Ghosts could award house points. That was news to every student in the castle, and the sheer arbitrariness of it was what really set people off. One hundred points for helping someone turn a few pages of a book?
There were professors who couldn't give out a hundred points in an entire month.
Only Tom Riddle, people agreed, could find a way to charm even the dead into doing him favours.
The sharper minds in the student body immediately began doing mental arithmetic.
Surely extracting points from ghosts was considerably easier than grinding them out of professors the honest way?
George's eyes moved fast, the unmistakable sign that a scheme was taking shape. He and Fred were among the most enthusiastic candidates for this line of thinking, and with good reason. The two of them had spent most of their Hogwarts career sitting comfortably near the top of Gryffindor's points-deducted list, only softening their approach slightly after their oblivious younger brother and Harry had started school.
"Fred," George murmured, "we should go find Nearly Headless Nick. Help him turn a few pages, bring him some kind of offering, maybe we pull in a few dozen points. Guaranteed profit."
Fred considered it, then shook his head. "Won't work. Our relationship with Nick is ordinary at best. Walking up to him out of nowhere probably won't get us anywhere. We need someone he actually likes." He paused. "Didn't Harry go to Nick's deathday party last year? Send Harry."
George conceded the point immediately. The only problem was that when they scanned the entire length of the Gryffindor table, Harry was nowhere to be seen. They'd have to wait until he got back to the common room.
...
At half past eight, Harry dragged himself through the portrait hole and into Gryffindor Tower.
He had just finished a remedial session with Lupin. Lupin had produced a Boggart from somewhere, and of course, what Harry feared most these days was a Dementor, so that was precisely what the Boggart had become, complete with an aura that pulled at the edges of his emotions.
Tonight had been his first attempt at the Patronus Charm, and he hadn't managed it once across the entire session. Not that Harry was particularly troubled by that. Tom had warned him in advance just how difficult the spell was, so he'd gone in without expectations.
What did frustrate him was something else entirely. He'd already arranged his next session with Lupin for tomorrow evening, but Snape had swooped in and slapped him with a night of detention on the flimsy excuse that he'd been wandering the corridors without permission, pushing the lesson back by a full day.
"Harry, finally! Where have you been all this time?"
The moment Harry stepped into the common room, the twins materialised from wherever they'd been waiting since dinner and dragged him sideways.
"Nothing much," Harry said, shaking his head. He had no particular desire to explain about the Patronus lessons. "Snape was making my life difficult again."
The twins absorbed this without even blinking. The day Snape wasn't making Harry's life difficult would be the day they'd actually be surprised.
"I'll throw a Dungbomb into his office for you later," Fred said magnanimously. "But first, something more urgent..."
He relayed the whole discovery to Harry, ghosts awarding points, the Grey Lady, the full scheme, and the proposal that Harry go find Nick and come up with some reasonable pretext for a few extra points.
"Can that actually work?" Harry asked, genuinely bewildered. And then, almost immediately, another thought struck him. "Wait, if ghosts can give points, can Peeves do it too?"
"Trying costs nothing," George said encouragingly. "We just lost the last match, Tom's racked up another two hundred points in the meantime, and if we don't do something the House Cup is already decided before the year's halfway through."
That landed. Harry felt a familiar knot of guilt tighten in his chest. He was the one who'd fainted and cost them the match. He nodded without hesitation. He'd find Nick tomorrow.
...
The next morning, Harry tracked Nick down in the western corridor on the second floor. He knew Nick favoured the spot because a portrait of one of his old friends hung there, and the two of them could often be found in conversation.
"Harry, something I can do for you?"
"Nick, could you give me some kind of task, and then award me points once I've done it?" Harry's pride drew a firm line at simply asking for something for nothing.
"Award points?" Nick looked at him with an expression of genuine puzzlement, his head swaying at its characteristic precarious angle. "I don't have the authority to give you points, Harry. Whoever told you I did?"
"Oh. But Tom got a hundred points yesterday."
Nick looked even more puzzled. "Who gave them to him?"
"Fred said it was the Grey Lady. The Ravenclaw ghost."
"Ah." Nick's expression cleared entirely, the dangling half of his head settling back into place with the serenity of sudden understanding. He looked at Harry's still-baffled face and found himself struggling not to laugh.
"Harry, the Grey Lady is rather a special case. We... all hold her in very high regard. I'll admit I didn't know she could award students points either, but when you think about it, it isn't entirely surprising. After all..." Nick paused, shook his head slightly, and left the sentence unfinished.
Being the daughter of a Founder, awarding a few house points was really quite beneath the threshold of anything worth remarking on.
"Right then. Stop wasting your time here and go study properly if you want points."
With that, Nick drifted away, and Harry walked back to the Great Hall with more questions than he'd arrived with.
The Grey Lady was the most singular ghost in the castle.
The news spread quickly, and before long, the question of whether she could award points had become almost secondary. What students really wanted to know was what made her so different from the other ghosts in the first place. That was the mystery that had taken hold.
But whether they asked the other ghosts or the teachers, no answers came. Most people genuinely didn't know. A handful of ghosts were aware of the Grey Lady's true identity, but none of them had any intention of saying so.
The Ravenclaw students, characteristically, decided the most logical approach was simply to ask her directly. For two solid days, Helena found herself hounded with questions at every turn, and she was thoroughly exhausted by it. She complained to Tom on multiple occasions.
Tom felt he was entirely blameless in all of this. All he'd wanted was to top up some house points. His Transcendence Mode and Thought Acceleration had been burning through his reserves lately and his stockpile was nearly depleted. Nobody could have predicted such an enormous fuss over something so simple.
Fortunately, Helena was trusting and good-natured enough that a little gentle coaxing was all it took to restore her mood. She even told him he could come find her again the next time he needed points.
Tom wasn't planning to push it much further anytime soon, though. He understood the value of restraint. Slytherin had already been far ahead before Helena's contribution, and Professor McGonagall had added another hundred on top of that. So when the points came in, there had been no real outcry from students or staff. He'd save another round for before the end of the school year, assuming the House Cup was already beyond any reasonable contest.
Helena had Tom to smooth things over for her. Another person tangled up in the fallout had no such luxury.
Fudge had finally understood what Dumbledore's warning had actually meant. Compared to the sting of being lectured by Dumbledore in person, Tom Riddle was something else altogether. Dumbledore brought embarrassment. Tom brought consequences.