A young Gryffindor boy was leaning out from behind a suit of armor coated in shadows and dappled with gleams of light from the adjacent corridor. The smile that Erik always carried, whether or not he was guilty, everlasting and mischievous, peeled across his face in the faint shadows as he peered at some 2nd years filing down into the empty corridor, and into his prank.

Ignan Storm had given him the idea, probably much to the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor's dismay, the other day during their “practical fire drill,” which lacked any sort of actual fire to accompany the suffocating fumes of smoke. However, Erik made an adjustment. He did have clay pots like Storm did  to set loose the smoke in the classroom, but his smoke was touched with a bit of billywig stings, courtesy of his 3-minute younger genius sister.

The 2nd years had barely stepped into the hall though when a string of zips whipped through the hallway and landed in Erik’s pots, rolling them all over the hall and into an explode-y mess of screeching and sudden giggling. Then a pot rolled in front of Erik. The boy’s smile drew back into a cringe as he tried to scramble away, but with another zip of the air the pot exploded and Erik had a chill of prickles run over his skin, then tripped, laughed, and floated towards the ceiling.

He heard the other laughing grow faint and distant, he supposed they had floated away to another class, but the smoke began to suck itself away and down one of the halls where a tall dark-skinned Slytherin emerged with a hand on her hip, a wand in her hand, and a leery gaze that scoured the halls—which was a silly and sour expression, to the hyped up Erik anyway, and snorted a chuckle.

The girl’s eyebrow raised and drew her gaze up towards the ceiling where Erik was bouncing away softly, although was surging with adrenaline. “Hey! What did you go and do that for?”

The girl’s puffy lips tipped into a grin, “Saw yer reflection in di’ o’ter suit,” she lazily leaned her twisted mauve wand towards a suit which was opposite the one Erik had been hiding behind, “An’ ‘dem pots aren’t usually herr—look like somet’in a 1st year would t’row in a kiln, really.” She bent a knee and started to roll her wand through her fingers looking up at the first year hopping on the ceiling, “So I ‘jus shot ‘em,” She then held up her free hand like a gun and set her wand on top of it, gripped between her thumb and two fingers. She then pulled the wand back from her gun-hand and back past her ear until a stick of light flashed and then an arrow zipped towards Erik.

Erik kicked as soon as his feet met the ceiling, and fell out of the aim of the arrow just as another one was whizzing towards him, and he proceeded to hop around the ceiling, dodging arrows, tripping on air, but then he slipped on a cobweb and an arrow got him right in the chest.

“Ah!” the boy clutched his chest in a panic and then patted it furiously, only to find there was no blood, no arrow—nothing? He felt more like the air was sucked out of him and like deadweight, and that’s when he realized he wasn’t aimlessly floating, he was suspended, the suspenseful suspended that lingered right before a drop.

Erik frowned shortly before gravity slammed him into a clash of armor.

“Lil’ hyped weren’t chyou?” was the lilting voice Erik heard as he clamored out the piled of armor with a hurt butt, pride, and his head stuck in a helmet.

“Don’t be a jerk!” Erik grumpily snapped.

The girl just kept smiling as a faint and raspy cackle twined through the stone halls. She then pointed her wand again, this time at the ceiling, “Peeves’ a-comin’.”

Erik lifted up his metal visor and craned around the room, but was still a little distracted by the girl using him as target practice, “What did you do, just then with the arrows?”

“Sa funny spell,” she said rolling her wand again, “Cin shoot people, and ‘dey start to feel funny—weren’t a very good chance of depressin’ ya down, really.” She said with an ooze of pity, “or you add a few words an’ make eet hurt—might ‘cin shoot ‘dat damned poltergeist too,” she gestured towards the ceiling as the cackle broke out again.

With a bit of a pout Erik tried to imitate the Slytherin, pulling his wand back continuously at the wall but to no avail, “How did you get that to work?” He asked hurriedly, and then turned towards the girl with an exasperated impatience.

“Nock,” she said with a slacked voice, as Erik looked on and gestured for a bit more, and then she just shrugged a shoulder towards her chin. He gripped his wand in an attempt to think up a spell to throw at her, but she just lazily pulled back on her invisible bow again and this time snapped some firecracker at his feet, making him jump back.

The Gryffindor then stumbled back in a panic, when a blur of laughing colors surrounded him and rose away, “Makin’ another mess ickle Collins?” the sharp-bodied poltergeist creaked, “Oooh,” he said looking at the girl, “or ‘bout to get snapped at by ‘lil Naomi?” he smiled then bared and talked through his ghostly teeth, “’lil beast that she is…”

Erik then spun around on his heels and readied his wand like an arrow, “Nock!” he said, the visor of the helmet clacked down over his face,  and then pulled back. A stick of light flickered and then cracked into a whiz into Peeves’ stomach and making him sing out, “Woohoohoo!” as he slingshotted back into the wall and then disappeared behind one of the walls.

“Hah!” Erik proclaimed with a smile, with all his joy and excitement returning from his fall from the ceiling, and then turned around to face Naomi with his helmet up and wand and non-existent bow at the ready. But his smile drooped into a frown at the appearance of the empty hallway, and he lowered his wand and scratched his head.

He just assumed she had run off, afraid of him maybe, (or Peeves but he’d like to think it was him) and then plastered a smile back onto his face, which fell into another frown as the all too familiar voice of a professor droned down the hallway, “Where he’s at now, Peeves?”

Erik yanked the helmet off his head and then tossed it aside as he beat his feet against the floor and sprinted away as fast as he could. Levartian would kill him—well, if Erik got caught anyway, so he made a mad dash for the common room.