Chapter 6: Lacewings & Specters

Chapter 6: Lacewings and Specters

            I was let out of the Hospital Wing the next day when I reported no more hallucinations. I slept soundly, probably from exhaustion more so than any sense of inner peace. I found Amit in the Great Hall and we fell into our normal routine. He caught me up on the classes I missed, and then we joked about how lame quidditch players are. Everyone wanted everything to go back to normal, and our wish was powerful enough to make it so.

            My secret strategy for normalcy was simple: lie all the time. I’m sure Godric Gryffindor was rolling over in his grave at my genuine lack of morality, but things were worse when I talked about my plans to other people. That was when I had to explain myself, to make sense of my desires. If I didn’t tell anyone that I wanted Polyjuice potion, I wouldn’t have to look in their eyes as they asked me if I was a pervert or delinquent. I didn’t have to justify using a potion from the restricted section. I didn’t have to explain how I was going to make it in secret while I stewed lacewings for twenty-one days.

            Oh, don’t get me started on the lacewings.

            Sure, they’re easy enough to get your hands on, but the smell is absolutely horrid. Yes, keeping an open flame under a cauldron for twenty-one days was hard. Doing it while attending classes and not having anyone wonder why you’re making a restricted potion was tricky. But absolutely nothing compared to hiding the smell. I failed to hide most of my attempts in janitor’s closets or trying to create huge bags of holding out of pocket dimensions. I had to ask Amit for some money after my fourth batch was soured in less than a day. He asked me what it was for, and I told him I was looking into getting a pet rat for a familiar.

            A pet rat.

            From the look in his eye, I don’t think Amit bought it. But he didn’t ask any questions, and when I had no rat a few days later, I said it died already and pretended to be in mourning. That conveniently also explained why I was being so aloof and looked tired all the time whenever someone asked. “His rat died,” Amit would say, and everyone gave me a sad look and left me alone.

            Note the brilliance of my strategy.

            However, with the tiny amount of money I conned my best friend out of (I saved feeling guilty for the quiet hours of the morning, which was also when I told myself I was neurotic and losing control for risking my life at Hogwarts all over a single glance in a mirror), I knew I couldn’t waste the last batch of lacewings. In the end, I went to Asia and asked where she stewed her lacewings for our potion.

            And that’s how I learned about an abandoned girls’ bathroom on the second floor above the Great Hall. Absolutely no one went there because it was haunted, the scene of multiple murders, and apparently the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets that Harry Potter and his Scooby Gang opened last year.

            It was perfect.

            So it wasn’t until late September that I began stewing my potion for twenty-one days, which meant I wouldn’t be able to actually drink my Polyjuice potion until late October. In the meantime, I depended on my strategy. If Amit asked where I was going whenever I had to check on the lacewings, I told him McGonagall wanted me to try out my transformation into a cat. I had no problem becoming one — I managed a beautiful ginger American Bobtail — but it was changing back that I struggled with. It took a while, and if I pulled it off, I often ended up with some unfortunate side effects: tail, fur, whiskers, ears, wrong eyes, an urge to claw the walls, or a genuine need to flail around at three in the morning.

            Besides, it was easier to sneak around the castle as a cat than as myself.

            So I went to class, studied, did homework, ate with Amit, attended tutoring sessions with McGonagall, and watched my potion. I had to cut some things out, like doing anything remotely fun with Amit. He normally was a wizard’s chess addict, and I fancied a game or twelve hundred myself, but I told him I was busy mourning Tom (the name of the imagined rat was Tomfoolery, Tom for short). Amit seemed to get over Madeline, and though I expected him to latch onto someone else, he didn’t. Or if he had, it was one of the things that didn’t come up over meals or walking between classes. It was unfortunate to let the distance build between us, especially after his kind words in the Hospital Wing, but if we started talking about girls and our inner lives, it wouldn’t be long until he found out what I was up to. And I didn’t know how to explain to him that what I wanted was the exact opposite of what he understood (proving I’m a real man).

            The strategy also kept people from glowing with green eyes and strange voices narrating everyone’s thoughts and feelings — meaning I didn’t technically lie to Madam Pomfrey during my follow-up examinations. If I stayed on the typical Elliot script, the world left me alone. That was more than fine with me. All I wanted was to carve out my little hour with my potion. It haunted me. I dreamt of the moment I had long and flowing hair again, of delicate features, of soft skin, of long legs I wanted to be seen, of flowing skirts and graceful twirls. I knew it was temporary, and I knew one couldn’t drink too much Polyjuice potion without some kind of long-term consequence — it was like that for an animagus, so it stands to reason the same would be true for a Polyjuice addict.

            Even Asia went back to normal. I guess the moment during Divinations was too much for their relationship, but I never saw her with Madeline anymore. In fact, I rarely saw Asia at all outside of class. That didn’t concern me. Asia and I were closer to rivals than friends, and I never talked to her before the incident with the Gryffindor staircase. Everything after that was just the natural fallout of experiencing too many strange things together.

            September rolled into October, and no one noticed. The excitement of being back in the castle and the newness of our routine died down. Everyone else settled into their normal while I ran three to four times a day to an abandoned bathroom to work on a potion. The green eyes were gone. The weird voice was gone. Amit served his detention and the incident with the staircase became a funny story of us being idiots. McGonagall stopped hinting that I should confess to anything, and I got better at turning back into me after being a cat. There was nothing strange other than the potion I was working on, dreaming about, and slaving over.

            Oh, that and the ghost who haunted the bathroom.

            The girls’ second floor bathroom — also known as Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom — was not only abandoned by students, but also by the house elves and any other staff at the castle responsible for maintenance and clean up. It was a dingy and damp bathroom, rich with the stench of mildew and the inevitability of getting wet from any one of the dozen leaking things. The sinks were chipped, the mirror had an unpleasant grey film over it, and the nubs of candles cast everything in a gloomy shadow.

            The bathroom’s namesake first made herself known to be on my second day of stewing the lacewings. “Oh no no no no no,” she said as she floated through a stall. “Not this, not again.” She was in the typical Hogwarts uniform — although a bit dated — with the Ravenclaw crest on it. She looked to be about thirteen or fifteen, with pigtails and huge circular glasses that made her face and head look tiny.

            I, in my infinite cleverness and stealth capabilities, tried to hide the giant cauldron behind my legs. “Not what?”

            She pointed between my legs. “Not that foul smelling potion. Not another. Not again.”

            “I was — I don’t know what potion you’re talking about. I was just — um — here because of a dare.”

            Myrtle arched one eyebrow high above the edge of her circular spectacles. “A dare?” she asked in her high pitched and nasally voice. I can’t think of any fate crueler than to be trapped in a body still going through puberty for all of time.

            “A bet.”

            She put her hands on her ethereal hips. “A bet?”

            “Um — yeah —” I turned around and gestured to my cauldron. “I have to piss in the second-floor girls’ bathroom.

            “In the cauldron?”

            “Mhmm, yup.” I flailed my arms in an attempt to gesture, ‘what can you do about it?’ “Stupid, I know.”

            “Was it a bet or a dare?”

            “Um —” I shook my head. “I honestly can’t remember.”

            “But you have to take a huge cauldron to my bathroom and —”

            “Piss in it. Yup.”

            She crossed her arms. For a moment, I wondered how ghosts do that. Why shouldn’t her arms pass through each other like they do everything else? “And I suppose it’s all a big joke to come here and desecrate my bathroom.”

            “Oh, well, I wouldn’t normally, but —”

            “You know there are other ghosts in other bathrooms.”

            “But it was this girl that I really like, and she — hold on what?”

            “I am not the only ghost that haunts a bathroom.” She turned her head up and away from me. “I’m just the only one that died while being bullied and am therefore forced to be bullied for all time.”

            “Well, that …” I thought of someone who knew why I was doing what I was doing. I wouldn’t want them to mock me for a minute, and definitely not for fifty years. “That’s awful. I’m sorry.”

            “Nearly Headless Nick spends an awful amount of time in Dumbledore’s bathroom, and no one makes any jokes about it.”

            “He does?”

            “Yes.” She looked back at me, floating up in the air in a decidedly menacing way. “He does.”

            “I never knew that.”
            “That’s exactly my point.”

            “But maybe that’s because no one really knows what goes on in Dumbledore’s bathroom. I mean, he’s the only one who uses it. It’s his after all.”

            Myrtle smirked. “Oh my, the things the headmaster gets up to in there.”

            My mind started to conjure an image of Professor Dumbledore doing his business while chatting with Nearly Headless Nick, and I decided to quickly brush it aside. “I imagine he — um — uses the bathroom.”

            “Not in a cauldron.” Myrtle floated closer but still kept herself a good foot above me. I wasn’t used to the sensation of looking up to talk to someone — I decided I didn’t like it.

            “Right. Sorry about that.” I snapped my fingers. “You know what, I can piss in this cauldron anywhere, and my friends would believe I did it here.”

            “Your piss was the proof?”

            I licked my lips and rocked on my heels. “Yup.”

            “Then why does it smell like stewing lacewings.”

            “Um —” I turned around and looked into the cauldron. “Does it?”

            She floated close enough that we could kiss. I would have taken a step back if it wouldn't mean setting my robes on fire. “Yes,” she said.

            “I ate some asparagus,” I said.

            She arched her eyebrow high again. “Asparagus?”

            “Yup.” I pulled my head back. I’ve had the Bloody Baron or Peeves pass through me while going through the hallways. Imagine dipping your chest — just your chest — into a semi-frozen lake. Not pleasant.

            “I had some with lunch,” I said. “That’s probably what’s making it smell like — wait a second. You can smell?”

            “Of course I can smell.”

            “How?”

            “The same way you smell.”

            I shook my head. “That’s impossible. I use the nerves on my body, and you’re — you’re —”

            “Dead?” Myrtle said. She floated back and laughed. “Yes. No, I suppose you’re going to tell me you know all about being dead. You know how it works.”

            “Well, sort of.” I wiped my sweating palms on my robes. I wasn’t sure which was more stressful, the fire inches from me, or the teenage ghost I was lying to.

            “Oh, then tell me all about it. I’ve only been at this for fifty years, so I haven’t figured out all the ropes.” Her posture changed to someone laying on the ground with her head in her hands, watching me expectantly like I was some teenage pop idol on her telly.

            “I — uh —” I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just — how can you hold your head?”

            “I thought you were the ghost expert. I mean, with your — what? Sixteen years? — of experience in the world, you must have so much to show a lowly fourth year like myself.”

            “Alright, well that was clearly stupid of me. I apologize.”

            “Yes, tell me all about what I can smell or can’t or what I can touch or can’t or if I even have feelings at all. That’s it, without a proper brain, I probably can’t be hurt by anything —” She ‘sat up’ and took off her glasses. “Excuse me, what did you say?”

            “I apologized.” I stepped away from the cauldron, revealing it as though she didn’t know it was there. “I’m not pissing in a cauldron.”

            “Of course you’re not. I really didn’t lose my brain when I died, and I was quite the Ravenclaw in my short time here.”

            “I know. I’m sorry.”

            “You know,” she floated closer to me, changing her posture as though she was sitting in an invisible chair with her head on her fist like Rodin’s “The Thinker.” “I really loved school. Can you imagine that I never got to finish it? I can’t even cast spells anymore.” She sighed. “I miss magic.”

            “Well,” I said, sitting on the edge of a sink. She apparently wasn’t going to kill me or report me, and I’d never really had a conversation with a ghost before. I was interested but also protecting my investment in lacewings. “At least you got to — I mean, is it a comfort to know you get to spend the rest of your life in a school for magic.”

            She scoffed. “Life?” she said. “What life?” She turned to me. “You know I can smell your nasty lacewings and touch enough things to play pranks, but I can’t feel the breeze on my skin? I can’t taste food. What kind of life is that?”

            I wanted to ask again how her nose worked at all, but I didn’t think it polite to push what was clearly a sensitive topic. I could add it to the list of magical things that didn’t work right — transfiguration, healing magic, and ghosts. She can see with her eyes, talk with no vocal cords, touch things, smell things, but not taste? Why?

            “I’m sorry,” I said.

            She blew her nose, and when I looked up, she had a ghostly tissue in her hand. Of course she did. “Everyone’s sorry,” she said. Then she narrowed her eyes. “Or no one is.”

            “I can’t imagine what it’s like to be dead — or what it’s like to be a ghost for that matter. But I —” I looked back at the cauldron. I had twenty more days to stew these lacewings, and that was just the beginning of the potion. If I was going to be here — and if I wanted Myrtle to keep my secret — I’d better win her over. “I know what it's like to feel …” I shook my head. “Trapped.”

            “You do?”

            I nodded.

            “How? You have this body. You have magic. You have a life.” She threw her transparent tissue behind her, and it disappeared through the bathroom floor. “You could be anything or go anywhere.”

            “Not anywhere,” I said. “And definitely not anything.”

            And then I told her. I told her everything, and Merlin’s beard, it felt good to get it off my chest. I told her all about our first Polyjuice potion and looking into the mirror and seeing Olivia’s face — her body — on my body. And somehow, I never knew how wrong my body felt or looked until I got to see myself as someone else. I explained how from what I can tell, there’s no spell that will make me into anything else, and if there is, it’s way out of my magical league. The best I can hope for is to drink some Polyjuice potion. I explained that while I had this one moment as Olivia, it was tiny. It was everything and nothing at all. I never got to be, to just be. I wanted to do it again without distraction. I had so many questions and understood so little. Being a girl for an hour was like stepping into Narnia — a reference Myrtle didn’t get — for an hour and being unable to find your way back there. There was an entire world on the other side of the wardrobe — or in this case the Polyjuice potion — and I had to explore it. I simply had to.

            Because what if my whole life I was a Narnian and didn’t know it?

            And she didn’t laugh at me. She didn’t say there was something wrong with me. I guess in a way, she understood. She had her own glimpse of Narnia — fourteen years among the living. She’d been unable to go back, but she was constantly taunted by it. She didn’t haunt the world of the living; it haunted her.

            When I was done, she offered me an ephemeral tissue, and I realized I’d been crying. I didn’t know when that started, but unfortunately her tissue was no help.

            “It’s only temporary though,” she said.

            “I know. But what would you give to be alive for an hour?”

            Her eyes widened. “Anything,” she whispered. From the reverence in her tone, I knew she understood me.

            “Exactly,” I said. I went to one of the stalls and used toilet paper to blow my nose. Seemed wasteful that wizards needed toilet paper at all — or tissues for that matter. Muggles made sense, but wizards? Couldn’t they Scourgify themselves?

            “Then I’ll help you,” Myrtle said as she floated through the bathroom stall I was in and appeared inches from my face.

            “You’ll help me?”

            “Of course. You’re not the first person to brew Polyjuice potion in my bathroom. In fact, I’m afraid soon they’ll rename it the Polyjuice Bathroom.”

            I shook my head. “That would just attract Filch.”

            “True,” she said. “But either way, of all the people using Polyjuice potion, this is the first noble cause I’ve heard.”

            “Really?”

            “Truly.” She adjusted her spectacles, though I couldn’t for the life of me understand how they would slip down her nose. “Most people want Polyjuice potion to eavesdrop or pull pranks like your friend.”

            “He wasn’t trying to —” She arched an eyebrow, and I decided not to die on the sword of Amit’s love story.

            “You strike me as a clever boy,” she said. “You think he couldn’t have come up with a better way to talk to her?”

            “Oh he could have,” I said. “And I tried to talk him out of it, but he was set on it.”

            “And you weren’t going to let him do it alone — even if it was a thoroughly stupid idea.”

            “Well … yeah.”

            “A noble cause and a true friend,” she said. I blushed at the admiration in her voice. “Rare traits indeed.” She stuck out a hand. “I’m Myrtle Warren.”

            I offered my hand. “Elliot Tanner.” To my delight, she actually shook my hand.

            “Pleased to meet you,” she said. She floated away from me and moved towards the cauldron. “How can I help?”

            Over the following weeks, Myrtle was invaluable. Like Amit, I hadn’t thought through all the holes in my plan. I guess we both let our desperation get the better of us. I had to ensure that no one touched my lacewings or smelled them or found them. While her bathroom was rarely frequented, some girls did use it from time to time — mostly to smoke or makeout with someone. Some even came for the sole purpose of mocking Myrtle. But Myrtle stepped up her ghost game on my behalf, terrorizing anyone who came remotely near the bathroom door, including Filch and Mrs. Norris.

            I also had to make sure the lacewings didn’t burn and that the heat was steady. If I were to do it right, I’d live in Myrtle’s bathroom for twenty-one days, but that wasn’t possible. She used her limited tangibility to stir the potion or monitor the flame. Once or twice, she floated out of her bathroom to come “haunt” me in one of my classes or during lunch to let me know I needed to check on the potion immediately.

            But more than anything, she helped fight the loneliness and kept me from thinking I was insane. We didn’t just complain about our woes — though Myrtle certainly preferred conversations that ended with us having a good cry together. I told her about growing up in Bootle and then moving to the States. When I told her about my parents, she got excited that my parents were artists and had a lot of Muggle friends. She was Muggle-born, and she explained that the divide between Muggle-born and pureblood was even worse in the forties. She grew up when racial cleansing was all the rage, and the Wizarding world was no exception to that. But what she hated was that most Muggle-born witches and wizards essentially abandon their parents once they go to Hogwarts. And few purebloods or half-bloods mingled with Muggles. There were two worlds, and you picked which one you belonged to for the most part. She liked that my parents actively hung out with Muggles as friends rather than freaks or strange and amusing pets.

            Though she didn’t like to talk about her childhood, Myrtle did like to talk about the way things were. When I remembered that she was essentially older than my grandparents, this made sense to me. It wasn’t all nostalgia fuel either. When she heard why I wanted to drink Polyjuice potion, she talked about the men getting arrested in the thirties for dressing as women. But she also said there were some successful performers that could pass as the opposite gender. She didn’t even realize they were transgender — though she called them transvestites — until her afterlife. In her opinion, she felt that the wizarding world was always harsher about these things, though she couldn’t explain why. In her mind, it was because so much of the wizarding world was ancient and took too long to die. Dated ideas and opinions lingered and haunted the wizarding world long after their time.

            I started to bring my books to the bathroom to study and do homework while watching the potion, and she made me read things aloud to her. She never got past her fourth year, so I had to explain some of what she missed in the fifth year (she was grateful to not live in the time of O.W.L.s). But her mind was hungry and sharp — it didn’t take her long to catch up. She wanted to know everything I was learning. She couldn’t cast the spells, but that didn’t stop her from reading over the pages of every book I brought her or mouthing the words of a spell or practicing the motion for the wand. She was a Ravenclaw through and through, and when I explained some Gryffindors teased me by calling me Rowena, she picked up the habit.

            “I thought you hated teasing,” I said when she asked me to turn a page and called me by the name.

            “I do.”

            “Then why do you call me Rowena?”

            “One of the things about teasing I’ve learned is that it only has power over you if you hate what they’re saying.”

            “Such as?”

            “If they were to make fun of me for being sad and — and — and —”

            “Dearly departed.”

            She smiled at me. “Thank you, darling. Yes. If they mocked me for being depressed and dearly departed, I would be upset. But they wouldn’t be wrong. I’m upset because I don’t like those things about me.” She slid her glasses up and let them rest on top of her head. “It’s mean because it’s true and it’s a sore subject.”

            “Right.”

            “Well, I guess I could get over my miserable state of being — I could even manage plucking up and putting a smile on — and maybe then they’re words wouldn’t hurt me anymore. Or I could accept the thing they want me to hate. I could love it dearly until it was a compliment.”

            “You could love being morose and … pulse impaired?”

            “Maybe not. I think death is thoroughly traumatizing.” She let the glasses slide back down on her nose. “But you? You’re clever. That’s what bothers you?”

            “No. It’s not that. It’s —”

            “What?” She narrowed her eyes. “Is it so shameful to be associated with Hogwarts’ finest house?”

            “No. It’s not that. It’s that they’re saying I don’t belong. That I’m not a real Gryffindor.”

            She shook her head with a rueful smile and muttered something.

            “What was that?”

            “No true Scotsman,” she said.

            “Gryffindor was Scottish, was he?”

            She rolled her head. “It’s a logical fallacy. If I say all Scotsman have red hair, and you show me a Scotsman with black hair, I could say he’s not a true Scotsman. It means I’m changing the definition instead of conceding that my understanding of a Scotsman was incomplete.”

            “So they’re changing the definition of a Gryffindor.”

            “Exactly. Godric Gryffindor may have been many things, but he certainly wasn’t a fool. You can’t have a bunch of teenagers abandon wisdom and knowledge in the name of bravery and chivalry.”

            “That’s fair.”

            “Of course it is.” She looked away from me and back to her book. “Now please turn the page, Rowena.”

            I obliged and went back to working on my Defense Against the Dark Arts work. It had been years since we had a proper professor teaching the class — which was fantastic — but the workload was notable. Luckily, Lupin never assigned us anything that wasn’t useful. He didn’t pile on the work for the work’s sake like Snape or McGonagall. He wanted to build us up, not break us. It also helped that his class felt more pressing than any other. Sure, I preferred Transfiguration — even more so after the night on the staircase — but after the castle is attacked by a basilisk and is currently guarded by Dementors you start to realize that you’ll need DADA to survive. In your first year, it’s hard to believe there are dark arts at all. Magic is so wonderful and wholesome. By your sixth year, you wonder if there are any light arts to speak of that can hold a candle to all the dark.

            “Myrtle,” I said while writing a brief report on the temporary truce between wizards and the merpeople, especially as it pertains to the Great Lake.

            “Yes?” she said as she practiced getting the right flick on her wand for the charm she was practicing.

            “Did Hogwarts feel just as dangerous back in your time as it does now?”

            She stopped practicing. “That’s a fascinating question. I’ll have to think.” She slid her glasses up onto her head. “Since my accident, I’ve learned a lot about the seedy underbelly of the castle. And being Muggle-born, I thought everything was wonderful — even the scary parts — when I first came. For example, I always loved the idea of becoming a vampire and —”

            The door to the bathroom flung open, and Myrtle dashed towards it, moaning and howling to try and scare off whatever first-year had accidentally invaded our privacy.

            “I’m here to talk to Elliot,” said a voice I unfortunately recognized immediately.

            “Who is Elliot?” Myrtle said. “I’m here with my friend, Rowena.”

            “I know he’s here, and I need to talk to him.”

            Asia rounded the corner while Myrtle chased her making faces that I think were an attempt to be scary but looked like she was trying to entertain an infant.

            “It’s okay, Myrtle,” I said, standing up from my work. “She’s safe.”

            “Oh no she isn’t,” Myrtle said. She’d dropped her ‘scary face,’ and her tone signaled the imminent arrival of tears. “When she made her potion, she kept telling me to calm down.”

            “I did not,” Asia said, whirling around.

            “You asked me if I could stop,” Myrtle said.

            “Politely.”

            “As though there is a polite way to ask that.” Myrtle put her hands on her hips. “As if there is any kind way to say someone shouldn’t feel miserable.”

            “Not miserable all the time.”

            “I’m a ghost! It’s not like I can change!”

            “Asia!” Both of them looked at me. “Sorry,” I said, lowering my voice. “What do you need?”

            “I came to talk to you.”

            “Obviously,” I said. “What about?”

            “Stir your lacewings.”

            “You came to tell me to stir my lacewings?”

            “No, they’re —” Asia sighed, puffing her bangs out of her eyes, and stormed towards my cauldron. She stirred and glared at me. “You have to keep an eye on these.”

            “I know.” I sighed and collapsed next to her. “This is not my first batch.”

            “I can tell.”

            “And you could have told me how expensive they were.”

            “I didn’t know. Amit bought mine.”

            “And I guess you didn’t burn your first few batches.”

            Asia shook her head and stirred. “No,” she said. I waited for her to say something else, but nothing happened. The room was filled with the sounds of Myrtle’s weeping and the gentle bubbling of my potion. “You should use a charm to disguise the smell,” she said finally. “I’m sure most third-years are clueless, but if Snape walked by, he would recognize —”

            “If you’re worried I’m going to get caught, you should know —”

            “I don’t think the potion is a good idea,” Asia said with finality, but I kept rolling.

            “I won’t leave any connection to you. Promise. If anything, they’ll assume I helped Amit. It will all point to me, even if I burn lacewings.”

            Asia smirked, but it faded quickly. She shook her head softly. “That’s not what I meant.”

            “Then what?”

            Asia looked up at me and brushed her hair out of her eyes. Her pale brown skin looked grey in the sickly green-ish light of the bathroom, but her sad expression matched our melancholy setting. She twitched her lips to one side, but I sighed with exasperation.

            “Just tell me.”
            “I mean, morally, I guess.” She shook her head again. “I don’t think it’s the right thing to do.”

            “Why not? It’s not like I’m sneaking into the girls’ bathroom, which you helped us do —”

            “And I was against it then!”

            “— might I remind you. Fine! Be against it, but you don’t need to keep bothering me. Be a conscientious objector like you were last time. It’s not like I’m hurting anyone.”

            Asia rose to her feet and pointed to the cauldron. “You’re stealing someone’s face.”

            “She still has her face. I’m copying it at best.”

            Asia crossed her arms. “You should ask Olivia if this is okay.”

            “There is no bloody way I’m asking her anything.” It was my turn to stand and let my heavy body loom over Asia. But even as I dwarfed her, she didn’t back down. She watched me rise with fury in her eyes.

            “Oh, so you can copy her face but can’t talk to her?”

            “Why not? I just want to —” I trailed off. I’d told Myrtle what I wanted, but she was different. She got it. She knew what it was like to be surrounded by bodies and burn with envy, admiration, and shame all at once.

            “Exactly,” Asia said. “You don’t know what you want to do. And honestly, you could just want to go to the Great Hall and have some Pumpkin Juice. But everything you do will reflect on Olivia. Even if you spent all day in the bathrooms brushing your hair.” I blushed as she made my dream sound so stupid with her condescending tone. She flung out one hand and pointed to the stall where Myrtle was crying. “People would think Olivia Snarzle was spending every waking moment with Moaning Myrtle.”

            “And what’s so wrong with that?” Myrtle asked from the darkness.

            “Nothing,” Asia said. “But it would be a lie, a lie she has to live with you because you copied her face.”

            “Well, I —” I hadn’t thought of that. In all my daydreams, I imagined myself doing a dozen things. I wanted to go to Hogsmeade and even sit in on a few classes. Heck, I’d watch a quidditch match as Olivia. I’d do anything as her. But in my head, I was her, I mean, I was me. I was Elliot doing these things as a woman. But to everyone else, I’d be Olivia. Everything I said or did or wore or broke or whatever would all get back to Olivia.

            “Elliot,” Myrtle said from the stall, but I ignored her. I didn’t want her comfort.

            “You what?” Asia said.

            “I don’t exactly have one of my own, do I?” The words were loud and harsh, and I couldn’t believe they slipped out. The heat of them struck Asia harder than anything else I’d said. She let her arms fall limp at her side, all fire burning out of her eyes.

            “Elliot, I’m —”

            “I understand if I can’t be someone else.” I looked away from her, my vision going blurry from the tears. “But I can’t exactly be me, can I? There’s no spell for it. No potion for it. It’s the Immutability Paradox, right?” I don’t know who I was yelling at, but I couldn’t stop. “I’ll always come back to this.” I pulled at my skin like the cheap costume it was, another generic copy of ‘big hairy guy.’

            “Elliot,” Myrtle said again with concern in her voice. “Someone is coming.”

            “So I can’t make my own, and that just leaves borrowing — or stealing — but what’s so fucking wrong about that? Tell me? If I want to spend an hour brushing Olivia Snarzle’s hair and pretending it's my own, what’s wrong with that? Who does this hurt? Cause I’ll tell you what —” The tears cut through my beard, pooled at my chin, and dripped to the tiled floor. “It hurts me. That’s who hurts, okay?” I pounded my chest. “In the meantime, it hurts me. And I can be a cat or change the color of my hair or take a potion, but I can’t make myself new. Where’s the magic in that?” My throat was burning, and I stopped yelling to ease the pain, but I couldn’t stop talking. “Where’s the magic in that?”

            Asia reached for me, but I pulled away. I knew Asia was right. I was as foolish as Amit. He was in love with the idea of Madeline Snapfire, and he thought Polyjuice potion was the key. I was in love with the idea of being Olivia — not her exactly, but being beautiful like her, feminine and flowy and wispy and ethereal and gentle and —

            But I was no wiser than Amit. Just a stupid boy in love with a stupid idea.

            Stupid boy.

            The tears carved hot lines down my face. “Watch the lacewings,” I said. It could have been to Myrtle or Asia, it didn’t matter. I grabbed my things and stormed out of the bathroom. I didn’t have time to slow down. If I slowed down just a breath, I’d realize how foolish I was being. Boys don’t become girls. Even magic can’t do it. It’s immutable. It’s fixed. And I’m stupid for trying and self-ish for stealing from Olivia. I’m all the things I hate most just because I spent one hour as the most beautiful and effortless version of myself.

            “Right outside,” Myrtle said. “Elliot, watch out for —”

            I swung the door open and smashed it right into Amit’s nose. He cried and held his face as blood immediately filled his hand and ran over his lips and down his chin. “Bloody hell,” he said as he staggered back.

            “Amit?” I looked back at Asia and the bubbling cauldron of stewing lacewings. I stepped forward quickly, gently pushed Amit back, and closed the bathroom door behind me. “Are you alright?”

            “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

            I reached for his face. “Let me see it.”

            He jerked away from me. “I said I’ll be fine.” He took another step back and glared at me. “Go back to your potion.”

            “My —” I looked back at the bathroom door. Just when I thought the night couldn’t get worse. “You heard?”

            “Every word.”

            “Amit, I’m —” I stepped closer, but he backed away again. I knew technically things could get worse. Filch or McGonagall or Snape could round the corner and see me drenched with tears and blood dripping over Amit’s robes. It wouldn’t take long to smell the lacewings, and I’m sure Asia would spill the whole story. Hell, from the look in his eyes, I bet Amit would have no problem ratting me out.

            “You told her first?” he said. The rage never died in his eyes, but now they swam with tears.

            “I —”

            “What about what I said in the Hospital Wing?”

            “I couldn’t just —”

            “You know what?” Amit raised his hands as he backed away from me. “Don’t bother.” A thick and wet red line went from his nose to his chin, mirroring the lines of snot and tears on my face. He pointed one blood-soaked hand to the bathroom. “Go tell her.” He turned around, but then spun back around to face me. “Oh, and you better be more careful. How many ginger American bobtails do you think roam the castle?”

            My throat burned, but I had no words anyway. I had used them all up on Asia, and she was the wrong person for them. The right person was shaking his head as he walked away from me.