As was her custom, Myrtle occupied the innermost cubicle of the abandoned girls' bathroom on the third floor, whimpering to herself. She had been cataloguing the injustices of fate — and the specific cruelties of Olive Hornby — for approximately fifty years, and showed no signs of stopping.
A soft knock at the cubicle door interrupted her.
She regarded the door with suspicion. No one knocked on her door. No one came to the bathroom at all, if they could help it.
"Hello?" A girl's voice, cautious and genuinely concerned. "Is someone in there? Are you all right? You sound as though you're not feeling well — is there anything I can do?"
"Who's asking?" Myrtle said, with a sniff.
"My name is Hermione Granger. Hermione, if you like — that's what my friends call me." The voice paused. "Has someone been unkind to you?"
Myrtle was thoroughly astonished.
This girl spoke to her as though she were simply a girl. As though Myrtle's distress were worth enquiring about.
It had been a very long time since anyone had done that.
"Olive Hornby," Myrtle said, before she had fully decided to say anything. "She said I looked like a great ugly dog with glasses. She was always going on about my glasses, my acne — she never stopped—"
"She had absolutely no right to say any of that." Hermione's voice came through the door, and it sounded genuinely cross on Myrtle's behalf. "I do understand, a little. I hid in a bathroom myself not very long ago, for not entirely different reasons. Some people don't seem to think before they speak, and it's the people they speak to who are left to deal with the consequences."
Myrtle blinked. A living girl, admitting to crying in a bathroom. The symmetry was peculiar and rather touching.
"I just don't want people talking about me," Myrtle said, with a fresh surge of self-pity. "I have feelings too. Even though—" She stopped. She didn't want to say the rest.
"Which house are you in?" Hermione asked. "I don't think I know an Olive Hornby from Gryffindor."
Myrtle rummaged through decades of memories for the answer. "Ravenclaw," she said finally. "I think — yes, Ravenclaw."
"I'm in Gryffindor," Hermione said. A pause, and then: "Olive Hornby doesn't sound like someone worth your energy. You deserve kinder friends than that."
"There aren't any," Myrtle said, with the certainty of fifty years' experience. "No one wants to be near me. They all laugh — they've always laughed — I've never had a friend here, not one—"
"Then I'll be the first," Hermione said, simply. "I haven't made any Ravenclaw friends yet, as it happens. We can both benefit."
Myrtle floated silently upward and peeked over the top of the cubicle door.
The girl below her had thick brown hair, rosy cheeks, and bright, worried eyes that were directed at the closed door with an expression that was unmistakably sincere. She was also clutching an enormous pile of books, which immediately recommended her.
"This is rather a gloomy place to talk," Hermione added, wrinkling her nose in the direction of the grimy mirror and the dripping tap. "You could come out, if you liked — we could find somewhere more—"
"I can't go anywhere else," Myrtle said quickly.
"That's perfectly all right. We'll stay here, then." A small sigh from below. "What's your name?"
Myrtle hesitated. If she said "Myrtle" — if she said "Moaning Myrtle" — the girl might know it, might make that particular face people made when they realised, and then this would be over.
"Elizabeth," she said. "Call me Elizabeth."
It wasn't a lie. Myrtle Elizabeth Warren — Elizabeth was her name as much as Myrtle was.
She had stopped crying, she realised. She floated quietly above the cubicle, watching the girl below her.
"Elizabeth," Hermione repeated, and smiled. "It's lovely to meet you. You know, people have made comments about my teeth before, and my hair. There's always something, isn't there? If we let every unkind thing dictate how we feel about ourselves, we'd never feel anything else. You deserve better than that."
Myrtle felt something she hadn't felt in a very long time. Something warm and slightly uncomfortable, like a muscle that had been still for too long beginning to move.
"You're right," she said. She was, unexpectedly, a little shy.
"Are you feeling a bit better? I'm afraid I have class in a few minutes," Hermione said. "But I'll come back. We can talk properly then."
"Come whenever you like," Myrtle said, and was surprised to find she meant it.
"I will." Hermione gathered her books. "Goodbye for now, Elizabeth. I'm glad I knocked."
Her footsteps retreated quickly down the corridor.
Myrtle settled back into the cubicle, no longer crying, turning the conversation over in her mind like something precious and slightly baffling.
Her first friend. In fifty years.
She was still savouring it when the bathroom door opened again.
Boys. Boys had walked into the girls' bathroom. The audacity was breathtaking — but Myrtle found, for reasons she couldn't entirely explain, that she was too flustered to scold them. Two of them were identical, with red hair and identical expressions of cheerful conspiracy. The third had platinum-blond hair and a guarded look.
They were all, she had to admit, reasonably good-looking.
She retreated silently to the inner cubicle, heart fluttering — and listened.
---
This had happened shortly after the Easter holidays.
Draco had been, in his view, entirely without warning, intercepted by the Weasley twins in the corridor and marched to the abandoned girls' bathroom on the third floor. No explanation had been offered. He had gone, partly out of curiosity and partly because declining the Weasley twins tended to produce more complications than accepting them.
If he was correctly oriented, this was Moaning Myrtle's domain.
He noted, also, what he was fairly certain was the sound of someone suppressing a laugh behind the last cubicle door. A silvery-pale face had flickered through the crack, briefly visible before withdrawing.
He filed it away and gave his attention to the matter at hand.
"Try one." George — or Fred — produced a tin of custard creams and held it out with the expression of a man offering something perfectly innocent.
Draco looked at the tin. He looked at the twins. "Before I eat anything you've brought into a disused bathroom, I'd like to know why we're here."
"Discretion," said Fred, with a conspiratorial wink.
"These aren't standard custard creams," said George, with a grin that did not inspire confidence. "You'll want to be near a mirror. For the best effect."
Draco regarded the tin for a moment longer. Then he picked up a biscuit and ate it.
There was a loud bang.
In the cracked mirror above the sink, a large canary stared back at him.
The twins folded entirely. They grabbed each other for support, wheezing, tears streaming.
Approximately sixty seconds later, the feathers receded and Draco was himself again. He straightened his robes with great dignity and looked at the twins with an expression that he had intended to be withering but suspected was slightly undermined by residual ruffled impressions.
Fred pressed a hand to his face, visibly fighting himself. "Our father is never going to believe we managed this."
"Why," Draco said, through his teeth, "could you not simply have described it to me?"
"We needed to know if you'd actually do it," George said, composing himself with difficulty. "Anyone can say they appreciate a joke. Not everyone eats the biscuit."
"Also," Fred added, "you're always so severe. Honestly, you'll put people off. You're eleven."
"Nearly twelve," Draco said, with considerably less authority than he would have liked.
"The nosebleed variety is far less forgiving," George offered cheerfully. "Consider that you got the friendly version."
"Right," Draco said. "The investment. What's your answer?"
"Yes," said Fred.
"Obviously yes," said George. "Mum will have opinions."
"Keep me out of it entirely," Draco said, in a tone that was not a request. "I mean it. My father cannot know about this. If you let it slip, it will cause problems for both of us."
"Naturally," they agreed, with the expressions of two people to whom discretion was a foreign concept but who were willing to claim otherwise.
Draco drew his wand and conjured the contract — several sheets of parchment, dense with terms, covering the arrangements they had been negotiating since before Christmas. He and the twins reviewed it quickly.
The terms were straightforward: Draco, as principal investor, would contribute two thousand Galleons for a fifty-one percent majority stake. The twins would hold the remaining forty-nine percent, act as joint proprietors and store managers, and take responsibility for product development, sourcing, production, and sales. Profits would be divided in proportion to shareholding. The twins would maintain strict confidentiality regarding the identity of their investor.
He had written careful supplementary clauses governing what happened in the event of a profit shortfall, a product-related incident, or a decision requiring both parties. The twins glanced through these with the expressions of people who found such thoroughness admirable but slightly exhausting. All three signed.
"We're developing several new lines," Fred said.
"Some still experimental," George added.
"We thought we'd test them on students informally first—"
"—before moving to a formal order process."
"Post owl delivery. A small advertisement in the Daily Prophet to begin with."
Draco had largely adjusted to the rhythm of their conversational relay. "Steady progress makes sense. You also have your N.E.W.T.s in due course. Don't run before you can walk, and don't let either of us get expelled."
He checked the cubicle at the end of the room from the corner of his eye and said, mildly, without looking directly at it, "Myrtle — I believe that's your name, isn't it? You've been very patient. We won't keep the bathroom much longer."
A sharp intake of breath. Something rushed into the toilet with an extremely indignant splash.
Fred and George stared at the cubicle, then at Draco.
"She's sensitive about being noticed," Draco said, with a shrug. "It's fine."
He reached into his dragonhide bag — an extension-charmed satchel, which appeared ordinary but had the internal capacity of a modest wardrobe — and produced a heavy money pouch, which he handed to the twins.
Fred looked at the bag with naked envy. "How large is that thing?"
"Large enough to be practical," Draco said. "Once the shop turns a reasonable profit, I'll have one made for each of you."
George hefted the money pouch with both hands and raised his eyebrows in appreciation. "We'll be in touch."
They left the bathroom considerably more cheerfully than they had entered it.
Draco glanced once more at the cubicle at the end of the room.
"Thank you for your discretion," he said, to whoever was listening.
No reply came, but the dripping tap was the only sound, and something about the quality of the silence suggested it was a listening sort of silence.
He straightened his robes and left.