"I write her a letter
just a few short lines,
and suffer death
a thousand times."
Asteria O'Connor, sole heir of a prestigious wizarding family,
has other plans when the self-proclaimed Marauders decide to
torment her and her housemates.
It's abo...
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aster
"Merlin, I bloody hate Halloween," I proclaim in aggravation to the ghost in front of me.
Myrtle leans against the stall door as I sit myself down on a closed toilet seat lid. She makes a noise of agreement as she picks at her nails. I wonder why because nothing can actually get stuck underneath her nails as she's a ghost and she has an eternity to inspect them.
Why is she avoiding talking to me?
I almost groan in annoyance but keep it to myself by biting the inside of my cheek. "What's wrong, Myrtle?" I ask blatantly, just wanting to get to the answer so that I don't have to put up with her moping anymore.
She turns away from me. "Oh, nothing. Nothing at all." With a roll of my eyes I stand and flatten my skirt with a brush of my hands, preparing to leave. She suddenly looks alarmed. "Hold on where do you think you're going?" she squawks in frustration.
I shrug nonchalantly. "Well if you have nothing to say to me then that's all for now I guess. I'm really quite tired." I yawn to emphasise my point. "Might go to bed early."
She spins around and blocks my exit, attempting to stop me from leaving the small cubicle. I could easily pass right through her but instead I obey and place my hands on my hips impatiently.
It's best to never walk through a ghost. It's deemed as highly disrespectful and downright insulting. I once put my hand through Myrtle's back as a joke to surprise her. It did not go down well. She got really upset – not just the usual Myrtle kind of upset. Oh no. She curled herself into a ball and sobbed in the corner of the bathroom for ages. I felt absolutely awful. It took almost an hour to calm her down and two days to convince her to forgive me.
Apparently if you take a ghost by surprise and they don't know that you're coming, when you do pass through them, they feel your life in their body once more and then it's sucked out of them the second you walk out. The coldness and loneliness they always feel is amplified and it gives them a terrible shock.
"Just tell me, Myrtle. What's up?"
She crosses her arms over her see through self and looks me dead in the eye. Literally. "You said that you'd bring a boy with you. You lied to me. Do you know how long it's been since a boy has actually noticed my presence not just to play pranks on mindless, moping, Moaning Myrtle – the sad ghost girl who died in a toilet? Forever!" she screams in my face.
Just as I'm about to respond Regulus bursts through the door with a loud crash. He bends over and places his hands on his knees, panting heavily.
