April 12th, 1891 — Wizzhard Books

Ford didn't usually get Hogsmeade assignments, but the Santa Antonina rescue efforts had disrupted the typical flow of the office that morning. Not that anyone in the Spirit Division was involved in it — no one had suggested any ghostly causes for the mysterious wreck yet that he was aware of, though given how little everyone in the magical community seemed to know about spirits it was probably only a matter of time — but it had pulled resources from other departments, which had sent everything off-kilter. Someone vaguely above them in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures had gotten tagged to help with Law Enforcement in some capacity, which meant one of the more senior members of the Spirit Division was off doing that person's job instead of their fair share of field work. Not that Ford minded in the slightest. His typical tasks were London and the occasional out-of-the-way Muggle hamlets around the countryside. He didn't get to do anything that was considered high profile, which just about everything in Hogsmeade, Irvingly, or Hogwarts was, due to the close proximity of dozens of magical residents (and in the case of Irvingly, Muggles that couldn't be obliviated if things went poorly). So this was a nice change, to be working a little closer to home. Or he supposed it would be, until he'd actually glanced at the file they had on the spirit in question.

Oh, he had a bit of a record, didn't he? And today he was "menacing customers" at one of the High Street shops, whatever that meant. Ford thought living people could be a little too sensitive about things like this, because it wasn't like ghosts could hurt anyone, but it wasn't up to him whether or not this complaint had any merit; it had been flagged with high importance by the secretary, so he needed to go see if he could talk the fellow down.

On entering the shop it didn't take him long at all to find the ghost in question — they did tend to stand out in a crowd, so to speak. Even without his appearance to give him away, though, it would have been evident because of the inhumane yowl that had come from exactly his position in the shop — not from him, as Ford realized, but from a distressed cat who soon scurried away. Hm.

"Hullo," he called brightly as he wandered over, through stacks of books and around one of the larger displays. "I like your sword."

Barnaby Wye Elias Grimstone (open to cameos from customers if you like!)

  

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Set by Lady!

And to top it all off, he had just stood in the cat.

Exasperated by - well, everything, Barnaby floated upwards a little as the cat screeched and scarpered off. Would that he could simply yowl like that when the livings were being vexing; but he, as a boy, had learned to use his words, though he would be damned if anybody in this shop were even fractionally inclined to listen to them. “And a pox on thy house as well!” he exclaimed furiously, making a rude hand gesture at another of the unhelpful bystanders who still happened to be craning their head around the bookcase corner.

But here came another live ‘un, tall and gangly and apparently more at ease with the situation, though he did not much look the usual braggart. Indeed, he had even paused to admire his rapier. Barnaby rubbed a thumb absently along the engraving on the quillon and nodded in agreement, all anger momentarily evaporating.

“Yes, it was always close to my heart,” Barnaby said wryly (though he was pleased at the compliment, having chosen the particular design himself). “Though I confess I was fonder of it before it took up residence in my vital organs.”

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   Fortitude Greengrass

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Ford couldn't help but chuckle at the phrasing of his response. Close to my heart. That was one of the things that Ford liked about talking with ghosts; having existed for so much longer than the average human lifespan they tended to have a different perspective on a lot of things, which Ford thought was interesting and sometimes refreshing. "Yes, I suppose so," he agreed lightly. He suspected that Wye was mostly talking about having been stabbed with it in the first place, and not so much the placement since then. It wasn't as though it would still hurt him, after he'd died, and Ford thought the overall look of it was rather striking. He wondered if Wye ever took it out and swung it around before replacing it in his chest — it seemed like the sort of thing one of the Hogswarts ghosts might do, vaguely whimsical but no less shocking for the sorts of people who didn't often deal with ghosts.

"So I've heard you're upset," Ford said, seguing into what he was actually supposed to be doing here this morning (much as he might have liked to continue the conversation about the sword). "Shall we start from the beginning? Oh — sorry. I didn't introduce myself. Fortitude Greengrass, Spirit Division," he continued, with a smile and a little wave. It wouldn't do to offer a handshake when ghosts weren't capable of shaking hands. Though maybe he ought to have offered a bow, instead? Judging by his wardrobe, this ghost was from a very different time, so perhaps he would have preferred that. Oh, well; too late now.

  

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Set by Lady!

Fortitude Greengrass. Well, if that wasn’t a name that had strolled right out of some puritan parish of centuries ago! At any rate, Barnaby surveyed the lad a little more thoroughly at the revelation he was of the Spirit Division. That explained his manner of ease at a situation he had only just come upon. “Not one of the usual fellows, I see,” he remarked, narrowing his eyes slightly at the newcomer. Although - by and large, the usual fellows tended to be a pain in his rear end, so perhaps this was a fortunate turn.

So he let this go, for the moment, unless Greengrass saw fit to explain himself. “Barnaby Wye, spirit,” he returned, almost primly. “But upset?” Barnaby echoed, rolling his eyes. “No, ‘tis not I - rather these people,” he muttered disparagingly, “who take affront to trifles. And who seem to believe that just because I am dead that I cannot read,” he bit out, which was well enough near where the altercations had begun; and fine, perhaps he was not the only one in the bookshop affronted by petty spoken slights.

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"Oh, not upset?" Ford returned lightly, raising his eyebrows. "Is 'a pox on thy house' how you usually say your goodbyes?" It was clear from his tone that he was joking, though really he might not have been. His quick glance through Wye's file had given him a notion of what to expect before he'd come down this morning, and he seemed to be quite the abrasive sort. Perhaps he did end conversations by wishing poxes upon people more often than he ended them in any other fashion. It wasn't outside of the realm of possibility.

But nevermind — Ford tended to agree with his assessment that living people were liable to overreact to most things, so he was inclined to believe that Wye was in the right, at least until the spirit proved otherwise. He did have to wonder at what had brought Wye in here, though. If he was looking for something to read, a bookshop might have been the perfect place, except for a few of the obvious difficulties that went along with being dead. Not having the ability to lift books, exchange money for goods, or turn pages being some of the most immediate that came to mind.

"Were you looking for a book, then?" Ford asked, holding on to his doubts on the subject for the moment to give the ghost a chance to explain himself.

  

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Set by Lady!

He snorted and gave a shake of his head, half in continued contempt and half in answer no, of course not, I am ever brimming with courtesy, but sometimes needs must when men are good-for-nothing sons-of-bitches. But he was not upset, merely exasperated, and now that he had a listening ear he might as well lament it properly. 

“Did all literature die with Marlowe and Spenser and me?” Barnaby exclaimed, turning up his palms theatrically and answering Greengrass’ question with as plain a one. “Though that may as well be the truth,” he said, with a forlorn sigh, “- else all altruism has died bitterly in mankind. Is it too much to ask of the living, to take a book from ‘pon the shelf?” He stuck a hand spitefully into the nearest row of books, gliding his hand back and forth through them like they were water. He had maybe done this to a person or two - thrown a fist that could not land - when they refused his first request.

(And, well, then he would have asked them to set it down for him and turn the pages when he asked, or purchase it for him outright, or trouble to read it aloud to him for an hour or two, or even set it down somewhere and try his luck in the wind; if they had indulged him, he might have even paid them back in a glorious composition of his own, but no, they had all struck up indignantly against him, as if he were asking for the world, and scurried off to buy their cheap modern drivel.)

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Ford perked up slightly at the mention of Marlowe and Spencer. He might have put those pieces together before, because Wye's file did have dates in it for the years he'd lived, but he hadn't connected that to the same time period as those authors. He'd read a good deal of Marlowe and Spencer, but honestly lost track of how long ago they'd actually been writing — in Ford's mind it was all sort of a long time ago, without much distinction beyond that. Ford had even been good at history, but since Hamish Darrow's class at Hogwarts hadn't included Muggle literary figures, it was easy to misplace them in his mental timeline.

"Well, you aren't going to find the next Faerie Queene there," Ford commented, with a glance across the titles on the shelf Wye had indicated. Probably he hadn't meant that specific shelf, because those all seemed to be treatises on transfiguration magic, which... would be quite a strange interest for a ghost to have, since they couldn't perform magic of any kind anymore. It was also not the sort of thing he might have expected Wye to be interested in if his other literary tastes included theater and poetry. Regardless, Ford was starting to understand the root of the problem. While Wye's conclusion that all altruism has died bitterly from mankind might have been a bit much, living people could often be in such a hurry about things. What began as a good-natured inquiry on Wye's part could easily have escalated into a shouting match when no one had time for what Wye considered a trivial favor — which might have actually taken a good deal of time, if it included browsing books for twenty minutes before selecting one, then sitting around turning pages while Wye read. Ghosts had a much different perception of time than living people did, in Ford's experience — rather understandably, since they didn't have any pressing commitments of their own to get off to most of the time.

"Have you ever read Paradise Lost?" he asked. He thought vaguely that Milton was after Spenser by a good deal, but he couldn't have been sure — he didn't remember the dates and his knowledge of Muggle literature existed somewhat separately from his knowledge of everything else that had happened in history. "It's sort of similar, the way it's structured. It's about heaven and angels and things, but if you ignore that and just read it as all symbolic it's fairly good. I've got a copy at home," he offered. Probably he shouldn't take an hour out of the middle of his work day to sit around reading poetry to a ghost, but — well, he was tasked with de-escalating the situation, wasn't he? And if Ford could get away with being paid to sit in his garden at home reading poetry, why not?

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   Barnaby Wye

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Set by Lady!

Barnaby swirled back around from the shelf when he heard the words Faerie Queene, his expression considerably brighter. It was pleasing to be reminded that some good things had not faded away into the past, and that even a youth - and he was an odd gangly fellow, wasn’t he (but perhaps that also had something to do with the horror of modern fashions, making everyone’s shapeless-straight-legs seem stretched as if upon a rack) - knew the worthiness of Spenser.

And was perchance offering a visit with an epic poem without Barnaby having to prod him into it? (Literally, sometimes, with a harmless rapier lunge or two.) Barnaby’s expression brightened still further, into a beam; and if his body had been capable of it, he might have shaken this Greengrass by the shoulders in sheer inexpressible gratitude.

“Oh, would that I had!” Barnaby exclaimed, wide-eyed. He knew the name, had heard of was Milton in his death, had even glimpsed bits and pieces across the years, but had had to endure an incomplete knowledge of it and an incomplete existence since. “I have seen but snatches of it, a mere page here and there, and the last time near two centuries ago -” he said, with a mournful shake of his head. “- and that, I should say, is a sort of hell.”

But he was in a very good mood already, at the prospect of changing that. “And is your home far yonder?” Barnaby quizzed; he would have been halfway there already if he had known which way to go.

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Ford nodded sympathetically at the mention of two centuries ago. Obviously he had no comparable experience, but it did sound dreadful; probably Wye wasn't up for quoting any of it, at any rate, if he'd seen it so long ago. Though that was sort of nice, because it meant that when Ford read it for him it would be as though he were experiencing it all for the first time once again.

"Bartonburg North. It's just a few blocks from here," he supplied cheerfully. Wye was leaving the bookstore, then, with not a single other customer menaced in the meantime — a job well done for Ford. He could certainly waste an hour on this if it was going to be put down so positively in his report, he thought — though anything more would be pushing it.

"I can't spare too long," he warned Wye as he headed for the door. "Because I do have to go back to work. But maybe we could get through the first book. And if you want to keep up with it, you could come by sometime when I'm not working," he volunteered (something his family would likely not feel half so positively about as Ford did, but nevermind — they could sit in the garden and they wouldn't bother anybody).

  

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Set by Lady!

Fortunate that this Fortitude fellow lived nearby, indeed; Barnaby might have floated cross-country to take up the offer, but companionable human-and-ghost travel options were limited, beyond walking, and after being stuck in the mirror for so many years he was naturally dubious of anything else.

At any rate, Barnaby barely heard can’t spare too long but if he had he would have decided that, since Greengrass’ job was to address spirits’ grievances (though the spirit division more often seemed to address the complaints of the living which Barnaby thought a severe oversight; what were they doing, always pandering to those people?), he should probably spare as long as Barnaby chose.

All the other ghosts in Britain could wait. There really ought to be some sort of feudal hierarchy to ghost society, he thought, as long as he was somewhere at the top.

But at least Greengrass had promised to continue! Though after what Barnaby had just told him about having to wait two hundred years to pick it back up, he dearly hoped the young man would not make him wait too long. Best - be nice, then, in the meantime. “I would be most pleased by that,” Barnaby said brightly. “Gramercy, good sir.”

Besides, if Greengrass were to renege on this arrangement now, Barnaby would, happily, know exactly where to haunt him.

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   Fortitude Greengrass

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