Word Count: 1,000

There were several decades between the day of her death and the date when it finally happened; when someone was finally genuinely nice to her without it being a plan of any scheme or something. Because that had occasionally happened during her lifetime and she did not want any more of it in her afterlife.

She was very surprised it was him out of all the people who had walked through these halls over the years.

The person in question was Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, the Golden Boy of Gryffindor Tower, and the Heir of Slytherin, though that last one was pretty recent.

Myrtle did listen to the gossip of the other ghosts as well as the rare students that entered her bathroom. She knew what kind of person everyone thought he was.

Arrogant and attention seeking, a spoiled brat.

Only, he wasn't. Not really.

He was neither of those things. Harry Potter was actually really nice and sweet and considerate.

And she would know. The boy and his two less nice friends spent the majority of their time in her toilet brewing some sort of potion after all. She only found out what the potion in question was a bit later, when they took it.

Harry occasionally—once every two weeks or so—visited her without the others and spent the time talking to Myrtle.

That felt really nice.

At the end of the school year, Harry Potter did not die when he was fighting whatever was hidden down the tunnel hid by the sink.

He did not join her, which she supposed was alright. Harry deserved to live a long life full of happiness, not whatever it was that she was experiencing.

He stopped coming over to her toilet. He didn't just stop to brew the Polyjuice Potion, oh no, she would have been more than fine with that, he completely stopped turning up in her toilet.

He forgot about her, left her all alone yet again.

Myrtle was always alone with herself without Harry.

Somehow, this felt infinitely worse than it did before.

At least we was not rude to her when she visited him two years later while he was trying to solve the clue hidden in the golden egg in that tournament.

It could have been a lot worse, Myrtle supposed.

He didn't insult her—at least not to her face—he did not try to make her leave—not really, she would have left if he had really wanted it—and he never tried to exorcise her—people had done that before.

Harry might not like her and merely tolerated her presence, but it was better than outright hatred by far.

Another boy started visiting her a couple of years later.

He was almost the total opposite of Harry in both appearance and character. The boy was called Draco.

No matter how much she tried to stop herself, Myrtle got her hopes up. Maybe this time it would not end the same way as the last. The boys were different enough from each other.

He visited more frequently and seemed just as desperate for help as she was.

It was really tragic and depressing that he seemed to be the only person she ever managed to really connect to when he seemed to be complementing horrible things.

Not whatever it was he did that ruined him, more ruining the thing's chances of ruining his life. And anyone else's too.

Myrtle should probably have tried to get him some help, but she didn't. She was too afraid that he would leave her alone if she did.

Perhaps they could be lonely ghosts together.

At the end of the year, Draco left and he never returned.

Everything had once again been a part of a larger plan, a scheme that involved her cooperation.

How could she have expected anything different at this point when every previous experience in both live and death proved her that her being happy simply would not happen?

She should have known better after close to a century of experience! How could she have let herself be fooled by a few nice words once again?

A couple of decades later, three children tried to befriend her. She was too cautious to let that happen again, especially as two out of the three were the children of Harry and Draco and the third was the child of one of Harry's friends—the girl, Hermione—and one of Draco's—the quiet one, Theodore.

That did not exactly inspire her trust in the three eleven-year-olds.

The three however, persisted. They really tried to befriend her.

She never dared to ask why. What if it turned out to be a part of a scheme yet again and not a genuinely nice gesture?

The three of them—Albus, Rose, and Scorpius—were different from everyone else so far, as they never really left.

Maybe it was because they were Ravenclaw—not Gryffindor, not Slytherin—but they kept visiting her over all seven years of their education.

Sometimes there were long times between their visits, during which Myrtle worried that they were just the same as everyone else in her existence.

They always returned, sooner or later.

And they even stayed as teachers. Rose taught Charms, Scorpius Ancient Runes, and Albus the newly mandatory—and finally accurate—Muggle Studies.

Of course Myrtle knew that it wasn't simply because of her, but she liked to pretend it was.

Once Rose, Albus, and Scorpius was old enough to leave the school forever, she felt herself ready to leave too.

She had achieved in over a century of afterlife what she had wanted in her dozen years of life.

Myrtle Warren was finally loved and appreciated. She was no longer known as Moaning Myrtle. She was no longer crying tears of debateable existence.

She was finally ready to let go, to step into the light.

It was better than she expected.

Heaven—because this was where she ended up, somehow—was everything she could remember wanting and desiring in her entire existence on Earth—both before and after her death.

Please tell me what you think!

~Marvelgeek42