Through the Mill

by: Slytherclaw Coffee Ninja

During her time at Hogwarts, Myrtle had been a witness to more than her fair share of breakups, rumours, and yet, she didn't understand them all that well. If the guy in the relationship had broken up with the girl, then the girl would be upset, and wonder what she could do to make him take her back. If the break up happened the other way around, the guy would be upset with the girl, and the girl would defend her case. She had seen all sorts of things like that happening, and while the characteristics of it sometimes baffled her - being excruciatingly simple, and yet excruciatingly difficult to wrap her mind around.

For example, the week before, Megan Jones, a sixth year Hufflepuff, had burst into the bathroom, and sat by the sinks for half an hour sobbing before she had noticed that Myrtle was in the room. She had told her that her boyfriend - Myrtle hadn't caught the name, espcially since Megan only addressed the boy in question as "him", but managed to gather that he was a seventh year Gryffindor, and had dumped her for not supporting Gryffindor during their match against Hufflepuff, which, in Myrtle's opinion, was one of the worst reasons that she had heard to date.

Of course, telling Megan that her life really wasn't as miserable as she was making it out to be probably wasn't the best idea, but she hadn't been able to think of what else she could tell the distraught Hufflepuff.

While Myrtle much preferred wallowing in her own sadness, lamenting the way things were, and the way they could've been, it seemed as though people who had issues of their own had been flooding into her bathroom during the past few weeks, interupting her solitude, and that particular day it was no different, despite how much Myrtle desired it to be.

The doors to the bathroom flew open, and this time, the girl who rushed in was Pansy Parkinson, a Slytherin sixth year. While she had never actually spoken to Pansy, she had seen the girl crying in the other bathrooms when she felt like venturing out of what she felt was almost her own corner of Hogwarts which was only recently getting invaded by high-pitched adolescent girls.

Floating up higher, towards the window, she sat in silence for a few moments, listening to Pansy cry.

"I can't believe he would say that to me!" she cried.

"What did he say to you?" Myrtle dared ask, having an inkling of who she was talking about.

Pansy looked up from where she was crying - by the sinks - and when she looked up at the ghost, she was more innocent, more childlike than she had ever been described, and for a moment, she was taken by surprise. But then the look changed from innocence to malice, as Pansy glared at Myrtle.

"Sod off," she said nastily. "It's none of your business."

Myrtle dove from her perch, and flew straight to where Pansy was sitting.

"Maybe he doesn't love you now," she snapped, "maybe he knows that you never marry the first person that you date in school."

"I don't believe you," Pansy spat. "We're going to get married. He just..."

"Is under a lot of stress, and should be left alone when he asks," Myrtle said, as Pansy gave her a confused look.

"What do you know," the sixth year snarled, clutching the edge of the sink for support. "You've never even met him. He would never tell me to go away. He loves me."

Myrtle sighed, and thought back to the night before, when she had Draco had spent hours talking. Rather, he was talking, and she was listening. He had told her more things than he ever would tell Pansy, and that she - despite the fact that Pansy and Draco had been intimate in other ways, she had become closer to him in a way that she never would be able to.

"People never do marry their first loves," she repeated a tad sorrowful, floating back up to where she was before, as Pansy descended further into hysterics, all the while, thinking, wishing that perhaps Pansy would get it. That Draco would move on; that their romance was not something that would last. It was petty and was solely a schoolday relationship that wouldn't cross over into adulthood.

"You're wrong," Pansy said softly. "You're wrong."

But, deep down, Pansy knew Myrtle was right.