"(°□°;) Tom! Are you—are you alright?!"
Ariana was so startled by Tom's sudden reaction that even her solid-looking ghost form flickered and became several shades more transparent, her eyes were wide with concern.
[I'm fine—it's just that the sound was too loud and too sudden, scared me half to death is all. No big deal. Let me take you to find Dumbledore first, then I'll go check out what on earth just happened!]
Reverting from his spiky, dragon-backed form, Tom glared venomously up at the ceiling where the sound had originated, his eyes were narrowing to slits.
If he found out who had made such a racket, he'd absolutely make sure they learned what consequences awaited anyone who crossed Tom—anyone who wasn't Jerry, that is! Only Jerry had plot armor strong enough to survive his schemes.
"Okay~"
Hearing Tom's suggestion, Ariana immediately abandoned whatever questions she'd been about to ask. In the face of seeing her brother again, everything else paled into insignificance!
However, just as they prepared to continue forward, pressing deeper into the castle's shadowy corridors—
"Darling, what did you bring me here for? Didn't Draco say there'd be students sneaking around the trophy room tonight? I definitely heard a commotion just now—if we keep searching, we'll absolutely find those rotten children!" A wheezing, irritable voice echoed down the hallway.
"Meow~" (Rule-breaking students can be caught anytime, but my lifelong romantic happiness only comes once, you know!)
"Oh? You mean those naughty students ran this way instead? Excellent! I'll catch all those troublemakers and punish them severely!" The man's voice grew more excited.
"Meow..." (Forget it, talking to you is pointless—you just keep being a dutiful pet owner and leave me alone...)
In the exchange between the cat's sighs and the man's muttered curses masquerading as conversation, a haggard-looking, thin-haired old man descended the third-floor staircase, accompanied by a skinny cat with dull, grayish fur that looked like it hadn't had a decent meal in months.
The cat's ribs were visible beneath her mangy coat.
"Nobody here? That can't be right—Mrs. Norris said so, which means they must be hiding! My sweet, sniff around carefully and find those troublemakers!" Filch strained his rheumy eyes, peering around the corridor with the intensity of a bloodhound on a scent.
But he completely failed to notice Tom and Ariana standing quietly in the corridor, despite them being right there in plain sight.
They were simply covered by a white bedsheet. Their figures stood out conspicuously in the empty hallway like a child's idea of a ghost costume.
Yet no matter how hard Filch and Mrs. Norris tried, filch was squinting so hard his face resembled a dried prune, the cat's whiskers were also twitching frantically however they couldn't detect any trace of the duo.
Watching this miraculous scene unfold, Ariana's eyes brightened with wonder, sparkling like someone had cast Lumos behind them.
"Amazing! Tom, how did you do that?"
"?! There's a sound?!" Filch's head snapped around like a hunting dog catching a scent.
Though Tom's 'disguise' was absolutely 'perfect' by the logic of cartoon physics, this was still nighttime in a quiet corridor.
Though Ariana's voice had been significantly muffled by Tom's magical bedsheet, it still created a faint echo in the silent hallway, bouncing off the stone walls.
Hearing the noise, Filch reacted like Spike the bulldog catching the scent of a bone, his entire body was orienting toward their direction with determination as he shuffled forward with surprising speed.
"Ooh!" Ariana realized she'd caused trouble and quickly clamped both hands over her mouth, looking at Tom with wide, panicked eyes, completely at a loss for what to do next. Her ghost body flickered nervously.
[Don't worry—stay quiet and don't move. He won't be able to see us.]
Tom remained completely unfazed, his tail tip was flicking with casual confidence.
As a cartoon character, his stealth abilities weren't something any ordinary person could penetrate! Even wizards couldn't spot him unless he deliberately revealed himself! The laws of cartoon physics were more powerful than any Disillusionment Charm.
Sure enough, even when Filch's sagging, wrinkled face came so close to the bedsheet that Tom could count the broken blood vessels in the man's nose, he still didn't notice anything unusual. His sour breath washed over them, carrying hints of cabbage and disappointment.
After circling the same spot three or four times like a confused dog chasing its tail, Filch scratched his head in bewilderment and retreated to his original position, muttering to himself.
He'd clearly heard the sound coming from this direction, how could there be absolutely nothing here?
'Could it have been my imagination? Damn troublemakers—if it weren't for them, I wouldn't have to suffer like this!' His internal grumbling was almost audible in his expression.
[!!! Tom, you're incredible! Is this magic too?]
Completely unaware of Filch's frustrated thoughts, Ariana felt tremendously excited, so excited she could almost feel her heart beginning to beat again, a sensation she hadn't experienced since her death.
This time, having learned from her earlier mistake, she vented all her questions and excitement onto the whiteboard instead of speaking aloud, her ghost hand were moving the marker rapidly across the surface.
[Is it a Disillusionment Charm? Mother taught me about those once—but I can't believe you can cast it without speaking the incantation or even using a wand!]
Tom didn't notice that when Ariana wrote this, their forms flickered briefly—just for an instant before returning to normal, as if reality itself had hiccupped.
Before he could respond to her question, a new 'visitor' emerged from the wall beside them, phasing through the stone as casually as one might walk through a doorway.
"There are students out of bed, roaming the Charms corridor! Filch, why aren't you catching them?"
The newcomer was none other than Peeves, who had chased his enemies down from upstairs. He'd originally planned to team up with Filch to catch those naughty students more importantly, the ones who'd had the audacity to punch him but why had Filch wandered all the way down from the fourth floor to the second floor?
"Now they've gotten away, those students have... hm?!"
It was simply rotten luck, really.
Originally, under the bedsheet's protection, even Mrs. Norris could only rely on her sense of smell to detect something unusual in this spot without actually seeing the cat and ghost girl hidden beneath. Her limited senses couldn't penetrate cartoon logic.
But Peeves, being Hogwarts' most unrestrained poltergeist, had the habit of zooming around in the air and tunneling through walls at random angles—it was simply his nature!
Combined with the angle at which he'd emerged, he successfully bypassed the bedsheet's concealment and spotted Tom and Ariana hiding underneath.
If it had been only Tom, that would have been fine—after all, pets weren't bound by school rules. But the problem was that Ariana stood right beside Tom!
Though she was a ghost, in Peeves' eyes, Ariana who appeared no different from a living person thanks to her unusual ghost body looked like a young witch who'd broken the rules by sneaking around at night with her pet!
So, Peeves decided to vent all his frustration from losing those other students onto Ariana, his eyes were gleaming with malicious glee.
"Oooh ho ho! Look what I've found! A little witch in an Invisibility Cloak, taking her pet for a midnight stroll? Let me think about how to punish you properly~" He rubbed his hands together with cartoonish villainy, floating closer with a wicked grin.
"Huh?" Ariana froze looking completely bewildered.
Witch? Her?
That particular word stirred up unpleasant memories she'd long tried to forget—memories of being discovered by Muggle children who'd learned she could do magic, of being attacked, of everything that had led to her tragic fate and the destruction of her family's happiness.
(This is bad!)
Tom didn't notice the shift in Ariana's emotional state, didn't even care about being called a pet by Peeves. Instead, he rapidly assessed their surroundings with the tactical awareness of someone who'd spent his entire existence in elaborate chase sequences.
Dumbledore had said 'you can ignore school rules as long as you're not caught'—which meant the reverse was also true...
'(╬￣皿￣) If we get caught, we're done for! I absolutely don't want that wretched cat fixating on me!'
Setting aside Filch for the moment, watching Mrs. Norris whose eyes had lit up with an eerie green glow as she rushed excitedly in their direction with what could only be described as romantic intent—Tom's entire body flinched in horror!
He could accept some punishment, but the consequences of being pursued by this love-struck cat? Absolutely not! He'd rather face a hundred mousetraps than deal with an infatuated cat who couldn't take a hint.
Looking around frantically, he took stock of his options: wall behind him, Peeves in front, Filch and Mrs. Norris to the left, and the dead-end passage leading back to the hospital wing on his right.
He had nowhere left to run... or did he?
'(╬￣皿￣) Just you all wait!'
Tom grabbed the still-dazed Ariana, shot Peeves one final glare that promised future revenge, and without hesitation charged directly at the portrait hanging on the wall behind them.
The next moment, as if passing through a water curtain or stepping through Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, the cat and ghost girl vanished from the spot, leaving only the bedsheet to flutter down to the floor like a deflated ghost, empty of its previous occupants.
"Where did this bedsheet come from?" Filch blinked in confusion.
"Meow?" (Where's my mate?!) Mrs. Norris's eyes darted around frantically.
"? Humans can walk through walls too?" Peeves stared at the portrait in genuine bewilderment.
Looking at the suddenly appearing (disappearing) bedsheet (duo), Filch, Mrs. Norris, and Peeves all stood frozen in place, completely baffled by what they'd just witnessed.