Flight of Death

1994

Professor Minerva McGonagall spoke a quiet incantation, opening a secret drawer in her desk unknown to any but her. From the drawer she pulled out a worn leather album. Her school photos, her memories.

As she made a habit of doing from time to time, she had gone tonight to visit Myrtle in her bathroom. And, as always, spending time with what was left of her old friend have her the desire to look back on who Myrtle had been, once upon a time, so many years ago.

She opened the book, knowing that the binding was broken just right, so that it would open to the right page in one try. Yes, here it was--a yellowing photograph of two girls.

The girl on the left, Minerva didn't spend too much time looking at. She already knew what she looked like. Black hair, pale skin, tall and bony.

The girl on the right was shorter and plumper--not fat fat, but just ungainly enough to suffer adolescent taunts. Teenagers, they are so cruel. They have always been so, and always will be. Her hair was a medium brown, a few shades lighter than Minerva's, and she had a cherubic face. Her overlarge glasses made her look a little owlish, but in a cute sort of way. Minerva could never see why the others called Myrtle ugly.

She smiled wistfully as the figures in the photograph moved before her eyes. Minerva was grinning from ear to ear, and she whispered something to Myrtle, whose face was set in a glum frown. Myrtle's eyes widened, and her face erupted into a smile that could have lit the very dungeons of Hogwarts. Minerva did not remember, after all these years, what joke she had whispered to Myrtle. But it was worth it, to have this memory of one of Myrtle's few happy moments.

Myrtle had always been melodramatic; it seemed that every dinner ended in Myrtle flouncing off to the girls' room after someone dealt her a slight, intended or not. And then there was always Minerva, following after her in both sympathy and exasperation. But in those days, Myrtle's gloom broke once in a while. Now, it was a constant condition. It was as if her death had split her in two, sending her sweet and kind self to whatever lay beyond, leaving only her neuroses and her temper behind. And just tonight, she was blaming Minerva again for what had happened...

1942

Minerva awoke and blinked. Dark, too dark. How long had she been asleep? Her hands fumbled in the gloom for the candle that had been gaily burning on her desk when she dozed off. It was out now. There was not even the waxy whiff of scent that candles gave out as they died, so Minerva knew it must have extinguished itself some time ago. It was late. Very late.

She glanced over her shoulder, through the wave glass windows of the library. The full moon rode high over the gently rippling lake; Minerva knew that meant midnight.

"Lumos," she muttered, once she had rooted her wand out of her robes. The glow illuminated books and papers, strewn higgledy-piggledy across the table. That's right. I was studying with Tom this afternoon.

She had at first been wary of Tom Riddle. To begin with, he was a Slytherin, and it seemed his House had always been at war with Gryffindor. Water and fire. And Tom was a very aloof boy. It had taken five years for her to realize that he might just be shy--like herself--and for their shaky friendship to form. But form it had. She knew, without vanity, that she and Tom were the brightest students at the school. She'd lay odds on his having more raw potential, but her own marks were higher. Tom had an incorrigible dearth of attention for anything he couldn't use.

The afternoon began to come back to her. She holding forth about the finer points of Protection Charms. He staring out the window behind her head, mesmerized perhaps by the sun on the lake, or by the eternal roiling of his own mind.

Yes, there in front of her lay the proof of his distraction. Her thin lips curled wryly as she looked at what passed for Tom's notes. A few halfhearted scribbles about Charms, yes, but mostly the paper was filled with drawings of snakes. Snakes coiled at rest, snakes rearing to strike, an immense one doodled all around the margins of the page. And that exasperating anagram he'd worked out from his name--"I Am Lord Voldemort".

Flight of Death. What did it mean to him? Minerva was torn between pity and disdain. Perhaps Tom was more troubled than Minerva knew. He was an orphan, after all, and had few friends. Maybe his high-and-mighty persona really was just an act. Did he harbor a secret death wish?

Or was he simply like so many of the other Slytherin boys Minerva knew, always playing at "Darker-than-Thou", posing and posturing with menacing nicknames?

Minerva sighed and gathered her things into her satchel. She found herself locked into the library. "Alohomora," she said with another sigh, and into the corridor she went.

She remembered, as she walked, Tom's growing impatience with the schoolwork. And incongruously, she recalled Tom waving his wand at her, whispering words of incantation. She had felt drowsiness come over her just after that. Had he put a Sleeping Charm on her out of sheer boredom, just to get out of the homework? Trust a Slytherin to think of a hex as the solution to all of life's little annoyances.

There was someone else in the corridor. Minerva heard sniffling. Crying? A moment later, the dancing torchlight illuminated a familiar pale head. A head covered in pale blonde, perfectly set Veronica Lake waves. Olive Hornby. Yes, it was her; as she moved closer, Minerva could see her specially tailored, form-fitting robes, designed to show off her every curve. She rolled her eyes. Olive was a stuck-up sort, and Myrtle's bete noire. No love lost between Miss McGonagall and Miss Hornby. She had to admit that it was nice to see an expression other than smugness on Olive's face.

"Minerva!" Olive's voice echoed off the stone walls. "Oh my God, Minerva!"

The shorter, more voluptuous girl ran up and grabbed Minerva by the shoulders. Did she mean to embrace her, or throttle her? The look in Olive's eyes was one of wild panic. "It's your fault--all your fault--you weren't there for her and I HAD TO FIND HER!"

"What are you talking about?"

"In the bathroom--Myrtle--"

Minerva gasped. She wrenched herself out of Olive's grip and ran headlong for the dank old bathroom that was Myrtle's refuge. Had she hurt herself somehow?

A few minutes later she stood, panting for breath, in the doorway of the restroom. It was empty, quiet except for the steady drip of a leaky pipe.

And then Minerva saw Myrtle. But this was not the Myrtle she had known, had giggled with. This Myrtle was made of gray gossamer; she hovered in midair, her feet not touching the floor.

Minerva clapped her hands over her mouth. "You're...you're..."

"DEAD!" moaned Myrtle, "and no thanks to you! You know who found me? Olive Hornby! OLIVE HORNBY thought to check on me before you did! Some friend you are! Here I was in here GETTING KILLED by some boy who was HISSING at me, and you were off picking your NOSE or something! They were taking my BODY away, and you were off...doing your NAILS!"

A tear escaped Minerva's eye. "I was asleep...bewitched...you know I would have come if I could have...I'm sorry, Myrtle. I'm here now, though! I came as soon as I heard." She smiled weakly, tasting the tear that slipped between her lips. "I think you gave that bitch Olive the scare of her life."

Myrtle's frown turned into a wicked smile. "Oh, did I? This ghost business COULD have its advantages..." And with that, Myrtle swooped into one of the stalls. Minerva heard a flushing noise, and Myrtle was gone.

Minerva's grief hardened into wrath. A hissing boy. Parseltongue. Minerva knew full well that there was a Parselmouth at Hogwarts. He'd boasted of it to her. The Sleeping Charm! Tom had made sure Myrtle would be alone tonight. All that bluster about hating the Muggle-born--he had meant it. Flight of Death--he had meant it. But Minerva had made a fatal error. It was not his own death he fantasized. It was Myrtle's. Myrtle's, and all others like her.

"Miss McGonagall," spoke a quiet voice behind her. She turned to face the speaker. It was Professor Dumbledore, the Transfiguration teacher. His eyes were filled with kindness and compassion. She lost whatever composure she'd had left, burying her face in his shoulder and bawling like a child.

She talked with Dumbledore in his office for some time. She told him everything she suspected.

He nodded thoughtfully. "I shall have to keep an eye on Mr. Riddle."

1994

He'd gotten away with it, of course, at least until fifty years later when another shy black-haired orphan had found him out. He had blamed poor Rubeus Hagrid, and only Minerva and Professor Dumbledore had disbelieved his story.

Minerva had never spoken to Tom Riddle again. She saw his loneliness as he spent the next two years with little company but that diary of his. Once in a while she would be moved to pity him. But then she would remember Myrtle--ripped from life at fifteen, reduced to a revenant obsessed with petty revenge.

She knew whose picture was pasted on the next page, but she would not turn to it. She knew it would give her that old sardonic smile, the one she had almost grown to like. And she knew that smile would almost soften her heart toward him again. But she could not let that happen. It would be a betrayal of her friend.

Lord Voldemort had gone on to commit many more murders, but it was that first one that Minerva McGonagall could never forgive.