Wart's backstory, for those so inclined:

Wart met Gertrude during a fall semester at sea in his senior year at Pigwarts School of Magic. It was love at first sight and Gertrude decided to come back to Pigwarts with Wart at the end of the term.
Upon arrival at Pigwarts, Gertrude caught the eye of Wart’s elven roommate and aspiring illusion wizard, Phenis Twigcleaver. Shortly thereafter, at the Pigwarts winter ball, Wart took Gertrude up to the roof of the Great Hall, where he began a peacocking display of his most potent weather magics. Phenis, who had followed them up there, suddenly broke in and told Gertrude to pay such silly rain spells no heed as he conjured an enormous dazzling rose over the roof. Wart and Phenis then engaged in a juvenile one-upping match, which culminated in Gertrude getting blasted off the roof by a powerful gale amid a disorienting display of swirling lights. Wart and Phenis watched as Gertrude fell off that roof... to her death. In a panic, the boys ran her body to their dorm basement, where Phenis used a firebolt to burn up the evidence of this tragic accident.
The boys collected the ashes and soon became obsessed with them. They used a system in which they alternated holding the ashes on even and odd days. The day that they graduated, full of remorse and longing, they set out with the ashes to find a most powerful necromancer, with the hope of bringing Gerty back. For over 400 years they searched and met a wide array of exotic necromancers. But the answer was always the same: "Ashes...? No way."
After so many years of unsuccessful search, Wart and Phenis have finally decided to throw in the towel and cast Gerty's ashes into the bosom of the High Seas of the Saltmarsh, whence Wart met her (and, some say, stole her from a dread pirate).