Dumbledore, Please Explain Your Twisted Logic!

Disclaimer: Seriously, J.K. Rowling wouldn't do this to her characters.

Warning: When it comes to rote description, this chapter is actually pretty tame compared to some of the previous ones. HOWEVER, I want to warn you all about some thematic elements in this chapter--specifically... well, I don't want to give it away. Just keep reading.

Chapter Twenty

This Mortal Coil is Quit

First of all, one matter must be cleared up immediately: Hermione had suffered many sleepless nights, and she had thought that she had seen the worst of her Arithmancy project, but now she could say with all surety that it had all been nothing compared to Wednesday night.

She got out of play practice at 6:00. She had a two-foot essay to write for Transfiguration, three recipes to create for Potions, another two-foot essay for Charms, a ten-page excerpt to translate for Ancient Runes, and a 150-page book to read for Defense Against the Dark Arts. To top that all off, she had to work on her Arithmancy project, as she had a mere nine days to complete it. Unfortunately, though, that was the day the play opened. This meant that Hermione would have gotten through her entire project without a single bit of help from the teacher.

To give herself an extra thirty minutes, Hermione skipped dinner. Then she went to the library, stomach growling, and began her Transfiguration essay. This she managed to finish in an hour. She then decided to go easy on herself a picked up her Ancient Runes, as it was rote translation that involved no planning or composing. She had thought she'd finish this in an hour as well. But the translation went a lot slower than she had planned, and by 8:00 she had actually only gotten through three pages. Then Ron and Harry traipsed into the library with a teacher's permission slip, eager to peruse the Restricted Section, and they made it a point to stop by and talk to Hermione. For a whole fucking hour. She loved her friends and all, but she had a shitload of homework, and that was a very valuable hour that they'd just thrown down the drain!

She got back on task: 11:00 saw the end of the translating, so she switched gratefully to Potions. However, the calculations turned out a lot harder than she expected, so she spent a good portion of the next two hours gritting her teeth and tearing at her hair. Madam Pince had long since left the library, but Hermione, being very smart and head girl as well, was allowed to stay out past curfew. This privilege she miserably exploited, and at 1:00 in the morning she began her 150-page book. The words were tiny. Scratch that, they were fucking microscopic! Did the publishers really expect her to have eagle-eye vision? Balling her fists, she resisted temptation to call for a house-elf to bring her chocolate, knowing that it would go against everything she preached in S.P.E.W.

It was 4:00 when she finished that damn book. Fucking 4:00 in the fucking morning! She had class tomorrow, and she still had an essay to finish and a project to work on! How could her teachers do this to her! Didn't they realize that she other classes outside their own, not to mention a life as well? She moaned long and loud, and her stomach took the bass line with a growl.

For a full minute Hermione considered skipping the essay and working on her project. She still needed to plan out her 10-parchment essay, and that would take a full day itself, never mind writing the entire damn thing in ancient runes! She needed to start on this fucking thing right now! But her Charms essay was due tomorrow at 9:30, and she couldn't stand to get a zero on it! What to do, what to do, what to do?

Charms essay. Writing with big, loopy words, Hermione managed to fill two feet within forty-five minutes. She set it aside in despair, knowing that it was some of the worst tripe she had written since her first year, convinced that it couldn't draw her more than a low A.

So at 4:45 she began working on her Arithmancy project. The moment she began planning, she realized there was still a hole in her logic that needed some more research. At this moment, she couldn't take it anymore. It was three hours and fifteen cunting minutes until her first cocking class, and she was still sitting in the library trying to start a clitting outline she should have finished four quimming hours ago! She was exhausted, she was unfocused, she was starving, and she was overstressed! She needed twice as much sleep and half as much work. She desired the company that misery so loves, and she longed for one single weekend in which she wasn't working her arse off. When would it all end?

She summoned Dobby and ordered him to get her as much chocolate as he could lay his hands on. He did this with alacrity, and in one minute Hermione was stuffing three globes of dark chocolate in her mouth at once and chewing desperately. It was at this moment that she broke down.

She wasn't going to get any work on her project done tonight. She wasn't going to get any sleep tonight. She wasn't going to have a single minute of free time until the play was over. And she had just ordered a house-elf to get her food--like a slave! She was so miserable she wanted to die.

So for the next hour-and-a-half, Hermione sobbed into her sleeves. Dobby hung around and gave her many hugs and massages, and Hermione wailed out a dozen apologies every other minute. "I'm so sorry, Dobby! I'm sorry I made you get me chocolate! Dobby, do you forgive me? I value you as an intelligent being, Dobby, I really do! I don't know what possessed me to order you around like a slave! If you want to go--and I know you do!--I won't be mad." And so on and so forth. Dobby just cooed a long line of comfort into her ear and kept feeding her chocolates. She scarfed enough truffles to keep a fondue fountain running for an entire Ministry party, and by the time 6:15 rolled around, Hermione felt extremely bloated, extremely miserable, and extremely guilty. She was touched by Dobby's patient bolstering, but nothing could improve Hermione's mood right now--not even if Godric Gryffindor himself materialized atop the study tables and performed a striptease.

With all this hanging over her, Hermione trudged to the Prefect's Bathroom to wash away at least the appearance of stress. She would cleanse the tear tracks and file her fingernails, which had grown rather ragged from dragging themselves across her cheeks all night. And maybe she could try yet another trick to get her hair to stop being so bushy. Hmmph, as if that'll ever happen, Hermione thought listlessly. Every day I try to tame my hair, and every day it just gets uglier. How can this day possibly be any different?

Hermione gave the password. The door opened, and she stepped into the bathroom.

Coughing fit to burst, she rushed out again. With her billowed a huge cloud of smoke, stifling and incensed so heavily that Hermione nearly got high from only a few breaths of the stuff. Tears streaming from her eyes, she fled halfway down the hall and waited for the smoke to float towards the ceiling. In a minute it had risen to the rafters, and Hermione was able to return to the Prefect Bathroom without having to breathe any more of that insufferable gas.

"What the bloody fuck was that!" she raged quietly, determined to be in a bad temper all day. Profanity be damned: She was going to cuss up a storm, and if anyone didn't like it, then they could bloody well go to the top of the Astronomy Tower and throw themselves off! "I'll bet it was that buggering Peeves." She stormed into the bathroom and stopped short.

The tub was surrounded by literally hundreds, maybe even thousands of candles, many of them still lit and burnt down to stubs against the marble floor. With a wave of her wand, she sent a blast of wind that blew them all out and even knocked a dozen or so of them into the tub. As for the tub, it was filled to the brim with water, and in it rested a single person, naked and unmoving.

It was Professor Trelawney. She was dead.

~~~~~

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

A deep breath.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAA! AAAAAAAAAAA! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"

Hermione did not have to do this for long before the whole of Hogwarts came running. Okay, so it was only a dozen students and a few teachers at first, but as the commotion grew, so did the crowd, and soon a sizeable multitude thronged around the ring of candles.

"What's happened?"

"Hey, who started screaming?"

"Why are we looking at someone sitting naked in a tub? This is sick!"

"Hey, is that a teacher in there?"

"Everyone out of the way!" Professor McGonagall had arrived, followed by Flitwick and and Dumbledore. They were all dressed in nightgowns, but Dumbledore's was by far the most flamboyant--it had little planets and stars that glowed in the dark and danced around the cloth. The three teachers made a path through the ring of candles and stood around the edge of the tub, examining the body.

"It is Professor Trelawney," Dumbledore announced, loud enough so that everyone heard him. "She is dead."

Inexplicably, he sounded a bit ashamed. McGonagall's response was stronger: She gave a dry sob and stumbled away from the tub, looking like Voldemort himself had stared her in the eye. Flitwick didn't react except to raise his eyebrows in unflattering astonishment.

Meanwhile, the students gasped and began repeating the news threefold to one another.

"Professor Trelawney is dead! Professor Trelawney is dead! Professor Trelawney is dead!" And etceteras, etceteras.

"Oh no!" wailed one First-Year who had no idea how miserable a teacher Trelawney was. "What happened to her?"

Maybe nobody else noticed, but Hermione was shrewd enough to realize that Dumbledore once again looked a little guilty. So, inexplicably, did Professor McGonagall. And Draco Malfoy. They all stared at the floor, or at the ceiling, or at the people next to them, but never at the body in the tub. What the hell was going on? What did these three people have to do with the death of Professor Trelawney?

Lavender and Parvati were devastated to see their favorite professor lying dead in the water just yards away from them; that their professor was pasty and naked only worsened the trauma. "I can't believe it!" Lavender wailed into her best friend's shoulder. "I just can't believe it! How could she leave us at a time like this?"

The other students exchanged guilty looks. The truth was, none of them was all that sad that Trelawney had died. She was mad as a hatter (or madder!). She smelled of cooking sherry and acted as if that was all she ever drank. Also, she was a terrible teacher: She had spent the last sixteen-and-a-half years predicting their deaths, for Merlin's sake! There was really nothing to like about her... at all. They felt--and Hermione counted herself among them--that the process of natural selection had done the world a favor in shuffling this tragic being off the Mortal Coil.

The worst thing about all this, though, was that they felt guilty for not feeling sad. Trelawney was a human being, and she had died. She wasn't Voldemort, she wasn't a Death Eater, and she wasn't even a common criminal. She was just a strange old lady who had gotten on their nerves. But she was human. They should be celebrating her life and mourning her death, yet they weren't. If anything, they'd been mourning her life and were now celebrating her death, or at least celebrating the fact that they'd never have to deal with her again. And, though they couldn't help their feelings, they still felt guilty for them.

Ron and Harry appeared by Hermione's side and craned their necks to survey the morbid sight. "Oh gee," Ron said delicately, trying to maintain the forced mood of solemnity. "Yikes. What in fucking fuck?"

Without warning, a spectral shape floated out of the water, causing half the students to scream. The teachers whipped their heads towards the mysterious development, then caught their breaths when they realized what it was.

"Moaning Myrtle?" Ron breathed. The oddest thing about it was that he whispered loud enough for everyone to hear, but Moaning Myrtle didn't throw a tantrum, nor even burst into tears. In fact, she was grinning broadly from ear to ghostly ear, looking more joyous than anyone had remembered, or even imagined, in their entire period at Hogwarts.

"My most esteemable Myrtle," Dumbledore said softly, "what happened here? What caused this tragedy?"

"Oh my good professors," Myrtle sang gleefully, "I know exactly what happened! And it is no tragedy."

~~~~~

Ten hours earlier, something very strange sped through the halls of Hogwarts. It was Professor Trelawney, barefoot and clad in a loose bathrobe. Her wand was out, and with it she levitated a line of boxes behind her. There were a dozen boxes in all, enough to hold all fifteen hundred of her candles, and she was taking every single of one of them with her to the Prefect's Bathroom for her nightly bath.

"Edna told me to do it, so I'll do it!" Trelawney whispered crazily to herself. "Take a bath, cleanse myself of my sorrow, if that's even possible. But is it? Oh dear holy Merlin, is it?"

She reached the entrance of the bathroom and said in a tremendous tremolo, "Ogden's Delights!" The door opened, and she stepped in, allowing the boxes to follow in single file. She closed and locked the door behind her, then threw off her robe because felt much too heavy against her skin.

Standing naked in the moonlight, Trelawney waved her wand about, causing all the candles to fly from their boxes and up into the air. They fluttered above her in a cloud tall enough to brush the ceiling, jostling against one another and sending flakes of wax into Sybil's bedraggled hair. With another wave of her wand, the candles lined themselves around the tub, sitting coolly with their black wicks pricking the chilly night air.

Trelawney slipped into the tub, savoring the firm caress of the marble against her bare buttocks, yet at the same time lamenting that it wasn't a pair of strong hands she felt instead. "Why is it that all my men leave me?" she said, her words expelled from her lips in sputters. "Why is it, when I beg for them to stay with me, they always leave? When I say I love them, I mean I love them!"

Still whimpering, she began turning on the many taps, allowing the multicolored water to jet into the vast tub. While the water level rose around her legs, Trelawney sent a line of flames from her wand. The fire circled the ring of candles that surrounded her and lit every one of them.

The effect was staggering. Previously when Trelawney had taken a bath in the Prefect's Bathroom, she only took a few candles--a couple dozen at the most. But now, with over a thousand candles, there was enough fire to create a small cloud of smoke above her. The fumes they gave off were mindbending. Before they had made Trelawney a little light-headed, but now they blasted her brain with such vapors that the room multiplied before her eyes. She was sure there were at least three mermaid paintings on the wall now, but even more sure that they had left the paintings and were fluttering around in the air like birds. Each flame became an overexcited firefly hovering two inches above the ground but always stretching for a few inches more. They whispered words to Trelawney: "Follow us, Sybil! We are the thousand lights--follow us and find what you seek!" Their words rose from their mouths and shriveled in the air, becoming smoke. They repeated themselves so quickly and so frequently that the room was soon thick with their speech. "Follow us! Follow us!"

And so Trelawney followed them. The surface of the water now hovered at the brim of the tub, so Trelawney had to push through the dark pool to reach the other end of the ring. "I'm coming!" she gasped. "I'm coming! I'M COMING! Oh fuck, Death, I'm coming!"

And she came. Her pelvis undulated beneath the water, swallowing great gulps of the scented liquid into her cervix before expelling it. Her legs quivered and her arms shook, and her heart wrenched magnificently in her chest as she realized that this orgasm found her all alone.

"Nobody to share it with," she moaned softly. "Nobody to feel its power juddering from my body into theirs... Oh why, oh why? They all left me, every one of them! I am the lonely tree in the wint--in the wint--in the winter..." She coughed violently, doubling at the waist until her hair crushed the soapsuds on the water's surface. The one-and-a-half thousand candles had raised the temperature of the room past 45 degrees Celsius, which was enough to flush her tender skin a magnificent red, and she was beginning to realize just how heavy the smoke had become. Previously it had risen to the ceiling, but now the air was so full of it that it sunk down towards the surface of the water, threatening to swallow the poor Divination professor. She coughed again, this time much more heavily than before. She gulped down a huge breath of air to revive herself, but with it came a mouthful of smoke.

"Ugh--" She choked as the smoke coated her throat. "Ugh..." And she realized: She was dying.

Her wand lay forgotten at the other end of the tub, and she didn't have the strength to fight her way through the water to reach it. Turning around to face the long line of firefly-candle lights, she gathered all the air from her lungs and expelled it from her mouth in an effort to blow out the candles. Her power was not enough. Precious little air entered her lungs, and all that did was just enough for those fiery beings to flit in synchrony to one side, only to return to their original position when she stopped blowing. So she took a deep breath to get more air, but all that happened was she started coughing again--great, ragged coughs. Even those failed to snuff the candles.

"I'm dying..." she rasped. "I'm dying." She turned around and sunk into the tub until only her head and shoulders were above the water. "When I was loved--when I had a man by my side--he would (*cough*) be in here with me... washing my back... He'd whisper to me instead of flames.

"But he's gone... They're all gone... And they'll come back no more."

Her next breath was shorter than the last. She was a lone figure in the murky air, a shadow of a person. The waters around her were dark and deep. And to the smoke she whispered, "No more..."

What else was there that could sum up her tragic life? She was to be a no-more phantom, just as everything she loved had become, and now was the time to join them in the Great Beyond. For a second the thought what lay beyond death scared her, but, she figured, if there was nothing for her on this earth, why stay with it any longer? Too many times Death with his scythe had reached out to touch the lives of her loved ones while ignoring her with all the dispassion a being could muster. Too often his ghostly companions surrounded her and refused to bargain with Death so that he'd take her too. But now Death was coming, and she was ready. In fact, she had never wanted anything more!

The firelights danced so furiously around the tub that they'd become one continuous ring, or even a portal--a door that swallowed Trelawney and welcomed her to her conference with Death himself. Through her blurry vision Trelawney saw a figure materializing in the smoke, and her heart began to race. It was Death, she knew it! It was him in his hooded cloak with the scythe slung over his shoulder, ready to speak to her about life in the Afterlife!

But it wasn't Death. It wasn't even wearing black. It was, in fact, a ghost, transparent and lean, that floated in front of her. It was Moaning Myrtle.

"Sybil!" the young girl gasped. "Sybil Trelawney, what's happening?"

"Myrtle," Trelawney whispered, her voice a rasp. "I'm dying."

"What?" Myrtle gasped, and this time the idea of someone else's death didn't excite her at all. "Sybil, what do you mean?"

"What's there to live for?" Trelawney replied listlessly. "Who is there who cares?"

"I'm going to get help!" Myrtle said, distraught. "Just you wait, Sybil, and I'll be back!"

"Don't go," Sybil murmured. "Stay with me. Talk with me. But don't leave me to die alone. There is nobody else left."

Myrtle wrung her ghostly hands together and gazed down upon the dying professor, clearly in a quandary. "Sybil, I don't want you to die," she whimpered.

"Why not," said Trelawney, not even having the energy to state it as a question.

"Because," Myrtle sobbed, bursting into tears. "Because, Sybil, I care! I don't want you to leave me!"

"But they left me." Trelawney's voice was languid as it drained from her corpse. She was fading away, and nothing would bring her back. Nothing.

"Don't!" Myrtle wailed, tearing at her ghostly hair. She flitted back and forth through the water, working herself into a state of agitation. Trelawney became so dizzy watching her that she had to close her eyes. "Sybil, don't! Open your eyes, stay with me! Don't go, not now, not when I haven't told you. Sybil, I... Sybil, I... I love you!"

Nothing would bring her back... except that! The haze that had fought to engulf her brain flickered, then slowly receded--not completely, but enough to allow Sybil to jerk upward at the waist and stand straight, her eyes so wide that she could no longer feel her eyelids. "What?" she gasped, her passions overwhelming her. "What--what... Myrtle, what did you say?"

"I love you!" Myrtle moaned. "Merlin, how I love you, Sybil Trelawney!"

"You... love me?" The violence of Trelawney's emotions was so great that her limbs began to shake, even in the scorching heat. "Myrtle, you can't... you didn't really just say..."

"I love you, I love you, I love you!" Myrtle repeated. She was begging Trelawney to believe her. "I have always loved you! Ever since we had Transfiguration together in Third Year. Since then, I haven't been able to take my eyes off you."

"What are you saying?" Trelawney breathed, still unable to fully register the exchange.

"I've loved nobody but you!" Myrtle cried. "When I realized just how much I loved you... well, I couldn't tell you! I was afraid you'd hate me for it. And so I said nothing--I suffered in silence as you chased after that cockhead Bartleby."

Myrtle moaned softly and drifted closer to the stunned Divination professor. "And then, Sybil, I died. I died, and I had to come back--you couldn't expect me to leave you to the mercies of Bartleby!"

"But he," Sybil said weakly, "he was a good lover. He loved me. He said so. He took my virginity." And how gently he had taken her! How loving, and how pleasant their midnight talks had been! He had been a gentleman, even up to the time when he left Hogwarts and consequently broke up with her. But he had loved her, hadn't he? He hadn't abused her or shouted at her.

"He left you," Myrtle said brutally. "Once he got enough pleasure out of you, he dumped you and used graduation as an excuse. Then it was on to Artesimus Fudge, who's as much of a whore as a man can ever be."

"He gave me nice presents," Trelawney said weakly.

"And you gave him nice sex. By that time you were out of school, so I didn't linger in Hogwarts--I couldn't bear to be away from you. At the same time, I couldn't exactly haunt you, because that would have made you miserable, which was the last thing I wanted. So I haunted Olive Hornby for a while (to get back at her for all her nasty tricks!) and traveled to your various apartments every month or so, just to check in on you."

"I had a good life then," Sybil sighed, running her hands along her scalded breasts. "I had Giovanni, and he loved me as any proper man should. I'm sure he would have asked me to marry him had he not died in that horrific cauldron accident." Her vision blurred even further as tears throbbed in her eyes.

"I'm sorry, Sybil," Myrtle whispered, her heart and her voice breaking for the desolate professor. "But he wouldn't have. He was like any other man you meet--a dick and a narcissistic and misogynist to boot!"

"Now that's a bit harsh!" Trelawney protested. "Not all men, surely..."

"Well, not Harry Potter," Myrtle said, even managing a smile despite the desperate situation. "And not Dumbledore. But most men are. And most women are self-absorbed bitches, like that disgusting Olive!"

Trelawney moaned and sank against the marble slope of the tub. "But how, then, can you even love me?" she asked brokenly. "I'm less than that: I'm nothing--I'm not even a worthy sex object! If not even the men with the lowest standards will touch me, how can you--a woman, and a young one at that--find anything in me worth loving?"

"Because," Myrtle said, now hovering mere inches from Trelawney's face. The dying professor could see every tear sparkling in the girl's ghostly eyes. "Because, Sybil, where they saw your body, I see your heart. It is broken, my dear Sybil, and mine breaks with it. You are a sad, lost woman, but that's not who you were made to be! Sybil, I do not see the woman that you are, but the woman you can be. I promise, Sybil, I can help you through this! I can love you, and when the world ends and we pass on to our final judgment, we'll go together, both having served the purpose we could not find in life."

"Oh, Myrtle..." Trelawney moaned. "Myrtle, do you really mean it? Please, Myrtle, I need someone to love me. I've needed it my whole life, but every time I thought I had it, I lost it! How... how can I trust you, when everyone else has claimed their love, then left?"

"Because," Myrtle said with conviction, "they only wanted sex. That's why they said they loved you, so that you would spread your legs. But as for me... I've given you the password to the Prefect's Bathroom. I've talked with you after your break-ups. And I've stayed here in Hogwarts, in the very place I died, waiting for the day in which I could finally tell you I love you. I did all this, knowing that you were alive and I was dead. I could have Gone On to look for love, knowing how empty this world was, but even it all its ruin, I knew it held one person of value, one person I couldn't find in the afterlife. And that person was you, Sybil. I love you."

"I... Oh, Myrtle..." She fought to remain conscious, yet at the same time she felt the urge to let herself go. For in the fog of death, the falsehoods that had plagued her life now began to melt away, and for the first time she began to see things clearly. Draco hadn't loved her! Neither had Barnabus, nor Artesimus, nor even Giovanni, nor all the other men that had come and gone. She had fallen for a bartender and a Puffskein breeder, an ambassador and a headmaster. She had fallen and fallen and fallen. From lover to lover she'd plummeted, always needing love, always giving love, but never receiving love in return. Such had been her spiral downward, until she had nothing left of her heart but fifty years of pain.

But now, as the smoke choked her lungs, her mind was free! "Myrtle!" she cried. "Myrtle, oh Myrtle! Now I realize."

Moaning Myrtle drifted sadly over to Professor Trelawney and hovered over her flopping form, "Realized what?"

"I never loved any of them," Trelawney said, tears falling from her eyes. "I NEVER LOVED ANY OF THEM!"

"You never--?"

"None of them!" Trelawney cried. "For my whole life, there's been an empty hole in my heart, and for my whole life I've sought to fill it. I've gone from one man to the next, giving all I had in hopes that he'd give me the love I so desperately needed in return. I threw myself at him, professed my undying love, and he threw it all back, broken past repair. And so I've slung it all over my shoulder and continued onward, from one failure to the next, reaching ever lower for the one man who could satisfy me. As much as I've tried to make life better for myself, it's only gotten worse. And now I have scraped the bottom of the barrel--this past year has been the most exquisite torture that any woman can experience without going mad!

"But now you've come along, and oh, Myrtle, you've removed the scales from my eyes! That love I was searching for was love that no man could ever give me. What I needed was the nurturing of another woman, a woman who would actually talk to me and give me the support I needed. Can you really do that for me, Myrtle?"

"All that and more," Myrtle promised her, crying afresh. "Oh, why didn't I confess my love sooner? I could have saved you from half a century of suffering!"

"Don't blame yourself, Myrtle," Trelawney said. She was now smiling for the first time in... well, the first time in as long a time as she could remember, come to think of it. She had finally found what eluded her for all these years, and now she finally felt peace with herself. She needed nothing more to turn her life in a complete one-eighty. As such, she now no longer felt the need to fight the haze that seeped back into her brain. "If I hadn't suffered so much, how could I know how happy you have made me?"

Myrtle was so overcome by this that she couldn't even speak. She only choked out another sob and stroked Trelawney's cheek. Though the ghost's touch was as ice-cold as any other, Trelawney relished it. The tub was so hot from the candles that it was almost simmering, and her skin was so red it was painful. Myrtle's presence was here to sooth the agony of her passing, and for it Trelawney only loved the ghost even more.

"This is goodbye, Myrtle," she rasped. "But not forever. I'm coming back."

~~~~~

"...And then she died." Moaning Myrtle finished the story with a big grin on her face.

The students and the teacher didn't applaud the happy ending. They didn't even heave sighs of relief. They simply stared unflatteringly at the grinning ghost, their mouths open and their eyebrows raised to their hairlines.

"Wow," Ron said to Harry and Hermione. "Just wow. I really don't know what to make of that." Neither, apparently did anybody else. Everyone muttered to themselves, but nobody sounded particularly impressed with the story. McGonagall and Dumbledore didn't say anything, but exchanged uncomfortable looks.

Suddenly one Second Year student squealed, "Look!" He pointed wildly to the opposite side of the tub, and everyone turned just in time to see a transparent object materialize on the opposite side of the tub. It was Sybil Trelawney. She was now as ghostly as Nearly-Headless Nick and the Bloody Baron, and everyone considered it an improvement. In her nonsubstantial stage, her body and all the ugliness that came with it were almost invisible.

"Sybil!" Myrtle crooned happily. "You've come back."

"Just as I said I would," Trelawney replied, gliding over to take the young ghost's hand. The two of them floated back to face the crowd, exchanging shy grins every other second.

For a moment nobody spoke. Then Lavender said timidly, "Are we still going to have Divination class?"

"Yes," Trelawney answered promptly. Luna and Loser rolled their eyes, while Ernie and Colin glared Lavender. She and Parvati, however, clapped their hands together and high-fived.

"Oh, I'm so glad, Professor!" Parvati said breathlessly. "Your subject is my favorite--I couldn't bear having it cut from my schedule for the rest of the year."

Trelawney just beamed and blushed as much as was possible for a ghost.

"I don't suppose your salary would do you any good now," Dumbledore figured. "So I hope you don't mind that I discontinue it. For your payment, I shall allow you to live in this castle."

"Thank you very much, Albus," Trelawney cooed. "Now if you'll excuse us, we're going to go somewhere private to enjoy some conversation."

"Have a good time," Dumbledore said. "Are you holding classes today?"

"Not today," Trelawney decided, "nor tomorrow. But I'll start up again on Monday."

"Then I'm going back to bed!" Colin said, a little too jovially. "Whoo! An extra hour to sleep in, that's what I like to hear!"

He left, as did Ernie and Loser, while Trelawney and Myrtle floated down through the floor, arm in arm. The students slowly left the room, still a little shaken by what they'd just witnessed.

"First of all," Ron said, sounding very skeptical. "I gotta question the idea that Moaning Myrtle can help someone recover from years of emotional trauma--and Trelawney's a pretty damn basket case of trauma, if you ask me.

"Yeah..." Harry said uneasily. "Well, I just kinda feel guilty for, well... for not seeing it ahead of time. You know, with her obsession over death and all. And then she ends up killing herself. I feel sorta bad for, you know, making fun of it."

"I don't," Hermione said, stifling a grin. "It was pretty damn funny." She had to admit, the whole spectacle had actually improved her mood. Maybe she had just needed to realize that someone's life was worse than hers... and that her misery was purely physical--it had an end in sight. "It also helps that Trelawney came back... give it a few weeks, and we'll all start making fun of her again."

Harry laughed a little. "Yeah," he admitted, "you're probably right. Oh well. I'm sure I'll recover from the guilt. Sooner than I should, I think."

They left the bathroom, laughing heartily. As they passed a statue of Boris the Bewildered, they ran into Goyle. "Gregory!" Hermione said, the delight in her voice obvious.

"Hermione?" Goyle stared at her as if caught off guard. "Wow, Hermione, your hair looks amazing!"

"What?" Hermione said, flustered by the unexpected comment. "My... you didn't say my hair, did you?"

"Yes, your hair!" Goyle breathed. "I've never seen you looking so beautiful."

"Wh--but... But I didn't do anything to it!" Hermione stammered, reaching up to pat her hair. "I haven't brushed it since yesterday morning--how could it possibly...?" She dug speedily into her purse and pulled out a handheld mirror. She gazed critically at her own appearance, marveling at what she saw. Yes, her hair was still bushy and it was still big. But for the first time in her life it looked... well, beautiful! It looked like it belonged to her, and that was just fine. She could hardly believe it.

Did it really look better? Was it simply not worrying about her hair that had done the trick? Or was it Goyle's comment that had raised her self esteem? Hermione didn't know, and she figured she didn't care. What mattered was that she felt better about her appearance than she had for a long time!

"I think, then," Goyle said with a smile, "that you should keep on doing 'nothing' to your hair. I always knew you never needed help to look beautiful."

Without any warning, Hermione grabbed Goyle by the shoulders and kissed him. It wasn't a quick peck on the cheek, either, but full on the lips for a good five seconds. She worked her mouth against his until he responded, and at that moment she drew away, grinning and flushed. Goyle looked mindboggled, and delightedly so. Ron laughed, and Harry blushed and purposely looked the other way.

"C'mon, Harry," Ron chortled, grabbing his best friend by the arm. "I need to show you something upstairs."

"Show me what?" Harry said. "Hermione, should we wait--?"

"No girls allowed," Ron interrupted him firmly. "Sorry, Hermione, we'll see you later! Hope you have fun!"

Hermione turned to Goyle, taking his hand in hers. She grinned ever so softly and said shyly, "So... do you think we'll have fun?"

Goyle gulped and took a deep breath, trying to calm him fluttering heart. But nothing he could do would erase the grin that plastered itself across his face. "I do believe so, Hermione," he whispered huskily.

A/N: Now that the Trelawney subplot has played out, I can now give you some trivia about it. I originally planned it as a one-shot entitled "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed" (like the Edna St. Vincent Millay poem that appears in this fic). Draco, however, wasn't in the picture: it was mostly about Trelawney lamenting about her past loves, then going into the Prefect's Bathroom and falling in love with Moaning Myrtle right as she dies. I got halfway through the story when I just suddenly stopped, and, in a split second, decided I didn't want to finish. Thankfully, though, it found its way into this story as a subplot.

As for the part where the students don't know whether or not to feel guilty... Well, when I was in high school, there was this substitute teacher who was the most ridiculous thing that ever existed. She seriously looked like E.T., and I am not joking. She had E.T.'s lumpy body and his spindly arms and legs, and her skin was even the same color as his. She also wore wigs, and everyone always made fun of it (One person said to her, "I love your hair! Where did you get it... done?"). She also seemed a bit fuzzy in the mind. For two years we all made fun of her. Then she didn't come back the next year. At the beginning of my senior year, we all learned that she had died from cancer, and we were all like: "Whoops!" And we felt guilty about making fun of her wig, because she must have had chemotherapy. And her fuzzy mind was from Alzheimer's or something. So... yeah. Great guilt trip material.

Please review! Tell me whether or not you saw this chapter coming: I practically spelled it out, but at the same time suicide isn't something you're expecting in a comedy! I have another twist in the very last chapter that's pretty-obvious-and-pretty-not-obvious at the same time. Feel free to make some guesses, and I'll give a shout-out to whoever makes the closest guess. And let me also thank my beta Lisa725 for being such a great beta! Now go review.