A/N: I don't own Harry Potter

Word Count: 643

Hermione found it tempting to skip classes, to just stop going all together, anything to stop hearing the whispers about her. Ron hadn't been whispering last time, the whole class had heard him and laughed. She tried to push their voices from her mind. She hated hearing them. Part of her wanted to just quit, do anything to end the emotional pain.

"She's a nightmare."

"A bossy know it all."

"Who'd want to be friends with someone like that?"

She'd found crying didn't help much, but hiding at least then they weren't teasing her, saying horrible things about her, she had tried hiding in the loo on the first floor, but someone had found her and started asking questions. She hadn't wanted to answer them.

In the library was a good place to hide, but they found her anyway and teased her for loving books. She'd been teased at her muggle school too for the same reasons. She couldn't help that she was smart, that her mind was a few steps ahead of everyone.

She had gone looking for a new place to hide. She remembered hearing about other loos in the school. She'd chosen the one that was always flooded. She didn't know or care why. She just knew no one would look for her there.

"Whatcha doing?" a voice asked. She looked over and blinked. She'd seen the ghosts at the beginning of term feast. This girl was obviously a ghost. She was transparent blue with glasses and long brown hair.

"Making it stop," she finally said.

"The teasing? I used to get teased. Olive Hornby was the worst! I used to haunt her you know, even showed up at her wedding. She deserved it. It's her fault I'm dead, after all."

"Really?" Hermione asked, curious despite herself. The ghost girl nodded.

"Really! She was teasing me about my glasses again and I ran in here to cry, just like you're doing and then I looked up and there was this huge pair of yellow eyes! And then, I died!"

"Just like that?"

"Just like that, they screamed when they found my body and shut down the school!"

"Wow. What did the eyes belong to?" Hermione asked.

"I don't know, I never did figure that out, but it came from over there," she said, pointing to the sinks. Hermione walked over and looked at them, seeing the small snake on the tap, her eyes widened.

"There's a snake on here, weird. So you died here, in this room?" Hermione asked.

"Yes, I died right here."

"And do you like it in here?"

"No one bothers me."

"But it must be boring, isn't it? There's no books in here."

The ghost girl wrinkled her nose and glared at Hermione.

"I can't pick up things, so I can't read books anymore!" she cried. Hermione rushed over and tried to put an arm around her. It passed straight through.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize. I'm new to the magic world and I had no idea! I could help you with that? I mean, I could turn the pages for you and we could read together, it would be nice to have a friend who doesn't think reading is stupid."

"A friend? You want to be friends with me?"

"Sure! Why not? We're both kind of different, people pick on us, and we both like to read, so why not? I'm Hermione by the way, what's your name?"

"Myrtle."

"Ohh, I like it! Come on, if we move fast enough, we can get to the library before curfew and pick out a few books we can read. We don't have to stay there," Hermione added, seeing the look on her new friend's face. "We can bring the books back here!"

"Alright, let's go," Myrtle agreed, following Hermione out of the loo without looking back.