Fic: 'Tales for an April Fool', Albus/Severus, George/Angelina, Gilderoy, Minerva, N-H Nick
Title: Tales for an April Fool
Author: purplefluffycat
Characters/Pairings: Albus Dumbledore/Severus Snape, Nearly-Headless Nick, George Weasley/Angelina Johnson, Dolores Umbridge, Gilderoy Lockhart/Minerva McGonagall
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Voyeurism, object insertion, unwitting swallowing of semen, self-bondage/dollification
Word Count: ~3400
Summary/Description: According to Nearly-Headless Nick, "The one boon - if there must be one - of this half-alive existence is that one gets to watch."
After several hundred years of disembodied floating, gosh he has seen a lot of things! And some of them are really quite ridiculous...
Author's Notes: I wrote this for daily_deviant's April Fool's Day celebration: Unfortunate Incidents/The Silly Side of Sex. Other than that, I think Nick's description speaks for itself!
Good afternoon! Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington here, reporting for your April-time challenge. Foolishness, you say? All sorts of high-jinks and mishaps that can give us a jolly good giggle? Well, I must admit, that's right up my alley!
I remember very clearly the Waterford-on-Brookley court jester... cheeky little chappie, he was - a tumbling dwarf with a vicious bladder-on-a-stick and humour bawdier than a ship of naval goblins on Veela Isle. Oh, the stories he told!
Though I suspect you're actually here to hear my stories, aren't you? The goings on I've witnessed in this fine old castle. Well, I don't mind if I do. You asked for the most outrageous tales of coital mishap. "After all, that non-corporeal drifting must be good for something," you said. "Nick, you must have witnessed a goodly number of shenanigans and frothy encounters," you said.
And I have. Truly, I have. The one boon - if there must be one - of this half-alive existence is that one gets to watch. Ooh, and how lovely that can be, I do attest!
But sometimes, the hot and steamy can turn cold and squidgy with alarming alacrity - and I like a chuckle just as much as the next wizard, especially if it's at the expense of someone who can take it in good humour, or someone who fully deserves everything that flies at them. I'm sure we all know a few people in that category, too.
So, I racked my brains (not so easy when they're made out of ectoplasm, I can tell you), and came up with my Top Three. I restricted myself to stories from the recent past, for your benefit; one might raise a titter when discoursing about those long gone - anon in flagrante with anon, as it were - but I daresay the comic effect is heightened when it's someone you have had the pleasure - or displeasure - of actually getting to know. Thus, with no further ado:
The first one might shock you right and proper, because it's about our esteemed Headmaster, Professor Albus Wulfric Percival Brian Dumbledore. "Too risqué?" you might suggest. Bah and piffle to that! The thing about being a ghost, you see, is that one becomes somewhat above propriety. Or wafts past it, I suppose.
Either way, I don't have the least compunction in telling you that the Headmaster is an adventurous sort. He's very flexible in his needs and wants and willingness. He will happily play the forceful, manly seducer if that is what his partner desires. But, of all things that two people might get up to together, the one thing our illustrious Professor likes most of all is: taking it up the arse.
Oh, and he's a real little minx! There he will be, on his hands and knees in the middle of the turret-room sheepskin rug, issuing orders like nobody's business. Harder! More! Left a bit, down a bit... Yes just there! Now, speed up... etcetera, etcetera - until the poor chap on the giving end is either entirely spent or has friction burns in all sorts of uncomfortable places.
Despite his great enthusiasm for all manner of activities, though, the Headmaster is incredibly faithful. Whosoever has his attentions has them fully - and for the past few decades, that has been none other than young Professor Snape.
"A surprising match," you say? Yes, I thought so too, but there it is. Shouting turned to crying, crying turned to holding, and holding turned to... well, you can imagine what came next. At it like Nifflers in Spring, they've been, ever since.
But anyway, where were we? Ah yes, the Headmaster and his arse. 'Twas a fine June day not long after Severus joined the staff, and the pair of them were taking advantage of the fact that the school was nipper-free. They had already made the sign of the Humpbacked Hippogriff a couple of times - with most affecting particulars, I do declare, but that's a tale for another time - and, after a few hours rest, in which Severus had begun to cook dinner (cooking is awfully like potion-making, I'm told, and he's widely rumoured to quite enjoy doing both) Albus was obviously thinking of a repeat performance.
They set again to kissing and so forth, and when he was being thoroughly rogered by Severus' nice, long fingers, Albus cried out for something more. Severus, however, perhaps wasn't feeling quite in the mood - or maybe he had a trick up his sleeve - because instead of reporting for duty in the usual way, he cast around for something else that would provide that which was needed.
His eyes alighted on his pestle and mortar in the corner of the room, and I daresay, that seemed perfect. Round, smooth marble. Nice and hard and thick at the top - just the thing for a pushy so-and-so who at that very moment was issuing semi-coherent instructions in no uncertain terms. So, Severus summoned the pestle and poured a goodly dollop of oil on it, then pushed it forward, clutching Albus' hip as it filled a needy opening, as it were.
He was rewarded with a surprised, 'Oh!' and a hiss of satisfaction, and started to move the thing in the way Albus likes best. All was going swimmingly, you'd think.
Yes, one would indeed think that, until remembering that Severus had lasted used the item in question for...
... powdering Scotch Bonnet chillies.
It started as a kind of murmur - not unlike the groans of passion that had rung around the walls minutes before - then gathered pace as a kind of querulous warble before blossoming into a full-voiced scream. Having such a vocal lover at the best of times, it actually took Severus a while to notice that anything was amiss. He had kept going with the pestle, firm of wrist and generous of conviction, before registering the pained cry.
By that point, however, Albus had extricated himself from the offending object, and jumped from the bed, hopping around the room with his posterior aflame. "Gods, Severus, what did you put on that thing?! Aaagh, it's awful, it's..." he spluttered, and he ran into the shower, moon-upward, hoping for some cooling relief.
As realisation dawned, Severus' eyes widened like deadly nightshade in full-bloom, and he gazed between the pestle, the spice-mix patiently awaiting supper, and Albus' troubled splashings next door. It would not have been sporting to laugh.
Severus laughed. Perhaps more than I have witnessed him laugh before or since, in fact. He was doubled-over, convulsed with peals of the stuff, tears creeping from the corners of his mirth-soaked eyes.
"What in Merlin's name is so dashed funny?" came a pitiful cry from the bathroom, amid the rush of water.
Severus answered by rifling through his potions box. He appeared at the bathroom door with a tube of anti-capsicum ointment, and a declaration that the price of such was relief from Gryffindor/Hufflepuff second-years every other Thursday.
I daresay the Headmaster thought twice before filing any more outré requests, after that!
Now then, we go from the exploits of a seasoned connoisseur like Dumbledore, to those making their first forays into the world of coital relations. Of course, this being a school full of youngsters, one sees such malarkey ever week - every day, it sometimes seems. I swear, the Astronomy Tower must be home to so many gropes, first-times, mutual wanks and inexpert attempts at fellatio, they should install a booking system.
Indeed, the usual haunts for after-hours assignations being so very popular, I daresay that is why the protagonists of our next tale - Mr George Weasley and Miss Angelina Johnson - opted to meet at midnight at the pear-portrait to the kitchens. "My friend in Hufflepuff gave me the password," quoth she, and then they were in.
They had correctly reasoned, I suppose, that between the hours of post-dinner and pre-breakfast, the elves would be safely abed, and the area deserted. Well, in that year where the hateful Umbridge woman from the Ministry had appointed herself as Headmistress, it was very nearly true.
The place was cavernous and quiet, and they set on one another with lips and teeth to the side of the neck, and experimental fingers on buttons and ties. Angelina ghosted her fingers - ha! pardon the self-illusion there - over the front of George's trousers, and the young man must have thought it was Christmas; going so pink and surprised, he was, ears the colour of geranium jelly.
Unfortunately for George, though, his ears were not the only pertinent pink thing in the castle that night. The pit-pat of little feet on the stair announced the entrance of two house-elves, who had been roused in the middle of the night to fetch Umbridge a hot chocolate. "And with extra cream, marshmallows and caramel sauce, too," said one earnestly to the other.
George and Angelina wrenched away from each other - and then, thanks to her quick-thinking, they darted into a stone alcove to the side of the stove. He cast a disillusionment charm - crudely, but the best a schoolboy can manage at short notice - and they did their best not to move as the elves tottered around, fetching dairy and lots of sugar.
These particular two elves, however, were clearly very sleepy. George and Angelina were Gryffindors both - and in my house, there's nothing that adds to a rumbustious encounter more than the frisson that you might get caught (just ask Sir Cadogan about the maiden and the kelpie).
So, much to his surprise and delight, she got down to business. A questing hand made it through George's trousers and vigorously set-to; he swallowed his gasps as best he could, and she smirked into his collar, fingers working like a boggart trapped in a jam-jar. The elves, just to their side, heated milk and frothed cream, assembling the sundae of a thing in a deep bone-china mug on the kitchen table, just in front of the trysting pair.
Thus, picture the scene, if you will: they were squeezed into that niche, the most amateur and basic of disillusionment charms their only cover (and, sadly, Angelina may have forgotten to re-charm those areas of George's anatomy that she had extracted since the original cast, so there was some sense of a disembodied pink worm doing the tango among the stonework), going at it hammer-and-tongs in the way that can be conferred only by the enthusiasm of glorious youth. Needless to say, that state of affairs could not last for long. With a strangled cry, George reached the pinnacle of his lust, and his emissions passed the pinnacle of their casing.
I followed the path of it with my eyes - a perfect globular projectile; George was probably quite proud - sweeping in an impressive arc over the flagstone floor and above the scrubbed oak table, to land, with a satisfying 'plop', squarely in the middle of Umbridge's chocolat chaud.
Angelina had to stuff her hand into her mouth to keep from guffawing, and even then, it sounded distinctly as if someone had forgotten to feed the giant squid.
I couldn't help but accompany the finished beverage upstairs. Umbridge drank it down in almost one go, some mixture of white, sticky things leaving a moustache on her upper lip. She licked it away, playing a coquette to the mirror. If feeling gallant, one could say that the froth leant the woman a certain lackadaisical charm, or perhaps an unexpected allure... but with a creature as base as that, quite frankly, it didn't.
So, I hope you enjoyed that one! It's a shame, really, that the ultimate, err, beneficiary hadn't a clue. In contrast, though, here's a little skit about a chap who most certainly knew what was going on; he was painfully aware of every moment, indeed…
Now, no-one knew it at the time apart from us ghosts, but Professor Lockhart owed much of his dazzling appearance to glamours, rather than nature. Alone, in the privacy of his own rooms, he looked... somewhat ordinary.
Not ugly, mind. I'm sure that his charm and colourful talk would have got him a long way, even with his real mousy hair and pudgy stomach in place - but it was the spells that made up the full package of coiffed golden locks to toss in the direction of journalists, and a chiselled physique to reveal on the covers of paperbacks, making middle-aged witches swoon.
The other thing that not many people knew about Professor Lockhart, was that he had a rather unusual fetish.
It was clear to all that he was something of a show-off - ha! his first day in the Great Hall told us that - but the public display was all terribly active and charismatic. In private, he liked to arrange himself as a passive miracle of loveliness - as an object of display, if you will. A toy; a doll; a spectacle.
And he had some very particular equipment with which to do it.
We start, perhaps, by observing the manacles that could be charmed down from the ceiling of his chambers and locked firmly with a magical key. They could hold a man's wrists above his head, but only if he were perched on the very tips of his toes. Gilderoy's special pair of boots rather helped with that. Black silk and leather, they contorted his feet en pointe with ten-inch heels, and laced magically to mid-thigh, preventing a bend at the knee.
He would complete the outfit with a little satin pouch about his nether regions connected with a thong at the back (really, it left very little to the imagination), a tutu, and a red, dragonskin corset, heavily boned at the front to flatten out his little gut (Lockhart, I fancy, liked the easy way of doing things, and he would no more diet and exercise to get the figure he wanted, than he would actually go on all of those adventures that he claimed to write about), and viciously cinched at the waist to create the hourglass illusion. He couldn't breathe but for little, shallow huffs and gasps; I daresay that was part of the attraction.
Gilderoy would get all gussied up like that, and pose in front of a three-panelled full length mirror for as long as his wrists and toes could stand. The key was out of reach, but it would respond to his command to come and unlock the manacles when he decided it was time. The mirror was charmed to say all manner of complimentary and filthy things: Oh, what a delightful little fairy you are! We'd like to fuck your dainty arse into next week. Gilderoy, how did you get so slim? So pretty? So delicate? He'd write and squirm, hanging there, panting faster and faster as he delighted in his own reflection and the bulge at his crotch got harder and harder. Finally, he'd Summon the key and collapse in a mess on the parquet, wanking himself sore.
Now, you may or may not notice a certain ambivalence in my delivery, here. Or perhaps a cool recitation of the facts? The thing is, I'm not altogether sure what I make of the whole performance: was it fascinating, or downright alarming? Is one to applaud such omnivorousness, or decide that a society - however liberal - must have some standards and guidelines? Indeed, to make up my mind, I had to go back and watch. Often.
Ahem.
Anyway, it was from my customary position - floating just out of view behind Gilderoy's mirror; the best seat in the house - that I witnessed the following tale:
The man had suspended himself as usual, in most fetching attire - I do admit - and, after a good twenty minutes, he was just about to conclude the process, as it were. He looked around, began the Summoning charm, and then - whoosh! - the key was snatched from mid-air by none other than our resident castle poltergeist.
Peeves sang a ditty or three, delighting in the mischief. A look of pure panic crossed Gilderoy's face and he tried everything to get the key back: cajoling, demanding, shouting, weeping... all, of course, to no avail whatsoever. His nemesis ricocheted around the chamber, cackling and teasing, making Gilderoy more and more desperate - and then Peeves finally tired of it and catapulted out of the room, leaving Gilderoy shackled, on-show and with no way of getting down.
By that point, he must have been trussed-up for at least an hour; it must have bally hurt.
I didn't hang around to find out, though, because a far more pressing question was what Peeves was up to, with that key. Now, Peeves being Peeves, I would have fully expected him to drop it in the Divination tower guttering, or the depths of the lake - or perhaps simply discard it in the middle of a corridor when something else was to catch his Machiavellian little eye. But, as it happened, when I glided after him, the route seemed to lead us more and more into my territory - and before I knew it, he'd plopped the key down on top of a pile of Professor McGonagall's marking, spattering her face with ink from the well and telling her, "I'd check office six on the fifth floor if I were you!" before blowing an enormous raspberry and dematerialising.
(Now, I'd just like to note here, that contrary to popular misconception, Peeves is not, in fact, a ghost. I and my esteemed colleagues do not dematerialise; we vanish. That is an entirely different process, and subject to completely dissimilar etiquette, if you please).
Right, where was I? Ah yes, Professor Minerva McGonagall and that key. She gazed at it for a while, with pursed lips (as one would, in the circs, I think it fair to say). Then - perhaps curiosity got the better of her, or perhaps she suspected some dire problem awaited her solution - she followed the poltergeist's instructions to the letter and pushed through the door to Lockhart's chambers.
- And there she found him! Buttocks on view beneath the tutu, wrists crossed submissively together as he dangled from the ceiling, and grazing the floor precariously, just on the tips of those dashed-impractical shoes.
Even if Minerva had been a jewelled rhinoceros beetle, she couldn't have looked more bug-eyed. She recovered quickly, though - one must give the fine woman credit. I could see that it was an internal battle between outrage and hilarity on her part - lips quivering at the corners in the effort not to crack-up - but Gilderoy was treated to no such cue; she stood behind him, hiding her face, and circled him like prey.
"Professor Lockhart," she said, in the tone of one delivering the minutes of a board meeting, "This seems to be a somewhat compromising position, does it not? -No, don't say anything."
Poor Gilderoy had gone absolutely scarlet; he barely dared to whimper.
With impeccable calm, then, Minerva laid out her terms: she would deliver the key she currently held hostage and say nothing of this to anyone, on the grounds that he was to, a.) refrain from making speeches in the Great Hall for the rest of the academic year, b.) never again mention his sales-figures or fan-club in the staff room, and c.) immediately cease the ridiculous competition he had initiated with Albus, wherein they tried to out-lavender one another.
Of course, Lockhart agreed; just then, he would have agreed to anything!
"And if you break any of those promises," Minerva added, with relish, "It will be this very memory of mine in the Pensieve that will do the talking."
The bargain struck, then, she made a bit of a show of handing over the precious little golden key. Minerva proffered it, but then hesitated and gave Gilderoy a good slap on his quivering cheeks before finally letting go. "And that's for being bloody infuriating!"
Well, there we go!
At times, it's quite fun being a ghost, I do admit - you get to see and hear all sorts of things that the living just don't. Feel free to pick a favourite…
-And what do we have up next, eh? Your turn for a tale?
Author: purplefluffycat
Characters/Pairings: Albus Dumbledore/Severus Snape, Nearly-Headless Nick, George Weasley/Angelina Johnson, Dolores Umbridge, Gilderoy Lockhart/Minerva McGonagall
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Voyeurism, object insertion, unwitting swallowing of semen, self-bondage/dollification
Word Count: ~3400
Summary/Description: According to Nearly-Headless Nick, "The one boon - if there must be one - of this half-alive existence is that one gets to watch."
After several hundred years of disembodied floating, gosh he has seen a lot of things! And some of them are really quite ridiculous...
Author's Notes: I wrote this for daily_deviant's April Fool's Day celebration: Unfortunate Incidents/The Silly Side of Sex. Other than that, I think Nick's description speaks for itself!
Good afternoon! Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington here, reporting for your April-time challenge. Foolishness, you say? All sorts of high-jinks and mishaps that can give us a jolly good giggle? Well, I must admit, that's right up my alley!
I remember very clearly the Waterford-on-Brookley court jester... cheeky little chappie, he was - a tumbling dwarf with a vicious bladder-on-a-stick and humour bawdier than a ship of naval goblins on Veela Isle. Oh, the stories he told!
Though I suspect you're actually here to hear my stories, aren't you? The goings on I've witnessed in this fine old castle. Well, I don't mind if I do. You asked for the most outrageous tales of coital mishap. "After all, that non-corporeal drifting must be good for something," you said. "Nick, you must have witnessed a goodly number of shenanigans and frothy encounters," you said.
And I have. Truly, I have. The one boon - if there must be one - of this half-alive existence is that one gets to watch. Ooh, and how lovely that can be, I do attest!
But sometimes, the hot and steamy can turn cold and squidgy with alarming alacrity - and I like a chuckle just as much as the next wizard, especially if it's at the expense of someone who can take it in good humour, or someone who fully deserves everything that flies at them. I'm sure we all know a few people in that category, too.
So, I racked my brains (not so easy when they're made out of ectoplasm, I can tell you), and came up with my Top Three. I restricted myself to stories from the recent past, for your benefit; one might raise a titter when discoursing about those long gone - anon in flagrante with anon, as it were - but I daresay the comic effect is heightened when it's someone you have had the pleasure - or displeasure - of actually getting to know. Thus, with no further ado:
The first one might shock you right and proper, because it's about our esteemed Headmaster, Professor Albus Wulfric Percival Brian Dumbledore. "Too risqué?" you might suggest. Bah and piffle to that! The thing about being a ghost, you see, is that one becomes somewhat above propriety. Or wafts past it, I suppose.
Either way, I don't have the least compunction in telling you that the Headmaster is an adventurous sort. He's very flexible in his needs and wants and willingness. He will happily play the forceful, manly seducer if that is what his partner desires. But, of all things that two people might get up to together, the one thing our illustrious Professor likes most of all is: taking it up the arse.
Oh, and he's a real little minx! There he will be, on his hands and knees in the middle of the turret-room sheepskin rug, issuing orders like nobody's business. Harder! More! Left a bit, down a bit... Yes just there! Now, speed up... etcetera, etcetera - until the poor chap on the giving end is either entirely spent or has friction burns in all sorts of uncomfortable places.
Despite his great enthusiasm for all manner of activities, though, the Headmaster is incredibly faithful. Whosoever has his attentions has them fully - and for the past few decades, that has been none other than young Professor Snape.
"A surprising match," you say? Yes, I thought so too, but there it is. Shouting turned to crying, crying turned to holding, and holding turned to... well, you can imagine what came next. At it like Nifflers in Spring, they've been, ever since.
But anyway, where were we? Ah yes, the Headmaster and his arse. 'Twas a fine June day not long after Severus joined the staff, and the pair of them were taking advantage of the fact that the school was nipper-free. They had already made the sign of the Humpbacked Hippogriff a couple of times - with most affecting particulars, I do declare, but that's a tale for another time - and, after a few hours rest, in which Severus had begun to cook dinner (cooking is awfully like potion-making, I'm told, and he's widely rumoured to quite enjoy doing both) Albus was obviously thinking of a repeat performance.
They set again to kissing and so forth, and when he was being thoroughly rogered by Severus' nice, long fingers, Albus cried out for something more. Severus, however, perhaps wasn't feeling quite in the mood - or maybe he had a trick up his sleeve - because instead of reporting for duty in the usual way, he cast around for something else that would provide that which was needed.
His eyes alighted on his pestle and mortar in the corner of the room, and I daresay, that seemed perfect. Round, smooth marble. Nice and hard and thick at the top - just the thing for a pushy so-and-so who at that very moment was issuing semi-coherent instructions in no uncertain terms. So, Severus summoned the pestle and poured a goodly dollop of oil on it, then pushed it forward, clutching Albus' hip as it filled a needy opening, as it were.
He was rewarded with a surprised, 'Oh!' and a hiss of satisfaction, and started to move the thing in the way Albus likes best. All was going swimmingly, you'd think.
Yes, one would indeed think that, until remembering that Severus had lasted used the item in question for...
... powdering Scotch Bonnet chillies.
It started as a kind of murmur - not unlike the groans of passion that had rung around the walls minutes before - then gathered pace as a kind of querulous warble before blossoming into a full-voiced scream. Having such a vocal lover at the best of times, it actually took Severus a while to notice that anything was amiss. He had kept going with the pestle, firm of wrist and generous of conviction, before registering the pained cry.
By that point, however, Albus had extricated himself from the offending object, and jumped from the bed, hopping around the room with his posterior aflame. "Gods, Severus, what did you put on that thing?! Aaagh, it's awful, it's..." he spluttered, and he ran into the shower, moon-upward, hoping for some cooling relief.
As realisation dawned, Severus' eyes widened like deadly nightshade in full-bloom, and he gazed between the pestle, the spice-mix patiently awaiting supper, and Albus' troubled splashings next door. It would not have been sporting to laugh.
Severus laughed. Perhaps more than I have witnessed him laugh before or since, in fact. He was doubled-over, convulsed with peals of the stuff, tears creeping from the corners of his mirth-soaked eyes.
"What in Merlin's name is so dashed funny?" came a pitiful cry from the bathroom, amid the rush of water.
Severus answered by rifling through his potions box. He appeared at the bathroom door with a tube of anti-capsicum ointment, and a declaration that the price of such was relief from Gryffindor/Hufflepuff second-years every other Thursday.
I daresay the Headmaster thought twice before filing any more outré requests, after that!
Now then, we go from the exploits of a seasoned connoisseur like Dumbledore, to those making their first forays into the world of coital relations. Of course, this being a school full of youngsters, one sees such malarkey ever week - every day, it sometimes seems. I swear, the Astronomy Tower must be home to so many gropes, first-times, mutual wanks and inexpert attempts at fellatio, they should install a booking system.
Indeed, the usual haunts for after-hours assignations being so very popular, I daresay that is why the protagonists of our next tale - Mr George Weasley and Miss Angelina Johnson - opted to meet at midnight at the pear-portrait to the kitchens. "My friend in Hufflepuff gave me the password," quoth she, and then they were in.
They had correctly reasoned, I suppose, that between the hours of post-dinner and pre-breakfast, the elves would be safely abed, and the area deserted. Well, in that year where the hateful Umbridge woman from the Ministry had appointed herself as Headmistress, it was very nearly true.
The place was cavernous and quiet, and they set on one another with lips and teeth to the side of the neck, and experimental fingers on buttons and ties. Angelina ghosted her fingers - ha! pardon the self-illusion there - over the front of George's trousers, and the young man must have thought it was Christmas; going so pink and surprised, he was, ears the colour of geranium jelly.
Unfortunately for George, though, his ears were not the only pertinent pink thing in the castle that night. The pit-pat of little feet on the stair announced the entrance of two house-elves, who had been roused in the middle of the night to fetch Umbridge a hot chocolate. "And with extra cream, marshmallows and caramel sauce, too," said one earnestly to the other.
George and Angelina wrenched away from each other - and then, thanks to her quick-thinking, they darted into a stone alcove to the side of the stove. He cast a disillusionment charm - crudely, but the best a schoolboy can manage at short notice - and they did their best not to move as the elves tottered around, fetching dairy and lots of sugar.
These particular two elves, however, were clearly very sleepy. George and Angelina were Gryffindors both - and in my house, there's nothing that adds to a rumbustious encounter more than the frisson that you might get caught (just ask Sir Cadogan about the maiden and the kelpie).
So, much to his surprise and delight, she got down to business. A questing hand made it through George's trousers and vigorously set-to; he swallowed his gasps as best he could, and she smirked into his collar, fingers working like a boggart trapped in a jam-jar. The elves, just to their side, heated milk and frothed cream, assembling the sundae of a thing in a deep bone-china mug on the kitchen table, just in front of the trysting pair.
Thus, picture the scene, if you will: they were squeezed into that niche, the most amateur and basic of disillusionment charms their only cover (and, sadly, Angelina may have forgotten to re-charm those areas of George's anatomy that she had extracted since the original cast, so there was some sense of a disembodied pink worm doing the tango among the stonework), going at it hammer-and-tongs in the way that can be conferred only by the enthusiasm of glorious youth. Needless to say, that state of affairs could not last for long. With a strangled cry, George reached the pinnacle of his lust, and his emissions passed the pinnacle of their casing.
I followed the path of it with my eyes - a perfect globular projectile; George was probably quite proud - sweeping in an impressive arc over the flagstone floor and above the scrubbed oak table, to land, with a satisfying 'plop', squarely in the middle of Umbridge's chocolat chaud.
Angelina had to stuff her hand into her mouth to keep from guffawing, and even then, it sounded distinctly as if someone had forgotten to feed the giant squid.
I couldn't help but accompany the finished beverage upstairs. Umbridge drank it down in almost one go, some mixture of white, sticky things leaving a moustache on her upper lip. She licked it away, playing a coquette to the mirror. If feeling gallant, one could say that the froth leant the woman a certain lackadaisical charm, or perhaps an unexpected allure... but with a creature as base as that, quite frankly, it didn't.
So, I hope you enjoyed that one! It's a shame, really, that the ultimate, err, beneficiary hadn't a clue. In contrast, though, here's a little skit about a chap who most certainly knew what was going on; he was painfully aware of every moment, indeed…
Now, no-one knew it at the time apart from us ghosts, but Professor Lockhart owed much of his dazzling appearance to glamours, rather than nature. Alone, in the privacy of his own rooms, he looked... somewhat ordinary.
Not ugly, mind. I'm sure that his charm and colourful talk would have got him a long way, even with his real mousy hair and pudgy stomach in place - but it was the spells that made up the full package of coiffed golden locks to toss in the direction of journalists, and a chiselled physique to reveal on the covers of paperbacks, making middle-aged witches swoon.
The other thing that not many people knew about Professor Lockhart, was that he had a rather unusual fetish.
It was clear to all that he was something of a show-off - ha! his first day in the Great Hall told us that - but the public display was all terribly active and charismatic. In private, he liked to arrange himself as a passive miracle of loveliness - as an object of display, if you will. A toy; a doll; a spectacle.
And he had some very particular equipment with which to do it.
We start, perhaps, by observing the manacles that could be charmed down from the ceiling of his chambers and locked firmly with a magical key. They could hold a man's wrists above his head, but only if he were perched on the very tips of his toes. Gilderoy's special pair of boots rather helped with that. Black silk and leather, they contorted his feet en pointe with ten-inch heels, and laced magically to mid-thigh, preventing a bend at the knee.
He would complete the outfit with a little satin pouch about his nether regions connected with a thong at the back (really, it left very little to the imagination), a tutu, and a red, dragonskin corset, heavily boned at the front to flatten out his little gut (Lockhart, I fancy, liked the easy way of doing things, and he would no more diet and exercise to get the figure he wanted, than he would actually go on all of those adventures that he claimed to write about), and viciously cinched at the waist to create the hourglass illusion. He couldn't breathe but for little, shallow huffs and gasps; I daresay that was part of the attraction.
Gilderoy would get all gussied up like that, and pose in front of a three-panelled full length mirror for as long as his wrists and toes could stand. The key was out of reach, but it would respond to his command to come and unlock the manacles when he decided it was time. The mirror was charmed to say all manner of complimentary and filthy things: Oh, what a delightful little fairy you are! We'd like to fuck your dainty arse into next week. Gilderoy, how did you get so slim? So pretty? So delicate? He'd write and squirm, hanging there, panting faster and faster as he delighted in his own reflection and the bulge at his crotch got harder and harder. Finally, he'd Summon the key and collapse in a mess on the parquet, wanking himself sore.
Now, you may or may not notice a certain ambivalence in my delivery, here. Or perhaps a cool recitation of the facts? The thing is, I'm not altogether sure what I make of the whole performance: was it fascinating, or downright alarming? Is one to applaud such omnivorousness, or decide that a society - however liberal - must have some standards and guidelines? Indeed, to make up my mind, I had to go back and watch. Often.
Ahem.
Anyway, it was from my customary position - floating just out of view behind Gilderoy's mirror; the best seat in the house - that I witnessed the following tale:
The man had suspended himself as usual, in most fetching attire - I do admit - and, after a good twenty minutes, he was just about to conclude the process, as it were. He looked around, began the Summoning charm, and then - whoosh! - the key was snatched from mid-air by none other than our resident castle poltergeist.
Peeves sang a ditty or three, delighting in the mischief. A look of pure panic crossed Gilderoy's face and he tried everything to get the key back: cajoling, demanding, shouting, weeping... all, of course, to no avail whatsoever. His nemesis ricocheted around the chamber, cackling and teasing, making Gilderoy more and more desperate - and then Peeves finally tired of it and catapulted out of the room, leaving Gilderoy shackled, on-show and with no way of getting down.
By that point, he must have been trussed-up for at least an hour; it must have bally hurt.
I didn't hang around to find out, though, because a far more pressing question was what Peeves was up to, with that key. Now, Peeves being Peeves, I would have fully expected him to drop it in the Divination tower guttering, or the depths of the lake - or perhaps simply discard it in the middle of a corridor when something else was to catch his Machiavellian little eye. But, as it happened, when I glided after him, the route seemed to lead us more and more into my territory - and before I knew it, he'd plopped the key down on top of a pile of Professor McGonagall's marking, spattering her face with ink from the well and telling her, "I'd check office six on the fifth floor if I were you!" before blowing an enormous raspberry and dematerialising.
(Now, I'd just like to note here, that contrary to popular misconception, Peeves is not, in fact, a ghost. I and my esteemed colleagues do not dematerialise; we vanish. That is an entirely different process, and subject to completely dissimilar etiquette, if you please).
Right, where was I? Ah yes, Professor Minerva McGonagall and that key. She gazed at it for a while, with pursed lips (as one would, in the circs, I think it fair to say). Then - perhaps curiosity got the better of her, or perhaps she suspected some dire problem awaited her solution - she followed the poltergeist's instructions to the letter and pushed through the door to Lockhart's chambers.
- And there she found him! Buttocks on view beneath the tutu, wrists crossed submissively together as he dangled from the ceiling, and grazing the floor precariously, just on the tips of those dashed-impractical shoes.
Even if Minerva had been a jewelled rhinoceros beetle, she couldn't have looked more bug-eyed. She recovered quickly, though - one must give the fine woman credit. I could see that it was an internal battle between outrage and hilarity on her part - lips quivering at the corners in the effort not to crack-up - but Gilderoy was treated to no such cue; she stood behind him, hiding her face, and circled him like prey.
"Professor Lockhart," she said, in the tone of one delivering the minutes of a board meeting, "This seems to be a somewhat compromising position, does it not? -No, don't say anything."
Poor Gilderoy had gone absolutely scarlet; he barely dared to whimper.
With impeccable calm, then, Minerva laid out her terms: she would deliver the key she currently held hostage and say nothing of this to anyone, on the grounds that he was to, a.) refrain from making speeches in the Great Hall for the rest of the academic year, b.) never again mention his sales-figures or fan-club in the staff room, and c.) immediately cease the ridiculous competition he had initiated with Albus, wherein they tried to out-lavender one another.
Of course, Lockhart agreed; just then, he would have agreed to anything!
"And if you break any of those promises," Minerva added, with relish, "It will be this very memory of mine in the Pensieve that will do the talking."
The bargain struck, then, she made a bit of a show of handing over the precious little golden key. Minerva proffered it, but then hesitated and gave Gilderoy a good slap on his quivering cheeks before finally letting go. "And that's for being bloody infuriating!"
Well, there we go!
At times, it's quite fun being a ghost, I do admit - you get to see and hear all sorts of things that the living just don't. Feel free to pick a favourite…
-And what do we have up next, eh? Your turn for a tale?