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He made her feel alive.
She was a measly girl, only thirteen and he was but a strong boy that walked in the shadows. He was timeless and ageless and absolutely ancient. It was silly; really, he should've been gone ages ago.
But he wasn't.
She met him near the girls' lavatory day-after-day and she smiled and she giggled and it was all absolutely dandy.
"I'm worried about dying," she'd say, sometimes.
"Don't be. Don't be. You can come and see me...live with me..."
"It's an awfully drafty castle, isn't it? I mean something's amiss. Something isn't right."
"Oh come now," he said motioning towards a leaky sink, "it's just old. Just old."
She took a deep breath and opened up her dog-eared copy of Hogwarts a History once more. "What was your name?"
"What?" He asked as he floated atop her.
"Your name..." she said "...your name, you had one, everyone did. At some point in time."
"I don't--" his voice became distant and she threw a lemon tart at his head. He glared.
"It didn't hurt," she reasoned, "anyway, you had a name. Tell me."
"Father's name..." he said as though thoroughly out of it "Mum named me after my Father...William," he said finally. "William."
"I like that name."
He was Slytherin's ghost and she was Ravenclaw's Princess. The Princess with curly ebony hair that became frizzy in the rain. Rumpled school uniform, ruddy cheeks usually a deathly pale--tiny feet slipped into black shoes.
Always late for Breakfast.
Always talking with the Bloody Barron. Or "William" as she had taken to calling him.
"My name's Myrtle," she said assured, "and even though I hear your hand is cold and bloody I'd quite like to shake it. You know to preserve some type of formality. Even though you're a ghost you were a human once. We must be dignified—we're British after all."
He laughed, perhaps hollowly and shook the girl's petite, white marble hand. "Pleased to meet you, Miss. Herald."
"And you," she said with a quick curtsey.
He followed her, and it would have been disturbing had he not been a ghost. But some say that made it all the more disturbing. To the doors' of classes, to the Quidditch Pitch, right outside the lavatories, in the library, when he could manage. And Myrtle, stuck in ignorance and self-pity simply laughed, stuck out her tongue and went on.
She was a jolly girl. But made less jolly because of the bloody thing behind her.
But because she was young, and because she was small, she didn't understand the awful feeling that came over her when he was around and mistook it as an almost caring gesture. He followed her. He liked her. He looked at her. He wanted her.
But he was a ghost. But to Myrtle...he was something terribly interesting.
Some say he was with her when she died.
Of course that is, very debatable for know one keeps tabs on ghosts.
But, for the record, he was there.
He heard the screaming, saw the sudden flash and her warmth flood through his 'body.' The smell of bits and pieces of parchment and beef stew. The smell of Myrtle.
Her glasses cracked on the wet floor her hands cold, clammy. Lifeless.
And so she was a ghost. An old promise. She said, back in first year, whenever she died she would become a ghost and stay with him for as long as she could manage.
Which would be eternity and all tomorrow's, and through the snow and the warmth. From Christmas to May Day.
She would be haunting with him.
Hogwarts was over.
And ghosts were no longer a mystery to the small girl with flowers in her hair and lemonade stained upon her lips.
Ghosts were real things not to be taken lightly.
Ghosts made Myrtle feel alive.
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