"I thought you had a big reveal planned for the opening feast." Lys said absently as she sketched out a schematic for my new gun.
I shrugged but then realized that she wasn't looking at me so she couldn't see it. "I changed my mind. I think pulling it during my last year will have more of an impact." I told her, and it was true, I just didn't tell her who I wanted to actually impact.
Some of the big players of the coming war was about to enter the stage. James Potter, Lily Evans, Sirius Black and Remus Lupin would all make their entrance next year. Snape would be there, and Peter too, but I didn't count him. He was a rat, even before he became an animagus. I sat back and stared up not really looking at the artificial sky. I honestly didn't know if I was going to do something concerning the tots that were about to make their entrance on stage. I didn't know if I should stick my oar in. By all accounts their first year at school was uneventful. No one tried to kill anyone by feeding them to their other friend, who was a werewolf. Was there really anything feasible I could do to them at this stage that would change things? Without tipping my hand that is.
Something to consider.
"You know, I don't think we need all of this." Lys said, drawing my attention back to her. She was tapping the magazine section of the schematic.
"Its kinda the whole point. Six might be better than one, but not that much better. I can't stop all the time and reload." I told her again.
"So why not just use the Gemini charm?" She retorted.
I snorted. "Because the duplicates of the Gemini charm degrades, and the smaller they are, and the more enchantments are on them the faster it goes."
"Yeah, because bullets are supposed to sit there in the mag and look pretty, not, you know, be shot at things and get busted, or explode in your case." She said sarcastically.
I blinked as what she was hinting at clicked in my head.
Then I laughed.
---
"I don't see how this is any of my business," Nel complained as we made our way towards Myrtle's bathroom. "I don't want any part of this new obsession of yours. I don't care about ghosts."
"But I do, and you owe me some favors," I told her calmly. "And you don't know enough about ghosts to really tell if you care or not."
"And I don't care to know." She snapped irritably.
"You should have thought of that before you want and took what wasn't yours, you naughty girl you." I teased.
Nel grunted in disgust. "Can't you do something more interesting than chasing down ghosts? No one cares about ghosts because the are of no use."
"How do you know? It's not like anyone has made a study of them. The wizarding world just determined what they are not and then proceeded to ignore them." I countered easily.
"We ignore them because there is nothing useful there." Nel shot back evenly.
"A conclusion founded on ignorance is no conclusion at all," I argued calmly as I took the stairs that lead down to the second floor. "Where is your sense of adventure? We are exploring the unknown here!"
"In a girls' bathroom?" She asked sarcastically.
"Adventure takes one to strange places?" I answered with a weak smile.
Nal gave me a flat unimpressed look.
"It's not my fault she decided to haunt a girl's bathroom!" I defended myself before turning a corner into the hallways where Myrtle's bathroom was located.
"But it is your fault for picking her to question," Nel said promptly.
"I didn't pick her," I told her. "She's just the only ghost I know that can actually do something besides float around."
"Ah, yes." She drawled unimpressed. "The glorious ability to flood the loo, the glories that await us are beyond imagining."
"Laying it on a bit thick there," I muttered.
"I don't think so. Seeing as you are still determined to follow through with this foolish endeavor, I would say I don't do enough."
"You don't have a curious bone in your body, do you?" I complained.
Nel gave me another flat look. "I know some sayings about curiosity, they are not very nice."
"Your just one big ball of fun today." I sighed.
"If you don't like it I could always just go," Nel suggested bluntly.
Now it was my turn to gift my companion with an unimpressed look. "Tempting, but no."
"I don't bring anything to this endeavor."
"It's always good to have a second pair of eyes along for the ride," I told her. "I might miss something that you won't."
"An unwilling pair of eyes…" Nel countered.
"But ones that owe a debt," I said and gave her a pointed look before stopping in front of a plain wooden door. We had arrived.
I heard quiet sobbing through the door before me and Nel even entered and I spotted a small pool of water slowly seeping out from under the door. I looked back at Nel who just raised a questioning eyebrow before shrugging. Fair enough. I opened the door quietly and entered. My first impression of the abandoned girls' bathroom was… damp. The tiled floor was covered in a thin layer of water and there was a film of wet on everything in the room. I could hear the dripping of water echoing throughout the room like a strange symphony of drips that accompanied the sound of the sobbing ghost that made this place her home. In the center of the room was a round pillar-shaped giant fountain-like structure hewn out of white marble. This had to be the hidden entrance to the concealed Chamber of Salazar Slytherin—and the resting-place of his little pet.
I admit I'd considered going down there, but common sense had prevailed upon me and I'd refrained. I rather liked living, and unleashing a millennia-old Basilisk on the school didn't appeal to me. There were enough ways to die in this world without me adding to them.
Myrtle herself was floating around aimlessly near the rafters of the room when we entered. She didn't seem to be aware of us at first, but then she turned and looked at us with watery eyes. She glanced at Nel, and I noted that her eyes tightened as if finding something irritating with my companion before she shifted her attention to me.
"Come to mock me have you?" She accused weakly.
I was momentarily struck speechless, not by her accusation, but by her appearance. Not that she was hideously ugly or anything, though attractive was not a word I'd use on her either. She was a squat pudgy little girl with a round face and chubby cheeks with deep-set eyes that made them seem small even with her glasses, and a slightly upturned nose. With all of it taken together, she looked a bit… piggish. She also happened to be the spitting image of my cousin on my father's side when she'd been that age. I suddenly felt a bit bad for Myrtle, had she remained alive I had a feeling that like my cousin she would have grown out of her looks in a few years like my cousin had, who like the proverbial ugly duckling had transformed into a real knockout of a swan as she'd grown older.
I was suddenly struck by an almost overwhelming sense of homesickness that quite literally took my breath away and I was left just standing there, staring at, but no longer seeing, this ghost that by happenstance looked like some from the family I had lost. I think that anyone that had lost a loved one could understand what I was feeling at that moment. Imagine for a moment, seeing a lost family member returned to you, only for reality to settle in again, riping them away. Suddenly, just for a moment, I felt like I had when I'd arrived here. It was agony.
Myrtle took my quiet staring the wrong way of course. "Oh, just came to stare at the freak then? Don't you think I know what people say behind my back? Fat, ugly, miserable, no good, Myrtle." She whined pathetically, fat ghostly tears tracking down her face.
"I— " I managed to choke out.
I didn't get any further before her sad expression twisted into one of towering fury and she was suddenly in my face. "Think it's funny, do you!?"
"I— " I didn't any further as Myrtle screamed hollowly before diving down one of the toilets followed immediately by every loo in the bathroom doing an impression of Old Faithfull by detonating in high-pressure blasts of water that was powerful enough to hit the ceiling before coming crashing down on us in a flood of foul-smelling sewage. I was so surprised by this random turn that I didn't have time to shield myself. instead, the sudden deluge proved powerful enough to knock me and Nel off our feet and into the muck.
Not my finest moment.
Fortunately, the foul flood quickly stopped and we were left to pick ourselves up of the floor and inspect the result of Myrtle's little temper-tantrum. The bathroom was a mess.
"Well, that was fun." Nel drawled her voice dry as a desert. I think it even dried my wet robes out a bit.
"I didn't think she was quite this volatile," I said absently.
"I would think the fact that this bathroom is abandoned would be an indication," Nel told me pointedly.
I sighed and pushed my wet hair out of my eyes before casting a couple of charms on myself and Nel, causing the fabric of our clothes to become instantly hydrophobic. Water suddenly, and ironically, washed right off us, splashing to the floor around our feet. Another spell caused a warm gust of air to blast us, taking away the lingering chill of our surprise dousing. Last was a cleaning charm because I don't want to know what was in that water.
"I guess," I said as I started to cast charms to get rid of the water and... other stuff fouling up this place.
Nel narrowed her eyes at me. "You're gonna try again, aren't you?"
I shrugged.
"I'm not coming with the next time." She proclaimed resolutely.
"Fair enough." I sighed before making for the door. "Come on, we are done here for now. Lets head down to the dungeons."
"If this ends up being another bathroom I'm waiting outside," Nel promised before following me.
"I don't think they have bathrooms in the dungeons," I said.
"You never know with Hogwarts," Nel stated.
"Point."
---
The Hogwarts dungeons are an extensive complex of labyrinthian corridors that burrowed down deep under the castle proper and even extended partway under the great lake, which was where the Slytherin Common Room was located. I'd bet a fair amount that parts extended into the Forbidden Forest as well. But there was no proof of that. But I was certain that the dungeons were as chock full of secret rooms and passages as the rest of the castle. The Chamber of Secrets was a good example if nothing else. And the Room of Requirement has a permanent entrance down there somewhere as well.
Also, Paddy had told me about the existence of one particular room that wasn't known to many, unless you were a ghost. The entrance for this unusual hidden room was located down in the very bowels of the dungeons, a place that had been mostly undisturbed through the centuries. Paddy had told me that the only inhabitants nowadays were ghosts and other spiritual beings. I had been suprised to find that the DADA teachers generally sourced their Boggarts from the dungeons, which was probably where Remus Lupin had captured the one he had used for his class. Well, not really. Dumbledore thought it was a good idea to have Cerberus housed on the third floor so I suppose that having Boggarts and other sundry beings lurking in the dungeons wasn't much of a stretch.
Originally the dungeons had been intended to function as storerooms that supplied the needs of the castle, and for a time they likely served that purpose, but the advent of space expansion charms not too long after Hogwarts was finished made the need for the extra space moot. Over time, the massive underground maze of chambers and halls had fallen into disuse and nowadays not even the Slytherins that made the dungeons their home moved about its moist hallways more then they had to.
I really couldn't blame them, the place was wet and cold, feeling like one of those gruesome fall evenings where the weather can't decide if it should be raining or snowing so it tried to do both. And me and Nel were heading towards the deepest place of this miserable place.
It took me a bit to locate the right hallways and then find the doorway. The portal was opened in a similar manner to the doorway that leads from the Leaky Cauldron to Diagon Alley, by tapping a specific set of stones in the right order. We watched as the hidden door folded in on itself and revealed a wall of opaque wet green crystal blocking the way.
"Huh," I said, surprised, before shaking myself and blowing the green wall inwards with a gesture.
The room beyond was pitch black, of course, so I cast my personal light spell. What was revealed was something to see. The room beyond was more of a hall, and if I'd guess it almost matched the great hall above for sheer size. That is if it wasn't filled by wetly gleaming crystal from the floor to the ceiling. It didn't look like we had entered a hall present in a castle, but a dimply lit cave of some sort. Thick sheets of green crystal covered every wall and giant spikes, like stalactites, were shooting down from the ceiling and were met by stalagmites thrusting up from the floor. There was also a large number of broken crystals, stalagmites that had fallen from the ceiling, littering the floor alongside pools of viscous fluid.
"What is this stuff?" Nel asked as she gingerly touched one of the glistening stalagmites and pulling a face when her hand came away covered by a sticky green substance.
"Ectotites," I answered her. "And Ectomites I suppose. Very, very rare. It's a type of Ectoplasm. You have to have a lot of ghosts and other spirits congregating in one place for a long time for this stuff to form. Hogwarts is one of the few places in the world where they grow this large and numerous thanks to the high concentration of ghosts that makes this school their home." I explained absently
Ectoplasm. The only real physical imprint that ghosts and related spirit beings left behind in the physical world. Movies back home always depicted it as slime essentially, and that was close I suppose, but in reality, a better comparison would be resin, pine resin in particular. It started out a bit slimy and sticky, but if you left it for a while it just got more viscous until it was basically glue. This is why wizards found it irritating since it tended to gum up doors and other things that were meant to move. It also had another property reminiscent of resin, and that was that if you left it alone for long enough it would harden into an amber-like substance. The only difference being that you didn't have to wait a few million years for it to fossilize, it just took a bit over a year or so and you were good.
There was a bit more to it than that of course. You needed specific conditions for Ectotite to form and persist. The first thing you needed was ghosts of course, the more the better. One ghost, or even five, wouldn't produce enough ectoplasm to really make a difference. It would just get the walls a bit wet before it dried out and flecked off, turned to what was essentially dust, and then just evaporate back into the ether. The second was related and that was that it couldn't be exposed to the elements or the same thing would happen. It was nice if the place was a bit damp as well, but it wasn't entirely necessary. The last thing was obviously a lack of living creatures moving around, particularly humans, because they tended to clean it up.
I was honestly surprised that the house-eves hadn't tidied this place up. I'd have to ask Paddy why that was once I got topside again. I noticed a group of ghost nuns watching us from the far side of the Ectocave. I smiled and waved. They didn't seem impressed and quickly passed through the far wall and away from us.
"Ew," Nel said in disgust before moving back to the doorway and smearing the ectoplasm on her hand on the wall. "What do you need this disgusting stuff for?"
"I just want to examine it," I answered absently before levitating a chunk of Ectotite the size of a baseball of the floor and cast a careful cleaning charm on it to get the ectoplasm off it without destroying the crystal.
"Why?"
"Because this is the only physical thing ghosts produce, there has to be something I can learn from it," I told her.
"It's ghost poop," Nel snarked, unimpressed. "You are going to be playing with ghost poop, and you think you'll learn something."
"You can learn a lot of things about something by examining its poop," I told her undeterred.
"And that's not disgusting at all." She muttered sarcastically. "Are we done here? I've had my fill of disgusting locations for today."
I chuckled. "Fine, fine. Let's go."