Chapter Text
She's fourteen when she dies.
It happens on a Monday, of course.
(she loathes Mondays)
There's a pair of yellow eyes, a feeling like everything is rushing away, and then she's looking at her own body lying on the floor. No one finds her until hours later. Until Olive stumbles into the bathroom, calling for her, telling her Dippet wants to talk to her.
"I'm right over here," Myrtle says.
Olive steps closer, sees the (very dead) body, screams, and runs away wailing at a truly impressive pitch. Myrtle considers it a small payback for all the bullying she suffered at her hands.
Dippet comes by some time later. He asks a lot of questions, but Myrtle isn't interested in giving him detailed answers. Yes, she's dead. Yes, it's tragic, she was so young. No, she doesn't know how it happened. Yes, she is planning on sticking around.
"Wouldn't you rather go on?" Dippet says, an odd grimace on his face, as if he knows this is not an appropriate question but he has to ask it anyway.
"Because I'm such a bother, is that it? No one liked me when I was alive, and now that I'm dead, it hasn't changed! I'm still ugly, pimply Myrtle! Well guess what, Headmaster, I'm staying! You're not getting rid of me that easily!"
With her surge of anger comes water, bursting from the pipes, flooding the bathroom. Dippet beats a hasty retreat.
Myrtle stays alone in the bathroom and cries.
(just like when she was alive)
Dumbledore comes to see her. 'My dear girl', he calls her, and he seems genuinely sorry that she met such a fate. He also has questions. Questions about how she died, and if she heard anything before it happens. She tells him she did, in fact. Some boy's voice, spitting and hissing in a strange language.
"Did you recognize the voice? Could you tell me who it belonged to?"
Myrtle shakes her head.
"I don't know many people."
"Is it possible it could have been Tom Riddle?"
The name is vaguely familiar. She's heard some of her classmates fawn over the bloke for his good looks, but nothing beyond that. She can't put a face to the name.
"I don't know him."
Dumbledore looks disappointed. He dips his head, stroking his fingers through his beard.
"Thank you, Miss Warren."
"Sir? Were my parents told what happened?"
"They have been informed of your demise, and given every detail we know of."
"Do they know I'm a ghost?"
Pain flashes in Dumbledore's eyes.
"They do," he says, more softly. "I believe a Ministry official whose job it is to act as liaison with Muggle parents has explained to them the existence of ghosts and the place they have in our world."
Imprints of a departed soul, Myrtle almost recites. They covered ghosts last week in Defense. She is what was left behind. What Death didn't want. The discarded remnants.
"They'll come to see me," she says.
Dumbledore dips his head, staying silent.
Myrtle waits.
(and waits and waits and waits)
(They never come.)
Being dead is boring.
Myrtle is two months into her afterlife when she decides to cure her boredom by haunting Olive. She follows her around the castle, taunting her, tormenting her. It's only fair. Olive made her life hell when she was alive. She never listened to Myrtle's pleas to stop, so Myrtle doesn't listen to hers. She surges up from the ground to scare her, she whispers into her ear, she hovers behind her, staring.
It occupies her for a while. Haunting is a full-time job, and while Myrtle is busy thinking of what next she's going to do to Olive, she isn't sitting around crying. When Olive graduates and leaves Hogwarts, Myrtle follows her. She moves into her flat. She sabotages the few dates Olive goes on. She invites herself to the wedding of Olive's brother and loudly informs everyone of the scene she witnessed a few minutes earlier(the bride-to-be being thoroughly snogged by the groom's best friend).
It's all very fun.
Until Olive goes to the Ministry to file a complaint, and Myrtle finds herself face-to-face with an Overseer of Departed Spirits and Unbound Souls who politely informs her she has to cease haunting Olive or they will place her in storage. Myrtle doesn't ask what that entails. She leaves Olive and comes back to Hogwarts.
To her bathroom.
Her non-life is boring again, and miserable.
Decades pass.
Students come and go, year after year after year. Moaning Myrtle, they call her. The Ugliest Ghost. That Girl in the Bathroom. She's become a fixture of the castle, one everyone overlooks. She'll stay here forever, in her flooded bathroom that's been abandoned and is now all hers.
She's crying to herself quietly when someone comes in. A boy, pale and stringy-looking, skidding in and quickly closing the door behind him. He's breathing rapidly, and there's sweat at his temples. Myrtle quiets her sniffling and floats closer. The only visitors she gets are either lost first-years in the first weeks of September, or stupid girls and boys from upper years (mostly boys) who goad each other into throwing things at her.
No one's ever hidden in her bathroom.
Because that's what the boy is doing. Hiding. He's holding very still, staring at the closed door, listening to what's going on in the corridor. He hasn't noticed her.
Myrtle hovers behind him, staring.
He's a first-year, she thinks. They all look so small, so unfinished. Little birds thrown from their nest and into the big sea that is Hogwarts. This one is wearing robes that are too short for him, with holes that have been patched over with fabric that doesn't quite match. He did not buy those this year.
His hair, seen from behind, drips down to his shoulders in black curtains. It's greasy the way hair gets when you either don't wash it often or wash it too often. Myrtle was in the second category when she was alive—had to wash her hair every day, and even then it would be in a sorry state by the evening.
It's that detail—the hair—which makes Myrtle approach him gently instead of screaming at him to get out.
Absurd?
Maybe.
But life often turns on strange details, and perhaps Myrtle is tired of pushing everyone away.
"Hello," she says.
The boy inhales sharply and whirls around. Oh. He's got very dark eyes, long eyelashes, and a nose that's a bit unfortunate. It dominates his whole face, drawing the gaze so intently there's almost nothing else to stare at. His enemies will ridicule him for it, and one day, someone might fall in love with that nose.
"Shhh," the boy says, doing something with his eyebrows that makes him look downright severe.
"Shh yourself!"
Oh, this is so typical. She's trying to be nice, for once, for the only time in, well, decades, and she gets shushhed for it.
The boy grimaces then turns back to the door to listen in. Myrtle hovers above him and sticks her head through the door. That's one of the biggest advantages of being a ghost: doors are obsolete, and you can go anywhere you please.
"There's no one outside," she reports back to the boy.
He glowers at her.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm sure. I may be dead but my eyes still work."
He seems to deflate at that. His shoulders drop, and he leans his head against the door.
"Alright. Thank you."
"You're welcome."
There's a moment of silence.
"What are you doing here anyway?" the boy asks.
"I died here."
A spark of recognition lights in his eyes.
"You're Moaning Myrtle."
"I am! Moaning Myrtle, the sad, weeping ghost of the second-floor bathroom, who tragically lost her life so young and now wastes away in her watery grave… Moaning Myrtle, Ugly Myrtle, Pimply Myrtle! Everything you've heard about me is probably true. Except whatever Olive is saying, that bi—bothersome girl!"
She executes a full turn upon herself, whirling in the air, and stops upside-down to smile at the boy.
"But I prefer to go by Myrtle."
He gives a jerky nod.
"Myrtle. Sure."
"And you are?"
"Severus Snape."
He says it forcefully, as if he's got something to prove. Myrtle is very familiar with that particular shade of swagger. She's seen it time and again in halbloods eager to prove themselves in a world socially dominated by purebloods.
"Well met, Severus."
"Can you check again to see if the coast is clear?"
She does.
"Still no one. This is not a very frequented corridor, you know. Nothing around here except my bathroom and some disused classrooms. Who are you hiding from anyway?"
"Stupid, loud-mouth Gryffindors."
"I know the type. Picking on people they perceive as weak and snivelling."
"Yeah," Severus says, and now he's looking intently at her, trying to discern the colors of her uniform, she can tell. But she's gone blue and gray, as all ghosts do, so Severus is left floundering.
"Ravenclaw," she tells him.
He visibly relaxes.
"Ravenclaw's good. Second best House."
"Oh, and the first one would be, let me guess, Slytherin?"
"Exactly," Severus says with pride.
Poor little first-year, so full of hope, bursting with dreams.
"The House of Salazar is not kind to anyone with Muggle roots," she says. "That has not changed since my days."
"I'll be different."
He gives her a wave.
"See you around, Myrtle."
And he's off.
Myrtle stays in her bathroom, alone with her thoughts. This time, they're a little less depressing than the usual.
Severus comes back.
The second time, he's hiding again. The third, he says he is hiding but Myrtle has her doubts. The fourth time, he's plainly lying when he declares he needs a place to lay low for a while.
"You don't mind if I stay here, do you?"
"Not at all," Myrtle says. "My bathroom is your bathroom."
Severus wrinkles his nose.
"Have you ever thought of moving?"
"And the first thing he does when being invited to stay in my home is to insult it. Did not one teach you manners, Severus Snape?"
There's the slightest flinch to his posture—shoulders tightening, chin dipping.
"Someone tried," he says.
Myrtle doesn't prod. Severus strides over to a dry spot, sits down, and takes out his school books.
"Were you any good in Divination?"
"I was the best," Myrtle says.
(she was not)
They talk. A lot, about a variety of subjects.
Severus loves Potions—it's his favorite class. He struggles in History of Magic and Divination, and isn't very fond of Care of Magical Creatures. He has an absent mother, and overbearing father who doesn't understand magic, and not many friends. He's trying to fit in as a Slytherin, but he's not a very social person, and that, coupled with his obvious Muggle surname, closes a lot of doors right from the start.
"I wish it didn't matter," he says, striking through some writing he just jotted down for his Transfiguration essay. "Halfblood, pureblood, Muggleborn… I wish no one cared at all."
"Eventually, it doesn't. We all die the same."
"Yeah," he says, with a chuckle. "But my best friend—"
He pauses there, glancing at her, and she realizes he thought she might be offended he's not talking about her. She's not, of course. How could she be? She has never been anyone's best friend. She's not so deluded that she thought she might be his. Not when she's a ghost.
Not when even Death didn't want her.
"—she's Muggleborn, and she's brilliant, leagues ahead of some of the purebloods in our year. They call her names."
Myrtle knows exactly what they call her. It's a slur she's been on the receiving end of a few times. The professors punish any student uttering it severely, but there's no stamping out bigotry, no matter the punishments.
"She'll grow to be a formidable witch, and they will be left in the dirt," Myrtle says.
"Oh, they'll all be sorry," Severus says with a smile.
One day, he hauls a cauldron into the bathroom.
"Whatever gave you the impression you can brew in here?"
"I've got nowhere else to go."
"Professor Slughorn has a secondary lab he keeps open to the students he deems promising, which does include you, I imagine. It's far better equipped than my bathroom."
"But that lab is for sanctioned potions, and this one is definitely unsanctioned."
Ah-ah. It didn't take long for the little first-year to start breaking rules. Well, a year, give or take a few months. Severus is a second-year now, and they're somewhere around November. Probably. Times ceases to matter once you cast off all mortal bonds.
"How unsanctioned?" Myrtle says, rising into the air to hover near the ceiling.
"Felix Felicis," come the answer, given in a confident tone.
Myrtle swirls back down in one practiced loop.
"That is a NEWTs potion."
"I know."
She doesn't tell him he can't brew it. He will try, and fail, and learn something (hopefully).
"What about the fumes?" she says.
"The fumes? Myrtle, you don't need to breathe. The entire bathroom could be flooded with toxic gas and you'd be fine."
"The fumes that could suffocate you, you idiot! Unless you're planning on joining me as a sad ghost, then you'd best have a solution for that problem."
"It says in my manual Felix Felicis hardly produces fumes, so I'll be fine." He glances at her. "A sad ghost?"
"A sad, scrawny ghost with the most impressive nose in Hogwarts."
His face hardens, the very tips of his ears turning red.
"Then I'd be a match for you and your pimpled face."
The redness spreads to the rest of his face the moment he says the words. He opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again.
"Sorry. Sorry, I didn't mean it. It's just—the nose is a sensitive topic, alright?"
Myrtle flaps one hand at him.
"It's alright. I've heard far worse over the years. And I'm sorry, too. I shouldn't have targeted your weak spot."
"I wouldn't go as far as to call it my weak spot…"
"Your one fatal flaw."
"Nope, that's not it either."
"Your most prominent facial feature—"
"If you keep going I'm throwing the cauldron at you."
"With those scrawny, scrawny arms? I don't think so."
Later, Myrtle will realize that any remark upon her face and its pimples would previously have caused her to burst into tears. Later, she will acknowledge that she doesn't mind when such things come from Severus. Later, she will wonder if this is what it means to have a friend.
Severus brews the potion. It starts out alright, but Felix Felicis is brewed over six months and has to be monitored extensively, which Severus can't manage when he's got classes to go every hour. Sometimes during the second month, it goes very, very wrong. The cauldron spews out golden liquid, melting down upon the floor, belching enormous quantities of black smoke. Thankfully, Severus isn't there at the time.
Myrtle watches the disaster unfold. Halfway through, she floods the bathroom, hoping it will be enough to mitigate the damage. She rather likes her bathroom, after all.
The disaster is still in progress, globs of superheated potion streaking through the air, when she hears noises outside. She goes through the door to find a cluster of girls staring at the smoke pouring from under the door.
"Do not come in here!" Myrtle says when one of them reaches for the door handle.
"I'm a Prefect," the girl says with such self-importance Myrtle wants to laugh in her face. "And I don't take orders from ghosts."
"Oh, my apologies, Miss Prefect. Go right ahead and have your face melted off."
The girl hesitates.
"You," Myrtle says, pointing at a random girl. "Go and fetch Professor Dumbledore."
"You mean Headmaster Dumbledore," says Miss Prefect.
Myrtle really needs to get up to date.
"Yes, obviously that's what I mean! Go, go!"
Dumbledore arrives quickly. He extinguishes the melting cauldron, contains the billowing smoke, and looks at the damage with a furrowed brow. Myrtle dodges his questions.
"I didn't see anyone. No, I don't know whose cauldron that is. I have no idea how it got here. Strange, really."
"You understand someone could have gotten hurt," Dumbledore says, wearing his unfortunately this is a serious matter face. "This isn't about punishing anyone, this is about the safety of the students, including the person who thought it a good idea to brew such a delicate potion in such an ill-suited environment."
I warned him about the fumes!
"I haven't seen anyone," Myrtle repeats.
She is lucky Legilimency doesn't work on ghosts. Dumbledore gives her a knowing look, thanks her for raising the alarm, and tells her he remains available should she remember anything.
Severus shows up two days after, slinking in after midnight and startling Myrtle out of her reverie.
"It was the only time I could come," he hisses. "I didn't want to be seen!"
He looks around and winces at the state of the bathroom. There's soot all over the ceiling, broken sinks, several holes in the stallsdoors, courtesy of the molten potion, and a crater where the cauldron used to be, the tiles bent and cracked.
"Why didn't you warn me the potion was becoming unstable?"
"And appear in the middle of class to sound the alarm? That wouldn't have been suspicious at all."
"You could have been discreet about it. Given me a sign, something! We could have avoided this."
He gestures around. Myrtle crosses her arms.
"It was too late to save the potion."
"You don't know that!"
"Yes, I do! Potions wasn't my best subject but I can still recognize when something is unsalvageable! Merlin himself couldn't have stopped the reaction once it started."
Severus sulks. He walks around the bathroom, glares at various things, and mumbles under his breath. Myrtle waits.
She waits for the inevitable question.
Why do you never leave your bathroom? he's going to ask, and she won't have an answer for him.
She can't leave. That's just how it is. She belongs here, in the bathroom, and that will remain true for however long she'll be a ghost. Possibly forever.
Severus stops walking in circles. He looks up at her, sighs, and rubs the bridge of his nose.
"Sorry about your bathroom. I'll fix it up. It can't stay in that state."
"It can," Myrtle says. "It resembles me more now." She flicks her finger at one of the largest holes. "The damage is all visible."
Severus' mouth flattens into a thin line. He doesn't say anything.
He visits her more often.
Third year comes along.
Severus' interest in Potions deepens, and he starts correcting his textbook, rewriting instructions he deems faulty. He's right most of the time. Of course, Slughorn still has his students use The Standard Book of Potions Making, which was written somewhere in the 1930s, and which Myrtle had herself as a textbook. There's been tons of advancement in brewing techniques since then.
"It's ridiculous that we're using textbooks so old they're practically falling to pieces," he rants as he uses Reparo on a ragged page.
"It's about as old as I am."
"...how old are you?"
"You never asked," she says with a giggle, and swoops in front of him. "How old do you think I am?"
"I think you're about my age."
"Close. I'm fourteen. But I'm also forty-four."
"That's old," he says after a beat. "That's… that's about my mum's age."
He tells her about Eileen. She doesn't recall anyone by that name during her living time as Hogwarts, but she didn't pay much attention to people. They may have crossed paths in the corridors. Eileen definitely knew of her as a ghost since she told Severus about the haunted bathroom.
"Do you still want to be friends now that you know how old I am?" she says, bracing herself for the worst.
"I fear the Sorting Hat might have made a mistake when it sent you to Ravenclaw, because that's a truly idiotic question."
Myrtle smiles.
One night of January, he misses their rendez-vous. Myrtle worries. What if something happened to him? What if he's in the Hospital Wing, writhing in pain, or unconscious, or… or worse? She flits about the bathroom, flying up and down, imagining all sorts of terrible scenarios. Water bursts in sudden geysers from the toilets every time she zooms above a row of stalls.
She should go check.
She really should go check, but that means leaving the bathroom, and that's terrifying.
She didn't use to have this problem. She left it without issue when she decided to torment Olive. But that was decades ago, and it seems ghosts are not immune to forming habits. Bad habits. Unhealthy attachments to the place where they died.
(why must she be like this?)
She doesn't go check.
She waits in her bathroom. Waits for the outside world to come to her.
It does, eventually.
Severus shows up the next day, healthy and not in any danger at all.
"Sorry about yesterday. Lily wanted to go over the lesson for the Transfiguration exam tomorrow, and I didn't see the time until it was too late."
"I worried."
Two words that say a lot.
"I can defend myself," Severus says, bristling, flexing his wand hand in some kind of demonstration of how quick his draw is. "I'm getting better every day."
"This Lily must be someone very special to make you forget our meetings. Your best friend?"
His face lights up.
"We grew up together. She's Muggleborn, and she's brilliant. I told you about her when we first met..."
He keeps talking, and tells her all about Lily Evans. His crush on her is blindingly obvious.
Myrtle wonders how that will turn out.
"What do you know about werewolves?"
"They're normal people except for one night a month, when they turn into rabid creatures who kill anything they see. Understandably, that leads most wizards to distrust them, even though they're normal otherwise."
"Have you ever met one?"
"No."
"Could there be one at the school?"
Myrtle frowns.
"Among the students? Or the professors? That would be hard to hide."
"How would you do it? If you were a werewolf and you had to hide."
There's a strange light in Severus' eyes—the spark of obsession. He gets this look whenever he's working on a potion, or a spell he wants to craft, or when he's deep into those books he smuggled out of the Restricted Section of the library.
Myrtle doesn't understand this new werewolf fixation.
"I'd pretend I have very heavy period, maybe. That takes care of the 'once a month' explanation. But I'd need to be restrained during the night, so as a professor, maybe I could burrow in my rooms and chain myself up… which would be unconscionably dangerous. As a student, there's no simple solution. And you'd have to involve the Headmaster either way."
"Say you're a student. And a boy."
"Then I pretend to be ill every month? But that's a really weak excuse, and people are bound to notice eventually."
"You'd think they would, yes."
"Are you saying there's a werewolf here? At Hogwarts?"
But he refuses to speak further on the subject.
One more summer goes by. Myrtle spends it staring off into space, waiting for Severus to come back. Peeves teases her about it.
"Pimply Myrtly's got a crush, does she? Getting her knickers in a twist over a boy, ending up all sad and gloomy when he's away!"
She pretends she can't hear him.
He's wrong, anyway. She's not crushing on Severus. He's simply her only friend, and she is a very lonely ghost.
Severus comes back taller. Much taller. Puberty hit him hard over the summer, and he's gained several inches. His voice is changing, too. He seems to be self-conscious about it because he's speaking differently, in a lower register.
Fifth year.
Myrtle never go that far.
It's the year of the OWLs, and Severus takes them seriously. He's always revising, scribbling away in his notebook, or complaining about James Potter. Their rivalry existed from the start, and Myrtle is no stranger to the refrain of 'Potter is a wanker' and other assorted insults, but this year it has ignited hotter and fiercer than ever.
Myrtle surmises it has to do with one Lily Evans.
Given the way Severus talks about her, things are strained between them as well.
"She doesn't think it's strange," he says out of the blue one evening. "That Lupin is always sick on the full moon. She says there could be loads of reason, and that I want to be right because it would make me feel good."
That's a lot to unpack.
"Lupin?" Myrtle says, choosing to start simple.
"The werewolf," he says, and he shows her a list of dates he's written down. "See? That's all the full moons of last year, plus the start of this year, and he was conveniently sick every single time!"
"And his name is Lupin?"
"Remus," Severus says with an uptick to his lips.
"So his last name sounds close to 'lupine', his first name is the same as one of the twins who founded Rome and were famously saved by a she-wolf who gave them her milk, and he's a werewolf. That's either the most unfortunate coincidence of them all, or someone is playing a prank on you."
Severus looks vindicated.
"You see it too."
"Of course I see it! It's right in front of everyone's noses. Remus Lupin the werewolf, honestly!"
"Now I just need a way to prove it."
Myrtle shakes her head and swoops close to Severus, getting in his face.
"You will not! You're right and we both know that, which is enough. Now promise me you'll stay away from this furry disaster."
Severus exhales in a huff.
"I promise," he says, and he looks so earnest saying it, too.
Myrtle will realize later that Severus has become an excellent liar.
Over the course of her ghostly existence, Myrtle has overhead many conversations. Voices resonate in the corridor outside her bathroom, carrying quantities of words to her, week after week, year after year. She has never cared for any of them. Students complaining about the essays they have to write, about the detentions they got, about their professors and their teaching methods; gossip about who is dating you; speculations on who will win the next Quidditch match; insults flying back and forth between parties—it's all meaningless to her.
Until one night, and one particular conversation.
A boy, talking about Severus.
"Snape's been sneaking around lately. Wanker's trailing his greasy nose all over the place."
"The usual," answers another boy. He sounds bored and arrogant, and Myrtle pictures him strutting down the corridor. "He knows we have a secret, and he's hoping to catch us in the act to go cry foul to Dumbledore. Won't happen."
"Not after tonight, it won't."
A pause.
"Sirius. What did you do?"
"Nothing."
"What the fuck did you do?"
"Alright, alright. I might have let it slip how to get past the Whomping Willow. So what? He'll just get a good scare. Probably shit in his drawers at the first glimpse of Moony, because let's be honest, he's terrifying..."
The other boy answers something that contains more profanities, but they've already moved far enough away that it doesn't reach Myrtle clearly. Then both voices fade into the distance.
Ghosts, by definition, cannot feel. They don't have a body anymore, which means no glands to produce hormones, no veins to carry adrenaline, no nervous system to light up and scream in distress. They can't feel their insides squeeze into a tight ball, and have the impression that the world is both speeding up and slowing down, everything suspended in that one awful moment.
But Myrtle does.
Maybe it's a trick of sensory memory, or maybe it's for some other reason she can't guess at right now, it doesn't matter.
She lets out a vicious curse.
"Fuck!"
(yes, that's vicious by her standards)
She flies in a tight circle, once, twice, a third time. The pipes groan, water rushing through them as it echoes her state of mind.
"I have to warn him. I have to warn him, I have to warn him—"
Which means stepping out of her bathroom.
She has to do it. Severus is in danger! He promised her he would leave Lupin alone, but Lily was right when she said he wants to prove he's right so he feels good about it. However he'll justify it in his head, he'll go past whatever that Whomping Willow is to confirm that Lupin—Moony, really?—is a werewolf.
And tonight is a full moon.
A beautiful full moon, glowing silver in the sky, cutting sharp shadows on the floor.
"I'm doing it," Myrtle whispers.
She starts by popping her head through the door. That's safe. She's done it hundreds of time before. There. Now she needs to go out into the corridor. Go find her best friend. Warn him of his impending death by werewolf claws. Save his stupid arse!
She takes a full breath—or the memory of a full breath, relived—that doesn't have any purpose other than steadying her resolve.
And she's off.
Zooming down the corridor, heading down, straight through the Great Hall and out the main doors. Then she's outside. It's dark, cloudy, and probably freezing. Good thing she's a ghost and doesn't care about any of that. Taking a bit of altitude, she locates a large tree which wasn't there in her student days. It does look like a willow, branches dripping down with foliage, except it's got a distinct air of hostility around it, and as Myrtle gets closer, one of the branches snaps in her direction and punches right through her.
She flies straight down.
Through a tunnel there beneath the roots, a tunnel whose entrance has recently been used!
Footprints in the mud lead deeper in. He stumbled in his haste, Lumos lighting the way. Myrtle navigates by her own ghostly light. Where does this lead? And where is Severus? She doesn't dare shout. Werewolves have very keen ears.
The tunnel narrows until anyone taller than a first-year would have to crawl through, then widens again. Myrtle zooms through at light speed.
(okay, no, not at 186 000 miles per second, but pretty damn close)
If she had a body, she'd slam into him. Since she doesn't, she goes through him and whirls around to glare. It's his glare she's using, borrowed from his severe face and his expressive eyebrows. Less impressive on her face, but still.
"What are you doing here?" is his reaction, far too incensed for someone this close to being werewolf food.
"I came to save you," Myrtle whispers back urgently, "since it seems your brain has vacated your skull. What do you think you're doing sneaking in here—wherever here is—"
"The Shrieking Shack," he says in a self-evident tone.
"—on a full moon, while you very strongly suspect this Lupin bloke is a werewolf. Your pride isn't worth your life, Severus!"
His lips thin. He sets his jaw and takes a step through her. She would be insulted if she wasn't so worried for him.
There's a creak of wood somewhere up ahead. Myrtle glimpses a wall of half-rotten planks on their right, and the shape of a corridor leading further into the building. Severus takes another step in that direction, fingers tight around his wand, Lumos reduced to a weak gleam.
"Severus," she whispers between clenched teeth. "Severus, please."
"I just need to see it."
"No, you don't. You really don't."
She places herself in his way again.
"I left my bathroom for you, because I overhead some boys talking about you. They said you'd be terrified to see Moony. Now I ask you, what else could he be but a werewolf? A were-mooncalf? Those don't even exist. We both know you're right, that's enough, let's go."
"He'll be chained up—"
"And if he isn't?"
From the darkness comes a sniffing inhale. Then a growl, which says 'werewolf' so loudly they both go very still. Shuffling noises follow, large paws creaking upon aged wood.
Myrtle doesn't hear any chains.
So close to Severus, her light illuminating his face in detail, she sees his emotions play out in real time, from oh fuck to I should run.
"Go," she mouths silently. "I'll distract him."
But she never gets the chance.
The wall of rotten planks explodes outward, and the beast lunges at Severus.
One furry arm extends, claws swiping the air. Claws that are going to intersect with Severus' throat. He's off-balance, he won't react in time. Myrtle grabs at him, wishing for a miracle, for her arm to turn solid and her hand to catch fabric.
It doesn't.
Another hand springs out of the darkness, closes on Severus' cowl, and yanks. The claws slice only air as Severus stumbles back into the boy who just saved his life.
"RUN, RUN!" Myrtle says.
They scamper off, sort of clinging to each other as they smash through speed records. Myrtle stands in the path of the werewolf. He ignores her entirely, barreling through her and pursuing his meal. Severus and the boy reach the tunnel, squeeze themselves in, and escape the death zone. The beast roars. It tries to dig through the earth, powerful claws raking through the mud, shoveling dirt, but he'd need to make a hole twice his size to have any hope of fitting in.
"You're no going anywhere," Myrtle informs him.
He gives up after a moment, whining sadly at the hole his dinner fled through. Sniffling, he turns big, watery eyes onto Myrtle. He shifts to his feet, approaches her, and opens his massive jaw to very deliberately close it on her.
Another whine follows.
There's an animal intelligence in those eyes, and a mind that wonders how come he can't eat her.
"Sorry. I'm already very dead, you can't make me any deader."
The werewolf throws back his head and howls.
Myrtle leaves him there, in his prison that is decidedly not secure enough. Who came up with the plan to have him hide out there with only an angry tree for protection? She'd like to have a word with them.
She catches up with Severus outside.
"...didn't need your help! What do you think you're doing, anyway? Did remorse hit you after Black tricked me, uh? You thought you'd play hero and rescue me, is that it?"
"It sure looked like you did need my help back there," the other boy says, and waves the hand he saved Severus with.
"So you couldn't stomach having my death on your conscience. Should I start clapping? Hurrah, the great James Potter has located one shred of moral fiber within the cesspool of his arrogance."
Potter rolls his eyes.
"I never wanted you dead, Snape. Not to mention what that would have done to Moony..."
"Oh, the werewolf would be devastated. Clearly that's the greater concern, and not my imminent demise."
"He would have savaged you," Potter says in a very calm, very flat voice. "He would have eaten you while you were still alive, Snape, and then he would have sucked the marrows from your bones. There would have been nothing left of you. And then Moony would have awakened next morning in a pool of blood, the taste of human flesh still on his tongue. What do you think that would have done to him?"
"Maybe Black should have thought about that before sending me to my death," Severus hisses back.
"He didn't send you to your death, for Merlin's sake. He only wanted to scare you. It was a prank! A stupid prank."
"Are you perhaps touched in the head?" Myrtle says, floating down to Potter's level.
"What?"
"That can happen in pureblood families, when they interbred over generations. Down the centuries, the flaws compound, which sometimes result in faulty offsprings who have NOTHING IN THEIR HEAD!"
Yes, she screamed the last four words. Right in his face, too.
He jumps back, looking utterly bewildered.
"Why is Moaning Myrtle here?"
He looks at Severus, waiting for an answer. When it doesn't come, he stares back at Myrtle.
"I thought you couldn't leave your bathroom," he says.
"I usually don't, but someone threatened my friend's life, so I had to try and save him."
Friend, Potter mouths, frowning even more.
"But you're a ghost," he says. "How could you save anyone?"
(it's a question she'll ask herself, over and over and over)
(one day she'll have the answer)
As they near the castle, they run into a professor Myrtle doesn't know, a middle-aged witch with piercing eyes and a harsh slant to her mouth. She coldly informs them it's past curfew and they shouldn't be outside at this hour. Severus and Potter exchange a glance.
Keep your mouth shut, Potter is clearly saying with his eyes.
Severus doesn't.
"I need to see the Headmaster."
"I'm sure that can wait until tomorrow, Mister Snape."
"No, it can't. This is about the werewolf that nearly killed me moments ago."
The witch pales, though she doesn't look surprised, only appalled.
"Are you alright? Were you injured? Did his claws graze you in any way?"
"I'm fine."
He is not. He is still trembling, and Myrtle knows that face on him—it's the prelude to an explosive rant.
The witch promptly takes them to Dumbledore.
The Headmaster's office has changed in thirty years. There are a multitude of silver instruments ticking away on the shelves, far more mirrors than there was in her time, and a phoenix sleeping on its perch. Dumbledore welcomes them with a grave expression that only gets graver when Severus explains what happened.
"Lupin should be expelled! He's a danger to everyone, even to himself! I honestly can't fathom why you're willing to accept such a risk for the sake of one student. And Black—Black tried to murder me."
"He didn't," Potter mutters.
Severus whirls on him.
"He knew what he was doing when he told me how to get past the tree!"
"So he gave you a piece of information. That doesn't make him a potential murderer. You went into that tunnel all by yourself, Snape. Black didn't hold your hand, and he didn't push you down there."
"He might as well have!"
Dumbledore lifts a hand in a way that carries such effortless authority the two boys instantly fall silent. He asks the witch—Professor McGonagall, apparently—to fetch Sirius Black, and thenasks for the three boys to sit down. Black does, sending a dark glare in Severus' direction. Myrtle glares at him in kind. Dumbledore says he's sorry for what Severus went through. He extends his sympathies, and tells him that Madam Pomfrey will check him over to ensure he is hale and healthy. He scolds Black for his actions, praises Potter for his quick thinking and the bravery he demonstrated by going into that tunnel after Severus, and even has a word for Myrtle, whom he calls 'a stout companion'.
It's all said very earnestly and with warmth, and Myrtle starts thinking that maybe Dumbledore is not such a bad bloke, that maybe Severus was wrong when he told her he was biased and always favored Gryffindors.
Then Dumbledore says nothing will change.
"There is nowhere else for Mister Lupin to finish his education. He must remain at Hogwarts if he is to have a future at all. The system we came up with, while not foolproof as we saw tonight, stood for five years without fault. And so it will continue to stand, for it must."
He looks at Severus, a kind twinkle in his eyes.
"I do hope that you find it in yourself to forgive Mister Lupin. In his beast form, he is no more capable of thought than any hungry animal. It was not him who lunged at you tonight; it was the wolf."
"I know how werewolves work," Severus mutters.
"Then why'd you go looking for one?" says Black, with a mean twist to his mouth.
"He's dangerous, Headmaster," Severus says. "What if it had been another student who went down that tunnel tonight? Someone exploring on their own? Then Potter wouldn't have been there, and you'd have a murder on your hands."
"Fortunately for us all, Potter was here, and you are alive," Dumbledore says, steepling his hands. "Mister Lupin deserves a chance to live a life as free of prejudices as possible. As do we all. We can give him that chance. We will."
He asks Severus to keep Lupin's secret—a secret only the professors and Lupin's three close friends are privy to.
"And if I don't?" Severus says, visibly bristling at the request.
Potter and Black throw him twin venomous looks.
"I would confess myself very disappointed," Dumbledore says.
"Fine," Severus spits. "I swear I won't tell."
Dumbledore nods. Then he looks at Myrtle.
"Miss Warren?"
"Yes?"
"Will you swear as well?"
"Me? But—but I'm a ghost."
I'm not important, is what she means.
"I'm well aware, Miss Warren. Yet you are a part of this, as much as anyone else here."
You are part of this.
How different it feels from How could you save anyone?
"I swear," she says.
Dumbledore gives her a nod in return. She finds herself quite liking him.
Severus is in a foul mood the next few weeks. He rants against Dumbledore, the old fool, and against Potter and his friends, the privileged Gryffindors who can get away with everything. Myrtles listens, nods at the right moments, and tries to distract him with questions about potions or spell trivia whenever he starts to lose himself in his anger.
Eventually, he pivots to revising for this OWLs. Myrtle quizzes him for hours on different subjects, reading from the textbooks. He's very good. Brilliant, really. If he keeps up, she can see him becoming a wizard of great renown. A world-famous potioneer, perhaps. He certainly has the inclinations. He's also created several spells, which is even more impressive.
"You're going to do great things," she tells him.
"I will be known as the Half-Blood Prince," he says, grinning.
She doesn't have the heart to tell him he might come to regret such a flashy nickname.
The door creaks.
Myrtle turns away from the window and floats up in the air, smiling as Severus strides in, bag slung over his shoulder. He's wearing a grim expression, face shuttered, eyes flat.
Oh no.
"Did the exam go that badly?"
He doesn't reply. He drops his bag on the floor, takes a few more steps, and sits down.
He buries his head in his hand
"Severus?"
He says something muffled and inaudible.
"What's wrong?"
"I fucked up."
"However bad it was, it won't drag down your global score by that much. And Binns is usually very forgiving, so even if you got a few dates wrong, or even most of the dates wrong, you'll still pull ahead."
"Not the exam. Fuck, who cares about the fucking exam."
He lifts his head to meet her eyes, and Myrtle realizes her initial assessment was way off.
He's not grim.
He's stricken.
Devastated, wrecked, undone.
He has been dealt a mortal blow and he's now leaking blood on the bathroom floor.
(metaphorically)
"What happened?" Myrtle asks, bracing herself for the worst.
"I called her a Mudblood."
It's not what she expected. She thought it was going to be something like I'll be expelled or I killed someone.
"I called her a Mudblood, fuck," he repeats.
He drops his head in his hands again. His shoulders tremble. Myrtle sits down in front of him.
"It can be fixed," she says.
"No. No, it can't."
"She might forgive you."
"She won't."
"She might."
He looks at her from between his fingers.
"I called her a Mudblood, in front of a dozen people, while she was trying to help me. That's not forgivable."
Myrtle winces.
"See?" he says. "Even you thinks it's horrible, and you're from a time period where that word was probably on everyone's lips."
"I've been called that," Myrtle acknowledges. "Actually, the first time it happened, the boy paused to fully explain what it meant, because he wanted me to know just how badly he'd insulted me. Anyway..."
There a stretch of silence, only broken by the distant drip of water.
"What did you use that word?"
"My friends use it all the time. They're—they're crass on purpose, and they think it's funny, and that's just how things are."
"Slytherins?"
He nods.
"All purebloods. It's part of their vocabulary. I never said it. But today—today I wanted to hurt her, and I was furious. So it came out."
He presses his clenched fists against his temples and lets out a sound of raw frustration. Then he looks at her.
"What do I do?"
"You talk to her. Apologize. And pray she forgives you."
"I talked to her."
"What did she say?"
"That she'd made excuses for me for too long. That she can't understand why I'm friends with Avery and Mulciber. That she can't forgive me."
"I'm sorry."
"Maybe it's for the best. Maybe she was holding me back."
Myrtle can recognize someone trying to convince themselves of a falsehood.
"Maybe," she says anyway.
Severus sinks further into the Dark Arts. His friendship with Lily severed, there's nothing holding him back from spending more time with his Slytherin friends, and he does, copiously. He doesn't tell Myrtle. She sees him with them, during her brief outings. Brief, because she doesn't dare leave her bathroom often yet.
But it's enough to get a rough picture of what's going on in the castle, and what she sees isn't reassuring. People are scared. Groups are forming among the students, rifts opening between purebloods and the others. There's talk of a rising Dark Lord.
Myrtle can only hope Severus will stay away.
That he won't be tempted by the promise of power, that he'll be smarter than to hand his future to someone—anyone—who calls himself a Dark Lord.
He smiles less. He's grown more tense, more dour. His obsession with crafting his own spells burns brigther, and he dedicates more time to that while refusing to tell Myrtle any details. One day, she glimpses an incantation scribbled in the pages of his Potions textbook.
"Sectumsempra?"
"That one will be my masterpiece."
"What does it do?"
"It cuts."
And he doesn't elaborate.
Their friendship isn't exactly strained, but he's more distant. More busy. They spent less time together.
Myrtle worries she's losing him.
"I've got an opportunity."
There's a gleam in his eyes. Something fervid, a bit mad.
"An opportunity to join a special group of people," he goes on when Myrtles remains silent. "To work with them, to gain access to a veritable wealth of knowledge. A one-in-a-lifetime chance."
He steps closer when she still doesn't respond.
"Do you understand what this means?"
"Yes. I understand all too well, Severus. You want to join that Dark Lord everyone's talking about."
He flinches. It's very subtle, very restrained. He's gotten so good at hiding his emotional reactions, but she's gotten good at reading him, too.
"He's not a Dark Lord. It's just a title. It doesn't mean what you think it does."
"I've lived through the Grindelwald years, but please, do lecture me on what a Dark Lord is."
She flies at him, stopping inches short of his face. This time, he doesn't flinch. She's pulled this move too often on him, playfully. But she's not playful today.
"Is he not planning to seize power? Does he not desire the subjugation of all Muggles? Mmh? What about speeches on his incredible power? Yes? Yes, Severus, I can read it in your eyes. Dark. Lord."
"You're making it sound so black and white. It's more complicated than that. It's about power, and pushing back the boundaries of magic. It's about refusing to be constrained by rules created by wizards so old and senile they're practically crumbling to dust! He has incredible ideas, Myrtle, ideas you would see are brilliant! His work in the field of curative Potions is nothing short of revolutionary, and would be recognized as such if he wasn't shunned by nearly the entire magical community."
She knows that look on him. That passionate spark. It's not theoretical.
"You've met him."
"Only once."
"He must be pretty convincing if you're ready to join him after one little speech."
He flushes, the very tips of his ears turning red. Myrtle abruptly flashes back to a tiny first-year Severus, blushing in the exact same manner. She wishes he were that small again, wishes he didn't know how hard the world was, wasn't forced to make awful choices.
"I don't have the money," he says, the words brimming with deep-rooted self-hatred, the kind that festers over a lifetime. "But he can help. He said he could get me any ingredients I needed, and a proper tutor in Potions. Things I can never hope to get otherwise."
Myrtles shakes her head.
"You can be great on your own. You don't need him."
There is a pause. He looks away, breaking eye contact.
"You're right. I don't."
But she knows he's lying.
They keep meeting.
Outwardly, nothing changes. They both pretend everything is fine. He doesn't raise the Dark Lord subject again. She doesn't ask him if he did it, if he joined the Death Eaters.
They talk of potions, of spells, of stupid things the Gryffindors did. Severus revises for his NEWTs and she helps, learning things along with him. Ghosts have a very good memory, courtesy of their undead state, so what she reads once, she recalls forever. She died in her third year, but academically, she knows as much as any seventh year by now.
"You could pass your NEWTs in my stead," Severus says one night.
It's very late—so late that it's nearly morning. They've pulled an all-nighter to cram the entire History of Magic program into Severus' head.
"Mmh," Myrtle says, idly twirling a lock of hair. "I'm sure the professors will see nothing wrong when I pretend to be Severus Snape. Surely they will all be fooled."
He grunts and rubs at his eyes.
"Then pass your NEWTs, period."
"Exams aren't open to ghosts."
"They're open to any students of Hogwarts. Technically, you're a student. Nowhere in the rules does it say you have to be alive."
"Really?" Myrtle says, leaning forward.
"I checked," he says through a yawn. "So—if you want—"
"But what purpose would that serve? Other than to brag about being the first ghost to get her NEWTs…"
"Aren't you a Ravenclaw? Knowledge for knowledge's sake, and all that."
Myrtle crosses her arms.
"We've talked about how wrong it is to oversimplify House traits, Severus."
He grins at her.
"Gryffindors are all boring goody two-shoes," he says.
She glares.
"Hufflepuffs are loyal, overtly friendly, and they love cooking," he goes on.
"I'm going to die. You're going to kill me again."
"And Slytherins are ambitious, cunning and resourceful, and the best and smartest, of course."
"Dead," Myrtle says, and dramatically lets herself splat to the floor.
"What a shame. I'll have to revise Transfiguration all on my own, and I will fail because I was ill-prepared." He sighs, equally as dramatic. "Help me, Myrtle. You're my only hope."
She wiggles on the floor.
"Can't. I'm dead."
"Noted. You will be solely responsible for my failings."
"It's a cross I'll have to bear."
He yawns again and reaches for his bag, stuffing his books back in.
"See you tomorrow. Or more accurately later today. Fuck, I need to take a nap."
"See you soon, Sev."
Myrtle toys with the idea. Going to Dumbledore, asking him to let her pass her NEWTs, to see if she could, to conclude her journey as a Hogwarts students. She thinks about it a lot.
But she doesn't go through with it.
Severus gets excellent grades—five Os, which is the best score possible. They celebrate together, sitting under the stars on top of the Astronomy Tower. He's brought a bottle of Firewhiskey and drinks directly from it. She sits with her feet dangling in the void, looking down at the drop, pretending gravity means something to her.
"Do you want to try some?" he says, offering her the bottle.
"I know your brain is all smushed up after two weeks of intense cramming, but I'm a ghost, remember?"
"You can still taste things, provided the taste is strong enough. I've been told rotten meat works best, but alcohol qualifies. The Bloody Baron loves standing in the secret alcohol stash in our dorms. We've had to shoo him away quite a few times."
Myrtle didn't know that. She hasn't really explored her ghost condition.
"I just need to stand on it?"
"You take it into your body, and uh, I don't know. Ghostly stuff happens."
They try it. Severus sets the bottle inside her. And… some sort of sensation comes to her. It's not exactly taste. It's reminiscent of it, like something you'd get in a dream where you're eating and your brain knows something is associated with food and attempts to recreate the feeling. It's not unpleasant. Myrtle hums to herself, enjoying it.
"I'm not done with it," she says when Severus reaches inside her to get the bottle.
"One second."
He takes a mouthful, then another, and places the bottle back.
"Is there a ghost taste?" Myrtle asks.
"No."
"Good. That would be weird."
"Very weird," he says, laughing.
They pass the bottle back and forth, and although Myrtle has never gotten drunk, she imagines it would be a bit like that—laughing, making stupid jokes, feeling like the world is lighter and her soul is freer, sharing a warm moment with her friend.
And then the last day of school comes.
"I guess this is goodbye."
He stands tall and rigid next to the sink. His robes are impeccably tailored, fitting him to a T. His greasy hair is tied back at his nape with a ribbon, the way purebloods wear their hair. He's still thin and gaunt, but he's grown into it, wearing his sharp cheekbones and his large nose with more confidence.
"I guess so," Myrtle says.
"Unless you want to visit."
Leaving her bathroom still takes an effort. Leaving the castle? Even the thought itself is daunting.
"Maybe," she says.
She doesn't ask where he lives. He doesn't tell her.
(he must knows her maybe is really a no)
They exchange a few inconsequential remarks, idle chatter that goes right through her and that she will not recall.
"Thank you," he says, right on the tail of such a remark. "For being my friend."
"Thank you for being mine."
He looks around, hesitating.
"Will you please keep my secrets?"
She knows so many of them.
Knows him so very well.
Severus Snape, who once set fire to this bathroom trying to brew Liquid Luck. Author of several spells, including a very dark one. The Half-Blood Prince. Death Eater.
"I will. You don't have to worry, Severus. I won't tell a soul."
He thanks her again.
Smiles.
And then he leaves.
The door closes on him, the flap of his dark cloak the last thing Myrtle sees of him.
"Who would listen to Moaning Myrtle anyway?" she says in the ringing silence of the bathroom.
She is alone.
One year.
Two years.
Three...
She mostly remains in her bathroom, and wanders the castle when in the mood for it.
There is nothing new. The students are the same. The way they speak is different, but they're similar to the students of her time, and similar to the students of twenty years ago. They're cruel, they're hopeful, they're idiots, they're impatient, they're horny. The professors are the same too, trying to hoard the little monsters while clinging onto the hope that they can teach them something.
Sometimes some students come in her bathroom to bother her, call her names, throws things at her. She drenches them in water and they flee.
Then she hides in the stall where she died and cries.
It's August again. 1981. Not that the date means anything to her.
She's floated up to the Astronomy Tower, and now she stands under the stars, looking up at them. They spread in a glowing tapestry, the Milky Way slashing across the night in a lustrous ribbon.
What would happen if she flew higher? If she traversed the atmosphere, reached the edge of space, and kept going? Gravity isn't a concern. She could leave Earth, go to the Moon, go further than any human being has ever gone.
Could she fly to the sun?
Would she die, then? Cease to exist in some way? Or would she lose her way, unable to pinpoint Earth ever again, doomed to drift eternally in the solar system?
"Beautiful night for a bit of stargazing."
Ghost can't jump out of their skin, but Myrtle startles nonetheless. She turns to encounter Dumbledore's smile. He's wearing purple, flowery robes along with a bright red necktie and a droopy hat—fashion that went out of style approximately twenty years before Myrtle was born.
"Do you mind if I join you, Miss Warren?"
"No."
"Wonderful."
He sets his hands on the parapet, looking truly delighted to be here.
They both look at the sky.
Dumbledore, Myrtle quickly finds out, has this odd quality about him that makes you feel like he's listening to you even when you're not saying anything. It makes you want to talk. It's insidious, in a kind way. She isn't sure how she feels about it.
"The sun is 93 million miles away," she says.
"Is it? My goodness, that's a lot of miles."
"It's so far way that light, the fastest thing in the universe, takes eight minutes to travel between Earth and Sun."
"So would you," Dumbledore says mildly.
Myrtle floats a little bit higher.
"Has anyone ever gone that far?"
"I confess I don't know. If anyone has, they haven't been back to talk about it."
"I could be the first."
Dumbledore emits faint disapproval, again without talking. How is he doing that? Myrtle would like to learn that skill.
"You could," he says after a moment. "You would be missed."
"By who?" she challenges.
"Myself, for a start. And Severus, of course."
"He's gone."
If she weren't a ghost, the words would be painful, but she is, so they're not.
(they are not)
"He will be coming back this September as a professor. Horace is finally retiring, and I have offered Severus the post of Potions Master. He accepted."
He's coming back?
Severus is coming back.
She floats back down slowly.
Flying to the sun doesn't sound so appealing now.
"I thought he wanted to do something else in his life," she remarks. "I never pictured him as a teacher."
"I'm quite certain he never pictured himself as such either. Circumstances being what they are, this is the path he's chosen to walk for now."
"No," Myrtle says. "No, it doesn't make sense. He doesn't have the patience for teaching! He hates when people are slow to understand something, and he's terrible at explaining things simply. He'll be a horrible teacher."
"Be that as it may, he will be a teacher."
She's starting to see another side to Dumbledore. The manipulative man, tugging at strings behind the scene.
"What did you offer him?"
"What he needed," Dumbledore says as if it's that simple.
"You blackmailed him."
He doesn't deny it.
"Severus is in a precarious position. I am doing what I can for him, shielding him from adverse interest."
"And in exchange, he'll spy for you."
He doesn't deny that either.
"You have a very keen mind, Miss Warren."
"Skip the flattery. You're using Severus in your fight against that Dark Lord, and you don't care what happens to him! You're making him pay for his mistakes!"
Dumbledore sighs as he runs his fingers through his beard.
"Severus offered himself to be used. I merely accepted. I am doing what I must. Voldemort is winning," he says, darkness shadowing his features. "He's gaining more and more power every day, people flocking to him. We will be swallowed up by the tide if we don't act."
Voldemort.
She's heard that name being whispered in the corridors. Another rising Dark Lord, so soon after Grindelwald.
"Can't you stop him like you stopped Grindelwald?" she says.
The question has a strange effect on Dumbledore. It settles over him and seems to leave him fifty years older.
"Alas, I cannot."
"Can I help?"
"You already have," he says with a subtle smile.
He tips his head at her.
"Good night, Miss Warren."
Myrtle remains here until morning, and watches the sun rise.
Severus is coming back.
He looks older.
Older, wearier, and sadder.
What has happened to him during those three years? What has he seen? What has he done?
She doesn't ask.
"Welcome back," she says. "Hogwarts missed you."
(I missed you)
"And I missed it."
She's come to greet him in the Great Hall. Dumbledore is there as well, telling Severus about his duties as a professor, showing him the staff room, then his office. At the end of the tour, he sets a hand on Severus' shoulder.
"You made the right choice," he says.
Severus nods stiffly.
Once Dumbledore is gone, Myrtle takes a good at Severus. She sees what she has missed earlier, what Severus is masterfully concealing. He's afraid.
He's terrified, and he's leveraging every mental trick he has to hold back the emotion that's threatening to bury him alive.
"Will you be alright?"
"I have to," he says, jaw clenching.
He fiddles with the top button of his coat. It's new. Long, black, tight over his chest. It has buttons everywhere for some reason, along his chest, but also down the sleeves and at his ankles. The whole thing goes well with his dragonhide boots. Visually, it's striking. It will impress the students.
"What are you thinking?" she asks, zooming around the office.
It used to be Slughorn's, filled to the brim with knickknacks and trinkets, old photos of his former pupils and newspaper clippings from their various exploits. Now the walls are bare, the floor freshly scrubbed, the expensive furniture gone.
"Curtains to brighter up the place?" she suggests.
"Jars on shelves, each one containing the head of a misbehaving student."
Poor students. They will come to fear Professor Snape. They will hate him, too.
"Give them various colors and make them glow spookily," she says. "Maybe add a wand next to one. They'll think you took a trophy from your victim."
He smiles, and it is nasty.
"We should get to work if this place is to resemble a proper office by the time the students arrive."
He raises his wand and gives it a flick.
Professor Snape acquires an instant reputation. Even the students who are a few years younger than him and therefore knew him as a student fear him. He is exactly the kind of teacher Myrtle thought he would be—strict, demanding, impatient.
But he gets results. The students learn. Some brew great potions, and others fail, exactly as it was with Slughorn. Myrtle catches whispers in the corridors, students muttering they miss him. She'd choose Slughorn over Severus as a Potions teacher, too. He would have intimidated her so much she would have been essentially useless. Still, there are worse teachers in the school. Why on Earth Binns is employed, she doesn't know.
Professor Snape is not a great teacher, but he isn't the worst.
They get two months of relative normalcy.
Then Voldemort kills Lily Potter, and Severus' world shatters.
He becomes a ghost.
Some part of him dies forever, and Myrtle isn't sure what's left will ever recover. He goes through life on automatic pilot. Does things because they must be done. Eats because the body requires sustenance, sleeps because Myrtle tells him to. There's nothing behind his eyes.
He exists in a dead state that clings to him during every moment.
She fights hard against it.
After six months, she gets him to smile (with a really stupid joke about Dumbledore and his beard).
After a year, she manages a laugh (another stupid joke).
Slowly, he warms to life again. Some light creeps back into his eyes. He talks with his colleagues again, more than idle chatter. He pays attention to the students and their problems.
But still, this deadness remains, anchored at his core.
Ten years of Severus as a professor.
She witnesses him grow into the role. She sits around his office while he grades essays and complains about the idiocy of his students. She accompanies him during his rounds, telling him where the students are hiding so he can swoop in like a bat and assign detentions. She spends some time in her bathroom whenever she's not with him, because it's her safe place and she still likes it here.
Ten years of routine, where there is no surprise and no danger.
Ten years of calm before the storm.
And then Harriet Potter comes to Hogwarts.