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Sargeras hurried down the corridor, a thick copy of An Introduction to Magic clutched tight against his chest.
He had just turned a dim corner cluttered with old suits of armor when a bizarre sight stopped him in his tracks.
The hallway, always poorly lit at this hour, had turned into the stage for a disastrous sort of "cleaning show."
Filch's beloved automatic mop, the enchanted one rumored to have been altered by Kestrel with charms of her own, was laboring with tireless devotion. Its wooden handle was fastened to the mop head by a creaky metal hinge that squeaked faintly with every stroke. With rigid, almost military zeal, it dragged itself back and forth across the ancient stone floor, each movement bursting with mechanical enthusiasm.
However, its hard work brought anything but cleanliness.
Quite the opposite.
Wherever the mop slid, it left behind not a trace of clear water but a trail of thick, snaking black ink.
Those dark marks writhed like living, ugly vines, spreading across the pale grey flagstones until the solemn corridor looked as if some careless artist had splashed out a huge, clumsy abstract painting. The air was sharp with the biting scent of fresh ink, a smell that stung the nose.
"What in the world…" Sargeras narrowed his eyes.
Instinctively, he glanced around, half-expecting Filch to appear at any moment, the way the caretaker usually charged in like a bloodhound on the scent.
Yet the hallway remained deserted. Only the eager mop kept at its frantic labor, each stroke steadily making the mess worse.
Sargeras' gaze swept over the scene, and experience whispered that this sort of "masterpiece" was no accident. Someone was having fun at the castle's expense.
Sure enough, he soon found the culprit.
High above the mop, tucked in the shadows near the arched ceiling, Peeves hovered with his arms wrapped around his belly, his face split in a grin of pure mischief.
Dangling from one hand was an empty ink bottle. A few stubborn drops clung to the mouth and fell, one by one, landing neatly in the battered iron bucket beside the mop.
Clearly, the not-so-clever magical mop had never noticed the switch. It hadn't the faintest idea that its water had been replaced with ink. Loyal to a fault, it simply followed its single command: dip, then scrub, utterly unaware that it had become the perfect accomplice to Peeves' latest act of vandalism.
Sargeras rubbed at his forehead.
That smell. That telltale mess. He recognized this recipe all too well.
If Filch were to see his precious mop turning the beloved corridor into such a nightmare… Sargeras could almost picture the caretaker's face turning a dark, liverish purple, hear the shrill roar that would follow.
And this wasn't the first time. He had heard about that night of the Bronze Feather gathering, when Peeves, finding no professors or even the headmaster about, had turned the Great Hall into utter chaos. To this day the Weasley twins were still serving detention with Snape for the part he'd blamed on them.
He couldn't keep letting this poltergeist roam the castle stirring up trouble. It was time to give him something else to worry about.
The thought was enough. His wand slid into his palm without a sound.
"Peeves."
Sargeras didn't raise his voice, yet the single word cut through the corridor, sharper and colder than the squeak of the mop.
High near the ceiling, Peeves' triumphant grin froze in place. He gave a violent start, the hand clutching his belly loosening so suddenly that the big empty ink bottle nearly slipped free.
In an instant, a real and unmistakable fear washed across his ever-shifting face. He darted toward the nearest crack in the stonework, desperate to melt into the wall.
"Chaos Storm!"
A sudden suction tore through the corridor, seizing him with brutal force and dragging his entire body down from the air.
Peeves shrieked, thrashing wildly, his limbs flailing as he tried again and again to dive through the walls or vanish into the ceiling. But it was as though invisible ropes had bound him tight. Every ghostly trick he knew failed, his ability to slip through stone sealed away as if someone had locked the very air around him.
"No! Let Peeves go! You can't—!" His shrill protest shattered into a ragged, panicked wail.
Sargeras paid it no mind.
With a precise flick of his wand, the empty ink bottle rose smoothly, suspended as if balanced on an unseen hand. Its mouth tilted until it pointed directly at the poltergeist still writhing in mid-air.
A soft pop rang out, like a stopper pressed neatly into place.
Peeves' struggling form, along with his terrified screams, was pulled in an instant into the very bottle he had used for his prank.
Sargeras traced a series of intricate runes across the glass with the tip of his wand.
At once, a fine silver pattern sealed over the mouth, delicate as spider silk yet hard as crystal. No matter how Peeves battered the sides or screamed and cursed, the bottle held firm, answering only with a deep, muffled thud.
"Quiet," Sargeras said, his voice calm, almost casual. He gave the bottle a light shake, as though handling some odd trinket rather than a furious poltergeist.
"Take a good look at Hogwarts while you can," he added, his voice betraying nothing. "By tomorrow, you may be setting sail for distant shores."
The wizarding world's understanding of chaotic spirits like this one was still painfully thin.
Sargeras remembered poring over a few dusty notebooks in a shadowed corner of the Restricted Section, their pages filled with hurried scrawls. Most of those records wandered in circles, describing strange phenomena without ever daring to speak of essence or solution.
Only one name stood apart: Lyall Lupin.
This scholar was one of the few experts in the wizarding world who had devoted his life to studying creatures outside the usual magical order, beings such as poltergeists and boggarts. The spell Sargeras had just used to subdue Peeves had been drawn from fragments of Luthen's scattered notes.
They had exchanged only a handful of letters. From those brief replies, Sargeras learned that Lupin had once served in the Department of Mysteries, in a division dedicated to anomalous events, until some internal pressure forced him into a quiet resignation.
More important still, there were far too few poltergeists in the wizarding world to examine in any depth. Peeves was almost the only one who remained both lively and "ancient" enough to serve as a proper subject of study.
Lyall Lupin's research had been like searching for a rich vein of ore only to discover that no ore could be mined, leaving him with no choice but to abandon his work. His insightful theories, once promising, ended up as neglected old papers.
Sargeras had studied those manuscripts with great care and had found their strict logic and daring conjectures strikingly persuasive.
And truly, for nearly a thousand years, Peeves had done little at Hogwarts beyond sowing endless chaos and mischief. There was no evidence of any higher purpose or accomplishment throughout his long history.
Rather than allow this source of pure disorder to go on wreaking havoc unchecked, it seemed wiser to Sargeras to channel that residual energy into something useful, to transform him into a rare and valuable experimental specimen.
Just then, heavy footsteps came pounding from the far end of the corridor. Each one landed quick and weighty, accompanied by the sound of labored breathing.
"Who?! Who is causing destruction in my corridors!"
Argus Filch appeared around the corner, his face a familiar map of gloom and deep-set wrinkles, twisted into outrage.
His bulbous eyes locked onto the sprawling "ink abstract painting" on the floor, and then snapped to the tireless, self-propelling mop still spreading new black trails.
"My… my mop! My corridor!"
Filch's complexion shifted instantly, from waxy yellow to a terrifying purplish-red. His scrawny chest heaved violently as if a roar were about to burst forth from his throat.
And yet, the roar never came.
He froze, staring at the young professor standing calmly amid the ink-stained chaos, holding the very bottle that contained Peeves.
Filch's gaze flicked between Sargeras, the ink bottle, the mop, and the ruined corridor. The raw fury on his face began to warp into a tangled, unnameable mix of disbelief, resentment, and confusion.
He seemed to grasp what had happened, yet he couldn't shake the sense that Sargeras' cold, composed demeanor was a kind of haughty mockery aimed at him, a silent taunt to the caretaker's usual impotence as a squib.
"Professor Greengrass?" Filch croaked, his voice rough with strain, "What… what is going on here? Peeves—he…"
"Quite obvious." Sargeras' voice carried no trace of emotion. He lifted the ink bottle slightly, and inside it Peeves was frantically banging his head against the glass walls.
"The poltergeist simply performed a minor functional upgrade on your… 'loyal assistant.'"
Filch stared at Sargeras, at that serene, in-control expression, and then back at his beloved mop and the utterly desecrated corridor. A surge of hot, blazing rage shot straight to his temples.
He despised Sargeras' detached, almost smug attitude!
"My corridor! My mop!"
He jabbed an accusing finger at the ink still spreading across the stones, his voice rising in pitch, tremulous with indignation. "Look at this! How long will it take to clean it all up! Peeves… Peeves he…"
His eyes burned with the desire to rush forward, seize the poltergeist from the bottle, and punish him personally. Yet the imposing presence of Sargeras and the contained fury in his calm restraint held him frozen. He could not dare make a move.
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[Chapter End's]
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