The Past and Present Collide

Mandy and Terry walked out of the room and begin to head towards the Great Hall. Terry was watching Mandy out of the corner of his eye, as if he wanted to ask her something but couldn't quite find the words to do so. Then, as they passed the portrait of a plump, sleeping wizard, he spoke.

"Why did you arrange to meet Patrick again?" Terry asked, in a disapproving tone of voice.

"I didn't. He owled me, and it would be rude if I just stood him up," she replied before continuing in a softer voice. "Besides, he was nice. And handsome..." she blushed and trailed off, looking away.

Terry stopped walking, disbelief etched all over his face. "Whoa, wait. You fancy a ghost? He's dead, Mandy."

"I do not fancy him. I'm not that stupid. But wouldn't it be interesting to have a ghost for a friend?" She said, trying to cover up her mistake by admitting to her friend that she found Patrick attractive.

He nodded reluctantly, and then began walking again. Now it was Mandy´s turn to watch Terry. He was deep in thought, which wasn´t a surprise, considering his habit of overanalyzing everything. His brow was furrowed, his mouth set in a frown, and his eyes set on something only he could see. Yep, he was in his own little world again, and Mandy decided to take advantage of it. She waved a few fingers in front of his eyes, then both hands, and when she got no response, she tried a more dramatic distraction.

"Terry, your hair is on fire!" she shrieked, and then propelled herself into him, knocking him over. Her tactic worked, and he yelled out in surprise, and then glowered at his friend as she lay on top of him, shaking with silent laughter. Her cheeks were flushed with mirth, but his began to redden for an entirely different reason. He hated being interrupted when he was thinking, especially by one of Mandy's frequent crazy moments.

"What was that for?" he growled.

"You looked so lost in thought...so serious...I couldn´t resist," she wheezed.

"It´s not funny, Mandy. You could´ve knocked me into the wall and killed me. And what if a professor had heard, eh? I´m sure no one´s in the mood to put up with your antics today, me included," Terry snapped in a tone that made it clear that he was a little bit more than annoyed at her.

He shot her a condescending look. Her cheeks were still pink, but now her mouth was set in a frown, and her brown eyes still shone, but now they were serious. Terry pushed her off him and stood up, smoothing out his robes. Mandy looked up at him.

"Lighten up, Terry. This isn´t the apocalypse," she said.

He held out a hand, and when she took it, he pulled her to her feet. She continued to gaze defiantly into his eyes. He cracked a smile, his first that morning, and she returned it.

"I know, I know. Just keep the goofing off to a minimum, all right? Everyone´s bound to be a bit tense, and you don´t want to lose any more points for us." He waited for her to nod, and then he swung his arm around her narrow shoulders like he always did when they walked together.

They continued on their way to lunch, silent once again. Their relationship was a strange one: unless they needed to talk about homework or a recent crisis, they were quiet around each other. Mandy seemed to feel protected by him, and he seemed to take comfort in her presence.

When they reached the Great Hall, the first thing Mandy noticed was how subdued it seemed. Sure, occasional bouts of laughter still rang out, but almost everyone was talking in hushed voices or not talking at all, simply eating. Terry leaned back, looking around Mandy, and then sighed.

"Guess who´s coming over," he said gloomily.

"Not Adrian, please," she moaned, and when her suspicions were confirmed, she moved behind Terry. "Don´t let him see me. I don´t want to talk to him."

"Too late," Terry whispered, just as Adrian reached them.

Adrian was even taller than Terry, standing at about six foot two, with black hair cut short in the back and longer in the front so it fell into his brown eyes, and a tan and freckles from endless hours of practicing Quidditch. He had a bright smile and even, white teeth, but it was impossible to tell at the moment, because he was scowling.

"Move," he hissed at Terry, and Terry stepped out of the way, revealing Mandy.

She was so short that she had to tilt her head up absurdly to look into Adrian´s eyes, but she did it anyway, and raised an eyebrow in the process.

"What do you want, Pucey?"

He dropped her gaze and his scowl and stared at the floor.

"I just wanted to, um, you know, uh..."

"Apologize?"

"Yeah, that´s it. I came to apologize." He looked at her again. "I´m really sorry for the things I said last night, and I was worried sick about you when you left like that. You have to understand, I´m under a lot of pressure right now. The team is really working hard lately and we still aren't good enough . . .and I keep saying stupid things I don´t mean. So do you forgive me?"

She sighed and looked down, partially disappointed that he was letting Quidditch get the better of him - again. "Yeah, I forgive you. But don´t let it happen again!"

He grinned and hugged her. "I won´t, I swear." Then he put an arm around her waist and began to walk with her towards the tables. "Eat lunch with me."

They walked over to the Slytherin table and sat down at the end, leaving Terry standing by the entrance and watching Adrian with a look of utter loathing on his face. He was just about to go over and drag Mandy to the Ravenclaw table when Padma walked up behind him and punched him on the shoulder.

"Come on, let´s go eat. I´m positively famished," she said breathily, and pretended to swoon. He cast her a dark look and she crossed her eyes at him, making him laugh. Then they walked over to the table and sat down.

Meanwhile, Mandy was filling her boyfriend in on the deathday party. Just as she had when she was telling the story to Padma and Terry, she stopped when she got to the part about walking with Patrick, but for a different reason this time. Things were already shaky with Adrian, and she didn´t want to make them worse by mentioning the charming, handsome ghost she was meeting with in a few hours.

"I stayed for awhile, but I started to freeze, so I left and started to head towards the Common Room. I guess Sinistra had been looking for me, because she found me a few minutes later. Thankfully, she only took five points off. It was worth it, just to see a real deathday party," she lied.

"I bet," he responded, sounding completely sincere. Adrian had a thing for ghosts. "Did you talk to anyone?"

"No," she replied, perhaps too quickly, because he looked like he didn´t believe her. "I just stayed in the shadows and watched. No one looked particularly friendly, and I didn´t want Peeves to see me and then run off to tell Filch."

Adrian nodded and they continued talking.

"What do you think about the classrooms?" Adrian said, through a bite of steak and kidney pie. "The attacks on them, I mean."

"I don't know...I haven't given them as much thought as everyone else, mostly because I was asleep when they were announced. But Terry," Adrian flinched at the mention of the person he viewed as the only problem between himself and Mandy, "has this theory that two people are attacking, and they can either fly or become invisible. I guess that's my theory, too. What do you think?"

He shrugged and took a swig of pumpkin juice. Then he leaned in and lowered his voice so only Mandy could hear him.

"I would say the Death Eaters, but that just doesn't make sense...Mostly because Snape's the head of Slytherin and they wouldn't attack him. He used to be a Death Eater too, I think...but then, maybe it does make sense, because they might be getting revenge on him for leaving. I don't know. There's just not enough evidence to go on. But I agree that there's more than one."

She nodded and they continued to talk as they always did.

* * *

Seven o´clock came almost faster than Mandy wanted. Just as the small hand on Mandy´s wristwatch slid onto the "VII," she pushed open the owlery door and was met by the screeching of hundreds of owls. Patrick stood in the far corner, almost obscured by dark shadows, running his fingers through the feathers of a snowy owl. It was a truly ethereal sight, from the blinding white of the owl to Patrick´s grayish glow to the final rays of dying red sunlight that slanted across the room. Mandy stood motionless for a few moments, wishing she had a camera to capture the strange beauty before her. But ghosts didn´t show up in photographs, did they?

Patrick turned his head to look at her and she was once again jarred by the fact that his eyes looked blue. He grinned and sort of floated over to her.

"Hello, Mandy. It´s good to see you again."

She smiled back. "It´s nice to see you, too."

"You aren´t going to get in any trouble for meeting me here, are you?" He asked, biting his lip.

"No, I spoke to Professor Sinistra this morning and she said that as long as I´m back at the Common Room by nine, it´s alright."

He nodded. "Good. I don´t want to get you in any more trouble than I already have."

She waved her hand dismissively. "All I lost last night was five points off, and that was my fault, not yours. I shouldn´t have been wandering by myself. But then again, I´m glad I did. After all, how many living people get to say they´ve been to a deathday party?"

"Not many," he said, smiling. Then he looked up, and Mandy followed his gaze to the rafters, which held hundreds of owl cages. Snowy owls, barn owls, big owls, little owls...they all flapped their wings restlessly, and they were all beautiful. "Some place, isn´t it?"

"It´s lovely," she agreed, "though not the first place I would have thought to meet."

"Well, it´s inconspicuous. If I would have asked you to meet me in the Astronomy Tower, the teachers would have thought we were up to something," he joked, wagging an eyebrow at her.

She laughed. Everyone knew that the real purpose of the tower wasn´t for looking at stars, but for Hogwarts couples to hide in the darkness and snog each other senseless. In fact, Mandy had been up there a few times with Adrian for some midnight snogging, but she wasn´t about to tell Patrick that- the scolding from Padma and Terry was more then enough to remind her about the rules.

"Oh! I wanted to ask you something," she said, suddenly remembering the owl he had sent her earlier. "How did you write that note to me? I thought you just passed through solid things."

"Well, at will, or when caught off guard, we can pass through things, which is quite handy, because I haven´t had to turn a doorknob or hunt for a key in a hundred years. But we can hold or touch solid things too. Hold up your hand," he instructed her. She looked puzzled, so he explained. "Let me show you."

She complied, and raised her arm so her hand was held level with her face, and her palm was facing outward. Patrick took his own hand and laid his palm against hers. It was the strangest thing she had ever felt. His palm was cold and dry, and she could feel the grooves in his skin and the roughness of his fingertips, but it wasn´t like touching skin. It was like touching dry ice carved into the shape of a hand, only not as solid. Then he pressed a bit harder, and his fingers slid through her palm.

She stood there in awe at the sight of four gray, ghostly fingers sticking out of the back of her hand. Her whole arm tingled from the touch, and sent shivers down her spine. Her heart raced, and her mouth went dry. Afraid of what she was feeling, she drew away and let her hand fall with a little gasp.

"Fascinating, isn´t it? It´s one of the few perks of being a ghost. You can hold onto things, unless they´re unnaturally heavy, but you can pass through them too."

"Amazing," she agreed, her voice a breathy whisper, and her eyes dancing. "Show me again."

He laughed and obeyed, loving the look on her face as he passed his fingers through her palm again. She smiled at him when he let his hand fall, and then walked to the window. The wind was picking up, thrashing the limbs of the trees about and chasing leaves across the ground. The sky was covered in a thick gray blanket of clouds, and suddenly the sky opened up rain poured down in steely sheets.

"Storm´s starting," Mandy said. "I hope there´s thunder."

Patrick had moved up beside her and was resting his elbows on the windowsill. "Do you like thunder?"

"I love thunder," she replied, feeling a smile come to play on her lips. She also leaned on the windowsill, crossing her arms and resting her chin on them. "When I was little, my father used to say that storms were the greatest magic of all. They can hurt or heal. They can bring flowers to life or they can rip them from the ground. Without storms, we wouldn´t be alive, but with too many, we would drown. Of course, it was just a story to calm me down when I got scared of the lightning, but to this day I still love storms."

She looked up at Patrick and smiled, and he returned the gesture, but his eyes were oddly sad.

"I never liked storms. To me, they always represented the fact that nature can never be controlled. Nature is one factor that we have no say in, and I didn´t like that. One horrible storm could come in and rip my world apart, and there would be nothing I could do about it. I used to pray every time the thunder would roll in, but there´s no use for religion anymore. It´s not real."

Mandy looked up at him, at his eyes fixed on the sky outside, at his hair framing his face, and at his hands clasped together. Indeed, his very being seemed to be proof that religion didn´t exist - after all, if there was a God, why would he be a ghost? Wouldn´t he go straight to heaven or purgatory, instead of being doomed to wander the earth like this for god knows how long? Mandy had never been religious, but her Muggle mother was a "woman of faith" who taught her children the basic principles of Catholicism. And in just two days of knowing Patrick, all those principles had been shattered for Mandy. She shuddered.

Mandy looked away, and murmured, so softly that she wasn´t sure Patrick would hear her, "I´m sorry you had to lose your faith."

"I am too," he replied. "I am too."

Silence took the place of conversation for a while as they watched the clouds rain themselves out, and then Patrick remembered Mandy´s fight from the night before.

"Did you talk to your boyfriend? The one you fought with?"

"Oh! Yes, I did," she said, slightly surprised at the sound of his voice.

"What happened?"

"We made up, no surprise there. We always do. He said he´s been under a lot of pressure lately, and he has, because he´s a seventh year and he has to get good grades. Add to that the fact that he's a Quidditch player, and he´s already studying for the N.E.W.T.s, which he has to ace if he wants to get the job he´s been aiming for."

"What job is that?"

"He wants to be an Auror. I know, it´s odd, because he´s a Slytherin, but he´s not evil like a lot of the people in that house are. He´s in Slytherin because he´s cunning and clever and he does whatever he has to to get what he wants. He´s not cruel, but he can be ruthless sometimes."

Patrick seemed to consider her words for a while. Then he asked, "What do you want to be?"

"I´m not sure. I´m good at Astronomy, but I can´t see myself staring at the sky for the rest of my life. I´ll probably just marry Adrian like my mum wants me to and be a housewife."

"But that´s not what you want, is it?"

She shrugged. "I love Adrian, so it wouldn´t be so bad. Besides, I just can´t see myself doing anything else. I´ve never been one of those who´s destined for greatness."

"That´s not true," he argued. "You just haven´t found what makes you tick yet."

Mandy grinned at him. "Maybe." Then she looked down at her watch. "Blast! It´s five past nine. I told Sinistra I´d be back at nine. I have to go. It was nice to see you again, Patrick."

"Wait. Can I see you again? Would you meet me back here on Sunday, the same time?"

She was halfway out the door, but she turned back and called, "I´ll try!"

He smiled and nodded. "Goodnight."

But she was already gone.