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Chapter 3: Observations and Revelations

One year followed another at Hogwart's, some more eventful than others. The castle ghosts all agreed that they had seen just about every form of physical human joining possible at least twice. Young people would always have their romances; there wasn't an untouched broom cupboard anywhere on campus, neither were there any greenhouses, towers, or alcoves that hadn't been used or abused as trysting spots. There was a particularly favored alcove on the sixth floor behind the tapestry of knights being chased by dragons where if the dragons appeared to be sleeping it meant that the small hallway was empty, if the dragons were restless then it was occupied.

The dragons were restless more often than not.

It said something about the code of secrecy among the students that no professor ever found out about it, which was odd, since nearly all the professors had been Hogwart's students at some point . . .

Myrtle became a keen observer, an unobtrusive connoisseur of effective sexual techniques; she could watch with one eye if she phased herself to the edge of a wall, with the other eye she kept a lookout for prefects and professors. More often than not she would warn the coupling teens by overturning a bucket or just floating down the corridor wailing nonsense. None of the un-caught lovers ever thought to thank her. Over the decades she witnessed what all the other ghosts described, but to her it was still fresh and fascinating. It was often like watching a train wreck - ugly but you just couldn't take your eyes off it. One early evening she was so frustrated by a couple who couldn't seem to get their act together that she popped her head out of the broom closet wall and moaned, "no, no! You're doing it all wrong!" The girl shrieked and ran out into the hallway, her open robe billowing behind her, sans skirt and pants proving to the world, or at least the other students in the hallway, that she was in fact not a natural blonde. The boy ran after her trying to return her garments. The couple in question had the audacity to bring a complaint against her to the head of their house. Needless to say the teens were in a lot more trouble than Myrtle.

The Marauders were legend in their years at Hogwart's; thankfully, no one was ever seriously hurt by their innovative pranks. There was this one particularly obnoxious greasy haired Slytherin who was very nearly killed by a werewolf. In the end the greasy git was safe, but vowed a vendetta against one of the other boys - funny way to thank someone for saving your life, oh well.

Shortly after the Marauders graduated Myrtle started seeing a procession of redheads, brilliant hair, and brilliant students. Prefects, quidditch stars, Head boys all, well, nearly all. The oldest boy seemed to have no trouble keeping the dragons on the sixth floor tapestry busy. And the twins, the ones who didn't make prefect, were delightful to watch and listen to as their back and forth 'twin-speak' made even the ghosts dizzy.

One day she heard a boy's voice in her bathroom ask "so tell me again, why are we brewing polyjuice potion in broad daylight in the middle of a girls' bathroom?"

"Nobody ever comes in here."

"Why not?"

"Moaning Myrtle."

"Who's Moaning Myrtle?"

It was time for Myrtle to have a little fun, and she did, playing the part of a petulant, slightly balmy ghost to the bushy haired girl's obvious delight - she realized, of course, it was all just an over the top act. Really, boys could be so thick sometimes.

She'd met Harry that day. She knew, somehow, that their futures were entwined. Myrtle didn't have the best marks in her year for divination for no reason; she was something of a seer. She didn't wish him any harm, but it would be nice to have someone near her own age to keep her company if he did die.

Two years later she saw Harry again, in the prefect's bathroom. She got to see quite a bit of Harry actually, he was forming rather nicely. A couple of more years and he would be a god! She helped him with the tri-wizard clue and had a little fun in the process. Later on while in the lake she directed him toward Ron and Hermione and the others being held by the merpeople.

The year after that was when Myrtle started noticing a petite girl, a fourth year with the same shade of red hair as the twins and Ron. She heard her name was Ginny, she heard the name 'Ginny' being moaned by a veritable parade of boys in closets, empty classrooms, the sixth floor alcove, the roof of greenhouse number one and the top of the astronomy tower. It made her ponder the inequities of gender in this world. When Ginny's older brother had a different girl every month he was considered a stud, a sexual superstar. Now, as his baby sister seemed to be following in his footsteps she was considered a slut, a slag, a roundheel, a bint, a whore, ah well, you get the idea.

Another year passed and she heard a young man crying in one of the boy's toilets. He was a miserable looking skinny boy with straight light blond hair, his face all screwed up in pain.

"Shall I fetch Madame Pomfrey; do you need a healer, are you hurt?"

The startled boy spun around and leveled his wand at her, his face a mask of fury.

He seemed to run the entire gamut of human emotions in five seconds, as though he was weighing something. Then he lowered his wand and asked, "I don't suppose you know how to fix a vanishing cabinet?"

A few months after that she saw Harry and Draco duel in that same bathroom. She was horrified to see Harry Potter, the supposed champion of Light Magic cast such a dark spell as /sectum sempra/, Merlin's beard, didn't he know his Latin? It meant "cut forever," without proper medical care Draco would bleed out and die. For the first time in fifty years Myrtle actually lost it, literally screaming bloody murder down the castle halls.

The next time she saw Harry it was to harangue him about his attempted murder of her only corporeal friend.

Harry exploded.

"Silencio!"

To her amazement, she found she couldn't speak.

"Have you managed to convince yourself that I attacked him?" he demanded, green eyes boring into her grey ethereal ones, "who started with the unforgivables? Who started cursing in the first place? What was he planning to do, and . . . wait a minute?" Harry realized something that he should have known all along. "You and he talked for hours; you must have known what he was trying to do!"

Myrtle shrank back toward a wall.

"When did you know, Myrtle? When did you know that he was planning an attack on this castle, planning to bring death eaters into these halls, to kill Albus Dumbledore?"

She was so mortified that as soon as Harry released her from the silencing spell she dove into the nearest toilet wailing in grief and guilt.

How could she have been so stupid, stupid, stupid? Easy enough, she was lonely. Draco was lonely too; she could sense that, she also knew he feared for his life and that of his mother, he wasn't evil; he was painted into a corner - how many times had she witnessed that over the decades?

She promised herself, then and there, she would make it up to Harry somehow, someday. And somehow she would try to help Draco, wherever he was.

_____ooo000ooo_____

Three hours past sunset an alarm sounded, indicating that there was a breach in the protective wards outside the walls; the walls themselves were still warded.

The flying squad came in first diving out of the moon strafing the parapets with jets of flaming acid, the effect would have been devastating if the defenders hadn't been warned against that tactic, physically impenetrable shields contained the flaming corrosive and flung it back at the flyers, nearly all of whom shrieked in agony as they crashed into the ground just outside the walls. Apparently the acid was charmed to keep burning until nothing was left of the victims. Two fliers could be seen in the light of the flames, they were holding back and were not attacking anyone; they were still hovering high above the parapets, acting as spotters perhaps.

Dean Thomas screamed "incendio!" and sent an anger powered jet of flame at the prima fascia attackers igniting their robes, hair and brooms simultaneously. The two hapless airmen spiraled down into the courtyard where they lay still and smoldering.
The young black wizard leveled his wand at the smoldering forms and was about to scream another curse when Harry gently said "please don't."

"They're part of the murdering scum that killed my family, I have the right!"

Harry grabbed the young man's shoulders and spun him away from his helpless victims.

"I need your focus up here Dean. Dean? Look at me, we need you up /here/. Tell you what, when this is over, if you want you can go down and look them in the eye, if you still want justice then you can have their heads, okay? But right now we need you here."

Dean nodded and looked grimly at the forest. A sound like elephants crashing through the forest was illuminated by a half-dozen daylight flares, courtesy of Her Majesty's Armed Forces. The glaring light illuminated three giants, two male and one female, who burst from the trees at a trot, each one carrying a six-meter length of tree trunk with a fire-hardened point. Each wore a visored helmet to protect his (or her) eyes from spell damage. Their eyes were their only real weak point, a giant's thick skin could absorb any spell the defenders could cast, even unforgivables. As they ran across the grounds they began to stumble then one after the other they fell into the grass, slapping at the thousands of tiny wounds on their bodies, especially their feet.

"And that's what happens when you transfigure grass into steel razor blades."

The giants continued to howl in pain as they were sliced by tens of thousands of razor sharp stalks of grass. Even their thick, calloused skin could be flensed by the actions of so many blades. Their blood attracted thestrals, dozens of thestrals who circled the giants like invisible vultures waiting for them to stop moving.

A powerful blasting curse, bright even in the glare of the flares, shook the castle to its foundations. When the dust settled a deep furrow twenty meters wide and a meter deep extended from the edge of the forest to the castle gates, the grass was gone, as were the giants, who were seen running into the forest leaving great bloody footprints behind.

Twenty four mountain trolls ran out of the woods through the fresh turned soil, free of razor grass, brandishing their metal spiked clubs.

Ron cried out "all together on three 'aquimentus maximus' fill the trench with water!"

The defenders did and soon the freshly turned soil became very slick mud.

George Weasley touched the tip of his wand to his throat and boomed out in his best announcer's voice "Ladieeeees and gentlemen, for your entertainment this evening, naked troll mud wrestling heeeeeere at Hogwart's!"

The trolls couldn't get any traction as they fell over and onto each other and each other's clubs, which angered them to the point where they started swinging at each other. Before long only two trolls were still, well not standing, but sort of kneeling as they gamely swung their spiked clubs at each other, connecting more often than not. They eventually took each other out and saved the castle defenders the trouble.

The inferi began to emerge from the forest, not worried about pain or blood loss from the razor grass, as they felt no pain and whatever blood they had wasn't exactly flowing anymore. Behind the inferi the death eater troops walked on the razors without any problems owing to their newly conjured dragon hide boots.

Harry passed a message along the battlements, "When the inferi get close enough begin the burning spells. Fire will stop them." He worried about how many would fall to the DE crossbow bolts.

Myrtle hovered in front of Harry and said, "I think we can help here."

"How?" Harry asked, desperate for any help he could get.

"The inferi are just dead people without souls. We are breathing-challenged people without bodies; I think we might be able to control them."

"What can you do?"

"We can try to possess them!"

With that she flew off the battlements and into one of the foremost inferi, which stopped, turned, and began to walk away from the castle.

All the other ghosts saw this and dove over the wall to find themselves an inferi to 'drive.'

The auror next to Harry said "d'you see that bloke on the broom, just at the tree line?"

"Yeah."

"Even money says he's a necromancer, the one controlling the inferi, take him out and they're just walkin' dead, no direction."

"Get your ten best spell casters on the wall to bring that arsehole down. Narrow beam cutting curses should do it."

The necromancer was confused? Why wasn't his mob following his directions? He flew away from the cover of the trees to get a closer look when three inferi saw him, turned their backs to him, bent over and dropped trou. The necromancer was so amazed at being mooned by his own inferi he didn't realize he'd left the safety and concealment of the forest far behind. This made it ridiculously easy for the sharpshooters on the wall to take him down. He was hit by eight of the ten cutting curses fired from the battlements and fell to the ground in pieces. The inferi stopped moving, just standing there, except for those that had been possessed by the castle ghosts, those advanced on the DE troops and began attacking them with tooth and nail and whatever weapons they could find lying around, sticks, rocks, handfuls of razor grass, whatever.

Seeing one inferi rip the arm off a death eater was too much for the rest of the attackers, they ran pell-mell back into the forbidden forest. The DE troops had been routed by a handful of inferi on a mission.

On the ramparts the defenders were cheering, they had thrown back everything Voldemort had sent their way.

Helen Smythe, a young, female auror, fresh out of training ran up to Harry.

"One of the prisoners says he needs to talk with you sir!"

"I'm not a sir, I'm just Harry."

"Yes sir, he says his name is Malfoy."

Harry ran down the stairs to the courtyard. Malfoy was in bad shape, he stank from scorched hair and flesh; half his face was badly burned, he'd probably lose the sight in his left eye. His lips were blackened and bleeding. He was being tended to by Neville, but his chances of survival didn't look good.

"You said you needed to talk to me Draco?"

"Yeah Potter," he rasped, then coughed, "I have a message from Snape. He says use the elves."

"Use the elves?"

"Yeah"

"Is that all?"

"No," he stuggled to sit up in the grass, "he says elves can't use their magic against wizards, but dementors . . ."

Draco coughed up blood.

"Draco!" the other prisoner screamed.

Harry spun so quickly at the sound of the other prisoner's voice he lost his balance and fell to his knees. He was in a state of complete shock as he slowly, mechanically grabbed the thin wrist of the prisoner's left arm and drew back the sleeve. A fresh dark mark glared from the inside of her elbow. Even through the mass of tangled singed hair and soot blackened features he would recognize that face and that voice anywhere.

It was Ginny Weasley.