rebirth (one shot)

Not many could say that they felt good at their time of decease. Louis could say that he felt good - elated even - as though everything was finally right with the world. Death was an ineffable and welcomed prospect, because he finally had no underlying fear of it. The spell that was controlling him came from Lochlan Riddle, although he was still unaware of its caster and had many blank spots in his memory surrounding the final days of his life. The mind-control curse had actually been cast during his argument with his cousin James, and not afterwards.

... but how Louis was even thinking any of this, when he was dead, was a great mystery to him.

He felt a chill pass over him, a white wind, and then he felt blissfully light-weighted, as though someone had freed him from the burden of a physical form. When looking around, he could see that he was somewhere in a state of neglect and decline. Wallpaper was peeling and ripped from the walls. The heavy must of the atmosphere was something he knew to be present, but he couldn't smell it. There was a broken bed, and beaten up chairs, and dust laden on the wooden floor.

The dust was broken by foot prints, and what looked to be a great struggle. Beside those foot prints were even fresher ones, and Louis realised that he wasn't alone here. There were the muffled sounds of moisture upon lips; what Louis could fathom as kissing.

Kissing... he'd missed that.

He saw the couple in the corner of the room and heard himself say: "Oh, sorry!"

They looked at him. They looked at him, and they gasped. What they did next didn't make much sense to Louis: various objects were thrown at him but didn't make contact, and the boy warned the girl about stories of violent spirits in the shrieking shack really being true! After a while of him furiously apologising, the couple scarpered, and Louis felt very dubious about the incident...

But there was still the matter of why he was experiencing all this when he was dead.

It became very clear, very suddenly, when he looked at his hands. He looked through his hands. He hadn't, as first presumed, grown several foot all of a sudden; but was drifting that distance from the floor. The acceptance of his ghost-being didn't really take too long. It explained everything quite well. He did feel mournful of his death, yes, but he also felt compelled to know exactly what had caused it and to fill in the blankness of his memory.

So it was that the Shrieking Shack finally housed a spirit.