You are nine years old the first time it happens. This is the year the adults start covering the windows and turning off the lights when it gets dark. They won't tell you why, of course, because you're just a child and "It's not for you to know, Myrtle." But you want to read and draw and play pretend, and one night as you lie in bed missing your confiscated torch, the lamp on the wall springs to life. You only get a few moments to stare wide-eyed at its miraculous glow before your parents rush in.

"Remember what we told you, sweetheart. The lights need to stay off."

They rumple your hair and tuck you in and have the door shut before you can tell them that you didn't even touch it.

You are ten years old. The war that had existed only in late-night whispers has now solidified into a real, though still distant, threat. You feel its presence most strongly after school, when the long walk home has left you hungry and the peanut-butter sandwiches you had at noon feel so far away. Mum has reminded you twice that your favorite oatmeal cookies will have to wait until rationing is less strict, but just looking at the sugar jar in the cupboard isn't going to hurt anyone. Every day the grainy white layer at the bottom seems to rise an inch or two, but you're sure it's only your imagination until you run home for your forgotten lunch box and find sugar spilling from under the pantry door. It takes days to sweep it out of all the cracks in the floorboards, and weeks to convince your parents you didn't steal it from Mrs. McGrady several doors down (though she'd have deserved it, the miserable old bat, hoarding so much when kids like you had hardly any.) You're grounded nonetheless, because your parents probably figure out of sight and out of mind means out of trouble.

The time confined in your room allows you to reminisce with your old heroes, Peter and Alice and Dorothy and the brave little Hobbit, and to scour their stories for any advice on how little girls should handle odd situations. You quickly rule out swords and pixie dust and strange potions, but your parents always keep a bucket of water by the door in case a fire breaks out, so you'll be prepared should a wicked witch come along.

The possibility that you might be the wicked witch occurs to you, but that's ridiculous, right?

You laugh it off a little too heartily to be reassured.

You are eleven years old, and the enemy has a face now. The planes seem to come every night, their bombs whistling down through the darkness to reduce stone to rubble. Children everywhere depart for the countryside, though your parents cling to you, comforted by the lie that keeping you close will keep you safe. Rationing and metal drives and casualty rates increase, and with them the things you can't explain. Your Victory Garden blooms almost overnight. A window shatters into fragments when your best friend's family opens the envelope marked KIA. The fairies in the picture above your bedpost, cut from a magazine by your mum as a girl and lovingly framed for your fifth birthday, dance and beckon. You wish you could follow them.

The backyard bomb shelter becomes both haven and prison. You like it in the afternoons after you've caused another inexplicable accident, or the latest news from the front has just sunk in. Lying on your back against the cool dirt, with the world reduced to the corrugated metal ceiling above you, worries can melt away for as long as you remain undisturbed. You hate it on the nights when the three of you huddle together in fear, praying that each explosion will be the last, feeling your tranquil memories become tainted by blood and dust and death.

It's on one such night that you receive the letter.

Your dad doesn't want anyone to touch it, and you can see why. Ever since the young men of the neighborhood went over to the continent, letters bring only heartbreak. You know the devastation well – your best friend hardly speaks to anyone now, let alone you. More to the point, what kind of lunatic would be running around in the middle of the blitz, slipping mail into people's bomb shelters? Logically, you should shrink back in fear. But that smooth white sheet of paper marked Miss Myrtle Elizabeth Warren, the Anderson shelter in the backyard, 5 Vernon Street, London, England is so obviously intended for you…

At first, you don't think it's real. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry? It sounds like something out of one of your storybooks; your own personal Oz or Wonderland. Surely you must've fallen asleep reading, drifted away with the pages pressed against your face and their words dancing through your mind. After all, who could blame you for conjuring up such fanciful things, what with a war raging on outside and your own life thrown out of balance? Yet it would be awfully strange for mum and dad to be having the same dream, and for the bombs to sound so loud and your pinch to the arm feel so real if you were really asleep.

You get your answer the next morning, when you wake up still in the bomb shelter with the same letter clutched in your hand. From outside wafts a scent you haven't smelt since rationing began. It leads you to the backyard, where a stranger with a long beard and a purple suit is smoking a pipe and serving your parents tea. You ask him if his name is Gandalf. He chuckles gently and replies that, while he has developed an affinity for Muggle literature, his name is Professor Albus Dumbledore, and he is here to invite you to his school. You, Myrtle Warren, are a witch.

The following months pass in a whirl of anticipation, underscored by the steady joy of certainty. You are not a freak. You are not a monster. You are a witch, and there is a place for you. Your parents, though understandably bewildered to start with, are supportive; they'd been considering sending you away to the countryside like other children, but you'll surely be safer still in Dumbledore's school. Your euphoria rises as the bricks behind the pub melt into a doorway; as you search Diagon Alley for eyes of newts and toes of frogs and leather-bound books heavy with knowledge; as the hazel-and-unicorn-hair wand connects with your soul and floods you with power. The war seems to recede into insignificance as time flies by, spent venturing through your textbooks in the secrecy of the Anderson shelter. You twirl a stick through the air on mellow summer afternoons, mentally cursing the underage magic restrictions Professor Dumbledore informed you of. When the bombs rain down at night, you calm yourself by mulling over lists of famous wizards you've memorized, like Ignatia Wildsmith and Elfrida Clagg and Wendelin the Weird. Or better yet, you let your mind wander ahead to some future day when you'll whip out your wand and jinx those planes back across the Channel, where they belong.

Finally, September the first arrives, crisp and clear with promise. Mum and dad tie your hair into its usual pigtails, make sure you have your bagged lunch, and try to pretend they're not tearing up as they see you off at King's Cross Station. You slide through the barrier between platforms nine and ten, wonder swelling with every step. Milling around the startlingly scarlet steam engine are more young wizards and witches than you thought could have possibly existed, all waving farewell to parents or rushing to embrace friends or lugging cages of bats and owls and rats. Reminded suddenly of how new this all is, you rush on board the train and try to find a seat alone. It isn't that you're averse to the idea of company; rather, you don't want anyone to intrude on your experiencing of this world for the very first time. Neither do you want to intrude in anyone else's experience, lest they make it clear how alien you really are.

You spend the first fifteen or so minutes of the ride engrossed in your spellbooks, but the nearness of what you've been anticipating for so long leaves you too anxious to focus. Looking out the window hardly helps when you expect to see the castle's turrets looming over every hilltop. So you trade transfiguration for Tolkien, and are lost in the pages of The Hobbit – your one keepsake from home – when voices sound in the hallway outside.

The compartment door slides open and several girls about your age enter. "Mind if we sit here?"

You peer over the top of the book, hoping you don't say anything stupid in front of real wizards. "Not at all."

"Thanks." They return to their former conversation, leaving you cautiously optimistic yet slightly disappointed; that is, until the girl seated in the middle speaks up again. "What is that you're reading?"

"The Hobbit."

Her eyebrows slant. "Sorry?"

"Don't you know Tolkien? … Bilbo Baggins? Smaug?" You search her face eagerly for some sort of recognition, but don't find it.

The girl shares a condescending smile with her friends. "I get it. You're one of – those people, aren't you?"

"What?"

Her smirk stretches wide, as if the next word is longing to escape it. "A Muggle."

The term is familiar from your summer reading; it was neutral, you recall, but this girl's tone of voice certainly isn't. Yours comes across a little higher-pitched than is probably socially acceptable. "Yes. I am. What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing, nothing," and the trio falls to giggling.

Hoping they'll leave you alone if you shrink into the background, you lift the book back up to cover your face.

"Do what you want," says the girl idly. "But you might want to read a spellbook instead. You know, since you're not as magic as the rest of us. Just some helpful advice."

You try to avoid their gazes as you gather up your things to leave. You don't want to be around this. Not today of all days; not when your emotions insist on fluctuating between excitement and sheer terror. There'll be another empty car somewhere.

"What, are you leaving?" one of the other girls pipes up. "Are you crying? Oh Merlin, she's actually crying!"

More laughter ripples out from the girls.

"Come back! We didn't mean it in a bad way! We're just telling the truth!"

You slam the door, but their taunts stick with you all the way to Hogwarts.

You are eleven years old, just like everyone else ushered to the side of the platform once the Hogwarts Express glides to a halt. The train ride was long enough that your eyes have dried by now, and that's fortunate, because you would hate to have missed the sight that lies before you. The castle looms out of the glassy black lake like the rock formations you'd seen on the occasional trips to the seaside before the war, carved into being by centuries of tidal flow. Towers ascend from the corners, cutting dark pointed shapes into the star-strewn sky. Each window blazes with light, the kind that roars in dwarven fireplaces and warms medieval feasts. As the little boats draw closer and closer through the water, you have the curious feeling of finding a home you never knew you'd left. This isn't a description from a fairy-tale book; it's something real, something yours.

Perhaps, you think, in this sacred, shining, moment, you'll never leave.

Inside, beneath a ceiling of stars and candles, the crowd of first-years passes between four long tables to a wizened black hat upon a stool. The Deputy Headmistress, an imposing woman by the name of Professor Merrythought, informs you that it will sort you into four houses, each representing a particular quality. You listen to their overlong names with a twinge of anxiety. Where will you fit in? You certainly don't think of yourself as brave, nor cunning. Loyal and hardworking, maybe, although you've never had an especially close group of friends to show loyalty to. As for intelligence, you're not sure of that – while your marks back home were never anything to scoff at, what good are arithmetic and geography in wizard school? – yet something in Ravenclaw house calls to you nonetheless. Not quite wisdom, but the desire to attain it. You want to learn as much as you can about this incredible new world, this mysterious power that flows within you.

That's why it's a blow when "Hornby, Olive!", the unpleasant girl from the train, is sent by the hat to the table decked out in blue and bronze. You're left to wait until nearly the end, when "Warren, Myrtle!" is called out and the musty old hat slips over your head. Its voice whispers within you, probing for answers. Your mind darts back and forth, from Olive's sneering face to the promise of knowledge, of truly earning your place here, regardless of what she thinks –

"Ravenclaw!"

You're not sure how to define the rush of emotion that floods you; some mixture between relief, dread, and acceptance that makes you weak at the knees. You stumble a bit over your robes as you hop down off the stool. The scattered laughter that breaks out is good-natured, but prickles over you uncomfortably nonetheless. Fortunately there are several students on the bench separating you from Olive.

The girl across from you, already wearing a badge and tie as blue as her eyes, smiles apologetically as you both reach for the same bread roll. You draw your hand back, but she shakes her head. "No, take it. It's your first day, and it'll refill anyways."

She's right; the second the roll is gone, a dozen others appear in its place. "Wish we'd had that during rationing," you mutter, without thinking.

The girl cocks her head, a lock of frizzy dark hair falling over her shoulder. "You're Muggle-born, then?" She sounds curious but not judgmental; after Olive, though, your defences are raised anyway. "There's nothing wrong with that, of course! I think it's wonderful that you're one of us. Er, a wizard, I mean. Anyway, enough of that. Welcome to Hogwarts. I'm Murcia Quimby, second year."

"Murcia? That's lovely." You don't know quite what to say that doesn't come off as awkward, but you're cautiously flattered by her attention. She certainly doesn't seem to hold Olive's prejudices. "I'm Myrtle. Myrtle Warren. First year, but, er, I guess you knew that already…"

You trail awkwardly off as she turns her attention back to her meal, but she flashes you another smile amidst her chewing. Reassured, you return to your plate as well, wishing that Murcia, not Olive, had happened to stumble into your compartment on the Hogwarts Express.

You are eleven years old, and Murcia is twelve, so you don't get to spend as much time with her as you'd like. What's more, sharing a dorm and a class schedule with the other first-year Ravenclaw girls means near-constant exposure to Olive Hornby. This doesn't present much of a problem for the first week, though. How could it, when you're in a state of utter enthrallment by everything around you? Not even Olive, who must have grown up in a house full of wizards, can help being spellbound.

You were already in love with Hogwarts the moment you saw its silhouette against the night sky, and this grows stronger with every passing moment. After seeing so much of London reduced to rubble, there's something almost inspiring about his venerable old castle, fixed to this spot for centuries without a single stone having crumbled. You long to explore every inch of it, to have each shifting staircase and meandering corridor imprinted as firmly in your mind as your own name. Every time you round a corner, an entirely different wing seems to open up before you; every wall you lean against must hide passageways and chambers unknown. Pictures talk, statues wave, ghosts drift overhead. It must take at least a hundred years, you decide, to truly get to know Hogwarts. There are too many sights to see, too many sounds to hear, too many things to touch and smell and sense, for one lifetime.

The classes are no less fascinating. You learn quickly that this magic is very different than the kind you'd learned in your storybooks. On your first day of Defence Against the Dark Arts, Olive Hornby bends over her desk into silent laughter when you ask if water could really melt a dark witch. The first spell you learn in transfiguration doesn't bring a scarecrow to life, but turns a single straw into a match. Although you're intimidated, you're also thrilled by how much there still is to learn.

Things begin to change the first weekend at Hogwarts. You're sitting cross-legged on your bed, engrossed in The Hobbit and waiting for Murcia to come up like she'd promised, when the door swings open to admit Olive. You stiffen instinctively. It's the first time the two of you have been alone together in the dormitory.

Olive doesn't seem to notice you at first, twirling her wand absent-mindedly and sorting through her belongings. When she sees you eyeing her over the top of your book, however, her expression sours.

"What's got your wand in a knot?"

"Pardon?"

She rolls her eyes impatiently. "I meant, what's wrong with you? You can't still be upset over the train ride. We were just joking around, anyways."

You grip the sides of your book tightly, never sure what to say in these situations. "That's not what you said then."

"Well, whatever." Olive waves a hand with a flippant air. "We just meant that you're different, is all. You know that too. It's just not the same if you don't have wizard parents."

"That doesn't mean I'm not a real witch," you shoot back, more bravely than you actually feel, "And how'd you like it if someone said that to you?"

"Well, I wouldn't run off crying like a gloomy Augurey. Merlin's pants, you acted like we'd hit you or something."

You grit your teeth. "Stop doing that!"

"Doing what?"

"Using all those – those wizard sayings! You know I'm new here! You're – you're – doing it all on purpose, to get to me!"

"Fine, be like that then." She slams her drawer shut forcefully. "See if I care what some Muggle thinks about me."

"See if I care what … you think about me."

"Witty," she sneers from the doorway, delighted by the weakness of your retort. "See you around, Myrtle."

And that she does. With the start of your second week of classes, Olive Hornby seems determined to make your life at Hogwarts miserable. What's worse, she's clever about it, never overtly insulting you in front of the teachers. ("Can you go through the parts of a cauldron again, Professor Slughorn? I'm not sure Myrtle understand it," or "You might want to help Myrtle Warren out with her wandwork, Sir, I think I saw her holding it backwards just now.") You're easily shaken, one jibe from her distracting you enough to confuse two potion ingredients or turn the feather you were supposed to be levitating into a tissue.

To your dismay, the more openly you react, the more deeply Olive sinks in her claws. Although jibes at your blood status colour nearly all her insults, she broadens her horizons to include other sources of ridicule – your glasses ("I guess she's never had the chance to learn a vision-fixing charm back home, has she?" as if you haven't seen countless wizards with spectacles), your weight ("I hear the Muggles aren't eating so well nowadays. Must be why she stuffs her face every feast"), even your accursed acne ("Most wizards don't get it so young, do they?"). You start asking to be excused from class, running to the usually-deserted first floor bathroom where no prying eyes will see you cry. As the months go on, you wonder whether this is still all about your spat in the dormitory, or whether goading you has become Olive's new pastime.

"It's because you're so … sensitive," Murcia admits reluctantly one day, after you've pressed her for nearly half an hour on the topic. "I'm sorry to say this, Myrtle, I really am. But I guess you make it too easy for her."

"What am I supposed to do then?" Or are real wizards not supposed to cry? you feel like adding caustically, but you hold your tongue. Murcia's companionship is too valuable to risk.

"I don't know." She's clearly uncomfortable with the conversation. "Just ignore her? Anyway, if she tried anything around me, I'd shut her up. It's too bad you're not in my year."

You smile at that, because you feel the same way. It's hard to find time to spend with Murcia, what with your differing class schedules, her Quidditch practice and all the homework you're both saddled with. You try to eat together at lunch and chat in the common room on weekends, but you often find yourself lost in Murcia's large, loud gaggle of friends. It isn't that any of them are unfriendly, or that she doesn't try to include you in the conversation when she can. But they're all a year older, and what's more, most of them are wizard-born, or at least muggle-borns already familiar with Hogwarts. Often you find yourself shrinking into silence rather than trying to follow the threads of a confusing discussion.

After Olive spots one of the school's spare barn owls delivering you a letter from home one morning – a telltale sign you don't have your own pet; with rationing going on you'd never be able to care for it over the summer – Murcia steps in. The next time you send a message out the owlery window, it's borne on the wings of an imposing great grey. "It's no big deal," Murcia laughs when you thank her. The sound peals like bells. "Venus is pretty smart; she'll be able to find her way to your place and mine. And she can carry much bigger packages than those scrawny school birds. Let's see Olive laugh now."

Admittedly, the sight of a majestic owl swooping down to you and Murcia is usually the best part of receiving your mail. You write your letters home with a tone of forced positivity; it's difficult to explain to your parents that their non-magical status is the root cause of your bullying. Besides, as wizard and muggle newspapers alike remind you, things are hard enough for them at home. Over time, you learn that wizards and muggles experience the war quite differently. Murcia tries to empathize, but tends to forget that your parents can't just cast a shield charm over their house during the bombings, or turn water into the tea so strictly rationed. Fear for your family gnaws at you from the inside out, but it's something you must bear alone.

Finally – or is it too quickly? – your first, breathless year at Hogwarts grinds to a stop. You vacate your dormitory in a hurry, eager to see the last of Olive Hornby for two months, but your heart is heavy as you leave behind the vast windows and silken tapestries of Ravenclaw tower. Murcia's compartment on the Hogwarts Express is full of laughter and merriment so contagious that for once you feel a true part of it. The two of you share a hug amidst the steam on the platform and part with promises to write every week. You slide through the brick barrier and there, at last, are your parents, waiting on the other side – clothes shabby, faces lined, but beaming nonetheless. You practically fly to them.

"How was Hogwarts, sweetie?" your mother asks, enveloping you in a hug while your father strokes your hair.

"Good," you answer. It's not entirely a lie, but you're not sure how to tell them the full truth.

You are twelve years old, and if your parents were here they would remind you that a young woman of your age keeps a stiff upper lip, regardless of what life throws her way. Unfortunately for them, you've always thought that was a stupid rule. What's the point in concealing your emotions? It only leads to frustration and repressed desires, and you have enough of those at the moment. If you're sad, cry. If you're happy, laugh. If you're scared, scream. Nothing else makes sense.

You've spent at least half the summer in your bedroom, absorbing every textbook you own – and a few more the library let you rent – in an effort to make up for all the time wasted fretting over Olive last year. You're bound and determined to beat her this time around, and it shows when your glowing results in the first big History of Magic test come back. This doesn't pose a problem until you're first of the class in Transfiguration, and second in Charms. Olive Hornby calls you a name that you don't understand – you don't have dirt in your veins, thank you very much – but the frozen silence that descends over the classroom says enough. You start crying right then and there, big loud ugly sobs in the middle of Professor Galdrar's lecture. It's as if every eye in the room is piercing through you. Olive ends up in detention, but the damage is done.

Murcia is uncomfortable when you ask the inevitable question. "It's a nasty word, Myrtle. It's what some wizards call people like … well, people like you." What does that mean, you persist. "You know … people with muggle parents. No magical blood. Some people think you shouldn't even be able to come here, that you're not good enough." But not her, she adds quickly.

You run off to the bathroom more than usual this term. Between Olive's constant torments, the drive to prove you deserve your place in Hogwarts, the war news filtering through the Daily Prophet and the radio, and Murcia taking extra classes this year ("Don't act like that, Myrtle, you know I love Care of Magical Creatures,") your nerves are frayed to their limit. The quiet stone nook on the first floor is always ready to receive you; the dim torches and grimy mirror issue no scathing words. Even the sink at the far end, which has never worked no matter how hard you twist the tap, has a comforting familiarity. You learn the paths to this lavatory from any classroom, the Great Hall, the library, and the Ravenclaw common room itself. The still air grows heavier each visit with the ghosts of recent worries: taunts, poorly-written tests, letters from mum that revealed too much by saying too little ("Please don't worry about us, sweetie, all that matters is that you're all right.") Yet it's a comforting sadness, a cocoon of the sort of self-pity you don't shun because you know, or at least you hope, that it's deserved.

You are thirteen years old now, as winter melts into spring, and for the first time in your life you realize your parents were wrong. When they saw you off at the station at the start of second year, it was with the expectation that Hogwarts be a safe haven from the war raging across the globe. Now the danger comes from within.

Returning to Ravenclaw tower from dinner one evening, you and Murcia find yourselves in a corridor packed with black-robed bodies. Students are milling around something halfway along the hall, anxious clamour rising above the usual din. The teachers call for calm, urging their students to proceed to the common rooms. Like any short second-year you're shuffled about in the throng, but as you round the corner you catch a glimpse of the wall and the sinister message it bears.

The moment you reach your dormitory, you slide the clutter of dog-eared textbooks, empty inkwells and half-finished essays off your trunk and grope around for your copy of Hogwarts: A History. The faithful book has never failed you before. Yet, search as you might, you can't find any mention of a Chamber of Secrets, nor the 'heir,' nor any 'enemies' he might have – and neither, it seems, can anybody else. Murcia murmurs all she knows to you over a tense breakfast the following morning, but it's not much – an ancient chamber supposedly concealed somewhere within the school, little more than a legend lingering on in the minds of the older generation. The teachers reiterate the same. Life at Hogwarts continues on much the same, albeit subdued, for several days.

Then Florence Alderton of Hufflepuff is found, ashen-faced and stiff as a board, just outside a girl's lavatory on the third floor. Not dead, Professor Dippet assures an anxious student body, but petrified. No one, not even the nurse, has any idea how. A week later, she's joined by Frank Parrish of Gryffindor and your fellow Ravenclaw Doris Roscoe. Several limp black roosters, throats slit and feathers scattered, surround both their forms. Only now does the staff reveal all they know: how the Chamber of Secrets was said to have been built shortly after the school's founding by Salazar Slytherin, how an unknown monster allegedly lurks within, how the true heir of Slytherin alone possesses the power to control it and purge the school of those of impure blood. Those like you.

Fear descends over the school like fog, its tendrils entangling every moment of the day. Life is restricted to the classrooms, the common room and the Great Hall. Passage through the hallways is swift and silent, convoys of students huddled together and glancing compulsively over their shoulders. Reaching the solitude of your bathroom is out of the question. More dead fowl are discovered throughout the school, prompting the closure of entire hallways due to their presence. Every evening, Ravenclaw common room is abuzz with discussion over the identity of the fabled creature (a dragon, you think, or a huge awful spider with crawling legs and glinting eyes.) The stigma of your birth, previously a source of mockery only to Olive and her ilk, now burns dark and heavy, a brand proclaiming your unworthiness. You start to question, more than ever, your place in this world. Did Dumbledore make some mistake in accepting you here? Why did he ever think you belonged at a school founded, in part, by a man who would have considered you beneath contempt?

The drive to succeed in your classes has never been stronger, but never have you been more distracted. It results in calamity when Professor Slughorn, in an attempt to prepare you for the upcoming exams, switches up the regular potions partners ("Come now, everybody needs a challenge now and then!") and, in the spirit of fostering "good, healthy teamwork," places you with Olive. Your attempt to avoid eye contact with her results in a broken flask of pufferfish eyes and the ruination of the last Swelling Solution you'll be able to brew before the exam. It's just as well that the potion starts emitting thick black smoke, because with it filling the entire dungeon, at least no one can see you cry. Only the fear of running into the monster prevents you from running off to your bathroom after class. As you sit alone and dejected at supper, you take a bit of solace in the fact that at least Olive and her friends are nowhere to be found.

You find out why when you return to the dormitory. Your first impression is that someone's wand must have backfired and blasted papers across the room. Then you realize that all the ragged pages bear the same familiar font – and that there, blackened and crumpled into a ball, is the distorted image of a Hobbit hole.

"I'm sorry about that, Myrtle," purrs Olive from her bunk. "I was just practicing my SeveringCharm and it happened to be in the way."

You hardly hear her; you're so intent on salvaging what you can. Maybe, if you get them all together – smooth them out –

"I'm sure you can buy a new one somewhere. Maybe a second-hand bookstore."

Reparo should work for fastening all the pages back together – but they're so wrinkled – and you don't know what to do about the scorching –

"I hear there are quite a few of them in muggle London. You'll have the whole summer to shop, and who knows? Maybe even longer. I don't suppose your parents will let you come back here, given everything."

Your breathing rises to a panicked gasping. The stack you've recovered is hardly half the thickness of the original book – they're all over the place, some burned, some shredded beyond repair –

"And, really, for the best, Myrtle. You just don't belong here. You try hard, but at the end of the day, you'll never be anything but a Mudbl-"

The pages cascade to the ground as you leap to your feet and whirl towards her, shooting the first hex that comes to min. She shrieks and dodges the shower of spiders as you wrench open the door and hurtle down the stairs, ignoring the comments of passing students. Murcia catches you by the shoulders before you can leave the common room, but you wrench out of her grasp and go hide behind one of the tapestries in the corner. She calls for you once, throws her arms up, and leaves. Good. You don't want to talk; you just want to sob and scream and kick everything in reach, and most of all to curl up and find yourself back home, before this all started, before Olive and the Chamber and the war.

Night might not have passed at all; you wake up to the same sickening sense of hopelessness that drove you to sleep. Listlessly you retread your steps up the stairs and get dressed. You can't bring yourself to sit beside Murcia at breakfast, not after last night's outburst, but of course Olive is right on schedule. Perhaps she feels some sense of shame, because all she comes up with is a weak gibe about your glasses. It's still enough. No teachers are guarding the door to the hall, and while a prefect is standing nearby at the end of the Slytherin table, he doesn't stop you from leaving.

Your bathroom's just the same as you left it several months ago. Same faint candlelight, gently leaking taps, damp flagstones. You rush into the furthest stall like the embrace of an old friend. Now that you're here, you're not leaving – you don't care about class – you'd stay here forever, if you could.

In the midst of your sobs, another sound intrudes – a low hissing in an unrecognizable language, garbled and sinister and, most unwelcomely, masculine. Just like last night, something in you snaps, and you wipe your sleeve across your runny eyes and swing open the door, because how dare he interrupt you in your most vulnerable state, in your one remaining place of refuge –

Yellow eyes blaze into your own, and time stops.

A/N: Where do I begin? I've loved Myrtle ever since I first watched Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as an 8- or 9-year-old, and have had the idea of writing a FanFiction about her life since I was 13 or 14. What started out as an over-ambitious plan for a 30-odd chapter fic gradually whittled itself down to a oneshot, which then expanded into a threeshot and then a four-shot. Almost a decade since I came up with the idea, I've finally finished this story, the first multichap FanFiction I've completed since I was 10. I sincerely hope you're enjoying it as much as I loved writing it.

A few words about the content. I know that second-person can be hit-and-miss, but I honestly can't imagine having written it any other way. One of my main goals with this story was to get the reader to empathize with a character whose tragic backstory is, in my opinion, sadly underexplored in the Harry Potter canon. I've always sympathized greatly with Myrtle, and I hope that by putting this in second-person, I've made it easier to get into her head (as depressing a place as it might be!).

I also know that the common age listed for Myrtle at her death is 14, not 13, but after a lot of fact-checking, I determined that the only source for that is an interview with her actress, Shirley Henderson, which I've chosen not to take as canon. As I've always imagined Myrtle being 12 or 13 when she died, and as she is described in the books as a teenager, I decided to go with 13.

For reference, the London Blitz lasted from about September 1940 until May 1941. It's sometime during this period when Myrtle has her 11th birthday and receives the Hogwarts letter. Her first year is 1941/1942, and her second, at the end of which she of course dies, is 1942/1943.

The dancing fairies in the portrait above Myrtle's bed at home are the Cottingley Fairies, fakes made by two young girls in the late 1910s/early 1920s. I had the idea that, in the HP universe, the girls could have been actual witches who charmed paper fairies into flying, or even befriended real fairies (although those in the HP canon are apparently quite different than those in the photographs!).

In my original drafts for the story, Olive Hornby was in Slytherin, but I decided later on that it was far too cliche to have the bully be that house. Instead, I put her in Ravenclaw so that she could be around Myrtle almost 24/7.

'Murcia' is the name of an obscure Roman deity frequently identified as a version of the love goddess Venus (hence the name of her owl). She was also heavily associated with myrtle plants.

I found it unbelievable that the Basilisk could have attacked so many people and only killed one, but CoS clearly states that several students were petrified during the 1943 openings of the chamber, so I had to have some unsuccessful attacks preceding Myrtle's death. I assume that they all happened to see the Basilisk through mirrors, water, or other indirect means, which is why I had the first girl be found near a bathroom.

I hope you all enjoyed this first chapter, and that if you did you will continue reading! :) Please don't be shy in leaving a review or comment - I would love to know what you have to say!