11th August, 1895 — Hogsmeade High Street

He had begun to eavesdrop unintentionally – he had sworn he had heard someone say Barnaby, and had only been partially mistaken! This fellow, a Barnabas, had – indeed – just made a supreme ass of himself in a (brief) encounter with a terribly pretty woman. Barnaby might have cringed to be witness to it, but at the same time he was veritably transfixed, letting two carriages drift through his body in succession as he watched the conversational wreck occur, and the woman storm off in a feverish glower.

At last, he blinked back his disbelief and drifted over to the short fellow, unable to let such a situation pass him by without remark. “Well,” Barnaby said sarcastically, hovering at his side, “that went exceedingly well, did it not?”

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Barnabas Skeeter

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   Barnabas Skeeter

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If Barnabas had been sports-minded, he would have compared his disastrous results thus far to striking out—the term he'd heard wizards in New York use about whatever sport the Americans called baseball—but he was not, and such a clever comparison could not be made. He hadn't the slightest idea what he'd done to upset her. She'd been there one moment and gone the next, with a scoff the only thing between the two. He was used to scoffs... he received them from women quite a bit. Though he had been a prefect and left Hogwarts with respectable OWL and NEWT scores, the fairer sex and more specifically—how he was supposed to behave around them—absolutely bewildered him.

The sudden voice to his left had startled him. He hadn't heard anyone approaching. It was only a turn of his head later that he saw the reason why. A ghost had come to socialize. Wonderful. And apparently he'd seen the entire conversation. Barnabas gave the spirit a once over, noting that the man's cause of ghosthood was fairly obvious. It was his turn to scoff. "You're one to talk."

  

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Barnabas walks with a cane • Set by the lovely Lady • plot with me

Barnaby caught the fellow looking him up and down, as if he had anything to feel superior about. Rude and uncouth.

“I am one to talk,” Barnaby contested, folding his arms and resting them on the hilt of his rapier. Not for nothing did he spend most of his Death composing songs and ballads, for one. “Unlike thee, I have a way with words,” he explained, raising his eyebrows. “And with women.”

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Barnabas scoffed at the ghost's proclamation. Was he delusional? Is that why he'd been stabbed to death? He found himself in complete understanding of whoever had had enough of him, once upon a time. "Oh? And how does that work out for you, sir?" He retorted with a smirk. Though he hadn't had much luck with women the last few years, he knew without a doubt that he'd at least touched one. The translucent figure could hardly say the same.

  

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Barnabas walks with a cane • Set by the lovely Lady • plot with me

“If that were any indication, I do great strides better in Death than you fare in Life, sirrah,” Barnaby rejoined, raising his eyebrows pointedly. He had been married in his own time, and happily engaged in a love affair; and even nowadays, in near three centuries of Death, amongst his closest friends and confidantes he could count the elegant Mrs. Adrienne Lestrange and the retiring half-veela Miss Chevalier (and he well suspected that if he had had a body, he would do even better than intimate friendship with both of them). He had even been with Mrs. Lestrange on her almost-death-bed, and seen her pale and clammy and – more importantly – in her nightgown. Could this cocky, pouty-mouthed scoundrel say as much? Doubtful.

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Barnabas scoffed. What nonsense! "Doubtful," he clicked the end of his cane on the cobblestone for emphasis. "Are you omniscient as well? Have you seen my past, present, and future and know all?" Of course not! He was merely the noncorporeal spirit of a wizard who spoke too much about things he knew nothing about.

  

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Barnabas walks with a cane • Set by the lovely Lady • plot with me

Barnaby raised his eyebrows loftily – he felt as good as omniscient here. “I shall make certain to pay you a visit at the end of your days and see if I am wrong,” he said carelessly, but it was no stretch to imagine a failure in the prime of his life to be a failure at ninety-two, as well. “But please, you may try and prove me so forthwith. Have you a sweetheart, say?” He grinned genuinely, because this was the kind of social experiment with Livings he could get invested in – and this Barnabas’ evident lack of social graces was free entertainment, if nothing else. Barnaby gestured him onwards, deciding he could easily follow him about to get a better measure of the man.

(If he wasn’t entirely right about him already.)

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Barnabas

Did he intend to follow him? Oh no, that wouldn't do. Barnabas did not like this ghost (though that statement applied to all ghosts—particularly ones that were just children trying to scare him.) He certainly didn't want whatever was wrong with this one to be yammering at him in public. "I'd rather you did not," he responded shortly, both to the following him around and the visiting him on his deathbed. "And yes, I do have one." He lied, for reasons he couldn't quite pinpoint.

  

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Barnabas walks with a cane • Set by the lovely Lady • plot with me