Chapter 1
A six-year-old Crystal looked up at the three people the Dursleys had hired to watch her while they were in Amity Park. They hadn’t wanted to bring her along, but there was no one else available to watch her.
Mrs. Figg was in the hospital recovering from being hit by a car, and Aunt Marge refused to watch her. This meant the Dursleys were forced to bring her along on Uncle Vernon’s business trip.
Since they didn’t want to be stuck with her the entire time, they hired the first three teens they saw to take care of Crystal during the day and drop her off at the hotel they were staying in at night.
The three people watching her were teens around fourteen years of age, and their names were Sam, Danny, and Tucker.
Sam had short black hair that reached her shoulders, with a small section held in a high ponytail. She had pale skin and purple eyes, which Crystal stared at in wonder. She had never seen someone with purple eyes before and was a bit surprised the Dursleys let someone not "normal" watch her.
Sam wore purple lipstick and black eyeliner, along with a black sleeveless crop top featuring a purple circle in the middle. She also wore a black skirt with green stripes, purple tights, and black steel-toed combat boots.
Crystal then turned her gaze to Tucker.
Tucker also had black hair, but his skin was darker than Sam's, and his eyes were teal. He wore a red hat backward, a yellow sweater, green cargo pants, and brown boots. He carried a gray backpack that, from what Crystal had seen, held several different electronic gadgets.
Finally, Crystal looked curiously at the last of the trio.
He had pale skin, blue eyes, and black hair. He wore a white shirt with red on the collar and sleeves, featuring a red circle in the middle, similar to the purple circle on Sam's crop top. He wore jeans and red trainers.
Crystal then thought about her own appearance: long, messy black hair that refused to lay flat and broke any brush that tried to tame it; emerald green eyes that she sometimes swore glowed when she looked at a reflective surface, hidden behind big round glasses that did their best to obscure them. She wore old hand-me-down clothes that clearly used to belong to someone much bigger, making her look younger than her six years. To top it all off, her shoes were practically falling apart.
Crystal felt awkward that these three cool kids were being made to watch her. She couldn’t believe they had agreed to it in the first place.
Over the next few days, she learned more about her three babysitters.
Sam was a vegetarian who hated meat but loved gardening and helping the environment grow and thrive. Crystal also learned, by accident, that Sam was rich. Sam made her swear not to tell anyone, not even Danny or Tucker.
Sam bought Crystal several outfits that actually fit her and made sure the Dursleys knew she had spent her own money and didn’t expect them to pay her back. She also bribed them with a thousand dollars to let Crystal keep the clothes, while mentioning she would like to stay in contact with her after she leaves.
Tucker was super smart but had a bit of a pervy side, though he tried not to show that around Crystal. He didn't want to be a bad influence on her. He even let her play with his PDAs when she mentioned that she wasn't allowed to touch any of the electronics in the Dursleys' house.
To Crystal, Danny was the coolest. His parents were real-life ghost hunters. When she met them, she made them promise that if they ever encountered her parents' ghosts, they would let her meet them before helping them cross over. Crystal didn’t understand why Maddie and Jack Fenton exchanged shocked and saddened looks or why the three teens watching her appeared a bit sad.
Maddie and Jack were suddenly realizing that there might be another way to deal with ghosts, but it would take some time before it fully materialized. The idea of helping ghosts move on to the next plane of life instead of lingering as spirits intrigued them. Sure, most ghosts were ectoplasmic entities, but maybe just a few wanted to move on.
The two also realized that this child was an orphan who wanted to meet her parents for the first time in a way she would remember. They vowed that if they ever found the ghosts of Lily and James Potter, they would tell them where their daughter was and let them pass on, just this once.
The teens were also shocked to learn she was an orphan. They had assumed the Dursleys were taking her on vacation to give her parents some time to themselves or something.
After that, the adult Fentons welcomed Crystal into their home. Jack even managed to get her a white jumpsuit like Danny's. Crystal was so happy there and dreaded the day she would have to go back to England with the Dursleys.
It was a few days before the Dursleys were scheduled to return to England when Danny brought her, Sam, and Tucker down to the basement to watch his parents activate their ghost portal—something they had been working on for most of their lives.
Crystal watched excitedly as Maddie and Jack plugged it in, but slumped in disappointment when it didn’t work. The adults went upstairs to sit in silence and disappointment, leaving the teens and Crystal downstairs.
Crystal overheard Sam trying to convince Danny to go inside the portal to see if he could get it to work, and her interest was piqued. She grabbed the jumpsuit the Fenton adults had given her, removed the sticker with Jack’s face, and sneaked inside the portal. She looked around with wide eyes before she tripped, catching her ankle in some wires. She cried out in surprise, catching the attention of the teens.
“Crystal, what are you doing in there?” Danny cried out as he grabbed his own suit, with Sam managing to yank the sticker with his dad's face off of it before he rushed in after her, trying to get her out. But he accidentally pressed the power button that his parents had foolishly placed on the inside, and everyone froze as the portal slowly started to activate.
“Shit, Crystal!” Danny rushed to her and picked her up, trying to get out before the portal turned on, but it was too late. Both of them soon felt like they were being electrocuted. Neither Danny nor Crystal had ever experienced pain like this, which surprised Crystal since she had a high pain tolerance thanks to Vernon’s frequent beatings.
It wasn’t a surprise that they were in so much pain; their molecules were literally being rearranged. The only reason they survived was due to a combination of a few factors.
They were being electrocuted while ectoplasm was being forced into their DNA. The electricity was both killing them and keeping them alive, as was the ectoplasm.
Another factor was that Crystal’s magic, sensing that she was dying, broke through one of the blocks placed on it and surged to protect both her and the kind boy who had risked his life to save her.
The magic helped keep their hearts beating while also fusing the ectoplasm into their DNA.
On the bright side, being electrocuted and forced to have ectoplasm infused into her DNA got rid of the soul leech that had attached itself to Crystal through her scar.
Soon, Danny and Crystal were tossed out of the portal, but they were both different, to Sam and Tucker’s shock and horror. Sam was horrified—she was sure she had just gotten Danny and Crystal killed.
Danny’s hair had turned snow white, and when he opened his eyes, they were glowing neon green. The jumpsuit he was wearing had changed colors, inverting itself. Now, the white parts were black, and the black parts were white.
Crystal’s hair had turned snow white with blue tips. When she opened her eyes, Sam and Tucker could see that they were icy blue instead of their usual emerald green. Her jumpsuit had switched colors just like Danny’s.
Sam was horrified; she had just killed one of her best friends and the kid they were supposed to be babysitting. Suddenly, before she could start to panic, a bright ring of light appeared around both Danny’s and Crystal’s wrists, separating into two.
One of the rings moved up, and the other moved down, transforming both of them back into what they looked like before they had entered the ghost portal.
Sam and Tucker rushed to check on them and shared a shocked look when they found that both had a pulse. What had just happened?
A few hours later, Danny, Sam, Tucker, and Crystal were sitting in Danny’s room, trying to figure out what had just happened to them.
“Maybe it was just a one-time reaction to that much ectoplasm—” Danny was cut off when a bright ring of light appeared around Crystal’s wrist, transforming her into her white-haired self to everyone’s shock.
“What am I going to do? I can’t go back to the Dursleys like this! They’ll kill me!” Crystal cried out in fear as she gestured to herself.
“And my parents will rip me apart molecule by molecule if they find out that we’re apparently part ghost!”
“DANNY!” Sam and Tucker yelled, wide-eyed. He turned to them, confused. “What?”
Sam gestured at Crystal. Danny turned, confused, to see her terrified face and immediately felt bad and guilty for scaring a six-year-old like that.
Another bright light came and went, and Crystal was once again a normal human girl—at least as far as anyone else knew.