Hogwarts Hermitober

Before you had forgotten about them, team JITS is still around!

Joker, Impulse, Tango and Skizz had been very active ghost hunters, identifying and capturing ghosts before they could do any harm to innocent students. They always locked them away in some sort of ghost trap and stored it for Zed to do research on. That way they could make much more efficient gear and learn more about each of the ghost types that apparently existed, which was very useful in the long run.

This evening they went to one of the nooks at the astronomy tower. They had heard professor Sinistra complain about all of her materials being scattered around the tower and it took only a quick look for Joker to figure out that it was indeed the work of an aggressive ghost.

They asked permission to investigate first, because the door was normally locked and professor Sinistra had since added some more locking charms to keep the culprit from doing it again, but that did nothing of course.

“Hi professor,” Skizz started, him being the smooth talker of the group of four, “So, we heard you complaining about the materials being scattered around your classroom and we might have an idea how to fix that,” professor Sinistra raised an eyebrow at him.

“Continue,” Skizz scraped his through a bit before continuing.

“Okay, so you know there are ghosts in the castle?” Professor Sinistra nodded, “Yeah, there is a thing such as aggressive ghosts who don’t have the energy to completely manifest, but they can still do stuff such as paralyse people. Me and my friends have been doing a lot of research on that and we have even removed some of those ghosts at Hogwarts. We suspect that what is happening might be the cause of those ghosts,” he finished and professor Sinistra sighed loudly.

“You’re asking for my permission to investigate it?” she asked and Skizz nodded nervously. “Well, I guess you can, I’m running out of options myself. Is there a chance that I could maybe supervise it? If this is really what you’re saying, I have to admit that I’m quite curious.”

And so it was a done deal. JITS was allowed to investigate her classroom under supervision of professor Sinistra. Zed had been doing lots of research on the activity this ghost was showing and they were suspecting it to be a poltergeist, which meant that they were looking out for spirit box, ultraviolet and ghostwriting.

When the night of the investigation came, the four of them were nervous. They never had an audience before! And not only did it mean that someone was watching and analysing their every move, it also meant that they had to keep professor Sinistra safe from any hunts this ghost might initiate.

Oh well, they were team JITS, they could do this!

It was a long walk from their base of operations to the Astronomy tower and they had to take their ghost trapificator 2000 with them, which was at least a kilo or fifteen. Luckily for the others, Joker had taken that task for himself.

He had left ten minutes before Tango, Impulse and Skizz did, but they still passed him halfway. They laughed at his misery and just continued on their way. And when Joker finally arrived at the Astronomy tower Skizz could not help but remark:

“You do know that you’re a wizard right? You could have just levitated the thing.”

The words that followed from Joker were not safe to be mentioned here.

After a while of setting up, they were finally ready to investigate the tower.

“Ey Zed, radiocheck one two three,” Tango checked. “Loud and clear Tango, let’s get this ghost!”

Impulse and Skizz were both on thermometer duty as the area they were investigating was actually quite big. Tango was carrying an EMF-reader as well as a glowstick in his pocket and Joker was walking around with a spirit box.

“Where are you? Are you here? Do you speak french-?” “Just out of curiosity, why would you ask if the ghost speaks french?” Professor Sinistra interrupted and Joker shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t know, but it answers to it.”

“I’m gettin some activity on the board, one of you is near it,” Zed's voice crackled through the comms.

“Yes, it just threw a cup at me,” Skizz shouted, annoyed.

“Hit him square in the face,” Impulse cackled so loud that Joker was able to hear him from below him. “Ten points to the ghost!”

“Where is it?” Tango asked, rushing past Joker and professor Sinistra with his EMF-reader up high.

“Under the second stairs,” Impulse responded, “Bit of a bummer because that could have been an amazing hiding spot.”

Joker nodded and followed Tango down the stairs, professor Sinistra following him. The ghost was indeed under the stairs as Joker felt it getting cold when standing there.

“Woah, why is it so cold here all of a sudden?” Professor Sinistra asked as she pulled her robes closer to her body.

“It’s a sign that indicates that that is where the ghost room is,” Tango explained as he began pointing his EMF-reader at random stuff, “The ghost likes it cold. If this were to be a Hantu it would be minus fifteen or something, real nasty that it.”

Joker laid the ghostwriting book on the ground, flipping to an empty page so the ghost could write in it. He stood up from the floor and immediately got hit by the book. Square in the face. Again.

“Stop throwing things at my face for goodness sake!” he yelled loudly, but the ghost only threw another book at him, which he was able to avoid.

“Ouch.” Joker looked behind him to find professor Sinistra with a red cheek. When Joker had ducked she did not have time enough to react to the flying book and it had also hit her in the face.

“Is it chucking stuff?” Zed came through the radio, “I’m getting some spikes, no five jumpers though.” Skizz held his comm to his mouth.

“Yep, it has hit three people in the face already. We might want to hurry up.”

“Typical poltergeist activity.” Zed stated and the rest agreed. Impulse placed the ghostwriting book back on the ground and behind him a door opened slightly. Tango basically pounced on it and began checking the entire door for fingerprints.

“We have fingies!” he shouted excitedly as he waved his glowstick in the air.

“Zed, we have fingies confirmed,” Joker informed Zed.

“Alright, thank you very much! Who’s going to do the spirit box?” They all looked up simultaneously and held their fingers against their noses.

“Not it!” Poor professor Sinista had no clue as to what they were doing and looked at them confused.

“Professor!” Skizz grinned, “Why don’t you do it?”

“I- eh, what?” Joker gave her their spirit box and backed off in order to turn the candles off.

“Just do what I did before. Ask questions and see if it responds!” he explained cheerfully, but did put a crucifix on the ground before they would leave completely, he did not want to have their professor paralysed. That would be very unfortunate.

Impulse closed the door behind them and Tango went with his ear up to it, trying to hear what was going on in there.

“Are you- Are you here?” they could faintly hear professor Sinistra say hesitantly. “Where are you? Do you speak French, perhaps?” Impulse turned to Joker.

“You taught her the french thin-”

“I do.”

“AAAAAH!” Professor Sinistra yelled out. She quickly opened the door and ran out, knocking over poor Tango who had not prepared for that and was still listening at the door.

“Zed, we got spirit box,” “Sweet! Just writing left.”

After a minute or two she returned, white faced.

“I now understand why you did not want to do that,” she said shakingly and team JITS grinned at her. Tango opened the door again and peeked his head into the room.

“Oh guys! We have- OUCH!” He tumbled back and fell on his but, his face was red.

“We have ghostwriting,” he mumbled angrily while the rest stood laughing the hardest they had ever done.

“Zed, we’re done,” Impulse brought out between his wheezes, “It’s a polty.”

“Let’s go, maybe next time they have a hard ghost for us, these are too easy!”

A few days later Impulse and Skizz sat opposite of each other at the Hufflepuff table in the Great Hall. Skizz was updating his ghost hunting journal and Impulse was fixing their camera after it had died quite early a few days ago.

“What are you two doing?” A voice came from behind Impulse and Skizz looked up from his journal. Behind Impulse stood a first year Slytherin and the fourth year Hufflepuff he recognised as Scar Goodtimes.

Impulse did not seem to hear them, too focussed on his camera, so Skizz answered in all honesty.

“We’re fix-” “Ahem.” “I mean, Impulse is fixing our ghost hunting camera,” the Slytherin looked confused at the thing, understandably so because it was originally a Muggle thing that Zed had found at some junkyard and they had repaired it.

“Ghost hunting? Why would you want to hunt ghosts?” Scar asked confusedly and Skizz went into a half an hour detailed conversation about what ghost hunting was and how it worked. At the end, the first year, Grian, and Scar were really into it and asked if they could join sometime to see how it was done.

And who were Impulse and Skizz to say no to that.

So, after interesting Gem as well, the five of them set out with their ghost hunting gear. The other three first got a lecture on how to use them and how they worked, because Impulse did not want to have to repair everything for their next hunt.

Skizz had heard from Joker that there was an entity in the courtyard that should be fairly simple for their first job as team GIGGS.

They had given Gem and Grian thermometers and Scar an EMF-reader, while Skizz was walking around with a spirit box and Impulse with a parabolic microphone.

“What is that thing you’re holding again, Impulse?” Scar asked from across the courtyard as he looked at his thermometer. “It’s a parabolic microphone,” Impulse answered as he pointed it at a corner.

“Okay, a parabablobtical, got it,” Scar muttered to himself. Skizz turned around, wheezing.

“What did you say buddy?” Scar looked up confused, “Huh what?”

“Parabablobtical, I’m very sure he said parabablobtical,” Grian cried out as he bent over from laughing and slapped his knees.

After a while Impulse put the parabablobtical away, because there was just way too much sound around him and he was not picking up anything. Maybe there was no ghost here.

Something about the corner where he was standing did not feel right though, it felt wrong in all sorts of ways. He did not recognise it because of its chilliness, it was actually quite doable for ghost standards, but because of the way that spot seemed to suck him in. He wanted to stay there, but he also did not.

“Gem,” he called out, “Can you check the temperature at the spot where I’m standing?” Gem nodded and headed over to him.

“Oh,” she said surprised, “It’s indeed dropping over here.” Skizz frowned at that.

“How did you know that Impulse, you’re not using your parabolic,” Impulse did not really know how to answer that one.

“I don’t know, I felt just drawn here. This spot felt wrong,” he stated but that did not reassure Skizz, who kept an eye on him during the entire investigation and made a mental note to ask Joker about that.

Scar put the ghostwriting book down and Grian activated the DOTS. After they, minus Skizz, walked away so he could do spirit box.

“Okay okay,” Skizz hyped himself up. “You can do this Skizz!” Gem cheered him on.

“Where are you?” “WHERE ARE YOU!” Grian sang from across the courtyard and Skizz giggled.

“I’m right here.”

Skizz did not giggle anymore, instead he screamed at a very high pitch, resulting in lots of laughter from his so-called family and friends.

“Mark off ghostwriting in your journal guys!” Impulse grinned as he did so as well. The journal magically wrote off some of the ghosts it could not be. “It’s also not freezing by the way.”

The four continued investigating for another hour, getting ghostwriting in the meantime, leaving Spirit, Yokai, Mare and Deogen. Oh how he hoped it would not be a Deogen, the eyes were impossible to escape from.

They were checking everything, but found nothing. Until Gem suddenly screamed when a figure in the DOTS ran at her with full speed.

So it was a Deogen. Merlin's pants.

“Okay everyone, we got ourselves a Deogen on our hands. We might want to leave as quickly as you can, we can’t hide from this ghost,” but it was already too late. They had just spent an hour in the dark without sanity pills and it had drained their sanity hard.

The ghost appeared three metres away from Impulse.

She was horrifying, her neck was broken like she was hung and she was dragging her feet over the floor as she walked at him.

Skizz immediately grabbed Scars wheelchair and helped him get back to the castle, Grian and Gem following in hot pursuit. The ghost only had eyes for Impulse.

His heart was beating in his chest and his whole body was shaking, he had never had to deal with a Deogen before. He had only heard of them in stories. The watching eye in the yellow mist that haunted the farmers in Belgium and the Netherlands and terrorised them until they had to leave. That, of course, had been the most powerful Deogen ever recorded and this ghost would have nowhere near the strength of that thing, but it was a terrifying thought nonetheless.

Impulse backed away slowly, he knew that if he got too far the ghost would speed up, but oh how the stench was bad!

He looped the fountain in the middle of the courtyard, the ghost following mindlessly, until it eventually disappeared.

He stood still for a few seconds before Skizz shouted for him, he shook off the terrible feeling and ran back towards his family and friends.

“Dippledop! You okay buddy?” Skizz exclaimed and pulled the younger in for a hug, which he, despite not being a fan of physical touch, still leaned into.

“Yeah, we just gotta get it in the trap and get the gear,” he answered and made way to go back, but Skizz was not letting that happen, “Skizz let go, we have to finish up.”

“Nu uh,” Skizz shook his head, “You’re not going back little bro, we’ll finish up and then you can get back to your dorm and get some sleep!” Impulse sighed. He did not want to leave them alone, especially when the ghost in question was a Deogen, but he also knew that there was no arguing with Skizz when he had made up his mind.

Back to his dorm it was. He knew that Skizz would come to him as soon as they were done, because he desperately needed to know how it had gone.

“Go Dippledop, I’ll be with you in half an hour,” Skizz reassured him, “We took sanity medication so we should be good, don’t worry.” Impulse relaxed and nodded, saying a quick goodbye to the rest and headed down towards the Hufflepuff dormitory.

Skizz, true to his word, came in half an hour later and told them that they had safely captured the Deogen and had brought it to their ghost room, where all the ghosts sat that they had managed to capture. Zed would take a look at it tomorrow.

Today had been a hard day, but at least he had gotten some friends out of it!