Get her!
The basement of the library smelt like old books and a campfire. Remus had to duck his head to fit in through the door to get down the stairs.
James trailed after Remus and Sirius, dragging his feet. Remus thought he was still a little unconvinced about the whole 'ghost' thing. All the nerves in Remus' arm (that worked, majority of them didn't) were tingling with excitement. He couldn't wait to get some physical evidence that the paranormal could interact with humanity.
"I think this is a waste of time," James complained.
"You think everything we do is a waste of time, besides you weren't doing anything in that office when I barged in here to get you down here." Sirius reprimanded.
"Sirius, Remus, as your friends, I have to tell you that I think you have really gone around the bend on all this ghost stuff. You've been running your ass off for two years, interviewing every schizo and shrooms addict in a five kilometre radius who thinks they've had an experience. And what have you seen?" James threw his arms in the air and gestured around. Remus wondered what had ticked him off so much, maybe his ESP experiment had gone badly again. That always seemed to make James mad.
"Seen? What do you mean by seen?" Sirius was confused. Remus scoffed. You'd think that a scientist could use word meaning in context. Apparently not.
"Looked at, with your eyes." James waved his hands around, pointing at Sirius' eyes.
"You forget that I was at an unexplained sponge migration once."
"Oh please, the sponges 'migrated' about fifty centimetres, nothing exciting there."
They reached the first turn, where a bookshelf had been moved, blocking their path, just like it had done to Minerva. Remus looked at James, with raised eyebrows. Surely he'd believe her story now.
"Okay, that looks like a pretty heavy shelf, no way she could have moved that on her own." James admits, looking defeated.
"We can't go over it, we can't go under it, we can't go through it - we'll have to go around it!" Remus softly sang, earning an amazed look from Sirius and James.
"Is that the words from the book, We're Going on a Bear Hunt?" James asked.
"I had no idea you could sing!" Sirius said, elbowing Remus.
Remus shrugged.
They turned left, walking through a maze of towering shelves. There was a creak and a bang as a shelf fell over, right after they had walked by it.
"Does that usually happen to you?" James questioned poor Sirius, who was closest to the shelf, and had nearly gotten squished. Sirius shook his head, too stunned to speak.
Remus took a twinkie out from his top pocket, unwrapped it, and took a bite out of it.
"Dude, seriously?" Sirius groaned, pointing at the twinkie in Remus' hand.
"No, you're Sirius." Remus grinned, and got smacked upside the head by James (who had to jump to reach him, mind you).
As they walked further into the maze of shelves, they found the card catalogue, that Minerva had described the cards flying out of.
"Talk about telekinetic activity, this place is a mess." Sirius stated, spinning around, taking it all in.
"Sirius, look at this," Remus made his way over to the drawers of the catalogue, they were all coated in some sort of slime. Remus reached into his pocket and pulled out a Petri dish. He always carried one with him, if he ever needed to collect samples of things.
He handed it to James, who looked questioningly at Remus.
"Thank you for the gift, Remus. The hell am I supposed to do with this?" James waved the dish around, hitting it on the catalogue.
"Take some samples, Potter. I want to study this further when we're back at Hogwarts." Remus grumbled, ignoring the disgusted sounds James made, failing to get the slime in the dish, but getting it all over his fingers instead. Remus smiled as he walked away, Sirius not far behind.
"Christ, Remus. Someone blows their nose and you wanna keep it?" James called after him.
"Authentic ectoplasmic residue is no joke, James."
About thirty seconds later, the P.K.E metre that Remus was holding started going crazy. Remus pointed it at a shelf, and the device went quiet. Then he swivelled on his heels and pointed it down the aisle. The machine went bat shit.
"Did you know it could do that?" James looked down at the device in Remus' hands.
"No." Remus answered, and took a massive step in front of him. The beeping that P.K.E was making stopped. Remus took a step back and faced right, and went a different way. The beeping continued, and only stopped when Remus went the wrong way.
This guessing game continued for a while, until there was a bang, and then the beeping stopped. The P.K.E metre had flown out of Remus' hand, over their heads, and smacked into the wall.
The floor then started to shake, books rattling off shelves, dust coming down from the ceiling.
"Believe Minerva now, James?" Sirius shouted over the thuds of the books falling off the rattling shelves.
"Yes, yes I do!" James shouted back, suddenly the ground stopped moving, and a purple, full torso apparition was facing a shelf, reading a book. Remus couldn't believe his eyes, something like this was not supposed to exist. In any scientific book, it was merely a belief, somewhat of a religion, and religions and science do not go well together.
Sirius was taking pictures of the spectre on the infra-red camera they had bought yesterday. It had been a real hassle, and James had sat in the Dean Slughorn's office for an hour, slowly swindling the money out of him through bets, some threatening, and a couple made up 'IOU's' that Slughorn had 'failed' to pay back.
James sighed as Sirius pushed him aside to get a better angle of the ghost. He grabbed Remus' arm and pulled him behind a bookshelf, reaching out and yanking down on Sirius' earlobe to get him around the corner.
"Okay, so the crazy library lady was telling the truth. Now what do we do?!" James whisper-shouted.
"Well, someone's gotta make contact with it." Sirius said
"Yeah, someone's gotta make contact with it. Go get 'em, James!" Remus clapped James on the shoulder, and pushed him out into the aisle. Face to face with the ghost.
"Hello, my name is Doctor James Potter, what's yours?" James tried to look friendly and non-threatening.
"Bellatrix." The spectre simply answered, not looking up from her book.
"Where are you from, originally?" James asked. Remus couldn't believe his ears, James Potter, the biggest sceptic he knew, having a conversation with a ghost. Who'd have thunk it?
This time James didn't get a response, the ghost turned, and shushed him.
James threw his arms up in frustration and walked back to where Remus and Sirius were.
"Clearly, this isn't working. Our new friend Bellatrix isn't much of a talker. Anyone got any ideas?"
"I might have one, might not be a good idea, but it is an idea nonetheless..." Sirius proposed.
The three of them walked out from behind the shelf and into the aisle, facing Bellatrix.
"Alright, are we ready? Three, Two, One, GET HER!" Sirius shouted.
"RRRRRAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHhhh!"
"AAAAAAAAHHHH!"