As usual, Myrtle sat on a broken toilet in the innermost stall of the girls' bathroom on the second floor, whimpering and sobbing. For fifty years, she had been complaining about the injustice of fate and the wretched mockery of Olive Hornby.
Suddenly, there was a soft knock on the door of her cubicle. She looked at the door warily, wondering who was so audacious as to disturb her daily crying.
"Hello? Is anyone there? Are you all right?" a girl's voice asked hesitantly from outside the door. "You sound like you are not feeling well. Do you need help?"
"Who is outside?" Myrtle asked, sobbing, a hint of curiosity piqued by the sudden, kind voice.
For a very, very long time, no one had spoken to her so gently and kindly.
People kept their distance from her, afraid of being associated with the weeping and complaining Myrtle.
"I am Hermione Granger. You can call me Hermione. That is what my friends call me." There was a hint of concern in the girl's voice. "Has someone bullied you?"
Myrtle was extremely surprised.
Had this ignorant girl never heard of the famous Myrtle?
The ugly, pitiful, and dejected Moaning Myrtle who lives in the abandoned girls' bathroom on the second floor of Hogwarts... Everyone looks down on her, and Olive Hornby always mocked her...
"Olive Hornby... she said I look like a four eyed dog with my glasses on..." Myrtle was touched by the hint of concern in Hermione's voice, and said with a sob, "She mocked my glasses... and my spots... she is so mean!"
"Oh... she truly should not have said that." Hermione's voice came from outside the door, sounding somewhat angry. "I can understand how that feels... I was in a poor mood recently, and I even hid in the bathroom a few times... Sometimes they simply do not know how to talk to people properly..."
Myrtle sobbed, "I hope people will not talk about me behind my back! I have feelings too! Even though..." She suddenly could not finish her sentence. She did not want to admit that she was dead.
"Which house are you in?" Hermione asked her, a hint of curiosity in her voice.
"You are probably not from Gryffindor. I have never heard of an Olive Hornby in our house."
The house? Myrtle frantically searched through her distant memories and finally managed to recall the name of her house.
"I am from Ravenclaw... I think I am..." Her light voice carried through the door, feeling rather pleased to be asked. For a moment, she felt like a living girl talking to another living girl through the door.
"I am from Gryffindor." Hermione stood outside the door, looking worriedly at the scratched, peeling wooden door. "Listen, I do not think that Olive Hornby is a good friend. You could make some other friends... the kind that do not cause you pain."
"No one wants to be my friend," Myrtle said sadly. "They all love to laugh at me and bully me... My life here is full of sorrow, not joy..."
"I can be your first friend. I have not even had a chance to meet any Ravenclaw friends yet." Hermione wrinkled her nose at the eerie candles, the dirty old mirror, and the damp floor in the bathroom. "This is truly not a good place to talk. Why do you not come out? We can find somewhere else to chat..."
"Other places?" Myrtle said emotionally, "I will not go anywhere else. I can only stay here..."
"All right, do not be angry. Let us stay here and talk for a while." Hermione sighed. "What is your name?"
Myrtle did not want to tell her her real name. If she did, the little girl might avoid her like the other students did.
So she would be stuck here alone again, bored, with nothing to do but cry.
She coughed lightly and cleared her throat. "Elizabeth. Please call me Elizabeth."
Myrtle's full name was Myrtle Elizabeth Warren. Telling someone her middle name was not considered deception.
She had stopped crying. The ghost floated up from above the cubicle, curiously peeking at the girl named Hermione Granger.
She was holding several thick books, had thick, long brown hair, a fair complexion with rosy cheeks, and bright brown eyes that showed a hint of worry, as though she was concerned about Elizabeth behind the door.
This girl seems to truly enjoy reading, which is something we share. Myrtle immediately felt somewhat more favorably disposed toward Hermione.
"It is a pleasure to meet you, Elizabeth. Some people make fun of my front teeth, and if we care about those things, it will never end... You know, nobody is perfect." Hermione said with a smile to Elizabeth behind the door, completely unaware that a ghost was peering at her through the crack in the door above her.
"You are right," Myrtle said. She was somewhat shy. Sharing girls' little secrets was a completely new experience for her.
When someone was willing to tell you about the things they had been ridiculed for, and to show you their scars, a close sense of trust and emotional connection would form between you and her. This was the beginning of friendships between girls.
From the time Moaning Myrtle arrived at Hogwarts until now, she had never made a single friend.
Everyone laughed at her. No one showed her any kindness. Yet, this girl was willing to talk to her and even be her friend.
If only I had met her sooner...
"It is a pleasure to meet you, Hermione." Myrtle sniffed, her voice tinged with delight. "I would love to be your friend."
"That is wonderful. Are you feeling better now? I have to go to class soon. Do you need me to stay with you a little longer?" Hermione noticed the change in her tone and immediately breathed a sigh of relief.
"Go to class, and come chat with me again when you have time," Myrtle said happily. She floated in the toilet tank, habitually pinching a spot on her chin, feeling smug about making her first friend.
"All right." Hermione's tone was somewhat puzzled. She did not understand why they had to meet here, in such a dark and gloomy place.
But time was pressing. Her next class was indeed about to begin. Hermione hurriedly said goodbye to the mysterious Elizabeth and dashed away from the abandoned girls' bathroom.
Just as Myrtle, unusually, stopped weeping and quietly savored her conversation with her first friend, footsteps sounded again outside the door of her cubicle.
It seemed a few boys ran in. How rude! This is a girls' bathroom!
Myrtle floated up and began to sneakily peek outside again. There were two identical red haired boys and a boy with platinum blond hair.
They were all quite good looking. This suddenly made Myrtle feel shy, and she was even too embarrassed to scold them.
Were they also here to make friends with me? A fleeting fantasy crossed her mind, so instead of running out and shouting, she shyly and quietly eavesdropped on their conversation.
Clearly, neither the Weasley twins nor Draco realized they were being spied on by a ghost.
"Give it a try." The Weasley twins mysteriously produced a box of custard creams, exchanged a knowing glance, and handed it to Draco.
Draco took the biscuit, looking at the Weasley brothers suspiciously. "Before I try the biscuit, please tell me why you brought me here?"
This happened right after the Easter holidays. Draco was brazenly kidnapped by the Weasley twins and dragged to the abandoned girls' bathroom on the second floor of Hogwarts without any explanation.
If Draco remembered correctly, this was Moaning Myrtle's territory.
"We need to be discreet," Fred winked at him. "These are not ordinary biscuits."
"Eating this will have unusual consequences," George said mischievously. "You had better do it in front of a mirror, or you might miss the show."
Draco stared at the box of biscuits. "Do you think I would eat such an unknown food without any precautions?"
Fred shrugged. "I remember someone saying they appreciated our sense of humor."
"This was the inspiration you gave us," George said with a smile. "We spent considerable time working on it."
Draco rolled his eyes and casually picked up a custard cream and put it in his mouth.
Bang! A large canary appeared in the mirror opposite Draco. The Weasley twins burst into laughter.
Even after a minute, when Draco returned to his original form, the twins were still clutching their stomachs and unable to straighten up.
Draco tried to appear more mature, but he still failed to control his expression and glared at them angrily.
"Dad never dreamed we would turn a Malfoy into this," Fred said to George with a straight face, barely managing to suppress a laugh.
Draco abandoned all pretense of composure, his cheeks puffing out in anger. "Why can you not simply tell me what this is?"
"We just want to make certain you can truly appreciate our humor," Fred patted Draco on the shoulder, "and see whether you are genuinely interested in working with us."
George said, "Oh, do not be so serious. You are so young, always wearing such a long face. You will scare all the girls away!"
"We have already gone easy on you. You have not tried Nosebleed Nougat yet..." Fred grinned.
"Quite efficient," Draco snorted. "So, what do you think about the collaboration?"
"Of course we should cooperate." Fred shrugged.
"Mum and Dad will be shocked when they find out," George said casually.
"Please keep this a secret! I do not want my dear father to break my legs," Draco said in a theatrical tone.
"All right." "All right," George and Fred said, somewhat disappointed.
Just as they were about to continue discussing the specifics of their collaboration with Draco, he casually gestured toward the last stall in the bathroom: "Hello, Myrtle. A kind girl like you surely would not mind giving us some private time, would you?"
Draco had already heard some rustling noises from that compartment, and he had even heard a suppressed laugh when he became a canary.
As he scanned the bathroom, he was quite certain that Myrtle's silvery white face had flashed past through the crack in the door of the last cubicle.
George and Fred looked toward the bathroom stall in surprise. They heard a girl scream, then something rushed into the toilet, splashing water everywhere.
"It is all right. She is always so easily startled," Draco shrugged, speaking to the twin brothers.
He waved his wand, and a magically binding agreement was quickly written.
The agreement stipulated that Draco, as Party A, would invest two thousand Galleons in the Weasley joke shop, making him the majority shareholder with a fifty one percent stake.
The Weasley twins would invest forty nine percent of the shares and would act as joint shop managers, responsible for product development, raw material procurement, production and sales.
The profits from the shop would be split equally between Party A and Party B. Party B must strictly keep Draco's status as a major shareholder confidential.
There were also many detailed rules as supplementary explanations, densely occupying several sheets of parchment. Draco and the Weasley twins glanced at them, and seeing that there were no problems, they quickly signed them.
"We are working on some new products..." Fred said.
"...some are still in the experimental stage," George added.
"We want to test their popularity among students first..."
"...or they can be sold via owl order."
"Place an advertisement in the Daily Prophet..."
"...They advertise in the Daily Prophet every day."
Draco was gradually getting used to the twin brothers' back and forth banter.
"Taking it step by step is a sound approach, and you also have studies to complete. In short, let us take it one step at a time, and I trust your judgment."
Draco glanced warily into the bathroom, watching to see if Myrtle had returned. Then, he took a heavy money pouch from his dragonhide bag, filled with Galleons.
"Brilliant!" Fred glanced enviously at the dragonhide pouch. "Extension Charm! It must have considerable space inside, correct?"
Draco chuckled lazily and handed them the money pouch. "It is several dozen square meters, large enough for people to live in. Once the shop makes a profit, I will give each of you one."