Author's Note: So, my dormant Harry Potter mood has taken a sharp upswing, and this (below) is what comes of that. I've seen a small number of stories concerning Draco's first meeting with Moaning Myrtle, but very few of them seemed (to me) to be in-character or plausible. Draco was either too nice, too accepting, of Myrtle's sympathy, or it degraded into a pairing (of which I do not approve. Sorry.) Thus, I decided to take a stab at what might drive young Mr. Malfoy to the girl's second-floor bathroom, and the events thereafter.

Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all related names, places, spells, etc. belong to J.K. Rowling and not myself. Just fanfiction here.

Seeking refuge in the abandoned girls' bathroom was something that Draco had never before imagined himself doing. It was a rather stinging blow to the old Malfoy pride; his father would never have dreamed of going within ten feet of the place when he was at school, and so, by the unwritten laws of the family, Draco should have been holding the same position on the matter. It was simply unthinkable. And honestly – the girls' bathroom? Inhabited by the notorious Moaning Myrtle?

Unfortunately for Lucius Malfoy, family pride was no longer the primary motivator behind each and every decision Draco made. There were other things to consider—like survival. Like the realization that he was alive on someone else's whim, and would only stay alive as long as he was useful to him.

It tended to put ancestral honor in perspective.

At the moment, Draco was deliberately avoiding the Great Hall, and the sounds from within—talking, laughter, silverware on plates—made little impression save to convince him that staying away was a good idea. It was the third time this week that he had intentionally skipped out on dinner, but even the little pangs of hunger later on failed to drive him back to the social center of the castle; he was beginning to find that Hogwarts society was not nearly as interesting as it used to be, and being in the middle of a knot of admiring Slytherins had rather lost its charm. A year ago he would have been the leader of his classmates, would have commanded a certain respect even from the then-sixth and -seventh years. Now, he was forced to distance himself in a way that made his friends worry and the other Slytherins figure that he had lost whatever it was that made him a Malfoy. Of course they didn't suspect the real cause. Most Slytherins had to be wary of what colors they flew in public, and it would never cross their minds that one of their own was so heavily involved in what their parents had warned them to be exceptionally cautious about.

The worst that Draco had to go through, though—disregarding Snape's daily looks of black disapproval that were growing blacker every day—came from no other than Pansy Parkinson. She was getting to be something of a nuisance, to put it lightly, and sulked whenever her girlish admiration was swept aside by one of Draco's best glares. Still, he hadn't managed to put her off completely. The others who had been privy to his veiled hints on the train in September had all been easy enough to manage; Crabbe and Goyle were too thick to do anything except obey orders, and Zabini had accepted the situation with a sort of appreciative skepticism that Draco knew to mean he wouldn't mention it to anyone.

Pansy wouldn't mention it to anyone, either, but her constant questions at him were becoming a royal pain. And they weren't even about the most important subject (which he flatly refused to talk about anyway, with the threat of imminent death hanging over his head); they were simply all about him.

Draco knew she was worried, and, to be honest, rightly so. He hadn't been sleeping well, had been eating much less, and only the previous week she had pointed out that he looked much paler than usual. He had shrugged these observations off with a contemptuous reference to "a lot of stuff I have to do" that made his efforts sound a great deal more glamorous than they actually were. She took him at his word, at first, but as the weeks went on and he did not look significantly better, the queries came pouring back on top of him. She said he needed to relax, spend more time with her. But, somehow, Draco found that choosing between Pansy Parkinson and the Dark Lord's instructions was not so difficult a decision to make.

Even so, Draco was not very much taken with the idea of saying this, repeatedly, to Pansy's face, so he took the alternative option of just avoiding her whenever possible. It wasn't always easy; he still had some classes with her, which meant that she was invariably sitting in the closest seat possible to his own and slipping him quite unnecessary notes written in violently pink ink whenever she thought the teacher's back was turned. Draco had once thought this a rather flattering hobby, but now it was starting to get old very quickly.

Outside of classes it became slightly easier, since Pansy could not possibly track him at every moment in a castle the size of Hogwarts, especially when she seemed to find her social life almost as important as following Draco around. And, Draco figured, since she always had her little group of girlfriends to hang out with, she couldn't possibly be that lonely for his company. So he slipped quietly away whenever the opportunity presented itself and retreated to another part of the castle where he would have to deal with no one. The only problem with this method was that empty areas of Hogwarts became remarkably scarce just when you were looking for them. The library was quiet, but Madame Pince prowled the bookshelves so frequently that Draco felt he was constantly under scrutiny and was consequently more stressed than ever. He couldn't enter the secret Room too often or it would look suspicious, and a lone Slytherin sitting in various empty classrooms immediately became a prime suspect for as yet undone mischief. So, really, what was he supposed to do?

The bathroom was a last resort tonight. He was sick of finding a silent spot and then having it suddenly fill up with noise, or looking up and seeing Snape staring down at him with his black eyes that seemed to spell Legilimency in tones of doom. He needed somewhere alone, someplace where no one else would bother looking for him.

When he got there, Draco shot a quick glance around him to make sure that he would get through the door without being seen. There was no one in sight, but he heard voices coming from the hall to his left; without waiting he slipped into the bathroom and shut the door gently behind him, then breathed a slow sigh of relief. He could stay here for some time without anyone searching for him. The mere thought was calming.

It was dim here; like all the rest of the castle, the bathroom was lit with torches on the walls, and though they were very bright, it was still no substitute for sunlight. Draco watched his shadow flickering on the opposite wall for a few moments with a sort of detached interest, thinking to himself that it was vaguely like a sitting through a lesson that might have been quite stimulating if only it hadn't been delivered in a monotone. Inevitably, the distraction lasted only so long before it ceased to be a distraction, and then Draco was left with his usual darker thoughts.

"You do know this is a girls' bathroom, don't you?"

Draco started violently at the reproachful voice that seemed to be right behind him. He whirled around, instinctively raising his wand.

Moaning Myrtle eyed the wand askance and somehow still managed to maintain her mournful expression. "Oh, like that's going to do anything," she said—sounding quite patronizing, Draco thought, for a girl who'd been dead fifty years. "It's not like you can hurt me, so I really wouldn't bother if I were you. Unless you planned on blowing up a toilet," she added, in a tone that suggested she might actually enjoy the excitement of it.

"I didn't," Draco shot back, annoyed.

"Well, that's probably a good thing," Myrtle agreed reflectively. "It would make all sorts of noise, and then there would be a lot of people coming in here and disturbing me, and I'd have to go sit in the prefects' bathroom again until they got the water cleaned up—and you don't know how boring it is in there when everyone's eating."

"Yeah, it's way more interesting in here," said Draco sarcastically.

She looked rather huffy at that. "It's supposed to be, silly. But if I'm going to move around, I want it to be somewhere with a little fun. And that's only when the prefects are actually in there."

"Oh, so you just float around and watch us, do you?" Draco asked scathingly, wondering why in the world he was condescending to talk to this Mudblood ghost.

Myrtle's answering grin was slightly naughty. "Sometimes I do," she admitted, with a high-pitched giggle. "It's ever so much fun knowing that I can see you and you can't see me."

"Right. Fantastic."

Draco really wasn't in the mood for this. He set his jaw and deliberately turned his back on Myrtle, staring instead along the row of sinks set against the opposite wall. The reflection staring back at him from the mirrors was not what he had expected.

"Fine then—ignore me," Myrtle pouted. She began to float away, but suddenly flipped over in midair and peered over his shoulder at the mirror. "Ooh, you look dreadful," she observed delightedly. "Really miserable. I know what that's like, but I'm sure you don't want to talk to me about it."

"You're right. I don't." Draco shifted his weight so that her head wasn't so close to his.

"You could, you know. I won't tell anyone."

"Or you could just shut up and leave me alone." He eyed her coldly. "I'm done talking with Mudbloods—even if they are already dead."

Myrtle drew herself up indignantly as huge, ghostly tears began spilling out from behind her glasses. "Oh, well then—you really think you're something special, don't you?" she demanded, her tone climbing towards a wail. "Of course, I'm not anybody—I'm just poor, lonely, dead Myrtle—I d-don't have feelings! N-no reason why y-you should think about m-me!"

Her voice was almost at a shriek now. "Shut up!" Draco yelled angrily, wishing furiously that he knew a hex that would work on ghosts.

Positively howling, Myrtle zoomed forward until she was only an inch from his face. "MAKE ME!" she screamed dreadfully, and promptly sped down the line of stalls. From the ensuing splash seconds later, Draco assumed that she had tried to drown herself in one of the toilets. It was some time before her wails faded away into the castle plumbing.

Now in a worse frame of mind than ever, Draco stared moodily at the floor for a few seconds and then suddenly struck his fist against the stone bathroom wall. He had hoped venting would make him feel a little better, but instead he ended up nursing some very black thoughts and a very pained set of fingers. It just wasn't fair. He had had the most horrible time trying to find somewhere he could be alone so he could think, and now, just when he was alone, he abruptly discovered that his usual logic had deserted him. Everything was piling up in his head—the anger, the frustration, the desperation, the fear—

"I can't do it…" The words tumbled from his lips unbidden, the words he had wanted to say for so long but had forcibly denied himself because he knew they were weak.

"I keep trying—but I can't—and Snape doesn't even understand w-what it's like—trying to help me—what does he know?" Closing his eyes hard, Draco let his body slide down the wall until he was sitting on the floor with his back pressed against the cool stone. His fingers clutched at the tiles of their own accord, seeking for something to hold on to. "B-but I have to do it—he'll kill me—but I d-don't know how…"

Now the tears were coming on fast; Draco muttered a fierce "Damn it" under his breath and roughly brushed them away, but for all his trouble they kept finding their way out from beneath his eyelids. I'm not weak, he told himself viciously, yet the words were hollow and bitter.

He was weak—horribly so, and the fact that he was acknowledging it made it even worse. His mother was pathetic sometimes, too, but she would never admit it. Well, except when she had spoken to him the day after he had taken his father's place—

"Don't know how—what?"

It was Myrtle again, poking her head out from one of the stalls. Draco sprang to his feet without thinking—he couldn't believe he had let her catch him crying—he flung his arm out and shouted "Crucio!" before he could even consider that it was a stupid idea.

Fortunately for Draco, the curse didn't work very well on ghosts; the jet of red light shot through Myrtle and instead hit the toilet behind her. There was a loud explosion, and the sound of hissing water as it sprayed outward and began spilling onto the floor.

Myrtle stared at him for a very long time without making a sound, and Draco stared right back, his mind a whirlwind of confusion and the suspicion that he had just overreacted very, very badly. He could feel his body trembling as the adrenalin rush started to wear off.

"I didn't think," Myrtle said finally, very slowly, "that students were allowed to use that sort of magic."

Mechanically, Draco shook his head. "I—they aren't—I just—"

Inside, he was becoming even more confused. Why wasn't she shrieking for the teachers, crying again, telling someone that he had just tried to use an unforgiveable, illegal spell? Another part of his brain wished that the curse had worked; he had been taught how to cast it properly, but had never used it against another person of his own free will. He wondered if he could actually do it.

"Is it to make up for whatever it is you can't do?" she asked, looking sincerely interested. "You learned that spell so people won't pick on you?"

"Not exactly." He shoved his wand back through his belt and leaned against the wall again, his eye focusing on the ceiling. Father would murder him if he knew that Draco was chatting with a Mudblood ghost, but the need to talk to someone—to have someone understand—was too strong. "My… someone else made me learn it. It was sort of a test, I think—to make sure I could."

"You can, though," she reassured him, with an out-of-character cheerfulness. "So you must be doing something right."

"No," Draco whispered, "no, I'm not—it's not working—and it's got to work—or else—"

"Or else what?" Myrtle floated over to him and placed a translucent hand on his shoulder that felt like a drip of ice water. "You can talk to me, you know. It might help."

So the only sympathy he got was from one of the castle's crazy specters. Draco gritted his teeth. "No, I can't," he answered, shaking his head despairingly. "And it's not that I don't want to—but I can't."

"You are rather lonely, though, aren't you?"

He looked over at her incredulously. She actually expected him to admit—

"Yeah. Sometimes." A lot of the time.

"Well," said Myrtle, looking at him out of the corner of her eye, "you can always come and visit me in here. It does get horribly quiet at night, and" —she gave him a knowing glance—"I promise I won't tell."

And she didn't tell. Draco expected that to be his first and last visit to the second-floor bathroom, but over the next few months he took refuge there a number of times, and began to find that confiding in someone else was a relief rather than a burden. It was the last thing he had expected, of course, but after all… his father wasn't always right. For the first time in his life, Draco was beginning to realize that he needed a friend rather than a follower. The idea would haunt him until the end of the war.

END

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