The Tale of Azure - Book I: Shades of Green and Blue

Chapter Five: The Strange Girl from Slytherin

Disclaimer: I do not own "Harry Potter", only my original characters.

Trigger warnings: bullying.

Myrtle wasn't expecting that she could hate another person like her sister who had stopped talking to her after she sent her first letter by owl to her family. Yet, she did: Olive Hornby. A girl who Myrtle saw as a blonde replica of Holly: mean, popular and pretty. A girl who would throw hexes to first years and Myrtle because she felt like it. The girl who had killed Gandalf, Myrtle's owl, despite that there was little evidence supporting this theory. The arsenic was a jab at Myrtle's Muggle-born status.

For a Half-blood, Hornby was very disdainful towards Muggle-borns, which had increased her popularity among the Slytherins.

After two years of having one friend, Myrtle reached a conclusion: loneliness was her only true companion that would help her during the remaining years of school. Myrtle could care less for friendship or bonding with students of her own House, despite Minnie's insistence that she should make an effort.

It was easier said than done.

If Myrtle had begun to hate her life at Hogwarts, the Holidays with her family only discouraged her from studying magic, which was mainly caused by Holly. Her twin's acting was as good as her singing voice: to her parents – who remained ignorant of the bullying and her suicide attempts because she had kept it secret – Holly was the "perfect daughter". In short, Holly was not also her younger twin but the apple of her parents' eye. Logically, she was the one who almost the entire family doted on.

However, to Myrtle, she would show her true colours by hitting her harshly when they were alone. The Warren twins grew apart with each day to the point of Holly "accidentally" pushing her into the village's river. Myrtle had almost drowned that day.

The outcome of this burst of magic had been a Ministry letter being sent to her house on the grounds of underage magic.

"Holly ignored me for the rest of the week." She kicked a pebble in anger. "I am sick of it."

Muttering about the unfairness of her life, the Ravenclaw walked down the stone path that led to her latest favourite spot in all of Hogwarts: a centuries-old oak located not too far from the Astronomy Tower. Its shade also served as a nice place to read or rest until the time for dinner, while the bark had small or medium-sized indentations that were typical of someone practising spells.

But the most unsettling thing about this tree's bark was a strange symbol that looked like a triangular eye, the eye being a circle around a straight vertical line. Below it, the sentence "For the Greater Good" had been engraved with magic, a bunch of words that did not make any sense to Myrtle until she read in the newspapers about Grindelwald and his "philosophy" of a better world which basically meant Muggle genocide, reminding her of Hitler and his anti-Jewish (not just Jews, but especially them) views.

Frankly, both men gave her the shivers. She hoped that Grindelwald's capture would not take too long and that the "Muggle World War" – as wizarding newspapers called it – would also end.

Arriving at the tree, Myrtle held closer the book she was carrying and sat in the small portion of uneven soil that was perfect for someone to accommodate themselves. Leaning against the bark, she began reading the book, carefully mimicking the necessary wrist movements to cast spells she was struggling to perform in Professor Merrythought's class. As time went by, her eyelids became heavier...

The last thing she heard before falling asleep was the melodic chirping of nearby sparrows.

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