After Professor McGonagall and Professor Snape led Lin Du's statue away, the heavy stone door closed again, and the Chamber of Secrets sank back into darkness and silence.
In the dead stillness, a translucent figure slowly drifted out from behind a towering stone pillar.
Moaning Myrtle Elizabeth Warren—
Or rather, Moaning Myrtle—hovered above the Basilisk's enormous corpse, her face wearing an almost infatuated expression.
She drifted around the area where Lin Du had fought, her fingers lightly brushing through the lingering warmth of Magic Power that had not yet fully dissipated.
"Oh... wasn't he amazing?"
She spoke to the empty Chamber of Secrets, her voice intoxicated.
"I mean, Professor Lin. The way he fought... so fast, so calm. Those flames, and the moment he stood in front of Harry Potter... it was so heroic!"
She cupped her pearly white cheeks in both hands. Though she had no physical body, she still struck a shy, wriggling pose.
As a ghost who had long "lived" in the second-floor girls' Restroom and whose death was directly connected to the Chamber of Secrets, Myrtle was exceptionally sensitive to the Basilisk's presence and the opening of the Chamber of Secrets.
She had sensed it when Lin Du first began investigating the nearby pipes.
Later, when Harry hesitated at the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, it was she who followed Lin Du's earlier tactful request—
"If one day you see that scarred boy wandering near the entrance, Miss Warren, perhaps you could give him a little courage to move forward. The truth often needs someone to step into the darkness before it can be revealed."
Those words were what finally drove Harry to grit his teeth and rush into the Chamber of Secrets.
"He said he'd come talk to me, tell me how he found