Bong.

“—Ow!”

Severus frowned, looking up from the last of his fourth-year essays. He knew that voice. The cackling retreating into the distance sounded like Peeves, but that voice sounded like…

“…Miss Granger?”

She wandered through the partially open door of his classroom, hand clamped to her forehead. She squinted up at him, her face pinched with pain as she drew closer. “Sorry, Professor…but do you have any Bruise Balm?”

“What happened?” he enquired, standing.

Hermione grimaced and muttered, “Peeves. In specific, that stupid poltergeist’s low-brow sense of humor. He asked me if I’d ever ‘walked into a bar’.”