I did like it. There was something about it, something personal.

I went on, then, with the door handle, I wrapped it up in my thick hair, twisted my hair around it, then pinned it down, I quite covered it with hair like I had with those other things back in Filching, and put my bonnet over so it couldn’t be seen, not even really if you took my bonnet off. Perhaps my head was a just a little bit bumpier, just a bit. Just for a little while, I told myself, then I’ll give it back. So I went on, doing my labour, feeling better now that I had the door handle.

I was cleaning the fireplace of the schoolmasters’ common room, a very thick place indeed, when I had the sudden feeling that someone was watching me. I turned to the door and there was someone there, someone horrible.

It was a ghost.

A ghost of a short ill-faced boy. I was so certain he had come to haunt me. He stood there in the doorway, a horrible boy with a neat parting and great circles under his eyes, with a very wide mouth and a head that seemed a little big for his shoulders. And I thought, no, I’m not going to stand it, I’ve been so terrified all this time about seeing a ghost that actually seeing one isn’t so bad and I’m not going to have this unhappy creature skulking around me each time I come upstairs so I shall have to tell it to shove off, that I won’t stand for it. So I stood up then and took hold of the coal shovel and marched towards him, hands trembling, and I hit, just as I had been told to. I hit him with the shovel. And my shovel struck. It made contact. It found something, not the doorframe, no, it hit the boy around the ear. There was even a very little blood.

Perhaps this wasn’t a ghost.

Perhaps it wasn’t.

It wasn’t.

No, not a ghost. And if he wasn’t a ghost then he was surely one of the family. I’d struck an Upiremonger. There was just a drop of blood but this Upiremonger made a terrible fuss and I kept telling him how sorry I was and he kept holding his precious ear as if I’d chopped the damned thing off.

When he was a bit quieter I begged him not to tell anyone. ‘Don’t report me, promise me that.’

And he stood with his hands around his lug and said, ‘My name’s Clod. You’ve heard of me I expect; Ayris’s son.’

‘My name’s –’

‘I know your name,’ he said impatiently, ‘your name is Iremonger of course.’

‘My name is Lucy Pennant.’

‘Is it? Is it really? Are you sure? I wasn’t aware that there were names for the servants downstairs, except the butler and such.’

‘Well there are, and mine is Lucy Pennant, and don’t you forget it.’