Hogwarts: A Future

Chapter Fourteen: Adventure

Heart in his mouth, Al stopped dead in his tracks. The shadow cast on the wall in front of him continued to move forward. Unlike the ghosts it bobbed slightly as it went, as though it were walking with one foot in front of the other, yet Al could still see no corporeal being.

Screaming for help felt like the best option, but, after a spilt second imagining what James would have to say about that, Al paused. Whatever it was, it was moving away from him. It clearly was not trying to harm him, at least for the time being. Watching carefully Al tried to see if the wavering shape on the wall had anything distinguishing about it that might give him a clue about what it was. To the naked eye it was just an ordinary shadow, excepting the fact that no one was casting it.

The shadow approached the corner of the passageway. Al grit his teeth and hurried towards it. The intersection of passageways was so close the shadow was almost out of sight... Al broke into a run, but it was too late. By the time he hurtled around the left hand side of the corridor the shadow had vanished.

Frowning to himself Al wandered back to the bottom of the stairs leading to the seventh floor. Wracking his brains he could not recall his parents or aunts and uncles ever talking about a shadow like that lurking in the school.

*

He was still deep in thought when he crawled through the portrait hole and into the common room.

The usual noisy scene greeted him. He headed over to the noisiest group of the lot to find his brother.

'Hey! Hey, James!' Al had to stand on tiptoes to see over the shoulders of some fifth years who were crowded around James' group of friends.

James and Demetri were playing a game of exploding snap. A quite ordinary game in the wizarding world, however, the heavy powder marks on the carpet around them, and indeed on the boys themselves, suggested they had found a way of adding emphasis to the exploding aspect of the game.

'What?' James called, without looking up. He and Demetri were totally engrossed in the game, flinging down cards rapidly.

'Snap!' Demetri yelled triumphantly and the whole pack made a noise like a small cannon. Once the smoke had cleared Al addressed James again.

'James, something weird has happened to Peeves,' Al blinked through the eye searing smoke.

James, slightly singed, peered teary-eyed up at Al.

'That's just Peeves, Al. That's the way he is.'

'No, you don't -'

But Al was interrupted by the clamouring of the crowd for another game to be played.

Annoyed, Al left the common room for his dormitory. He knew what he had seen had not been a ghoul. The one which groaned a lot, and had a peculiar predilection for pyjamas, living in his grandparent's home was nothing like the shadow he had seen.

Pushing open the dormitory door he was surprised to walk in on Edwin and Petra, clearly in the middle of a fight. The twins were glaring angrily at one another from either side of the room, Edwin with his hands stuffed into his pockets, Petra with her arms folded tightly. At Al's arrival their heads snapped towards him, each attempting to control the expressions of rage on their faces.

'Oh-' Al began, hesitating.

'Hi Al-' Petra tried for normalcy, whereas Edwin said, 'it's okay, we were just finished.'

Petra glared at her brother.

'No we weren't.'

'We are now,' Edwin grumbled back.