A/N: okay PHEW. that last chapter was actually torturous. I'm gonna try and make this one um a lot less words haha...
A couple more weeks roll around before Aly, Madi, Kim, and Noia are walking down the hall with Harry, and Ron (Hermione was busy studying). Just talking about anything and everything. Suddenly, they heard Flich's voice, which sounded quite hysterical.
"Even more work for me! Mopping all night, like I haven't got enough to do! No, this is the final straw, I'm going to Dumbledore,"
His footsteps receded along the out-of-sight corridor and they heard a distant door slam.
They poked their heads around the corner. Filch had clearly been manning his usual lookout post: They were once again on the spot where Mrs. Norris had been attacked.
They saw at a glance what Filch had been shouting about. A great flood of water stretched over half the corridor, and it looked as though it was still seeping from under the door of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. Now that Filch had stopped shouting, they could hear Myrtle's wails echoing off the bathroom walls.
"Now what's up with her?" said Ron.
"Let's go and see," said Harry, and holding their robes over their ankles they stepped through the great wash of water to the door bearing its OUT OF ORDER sign, ignored it as always, and entered.
Moaning Myrtle was crying, if possible, louder and harder than ever before. She seemed to be hiding down her usual toilet. It was dark in the bathroom because the candles had been extinguished in the great rush of water that had left both walls and floor soaking wet.
"What's up, Myrtle?" said Madi.
"Who's that?" glugged Myrtle miserably. "Come to throw something else at me?"
Harry waded across to her stall and said, "Why would I throw something at you?"
"Don't ask me," Myrtle shouted, emerging with a wave of yet more water, which splashed onto the already sopping floor. "Here I am, minding my own business, and someone thinks it's funny to throw a book at me."
"But it can't hurt you if someone throws something at you," said Aly, reasonably. "I mean, it'd just go right through you, wouldn't it?"
She had said the wrong thing. Myrtle puffed herself up and shrieked, "Let's all throw books at Myrtle, because she can't feel it! Ten points if you can get it through her stomach! Fifty points if it goes through her head! Well, ha, ha, ha! What a lovely game, I don't think!"
"Who threw it at you, anyway?" asked Kim.
"I don't know... I was just sitting in the U-bend, thinking about death, and it fell right through the top of my head," said Myrtle, glaring at them. "It's over there, it got washed out.."
They all looked under the sink where Myrtle was pointing. A small, thin book lay there. It had a shabby black cover and was as wet as everything else in the bathroom.
Madi stepped forward to pick it up, but Ron suddenly flung out an arm to hold her back.
"What?" Glared Madi.
"Are you crazy?" said Ron. "It could be dangerous."
"Fine," Madi snapped, "If it's dangerous then I want you to pick it up," she crossed her arms.
"Dangerous?" said Noia, laughing. "Come off it, how could it be dangerous?"
"You'd be surprised," said Ron, who was looking apprehensively at the book. "Some of the books the Ministry's confiscated Dad's told me — there was one that burned your eyes out. And everyone who read Sonnets of a Sorcerer spoke in limericks for the rest of their lives. And some old witch in Bath had a book that you could never stop reading!
You just had to wander around with your nose in it, trying to do everything one-handed. And —"
