The wraith of Lord Voldemort, freshly defeated (for the second time) by the young Harry Potter, furiously flew through the halls and walls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, probing the school's wards for any weak point he could exploit to escape. Dumbledore had had them activated upon his early return, and it would be tricky, but Voldemort could certainly pull it off. Just a few more moments...

"Who's out there?" a shrill female voice called out. "Don't think I didn't hear you!"

Voldemort ignored the voice. There! He began to internally cast the incantation that would alter his wraith-form enough to let him squeeze through the wards. It would weaken him substantially, but to be weakened and outside Hogwarts would be a great deal better than being trapped in here...especially if Dumbledore found him.

"Another ghost? Hmph. You must be new, none of the other ghosts care to be around me. Nobody ever comes to my death-day parties." The voice was now forlorn, and almost sounded on the verge of tears.

"Do shut up, you miserable wretch," Lord Voldemort uttered, as the pestering began to fray on his concentration.

"Shut up! Shut up!" The girl had gone back to shrill again. "You are the rudest spirit I have ever met! Why, even Peeves is kinder than you, you..."

The wraith finally turned to the female ghost as she sputtered for just the right insult to call him, and paused in recognition. "You're that mudblood, who I...who was killed, Myrtle..." He trailed off as he did not recall her last name.

"MUDBLOOD!" Myrtle was absolutely livid at the insult. Forgetting for a moment that both she and the wraith were incorporeal spirits, she pulled her arm back and swung as hard as she could. To the surprise of both her and Voldemort, she connected, and with a loud CRACK!, the girls' bathroom was filled with a blinding white light, and both entities blacked out.

XXXX

After making sure Harry was under the watchful eye of Poppy Pomfrey, Dumbledore made all haste to the bathroom where he had detected the burst of magic. He knew that, even if he had left Harry laying where he had fallen after his confrontation with the Dark Lord and had gone into pursuit of Voldemort's wraith, he would never have caught up with it before it escaped the castle. Still, the magic burst filled him with a quiet dread -- had Voldemort stumbled upon a student during his escape? Dumbledore cut off the line of thought before it went somewhere terrible, and doubled the speed of his paces.

He had his wand at the ready as he opened the bathroom door, wandlessly casting the Lumos spell as it was dark inside. He breathed a sigh of relief -- there was no sign of foul play; no blood, and certainly no bodies. Then, he did a double-take -- there, on the floor, was the unconscious form of Hogwarts' own Moaning Myrtle. This worried Dumbledore, as to the best of his quite extensive knowledge, ghosts did not sleep, nor could they be physically harmed. (They were already dead, after all; nothing could harm them after that). "Myrtle?" he called out gently.

After a second, her eyes opened. "Professor!" she said in surprise. "What are you doing in here?" She gave him none of her usual attitude -- lingering respect for the man that had taught her Transfigurations so many years ago.

"Ah, a...malevolent spirit was recently in the castle, and I thought he might have been in here. Did you see him?"

Myrtle nodded vigorously. "I did, I did! He was very rude, and he called me a...well, a very bad word! And then I...ah..." If ghosts were capable of blushing, surely Myrtle would have at that moment. "I tried to...hit him."

A smirk appeared on Dumbledore's face for the briefest of moments. "Did you, now? Good effort, then!" He resisted the urge to award house points. He cast his gaze around the room, surreptitiously casting detection spells. There was something, but he couldn't quite pinpoint it.

Myrtle tugged on the sleeve of Dumbledore's robe. "Professor, what..." They both looked down simultaneously at Myrtle's hand, still gribbing the fabric loosely.

XXXX

As the early morning sun peeked its way into the headmaster's office, Dumbledore's thoughts once again went over what (he suspected) were the events which took place after the showdown for the Philosopher's Stone: Voldemort's wraith fled Quirrell's body and began searching for a way out of Hogwarts' wards. By sheer chance, he found a weak point in Myrtle's bathroom of residence. As he cast an unknown spell, Myrtle (through her punch) made physical contact, and then...

Dumbledore drew a blank. If he had to blindly guess, he would say it had something to do with the terrible powers he had wielded -- engaging in dark activities no other wizard in recorded history had done before. Maybe something to look into while he researched horcruxes.

The end result was that Myrtle was not quite as incorporeal as before -- she could still pass through solid objects as easily as most passed through air, but now she could exert her will upon the world. Her first act after tugging Dumbledore's sleeve was tugging on his beard, then fleeing into her pipes, thoroughly embarassed. Dumbledore had forgiven her ("Many students throughout the years have wanted to give my beard a tug," he had said. "You are simply the first to do so,") but she refused to come out.

As to Voldemort himself...Dumbledore knew he hadn't escaped outside of the wards. When Myrtle touched him, she had sapped a great deal of energy from him, which left two possibilities: Voldemort was laying low in a secluded part of the school somewhere (perhaps even the Chamber of Secrets itself), or, hopefully, his spirit had been cast from the Earth altogether. It wouldn't do to be too hopeful, unfortunately...with the proper ritual, a horcrux could easily summon back the dead who had moved on entirely.

If Voldemort had a horcrux. Or horcruxes.

Dumbledore wondered if the changes to Myrtle were permanent. No ghost in recorded history had ever possessed or gained the ability to manipulate the tangible, like Myrtle had. There was anecdotal evidence, of course, but most reported instances of ghosts being able to interact with physical objects had turned out to be poltergeist activity. (Peeves, the longest non-living prankster at Hogwarts, was himself a poltergeist, and had never once been alive). It bore watching, at any rate.

A thought came to him: If Myrtle had absorbed Voldemort's power, then maybe...

He stood up at once, grabbed a pinch of floo powder, and tossed it into the flames of his hearth. "Ollivander's," he said, and stuck his head into the flames.