Harry flopped over. "Man, that was terrifying."
He was sore all over and he was fairly sure he had cracked a couple of bones, but luckily enough his trademark healing potion (not really) had helped him reset most of the long-term consequences of jumping from the window of the Defense Against Dark Arts classroom, resulting in a hundred feet free-fall into the castle's moat.
Still, being slightly tipsy from the 'healing potion' helped deal with the internal terror of what he had witnessed while Harry quite literally forgot that he was covered in unspeakable substances from the moat, causing the substances to disappear from his face, clothes and hair.
Harry sighed and rested his back against the stone wall of a hallway, trying to get his bearings straight after a close call with a terrifying what-if future.
A small sound came from somewhere nearby and Harry instantly drew and put on his invisibility cloak while he pulled his shotgun out with one hand, and a cigarette of DMT with the other.
However, as Harry rounded the corner to confront whoever had stalked him… He saw that a girl had leaned around the corner to peek at Harry.
The girl had bright red hair and was staring goggle-eyed at the spot from where Harry had disappeared into thin air, at least from her point of view.
Harry sighed internally but didn't lower his guard- Just because the girl looked harmless didn't mean she actually was harmless. Moreover, she had red hair like Ron's, and Ron had mentioned that he had a little sister, and she was clad in Gryffindor colors, which were three coincidences that started to shine a light on the stalker's identity.
Indeed, the more Harry thought about it, the more likelier it was that Ron had asked his sister to keep an eye on Harry when he had jumped out of the window, since Ron's foci had broken and he'd likely have trouble casting Hermetic magic without it counting as Vulgar Magic in the micro-Consensus.
So Harry decided to confront the girl, but not too aggressively.
"Hey." Harry slipped from under the invisibility cloak and slammed his hand against the wall next to the girl's head while leaning a bit over her, and pressed the barrel of his shotgun against the girl's stomach as she jumped and turned to face Harry. "How are you doing?"
"Eeep!" The girl jumped back as she realized that Harry was looming over her, but only managed to hit her back against the wall and smack the back of her head on the stone. "Oww…"
"Me too, me too… Relatable, even." Harry nodded as his recent experiences had gone along the similar lines as the girl's shrieks just now.
"H- h-h-hh-h- h- H-" The girl seemed to suffer an aneurysm and her face became as red as her hair as she looked at Harry's face, which was roughly five inches away from hers. It looked like she hadn't even registered the shotgun pressed against her stomach.
"Hey to you too. Did Ron send you?" Harry replied.
"R-r-r-r-"
"Yeah, the red-headed bloke? He got caught up during the class." Harry nodded.
"B-b-b-b-b- S-s-s-s I- I- I- I- dididid-"
"So you stalked me on your own, huh? Were you planning on ambushing and killing me?" Harry narrowed his eyes, causing the girl's face to pale a bit which left her face with an impressive shade of violet.
"N-N-n-n-n!" The girl looked like she had stopped breathing and was trying to vibrate to another state of existence altogether with her head-shakes.
"Gotcha. So only low-key stalking. So did you get enamored by my roguish charms or the recent rumors I heard about?" Harry asked. "The one where I was a dark lord or something?"
The girl blushed to so deep red that she appeared tanned for a moment, and then paled to deathly pale complexion.
"Gotcha." Harry nodded as the girl had more or less answered yes to the first question and then no to the latter. "Man, it's really easy to talk to you, you know? No offense, but not many people are as straightforward as you, I like it about you. Come to think of it, you never mentioned your name, miss…? I've been told that I'm Harry Potter, by the way."
"G-g-g-g-g-g-g-"
"Miss G? Gotcha. I like your cut, miss G. Well then, I'm mr. H, so let us refer to one another that way from now on. I'll take the target down. Agent H, out." Harry pumped his shotgun once to assert dominance and then threw the invisibility cloak on himself again, disappearing from view.
The red-headed girl slid down to sit on the floor while she looked like she was suffering a nervous breakdown.
Harry left the scene with a high-and-mighty strut, even though no-one could see it.
.
.
.
Seeing that Harry was in detention for a week and a day straight, he decided to simply skip them for now because he had too much fun exploring Hogwarts, and discovering all sorts of fascinating things and magical creations within.
In doing so, he found himself confronted by a wraith of some sort, and had been thoroughly spooked out when the Wraith had turned out to be utterly impervious to Rend… at least, until he realized that the Wraiths in Hogwarts were not true Wraiths, but rather just magical imprints of an actual soul that had passed to Umbra.
"So… You got murked couple of decades ago or something?" Harry asked as he sat on the floor of an abandoned bathroom, speaking to a girl ghost who was poking her head out of a sink.
"Yes… I was crying because I was called mean names, and some boy came into the bathroom and I told him to piss off… And then I died…" The female ghost moaned in her misery.
"Man, that sucks."
"UwaaaaaAAAAAAAH!" The ghost let an ear-piercing wail of misery in turn, causing Harry to become a bit dizzy.
"So did the killer get caught?" Harry asked after the ringing in his head subsided to acceptable levels.
"No… They blamed Hagrid, the oaf student with a pet spider or whatever, but there was no way a spider killed me… It was big, and it hissed, and it had huge yellow eyes…" The ghost grumbled after a while. "I was neeeever asked what had killed me, even though I was the only one present… Stupid aurors… Stupid legal system… 'Ghosts are not people so they have no rights'... grumble…"
"Speaking of names, you actually never told me yours?"
"I'm Myrtle… The students call me 'moaning Myrtle'... I'll hate you forever if you call me that…" The ghost sent an angry look at Harry, as if expecting him to start laughing at her upon hearing the name.
"Gotcha. Well, they call me Harry Potter." Harry leaned in and sent the ghost an angry glare while motioning towards a row of chamber-pots that were, for some reason, in the water-flushed bathroom. "Call me Harry or I'll never forgive you."
The ghost drew the connection and giggled a bit, before looking utterly mortified. "Ah- Eh! I didn't mean to! I'm sorry! I'm sorrrrryyyyyYYYYYYYY!"
Harry flopped on his back while his head felt as if someone had sent a ping-pong ball through both his ears from the power of the shriek alone, scrambled his brains, and then made the balls come out through the opposite ears.
Five minutes later Harry sat back up and pulled a bong from his pocket. "Myrtle-chan, I'll have to ask you to scream with a hint less volume or I'll have to stop being friends with you. Not because I want to stop, but because I'll probably be dead and there's a very high chance I'll go straight to Stygia because of my regret at not getting to know you better, and thus I won't leave a Ghost. And also because this is turning out to be a cool murder mystery and I want to solve it!"
"-Chan? Did- Did you call me a slur just now?" Myrtle looked quite shaky but nonetheless kept her voice down, even if she had a suspicious and borderline hostile look in her eyes after Harry had spoken. At least, that was her expression as far as one could tell, with the translucency of ghosts and all.
After that the rest of Harry's sentence hit her and she let a small 'eep' sound before diving into a sink, and started to give Harry a suspicious look while her ethereal cheeks gained a raging silvery blush.
"It's an honorific from faraway land. Don't worry about it." Harry handwaved. "One moment, please, I need something for the tinnitus…"
Myrtle looked like she wasn't sure if she should be offended or not, or try to comment on Harry's previous words, and Harry used the time that she spent trying to figure it out in order to warm up his bong and take a few long rips.
"Phaa… Cough… hoo." Harry nodded to himself while swaying back and forth. "Right, back on track. Myrtle, what's up?"
The ghost sank deeper into the sink so that she was hidden from eyes-down. "Pervert."
"Excuse me, I'd like to call it 'artisan of excess'." Harry protested. "Hence the name, 'Cult of Ecstasy'."
"You're trying to seduce me so that I'll tell you the secrets of everyone who's been gossipping in my bathroom!" Myrtle popped out of the sink and pointed an accusatory finger at him.
"Miss Myrtle, I remember you telling me that you were lonely because no-one's been in your bathroom for who-knows-how-long." Harry pointed out the flaw in Myrtle's theory while he felt warm and his vision started to feel bright, as if he was watching the world through a warm glass. "Whose secrets I'd be inquiring about?"
Harry realized what had caused the feeling of watching warm glass and took his glasses off, and saw only blurry shapes… But it was fine, because he knew who those blurry shapes were when they sharpened to form light-bathed visions.
"That- uh… T-those- Em… A-about that boy who came to the bathroom when I was crying! yeah! Or that red-head who kept sneaking in and I swear she was hissing and then a sink opened to show a passage to some sort of hidden dungeon-…" Myrtle looked like she was grasping straws as Harry took a small backwards step towards the exit-window.
"Alright, let's for a moment assume that I was only interested in you for your body." Harry countered while his ears had picked up a clue-like detail from Myrtle's panicked blurt. "And let's also assume that I was trying to small-talk about those suspicious people in order to get into your pants by solving your murder-mystery."
Myrtle let out a small 'eep' sound and dove into the sink again. "A-aa-a-a-a-are you interested in me?! That- That is illegal! Perversion! Ghost-pervert!"
"Indeed, the moment I saw your beautiful eyes I couldn't help it, but wondered- What sorts of dark, wise and seductive secrets does this person hold…" Harry got up and approached the Myrtle that was sinking into the sink, and not the one that was eating pizza while looking quite shocked, while another was crying against a toilet and the fourth one was frozen dead on the floor.
By his calculation the Myrtle that was sinking into the sink was the realest of the visions that Harry was currently experiencing. After all, he was in the process of, so to say, 'getting high as a kite' and it took a moment to adjust to what was 'the current moment'
Myrtle was in the process of sputtering something as a reply when Harry reached to grab her by the waist and draw her out of the sink, and then kissed her on the back of her hand.
"Mbhsuuuuuu!" A shocked yelp came from Myrtle as if she didn't realize what was happening and tried to let out a shriek while her mouth was still closed, causing it to turn to a protesting moo.
"Forgive me my passion. Please, tell me… Do you happen to have a boy- or girlfriend? Perhaps that red-headed person you mentioned and who came and went?"
"I- he- heeee uuuh…" Myrtle looked like her existence had come to a halt for a moment. "Y-y-you c-c-can touch mee?! You can touch ghosts?! W-what are you?!"
"High as heaven, on your beauty."
"That was not an answer!" Myrtle squeaked and dove into the sink, this time so deep that she became completely submerged, leaving her voice a muted warble from inside the sink as she disappeared from sight. "Waaaait! I need a moment to think! G-go away!"
"Hm… I may have been a bit too straightforward, my dear. Could we speak instead? I'll promise I'll ask before we continue our moonlit rendezvous." Harry resisted the urge to burp as the tipsiness from earlier didn't seem to gel properly with the bong.
So, naturally, Harry sat down to take a couple more rips to make sure the effect lasted, even if he felt quite wobbly at the end.
Myrtle popped her head suspiciously out of the water of the sink after a few minutes. "What is that thing?"
"This, my dear, is a bong. It is a foci for my magic. It also helps with sore muscles and stress. But it probably isn't very good for my lungs long-term." Harry explained and then coughed while swaying slightly to keep pace with Myrtle's swaying visage. "Then again, it's not like death by old age is a real thing. It's all a hoax made up by the cloud government. I would call them 'god and heaven' but I'm not a Chorista."
"But… People die when they get too old!"
"If they believe that to be the case. Then again, at that point I bet like half of the old farts are just waiting to tap out so there may be some correlation." Harry pointed out while pointing at the third identical Myrtle from the right. "Anyway, point's that I lured you out."
"Eep!" Myrtle was halfway back in the sink by the time Harry lifted his hands, this time with his palms up in surrender.
"Joking. Want to share?" Harry rummaged his pocket for a while before realizing that he had run out of snacks and beer. And that pocket-warm stuff probably wouldn't be genuinely warm anymore.
Someone knocked on the door of the bathroom and Harry went to open it, all the while Myrtle tilted her head in puzzlement and sat down in front of where Harry had sat on the tiled floor of the bathroom.
Harry took the stacked box of pizza and a six-pack of cider that Harry on the other side of the door gave him, and he tipped a five for the deliveryman-Harry who smirked in turn while having his eyes closed, even if the deliveryman-Harry looked quite ragged and tired.
The delivery-man Harry then gave the stoned Harry the receipt for the pizza, and the stoned one lifted his eyebrow as he read the message on the back of the receipt..
"Great, preem." Harry carried the foodstuffs back, gave them to Myrtle and pulled a picnic blanket to put it on the bathroom floor, before finally grabbing the pizza-box that he had temporarily given to Myrtle and put the box on the blanket
The ghost stared at her hands as she had instinctively taken the boxes that Harry had handed to her… And the boxes hadn't fallen through her translucent hands.
"Pizza?" Harry asked after opening the box and popping the lid off a pair of cider bottles.
"I have no idea what that is." Myrtle seemed to formulate a sentence after a moment.
"Holy hell girl when did you die? The middle ages?"
"...It's rude to ask a girl her age. You could calculate it from knowing when I died." Myrtle looked to be quite stunned and sat down. "What… is this?"
"Food. Mouth. Eat." Harry took a slice from the box and stuffed it into Myrtle's mouth.
"Mgu!" A protesting yelp came from the girl as she swayed back and forth while Harry stuffed both of their faces with the pizza and cider as he felt as if he had not eaten anything in ages. Which might be just what had happened.
The ghost seemed to blink for a moment after swallowing and then reached shakily for more, and after some time, the two were gorging on the food with little regard for decency of manners.
"Pwah, man, greasy cheesy things are the best when you're high…" Harry burped after a moment. "Yo, you alright?"
Myrtle was lying flat on the floor with her face against the tiles, and she had a bottle in her hand. "The worls spinninh."
"Oh yeah, the cider had alcohol… I take it that you've not drank much before? Ey, open up, what do you contain?" Harry looked at the label of Mytrle's bottle and then hissed at it, as the bottle's list of ingredients seemed to come alive and turn to snakes.
Myrtle jumped up, stumbled on her school robes, almost caught herself, stumbled again on the picnic blanket, and then would have fallen on her face if not for Harry catching her and lowering her into a princess hold.
"Y-y-y-y-you're Tom Riddle!" The ghost pointed at Harry's face, accidentally stuffing her finger up his nose.
"I sho nots knows whash yoush shayins." Harry noted, even if his words were a bit muted considering the appendage in his nose.
"You killed me! You're a ghost too!" Myrtle had the decency to pull her finger out of Harry's nose.
"My dear, is that a confession? I like you too."
"I'll scream! I'll scream for sure if you don't confess!"
"I just confessed, but I fear as if my heart has shattered, and each slice is but a part of the whole- So please forgive me if I only offer you what I can." Harry told the ghost who looked to be on the brink of insanity.
"You're- What- But- butbut-" The ghost looked quite shaken. "You… d-did… You died, and did you get me killed so you could be with me, always?! But all of the girls said that-"
The sound of stones churning against one another broke Myrtle's panicked babbling and the two glanced at the huge hand-sink sculpture at the center of the bathroom, which had opened and sunk to the floor, revealing a pathway down.
Or rather, a large waterslide-like pipe that led down.
Harry blinked a bit and lifted an eyebrow at the snake that was coming out of the list of ingredients of the bottle that Myrtle had been holding, and the snake shrugged its shoulders before pulling out a cigarette from the bottle and started to smoke it.
"Man, this place is so not up to OSHA standards. I love it." Harry commented, stared at the entrance, considered whether he should, promptly ignored what his sensible side told him, and then jumped down the hole while it looked like Myrtle was having a major case of flashbacks and would probably detonate in a shower of ectoplasma if poked too hard.
Harry tossed his hands up in glee as the tunnel seemed to continue into eternity, occasionally swaying to the side, up, down, and even looping on itself a couple of times before finally shooting him out into a pile of old snakeskin that cushioned his fall nicely.
"Man, slip'n'slides are truly something in this place." Harry wobbled back up, and heard a wail approaching that was followed by an object getting shot out of the slide-tunnel and landing on Harry's face.
"How forward, miss Myrtle." Harry noted as the ghost had slammed into him crotch-first and knocked him on his back with her sitting on his face.
"Ew!" Myrtle jumped up, slipped on the snakeskin, slammed her face on the stone wall, and finally flopped back to Harry's lap. "Everything's spinning… I cant's keep still…"
"That's the magic of alcohol, my dear. Hold my hand and it'll subside." Harry offered his hand and the ghost grabbed it. "Shall we proceed? While a bed of snakeskin is quite interesting place, I fear as if the rat carcasses somewhat dampen the mood."
"What is this- ew!" Myrtle seemed to realize what she was surrounded by and jumped a bit. "This sort of thing was- ish- under my bathroom… hic?! Ew- Ewie! Ew! Ew!"
"Myes, I feel as if some clean-up would be good. Oh- I think I see something over theeeere." Harry spotted a gate of some sort and waddled over, expertly dodging and kicking a couple of spiderwebs that Myrtle would have caught with her robes- It wouldn't do if she fell over again and knocked herself out.
"Hiss." Harry commented as the metal snake that had been sculpted in the gate lifted its eyebrow and asked if Harry was, in fact, insane.
Seeing that Harry was spelunking a dungeon while high as balls on cannabis, alcohol and 'mushroom' pizza, he felt that he would apply to the category and the gate seemed to agree as it swung open.
Harry giggled a bit as the inanimate snake in the gate hadn't realized that getting high as a kite would only make him more powerful.
The pair wobbled into the chamber that had opened up, hit their heads on the gate's frame on the way there, and then wobbled a bit wider as Harry and Myrtle did a 'pair of drunks on their way back from bar' routine, complete with leaning on each other's shoulders and walking in a manner that would physically cause both to topple over, yet their drunk state made them defy the very gravity itself.
"...I see we have guests." A voice spoke and Harry leaned forward to look at what had spoken, then used his hand like a pair of binoculars to finally spot a young man who was standing at the end of the chamber, in front of some sort of lake of sewage with a face-carving in the end-wall.
There was a red-headed girl in the chamber as well, and she was flopped over on the slimy stones of the snake-themed sewer-like chamber that was bathed in green light, much like the Slytherin common room but slimier.
"She won't wake up, you know." The boy spoke softly after Harry had glanced at the red-head and pointed at her while glancing at Myrtle, who seemed to scrunch her eyebrows in concentration.
"She's the girl who was frequenting this shithole?" Harry asked, and Myrtle seemed to make the connection and nodded.
"She's… hic… Just like I remember her being… Hic…" Myrtle wobbled a bit but looked quite certain. "It's like she hasn't… aged a day… burp…"
"You dare call the Chamber of Secrets a 'shithole', Harry Potter?" The boy who had been in the chamber seemed to grow quite angry.
"It's a sewer, my duuuude. Poop goes to the sewers. Don't have to get all defensive over thaaaat… Hello to you too, by the way… Who're you? 'An how do you know who I was?" Harry almost fell into the sewage channel as he took a side-step since the chamber felt as if it had rotated over, or perhaps it was just Harry's sense of balance doing loops again.
"This girl… Ginerva Weasley, was it? She had such fascinating tales to tell… She had read all 'Harry Potter' chronicles, all of which had been penned by one 'Gilderoy Lockheart', and complete rubbish… But he did get one thing right- The lightning-shaped scar." The boy smirked a bit. "I remember as much, even if my memory is… spotty in this form."
Harry glanced a bit down and noticed that the boy was standing on a diary-looking leather-bound book.
Myrtle gasped as she saw the boy's smirk. "Hey! He's Tom Riddle!"
"I see someone has eyes, miss… Hm. And who are you, again?" The boy seemed to raise his eyebrow at Myrtle.
"You killed me!" Myrtle screeched in outrage, causing the chamber to shake a bit.
"Do you have any idea how little that narrows it down?" Tom Riddle commented dryly.
"You murderer!" Myrtle charged in and made to latch to Riddle's throat… But her hands passed through his throat without resistance.
"Indeed. I am not complete, quite yet. But soon… You have arrived too late to save the girl, or to stop me. You are only on time for your own death." Tom commented coldly and lifted his hand.
A wand flew from the unconscious girl's pocket at Tom's outstretched hand, and-
A bang rang in the chamber, causing Myrtle to take a few stumbling steps back while covering her ears and almost falling on her back.
The wand had exploded into splinters mid-flight.
Harry pumped another round into his shotgun before blowing at the smoking barrel and putting the gun back into his pocket..
Tom sent a glare at Harry. "Do you think you've won? I meant to make your death painless. You force my hand- And you shall suffer."
The last word came out as a hiss… And the mouth of the statue at the end of the chamber started to open.
However, nothing came out of it.
"Oh." Tom seemed to realize something.
"You sent it to murder Lockheart a couple of minutes ago, right?" Harry asked and pat Tom's shoulder. "Don't worry, shit timing happens to each of us at one point."
"How did you know- Ah. You manipulated Time to make this happen. You are not Hermetic." The boy seemed to realize what had happened. "...Very well. You won this round, Potter. Do not presume that it will repeat. You have played your hand too early, for too small a victory."
"Hey, Myrtle. Did you say that Tom here killed you?" Harry asked while turning around.
Myrtle in turn stopped letting 'awp, awp' sounds on the floor as the ringing in her ears must have been quite severe.
"That… little… I hate you…" Myrtle let a sound that was a combination of a sob and growl.
"Wanna make things even?" Harry pulled out a Basilisk fang from his pocket and gave it to the girl who looked at it in shock, as did Tom.
"How did you- but- Where are you? Respond immediately!' Tom glanced at the fang, shrieked at the ceiling, and then paled quite a bit as no answer came. "Potter! What have you done! How did you get your hands on a rooster?! Ginerva had killed all of them!"
"Dunno. Haven't gotten that far yet." Harry shrugged and wiped his face as his ears had started to bleed just now and his head had started to pound with a headache. "Myrtle? Tom-kun over here probably uses that book as a Fetter, so go ahead, and-"
"Ghrraaaaah!" Myrtle grabbed the fang and practically dove to stab it down on the book before Harry could finish his sentence.
Tom let out a loud, ethereal howl of pain as the Fetter was broken, causing his form to start to waver like mist in the wind, collapsing onto itself and forming a smoking mist…
…Before the mist lashed out in a shower of thin slivers of shadow-like tendrils, knocking both Harry and Myrtle to the floor. "You fooooools?! You think that thiiiiis will stop meee?! II amm loooord VOOOLDDEEMOOOORT And III WILL NOT BEE DEFEEAATEED LIKE THIIIIS!"
The mist began to reform itself, gaining a pair of red-glowing ethereal eyes.
The water in the sewer-chamber flash-froze, all the while the shadows of the chamber started to lengthen and move…
Harry quickly took in the scene, decided that he did not want to deal with a possible Manifestation of a Wraith, and grabbed both Myrtle and the unconscious red-head on the floor, lifted them on his shoulders… And fell over, as he had forgotten in his drunk daze that he wasn't actually as strong as he probably thought he was, and lugging two girls was definitely pushing it.
However, he fell into the sewer that lined the sides of the chamber's floor, which widened to accommodate him and the two girls, causing them to break the thin layer of ice on the water and get submerged into the chunky 'water'… And then break through the chunky, greasy layer to reach a layer of regular water underneath.
Harry drew a deep breath as he popped his head out of the water, and then dragged Myrtle and the red-headed Ginerva-girl out of the water before they had a chance to drown.
A large group of students stared at the trio of students who had emerged out of the fountain in a garden in Hogwarts.
Harry stared back, all the while his ponytail had come loose, causing hair to be dripping water and partially obstructing his vision while it was probably causing him to look like a swamp monster.
However, since Harry had something he needed to do, he tossed the red-headed girl at the nearest student who happened to be around, grabbed Myrtle's hand as she seemed to be reorienting herself, and then ran away while making 'wob wob wob' sound and tossing his invisibility cloak on top of both himself and Myrtle.
Harry had gotten a good enough idea of what would-slash-will-slash-could go on based on the message he had received on the back of the receipt earlier, and based off what Tom had said earlier which had likely been the root of the whole message as fully self-isolated time-loops could lead to Paradox.
So, to forward the plot that had happened just earlier but would take place at the same time as the current time, Harry needed to procure a rooster from somewhere.
Luckily enough, Myrtle had been conscious enough to point out that the house-elves, that Hogwarts apparently had as servants, would be able to procure a rooster on short schedule, and if Harry was very descriptive, he'd probably get one that wasn't cooked already.
Roughly ten minutes later the pair had in their possession one(1) very angry bird.
The rooster tried to poke Harry's eyes out so he tossed the bird at Myrtle, who almost let it escape as it tried to gut her, all the while Harry was thinking about how he should go about luring whatever Riddle had been talking about… Before he realized that he was overthinking it.
And naturally, when he was probably on a negative IQ due to his inebriation, that sort of skill roll would have so high malus on it that he'd probably turn his brain into a smooth ball if he tried to use his intelligence to do the decisions- So instead he just relied on his intuition.
So, Harry simply hissed at the wall. "Hey, where are you?"
"Killing a fool. Who are you?" An angry hiss came back, making Harry grab the rooster, run off with Myrtle hot on his heels, and then promptly toss the now-terrified rooster around a corner like a flashbang as he was fairly sure he had arrived to where he had been intending on going, after passing two or two hundred corners.
True to the perceived role, the rooster let out a bang-like "COOOOOOOCK" sound, a flapping sound came from the hallway, and Harry rounded the corner to see the rooster sitting on the floor while holding to its chest with it's wing as if the bird was on the verge of a heart attack.
There was a blonde guy who was lying on a puddle of piss on the hallway, and before him, there was a huge dead snake.
"That- It's… That is the…" Myrtle seemed to suffer a small aneurysm as she stared at the beast.
Harry walked up to it, grabbed one of the teeth in the snake's mouth, and tried to yank it out.
After that didn't work, as expected, Harry just pulled out his shotgun and unloaded a couple of times into the snake's mouth to cause a number of fangs to fly all over, before grabbing one that was somewhat intact after the affair, and put it into his pocket.
"Right, let's go- I'm feeling like gorging up on the next box of pizza. All this is making me seriously hungry… And I'm getting dangerously sober too." Harry noted as the walls were starting to get somewhat clear in his vision, and that was probably not a good idea because he was fairly sure he was where he wasn't expected to be.
Myrtle had fallen on her arms and knees and was staring at the dead snake while her expression was dangerously blank. "Back?"
"Yea, the bathroom. Why?" Harry pat the girl's head, causing her to almost pass out, at least based on the way her expression turned completely slack.
"I… why… we… what…" The ghost looked to be utterly wordless, so Harry grabbed her and lifted her into a princess carry as he remembered this time that Ghosts probably shouldn't weigh anything, and it only made sense that it was the case.
Harry ran off as he realized that the hallways were starting to flood, and that the stone was starting to get spongy and bouncy and seriously unstable before losing all color and sound… And he carried Myrtle over the threshold of the door to the girl's bathroom just in time to hear a group of wizards rounding the corner to chase after Harry… And the door slammed shut behind Harry, quieting any sounds that came from the hallway.
The ghost fell on her back as soon as Harry put her down on the picnic-blanket from where they had started their little adventure, and Harry shrugged before starting to work on the second pizza of the stack. "Well, that was fun. Did you know there was that sort of thing in your bathroom?"
"My head…"
"Cider? It helps, you know." Harry rested the side of a cold bottle against the ghost's cheek, causing her to grab the bottle with slightly exaggerated motions, lift the bottle against her lips while lying on her back, and just glug it all down despite the fact Harry had poured some of his backup 95-percent vodka into the bottle since it looked like Myrtle seriously needed it.
The glugs continued far longer than the bottle should have lasted, so Harry let her do her thing while he ate.
…And in a couple of minutes, hours, or days, who was keeping Time anyway, Harry realized that he had run out of pizza and that Myrtle had passed out while vomiting into a toilet bowl and she was sleeping while using the toilet bowl's rim as a pillow.
.
.
.
Some time later Harry wandered back into the Slytherin common room, feeling as his headache was intensifying and causing his eyes to be completely bloodshot, while his temper was starting to get quite irate- And worse, he had run out of booze that he could safely drink to quell it.
Draco Malfoy stood up instantly as if he had been waiting for someone while seated on a chair by the side of the fireplace, and he instantly bowed to Harry. "My lord, I-"
Harry was not in a mood to play along with the Slytherin's mind games when he was having a massive headache, and just let out a small growl.
Draco jumped back in fright. "My apologies, my lord. May I know what I should say should anyone question your disappearance? You have been gone for nearly a week- The First Task of the Triwizard Tournament takes place-."
"I was in the Chamber of Secrets. The place's haunted, by the way. Don't go there or you'll get killed by Lord Voldemort." Harry growled at the boy who froze completely still and then began to shake so hard that Harry was fairly sure the blonde boy would vibrate to a different quantum superposition if he got nudged a bit.
After that Harry just walked to the bedchambers, set his shotgun up by his bedside with a string-trap so that if anyone opened the door they'd get blasted, as he was not interested in going along with whatever group hazing-shash-beatings the Slytherins could get up to when his head was ringing as if someone had used it as a anvil, and he promptly flopped to his bed to sleep under the Invisibility Cloak.
A couple of hours later Harry woke up to a huge premonition, as if he was missing something important and groundbreaking, something that he needed to attend-
'Oh yeah. The whole 'Triwizard Tournament' thing. Don't tell me that it's supposed to start now?' Harry remembered Draco's tidbit from earlier, got up groggily, and walked to the window in order to look out of it. While the Slytherin Common Room was in the dungeons, the bedrooms were seemingly somewhere that had a view of the outside- And luckily so as the window showed a quite spectacular view of the castle grounds.
There was a huge wooden arena-structure that had been set up, with the colors of all three Wizarding Schools flying above them… As well as a small flag bearing the Council insignia of Sahajiya on a violet background.
'Man, I completely forgot about that.' Harry groaned, scratched his butt, grabbed his shotgun, and then started to mosey over towards the tournament grounds with the enthusiasm of a particularly dead sloth.
…And then he wandered off to find the house-elves that Myrtle had talked about, and to ask them to make him a whole stack of pizza and a few packs of cider, as he remembered that he had a delivery that he had to make.