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Tom Riddle would lose half his soul to Myrtle Warren. She would lose her entire life to him. Something something here, about a man giving half his all and still coming up top, but a woman having to forfeit everything and not even know why.
If anyone asked Tom Riddle about Myrtle Warren, he would sympathise. He would not be crestfallen, because not even he was that good of an actor. But he would nod solemnly. And he would go quiet, in the special way he'd observed from others when they were sad, or sympathetic, or solemn, or otherwise preoccupied with an emotion he rarely knew how to deal with. ''Yes, I knew her. It was a tragedy what happened to her. Hm? No. No, we weren't friends.''
Myrtle Warren was not asked to die that day. Perhaps she'd have said yes. If a handsome fellow like Tom Riddle asked, after all. The apple of her eye. A boy who, by only the virtue of his good looks and his genius mind, was a prefect and so had a responsibility to be nice, to be kind, and to be responsible. He played the part masterfully. Myrtle Warren thought they were friends. She thought she might survive anything with Tom Riddle as a friend by her side.
The Ravenclaw girls, the ones who'd scorned Myrtle Warren from her toes up to her hair, were not repentant. After all, Myrtle Warren died because she was in a girl's lavatory while an acromantula was on the loose. It could have happened to anyone. A history of Myrtle Warren going to cry in the girl's lavatory because of the hateful, seething comments the Ravenclaw girls made about her never came up. And if this did come up, what did it matter now that she was dead anyway? She should have brushed it off and moved on. It was all just girls being girls.
Had Myrtle Warren gone to a professor? Perhaps she had, to Flitwick. Who was much older, and should have been much wiser, but simply made things even worse with his interference. Painted a starker target on her back. Tattle tale Myrtle Warren. Had she tried going to the Head Girl, a Ravenclaw girl at the time, and begging her to intervene. Had the Ravenclaw girl, a girl years her senior, only rolled her eyes and said that the best reaction would be to not give them a reaction. They'd move on. Perhaps they would have. Perhaps they would have moved on if enough time had passed. But Myrtle Warren was a small, mousy girl, with nary a kind thing to say about herself. She wasn't pretty. She wasn't smart. (How did you end up in this House, they'd ask her, jeering, if you don't know something as simple as that!) She wasn't even kind. She was just forced into being kind because when one wasn't smart or pretty, one had to be something. Myrtle Warren had to be something. Because if she wasn't something, then she was nothing. And no girl wanted to be nothing.
The prefects were in on it. So Myrtle did not ask the Ravenclaw prefects for help. It'd be same as sticking a hand in boiling water and crying out that it was hot. She wasn't that stupid, after all. So she would become smaller and smaller. Because hopefully, if she simply ceased to exist, if she never raised a hand, if she was never called on, if she never had to speak to anyone, then they would leave her alone. Perhaps her plan would have worked. Or maybe she'd have turned into something invisible, and unrecognizable, and worse than dead.
Myrtle Warren's life changed when she ran into the Slytherin prefect, Tom Riddle. He was dashing. Quite literally, as he was doing that half walk half jog thing to get to his class faster (couldn't be caught running as a prefect in the halls, but would be late if he didn't at least try). A precarious amount of books levitated behind him. In his haste, he did not quite manage to manoeuvre the books, and so they toppled when they hit a stone column.
''Fuck.'' He hissed under his breath, startling Myrtle. Looked at his wristwatch and whispered: ''Dumbledore'll skin me.'' Quickly, he flicked his wand and had the majority of the books fly back into their position. But a few had scattered to the ground and would not listen to magical means.
When Myrtle bent to help him pick up the books, their fingers brushed against one another.
''You're all right, doll.'' He tossed the books onto the pile and smiled at her.
Her world became so much brighter.