Moaning Myrtle and the Yellow Eyes (3)

Her body drifted slowly through the air, that translucent, pale face inching closer and closer to Harry until he could make out the fine lines on it, like cracks in porcelain.

She tilted her head and looked at him with an expression Harry had never seen on anyone's face before.

That expression—if he had to describe it with one word—was probably "infatuation."

"Oh—" Moaning Myrtle let out a long sound, somewhere between a sigh and a moan. "You're Harry Potter?"

Harry took half a step back, his back hitting a cold pipe. There was nowhere left to retreat.

"Uh—y-yes. That's me." His voice came out dry.

Moaning Myrtle floated a little closer.

Her gaze swept from Harry's hair to his eyes, from his eyes to his nose, from his nose to his chin, then went over him from top to bottom again, as though she were admiring a fine work of art.

"Pretty boy," she murmured, her voice carrying a dreamy, floating lilt. "You smell as delicious as cream."

Harry's brain short-circuited in that instant.

Like cream?

Delicious?

A ghost—a ghost who had been dead for over fifty years, forever frozen in her teenage years—had just called him "delicious"?

His face turned from pale to pink in an instant, from pink to scarlet, then from scarlet to a deep red like a boiled crab, even the tips of his ears burning.

"I... I don't... I'm not..." His tongue seemed to tie itself in knots, every word stumbling in his throat.

A tiny, muffled snort came from the stall, as though someone had something lodged in their throat.

Then came Ron's hushed, broken voice. "Cream... delicious... I'm fucking dying..."

Hermione's voice followed, equally low. "Don't... don't laugh, he'll hear you..."

"He can't hear us. He's busy being called delicious... how could