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Chapter 648: People on the Marauder’s Map
🕑 Added 2019-10-31 19:46:17 +0000 UTCRon was still digesting this shocking news and couldn’t believe he was going into the lake.
"Myrtle … what lives in the lake, apart from the giant squid?" Harry continued.
"Oh all sorts, far beyond your imagination!" she said, seemingly a little unhappy. "I sometimes go to the lake to hang out … sometimes I don’t have any choice, if someone flushes my toilet when I’m not expecting it..."
Harry tried not to think about Moaning Myrtle zooming down a pipe to the lake with the contents of a toilet, though it was funny. He would give it a try if he could.
"Well, does anything in there have a human voice?" Harry asked. "Hang on..."
His eyes had fallen on the picture of the snoozing mermaid on the wall and hurriedly pushed Ron.
"The Merpeople, Ron, it must be the Merpeople!" he said quickly, "Myrtle, there aren’t Merpeople in there, are there?"
“Oooh, very good,” she said, her thick glasses twinkling, and she looked at Harry with satisfaction. “It took Diggory much longer than that! And that was with her awake too” … she jerked her head toward the mermaid with an expression of great dislike on her glum face … “giggling as usual and showing off and flashing her fins to the students bathing…” she said, dissatisfied.
"Harry, you mean..." Ron’s eyes also fell on the portrait of the mermaid.
"That’s it. The second task is to go and find the Merpeople in the lake and … and …” Harry couldn’t say any more. He suddenly realized what he was saying, and he felt the excitement that he had just discovered the secret drain out of him.
He remembered that the lake was very large and very deep, and the Merpeople would surely live right at the bottom...
This was no longer a matter of swimming. How could Ron breathe in there?!
Obviously, Ron thought the same. He no longer had the joy of finding the secret of the golden egg, and his face was bloodless.
"Myrtle, do you know how we are supposed to breathe underwater?" he asked hopefully.
At this, Myrtle’s eyes filled with sudden tears again.
"Tactless!" she muttered, groping in her robes for a handkerchief, "talking about breathing in front of me!"
There were more and more tears in her eyes, and she jumped off the tap.
"You know that I can't!" she said shrilly, and her voice echoed loudly around the bathroom. "I haven’t … not for ages..."
She buried her face in the handkerchief and sniffed loudly.
Harry remembered how touchy Myrtle had always been about being dead, but none of the other ghosts he knew made such a fuss about it.
Ron thought of this too, but he didn't want to comfort Myrtle at all. He just wanted to leave.
He was to drown in the lake soon, and now he needed to apologize to an annoying ghost?!
"Sorry!" Finally, Harry said impatiently, "We didn't mean it … we just forgot!"
"Oh yes, very easy to forget Myrtle is dead," said Myrtle, gulping, looking at them out of swollen eyes. "Nobody missed me even when I was alive. It took them hours and hours to find my body … I know, I was sitting there waiting for them. Olive Hornby came into the bathroom … 'Are you in here again, sulking, Myrtle?’ she said, ‘because Professor Dippet asked me to look for you...’ And then she saw my body … ooooh, she didn’t forget it until her dying day, I made sure of that … I followed her around and reminded her, I did. I remember at her brother's wedding... and then, of course, she went to the Ministry of Magic to stop me stalking her, so I had to come back here and live in my toilet.”
That was really an unpleasant memory. Myrtle seemed to bear grudges beyond imagination.
Harry and Ron didn’t even listen. They didn’t even care about being seen by her.
They retrieved the golden egg from the bottom of the bath, climbed out, dried themselves as quickly as possible, and put on their clothes again.
"Fred and George must have known about this. They knew that Myrtle would come and peek, and gave me the password to get in here," said Ron angrily, "to see her?! Unless all the toilets in the castle are sealed with earth, I'll never go near that place again."
"Myrtle is really bad, but she helped us after all!" said Harry. "How are you going to do to dive under the water?"
"I don't know. Go back and ask Evan and Hermione, they must know!" said Ron weakly.
Although unwilling to admit it, he did not have any way to deal with the current situation.
He had thought that this time he might not rely on Evan’s help, but he couldn’t.
After seeing Hermione at the Yule Ball, Ron had been very uncomfortable, always thinking of the scene of Evan and Hermione dancing, and the parchment with terrible patterns that Evan took out in the pub that morning...
This was not the time to get into conflict with Evan. Ron reminded himself that this was the lesson he learned in the past few years.
Evan’s power was very strong, far beyond his imagination, and he needed his help.
"Ron, we must hurry back," said Harry, putting the invisibility cloak on top of their heads and checking it carefully. "It's getting late. Come on, I'll take the Golden Egg. You check the Marauder's Map."
They came to the dark corridor, and Ron absently checked the Marauder’s Map. The dots belonging to Filch and his cat, Mrs. Norris, were safely in their office.
Nothing else seemed to be moving apart from Peeves, though he was bouncing around the trophy room on the floor above.
"Let's go!" said Ron, but he stopped abruptly.
Peeves was not the only thing that was moving. He saw Evan and Hermione suddenly appear at the gates of the castle.
What were they going out for? Was it a date?!
It made him feel uncomfortable when he thought of the scene of Evan and Hermione kissing.
Ron went out on a date with Lavender recently and finally knew what boys and girls were doing alone.
Think of it that way, Evan and Hermione had been together for a long time, they must be the same...
"What's wrong, Ron?" Harry leaned over and saw Evan and Hermione at the gates. "Strange, how could they be there? Let’s go!"
He tugged at Ron's sleeve, and Ron came to his senses.
"Oh!" He was about to put away the Marauder's Map, and his eyes suddenly came to a standstill.
He saw a single dot flitting around a room in the bottom left-hand corner.
It was Professor Snape’s office. But the dot wasn’t labeled “Severus Snape” ... it was Caresius Slytherin!!!
