Temple of Apollo

"Peeves, what are you sneaking around over there for?"

Professor Binns drifted quietly beside an empty bookshelf deep in the library, holding the note he had written for himself and a book he had just taken down from the shelf. His eyes swept over the pitifully few spines of the History of Magic books, and without turning his head, he asked, "Did you need something from me?"

A sharp smell of mildew filled the library, but Professor Binns did not care. He could not smell it anyway. The dust-covered gauze curtains turned the sunlight streaming in an orange hue, like dried orange peel. It passed through his translucent, milky-white body, tinting him the same color and making the chilly Professor Binns feel as if he were basking in warmth.

The clatter of the chains on the great doors being knocked to the floor echoed through the library, squeezed through the slightly open crack in the door, and slipped into the castle corridors. It wandered up and down the deserted hallways, weaving through the lush leaves of mistletoe, knocking on the doors of all four Houses. Receiving no response, it had no choice but to slink back to the place where it had been born.

The only professor still at school now was Cuthbert Binns, but he did not mind the loneliness. On the contrary, he enjoyed it. He enjoyed the familiar illusion that came when he leafed through these history textbooks that had not changed for centuries, as if he were chatting and drinking with old friends from back when he had still been alive. For that, he had even given up his bad habit of talking to himself.

"What are you looking at, Binns?" Peeves let out a burst of gurgling, cackling laughter, twisted himself into a cartoon tornado,