Peter really hadn't expected to be allowed the use of James' invisibility cloak – James had, after all, inherited it from his grandfather, and was very careful of it. The fact that Peter refused to tell him what he wanted to do with it did not, of course, help... but there was no way Peter could say he'd accidentally gotten a date with Moaning Myrtle. James would never have let him forget it.
So he was entirely visible that night as he crept out of Gryffindor Tower – and accordingly, very nervous. Filch and his cats would be out... if Peter were caught out of bed, he'd be in detention for the rest of the year. So he was incredibly jumpy as he made his way through the maze of Hogwarts to the Room of Requirement. Once or twice he was quite certain he heard footsteps following him, but when he stopped and listened, he decided they must've been his imagination.
He made it to the Room without meeting custodian or cats, and paused outside it, as was necessary, to single out what he needed so that the Room would provide the right solution. If you didn't know what you needed before you went in, the Room of Requirement might give you something else entirely. Once Peter had tried to find it while hungry, hadn't stopped, and had ended up in a room full of cakes instead of the soundproof chamber where the marauders practiced their transformations.
Tonight, he needed something that would get him out of going to the Ball with Myrtle. He thought about that, and opened the door.
On the other side was a staircase, lit by torches. It spiraled down out of sight – he couldn't see where to, but it was all old, mossy stone and very spooky in the flickering torchlight. Was his solution down there? He swallowed, turned up his collar, and...
"Who goes there?" asked a voice.
"Huh?" Peter looked up. "Who are you?"
"Did I not ask thee first?" the voice inquired.
"Oh," said Peter. "I guess. I'm Peter Pettigrew. Sorry, am I disturbing you?"
The voice sighed, and a ghost materialized in front of Peter – it was a boy, fifteen or sixteen years old, dressed in a gray doublet and wearing a huge lacy collar that must have been awfully itchy. "Nay," the boy said sadly. "Or rather, thou are indeed... but in sooth, I have longed a great while now for someone to disturb me. It is my pleasure indeed to meet you, Peter Pettigrew. I am Christopher Fitzwilliam."
"Hi," said Peter. And then, just to be on the safe side, he thought he'd better point out, "you're dead. You know that, right?"
"I do," Christopher said mournfully. "If thou followest these steps, thou shald find my body at the bottom, where I fell and dashed my head I know not how long ago. Ever since, I have waited here for some one who would wonder what might have become of me and come looking, but thou art the first."
Peter looked down the stairs, then decided he definitely wasn't going down them, solution or no solution. "When was that?" he asked.
"The ninth day of September," Christopher said, "in the year of our lord, fifteen hundred and seventy four."
Peter's eyes grew huge. "You've been down here for four hundred years?"
"Have I?" Christopher seemed just as surprised. "Has it been so long? In the darkness I cannot count the days and nights. Woe is me, then, for I suppose my poor parents never knew what fate befell me. To say nothing of my friends and teachers..."
Peter had never heard anybody say 'woe is me' and actually mean it before. He sat down on the steps. "What did happen?" he asked. "How did you fall?"
Christopher sat down next to him – he had very long, bony legs, which weren't flattered by the tights he was wearing. "It is a tragic tale of my own foolishness," he sighed. "John Barbour in Gryffindor House told me he expected I shouldn't dare to put hotfoot powder in the history professor's shoes – so naturally I tried to do so, to prove myself braver than he, but I was caught at it and forced to flee. I came in here to get quickly back to my common room, as I had done many times before, only to slip on the step and split my skull upon the stone." He sighed sadly. "And thus was my life ended for the sake of a foolish prank. I found myself unable to pass through the doors, either at the top of the stairs or at the bottom, and so I have waited here, for somebody to find me."
"That sounds awful," said Peter. "I'd've gone nuts from boredom if it was me."
"If only I had that release!" groaned Christopher. "Insanity would be welcome! But five hundred years, thou sayest?" He looked like he still didn't quite believe it. "That is a remarkable thing! I hadn't thought this passage so difficult to find as all of that, even if one cannot enter it from the other end."
"Oh, this isn't a passage," said Peter. "Not all the time, anyway. This is the Room of Requirement. It becomes whatever you need it to be. So if you needed a secret passageway back to your common room, it would be that, but it can be all kinds of other things." He thought about that. "That must be why nobody found you! Nobody else opened this door hoping for a secret passageway back to whatever was your common room! And if you can't go out... maybe the doors only work for the living."
"Then I am truly wretched," Christopher heaved a sigh – or at least appeared to. Being a ghost, he didn't actually take in any air. "Am I to be trapped in here for all eternity?"
By now, Peter was getting a very good idea of how this was going to help him escape a date with Myrtle. "I don't think so," he said. "I think I can let you out. Let's try it!" He got up, opened the door, and stepped out into the hall. "Come on – you try it."
Christopher looked nervous, but he got to his feet and gave it a try... and passed through he doorway without obstruction.
"Oh, happy day this is!" he exclaimed, and nearly tried to hug Peter before seeming to remember that this wasn't exactly possible. "My friend! I am forever indebted to thee! Whatever can I do to repay thy kindness?"
"You can come and meet somebody," replied Peter. "I think you and her will get along great."
On the way to the first floor bathroom, Peter explained to Christopher how he'd ended up in that particular manifestation of the Room of Requirement – or at least, gave an explanation. He didn't think Christopher would like the truth very much. "She haunts a bathroom," he explained, "so none of the other ghosts like her very much. I felt so bad for her I asked her to go to a dance with me, I thought it would cheer her up, but she needs a real friend. And I thought, where am I going to find a friend for a lonely ghost?"
"It does seem an unlikely thing to find anywhere," said Christopher.
"It does," Peter nodded. "But then my friend Remus told me about how him and Sirius went into the Room of Requirement looking for dates, and they both met great girls right away. So I thought I'd give it a try, and there you were."
"Here I am, indeed." Christopher nodded. "Where is this lady?"
"In here." Peter pushed the bathroom door open. "Myrtle!" he called.
"Go away!" her voice came back, sounding rather watery – she was in one of the toilets again.
"Myrtle, it's me, Peter Pettigrew," he said. "I've found a friend for you! Come on out and meet Christopher."
There was a pause as Myrtle apparently hesitated, then she floated through the doorway of a stall. "You shouldn't be in here," she said, "not either of you. This is the girls' room."
Peter wasn't too sure how to answer that, so he just got on with the introductions. "Christopher," he said, "this is... uh... Lady Myrtle the Moaning. Myrtle, this is Christopher Fitzwilliam. He haunts the Room of Requirement. I figured, you know, both of you are pretty lonely and don't see the other ghosts much, so I thought you might like to meet each other."
Christopher bowed. "A pleasure to make thy acquaintance, my lady."
For the first time that Peter could remember, a look that wasn't strictly misery crossed Myrtle's face. For a moment she was surprised, but then it turned to suspicion. "Are you making fun of me?"
"He's not," said Peter. "He's just been in the Room of Requirement stuck for four hundred years and doesn't know how people talk now." He took a couple of steps back. "Well, I'm glad you two got to meet, but I really ought to be in bed, I don't want Filch to catch me wandering around or I'm gonna be in detention and then you and I can't go to the dance, Myrtle! Good night!"
"Good night, Peter Pettigrew," said Christopher.
"Night," said Peter, and turned and hurried out of the bathroom.
He made it back to the dorm without anything significant happening – at one point, he heard a cat meow, and ducked into the shadow of a suit of armor, certain he was about to be caught. But then a painting fell off the wall at the other end of the corridor, its subject letting out a frightened shout, and the startled cat ran off. Peter said a short prayer of thanks and ran back to the common room just as fast as his legs would carry him.
Once there, he quickly changed his pajamas and got into bed, where he fell asleep quickly, feeling quite accomplished. He wouldn't know for a while if introducing her to Christopher had really gotten him out of going to the dance with Myrtle, but for now it seemed like quite a real possibility. If the Room of Requirement could get Remus and Sirius dates, anything was possible.
He didn't even notice that James' bed was empty. And he was certainly fast asleep when James came in.
As for James himself, he packed up his invisibility cloak, climbed into bed, and pulled the pillows over his head so that nobody would be able to hear him laughing. So... Peter had gotten himself a date with Moaning Myrtle – James didn't even want to know how – and was now trying to con innocent unsuspecting ghosts into meeting her in order to get out of it. But that wasn't half as funny as the idea that Remus and Sirius had honestly gone into the Room of Requirement looking for dates.
So that was where Sirius had picked up the flat-chested hippie girl from Hufflepuff... and Remus had gotten himself a nerdy heiress. The idea that even an inanimate object could have thought those were decent matches was hilarious! He was going to have to figure out some way to rib them about it... some way that didn't involve admitting he'd followed Peter, of course. He'd have to make them admit it themselves, and then the fun could begin.
As James drifted off to sleep, still snickering to himself, the thought occurred to him that maybe they'd just gotten stuck with losers because they hadn't done it right. Maybe they'd just been wanting 'a date' rather than 'a hot date' or 'a worthwhile date' or a specific girl. Maybe if he... no, he couldn't do that, he had his pride. But then, he did also have an invisibility cloak...
He'd think about it in the morning.