cackled merrily.
James wandered until he was out of earshot of Peeves' singing. After a few minutes, he found himself on a long, pillared balcony overlooking the school grounds. Mist arose from the lake in a great golden cloud, burning off in the sun. James leaned against a railing, soaking up the happiness and excitement of beginning his first day.
Something moved in the stillness. James glanced toward it. It had been at the edge of the forest, near Hagrid's cabin. Perhaps Hagrid was back. James studied the cabin. There was still no smoke in the chimney. The yard looked untended and overgrown. James frowned slightly. Why wasn't Hagrid back yet? He knew that the half-giant had a notorious soft spot for beasts and monsters, and he worried, along with his parents, that this would eventually be his undoing. Perhaps the alliance with the giants, tentative at the best of times, had fallen apart. Perhaps they had attacked Hagrid and Grawp or imprisoned them somehow. Perhaps--
The movement caught James' eye again. Just behind the stack of firewood by Hagrid's cabin, there was a flicker of color and a flash. James squinted, leaning as far over the balcony railing as he could. There it was again. A head peered over the firewood. In the distance, James could only see that it was a man about his dad's age. The face seemed to study the grounds, and then the man stood slowly and raised a camera. The flash came again as the man took a picture of the castle.
James was about to go find someone to tell about this strange sight, a teacher or even a house-elf, when something flew suddenly past him. James jumped aside, dropping his books for certain this time. The figure was white, semi-transparent, and utterly silent. It streamed past him and swooped down to the ground below, aiming for the interloper with the camera. The ghostly form was indistinct in the brightening sunlight, but the interloper saw it coming as if he had expected it. The man let out a little shriek of fear, but didn't run, despite the fact that at least part of him seemed to want to. Jerkily, he raised the camera again and snapped off a few quick shots of the ghostly form as it streaked towards him. Finally, just as the form was about to overtake him, the man spun on his heels and sprinted clumsily into the perimeter of the woods, disappearing into the darkness within. The ghost pulled up at the edge of the woods like a dog on the end of its leash. It peered in, then prowled back and forth restlessly. After a minute, it turned and began to return to the castle. As James watched, it began to take on a somewhat more solid shape. By the time the figure had returned to the ground in front of the balcony, it looked like a young man. The ghostly man walked with a determined, if rather dejected gait, head down. Then he glanced up, saw James, and stopped. There was a long moment of perfect stillness in which the man stared up at James, his transparent face expressionless. Then the figure simply evaporated, quickly and completely.
James stared at the place where the figure had been. He knew he hadn't imagined it. Ghosts were as much a part of Hogwarts as wands and moving paintings. He'd seen the Ravenclaw House ghost, the Grey Lady, only the day before, gliding down a corridor and looking quaintly morose. He was looking forward to meeting Nearly Headless Nick, the Gryffindor House ghost. But this ghost was new to him. Of course, his parents couldn't have told him about every little detail of life at Hogwarts. A great deal of it was new to him. Still, the figure nagged at him, as did the sight of the man with the camera, sneaking about and taking pictures. Could he have been from one of the wizarding tabloids? Not The Quibbler, of course. James knew the people who ran that publication, and they wouldn't be interested in the snoozing morning life of Hogwarts. Still, there were plenty of muck-raking wizarding publications always interested in the supposed dirty little secrets of Hogwarts, the Ministry, and even James' dad.
Heading back toward the common room where he hoped to find Ted or one of the Gremlins before breakfast, James remembered that he hadn't yet given his parents' greetings to Professor Longbottom. He determined to do so at breakfast, and to use the opportunity to ask Neville about the ghost and the man with the camera.
In the Great Hall, however, Neville was nowhere to be seen. The long tables were now crowded with students in their school robes.
'So you saw some guy snapping pictures out on the grounds?' Ralph asked around a mouthful of French toast. 'What's the big deal about that?'
'I'm more interested in the ghost,' Zane said determinedly. 'I wonder how he was killed. Do ghosts only come back when they've been killed in some really messy way?'
James shrugged. 'I don't know. Ask one of the older guys. For that matter, ask Nick when you see him next.'
'Nearly Headless Nick?' Sabrina said from further down the table.
'Yeah. Where's he at? We have a question for him.'
'Gone,' Sabrina said, shaking her head so that the quill in her hair wobbled. 'He hasn't been with us since our first year. Finally made it into the Headless Hunt after all those years. We had a party for him, and then off he went. He never came back. Must have been the thing he needed to finally move on. Good for him, too. But still.'
'The Headless…' Ralph queried tentatively, as if he wasn't sure he wanted clarification.
'He never came back?' James repeated. 'But he was the Gryffindor House ghost! Who's our ghost now?'
Sabrina shook her head again. 'Don't have one at the moment. Some of us thought it'd be old Dumbledore, but no luck.'
'But…,' James said, but didn't know how to continue. Every house had a ghost, right? He thought of the wispy shape that had turned into the silent young man on the front lawn.
'Mail call!' Zane called. Everyone looked up as owls began to swoop in through the high windows. The air was suddenly full of flapping wings and dropping letters and packages. James' eyes widened as he recalled Peeves' strange project from earlier that morning. Before he could say anything, the first loud pop rang out and a girl screamed in surprise and anger. She stood up from a nearby table, her robe spattered with yellow gobbets.
'My eggs blew up!' she exclaimed.
More pops erupted throughout the hall as the owls banked among the rafters. Zane and Ralph looked around wildly, trying to see what was going on.
'Time to go, mates!' James called, trying not to laugh. As he spoke, a Peruvian ballistic bean dropped from a rafter nearby, landing in a half empty cup and exploding with a loud pop. Juice erupted out of the cup like a tiny volcano. As James, Zane, and Ralph ran out of the milling chaos, Peeves swooped and dove through the Great Hall, laughing gleefully and singing about musical fruit.
Technomancy class was held in one of the smaller classrooms in the levels above the main hall. It had one window immediately behind the teacher's desk, and the morning sun shone directly through it, making Professor Jackson's head a corona of golden light. He bent over the desk, scratching away with a quill and parchment as Zane and James arrived. They found seats in the uncomfortable hush of the room, taking care not to break the silence by scraping their chairs. Slowly, the room filled, few students daring to speak, so that no noise could be heard except the busy scritch of the professor's quill. Finally, he consulted the clock on his desk and stood up, smoothing the front of his dark grey tunic.
'Welcome, students. My name, as you may know, is Theodore Jackson. I will be instructing you this year in the study of technomancy. I believe a great deal in reading, and I put a great stock in listening. You will do much of both in my class.' His voice was calm and measured, more refined than James had expected. His iron grey hair was combed with military neatness. His bushy black eyebrows made a line as straight as a ruler across his forehead.
'It has been said,' Jackson continued, beginning to pace slowly around the room, 'that there is no such thing as a stupid question. No doubt you yourselves have been told this. Questions, it is supposed, are the sign of an inquisitive mind.' He stopped, surveying them critically. 'On the contrary, questions are merely the sign of a student who has not been paying attention.'
Zane nudged James with his elbow. James glanced at him, then at his parchment. Zane had already drawn
