Echo | Harry Potter - George Weasley

Chapter 23: Tom Riddle's Diary

"Have you spoken to Hermione?" Ron questioned as he, Shaye, and Harry made their way back to the Gryffindor common room. It had been a few days since their experiment with the Polyjuice Potion and Hermione had been in the hospital wing since. 

"She should be out of hospital in a few days," Harry answered with a mischievous grin on his face. "When she stops coughing up furballs."

Shaye shook her head disapprovingly but smiled anyway. She had just visited Hermione in the hospital wing that morning and her face was completely un-cat-like. As Harry had said, she would be out in a couple of days once Madam Pomfrey was convinced she was fully healed.

The saving grace of the whole situation was that nobody asked too many questions as to why Hermione had made and drank the cat-infused PolyJuice Potion in the first place. Everyone was too busy worrying about the Chamber of Secrets to even blink an eye at a cat-girl. 

Shaye was about to say something along the lines of what Draco had told Harry and Ron in the Slytherin common room but before she could, she heard a splash and looked down to see that she had stepped in water, as had Harry and Ron. The floor of the corridor they had just entered was flooded, even more so than when they had found the blood message and petrified Mrs. Norris previously. 

"Yuck!" Ron shook his foot as the water began to seep into his shoe and absorb into his sock.

"Look's like Moaning Myrtle's flooded the bathroom." Shaye pointed to the same girls' lavatory that they had brewed their Polyjuice Potion in.

When the trio entered the lavatory they were unsurprised to see that every single sink had been turned on and was overflowing onto the floor. The room was dark and Shaye even swore she could still smell faint notes of the foul Polyjuice Potion in the air. 

Hearing a low weeping sound, Harry pointed to where Myrtle was sitting in the circular windowsill above the stalls. Also unsurprisingly, she was crying. It wasn't unusual to catch Myrtle sobbing—hence the nickname Moaning Myrtle—but it was unusual for her to flood the bathroom, which was the one place she felt most comfortable.

Myrtle hiccupped a little but stopped crying when she spotted the three students in her bathroom. "Come to throw something else at me?" she accused.

Harry cocked a brow. "Why would I throw something at you?"

"Don't ask me." Myrtle floated down from the windowsill. "Here I am, minding my own business and someone thinks it's funny to throw a book at me."

"But it can't hurt if someone throws something at you," Ron reasoned. "I mean, it'll just go through you."

That was the wrong thing to say, no matter how true it was. 

"Sure! Let's all throw books at Myrtle because she can't feel it!" Myrtle growled as she swooped toward Ron. "Ten points if you get it through her stomach!" She punched her ghostly hand right through Ron's stomach and he seized up as if he had just jumped into a freezing lake. "Fifty points if it goes through her head!" She punched through Ron's head next.

"Myrtle, who threw a book at you?" Shaye asked, trying to get the conversation back on track.

Myrtle's tone immediately softened. "I don't know. I didn't see them. I was just sitting in the U-bend, thinking about death and it fell through the top of my head."

Reliving the traumatic experience pushed Myrtle over the edge once more and with a high-pitched shriek she turned and disappeared, her cries echoing through the bathroom even after she had gone.

That's when Harry spotted a book lying in front of the stalls in the water. It was the only book in sight so it must have been the one that someone had thrown at Myrtle. Walking over, Harry picked it up and gave it a shake. Luckily, the book was leather-bound so the outside was waterproof and most of the pages inside were only a little wet.