"Oh look! It's the four-eyed freak!" she yelled at the girl, while those around her giggled and echoed the words that she had spoken. The girl was Myrtle Spinner, and she was being teased by Olive Hornby and her cronies, again.
Myrtle was used to this, as it happened every waking hour; but it still hurt her. Each word was like a hard pinch on the arm, each insult like a slap across the face, each day like a living nightmare. She tried to tell the teachers, but Olive seemed to have perfected the innocent look. Myrtle didn't know why they picked on her; she just knew that it happened. Each day it got worse – she had even been hit a few times. It seemed that today was a really bad day.
"Let's play a little game, Myrtle! We'll play the opposite game; I'll ask the questions. Do you want me to… break your bag?"
"No! Um, I mean… yes!"
Myrtle looked on in horror as her bag was torn apart by Olive.
"But I thought you said that it was the opposite game?"
"It was, but I stopped playing. You really need to keep up, Myrtle!" Olive and her friends laughed cruelly and created a circle around Myrtle so that she couldn't escape. Each time she tried to they would just shove her back into the centre. She thought about calling for a teacher, but remembered that they were in an emergency meeting in the staff room – two floors away.
"Now, Myrtle, do you want me to ruin your homework?"
The game continued for about 10 minutes until Myrtle managed to push past some of the girls and ran down the corridor. She kept on running and ended up in the second floor bathroom; she hoped that she had run far enough away that Olive wouldn't find her until it was time for classes to start. She ran into one of the stalls and began to cry. Why was Olive so horrid to her? Why couldn't she pick on someone else?
The more she sat there, the more she realised that she didn't deserve to be bullied by Olive – or anyone else, for that matter. She also knew that she was the only person who could change this. She would have to take matters into her own hands.
A set of footsteps suddenly echoed through the bathroom and startled Myrtle. Why are you so surprised? She asked herself. This is a bathroom; someone would come in at some point.
However, there was something just slightly creepy about these footsteps. They were so loud and felt cold in some weird way.
Then the person started speaking. The first thing that struck her as odd was that it wasn't English. The second thing that she realised was that it was a boy speaking. She came out of her stall to see what he was doing.
"You do know that this is the girls' bathroom? You should go and-" she stopped when she was face to face with bright yellow eyes.
What happened next was very odd. Myrtle felt herself floating upwards. Well, she didn't exactly feel anything, but she knew that she was floating. She looked down and saw herself and a boy leaving the bathroom. Even worse, Myrtle looked, well, dead.
Hang on, she thought. Has that … thing killed me? I think it has. The real question is how. And why me? I didn't want to die this young… at least; I wanted to get revenge on Olive Hornby before I died. I really want to stay in Hogwarts. If I don't get revenge then who will? I've got to stay at Hogwarts.
All of a sudden, Myrtle felt herself floating back towards the earth and landed next to her dead body; wondered what on earth was going on. Had she decided not to die? Had the afterlife rejected her spirit? She brought her hand up in front of her face. It was a transparent silver colour. She looked in the mirror. It was like someone had thrown see-through silver paint all over her body. Maybe I'm a ghost, she reasoned. That would make a lot more sense. Myrtle went to touch the mirror and, sure enough, her hand went straight through it. This could be an advantage, she thought, smiling.
She decided to wait in the bathroom until someone came and found her dead body. She thought that it wouldn't be too long as most people knew that she often hid in here. However, as she had history of magic, it may take a while for her absence to be noticed.
After a few hours, someone came into the room.
"Are you in here again, sulking Myrtle?" Olive Hornby said, "Because Professor Dippet asked me to look for you-" she stopped dead in her tracks; staring down at Myrtle's cold, lifeless body. Myrtle decided that this would be a good time to introduce herself and floated through the door to greet her ex-bully.
"There you are, Olive! They have finally noticed my absence! I was hoping that they would send you, my dear friend, so that I could talk to you. I was thinking that we could play a little game…"
Olive ran to the closed bathroom door, but Myrtle was much faster and flew in front of it, preventing escape.
"Why don't we play the game that I like to call 'Haunting Olive for the rest of her life'? I think that would be fair, since you made the last few years a living nightmare for me!"
Olive was too shocked to say anything more than "H-how?"
"Oh, you want to know how I died. Well, it was a big monster that stared at me. Just think, if you didn't tease me, then I wouldn't have come running in here, sobbing, and then I wouldn't have seen the monster and died!"
"I swear, I didn't mean-"
"Of course you didn't; but it still happened! If word of this spread, you could be expelled! Thankfully, I'm not as mean as you; so I will settle with haunting you for the rest of your miserable life!"
Olive screamed, ran straight through Myrtle, and out of the bathroom.
Myrtle smiled to herself. I could get used to this…
A/N: this was written for the finals round 1 for the Holyhead Harpies.
