Author's Note: Sorry this chapter is a bit short, but it's necessary to the plot and I thought it was too long to tack on to chapter three. That is all.
Tom's rejection of Lauren went incredibly smoothly. That is to say, Lauren was torn apart while Tom's behavior could remain faultless. They rarely bumped into each other at school and when they did, he was the first one to say how much he wanted to spend time with her, but he just had so much work to do. He would even come up with certain specific times they could be together, knowing full well that she had classes during those periods. After every failed attempt at a meeting, Lauren would always cry with the sheer unfairness of it all. Lauren was never angry at Tom; she just wanted to be with him and resented his classes for taking him away from her. She missed him terribly, and constantly worried that he was with someone else.
Eventually, she realized that he didn't want her anymore and spent the rest of that day forcing herself to throw up in the bathroom, hoping to hurt herself without actually being in any real danger. If Tom didn't love her anymore, she was obviously worthless. She couldn't remember the last time she had seen him and their little rendezvous in the Room of Requirement had been over five months before. Her already low self-esteem became worse than ever until she reached the point where she felt like crying if someone looked at her for too long. Tom was all she had; the only thing that protected her from her classmates. Without him, she had no reason to disbelieve all the nasty things they said about her. She had no one to go to. Students bullied her and not even her parents took her seriously. Before Tom, it had been bearable. Now, she could no longer pretend that she was bullied and ignored because people just didn't get to know her since her soul mate had dumped her. She walked across the lawn one evening after dinner in this state of mind when she heard footsteps behind her.
"Hey, Mudblood!" shouted a female voice. Lauren held her books tighter to her chest and continued walking. The footsteps caught up to her and she saw the Hornby girl for a second before the world became a blur.
"Nice glasses, Mudblood" said the seemingly disembodied Olive.
"Give them back" Lauren said as forcefully as she could without betraying the fact that she was on the verge of tears. She vaguely saw a movement from the blurry figure before it said, "Sorry, I just dropped them on the grass. I'd help you find them, but I need to get to my common room now. Bye." Olive Hornby trotted off to the Gryffindor common room as Lauren crouched down, not caring how much of her legs people could see, and felt around the grass on her hands and knees to the taunts of students crowded around her. She realized quickly that Hornby had thrown her glasses across the lawn. In spite of strict rules about magic outside of class, she took out her wand and mumbled "accio glasses". The spell worked a little too well, and she ended up being hit in the nose, much to the amusement of the other students. She straightened herself out as much as possible and walked away quickly, already making choking, sobbing sounds in her throat. She had been through similar humiliations, so she knew exactly where the nearest girls' bathroom was where she could cry in peace.
She didn't know how long she had been in the stall when she heard a voice. It was definitely a boy, but she couldn't tell who it was or what he was saying. She flared up in anger and found herself shouting, "Hey, you're not supposed to be he-"
She never got to finish her sentence, and a few seconds later, the spirit of Lauren Rosalie Myrtle floated towards the ceiling, looking down at her small, crumpled body lying on the bathroom floor.