𝐀𝐈𝐌 𝐎𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐘𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐘┊ᴴᵃʳʳʸ ᴾᵒᵗᵗᵉʳ

29 ✦ 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐶ℎ𝑎𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑆𝑒𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑡𝑠

𓍊𓋼𓍊𓋼𓍊𓍊𓋼𓍊𓋼𓍊

They marched Lockhart out of his office and down the nearest stairs, along the dark corridor where the messages shone on the wall, to the door of Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom.

They sent Lockhart in first. Harry and Crystal were pleased to see that he was shaking.

Moaning Myrtle was sitting on the tank of the end toilet.

“Oh, it’s you guys,” she said when she saw Crystal and Harry. “What do you want this time?”

“To ask you how you died,” said Harry.

Myrtle’s whole aspect changed at once. She looked as though she had never been asked such a flattering question.

“Ooooh, it was dreadful,” she said with relish. “It happened right in here. I died in this very stall. I remember it so well. I’d hidden because Olive Hornby was teasing me about my glasses. The door was locked, and I was crying, and then I heard somebody come in. They said something funny. A different language, I think it must have been. Anyway, what really got me was that it was a boy speaking. So I unlocked the door, to tell him to go and use his own toilet, and then ---” Myrtle swelled importantly, her face shining. “I died.”

“How, Myrtle?” said Crystal.

“No idea,” said Myrtle in hushed tones. “I just remember seeing a pair of great, big, yellow eyes. My whole body sort of seized up, and then I was floating away... ” She looked dreamily at Crystal and then at Harry. “And then I came back again. I was determined to haunt Olive Hornby, you see. Oh, she was sorry she’d ever laughed at my glasses.”

“Where exactly did you see the eyes?” said Crystal.

“Somewhere there,” said Myrtle, pointing vaguely toward the sink in front of her toilet.

Crystal, Harry, and Ron hurried over to it. Lockhart was standing well back, a look of utter terror on his face.

It looked like an ordinary sink. They examined every inch of it, inside and out, including the pipes below. And then Harry saw it: Scratched on the side of one of the copper taps was a tiny snake.

"It's here!" Harry exclaimed, Crystal and Ron, rushed over to him.

“That tap’s never worked,” said Myrtle brightly as Crystal tried to turn it.

“Harry,” said Ron. “Say something. Something in Parseltongue.”

“But ---” Harry thought hard. The only times he’d ever managed to speak Parseltongue were when he’d been faced with a real snake. He stared hard at the tiny engraving, trying to imagine it was real.

“Open up,” he said.

He looked at Ron, who shook his head.

“English,” he said.

"Focus, Harry, it was something like this ---" Crystal tried to imitate some gibberish hissing and there was some sound from the sink behind her as though it shifted a little.

Harry, Ron, Lockhart, and Myrtle all looked at Crystal in shock, whose mouth was open in a bigger shock herself. She slowly turned to look at the sink.

"Guys guys, it's just a coincidence, I just spouted some rubbish," she said and gulped looking at the slight shift in the position of the tap.

"Right, you don't understand what I said in parseltongue," said Harry nodding. "But you said some gibberish among which I could understand a word was 'move',"