The ghost had a pearly-white, semi-transparent body, wore absurdly colorful clothes, and had a jester’s cap adorned with bells perched on his head.
Clutching a pile of water balloons filled with paint, he was hurling them one after another at the passing students with extreme agility.
“Peeves!”
A Ravenclaw girl shrieked as she ran past, “Don’t hit me!”
“Oh, yes I will!
Yes I will!”
Peeves cackled, cleanly throwing a purple paint-ball that hit the girl square in the back, the purple paint blooming across her brand-new robes.
Alvin’s eyes swept across the corridor.
Splattered paint was everywhere—on the floor, walls, ceiling, and even the portraits.
The figures inside the frames were fleeing their canvases, some hiding in neighboring paintings, others vanishing entirely.
The young wizards ran in all directions, screaming, cursing, crying, and laughing in a chaotic mess.
Meanwhile, his acquaintance Hermione Granger was standing right in the middle of the corridor.
Her hair, face, and robes were covered in red and yellow paint, making her look like an angry parrot that had flown through a paint factory.
She was pointing her wand at Peeves, chanting spells rapidly, but her magic either missed or passed harmlessly through his spectral body, doing absolutely nothing.
Having the spells pass right through him only made Peeves laugh louder.
He didn’t even bother dodging, letting the spells hit the walls behind him as he grew increasingly excited.
“No use!
No use!
Your tiny little spells can’t touch the great Peeves!”
Then, he aimed two paint-balls right at Hermione at once:
“Have a taste of Peeves’ Special Rainbow Combo!”
Hermione dodged one but couldn’t avoid the second, adding a streak of blue to her face.
Alvin frowned slightly as he watched.
He had met three ghosts—or rather, spirits—at Hogwarts: the friendly Fat Friar, the indifferent Professor Binns, and the troublemaking Peeves.
While the first two had their quirks, they shared one common trait: they never actively harmed the students.
Peeves, however, belonged to an entirely different category.
Alvin could tell that Peeves didn’t possess the typical resentment or malice of a “vengeful specter” in the Eastern sense.
His existence was closer to…
a form of twisted glee.
An instinctual urge to find joy in the misery and embarrassment of others.
He didn’t want to kill; he just wanted to cause chaos.
And because physical attacks were useless against him and ordinary spells couldn’t touch him, he was virtually above the law in this castle.
The screams of the young wizards grew louder.
A few more unfortunate students were hit, their faces and robes stained with multiple colors.
Peeves floated in midair, laughing so hard he was practically doing loops, his supply of paint-balls seemingly endless—heaven knew where he was getting them all.
Alvin did not join the fleeing crowd.
He quietly backed behind a stone pillar on one side of the corridor, blending into the shadows.
He planned to lend a hand to his classmate, but he had no intention of exposing himself.
He slipped his hand into his talisman pouch, his fingertips brushing against a stack of paper talismans.
This was one of the basic talismans he had drawn back on Mount Qingcheng—the “Clear Wind Draft.”
It was originally used to guide air currents, disperse stagnant energy, and purify small areas, possessing almost zero offensive power.
But with a slight modification…
He pulled out a paper talisman, and with his other hand, fished out a small stump of a cinnabar brush from the bottom of his pouch—a spare tool he used to touch up talisman ink.
With lightning speed, he added a few strokes to the back of the talisman.
He didn’t draw a completely new one; instead, he added a “Mind-Clouding” variant structure to the existing “Clear Wind Draft” array.
The Mind-Clouding technique was an entry-level trick his martial uncle used to discipline misbehaving younger disciples.
It didn’t harm the target, but merely caused a brief moment of daze and distraction, making them lose focus on what they were doing.
It worked on spiritual entities as well.
To deal with a being like Peeves, who lived for mischief, one didn’t need high-powered offensive spells.
One only needed to disrupt his rhythm and let him trip over himself.
At the last moment, remembering something, he added a few runes to the talisman to ensure it would affect spiritual forms directly.
Then, holding the modified talisman between his index and middle fingers, Alvin channeled his spiritual energy and gave a soft command:
“Go!”
The talisman dissolved into an almost invisible draft, drifting silently toward Peeves.
A second later, Peeves was just about to hurl an orange paint-ball at a first-year hiding in a corner when his arm suddenly froze.
The perpetual grin on his face faltered, replaced by a sudden blank stare.
“Eh?”
He looked down at his hand, then at the paint-ball, as if he had suddenly forgotten what he was doing.
“What was I…
trying to do just now?”
In that brief second of confusion, his grip loosened, and the paint-ball slipped through his fingers.
*Splat!*
It exploded right on his foot.
The yellow paint burst across his semi-transparent form, and then, in a bizarre turn of events…
it stuck.
Instead of passing through his body, it behaved like real paint on real clothes, leaving a massive yellow stain on his spiritual form.
Peeves’ eyes widened.
He stared down at the yellow splotch on his foot, his expression shifting from confusion to shock, and then from shock to absolute terror.
“This—this is impossible!”
His voice cracked into a high-pitched shriek.
“How is it sticking?
I’m a ghost!
Paint is supposed to go through me!
What is this, aaah!”
He shook his leg frantically, but the paint remained firmly attached to his semi-transparent body.
To make matters worse, in his panic, the remaining paint-balls in his hands slipped one after another, exploding all over him.
*Splat!
Splat!
Splat!*
Red, blue, green, purple…
a kaleidoscope of colors burst across his body, sticking everywhere.
Peeves let out a screech like a stuck pig, thrashing wildly in midair as he tried to shake off the paint.
But the more he shook, the worse it got, until he was nothing but a screaming, thrashing, multicolored blur.
“Who did this!
Who’s sabotaging the great Peeves!”
He shrieked, looking around wildly, but he could see nothing. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
Alvin had already withdrawn his spiritual energy, hiding completely in the shadow of the stone pillar.
The fleeing students stopped, staring open-mouthed at the sight.
The normally untouchable, uncontrollable Peeves was now thrashing in midair like a cat dunked in paint, his screams nearly rattling the ceiling.
Hermione stood in the middle of the corridor, not even bothering to wipe the paint from her face, her mouth agape as she stared at the thrashing, colorful ghost.
Peeves finally gave up trying to find his attacker.
He was absolutely terrified of the paint on his body.
For a ghost who loved to cause messes but hated being messy himself, being covered in sticky paint was the ultimate nightmare of his centuries-long afterlife.
“Help!
Help!
Peeves is going to Dumbledore!”
He shrieked, flying frantically toward the other end of the corridor, leaving a trail of colorful splatters and a fading string of wails.
“Headmaster!
Someone’s bullying Peeves!
You have to stop them!”
His voice drifted further and further away, finally vanishing around a corner.
The corridor fell into a bizarre silence.
Then, a voice broke the quiet:
“So…
Peeves…
pelted himself with his own paint-balls?”
It was a Gryffindor boy.
His robes were also stained, but he didn’t care about cleaning them at the moment, staring blankly in the direction Peeves had fled.
“And the paint…
actually stuck to him?” a Ravenclaw girl added in disbelief.
Hermione snapped out of her daze and shook her head vigorously, sending a few droplets of paint flying onto the person next to her.
She raised her wand, performing a Cleaning Charm on herself.
The paint vanished from her face, though a large stain remained on her robes.
She performed the charm a few more times until she looked presentable again.
Then, she spun around, her sharp eyes scanning the surroundings as if searching for something.
Alvin didn’t give her the chance.
While everyone’s attention was still fixed on where Peeves had disappeared, he slipped silently from behind the pillar, blended into a group of whispering students, and walked toward the other end of the corridor as if nothing had happened.
There was still a small yellow paint smudge on the hem of his robes, but he kept it hidden beneath a fold.
His stride was steady and unhurried, looking like any other student heading down to the Great Hall for dinner.
Behind him, Hermione’s voice drifted over faintly:
“…not an ordinary spell…
to work on a ghost…
and Peeves didn’t even see who did it…
how could…”
A tiny, barely perceptible smile played on the corner of Alvin’s mouth.
He stepped onto the stairs leading to the dungeons, his footsteps echoing softly against the stone.
The last rays of the setting sun filtered through the high windows, painting his silver-white hair in a warm, golden hue.
In his talisman pouch, the ashes of the modified “Clear Wind Draft” talisman had long since dissolved into a wisp of smoke invisible to mortal eyes, dispersing into the air where Peeves had been thrashing.
Alvin didn’t look back.
Alvin’s first afternoon of free time at Hogwarts had come to a close, ending on a note that wasn’t half bad.