Excerpt from "An Interview With Death: The Complete Tales of Hogwarts Ghosts, circa 2100" by Odessa Lockhart

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Chapter 12: The Screamer of Slytherin House

"I was killed one hundred and five years ago by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named."

The ghost before me is the second 'youngest' of all of Hogwarts' apparitions, behind only Moaning Myrtle [see Chapter 10: The Girl in the Lavatory], and the most recent addition of all to the school's phantasmic complement. Interestingly, the two student ghosts owe their deaths to the same person.

"You are referring to one Tom Marvolo Riddle, self-styled 'Lord Voldemort', the most powerful dark wizard in recent history?"

"Yes."

He seems unhappy to hear the name of his killer spoken so plainly, as though the name itself brings to the fore terrible memories he has tried for a century to escape.

"I'm sorry for the interruption, go on."

His name was once Draco Malfoy, heir to a family and fortune that is still influential today. He left that name behind a hundred years ago, however; the pale, gaunt ghost of a boy I speak with now is known commonly as the Slytherin Screamer. For almost exactly a century he has wandered the halls of the school's dungeons, by day only different from any other sixth year boy of that House in that he is translucent and is free from the obligation of classes; by night, his screams echo through the school, a lost and desolate cry for help that can never be answered.

"I was a Death Eater - one of the Dark Lord's circle of trusted servants."

He says it without shame or any sign of remorse; perhaps he is daring me to hold the affiliation against him. Perhaps he wants me to think that he got what he deserved. Having heard his cries in the night while conducting research for this book, I do not have the heart.

"And yet, he killed you."

"I failed him. I was given the task of killing Dumbledore, and a year to do it in, and when it came down to it, I couldn't."

"So you were killed because you couldn't murder for him."

He doesn't answer. There are dark emotions clouding his grey eyes, complex and unreadable even to an experienced jornalist. Perhaps the living can never truly understand the feelings of the dead, even when they are right before our very eyes.

"You were murdered with the Killing Curse, right?"

"I was... eventually."

"Eventually?"

"He made my father torture me first, to prove his loyalty. Then when he wouldn't anymore, he let my aunt and uncle have their turn at the fun; they were his experts at the Cruciatus, and they didn't want to miss out. They kept it up for an hour... they could have kept it going for days if he hadn't told them to finish it."

"So you weren't directly killed by Riddle at all, were you? You were killed by family."

A change comes over his face: the humanity leeches out of it startlingly quickly, replaced by an echo of wild-eyed madness, an ugly, frightening expression, though we all know a ghost cannot truly harm you. It passes quickly as he pulls his emotions back under whatever thin control a teenaged murdered ghost may have, and it leaves me glad that he is not an angry spirit seeking revenge.

Sensitive to his unwillingness to pursue the conversation on those lines, I change the subject.

"Do you know what made you stay?"

Again, he chooses not to answer immediately. This is the all-important question that many earthbound ghosts dwell on for their centuries of existence, and yet a touchy subject for so many of them. Is this poor child among them? Has he even discovered his own motivations yet?

"Did you want revenge on your killers? Or was it guilt over being a Death Eater? ...Did you fear moving on?"

"My mother. I wanted my mother when I was being tortured. It was the only thought I had left besides the pain; I must have been so focused on her that I came to her when I died."

A lost boy crying for his mother, so desperate for the safety of her arms that even in death he sought it. Yet, the tragedy does not end with his death, but with hers, for now, a century later on, when she has passed from this world, he still remains, left with nothing but the empty haunting of his old school, and the knowledge that he will never feel those arms again.

He seems aware of that tragedy; a deep sorrow is etched into his thin face as he looks away, drifting with the aimless preoccupation of a restless spirit who can never have what it needs for peace.

"So you haunted your old home..."

"Yes, for five years."

"And when you couldn't haunt her anymore you came here, isn't that right?"

"Yes, that's right."

"Do you like being a ghost of the school, with so many living people and other ghosts around you?"

"Yes, I like the company."

"Do you think you'll stay at Hogwarts forever, then?'

"...Yes... I suppose I will."