Harry Potter and all associated characters and concepts belong to J.K. Rowling.
She knew right away that she was dead. Later, someone would tell her—it might have been the Fat Friar—that some ghosts took weeks or even months to accept being dead. That had surprised her. Se didn't think it was very different from being alive. She couldn't see her face in mirrors anymore, but that was no loss. She had never been pretty.
At first they just called her Myrtle, or more often, Myrtle's ghost. They spoke about her in hushed whispers, perhaps not wanting to be reminded that Hogwarts was not safe.
The Head Girl came to see her once. Myrtle wondered what it was about being dead that caused her tormentors to dessert her and her idols to suddenly take note of her.
"Myrtle, I'm… I'm sorry. I have failed. As Head Girl, I should have kept you safe. There was something wrong, I knew it, but I didn't do anything. I couldn't believe that the boy would ever really hurt anyone. People said things, but I wanted to protect him. Hogwarts was all he had. And he was young for his age, no matter his size. But I wish I'd spoken sooner. Even now I don't really believe it was him. But I should have done something. Myrtle, I'm sorry."
After the Head Girl left school, it was a long time before anybody nice would visit Myrtle again.
By her third deathday, Myrtle knew the worst part of being dead. She was still a second-year. Her classmates were sitting their O.W.L.s, but Myrtle would always be thirteen. She wished she could have been just a little older when she died. Maybe that was why the other ghosts weren't so unhappy. They didn't have to be thirteen forever.
By her tenth deathday, all the students she had known were long gone. The new students called her Moaning Myrtle now. She had never been alive to them. That was when she grew to hate being dead. They didn't care, not about her, not about poor Myrtle. What did it matter to them if she was dead? All they cared about was trying to flush her down her toilet. Sometimes they'd throw things, too.
By her thirteenth deathday, Myrtle had been dead for as long as she had been alive. She wondered what it would be like to be twenty-six, or even sixteen. She thought that she wouldn't mind dying again if only she got to live a little more first. Dying wasn't really so bad. Being dead was the bad part. Being dead, and seeing other people alive, and older. She was still thirteen. But she was older now than the prefects and even the new Head Girl. Myrtle wondered what she would have been like if she were alive. But that made her think that maybe she was better off dead. At least people left her alone now. Mostly.
There was a new professor now. Myrtle saw her sometimes. She looked like someone who was always very careful of her students. She reminded Myrtle of the old Head Girl, the nice one who had come to visit her. But she looked different. She didn't smile.
Myrtle could remember from when she was alive that sometimes, people looked different as they got older. Maybe the new professor was the Head Girl. Myrtle would have liked to ask her, but she was afraid that if she were someone else, the professor might just tell her to go away. Besides, even if she were the old Head Girl, she might not remember what Myrtle looked like. Myrtle didn't. Why should anyone else?
More years passed. There was a new girl at Hogwarts. She was nice. Myrtle liked her because they both had flower names. Myrtle met her when the girl escaped into the bathroom from a Nasty Boy who wouldn't leave her alone. Myrtle knew all about mean boys, like the one who made the Ministry tell her she had to stay in the bathroom. The Nice Girl told Myrtle that she was sure Myrtle would have made a very good witch. The girl became Myrtle's friend. Myrtle couldn't remember the last time she had had a friend. She could barely remember the time before she was a ghost. She'd stopped counting her deathdays long ago.
But then the Nice Girl got older. She started to think boys were nice. Myrtle even heard her say once that maybe the Nasty Boy wasn't so bad after all. The nice girl became Head Girl, like that other girl from long ago. Myrtle wondered for the first time in years if the young professor was the old Head Girl. But the young professor wasn't young anymore. She looked more like the other professors.
Myrtle wondered if she were any older. Maybe ghosts did age, but very very slowly. But she was afraid to ask the other ghosts. They were so much older than she was. They wouldn't listen to a little ghost like her. She wished she could know. But she couldn't even feel to see if her hair had grown any—her hand passed right through where her hair should have been. It would be nice to be even a little older.
The nice girl left. Myrtle heard the other ghosts say that she married the nasty boy. Then the Nice Girl, and the Nasty Boy, died. Part of Myrtle remembered that when people die, you were supposed to be sad. But that was a long time ago. The nice girl had grown up and left her, just like everyone else, just like her classmates, just the like the old Head Girl. Why did it matter if they died? They all left Myrtle. Because Myrtle wasn't anyone. She was just Moaning Myrtle. She wondered if she'd ever had another name. If she'd ever been someone else. If she'd ever been pretty like the Nice Girl. If she'd ever been someone.
Myrtle didn't always stay in her toilet. Sometimes she left. She liked to wander the empty parts of the castle. Maybe someone else would die. Maybe there would be another ghost like her, someone who wouldn't grow up and leave her. But she couldn't find any other ghosts like her. She did find lots of interesting things, like doors that only opened when you didn't need to get through and portraits that were only there when know one was looking. One day she found a mirror. She remembered mirrors. Her mother had had one. Myrtle used to look at it, in the time before. This one had something written above it. It said "Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi." Myrtle wondered what that meant. Then she looked at the mirror. If she weren't dead, she would have died of shock. She could see herself. She was real.
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