They had already completely turned into themselves when they arrived at the corridor outside of the Slytherin common room. But they had been sort of in time, since Malfoy didn't seem to notice their appearance was changing.

They ran as fast as they could through the hallways, without speaking in case somebody heard them. Percy Weasley had probably gone back to the Gryffindor Tower, because they didn't see him.

A strange sound was heard, and they stopped. Harry turned to Ron and Ben, "Did you hear that?"

"It sounds like somebody's crying," whispered Ben, receiving nods from the others.

He rushed to the end of the corridor, which was where the sniffing sound was coming from. There was a not very large- but enough for someone to go through it- window ajar and, sitting on top of what seemed to be part of the roof, was a girl with wavy dark hair.

Ben took a step back, and looked at his friends. "It's Audrey."

Harry's eyebrows raised, while Ron's furrowed. "What are you gonna do?" asked the redhead.

"You two go to the bathroom, tell Hermione what we know," he told them in a hushed voice. "I'll see you in the common room later."

They nodded, and left without saying a word. Ben turned back to the window, and opened it a bit more. "Hi!"

Audrey gasped in surprise as she saw her brother's head peeking out the window, and wiped the tears from her eyes before Ben would see them. "Are you mental? What are you doing here?"

"What are you doing here?" he repeated, pushing himself through the gap and standing next to his sister. "I thought you had gone home for Christmas."

"Are those Slytherin robes?" she frowned, staring at what he was wearing.

"No," he said.

"Yes, they are, there's literally a sna-"

Ben interrupted her, knowing she was trying to avoid his question by directing the conversation to him. "Why are you here? Are you alright?"

"That's none of your business," she scoffed, and looked up to the jet black sky, lit up by beautiful sparkling stars.

"Are you crying?"

"I don't cry."

"Then why are your eyes sweating?"

Ben expected Audrey to insult him in the most gruesome and mean way but, to his surprise, she let out a giggle instead. "You're stupidly weird."

"In a bad or in a good way?"

"Depends on the day."

Ben nodded in understanding. "Why aren't you at home, Audrey?"

She didn't reply at once. "They found out."

"What did they-" he began, but realisation hit him before he could finish the question. "Oh... How? What happened?"

"This year Mother and Father didn't want to hold a big family dinner, because of what happened last year," she said. Ben flinched at the memory. "But they wanted to do something special. So they told me they would invite Steve and his family over."

"Oh, that's nice."

"Yeah, but it was way too risky. Mother began sending letters to Steve's mother, Freya, and somehow they really liked each other," she continued. "Until Freya mentioned her husband being a muggle, and Steve being a Hufflepuff prefect, and everything was ruined. Mother made a hell of a mess, and she was mad at me for lying to her, and she forbade me to continue going out with Steve."

Her voice cracked, and she let out a muffled sob. Ben moved a little closer to his sister, and took her hand in both of his. Audrey had almost skeletal fingers, and wrists so small that her bracelets always slipped off.

"What happened after that?"

"I didn't break up with Steve."

Ben's eyes widened unintentionally. "That's really brave of yo-"

"He broke up with me," she cried. "He was hurt that I had lied about him to Mother and Father. He said he didn't want to be with someone who felt embarrassed of him and who he was."

"But you're not embarrassed of him, are you?" assumed Ben. "You were just scared of what our parents would do if they found out the truth. Because you knew they would force you to break up with him."

"Exactly," she nodded, wiping away tears that fell down her cheeks. "But he wouldn't listen to me. He wouldn't let me explain. And now he's at home for Christmas."

"You should try to talk to him once he's back. I'm sure he'll have cooled down, and realised that it wasn't your fault, and he'll let you explain everything better."

Audrey nodded, and brushed a few strands of blond hair out of her eyes. "You're right."

"I know, I always am," he said jokingly, smirking at his sister.

The girl laughed, and nudged him carefully.

It was hard to understand Audrey Walker.

One minute she could be being cruel and inconsiderate to you, hitting you right where it hurts the most on purpose, in an attempt to do as much damage as possible.

And the next one you found her crying alone in almost absolute silence, or asking if you were okay after getting your leg destroyed by a troll, or offering you a deal to protect you.

If the situation had been exactly the other way around, with Ben crying and Audrey hearing him, she would probably have said the most ruthless thing she could think of, and she would go away, leaving him with eyes full of tears.

He knew could have done that too. He had the words in his mind; the perfect ones to make her suffer. He could have done it, to give her a try of her own medicine.

But he really couldn't.

She was his sister, after all. No matter how much pain she had caused him, he wasn't like her, he didn't find any joy in hurting others, and even less if 'others' meant his sister.

———————————————

There had been a problem with Hermione's transformation. She had told the others that she got Millicent Bulstrode's hair from her robes. But in the end, it was discovered to be from the girl's cat.

The Polyjuice Potion hadn't been created for animal transformations, so she ended up looking like a strange creature between a cat and a human. Unluckily, the effects of the potion didn't disappear as fast as they had on Harry, Ron and Ben's cases, and she had to be taken to the hospital wing.

When people came back from the Christmas break, everyone thought she had been petrified too, and students were even more scared of Harry than before.

On the first day of class after the break, there was another attack. Steve Robinson had been found petrified in the bathroom. Ben had tried to go find Audrey to check on her, but she was nowhere to be seen.

"Have you spoken to Hermione?" asked Ron as he, Harry and Ben walked up the stairs to the common room.

"She should be out of hospital in a few days," answered Harry, and a small smile appeared on his lips. "When she stops coughing off fur balls."

The other two boys let out a small chuckle, not able to deny it was a bit funny, especially knowing she would be okay. As they stepped onto the landing of the stairs, a splash was heard.

"Why's there water here?" frowned Ben, puzzled. "Maybe there's been a leak?"

Harry and Ron shrugged, and they ran to see where it was coming from. A great flood of water stretched over half the corridor, and it looked as though it was still seeping from under the door of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.

Myrtle's wails echoed through the whole hallway.

"Now what's up with her?" groaned Ron.

"Let's go and see," suggested Harry. When they entered the bathroom, ignoring the 'Out of Order' sign, as usual, water gushed out of the faucets with such force that they looked like small waterfalls. The sinks were completely flooded, and the water was leaking everywhere.

Myrtle was crying louder and harder than Ben had ever seen anybody cry, sitting on the ledge of the window, until she noticed the three boys staring at her.

"Are you alright, Myrtle?"

"Why do you care?" she asked quietly. "Are you here to throw something else at me?"

Harry, Ron and Ben exchanged confused glances.

"Why would I throw something at you?" asked Harry kindly.

Myrtle shrugged. "Don't ask me. Here I am, minding my own business, and someone thinks it's funny to throw a book at me."

"But it can't hurt you if someone throws something at you," said Ron. "I mean, it'd just go right through you, wouldn't it?"

He technically wasn't wrong, but Myrtle wasn't amused at all by that comment, and shrieked,"Let's all throw books at Myrtle, because she can't feel it! Ten points if you can get it through her stomach! Fifty points if it goes through her head! Well, ha, ha, ha! What a lovely game, I don't think!"

"Who threw it at you, anyway?" wondered Harry, and Myrtle's angry expression shifted immediately to a childish pout.

"I don't know... I was just sitting in the U-bend, thinking about death, and it fell right through the top of my head. Mm-hmm..." and she burst into shrieks and cries again.

"Did she turn the sinks on with her mind or something?" Ben asked Ron in a hushed voice, in case Myrtle came back to yell at him too. "I mean, she can't touch things, right?"

"Look at this!" suddenly exclaimed Harry, crouched next to the stalls staring at something on the floor. Ron and Ben walked to him, and he showed them some sort of black book.

"Is this what went through Myrtle's head?" asked Ben.

"I can still hear you!" the ghost shrieked from the other side of the bathroom, making him flinch.

"Yes, it's what they threw at her," Harry picked the book and examined its sides. "Oh, it's a diary."

"Does it have something written on it?" Ben crouched down next to Harry eagerly.

"You're such a gossip," teased Ron with a smirk.

"Shut up, Weasley," the black-haired boy groaned. "I didn't mean it like that. Perhaps, if there's a name, we can find out who threw it."

"And that'd be useful because..."

"T. M. Riddle," said Harry out of the blue.

"Sorry?"

"It's written here, look," he passed Ben the diary, and Ron approached him to see the first page. The name 'T. M. Riddle' was written in smudged ink. Ben turned it around, looking at the year in the cover to find it was fifty years old.

"Hang on, I know that name..." exclaimed Ron, frowning as he thought. "T. M. Riddle got an award for special services to the school fifty years ago."

"How on earth d'you know that?" asked Harry, amazed.

"Because Filch made me polish his shield about fifty times in detention," said Ron resentfully. "That was the one I burped slugs all over. If you'd wiped slime off a name for an hour, you'd remember it, too."

Ben felt a chill run through his body at the mention of the animal, and he nervously stood up. "We should show it to Hermione," he suggested. "There might be something there we aren't seeing."

A/N: thoughts on audrey? i enjoy her as a character, because she's quite entertaining to write about.

A/N (21/08/2023): ALSO THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR 50K READS OMGG I LOVE YOU ALL