Transparent by Argelfraster
Chapter Notes: This story is one of those weird ideas that just pop into your head. I think it was because someone said that Cho Chang reminded them of Moaning Myrtle...and then I wondered what would happen if Cedric ever came back as a ghost...and, well, it kind of wrote itself. I hope you all like it--it's my first attempt at Harry Potter fan fiction. Note that it is a one-shot--one chapter only.
Moaning Myrtle rested her chin on her pearly hand, peering out over the toilet seat dejectedly. Good Lord, they just had to close the school, didn’t they? It’s bad enough that I’m haunting a toilet; now I’m haunting a toilet that nobody uses.
Sighing, the sixty-something-year-old ghost of a fifteen-year-old girl glided out of the toilet bowl (allowing a wave of water to wash onto the floor—not as if anyone would care, since there was no one to see it) and over to the tarnished mirrors that hung over the cracked sinks. “Miserable, moaning, moping Myrtle,” she said aloud to the blank mirror—she hadn’t seen herself reflected in one for nearly sixty years.
Myrtle sighed, thinking back over her miserable life and even more miserable death. After she’d taken up residence in the toilet, she’d expected it to be boring. It had been, although not overly so. It was quite entertaining to drift through the stall door just as somebody happened to be using it, or to wail loudly while a pair of first years were trying to hold a gossipy conversation. But it wasn’t what Myrtle had wanted from life (or death). What she had wanted was to be accepted.
That stuck-up Olive Hornby had always ensured that Myrtle was not a part of the popular group. She’d even seen to it that Myrtle’s crush, the extraordinarily handsome Tom Riddle, never looked her way at all, unless he was laughing at her. (In later years, Myrtle learned that she was lucky he had never been particularly interested in her, but it still stung that Riddle had never cared for her even the tiniest bit.) But dying, if anything, had been worse. Myrtle hadn’t made a single friend in sixty years, even with a constant stream of girls running in and out of her bathroom. All the other ghosts were ages older than her, and none of them haunted a bathroom.
Then, fifty years exactly from her death, Harry Potter had walked into her bathroom with that horribly smart Hermione Granger. At first Myrtle had been indignant; boys were not allowed in girls’ bathrooms, which was what she had tried to tell Tom Riddle before he set the basilisk on her. But as she spied on them brewing some sort of disgusting potion over the toilet bowl, she realized that Harry Potter was quite dreamy, as boys go. Not only was he handsome, in a way that was almost reminiscent of Riddle, but he was noble, kind, loyal, and very foolhardy. She’d never expected him to survive second year (and had even asked him to share her toilet if he died), but along with his other traits, Harry also seemed to be unnaturally lucky.
Unfortunately, Harry was not interested in sharing a toilet with a ghost. Even when she all but told him the answer to the riddle in his golden egg in fourth year, he’d only acted stiffly around her. (Myrtle wondered if this might have something to do with the fact that she’d seen him without any clothes on in the bath.)
Myrtle had finally given up on any possibility that Harry would die and take up residence in her toilet, and had moped around for a year. Then she found Draco Malfoy, crying his eyes out in her bathroom, and developed a severe crush immediately. Harry Potter had never confided his feelings to her like Draco did. Harry was too tough to cry, unlike the deep and emotional Draco.
But that, too, ended when Harry burst into the bathroom and nearly killed Draco. Myrtle had been horrified, but she later learned that Draco did not die, much to her relief. Still, at the end of that year, Draco had shown his real loyalties to the Death Eaters and fled the school.
And then it had closed down.
Myrtle felt silvery tears come to her eyes at the thought of it. She was alone, tied to this old castle forever, with no one to hear her sobs and talk to her except the unsympathetic old ghosts in the towers. There wasn’t anywhere she could go for vacation except the lake, and the mermaids didn’t like her. She was trapped for the rest of her death.
“Excuse me.”
The first voice Myrtle had heard in a year split the silence. She screamed and whirled around.
Standing just inside the doorway was the most handsome young man she had ever seen. His blond hair was perfect, his features attractive, his body fit and lean. He was staring at her in confusion.
And he was transparent.
Another ghost!
“Who are you?” he asked, taking a step forward. His feet, like hers, hovered six inches above the ground.
“My name is Myrtle. I haunt this bathroom,” Myrtle squeaked. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Cedric Diggory,” said the boy. “For the last five years I’ve been looking all over for a place to haunt, and haven’t found anywhere. So finally I came back here. I heard it’s deserted now. I didn’t expect to find anyone.”
“Was this where you died?” Myrtle asked curiously.
“No. I was killed in a graveyard miles from here, but Harry Potter brought my body back here. I didn’t want to haunt the graveyard—you can imagine, there’re already so many ghosts there that it’s standing room only.”
“I see,” Myrtle said. “I think I remember you. There were dozens of girls in here crying when you died—there was practically a line for the toilet stalls. I don’t think I ever met you when you were alive though—” Then her eyes widened. “Wait—I did see you once! You were taking a bath in the prefects’ bathroom, and I saw you work out the egg clue!”
“You were spying on me while I was taking a bath?” Cedric asked, his eyebrows raised almost to his hairline.
“Well…uh…” Myrtle blushed silver. “Kind of.”
Cedric didn’t reply, but he was looking at her rather oddly.
“You have a very nice chest,” said Myrtle before she could stop herself. Then she clapped a see-through hand over her mouth.
“Uh, thanks,” Cedric said. He, too, turned silver.
There was an awkward silence, then Cedric said, “You know, you kind of remind me of my old girlfriend, Cho Chang. You’d be really pretty if you took off those glasses.”
“Thank you,” said Myrtle shyly, silver cheeks burning. “But I can’t see without them.”
“Do ghosts need to see? We just go through everything anyway, so you won’t bump into anything.”
“Good point,” Myrtle said thoughtfully, and whipped off her glasses for the first time since she had died. Everything blurred slightly around the edges, but she thought that her vision was better than when she’d been alive. Tossing the glasses aside, she watched them evaporate into nothing.
“Would you mind showing me around?” Cedric asked. “I mean, I know my way around the castle, but not through the walls and everything. I never did much walking through walls when I was alive.”
Myrtle giggled. She hadn’t giggled in a long time, and was surprised to find it was rather pleasant. “Certainly,” she said, and reached out for Cedric’s hand. Their pearly fingers wove together in an effect that Myrtle rather liked.
Without her glasses, she misjudged the next gliding step and almost stumbled. Cedric’s hands steadied her, and she smiled up at him.
“I know a great place you can haunt,” she said to him, and they floated together through the ceiling into the prefects’ bathroom.