The Fat Friar's voice was not loud, but quite a few ghosts still heard him.
Sorrow appeared in some of the ghosts' eyes.
Douglas sighed. He had no idea how to comfort him about something like this. The living and the dead belonged to different worlds.
He could not even give him a simple hug.
Douglas turned to Peeves, who had been bound into a ball and was still howling, and said:
"Peeves, I remember telling you that you weren't allowed to touch my personal things in the kitchen!"
Peeves stubbornly protested:
"I didn't!
That was unwanted stuff!
Stinky stuff!
According to the agreement, I can..."
Douglas snorted.
"Hmph! That was stinky tofu brine I painstakingly fermented specifically to make a certain delicacy...
Every elf in the kitchen knows I set aside time every day to speed up the process with magic...
It was almost ready, but then you messed with it, and all my hard work went to waste...
And now you've deliberately splashed it on my office door...
Don't forget, everyone, I'm a professor at Hogwarts!
Not a student!"
Douglas directed that last sentence at the surrounding ghosts.
Peeves bullying students and provoking a professor were two entirely different matters.
Peeves argued:
"I didn't do it on purpose!
I was after those two little brats...
You broke the agreement and attacked me...
I'm going to report you to the head professor..."
Filch shouted hoarsely:
"Professor Holmes, don't believe his lies!
Hurry up and use the Peeves-Repelling Charm..."
The moment he finished speaking, everyone-every ghost-looked at Filch.
The ghosts glared at Filch, and the whole castle suddenly filled with the uproar of their furious shouts:
"Shut up, you!"
Then the ghosts looked cautiously at Douglas. Many even had pleading looks in their eyes, as though terrified that Douglas would