It's a Girls' bathroom
Christmas, if anything, was even better than it had been the previous year what with the addition of Hermione to the proceedings. Even if she did waken her at the crack of dawn by bouncing onto her bed like a four year old shouting Merry Christmas to give her a gift - which turned out to be a book on medieval magical history.
"There's a really interesting chapter in it on witch burnings," she informed her as Alice thumbed through the book. Once she had glanced through it she slipped on her dressing gown and dashed to her trunk trying to have her feet make as little contact with the still freezing cold stone slabs of the floor as possible. Hopping from one foot to the other as she eventually located them and made a running leap for the bed again.
"Here you go," she handed over one parcel from the pile she had extracted, "Merry Christmas."
"Thanks Alice!" Hermione enveloped her in one of her hugs after she had unwrapped the expensive quill and ink set. "Come on let's go through and wake up the boys."
Gathering up their gifts, including the several at the bottom of their beds, and making sure that this time they collected their slippers - especially on Alice's part - the two of them made their way along to the boys' dormitory. Initially Ron was rather displeased at finding himself woken rather abruptly at what he still considered an inhumane time, but he soon brightened on spotting the huge pile of presents at the foot of his bed.
"Merry Christmas you two," Harry smiled sleepily as he handed them each a parcel wrapped in brown paper. As Hermione ripped hers open and was exclaiming over the diary and notebook Harry had given her, Alice carefully peeled back the paper on her own to discover a copy of Swooping with the Kestrels: A Complete Quidditch Guide.
"Thanks Harry," she beamed at him. The Kenmare Kestrels had recently become her favourite team. "I love it."
Once they had all opened the rest of their gifts - all four of them had received one of Mrs Weasley's jumpers this year which Alice found quite touching - she and Hermione returned to their own room to get dressed.
"I still can't believe the twins gave that to Harry though," Hermione reproached for the tenth time since Harry had opened the parcel containing the muggle joke snake they had given him.
Alice grinned, "I thought it was funny," her smile broadened, "Harry certainly thought so."
"Yes well…" Hermione sniffed disapprovingly. Apparently Harry didn't know what was good for him.
The rest of Christmas seemed to pass in a blur after that. The four of them spent most of the day having what could only be described as an enormous snowball war across the grounds with the rest of Ron's family; even Percy joined in for a while before retreating inside to warm up by the fire before dinner. The meal in itself was also spectacular and Alice did briefly wonder if Hogwarts tried to outdo itself every festive season. It certainly seemed that way. The Great Hall was a blaze of colour and lights, and despite the relatively tiny number of people who had stayed over Christmas, it seemed full of life. She especially appreciated the fake snow falling from the ceiling. Sitting at the table after they had all stuffed themselves with as much as they could eat Alice glanced along the table.
"What is it?" Harry asked noticing her sudden laughter.
"Well look at us," she indicated the eight of them all wearing Weasley jumpers, "we look like we're at some really weird convention or something!" This was especially true of Harry who had added the baseball cap with the broomstick on the front that she had given him to his ensemble.
"Oi!" Fred Weasley pretended to look offended. "I'll have you know that our Mum's jumpers are the height of fashion!"
"Yeah there's nothing weird about them!"
"Well… except the people wearing them," she pointed out.
"True."
It was all too soon that she found herself stretched out in front of the fire, her new Kestrels book in one hand and a pack of Exploding Snap cards in the other trying to stop her eyes from falling shut.
"How does Christmas always manage to do this?" Ron complained. "You look forward to it for ages and then you blink and it's past." If he had been expecting an answer he must have been sorely disappointed because all he received were some dopey murmurs in response. What he said was all too true though, and before they knew it they had to admit defeat and troop off to bed - they just couldn't keep their eyes open any longer.
The holidays seemed to do the entire school good as when the Hogwarts Express returned the raging fear that had swept the castle seemed to have been dialled back to the thinly veiled nervousness that there had been before Justin's attack. Another, less satisfying, outcome of Christmas seemed to be that Lockhart had regained something of his old spirits. Still you couldn't have everything.
"I've decided to hold a competition," he announced in Defence Against the Dark Arts at the beginning of February, "for the design of the best Valentine's Day card. To get us into the spirit of things a bit." He beamed that sickeningly toothy grin at them all as the girls sitting at the front of the class all began bleating excitedly. Ron smashed his head against the desk.
"It doesn't really have much to do with teaching us Defence though does it?" Neville commented at dinner that night.
Ron swallowed a mouthful of food and pulled a face. "The only thing I want to know how to be able to repel is Lockhart. If Defence Against the Dark Arts can teach me that I'll be happy."
Hermione was taking a different view of things however. "We've still got to do it though. I mean he said it was for house points."
"I thought you'd gone off him," Ron sounded disparaging.
"I have," she threw a less than subtle glance in Harry's direction and flushed a deep crimson. "Of course I have."
"Then why bother? It's only a few house points; who cares if you get them from him?"
"Shut up Ron."
Alice grinned, she really would have to try and find a way to get her two friends to admit they both had a crush on each other - even if it was amusing the way they would blush and stammer whenever they came within two feet of each other and romance was mentioned.
Any half-constructed plans to this effect were driven right out of her head on Valentines Day however on her arrival in the Great Hall. At first she had to check that she hadn't wandered into the wrong room by accident.
"Oh my…." It looked as though a candy-floss machine had exploded.
"Please tell me he's kidding," Ron looked like he was going to be sick.
"Nope," Harry indicated Lockhart himself who was dressed like a stick of pink bubblegum, "unfortunately I think he's deadly serious."
"Happy Valentine's Day!" His jubilant shout echoed around the room as the four of them took their seats next to Neville who was trying to scoop some heart-shaped confetti out of his pumpkin juice.
"Hermione," Ron groaned as he continued, "how can you ever have liked -"
"I know, I know," she watched with bemusement as the cupid-dwarves marched the length of the Great Hall looking more like they wanted to start a fight than deliver Valentines messages for giggly students.
Listening to the conclusion of Lockhart's speech Alice grinned ruefully. "You know if it didn't mean taking your life in your hands I'd be quite tempted to ask Snape to show us how to make a Love Potion, just to see the look on his face." At this point all four of her friends, even Neville who rarely found anything about Snape funny, collapsed giggling into their breakfasts.
Harry found it less funny later in the day though when one of the dwarves hailed him in the corridor.
"Stay still," he growled menacingly kicking his way towards them as Harry, looking desperate, tried to find an escape route.
"Actually, I've got -" Harry bolted along the corridor as Alice, Ron and Neville began to giggle.
"Oh no you don't!" The dwarf launched himself from ten paces back at Harry's legs sending him and several people still clustered around him flying as the pair landed on the floor with a thud.
By this time Alice was bent double in the corridor as she tried to control her laughter and tearfully watched the most bizarre sight she had ever seen as one of Lockhart's golden-winged dwarves wrestled Harry to the floor.
"I said stay still!" The dwarf whacked Harry hard on the head with his miniature harp to emphasise his point as her friend attempted to wriggle free. "Right," he cleared his throat loudly as everyone in the corridor stared. "Now where was I? Ah, right here goes: His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad…"
By this point Alice was almost on her knees laughing so much and Ron was hanging on to the wall to support himself, even Neville was grinning broadly. Hermione however looked positively livid.
"It's such an indignity!" She stormed five minutes later once Harry had extricated himself and everyone in the corridor had resumed their own business, "and in front of everyone too!"
"It's alright Hermione," he tried to smile along with the rest of them, "it's just a laugh, you've got to see the funny side I suppose." He mock glared at Ron, Alice and Neville who were still grinning like idiots.
"Yes well at least you got a Valentine out of it I suppose," she sniffed haughtily and then rather abruptly, and obviously in Alice's opinion, changed the subject.
If nothing else, Alice considered later on, at least Lockhart's spectacle had caused everyone to think of something other than the Chamber of Secrets for a whole day. The fear of it might have decreased in the light of no fresh attacks since term had started, but it was still ever present like an itch you wanted to scratch but couldn't quite reach. And of course Harry and his friend's were still being avoided like the plague and whispered about by most of the school. Alice was beginning to lose patience with it to be honest. It was difficult to ignore people when they flinched away from you when you got too close and got up to move whenever you sat down. At least Fred and George seemed to take it as an opportunity for a great joke and would run screaming if they saw Harry or defer to him slavishly as their mood took them.
"They're completely idiotic though," Hermione complained as they searched once again for the elusive newspapers in the Library several days later. "I mean they're behaving like children."
"Hermione," Ron grunted as he tried to lift a particularly large box back onto the shelf, "I hate to break it to you, but we are children."
"I don't mind," Harry went to help him, "it makes a change from people thinking I'm some sort of marauding lunatic."
Alice snorted sceptically and Harry pulled a paper from the nearest box and threw it at her.
"Ouch! I'm kidding!" Laughing quietly so as not to attract Madame Pince's unwelcome attention, she stooped to pick the paper up. "Hang on… Hermione what date are we looking for again?"
Her friend's head flew up from where it had been immersed in a stack of sheets, "the sixth and the fourteenth," she recited instantly, "why have you…?"
"This is from the sixth," Alice held up the paper Harry had just thrown at her.
No sooner were the words out of her mouth than Hermione had snatched the paper from her and spread it out on a table. "Well it's not in the headline," she muttered to herself, smoothing the page as the others gathered round excitedly. "Perhaps…" she flipped the page and scanned it before skipping onto the next one. "THERE!" she suddenly exclaimed, evidently a tad loudly as Madame Pince's disapproving face popped round the side of their aisle before disappearing again once she was certain calm would ensue. "There, look," Hermione whispered more quietly pointing at a short column buried on the fourth page with a trembling hand.
Quickly Alice scanned what the text. TRADGEDY AT HOGWARTS, the headline read, Students and Professors alike at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry were left shocked and bereaved today after the tragic and untimely death of one of its students. The student in question, fourth year Hufflepuff, Myrtle Grumble was found around eleven o'clock last night in a bathroom where it was believed she had slipped some hours earlier in a pool of water and caused herself a fatal head trauma. Mediwizards were called to the scene when the girl was found but pronounced her dead on arrival. A spokesperson for the School Board however has said that "although nothing could have been done to prevent this tragic accident, the deepest sorrow and sympathy of the Board, the Staff and the Ministry of Magic is extended to Miss Grumble's family and friends." The girl's parents were of course informed, but so far have declined to give any comment.
"Well that doesn't give us very much to go on does it?" Ron grumbled looking peeved. "I mean maybe she did just slip, and we don't know anything else about this Myrtle do we? Do we… Hermione?"
But Hermione wasn't listening to him; she was looking at Alice with excited eyes, "You don't think…?" she waited for her friend to jump to the same conclusion that she evidently had.
Suddenly a light went on in Alice's brain and she gasped. "It couldn't be could it?! Do you think it might be?"
"Are either of you two going to tell us what you're talking about," Harry huffed impatiently.
Eventually Hermione turned to the boys with triumphant eyes. "Moaning Myrtle."
Silence.
"Erm… who?" Ron looked utterly perplexed.
"Oh for goodness sake Ron; Moaning Myrtle, the ghost that haunts the girls' bathroom on the second floor."
"Hogwarts has a ghost… that haunts the bathroom?"
"Of course. How can you not know about that?"
"Maybe because it's a girls' bathroom," Harry looked much less confused than Ron. "Are you saying this girl," he gestured to the paper, "could be her?"
"Well it would make sense," Alice reasoned with mounting excitement, "I mean she definitely went to Hogwarts and it would make sense to haunt the bathroom that you died in… I mean why else would you do it?"
"Have you met her then?"
"Only once last year," Hermione grinned, "we don't use that toilet much."
"Well let's go and talk to her then!"
Both Hermione and Alice suddenly looked uncomfortable, sharing a look of trepidation and understanding much to the boys' evident consternation.
"What's wrong?"
"You'll see."
Ten minutes later they were standing outside the door to the bathroom on the second floor trying to persuade the boys to stop shuffling their feet awkwardly and go in.
"Oh for goodness sake," Hermione exclaimed. "You were the ones who wanted to go and talk to her!"
"Yeah," Ron whined, "but it's a girls' bathroom."
"Is there an echo in here? We've already established that. Stop kicking your heels and just get in."
"Just be careful what you say," Alice warned them, "she's a bit touchy."
Quietly, and with Harry and Ron hanging back as far as they feasibly could without being left outside, the four of them crept into the bathroom. Or rather they sloshed, because the floor was swimming with water.
"Who's that?" A glum voice hiccupped from the farthest cubicle.
"Um… it's… Hermione Granger, and um… friends."
Alice raised an eyebrow at her as Hermione just shrugged. Gingerly she picked her way across the sopping floor towards the voice and opened a door that was only just maintaining contact with its hinges.
"Hello Myrtle," she received a sniff in reply. "We just thought we would come and say hello, and see how you were," Hermione ploughed on into the silence which was broken only by the gentle drip of water from somewhere.
"Not that I suppose you care," the pitiful figure scowled at them. "Not that anyone does." She caught sight of Harry and Ron. "What are they doing in here? This is a girls' bathroom."
"We've heard," Alice and Hermione chorused together trying not to smile. Looking around her Alice pondered the state of the place. She had only been in Myrtle's bathroom once before when it had been an emergency in first year and she and Hermione were still wary of finding their way around the castle. Even then it had been a bit run-down and damp, but nothing as bad as it was now. Her reflections were interrupted by Harry addressing the ghostly figure floating above the cistern.
"Excuse me, Myrtle… can I ask you a question?" Wary eyes, enlarged threefold behind thick spectacles, regarded him suspiciously for a moment followed by a curt nod. "Was your last name Grumble?"
"Was," Alice winced realising he had said the wrong thing, "what do you mean was?" Myrtle's voice rose to a shriek that caused several tiles to drop from the wall. "It still is Grumble. Just because you're dead doesn't mean you stop having a last name. There's no need to be so insensitive you know." Harry rushed to apologise but she waved him off as she burst into loud, echoing sobs. "Not that I could expect anyone to understand."
"We erm… wanted to ask you about that actually," Ron broke in awkwardly. Apparently speaking to Myrtle was better than being uncomfortable listening to a girl cry. "How you died. We read bout it in the Library you see."
Abruptly the tears stopped. "You went and looked me up?" She sniffed, staring at him with eyes that would have been red-rimmed if she hadn't been totally translucent. "You were interested?"
"Err…" Ron stammered looking to his friends for support. "Yes?"
"Ooooh, it was dreadful." Suddenly her entire demeanour changed. "It happened right in here. I died in this very cubicle. 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 -"
"Was Olive Hornby -" Hermione's interruption was met with a hostile glare which Ron seemed to find amusing.
"Do you want me to finish the story or not?"
"Sorry." She didn't look the least bit.
"Anyway, I heard somebody come in and 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 I died." She looked positively radiant about it.
"How though? Hermione was determined to interrogate her.
"I don't know," Myrtle huffed pushing her glasses up her nose. "I just did. One minute I was alive as you please then the next I saw these great big eyes and then -splat! I'm dead. I came back though and haunted Olive. Oh she was sorry she ever laughed about my glasses."
"Great big eyes?" Harry sounded intrigued. "What sort of eyes?"
"I don't know," she was getting frustrated now. "Just big and yellow that's all I had time to see. I died, I wasn't taking notes. If you don't want to hear -"
"No, no, we do honestly," Ron rushed in, "we're really interested honest." He gulped as Myrtle smiled sickeningly at him.
"Dying feels horrible," her enthusiastic expression seemed utterly disjointed from her macabre words, "I sort of froze up," she demonstrated," and then I was just floating away into black. The next thing I knew I was in Peterhead! Peterhead, I ask you?!"
"Did you see the boy?" Harry asked.
"No. I was a bit preoccupied with dying at the time!"
"Did you recognise the language at all?" Hermione pushed. It didn't get her very far however as with an infuriated scream Myrtle flipped upside down and dive-bombed straight into the toilet with a considerable splash.
"Hermione," Harry observed wryly, "I think you might have upset her."
"I wonder where she's gone?" Alice queried as her friend began to protest. Wading across the floor she peered into the toilet. "Hey come and see this!" Her friends sloshed over excitedly at her exclamation. "Look it's a book or something." And so it was, wedged just above the u-bend its pages floating eerily in the settling water.
"So it is," Hermione seemed excited, "maybe it was Myrtle's." She raised her wand and too late the others realised what she was about to do and rushed to stop her. "Accio notebook!"
"Yuck!" Ron tried to jump out of the way as water cascaded onto the already water-logged floor and the notebook went flying over their heads. "Did you really need to do that?"
"Well Ron," Hermione, her robes like Alice's now soaked up to the knee, observed snippily, "unless you wanted to shove your hand down the loo, how else do you suggest we got it out?"
He had no answer to this.
"I don't get it," Harry grumbled once they had examined what transpired to be a diary in detail, "the cover is falling to pieces so it's obviously been in the water for a while, but the pages are fine. And they're bone dry. Look."
"They must be enchanted or something," Alice examined it closely for any other possible explanations. "Hang on," she dug her wand from her pocket," Aparecium," she tapped it three times. Nothing happened. "Arcanum Aperio." Still nothing.
"I've got a Revealer upstairs in my trunk," Hermione offered. We can try that if it's invisible ink or something."
"Good," they looked up at Ron in surprise. "Can we get out of the girls' bathroom now? Percy will have a fit if he knows I've been in here."
As it turned out Hermione's Revealer worked no better than Alice's spells had and they had to eventually admit defeat. Ron soon got bored with the whole concept of the diary and even Alice felt that they should probably focus their energies on something that was going to be more profitable, like following the other leads they had or - rather controversially for them - concentrating on school work. Harry and Hermione were determined that it should provide them with some answers however.
"Where have they gone now?" Ron looked up from an essay he was struggling through for History of Magic one afternoon in March as he sat in the Library with Alice and Neville.
"I think they're down there," Neville indicated the corner of the Library on Secrecy Charms.
"Did I even need to ask?" Ron raised his hands in despair; it was fast becoming their second home. "I think they're trying to read the entire section before Easter," he observed dryly measuring the length of his essay. "Merlin, I'm still about four inches short!"
"Well they are more than halfway through now," Alice commented absently as she scribbled busily away at her own homework.
"I was kidding."
Alice spared an amused glance up at him. "I wasn't."
They lapsed back into silence again. "Maybe they gave up on searching ages ago," Ron smirked to himself, "and they just want to spend more time with each other."
"Well it is fairly obvious," Neville chipped in as the others looked at him in surprise.
"What is?" Alice feigned innocence.
"That Harry and Hermione like each other. I know you lot don't always tell me everything that's going on," he waved off Alice's protesting apology. "No I'd rather not know half the time. I've got enough to do trying to keep my head down in Potions and my grades up everywhere else. But even I can see what's going on with them."
"Yeah well try telling Harry that," Ron harrumphed. "I tried bringing it up with him a few weeks ago and he denied it point blank."
"Hermione too. Still you can't force them I suppose, just hope that they see what's plain as day to everyone else before too long." She quickly shut up as the friends in question both appeared around the corner of a bookcase carrying a stack of books each. The three of them bent over their work again with conspiratorial smiles.
A/N: And there you go again, nothing truly riveting and the ending was hardly spectacular but I felt they had to talk about the situation with Harry and Hermione sooner or later. I invented the spell Arcanum Aperio basically it would be another revealing spell as Arcanum means a sacred secret in Latin and Aperio means to uncover. And for those of you unfamiliar with Scottish geography Peterhead is on the "nose" of Scotland. Google it.
-->