Title: Someday My Prince Will Come
Summary: Trevor the toad has an accident with a Time-Turner.
Characters/Pairings: Moaning Myrtle/Trevor, Eileen Prince/Moaning Myrtle
Genre: humor
Beta: cythraul
Rating/Warnings: PG-13
Medium: fic
Word Count: 1525
Can the Order post to Tumblr?: sure
If yes, your Tumblr username: undauntra
Hermione never saw the toad on the stairs. She was running late to Charms class and had her hands quite full between juggling her school books and trying to work the Time-Turner. Just when she was halfway down the stairs, the staircase started moving again and her foot landed on something... squishy. She recoiled instinctively. It was a bad move. Next thing she knew, she had fallen down the stairs and sent all of her supplies flying.
It was all just too much for her. She sat down right there on one of the steps and began to cry. After catching an uneven breath, she knelt to pick everything back up again. Well, almost everything. "Oh no, my Time-Turner! What will Professor McGonagall say when she finds out that I've lost it!" It never occurred to her to wonder what the squishy thing underfoot had been.
Decades earlier, Trevor the toad was hopping frantically away from where the girl had nearly crushed him. He shook off a faint sprinkling of glittering sand, but thought nothing of it. This place was far too open, far too exposed to clumsy or malicious humans. He had to find someplace safer, more hidden.
Meanwhile, Myrtle Warren was sulking in the bathroom again. Why couldn't the other girls just leave her alone? It was bad enough that the boys all thought she was ugly, but why did the girls have to rub it in? Someday she would find a boy who loved her for herself, a boy who wasn't shallow enough to get hung up on appearances. Someday...
Finally, a nice confined room where a toad could hide. Trevor hopped into the bathroom and hid under one of the sinks. Wait, what was that? A human was in one of the stalls. Trevor's gaze darted about as he looked for escape routes, when suddenly he heard, "Accio toad!" This was clearly not his day.
Myrtle spotted the toad through the crack in the stall door. Aw, somebody's familiar must have wandered off. "Accio toad!" She caught the toad gently when it came flying into her hands. "Poor toad," she said. "Someone not taking proper care of you?" She should find out whose toad it was and give it back. Or maybe not give it back, if it was one of those mean witches. "I should keep you myself. I don't mind that you have warts on, because looks aren't important."
Trevor felt a bit queasy from flying through the air, but it couldn't be denied that this witch was handling him far more carefully than the last one had. For one thing, she noticed that he was there and didn't step on him. Definitely an improvement. This whole Accio business was no fun, though. He'd have to train her out of it. Trevor gave a little hop and settled into the witch's hand, by way of showing that he deemed her acceptable, as humans go.
Myrtle smiled when she realized that the toad seemed content to stay in her hands. It wasn't struggling at all. Just another example of how she was so much better at Care of Magical creatures than that nasty Olive Hornby. She sighed, thinking wistfully about the fairy tales she had grown up with, about frogs turning into princes. But wait... the fairy tales about witches had turned out to be real (if glaringly inaccurate), so why not this one? Hesitantly, she lifted Trevor up to her face. Frog, toad, close enough. It wasn't like anyone else was going to kiss her, now was it? "Are you my prince?" she asked the toad. "Will you love me and take me away to a place where people are nice?" Closing her eyes, she went in for the kiss.
This was definitely not the human behavior that Trevor had come to expect from living with Neville! Was the witch trying to eat him? Torn between placating the otherwise promising human and fleeing the threat, he settled for dodging to the side so that he bumped her cheek instead.
Outside in the hall, an unsuspecting student headed for the bathroom to freshen up.
Myrtle chuckled at the unexpected sensation. "That tickled!" she protested. "Now, frog - er, toad - we're going to try this one more time. This time, I'm going to kiss you on the lips - er, mouth." Delighted by her own daring, Myrtle had let her voice get loud enough to carry. And carry it did, masking the sound of the door opening and closing as someone entered the bathroom. Oblivious to the interloper, this time Myrtle kept her eyes open when she kissed the toad.
Trevor was not entirely sanguine about these goings-on, but the human's mannerisms didn't seem to be particularly hungry, for all of her bizarre obsession with rubbing her lips on amphibians. As long as her mouth remained closed, he should be safe enough. Safer than Neville's dorm, at any rate. Trevor's life experience had not exactly led him to maintain high standards for safety. Resolute, he stood fast and permitted the witch to lip-rub on him.
"Aw, still not a prince?" Myrtle hadn't really gotten her hopes up, but it had been nice to pretend for just a little while. "Maybe next time I'll slip you some tongue." Just then, someone yanked open Myrtle's stall from the outside. Myrtle flinched away, nearly dropping her new toad.
It was one of those mean Slytherin girls. (As opposed to those mean Ravenclaw girls, or those mean Gryffindor girls, or those mean Hufflepuff girls. Myrtle did not have a high opinion of other members of her own sex.) The girl stepped into the stall, crowding Myrtle back against the toilet. "Just... just go away and leave me alone!" she cried. "I haven't done anything to you!"
The Slytherin girl raised her eyebrows. "I didn't claim that you had." The girl's voice was smooth, unlike Olive Hornby's nasal whine. She glanced down at the toad in Myrtle's hand. "Perhaps you should set your familiar down safely before you drop him."
Oh no, the Slytherin was going to knock her out! Probably with a Stupefy, though Slytherins were reputed to have Darker hexes at their disposal. But this girl was younger than Myrtle, so she probably couldn't manage anything too evil. At least she'd had the courtesy to let Myrtle see to the toad first. Did Slytherins have a soft spot for amphibians as well as reptiles? Myrtle couldn't recall. With a nervous nod, Myrtle set Trevor down on the toilet. "Thank you for the warning," she said quietly. "But... since you know I haven't done anything to you, why did you come in here?" She left the "and bother me" part unspoken.
The Slytherin flashed Myrtle a predatory smile, then reached forward to trail two fingers along Myrtle's jawline. Cupping Myrtle's chin, she forced Myrtle to look her in the eye. The Slytherin's eyes were dark, so dark that the pupil blended into the iris. Myrtle trembled on the edge of an abyss, about to topple into the Slytherin girl's dark eyes and fall forever. Time slowed, and she became acutely aware of physical sensations. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, the pipe from the toilet tank digging into her back, the Slytherin's sharp nails pricking her jaw just enough that she couldn't ignore it, and the heat of the other girl's body as she pressed up against Myrtle.
These witches were a hazard to life and limb! Hastily, Trevor leapt down from the toilet seat and hopped under the partition to the next stall. Now he could watch them from a point of relative safety. They crowded together over the toilet bowl, Trevor's new human pushed back so far that she had to straddle the toilet or risk a fall. Perhaps this was human mating behavior? The toilet bowl was not up to Trevor's standards for a mating pond, but it would not be impossible to use it as one. He wondered which of the witches would be depositing her eggs in the bowl.
Myrtle stopped breathing when the Slytherin girl finally kissed her, and only partly because her mouth was busy and her nose was a little stuffed up from the crying. Oh gosh, it was nothing at all like kissing her Mum on the cheek, or kissing her new toad. Finally, someone was interested in her. Even if it was a girl. Even if the girl was a Slytherin. How very peculiar, that this should be her first real kiss. Please don't let it be just part of a cruel hoax. The kiss ended all too soon, a last nibble at the corner of her mouth and a pulling away. Myrtle gasped in a breath of air.
The Slytherin laughed softly, a barely-there warm chuckle. "To answer your question, I came into the bathroom to fix up my hair before lunch." Her voice was pitched lower than before, and roughened to a husky tone. Her tongue flicked out to moisten her lips, and Myrtle couldn't help but stare, thinking about those lips. And wondering about that tongue. "I came into your stall because I overheard that you were looking for a Prince," Eileen said with a smile.
Jennifer/Slytherin/51 Points