Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition Round 9:
Position: Seeker for the Holyhead Harpies
Prompt: Write about Moaning Myrtle
Word Count (Pages): 1,005
Dark
Myrtle sees the Weasley girl do it.
She hovers in her stall with her bespectacled eyes barely clearing the metal door, and she holds her breath (not that she breathes nowadays, but old habits die—or don't die—hard), and she watches the girl with the flaming red hair whisper things to the bathroom sink. Myrtle can't make out the exact words, but she can tell by the harsh s sounds that the Weasley girl's business here is dark, and even though she cannot die anymore, Myrtle is afraid of dark things.
The sink breaks apart, opening with a loud crack that echoes in Myrtle's ears. The Weasley girl does not react. Her back is facing Myrtle, but the mirror reflects a pair of blank, hollow eyes.
There is a chasm behind the sink—a chasm so dark that Myrtle can hardly look at it. She'd grown up with a nightlight in her bedroom, and she'd been devastated when she hadn't been allowed to bring it along with her to Hogwarts. She'd settled for a candle beside her bed instead, and when the other girls in her dormitory thought it would be funny to charm the wick so it refused to light, she had slept on the floor in the common room, where the torchlight cast dancing shadows along the walls.
The Weasley girl does not step toward the chasm. She watches it, instead, looking deep within and murmuring words in that language of snakes that Myrtle has been trying fifty years to forget. Trembling, Myrtle watches as a figure steps out from the shadows behind the sink. . . .
And then she has her ghostly hands clamped over her mouth, and it's all she can do to stop herself from screaming.
It's him.
He's still tall, still young and handsome, as if he hasn't aged a moment since the last time she saw him. His mouth is still set in that serious scowl, but his eyes dance as if he knows a joke that nobody else has heard, and she hasn't felt anything but self-pity for fifty years but there's something else now . . . something like pain . . . something like heartache. . . .
Myrtle closes her eyes and takes a gulp of air that her lungs don't need.
Tom Riddle is in her bathroom.
She's thrown back into the memory of it all. Tom Riddle giving her extra lessons in Charms . . . Tom Riddle keeping her in the library long after the library has closed . . . Tom Riddle telling her that he will not allow her to leave until she has the spells perfected . . . Tom Riddle promising her that she won't get in trouble for being out of bed so late because he is a prefect, and he will walk her back to the Ravenclaw common room.
Tom Riddle guiding her wand arm with a gentle hand on her wrist. Tom Riddle saying she is brilliant for learning a sixth-year spell at only fourteen. Tom Riddle asking when he can see her again.
She knows Tom Riddle came to her funeral. He dropped a blue flower on her coffin.
And now he's here, in her bathroom, and he isn't a day over sixteen, and she is sobbing because he reminds her so much of what it felt like to be alive.
"Ginny," says Tom. His voice echoes through the bathroom.
Myrtle peers up over the edge of her stall again. He's touching the Weasley girl's arm. If Myrtle still had a working heart, she's sure it would be breaking.
It isn't Tom. It can't be. It must be Tom's son, or even his grandson. Or perhaps she's just dreaming—perhaps she's finally found that sleep that has evaded her for so many years.
Tom opens his mouth, and that harsh language of snakes comes rasping out of his throat. Myrtle swallows.
She has heard that voice uttering those words before.
The Weasley girl nods once and turns to face the exit. Her eyes are still blank as she walks out into the corridor. Tom watches her go, and then he turns his head very slowly and deliberately toward Myrtle.
"Warren," he says. His eyes shine.
She gulps. "Riddle."
He breaks into a slow smile. "S'pose it makes sense that you'd become a ghost."
She opens her mouth, but she has no words.
"What with your fear of the dark, and all, I mean."
She still can't speak. Something is wrong. His eyes never used to shine like that.
"Little Myrtle Warren." Tom shakes his head. "Always running around after me. They called you my Mudblood Shadow, did you know that?"
She hears herself squeak. "Wh-what?"
"Mudblood. Shadow." He says the words slowly and clearly, and with a hard malice she had never heard before. "I'm quite certain I liked the nickname less than you."
She flows through the stall and moves to meet him on the floor. "We were friends," she says.
He laughs. It is cold and cruel and dark. "Is that what you thought?"
She doesn't answer.
"You saw Ginny Weasley open the Chamber of Secrets, didn't you, Warren."
Myrtle is trembling.
"You're not going to tell anyone."
"I might." It comes out as a ragged whisper.
"You won't." Tom reaches out and grips her arm, and to her absolute horror, he doesn't sink through her body like everyone else does. "You see, I'm like you now, Warren. We're both just ghosts of the past. To me, you are solid. I can hurt you."
She twists away.
"Do you know who killed you, Warren?"
She closes her eyes.
His next words are whispered, and they come from just beside her ear. "I think you do."
She counts to ten before she opens her eyes, and when she does, he's gone. The chasm in the sink has closed. The Weasley girl is nowhere to be found.
But on her right forearm, just below where he'd held her arm, there is a dark handprint burned into her skin, and for the first time in fifty years, Myrtle is afraid.