"Who is there?" one of them called, her voice tight despite her attempt at bravery. "If this is a ghost, it's not funny. Just show yourself."
Another girl nodded quickly, clinging to that explanation. "It has to be a ghost," she said, though her eyes kept darting around the room. "Hogwarts is full of them. This is just some prank."
A third shook her head, taking a step back. "No ghost sounds like that," she whispered. "That doesn't sound like Nearly Headless Nick or the Bloody Baron…"
The crying returned, louder this time, dragging through the air in a way that made it impossible to tell where it was coming from, and then a voice followed it.
"Me…"
The word stretched, uneven, as if it struggled to hold form.
"I'm a bullied student… who jumped from Ravenclaw tower…"
The girls stiffened, fear settling in properly now.
"…and now I haunt this place."
One of them shook her head rapidly.
"That's not real," she said, though her voice trembled. "No one—no one died like that—"
"You laughed."
The interruption was immediate.
"You watched."
The voice moved, shifting around them without a source.
"You thought it was nothing."
"We didn't do anything," she said quickly, panic breaking through. "We were just joking—"
"Joking?"
The word twisted, sharper now.
"And whenever I see bullies… I get angry."
The crying rose again, no longer soft, now mixed with something unstable that made the air feel heavier.
One of the girls let out a small scream.
"Open the door!" she shouted, turning back and pulling at the handle again. "Let us out!"
"It won't open!" another cried, hitting the door with her hand. "Why won't it open?!"
Behind them, the voice came again, closer than before.
"So now…"
"…it's your turn."
Then the first book lifted.
It rose slowly from the nearest desk, tilting at an odd angle, as if something invisible was turning it over with mild curiosity. Then another. Then a quill, then an inkwell, then a set of robes draped over a chair — all of them drifting upward at once, rotating gently in the air like debris caught in still water.
One girl pressed herself flat against the door.
Another made a sound she would later refuse to describe.
The third pointed, her hand shaking.
"They're moving—"
"I see them!" the first snapped, grabbing her arm without looking away.
The objects didn't rush. They simply hung there, patient and wrong.
"You like deciding what someone else's day looks like, don't you."
"Shoes that wander off on their own. How funny that must have seemed."
One girl flinched before she could stop it.
"We didn't—"
"You did."
The inkwell tilted. A thin ribbon of ink curled through the air, suspended.
"She walked on cold stone. In November. And you laughed."
"I want you to remember this feeling. Not because I enjoy it. Because she deserved none of it."
The objects held one moment longer.
Then settled — back onto desks, back over chairs, exactly where they had been.
The door clicked open.
None of them moved. Then one lunged for the handle, threw it wide, and all three spilled into the corridor, not stopping until they reached the common room and the fire and the light.
The dormitory was quiet. Empty. Exactly as it had always been.
Victor woke in his bed and smiled at the ceiling.
Those three won't touch Luna again. Won't touch anyone, if he read them right.
"Why the hell are you smiling like that?"
Draco was propped on one elbow, squinting across the dark dormitory with the expression of someone who resented being conscious.
Victor glanced at him.
"Go back to sleep."
"You're grinning at the ceiling at two in the morning. I'm not going back to sleep."
"Then stare at the wall. Either works."
Draco didn't move. "What did you do?"
"Nothing."
"Victor."
"Sleep, Draco. Unless you want me to describe my evening in full." A pause. "Fair warning — you won't sleep for a week."
Draco studied him for a long moment in the dark. Whatever he saw there was apparently enough. He pulled his curtain shut without another word.
Victor turned back to the ceiling.
***
The next morning, the three girls went straight to Professor Flitwick and explained everything.
He listened without interrupting. The crying, the voice, the objects lifting from their desks, the door that wouldn't open. All of it.
When they finished he was quiet for a moment.
"A ghost," he said.
"It had to be," one of them said.
Flitwick said nothing, which unsettled them more than any response would have. Because he knew every ghost in Hogwarts. The Grey Lady didn't move objects. The Bloody Baron had no interest in first-year dormitories. Peeves was loud and chaotic and impossible to mistake for anything else.
What they were describing didn't match any of them.
And ghosts didn't lock doors. Didn't reference specific incidents. Didn't know exactly whose shoes had gone missing and why.
He looked at the three of them carefully.
"Did anything happen beforehand?" he asked. "Anything that might have… prompted this?"
Another silence.
The girls looked at each other.
Flitwick watched that look pass between them and understood it immediately.
He straightened slightly behind his desk.
"I see," he said.
He didn't press further about the ghost. He didn't need to. Whatever had happened in that dormitory, these three had clearly already received some version of a consequence for it.
He simply held their gaze a moment longer than comfortable.
"You're dismissed."
*****
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