Title: Touched by a Dead Witch
Summary: While trying to navigate the tension and darkness at Hogwarts now that Snape is Headmaster and the Carrows prowl the corridors, Ginny finds solace in a second floor bathroom. While hiding out there, she finds out why the Hogwarts girls call the residing ghost Moaning Myrtle. And it's not because of the crying, that's for sure. F/F. Femslash. Ginny's fifth year.
Warnings: Seducer Myrtle. 'nough said. Warnings will be updated per chapter.
Authors: Usually Valiant Theorist & AcePaca
Note: Chapters will typically be less than 2000 words.
Chapter One
When Ginny was a young girl, she excitedly listened to her mother tell her tales of Hogwarts. Her mother would tuck her in, smooth her red curls back from her face, crack open the large pop-up storybook, and read to her about moving staircases and witches and wizards of might by wandlight. She had pictured Hogwarts, eyes and thoughts filled with wonder, almost as much as she dreamed about Harry Potter.
This, though. This was nothing like how she imagined Hogwarts would be. The once light corridors that she had dreamed about and come to know the past four years were now dark, shadows creeping along the stones. Gone were the students of all Houses lingering in the Great Hall, house unity strongly shown in colors and name. The laughter was now replaced by silence that permeated the air like a disease.
Not only was Hogwarts taken over by Death Eaters hell bent on subjugating all resistance, but Harry, Hermione and Ron were no longer here, gone off to Merlin knows where on some godforsaken mission that they hadn't even graced her with the knowledge of. Without the Golden Trio, the fight and life seemed to be sucked out of the student body, especially Gryffindor house. They had become complacent. Except Neville, whose eyes shone with a silent fire even though he kept his head down and fists clenched.
Hogwarts had officially gone to shit.
Tonight, though, there was more noise in the hallways near the Great Hall than normal. Ever since she had come back to school, Ginny had made sure to keep her head down. The less attention she drew to herself, the more they would underestimate her in the end.
She kept walking, wanting to make it to her class on time. Druella, their new Potions Mistress, was a slave driver and tardiness was met with a personal demonstration of the Cruciatus curse.
As she made to leave, drawing her robes closer to fight the chill wafting through the castle, a scream suddenly pierced the dimness. Her blood chilled and her feet drew to a stop of their own accord. Her heart thudded in her chest and she closed her eyes, wishing with all her being that it was just her imagination. A gargled pain-filled sob met her ears again, sounding like it was just right around the corner.
Ginny felt herself torn. She needed to keep her head down. But at the same time, she could feel her famous temper, the fire in her veins that cried out against injustice, screaming through her. Her wand throbbed, already in her hand despite her not realizing that she had pulled it from her sleeve.
She should walk away, she should—
Her feet slapped against the stones as she rushed down the hallway, her lungs laboring with excitement and fear as she rounded the corner.
The grotesque dark haired Dark Arts professor, whose name she never bothered to learn, had a first year cringing into the corner. Her eyes were moving rapidly behind her lids, whimpers leaking from her mouth, betraying the horror and pain she felt about whatever she was seeing. A sickly purple light with black shockwaves had illuminated her form, looking like it was leeching off of the Hufflepuff's magic. The pungent aroma of the curse filled Ginny's nostrils and her stomach rolled.
The tears making shining tracks down the little girl's face was what sealed Ginny's decision. Steeling her resolve, she raised her wand and cast a Stupefy at the wizard's back, causing him to topple forward. A slight crack sounded between them as he hit the ground with a thud.
She was frozen for a few moments, blood pounding so strongly in her ears that she couldn't hear anything else.
She had just cast a spell at a professor. At the Dark Arts professor, no less.
A small moan of fear freed itself from her throat before she clamped down tightly on that emotion. No, she would not lose her composure. She did what she knew was right. Plus, he hadn't even seen her. The girl hadn't seen her. No one would know it was her. At that thought, a dangerous thrill shot through her veins along with a dark sense of satisfaction.
Walking forward, Ginny cast a Finite Incantatem at the witch, hopeful that it would break whatever spell she was under, and began running as fast as her feet would take her. She felt like she had run for hours. She knew she wouldn't make it to Potions but if anyone found her anywhere near the scene, she knew she would just be dead. A first year wouldn't have been able to take out the Dark Arts professor; even if he wasn't paying attention, they wouldn't know the incantation or wand movements for Stupefy. The Death Eaters on staff would be looking and she wanted to get as far away from there as possible before his body and the girl were found.
When Ginny had finally calmed down, her hands on her knees as she panted, she noticed that she had managed to find herself in one of the girls' bathrooms.
Adrenaline still pumping through her, she stepped towards the mirror at the farthest side of the room. As she approached, she noticed that her cheeks were flushed, her chest heaving up and down with her heavy breathing, and her hair looked a right mess. Reaching up to her hair to pat down her many flyaways, she noticed that her hands were shaking violently. Abandoning her hair, she instead started to fix her crooked tie.
Panting still, she stared at her reflection, her eyes feeling drawn to her mirror self's eyes. Her pupils were blown wide with fright but also something else.
Trying to sort out her own emotions, to understand what she was feeling, Ginny spent a few more minutes examining herself. Unsuccessful, she splashed some water on her face to help alleviate the redness. Water wet her robes, and she sighed in annoyance as she retrieved her wand, a cleaning spell already on her mind.
"Great. The last thing I wanted was to be wet when—"
Suddenly, a voice interrupted her, sounding as if it was right next to her ear.
"Oh really? That's the first thing I would want."
Ginny almost jumped a foot in the air and whirled around. Her eyes scanned the bathroom, her ears straining, but she appeared to be alone. She couldn't see any feet dangling beneath the stall doors either. The only noise she could hear was the dripping of a leaking loo.
Feeling a little disturbed, Ginny's eyes narrowed as she mustered up her Gryffindor courage and exclaimed, "Who's there? Show yourself!" The tip of her wand glowed a dark red, the incantation for the Bat Boogey Hex already on the tip of her tongue.
"I'll show you mine if you show me yours," the voice said, an undercurrent of laughter in it.
The hell?
Ginny's eyes swept over the bathroom and when they returned to in front of her, she automatically sent the Bat Boogey Hex forward on reflex.
The red light simply sailed through a translucent form in front of her and dissolved uselessly into sparks against the wall.
As her heart rate slowed down, Ginny took in the sight of long brown pigtails and a Ravenclaw school uniform. The ghost had a very beautiful face from what Ginny could tell, but that was hidden quite thoroughly behind the large old timey glasses that were somehow worse than Harry's.
"Myrtle," Ginny found herself saying as she put away her wand. "You're Myrtle, aren't you?"
"Yes, but everyone calls me Moaning Myrtle," she confirmed, eyes narrowed in suspicion.
"Are you here to pick on poor Moaning Myrtle?" she playfully crooned, seeming to exaggerate the whimpering sighs that she tacked on at the end of her sentence.
"No, I just happened to end up here. Why do they call you Moaning Myrtle?" Ginny hesitantly asked the question, looking up at the ghost from beneath her eyelashes. Her eyes tracked the movement of the undead teenager as she swirled around the room, her floating suddenly seeming almost sensual to the fifth year.
When Ginny was younger, the upperclassmen had laughed when they told the younger years that it was because Myrtle cried all the time, moaning with sadness over her tragic death. But as the demure, sniveling expression the spirit had changed like a switch had been flipped, Ginny felt the distinct impression that she had been lied to. Somehow, she suddenly had the feeling that those upperclassmen her first year hadn't been telling the whole truth for hilarity's sake. And she had never clued in on the joke.
"Oh, you know why, Little Red," Myrtle said, smirking as she floated closer to the redhead. Her pale, translucent lips were centimeters from Ginny's. "I'm a moaner."
Red graced the apples of the Gryffindor's cheeks, making the freckles stand out more starkly. Her blush deepened to match her hair as Myrtle's wicked laughter filled the air before the bespectacled spirit disappeared.