When Harry came running out of Filch's office, the first thing he saw made his jaw drop.
Louis was standing there with one hand poised like a knife and the other gripping Sir Nick by the collar.
"What—what are you doing?!" Harry blurted, stunned.
Especially when he noticed that wherever Louis's hand grabbed, Nick's ghostly robes actually wrinkled, as if being pulled by something solid.
"Oh, nothing much," Louis said, turning his head with a perfectly straight face. "Nick's been having trouble getting into the Headless Hunt, so I thought I'd offer him a bit of… humble assistance."
This wasn't just for fun—well, mostly for fun—but Louis also considered it serious magical research.
For instance: if you cut off a ghost's head, does the ghost die again?
Alright, yes, mostly for fun.
"Don't worry, Nick," Louis grinned. "Even if you do die again, I can pull your soul right back. You just have to trust me!"
"If this works, you could even be my magic-show assistant! Wouldn't that be great?"
"That's—well, that's not entirely unappealing," Nick stammered, "but could you please be a little more careful?! You're acting like this is a joke, and it's terrifying! Let's, uh, start somewhere else first—anywhere else but my head!"
After much begging from Nick, Louis finally agreed to start small.
He grabbed Nick's hand.
"Alright then… let's begin with your pinky."
With a swift motion, Louis's hand flashed like a blade — shhk! — slicing clean through Nick's little finger.
"How does it feel?" Harry asked eagerly, almost leaning forward.
Nick flexed his hand experimentally — and to his delight, the severed pinky twitched in midair.
"Haha! It works! It actually works!" Nick said excitedly, eyes gleaming.
"See?" Louis cracked his knuckles, pleased. "Told you, no problem. Now—let's move on to the head!"
This time, he didn't give Nick a chance to protest.
His hand glowed faintly — one clean, shimmering stroke — shhk!
Nick's head soared into the air, perfectly detached.
"I'M FREEEE!"
His disembodied head floated triumphantly, refusing to come down, while his headless body waved its arms joyfully and chased after it down the corridor.
Harry clapped both hands over his face — the scene was so bizarre it made his brain ache.
Only after Nick's body and head disappeared around the corner did Harry finally lower his hands and speak.
"Louis," he said, trying to focus on something normal, "did you know Filch can't use magic? He's actually enrolled in some sort of quick-start wizarding course. He looked really upset about it."
"You didn't know?" Louis looked at him. "Filch is a Squib."
"A… Squib?"
"Yes," Louis said evenly. "A Squib — someone born into a wizarding family but unable to perform magic. A tragedy among wizards. Even the most open-minded families — like the Weasleys — would never publicly mention having one."
His tone was calm, almost detached, but to Harry, the words felt cruel.
"The cruelest thing," Louis went on, "isn't to have never possessed something — it's to witness it, to almost grasp it… and then lose it forever."
He glanced at Harry.
"If you were ever expelled from Hogwarts," he said quietly, "you might begin to understand Filch's pain."
———
Although he'd been delayed for a while, Louis finally found the abandoned girls' bathroom.
It had been deserted for a reason — someone had died there.
Wizards weren't afraid of ghosts, of course.
The real reason people avoided this particular lavatory was because the girl who'd died there had become a hypersensitive, moody, and extremely loud ghost.
Moaning Myrtle — or as she liked to call herself, the beautiful Myrtle — a lovesick spirit with a weakness for handsome boys.
Myrtle had been the victim of the Chamber of Secrets' first opening fifty years ago.
Interestingly, her death hadn't been part of the heir of Slytherin's plan.
Tom Riddle — the young Voldemort — hadn't intended to cause a death right on his own doorstep.
Myrtle had simply run off to the bathroom in tears after being teased, and the basilisk had happened to emerge there.
She looked into its eyes — and became the first Muggle-born killed by the creature.
The incident had terrified Riddle.
He hadn't been ready yet — his goal was to wipe out all the Muggle-borns in one stroke, not to act rashly and alert the school.
What truly horrified him, though, was that the girl's death led to Hogwarts being threatened with closure.
For Tom Riddle, that was disastrous.
At that time, his situation wasn't much better than Harry's would be fifty years later — limited by his half-blood status, looked down upon, and living in worse conditions than before he'd ever set foot in Hogwarts.
So he did what he did best — blamed someone else.
He pinned the attack on Hagrid, who was only a second-year at the time.
It cleared Riddle of suspicion and buried the Chamber of Secrets incident in silence.
That alone showed what kind of place the Ministry of Magic was.
No Minister could explain that away — and the one back then certainly wasn't Cornelius Fudge.
The whole Ministry was like a rotten apple — crawling with worms.
"How could a student supposedly killed by an Acromantula be treated the same as one killed by a basilisk?" Louis murmured, shaking his head as he stepped into the bathroom.
Before entering, he cast a distortion barrier with the Distortion Eye, to prevent anyone from seeing in or accidentally walking through while he was inside.
After all, it was a girls' bathroom — the last thing he needed was a scandal.
Inside, the room was surprisingly clean — not the slightest trace of dust, as if it hadn't been abandoned at all.
That was thanks to Myrtle herself. She cried constantly, and every time she did, the place flooded like a broken dam — water spraying from the pipes until the whole room was drenched.
No wonder it stayed spotless.
Still, not everything could be washed away.
Standing in the middle of the room, Louis's sharp eyes immediately picked up faint, suspicious traces on both the ceiling and the floor.
"Even magic can't operate completely without sound or trace — not a mechanism that's been active for centuries," he muttered.
Examining the floor markings, he pinpointed where the entrance to the Chamber must be.
Then he searched the sinks for the distinguishing mark — and quickly found it: a faucet engraved with a tiny snake.
"What are you doing here?" a shrill voice suddenly demanded from behind him.
Louis turned around — and there she was: a young-looking girl ghost with twin pigtails.
Of course, "young-looking" referred only to her appearance. In reality, the ghost was over sixty years old.
"Oh my, a handsome boy!" Myrtle giggled, circling him playfully. "But what are you doing here? Don't tell me you came to peek on the girls?"
"I came here to find something," Louis replied evenly.
"Find something? There's nothing here except poor, miserable Moaning Myrtle," she said dramatically, floating up to the ceiling and hanging upside down in melodramatic self-pity.
"Have you ever tried going in there?" Louis asked, pointing toward the sink in front of him.
For some reason, that question struck a nerve. Myrtle's expression twisted — she glared at him furiously.
"Oh, so that's what you think, huh?! You all think Moaning Myrtle is just some ugly girl who spends her afterlife crawling around in toilets?!" she screeched.
And with that, she dove headfirst into a toilet bowl — and vanished with a splash.
Louis stood there in silence.
"...Emmmm…"
---
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