Chapter Text
***
‘Then he said to me, “I say, Olive, why don’t we go to Hogsmeade together this weekend?”.'
'And what did you say?'
'I said yes, of course!’
‘God, I am green with envy.’
‘Simply too jealous.’
Olive Hornby smiled indulgently at the circle of girls sitting around her, looking up at her with adoring eyes, like elfin courtiers gazing upon a fairy princess. ‘Oh, girls, there’s no need for all this. It’s only Reggie -’
‘Only Reggie?!’
‘Olive, Reginald Chive is the best looking boy in the whole year and you know it!’
‘He’s a dreamboat!’
‘Absolutely swoony.’
'And terribly rich.'
‘If he spoke to me I think I’d die on the spot!’
‘He would never even look twice at me. My nose is simply enormous.’
'My hair is too thin.’
'I have fat thighs.'
'I have a horrible big toe.'
‘My knee points in a strange direction.’
‘I say, so it does.’
'Don't poke it!'
'Be that as it may,’ said Olive, above the clamour, with the easy confidence of the very young, and very popular, and very beautiful, ‘at least none of you look like Myrtle.'
There was an outbreak of wretching and giggling.
'Eurgh! Too true!'
'I don't look like a wardrobe in my robes.'
'And I don't have a double chin.'
'Or spots!'
'Or an ugly round face!'
'Or an annoying voice!'
‘Or no friends!’
‘And those glasses are too dreadful,’ said Olive, to general assent, looking up, with a grin like a shark, at the girl who had been standing transfixed at the edge of the common room, watching the four people she'd shared a dormitory with since first year tear her apart, apparently not caring to check if she was there. ‘Wouldn’t you agree, Myrtle?’
***
If you wish to make a scene at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, crying in the girls’ toilets is the way to do it. Every single bog in the castle functions like Piccadilly Circus for gossip - you’ll pop in there for a quick sob before Charms because Martine van Duizen spent all of Herbology not telling you your robes were tucked into your knickers, and by the time lunch rolls around the whole school will know the exact decibel your crying reached and what colour your pants were.
If you wish to cry romantically, the Astronomy Tower - where you can gaze wistfully at the stars and remember necking on with your boyfriend (imaginary or otherwise) - is the perfect spot, as all the seventh-year girls know very well.
If you’d like a theatrical cry, like you're in some gothic novel and the wind is whipping your skirts about like a metaphor for the Industrial Revolution, the edge of the lake is the place.
And if you want to cry properly and not be seen, because the fact that all the other girls in your house hate you is like a million tiny hammers, and your heart is shattering into ten million tiny pieces, and maybe you should just kill yourself and get it all over with, except then you’d have to come back as a ghost because you’d need to know what they were saying about you, except they probably wouldn’t be saying anything other than how glad they were you were dead, so you’d just be stuck forever being fourteen which is hell, having to watch as they all got even prettier and you were still fat and pimply except you were also transluscent and -
Where were we?
If you want to cry properly, the best place to do it is the library after nine, because if you lock hundreds of teenagers in a castle and give them the option either to study late into the night or to use the lack of adult supervision in the common rooms to fondle each other, they’ll pick the latter every time. It was awful, trying to find somewhere in Ravenclaw Tower to sit and work, and instead tripping over endless canoodling simpletons playing a competitive match of tonsil Quidditch.
Indeed, right on cue, she could see a cluster of older Slytherin boys coming into the library corridor, probably done pretending to care about their Transfiguration essays and now ready to focus on the sort of simpering pureblood bimbos - with nice teeth and real diamond jewellery - who always seemed to end up in that house.
‘He is absolutely doing my head in,’ she heard one say to his fellows. ‘Honestly, who gives a monkey's about some secret bunker under the school? I’m going to be late to neck on with Belladonna now, and you remember what she did to me the last time that happened.’
‘I’ll give you fifty galleons to say that to him,’ said another, who she was pretty sure was on the Quidditch team, and had the nice arms to prove it.
‘No fear! I’d prefer not to go home in a matchbox.’
‘There wouldn’t be enough of you left.’
There was an outbreak of aristocratic tittering.
‘What are you looking at, Mudblood?’ said a third - platinum-blonde hair slicked back - as they walked past.
***
Myrtle settled herself in one of the stacks - near the more obscure books on History of Magic - and, not expecting to be overheard, threw herself into howling gustily at just how truly, terrifically, transcendentally unfair her life was, complete with plenty of tears and snot for dramatic effect.
She was rather enjoying it, actually - crying always worked to clear her head - and was just getting into the swing of a stonking tantrum when she was rudely interrupted.
‘For the love of God, will you keep it down? I’m trying to work,’ snapped a voice; soft, but with the sharp edge of a steel blade running through it.
Myrtle blinked back her river of tears. A thin, irritated-looking boy, with jet-black hair and a prefect’s badge pinned to his robes, came into focus. He was leaning round the edge of a bookshelf, eyes narrowed threateningly.
‘And I’m trying to cry!’ she wailed, fearing he might not have got the point.
A muscle twitched in the boy's jaw. ‘Cry in your common room. This is a library.’
Myrtle opened her mouth to reply, but the boy had already slithered off as if the conversation had finished.
She rather felt it hadn't. After all, it's a bit rude to walk off when a lady is upset, instead of comforting her delicately and handing her your handkerchief. But many of the boys she knew were a bit weak on social convention. It was always a good idea to remind them of their duty.
Forgetting that she was supposed to be focused on the misery of her existence, she stomped out of the stack, towards the table - groaning with parchment and raven-feather quills and stultifyingly ancient books - where the boy was sitting, thumbing through some dull-looking volume on the genealogy of Salazar Slytherin.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ he hissed, eyes - which she could now see were a nice shade of brown and framed by very long lashes - widening in shock as she flopped into the chair opposite him.
‘We hadn’t finished talking!’
‘Yes we had.’
‘You hadn’t asked why I was crying!’
‘Because I don’t care.’
‘You should! It's jolly rotten of you not to.'
'You'll live.'
'It’s because all the girls in my year were sitting in a circle talking about how fat and ugly I am when they knew I could overhear them.’
He raised an eyebrow and went back to his work. ‘That’s very foolish of them.’
‘Right!’
‘Either they should take more care to ensure their conversations aren’t overheard, or they should tell you what they think of you to your face.’
‘They should stop being so beastly to me! They do this every single day and I hate it!'
'Nonetheless, I don't care.'
'I can't go anywhere without one of them making my life a living hell!'
'I don't care.'
'I was so excited to come to Hogwarts but they’ve ruined everything about it!
'I don't care.'
'I hate them so much it hurts!’
The boy slammed the book shut. ‘For God’s sake, what will it take for you to leave me alone?’
‘Haven't you been listening to me?’
‘It’s been impossible not to, the way you’re whinging on! But this is your own fault. If these girls are upsetting you as much as they seem to be then you should fight back, instead of crying like some cowardly child who expects everyone else to fight their battles for them.'
‘Fight back?’
‘Are you deaf?’
‘Fight back how?’
‘How the hell should I know? Push them down the stairs, poison their tea, kill their pets. Just do it somewhere where I’m not trying to read.'
***
Two days later, Olive Hornby emerged from her evening shower with her head as smooth as an egg. As she was carried off in hysterics to the hospital wing for a course of Dreamless Sleep and an emergency wig fitting, it emerged that she had accidentally used the Dew of Depilation, a colourless, odourless, and exceptionally strong hair-removal potion, on her silken blonde locks instead of shampoo. Madam Poultice gave the entire year a lecture - complete with a slideshow - on the dangers of vanity, and warned them to avoid the sort of faddy cosmetic potions that would be familiar to any old tart on Knockturn Alley and stick to good, old-fashioned soap and water instead.
Olive said she didn’t mix the potions up, of course. But nobody believed her.
***
And, as it turned out, she wasn’t the only person in Ravenclaw who was having a stinker of a week.
Sandraudiga Rowle - who told Myrtle, as Olive was being rushed out of the common room, that she hoped all her hair fell out, since it was otherwise so thin and disgusting - tripped over her own feet in Herbology the next day and fell head-first into a trough of dragon manure. A new nickname, Reeky Rowle, was in place within hours. By dinner, the Gryffindors had a musical number about the incident, dance moves included.
Autonoë Dashwood-Brandon - who stole Myrtle’s best quill after Professor Merrythought insisted she let her borrow it, snapped it in half, and then tried to convince Myrtle that had been her own doing - landed herself a full six months of detention the day after that, when Professor Slughorn found a roll of expensive boomslang skin - stolen from the store cupboard when everyone else was bent over their cauldrons - in her bag.
Isabella Spats - who told Angus Dove to his face that Myrtle fancied him at break the day after that, and then ran around screeching to anyone who'd listen that Myrtle had gone bright red and dropped her pencil case on the floor, and that Angus had laughed so loudly he was almost sick - broke out in terrible pus-filled boils, when it turned out she'd accidentally used doxycide on her face rather than cold cream.
And the boys were no less affected than the girls. Reginald Chive, with his love of saying Myrtle had a dog face, woke up one morning to find all his robes had been dyed bright yellow, and had to endure a full day of mocking from the Hufflepuffs about how he could join their house if he just asked nicely. Angus Dove, whose crimes we already know, received a howler from his furious parents, who had been horrified to get a letter from him saying he was jacking in the magic lark to join the circus. Igor Bagman, who had knocked Myrtle off her broom during their first flying lesson, displaying her knickers to the whole year, crashed into the North Tower during Quidditch practise - interrupting a NEWT Divination class, which not a single person seemed to have foreseen - and was going to have to miss the next match with a broken collarbone.
By Friday afternoon, as the Ravenclaws tramped into Transfiguration, Myrtle was the only one who wasn't on the verge of total collapse.
‘You know, I don’t know how you were sorted into Ravenclaw,’ sniffed Olive, as Professor Dumbledore handed back Myrtle’s latest essay, covered all over with his precise, purple-inked handwriting, ‘when you’re as stupid as a jelly someone’s dropped on the floor.’
‘Oh, keep your wig on,’ said Myrtle.
***
Myrtle stomped up the lane which linked Hogwarts and Hogsmeade, mud splattering all over her sensible shoes.
She didn’t know why she bothered going into the village. Nobody ever invited her to join them for the day. Olive - now equipped with a glossy new wig - always took the best table in the Three Broomsticks, and spent the whole day declaiming over a series of gillywaters how awful Myrtle was, encouraged by a whole congregation of nodding sycophants. She couldn't go to the Hog's Head, because the barman frightened her, or to the Post Office, because one of the owls had bitten her the first time she had and she'd cried. She couldn't go to Zonko's, because she'd had most of their stock used against her at some point and she felt sick even looking in the windows. She couldn't go to Gladrags, because the thought of herself in the dainty wisps of satin which were fashionable at the minute was absurd. And she couldn't go to Madam Puddifoot's, because she didn't have a boyfriend and seemed unlikely to ever get one.
She’d managed to go to Honeydukes, though - even if a horrible toff called Hubert Fawley had mimed vomiting when she walked through the door - and get a bag of chocolates the size of tennis balls, each filled with strawberry mousse. They looked delicious and smelled delightful, their sweetness mingling with the scent of late wildflowers and heather on the autumn highland air, and she could very easily have unhinged her jaw and swallowed each of them in quick succession, like a snake.
But they weren’t for her. As she kept reminding herself every time her fingers twitched to open the bag.
Although how she was going to get them to their intended recipient was beyond her.
She had discovered that the boy she had spoken to in the library was called Tom Riddle. Henrietta Savernake - who knew everything there was to know about the castle’s boys, having exchanged saliva with most of them - said that he was widely regarded as extremely fanciable, from quite an impressive background (if the Slytherins were to be believed), a hater of Quidditch, extraordinarily clever, and incredibly aloof. Apparently, he never said yes to anyone who asked him out - even Domitiana Rosier, who was gorgeous and famously easy - and his unapproachability was made all the worse by the fact that he was constantly surrounded by a gang of extremely rich and popular Slytherin boys. Which was to say, in the ecosystem of Hogwarts, he was a golden phoenix and Myrtle was pondlife. She’d tried to catch his attention in the halls, and had thought his eyes might have flickered towards her a couple of times as she'd attempted, awkwardly, to wave at him, but to no avail. And she couldn't even be certain that wasn't just a figment of her imagination.
She thought the same thing, when she rounded a corner to find him sitting, long legs crossed, on the kissing gate which marked the final ascent to the castle.
'Good afternoon,' he said, in a voice which was much gentler - and considerably posher - than it had been the last time they’d spoken.
'Hello?'
'If it isn't the scourge of Ravenclaw Tower.'
'I don't know what -'
‘Those were some tricks you pulled,' he said, eyes flickering across her face. 'I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you.'
Myrtle bristled. 'You're the one that told me to do it! You don't need to try and get me into trouble over it!'
His lip curled into a sneer. 'I’m saying I was impressed.’
‘Oh. Thank you.’
He climbed down from his perch and drifted towards her, observing her intently with his head tilted to one side like a siamese cat. If he hadn’t been so good-looking, it would have been quite creepy.
As it was, Myrtle was aware that she had gone puce.
‘Where did you find that hair-loss potion?' he said. 'I’ve never seen one which is completely undetectable in any of the books I’ve read. It's not a devastating line of attack, of course, but I can certainly see its usefulness as an initial tool of disarmament.’
‘Witch Weekly. I was looking for something that might sort out my blackheads, but then I -’
Riddle frowned. ‘Witch Weekly?’
‘It's a magazine. There’s all sorts of useful stuff in there - not just potions but charms and hexes. I read it cover to cover. I could tell you if I come across anything interesting. If you’d like?’
Riddle stared at her, as though what she had said took rather a long time to make sense to him, before his face suddenly transformed, rearranging itself from the delicate, slightly consumptive pointiness of a Victorian artist to the unthreatening boyishness of a teenage matinee idol. He flashed her a very broad, very charming smile, with just the slightest hint of total artifice underneath it. ‘I would appreciate that a great deal.’
'Oh,' said Myrtle, feeling a little dizzy. But maybe that was the uphill walk - it always made her out of breath. ‘It wouldn’t be a problem. Not at all.’
'Wonderful. Well, I should be off to the Hog’s Head.’
‘You go to the Hog’s Head?’
‘I prefer the ambiance.’
'Even with that horrible barman?'
'That horrible barman never checks ages.’
‘Wait,’ she said, darting forward clumsily and pressing the bag of chocolates into his hand. ‘While I’ve got you. I bought you these.’
He stared at his own palm, not opening the paper bag, with the look of someone who had just been handed a bomb. ‘What are these?’
‘They’re chocolates.’
‘I can see that,’ he said, face morphing back into coldly irritated gauntness. ‘What are they for?'
‘To say thank you. For telling me to stand up for myself. I wouldn't have been brave enough to try and get some revenge without you saying that to me, but I’ve felt a lot better this week than I usually do for having done it.’
Riddle's eyes darkened. ‘And what do you expect of me in return? Because, let me assure you, you're not getting it.’
Myrtle was confused. ‘Nothing. They’re a present. Don’t you know what a present is?’
‘Of course I know what a present is,’ he snapped.
But there was something in the flush spreading down his slender neck that made Myrtle think he was lying.
***
When Myrtle was a baby, as mum liked to tell anyone who would listen, she had been ‘a limpet'. Fussy, and a bit cowardly, like the sort of dog that’s afraid of its own shadow, she had clung on to anyone who indulged her.
People had found that cute, for a bit, but once she grew too old to be carried everywhere it stopped. 'You need to make some nice friends, pudding,' mum would say, shoving her off in the direction of other children, who would inevitably start laughing at her the minute they caught sight of her pudgy face and milk-bottle glasses. On her first day at primary school, she'd spilled jam roly-poly and custard down herself at lunch, and her teacher had said, 'perhaps you might try eating a little slower, Myrtle', and all the other children had shrieked with glee at how fat and greedy she was. They'd called her Piggy until the day she left.
Hogwarts had been no better. The fact that her hair was in unfashionable bunches, and her glasses were out of style, and she'd brought her own sandwiches from home for the train journey had done for that. It had almost been a relief when puberty hit - at least her bum getting bigger and her skin getting pimply were things everyone knew you were supposed to be ashamed of. It was much easier to be disliked for being chubby than it was to be disliked for simply continuing to exist.
But maybe, after fourteen years, she had made a friend.
Tom Riddle hadn't rejected the chocolates she'd bought for him. He'd even smiled at her - well, grimaced, but it had definitely been real - from the Slytherin table at dinner that evening. And so she'd decided, even if it was the sort of silly, hopeful thing she'd have done when she was five, to go and try and find him in the library that evening, after his friends had gone off to disgrace themselves. And had. And had chattered away at him about her day, unbothered by the fact that he made no effort to join in with the conversation and spent an hour groaning into his own hands, until she asked him what he was reading and he launched into an incredibly boring monologue about how wizards discovered plumbing.
And she went back the next day, and the day after that, and every day for the rest of term, choosing to believe that Riddle's daily insistence that next time he was going to put a stop to it for good was simply hormonal exaggeration.
And she discovered that, when he could be pulled away from his books and nagged into responding to her, Riddle was surprisingly good company. He had a vicious sense of humour, and would help her with her homework (mostly, it seemed, because he liked insulting the standard of teaching at Hogwarts), and, when she asked him a question about some more obscure magical theory, he would forget that his public persona was supposed to be cool and aloof, and would wave his hands around excitedly and talk very quickly in a barrow-boy voice, his huge, dark eyes shining as they gazed unwaveringly into hers.
***
One evening, the day before the Christmas holidays began, he wasn’t in the library. Myrtle waited until gone eleven, scratching her neck where her woolly jumper itched it, packing and repacking her pencil case, looking up at every noise, before beginning to shuffle dejectedly back to Ravenclaw Tower, thinking she might treat herself to a little cry in bed about the fact that Riddle had clearly taken a leaf out of his friends' books and found himself a girl to sneak off to dark corners with. She probably had a serpentine wiggle to her walk, and long limbs, and cunning eyes, and a willingness to overlook the fact that he wasn't chivalrous in the slightest because his nose was so pretty.
As she was passing along the second floor, certain she could summon tears at any time, the pigeon of fate decided to poo on her head, as was its wont. Professor Dumbledore was standing right in the middle of the corridor, in sumptuous robes of midnight-blue velvet, the aura of points about to be taken hanging in the air around him.
She felt herself redden in anticipation of the telling off which was about to come, and opened her mouth to give an excuse she knew would never be believed.
But she was not the person Dumbledore had noticed.
‘Out for a little moonlight stroll, Tom?’
‘Is that a problem, Professor?’ she heard Riddle, who appeared to have just emerged from the direction of the entrance hall, say.
‘Not at all, Tom, not at all. I myself have a habit of nocturnal wandering. I find it is often the best way of working through problems which are consuming me.’
'Lovely, sir,' he said, stepping into a patch of moonlight, which shone, silvery, on his marble skin. He was looking at Dumbledore with glassy-eyed detachment, his beautiful face expressionless.
'So I feel I must ask,’ said Dumbledore, ‘whether there is anything you feel is bothering you?' He stepped closer to Riddle, and Myrtle could well imagine the accusatory piercing of his twinkling blue eyes. He used it on her in every Transfiguration lesson to show his disappointment at the fact that her needles were always quite match-like or her teacup had bitten him. It always made her furious.
Riddle, it seemed, felt similarly. 'No, sir,' he said, with a tight edge to his voice.
'Really, Tom?’ said Dumbledore, drawing closer. ‘I noticed you were not at the Quidditch match today and I must say I am concerned that you are -'
A suit of armour toppled to the floor with an almighty crash, the blade of its axe breaking off and skidding across the floor, stopping just before it gouged a chunk out of Dumbledore's ankle.
‘That wasn’t me,’ said Riddle, quickly.
'I didn't think it was,' said Dumbledore, sweeping off to inspect the armour, which lay in pieces on the floor. He sighed. 'I suspect Peeves was feeling the castle was a little too quiet at this time of night.’
‘Ah.’
‘Excuse me, Tom, I must go speak to the headmaster about this.’
And he strode off without another word.
‘I can’t believe that worked,’ said Myrtle, popping her head out of the shadows.
Riddle whirled around. ‘That was you?’
‘I thought he was about to get you in trouble.’
‘He probably was,’ he said, absent-mindedly, picking a feather off the cuff of his robe. Typically immaculate, he looked unusually grubby.
‘I was in the library,’ said Myrtle. ‘Olive Hornby pushed me over on the way back from Care of Magical Creatures and I had to spend all afternoon covered in mud. I wanted to talk to you about it.’
Riddle ran his eyes from her to the armour, an appraising look on his face.
‘I’ll deal with Olive Hornby,’ he said, eventually.
***
The following morning, Olive was discovered with a mountain of evidence that she'd killed all the school roosters in the middle of the night.
Ogg was apoplectic, Professor Dippet was confused, Madam Poultice was convinced it was a sign of a hormone disorder, and Olive was in disgrace.
Myrtle had a lovely time gossiping with the other girls about it, as the Hogwarts Express chugged wheezily towards London.
***
She trundled down from the dormitory one morning in late January, in search of her other shoe, to find the common room hushed and Professor Merrythought talking worriedly to one of the prefects.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked one of the second years.
‘One of the Gryffindors was found this morning half-dead.’
‘What?’
‘They’re saying he’s been petrified. He’s like a statue, completely unresponsive.’
‘Oh my God?’
‘Professor Beery says he can fix him, though, but it’ll be weeks, and they have no idea what did it.’
‘It’s worse than that,’ said one of the fourth years. ‘They know it’s going to happen again. There was a message left on the wall in blood saying so.’
‘In blood? What did it say?’
‘The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Slytherin’s Monster is free to hunt this school once more.’
***
And hunt it did.
By Easter there were eight people frozen in the hospital wing and the school was overrun by giddy speculation. Or, giddy for most people. A pattern had been noted - the monster only targeted those who were Muggleborn - and so those whose blood protected them from attack apparently had nothing better to do than debate who would be the next victim of the mysterious creature.
Myrtle wondered what her odds were. It was probably the first time in her life she was in line to win something.
She was counting down the days until she was next, periodically overcome by fits of wailing in the library about how she would probably end up dying rather than being petrified, and nobody - least of all the other girls - would even care.
‘You have nothing to worry about,’ said Riddle, on one such occasion, not looking up from his book. 'The monster won't come near you.'
***
Olive was in elegant tears over breakfast, as the Great Hall ceiling flashed a balmy blue on the first day of May.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ Myrtle asked Isabella.
‘There was another attack last night,’ said Isabella solemnly. ‘It was Henrietta Savernake. I don’t think Olive expected the monster to target someone like her.’
Henrietta looked exactly like Hedy Lamarr. Wizards, Myrtle was learning, all shared the belief that monsters didn’t eat beautiful people.
Reginald Chive was next to Olive, patting her awkwardly on the shoulder, his brylcreemed head gleaming. ‘Don’t worry, old girl,’ he said, in a carrying voice. ‘Professor Beery will sort Henrietta out soon and it’ll all be fine. She’s not going to die.’
‘But it might kill someone else!’ Olive wailed.
Reginald scratched his head, sagely. ‘It only hunts Mudbloods, doesn’t it? Well, there’s not that many still left. Except Myrtle. Perhaps it’ll finish her off for you.’
Olive gave him a watery smile, her eyes fixed over his head at Myrtle’s own. ‘Oh no, Reggie,’ she purred. ‘Even a foul monster couldn’t stand the taste of Myrtle. She probably tastes like old chip fat. Because you’re so terribly greedy, aren’t you, Myrtle? You'd probably try to eat it before it could get you.'
Myrtle knocked over a jug of pumpkin juice as she ran, jibes about her fat, clumsy backside echoing after her, away from the Ravenclaw table and through the corridors to the second floor. She was upset, but that didn't stop her being practical - she had Defence first, so if she wanted to have a really good howl she’d need to do it in the toilets there, which also had a great acoustic for when you really wanted to let some anguish out, and which had been flooded for half the year, so might be semi-empty, and -
She collided heavily with a tall, spindly boy outside the door.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ snapped Riddle, wincing. She had trodden on his foot. ‘Am I doomed to find you everywhere I go?’
Myrtle drew herself up to her full, tearful height. She reached the middle of his chest. ‘I could say the same thing! You’re the one who has no right to be here! This is a girl’s toilet.’
Riddle’s eyes flickered over the door. ‘Oh - er - yes. My mistake.’
‘What were you do-’
‘What are you crying about this time?’ he said, smoothly.
'Everything.’
A muscle spasmed in the corner of his eye. ‘Be specific.’
‘There’s been another attack.’
‘I’m aware,’ he said, in a level voice.
‘And so there’s basically no other Muggleborns left now! I’ve got to be soon! And Reginald Chive said he hoped I’d be the first one to die!’
Riddle looked sombre. It was not an expression he could entirely pull off. ‘I’ve told you before. You have nothing to worry about. You won’t be attacked.’
‘The monster is out to get Muggleborns! That’s me.’
‘You’re not -’ said Riddle, tightly. ‘I mean, you’re different.’
‘How am I different? My parents are both Muggles.’
‘But you’re - you know. You don’t act like most Muggleborns. I certainly don’t think of you as being like the rest of -’
‘But I still am one! You can’t understand. You’re in Slytherin, you're pureblood, you’ve always belonged in this world. But I haven’t!’ She felt an unsightly stream of snot begin to roll down her face. Riddle looked horrified. ‘Everyone was so ghastly to me at primary school, and I always felt so different and strange around them, and so when they told me I was a witch I thought that would make everything better. I thought it would make me feel like I was finally meant to be somewhere, like I'd be around people who understood me. And it hasn't! You're the only person I know who doesn't make my life a living hell. I hate every day I spend here. I wish I’d never heard of magic.’
‘But surely you wouldn't want to go back to live among Muggles?'
‘It wouldn’t make a single bit of difference to me. Maybe it would be better. They'd tease me, but at least they couldn't hex me as well.'
'You'd rather live among Muggles? I don't quite think you can hear what you're saying.'
'Anyway, I’ll probably have to soon.’
Riddle looked alarmed. ‘Why?’
‘Haven’t you heard? Professor Dippet told the other teachers this morning that they’ll have to close the school unless the attacks stop.’
He blanched. ‘Close the school? I hadn’t thought -’
‘I have Defence now,’ she said, sullenly. ‘I’ll talk to you later.’
‘Wait,’ he said, looking at her very intently with his black-coffee eyes. ‘What are they saying the monster is? In Ravenclaw?’
‘Nobody knows.’
‘Nobody has any idea?’
‘No.’
‘Alright,’ he said, and Myrtle had no idea why he was smiling.
***
Myrtle came into the common room at half-past eleven that night, after another Riddle-less evening in the library, to find it still packed and buzzing with nervous conversation.
‘Where have you been?’ said Autonoë, grabbing her by the arm.
‘The library -’
‘Haven’t you heard?’
‘Heard what?’
‘Reginald Chive was the person who attacked all those Mudbloods - I mean - Muggleborns.’
‘What?’
‘The monster was some sort of particularly poisonous acromantula. He was keeping it in the dungeons. I suppose calling it Slytherin’s Monster was a trick to throw people off the scent.’
‘Oh my God.’
‘He’s been expelled. Olive’s in an absolute state.’
'That's bonkers.'
'Isn't it? You know, I can't believe I used to fancy him.'
***
‘What do you think it’s like to be a ghost?’ she asked at the end of June, unfolding a Cauldron Cake from its foil wrapper. Her last exam was tomorrow, she could see the summer holidays stretching out before her, and she was growing bored of studying.
‘I have no idea. Focus on the matter at hand. What goes into a standard Befuddlement Draught?’
‘Do you want half of this? Have you never even wondered? About being a ghost?’
‘Of course not.’
‘I have. I think about what it would be like to be dead quite a lot. Sometimes I think it might be quite nice.’
Riddle shuddered. ‘I think it would be quite nice if you started keeping a diary, so you could write all these thoughts down instead of bothering me with them.’
‘I’m horrible at keeping a diary. I’ve never been able to do it. I haven’t got the concentration span.’
‘Oh, keeping a diary is easy,’ he drawled. ‘You just have to pour your soul into it.’ He popped the Cauldron Cake into his mouth, looking exceptionally pleased at his remark, although Myrtle didn’t think it was a particularly clever quip. But maybe he was tired. His OWLs had only just finished, after all, and he'd taken thirteen of them.
‘Are you doing anything interesting this summer?’ she asked.
‘Perhaps,’ he replied, looking inscrutable.
‘Right,' said Myrtle, when it became clear no further information would be forthcoming. 'Well, before I forget -’ she rummaged in her bag for a scrap of parchment - ‘this is my address. You can write to me, if you’d like?’
He said nothing, merely folding the parchment with his long fingers and tucking it into the pocket of his robes.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘if I was a ghost, I’d still come here and see you.’
Riddle wrinkled his nose in distaste. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’