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In her many years at Hogwarts, Myrtle has let quite a few secrets slip. But there are still some she keeps close to her breast, like this one:
Dying fucking hurts.
The Basilisk's eyes did not lead her gently into the good night. They burned, burned like lightning strikes and hot irons and the fires they tried to roast her ancestors over. It hurt so so bad, and she couldn't even scream.
Then she was drifting out of her body, looking down to see a twisted horror spread out over the floor. She screamed and the pipes shattered, water mixing with her own blood.
Myrtle cowered in the depths of Hogwarts' sewer system for months afterward, shaking and sobbing. From a distance she heard her mother scream her name, and she cried harder.
She was heartbroken, and she was angry, too. She hadn't wanted this; she'd wanted to grow up and work for the Prophet or the Ministry or something else entirely. She wanted to kiss boys or girls or somebody, she wanted to decide whether or not she wanted children, she wanted to struggle through periods and bills and double standards because those were reserved for the living, she wanted to be. The other ghosts had had at least a few decades to live, but she had practically nothing.
There was a time when she considered reaching up and pulling Hogwarts done from the inside, even if the effort would destroy her. Let them drown in the lake, let the squids and mermaids sort them out. She didn't care.
Except...she did. She couldn't forgive what had been done to her, couldn't move on, but she didn't want to make the other students suffer the way she did. And she loved Hogwarts, even after all that it had done to her.
Myrtle chose to weep, instead of destroy. She came up out of the dark, to ensconce herself in the bathroom where she had died. A strange choice, perhaps, but at least there was in peace. And...and Myrtle sometimes wondered if she might look down one day and see her body lying on the ground, whole and intact, ready for her to slip back into it as if the whole thing had been a bad dream.
She sat and wept for what she had lost, wept as a way to cope with the pain and trauma, wept because what else could she do? Her life was quite literally over, and her entrance to the world of the dead had been so terrifying, how could she find the courage to complete the journey?
Both the humans and ghosts wished she'd stop making such a fuss. The monster who'd destroyed her was gone, after all, banished. What did she have to worry about anymore?
"Moaning Myrtle," they called her. It was a cruel name, but Myrtle already knew that children are cruel. In her life she'd been a pale little girl with glasses, acne, and lank hair, after all, a girl who never learned how to smile through the pain. She'd dreamed of the day when she would blossom into into a great beauty, but if that day had ever been a remote possibility it certainly wasn't anymore.
That was just one more thing to cry about, she supposed. Luckily, she had plenty of long years in which to do it.
It wasn't all misery, of course. There was Peeves, the endlessly annoying poltergeist. Peeves liked causing chaos, but he also liked making people laugh. And he thought the sad little girl huddled on the toilet might like to laugh once in a while. Peeves could be mean, yes, but he also liked being spontaneous, and what was more spontaneous than making Moaning Myrtle smile?
When he didn't have anything else to do, which could be quite often during the silent school hours, he'd go visit Myrtle. He'd tell off-color jokes in hope of making her blush, he'd make the toilets or the fecal matter dance, he'd do rather desperate magic routines or rearrange the tiles in amusing patterns.
Sometimes she'd lose control, accuse him of mocking her, scream at him to go away. He always came back, though, and she always apologized.
On a good day, Peeves could wring a smile from her. On a very very very good day, he could get her to laugh. On the best of all days, he could get her to chase him down the corridors, squealing and giggling as he wreaked havoc for her amusement.
Some of the ghosts might have thought they were in love, and perhaps they were, it's hard to say. Peeves wasn't really in interested in sex or romance, only mischief. He was a child, really, a little boy playing games.
Myrtle grew to think of him of a little brother, an annoying little brother with a fickle memory who forgot to visit her for months and then bothered her for weeks, but a little brother all the same.
And no one would ever be able to take him from her. She hoped.
Sometimes, girls slipped into the haunted lavatory to cut themselves or purge. There was little to no chance of being interrupted, after all, and why would Moaning Myrtle care what they did to themselves? She'd probably cheer them on.
Moaning Myrtle did not cheer them on. Moaning Myrtle rushed to over to them while they were sticking their fingers down their throats or holding up the razor to the light. She wept in genuine shock and horror at the sight of every one.
"Why are you doing this?" she'd cry. "Don't you know how precious life is? Don't you know how beautiful you are? Your body is so perfect, it's yours, don't you know how badly you're damaging it?"
Sometimes the girls would run. Sometimes they'd break down sobbing, spilling a wave of dark thoughts and memories as they shook in Myrtle's transparent arms. On a few rare, beautiful occasions, they even left the razors with her.
In every case, she delivered their names to Madam Pomfrey, who hadn't changed much from when Myrtle had been a student. Madame Pomfrey promised to keep an eye on each of them, to keep them safe.
Some girls slipped through their net, of course, and plenty of boys did as well. Hogwarts has had its suicides, has had bodies removed from its corridors in the dead of night the way Myrtle's was.
There are many kinds of wars, including wars against yourself, and every wars takes its casualties. Myrtle whispered goodbye to the ghosts of the fallen soldiers as they drifted beyond the castle walls, and had something new to weep about afterwards.
She didn't think she congratulate herself for saving the girls who survived, didn't think herself as helpful or a hero. She thought of herself as someone who cried exceptionally loud, and was occasionally heard.
And to her, that was enough.
One year, Ginny Weasley came to Hogwarts. Ginny did not cut herself where Myrtle could see, did not purge except for a (failed) attempt to destroy the diary. But she desperately needed help, and Myrtle did not see it no matter how many times the girl came to her bathroom.
Myrtle would always hate herself for that.
She heard the pipe ripple and twist and instinct drove her back underground, away from the horror. She couldn't let herself think about what was happening, even in the aftermath. Was she was a coward? Perhaps, but painful deaths have a way of breaking you, and it is very hard to be brave when you are broken like that.
Myrtle could not face the possibility that the monster that killed it was back, even when she heard it slithering through the pipes of Hogwarts. She was a ghost, of course, she was invulnerable, but there was a part of her mind that was all pain and fear and death and that part filled her with silencing terror whenever the snake came to mind.
It's just the structure. The castle is old. She told herself this, to stop the fear from making her shake the structure of the castle apart.
It's an invader of some kind. It's not something actually living here. You're safe. She told herself this, because she knew if she thought and said otherwise, people would just say old Moaning Myrtle was throwing another temper tantrum. No one listened to her unless matters of depression (the only thing she was known for these days) were involved, and sometimes not even then.
Peeves would have believed her, if she dared to build her thoughts and sensations in a straight line, but who would listen to Peeves?
Ginny's just have some romantic troubles. She's okay. She's just a little sick. She hasn't cut or purged or burnt or anything. This is what she told herself, because Myrtle had never seen as herself as the kind of person with the strength to save people like Ginny. Her subconscious turned against her, kept her from facing the truth, and Ginny suffered as a result.
Then Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger came along with their investigations. Hermione turned herself into a cat (she didn't look like she was going to slit her wrists over the incident, so Myrtle found herself laughing a bit too hard, because it was hard to remember her awkward younger days and having the face of a cat was better than having no face or body at all).
And Hermione was gone, and so was Ginny, and Harry and Ron started asking their desperate questions. And suddenly, Myrtle could no longer hide from these things. She gritted her teeth and told them about the day she died, trying to be overdramatic to be the point of comedic so she wouldn't break down at this most precious moment.
She watched them disappear into the dark, and wept, because what if she'd condemned them to death? She almost ran to McGonagall, but then the pipe started to close and she realized that that was their only one out.
After all her failures, there was only one thing to do. Myrtle thrust herself into the pipe, calling the water from the toilets (she could do this, she'd learned to make the water on her command to mark her most epic temper tantrums).
She stayed there, straining with every once of her long-buried will to keep the water rushing around her in an endless spiral, pressing on the tube with incredible force. She sobbed and sobbed, her cries echoing through the bathroom, unheard in the Chamber below.
Even the dead can't hold up under such strain forever, and as hard as she tried she could feel the pipe closing around her. She was about to collapse when the phoenix blazed through the door, the same glorious bird she'd once seen on her Defense Against The Dark Arts teacher's shoulder, Sorting Hat clutched in his claws.
He passed through her, his beautiful wings sending a blaze of warmth through her essence. It will be all right, he sang, in the language of magical creatures that the dead, who are far more magic than human, can understand. I will save them.
She held it open until he passed through and then collapsed, folding up near the ceiling. She wanted to disappear again, but she forced herself to hold on, to wait with bated breath until they all emerged, bloody and muddy and battered and alive, thank all the Gods.
Afterwards, she passed back through the pipes, forced herself into the dark. She made her way to where the basilisk, the monster that had stolen everything from her, waited. She knelt down before its corpse, ran her hands over its twisted scaly length.
She could feel the water mixed in with its blood, still and silent beneath her fingers, but still there. She closed her eyes, let immaterial hands slip into that water and with, a vicious scream, yanked.
The basilisk exploded in a torrent of blood and flesh, scales clattering on the walls around her. Its massive bones shook, stubbornly holding onto each other as tidal waves of red and green sloshed across the floor.
Myrtle knelt at the certain of an ocean of her own making, still reaching. She brought a fresh stream of water rattling through the chamber, sloshing and hissing around her as it scrubbed the wretched stones clean. Then, with a growl, she sent it all away, waves and waves of Christmas-colored ruin vanished back into the depths of Hogwarts.
In the end, all that was left was a faintly pink floor, a denuded skeleton, and a waterlogged book pinned to the ground with a basilisk fang.
Myrtle didn't wash the Basilisk away--she wouldn't grant it the peace of a watery grave. Instead, she took away the frills and left it as it truly was, an empty house that no one would ever fear again. A house she would never fear again.
She turned away and left it there, silent tears trickling down her face.
Ginny came back.
Ginny would come and stare at the pipes, hugging herself. Ginny would walk as if in a dream, running her fingers over the pipes, then wake up with a start and dash away.
Myrtle talked to her. She apologized, of course, said how very sorry she was for what she'd done. Ginny said she believed her, but Ginny had been trained to pity poor Moaning Myrtle, to forgive her because she couldn't possibly know any better. Ginny didn't know how very old Myrtle was, frozen as she seemed.
Myrtle should have known better. And in the future, Myrtle would.
So she found another way to apologize: keeping Ginny sane. She dragged Ginny into conversations to distract her, asked her about Quidditch and Harry and her family and those horrible Dementors that were sneaking around. They could spent hours together, talking about nothing and everything. Myrtle pushed herself to see what else she could do with the water, what she could to make Ginny gasp and laugh.
Sometimes, they didn't talk about light things. Sometimes they talked about the way Ginny still felt Tom's hands in the back of her skull, digging and pinching. They talked about how getting drained of life was a lot like dying, how both involved seeing yourselves crumble to nothing and not being able to stop.
Ginny had nightmares, sometimes, about Tom Riddle's hands on her body. She prayed they were just dreams; there was a lot she couldn't remember. She prayed, and Myrtle prayed with her.
Sometimes Peeves showed up to make them both laugh; he teased Ginny, but not too badly, because he knew he would make Myrtle upset. Ginny would smile at him in the corridor somedays, when no one was looking, and Peeves would smile back at the haunted little girl who occasionally found her friendship in ghosts.
When Ginny needed to completely break down in tears and helpless fury, Myrtle would jam the bathroom door so that even the most desperate had to move on and let her weep in peace. She'd slide down to the depths of Hogwarts if Ginny needed privacy, and stay by her side if Ginny needed someone to whisper comfort to her, or cry over her own tears.
It was the least she could do.
Myrtle spent most of Umbridge's tenure in hiding, choking down her tears, only emerging when there was a girl needing help (there were quite a few of those these days). Occasionally she'd flood a corridor or explode a few sinks; Peeves took the blame (he bragged about 'stealing the credit'). No one even looked at quiet Moaning Myrtle.
Ginny came, talking about secret armies and the return of the monster who had tortured her, the monster who was.... "Responsible for the basilisk," she admitted, not meeting Myrtle's eyes. "I'm sorry, Myrt."
"I'm sorry, too," Myrtle admitted. "But not too sorry, 'cause you're gonna kill him."
Ginny shrugged. "I'll do my best. Who knows, maybe it'll be you."
Myrtle raised an eyebrow. "Seriously?"
"Seriously. You're strong, Myrt, and I think you're getting stronger. Those tricks you do, holding open the pipe...I think it's just the beginning."
"Ghosts don't change, Ginny," Myrtle chided. "They learn a bit more, but they don't grow. We can't." She was the same old weepy Moaning Myrtle. The limp, unresisting was probably the greatest thing she'd ever do, and even that left her exhausted.
"But you're not just a ghost, are you?" Ginny reminded her.
Umbridge left, and that was good. Dumbledore died, and that was frightening. The Death Eaters swarmed Hogwarts, and that was a nightmare. Monsters in the corridors, monsters' voices ringing through the pipes, and Myrtle wanted to forget everything again, or even better, just disappear back into the dark.
But she couldn't, because Ginny still needed her, and the desperate girls and boys of Hogwarts still needed her. And even though Myrtle was still soggy and broken, she also had to admit that there was something truly intoxicating about being needed.
She summoned floods and explosions that were once again blamed on Peeves, even though he was supposedly expelled. Ginny stood in the bathroom, and Myrtle dabbed at her bruised face so she wouldn't have to use her cut-up hands.
Ginny wore an iron mask that year, and Myrtle was the only one who saw behind it, because Ginny had no loved ones left to hold her and ghosts are allowed to see things not trusted with the living. Ginny shook and bawled in that bathroom, weeping about how scared she was for her brothers and friends and the boy she might love. Myrtle promised her that everything would be all right, that her survival gave her power, and made a few sobs of her own to drown out Ginny's.
Afterwards, Myrtle would help Ginny wash her face and they would hold each other as best they could. "Thank you," Ginny would whisper. "Thank you, Myrt." Then she'd turn back to stone and march back out that door, returning to her role as warrior queen of Dumbledore's Army.
Other girls came to Myrtle, and even a few boys. They let her tend to the wounds they didn't want their friends to see and drown out their tears with her own crying. They gave her ideas for her next flood and congratulated her on her latest work.
"Thanks, Myrtle," they said to her. Or, on lucky days, "Thanks, Myrt."
Sometimes, Myrtle would find herself weeping about the nightmare that had consumed the wizarding world, her world. She would mourn for Peeves, for all the children who'd already been lost and the ones that were already suffering.
A few times, Ginny was able to come and hold her arms around Myrtle's immaterial body, telling her that everything was going to be okay. She would give Myrtle permission to let loose, and they would watch the toilets flood together.
War came to Hogwarts, and the terror was worse than it had ever been. The fear was completely irrational, but it was there anyway, compounded by the shock and the horror. It was knives in her feet, pinning her to the bathroom floor. Myrtle shook and sobbed in the shadows as screams and curses rang by outside.
She had to do something. No, she didn't. She'd gotten used to doing things, had been doing quite a few things over the years. Useless things, small things. She'd destroyed the basilisk. The basilisk was already dead.
She had power she could use, power she'd been using. Flooded toilets, burst pipes, party tricks. They couldn't hurt her, couldn't do worse than had been done. You don't know that, don't know if they can't strip ghosts down to nothing. There were people who needed her. They don't care about you. They think all you can do is cry. Not all of them thought that, though. Didn't they?
Ginny.
You can't do anything for them.
Hermione, Ron, Harry, the three brave children who'd fought to save Hogwarts when no one else could.
You're just a whiny little bitch.
The children of Dumbledore's Army--everyone, really--fighting to save the school, to survive a whole year under the reign of demons. The kids who called her Myrtle, and even the kids who didn't.
You're weak, useless.
The descendants of the girls she'd...saved? Ginny said she saved them, when Myrtle told her about it.
Nothing matters to the ghosts. Ghosts are just there to be jokey and informative. They don't really matter.
Myrtle closed her eyes and bit her lip, forcing herself to reach. She had been testing her powers, she supposed, over the months and years of causing chaos. By now, the pipes of Hogwarts felt more familiar than the veins of her body.
You don't have a wand.
The voice was too loud, here in the relatively silent bathroom. She needed to get away. She could do that, couldn't she?
Myrtle lifted her chin and passed through the door, out into the chaos. The world around was full of darting shadows and flashing nights, screams of pain and fear. It was almost enough to drown her.
Almost. She dug her fingers into the water, gathering it up into clenched fists as she made her way through the chaos. No one noticed her.
Dumb. Stupid. Soggy. Crazy.
Myrtle growled and drew water from every corner of the castle, more than she'd ever touched before. Her hands were trembling, it was too much, to strong.
No. No, it wasn't. Because she was sad, and she was scared, and for the first time in a very long time she was angry. What was stolen for her had been stolen from so many children, stolen from the students with razors and the ones who'd suffered this past horrible year and the soldiers falling tonight.
She looked back, remembered how angry she'd been there down in the dark. That anger had never left her.
A sudden burst of shouts, and she turned to see a phalanx of Death Eaters striding down the hall, faces blank and deranged. Broken children, just like her, only now they were trying to inflict their brokenness on everyone else and she hated them for that.
She heard screams, the thump of someone falling. The Death Eaters didn't notice her, anymore than the defending students did. Who would notice Moaning Myrtle? What threat did she pose?
Myrtle took a breath (she didn't need to breathe, but she felt like this was a good moment for it anyway) and let out a piercing shriek, snot and tears spilling from her mouth, as the bulging pipes exploded and tons upon tons of water crashed down on the Death Eaters.
They screamed, arms flailing as they fired useless curses at her each other. The water rushed at her and Myrtle raised her arms, forcing the water back, channeling it away from the defending students.
She forced the river through the walls, screaming and sobbing with effort. It was hard, harder than the pipe or the Basilisk. The water twisted like a wild animal under her grip, fighting to slip free and let the Death Eaters escape or just drown everyone. But she wouldn't let it.
Myrtle kept the Death Eaters imprisoned in a great cage of water as she descended the stairs, drawing a few wide eyes even among the chaos. She made her way through Hogwarts; it was the first time she'd moved through the walls without Peeves guiding her in literally decades, but she still remembers the place like the back of her hand.
The Death Eater glared at her through the water, cheeks puffing up as their eyes rolled about wildly in their heads. Myrtle glared back, her entire essence vibrating with concentration. Other Death Eaters drew, trying to free their friends or just past by, and Myrtle made the water sprout hungry mouths to swallow them up.
She forced them past the school doors, out towards the flaming lawn. And then she gritted her teeth and shoved them away, sent them flying through the air like a human aquarium taking flight. The great ball of water hit the grass and exploded, sending pieces of red blood, white bone, and black robe flying everywhere as the Death Eaters snapped to pieces like a child's fallen toys.
Myrtle let out a soft sigh at the feeling of a weight slipping off her back. And then she reached from the water left sloshing around the Hogwart's floors, gathering it up in her hands, thrusting shattering bursts of it as the Death Eaters whose curses passed harmlessly through her.
She would lose consciousness soon enough, slip back into the dark at the bottom of the Hogwarts sewage system to recuperate from all this. But for now she could force her way through, just like everyone else did.
When she remerged afterwards, McGonagall tracked Myrtle down and told her she had received an Order of Merlin, first class. Peeves stuck his tongue out of her from where he was hiding Dung Bombs in a doorway, smiling.
Ginny had other people to hold her up in the days to come, but she still visited Myrtle sometimes, as did a few of the other DA members.
"Are you going to leave?" Ginny asked her once, a few days before her own, very different departure.
Myrtle shrugged. "Maybe, I don't know. It doesn't scare me as much, I think." She twirled from the drop from a faucet around her fingers, admiring the way they sparkled in the light. "It's my choice, now, and I guess it's...nice, to have more choices than before." She shrugs.
She still cries, of course. She still loses herself in the pain and grief, for herself and everyone else. But it's a little easier for Peeves to make her laugh, sometimes.
And these days, when Hogwarts students talk about Moaning Myrtle, more often than not there's a student, the daughter of a Dumbledore Army's member or even its warrior queen, who points out that her name is Myrtle. Although she prefers Myrt.