get so tired... so tired of him... of this god-forsaken school! The students...the professors...Dumbledore...such a pansy..."

"It is not so bad..." Nick wheedled, floating closer to Filch. His cloak floated through Filch's knee, making him shiver. "You will get them, you'll get them all! Now, just relax... relax."

The words, whispered into his ear with chilled, ghostly breath, wrapped themselves around his heart, cold as death.

Filch jumped up, breaking the icy tension, and dropped a hissing, screeching Mrs Norris on the threadbare rug.

"Yes - er - well...um."

And without another word, he rushed out of his office into the hallways, in search of stress-relieving vindictive punishment, feeling the palpable weight of the unspoken and dreading it.

***

Nicholas' wispy body floated down to the floor slowly after the door had closed behind Filch's pert bum.

"Oh, me. Oh, woe. My heart cries for you, my dashing prince!"

In a glowing ball of translucent angst, Nearly Headless Nick did not notice when he just kept on floating through the floor.

Mrs Norris noticed, however, and in another bout of hissing, she scampered thorugh the tapestry of Twenty Ways to Terrorize Students Without Getting Fired, bottlebrush tail held high.

Floorboards and ceiling tiles passed through Nick's head, until he began to dimly hear voices below him. Two low, drippingly sweet voices.

He thought he recognized one of them... but who was it?

As soon as his eyes passed underneath the bottom of the ceiling, he was hit by an explosion of pink that threw his drifting body back against the ceiling. Pink invaded his lungs, and as he hacked away, the room came back into focus and he was able to make out whose voices he had heard.

And that was when he saw it.

He really should have known, from the tone of their voices.

Sir Nicholas de Mimsy Porpington, lying on the ceiling of an anonymous, pink room below the bulk of the Astronomy Tower, gagged until he could not see anymore.

Harry Potter was stark naked. He was reclining on a pink couch, surrounded by cushions and pillows. One arm was thrown over his head. He wore a ridiculously large, blue jewel that hung around his neck on a diamond-encrusted chain.

He was not alone in the room. Someone sat behind an easel, and Nick could hear the scritch-scratching of the charcoal. Then the artist peeked out from behind her work, and Nick saw her face.

It was Bullicent Millstrode.

Nick passed out and fell through the wall, into the room next door.

***

He was unceremoniously wrenched out of his unconscious stupor by the amalgamations of warding spells that fizzed at the edges of his body, unable to get a bearing on his insubstantial being. Dumbledore warded his office well.

He remained suspended in a crackling shell, unable to move, still inside the wall between safety and the dreaded Pink Palace.

Nick heard the click and slam of a door opening and closing in the next room.

And then, in a silky, sultry voice that sent shivers across the boundary of Nick's vaporous skin, someone said, "Oh, my love... my one true love... my knight in shining armor... Oh, Dumbledore! Tell me that you love me!"

"Lemon drop?"

The first voice became outraged at this refusal of affection, and transformed into a nasty, vindictive one that Nick finally recognized.

"I should have known that your frail and feeble mind could not comprehend the depth of my feeling. You will never understand - throughout all of eternity, I will live only a half-life, unable to love. May your wrinkled skin fall to the floor in a cascade of flesh, you shriveled old man!"

"Severus! How could you think such a thing about me? What I meant to say to you was 'would you like to see my lemon drop?' "

Nick threw off the power of the wards with the energy from his absolute revulsion. He screamed to himself, scrabbling with all his might against the scene evolving so close to him.

Up, up, up he went, fleeing for his life, trying in vain to block the mental images that threatened to empty his stomach.

Suddenly, the images stopped. They were replaced by an all-consuming, churning fog. It was unbearably cold. He saw swirling, swirling; brain freeze started to take over his senses... until he realized what was going on, and pulled his head out of the crystal ball that it had stuck itself into.

Music was playing... well, not music like he was used to, but jarring, screeching music. A gruff voice, singing. "Have I tooold you lately that I luuuuuuvvvv yoooooo...?" Then a high-pitched tinkley giggle, and two bodies... unconventionally intertwined... naked, again!

What is with this school? Is it mating season again already for them?

"Sibyll!" the man said.

"Ludo!" the woman cried.

"Sibyll!" he exclaimed.

"LUDO!" she wailed.

"AAAAAAAA!" Nick screamed, fleeing for his life once more.

Then out, out into the relative safety of the hallway. But alas, his eyes met another scene, this one of grey against white, translucent silver against transparent monotone.

Peeves was propositioning a suit of armour with a nastily-shaped oil can.

"AAAAAAAA!" Nick repeated, sure that the castle hadn't heard him properly the first time.

Then another flight away from potential horror that only took him further into the fire. Straight into - what was that? His first impression was of a toad on fire. Wide bulk, popping eyes, framed by the reddest red hair around.

Nick could no longer tell what body part belonged to whom, and there was no way in a cold, frozen hell that he was going to stick around to find out.

**

A cat that sniffs a mousetrap for the first time will end up with a sore nose.

A stupid cat that sniffs a mousetrap for the second time will end up with a very sore nose.

A brainless cat, after its nose finally stops bleeding, will someday stop sniffing the mousetrap.

**

Nick's nose was extremely bloody, but he was finally starting to learn. Since escaping 'up' or 'out' of these situations only led him to another, far worse one, he decided that 'down' was a better choice.

So he pointed his face towards the floor and rocketed through it, hoping that he might still have a chance of keeping his last supper down.

Dim light soothed his eyes; the smell of dirt and earth was all around him. He sighed, finally feeling safe. Everything is going to be alright, he told himself, trying to calm his racing heart and churning stomach. It's just Professor Sprout, repotting mandrakes. He sighed, relaxing to the gentle music created by those strange and beautiful plants.

But then the music began to change, becoming more hurried, more rushed. More frantic. And why was the mandrake breathing heavily? What...?

Realization hit him upon closer inspection of the scene. Sure, Nick didn't know much about herbology, but he was pretty sure that that was not the screams the mandrakes made when the second-years repotted them.

Down, down, once more, ever down, must get away, must not think about...must not...must not...ICK!

His translucent body was plunged into ice-cold water that suddenly calmed and soothed his racing heart. Looking around, he noticed that he was in a very long, narrow room that was painted a reddish-brown. Very narrow. In fact, the ceiling scraped against his nose, as the walls did his shoulder cuffs. Perhaps not room, maybe... pipe?

A girlish giggle echoed up the pipe and it seized his stomach, anticipation and fear coursing across his foggy skin in sheets. Vainly struggling against the tide, he was dumped into a dark pool in a darker room. Dripping sounded all around him, mingled with the tinkling of pre-pubescent laughter.

A dungeon? A cavern? A pile of basilisk and girl?

WHY???

Desperation taking hold of him, Nick shoved his fists through his eye sockets, trying to gouge out his own vaporous eyeballs. The poor, unfortunate soul tumbled in agony into the pool and through the floor beneath, tearing at the small flap of flesh still holding his head on.

He collapsed on a moth-eaten, threadbare rug, shaking and crying.

"Nicholas??"

His eyes opened slowly, fearful of what might meet them. But it was nothing more than a very concerned Filch bending over his body.

"Filch...Argus...I've been destroyed...destroyed...the things I have seen...Oh, god!"

"What's happened to you, Nick? Was it the students? Was it?" He suddenly giggled, scrambled over to his desk, and rifled through his diverse array of torture implements. They clunked and clanged against each other, making the music of death. He popped back up from behind the desk with a gleeful grin on his face, holding the sharpest and shiniest. "Ooooh, can I do anything to those snots that did this to you?"

Helpless against this childish glee, Nick doubled over in laughter. The images and memories began to fade, taking his fear with them.

"Ha, ha, ha - Oh, Argus - thank you. You don't know what you mean to me."

Filch set his Reaper hook down on his desk and knelt next to Nick's body. "Nick... Nick, I know only too well. You're the one who doesn't know."

He bent down further, and planted a scratchy kiss just underneath Nick's lips. Shivers passed through Filch's lips, down to his toes, and reverberated back into Nick.

Both of them sighing with the happiness of the unrequited finally realized, Filch collapsed onto the rug, wrapping his arms through Nick, facing down the infinite depths of a future together.

In the room next door, alone and deserted, Mrs Norris's body silently shook, knowing that she had finally lost him.