Chapter 299: The Innocent
The girls' bathroom on the second floor was a dismal, depressing place.
Below a large, cracked mirror stained with age sat a row of stone basins with peeling surfaces. The floor was perpetually slick with water, and a few stubby candles flickered in their brackets, casting long, eerie shadows that made the room feel even more oppressive. The wooden doors of the stalls were scratched and covered in peeling paint; one door hung precariously from a single rusted hinge, swinging slightly in the damp draft.
Curfew had long since passed, and the room should have been empty. However, two strange voices echoed through the tiles.
"Someone's here! Oh, you're going to be caught now. And once he finds you, I bet he'll have plenty to say about you!"
Sean recognized that irritating cackle—it was Peeves the Poltergeist. A moment later, a ghost poked her head cautiously out of a toilet stall.
She was a squat, sullen-looking girl with lank hair and thick, pearly glasses that hid half her face. The moment she saw Sean, she recoiled like a startled ostrich.
Peeves continued his sly goading. "He saw you! Oh, I'll bet he's talking about you right now! Remember what they all say?"
"Are you talking about me?"
Myrtle swooped out of the stall, her nose twitching.
"I wasn't—" Sean began, but he was quickly cut off.
"Don't lie to me!" Myrtle wailed, tears beginning to spill down her translucent cheeks. Behind her, Peeves was cackling with glee. "Do you think I don't know what they call me behind my back? Fat Myrtle! Ugly Myrtle! Miserable, moaning, moping Myrtle!"
"You forgot 'pimply'!" Peeves hissed into her ear.
Moaning Myrtle let out a heartbroken sob. Peeves began pelting her with small pebbles, chanting, "Pimply! Pimply! Pimply Myrtle!"
The situation shifted in an instant. As Sean fixed Peeves with a silent, penetrating stare, the poltergeist's annoying face froze.
"Merlin's beard—it's you!"
Peeves looked as though he wanted to dissolve into the floor. He turned and bolted toward the ceiling, shouting as he went, "I saw nothing, my Lord! Nothing at all!"
The bathroom fell silent. Myrtle remained floating near the cistern of a toilet, her sobs subsiding into quiet sniffs. Sean said nothing, simply waiting for her to settle.
Moaning Myrtle... she had been the first student Tom Riddle ever murdered at Hogwarts. She had suffered through unfairness in life and had found no peace in death.
"Peeves won't be back," Sean said finally.
"Maybe... I suppose... but this is the girls' bathroom," Myrtle said, wiping her eyes and looking at him with suspicion. "And you aren't a girl."
"I came to ask you something," Sean replied. He knew this question usually piqued her interest. "How did you die?"
Myrtle's entire demeanor changed. Her gloomy expression vanished, replaced by a look of sheer pride. It seemed no one had asked her such a "distinguished" question in a very long time.
"Oh, it was ghastly," she said with relish. "It happened right here. I died in this very stall. I remember it perfectly. Olive Hornby was teasing me about my glasses, calling me 'four-eyes,' so I came in here to hide.
"I locked the door and I was crying, and then I heard someone come in. They were speaking a funny sort of language—I thought it must have been some foreign gibberish. But what really annoyed me was hearing a boy's voice. So I opened the door to tell him to go away, to go to his own bathroom, and then—"
Myrtle puffed out her chest, her face practically glowing with the memory. "I died."
Silence reclaimed the bathroom. Outside, the overcast September sky began to shed a light, drizzling rain. It wasn't heavy enough to rattle the windows, but it was enough to soak the sleeping castle in a cold dampness.
"Who was the killer?" Sean asked.
"I don't know," Myrtle said, dropping her voice to a mysterious whisper. "I just remember seeing a pair of enormous, terrifying yellow eyes. It felt like my whole body was being seized, and then I just... floated away."
She stared at Sean with a vacant, dreamy expression. "Then I came back. I was determined to haunt Olive Hornby, you see. She shouldn't have laughed at my glasses."
"Was she frightened?" Sean asked.
"Oh, naturally! You should have seen her face. She was so full of regret... so, I suppose I let her off eventually." Myrtle seemed to be in a much better mood. "I know you came here with a purpose. No one ever wants to talk to a miserable, moaning ghost just for fun. But you've made me quite happy. Ask your questions; I'll answer them."
Sean fell silent for a moment. The centaur teacher had been right: the innocent were always the first to suffer. It had been that way for a thousand years.
"If the killer were found and punished... would it make you feel better?" Sean asked.
"What a strange question—oh—" Myrtle paused. "But I can only cry. There is no joy in my life here, only sadness. And even now that I'm dead, people won't leave me alone. I just wish they wouldn't talk about me behind my back. I have feelings too, you know. Even if I am dead."
"I'll see what I can do," Sean said.
"Dear me, I've met few people like you. But you can't help with that. Let me tell you a secret: people's mouths can never be stayed!" Myrtle sounded oddly proud of her cynicism. "Oh, by the way... what is your name?"
"Sean Green," Sean said softly.
"Oh! You're that Sean Green! Goodness!" Myrtle gasped, covering her mouth with a translucent hand.
"What do you mean?" Sean asked.
"You're quite famous in the castle. The house-elves call you 'the Lordship'; the portraits praise you to the heavens; and I know for a fact that quite a few witches talk about you... the good kind of talking..." Myrtle rambled, looking a bit bashful. "I'm happy to tell you... if you're looking for those yellow eyes, they're right about there."
She pointed vaguely toward the row of stone basins.
Sean walked over to inspect them. At first glance, the sink looked perfectly ordinary. But as he leaned closer, he spotted it.
On the side of one of the copper taps was a tiny, etched snake.
Sean knew he had found it. The entrance to the Chamber of Secrets.
All he needed now was Harry. Unfortunately, at this point, Harry likely hadn't even discovered the fact that he was a Parselmouth yet.
And until Harry discovered his gift for snake-talk, Dumbledore wouldn't begin to suspect the truth about the boy being a Horcrux.
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