The Philosophy and Science of Ghosts, or

The Holly Bears a Berry As Red As Any Blood

Chapter 19

"What did you like to do when you were in Ravenclaw?" Lucia asked the squat, transparent girl sitting next to her on the edge of the bath in the deserted bathroom.

"You mean when I was alive?" Myrtle snapped.

"Yes, that one."

She wasn't sure whether the ghost was going to fly off in a huff or not, but Myrtle chose to look on her interest with favor.

"I can hardly remember," she mused. "I must have liked something. It was all a nightmare of being tormented morning, noon, and night! 'Fat Four-Eyes,' Olive used to call me! Well, I got her back, I did!"

Lucia stared at her and wondered if a life really could be reduced down to nothing more than a petty grudge. Was there really so little to Myrtle that she knew nothing more than her last few days of existence? What if ghosts were less than people thought they were? What if this wasn't really Myrtle but only some small portion of her, only the echo of her misery? What if a ghost were no more the real person than one of those moving paintings or photographs? Just an imprint of the worst moments of someone's life. Nearly-Headless Nick thought about practically nothing more than being nearly headless. They weren't souls, surely, because the soul was the most substantial part of a person. If that was so, then what she was dealing with wasn't the fullness of who Myrtle was but only her misery and her malice. What was it about the physical world that wouldn't let go of its pain and evil? And was there some way to make it let go?

"Why are you staring at me like that?" Myrtle demanded.

"Sorry—I was just thinking," Lucia murmured.

"About what?"

"About why it's so hard to get rid of what hurts us."

Myrtle stared at her. "Were you ever hurt?" she asked, strangely soft.

"Not really. Except, I suppose, by finding out that my father was one of the worst people who ever lived. Like a Nazi."

"Like who?"

"Never mind. I wasn't thinking about people who hurt me but about you. The way you were hurt."

"Oh." Myrtle preened herself a little. People didn't often think about her pain, and it was the only thing of distinction she had. Ghosts like the Bloody Baron and Nearly-Headless Nick and the Grey Lady had everything going for them, frightening, impressive, beautiful, or amusing as they were. Myrtle was as ugly and avoided in death as in life.

"This is probably a stupid question, but do you like being a ghost? I mean, you know, haunting people and hanging around in drainpipes and bathrooms and causing trouble? Is it worth it?"

Myrtle was about to give her a whinging, smart-aleck reply and jump into the nearest toilet, but then she saw the look of real interest on Lucia's face and said suddenly, "I hate it. We all hate it. Ghosts aren't happy, you know. We have to stay forever in the place where we were killed and the state we were killed in. what if I'd been killed in my underwear? Fat, ugly Myrtle doomed to spend eternity flashing her granny underpants at everyone. We can try to have a bit of fun, scaring people or playing Headless Polo, but it doesn't fix what we really are. And to think that we become ghosts on purpose." She gave a bitter laugh. "The only important decision of my existence, and look where it landed me. In a bathroom."

"Did anyone ever try to free you? I don't know what it would take, but it seems like someone should."

"Oh, they tried in the 1960s," Myrtle said with a sneer. "Americans it was, all full of talk about freedom and rights, seemed to think the professors were holding us captive here and that some American Muggle royalty told them they had to give us our rights."

"Muggle royalty in America?"

"They said he was a king. 'King said this' and 'King said that.' Ignorant Americans don't even know how to talk about their own king."

Lucia tried very hard not to burst out laughing. "Do you mean Martin Luther King, Jr.?"

"That's it. Not royalty, then?"

"No, Americans don't have kings. Just people named King. But it didn't work?"

"Of course not! I'm still here, aren't I?"

"What did they try?"

"Oh, loads of magic, of course, but they also talked a lot of rubbish about people being kind to us and treating us as if we were still alive."

"I wonder."

"What?"

"If they missed something."

"Of course they missed something!" Myrtle shouted at her.

"No, I mean, thinking about it logically, what is it that is keeping you here? It's the fact that someone did horrible things to you, so horrible you haven't been able to get away from them. My mum says—see, she finds people who are lost, so she has to know a lot of psychology to understand them. Once she came home very sad because she'd found her lost person, living as a homeless person in London, and though his family wanted him back, he wouldn't go back, because he would have to forgive someone who hurt him, and he wouldn't. He would rather live on the streets. And my mum said that sometimes people hurt themselves more by refusing to forgive people than the way they were hurt in the first place. Maybe the person who hurt him sent him to the streets, but it was his refusing to forgive that kept him there. Did those Americans ever suggest you try forgiving the girl who was mean to you? And the person who killed you, too, I suppose."

"Of course not! That's the stupidest thing I ever heard! Forgive Olive? Did she ever deserve being forgiven? No! She deserved me haunting her!"

"I wasn't thinking about what she deserved but what you deserve," Lucia said softly. "I don't think you deserve for your pain to chain you to a bathroom for the rest of time."

"Well, you're stupid!" Myrtle shouted and dived into a toilet.

Lucia sighed and began gathering up her things. So much for ever hearing about Draco. But just as she was leaving, Myrtle's head popped up out of the toilet, which was very disconcerting.

"Draco felt like a ghost himself, you know."

"He did?"

"Not all transparent and dead. Like he was chained up to what hurt him most with no hope of ever escaping, and the only fun he got out of it was haunting Harry Potter and his friends, and that had stopped being fun long ago."

She disappeared again, leaving Lucia to walk slowly back to the Slytherin dungeon and find a place to think.