Cursed With Curious Minds | Hp Next Generation

14 - The Ghost Problem

"I can't believe it's Halloween already," Emmeline said, as the girls changed out of their uniforms and into more fashionable robes for the Halloween feast.

"Next thing you know, it'll be Christmas." Delilah said, winking at Astrid.

Astrid rolled her eyes, knowing exactly what Delilah was implying. None of the others seemed to notice.

"Ted's throwing a party in the common room after the feast," Abi said. "Are you lot going to come?"

"Might as well, if there's a party going!" Delilah laughed.

"You sure you're not going to be partied out?" Jasmine asked.

Delilah looked confused. "What do you mean?"

"Your birthday," Jasmine replied, like it was obvious. "It's next week."

"Yeah, that's a whole week in between parties! Plenty of time to recover." Delilah grinned.

"I'll be late, because I've got astronomy – but I'll be there." Astrid remembered. She knew a lot of people in her class were quite miffed about missing a whole hour of Halloween celebrations, but for Astrid it was a whole hour next to Ophelia that she wouldn't have had otherwise.

The five of them went as a group down to the Great Hall. The decorations had been put up during the day, and the hall looked immaculate. There were pumpkins all around the hall, and floating above their heads. The ceiling had also been bewitched to show a fake lightning storm in the sky, which had the occasional flash and bang which caused a few students to jump. Even the teachers had gotten into the spirit, with each of them having their own carved pumpkin in front of their seat, with images relating to their subject. Astrid particularly liked Professor McGonagall's, which showed a witch on a broom transforming into a cat.

McGonagall gave her welcome speech, and congratulated everybody on a fantastic start to the term – as usual. She continued on as she did every year, explaining how it's still 'not a time to slack off' as we still have 'two months until Christmas'. Astrid wasn't really paying attention however, as she looked over at James. Astrid wouldn't normally look at James at any time, but today he looked particularly suspicious, and she'd heard him on the way explain to his mates how much fun the feast was going to be. 'Fun' in James Potter's eyes usually wasn't fun in everybody else's.

The moment McGonagall finished talking, and the feast appeared – everyone was distracted so that's when James whipped out his wand.

"Oh no." Astrid said, noticing James pulling his wand out of his robes.

"What?" Delilah asked.

"Look at James."

Delilah didn't argue, and looked over in the direction of the Gryffindor table.

"What's he doing?" she asked.

Astrid looked worried. "I don't know."

However, she was about to find out, as James muttered some incantation under his breath and suddenly Nearly Headless Nick split into two. Then four. Then eight. Then sixteen. But it wasn't just Nearly Headless Nick; the Bloody Baron, the Fat Friar, the Grey Lady, Professor Binns and even Peeves had multiplied enough so there must have been a hundred of each ghost flying about the Great Hall.

"Bloody hell!" James exclaimed. "Didn't realise it'd work on poltergeists too! Brilliant!" One of the many Peeves flew down and high-fived James.

"You've really outdone yourself this time, Potter," Jason Thomas-Finnigan said through laughter.

Dominique and Elliot were laughing far too much to comment.

Meanwhile, Astrid over at the Ravenclaw table was fuming.