Title: Toilet Training.
Rating: G.
Summary: (Writtenfor the Lumos! Community History of Magic OWL): In this OWL examination you will write a short story about an event from the childhood of any witch or wizard mentioned in the Harry Potter Universe. If you like, you can include other characters, but make sure the focus is on one character. The story must be 300 words minimum:Myrtle is potty-trained with oddly premonitory results. First place winner, by the way
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Myrtle's mother decided it was time for her daughter to use the toilet. It had been a long time coming, really; it was entirely too much for her mother to have to deal with the girl weeping on top everything else every time she went to pull off the girl's diaper and expose her to the cold-- whatever the season-- air. She had never seen nor heard of a more weepy child; everything seemed to set this child off. She was such a pathetic little imp, really, and even her mother could admit it. Her eyes were terrible, so bad that she ran into things as she toddled about the room, falling against the table edges and other uncomfortable articles of furniture and weeping inconsolably at least twice a day. Her mother was sure she was going to need hideously thick glasses. As if that weren't enough, had thick stick-like black hair that stuck out in two awkward short pigtails, a lackluster complexion, and a round, unpleasant face that looked as if it were frowning even on the rare occasions when it wasn't contorted with feeble tears.
Her mother took Myrtle into the clean, white bathroom, dutifully sterilized on a weekly basis with chlorinated scrub so that the tile shown and the grout was always the same color as it had been when it had been replaced the year before Myrtle was born. The toilet itself was a gleaming, pure white throne, upon which Myrtle's mother placed the fearful-- and therefore tearful-- Myrtle.
Nothing happened for ages. Myrtle seemed so distraught over the pressure her mother was placing upon her to relieve herself that the otherwise natural function was rendering useless. She couldn't even wet herself in fear; the cold toilet seat and bright lights glaring off the shininess of the white tile room were not conductive to anything so natural and familiar as personal excrement. Frustrated, Myrtle's mother left the room to go fetch the replacement box of tissues.
Myrtle seized this opportunity to collect herself. Wiping the tears feebly from her poor eyes, she gathered her surroundings in her young mind and tried to reconcile herself with them. Without her mother standing near, the toilet really wasn't so bad. The porcelain and tile of the starkly-white bathroom was cold, indeed, but comforting in its neatness and solitude. Suppressing her weak little sobs, she could feel herself relaxing with the sound of the pipes vibrating in the wall behind her, and the faint semi-consistent dripping from within the back of the toilet. Allowing herself one more dramatic sob, she conceded that she did indeed like their bathrooms and their cool comfort, private where one could cry without feeling watched or out of place-- for, after all, a place so full of water could not suffer to have just a little bit more.
She became so relaxed, however, that she slid just a bit too far down on the seat. Her legs relaxed, and her entire body bowed until she felt the shock of cold water. Squealing, she pulled herself up and slid straight off the toilet. Curious, she peered into the white abyss of the toilet bowl, where within rippled the gentle pool of blue-white water, beneath which was an inexplicable cavern. Unable to resist her temptation any longer, Myrtle pulled herself forward to the toilet once more, leaning in over the bowl, vowing to find what was within, through, and beyond that deep space.
When Myrtle's mother returned, she found her daughter not sitting on, but standing before the toilet, her small hands flattened palm-down upon the seat, her head in the bowl itself. With a small shriek and a vituperative inner scolding of herself for not taking heed of all the child-care manuals' explicit instructions to never leave a child unattended in a bathroom near a toilet, Myrtle's mother rushed to her daughter's aid. However, before she could reach her to pull her forth from the murderous, sterile toilet-water, she heard an unmistakably gurgle of bubbly laughter that hardly sounded submerged at all. Horrified at the possible explanations for this, Myrtle's mother gingerly leaned over her daughter's body and glanced down into the toilet bowl.
Wriggling within the depths of the porcelain bowl was an unmistakable bubble, swallowing nearly whole her daughter's entire head, spiky black pigtails and all. The girl was giggling within, her childish voice reverberating off the bubble walls and through the water above and below her. Absolutely nonplused and with no other way to react, Myrtle's mother seized her by the waist and prepared to yank her from the water.
However, with the touch of her mother's hands, the bubble Myrtle had concocted popped, instantaneously dissipating with the shock of being handled. The water collapsed itself back in on her, soaking her otherwise untouched head and filling her mouth with the bleach-tasting water. Her mother pulled her immediately from the imminent drowning she would otherwise be victim to, but it was too late; Myrtle shrieked in absolute agony, shaking in her mothers arms in a frantic moment of pure temper, and then succumbing weakly to weeping over her distraught state of wetness, shock, and discontentment.
Myrtle's mother decided the girl had had enough for one day, and dried her off and put her to bed, where the girl sniveled piteously to herself until she fell asleep-- and even beyond that. Her mother mused over the peculiar instances of the day, instances which would come in time to be explained by the arrival of a letter nearly a full decade later. Henceforth the girl Myrtle was a witch with a knack for the Bubble-Head Charm (which she would reveal, in time, to those flattering enough to her to ask advice on particular watery subjects)-- and one with devout affinity for toilets and their sacred solace from the cold, pressuring world.