The Marauders: Year One (female)

44. The Miseries of Myrtle

Jamie turned to Professor Kettleburn, and made as if to seize the front of his robes. He dodged away with surprising agility, considering he had a wooden leg. Sirius thought she saw it unscrew slightly from its socket.

'Please, Professor Kettleburn!' Jamie begged, with wide, pleading eyes. 'You can't do this to us!'

'I can, and I just did,' the Professor said grimly, patting his grey beard, which was still smoking at the ends. 'You seem to enjoy playing amongst dung so much, that I decided that I'd better give you all a special little treat. Myrtle and Peeves have had one of their --' he paused, searching for the right word, 'parties, and they need a hand in cleaning up. Seeing as I don't have many of those to spare, who better to help than you lot?'

He flourished his wooden stump of a hand at the wrecked toilet cubicles, and at the flooding taps.

'You can't make us work with--' Severa dropped her voice, looking anxiously to where the ghostly girl was flushing wads of toilet paper down the loo, '--with Myrtle.'

'Would you rather I called Peeves?' offered Professor Kettleburn. 'I'm sure he'd love to help.'

'No, not at all, that's fine, Professor,' said Severa hastily.

'That's what I thought,' grunted Kettleburn. 'Now, I'm off to deal with some issues. These toilets better be so clean that I can check my reflection on the seats -- not that I'd want to do that anyway,' he said, tapping his misshapen nose and grinning to show three missing teeth.

He gave them all an evil leer one last time, and hobbled out of the loos, slamming the door behind him.

Lillian groaned loudly, and poked gingerly at a toilet stall door, which looked filthy. 'This is all your fault!' he said, pointing an accusing finger at Jamie. 'From the beginning to the end!'

'Hold up,' said Jamie indignantly. 'What're you on about? You lot took part in that dung fight just as much as we did!'

Lillian shook his head. 'Nope. You started it. As usual. And if you hadn't been spying on me and Sev, no one would have got in trouble in the first place.'

Jamie sneered. 'Yeah, well, you and your precious Sev wouldn't have had  a run-in with us at all if she wasn't chatting it up with You-Know-Who everytime your back's turned.'

'Call me Sev again, Potter, and I'll hex you,' growled Snape.

Sirius stepped forward menacingly. 'Is that a threat, Snivelly?'

'She's not even denying it!' exclaimed Jamie.

'That's because your accusations are so wildly absurd, that it would be beneath her dignity to answer them,' snapped Lillian. 'And don't call her that,' he added, looking at Sirius, his tone a bit softer.

'Let her speak for herself,' Sirius said. 'Surely, all snakes must have tongues.'

Petra grinned. 'Good one, mate.' She reached for a high-five.

Lillian looked helplessly at Severa. 'Go on. Tell them. You wouldn't possibly be working for the Darkest wizard in the last century, would you, Severa?'

Severa curled her lip and glared balefully at the Gryffindor girls. ' 'Course not,' she said, turning away, and letting her hair fall over her eyes. 'We should get a start before Kettleburn gets back and sets us something worse.'

As they all had to grudgingly agree with her, Myrtle swooped down from her ledge, where she'd been watching them squabble. 'Oh, you're not going to stop fighting now, are you?' she asked in dismay. 'I was enjoying that. Merlin knows, after years of being dead, it does tend to get a little -- well, dead.' She floated into a cubicle, and stared into the toilet bowl remniscently.