Chapter Seventeen: In Which Ghosts Are Employed
"Have you been spying on him too?" Harry said indignantly. "What d'you do, sneak up here in the evenings to watch the prefects take baths?"
"Sometimes," said Myrtle, rather slyly, "but I've never come out to speak to anyone before."
Harry was . . . kind of impressed and disgusted by Myrtle's spying at the same time. She was a teenager, so it was sort of understandable that she would use her ghost-ness to her advantage. Myrtle wasn't really impeded by physical barriers like him, so she could do things he could not. . . . Harry connected the dots at the speed of light. The next evening, he was in the prefect's bath again.
"Hey Myrtle," Harry said. "Would you do mind doing a favor for me?"
"Sure, Harry. Anything for you," she winked.
"I want you to . . ."
Harry gave her instructions. Now he only had to wait.
The next day, he met Moaning Myrtle again.
"And then Anthony from Ravenclaw spilled pumpkin juice all over his —"
"I don't want to know about that, Myrtle," Harry interrupted. "Tell me if anyone was acting oddly."
"Well . . . Professor Moody," she said, giggling.
Harry was about to dismiss it, because Moody was odd all the time, but he asked anyway, "What did he do?"
"He entered his office, sat on his chair for some time. Then he pulled out his hip flask and it was empty . . . so he went over to a big cauldron in one corner of his office. . . . He siphoned some out using his wand and drank it."
"Cauldron? That sounds suspicious. So he's drinking some sort of potion. . . . Good work, Myrtle. You mind keeping an eye on Moody from now on?"
She nodded and floated away.
"He looked like another person, but after he drank the potion he sort of bubbled into the normal Moody," she reported the next day. Harry had been eagerly waiting for news and had been doing some spying of his own in the meanwhile.
"Polyjuice," he said in horror. "He's an imposter! It all makes sense now. . . . I need to see Dumbledore!"
He ran off.
"That's ok, I will just sit here on the cliffhanger you've left me on, Harry," Myrtle said, bursting into tears again. "Oh wait, I can go and spy on them too."
She giggled and drifted off.
In the Headmaster's office, a very curious conversation was taking place.
"I had Myrtle's help, sir."
"I see. Did she perhaps spy on you while you were bathing?" inquired Dumbledore, eyes twinkling.
Harry did not even want to know how and why Myrtle had encountered him in the bath. . . . A naked Dumbledore was ewww. Just ewww.
"Sir? I think we have more important things to deal with right now."
"Of course."
Then they went and caught Barty Crouch Junior, put him in Azkaban and everything was fine and dandy again.
AN: Well. . . . If I was Harry and I needed someone to spy for me, it would probably be a ghost. Especially one like Myrtle, who doesn't have any qualms about spying on unsuspecting people.