Categories > Books > Harry Potter > Shadowlands
Harry shares his woes with an absolutely unexpected someone.
2Ambiance
Chapter 7: A ghostly night
CRASH! The china coffeepot we'd just emptied flew toward the fireplace and shattered into thousands of tiny particles, just seconds after the green flames went out. I was trembling with fury and I honestly didn't care if I hurt anyone. Brilliant. Just fucking brilliant. I loudly grunted in frustration, when my shock caused by the last words of Lily Potter Sr. was reduced to a manageable minimum. Just what I needed in my miserable situation. Just what the Witch doctor prescribed: a one-way ticket to Guilt Express. Although, I can't say this was unexpected after what Luna'd told me that night. This had to be solved, the earlier, the better, before something unthinkable could happen to my girls. The only problem was that I had no idea whatsoever as to how to climb out of this situation with minimum damage to all affected.
I understood all too well what Mum had meant. Even in real, normal, living life, it was an unwise thing to burn the candle at two ends at the same time. I knew what I wanted. I wanted to be with my wife and my precious little gem, our Lily. There were only two tiny obstacles on our way to happiness. First and foremost of all, I was irreversibly dead. Second, I didn't want to hurt Luna, didn't want to cause her any more pain than I'd already caused to her.
Of course, I just could have told her in plain English that we couldn't see each other any more. Even if she understood me much better that I understood myself, even if she kept saying that this was the way things should have happened, this would have hurt her like hell and this was something I wanted to avoid at all costs. I have already caused enough suffering to people I'd loved and who'd loved me and I'd just have broken her heart.
Even though it was already midnight, I couldn’t think of going to sleep. I thought life had never been easy, but being dead certainly hadn’t made it easier. I needed to clear out my head and think and I knew just the perfect spot.
Somewhere, on the outskirts of Shadowlands, stood an ancient construction, which had no equivalent in the world of the living. More precisely, it was not a construction, it was a well. Located in a serene, peaceful place on a magnificent plateau, surrounded by ever-blossoming magnolia trees, the Well of Nepenthe was the final destination of all souls in the Shadowlands, who got tired of their everyday existence. When you jump in the dark, opaque water filling the well, your soul’s stripped of your body and you join the myriads of other souls patiently waiting the Final Day, the Day of Truth, so I was told.
This was a place you couldn’t travel with any normal wizarding means. You couldn’t mount a broom and ride here. Portkeys and Apparition were out of question as well. You had to want to be here, you had to will yourself here. This was what I’d been doing in the very first weeks, months after my death. This was a place where I could clearly think; the serenity and peacefulness of the place did certainly have a positive, excitatory effect on the working of my brain cells.
I closed my eyes and purged my head from all rogue thoughts, clearly focusing on my target. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself in my favourite place; just a few hundred paces from the Well, in a small oak forest. I lay flat on the ground and quietly observed the incredibly clear, starry sky, which sometimes frightened me with its endlessness, but today it seemed as if I was breathing in unison with it.
The forest was full with life forms of all kinds, sorts and types, and, even at this late hour, it was alive. I heard the unmistakable, crunching noise of small feet stepping on dead leaves and last year’s twigs and acorns the ever-hungry squirrels hadn’t devoured. Owls were hooting in the sky; the polyphonic chirping of the crickets filled the air. In the crown of one of the centuries-old oaks a small colony of bats nestled; their high-pitch chorus rose eerily into the cold night. They were ready for another successful hunting round.
Suddenly, I heard a twig snapping under someone’s feet. The Auror reflexes kicked in and I jumped smoothly on my feet, in the same movement pointing my wand at the chest of the newcomer.
“The last time I saw you, Harry, you were not so animous. Well, you were, only not towards me. You almost did hex poor Draco into next century, you nasty boy,” the bespectacled girl cackled at me, moving my wand away with her index finger. “I did enjoy our little cuddling in the prefects' bathroom, though,” she added, winking at me.
I rated my disbelief 9 at the Richter scale.
“Myrtle! What are you doing here, of all places?” I asked in a voice that wasn't really steady.
“Here, there, everywhere,” she poked her tongue out at me. Brilliant. Now even she was talking riddles to me.
"Could you spell that out? I'm not up to unraveling subtle hints today," I grunted and pocketed my wand, flashing an apologetical half-smile at the … ghost? Hell, no. She seemed all material to me, not the ectoplasmatic being I remembered her to be.
As if she were practising Occlumency at me, she cackled again in her rather irritating way. “Well, having died the way I had made me kind of stuck on the border of the two worlds. I may not have a body in the world of the living, but I'm more than a simple dead soul, thank you very much!” she added rather squirmishly. Suddenly, her eyes flashed up and she looked at me with a somewhat predatory smile I didn't like at all.
“You here, you dead,” she concluded. /What an IQ. /“Can we do some more cuddling?” she asked suddenly and I needed to count to ten before I managed to breathe again.
“No, Myrtle, we can absolutely NOT do any cuddling!” I cut all her hopes off. In an instant, I saw a hurt look appear behind his thick-framed, old-fashioned spectacles, and her sudden, high-pitch shriek made the fine hairs on my neck stand. I took a deep breath and did some damage assessment, raising my hand in surrender.
“OK, Myrtle, I guess you can cuddle up with me a little. Only no tricks, please, I have enough on my mind right now.” No sooned had I finished my sentence than she was already taking my hand and pulling me towards an ancient fallen tree, then sat down besides me, putting her head onto my shoulder.
“You know, your girls are lucky to have you, Harry,” she suddenly said, out of the blue, and sighed dreamily, snuggling closer. Whatever I was mumbling in answer shouldn't have been too comprehensive, because she raised her head and looked into my eyes questioningly. I returned the glance, but said nothing.
“Well,” she started ambiguously, “I've never been a big expert in boys, and my love life had been non-existent until the moment I died, but it's common courtesy to help someone in trouble. And even I see that you're in trouble. Talk to me, Harry.”
Her voice suddenly seemed different, more … normal. I took a deep breath and considered phraseology.
“It's very generous of you, Myrtle, to offer your help, but I don't feel up to discussing my love life with anyone right now,” I said in a hushed, somewhat faraway voice.
“I don't want to discuss your love life, Harry. Sometimes, talking just helps.”
I couldn't believe I was doing it. Talk my woes out with the person I least expected to open up for. Well, not including Tom Riddle, maybe.
“Luna's been my best friend, the last seven years or so,” Myrtle started. “She confided me in everything. You know, nobody's taking a ghost seriously, she is. We had long talks here, in the Shadowlands, about the meaning of Life and Death and things like that; you know, girlie talk all the way.”
Even in this weird situation, I couldn't suppress a short laugh. In fact, I started feeling better, no matter what. Myrtle'd had her own share of personal woes, both in life and death, but underneath all this, she was just a girl, even being fifty-some Earthly years older than me. So, aforementioned girlie talks could just as well have taken place and, knowing Luna's aptitude to all creatures odd and weird, I was sure they'd had meaningful conversations.
Myrtle whispered on. “When you died for the second time, she was broken. She was ready to come after you, she told me. I almost had to Imperius her in order to prevent it; she would've most probably ended up as a ghost with her capabilities, anyway. Besides, her death would have killed old Xeno and Ron.”
My eyes assumed the size of a saucer. “Luna, a ghost?”
“Of course, Harry!” She said it with such reprimand in her voice that I almost felt ashamed. “Those who could roam the Planes while alive will continue to be able to after they die. And then, there are those who died somewhat unconventional deaths like Sir Nicholas or myself. How did you die, Harry?” She looked into my eyes with childish curiosity, and my initial animosity towards her dissolved completely.
However, my face clouded over very quickly. I didn't want to relive that moment, ever. Moreover, I was absolutely not sure what had happened then. I remembered my dreams the day before, the dreams of being a condor. I remembered that wonderful night on the top of Uluru, as well as the desperation that had completely taken me over when I woke up with sunrise and Hermione wasn't there. I felt again that itching sensation on my back but I didn't know whether or not it had been a product of my imagination or some bad juju, the deed of the awoken spirits of the Anangu.
Very slowly, taking every word into good consideration, I relayed my thoughts to Myrtle, who was carefully listening to my somewhat incomprehensive speech. At the end, she simply nodded.
“If you hadn't been sleeping on Binn's lessons,” she started in a very much “I’m-Hermione- Granger-by-the-way-who-are-you” voice, “you'd know that certain cultures believed their dead would return if they'd died of unnatural stuff or committed suicide. They'd stake them, cut their heads off, filled their mouths with garlic, all the nice things. Ghosts, strigoi, vampires, werewolves, they all believed in and they were partly right. You always were a cute boy, and you would make a cute ghost indeed,” she continued, standing up and stretching her legs.
We walked silently to the Well, as I was too shocked to talk. Me, a ghost? I couldn't imagine myself dancing around, wrapped into a white sheet and scaring the willies out of people, just for fun. Suddenly, I had to laugh. Of course, this was only a stereotype I'd picked up one night from some 1930's black-and-white film on TV, when Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were out and Dudley was already asleep. I'd seen and known several ghosts at Hogwarts and they were nothing like that. Then, another thought struck me and I gleamed at Myrtle.
“Do you want to say that if I become a ghost, I will be able to interact with the living? Be around them whenever I want to? See Hermione, see Lily grow up?” I was overwhelmed with this new possibility. But then, I thought of that sentence on my bathroom mirror and my enthusiasm chilled down several hundred degrees, although I didn't speak about it to Myrtle.
“To become a ghost, Harry,” Myrtle reproachfully started, “it's already too late. It will happen in the moment of your death or it will never happen at all. You missed the train, so to say.”
I was, strangely, satisfied with the answer. Sitting on the ancient stone well, I absent-mindedly watched the unearthly, oily, black water. I reached with my index finger to probe it, but Myrtle pulled my hand away in a swift movement.
“Don't touch the water, Harry!” she shrieked. ”It will suck out the memories of your past life out of you until you're nothing but an empty shell and fill you with a longing to take a dive and end it all, finally and irrevocably.”
“You still have a life, even if it's here, in the Shadowlands,” she continued in a hushed, uncharacteristically normal voice. “You have your family, friends, and you have the ties to the world of the living.”
“You seen, that's my problem, Myrtle,” I explained. “I'm torn between two worlds and two young women I equally love.”
“Tsk, tsk, the young rascal,” she hit me playfully on my shoulder. Seeing my hurt glance, she backed up.
“Not my fault, in case you want to know!” I snapped unnecessarily at her, taking a defensive position but it didn't make me feel any safer. On the contrary. Little did I known that the solution was lying there, within the reach of my hands.
“Well, strictly speaking, leaving Hermione was your fault,” she started cautiously, raising her hand when she saw I was just about to interject. “I know about all crap you'd been through in your life and that morning you'd simply had too much on your plate. Not nice of her to have left you, twice, but a man – or a woman – can be only that strong and she'd had enough to cope with as well.”
Blah-blah-blah, yadda-yadda-yadda. Tell me something I don't know.
She didn't misunderstand my glance, that's for sure, because she shot back an identical glare. I lowered my head and looked down into my hands as if they held an oracle. Any words would have been ambiguous. She was right.
“Harry, you have no choice. You can't go back to Hermione and Lily,” she stated, clearly not interested what I was thinking about it, “and you shouldn't tear apart Luna's family. You have to accept this, for once, and start living your life, here and now.”
Suddenly, I got an alarming feeling inside. It felt as if a string was attached to me and it was burning now. Then, I heard Luna's voice in my head, very clearly, as if she was sitting here with me. “Harry, where are you?”
I closed my eyes, completely missing the curious look on Myrtle's face, and concentrated hard. “I'm at the Well of Nepenthe, love. What's wrong?”
I never realized my connection to Luna until now, but for some strange reason I instinctively knew this should have been it. /Cool/, I thought. Even through Time, Space and Planes, I could talk to her. Her next sentence, however, cooled down my enthusiasm.
“I'm at your place, Harry. I can't go to the Well, but I desperately need to talk to you. It's Ron...”
I understood she was crying, her message was unclear as if it took her a lot of energy to focus. Saying my goodbye to Myrtle, I closed my eyes again and concentrated at the small house I lived in. I felt the Well trying to force me to stay, but I didn't give in and the next moment I stood in front of my entrance, holding my crying soulmate in my arms.
CRASH! The china coffeepot we'd just emptied flew toward the fireplace and shattered into thousands of tiny particles, just seconds after the green flames went out. I was trembling with fury and I honestly didn't care if I hurt anyone. Brilliant. Just fucking brilliant. I loudly grunted in frustration, when my shock caused by the last words of Lily Potter Sr. was reduced to a manageable minimum. Just what I needed in my miserable situation. Just what the Witch doctor prescribed: a one-way ticket to Guilt Express. Although, I can't say this was unexpected after what Luna'd told me that night. This had to be solved, the earlier, the better, before something unthinkable could happen to my girls. The only problem was that I had no idea whatsoever as to how to climb out of this situation with minimum damage to all affected.
I understood all too well what Mum had meant. Even in real, normal, living life, it was an unwise thing to burn the candle at two ends at the same time. I knew what I wanted. I wanted to be with my wife and my precious little gem, our Lily. There were only two tiny obstacles on our way to happiness. First and foremost of all, I was irreversibly dead. Second, I didn't want to hurt Luna, didn't want to cause her any more pain than I'd already caused to her.
Of course, I just could have told her in plain English that we couldn't see each other any more. Even if she understood me much better that I understood myself, even if she kept saying that this was the way things should have happened, this would have hurt her like hell and this was something I wanted to avoid at all costs. I have already caused enough suffering to people I'd loved and who'd loved me and I'd just have broken her heart.
Even though it was already midnight, I couldn’t think of going to sleep. I thought life had never been easy, but being dead certainly hadn’t made it easier. I needed to clear out my head and think and I knew just the perfect spot.
Somewhere, on the outskirts of Shadowlands, stood an ancient construction, which had no equivalent in the world of the living. More precisely, it was not a construction, it was a well. Located in a serene, peaceful place on a magnificent plateau, surrounded by ever-blossoming magnolia trees, the Well of Nepenthe was the final destination of all souls in the Shadowlands, who got tired of their everyday existence. When you jump in the dark, opaque water filling the well, your soul’s stripped of your body and you join the myriads of other souls patiently waiting the Final Day, the Day of Truth, so I was told.
This was a place you couldn’t travel with any normal wizarding means. You couldn’t mount a broom and ride here. Portkeys and Apparition were out of question as well. You had to want to be here, you had to will yourself here. This was what I’d been doing in the very first weeks, months after my death. This was a place where I could clearly think; the serenity and peacefulness of the place did certainly have a positive, excitatory effect on the working of my brain cells.
I closed my eyes and purged my head from all rogue thoughts, clearly focusing on my target. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself in my favourite place; just a few hundred paces from the Well, in a small oak forest. I lay flat on the ground and quietly observed the incredibly clear, starry sky, which sometimes frightened me with its endlessness, but today it seemed as if I was breathing in unison with it.
The forest was full with life forms of all kinds, sorts and types, and, even at this late hour, it was alive. I heard the unmistakable, crunching noise of small feet stepping on dead leaves and last year’s twigs and acorns the ever-hungry squirrels hadn’t devoured. Owls were hooting in the sky; the polyphonic chirping of the crickets filled the air. In the crown of one of the centuries-old oaks a small colony of bats nestled; their high-pitch chorus rose eerily into the cold night. They were ready for another successful hunting round.
Suddenly, I heard a twig snapping under someone’s feet. The Auror reflexes kicked in and I jumped smoothly on my feet, in the same movement pointing my wand at the chest of the newcomer.
“The last time I saw you, Harry, you were not so animous. Well, you were, only not towards me. You almost did hex poor Draco into next century, you nasty boy,” the bespectacled girl cackled at me, moving my wand away with her index finger. “I did enjoy our little cuddling in the prefects' bathroom, though,” she added, winking at me.
I rated my disbelief 9 at the Richter scale.
“Myrtle! What are you doing here, of all places?” I asked in a voice that wasn't really steady.
“Here, there, everywhere,” she poked her tongue out at me. Brilliant. Now even she was talking riddles to me.
"Could you spell that out? I'm not up to unraveling subtle hints today," I grunted and pocketed my wand, flashing an apologetical half-smile at the … ghost? Hell, no. She seemed all material to me, not the ectoplasmatic being I remembered her to be.
As if she were practising Occlumency at me, she cackled again in her rather irritating way. “Well, having died the way I had made me kind of stuck on the border of the two worlds. I may not have a body in the world of the living, but I'm more than a simple dead soul, thank you very much!” she added rather squirmishly. Suddenly, her eyes flashed up and she looked at me with a somewhat predatory smile I didn't like at all.
“You here, you dead,” she concluded. /What an IQ. /“Can we do some more cuddling?” she asked suddenly and I needed to count to ten before I managed to breathe again.
“No, Myrtle, we can absolutely NOT do any cuddling!” I cut all her hopes off. In an instant, I saw a hurt look appear behind his thick-framed, old-fashioned spectacles, and her sudden, high-pitch shriek made the fine hairs on my neck stand. I took a deep breath and did some damage assessment, raising my hand in surrender.
“OK, Myrtle, I guess you can cuddle up with me a little. Only no tricks, please, I have enough on my mind right now.” No sooned had I finished my sentence than she was already taking my hand and pulling me towards an ancient fallen tree, then sat down besides me, putting her head onto my shoulder.
“You know, your girls are lucky to have you, Harry,” she suddenly said, out of the blue, and sighed dreamily, snuggling closer. Whatever I was mumbling in answer shouldn't have been too comprehensive, because she raised her head and looked into my eyes questioningly. I returned the glance, but said nothing.
“Well,” she started ambiguously, “I've never been a big expert in boys, and my love life had been non-existent until the moment I died, but it's common courtesy to help someone in trouble. And even I see that you're in trouble. Talk to me, Harry.”
Her voice suddenly seemed different, more … normal. I took a deep breath and considered phraseology.
“It's very generous of you, Myrtle, to offer your help, but I don't feel up to discussing my love life with anyone right now,” I said in a hushed, somewhat faraway voice.
“I don't want to discuss your love life, Harry. Sometimes, talking just helps.”
I couldn't believe I was doing it. Talk my woes out with the person I least expected to open up for. Well, not including Tom Riddle, maybe.
“Luna's been my best friend, the last seven years or so,” Myrtle started. “She confided me in everything. You know, nobody's taking a ghost seriously, she is. We had long talks here, in the Shadowlands, about the meaning of Life and Death and things like that; you know, girlie talk all the way.”
Even in this weird situation, I couldn't suppress a short laugh. In fact, I started feeling better, no matter what. Myrtle'd had her own share of personal woes, both in life and death, but underneath all this, she was just a girl, even being fifty-some Earthly years older than me. So, aforementioned girlie talks could just as well have taken place and, knowing Luna's aptitude to all creatures odd and weird, I was sure they'd had meaningful conversations.
Myrtle whispered on. “When you died for the second time, she was broken. She was ready to come after you, she told me. I almost had to Imperius her in order to prevent it; she would've most probably ended up as a ghost with her capabilities, anyway. Besides, her death would have killed old Xeno and Ron.”
My eyes assumed the size of a saucer. “Luna, a ghost?”
“Of course, Harry!” She said it with such reprimand in her voice that I almost felt ashamed. “Those who could roam the Planes while alive will continue to be able to after they die. And then, there are those who died somewhat unconventional deaths like Sir Nicholas or myself. How did you die, Harry?” She looked into my eyes with childish curiosity, and my initial animosity towards her dissolved completely.
However, my face clouded over very quickly. I didn't want to relive that moment, ever. Moreover, I was absolutely not sure what had happened then. I remembered my dreams the day before, the dreams of being a condor. I remembered that wonderful night on the top of Uluru, as well as the desperation that had completely taken me over when I woke up with sunrise and Hermione wasn't there. I felt again that itching sensation on my back but I didn't know whether or not it had been a product of my imagination or some bad juju, the deed of the awoken spirits of the Anangu.
Very slowly, taking every word into good consideration, I relayed my thoughts to Myrtle, who was carefully listening to my somewhat incomprehensive speech. At the end, she simply nodded.
“If you hadn't been sleeping on Binn's lessons,” she started in a very much “I’m-Hermione- Granger-by-the-way-who-are-you” voice, “you'd know that certain cultures believed their dead would return if they'd died of unnatural stuff or committed suicide. They'd stake them, cut their heads off, filled their mouths with garlic, all the nice things. Ghosts, strigoi, vampires, werewolves, they all believed in and they were partly right. You always were a cute boy, and you would make a cute ghost indeed,” she continued, standing up and stretching her legs.
We walked silently to the Well, as I was too shocked to talk. Me, a ghost? I couldn't imagine myself dancing around, wrapped into a white sheet and scaring the willies out of people, just for fun. Suddenly, I had to laugh. Of course, this was only a stereotype I'd picked up one night from some 1930's black-and-white film on TV, when Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were out and Dudley was already asleep. I'd seen and known several ghosts at Hogwarts and they were nothing like that. Then, another thought struck me and I gleamed at Myrtle.
“Do you want to say that if I become a ghost, I will be able to interact with the living? Be around them whenever I want to? See Hermione, see Lily grow up?” I was overwhelmed with this new possibility. But then, I thought of that sentence on my bathroom mirror and my enthusiasm chilled down several hundred degrees, although I didn't speak about it to Myrtle.
“To become a ghost, Harry,” Myrtle reproachfully started, “it's already too late. It will happen in the moment of your death or it will never happen at all. You missed the train, so to say.”
I was, strangely, satisfied with the answer. Sitting on the ancient stone well, I absent-mindedly watched the unearthly, oily, black water. I reached with my index finger to probe it, but Myrtle pulled my hand away in a swift movement.
“Don't touch the water, Harry!” she shrieked. ”It will suck out the memories of your past life out of you until you're nothing but an empty shell and fill you with a longing to take a dive and end it all, finally and irrevocably.”
“You still have a life, even if it's here, in the Shadowlands,” she continued in a hushed, uncharacteristically normal voice. “You have your family, friends, and you have the ties to the world of the living.”
“You seen, that's my problem, Myrtle,” I explained. “I'm torn between two worlds and two young women I equally love.”
“Tsk, tsk, the young rascal,” she hit me playfully on my shoulder. Seeing my hurt glance, she backed up.
“Not my fault, in case you want to know!” I snapped unnecessarily at her, taking a defensive position but it didn't make me feel any safer. On the contrary. Little did I known that the solution was lying there, within the reach of my hands.
“Well, strictly speaking, leaving Hermione was your fault,” she started cautiously, raising her hand when she saw I was just about to interject. “I know about all crap you'd been through in your life and that morning you'd simply had too much on your plate. Not nice of her to have left you, twice, but a man – or a woman – can be only that strong and she'd had enough to cope with as well.”
Blah-blah-blah, yadda-yadda-yadda. Tell me something I don't know.
She didn't misunderstand my glance, that's for sure, because she shot back an identical glare. I lowered my head and looked down into my hands as if they held an oracle. Any words would have been ambiguous. She was right.
“Harry, you have no choice. You can't go back to Hermione and Lily,” she stated, clearly not interested what I was thinking about it, “and you shouldn't tear apart Luna's family. You have to accept this, for once, and start living your life, here and now.”
Suddenly, I got an alarming feeling inside. It felt as if a string was attached to me and it was burning now. Then, I heard Luna's voice in my head, very clearly, as if she was sitting here with me. “Harry, where are you?”
I closed my eyes, completely missing the curious look on Myrtle's face, and concentrated hard. “I'm at the Well of Nepenthe, love. What's wrong?”
I never realized my connection to Luna until now, but for some strange reason I instinctively knew this should have been it. /Cool/, I thought. Even through Time, Space and Planes, I could talk to her. Her next sentence, however, cooled down my enthusiasm.
“I'm at your place, Harry. I can't go to the Well, but I desperately need to talk to you. It's Ron...”
I understood she was crying, her message was unclear as if it took her a lot of energy to focus. Saying my goodbye to Myrtle, I closed my eyes again and concentrated at the small house I lived in. I felt the Well trying to force me to stay, but I didn't give in and the next moment I stood in front of my entrance, holding my crying soulmate in my arms.
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