Snape deliberately dawdled over dinner in the Great Hall for more than an hour.
Not until the enchanted ceiling was twinkling with starlight and the hall was nearly empty did he finally stroll into the entrance hall and head upstairs to the second floor.
On the door of the girls' bathroom hung a mottled sign with the word "Out of Order."
He reached out, grabbed the brass ball-shaped handle, and pushed the door open.
It was the darkest, most oppressive place he had ever been.
The bathroom reeked of mildew, the walls and floor damp and clammy.
Beneath a large cracked and stained mirror stretched a row of stone sinks, their surfaces flaking away.
A few stubby candles burned low in brackets, looking ready to gutter out at any moment. Their dim, wavering light threw eerie shadows across the floor.
The stall doors were scarred, with peeling paint; one of them hung crooked, barely clinging to a single hinge.
From the moment he stepped inside, the drip-drip of water echoed from some dark corner, accompanied by a faint sobbing that floated from deep within one of the stalls, reverberating throughout the empty bathroom.
Snape paused to listen, then walked toward the last stall at the back.
At the door, he knocked gently. "Hey, Myrtle. How are you?"
Moaning Myrtle was floating in the toilet tank, tugging miserably at a spotty blemish on her chin through tear-swollen eyes.
"This is the girls' bathroom," she said, eyeing Snape suspiciously. "You're not a girl."
"How dare you presume-"
Snape nearly reacted on instinct with a powerful Dark spell from the future, but managed to stop himself in time.
"Ahem. Clearly I'm not a girl," he said. "I came here to see you."
"You're here to laugh at me again!" Myrtle said through her sobs. "I have feelings too, you know, even if I'm dead."
"Myrtle, no one's here to laugh at you," Snape said. "I only-"
"No one wants to laugh at me? What a joke!" Myrtle wailed. "There's no joy in my existence here, only sorrow. And now that I'm dead, you still won't leave me in peace!"
Tears streamed rapidly from her small, transparent eyes.
"I only want to ask how you died," Snape said quickly and loudly.
Her sobs stopped, and Myrtle's whole expression shifted.
It seemed very few had ever asked her such a question,one that, to her, felt like a rare honor.
She wiped away her ghostly tears. "No one's cared to ask me in over thirty years. Oh, it was dreadful. It happened right here. I died in this very stall."
She drifted upward, spun around, and perched gracefully atop the toilet tank.
"I remember it very clearly. Olive Hornby was teasing me about my glasses, calling me 'four-eyes,' so I came here to hide. I locked the door and cried inside, when suddenly I heard someone enter.
"You know? The words they spoke were funny,I thought it must be another language. But what made me angriest was that I heard a boy's voice."
"Just like yours." Myrtle gave Snape a meaningful look, then continued with relish. "So I opened the door, scolded him to leave and go to his own boys' toilet, and then-"
She puffed out her chest proudly, face glowing with self-importance. "I died."
"How did you die?" Snape asked.
"I don't know," Myrtle whispered mysteriously. "I just remember seeing a pair of enormous, terrifying yellow eyes. My whole body seemed to be lifted up, and then I drifted away..."
She gazed at Snape in a daze. "Then I came back here. You see, I was determined to get even with Olive Hornby.
"They took such a long, long time to find my body,I know, because I was sitting right here waiting for them.
"Olive Hornby walked in. 'Are you sulking in here again, Myrtle?' she said. 'Professor Dippet sent me to look for you,'"
A mischievous expression crept over Myrtle's face.
"Then she suddenly saw my body... oh, she never forgot that sight until the day she died, I can guarantee it... I followed her everywhere, to remind her.
"I remember at her brother's wedding, when they popped the champagne cork, what sprayed out wasn't just bubbly-"
"It was me." She gave a twisted little smile. "Oh, she deeply regretted mocking me about my glasses."
"Later, of course," Myrtle's mood sank again, "she went to the Ministry of Magic, and they stopped me from haunting her. I had no choice but to come back here, to live in my bathroom.
"I really don't understand. Why does the Ministry bother with that, but never listen to anything I have to say?"
"What did you tell the Ministry?" Snape asked.
"They came to me and said the oaf who killed me had been expelled, so I should move on.
"But the voice I heard that day definitely wasn't his. So I told them they had the wrong person."
"You mean it wasn't Hagrid?"
Myrtle's pearl-like eyes suddenly flashed bright white, her thick glasses gleaming with surprise.
"How do you know that?"
"Hagrid told me," Snape said calmly. "Did you ever tell Dumbledore this?"
"Yes. He came to ask me about it himself," Myrtle said seriously with a nod. "But he only said, 'I see,' and told me to keep it secret. That was all."
"Oh, that's very Dumbledore." Snape curled his lip, then steered the conversation onward. "Can you tell me where you saw those yellow eyes?"
"About there, I think." Myrtle pointed vaguely at the sink in front of her.
Snape walked over to the filthy sink.
It looked ordinary. He deliberately checked it thoroughly, inside and out, top to bottom, even the mirror above and the pipes below.
At last, he examined the dark green copper taps.
On the side of one tap, he saw a tiny serpent-shaped mark.
"That one's never had any water." Myrtle said happily as she saw him trying to turn it.
"Do you remember the funny words that boy spoke?" Snape stopped his attempt.
Myrtle frowned, thought for a while, then hissed out a series of odd, snakelike sounds.
But nothing happened. It was still the same bathroom, with only the "drip-drip" of falling water echoing in their ears.