Mudblood Myrtle, for Lys
Title: Mudblood Myrtle
Characters/Pairings: Myrtle Ethelbert, Olive Hornby, Albus Dumbledore
Rating: PG
Warning(s): character death
A/N: I wrote the beginning of this story and I wrote the end. But Myrtle wrote the middle portion for me. I got her started and she just wouldn’t stop.
Dear Lys, I really loved your prompt and I tried to answer it fully (only you will be able to judge if I did). I had a lot of fun writing it, and I can't say how stellar you are. Happy Halloween!
Myrtle bit her lip and glanced up toward the clock. In twelve minutes Transfiguration would end and her day would be over. Pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose, she gauged the stinging feeling behind her eyes. Yes, she could last another twelve minutes, if no one said anything to upset her.
Not much chance of that, she thought glumly, with Olive as my partner. Myrtle watched dismally as Olive perfectly switched the tails of the mouse and the lizard on the table in front of them. Smiling in satisfaction, Olive switched the tails back and turned slightly towards her partner, nodding for her to take a turn.
Myrtle glanced nervously down at her notes before repeating the wand movement and incantation. For the fourth time that class, nothing happened. She bit down on her bottom lip as blood rushed up to her cheeks, acutely aware of Olive’s smirk. Against Myrtle’s will, a tear escaped her eyelashes and made its way down her cheek, stinging as it passed over a pimple in its path. Transfiguration was never her best subject, but the humiliation of being unable to produce any result at all was unbearable.
“It’s quite all right, Miss Ethelbert. Switching spells take an uncommon amount of focus. I shouldn’t be surprised if focus was half your problem, indeed.” Professor Dumbledore smiled kindly down at her. “Try to a good night’s rest and you can try it again in class tomorrow.”
When the Transfiguration professor had moved safely out of earshot, Olive snorted. “If focus is your problem, why doesn’t he send you to get new glasses? Honestly, I don’t know how you can see well with those Muggle contraptions you wear. I would have thought even you would have managed to get wizarding spectacles by now.”
Myrtle felt the tears welling up, threatening to overflow her eyes. How could she have known that the wizarding world had other, better glasses? It wasn’t as if Juniper or Marianne wore glasses, much less Olive. If she hadn’t been so miserable, she might have even giggled at the absurdity of Olive wearing spectacles. Olive was the model Ravenclaw: beautiful, clever, and pureblooded. One simply did not bring Olive Hornby and spectacles together in the same thought. No, of all the Ravenclaw girls her year, only Myrtle wore glasses. Miserable, muddling, Mudblood Myrtle.
The bell rang, signalling the end of class and startling the girl out of her reverie. Blindly -- for hot salty tears were now obscuring her vision almost completely -- Myrtle stuffed her things into her bag and ran from the classroom. She had been planning on returning to the dormitory and shutting herself behind her bed curtains, but Olive would follow her there. Abruptly turning from the well-travelled course to her common room, Myrtle rushed down a small stairway hidden behind the statue of Gilbert the Gloating.
An immediate right, a long corridor, and two successive left turns later, she found herself standing in front of the second floor girls’ bathroom. While she hadn’t exactly intended to end up there, she hadn’t really intended to go anywhere in particular. It would suit her purposes quite well; this part of the second floor would be mostly deserted so close to supper, which meant her chances of a long, uninterrupted cry were very good.
Opening the door, Myrtle crossed to the nearest cubicle, looking away from the mirror so as not to glimpse the mixture of snot and tears covering her face. After locking the stall door behind her, she threw her bag down, vaguely satisfied by the thump it made as it hit the stone floor. She then sat down heavily on the toilet seat and began to cry in earnest.
It was simply too awful, too unfair. She tried so hard to fit into the wizarding world, but in some ways she simply couldn’t. There were so many simple, obvious things she didn’t know. Things she could never ask about, because asking would be admitting she didn’t know already, an admission tantamount to advertising her status as a Mudblood.
Myrtle had learned early not to make her Muggle heritage known. In the beginning, it had been a reason for condescension and exclusion. She had let it slip during the first week of first year to the other girls who shared her dorm. None of them had told -- Juniper and Marianne were not that cruel, Olive valued the power of her knowledge too much to share it -- but it had opened the chasm that separated her from her year mates. Later it had become clear that Myrtle was neither particularly clever nor magically talented, cardinal sins for a Ravenclaw. Her exile had been complete.
After her initial experience with her roommates, Myrtle had kept her heritage a secret. Over her four years at Hogwarts, pureblood sentiment had been steadily growing. By the end of her third year it had become outright dangerous to be a known Mudblood. And now, with rumours about the Chamber of Secrets and the Heir of Slytherin flying around the school and the increasing threat of Grindelwald in Europe, the idea of being widely known as a Mudblood was terrifying.
The tears were falling steadily, mixing with her snot and soaking her handkerchief. With her tears she released her pent up anger, frustration, and fear. Even walking around the school wasn’t safe anymore; twelve students had been mysteriously petrified over the last four months. The larger wizarding world was paralyzed with fear of Grindelwald. The Muggle world was no refuge, saturated by fears about the Muggle World War.
The Other War, as she thought of it. Most of the other students seemed completely unconcerned about the war being fought in the Muggle world, despite its connection to Grindelwald. Certainly none of them ever spoke about it.
That was, for Myrtle at least, the most difficult part of hiding her heritage. Her lack of knowledge about the wizarding world was minor in comparison. After all, she could find most of what she needed to know by reading books, though it was extremely shameful when she didn’t know about something obvious -- like wizarding glasses, for instance. The greatest difficulty was all the things she couldn’t share: all the explanations she would never be able to give and the stories she could never tell.
If possible, she cried even harder at this thought. In the last few weeks especially, it had taken its toll. She had never felt more alone. She had been afraid for over two years, ever since her father had enlisted in the army. There had been no one to turn to with her fear, though, no one to whom she could explain. When she cried in fear, they had added moping and moaning to their list of epithets. No one had ever asked why, and even if they had, she couldn’t have told them.
Last week she had received post from her mother one morning at breakfast. Her mother was now her only parent, as her father had been killed in action. A honourable death -- if there really was such a thing. Myrtle had read the letter through three times, memorizing it. And then, stifling the tears that were threatening to overwhelm her, she had touched her wand to the page and murmured a single word: incendio. One simply did not leave evidence of Muggle parents for others to find, even if the Muggle in question were deceased.
She had missed Herbology and Charms that morning while she lay on her bed and cried, but no one had bothered to ask her what was wrong or if she was alright. She had missed class, dutifully served detentions as punishment, and, so far as anyone else seemed concerned, that was all. Her class work had been even more dismal than usual for the past week, and Professor Dumbledore at least seemed to guess that something was amiss.
Really, what could she say, even to her kind Transfiguration professor? If she were to tell him, he might be understanding, and then there might be questions. Questions that she was desperate to avoid.
It was essential that her father’s death remain a secret. The obituary list published in the Daily Prophet was exhaustive, and it was also monitored closely by most of the students at Hogwarts. They would know that her father’s name had never been listed in the Prophet. They’d know that there was only one explanation for that omission. And everyone would know that she was a Mudblood.
So she had kept her silence, and would continue to do so. She had told no one of her father’s death, not even any of her professors. It was safer that way. Any reaction on their part, even kindness, could endanger her secret by raising questions.
She was entirely alone in this, stranded as she was between two worlds. In the Muggle world, her magic set her apart --her magic and her understanding of the Other War, augmented as it was by her knowledge of Grindelwald. As for the magical world, she often felt she might as well have been the only Muggleborn witch in the school, as it was simply too dangerous to make public. Of the twelve students who had been petrified, ten had been Mudbloods, while the remaining two were half-bloods. There was no one she could safely turn to, not in either world. In her grief, Myrtle was more alone than ever.
In a way she even envied the Gryffindor Prefect -- McGonagall was her name, wasn’t it? -- who had lost both of her parents in November to the war against Grindelwald. The girl had lost both parents, not just her father, but she had been able to grieve. To grieve openly, her grief not overshadowed by her fear.
As much as her father’s death hurt, Myrtle’s pain was secondary to her fear. She was too afraid to grieve, too afraid to lament the death of the father she loved so much.
Her entire world was overshadowed by fear. The Muggle world lived in terror of the Axis Powers and their advancing armies. The wizarding world was no safer, as Grindelwald was as frightening to wizards as Hitler was to Muggles, and the threat of magical attack kept people from leaving their homes. And here at Hogwarts, everyone was afraid of whatever attacking the students, supposedly coming from the Chamber of Secrets.
Fear surrounded Myrtle, threatened her in every aspect of her life. And she was completely alone in it, because sharing her fears would be risking too much.
At least here, alone in this toilet stall, there was nothing to fear. Not air raids, not Germany, not Hitler or even Grindelwald. Not even Olive Hornby and her cruel teasing about Myrtle’s Muggle glasses. Here, safe if still alone, she was far enough removed from fear to grieve.
And so she cried. She cried for her father, because he was dead, and for her mother, because she was alone now. But most of all she cried for herself: for her horrible failures in Transfiguration and Charms, for all the obvious details of the magical world of which she was unaware (magical glasses, for instance), for all the secrets she was compelled to keep, for the overwhelming loneliness which had become her most constant companion.
In her crying she found release, able at last to acknowledge her pain, if only to herself. The sobs were quiet now, though they still came. The cold stone interior of the toilet stall was the most comforting place she had been since she was home with her mother for Christmas.
From the confines of the cubicle, Myrtle heard the door open. Quieting her breathing, she listened as footsteps made their way into the bathroom. She frowned, annoyed at the disruption.
Then a voice spoke, coming from the same place as the footsteps. It said something odd sounding that she couldn’t understand -- it didn’t sound like English at all. But the oddest thing about the voice was that it was male.
Myrtle’s frown deepened into a scowl, and her chin came up. She didn’t want anyone disturbing her here in the girls’ toilet, and this boy had absolutely no right to be there. Resolutely, she unlocked the door, preparing to demand that the boy go and use his own toilet. The stall door swung inwards.
All Myrtle could see was a pair of huge, luminous yellow eyes. Her body went stiff, everything around her seemed to go grey, and she was confused. She felt herself floating up and out of her body, and she was dead.
Characters/Pairings: Myrtle Ethelbert, Olive Hornby, Albus Dumbledore
Rating: PG
Warning(s): character death
A/N: I wrote the beginning of this story and I wrote the end. But Myrtle wrote the middle portion for me. I got her started and she just wouldn’t stop.
Dear Lys, I really loved your prompt and I tried to answer it fully (only you will be able to judge if I did). I had a lot of fun writing it, and I can't say how stellar you are. Happy Halloween!
Myrtle bit her lip and glanced up toward the clock. In twelve minutes Transfiguration would end and her day would be over. Pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose, she gauged the stinging feeling behind her eyes. Yes, she could last another twelve minutes, if no one said anything to upset her.
Not much chance of that, she thought glumly, with Olive as my partner. Myrtle watched dismally as Olive perfectly switched the tails of the mouse and the lizard on the table in front of them. Smiling in satisfaction, Olive switched the tails back and turned slightly towards her partner, nodding for her to take a turn.
Myrtle glanced nervously down at her notes before repeating the wand movement and incantation. For the fourth time that class, nothing happened. She bit down on her bottom lip as blood rushed up to her cheeks, acutely aware of Olive’s smirk. Against Myrtle’s will, a tear escaped her eyelashes and made its way down her cheek, stinging as it passed over a pimple in its path. Transfiguration was never her best subject, but the humiliation of being unable to produce any result at all was unbearable.
“It’s quite all right, Miss Ethelbert. Switching spells take an uncommon amount of focus. I shouldn’t be surprised if focus was half your problem, indeed.” Professor Dumbledore smiled kindly down at her. “Try to a good night’s rest and you can try it again in class tomorrow.”
When the Transfiguration professor had moved safely out of earshot, Olive snorted. “If focus is your problem, why doesn’t he send you to get new glasses? Honestly, I don’t know how you can see well with those Muggle contraptions you wear. I would have thought even you would have managed to get wizarding spectacles by now.”
Myrtle felt the tears welling up, threatening to overflow her eyes. How could she have known that the wizarding world had other, better glasses? It wasn’t as if Juniper or Marianne wore glasses, much less Olive. If she hadn’t been so miserable, she might have even giggled at the absurdity of Olive wearing spectacles. Olive was the model Ravenclaw: beautiful, clever, and pureblooded. One simply did not bring Olive Hornby and spectacles together in the same thought. No, of all the Ravenclaw girls her year, only Myrtle wore glasses. Miserable, muddling, Mudblood Myrtle.
The bell rang, signalling the end of class and startling the girl out of her reverie. Blindly -- for hot salty tears were now obscuring her vision almost completely -- Myrtle stuffed her things into her bag and ran from the classroom. She had been planning on returning to the dormitory and shutting herself behind her bed curtains, but Olive would follow her there. Abruptly turning from the well-travelled course to her common room, Myrtle rushed down a small stairway hidden behind the statue of Gilbert the Gloating.
An immediate right, a long corridor, and two successive left turns later, she found herself standing in front of the second floor girls’ bathroom. While she hadn’t exactly intended to end up there, she hadn’t really intended to go anywhere in particular. It would suit her purposes quite well; this part of the second floor would be mostly deserted so close to supper, which meant her chances of a long, uninterrupted cry were very good.
Opening the door, Myrtle crossed to the nearest cubicle, looking away from the mirror so as not to glimpse the mixture of snot and tears covering her face. After locking the stall door behind her, she threw her bag down, vaguely satisfied by the thump it made as it hit the stone floor. She then sat down heavily on the toilet seat and began to cry in earnest.
It was simply too awful, too unfair. She tried so hard to fit into the wizarding world, but in some ways she simply couldn’t. There were so many simple, obvious things she didn’t know. Things she could never ask about, because asking would be admitting she didn’t know already, an admission tantamount to advertising her status as a Mudblood.
Myrtle had learned early not to make her Muggle heritage known. In the beginning, it had been a reason for condescension and exclusion. She had let it slip during the first week of first year to the other girls who shared her dorm. None of them had told -- Juniper and Marianne were not that cruel, Olive valued the power of her knowledge too much to share it -- but it had opened the chasm that separated her from her year mates. Later it had become clear that Myrtle was neither particularly clever nor magically talented, cardinal sins for a Ravenclaw. Her exile had been complete.
After her initial experience with her roommates, Myrtle had kept her heritage a secret. Over her four years at Hogwarts, pureblood sentiment had been steadily growing. By the end of her third year it had become outright dangerous to be a known Mudblood. And now, with rumours about the Chamber of Secrets and the Heir of Slytherin flying around the school and the increasing threat of Grindelwald in Europe, the idea of being widely known as a Mudblood was terrifying.
The tears were falling steadily, mixing with her snot and soaking her handkerchief. With her tears she released her pent up anger, frustration, and fear. Even walking around the school wasn’t safe anymore; twelve students had been mysteriously petrified over the last four months. The larger wizarding world was paralyzed with fear of Grindelwald. The Muggle world was no refuge, saturated by fears about the Muggle World War.
The Other War, as she thought of it. Most of the other students seemed completely unconcerned about the war being fought in the Muggle world, despite its connection to Grindelwald. Certainly none of them ever spoke about it.
That was, for Myrtle at least, the most difficult part of hiding her heritage. Her lack of knowledge about the wizarding world was minor in comparison. After all, she could find most of what she needed to know by reading books, though it was extremely shameful when she didn’t know about something obvious -- like wizarding glasses, for instance. The greatest difficulty was all the things she couldn’t share: all the explanations she would never be able to give and the stories she could never tell.
If possible, she cried even harder at this thought. In the last few weeks especially, it had taken its toll. She had never felt more alone. She had been afraid for over two years, ever since her father had enlisted in the army. There had been no one to turn to with her fear, though, no one to whom she could explain. When she cried in fear, they had added moping and moaning to their list of epithets. No one had ever asked why, and even if they had, she couldn’t have told them.
Last week she had received post from her mother one morning at breakfast. Her mother was now her only parent, as her father had been killed in action. A honourable death -- if there really was such a thing. Myrtle had read the letter through three times, memorizing it. And then, stifling the tears that were threatening to overwhelm her, she had touched her wand to the page and murmured a single word: incendio. One simply did not leave evidence of Muggle parents for others to find, even if the Muggle in question were deceased.
She had missed Herbology and Charms that morning while she lay on her bed and cried, but no one had bothered to ask her what was wrong or if she was alright. She had missed class, dutifully served detentions as punishment, and, so far as anyone else seemed concerned, that was all. Her class work had been even more dismal than usual for the past week, and Professor Dumbledore at least seemed to guess that something was amiss.
Really, what could she say, even to her kind Transfiguration professor? If she were to tell him, he might be understanding, and then there might be questions. Questions that she was desperate to avoid.
It was essential that her father’s death remain a secret. The obituary list published in the Daily Prophet was exhaustive, and it was also monitored closely by most of the students at Hogwarts. They would know that her father’s name had never been listed in the Prophet. They’d know that there was only one explanation for that omission. And everyone would know that she was a Mudblood.
So she had kept her silence, and would continue to do so. She had told no one of her father’s death, not even any of her professors. It was safer that way. Any reaction on their part, even kindness, could endanger her secret by raising questions.
She was entirely alone in this, stranded as she was between two worlds. In the Muggle world, her magic set her apart --her magic and her understanding of the Other War, augmented as it was by her knowledge of Grindelwald. As for the magical world, she often felt she might as well have been the only Muggleborn witch in the school, as it was simply too dangerous to make public. Of the twelve students who had been petrified, ten had been Mudbloods, while the remaining two were half-bloods. There was no one she could safely turn to, not in either world. In her grief, Myrtle was more alone than ever.
In a way she even envied the Gryffindor Prefect -- McGonagall was her name, wasn’t it? -- who had lost both of her parents in November to the war against Grindelwald. The girl had lost both parents, not just her father, but she had been able to grieve. To grieve openly, her grief not overshadowed by her fear.
As much as her father’s death hurt, Myrtle’s pain was secondary to her fear. She was too afraid to grieve, too afraid to lament the death of the father she loved so much.
Her entire world was overshadowed by fear. The Muggle world lived in terror of the Axis Powers and their advancing armies. The wizarding world was no safer, as Grindelwald was as frightening to wizards as Hitler was to Muggles, and the threat of magical attack kept people from leaving their homes. And here at Hogwarts, everyone was afraid of whatever attacking the students, supposedly coming from the Chamber of Secrets.
Fear surrounded Myrtle, threatened her in every aspect of her life. And she was completely alone in it, because sharing her fears would be risking too much.
At least here, alone in this toilet stall, there was nothing to fear. Not air raids, not Germany, not Hitler or even Grindelwald. Not even Olive Hornby and her cruel teasing about Myrtle’s Muggle glasses. Here, safe if still alone, she was far enough removed from fear to grieve.
And so she cried. She cried for her father, because he was dead, and for her mother, because she was alone now. But most of all she cried for herself: for her horrible failures in Transfiguration and Charms, for all the obvious details of the magical world of which she was unaware (magical glasses, for instance), for all the secrets she was compelled to keep, for the overwhelming loneliness which had become her most constant companion.
In her crying she found release, able at last to acknowledge her pain, if only to herself. The sobs were quiet now, though they still came. The cold stone interior of the toilet stall was the most comforting place she had been since she was home with her mother for Christmas.
From the confines of the cubicle, Myrtle heard the door open. Quieting her breathing, she listened as footsteps made their way into the bathroom. She frowned, annoyed at the disruption.
Then a voice spoke, coming from the same place as the footsteps. It said something odd sounding that she couldn’t understand -- it didn’t sound like English at all. But the oddest thing about the voice was that it was male.
Myrtle’s frown deepened into a scowl, and her chin came up. She didn’t want anyone disturbing her here in the girls’ toilet, and this boy had absolutely no right to be there. Resolutely, she unlocked the door, preparing to demand that the boy go and use his own toilet. The stall door swung inwards.
All Myrtle could see was a pair of huge, luminous yellow eyes. Her body went stiff, everything around her seemed to go grey, and she was confused. She felt herself floating up and out of her body, and she was dead.