⋆𝐃𝐮𝐜𝐤𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠⋆ - 𝐓.𝐌.𝐑

𝟎𝟐𝟒 - 𝐃𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐔𝐩 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐝

⋆

𝗗𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝟮𝟰, 𝟭𝟵𝟰𝟰

She's limping down the corridor, more sore than the wife of the roughest giant, when a familiar flash of ephemeral silver darts past her eyes. Excitement and relief surge through her enlengthened veins – a sense of pride overcoming her as well; if the added few inches are anything to go by, then the ritual worked.

"My Lady, look!"

The haunted ghost halts in her flight for a second, wearily observing the luridly alluring stranger who had just mimicked her little raven's voice.

"Who are you?"

The Grey Lady's eyes betray no spark of recognition, and she flees before Elizabeth can muster up a response.

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𝗗𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝟯𝟬, 𝟭𝟵𝟰𝟰

She's naked, as she often is these days. An urge had awakened in her, to repeatedly and meticulously examine her new body – as one would a particularly interesting case in the morgue.

"Lumos."

A spark manifests at the end of her knotted wand, her palm digs painfully into the skull-shaped whorl at the base of the handle as she battles humiliation, trying to force more magic into the simple spell and failing spectacularly. The light flickers once, twice; a futile battle that rages for several more seconds before going out with a whimper – as all things inevitably do.

"Fuck!"

A round of applause, everyone! Please! Put your hands together and rejoice in gleeful, raucous laughter-

-for Myrtle Elizabeth Warren had managed to – once again – deplete her own magical core.

The expletive echoes mockingly throughout the Prefects' bathroom, bouncing from one marble tile to the next and reverberating back a more hollow, less human version of itself. Skipping across the stained-glass panes until it is perverted enough to remind her of her old voice – folding in until it ricochets maliciously against her ears, a derisive imprint of her frustration.

And yet, even this pitiful excuse of a lightshow was bounds and leagues above what Elizabeth could do in the days immediately following the ritual – well, immediately following the day-and-a-half coma after the ritual but the principle stands. Upon waking up in the 'Come and Go' room, which had still retained evidence of her ritual, her core had been veritably empty.

Elizabeth will have you know that surviving Hogwarts while magic-less was terrifying, by the way. The castle was rather inaccessible with no power to call your own and wield away, and she found herself commending Apollyon Pringle, the squib who functioned as Hogwarts's caretaker for having managed to live this long. Never pretending to be one of god's strongest soldiers, she took to brewing countless Exstimulo potions and downing them like water, all in order to supplement her own inadequacy.

When she'd awoke, though, it was to a castle once more bustling with students, having missed welcoming her Slytherin comrades back from their vacations – which in turn had made them quite cross with her. Elizabeth had also inadvertently skipped the welcoming feast, during which three more muggleborns – that could've been her – had been pronounced casualties of the air raids in England and ceremoniously mourned.

This time, Riddle wasn't here to weave a compelling fable, one that might explain away the drastic change to her appearance – and Elizabeth was never one for fairytales herself – so she had settled for her personal brand of obscene blitheness whenever someone questioned her.