A House Homecoming for All

Andrew couldn\'t believe his luck; he was sure he\'d be lued wed with a dingy cot and nothing to eat but a stale cruton for dinenr under the care of this old codger. Sure, Andrew had read all of the books but in the timeframe of approximately three quarters of an hour, already he could estimate the level of senility that had claimed this to be sure, and it was high; it was a shame to see such a decrepit version of a revered and brilliant person, perhaps once he might\'ve even been vivacious and cognizant man.

First of all, Dumbledore said flat out that Andrew would first be introduced to his \"sub-mentors\" according to the association to house relations; so, naturally, The Grey Lady would be his primary teacher, then Sir Nicholas, the Bloody Baron and the Friar. Andrew sauntered down the hall with all the alacrity of a dead fish doused in vinegar at the prospect of being schooled by the undead, however diaphanous and ostensibly \'harmless.\'

Eventually (Andrew had to stop several times along the winding coridoors for Dumbledore to catch his breath), Andrew reached his quarters and began to unpack, soon to be visited by his first spectre. Waiting a good ten minutes before doing anything more than cheack where the loo was from his dorm, Andrew paced up and down, not saying a word for fear it might provoke some voyeristic incubus. Finally, The Grey Lady came and flopped herself down upon the blue lined chaise opposite his bed; quirking his head to the side, Andrew reverently sat on the bed and awaited the Lady\'s preamble.

\"So, you\'re our true representitive, eh?\" The Lady sighed and glanced over at the still exposed deck of cards so hasitly slipped in, some of the edges bent haphazardly now.

\"What do you play?\" Andrew blinked and reached for the packet, pulling out the deck and shuffling nonchalantly; trying to calm his frenetically somersaulting nerves at seeing a ghost head on fro the first time in his life and having it speak to him in anything but a professional manner.

\"Poker or Go-Fish,\" Andrew began dealing when The Lady Grey sighed and put up her hand lazily.

\"Honestly, boy, I\'m not some American hussy you probably come across with on a day to day basis - the best I know is blackjack...\"
Andrew merely scoffed and sighed in return, very quietly.

\"I\'m Canadian-\"

\"Same bloody thing-\"

\"Hey, I\'ll have you know we\'re non-violent and progressive, thanks!\" Andrew couldn\'t stop the little outburst, he just couldn\'t abide such calumny against his precious land. Looking a bit ntednted and none too obliged to give an eventing tutoring, The Grey Lady swept off with nothing more that a cold breeze as a token of thanks.

While Andrew was putting away his cards, simultaneously attempting to rectify the ugly creases in the dogeared peaks, his next visitor arrived - Nearly Headless Nick.

\"Well, hello, my boy! Pleasure to meet you at last, Dumbledore\'s been going on for weeks about you and all your little housemates,\" Nick\'s nose scrunched, \"but then they wouldn\'t rightly be housemates since you\'re in completely different houses...\"

Nick\'s face then completely contorted into a giant grimace of painstaking thought that tempted Andrew to explode in a giggling fit.

\"No, no - they aren\'t, are they.. I mean, in Gryffindor - oh, no! You\'re the Ravenclaw one, aren\'t you? Oh, pish-posh, now I\'ve gone and forgotten why I\'ve even come... excuse me, won\'t you?\" and Nick was off to ruminate upon his tragically long and desolate (and narcoleptic) afterlife.

Turning wearily to his little toilet, Andrew hoped to take a whiz before any other intellectually or socially stunted wraith appeared from nowhere. Standing leisurely before his pristine basin, Andrew couldn\'t help but notice a slight chill in the air but chalked it up to the diabolical centraltingting he\'d read about in ancient casteles similar to these somewhere, although it was supposed to be heated by magic, he reminded himself.

It was strange, he\'d have to make a plan to explore with the others sometime the next day or be damned to learn from bloody anno dep departeds. Suddenly, Andrew couldn\'t stand the unwavering breeze sweeping up underneath upon his sensitive balls and whipped his head around to come face to face with one of the grizzliest looking pirates he\'d ever seen grinning menacingly.

Shrieking first, not stopping to consider that he was harmless, Andrew raced from the toilet, straight through the form and out the door, still unzipped, into the thankfully empty hallways. Rushing down to his groin area first, then to the Great Hall which he amazingly had memorized from the five times he and Dumbledore had had to stop in crossing the vast expanse, he ran into Tiera, Sprout and Flitwick, all looking at the architecture of the roof and how it was enchanted to look like the night sky. Normally, Andrew would\'ve been fascinated by the runninmmenmmentary based upon the coveted, \"Hogwarts: A History,\" but had no time to waste and wrenched Tiera\'s arm nearly out of its socket as he tried to explain.

\"You have to let me sleep with you tonight!\" Andrew whispered feverishly, Sprout and Flitwick looking on worriedly and exchanging troubled glances.

\"What?\" Tiera said gravely, \"What do you mean? I thought you were.... you know...\" Tiera\'s eyes rolled and she managed a decent half-stance worthy of any morally disposable adolescent.

\"No! No!\" Andrew said forcefully and waved his hands in a pushing back motion.
\"My room is haunted by a ghost who watches me when I pee!\"

Tiera\'s eyes went wide and she practically fell over with tears of happy distraction cloudling her eyes.
\"What... on earth... did you expect?\" she breathed through her gasps. Andrew\'s brow furrowed and could only walk away fiercely at Tiera\'s exemplification of scrofulousness in the face of an opportunity - some Hufflepuff.

Inching back to his room as he hadn\'t the foggiest as to where Dumbledore\'s office was located and the halls remained deserted - at one point, he even began calling out for the Grey Lady or Nick, but nobody came. Carefully, he knocked upon his own chambers and entered once he\'d checked that no freakish, devilish ghostie was lurking behind the door. Sitting down, a bit more relaxed, Andrew began to toss his deck back and forth between his hands effortlessly until he heard a majestic voice from just behind his ear.

\"How do you do that so well?\" Andrew bristled immediately and leapt to his feet with a squeak; this was going too far.

\"You listen to me! I don\'t know what you get up to at Hogwarts during the school year, but I can bet Dumbledore doesn\'t approve of spying on students by dead perverts!\" To this, the Bloody Baron sat down pensively upon the chair Andrew had just escaped from and put his head in his hands; after a minute of consideration, the Baron stood up again and extended his hand without the hook.

\"I\'m sorry, boy, please, let me introduce myself-\"

\"I know who you are,\" Andrew tentatively took the hand delicatley gloved in 16th century frills and lace. The Baron smiled and bowed with a flourish.

\"No doubt, you\'ve been warned, but know that I will teach you many things you may thank me profusely later for,\" the Baron winked and began to circle Andrew contemplatively, turning every now and then as if to check an angle.

\"So, what is your job to teach me?\" Andrew said irrattatedly - he still had one more to go after this and he was pretty tired after being scared shitless all night.

\"Anything you feel you don\'t know enough about,\" the Baron halted and leveled his gaze with the boy\'s until they were only inches apart. Andrew swallowed and began looking more closely at the transparent figure before him. He couldn\'t see much thanks to the layers of straps and ancient garb only seen in movies and the like, but he was fairly well made with an inch more in height and that deranged Jack Sparrow look that could benefit from a drop of accent. No, he wouldn\'t mind a shag.

And with that, the Friar chose to make his presence known in deigning to soar in on wings of ale and nearly crash into his brethren in the process.

\"Sorry about that, Baron - a bit tipsy, mate. Just wanted to say hellow to our little student!\" the Friar waved clumsily, spilling beer all over Andrew\'s immaculate blue bed covers. The Baron looked slightly offput, but remained calm as he took the corpulent midget by the gut and led him out with his hook.

\"It\'s far too late for you to still be up and about, even if you are a ghost, Fry,\" the Baron said whimsically before giving Andrew a quick wink on his way out, shutting the door behind them.

Andrew couldn\'t help giving a shiver, half in relief, half in excitement as he knew he\'d be looking forward to spending a little extra time on assignments with one of his \'professors\' in particular.








A/N: Please review