Saturday arrived with the quiet weight of unfinished parchment.
Hermione dragged Elias to the library before the sun had finished climbing the towers, and by the time his quill stopped moving, his mind had already fled the building.
He wandered.
The castle, even after weeks, still had corridors he’d never walked, doors that looked like walls.
He drifted through them like a ghost himself, letting his feet decide the path.
Rest, he’d told Hermione.
Balance.
A hidden door on the fourth floor swung open as he passed.
Water hit him before he heard the laughter—a full bucket, cold and sudden, plastering his hair to his scalp.
“Hahaha! The little first-year brat has fallen into Peeves-sama’s trap!”
A poof of displaced air, and a transparent imp tumbled mid-air, clutching his belly, mouth stretched wide with delight.
Heat surged through Elias’s chest, involuntary and immediate.
[Wrath +1]
“Stupefy!”
His wand was out before the first drop hit the floor.
The red bolt shot straight through Peeves and cracked against the stone wall behind him.
The imp didn’t so much as flinch.
“Hahahaha! Lord Peeves isn’t afraid of spells, little brat!”
Peeves produced a ball from somewhere—a dense, brown sphere that Elias recognised an instant too late.
He’d seen the Weasley twins lob one at the Slytherin table before McGonagall vanished it mid-flight.
Dung.
The imp could touch solid objects.
Interesting.
His wand moved again.
“Wingardium Leviosa.”
The dung ball froze in the air an inch from his chest.
The spell held it steady, and the stench hadn’t yet reached him.
He wasn’t going to let that change.
“Look here!” Peeves chirped, and a second ball was already in his hand.
“Wingardium Leviosa.”
This one reversed direction faster than Peeves could blink.
It passed clean through the imp’s transparent body and sailed out the open window, vanishing into the grounds below.
Peeves’s grin collapsed.
He’d only had two dung balls left.
His prank, thoroughly ruined, left him floating in disappointed silence for exactly one second before he turned and passed through the wall with a huff.
He needed more ammunition.
The Weasley twins would have plenty.
Elias watched him vanish, then touched his wand to his soaked robes.
“Finite.”
Steam rose from the fabric, and warmth bloomed across his skin.
Seconds later, he was dry.
But his mind was still turning.
A being that could clutch a solid object and pass through walls.
He’d spent enough time trailing after Professor Binns—the only ghost he’d ever observed closely—to know that much.
Binns didn’t even touch parchment.
He lectured from memory, a dry recitation that explained why the History of Magic textbooks hadn’t been updated in decades.
Elias needed a better source.
He asked the next three ghosts he passed.
Each one pointed him deeper into the castle, until he found the Bloody Baron in a cold basement chamber, silent and staring at nothing.
The Baron did not turn when Elias entered.
He simply waited.
“You’re asking about Peeves,” he said, voice scraping the air like stone on stone.
The gaunt face finally moved, fixing Elias with an empty gaze.
Elias nodded.
“He’s not a ghost.”
That much he’d expected.
“Then what is he?”
“An emotion.”
Elias let the word hang.
“An emotion.”
The Baron’s chains shifted, a sound like dry bones settling.
“Peeves is a sprite born from the strange feelings of the young wizards who study here. All the mischief they never act on, all the chaos they imagine—he absorbs it. His existence is to fulfil those desires. That is his meaning. To prank. To disrupt.”
Elias understood, and something clicked behind his eyes.
Peeves was a manifestation of emotion—mischief, distilled and given form.
The Seven Deadly Sins were emotions too, in their purest, most corrupting shape.
Wrath.
Sloth.
Could they be materialised the same way?
Not just as a counter on a screen, but as a tool?
As magic?
He thanked the Bloody Baron and left the basement with his pulse beating a little faster.
The library called to him again, but this time it wasn’t Hermione’s voice doing the summoning.
If his conjecture was right, he might never need to wake before noon again.
The thought settled over him, thick and sweet as honey left in sunlight.
[Sloth +1]
Apparently, sloth was a matter of long-term thought, not long-term action.
Useful.
Elsewhere on the grounds, Harry was learning that Hogwarts could be paradise, except for Draco Malfoy.
Since leaving the Dursleys, he’d worn clothes that fit.
He’d eaten food that wasn’t scraped from the bottom of a pan.
He played wizard chess with Ron in the common room until the fire burned low, and he woke most mornings not dreading the day.
If Malfoy didn’t exist, he’d have gone to sleep smiling every single night.
But Malfoy existed, and he had a flawless instinct for the worst possible moments.
Today, Harry and Ron had found a patch of grass near the lake, warm with afternoon sun, eating the last of the train sweets.
Other students dotted the lawn, spaced out in their own quiet clusters.
It was, for ten minutes, good.
He spread a picnic blanket not twenty feet away and began piling it with sweets.
Shiny boxes, ribbon-wrapped confections, the kind of things that glittered even from a distance.
“My father sends me these,” Malfoy announced, loud enough to carry, his eyes flicking toward Harry.
“Top quality. Not the sort of thing just anyone can buy.”
He paused, letting the words land.
“What do you say, Potter? I might let you try one. Reluctantly, of course.” A slow smile.
“Weasley’s out of the question. Some people simply don’t deserve nice things.”
Ron was on his feet before Harry could exhale.
His ears had gone red.
“Say that again.”
Malfoy’s smile widened.
“Poor bastards don’t—”
Ron rolled up his sleeves and stepped forward.
Harry rose behind him, heart pounding.
Four of them, and Crabbe and Goyle were built like trolls in training.
A fistfight would end badly.
He gripped his wand, even though he hadn’t yet cast a single complete spell.
It felt small in his hand.
“You want to fight?” Malfoy said, and Crabbe and Goyle moved like a wall in front of him.
Pansy Parkinson shrieked, “Beat them up!” and grabbed Malfoy’s arm.
He yanked it free with visible disgust.
The air tightened.
Both groups leaned forward, the invisible line between them thinning to nothing.
Then a shape fell from the sky.
It struck the grass between them with a sound like a wet explosion.
Juice and something far worse sprayed outward in a thick, sudden burst, and the stench hit a half-second later—foul, clinging, unmistakable.
Malfoy’s carefully styled blond hair was suddenly a dripping ruin.
Ron, mid-shout, caught a mouthful he’d be tasting for the rest of the day.
“Ugh—!” The two groups recoiled, gagging, all aggression drowned in the sudden universal desire to be somewhere else.
Malfoy, as the only person present holding a wand, had no doubt whatsoever who was responsible.
“Damn Potter! If I ever listen to my father and try to befriend him again, I’m a dog!”
Harry, gasping and spitting, had an equally firm conviction: “Malfoy threw it. I’ll kill him—ugh.”
Neither side advanced.
The smell made sure of that.
And Elias, entirely unaware that the dung ball he’d bounced out the fourth-floor window had found its mark and accidentally prevented a brawl, was walking faster now, sneezing into his sleeve as a chill tickled his nose.
Peeves’s prank water, perhaps.
Or just the castle’s draft.
He quickened his pace anyway.
Hermione would never admit she’d been watching the library door.
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