After The Party

So.

So, the work would not be finished by Christmas. So, he would not be working today. So, he had gone, just to round things up before Christmas, and had gotten himself caught by Filch and had been forced to lie that he had actually wanted to gatecrash Slughorn's party. And to prove it, he had to butter up the old fatso, to suck up to him, to crawl, creep and grovel and flatter him–

And then, he had been scolded by Snape and had snapped out at him like – yes, Snape had been right: like a child. He had raised his voice, and had Snape not warned him, he would have probably ended up screaming, out for the entire school to hear.

He wanted to scream. If he were a Gryffindor, he would have screamed – and then, of course, being a Gryffindor, he would have gotten away with it. But he was a Malfoy, a pure-blood and a Slytherin, and it did not become him to scream; it was unfortunate…tasteless… unseemly… ungainly…

Reckless.

Reckless enough that he had already almost screamed out before that night.

No; appearances would be kept.

Appearances were survival.

---

Appearances were survival; but appearances were more, so much more. Tomorrow, appearances would assure that Mother would not know that things were not going well, not as well as they should.

She would know, of course; she always did. But she would not know because he told her. She would not be certain; she would have her intuition, which would almost amount to certainty, but she would not ask; and he would not tell. He would laugh at her little jokes, and make all the little comments he would be expected to make, and perform all the little rituals of life he was expected to perform; and he would very carefully not tell her anything.

Because, if she knew for sure, she would be upset. And she would go to Snape again. As if, in her urge to protect him, she refused to understand... refused to understand that this was family matter. Snape might wish to steal his glory; or, perhaps, he had to admit, he might not; but, in the end, it all boiled down to this: this was Malfoy matter, Malfoy business. A Malfoy started it, and a Malfoy would finish it, and Snape neither had nor would have anything to do with it.

No. Mother must not know.

In fact, he would much rather not go home for Christmas. He could work during the break; he could work for hours, and would not be interrupted for lessons; and he would be careful, of course, he would avoid Filch.

(And Mother would not see him, would not guess, would not learn, would not know, would not get upset–)

But appearances must be kept, and he must not be seen staying at Hogwarts while he was expected to go home.

(And Mother was alone in the house; or, perhaps, with Aunt Bellatrix for company; and he shuddered as he could not decide which of the two would be worse–)

And so, he would go home for Christmas.

And, once home, he would keep up all the proper appearances.

---

There was Pansy, of course.

Pansy, sweet Pansy who did not know how to Occlude her mind; whose thoughts lay open to all who wished to partake of them, and not in the least for Snape. No. He had promised to himself that he would leave Pansy out of it – that he would leave them, Pansy, and Greg, and Vince, them all out of it.

So, when he would see Pansy again, he would be the way he ought to be; he would talk, and smile, and laugh; and he would very carefully not tell her anything, either.

---

For now, however, he wanted to scream.

Or, failing that, at least to talk.

To talk: to talk without worrying about the world and about those within the world who might be listening; to talk without having to laugh at the little jokes, without making the little comments he was expected to make, without performing all the little rituals of life he was expected to perform; to talk.

He looked around to see if anyone was coming; and then, when he saw that no one was, he crossed the threshold of the bathroom. Her bathroom.

---

"Hello, Myrtle."

She was a small, sad figure sitting sulkily on the tank of the last toilet in the dank, smelly bathroom, with her elbows propped on her knees and her chin resting on her hands. Oddly enough, she was not crying; only sitting there, glumly and miserably, in the nearly complete darkness.

"Oh. It's you, Draco," she replied without the slightest trace of interest in her voice, without even as much as a look in his direction.

(She really was hideous. It did not bother him nearly as much as he had thought it would when she availed herself of his name. But was she ugly!)

"I came to talk," he announced, folding his arms in the sleeves of his robe and propping himself against the toilet's door. The charms on the entrance were as strong as he could put up... Although, come to think of it, would a strongly charmed bathroom door not be suspicious in its own way?

Myrtle corrected her ghostly glasses on her ghastly nose, and asked – still not looking at him; still without interest in her voice, "Talk? About what?"

Draco blinked. "What is it with you?" Then, he blinked again. "Today?"

This, at least, did have some effect on the ghost. It infuriated her.

"What is it with me?" she asked angrily, "What is it with me that when a pampered pure-blood prince strides into my bathroom and demands to talk to me, I am not happy to serve him at his every beck and call, like some house-elf–" She started to cry loudly.

Draco blinked for a third time.

"If I am a pampered pure-blood prince, then you are muck as mud," he replied coolly. "And I would much rather not return to that aspect of our acquaintance. Therefore – shall we start again? What happened?"

A moment later, his thoughts caught up with his words. Had he just...

It was, of course, already too late: Myrtle had taken his throwaway words as an invitation to launch a full-scale offensive of tear-blurred words:

"You promised that you would come! And you didn't! And right now, I bet, you only came here because you want me to tell you things about other students, about Harry Potter, not because you want to talk to me! No one ever wants to talk to me! No one ever wants to talk to Myrtle, the fat, ugly, pathetic Moaning Myrtle who's only good for a laugh now or then! Everyone's laughing. Laugh, laugh, laugh… Oh, look, how funny she is! I hate this school!"

The non sequitur was definitely something Draco could identify with. Between Dumbledore's criminal mismanagement of the school and the faculty's blatant favouritism of Potter in particular and the Gryffindors in general (Snape, he had to admit, continued to be the laudable exception in this regard), he too had no warm feelings for Hogwarts.

(He and, to the best of his knowledge, most everyone who wasn't a Gryffindor.)

Therefore, it was completely in earnest and very much with feeling that he replied, "I hate it, too."

Myrtle finally deigned to look at him.

"You do?" she asked suspiciously, her temper tantrum already forgotten, her tears already drying.

"Mhm," Draco replied, "I do. Father–"

He stumbled, but quickly recovered, "Father wanted me to go to Durmstrang. But Mother wouldn't have it."

"Durmstrang?" she asked curiously; and he remembered that, when all was said and done, she was only a Mudblood.

"Another school," he replied noncommittally.

"Oh."

"But you– You don't have to stay here?" he asked suddenly. "Do you?" he added quickly, seeing that Myrtle's face threatened to burst with tears again.

"I do. The Ministry – they did something dreadful to me," Myrtle whispered conspiratorially, and Draco had to make himself hide the smile which simply wanted to appear on his face. "And now I can't leave Hogwarts. Ever," the ghost finished.

The rituals of society, Draco mused, prepared one little for giving condolences to ghosts on the occasion of learning of their confinement to a building they abhorred. Especially when said ghosts appeared to take pleasure in speaking of the experience.

Therefore, he felt it necessary to resort to the vaguely consoling murmur Mother had taught him precisely for such equivocal circumstances, "That's terrible. Why would they do this?"

Myrtle smiled unpleasantly. "Because of Olive Hornby. I told you about Olive, didn't I?"

"The first time we met." And, for some inscrutable reason, he had retained Olive Hornby in his mind.

"You listened!" Myrtle was now positively beaming; Draco felt oddly proud of himself. "Anyway, Olive hated me. She followed me, and teased me, and made fun of me... So, when I died–"

"You haunted her," Draco laughed. "Served her right, I suppose."

"Yes," Myrtle said; and, for a moment, she seemed almost happy.

That impression passed quickly as she added, "I hated it, you know? Even when I was alive, it was horrible."

It took a moment before he understood what she was talking about. "Hogwarts?"

Myrtle nodded dolefully.

"But, your parents– I mean, couldn't they– Why didn't they–" He interrupted; he simply did not know how to finish.

Myrtle sniffed. "They thought that I would be safer here."

Draco tried to wrap his mind around the alien concept. "Safe? Safer?" At Hogwarts? From what?"

"From the war, of course," Myrtle replied matter-of-factly.

For a moment, visions of the Dark Lord, of his entourage, of Aunt Bellatrix; of Fenrir Greyback, danced in his mind. He forced his mind to shut them down where they belonged; to think logically–

"War?" he repeated, "Grindelwald, you mean?"

The ghost glared at him through narrowed eyes, as though she suspected him of making jokes of her.

"No," she said empathetically, "The war. In the outside world."

The outside world, she said, his mind noted. The outside world. Not the Muggle world. As though the wizards were caged, imprisoned in some faux, unreal world–

"I wasn't supposed to come here at all," Myrtle continued in a storytelling voice, obviously oblivious to Draco's distress, "But then, Britain went and signed a pact with..."

She frowned, as though recalling the memory of a lesson learnt long ago – which, Draco suspected, must be precisely the case.

At last, she appeared to have found the remainder of the lesson. "...Poland, which said that if Germany attacked Poland, Britain would strike back at Germany within two weeks..."

A fool of a pact, Draco decided.

"...And everyone knew that Germany would attack Poland come autumn, at last, so my parents thought that I'd be safer among the wizards, if Britain found itself in war..."

That was Muggle thinking for you, Draco thought scornfully.

"...And do you know what the worst part of it was? When Poland was attacked, we didn't do anything. We just broke the pact and didn't do anything. Not until nine months later, when France was attacked. I could have spent a whole year outside this place!"

In Draco's opinion, it was unbelievable: Myrtle genuinely seemed to think that it had all happened to spite her.

"And then what happened?" he asked, because it seemed that it was demanded of him.

"And then, Germany attacked Britain..."

Typical. If you hesitated too long in choosing the side in a war, your side was chosen for you. Fortunately, he had been cursed with none of that reluctance. And he had chosen the winning side.

"...and my mother died in the bombings..."

She had mentioned this before, he was sure. Bombings. Some merry killing version of a Dungbomb, no doubt created by someone sharing the Weasel twins' sense of humour.

"...and my father was busy working for the government, and he still thought that I would be safe here. Because of the bombings. Which ended soon after I started the second year, anyway," Myrtle finished glumly.

For a moment, Draco only watched the ghost. Those idiot Muggles. There had been a war, and they had sent their daughter to Hogwarts for safety. But Hogwarts had never been safe, Draco would be the first to testify to that. It didn't even need Dumbledore...

Dumbledore, who decided that the post of a Headmaster of the largest school in Britain would be the perfect stand from which to wage his losing crusade against the Dark Lord – probably because it afforded him the perfect opportunity to recruit young fools into his army, no less. Of course, if he became the Minister, he would actually have to answer to somebody, to the press, at least, and not get away with doing nothing to protect those nominally in his care–

Even this year's lauded increased security was really laughable, wasn't it? What was it that Granger said in the library? That it'd be easy to smuggle poison into the school, it's only have to be... hidden... in a bottle... of something... else...

(As in, let's assume for a moment, Rosmerta's beverage of choice, a Christmas present to Dumbledore– Some teacher or other would be sure to buy Dumbledore something of Rosmerta's; and, if not, she might send him a gift from herself– Of course, this would expose the Imperius, but by that time, this would not matter– And, best of all, he would be at home when it would all happen; he, and the rest of students; and nothing would happen to anyone, except for Dumbledore, of course, and possibly some teacher; everyone in the school would be safe, nobody would be hurt because of him again–)

The enchanted coin burned his pocket; he longed to go and do something, and finish the thing, once and for all, and atone for Father's mistake, and restore the family to their rightful place by the Dark Lord's side–

There was a slight sob from the direction of the tank of the toilet.

Draco frantically searched through his thoughts, trying to recall just what precisely Myrtle had been talking about when he had come across this new idea–

Oh.

"Look, Myrtle," he started, "I'm not sure if it's any consolation to you... But if you hadn't come to Hogwarts, then you wouldn't have surprised me in that bathroom. And we wouldn't have started to talk. And we wouldn't be having this conversation. And you have helped me very much with this conversation, you know?"

Myrtle perked up, just a bit. "I have?" she asked suspiciously.

"Yes, you have. Although now I have to leave again."

Yes, he had to leave; to leave, to work – he had so much work to do that night! And perhaps, just perhaps, if he did things correctly, he'd not even have to return to Hogwarts–

Of course, he thought as he undid the door charms with a fluid, lazy move of his wand, this would mean that he'd probably never see Myrtle again, too.

He looked to the small, sad figure sitting sulkily on the tank of the last toilet in the dank, smelly bathroom, and shrugged. He might as well throw the ghost a farewell bone.

Putting a great deal of care into the detail, he smiled what Pansy considered to be his most charming smile, and said:

"Merry Christmas, Myrtle!"

With some luck, it would be a very merry Christmas, indeed.