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The Spirit Faculty Lounge was unusually quiet. Dust motes floated through the torchlight like absent-minded thoughts, and Professor Binns droned through the minutes of the last meeting with his customary monotone. The ghosts fidgeted — or rather, the spectral approximation of fidgeting, which mostly meant shifting translucently through their chairs or sighing theatrically.
At last, Binns coughed (a sound more memory than substance) and shuffled his notes. “Now. Under new business. It is the end of my ten-year term as chairperson of the Hogwarts Ghost Council. According to article four, section six, paragraph eight of the bylaws, it is time to elect a new chair.”
A stir ran through the chamber. Nearly Headless Nick straightened his ruff, looking faintly excited.
“Elect a new chair?” he repeated. “I mean—well—can one nominate oneself?”
The ghosts turned as one to stare at him. Silence.
Binns blinked slowly, as if Nick had just suggested they all take up skateboarding. He pulled a battered copy of the bylaws from his robes and began to leaf through it with painful slowness, pages rustling like dead leaves. After several minutes he announced, “There is no provision in the rules preventing a ghost from nominating himself.”
Nick’s face brightened. “Then I do nominate myself!”
At once, the Bloody Baron’s cold voice cut through the air. “If he may nominate himself, then so shall I.” His chain rattled for emphasis, a sound that sent a shiver through the more delicate members of the Council.
“Absurd!” shrieked the Fat Friar, bouncing indignantly in his chair. “If they can stand, then so can I. Heaven knows we need cheer and compassion in this office, not decapitations and dourness.”
The Grey Lady gave an elegant sniff. “If the post is to be sullied by campaign squabbling, then I, too, will enter my name. At least one candidate ought to have dignity.”
“Oh, dignity is overrated!” Moaning Myrtle wailed from her corner, spraying a fine mist of ectoplasm over the minutes. “I want to be chairperson! No one ever takes me seriously, and this will show them! This will show everyone!”
“Very well,” Binns droned, apparently unperturbed by the outbreak of self-promotion. “I, too, nominate myself. For continuity.”
There was a collective groan from the chamber.
“According to the rules,” Binns continued as if the groan had not happened, “the candidates shall have until the next Ghost Council meeting to campaign for the office. Campaigning may consist of speeches, posters, or other activities so long as they do not constitute haunting, hexing, or interfering with castle plumbing.”
Myrtle crossed her arms. “That’s not fair. The pipes are my best asset.”
“Candidates may begin immediately,” Binns concluded. “If there is no other new business, this meeting is adjourned.”
The Bloody Baron swept from the chamber like a thundercloud, muttering about “proper governance.” Nick was already rehearsing his acceptance speech aloud, practicing bows to an imaginary audience. The Friar hummed cheerily, promising free puddings for all who supported him. The Grey Lady drifted off with a lofty expression that suggested she had already won. Myrtle rushed to the bathrooms to begin composing campaign slogans in soap scum.
And Binns, still holding the bylaws, sighed, “So much for continuity.”
The voters informational meeting organized by the League of Spiritual Voters (also chaired by Professor Binns) had none of the usual dusty calm of the Ghost Council Meetings. The chamber was plastered with spectral campaign posters that glowed faintly in the dark, half-visible, half-legible. One slogan declared: “Vote Nick: Nearly Headless, Fully Committed!” Another blinked intermittently: “Baron Means Business — Or Else.”
Professor Binns rapped the table with his incorporeal knuckles. “Campaign statements,” he intoned. “Each candidate has three minutes. Violations of time limits will result in haunting detention.”
Nick leapt up first, bowing extravagantly. “Esteemed colleagues! As chairperson, I would bring refinement. Gala dinners, elegant commemorations, perhaps even a choir of our own. Hogwarts deserves a Council that glitters, not groans! Vote for me, and I promise a new age of pageantry. And—if I may add—better head placement policies.” He tapped his wobbling neck for effect.
The Fat Friar bobbed forward, beaming. “Cheer, friends! Ghosts have been gloomy long enough. Under my leadership, there will be laughter, feasting, and unlimited puddings at every Council session! No more chains and scowls—our afterlives should be jolly!”
The Bloody Baron rose, chain clanking. “This Council has descended into farce. I offer order. Authority. Discipline. With me as chair, we shall finally have respect from the living staff—and fear, if respect is too much to hope for.” His eyes glowed faintly red. No one clapped, but several shivered.
The Grey Lady stood next, serene as moonlight. “I propose dignity. Restraint. Silence, even. This Council has too long indulged in buffoonery. As chair, I would return us to scholarly debate, refined governance, and perhaps—finally—a complete cataloguing of Hogwarts’s hauntings. Which, I note, is forty-two years overdue.”
Myrtle shot up before anyone could object, water dripping onto the council table. “I’ll be the first chairperson to actually listen to students! They always tell me their secrets in the bathroom anyway. With me, the Council will finally have relevance! Also, I’ll curse anyone who doesn’t vote for me. Just saying.” She folded her arms and glared defiantly.
At last, all eyes turned to Binns. He blinked, adjusted his notes, and murmured, “Continuity.” Then, after a pause, added, “And shorter meetings.”
A gasp ran through the chamber. Shorter meetings were revolutionary.
The campaigning spiraled from there. Nick distributed translucent pamphlets that fluttered through the corridors, occasionally wafting through portraits. The Friar tried bribing voters with phantom puddings that went straight through the floor. The Baron patrolled the dungeons, “encouraging” votes with rattling chains. The Grey Lady distributed elegantly written spectral treatises which no one read. Myrtle wailed campaign slogans while the students were trying to wee. And Binns… well, he just kept turning up, mumbling about continuity.
By the end of the week, Hogwarts was littered with spectral slogans, and not a single student had any idea why the bathrooms whispered “Vote Myrtle or Die Crying” whenever the sinks turned on.
The battered mahogany table flickered with spectral light as the five hundred and second meeting of the Hogwarts Ghost Council convened. The usual candle hovered above the center, guttering faintly, and Professor Binns cleared his transparent throat with all the gravitas of a man who had been clearing it since the turn of the century.
“New business,” he intoned, adjusting his incorporeal spectacles. “According to bylaw twenty-seven, subsection B, it is time once again to elect a Chairperson of the Council.”
The Grey Lady inclined her head, cool as mist. The Bloody Baron folded his arms with an audible growl. The Fat Friar beamed, hands folded like he was about to bless the tea. Moaning Myrtle squeaked, “Ooooh, exciting!” and darted through the ceiling and back down again in giddy circles.
“And remember,” Binns continued, “the rules are explicit. No one may enter or leave the chamber until a successful vote has been reached.” He gestured at the fireplace, where a bemused house-elf stood beside a crate of combustibles.
“Nubbin,” he gestured at the house-elf. “will signal the result to the living with smoke. White for a successful election. Black for… another failure.”
Nubbin sighed. Clearly the living cared not one whit about ectoplasmic democracy, but orders were orders. He held a scoop of soot in one hand and a bundle of enchanted parchment shavings in the other, already resigned to a long night.
“Ballots, please.”
Spectral hands dipped into the air, produced quills of mist, and dutifully scribbled names on phantom slips. The votes shimmered and drifted into Binns’s waiting ledger. He peered down, nodded once, and said in his monotone:
“One vote for Cuthbert Binns. One vote for Helena Ravenclaw. One vote for the Fat Friar. One vote for the Bloody Baron. One vote for Myrtle Warren. No vote recorded for Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington.”
The Grey Lady arched a brow. “Where is Nicholas?”
Right on cue, a muffled wail echoed through the stone wall. “I WAS IRONING MY RUFF! LET ME IN!” Nick’s pale face pressed against the masonry, half-severed neck bobbing indignantly as he tried to drift through. But the other ghosts, respectful of the rules (or enjoying his discomfort), hissed at him until he withdrew.
“I protest!” he howled. “This is electoral disenfranchisement of the most grievous kind!”
“Motion to ignore him,” the Baron growled.
“Seconded,” said the Grey Lady.
Nubbin dutifully tossed soot onto the fire, muttering darkly about hazard pay. Black smoke curled up the chimney, drifting out into the Hogwarts night where no one noticed at all.
Binns coughed. “As no majority was reached, the vote fails. We must… er… vote again.”
And so they did.
And again.
And again.
Two dozen times the ghostly ballots shimmered, and two dozen times the results came back identical: each ghost voting for themselves, the fireplace belching black smoke into the night. Students in the corridors began speculating about chimney sweeping mishaps. Peeves started a rumor about a dragon in the dungeons. Nubbin looked like he was contemplating clothes.
Inside the chamber, tempers began to fray.
“This is undignified,” the Grey Lady snapped. “We are supposed to be the august body of Hogwarts’ immortal faculty, not a gaggle of self-important wraiths!”
“You speak as if you’re not one,” the Baron rumbled, bloodstains glinting faintly in the candlelight.
“I think it’s lovely,” the Fat Friar said brightly. “So many good candidates! So much healthy competition!”
From the far side of the wall, Nick wailed: “I DEMAND MY CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS! I HAVE A CAMPAIGN SLOGAN READY!”
Myrtle burst into tears. “We’ll never get out! We’ll be trapped here forever, voting for ourselves while Nicholas mopes in the corridor!”
Binns shuffled his papers, expression unchanged. “The bylaws are clear. We continue until a majority is reached. Order must be maintained.”
Another round of ballots floated into the ledger. Another puff of black smoke rolled up the chimney. Down in the courtyard, students began placing bets. Some swore the black smoke meant a secret dragon hatching. Others claimed it was the end of Quidditch. Peeves spread a rumor that it signaled the opening of a new ice-cream parlor. The Bloody Baron slammed his fist through the table, which gave a protesting wobble. “If this continues, I shall personally haunt the bylaws.”
And outside the wall, Nick gave a howl of despair: “YOU NEED ME! I’M THE SWING VOTE!”
The chamber rang with groans.
And still the smoke curled upward, black and bitter, into an indifferent night.
“Point of order,” said the Fat Friar, raising a spectral hand. “What happens if we… er… can’t elect anyone? Are we doomed to keep voting forever?”
A chilly silence fell. The Grey Lady arched an eyebrow. The Baron muttered something about eternity being punishment enough.
Professor Binns rifled through his parchment, which rustled though it hadn’t been touched by mortal hands in centuries. “According to the records,” he intoned with his customary monotone, “if we reach the one hundredth ballot without resolution, the Council enters Emergency Sudden Death Mode.”
“Sudden death?” Myrtle squeaked. “But we’re already dead!”
Nick, still muffled from the other side of the wall, wailed: “What does that mean?”
“It means,” Binns said, peering over his glasses, “that Peeves is empowered to eliminate one candidate from the ballot.”
The room went cold.
“Eliminate?” the Grey Lady repeated frostily. “As in…?”
“Strike their name from the list,” Binns clarified. “And then we vote again. And if there still isn’t a chair elected, the process repeats.”
The Fat Friar brightened. “Oh, that sounds efficient!”
“It was instituted,” Binns droned on, “after the election of 1643, which lasted thirty-seven days, eighteen hours, and—” he squinted at the parchment—“forty-nine minutes. The stalemate was only broken when Peeves declared himself the victor and demanded to be addressed as ‘Pope of Phantoms.’”
The Baron groaned. “I remember. He wore a crown made from chamberpot lids.”
“And declared every corridor a holy latrine,” added the Grey Lady with deep distaste.
On the other side of the wall, Nick moaned theatrically: “If Peeves eliminates me while I’m absent, I shall sue!”
“Ghosts don’t have standing to sue for… anything,” the Grey Lady snapped.
“Then I’ll haunt the court!” Nick shouted.
At the one-hundredth ballot, the house-elf Nubbin heaved a weary sigh and dumped yet another pinch of soot into the grate. He’d started making tally marks in the soot in order to stay sane. Black smoke billowed from the fireplace, curling up the chimney like an exhausted protest.
Professor Binns shuffled his parchment. “Bylaw nineteen, subsection epsilon,” he intoned. “Having reached the hundredth unsuccessful ballot, the Council is hereby adjourned—temporarily—for Emergency Sudden Death Mode. The chamber shall now admit… Peeves.”
The door banged open without a touch. Peeves zoomed in upside-down, decked out in a paper crown scrawled with the words ‘VOTE 4 ME’ in dripping ink.
“Wheeeeee!” he whooped, scattering a fistful of dungbomb confetti. “Your Pope of Phantoms has returned! Time to prune the ballot box!”
The Grey Lady pinched the bridge of her incorporeal nose. “This was a mistake.”
“Flatterer wins!” Peeves declared, swooping in a circle.
Immediately, the room dissolved into chaos.
“I could—er—offer you unlimited access to the kitchens’ pie cupboard,” said the Fat Friar earnestly.
Nick, still barred outside, banged through the wall. “Peeves, old chap, remember the time we sang madrigals together? Let me in!”
The Bloody Baron rose to his full terrifying height, chains rattling. “If you dare eliminate me, poltergeist, I shall hound you through eternity.”
“Ooooh!” Peeves cackled. “Promises, promises. I like it when you threaten me, Baron—it makes me all tingly!”
He spun, pointed, and shouted: “You! Myrtle!”
Myrtle froze, wide-eyed. “M-me?”
“Out you go, mop-top! Eliminated!” Peeves crowed. He blew a raspberry so wet the portraits rattled.
Myrtle’s face crumpled. A keening wail burst out of her, reverberating through the lounge walls, the floor, the ceiling, and every pipe in the castle. The house-elf Nubbin dropped the soot packet in alarm.
“Not eliminated eliminated! That’s impossible!” the Friar tried to reassure her, patting her shoulder. His hand passed straight through. “Just… out of the running.”
But Myrtle wasn’t listening. She drifted into a corner, hair flying like seaweed, and let loose a catastrophic sob that vibrated the fireplace grate.
“This is intolerable,” the Grey Lady muttered, massaging her temples.
“On the contrary,” Peeves said cheerfully, “it’s hilarious! Who’s ready for ballot one-hundred-and-one?”
And as Myrtle’s wails echoed through the Faculty Lounge, the Council resumed voting—now with one fewer candidate and twice the headache.
The one-hundred-and-first ballot ended as the hundred before it: black smoke curling up the chimney, Nubbin coughing faintly in the grate and wishing to be a free elf.
“Vote tallies are unchanged,” Binns droned, squinting at his scroll. “Six votes divided evenly. One abstention.”
All eyes slid toward Myrtle, who was still collapsed in the corner, wailing into her hands.
“I said I won’t vote!” she shrieked between sobs. “You can’t make me! Eliminated first — I’ll never forgive you! Never!”
Nick wailed from outside the wall, “For Merlin’s sake, Myrtle, if you don’t vote, none of us will ever get out of here!”
“Good,” she sobbed. “Let us suffer together!”
A collective groan rose from the Council.
“Very well,” Binns said heavily. “We must… proceed to the second stage of Emergency Sudden Death Mode.” He cleared his throat. “Peeves, select another candidate to eliminate.”
Peeves tumbled through the air like an ecstatic fireworks display. “Ooooh! My favorite part! Eeny, meeny, miny…” He swooped over the Friar, buzzed around the Grey Lady, somersaulted past the Baron, then skidded to a halt in front of Professor Binns.
“You,” Peeves said with relish. “The droney one. OUT!”
Binns blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“You’re boring,” Peeves crowed. “All rules and scrolls and blah-blah-blah. Elections should be FUN! You’re no fun! Eliminated!”
A stunned silence followed, except for Myrtle’s continuous wails.
The Fat Friar sputtered. “But—without Binns, who will keep the minutes?”
“Who will enforce the bylaws?” the Grey Lady demanded, aghast.
“I shall!” Peeves declared, snatching up Binns’s scroll. He immediately folded it into a paper aeroplane, set it on fire, and sent it gliding into Myrtle’s corner. She shrieked and batted it away, which only spread more ghostly embers across the floor.
The Baron’s spectral jaw tightened. “This is spiraling into chaos.”
“This is chaos!” Peeves sang, spinning loops around the chandelier. “Delicious, delightful, delirious chaos!”
From outside the wall, Nick shouted miserably, “And I still haven’t received a single vote!”
Nubbin the house-elf sighed and dumped another handful of soot into the grate. Black smoke belched upward once more.
The one-hundred-and-second ballot produced a curious result: For the first time, a candidate received more than a single vote.
“Two votes for the Grey Lady,” Binns announced in his usual monotone. “One cast by herself, and one by… er… myself.”
The Grey Lady lifted her chin with cool satisfaction. “At last, some measure of discernment.”
“Not enough,” Binns added, shuffling his notes. “The rest remain scattered. No majority achieved. The ballot fails.”
Black smoke belched from the hearth again, Nubbin the house-elf coughing pointedly into his rag.
“Which means…” Peeves swooped gleefully from the chandelier, “another elimination!” He zoomed in a tight circle, then screeched to a halt before the Grey Lady. “YOU! Out, out, out!”
The Grey Lady’s eyes narrowed. “On what grounds?”
“Too snooty!” Peeves sang, somersaulting in midair. “No fun at parties! And besides, you never laugh at my limericks.”
Her expression frosted over. “I abstain.” She folded her arms and drifted back into the shadows.
And so it went, round after round, Peeves gleefully thinning the field while every eliminated ghost—stung in pride—refused to cast further votes. Only Binns continued, dutifully ticking boxes and recording results that led nowhere.
At last, after the ninety-ninth repeat of Nubbin’s weary soot dump, there remained only one candidate: Nearly Headless Nick.
Nick adjusted his ruff, self-consciously preening. “Well… it seems destiny has spoken.”
All eyes turned to Binns, who hovered over his parchment. He tapped the quill once, then looked up. “I cannot in good conscience record a vote for a chair who was so negligent as to miss the election meeting entirely.”
Nick’s jaw dropped. “You can’t be serious—!”
“ELIMINATED!” Peeves howled in delight, dive-bombing through Nick’s ruff and scattering him across the floor like a badly shuffled deck of cards.
When the ectoplasmic dust settled, the Council found itself with no candidates at all. A stunned silence followed, apart from the constant sound of Myrtle’s sobbing.
The Friar blinked. “Now what?”
“Surely not Peeves again,” the Baron growled. “We remember what happened last time.”
Binns consulted the bylaws. “That loophole was… mercifully corrected. The procedure now stipulates that, in the event of a total elimination, the previous chair shall appoint a successor.”
A hush fell over the room. Then the Grey Lady leaned forward with a thin smile. “Can you appoint yourself?”
Binns blinked. “There is… nothing in the rules against it.”
“Then I move that you appoint yourself,” she said smoothly.
“Seconded!” boomed the Friar, clapping spectral hands together.
All heads turned.
Binns adjusted his spectacles, looked down at his scroll, then cleared his throat. “Very well. I hereby appoint myself to serve as chair for the next ten-year term.”
White smoke rose at last from the chimney. Down in the courtyard, the students cheered, convinced it meant exams had been canceled. Nubbin sagged with relief, muttering, “About ruddy time.”
And so, after one hundred and two ballots, two dozen tantrums, and the unholy glee of Peeves, the Hogwarts Ghost Council emerged from deadlock exactly where it had begun: Chaired once more by Professor Cuthbert Binns.