Chapter 1 : Book 1: Chapters 1-5 (write-ins, editing)

… Madam Malkin was a squat, smiling witch dressed all in mauve.

“Hogwarts, dear?” she asked, when Harry started to speak. “Got the lot here. A young woman is being fitted up just now, in fact.”

In the back of the shop, a girl with a pale, pointed face was standing on a footstool while a second witch pinned up her long black robes. Madam Malkin stood Harry on a stool next to her, slipped a long robe over his head, and began to pin it to the right length.

When he was head free of the robe, Harry glanced sideways at the girl. The sunlight through the window made her gray-green eyes glitter like glass, and her hair looked bright due to how blonde it was.

Harry reckoned it must have been quite pretty, but was currently up in a bun so the tailors could work more easily.

“Hello,” said the girl, catching Harry staring sideways at her, “Hogwarts, too?”

“Yes,” said Harry quickly, forcing his eyes straight and out the window.

“My father’s next door buying my books and mother’s up the street looking at wands,” said the girl. She had a bored, drawling voice that was as sharp as glass. “Then I’m going to drag them off to look at racing brooms. I don’t see why first years can’t have their own. I think I’ll bully father into getting me one since he’s always been soft on me, can’t let his precious little girl go on wanting, you know, and I’ll smuggle it in somehow.”

Harry was strongly reminded of Dudley from how stubborn and spoiled she seemed to be… though she certainly looked better than Dudley.

Everyone looked better than Dudley, really.

“Have you got your own broom?” the girl went on, turning her head a little more to look at Harry.

“No,” replied Harry, forcing himself to stay staring out the window.

“Play Quidditch at all?” She asked curiously, now leaning forward slightly to get a better look at Harry as the witches fussed with her robes.

“No,” Harry said again, wondering what on earth Quidditch could be while he made sure his hair was well over his brow to hide his scar.

She bent over a little more, trying to get a better look at Harry. “What’s your team?”

“My- what?” Harry asked, turning his head just a little and seeing the girl nearly bent over double and trying to look at his face.

He quickly looked away to the window again.

“Your team!” She laughed out, growling angrily when a witch poked her with a needle in order to get her to stand back up straight, and she hissed at the witch. “Don’t poke me, woman, do you know who my father is?” She then dressed her voice as she turned back to Harry. “Anyway I’m partial to the Holyhead Harpies for the moment, but I don’t see that lasting, they haven’t been doing well, though it will be a warm day in Durmstrang before I park my broom with the Chudley Cannons. Absolutely motley lot. Do you plan to play while you’re at Hogwarts? For one of the house teams?”

Harry blinked out the window again, then shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know.

“I do.” the girl chirped brightly as she bent back forward with a bounce of her heels, though bent back up with a prod from the witch working on her hem. “Father says it’s a crime if I’m not picked to play for my house, and I must say, I agree. Know what house you’ll be in yet?”

“No,” said Harry, feeling more stupid by the minute and a bit warm under so much female attention.

Was one of his less-liked side effects of being raised like a leper. No real social interaction besides school, and there wasn’t much positive interaction there either.

“Well, no one really knows until they get there, do they, but I know I’ll be in Slytherin, all our family have been. Imagine being in Hufflepuff.” the girl said with a giggling snort. “I think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?”

“Mmm,” hummed Harry, wishing he could say something a bit more interesting.

“I say, look at that man!” said the girl suddenly, nodding toward the front window. 

Hagrid was standing there, grinning at Harry and pointing at two large ice creams to show he couldn’t come in.

“That’s Hagrid,” Harry said with a smile and a small, sideways wave to Hagrid, pleased to know something the girl didn’t. “He works at Hogwarts.”

“Oooh,” said the girl, “I’ve heard of him. He’s a sort of servant, isn’t he? Runs around the castle clipping hedges and such? We have one of those too.”

“He’s the gamekeeper,” Harry repeated. He was suddenly liking the girl less and less every second, and the odd fluttering in his stomach died away like a false breeze..

“Yes, exactly! I heard he’s a sort of savage. Lives in a hut on the school grounds and every now and then he gets drunk, tries to do magic, and ends up setting fire to his bed.” she said with another giggle and a derisive shake of her head. “I think he’d be better off living in the woods!”

“I think he’s brilliant,” said Harry coldly.

“Do you?” said the girl, with a slight sneer. “Why is he with you? Where are your parents?”

“They’re dead,” said Harry shortly. He didn’t feel much like going into the matter with this girl, certainly not now.

“Oh, sorry,” said the girl flatly. She glanced sideways a few times at Harry as an awkward paused stretched between them for a few breaths, but she seemed to have rallied with a new question. “But they were our kind, weren’t they?”

“They were a witch and wizard, if that’s what you mean.”

She seemed to brighten at this, and sought to fill the air to avoid another awkward pause. “I really don’t think they should let the other sort in, do you? They’re just not the same, they’ve never been brought up to know our ways and come into the school blind, clogging up the shops with their gawping. Some of them have never even heard of Hogwarts until they get the letter. Imagine that! Just one day they find out they’re a wizard. I think they should keep it in the old wizarding families only. What’s your surname, anyway?”

But before Harry could answer, Madam Malkin said, “That’s you done, my dear,” and Harry, not sorry for an excuse to stop talking to the girl, hopped down from the footstool.

“Well, I’ll see you at Hogwarts, I suppose,” said the girl, giving Harry a cheerful wave from her loose sleeve as he slipped past the door.

When Harry looked back through the window as he walked towards Hagrid, he saw her pointing out towards him and talking rather cheerfully to Madam Malkin. The old witch kept having to push her arm back down to her side, shaking her head as she tried to get a measurement.

Harry was rather quiet as he ate the ice cream Hagrid had bought him, a rough blend of chocolate, raspberry, and chopped nuts.

“What’s up?” asked Hagrid. “I’ve never seen a lad eat icecream with such a somber look!”

“Nothing,” Harry lied, licking at the icecream so Hagrid could see his mouth was busy. He kept thinking back to the girl, and how… lovely she had seemed before she had opened her mouth.

Hagrid, a “savage servant”? Thinking so little of people who never knew they were a wizard until their letter showed up… that was Harry to a “T”, wasn’t it? 

They stopped to buy parchment and quills, dusting their hands off on their robes when the shop keeper gave them a waspish look. Harry cheered up a bit when he found a bottle of ink that changed color as you wrote. 

When they had left the shop, Harry asked, “Hagrid, what’s Quidditch?”

“Blimey, Harry, I keep forgettin’ how little yeh know. Imagine not knowin’ about Quidditch!”

“Don’t make me feel worse,” groused Harry. 

He told Hagrid about the pale girl in Madam Malkin’s.

“-and she said people from Muggle families shouldn’t even be allowed in-”

“Yer not from a Muggle family, Harry. If she’d known who yeh were, hah, she’s grown up knowin’ yer name if her parents are wizardin’ folk. You saw what everyone in the Leaky Cauldron was like when they saw yeh. Anyway, what does she know about it, some o’ the best I ever saw were the only ones with magic in ‘em in a long line o’ Muggles. Look at yer mum! Look what she had fer a sister!”

“So! What is Quidditch?” Harry asked, trying to steer the conversation away from his mother.

“It’s our sport. Wizard sport. It’s like… like soccer in the Muggle world. Everyone follows Quidditch! Played up in the air on broomsticks and there’s four balls, er… sorta hard ter explain the rules.”

“And what are Slytherin and Hufflepuff?”

“School houses. There’s four. Everyone says Hufflepuff are a lot o’ duffers, but-”

“I bet I’m in Hufflepuff,” said Harry gloomily, remembering how the girl had giggled and snorted at the mere thought of being in that house.

“Better Hufflepuff than Slytherin,” said Hagrid darkly. “There’s not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn’t in Slytherin. You-Know-Who was one.”

“Vol-, sorry. You-Know-Who was at Hogwarts?”

“Years an’ years ago,” said Hagrid. “Every child has to go to school, don’they? But there’s no telling what’cher gonna turn into as an adult.”

Harry chewed Hagrid’s words over in his head… she was too pretty to be evil, right? But she certainly had a lot of poison in some of her words.

They bought Harry’s school books in a shop called Flourish and Blotts where the shelves were stacked to the ceiling with books as large as paving stones bound in leather; books the size of postage stamps in covers of silk; books full of peculiar symbols, and a few books with nothing in them at all.

Even Dudley, who never read anything, would have been wild to get his hands on some of these.

Hagrid almost had to drag Harry away from Curses and Countercurses (Bewitch Your Friends and

Befuddle Your Enemies with the Latest Revenges: Hair Loss, Jelly-Legs, Tongue-Tying and Much, Much More) by Professor Vindictus Viridian.

“I was trying to find out how to curse Dudley.” Harry laughed out as Hagrid let go over his sleeve. “Maybe even that evil little girl who called you a savage servant!”

“I’m not sayin’ that’s not a good idea, but yer not ter use magic in the Muggle world except in very special circumstances,” said Hagrid. “An’ anyway, yeh couldn’ work any of them curses yet, yeh’ll need a lot more study before yeh get ter that level.”

Hagrid wouldn’t let Harry buy a solid gold cauldron either, reminding him that “It says pewter on yer list” and gently poking him in the right direction. But, they got a nice set of scales for weighing potion ingredients and a collapsible brass telescope. Then they visited the Apothecary, which was fascinating enough to make up for its horrible smell, a mixture of bad eggs and rotted cabbages. 

Barrels of slimy stuff stood on the floor; jars of herbs, dried roots, and bright powders lined the walls; bundles of feathers, strings of fangs, and snarled claws hung from the ceiling. While Hagrid asked the man behind the counter for a supply of some basic potion ingredients for Harry, Harry himself examined silver unicorn horns at twenty-one Galleons each and minuscule, glittery-black beetle eyes for “five Knuts a scoop”.

Outside the Apothecary, Hagrid checked Harry’s list again.

“Just yer wand left. A’yeah, an’ I still haven’t got yeh a birthday present.”

Harry felt himself go red.

“You don’t have to-”

“I know I don’t have to, but this is a big occasion and from what I can tell yeh ain’t had scuff for birthday presents in the past. Tell yeh what, I’ll get yer animal. Not a toad, ugh, toads went outta fashion years ago an yeh’d be laughed at. I don’ like cats, they make me sneeze. Hum… I’ll get yer an owl! All the kids want owls! They’re dead useful, carry yer mail an’ everythin’.”

Twenty minutes later, they left Eeylops Owl Emporium, which had been dark and full of rustling and flickering, jewel-bright eyes. Harry now carried a large cage that held a beautiful snowy owl, fast asleep with her head under her wing. He couldn’t stop stammering his thanks, sounding just like Professor Quirrell.

“Don’ mention it,” said Hagrid gruffly. “As I said, don’t expect you’ve had a lotta presents from them Dursleys. Just Ollivanders left now. Only place fer wands, Ollivanders, and yeh gotta have the best wand.”

A magic wand…this was what Harry had been really looking forward to.

The last shop was narrow and shabby. Peeling gold letters over the door read Ollivanders: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 B.C. A single wand lay on a faded purple cushion in the dusty window.

A tinkling bell rang somewhere in the depths of the shop as they stepped inside. It was a tiny place, empty except for a single, spindly chair that Hagrid sat on to wait. Harry felt strangely as though he had entered a very strict library; he swallowed a lot of new questions that had just occurred to him and looked instead at the thousands of narrow boxes piled neatly right up to the ceiling. For some reason, the back of his neck prickled. The very dust and silence in here seemed to tingle with some secret magic.

“Good afternoon,” said a soft voice. Harry jumped. Hagrid must have jumped, too, because there was a loud crunching noise and he got quickly off the spindly chair.

An old man was standing before them, his wide, pale eyes shining like moons through the gloom of the shop.

“Hello,” said Harry awkwardly.

“Ah yes,” said the man. “Yes, yes. I thought I’d be seeing you soon. Harry Potter.” It wasn’t a question, and the old man tilted his head at him kindly. “You have your mother’s eyes. It seems only yesterday she was in here herself, buying her first wand. Ten and a quarter inches long, swishy, made of willow. Nice wand for charm work.”

Mr. Ollivander moved closer to Harry. Harry wished he would blink. Those silvery eyes were a bit creepy.

“Your father, on the other hand, favored a mahogany wand. Eleven inches. Pliable. A little more power and excellent for transfiguration. Well, I say your father favored it. It’s really the wand that chooses the wizard, of course.”

Mr. Ollivander had come so close that he and Harry were almost nose to nose. Harry could see himself reflected in those misty eyes.

“And that’s where…” Mr. Ollivander touched the lightning scar on Harry’s forehead with a long, white finger.

“I’m sorry to say I sold the wand that did it,” he said softly. “Thirteen-and-a-half inches. Yew. Powerful wand, very powerful, and in the wrong hands…well, if I’d known what that wand was going out into the world to do…”

He shook his head and then, to Harry’s relief, spotted Hagrid.

“Rubeus! Rubeus Hagrid! How nice to see you again…Oak, sixteen inches, rather bendy, wasn’t it?”

“It was, sir, yes,” said Hagrid.

“Good wand, that one. But I suppose they snapped it in half when you got expelled?” said Mr. Ollivander, suddenly stern.

“Er, yes, they did, yes,” stammered Hagrid, shuffling his feet. “I’ve still got the pieces, though,” he added brightly.

“But you don’t use them?” said Mr. Ollivander sharply.

“Oh, no, sir,” said Hagrid quickly. Harry noticed he gripped his pink umbrella very tightly as he spoke.

“Hmmm,” said Mr. Ollivander, giving Hagrid a piercing look. “Well, now Mr. Potter. Let me see.” He pulled a long tape measure with silver markings out of his pocket. “Which is your wand arm?”

“Er… well, I’m right-handed,” said Harry.

“Hold out your arm. That’s it.” He measured Harry from shoulder to finger, then wrist to elbow, shoulder to floor, knee to armpit and round his head. As he measured, he said, “Every Ollivander wand has a core of a powerful magical substance, Mr. Potter. We use unicorn hairs, phoenix tail feathers, and the heartstrings of dragons. No two Ollivander wands are the same, just as no two unicorns, dragons, or phoenixes are quite the same. And of course, you will never get such good results with another wizard’s wand.”

Harry suddenly realized that the tape measure, which was measuring between his nostrils, was doing this on its own. Harry thought back to the girl’s words, her “Imagine that! Just one day they find out they’re a wizard”, and he couldn’t help but feel even more that he fell into that category.

Mr. Ollivander was flitting around the shelves, taking down boxes. “That will do,” he said, and the tape measure crumpled into a heap on the floor. “Right then, Mr. Potter. Try this one. Beechwood and dragon heartstring. Nine inches. Nice and flexible. Just take it and give it a wave.”

Harry took the wand and (feeling foolish) waved it around a bit, but Mr. Ollivander snatched it out of his hand almost at once.

“Maple and phoenix feather. Seven inches. Quite whippy. Try.”

Harry tried, but he had hardly raised the wand when it, too, was snatched back by Mr.

Ollivander.

“No, no, here, ebony and unicorn hair, eight and a half inches, springy. Go on, go on, try it out.”

Harry tried. And tried. He had no idea what Mr. Ollivander was waiting for. The pile of tried wands was mounting higher and higher on the spindly chair, but the more wands Mr. Ollivander pulled from the shelves, the happier he seemed to become.

“Tricky customer, eh? Not to worry, we’ll find the perfect match here somewhere-... I wonder.” He slowly pulled a box from the shelf, rubbing a thumb along the dust of the face as he turned to look at Harry, brows punched in thought. “Now… yes, why not, unusual combination…  holly and phoenix feather, eleven inches, nice and supple.”

Harry took the wand, and felt a sudden surge of warmth in his fingers. He raised the wand above his head, brought it swishing down through the dusty air, and a glowing stream of red and gold sparks shot from the end like a firework, throwing dancing spots of light on to the walls. 

Hagrid whooped, and clapped, while Mr. Ollivander cried, “Oh, bravo! Yes, indeed, oh, very good. Well, well, well…how… curious. How very curious…” He put Harry’s wand back into its box and wrapped it in brown paper, still muttering, “Curious…curious…”

“Sorry,” said Harry, “but what’s curious?”

Mr. Ollivander fixed Harry with his pale stare.

“I remember every wand I’ve ever sold, Mr. Potter. Every single wand. It so happens that the phoenix whose tail feather is in your wand, gave another feather. Just, one, other. It is very curious indeed that you should be destined for this wand when its brother… why, its brother gave you that scar.”

Harry swallowed.

“Yes, thirteen-and-a-half inches. Yew. Curious indeed how these things happen. The wand chooses the wizard, remember…I think we must expect great things from you, Mr. Potter… after all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things. Terrible, yes, but great.”

Harry shivered. 

He wasn’t sure he liked Mr. Ollivander too much. 

Harry paid seven gold Galleons for his wand, and Mr. Ollivander bowed them from his shop.

The late afternoon sun hung low in the sky as Harry and Hagrid made their way back down Diagon Alley, back through the wall, then back through the Leaky Cauldron, now empty. Harry didn’t speak at all as they walked down the road; he didn’t even notice how much people were gawking at them on the Underground, laden as they were with all their funny-shaped packages, with the snowy owl asleep in its cage on Harry’s lap. 

Up another escalator, out into Paddington station; Harry only realized where they were when Hagrid tapped him on the shoulder.

“Got time fer a bite to eat before yer train leaves,” he said.

He bought Harry a hamburger and they sat down on plastic seats to eat them. Hagrid’s seat looked quite unsure in the legs, about as unsure as the workers when Hagrid ordered five burgers for himself.

Harry kept looking around as he unwrapped his own burger, the paper rustling in his fingers. Everything looked so… strange, somehow. He had just bought a wand, a cauldron, an owl, and now here he was eating a burger of all things in the train station.

“You all right, Harry? Yer very quiet,” said Hagrid through a mouthful of his bacon cheeseburger, his other fingers rustling around in a small tray of chips.

Harry wasn’t sure he could explain. He’d just had the best birthday of his life… and yet he chewed his hamburger, trying to find the words.

“Everyone thinks I’m special,” he said at last. “All those people in the Leaky Cauldron, Professor Quirrell, Mr. Ollivander… but I don’t know anything about magic at all That girl knew more about magic than I did, and we are probably the same age. I mean, I didn’t even know what Quidditch was! How can they expect great things? I’m famous and I can’t even remember what I’m famous for. I don’t know what happened when Vol-, sorry, I mean, the night my parents died.”

Hagrid leaned across the table. Behind the wild beard, thick eyebrows, and a moustache smeared with mustard, he wore a very kind smile. “Don’ you worry, Harry. You’ll learn fast enough. Everyone starts at the beginning at Hogwarts, you’ll be just fine. Just be yerself. I know it’s hard. Yeh’ve been singled out, an’ that’s always hard. But yeh’ll have a great time at Hogwarts. I did. Still do, ‘smatter of fact.”

After they had finished their burgers and tossed away their rubbish, Hagrid helped Harry on to the train that would take him back to the Dursleys, then handed him an envelope.

“Yer ticket fer Hogwarts, “ he said. “First o’ September, King’s Cross. It’s all on yer ticket. Any problems with the Dursleys, send me a letter with yer owl, she’ll know where to find me…. See yeh soon, Harry.”

The train pulled out of the station. Harry wanted to watch Hagrid until he was out of sigh , rising in his seat and pressing his nose against the window, but he blinked, and Hagrid had gone.

Chapter 2 : Book 1: Chapter 6 (editing, course changes)

Harry’s last month with the Dursleys wasn’t fun. 

True, Dudley was now so scared of Harry he wouldn’t stay in the same room, while Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon didn’t shut Harry in his cupboard, force him to do anything, or shout at him. 

In fact, they didn’t speak to him at all. 

Half terrified, half furious, they acted as though any chair with Harry in it were empty. Although this was an improvement in many ways, it did become a bit depressing after a while.

Harry kept to his room, with his new owl for company instead. 

He had decided to call her Hedwig, a name he had found in A History of Magic. To no surprise of Harry, he found all of his school books were very interesting. He normally hated reading school books, whether it was science or mathematics, but these may as well have been fantasy novels come to life.

He lay on his bed reading late into the night, Hedwig swooping in and out of the open window as she pleased. It was lucky that Aunt Petunia didn’t come in to vacuum anymore, because Hedwig kept bringing back dead mice for her nightly dinners. 

One required a little more killing than normal, a surprise to both Harry and Hedwig as the owl slapped the mouse against the floorboards with her claws.

Every night before he went to sleep, Harry ticked off another day on the piece of paper he had pinned to the wall, counting down to September the first.

On the last day of August he thought he’d better speak to his aunt and uncle about getting to King’s Cross station the next day, so he went down to the living room where they were watching a quiz show on television. 

He cleared his throat to let them know he was there, resulting in Dudley screaming and running from the room.

“Er… Uncle Vernon?”

Uncle Vernon grunted to show he was listening, his squinted eyes locked on the telly.

“I uh… I need to be at King’s Cross tomorrow. To go to Hogwarts.”

Uncle Vernon grunted again.

“Would it be all right if you gave me a lift?”

He was given a Grunt in response. 

Harry supposed that meant yes. “Thank you.”

He was about to go back upstairs when Uncle Vernon actually spoke.

“Funny way to get to a wizards’ school, the train. Magic carpets all got punctures, have they? Tassels frayed to the ends due to the wind, ay’?”

Harry didn’t say anything.

“Where is this school, anyway?” Vernon mumbled, turning back to the television.

“I don’t know,” said Harry, realizing this for the first time. He pulled the ticket Hagrid had given him out of his pocket. “I just take the train from platform nine and three-quarters at eleven o’clock.” 

His aunt and uncle stared.

“Platform what?” Aunt Petunia asked, her eyebrows high.

Harry looked at her, down to the ticket, then back. “Nine and… three-quarters.”

“Don’t talk rubbish,” Uncle Vernon grumped. “There is no platform nine and three-quarters.”

“It’s on my ticket.” Harry replied, holding it up at his side.

“Barking,” Uncle Vernon growled, “howling mad, the lot of them. You’ll see. You just wait. All right, we’ll take you to King’s Cross. We’re going up to London tomorrow anyway, or I wouldn’t bother.”

“Why are you going to London?” Harry asked, trying to keep things friendly.

“Taking Dudley to the hospital,” rumbled Uncle Vernon. “Got to have that ruddy tail removed before he goes to Smeltings, don’t we? Get rid of that nasty little gift your giant friend gave us.”

Harry figured he would leave it there, turning hard on his bare heel with a flick of his leg and walking away.

He had books to read, anyway.

Harry woke at five o’clock the next morning and was too excited and nervous to go back to sleep. He got up and pulled on his jeans, as he didn’t want to walk into the station in his wizard’s robes. He’d figured he would be perhaps far too much for his aunt and uncle, and made up his mind that it was safer to change on the train. 

He checked his Hogwarts list yet again to make sure he had everything he needed, saw that Hedwig was shut safely in her cage, and then paced the room, waiting for the Dursleys to get up. Two hours later, Harry’s huge, heavy trunk had been loaded into the Dursleys’ car, Aunt Petunia had talked Dudley into sitting next to Harry, and they had set off.

It was an awkward ride, Hedwig hooting up at Dudley as if he were a fat mouse, and Dudley sticking so close to the car door that Harry was surprised he didn’t somehow phase through it. A large truck had honked at a car beside them, causing Hedwig to flap about in her cage angrily with a screech, and his Aunt had nearly launched herself through the top of the car from how hard she startled.

They reached King’s Cross at half past ten, everyone looking as if they had crossed the channel in a wooden rowboat during a storm. Uncle Vernon dumped Harry’s trunk onto a cart and wheeled it into the station for him, more so to quickly get the owl away from his wife. 

Harry thought this was strangely kind until Uncle Vernon stopped dead, facing the platforms with a nasty grin on his face.

“Well, there you are, boy. Platform nine — platform ten.” Uncle Vernon rumbled at him with an evil humor. “Your platform should be somewhere in the middle, but they don’t seem to have built it yet, do they?”

He was quite right, of course. There was a big plastic number nine over one platform and a big plastic number ten over the one next to it, and in the middle… nothing at all.

“Have a good term,” said Uncle Vernon with an even nastier smile, letting go of the cart with a flick of his fingers, and then dusted his hands as he tottled away. 

Harry turned and saw the Dursleys drive away. All three of them were laughing, Dudley pointing, Aunt Petunia with her hand held to her chest. 

Harry’s mouth went rather dry. 

What on earth was he going to do? 

He was starting to attract a lot of funny looks because of Hedwig, who was hooting at children and looking around with rapid swivels of the neck. 

He’d have to ask someone.

He stopped a passing guard, though didn’t dare mention platform nine and three-quarters. Maybe if he had been wearing a robe he would have risked it, but the guard looked rather… normal.

The guard had never heard of Hogwarts and when Harry couldn’t tell him what part of the country it was in, he started to get annoyed, as though Harry was being stupid on purpose. 

Getting desperate, Harry asked for the train that left at eleven o’clock, but the guard said there wasn’t one. In the end the guard strode away, muttering about time wasters. 

Harry was now trying hard not to panic, rubbing his hands through his hair as he began to get rather hot under his clothes. 

According to the large clock over the arrivals board, he had ten minutes left to get on the train to Hogwarts and he had no idea how to do it. He was stranded in the middle of a station with a trunk he could hardly lift, a pocket full of wizard money, and a large owl that was starting to look as nervous as Harry.

Hagrid must have forgotten to tell him something you had to do, like tapping the third brick on the left to get into Diagon Alley. He wondered if he should get out his wand and start tapping the ticket inspector’s stand between platforms nine and ten.

He had just put his hand into his pocket for his wand when a group of people passed just behind him, and he caught a few words of what they were saying.

“...packed with Muggles, of course!”

Harry swung round, ripping his hand from his pocket. The speaker was a plump woman who was talking to four boys, all with flaming red hair. Each of them was pushing a trunk like Harry’s in front of him, and they had an owl.

Heart hammering, Harry pushed his cart after them, attempting to filter in behind them as if he belonged as well. 

They stopped and so did he, just near enough to hear what they were saying.

“Now, what’s the platform number?” said the boys’ mother.

“Nine and three-quarters!” piped a small girl, also red-headed, who was holding her hand. “Mum, can’t I go-”

“You’re not old enough, Ginny, now be quiet.” The woman sad, giving the girls cheek a soft pinch before turning to her sons. “All right, Percy, you go first.”

What looked like the oldest boy marched toward platforms nine and ten. Harry watched, careful not to blink in case he missed it, but just as the boy reached the dividing barrier between the two platforms, a large crowd of tourists came swarming in front of him and by the time the last backpack had cleared away, the boy had vanished.

“What?!” Harry hissed under his breath, glaring at a woman who paused to take a picture of him and his owl, obviously an American.

“Fred, you next,” the plump woman said.

“I’m not Fred, I’m George,” said the boy, placing his hands on his hips with a slight bend at the waist. “Honestly, woman, you call yourself our mother? Can’t you tell I’m George?”

She rolled her eyes with an exasperated pant. “Sorry, George, dear.”

“Only joking, I am Fred,” said the boy, and off he went at a trot. 

His twin called after him to hurry up, and he must have done so, because a second later, he had gone.

But how had he done it?

Now the third brother was walking briskly toward the barrier. He was almost there and then, quite suddenly, he wasn’t anywhere.

There was nothing else for it, so Harry smoothed down his stress-frayed hair and approached the woman.

“Excuse me,” Harry said her, holding up a hand weakly.

“Hello, dear,” she said. “First time at Hogwarts? Ron’s new, too.”

She pointed at the last and youngest of her sons. He was tall, thin, and gangling, with freckles, big hands and feet, and a long nose.

“Yes,” said Harry. “The thing is… the thing is, I don’t know how to…”

Harry gestured to himself, the cart, and then to the wall people kept vanishing into.

“How to get onto the platform?” she said kindly, and Harry nodded.

“Not to worry,” she said. “All you have to do is walk straight at the barrier between platforms nine and ten. Don’t stop and don’t be scared you’ll crash into it, that’s very important. Best do it at a bit of a run if you’re nervous. Go on, go now before Ron.”

“Er… okay,” said Harry, looking down with a flare of his eyes.

Just walk into it at a bit of a run? 

Was that really all?

He pushed his trolley around and stared at the barrier. 

It looked… very solid.

He started to walk toward it. People jostled him on their way to platforms nine and ten, knocking him off course a few times, but he stayed on track. 

Harry walked more quickly, coming up to a light jog as Hedwig looked up at him as if he were insane. 

He was going to smash right into that barrier and then he’d be in trouble with a screeching owl and a trunk spilling books all over the place. Leaning forward on his cart, he broke into a heavy run. The barrier was coming nearer and nearer, and he was going fast enough that he wouldn’t be able to stop.

The cart was out of control now, no way to bring it to a halt unless he put on the brakes with his feet.

He was a foot away, cart wheels rattling like mad, Hedwig bracing against the back of her cage as if she was expecting a car accident to unfold.

He closed his eyes ready for the crash…

… But it didn’t come.

There was an odd change of pressure in his ears as he kept on running, so he opened his eyes.

A scarlet steam engine was waiting next to a platform packed with people. A sign overhead said, “Hogwarts Express, eleven o’clock”. 

Harry looked behind him and saw a wrought-iron archway where the barrier had been, with the words Platform Nine and Three-Quarters on it. 

He had done it.

He wasn’t exactly sure how he had done it, or what had happened, but his cart wasn’t a train wreck of a mess all over the ground, so Harry chalked it up as a win.

Smoke from the engine drifted over the heads of the chattering crowd,

while cats of every color wound here and there between their legs. Owls hooted to one another in a disgruntled sort of way over the babble and the scraping of heavy trunks. It reminded Harry of office workers boredly chatting around the office cooler, and it made him smile

The first few carriages were already packed with students, some hanging out of the window to talk to their families, some fighting over seats. Harry pushed his cart off down the platform in search of an empty seat. 

He passed a round-faced boy who was saying, “Gran, I’ve lost my toad again.”

“Oh, Neville,” he heard the old woman sigh.

A boy with dreadlocks was surrounded by a small crowd.

“Give us a look, Lee, go on!”

The boy lifted the lid of a box in his arms, and the people around him shrieked and yelled as something inside poked out a long, hairy leg.

Harry was not too keen on finding out what the hell was in that box, so he pressed on through the crowd until he found an empty compartment near the end of the train. Running in and out of the little doorway quickly, he put Hedwig inside first and then started to shove and heave his trunk toward the train door. 

He tried to lift it up the steps but could hardly raise one end, and twice he dropped it painfully on his foot. Something told him the cauldron had just bruised his toe, and he had a few special curses to mutter under his breath.

“Want a hand?” 

Harry looked up, and it was one of the red-haired twins he’d followed through the barrier talking to him.

“Yes, please,” Harry panted. “I think my cauldron just tried to assassinate my foot.”

“Oy, Fred! C’mere and help!”

With the twins’ help, Harry’s trunk was at last tucked away in a corner of the compartment, Hedwig hooting softly nearby.

“Thanks,” said Harry, pushing his sweaty hair out of his eyes.

“What’s that?” said one of the twins suddenly, pointing at Harry’s lightning scar.

“Blimey,” said the other twin. “Are you- ?”

“He is,” said the first twin, leaning forward to look at him now. “Aren’t you?” 

“What?” asked Harry.

“Harry Potter,” chorused the twins together, the pair of them pointing to his forehead.

“Oh, him,” said Harry, then shook his head. “I mean, yes, I am. I am him.”

The two boys gawked at him, and Harry felt himself turning red. Then, to his relief, a voice came floating in through the train’s open door.

“Fred? George? Are you there?”

“Coming, Mum.” The boys said together again, then gave Harry one last inspective glance before turning away to their mother’s voice.

With a last look over the shoulder at Harry, the twins hopped off the train.

Harry sat down next to the window where, half hidden, he could watch the red-haired family on the platform and hear what they were saying. 

Their mother had just taken out her handkerchief. “Ron, you’ve got something on your nose.”

The youngest boy tried to jerk out of the way, but she grabbed him and began rubbing the end of his nose.

“Mum! ‘Geroff!” He groaned, wriggling free with a shake of his head and shoulders.

“Aaah, has ickle Ronnie got somefink on his nosie?” said one of the twins.

“Shattup,” Ron groused, rubbing his nose clean with a sleeve.

“Where’s Percy?” asked their mother.

“He’s coming now.”

The oldest boy came striding into sight. He had already changed into his billowing black Hogwarts robes, and Harry noticed a shiny red-and-gold badge on his chest with the letter P on it.

“Can’t stay long, Mother,” Percy said. “I’m up front, the prefects have got two compartments to themselves-”

“Oh, are you a prefect, Percy?” said one of the twins, with an air of great surprise. “You should have said something, we had no idea.”

“Hang on, I think I remember him saying something about it,” said the other twin. 

“Once.”

“Or twice.”

“A minute.”

“All summer.”

“Oh do shut up,” growled Percy, eyeing the two irritably.

“How come Percy gets new robes, anyway?” said one of the twins.

“Because he’s a prefect,” said their mother fondly. “All right, dear, well, have a good term. Send me an owl when you get there.”

She kissed Percy on the cheek and he left. Then she turned to the twins.

“Now, you two. This year, you behave yourselves. If I get one more owl telling me you’ve… oh, you’ve blown up a toilet or-”

“Blown up a toilet? We’ve never blown up a toilet.” said one twin.

“Great idea though, thanks, Mum.” replied the other.

Their mother pointed a finger between the both of them. “It’s not funny. And look after Ron.”

“Don’t worry, ickle Ronniekins is safe with us.”

“Shut up,” said Ron again. 

He was almost as tall as the twins already and his nose was still pink where his mother had rubbed it.

One of the twins snapped their fingers.“Oh! Hey, Mum, guess what?! Guess who we just met on the train!”

Harry leaned back quickly so they couldn’t see him looking.

“You know that black-haired boy who was near us in the station? Know who he is?”

“Who?” Asked their mother, pulling her daughter back to her side before she could wander off too far.

“Harry Potter!” The twins said together, both pointing to where Harry had ducked further down beneath the window to make double sure no one saw him.

Harry heard the little girl’s voice.

“Oh, Mum, can I go on the train and see him?! Mum, oh please. . . .” 

“You’ve already seen him, Ginny, and the poor boy isn’t something you goggle at in a zoo. Is he really, Fred? How do you know?”

“Asked him. Saw his scar. It’s really there, like lightning.”

“Oh. Poor dear. No wonder he was alone. I did wonder. He was ever so polite

when he asked how to get onto the platform.”

“Never mind that, do you think he remembers what You-Know-Who looks like?” Asked one of the twins.

Their mother suddenly became very stern.

“I forbid you to ask him, Fred. No, don’t you dare. As though he needs reminding of that on his first day at school!”

“All right all right, keep your hair on.” 

A whistle sounded.

“Hurry up!” their mother shouted, and the three boys clambered onto the train. 

They leaned out of the window for her to kiss them good-bye, and their younger sister began to cry.

“Don’t, Ginny, we’ll send you loads of owls.” Ron said out the window, rustling her hair.

George gave her a thumbs up. “And we’ll send you a Hogwarts toilet seat!”

“George!” Her mother said with a glare, while her daughter grinned from beside her.

“Only joking, Mum.”

The train began to move. 

Harry saw the boys’ mother waving and their sister, half laughing, half crying, running to keep up with the train until it gathered too much speed, then she fell back and waved.

Harry watched the girl and her mother disappear as the train rounded the corner. 

Houses flashed past the window, smoke curling back along the train as the nearby colors began to blur.

 Harry felt a great leap of excitement as he leaned back up and glanced out the window of the train. He didn’t know what he was going to, or where for that matter, but it had to be better than what he was leaving behind.

The door of the compartment slid open and the youngest redheaded boy came in.

“Anyone sitting there?” he asked, pointing at the seat opposite Harry. “Everywhere else is full, or filled with people I’d like to kick off a bridge.”

Harry chuckled and shook his head, so the boy sat down. 

He glanced at Harry and then looked quickly out of the window, pretending he hadn’t looked. 

Harry saw he still had a black mark on his nose, but heard a pair of familiar, similar voices coming down the hallway.

“Hey, Ron.”

The twins were back.

“Listen, we’re going down the middle of the train, and Lee Jordan’s got a giant tarantula down there.”

“Right,” mumbled Ron, his eye giving a light twitch.

“Harry,” said the other twin, “did we introduce ourselves? Fred and George Weasley. And this is Ron, our brother. See you later, then.”

“Bye,” said Harry and Ron. 

The twins slid the compartment door shut behind them.

“Are you really Harry Potter?” Ron blurted out, then rallied himself and held up his hands. “Sorry.”

Harry nodded. “I am.”

“Oh… well, I thought it might be one of Fred and George’s jokes,” said Ron. “And have you really got… you know . . .”

He pointed at Harry’s forehead.

Harry pulled back his bangs to show the lightning scar. 

Ron stared.

“So that’s where… you know, You-Know-Who… ?”

“Yes,” Harry replied flatly, “but I can’t remember it.”

“Nothing?” asked Ron eagerly.

“Well. I remember a lot of green light, but nothing else.”

“Wow,” said Ron. 

He sat and stared at Harry for a few moments, then, as though he had suddenly realized what he was doing, he looked quickly out of the window again.

“Are all your family wizards?” asked Harry, who found Ron just as interesting as Ron found him.

“Er… yes, I think so,” said Ron. “I think Mum’s got a second cousin who’s an accountant, but we never talk about him. Gary, I think his name is? Lives over on the Isle of Man.”

“So you must know loads of magic already.” Harry asked, watching Ron closely.

The Weasleys were clearly one of those old wizarding families the pale girl in Diagon Alley had talked about.

“I heard you went to live with Muggles,” said Ron. “What are they like?”

“Horrible. Well, not all of them. My aunt and uncle and cousin are, though. Wish I’d had three wizard brothers instead.”

“Five,” Ron corrected, holding up all the fingers of his right hand. For some reason, he was looking gloomy. “I’m the sixth in our family to go to Hogwarts. You could say I’ve got a lot to live up to. Bill and Charlie have already left. Bill was head boy and Charlie was captain of his house’s Quidditch team. Now Percy’s a prefect. Fred and George mess around a lot, but they still get really good marks and everyone thinks they’re really funny. Everyone expects me to do as well as the others, but if I do, it’s no big deal, because they did it first. You never get anything new, either, with five brothers. I’ve got Bill’s old robes, Charlie’s old wand, and Percy’s old rat.”

Ron reached inside his jacket and pulled out a fat gray rat, which was asleep.

“His name’s Scabbers and he’s useless, he hardly ever wakes up. Percy got an owl from my dad for being made a prefect, but they couldn’t aff-... I mean, I got Scabbers instead.”

Ron’s ears went pink. 

He seemed to think he’d said too much, because he went back to staring out of the window.

Harry didn’t think there was anything wrong with not being able to afford an owl. After all, he’d never had any money in his life until a month ago, and he told Ron so, all about having to wear Dudley’s old clothes and never getting proper birthday presents. This seemed to cheer Ron up considerably, as it seemed everyone got the chance of getting the short end of the wand.

“... And until Hagrid told me, I didn’t know anything about being a wizard or about my parents or Voldemort-”

Ron gasped, horrified, and placed his hands over his ears.

“What?” asked Harry, hands still poised mid story.

“You said You-Know-Who’s name!” exclaimed Ron, sounding both shocked and impressed. “I’d have thought you, of all people-”

“I’m not trying to be brave or anything, saying the name,” said Harry, “I just never knew you shouldn’t. See what I mean? I’ve got loads to learn. . . . I bet,” he added, voicing for the first time something that had been worrying him a lot lately, “I bet I’m the worst in the class.”

“You won’t be. There’s loads of people who come from Muggle families and they learn quick enough.” 

While they had been talking, the train had carried them out of London. Now they were speeding past fields full of cows and sheep, and hedges that hummed as they passed. 

They were quiet for a time, watching the fields and lanes flick past or cars motor about in the distance.

Around half past twelve there was a great clattering outside in the corridor and a smiling, dimpled woman slid back their door and said, “Anything off the cart, dears?”

Harry, who hadn’t had any breakfast, leapt to his feet, but Ron’s ears went pink again and he muttered that he’d brought sandwiches. 

Harry went out into the corridor, peering down at the large trolly.

He had never had any money for candy with the Dursleys, and now that he had pockets rattling with gold and silver he was ready to buy as many Mars Bars as he could carry… but the woman didn’t have Mars Bars. 

What she did have were Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, Drooble’s Best Blowing Gum, Chocolate Frogs, Pumpkin Pasties, Cauldron Cakes, Licorice Wands, and a number of other strange things Harry had never seen in his life. Not wanting to miss anything, he got some of everything and paid the woman eleven silver Sickles and seven bronze Knuts.

Ron stared as Harry brought it all back in to the compartment and tipped it onto an empty seat. “Hungry, are you?”

“Starving,” said Harry, taking a large bite out of a pumpkin pasty and sighing as he chewed. “Pretty sure I’ve been living on less calories than prisoners of war when it comes to my aunt and uncle feeding me.”

Ron had taken out a lumpy package and unwrapped it, humming in his throat at Harry. 

There were four sandwiches inside. He pulled one of them apart with a sad sigh. “She always forgets I don’t like corned beef.”

“Swap you for one of these,” said Harry, holding up a pasty. “Go on.”

“You don’t want this, it’s all dry,” said Ron. “She hasn’t got much time you know,” he added quickly, “with five of us.”

“Go on, have a pasty,” Harry laughed out kindly, having never had the experience of having anything to share before or, indeed, anyone to share it with. 

It was a nice feeling, sitting there with Ron, eating their way through all Harry’s pasties, cakes, and candies… though the sandwiches lay forgotten.

“What are these?” Harry asked Ron, holding up a pack of Chocolate Frogs. “They’re not really frogs, are they?” 

He was starting to feel that nothing would surprise him, though he was not keen on eating a living frog no matter what it may be made of.

“No,” said Ron. “But see what the card is. I’m missing Agrippa.”

“What?”

“Oh, of course, you wouldn’t know. Chocolate Frogs have cards inside them, you know, to collect. Famous witches and wizards and the like. I’ve got about five hundred, but I haven’t got Agrippa or Ptolemy.”

Harry unwrapped his Chocolate Frog and picked up the card. 

It showed a man’s face, and he certainly looked like a wizard; He wore half-moon glasses, had a long, crooked nose, flowing silver hair, a beard, and mustache. Underneath the picture was the name “Albus Dumbledore”.

“So this is Dumbledore!” said Harry, holding the card up in front of him. “He is the most wizardly wizard I have seen in my life, really.”

“Don’t tell me you’d never heard of Dumbledore!” said Ron. “Can I have a frog? I might get Agrippa.” He tossed the frog Harry tossed to him, tossing it in his hand with a nod. “Thanks!”

Ron began opening the chocolate frog pack. He was becoming rather happy he had been brave enough to sit in Harry’s train room, and was finding the boy to be rather kind, all things considered.

Harry turned over his card and read:

ALBUS DUMBLEDORE

CURRENTLY HEADMASTER OF HOGWARTS

Considered by many the greatest wizard of modern times,

Dumbledore is particularly famous for his defeat of the Dark wizard Grindelwald in 1945, for the discovery of the twelve uses of dragon’s blood, and his work on alchemy with his partner, Nicolas Flamel. Professor Dumbledore enjoys chamber music and tenpin bowling.

“Tenpin bowling, huh.” Harry mused as he turned the card back over and saw, to his astonishment, that Dumbledore’s face had disappeared. He turned the card around a few times, then looked at Ron as if he were lost. “He’s gone!”

“Well, you can’t expect him to hang around all day,” said Ron. “He’ll be back. No, I’ve got Morgana again and I’ve got about six of her . . . do you want it? You can start collecting.”

Ron’s eyes strayed to the pile of Chocolate Frogs waiting to be unwrapped.

“Help yourself,” said Harry, tossing Ron another box. “But in, you know, the Muggle world, people just stay put in photos.”

“Do they? What, they don’t move at all?” Ron sounded amazed as he started unwrapping the box. “Weird!”

Harry stared as Dumbledore sidled back into the picture on his card and gave him a small smile. Harry peered down at the main with a raised brow, and the man on the card raised his own bro in return.

Ron was more interested in eating the frogs than looking at the Famous Witches and Wizards cards, but Harry couldn’t keep his eyes off them. Soon he had not only Dumbledore and Morgana, but Hengist of Woodcroft, Alberic Grunnion, Circe, Paracelsus, and Merlin. He finally tore his eyes away from the druidess Cliodna, who was scratching her nose, to open a bag of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans.

“You want to be careful with those,” Ron warned Harry. “When they say every flavor, they mean every flavor. You get all the ordinary ones like chocolate and peppermint and marmalade, but then you can get spinach and liver and tripe. George reckons he had a booger-flavored one once.”

Ron picked up a green bean, looked at it carefully, and bit into a corner. His nose wrinkled as his face twisted. “Bleaaargh! See?! Sprouts!”

They had a good time eating the Every Flavor Beans. Harry got toast, coconut, baked bean, strawberry, curry, grass, coffee, sardine, and was even brave enough to nibble the end off a funny gray one Ron wouldn’t touch, which turned out to be pepper.

The countryside now flying past the window was becoming wilder. The neat fields had gone, rows of wheat and corn but a distant memory. Now there were woods, twisting rivers, and dark green hills.

There was a knock on the door of their compartment and the round-faced boy Harry had passed on platform nine and three-quarters came in. 

He looked rather tearful.

“Sorry,” he said, “but have you seen a toad at all?”

When they shook their heads, he wailed, “I’ve lost him! He keeps getting away from me!”

“He’ll turn up,” said Harry.

“Yes,” said the boy miserably. “Well, if you see him . . .”

He left.

“Don’t know why he’s so bothered,” said Ron. “If I’d brought a toad I’d lose it as quick as I could. Mind you, I brought Scabbers, so I can’t talk.”

The rat was still snoozing on Ron’s lap, itching at its stomach with a paw that was missing a digit.

Harry reckoned the rat must have been some hard life between the brothers, so maybe a missing toe wasn’t too much of a surprise.

“He might have died and you wouldn’t know the difference,” said Ron in disgust. “I tried to turn him yellow yesterday to make him more interesting, but the spell didn’t work. I’ll show you, look . . .”

He rummaged around in his trunk and pulled out a very battered-looking wand. It was chipped in places and something white was glinting at the end.

“Unicorn hair’s nearly poking out.” Ron said with a twirl of the wand, then shrugged. “Hand-me-down life. Anyway.”

He had just raised his wand when the compartment door slid open again. The toadless boy was back, but this time he had a girl with him. She was already wearing her new Hogwarts robes.

“Has anyone seen a toad? Neville’s lost one,” she said. 

She had a bossy sort of voice, lots of bushy brown hair, and rather large front teeth. Harry didn’t think her ugly at all, just less… well. He hoped she was at least kinder than the first girl he had met.

“We’ve already told him we haven’t seen it,” said Ron, but the girl wasn’t listening, as she was looking at the wand in his hand.

“Oh, are you doing magic? Let’s see it, then.”

She sat down. 

Ron looked taken aback. “Er — all right.” He cleared his throat. “Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow, turn this stupid, fat rat yellow.”

He waved his wand, but nothing happened. 

Scabbers stayed gray, fat, and fast asleep.

“Are you sure that’s a real spell?” asked the girl. When Ron shrugged, she rolled her eyes. “Well, it’s not very good, is it? I’ve tried a few simple spells just for practice and it’s all worked for me. Nobody in my family’s magic at all, it was ever such a surprise when I got my letter, but I was ever so pleased, of course, I mean, it’s the very best school of witchcraft there is, I’ve heard. I’ve learned all our course books by heart, of course, I just hope it will be enough. I’m Hermione Granger, by the way, who are you?”

She said all this very fast, the two boys blinking at her in unison.

Harry looked at Ron, and was relieved to see by his stunned face that he hadn’t learned all the course books by heart either.

“I’m Ron Weasley,” Ron muttered.

“Harry Potter,” said Harry.

“Are you really?” asked Hermione. “I know all about you, of course. I got a few extra books for background reading, and you’re in Modern Magical History and The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts and Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century.”

“Am I?” Harry asked, feeling rather dazed to hear he was in history books.

He was only eleven years old, after all.

“Goodness, didn’t you know? I’d have found out everything I could if it was me,” said Hermione. “Do either of you know what House you’ll be in? I’ve been asking around, and I hope I’m in Gryffindor, it sounds by far the best. I hear Dumbledore himself was in it, but I suppose Ravenclaw wouldn’t be too bad. . . . anyway, we’d better go and look for Neville’s toad. You two had better change, you know, I expect we’ll be there soon.”

And without another word she left, taking the toadless boy with her.

“Whatever House I’m in, I hope she’s not in it,” said Ron. He threw his wand back into his trunk. “Stupid spell. George gave it to me, bet he knew it was a dud.”

“What House are your brothers in?” asked Harry.

“Gryffindor,” said Ron. Gloom seemed to be settling on him again. “Mum and Dad were in it, too. I don’t know what they’ll say if I’m not. I don’t suppose Ravenclaw would be too bad, but imagine if they put me in Slytherin.”

“That’s the House Vol-, I mean, You-Know-Who was in?”

“Yeah,” Ron said glumly. He flopped back into his seat, looking depressed.

“You know, I think the ends of Scabbers’ whiskers are a bit lighter,” said Harry, trying to take Ron’s mind off Houses. “So what do your oldest brothers do now that they’ve left, anyway?”

Harry had been wondering what a wizard or witch did once they’d finished school. Most of the people from the local colleges ended up working as baristas.

“Charlie’s in Romania studying dragons, and Bill’s in Africa doing something for Gringotts,” said Ron. “Did you hear about Gringotts? It’s been all over the Daily Prophet, but I don’t suppose you get that with the Muggles. Someone tried to rob a high security vault.”

Harry stared. “Really? What happened to them?”

“Nothing, that’s why it’s such big news. They haven’t been caught. My dad says it must’ve been a powerful dark wizard to get round Gringotts, but they don’t think they took anything, that’s what’s odd. ’Course, everyone gets scared when something like this happens in case You-Know-Who’s behind it.”

Harry turned this news over in his mind. He was starting to get a prickle of fear every time You-Know-Who was mentioned. He supposed this was all part of entering the magical world, but it had been a lot more comfortable saying “Voldemort” without worrying.

“What’s your Quidditch team?” Ron asked.

Harry’s mind was instantly transported back to Madam Malkin’s robe shop, and the girl with the bright gray-green eyes.

“Errr… I don’t know any,” Harry confessed, though he had been tempted to just mention the Chudley Cannons.

“What!” Ron looked dumbfounded. “Oh, you wait, it’s the best game in the world!” 

And he was off, explaining all about the four balls and the positions of the seven players, describing famous games he’d been to with his brothers and the broomstick he’d like to get if he had the money. 

He was just taking Harry through the finer points of the game when the compartment door slid open yet again, but it wasn’t Neville the toadless boy, or Hermione Granger this time.

Two girls and a boy entered, and Harry recognized the middle one at once: It was the pale girl from Madam Malkin’s robe shop, and Harry was beginning to wonder if she had somehow found him through a magic spell that homed in on Quidditch talk.

She was looking at Harry with somehow more interest than he’d shown back in Diagon Alley, and she smiled at him while tucking a strand of blonde hair behind her ear.

“Is it true?” She asked, her gray-green eyes staring into his. “They were saying all the way down the train that Harry Potter’s in this compartment. So it’s you, is it?”

Her voice was oddly soft when she was talking to him, though Harry still remembered how she addressed the witch that had poked her.

“Yes,” said Harry, and while the girl made his stomach feel weird again, it was offset by the annoyance of what she had said about Hagrid.

He instead looked at the other two with a side glance. Both of them were thickset, and looked extremely mean. The girl sported a thick black braid and had a bruisers face as if she played a lot of rugby, and Harry instantly knew they were not going to get along. The boy looked a bit like a thumb, which Harry had to fight to not smile about. 

Standing on either side of the pale girl, they looked like bodyguards.

“Oh, this is Crabbe and this is Goyle,” said the pale girl carelessly, noticing where Harry was looking with a tick of annoyance. “And my name’s Draconia, Draconia Malfoy.”

Ron gave a slight cough, which might have been hiding a snigger. 

Draconia Malfoy looked at him with a narrowed eye, her voice taking on that icy edge that Harry remembered. “Think my name’s funny, do you? No need to ask who you are. My father told me all the Weasleys have red hair, freckles, and more children than they can afford. Judging by those robes alone you fit the bill.” She turned back to Harry, instantly redressing her voice. “You’ll soon find out some wizarding families are much better than others, Potter. You don’t want to go making friends with the wrong sort.”

She held out her hand to shake Harry’s, fixing him with a smile he knew she’d surely used enough to know it normally got others to go her way. “I can help you there.”

 Harry didn’t take it, leaving her hand hanging in the air as he tilted his head back a hair as he addressed her cooly. “I think I can tell who the wrong sort are for myself, thanks.”

Draconia Malfoy didn’t go red, but a pink tinge appeared in her pale cheeks as the fingers of her outstretched hand curled in angrily. She formed her mouth into an annoyed smile, the corner of her eye twitching.

“I’d be careful if I were you, Potter,” She said with forced honey. “Unless you’re a bit politer you’ll go the same way as your parents. They didn’t know what was good for them, either. You hang around with riffraff like the Weasleys and that massive oaf Hagrid, and it’ll rub off on you.”

Both Harry and Ron stood up.

“Say that again,” Ron said lowly, his face as red as his hair as Crabbe and Goyle locked their eyes to him.

“Oh, you’re going to fight us, are you?” Malfoy sneered. “See, Potter? This is the kind of people you want to get yourself wrapped up in? People that cause you problems? If you were to hang out with me-”

“Unless you get out now, we just might be.” said Harry, more bravely than he felt, because Crabbe and Goyle were a lot bigger than him or Ron. He took a step forward so he was a bit closer to Malfoy, hoping that maybe a bit of an advance would cause them to step back.

Malfoy turned a bit more pink, staring up into Harry’s face. She had forgotten that he had been a little bit taller than her, but that might have been due to her having to stand on a box at Madam Malkin’s. Her eyes flicked from Harry’s eyes, to his scar, then away as she placed her hands on her hips. “But we don’t feel like leaving, do we? We’ve eaten all our food and you still seem to have some.” She grinned up at Harry. “Why don’t you share with us, then?”

Goyle reached toward the Chocolate Frogs next to Ron, but as Ron leapt forward, before he’d so much as touched Goyle, Goyle let out a horrible shriek.

Scabbers the rat was hanging off her finger, sharp little teeth sunk deep into Goyle’s knuckle. 

“Eugh, a rat!” Malfoy screeched, shoving Crabbe in front of her as Goyle began swinging her arm around in panic. “Disgusting! Augh!”

Crabbe and Malfoy backed away as Goyle swung Scabbers round and round, howling, and when Scabbers finally flew off and hit the window, all three of them disappeared at once, scrambling out of the compartment. 

Perhaps they had thought there were more rats lurking among the sweets, or perhaps they’d heard footsteps, because a second later, Hermione Granger had come in.

“What has been going on in here, then?” she asked, looking at the sweets all over the floor, Ron picking up Scabbers by his tail, and the rather odd splotches of blood on the walls of the compartment.

“I think he’s been knocked out,” Ron said to Harry. He looked closer at Scabbers. “No, no he’s-...  I don’t believe it. He’s gone back to sleep!”

And so he had, the snoring rat sleepily licking at the blood on its lips.

“You’ve met Malfoy before?” Ron asked, placing the rat back onto its nest of sweets.

Harry explained about their meeting in Diagon Alley.

“I’ve heard of her family,” said Ron darkly. “They were some of the first to come back to our side after You-Know-Who disappeared. Said they’d been bewitched. My dad doesn’t believe it. He says Malfoy’s father didn’t need an excuse to go over to the Dark Side.” He turned to Hermione, who had been standing in the doorway ever since she had come in. “Can we help you with something?”

“You’d better hurry up and put your robes on, I’ve just been up to the front to ask the conductor, and he says we’re nearly there. You haven’t been fighting, have you? You’ll be in trouble before we even get there!”

“Scabbers has been fighting, not us,” said Ron, scowling at her. “Would you mind leaving while we change?”

“All right. I only came in here because people outside are behaving very childishly, racing up and down the corridors,” said Hermione in a sniffy voice. “And you’ve got dirt on your nose, by the way, did you know?”

Ron glared at her as she left. 

Harry peered out of the window. It was getting dark. He could see mountains and forests under a deep purple sky. The train did seem to be slowing down.

He and Ron took off their jackets and pulled on their long black robes. Ron’s were a bit short for him, as you could see his sneakers underneath the hem.

A voice echoed through the train: “We will be reaching Hogwarts in five minutes’ time. Please leave your luggage on the train, it will be taken to the school separately.”

Harry’s stomach lurched with nerves and Ron, he saw, looked pale under his freckles. They crammed their pockets with the last of the sweets, the still sleeping Scabbers, and joined the crowd thronging the corridor.

The train slowed down, and finally stopped with a screech of the wheel brakes and a hiss. People pushed their way toward the door and out on to a tiny, dark platform. It looked much like the one they had left, though rather lonely and without the warmth of families seeing them off.

Harry shivered in the cold night air as the older students marched off towards a series of carriages barely visible in the darkness, though Harry didn’t hear the snort or stamp of horses. 

The glow of a lamp came bobbing over the heads of the students, and Harry heard a familiar voice: “Firs’ years! Firs’ years over here! All right there, Harry?”

Hagrid’s big hairy face beamed over the sea of heads. “C’mon, follow me — any more firs’ years? Mind yer step, now! Firs’ years follow me!”

Slipping and stumbling, they followed Hagrid down what seemed to be a

steep, narrow trail lined with rocks and shrubs. It was so dark on either side of them that Harry thought there must be thick trees there, that or there was something cast on the place. Nobody spoke much, mostly quiet chatter or the panting of breath from those who never got out much. 

Neville, the boy who kept losing his toad, sniffed once or twice.

“Yeh’ll get yer firs’ sight o’ Hogwarts in a sec,” Hagrid called over his shoulder, “jus’ round this bend here.”

There was a loud “Oooooh!”, and Harry came to a stop with the others.

The narrow path had opened suddenly onto the edge of a great black lake. Perched atop a high mountain on the other side, its windows sparkling in the starry sky, was a vast castle with many turrets and towers. Harry had never seen a castle like it before, not in the books or movies he had seen while at school, or the few times he could sneak a look at the Dursley’s television.

“No more’n four to a boat!” Hagrid called, pointing to a fleet of little boats sitting in the water by the shore. 

Harry went to step forward, but stopped as he felt something snag his sleeve.

“Potter.”

Harry inwardly rolled his eyes, and he managed to suppress the growl in his throat.

It was the Malfoy girl.

“Come to our boat, Harry Potter.” Malfoy said, giving his tug a sleeve as Crabbe and Goyle pushed kids out of the way of the ‘best’ boat. “Honestly, spending some time with students from real wizarding families would do you some good!”

Harry pulled his arm forward. “I’m good, thanks.”

“Potter, stop being silly!” Malfoy giggled, giving his arm another tug. “Come on, we-”

“Let go of me!” Harry spat, pulling his arm forward hard.

Malfoy stumbled forward with a short squeak, looking down at her hand as Harry brushed his sleeve. She looked from her hand, then to Harry, her lips twisting into an angry grimace.

“You-!”

“Harry, come down here, we have a boat!” Ron called up at Harry as Hermoine helped Neville into the boat, though that appeared to be a two man job as Ron quickly stepped in to help.

Malfoy stammered out a few, wordless syllables as Harry turned to look over his shoulder at her, making his way down the path to the boat. “See you at school, Malfoy.”

“Potter! You-” She stammered out again, then stomped her foot with an “Augh!” of anger before trudging off to the boat Crabbe and Goyle had secured.

Harry was followed by Ron after they helped Hermione into the boat, and they got comfortable.

Harry glanced over to the boat that Malfoy sat in, and saw she was angrily staring at the dark water with her arms crossed, and her eyes would flick over to his own boat every so often.

“Everyone in?” shouted Hagrid, who had a boat to himself that rocked back and forth with his bulk. “Right then. FORWARD!”

The fleet of little boats moved off all at once without need of paddle or motor, gliding across the lake which was as smooth as glass. Everyone was silent, staring up at the great castle overhead. It towered over them as they sailed nearer and nearer to the cliff on which it stood.

Harry grinned up at the castle, but a sigh caught his ears. He turned, spotting Malfoy quickly turning her head away from Harry’s direction and instead looking up at the castle.

He shook his head, annoyed.

“Heads down!” yelled Hagrid as the first boats reached the cliff. 

They all bent their heads and the little boats carried them through a curtain of ivy that hid a wide opening in the cliff face. There were a few sounds of disgruntled disgust, one that Harry recognized right off the gate since he had heard it during the “Scabbers rescue”, and chuckled as he removed loose ivy from his hair.

He had dealt with enough cobblewebs under the stairs, this was nothing.

They were carried along a dark tunnel, which seemed to be taking them right underneath the castle. Harry heard Malfoy screech, rustling, and what sounded like a small row before Malfoy shouted something at Crabbe. The echo of the cave made it a little hard to understand, but something wet landed in his boat. 

He couldn’t even begin to see what it was until they reached a kind of underground harbor, where they clambered out onto rocks and pebbles.

“Oy, you there! Is this your toad?” said Hagrid, who was checking the boats as people climbed out of them.

“Trevor!” cried Neville blissfully, holding out his hands as Hagrid deposited the toad into them. 

Harry saw Malfoy wiping her hands on her cloak with a gagging retch of her shoulders, and he laughed under his breath.

“I guess someone finally found your toad, Neville.” Harry mused, watching the boy tuck the toad into his robe pocket.

“Yeah! Hagrid is the best, isn’t he?” Neville replied, patting the toad-filled pocket.

Harry smiled, then nodded. “Yeah, absolutely top notch."

They clambered up a passageway in the rock after Hagrid’s lamp, coming out at last onto smooth, damp grass right in the shadow of the castle.

They walked up a flight of stone steps and crowded around the huge, oak front door.

“Everyone here? You there, still got yer toad?” Hagrid asked, looking over his shoulder at Neville.

Neville patted his pocket, the nodded up at Hagrid.

“Right! In we go.” Hagrid called out, raising a gigantic fist and knocking three times on the castle door.

Chapter 3 : Book 1: Chapter 7 (adjustments)

The door swung open at once. A tall, black-haired witch in emerald-green

robes stood there. She had a very stern face, and Harry’s first thought was that this was not someone to get on the bad side of.

“The firs’ years, Professor McGonagall,” said Hagrid, gesturing to Harry and the swell of young students behind him. 

Professor McGonagall’s voice was short, clipped, and professional as she spoke to Hagrid. “Thank you, Hagrid. I will take them from here.”

She pulled the door wide, the hinges groaning as a grand castle door should. The entrance hall was so big you could have fit the whole of the Dursleys’ house in it. The stone walls were lit with flaming torches like the ones at Gringotts, the ceiling was too high to make out, and a magnificent marble staircase facing them led to the upper floors.

They followed Professor McGonagall across the flagged stone floor. Harry could hear the drone of hundreds of voices from a doorway to the right. He figured the rest of the school must already be here waiting for them, but Professor McGonagall showed the first years into a small, empty chamber off the hall. They crowded in, standing rather closer together than they would usually have done, peering about nervously.

“Welcome to Hogwarts,” said Professor McGonagall. “The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your Houses. The Sorting is a very important ceremony because, while you are here, your House will be something like your family within Hogwarts. You will have classes with the rest of your House, sleep in your House dormitory, and spend free time in your House common room.”

“The four Houses are called Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Each House has its own noble history and each has produced outstanding witches and wizards. While you are at Hogwarts, your triumphs will earn your House points, while any rule-breaking will lose House points. At the end of the year, the House with the most points is awarded the House Cup, a great honor. I hope each of you will be a credit to whichever House becomes yours.”

“The Sorting Ceremony will take place in a few minutes in front of the rest of the school. I suggest you all smarten yourselves up as much as you can while you are waiting.”

Her eyes lingered for a moment on Neville’s cloak, which was fastened under his left ear, and on Ron’s smudged nose. Harry nervously tried to flatten his hair. “I shall return when we are ready for you. Please wait quietly.”

She left the chamber. 

Harry swallowed.

“How exactly do they sort us into Houses?” he asked Ron.

“Some sort of test, I think. Fred said it hurts a lot, but I think he was joking.”

Harry’s heart gave a horrible jolt. 

A test? 

In front of the whole school? 

But he didn’t know any magic yet. 

What on earth would he have to do? 

He hadn’t expected something like this the moment they arrived. He looked around anxiously and saw that everyone else looked terrified, too. No one was talking much except Hermione Granger, who was whispering very fast about all the spells she’d learned and wondering which one she’d need. 

Harry tried hard not to listen to her, looking around. He spotted Draconia Malfoy, and she looked as green about the gills as the rest of them, though she glared at Harry when she realized he was looking at her.

He spun back around, instead making idle small talk with Ron. 

He’d never been more nervous, never, not even when he’d had to take a school report home to the Dursleys saying that he’d somehow turned his teacher’s wig blue. 

He kept his eyes fixed on the door. 

Any second now, Professor McGonagall would come back and lead him to his doom.

Then something happened that made him jump about a foot in the air, as several people behind him screamed.

“What the?!” He gasped. 

So did the people around him. About twenty ghosts had just streamed through the back wall. Pearly-white and slightly transparent, they glided across the room talking to one another and hardly glancing at the first years. 

They seemed to be arguing. 

What looked like a fat little monk was saying: “Forgive and forget, I say, we ought to give him a second chance.”

“My dear Friar, haven’t we given Peeves all the chances he deserves? He gives us all a bad name and you know, he’s not really even a ghost-, I say, what are you all doing here?”

A ghost wearing a ruff and tights had suddenly noticed the first years.

Nobody answered.

“New students!” said the Fat Friar, smiling around at them. “About to be Sorted, I suppose?”

A few people nodded mutely.

“Hope to see you in Hufflepuff!” said the Friar. “My old House, you know.”

“Move along now,” said a sharp voice. “The Sorting Ceremony’s about to start.”

Professor McGonagall had returned. One by one, the ghosts floated away through the opposite wall.

“Now, form a line,” Professor McGonagall told the first years, “and follow me.”

Feeling oddly as though his legs had turned to lead, Harry got into line behind a boy with sandy hair as they all jumbled together for a moment, with Ron behind him. They walked out of the chamber, back across the hall, and through a pair of double doors into the Great Hall.

Harry had never even imagined such a strange and splendid place. It was lit by thousands and thousands of candles that were floating in midair over four long tables, where the rest of the students were sitting. These tables were huge things made from true lumber, not veneer and plywood, and were warm with dark lacquer. Laid atop them were long bands of cloth that must have matched the houses, glittering with golden plates and goblets. At the top of the hall was another long table where the teachers were sitting. 

Professor McGonagall led the first years up here, so that they came to a halt in a line facing the other students, with the teachers behind them. The hundreds of faces staring at them looked like pale lanterns in the flickering candlelight. Dotted here and there among the students, the ghosts shone misty silver. 

Mainly to avoid all the staring eyes, Harry looked upward and saw a velvety black ceiling dotted with stars. 

He heard Hermione whisper, “It’s bewitched to look like the sky outside. I read about it in Hogwarts: A History.”

Harry hummed in his throat; This was likely going to become a constant thing when it came to that girl.

It was hard to believe there was a ceiling there at all, and that the Great Hall didn’t simply open on to the heavens.

Harry quickly looked down again as Professor McGonagall silently placed a four-legged stool in front of the first years. On top of the stool she put a pointed wizard’s hat. This hat was patched,frayed, and extremely dirty, like a leather traveling hat that had seen too many mountains and not enough washes. 

Aunt Petunia probably wouldn’t have even let it in the house.

Maybe they had to try and get a rabbit out of it, Harry thought wildly, that seemed the sort of thing, but wouldn’t that be a little cliche for a wizard?

Noticing that everyone in the hall was now staring at the hat, he stared at it, too. For a few seconds, there was complete silence. 

Then the hat twitched. 

A rip near the brim opened wide like a mouth, and the hat began to sing:

“Why don’t you go and tell me,

What you think when you see,

The weathered leather and frayed edge,

My brimmed countenance, and bent marquee.

A ballcap holds no shine in comparison,

No fedora can keep pace,

For I’m the Hogwarts Sorting Hat,

Which no magic can erase.

You cannot hide your thoughts from me, for I will see them all,

Plop me on your nervous brow, 

and we’ll see in which house you fall.

You may find yourselves in Gryffindor,

And here you’ll find the brave,

Their might, pluck, and honor

It is a noble path they pave.

Your home could be found in Hufflepuff,

Full of the patient and the hardest working,

Students here are hard fold,

You won’t ever find them shirking.

Then there is our Ravenclaw, keen edge and razor mind,

No answer, question, or page unknown will a Ravenclaw fail to find.

Or perhaps, in Slytherin, where tight your friendship coils,

Cunning minds, helpful hearts, it is here that passion boils.

So place me on your weary head, and while your mind may be spinning!

If you have doubts, do not worry

This is merely your new beginning.”

The whole hall burst into applause as the hat finished its song. It bowed to each of the four tables and then became quite still again.

“So we’ve just got to try on the hat!” Ron whispered to Harry. “I’ll kill Fred, he was going on about wrestling a troll.”

Harry smiled weakly. 

Yes, trying on the hat was a lot better than having to do a spell, but he did wish they could have tried it on without everyone watching. The hat seemed to be asking rather a lot; Harry didn’t feel brave or quick-witted or any of it at the moment. If only the hat had mentioned a House for people who felt a bit queasy, that would have been the one for him.

Professor McGonagall now stepped forward holding a long roll of parchment.

“When I call your name, you will put on the hat and sit on the stool to be sorted,” she said. “Abbott, Hannah!”

A pink-faced girl with blonde pigtails stumbled out of line, put on the hat, which fell right down over her eyes, and sat down. There was a moment’s pause before-

“HUFFLEPUFF!” shouted the hat with nary pause nor stutter.

The table on the right with yellow banners adorned with a badger cheered and clapped as Hannah went to sit down at the Hufflepuff table. Harry saw the ghost of the Fat Friar waving merrily at her.

“Bones, Susan!”

“HUFFLEPUFF!” shouted the hat again, and Susan scuttled off to sit next to Hannah.

“Boot, Terry!”

“RAVENCLAW!”

The table second from the left clapped this time, draped in blue and silver; several Ravenclaws stood up to shake hands with Terry as he joined them.

“Brocklehurst, Mandy” went to Ravenclaw too, but “Brown, Lavender” became the first new Gryffindor, and the table draped in crimson cloth on the far left exploded with cheers; Harry could see Ron’s twin brothers catcalling.

“Bulstrode, Millicent” then became a Slytherin. 

Perhaps it was Harry’s imagination, after all he’d heard about Slytherin, but he thought they looked like an unpleasant lot with all the green about them.

He was starting to feel definitely sick now. He remembered being picked for teams during gym at his old school. He had always been last to be chosen, not because he was no good, but because no one wanted Dudley to think they liked him.

“Finch-Fletchley, Justin!”

“HUFFLEPUFF!”

Sometimes, Harry noticed, the hat shouted out the House at once, but at others it took a little while to decide. “Finnigan, Seamus,” the sandy-haired boy next to Harry in the line, sat on the stool for almost a whole minute before the hat declared him a Gryffindor.

“Granger, Hermione!”

Hermione almost ran to the stool and jammed the hat eagerly on her head.

“GRYFFINDOR!” shouted the hat. 

Ron groaned.

A horrible thought struck Harry, as horrible thoughts always do when you’re very nervous. 

What if he wasn’t chosen at all? 

What if he just sat there with the hat over his eyes for ages, until Professor McGonagall jerked it off his head and said there had obviously been a mistake and he’d better get back on the train?

When Neville Longbottom, the boy who kept losing his toad, was called, he fell over on his way to the stool. 

The hat took a long time to decide with Neville. When it finally shouted, “GRYFFINDOR,” Neville ran off still wearing it, and had to jog back amid gales of laughter to give it to “MacDougal, Morag.”

Malfoy swaggered forward when her name was called and got her wish at once. The hat had barely touched her head when it screamed, “SLYTHERIN!”

Malfoy went to join her friends Crabbe and Goyle, looking pleased with

herself.

There weren’t many people left now.

“Moon” . . . , “Nott” . . . , “Parkinson” . . . , then a pair of twin girls, “Patil” and “Patil” . . . , then “Perks, Sally-Anne” . . . , and then, at last —

“Potter, Harry!”

As Harry stepped forward, whispers suddenly broke out like little hissing fires all over the hall.

“Potter, did she say?”

“The Harry Potter?”

The last thing Harry saw before the hat dropped over his eyes was the hall full of people craning to get a good look at him. 

Next second he was looking at the black inside of the hat. 

He waited.

“Hmm,” said a small voice in his ear. “Difficult. Very difficult. Plenty of courage, I see. Not a bad mind either. There’s talent, oh my goodness, yes, and a nice thirst to prove yourself, now that’s interesting. . . . So where shall I put you?”

Harry gripped the edges of the stool and thought, “Not Slytherin, not Slytherin.”

“Not Slytherin, eh?” said the small voice. “Are you sure? You could be great, you know, it’s all here in your head, and Slytherin will help you on the way to greatness, no doubt about that… no? Well, if you’re sure… better be… GRYFFINDOR!”

Harry heard the hat shout the last word to the whole hall. 

He took off the hat and walked shakily toward the Gryffindor table. He was so relieved to have been chosen and not put in Slytherin, he hardly noticed that he was getting the loudest cheer yet. Percy the Prefect got up and shook his hand vigorously, while the Weasley twins yelled, “We got Potter! We got Potter!” 

Harry sat down opposite the ghost in the ruff he’d seen earlier. The ghost patted his arm, giving Harry the sudden, horrible feeling he’d just plunged it into a bucket of ice-cold water.

He could see the High Table properly now. At the end nearest him sat Hagrid, who caught his eye and gave him the thumbs up. 

Harry grinned back. 

And there, in the center of the High Table, in a large gold chair, sat Albus Dumbledore. Harry recognized him at once from the card he’d gotten out of the Chocolate Frog on the train. Dumbledore’s silver hair was the only thing in the whole hall that shone as brightly as the ghosts. 

Harry spotted Professor Quirrell, too, the nervous young man from the Leaky Cauldron. He was looking very peculiar in a large purple turban.

And now there were only four people left to be sorted. “Thomas, Dean,” a black boy even taller than Ron, joined Harry at the Gryffindor table. 

“Turpin, Lisa,” became a Ravenclaw and then it was Ron’s turn. 

He was pale green by now. Harry crossed his fingers under the table and a second later the hat had shouted, “GRYFFINDOR!”

Harry clapped loudly with the rest as Ron collapsed into the chair next to him.

“Well done, Ron, excellent,” said Percy Weasley pompously across Harry as “Zabini, Blaise,” was made a Slytherin. Professor McGonagall rolled up her scroll and took the Sorting Hat away.

Harry looked down at his empty gold plate. He had only just realized how hungry he was. 

The pumpkin pasties seemed ages ago.

Albus Dumbledore had gotten to his feet. He was beaming at the students, his arms opened wide, as if nothing could have pleased him more than to see them all there.

“Welcome!” he said. “Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak! Thank you!”

He sat back down. Everybody clapped and cheered. 

Harry didn’t know whether to laugh or not.

“Is he a bit mad?” he asked Percy uncertainly.

“Mad?” said Percy airily. “He’s a genius! Best wizard in the world! But he

is a bit mad, yes. Potatoes, Harry?”

Harry’s mouth fell open. The dishes in front of him were now piled with food. He had never seen so many things he liked to eat on one table: roast beef, roast chicken, pork chops and lamb chops, sausages, bacon and steak, boiled potatoes, roast potatoes, fries, Yorkshire pudding, peas, carrots, gravy, ketchup, and, for some strange reason, peppermint humbugs.

The Dursleys had never exactly starved Harry, but he’d never been allowed to eat as much as he liked. Dudley had always taken anything that Harry really wanted, even if it made him sick. 

Harry piled his plate with a bit of everything except the peppermints and began to eat. Whether it was magic or entirely skill, Harry had never tasted food like this in his life. The potatoes were perfectly cooked and flakey, any meat he pieced with his fork was juicy and tender, and no matter how many sauces he tried, they all made him close his eyes and chew slowly to enjoy the flavor.

“That does look good,” said the ghost in the ruff sadly, watching Harry cut up his steak.

“Can’t you-?”

“I haven’t eaten for nearly five hundred years,” said the ghost. “I don’t need to, of course, but one does miss it. I don’t think I’ve introduced myself? Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington at your service. Resident ghost of Gryffindor Tower.”

“I know who you are!” said Ron suddenly. “My brothers told me about you! You’re Nearly Headless Nick!”

“I would prefer you to call me Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-” the ghost began stiffly, but sandy-haired Seamus Finnigan interrupted.

“Nearly Headless? How can you be nearly headless?”

Sir Nicholas looked extremely miffed, as if their little chat wasn’t going at all the way he wanted.

“Like this,” he said irritably. 

He seized his left ear and pulled. His whole head swung off his neck and fell onto his shoulder as if it was on a hinge. Someone had obviously tried to behead him, but not done it properly. 

Looking pleased at the stunned looks on their faces, Nearly Headless Nick flipped his head back onto his neck, coughed, and said, “So, new Gryffindors! I hope you’re going to help us win the House Championship this year? Gryffindors have never gone so long without winning. Slytherins have got the Cup six years in a row! The Bloody Baron’s becoming almost unbearable. He’s the Slytherin ghost.”

Harry looked over at the Slytherin table and saw a horrible ghost sitting there, with blank staring eyes, a gaunt face, and robes stained with silver blood. He was right next to Malfoy who, Harry was pleased to see, didn’t look too pleased with the seating arrangements.

“How did he get covered in blood?” asked Seamus with great interest.

“I’ve never asked,” said Nearly Headless Nick delicately.

When everyone had eaten as much as they could, the remains of the food faded from the plates, leaving them sparkling clean as before. A moment later the desserts appeared. Blocks of ice cream in every flavor you could think of, apple pies, treacle tarts, chocolate éclairs and jam doughnuts, trifle, strawberries, Jell-O, rice pudding . . .

As Harry helped himself to a treacle tart, the talk turned to their families.

“I’m half-and-half,” said Seamus. “Me dad’s a Muggle. Mum didn’t tell him she was a witch ’til after they were married. Bit of a nasty shock for him.”

The others laughed.

“What about you, Neville?” said Ron.

“Well, my gran brought me up and she’s a witch,” said Neville, “but the family thought I was all-Muggle for ages. My Great Uncle Algie kept trying to catch me off my guard and force some magic out of me. He pushed me off the end of Blackpool pier once, I nearly drowned, but nothing happened until I was eight. Great Uncle Algie came round for dinner, and he was hanging me out of an upstairs window by the ankles when my Great Auntie Enid offered him a meringue and he accidentally let go. But I bounced all the way down the garden and into the road. They were all really pleased, Gran was crying, she was so happy. And you should have seen their faces when I got in here! They thought I might not be magic enough to come, you see. Great Uncle Algie was so pleased he bought me my toad.”

On Harry’s other side, Percy Weasley and Hermione were talking about

lessons 

“I do hope they start right away, there’s so much to learn, I’m particularly interested in Transfiguration, you know, turning something into something else, of course, it’s supposed to be very difficult-” Hermione prattled on, only just held at bay by the gently raised hand of Percy.

“You’ll be starting small, just matches into needles and that sort of thing.”

Harry, who was starting to feel warm and sleepy, looked up at the High Table again. Hagrid was drinking deeply from his goblet. Professor McGonagall was talking to Professor Dumbledore. Professor Quirrell, in his absurd turban, was talking to a teacher with greasy black hair, a hooked nose, and sallow skin.

It happened very suddenly. 

The hook-nosed teacher looked past Quirrell’s turban straight into Harry’s eyes, and a sharp, hot pain shot across the scar on Harry’s forehead.

“Ouch!” Harry clapped a hand to his head.

“What is it?” asked Percy.

“N-nothing.” Harry replied, confused and a little stunned.

The pain had gone as quickly as it had come. Harder to shake off was the feeling Harry had gotten from the teacher’s look, a feeling that he didn’t like Harry at all.

“Who’s that teacher talking to Professor Quirrell?” he asked Percy.

“Oh, you know Quirrell already, do you? No wonder he’s looking so nervous, that’s Professor Snape. He teaches Potions, but he doesn’t want to. Everyone knows he’s after Quirrell’s job. Knows an awful lot about the Dark Arts, Snape.”

Harry watched Snape for a while, but Snape didn’t look at him again.

At last, the desserts too disappeared, and Professor Dumbledore got to his feet again. 

The hall fell silent.

“Ahem, just a few more words now that we are all fed and watered. I have a few start-of-term notices to give you. First years should note that the forest on the grounds is forbidden to all pupils. And a few of our older students would do well to remember that as

Well.”

Dumbledore’s twinkling eyes flashed in the direction of the Weasley twins.

“I have also been asked by Mr. Filch, the caretaker, to remind you all that no magic should be used between classes in the corridors. Quidditch trials will be held in the second week of the term. Anyone interested in playing for their House teams should contact Madam Hooch. And finally, I must tell you that this year, the third-floor corridor on the right-hand side is out of bounds to everyone who does not wish to die a very painful death.”

Harry laughed, but he was one of the few who did.

“He’s not serious?” he muttered to Percy.

“Must be,” said Percy, frowning at Dumbledore. “It’s odd, because he usually gives us a reason why we’re not allowed to go somewhere. Tthe forest’s full of dangerous beasts, everyone knows that. I do think he might have told us prefects, at least.”

“And now, before we go to bed, let us sing the school song!” cried Dumbledore. 

Harry noticed that the other teachers’ smiles had become rather fixed, if not outright strained.

Dumbledore gave his wand a little flick, as if he was trying to get a fly off the end, and a long golden ribbon flew out of it, which rose high above the tables and twisted itself, snakelike, into words.

“Everyone pick their favorite tune,” said Dumbledore, “and off we go!”

And so the school bellowed:

“Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hoggy Warty Hogwarts,

Teach us something please, 

Whether we be old and bald 

Or young with scabby knees, 

Our heads could do with filling

With some interesting stuff, 

For now they’re bare and full of air,

 Dead flies and bits of fluff, 

So teach us things worth knowing, 

Bring back what we’ve forgot, 

Just do your best, we’ll do the rest, 

And learn until our brains all rot.”

Everybody finished the song at different times, something that Harry found as uncomfortable as someone dragging their nails down a chalkboard at a funeral. 

At last, only the Weasley twins were left singing along to a very slow funeral march. Dumbledore conducted their last few lines with his wand and when they had finished, he was one of those who clapped loudest.

“Ah, music,” he said, wiping his eyes. “A magic beyond all we do here! And now, bedtime. Off you trot!”

The Gryffindor first years followed Percy through the chattering crowds, out of the Great Hall, and up the marble staircase. Harry’s legs were like lead again, but only because he was so tired and full of food. He was too sleepy even to be surprised that the people in the portraits along the corridors whispered and pointed as they passed, or that twice Percy led them through doorways hidden behind sliding panels and hanging tapestries. They climbed more staircases, yawning and dragging their feet, and Harry was just wondering how much farther they had to go when they came to a sudden halt.

A bundle of walking sticks was floating in midair ahead of them, and as Percy took a step toward them they started throwing themselves at him.

“Peeves,” Percy whispered to the first years. “A poltergeist.” He raised his voice, “Peeves, show yourself.” A loud, rude sound, like the air being let out of a balloon, answered. “Do you want me to go to the Bloody Baron?”

There was a pop, and a little man with wicked, dark eyes and a wide mouth appeared, floating cross-legged in the air, clutching the walking sticks.

“Oooooooh!” he said, with an evil cackle. “Ickle Firsties! What fun!”

He swooped suddenly at them, and they all ducked.

“Go away, Peeves, or the Baron’ll hear about this, I mean it!” barked Percy.

Peeves stuck out his tongue and vanished, dropping the walking sticks on Neville’s head. They heard him zooming away, rattling coats of armor as he passed.

“You’ll want to watch out for Peeves,” said Percy, as they set off again. “The Bloody Baron’s the only one who can control him, he won’t even listen to us prefects. Here we are.”

At the very end of the corridor hung a portrait of a very fat woman in a pink silk dress.

“Password?” she asked.

“Caput Draconianis,” said Percy, and the portrait swung forward to reveal a round hole in the wall. They all scrambled through it, though Neville needed a leg up, and found themselves in the Gryffindor common room, a cozy, round room full of squashy armchairs.

Percy directed the girls through one door to their dormitory and the boys through another. At the top of a spiral staircase, as they were obviously in one of the towers, they found their beds at last: five four-posters hung with deep red, velvet curtains. Their trunks had already been brought up, placed at the ends of the beds. 

Too tired to talk much, they pulled on their pajamas and fell into bed.

“Great food, isn’t it?” Ron muttered to Harry through the hangings. “Get off, Scabbers! He’s chewing my sheets.”

Harry was going to ask Ron if he’d had any of the treacle tart, but he fell asleep almost at once.

Perhaps Harry had eaten a bit too much, because he had a very strange dream. He was wearing Professor Quirrell’s turban, which kept talking to him, telling him he must transfer to Slytherin at once, because it was his destiny. 

Harry told the turban he didn’t want to be in Slytherin, and it got heavier and heavier. He tried to pull it off but it tightened painfully around his head. Then there was Malfoy, laughing at him as he struggled with it. Malfoy turned into the hook-nosed teacher, Snape, whose laugh became high and cold, then there was a burst of green light and Harry woke, sweating and shaking.

He rolled over and fell asleep again, and when he woke next day, he didn’t remember the dream at all.

Chapter 4 : Book 1: Chapter 8 (adjustments)

“There, look.” 

“Where?”

“Next to the tall kid with the red hair.”

 “Wearing the glasses?”

“Did you see his face?” 

“Did you see his scar?”

Whispers followed Harry the moment he left his dormitory the next day. 

People lined up outside classrooms, stood on tiptoe to get a look at him, or doubled back to pass him in the corridors again, staring. 

Harry wished they wouldn’t, because he was trying to concentrate on finding his way to classes.

There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump. 

Then there were doors that wouldn’t open unless you asked politely, or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren’t really doors at all, but solid walls just pretending. 

It was also very hard to remember where anything was, because it all seemed to move around a lot. The people in the portraits kept going to visit each other, and Harry was sure the coats of armor could walk.

The ghosts didn’t help, either. 

It was always a nasty shock when one of them glided suddenly through a door you were trying to open. Nearly Headless Nick was always happy to point new Gryffindors in the right direction, but Peeves the Poltergeist was worth two locked doors and a trick staircase if you met him when you were late for class. 

He would drop wastepaper baskets on your head, pull rugs from under your feet, pelt you with bits of chalk, or sneak up behind you, invisible, grab your nose, and screech, “GOT YOUR CONK!”

Even worse than Peeves, if that was possible, was the caretaker, Argus Filch. 

Harry and Ron managed to get on the wrong side of him on their very first morning. Filch found them trying to force their way through a door that unluckily turned out to be the entrance to the out-of-bounds corridor on the third floor. 

He wouldn’t believe they were lost, was sure they were trying to break into it on purpose, and was threatening to lock them in the dungeons when they were rescued by Professor Quirrell, who was passing.

Filch owned a cat called Mrs. Norris, a scrawny, dust-colored creature with bulging, lamplike eyes just like Filch’s. 

She patrolled the corridors alone. 

Break a rule in front of her, put just one toe out of line, and she’d whisk off for Filch, who’d appear, wheezing, two seconds later. Filch knew the secret passageways of the school better than anyone (except perhaps the Weasley twins) and could pop up as suddenly as any of the ghosts. 

The students all hated him, and it was the dearest ambition of many to give Mrs. Norris a good kick.

And then, once you had managed to find them, there were the classes themselves. There was a lot more to magic, as Harry quickly found out, than waving your wand and saying a few funny words.

They had to study the night skies through their telescopes every Wednesday at midnight and learn the names of different stars and the movements of the planets. 

Three times a week they went out to the greenhouses behind the castle to study Herbology, with a dumpy little witch called Professor Sprout, where they learned how to take care of all the strange plants and fungi, and found out what they were used for.

Easily the most boring class was History of Magic, which was the only one taught by a ghost. Professor Binns had been very old indeed when he had fallen asleep in front of the staffroom fire and got up next morning to teach, leaving his body behind him. Binns droned on and on while they scribbled down names and dates, and got Emeric the Evil and Uric the Oddball mixed up.

Professor Flitwick, the Charms teacher, was a tiny little wizard who had to stand on a pile of books to see over his desk. At the start of their first class he took the roll call, and when he reached Harry’s name he gave an excited squeak and toppled out of sight.

Professor McGonagall was, again, different. Harry had been quite right to think she wasn’t a teacher to cross. Strict and clever, she gave them a talking to the moment they sat down in her first class.

“Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts,” she said. “Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned.”

Then she changed her desk into a pig and back again. They were all very impressed and couldn’t wait to get started, but soon realized they weren’t going to be changing the furniture into animals for a long time. After taking a lot of complicated notes, they were each given a match and started trying to turn it into a needle. By the end of the lesson, only Hermione Granger had made any difference to her match; Professor McGonagall showed the class how it had gone all silver and pointy and gave Hermione a rare smile.

The class everyone had really been looking forward to was Defense Against the Dark Arts, but Quirrell’s lessons turned out to be a bit of a joke. 

His classroom smelled strongly of garlic, which everyone said was to ward off a vampire he’d met in Romania and was afraid would be coming back to get him one of these days. His turban, he told them, had been given to him by an African prince as a thank-you for getting rid of a troublesome zombie, but they weren’t sure they believed this story. 

For one thing, when Seamus Finnigan asked eagerly to hear how Quirrell had fought off the zombie, Quirrell went pink and started talking about the weather; for another, they had noticed that a funny smell hung around the turban, and the Weasley twins insisted that it was stuffed full of garlic as well, so that Quirrell was protected wherever he went.

Harry was very relieved to find out that he wasn’t miles behind everyone else. Lots of people had come from Muggle families and, like him, hadn’t had any idea that they were witches and wizards. There was so much to learn that even people like Ron didn’t have much of a head start.

Friday was an important day for Harry and Ron. They finally managed to find their way down to the Great Hall for breakfast without getting lost once.

“What have we got today?” Harry asked Ron as he poured sugar on his porridge.

“Double Potions with the Slytherins,” said Ron. “Snape’s Head of Slytherin House. They say he always favors them, so we’ll be able to see if it’s true.”

“Wish McGonagall favored us,” said Harry.

Professor McGonagall was head of Gryffindor House, but it hadn’t stopped her from giving them a huge pile of homework the day before.

Just then, the mail arrived. 

Harry had gotten used to this by now, but it had given him a bit of a shock on the first morning, when about a hundred owls had suddenly streamed into the Great Hall during breakfast. Circling the tables until they saw their owners, they then dropped letters and packages onto their laps.

Hedwig hadn’t brought Harry anything so far. She sometimes flew in to nibble his ear and have a bit of toast before going off to sleep in the owlery with the other school owls. This morning, however, she fluttered down between the marmalade and the sugar bowl and dropped a note onto Harry’s plate. Harry tore it open at once. 

It said, in a very untidy scrawl:

Dear Harry,

I know you get Friday afternoons off, so would you like to come and have a cup of tea with me around three? I want to hear all about your first week. Send us an answer back with Hedwig. 

Hagrid

Harry borrowed Ron’s quill, scribbled, “Yes, please, see you later”, on the back of the note, and sent Hedwig off again.

It was lucky that Harry had tea with Hagrid to look forward to, because the Potions lesson turned out to be the worst thing that had happened to him so far.

At the start-of-term banquet, Harry had gotten the idea that Professor Snape disliked him. By the end of the first Potions lesson, he knew he’d been wrong. 

Snape didn’t dislike Harry.

He hated him.

Potions lessons took place down in one of the dungeons. It was colder here than up in the main castle, and would have been quite creepy enough without the pickled animals floating in glass jars all around the walls. Snape, like Flitwick, started the class by taking the roll call, and like Flitwick, he paused at Harry’s name.

“Ah, yes,” he said softly, “Harry Potter. Our new… celebrity.”

Draconia Malfoy pressed her lips together in a rather annoyed fashioned as her friends Crabbe and Goyle sniggered behind their hands. 

Snape finished calling the names and looked up at the class. His eyes were black like Hagrid’s, but they had none of Hagrid’s warmth. They were cold, empty, and made you think of dark tunnels.

“You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making,” he began. He spoke in barely more than a whisper, but they caught every word. Like Professor McGonagall, Snape had the gift of keeping a class silent without effort. “As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don’t expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses. . . . I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death… if you aren’t as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach.”

More silence followed this little speech. 

Harry and Ron exchanged looks with raised eyebrows.

Draconia Malfoy  looked rather bored, resting her chin on her palm as she doodled in her personal notebook with a quill. 

Hermione Granger was on the edge of her seat and looked desperate to start proving that she wasn’t a dunderhead.

“Potter!” said Snape suddenly, both Harry and the room snapping into a surprised jerk as Malfoy’s quill splattered ink across her page. “What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?”

Powdered root of what to an infusion of what? Harry thought to himself, his blinking eyes wide.

Harry glanced at Ron, who looked as stumped as he was, though Hermione’s hand had shot into the air.

“I don’t know, sir,” said Harry.

Snape’s lips curled into a sneer.

“Tut, tut, fame clearly isn’t everything.”

He ignored Hermione’s hand. “Let’s try again. Potter, where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?”

Hermione stretched her hand as high into the air as it would go without her leaving her seat, but Harry didn’t have the faintest idea what a bezoar was. “I don’t know, sir.”

“Thought you wouldn’t open a book before coming, eh, Potter?”

Harry forced himself to keep looking straight into those cold eyes. 

He had looked through his books at the Dursleys’, but did Snape expect him to remember everything in One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi?

Snape was still ignoring Hermione’s quivering hand.

“What is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?”

At this, Hermione stood up, her hand stretching toward the dungeon ceiling.

“I don’t know,” said Harry quietly. “I think Hermione does, though, why don’t you try her?”

A few people laughed. Harry caught Seamus’s eye, and Seamus winked. 

Snape, however, was not pleased.

“Sit down,” he snapped at Hermione, then turned back to Harry. “For your information, Potter, asphodel and wormwood make a sleeping potion so powerful it is known as the Draught of Living Death. A bezoar is a stone taken from the stomach of a goat and it will save you from most poisons. As for monkshood and wolfsbane, they are the same plant, which also goes by the name of aconite. Well? Why aren’t you all copying that down?”

There was a sudden rummaging for quills and parchment. 

Over the noise, Snape said, “And a point will be taken from Gryffindor House for your cheek, Potter.”

Things didn’t improve for the Gryffindors as the Potions lesson continued. 

Snape put them all into pairs and set them to mixing up a simple potion to cure boils. He swept around in his long black cloak, watching them weigh dried nettles and crush snake fangs, criticizing almost everyone except Malfoy, whom he seemed to like. 

He was just telling everyone to look at the perfect way Malfoy had stewed her horned slugs when clouds of acid green smoke and a loud hissing filled the dungeon. 

Neville had somehow managed to melt Seamus’s cauldron into a twisted blob, and their potion was seeping across the stone floor, burning holes in people’s shoes. Within seconds, the whole class was standing on their stools while Neville, who had been drenched in the potion when the cauldron collapsed, moaned in pain as angry red boils sprang up all over his arms and legs.

“Idiot boy!” snarled Snape, clearing the spilled potion away with one wave of his wand. “I suppose you added the porcupine quills before taking the cauldron off the fire?”

Neville whimpered as boils started to pop up all over his nose.

“Take him up to the hospital wing,” Snape spat at Seamus. 

Then he rounded on Harry and Ron, who had been working next to Neville.

“You, Potter, why didn’t you tell him not to add the quills? Thought he’d make you look good if he got it wrong, did you? That’s another point you’ve lost for Gryffindor.”

This was so unfair that Harry opened his mouth to argue, but Ron kicked him behind their cauldron.

“Don’t push it,” he muttered, “I’ve heard Snape can turn very nasty.”

Harry bit his tongue, his jaw flexing as he fought to not grind his teeth, but he found it rather hard to stay calm when he heard Malfoy mutter “Potter” from her side of the room, pulling giggles from Slytherines around her.

As they climbed the steps out of the dungeon an hour later, Harry’s mind was racing and his spirits were low. 

He’d lost two points for Gryffindor in his very first week, just why did Snape hate him so much?

“Cheer up,” said Ron, “Snape’s always taking points off Fred and George. Can I come and meet Hagrid with you?”

At five to three they left the castle and made their way across the grounds. Hagrid lived in a small wooden house on the edge of the forbidden forest. A crossbow and a pair of galoshes were outside the front door.

When Harry knocked they heard a frantic scrabbling from inside and several booming barks. Then Hagrid’s voice rang out, saying, “Back, Fang — back.”

Hagrid’s big, hairy face appeared in the crack as he pulled the door open.

“Hang on,” he said. “Back, Fang.”

He let them in, struggling to keep a hold on the collar of an enormous black boarhound.

There was only one room inside. 

Hams and pheasants were hanging from the ceiling, a copper kettle was boiling on the open fire, and in the corner stood a massive bed with a patchwork quilt over it.

“Make yerselves at home,” said Hagrid, letting go of Fang, who bounded straight at Ron and started licking his ears. 

Like Hagrid, Fang was clearly not as fierce as he looked.

“This is Ron,” Harry told Hagrid, who was pouring boiling water into a large teapot and putting rock cakes onto a plate.

“Another Weasley, eh?” said Hagrid, glancing at Ron’s freckles. “I spent half me life chasin’ yer twin brothers away from the forest.”

The rock cakes were shapeless lumps with raisins that almost broke their teeth, but Harry and Ron pretended to be enjoying them as they told Hagrid all about their first lessons. 

Fang rested his head on Harry’s knee and drooled all over his robes.

Harry and Ron were delighted to hear Hagrid call Filch “that old git.”

“An’ as fer that cat, Mrs. Norris, I’d like ter introduce her to Fang sometime. D’yeh know, every time I go up ter the school, she follows me everywhere? Can’t get rid of her. Filch puts her up to it.”

Harry told Hagrid about Snape’s lesson. 

Hagrid, like Ron, told Harry not to worry about it, that Snape liked hardly any of the students.

“But he seemed to really hate me.” 

“Rubbish!” said Hagrid. “Why should he?”

Yet Harry couldn’t help thinking that Hagrid didn’t quite meet his eyes when he said that.

“How’s yer brother Charlie?” Hagrid asked Ron. “I liked him a lot, great with animals.”

Harry wondered if Hagrid had changed the subject on purpose. 

While Ron told Hagrid all about Charlie’s work with dragons, Harry picked up a piece of paper that was lying on the table under the tea cozy. It was a cutting from the Daily Prophet:

GRINGOTTS BREAK-IN LATEST

Investigations continue into the break-in at Gringotts on 31 July, widely believed to be the work of Dark wizards or witches unknown.

Gringotts goblins today insisted that nothing had been taken. The vault that was searched had in fact been emptied the same day.

“But we’re not telling you what was in there, so keep your noses out if you know what’s good for you,” said a Gringotts spokesgoblin this afternoon.

Harry remembered Ron telling him on the train that someone had tried to rob Gringotts, but Ron hadn’t mentioned the date.

“Hagrid!” said Harry, “that Gringotts break-in happened on my birthday! It might’ve been happening while we were there!”

There was no doubt about it, Hagrid definitely didn’t meet Harry’s eyes this time. 

He grunted and offered him another rock cake. 

Harry read the story again. The vault that was searched had in fact been emptied earlier that same day. Hagrid had emptied vault seven hundred and thirteen, if you could call it emptying, taking out that grubby little package. 

Had that been what the thieves were looking for?

As Harry and Ron walked back to the castle for dinner, their pockets weighed down with rock cakes they’d been too polite to refuse, Harry thought that none of the lessons he’d had so far had given him as much to think about as tea with Hagrid. 

Had Hagrid collected that package just in time? Where was it now? And did Hagrid know something about Snape that he didn’t want to tell Harry?

Chapter 5 : Book 1: Chapter 9 (heavy adjustments, additions)

Harry had never believed he would meet a kid he hated more than Dudley, but that was before he met Draconia Malfoy. 

Still, first-year Gryffindors only had Potions with the Slytherins, so they didn’t have to put up with Malfoy much. Or at least, they didn’t until they spotted a notice pinned up in the Gryffindor common room that made them all groan. 

Flying lessons would be starting on Thursday, with Gryffindor and Slytherin learning together.

“Typical,” said Harry darkly. “Just what I always wanted. To make a fool of myself on a broomstick in front of that little brat.”

He had been looking forward to learning to fly more than anything else, but now a lot of annoyance was riding sidebroom with it.

“You don’t know that you’ll make a fool of yourself,” said Ron reasonably. “Anyway, I know Malfoy’s always going on about how good she is at Quidditch, but I bet that’s all talk.”

Malfoy certainly did talk about flying a lot. She complained loudly about first years never getting on the House Quidditch teams and told long, boastful stories that always seemed to end with her narrowly escaping Muggles in helicopters. 

He wasn’t the only one, though: the way Seamus Finnigan told it, he’d spent most of his childhood zooming around the countryside on his broomstick. 

Even Ron would tell anyone who’d listen about the time he’d almost hit a hang glider on Charlie’s old broom. 

Everyone from wizarding families talked about Quidditch constantly. Ron had already had a big argument with Dean Thomas, who shared their dormitory, about soccer. Ron couldn’t see what was exciting about a game with only one ball where no one was allowed to fly. 

Harry had also caught Ron prodding Dean’s poster of West Ham soccer team, trying to make the players move.

Neville had never been on a broomstick in his life, because his grandmother had never let him near one. Privately, Harry felt she’d had good reason, because Neville managed to have an extraordinary number of accidents even with both feet on the ground.

Hermione Granger was almost as nervous about flying as Neville was. This was something you couldn’t learn by heart out of a book… not that she hadn’t tried. 

At breakfast on Thursday she bored them all stupid with flying tips she’d gotten out of a library book called Quidditch Through the Ages. Neville was hanging on to her every word, desperate for anything that might help him hang on to his broomstick later, but everybody else was very pleased when Hermione’s lecture was interrupted by the arrival of the mail.

Harry hadn’t had a single letter since Hagrid’s note, something that Malfoy had been quick to notice, of course. 

Malfoy’s eagle owl was always bringing her packages of sweets from home, which she opened gloatingly at the Slytherin table. A few times, when all the other students had idled away or were busy, she had offered Harry what was left over, usually a few neatly wrapped candies or small cakes in ornate little boxes.

It would have been nice if it wasn’t for the smug smile on her face when she offered them, as if she were offering him some unknown treat and that he should have been flattered at such gift.

He had yet to take one, despite how good some of them looked, instead saying “No thank you” curtly and smiling to himself when she looked annoyed.

A few times she had slammed the refused items in trash bins with a whip of her hand, not realizing that Harry had been near enough to either see or hear it.

A barn owl brought Neville a small package from his grandmother. He opened it excitedly and showed them a glass ball the size of a large marble, which seemed to be full of white smoke.

“It’s a Remembrall!” he explained. “Gran knows I forget things. This tells you if there’s something you’ve forgotten to do. Look, you hold it tight like this and if it turns red… oh.” His face fell, because the Remembrall had suddenly glowed scarlet, “. . . you’ve forgotten something . . .”

Neville was trying to remember what he’d forgotten when Draconia Malfoy, who was passing the Gryffindor table, snatched the Remembrall out of his hand with a flick of her fingers.

Harry and Ron jumped to their feet, something that made Malfoy raise her brows as she spun the Remembrall on her palm. 

They were half hoping for a reason to fight Malfoy, but Professor McGonagall, who could spot trouble quicker than any teacher in the school, was there in a flash. 

“What’s going on?” She asked sharply.

“Malfoy’s got my Remembrall, Professor.” Neville cried out, pointing at Malfoy with a plump finger.

Scowling, Malfoy quickly dropped the Remembrall back on the table. 

“Just looking,” she said, then stepped away with Crabbe and Goyle behind

Her.

At three-thirty that afternoon, Harry, Ron, and the other Gryffindors hurried down the front steps onto the grounds for their first flying lesson. 

It was a clear, breezy day, and the grass rippled under their feet as they marched down the sloping lawns toward a smooth, flat lawn on the opposite side of the grounds to the forbidden forest, whose trees were swaying darkly in the distance.

The Slytherins were already there, and so were twenty broomsticks lying in neat lines on the ground. Harry had heard Fred and George Weasley complain about the school brooms, saying that some of them started to vibrate if you flew too high, or always flew slightly to the left.

Their teacher, Madam Hooch, arrived. She had short, gray hair, and yellow eyes like a hawk. She showed them flying gear, also owned by the school and it looked like it, as well as how to put it on. Once they had all figured out how to wear their gear, they all stood there awkwardly, looking at her.

“Well, what are you all waiting for?” she barked. “Everyone stand by a broomstick. Come on, hurry up.”

Harry glanced down at his broom. It was old and some of the twigs stuck out at odd angles.

“Stick out your right hand over your broom,” called Madam Hooch at the front, “and say ‘Up!’”

“UP!” everyone shouted.

Harry’s broom jumped into his hand at once, but it was one of the few that did. 

Malfoy looked quite surprised that Harry’s broom had lunged into his hand like that, eyes wide as she held her hand over her own wiggling broom.

Harry looked over at her, broom happily clutched in his hand. “What?”

“Nothing.” Malfoy snapped quickly, then brought her eyebrows together and glared down at her broom, “Up!”

The broom snapped into her palm, and she smiled triumphantly at Harry.

Hermione Granger’s had simply rolled over on the ground like a lazy cat, while Neville’s hadn’t moved at all. 

Harry frowned as Ron was also having trouble, knowing exactly what was going through the blonde girl’s head.

“See, Potter?” Malfoy hiss-whispered over at him. “I told you that not all wizarding families are the same.”

Perhaps brooms, like horses, could tell when you were afraid, Harry assumed, turning away from Malfoy. There was a quaver in Neville’s voice that said only too clearly that he wanted to keep his feet on the ground.

When everyone had managed to pull their brooms from the ground, the lesson continued.

Madam Hooch then showed them how to mount their brooms without sliding off the end, and walked up and down the rows correcting their grips. 

Harry and Ron were delighted when she told Malfoy she’d been doing it wrong for years, which formed the girl’s once smugly smiling lips into an angry, furious line.

“Now, when I blow my whistle, you kick off from the ground, hard,” said Madam Hooch. “Keep your brooms steady, rise a few feet, and then come straight back down by leaning forward slightly. On my whistle — three — two —”

But Neville, nervous and jumpy and frightened of being left on the ground, pushed off hard before the whistle had touched Madam Hooch’s lips.

“Come back, boy!” she shouted, but Neville was rising straight up like a cork shot out of a bottle. He passed twelve feet, then twenty feet, and didn’t appear to be slowing. 

Harry saw his scared white face look down at the ground falling away, saw him gasp, slip sideways off the broom and-

With a meaty thud of thick body to ground followed by a nasty crack, Neville lay facedown on the grass in a heap. 

His broomstick was still rising higher and higher, and started to drift lazily toward the forbidden forest and out of sight.

Madam Hooch was bending over Neville, her face as white as his.

“Broken wrist,” Harry heard her mutter. “Come on, boy, it’s all right, up you get.”

She turned to the rest of the class.

“None of you is to move while I take this boy to the hospital wing! You leave those brooms where they are or you’ll be out of Hogwarts before you can say ‘Quidditch.’ Come on, dear.”

Neville, his face tear-streaked, clutching his wrist, hobbled off with Madam Hooch, who had her arm around him.

No sooner were they out of earshot did Malfoy burst into laughter.

“Did you see his face? The great lump hit the ground like a cauldron dropped from a window!” She giggled, half bent over with her laughter.

The other Slytherins joined in, not finding much compassion for Neville.

“Oh shut up, Malfoy,” snapped Parvati Patil.

“Ooh, sticking up for Longbottom?” said Pansy Parkinson, a hard-faced Slytherin girl. “Never thought you’d like fat little crybabies, Parvati.”

“Look!” said Malfoy, darting forward and snatching something out of the grass. “It’s that stupid thing Longbottom’s gran sent him.”

The Remembrall glittered in the sun as she held it up.

“Give that here, Malfoy,” said Harry quietly. 

Everyone stopped talking to watch.

Malfoy blinked at Harry, then a bemused smile crept across her lips. “I think I may leave it somewhere for Longbottom to find. How about… up a tree?”

“Give it here!” Harry yelled, but Malfoy had leapt onto her broomstick and taken off, hovering above him out of reach. 

She hadn’t been lying, she could fly well. 

Hovering level with the topmost branches of an oak she slowly kicked her feet from side to side as she sat on her broom, dangling the Remembrall towards Harry with her fingers. “Come and get it, Potter!”

Harry grabbed his broom.

“No!” shouted Hermione Granger. “Madam Hooch told us not to move, you’ll get us all into trouble!”

Harry ignored her. 

Blood was pounding in his ears. 

He mounted the broom and kicked hard against the ground and up, up he soared; air rushed through his hair, his robes whipped out behind him, and in a rush of fierce joy he realized he’d found something he could do without being taught.

This was easy.

This was wonderful. 

He pulled his broomstick up a little to take it even higher, and heard screams and gasps of girls back on the ground as well as an admiring whoop from Ron.

He turned his broomstick sharply to face Malfoy in midair. 

Malfoy looked stunned, her hand still holding out the Remembrall stupidly as she gazed at Harry with wide, surprised eyes.

“Give it here,” Harry called, “or I’ll knock you off that broom!”

“Knock me off my broom?!” Malfoy called back, trying to sneer but looking rather worried about the prospect. “I’d like to see you try, Potter.”

Harry knew, somehow, what to do. 

He leaned forward and grasped the broom tightly in both hands, and it shot toward Malfoy like a javelin. 

Malfoy only just got out of the way in time, diving down with a panicked yell as she brought the Remembrall to her chest. 

Harry made a sharp about-face and held the broom steady as Malfoy came around in front of him, her eyes narrowed. 

A few people below were clapping.

“No Crabbe and Goyle up here to save your neck, Malfoy,” Harry called out, turning his broom and slowly drifting towards her.

The same thought seemed to have struck Malfoy, and she leaned back on her broom.

“Catch it if you can, then!” She shouted, and she tossed the glass ball into the air softly before punting it with her flying boot.

Harry saw, as though in slow motion, the ball arc up through the air and then start to fall. 

He leaned forward and pointed his broom handle down. The next second he was gathering speed in a steep dive, racing the ball as it glinted down to the ground. Wind whistled in his ears, mingled with the screams of people watching. He stretched out his hand, a foot from the ground, and he caught it, just in time to pull his broom straight. Unfortunately he was just slightly too low, the grass hissing against the tips of his flying boots before the soil under it grabbed his toes. Slow enough to not break any bones, he toppled gently onto the grass in a roll with the Remembrall clutched safely in his fist, coming to a sliding stop on his rump.

“HARRY POTTER!”

His heart sank faster than he’d just dived. 

Professor McGonagall was running toward them, and from how she was holding her dress robes, she was putting on some speed too. 

He got to his feet, trembling.

“Never! In all my time at Hogwarts-!” Professor McGonagall was almost speechless with shock, and her glasses flashed furiously, “How dare you! Might have broken your neck-!”

“It wasn’t his fault, Professor-”

“Be quiet, Miss Patil.”

“But Malfoy-”

“That’s enough, Mr. Weasley. Potter, follow me, now.”

Harry caught sight of Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle’s triumphant faces as he left, walking numbly in Professor McGonagall’s wake as she strode toward the castle. 

He was going to be expelled, he just knew it. 

He wanted to say something to defend himself, but there seemed to be something wrong with his voice. 

Professor McGonagall was sweeping along without even looking at him. He had to jog to keep up. 

Now he’d done it. 

He hadn’t even lasted two weeks. 

He’d be packing his bags in ten minutes. 

What would the Dursleys say when he turned up on the doorstep?

Up the front steps, up the marble staircase inside, and still Professor McGonagall didn’t say a word to him. She wrenched open doors and marched along corridors with Harry trotting miserably behind her. 

Maybe she was taking him to Dumbledore. 

He thought of Hagrid, expelled but allowed to stay on as gamekeeper. 

Perhaps he could be Hagrid’s assistant. 

His stomach twisted as he imagined it, watching Ron and the others becoming wizards while he stumped around the grounds carrying Hagrid’s bag.

Professor McGonagall stopped outside a classroom. She opened the door and poked her head inside.

“Excuse me, Professor Flitwick, could I borrow Wood for a moment?”

Wood? thought Harry, bewildered. 

Was Wood some kind of magical cane she was going to use on him?

But Wood turned out to be a person, a burly fifth-year boy who came out of Flitwick’s class looking confused.

“Follow me, you two,” said Professor McGonagall, and they marched on up the corridor, Wood looking curiously at Harry. “In here.”

Professor McGonagall pointed them into a classroom that was empty except for Peeves, who was busy writing rude words on the blackboard.

“Out, Peeves!” she barked. Peeves threw the chalk into a bin, which clanged loudly, and he swooped out cursing.

 Professor McGonagall slammed the door behind him and turned to face the two boys. “Potter, this is Oliver Wood. Wood. I’ve found you a Seeker.”

Wood’s expression changed from puzzlement to delight. “Are you serious, Professor?”

“Absolutely,” said Professor McGonagall crisply. “The boy’s a natural. I’ve never seen anything like it. Was that your first time on a broomstick, Potter?”

Harry nodded silently. He didn’t have a clue what was going on, but he didn’t seem to be being expelled, and some of the feeling started coming back to his legs.

“He caught that thing in his hand after a fifty-foot dive,” Professor McGonagall told Wood. “Didn’t even scratch himself. Charlie Weasley couldn’t have done it.”

Wood was now looking as though all his dreams had come true at once.

“Ever seen a game of Quidditch, Potter?” he asked excitedly.

“Wood’s captain of the Gryffindor team,” Professor McGonagall explained.

“He’s just the build for a Seeker, too,” said Wood, now walking around Harry and staring at him. “Light,  speedy, we’ll have to get him a decent broom, Professor. A Nimbus Two Thousand or a Cleansweep Seven, I’d say.”

“I shall speak to Professor Dumbledore and see if we can’t bend the firstyear rule. Heaven knows, we need a better team than last year. Flattened in that last match by Slytherin, I couldn’t look Severus Snape in the face for weeks. . . .” Professor McGonagall groused, then peered sternly over her glasses at Harry. “I want to hear you’re training hard, Potter, or I may change my mind about punishing you.”

Then she suddenly smiled.

“Your father would have been proud,” she said. “He was an excellent Quidditch player himself.”

“You’re joking.” Harry gasped, running the his riding glove through his hand as he laughed.

“Oh yes,” Professor McGonagall replied with a nod. “I got to watch him all through his time here at Hogwarts.”

Harry, for as long as he could, stood in front of McGonagall and let her tell him all about his father in his youth. He was fascinated as she recounted the stories of him on his broom, his games, but he felt an odd lump begin to  form in his throat.

This was, as far as he could remember or think, the closest he had been to his father since he was just a baby. He looked down at the broom in his hand, then to the old gear…

… Did he father also wear this? During his early days at Hogwarts?

Professor McGonagall saw the look in Harry’s eyes, then realized she had kidnapped both Wood and Harry for nearly twenty minutes. “Oh! Good heavens, what are we doing? Go back to class, the both of you! Wood, meet with Harry after dinner and get him set up with how everything works.”

Soon enough, it was dinnertime. 

Harry had just finished telling Ron what had happened when he’d left the grounds with Professor McGonagall. 

Ron had a piece of steak and kidney pie halfway to his mouth, but he’d forgotten all about it.

“Seeker?” he said. “But first years never-, you must be the youngest House player in about-”

“A century,” said Harry, shoveling pie into his mouth. He felt particularly hungry after the excitement of the afternoon. “Wood told me.”

Ron was so amazed, so impressed that he just sat and gaped at Harry.

“I start training next week,” said Harry. “Only don’t tell anyone, Wood wants to keep it a secret.”

Fred and George Weasley now came into the hall, spotted Harry, and hurried over.

“Well done,” said George in a low voice. “Wood told us. We’re on the team too, Beaters.”

“I tell you, we’re going to win that Quidditch Cup for sure this year,” said Fred. “We haven’t won since Charlie left, but this year’s team is going to be brilliant. You must be good, Harry, Wood was almost skipping when he told us.”

“Anyway, we’ve got to go, Lee Jordan reckons he’s found a new secret passageway out of the school.”

“Bet it’s that one behind the statue of Gregory the Smarmy that we found in our first week. See you.”

Fred and George had hardly disappeared when someone far less welcome turned up: Malfoy, flanked by Crabbe and Goyle.

“Having a last meal, Potter?” She asked, folding her arms as she glanced at Ron, Neville, and Hermonie who sat around him. “When are you getting the train back to the Muggles?”

“You’re a lot braver now that you’re back on the ground and you’ve got your little friends with you,” said Harry coolly. 

There was of course nothing at all little about Crabbe and Goyle, but as the High Table was full of teachers, neither of them could do more than crack their knuckles and scowl.

“I’d take you on anytime on my own!” said Malfoy furiously, having been getting quite a ribbing from the other Slytherins since Harry had been frog marched away by Professor McGonagall. She then lowered her voice as she put her hand in her wand pocket. “Tonight, if you want. Wizard’s duel. Wands only, no contact.” When Harry squinted his eyes at her, she pursed her lips at him mockingly. “What’s the matter? Never heard of a wizard’s duel before, I suppose?”

“Of course he has,” said Ron, wheeling around. “I’m his second, who’s yours?”

Malfoy looked at Crabbe and Goyle, sizing them up.

“Crabbe,” she said. “Midnight all right? We’ll meet you in the trophy room. That’s always unlocked. Don’t be late, Potter.”

When Malfoy had gone, Ron and Harry looked at each other.

“What is a wizard’s duel?” asked Harry. “And what do you mean, you’re my second?”

“Well, a second’s there to take over if you die,” said Ron casually, getting started at last on his cold pie. Catching the look on Harry’s face, he added quickly, “But people only die in proper duels, you know, with real wizards. The most you and Malfoy’ll be able to do is send sparks at each other. Neither of you knows enough magic to do any real damage. I bet she expected you to refuse, anyway.”

“And what if I wave my wand and nothing happens?” 

“Throw it away and punch her in the forehead,” Ron suggested. 

“Excuse me.”

They both looked up. 

It was Hermione Granger. 

“Can’t a person eat in peace in this place?” said Ron. 

Hermione ignored him and spoke to Harry. “I couldn’t help overhearing what you and Malfoy were saying-” 

“Bet you could,” Ron muttered.

“-and you mustn’t go wandering around the school at night, think of the points you’ll lose Gryffindor if you’re caught, and you’re bound to be. It’s really very selfish of you.”

“And it’s really none of your business,” said Harry. 

“Good-bye,” said Ron with a dismissive wave.

All the same, it wasn’t what you’d call the perfect end to the day, Harry thought, as he lay awake much later listening to Dean and Seamus falling asleep.

Neville wasn’t back from the hospital wing, something about his bones snapping like twigs and needing mending. 

Ron had spent all evening giving him advice such as “If he tries to curse you, you’d better dodge it, because I can’t remember how to block them.” There was a very good chance they were going to get caught by Filch or Mrs. Norris, and Harry felt he was pushing his luck, breaking another school rule today. 

On the other hand, Malfoy’s sneering face kept looming up out of the darkness, and this was his big chance to beat Malfoy face-to-face. 

He couldn’t miss it.

“Half-past eleven,” Ron muttered at last, “we’d better go.”

They pulled on their bathrobes, picked up their wands, crept across the tower room, down the spiral staircase, and into the Gryffindor common room. 

A few embers were still glowing in the fireplace, turning all the armchairs into hunched black shadows. They had almost reached the portrait hole when a voice spoke from the chair nearest them.

“I can’t believe you’re going to do this, Harry.”

A lamp flickered on. It was Hermione Granger, wearing a pink bathrobe and a frown.

“You!” said Ron furiously. “Go back to bed!”

“I almost told your brother,” Hermione snapped, “Percy, he’s a prefect, he’d put a stop to this.”

Harry couldn’t believe anyone could be so interfering.

“Come on,” he said to Ron. He pushed open the portrait of the Fat Lady and climbed through the hole.

Hermione wasn’t going to give up that easily, though. She followed Ron through the portrait hole, hissing at them like an angry goose.

“Don’t you care about Gryffindor, do you only care about yourselves? I don’t want Slytherin to win the House Cup, and you’ll lose all the points I got from Professor McGonagall for knowing about Switching Spells!” She hissed behind Ron, her slippers tapping along behind him.

“Go away!” Ron hissed right back, making shooing motions at her with his hands.

“All right, but I warned you, you just remember what I said when you’re on the train home tomorrow, you’re so-”

But what they were, they didn’t find out. 

Hermione had turned to the portrait of the Fat Lady to get back inside and found herself facing an empty painting. 

The Fat Lady had gone on a nighttime visit and Hermione was locked out of Gryffindor Tower.

“Now what am I going to do?” she asked shrilly.

“That’s your problem,” said Ron. “We’ve got to go, we’re going to be late.”

They hadn’t even reached the end of the corridor when Hermione caught up with them.

“I’m coming with you,” she said.

“You are not.” Ron groaned, trying to increase his step length to outpace her.

“D’you think I’m going to stand out here and wait for Filch to catch me? If he finds all three of us I’ll tell him the truth, that I was trying to stop you, and you can back me up.” Hermoine groused, rapidly stepping along behind Ron and Harry.

“You’ve got some nerve —” said Ron loudly.

“Shut up, both of you!” said Harry sharply. “I heard something.”

It was a sort of snuffling.

“Mrs. Norris?” breathed Ron, squinting through the dark.

It wasn’t Mrs. Norris. 

It was Neville. 

He was curled up on the floor, fast asleep, but jerked suddenly awake as they crept nearer. “Thank goodness you found me! I’ve been out here for hours, I couldn’t remember the new password to get in to bed.”

Hermione clicked her tongue at Neville, her hands on her hips “Keep your voice down, Neville. The password’s ‘Pig snout’ but it won’t help you now, the Fat Lady’s gone off somewhere.”

“How’s your arm?” asked Harry.

“Fine,” said Neville, showing them. “Madam Pomfrey mended it in about a minute.”

“Good. Well, look, Neville, we’ve got to be somewhere, we’ll see you later-” Harry began, moving to step around the boy.

“Don’t leave me!” squeaked Neville, scrambling to his feet, “I don’t want to stay here alone, the Bloody Baron’s been past twice already.”

Ron looked at his watch and then glared furiously at Hermione and Neville. “If either of you get us caught, I’ll never rest until I’ve learned that Curse of the Bogies Quirrell told us about, and used it on you.”

Hermione opened her mouth, perhaps to tell Ron exactly how to use the Curse of the Bogies, but Harry hissed at her to be quiet and beckoned them all forward.

They flitted along corridors striped with bars of moonlight from the high windows. At every turn Harry expected to run into Filch or Mrs. Norris, but they were lucky. They sped up a staircase to the third floor and tiptoed toward the trophy room.

Malfoy and Crabbe weren’t there yet. 

The crystal trophy cases glimmered where the moonlight caught them. Cups, shields, plates, and statues winked silver and gold in the darkness. They edged along the walls, keeping their eyes on the doors at either end of the room. Harry took out his wand in case Malfoy leapt in and started at once.

The minutes crept by.

“He’s late, maybe she’s chickened out,” Ron whispered.

Then a noise in the next room made them jump. Harry had only just raised his wand when they heard someone speak, and it wasn’t Malfoy.

“Sniff around, my sweet, they might be lurking in a corner.”

It was Filch speaking to Mrs. Norris. Horror-struck, Harry waved madly at the other three to follow him as quickly as possible. They scurried silently toward the door, away from Filch’s voice. 

Neville’s robes had barely whipped round the corner when they heard Filch enter the trophy room.

“They’re in here somewhere,” they heard him mutter, “probably hiding.”

“This way!” Harry mouthed to the others and, petrified, they began to creep down a long gallery full of suits of armor. 

They could hear Filch getting nearer. 

Neville suddenly let out a frightened squeak and broke into a run, but he tripped, grabbed Ron around the waist, and the pair of them toppled right into a suit of armor.

The clanging and crashing were enough to wake the whole castle.

“RUN!” Harry yelled, and the four of them sprinted down the gallery, not looking back to see whether Filch was following. 

They swung around the doorpost and galloped down one corridor, then another, Harry in the lead, without any idea where they were or where they were going. They ripped

through a tapestry and found themselves in a hidden passageway, hurtled along it and came out near their Charms classroom, which they knew was miles from the trophy room.

“I think we’ve lost him,” Harry panted, leaning against the cold wall and wiping his forehead. 

Neville was bent double, wheezing and spluttering.

“I — told — you,” Hermione gasped, clutching at the stitch in her chest, “I — told — you.”

“We’ve got to get back to Gryffindor Tower,” said Ron, “quickly as possible.”

“Malfoy tricked you,” Hermione said to Harry. “You realize that, don’t you? She was never going to meet you. Filch knew someone was going to be in the trophy room, Malfoy must have tipped him off.”

Harry thought she was probably right, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. “Let’s go.”

It wasn’t going to be that simple. They hadn’t gone more than a dozen paces when a doorknob rattled and something came shooting out of a classroom in front of them.

It was Peeves. 

He caught sight of them and gave a squeal of delight.

“Shut up, Peeves! Please! You’ll get us thrown out.” Harry panted at the poltergeist.

Peeves cackled. “Wandering around at midnight, Ickle Firsties? Tut, tut, tut. Naughty, naughty, you’ll get caughty.”

“Not if you don’t give us away, Peeves, please.” Ron panted through pained breathing.

“Should tell Filch, I should,” said Peeves in a saintly voice, but his eyes glittered wickedly. “It’s for your own good, you know.”

“Get out of the way,” snapped Ron, taking a swipe at Peeves, though his was a big mistake.

“STUDENTS OUT OF BED!” Peeves bellowed, “STUDENTS OUT OF BED DOWN THE CHARMS CORRIDOR!”

Ducking under Peeves, they ran for their lives, right to the end of the corridor where they slammed into a door, and it was locked.

“This is it!” Ron moaned, as they pushed helplessly at the door, “We’re done for! This is the end!”

They could hear footsteps, Filch running as fast as he could toward Peeves’s shouts.

“Oh, move over,” Hermione snarled. She grabbed Harry’s wand, tapped the lock, and whispered, “Alohomora!”

The lock clicked, and the door swung open. They piled through it, shut it quickly, and pressed their ears against it, listening.

“Which way did they go, Peeves?” Filch was saying. “Quick, tell me.”

“Say ‘please.’”

“Don’t mess with me, Peeves, now where did they go?”

“Shan’t say nothing if you don’t say please,” said Peeves in his annoying singsong voice.

“All right — please.”

“NOTHING! Ha haaa! Told you I wouldn’t say nothing if you didn’t say please! Ha ha! Haaaaaa!” And they heard the sound of Peeves whooshing away and Filch cursing in rage.

“He thinks this door is locked,” Harry whispered. “I think we’ll be okay- get off, Neville!” 

Neville had been tugging on the sleeve of Harry’s bathrobe for the last minute, and he turned his head towards the boy. “What?!”

Harry turned around, and saw, quite clearly, what. 

For a moment, he was sure he’d walked into a nightmare as this was too much, on top of everything that had happened so far.

They weren’t in a room, as he had supposed. They were in a corridor. 

The forbidden corridor on the third floor. 

And now they knew why it was forbidden.

They were looking straight into the eyes of a monstrous dog, a dog that

filled the whole space between ceiling and floor. It had three heads. Three pairs of rolling, mad eyes; three noses, twitching and quivering in their direction; three drooling mouths, saliva hanging in slippery ropes from yellowish fangs.

It was standing quite still, all six eyes staring at them, and Harry knew that the only reason they weren’t already dead was that their sudden appearance had taken it by surprise, but it was quickly getting over that.

There was no mistaking what those thunderous growls meant.

Harry groped for the doorknob.

Between Filch and death, he’d take Filch.

They fell backward. Harry slammed the door shut, and they ran, nearly flying, back down the corridor. 

Filch must have hurried off to look for them somewhere else, because they didn’t see him anywhere, but they hardly cared. 

All they wanted to do was put as much space as possible between them and that monster. 

They didn’t stop running until they reached the portrait of the Fat Lady on the seventh floor.

“Where on earth have you all been?” she asked, looking at their bathrobes hanging off their shoulders and their flushed, sweaty faces.

“Never mind that. Pig snout, pig snout!” panted Harry, and the portrait swung forward. 

They scrambled into the common room and collapsed, trembling, into armchairs.

It was a while before any of them said anything. Neville, indeed, looked as if he’d never speak again.

“What do they think they’re doing, keeping a thing like that locked up in a school?” said Ron finally. “If any dog needs exercise, that one does.”

Hermione had got both her breath and her bad temper back again.

“You don’t use your eyes, any of you, do you?” she snapped. “Didn’t you see what it was standing on?”

“The floor?” Harry suggested. “I wasn’t looking at its feet, I was too busy with its heads.”

“No, not the floor. It was standing on a trapdoor. It’s obviously guarding

something.” She stood up, glaring at them. “I hope you’re pleased with yourselves. We could all have been killed. Or worse, expelled. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to bed.”

Ron stared after her, his mouth open.

“No, we don’t mind,” he said. “You’d think we dragged her along, wouldn’t you?”

But Hermione had given Harry something else to think about as he climbed back into bed. 

The dog was guarding something. . . . 

What had Hagrid said? 

Gringotts was the safest place in the world for something you wanted to hide, except perhaps Hogwarts.

It looked as though Harry had found out where the grubby little package from vault seven hundred and thirteen was.

Chapter 6 : Book 1: Chapter 10 (Adjustments)

Malfoy couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw that Harry and Ron were still at Hogwarts the next day, looking tired but perfectly cheerful. 

Indeed, by the next morning Harry and Ron thought that meeting the threeheaded dog had been an excellent adventure, and they were quite keen to have another one. In the meantime, Harry filled Ron in about the package that seemed to have been moved from Gringotts to Hogwarts, and they spent a lot of time wondering what could possibly need such heavy protection.

“It’s either really valuable or really dangerous,” said Ron. “Or both,” said Harry.

But as all they knew for sure about the mysterious object was that it was about two inches long, they didn’t have much chance of guessing what it was without further clues.

Neither Neville nor Hermione showed the slightest interest in what lay underneath the dog and the trapdoor. All Neville cared about was never going near the dog again.

Hermione was now refusing to speak to Harry and Ron, but she was such a bossy know-it-all that they saw this as an added bonus. All they really wanted now was a way of getting back at Malfoy, and to their great delight, just such a thing arrived in the mail about a week later.

As the owls flooded into the Great Hall per usual, everyone’s attention was caught at once by a long, thin package carried by six large screech owls. Harry was just as interested as everyone else to see what was in this large parcel, and was amazed when the owls soared down and dropped it right in front of him, knocking his bacon to the floor. 

They had hardly fluttered out of the way when another owl dropped a letter on top of the parcel.

Harry ripped open the letter first, which was lucky, because it said: 

“DO NOT OPEN THE PARCEL AT THE TABLE. 

It contains your new Nimbus Two Thousand, but I don’t want everybody knowing you’ve got a broomstick or they’ll all want one. Oliver Wood will meet you tonight on the Quidditch field at seven o’clock for your first training session.”

Harry had difficulty hiding his glee as he handed the note to Ron to read.

“A Nimbus Two Thousand!” Ron moaned enviously. “I’ve never even touched one.”

They left the hall quickly, wanting to unwrap the broomstick in private before their first class, but halfway across the entrance hall they found the way upstairs barred by Crabbe and Goyle. 

Malfoy seized the package from Harry and felt it.

“That’s a broomstick,” She said with a quiet air of wonder, then cleared her throat before throwing it back to Harry with a mixture of jealousy and spite on her face. “You’ll be in for it this time, Potter, first years aren’t allowed them.”

Ron couldn’t resist it.

“It’s not any old broomstick,” he said, “it’s a Nimbus Two Thousand. What did you say you’ve got at home, Malfoy, a Comet Two Sixty?” Ron grinned at Harry. “Comets look flashy, but they’re not in the same league as the Nimbus.”

“What would you know about it, Weasley, you couldn’t afford half the handle,” Malfoy snapped back, her face twitching angrily. “I suppose you and your brothers have to save up twig by twig.”

Before Ron could answer, Professor Flitwick appeared at Malfoy’s elbow.

“Not arguing I hope, are we?” he squeaked.

“Potter’s been sent a broomstick, Professor,” said Malfoy quickly.

“Yes, yes, that’s right,” said Professor Flitwick, beaming at Harry. “Professor McGonagall told me all about the special circumstances, Potter. And what model is it?”

“A Nimbus Two Thousand, sir,” said Harry, fighting not to laugh at the look of horror on Malfoy’s face. She actually turned around, looked up at the ceiling while mouthing curses, then back around to Harry as he kept speaking. “And it’s really thanks to Malfoy here that I’ve got it,” he added.

Harry and Ron headed upstairs, smothering their laughter at Malfoy’s obvious rage and confusion.

“Well, it’s true,” Harry chortled as they reached the top of the marble staircase, “If she hadn’t stolen Neville’s Remembrall I wouldn’t be on the team. . . .”

“So I suppose you think that’s a reward for breaking rules?” Came an angry voice from just behind them. 

Hermione was stomping up the stairs, looking disapprovingly at the package in Harry’s hand.

“I thought you weren’t speaking to us?” said Harry.

“Yes, don’t stop now,” said Ron, “it’s doing us so much good.”

Hermione marched away with her nose in the air.

Harry had a lot of trouble keeping his mind on his lessons that day. It kept wandering up to the dormitory where his new broomstick was lying under his bed, or straying off to the Quidditch field where he’d be learning to play that night. He bolted his dinner that evening without noticing what he was eating, and then rushed upstairs with Ron to unwrap the Nimbus Two Thousand at last.

“Wow,” Ron sighed, as the broomstick rolled onto Harry’s bedspread.

Even Harry, who knew nothing about the different brooms, thought it looked wonderful. Sleek and shiny with a mahogany handle, it had a long tail of neat, straight twigs and Nimbus Two Thousand written in gold near the top.

As seven o’clock drew nearer, Harry left the castle and set off in the dusk toward the Quidditch field. He’d never been inside the stadium before. Hundreds of seats were raised in stands around the field so that the spectators were high enough to see what was going on, the supports and stairs trailing along like veins. At either end of the field were three golden poles with hoops on the end. They reminded Harry of the little plastic sticks Muggle children blew bubbles through, except that they were fifty feet high.

Too eager to fly again to wait for Wood, Harry mounted his broomstick and kicked off from the ground. With a soar in his heart, he swooped in and out of the goalposts and then sped up and down the field. The Nimbus Two Thousand turned wherever he wanted at his lightest touch, more an extension of himself than broom.

“Hey, Potter, come down!”

Oliver Wood had arrived. 

He was carrying a large wooden crate under his arm, and Harry landed next to him.

“Very nice,” said Wood, his eyes glinting. “I see what McGonagall meant . . . you really are a natural. I’m just going to teach you the rules this evening, then you’ll be joining team practice three times a week.”

He opened the crate. Inside were four different-sized balls.

“Right,” said Wood. “Now, Quidditch is easy enough to understand, even if it’s not too easy to play. There are seven players on each side. Three of them are called Chasers.”

“Three Chasers,” Harry repeated, as Wood took out a bright red ball about the size of a soccer ball.

“This ball’s called the Quaffle,” said Wood. “The Chasers throw the Quaffle to each other and try and get it through one of the hoops to score a goal. Ten points every time the Quaffle goes through one of the hoops. Follow me?”

“The Chasers throw the Quaffle and put it through the hoops to score,” Harry recited. “So — that’s sort of like basketball on broomsticks with six hoops, isn’t it?”

“What’s basketball?” said Wood curiously.

“Never mind,” said Harry quickly, remembering where he was again.

“Now, there’s another player on each side who’s called the Keeper — I’m Keeper for Gryffindor. I have to fly around our hoops and stop the other team from scoring.”

“Three Chasers, one Keeper,” said Harry, who was determined to remember it all. “And they play with the Quaffle. Okay, got that. So what are they for?” He pointed at the three balls left inside the box.

“I’ll show you now,” said Wood. “Take this.”

He handed Harry a small club, a bit like a short baseball bat.

“I’m going to show you what the Bludgers do,” Wood said. “These two are the Bludgers.”

He showed Harry two identical balls, jet black and slightly smaller than the red Quaffle. Harry noticed that they seemed to be straining to escape the straps holding them inside the box.

“Stand back,” Wood warned Harry. He bent down and freed one of the Bludgers.

At once, the black ball rose high in the air and then pelted straight at Harry’s face. Harry swung at it with the bat to stop it from breaking his nose, and sent it zigzagging away into the air — it zoomed around their heads and then shot at Wood, who dived on top of it and managed to pin it to the ground.

“See?” Wood panted, forcing the struggling Bludger back into the crate and strapping it down safely. “The Bludgers rocket around, trying to knock players off their brooms. That’s why you have two Beaters on each team — the Weasley twins are ours — it’s their job to protect their side from the Bludgers and try and knock them toward the other team. So — think you’ve got all that?”

“Three Chasers try and score with the Quaffle; the Keeper guards the goalposts; the Beaters keep the Bludgers away from their team,” Harry reeled

off.

“Very good,” said Wood.

“Er — have the Bludgers ever killed anyone?” Harry asked, hoping he sounded offhand.

“Never at Hogwarts. We’ve had a couple of broken jaws but nothing worse than that. Now, the last member of the team is the Seeker. That’s you. And you don’t have to worry about the Quaffle or the Bludgers —”

“— unless they crack my head open.”

“Don’t worry, the Weasleys are more than a match for the Bludgers — I mean, they’re like a pair of human Bludgers themselves.”

Wood reached into the crate and took out the fourth and last ball. Compared with the Quaffle and the Bludgers, it was tiny, about the size of a large walnut. It was bright gold and had little fluttering silver wings.

“This,” said Wood, “is the Golden Snitch, and it’s the most important ball of the lot. It’s very hard to catch because it’s so fast and difficult to see. It’s the Seeker’s job to catch it. You’ve got to weave in and out of the Chasers, Beaters, Bludgers, and Quaffle to get it before the other team’s Seeker, because whichever Seeker catches the Snitch wins his team an extra hundred and fifty points, so they nearly always win. That’s why Seekers get fouled so much. A game of Quidditch only ends when the Snitch is caught, so it can go on for ages — I think the record is three months, they had to keep bringing on substitutes so the players could get some sleep.

“Well, that’s it — any questions?”

Harry shook his head. He understood what he had to do all right, it was doing it that was going to be the problem.

“We won’t practice with the Snitch yet,” said Wood, carefully shutting it back inside the crate, “it’s too dark, we might lose it. Let’s try you out with a few of these.”

He pulled a bag of ordinary golf balls out of his pocket and a few minutes later, he and Harry were up in the air, Wood throwing the golf balls as hard as

he could in every direction for Harry to catch.

Harry didn’t miss a single one, and Wood was delighted. After half an hour, night had really fallen and they couldn’t carry on.

“That Quidditch Cup’ll have our name on it this year,” said Wood happily as they trudged back up to the castle. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you turn out better than Charlie Weasley, and he could have played for England if he hadn’t gone off chasing dragons.”

Perhaps it was because he was now so busy, what with Quidditch practice three evenings a week on top of all his homework, but Harry could hardly believe it when he realized that he’d already been at Hogwarts two months. The castle felt more like home than Privet Drive ever had. His lessons, too, were becoming more and more interesting now that they had mastered the basics.

On Halloween morning they woke to the delicious smell of baking pumpkin wafting through the corridors. Even better, Professor Flitwick announced in Charms that he thought they were ready to start making objects fly, something they had all been dying to try since they’d seen him make Neville’s toad zoom around the classroom. 

Professor Flitwick put the class into pairs to practice. Harry’s partner was Seamus Finnigan (which was a relief, because Neville had been trying to catch his eye). Ron, however, was to be working with Hermione Granger. It was hard to tell whether Ron or Hermione was angrier about this. 

She hadn’t spoken to either of them since the day Harry’s broomstick had arrived.

“Now, don’t forget that nice wrist movement we’ve been practicing!” squeaked Professor Flitwick, perched on top of his pile of books as usual. “Swish and flick, remember, swish and flick. And saying the magic words properly is very important, too — never forget Wizard Baruffio, who said ‘s’ instead of ‘f’ and found himself on the floor with a buffalo on his chest.”

It was very difficult. 

Harry and Seamus swished and flicked, but the feather they were supposed to be sending skyward just lay on the desktop. Seamus got so impatient that he prodded it with his wand and set fire to it — Harry had to put it out with his hat.

Ron, at the next table, wasn’t having much more luck.

“Wingardium Leviosa!” he shouted, waving his long arms like a windmill. 

“You’re saying it wrong,” Harry heard Hermione snap. “It’s Wing-gardium Levi-o-sa, make the ‘gar’ nice and long.” 

“You do it, then, if you’re so clever,” Ron snarled.

Hermione rolled up the sleeves of her gown, flicked her wand, and said,

“Wingardium Leviosa!”

Their feather rose off the desk and hovered about four feet above their heads.

“Oh, well done!” cried Professor Flitwick, clapping. “Everyone see here, Miss Granger’s done it!”

Ron was in a very bad mood by the end of the class.

“It’s no wonder no one can stand her,” he said to Harry as they pushed their way into the crowded corridor, “she’s a nightmare, honestly.”

Someone knocked into Harry as they hurried past him. It was Hermione. Harry caught a glimpse of her face — and was startled to see that she was in tears.

“I think she heard you.”

“So?” said Ron, but he looked a bit uncomfortable. “She must’ve noticed she’s got no friends.”

Hermione didn’t turn up for the next class and wasn’t seen all afternoon. On their way down to the Great Hall for the Halloween feast, Harry and Ron overheard Parvati Patil telling her friend Lavender that Hermione was crying in the girls’ bathroom and wanted to be left alone. 

Ron looked still more awkward at this, but a moment later they had entered the Great Hall, where the Halloween decorations put Hermione out of their minds.

A thousand live bats fluttered from the walls and ceiling while a thousand more swooped over the tables in low black clouds, making the candles in the pumpkins stutter. The feast appeared suddenly on the golden plates, as it had at the start-of-term banquet.

Harry was just helping himself to a baked potato when Professor Quirrell came sprinting into the hall, his turban askew and terror on his face. 

Everyone stared as he reached Professor Dumbledore’s chair, slumped against the table, and gasped, “Troll — in the dungeons — thought you ought to know.”

He then sank to the floor in a dead faint.

There was an uproar. 

It took several purple firecrackers exploding from the end of Professor Dumbledore’s wand to bring silence.

“Prefects,” he rumbled, “lead your Houses back to the dormitories immediately!”

Percy was in his element.

“Follow me! Stick together, first years! No need to fear the troll if you follow my orders! Stay close behind me, now. Make way, first years coming through! Excuse me, I’m a prefect!”

“How could a troll get in?” Harry asked as they climbed the stairs.

“Don’t ask me, they’re supposed to be really stupid,” said Ron. “Maybe Peeves let it in for a Halloween joke.”

They passed different groups of people hurrying in different directions. As they jostled their way through a crowd of confused Hufflepuffs, Harry suddenly grabbed Ron’s arm.

“I’ve just thought — Hermione.”

“What about her?”

“She doesn’t know about the troll.”

Ron bit his lip.

“Oh, all right,” he snapped. “But Percy’d better not see us.”

Ducking down, they joined the Hufflepuffs going the other way, slipped down a deserted side corridor, and hurried off toward the girls’ bathroom. They had just turned the corner when they heard quick footsteps behind them.

“Percy!” hissed Ron, pulling Harry behind a large stone griffin.

Peering around it, however, they saw not Percy but Snape. He crossed the corridor and disappeared from view.

“What’s he doing?” Harry whispered. “Why isn’t he down in the dungeons with the rest of the teachers?”

Quietly as possible, they crept along the next corridor after Snape’s fading footsteps.

“He’s heading for the third floor,” Harry said, but Ron held up his hand.

Ron sniffed the air, then turned to Harry. “Can you smell something?”

Harry sniffed and a foul stench reached his nostrils, a mixture of old socks and the kind of public toilet no one seems to clean.

Then they heard it — a low grunting, and the shuffling footfalls of gigantic feet. Ron pointed — at the end of a passage to the left, something huge was moving toward them. They shrank into the shadows and watched as it emerged into a patch of moonlight.

It was a horrible sight. Twelve feet tall, its skin was a dull, granite gray, its great lumpy body like a boulder with its small bald head perched on top like a coconut. It had short legs thick as tree trunks with flat, horny feet. 

The smell coming from it was incredible. 

It was holding a huge wooden club, which dragged along the floor because its arms were so long.

The troll stopped next to a doorway and peered inside. It waggled its long ears, making up its tiny mind, then slouched slowly into the room.

“The key’s in the lock,” Harry muttered. “We could lock it in.”

“Good idea,” said Ron nervously.

They edged toward the open door, mouths dry, praying the troll wasn’t about to come out of it. With one great leap, Harry managed to grab the key, slam the door, and lock it.

“Yes!”

Flushed with their victory, they started to run back up the passage, but as they reached the corner they heard something that made their hearts stop — a high, petrified scream — and it was coming from the chamber they’d just chained up.

“Oh, no,” said Ron, pale as the Bloody Baron.

“It’s the girls’ bathroom!” Harry gasped.

“Hermione!” they said together.

It was the last thing they wanted to do, but what choice did they have? Wheeling around, they sprinted back to the door and turned the key, fumbling in their panic. Harry pulled the door open and they ran inside.

Hermione Granger was shrinking against the wall opposite, looking as if she was about to faint. 

The troll was advancing on her, knocking the sinks off the walls as it went.

“Confuse it!” Harry said desperately to Ron, and, seizing a tap, he threw it as hard as he could against the wall.

The troll stopped a few feet from Hermione. It lumbered around, blinking stupidly, to see what had made the noise. Its mean little eyes saw Harry. 

It hesitated, then made for him instead, lifting its club as it went.

“Oy, pea-brain!” yelled Ron from the other side of the chamber, and he threw a metal pipe at it. 

The troll didn’t even seem to notice the pipe hitting its shoulder, but it heard the yell and paused again, turning its ugly snout toward Ron instead, giving Harry time to run around it.

“Come on, run, run!” Harry yelled at Hermione, trying to pull her toward the door, but she couldn’t move, she was still flat against the wall, her mouth open with terror.

The shouting and the echoes seemed to be driving the troll berserk. It roared again and started toward Ron, who was nearest and had no way to escape.

Harry then did something that was both very brave and very stupid: He took a great running jump and managed to fasten his arms around the troll’s neck from behind. The troll couldn’t feel Harry hanging there, but even a troll will notice if you stick a long bit of wood up its nose, and Harry’s wand had still been in his hand when he’d jumped — it had gone straight up one of the troll’s nostrils.

Howling with pain, the troll twisted and flailed its club, with Harry clinging on for dear life; any second, the troll was going to rip him off or catch him a terrible blow with the club.

Hermione had sunk to the floor in fright; Ron pulled out his own wand — not knowing what he was going to do he heard himself cry the first spell that came into his head. 

“Wingardium Leviosa!”

The club flew suddenly out of the troll’s hand, rose high, high up into the air, turned slowly over — and dropped, with a sickening crack, onto its owner’s head. The troll swayed on the spot and then fell flat on its face, with a thud that made the whole room tremble.

Harry got to his feet. He was shaking and out of breath. Ron was standing there with his wand still raised, staring at what he had done.

It was Hermione who spoke first.

“Is it — dead?”

“I don’t think so,” said Harry, “I think it’s just been knocked out.”

He bent down and pulled his wand out of the troll’s nose. It was covered in what looked like lumpy gray glue.

“Urgh – troll boogers.”

He wiped it on the troll’s trousers.

A sudden slamming and loud footsteps made the three of them look up. They hadn’t realized what a racket they had been making, but of course, someone downstairs must have heard the crashes and the troll’s roars. 

A moment later, Professor McGonagall had come bursting into the room, closely followed by Snape, with Quirrell bringing up the rear. Quirrell took one look at the troll, let out a faint whimper, and sat quickly down on a toilet, clutching his heart.

Snape bent over the troll. 

Professor McGonagall was looking at Ron and Harry. 

Harry had never seen her look so angry. 

Her lips were white. 

Hopes of winning fifty points for Gryffindor faded quickly from Harry’s mind.

“What on earth were you thinking of?” said Professor McGonagall, with cold fury in her voice. Harry looked at Ron, who was still standing with his wand in the air. “You’re lucky you weren’t killed. Why aren’t you in your dormitory?”

Snape gave Harry a swift, piercing look. 

Harry looked at the floor. 

He wished Ron would put his wand down.

Then a small voice came out of the shadows.

“Please, Professor McGonagall — they were looking for me.”

“Miss Granger!”

Hermione had managed to get to her feet at last.

“I went looking for the troll because I — I thought I could deal with it on my own — you know, because I’ve read all about them.”

Ron dropped his wand. 

Hermione Granger, telling a downright lie to a teacher?

“If they hadn’t found me, I’d be dead now. Harry stuck his wand up its nose and Ron knocked it out with its own club. They didn’t have time to come and fetch anyone. It was about to finish me off when they arrived.”

Harry and Ron tried to look as though this story wasn’t new to them.

“Well — in that case . . .” said Professor McGonagall, staring at the three of them, “Miss Granger, you foolish girl, how could you think of tackling a mountain troll on your own?”

Hermione hung her head. 

Harry was speechless. 

Hermione was the last person to do anything against the rules, and here she was, pretending she had, to get them out of trouble. 

It was as if Snape had started handing out sweets.

“Miss Granger, five points will be taken from Gryffindor for this,” said Professor McGonagall. “I’m very disappointed in you. If you’re not hurt at all, you’d better get off to Gryffindor Tower. Students are finishing the feast in their Houses.”

Hermione left.

Professor McGonagall turned to Harry and Ron.

“Well, I still say you were lucky, but not many first years could have taken on a full-grown mountain troll. You each win Gryffindor five points. Professor Dumbledore will be informed of this. You may go.”

They hurried out of the chamber and didn’t speak at all until they had climbed two floors up. It was a relief to be away from the smell of the troll, quite apart from anything else.

“We should have gotten more than ten points,” Ron grumbled.

“Five, you mean, once she’s taken off Hermione’s.”

“Good of her to get us out of trouble like that,” Ron admitted. “Mind you, we did save her.”

“She might not have needed saving if we hadn’t locked the thing in with her,” Harry reminded him.

They had reached the portrait of the Fat Lady.

“Pig snout,” they said and entered.

The common room was packed and noisy. Everyone was eating the food that had been sent up. Hermione, however, stood alone by the door, waiting for them. There was a very embarrassed pause. 

Then, none of them looking at each other, they all said “Thanks,” and hurried off to get plates.

But from that moment on, Hermione Granger became their friend. 

There are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.

Chapter 7 : Book 1: Chapter 11-12 (Deviation)

Chapter 11 of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is for the most part unchanged. Harry successfully has his debut on the Quidditch field, battling the cursed broom while also managing to nearly swallow the golden snitch. Unknown to him as he flew upon his broom, there was one Slytherin who kept her eyes on him and only him, playing her part as the “enemy team” while admiring Harry’s flying skills.

It is here, again, that the story deviates.

Christmas was coming. 

One morning in mid-December, Hogwarts woke to find itself covered in several feet of snow. The lake froze solid and the Weasley twins were punished for bewitching several snowballs so that they followed Quirrell around, bouncing off the back of his turban. 

The few owls that managed to battle their way through the stormy sky to deliver mail had to be nursed back to health by Hagrid before they could fly off again.

No one could wait for the holidays to start. 

While the Gryffindor common room and the Great Hall had roaring fires, the drafty corridors had become icy and a bitter wind rattled the windows in the classrooms. Worst of all were Professor Snape’s classes down in the dungeons, where their breath rose in a mist before them and they kept as close as possible to their hot cauldrons.

“I do feel so sorry,” said Draconia Malfoy, one Potions class, “for all those people who have to stay at Hogwarts for Christmas because they’re not wanted at home.”

She was looking over at Harry as she spoke. 

Crabbe and Goyle chuckled.

 Harry, who was measuring out powdered spine of lionfish, ignored them. 

Draconia had been even more unpleasant than usual since the Quidditch match, though it was in way that he was not used to when it came to the girl. Disgusted that the Slytherins had lost, she had started calling him “tree frog”, calling out to him as they passed in the hallway. 

When this failed to get a rise out of Harry anymore after a few weeks, she then started pestering him with Quidditch questions, as if to prove he actually knew nothing about the sport. This resulted in Harry studying both its history and the current teams, so much that when the two saw each other, it would result in Draconia throwing questions at Harry. 

The weeks of their over-head quarrels drew eye rolls and curt head shakes from Ron and Hermione, Harry and Draconia peppering each other with answers and questions as they passed in the hallway.

One day the magazine clippings began showing up in Harry’s school books. He knew it was Draconia, but he did not know how she kept getting the pages into his books, nearly always during Potions.

First it was pictures of brooms with “You’ll never afford one of these, Potter!” written in golden ink along the front. Then it was teams, Draconia remarking on how none of them would ever take him on, then oddly enough a long slew of teams and facts she “just found interesting.”

After a while… there was nothing else for them to learn and or to throw at each other, which seemed to incense Draconia further than when they had started. 

Apparently both Harry and Draconia being on even ground rankled her something fierce, so she had gone back to taunting Harry about having no proper family.

It was true that Harry wasn’t going back to Privet Drive for Christmas, not that he minded. 

Professor McGonagall had come around the week before, making a list of students who would be staying for the holidays, and Harry had signed up at once. He didn’t feel sorry for himself at all; this would probably be the best Christmas he’d ever had. 

Ron and his brothers were staying, too, because Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were going to Romania to visit Charlie.

When they left the dungeons at the end of Potions, Harry balling up a newspaper clipping of “best wizarding family vacation spots!” that Draconia had left in his book again, they found a large fir tree blocking the corridor ahead. 

Two enormous feet sticking out at the bottom and a loud puffing sound told them that Hagrid was behind it.

“Hi, Hagrid, want any help?” Ron asked, sticking his head through the branches.

“Nah, I’m all right, thanks, Ron.”

“Would you mind moving out of the way?” came Draconia’s cold drawl from behind them. “Are you trying to earn some extra money, Weasley? Hoping to be gamekeeper yourself when you leave Hogwarts, I suppose that hut of Hagrid’s must seem like a palace compared to what your family’s used to.”

Ron dived at Draconia just as Snape came up the stairs, Draconia pulling Crabbe in front of her.

“WEASLEY!”

Ron let go of the front of Crabbe’s robes, Draconia popping her head around the other side of the boy with a sneer.

“He was provoked, Professor Snape,” said Hagrid, sticking his huge hairy face out from behind the tree. “Malfoy was insultin’ his family.”

“Be that as it may, fighting is against Hogwarts rules, Hagrid,” said Snape silkily. “Five points from Gryffindor, Weasley, and be grateful it isn’t more. Move along, all of you.”

Draconia, Crabbe, and Goyle pushed roughly past the tree, scattering needles everywhere and smirking.

“I’ll get her,” said Ron, grinding his teeth at Draconia’s back, “one of these days, I’ll get her—”

“I hate them both,” said Harry, pulling out another family vacation clipping from his pocket that had not been there before. “Malfoy and Snape.”

“Come on, cheer up, it’s nearly Christmas,” said Hagrid. “Tell yeh what, come with me an’ see the Great Hall, looks a treat.”

So the three of them followed Hagrid and his tree off to the Great Hall, where Professor McGonagall and Professor Flitwick were busy with the Christmas decorations.

“Ah, Hagrid, the last tree — put it in the far corner, would you?” Professor McGonagall said, trying to work a bauble onto a stubborn branch.

The hall looked spectacular. Festoons of holly and mistletoe hung all around the walls, and no less than twelve towering Christmas trees stood around the room, some sparkling with tiny icicles, others glittering with hundreds of candles.

“How many days you got left until yer holidays?” Hagrid asked.

“Just one,” said Hermione. “And that reminds me. Harry, Ron, we’ve got half an hour before lunch, we should be in the library.”

“Oh yeah, you’re right,” said Ron, tearing his eyes away from Professor Flitwick, who had golden bubbles blossoming out of his wand and was trailing them over the branches of the new tree.

“The library?” said Hagrid, following them out of the hall. “Just before the holidays? Bit keen, aren’t yeh?”

“Oh, we’re not working,” Harry told him brightly. “Ever since you mentioned Nicolas Flamel we’ve been trying to find out who he is.”

“You what?” Hagrid looked shocked. “Listen here — I’ve told yeh — drop it. It’s nothin’ to you what that dog’s guardin’.”

“We just want to know who Nicolas Flamel is, that’s all,” said Hermione.

“Unless you’d like to tell us and save us the trouble?” Harry added. “We must’ve been through hundreds of books already and we can’t find him anywhere — just give us a hint — I know I’ve read his name somewhere.”

“I’m sayin’ nothin’,” said Hagrid flatly.

“Just have to find out for ourselves, then,” said Ron, and they left Hagrid looking disgruntled and hurried off to the library.

They had indeed been searching books for Flamel’s name ever since Hagrid had let it slip, because how else were they going to find out what Snape was trying to steal? 

The trouble was, it was very hard to know where to begin, not knowing what Flamel might have done to get himself into a book. He wasn’t in Great Wizards of the Twentieth Century, or Notable Magical Names of Our Time; he was missing, too, from Important Modern Magical Discoveries, and A Study of Recent Developments in Wizardry. 

And then, of course, there was the sheer size of the library; tens of thousands of books; thousands of shelves; hundreds of narrow rows.

Hermione took out a list of subjects and titles she had decided to search while Ron strode off down a row of books and started pulling them off the shelves at random. 

Harry wandered over to the Restricted Section. 

He had been wondering for a while if Flamel wasn’t somewhere in there. 

Unfortunately, you needed a specially signed note from one of the teachers to look in any of the restricted books, and he knew he’d never get one. These were the books containing powerful Dark Magic never taught at Hogwarts, and only read by older students studying advanced Defense Against the Dark Arts.

The old woman who ran the library raised her nose at him, eyebrow quirking. “What are you looking for, boy?”

“Nothing,” said Harry.

Madam Pince the librarian brandished a feather duster at him.

“You’d better get out, then. Go on — out!”

Wishing he’d been a bit quicker at thinking up some story, Harry left the library. He, Ron, and Hermione had already agreed they’d better not ask Madam Pince where they could find Flamel. 

They were sure she’d be able to tell them, but they couldn’t risk Snape hearing what they were up to.

Harry waited outside in the corridor to see if the other two had found anything, but he wasn’t very hopeful. They had been looking for two weeks, after all, but as they only had odd moments between lessons it wasn’t surprising they’d found nothing. 

What they really needed was a nice long search without Madam Pince breathing down their necks.

Five minutes later, Ron and Hermione joined him, shaking their heads. They went off to lunch.

“You will keep looking while I’m away, won’t you?” said Hermione. “And send me an owl if you find anything.”

“And you could ask your parents if they know who Flamel is,” said Ron. “It’d be safe to ask them.”

“Very safe, as they’re both dentists,” said Hermione.

Once the holidays had started, Ron and Harry were having too good a time to think much about Flamel. They had the dormitory to themselves and the common room was far emptier than usual, so they were able to get the good armchairs by the fire. 

They sat by the fire eating anything they could spear on a toasting fork — bread, English muffins, marshmallows — and plotting ways of getting Draconia expelled, which were fun to talk about even if they wouldn’t work.

Ron also started teaching Harry wizard chess. 

This was exactly like Muggle chess except that the figures were alive, which made it a lot like directing troops in battle. Ron’s set was very old and battered. Like everything else he owned, it had once belonged to someone else in his family — in this case, his grandfather. 

However, old chessmen weren’t a drawback at all. Ron knew them so well he never had trouble getting them to do what he wanted.

Harry played with chessmen Seamus Finnigan had lent him, but they didn’t trust him at all. He wasn’t a very good player yet and they kept shouting different bits of advice at him, which was confusing. 

“Don’t send me there, can’t you see his knight? Send him, we can afford to lose him.”

On Christmas Eve, Harry went to bed looking forward to the next day for the food and the fun, but not expecting any presents at all. 

When he woke early in the morning, however, the first thing he saw was a small pile of packages at the foot of his bed.

“Merry Christmas,” said Ron sleepily as Harry scrambled out of bed and pulled on his bathrobe.

“You, too,” said Harry. “Will you look at this? I’ve got some presents!”

“What did you expect, turnips?” said Ron, turning to his own pile, which was a lot bigger than Harry’s.

Harry picked up the top parcel. 

It was wrapped in thick brown paper and scrawled across it was To Harry, from Hagrid. Inside was a roughly cut wooden flute. Hagrid had obviously whittled it himself. Harry blew it — it sounded a bit like an owl.

A second, very small parcel contained a note.

“We received your message and enclose your Christmas present. From Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia. Taped to the note was a fifty-pence piece.”

“That’s friendly,” said Harry.

Ron was fascinated by the fifty pence.

“Weird!” he said, “What a shape! This is money?”

“You can keep it,” said Harry, laughing at how pleased Ron was. “Hagrid and my aunt and uncle — so who sent these?”

“I think I know who that one’s from,” said Ron, turning a bit pink and pointing to a very lumpy parcel. “My mum. I told her you didn’t expect any presents and — oh, no,” he groaned, “she’s made you a Weasley sweater.”

Harry had torn open the parcel to find a thick, hand-knitted sweater in emerald green and a large box of homemade fudge.

“Every year she makes us a sweater,” said Ron, unwrapping his own, “and mine’s always maroon.”

“That’s really nice of her,” said Harry, trying the fudge, which was very tasty.

His next present also contained candy — a large box of Chocolate Frogs from Hermione.

This only left one parcel. Harry picked it up and felt it. It was very light. He unwrapped it.

Something fluid and silvery gray went slithering to the floor where it lay in gleaming folds. Ron gasped.

“I’ve heard of those,” he said in a hushed voice, dropping the box of Every Flavor Beans he’d gotten from Hermione. “If that’s what I think it is — they’re really rare, and really valuable.”

“What is it?”

Harry picked the shining, silvery cloth off the floor. It was strange to the touch, like water woven into material.

“It’s an Invisibility Cloak,” said Ron, a look of awe on his face. “I’m sure it is — try it on.”

Harry threw the Cloak around his shoulders and Ron gave a yell.

“It is! Look down!”

Harry looked down at his feet, but they were gone. He dashed to the mirror. Sure enough, his reflection looked back at him, just his head suspended in midair, his body completely invisible. 

He pulled the Cloak over his head and his reflection vanished completely.

“There’s a note!” said Ron suddenly. “A note fell out of it!”

Harry pulled off the Cloak and seized the letter. Written in narrow, loopy writing he had never seen before were the following words:

“Your father left this in my possession before he died. It is time it was returned to you.

Use it well.

A Very Merry Christmas to you”

There was no signature. 

Harry stared at the note. 

Ron was admiring the Cloak.

“I’d give anything for one of these,” he said. “Anything. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” said Harry. He felt very strange. 

Who had sent the Cloak? 

Had it really once belonged to his father?

Before he could say or think anything else, the dormitory door was flung open and Fred and George Weasley bounded in. 

Harry stuffed the Cloak quickly out of sight. 

He didn’t feel like sharing it with anyone else yet.

“Merry Christmas!”

“Hey, look — Harry’s got a Weasley sweater, too!”

Fred and George were wearing blue sweaters, one with a large yellow F on it, the other a G.

“Harry’s is better than ours, though,” said Fred, holding up Harry’s sweater. “She obviously makes more of an effort if you’re not family.”

“Why aren’t you wearing yours, Ron?” George demanded. “Come on, get it on, they’re lovely and warm.”

“I hate maroon,” Ron moaned halfheartedly as he pulled it over his head.

“You haven’t got a letter on yours,” George observed. “I suppose she thinks you don’t forget your name. But we’re not stupid — we know we’re called Gred and Forge.”

“What’s all this noise?”

Percy Weasley stuck his head through the door, looking disapproving. He had clearly gotten halfway through unwrapping his presents as he, too, carried a lumpy sweater over his arm, which Fred seized.

“P for prefect! Get it on, Percy, come on, we’re all wearing ours, even Harry got one.”

“I — don’t — want —” said Percy thickly, as the twins forced the sweater over his head, knocking his glasses askew.

“And you’re not sitting with the prefects today, either,” said George. “Christmas is a time for family.”

They then frog-marched Percy from the room, his arms pinned to his side by his sweater.

Harry had never in all his life had such a Christmas dinner. 

A hundred fat, roast turkeys; mountains of roast and boiled potatoes; platters of chipolatas; tureens of buttered peas, silver boats of thick, rich gravy and cranberry sauce — and stacks of wizard crackers every few feet along the table. 

These fantastic party favors were nothing like the feeble Muggle ones the Dursleys usually bought, with their little plastic toys and their flimsy paper hats inside. Harry pulled a wizard cracker with Fred and it didn’t just bang, it went off with a blast like a cannon and engulfed them all in a cloud of blue smoke, while from the inside exploded a rear admiral’s hat and several live, white mice. Up at the High Table, Dumbledore had swapped his pointed wizard’s hat for a flowered bonnet, and was chuckling merrily at a joke Professor Flitwick had just read him.

Flaming Christmas puddings followed the turkey. 

Percy nearly broke his teeth on a silver Sickle embedded in his slice. Harry watched Hagrid getting redder and redder in the face as he called for more wine, finally kissing Professor McGonagall on the cheek, who, to Harry’s amazement, giggled and blushed, her top hat lopsided.

When Harry finally left the table, he was laden down with a stack of things out of the crackers, including a pack of non-explodable, luminous balloons, a Grow-Your-Own-Warts kit, and his own new wizard chess set. The white mice had disappeared and Harry had a nasty feeling they were going to end up as Mrs. Norris’s Christmas dinner.

Harry and the Weasleys spent a happy afternoon having a furious snowball fight on the grounds. Then, cold, wet, and gasping for breath, they returned to the fire in the Gryffindor common room, where Harry broke in his new chess set by losing spectacularly to Ron. 

He suspected he wouldn’t have lost so badly if Percy hadn’t tried to help him so much.

After a meal of turkey sandwiches, crumpets, trifle, and Christmas cake, everyone felt too full and sleepy to do much before bed except sit and watch Percy chase Fred and George all over Gryffindor Tower because they’d stolen his prefect badge.

It had been Harry’s best Christmas day ever. 

Yet, something had been nagging at the back of his mind all day. Not until he climbed into bed was he free to think about it: the Invisibility Cloak and whoever had sent it.

Ron, full of turkey and cake and with nothing mysterious to bother him, fell asleep almost as soon as he’d drawn the curtains of his four-poster. 

Harry leaned over the side of his own bed and pulled the Cloak out from under it.

His father’s . . . this had been his father’s. 

He let the material flow over his hands, smoother than silk, light as air. 

Use it well, the note had said.

He had to try it, now. 

He slipped out of bed and wrapped the Cloak around himself. 

Looking down at his legs, he saw only moonlight and shadows. 

It was a very funny feeling.

“Use it well.”

Suddenly, Harry felt wide-awake. 

The whole of Hogwarts was open to him in this cloak. Excitement flooded through him as he stood there in the dark and silence. He could go anywhere in this, anywhere, and Filch would never know.

Ron grunted in his sleep. 

Should Harry wake him? 

Something held him back — his father’s Cloak — he felt that this time — the first time — he wanted to use it alone.

He crept out of the dormitory, down the stairs, across the common room, and climbed through the portrait hole.

“Who’s there?” squawked the Fat Lady. 

Harry said nothing. 

He walked quickly down the corridor.

Where should he go? 

He stopped, his heart racing, and thought. And then it came to him. The Restricted Section in the library. He’d be able to read as long as he liked, as long as it took to find out who Flamel was. He set off, drawing the Invisibility Cloak tight around him as he walked.

The library was pitch-black and very eerie. Harry lit a lamp to see his way along the rows of books. The lamp looked as if it was floating along in midair, and even though Harry could feel his arm supporting it, the sight gave him the creeps.

The Restricted Section was right at the back of the library. Stepping carefully over the rope that separated these books from the rest of the library, he held up his lamp to read the titles.

They didn’t tell him much. Their peeling, faded gold letters spelled words in languages Harry couldn’t understand. Some had no title at all. One book had a dark stain on it that looked horribly like blood. The hairs on the back of Harry’s neck prickled. Maybe he was imagining it, maybe not, but he thought a faint whispering was coming from the books, as though they knew someone was there who shouldn’t be.

He had to start somewhere. Setting the lamp down carefully on the floor, he looked along the bottom shelf for an interesting-looking book. A large black and silver volume caught his eye. He pulled it out with difficulty, because it was very heavy, and, balancing it on his knee, let it fall open.

A piercing, bloodcurdling shriek split the silence — the book was screaming! 

Harry snapped it shut, but the shriek went on and on, one high, unbroken, earsplitting note. He stumbled backward and knocked over his lamp, which went out at once. Panicking, he heard footsteps coming down the corridor outside — stuffing the shrieking book back on the shelf, he ran for it. He passed Filch in the doorway; Filch’s pale, wild eyes looked straight through him, and Harry slipped under Filch’s outstretched arm and streaked off up the corridor, the book’s shrieks still ringing in his ears.

He came to a sudden halt in front of a tall suit of armor. 

He had been so busy getting away from the library, he hadn’t paid attention to where he was going. Perhaps because it was dark, he didn’t recognize where he was at all. 

There was a suit of armor near the kitchens, he knew, but he must be five floors above there.

“You asked me to come directly to you, Professor, if anyone was wandering around at night, and somebody’s been in the library — Restricted Section.”

Harry felt the blood drain out of his face. Wherever he was, Filch must know a shortcut, because his soft, greasy voice was getting nearer, and to his horror, it was Snape who replied. 

“The Restricted Section? Well, they can’t be far, we’ll catch them.”

Harry stood rooted to the spot as Filch and Snape came around the corner ahead. They couldn’t see him, of course, but it was a narrow corridor and if they came much nearer they’d knock right into him — the cloak didn’t stop him from being solid.

He backed away as quietly as he could. A door stood ajar to his left. It was his only hope. He squeezed through it, holding his breath, trying not to move it, and to his relief he managed to get inside the room without their noticing anything. 

They walked straight past, and Harry leaned against the wall, breathing deeply, listening to their footsteps dying away. 

That had been close, very close. It was a few seconds before he noticed anything about the room he had hidden in.

It looked like an unused classroom. 

The dark shapes of desks and chairs were piled against the walls, and there was an upturned wastepaper basket — but propped against the wall facing him was something that didn’t look as if it belonged there, something that looked as if someone had just put it there to keep it out of the way.

It was a magnificent mirror, as high as the ceiling, with an ornate gold frame, standing on two clawed feet. There was an inscription carved around the top: “Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi”.

His panic fading now that there was no sound of Filch and Snape, Harry moved nearer to the mirror, wanting to look at himself but see no reflection again. 

He stepped in front of it.

He had to clap his hands to his mouth to stop himself from screaming. He whirled around. His heart was pounding far more furiously than when the book had screamed — for he had seen not only himself in the mirror, but a whole crowd of people standing right behind him.

But the room was empty. 

Breathing very fast, he turned slowly back to the mirror.

There he was, reflected in it, white and scared-looking, and there, reflected behind him, were at least ten others. Harry looked over his shoulder — but still, no one was there. 

Or were they all invisible, too? 

Was he in fact in a room full of invisible people and this mirror’s trick was that it reflected them, invisible or not?

He looked in the mirror again. A woman standing right behind his reflection was smiling at him and waving. He reached out a hand and felt the air behind him. If she was really there, he’d touch her, their reflections were so close together, but he felt only air — she and the others existed only in the mirror.

She was a very pretty woman. 

She had dark red hair and her eyes — 

Her eyes are just like mine, Harry thought, edging a little closer to the glass. 

Bright green — exactly the same shape, but then he noticed that she was crying; smiling, but crying at the same time. The tall, thin, black-haired man standing next to her put his arm around her. He wore glasses, and his hair was very untidy. 

It stuck up at the back, just as Harry’s did.

Harry was so close to the mirror now that his nose was nearly touching that of his reflection.

“Mum?” he whispered. “Dad?”

They just looked at him, smiling. 

And slowly, Harry looked into the faces of the other people in the mirror, and saw other pairs of green eyes like his, other noses like his, even a little old man who looked as though he had Harry’s knobbly knees — Harry was looking at his family, for the first time in his life.

The Potters smiled and waved at Harry and he stared hungrily back at them, his hands pressed flat against the glass as though he was hoping to fall right through it and reach them. He had a powerful kind of ache inside him, half joy, half terrible sadness.

How long he stood there, he didn’t know. 

The reflections did not fade and he looked and looked until a distant noise brought him back to his senses. He couldn’t stay here, he had to find his way back to bed. 

He tore his eyes away from his mother’s face, whispered, “I’ll come back,” and hurried from the room.

“You could have woken me up,” said Ron, crossly.

“You can come tonight, I’m going back, I want to show you the mirror.”

“I’d like to see your mum and dad,” Ron said eagerly.

“And I want to see all your family, all the Weasleys, you’ll be able to show me your other brothers and everyone.”

“You can see them any old time,” said Ron. “Just come round my house this summer. Anyway, maybe it only shows dead people. Shame about not finding Flamel, though. Have some bacon or something, why aren’t you eating anything?”

Harry couldn’t eat. He had seen his parents and would be seeing them again tonight. 

He had almost forgotten about Flamel. 

It didn’t seem very important anymore. 

Who cared what the three-headed dog was guarding? 

What did it matter if Snape stole it, really?

“Are you all right?” said Ron. “You look odd.”

What Harry feared most was that he might not be able to find the mirror room again. With Ron covered in the Cloak, too, they had to walk much more slowly the next night. 

They tried retracing Harry’s route from the library, wandering around the dark passageways for nearly an hour. 

“I’m freezing,” said Ron. “Let’s forget it and go back.” 

“No!” Harry hissed. “I know it’s here somewhere.”

They passed the ghost of a tall witch gliding in the opposite direction, but saw no one else. 

Just as Ron started moaning that his feet were dead with cold, Harry spotted the suit of armor.

“It’s here — just here — yes!”

They pushed the door open. Harry dropped the Cloak from around his shoulders and ran to the mirror.

There they were. His mother and father beamed at the sight of him.

“See?” Harry whispered. 

“I can’t see anything.” Ron said with a shivering yawn

“Look! Look at them all . . . there are loads of them. . . .” “I can only see you.”

“Look in it properly, go on, stand where I am.”

Harry stepped aside, but with Ron in front of the mirror, he couldn’t see his family anymore, just Ron in his paisley pajamas.

Ron, though, was staring transfixed at his image. 

“Look at me!” he said.

“Can you see all your family standing around you?”

“No — I’m alone — but I’m different — I look older — and I’m Head Boy!”

“What?”

“I am — I’m wearing the badge like Bill used to — and I’m holding the House Cup and the Quidditch Cup — I’m Quidditch captain, too!”

Ron tore his eyes away from this splendid sight to look excitedly at Harry. “Do you think this mirror shows the future?”

“How can it? All my family are dead — let me have another look —” 

“You had it to yourself all last night, give me a bit more time.”

“You’re only holding the Quidditch Cup, what’s interesting about that? I want to see my parents.”

“Don’t push me —”

A sudden noise outside in the corridor put an end to their discussion. They hadn’t realized how loudly they had been talking.

“Quick!”

Ron threw the Cloak back over them as the luminous eyes of Mrs. Norris came round the door. 

Ron and Harry stood quite still, both thinking the same thing — did the Cloak work on cats? 

After what seemed an age, she turned and left.

“This isn’t safe — she might have gone for Filch, I bet she heard us. Come on.”

And Ron pulled Harry out of the room.

The snow still hadn’t melted the next morning. 

“Want to play chess, Harry?” said Ron.

 “No.”

“Why don’t we go down and visit Hagrid?” 

“No . . . you go . . .”

“I know what you’re thinking about, Harry, that mirror. Don’t go back tonight.”

“Why not?”

“I dunno, I’ve just got a bad feeling about it — and anyway, you’ve had too many close shaves already. Filch, Snape, and Mrs. Norris are wandering around. So what if they can’t see you? What if they walk into you? What if you knock something over?”

“You sound like Hermione.” 

“I’m serious, Harry, don’t go.”

But Harry only had one thought in his head, which was to get back in front of the mirror, and Ron wasn’t going to stop him.

That third night he found his way more quickly than before. He was walking so fast he knew he was making more noise than was wise, but he didn’t meet anyone.

And there were his mother and father smiling at him again, and one of his grandfathers nodding happily. 

Harry sank down to sit on the floor in front of the mirror. There was nothing to stop him from staying here all night with his family. 

Nothing at all.

Except —

“So — back again, Harry?”

Harry felt as though his insides had turned to ice. He looked behind him. Sitting on one of the desks by the wall was none other than Albus Dumbledore. 

Harry must have walked straight past him, so desperate to get to the mirror he hadn’t noticed him.

“I — I didn’t see you, sir.”

“Strange how nearsighted being invisible can make you,” said Dumbledore, and Harry was relieved to see that he was smiling.

“So,” said Dumbledore, slipping off the desk to sit on the floor with Harry, “you, like hundreds before you, have discovered the delights of the Mirror of Erised.”

“I didn’t know it was called that, sir.”

“But I expect you’ve realized by now what it does?”

“It — well — it shows me my family —”

“And it showed your friend Ron himself as Head Boy.”

“How did you know — ?”

“I don’t need a cloak to become invisible,” said Dumbledore gently. “Now, can you think what the Mirror of Erised shows us all?”

Harry shook his head.

“Let me explain. The happiest man on earth would be able to use the Mirror of Erised like a normal mirror, that is, he would look into it and see himself exactly as he is. Does that help?”

Harry thought. Then he said slowly, “It shows us what we want . . . whatever we want . . .”

“Yes and no,” said Dumbledore quietly. “It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. You, who have never known your family, see them standing around you. Ronald Weasley, who has always been overshadowed by his brothers, sees himself standing alone, the best of all of them. However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible.”

“The Mirror will be moved to a new home tomorrow, Harry, and I ask you not to go looking for it again. If you ever do run across it, you will now be prepared. It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that. Now, why don’t you put that admirable cloak back on and get off to bed?”

Harry stood up. “Sir — Professor Dumbledore? Can I ask you something?”

“Obviously, you’ve just done so,” Dumbledore smiled. “You may ask me one more thing, however.”

“What do you see when you look in the mirror?”

“I? I see myself holding a pair of thick, woolen socks.”

Harry stared.

“One can never have enough socks,” said Dumbledore. “Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn’t get a single pair. People insist on giving me books.”

It was only when he was back in bed that it struck Harry that Dumbledore might not have been quite truthful. 

But then, he thought, as he shoved Scabbers off his pillow, it had been quite a personal question.

Chapter 8 : Book 1: Chapter 13 (Adjustments)

Dumbledore had convinced Harry not to go looking for the Mirror of Erised again, and for the rest of the Christmas holidays the Invisibility Cloak stayed folded at the bottom of his trunk. Harry wished he could forget what he’d seen in the mirror as easily, but he couldn’t. 

He started having nightmares. 

Over and over again he dreamed about his parents disappearing in a flash of green light, while a high voice cackled with laughter.

“You see, Dumbledore was right, that mirror could drive you mad,” said Ron, when Harry told him about these dreams.

Hermione, who came back the day before term started, took a different view of things. 

She was torn between horror at the idea of Harry being out of bed, roaming the school three nights in a row, whisper shouting “If Filch had caught you!” when Harry had first told her, and disappointment that he hadn’t at least found out who Nicolas Flamel was.

They had almost given up hope of ever finding Flamel in a library book, even though Harry was still sure he’d read the name somewhere. 

Once term had started, they were back to skimming through books for ten minutes during their breaks. 

Harry had even less time than the other two, because Quidditch practice had started again.

Wood was working the team harder than ever. Even the endless rain that had replaced the snow couldn’t dampen his spirits. 

The Weasleys complained that Wood was becoming a fanatic, but Harry was on Wood’s side. If they won their next match, against Hufflepuff, they would overtake Slytherin in the House Championship for the first time in seven years. 

Quite apart from wanting to win, Harry found that he had fewer nightmares when he was tired out after training.

Then, during one particularly wet and muddy practice session, Wood gave the team a bit of bad news. He’d just gotten very angry with the Weasleys, who kept dive-bombing each other and pretending to fall off their brooms.

“Will you stop messing around!” he yelled. “That’s exactly the sort of thing that’ll lose us the match! Snape’s refereeing this time, and he’ll be looking for any excuse to knock points off Gryffindor!”

George Weasley really did fall off his broom at these words.

“Snape’s refereeing?” he spluttered through a mouthful of mud. “When’s he ever refereed a Quidditch match? He’s not going to be fair if we might overtake Slytherin.”

The rest of the team landed next to George to complain, too.

“It’s not my fault,” said Wood. “We’ve just got to make sure we play a clean game, so Snape hasn’t got an excuse to pick on us.”

Which was all very well, thought Harry, but he had another reason for not wanting Snape near him while he was playing Quidditch. . . .

The rest of the team hung back to talk to one another as usual at the end of practice, but Harry headed straight back to the Gryffindor common room, where he found Ron and Hermione playing chess. 

Chess was the only thing Hermione ever lost at, something Harry and Ron thought was very good for her.

“Don’t talk to me for a moment,” said Ron when Harry sat down next to him, “I need to concen —” He caught sight of Harry’s face. “What’s the matter with you? You look terrible.”

Speaking quietly so that no one else would hear, Harry told the other two about Snape’s sudden, sinister desire to be a Quidditch referee.

“Don’t play,” said Hermione at once.

“Say you’re ill,” said Ron.

“Pretend to break your leg,” Hermione suggested.

“Really break your leg,” said Ron. “I’ll break your leg.”

“I can’t,” said Harry. “There isn’t a reserve Seeker. If I back out, Gryffindor can’t play at all.”

At that moment Neville toppled into the common room. 

How he had managed to climb through the portrait hole was anyone’s guess, because his legs had been stuck together with what they recognized at once as the LegLocker Curse. 

He must have had to bunny hop all the way up to Gryffindor Tower.

Everyone fell over laughing except Hermione, who leapt up and performed the countercurse. 

Neville’s legs sprang apart and he got to his feet, trembling.

“What happened?” Hermione asked him, leading him over to sit with Harry and Ron.

“Malfoy,” said Neville shakily. “I met her outside the library. She said she’d been looking for someone to practice that on.”

“Go to Professor McGonagall!” Hermione urged Neville. “Report her!”

Neville shook his head.

“I don’t want more trouble,” he mumbled.

“You’ve got to stand up to her, Neville!” said Ron. “She’s used to walking all over people, but that’s no reason to lie down in front of her and make it easier.”

“There’s no need to tell me I’m not brave enough to be in Gryffindor, Malfoy’s already done that,” Neville choked out.

Not that Neville was really lacking in bravery, but being picked on by a girl was a whole other bag of worms that he had never had to deal with.

Harry felt in the pocket of his robes and pulled out a Chocolate Frog, the very last one from the box Hermione had given him for Christmas. 

He gave it to Neville, who looked as though he might cry.

“You’re worth twelve of Malfoy,” Harry said. “The Sorting Hat chose you for Gryffindor, didn’t it? And where’s Malfoy? In stinking Slytherin.”

Neville’s lips twitched in a weak smile as he unwrapped the frog.

“Thanks, Harry . . . I think I’ll go to bed. . . . D’you want the card, you collect them, don’t you?”

As Neville walked away, Harry looked at the Famous Wizard card.

“Dumbledore again,” he said, “He was the first one I ever —”

He gasped. He stared at the back of the card. Then he looked up at Ron and Hermione.

“I’ve found him!” he whispered. “I’ve found Flamel! I told you I’d read the name somewhere before, I read it on the train coming here — listen to this: ‘Dumbledore is particularly famous for his defeat of the Dark wizard Grindelwald in 1945, for the discovery of the twelve uses of dragon’s blood, and his work on alchemy with his partner, Nicolas Flamel’!”

Hermione jumped to her feet. She hadn’t looked so excited since they’d gotten back the marks for their very first piece of homework.

“Stay there!” she said, and she sprinted up the stairs to the girls’ dormitories. Harry and Ron barely had time to exchange mystified looks before she was dashing back, an enormous old book in her arms.

“I never thought to look in here!” she whispered excitedly. “I got this out of the library weeks ago for a bit of light reading.”

“Light?” said Ron, but Hermione told him to be quiet until she’d looked something up, and started flicking frantically through the pages, muttering to herself.

At last she found what she was looking for.

“I knew it! I knew it!”

“Are we allowed to speak yet?” said Ron grumpily. 

Hermione ignored him.

“Nicolas Flamel,” she whispered dramatically, “is the only known maker of the Sorcerer’s Stone!”

This didn’t have quite the effect she’d expected.

“The what?” said Harry and Ron.

“Oh, honestly, don’t you two read? Look — read that, there.” She pushed the book toward them, and Harry and Ron read:

“The ancient study of alchemy is concerned with making the Sorcerer’s Stone, a legendary substance with astonishing powers. The Stone will transform any metal into pure gold. It also produces the Elixir of Life, which will make the drinker immortal.

There have been many reports of the Sorcerer’s Stone over the centuries, but the only Stone currently in existence belongs to Mr. Nicolas Flamel, the noted alchemist and opera lover. Mr. Flamel, who celebrated his six hundred and sixty-fifth birthday last year, enjoys a quiet life in Devon with his wife, Perenelle (six hundred and fifty-eight).”

“See?” said Hermione, when Harry and Ron had finished. “The dog must be guarding Flamel’s Sorcerer’s Stone! I bet he asked Dumbledore to keep it safe for him, because they’re friends and he knew someone was after it, that’s why he wanted the Stone moved out of Gringotts!”

“A stone that makes gold and stops you from ever dying!” said Harry. “No wonder Snape’s after it! Anyone would want it.”

“And no wonder we couldn’t find Flamel in that Study of Recent Developments in Wizardry,” said Ron. “He’s not exactly recent if he’s six hundred and sixty-five, is he?”

The next morning in Defense Against the Dark Arts, while copying down different ways of treating werewolf bites, Harry and Ron were still discussing what they’d do with a Sorcerer’s Stone if they had one. It wasn’t until Ron said he’d buy his own Quidditch team that Harry remembered about Snape and the coming match.

“I’m going to play,” he told Ron and Hermione. “If I don’t, all the Slytherins will think I’m just too scared to face Snape. I’ll show them . . . it’ll really wipe the smiles off their faces if we win.”

“Just as long as we’re not wiping you off the field,” said Hermione. 

As the match drew nearer, however, Harry became more and more nervous, whatever he told Ron and Hermione. 

The rest of the team wasn’t too calm, either. 

The idea of overtaking Slytherin in the House Championship was wonderful, as no one had done it for seven years, but would they be allowed to, with such a biased referee?

Harry didn’t know whether he was imagining it or not, but he seemed to keep running into Snape wherever he went. At times, he even wondered whether Snape was following him, trying to catch him on his own. 

Potions lessons were turning into a sort of weekly torture from how Snape was constantly so horrible to Harry. 

Could Snape possibly know they’d found out about the Sorcerer’s Stone? 

Harry didn’t see how he could — yet he sometimes had the horrible feeling that Snape could read minds.

Harry knew, when they wished him good luck outside the locker rooms the next afternoon, that Ron and Hermione were wondering whether they’d ever see him alive again. 

This wasn’t what you’d call comforting. 

Harry hardly heard a word of Wood’s pep talk as he pulled on his Quidditch robes and picked up his Nimbus Two Thousand.

Ron and Hermione, meanwhile, had found a place in the stands next to Neville, who couldn’t understand why they looked so grim and worried, or why they had both brought their wands to the match. 

Little did Harry know that Ron and Hermione had been secretly practicing the Leg-Locker Curse. 

They’d gotten the idea from Malfoy using it on Neville, and were ready to use it on Snape if he showed any sign of wanting to hurt Harry.

“Now, don’t forget, it’s Locomotor Mortis,” Hermione muttered as Ron slipped his wand up his sleeve.

“I know,” Ron snapped. “Don’t nag.”

Back in the locker room, Wood had taken Harry aside.

“Don’t want to pressure you, Potter, but if we ever need an early capture of the Snitch, it’s now. Finish the game before Snape can favor Hufflepuff too much.”

“The whole school’s out there!” said Fred Weasley, peering out of the door. “Even — blimey — Dumbledore’s come to watch!”

Harry’s heart did a somersault.

“Dumbledore?” he said, dashing to the door to make sure. 

Fred was right. There was no mistaking that silver beard.

Harry could have laughed out loud with relief. He was safe. There was simply no way that Snape would dare to try to hurt him if Dumbledore was watching.

Perhaps that was why Snape was looking so angry as the teams marched onto the field, something that Ron noticed, too.

“I’ve never seen Snape look so mean,” he told Hermione. “Look — they’re off. Ouch!”

Someone had poked Ron in the back of the head. 

It was Draconia.

“Oh, sorry, Weasley, didn’t see you there.” She mused, sitting alone for the first time in forever. “Wonder how long Potter’s going to stay on his broom this time? Anyone want a bet? What about you, Weasley?”

Ron didn’t answer, nor did he have the time to wonder where her cronies had gone off to. 

Snape had just awarded Hufflepuff a penalty because George Weasley had hit a Bludger at him. The game was so fast and fierce that many were making bets that it everyone would likely be unable to finish their snacks before the match had ended.

Hermione, who had all her fingers crossed in her lap, was squinting fixedly at Harry, who was circling the game like a hawk, looking for the Snitch.

“You know how I think they choose people for the Gryffindor team?” said Draconia loudly a few minutes later, as Snape awarded Hufflepuff another penalty for no reason at all. “It’s people they feel sorry for. See, there’s Potter, who’s got no parents, then there’s the Weasleys, who’ve got no money. You should be on the team, Longbottom, you’ve got no brains.”

Neville went bright red but turned in his seat to face Draconia.

“I’m w-worth twelve of y-you, Malfoy,” he stammered with a bit of venom on the end.

Draconia Malfoy tittered with laughter, but Ron, still not daring to take his eyes from the game, said, “You tell her, Neville.”

“Longbottom, if brains were gold you’d be poorer than Weasley, and that’s saying something.” Draconia mused, making shooing motions at Crabbe and Goyle as they stared at her from a few seats down.

Ron’s nerves were already stretched to the breaking point with anxiety about Harry.

“I’m warning you, Malfoy — one more word —”

“Ron!” said Hermione suddenly, “Harry — !”

“What? Where?”

Harry had suddenly gone into a spectacular dive, which drew gasps and cheers from the crowd. Hermione stood up, her crossed fingers in her mouth, as Harry streaked toward the ground like a bullet. She was clapping, and turned to say something to Ron… but noticed that Draconia was standing as well, watching Harry closely.

Hermione’s clapping hands slowed, and she stared up at Draconia with furrowed brows. She turned and poked Ron on the shoulder.

“What?!” Ron snapped. “I’m watching the match!” 

Hermione leaned towards Ron, whispering. “Look behind us.”

Ron, aggravated, turned and looked, coming to a pause as Hermione turned with him.

Draconia was still watching Harry, her eyes narrowed as she tracked him across the field.

“... What the?” Ron muttered, but spun back around as another cheer went up across the field as Gryffindor scored again.

“Come on, Harry!” Hermione screamed, leaping onto her seat to watch as Harry sped straight at Snape.

She didn’t notice Draconia hold out an angry finger to Crabbe, and Goyle, once again shooing them away as they ushered her to leave.

Up in the air, Snape turned on his broomstick just in time to see something scarlet shoot past him, missing him by inches as Harry zipped by him in blur.

“Get there…” Draconia muttered under her breath, angrily eyeing the field as the Hufflepuff Chaser came screaming in from high center.

Hermione turned to tell Draconia off for cheering for Hufflepuff in the Gryffindor section… but she couldn’t tell if the Slytherin was looking at Harry, or the other chaser.

 Another great cheer erupted from the stands as Harry pulled out of the dive, his arm raised in triumph, the Snitch clasped in his hand.

The stands erupted; it had to be a record, no one could ever remember the Snitch being caught so quickly.

“Ron! The game’s over! Harry’s won! We’ve won! Gryffindor is in the lead!” shrieked Hermione, dancing up and down on her seat and hugging Parvati Patil in the row in front.

Ron, however, had his head slightly cocked, watching as Draconia quickly stood and left, making quick steps over to Crabbe and Goyle and then disappearing into the crowd.

Ron only saw her pause once, looking down at the pitch as Harry came swooping down to the grass.

Harry jumped off his broom, a foot from the ground. He couldn’t believe it. He’d done it — the game was over; it had barely lasted five minutes. As Gryffindors came spilling onto the field, he saw Snape land nearby, white faced and tight-lipped — then Harry felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up into Dumbledore’s smiling face.

“Well done,” said Dumbledore quietly, so that only Harry could hear. “Nice to see you haven’t been brooding about that mirror . . . been keeping busy . . . excellent . . .”

Snape spat bitterly on the ground.

Harry left the locker room alone some time later, to take his Nimbus Two Thousand back to the broomshed. He couldn’t ever remember feeling happier. 

He’d really done something to be proud of now — no one could say he was just a famous name any more. 

The evening air had never smelled so sweet. 

He walked over the damp grass, reliving the last hour in his head, which was a happy blur: Gryffindors running to lift him onto their shoulders; Ron and Hermione in the distance, jumping up and down, though Ron kept looking over his shoulder.

Harry had reached the shed. 

He leaned against the wooden door and looked up at Hogwarts, with its windows glowing red in the setting sun. Gryffindor in the lead. He’d done it, he’d shown Snape. . . .

And speaking of Snape . . .

A hooded figure came swiftly down the front steps of the castle. Clearly not wanting to be seen, it walked as fast as possible toward the forbidden forest. 

Harry’s victory faded from his mind as he watched. He recognized the figure’s prowling walk. Snape, sneaking into the forest while everyone else was at dinner — what was going on?

Harry jumped back on his Nimbus Two Thousand and took off. 

Gliding silently over the castle he saw Snape enter the forest at a run. 

He followed.

The trees were so thick he couldn’t see where Snape had gone. He flew in circles, lower and lower, brushing the top branches of trees until he heard voices. He glided toward them and landed noiselessly in a towering beech tree.

He climbed carefully along one of the branches, holding tight to his broomstick, trying to see through the leaves.

Below, in a shadowy clearing, stood Snape, but he wasn’t alone. Quirrell was there, too. Harry couldn’t make out the look on his face, but he was stuttering worse than ever. Harry strained to catch what they were saying.

“. . . d-don’t know why you wanted t-t-to meet here of all p-places, Severus . . .”

“Oh, I thought we’d keep this private,” said Snape, his voice icy. “Students aren’t supposed to know about the Sorcerer’s Stone, after all.”

Harry leaned forward. Quirrell was mumbling something. Snape interrupted him.

“Have you found out how to get past that beast of Hagrid’s yet?”

“B-b-but Severus, I —”

“You don’t want me as your enemy, Quirrell,” said Snape, taking a step toward him.

“I-I don’t know what you —”

“You know perfectly well what I mean.”

An owl hooted loudly, and Harry nearly fell out of the tree. He steadied himself in time to hear Snape say, “— your little bit of hocus-pocus. I’m waiting.”

“B-but I d-d-don’t —”

“Very well,” Snape cut in. “We’ll have another little chat soon, when you’ve had time to think things over and decided where your loyalties lie.”

He threw his cloak over his head and strode out of the clearing. It was almost dark now, but Harry could see Quirrell, standing quite still as though he was petrified.

He slowly slide back onto his broom and lifted away from the tree, taking the long way back around to the broom shed and putting his Nimbus Two Thousand away. 

It was far later than he would have liked when he got back to the castle, though Ron and Hermione were waiting for him even still.

“Harry, where have you been?” Hermione squeaked.

“We won! You won! We won!” shouted Ron, thumping Harry on the back. “Talk about showing Slytherin! Everyone’s waiting for you in the common room, we’re having a party, Fred and George stole some cakes and stuff from the kitchens.”

“Never mind that now,” said Harry breathlessly. “Let’s find an empty room, you wait ’til you hear this. . . .”

He made sure Peeves wasn’t inside before shutting the door behind them, then he told them what he’d seen and heard.

“So we were right, it is the Sorcerer’s Stone, and Snape’s trying to force Quirrell to help him get it. He asked if he knew how to get past Fluffy — and he said something about Quirrell’s ‘hocus-pocus’— I reckon there are other things guarding the stone apart from Fluffy, loads of enchantments, probably, and Quirrell would have done some anti-Dark Arts spell that Snape needs to break through —”

“So you mean the Stone’s only safe as long as Quirrell stands up to Snape?” said Hermione in alarm.

“It’ll be gone by next Tuesday,” said Ron.

Chapter 9 : Book 1: Chapter 14 (adjustments)

Quirrell, however, must have been braver than they’d thought. In the weeks that followed he did seem to be getting paler and thinner, but it didn’t look as though he’d cracked yet.

Every time they passed the third-floor corridor, Harry, Ron, and Hermione would press their ears to the door to check that Fluffy was still growling inside. Snape was sweeping about in his usual bad temper, which surely meant that the Stone was still safe. 

Whenever Harry passed Quirrell these days he gave him an encouraging sort of smile, and Ron had started telling people off for laughing at Quirrell’s stutter.

Hermione, however, had more on her mind than the Sorcerer’s Stone. She had started drawing up study schedules and color-coding all her notes. Harry and Ron wouldn’t have minded, but she kept nagging them to do the same.

“Hermione, the exams are ages away.”

“Ten weeks,” Hermione snapped. “That’s not ages, that’s like a second to Nicolas Flamel.”

“But we’re not six hundred years old,” Ron reminded her. “Anyway, what are you studying for, you already know it all.”

“What am I studying for? Are you crazy? You realize we need to pass these exams to get into the second year? They’re very important, I should have started studying a month ago, I don’t know what’s gotten into me. . . .”

Unfortunately, the teachers seemed to be thinking along the same lines as Hermione. They piled so much homework on them that the Easter holidays weren’t nearly as much fun as the Christmas ones. 

It was hard to relax with Hermione next to you reciting the twelve uses of dragon’s blood or practicing wand movements. 

Moaning and yawning, Harry and Ron spent most of their free time in the library with her, trying to get through all their extra work.

“I’ll never remember this,” Ron burst out one afternoon, throwing down his quill and looking longingly out of the library window. 

It was the first really fine day they’d had in months. The sky was a clear, forget-me-not blue, and there was a feeling in the air of summer coming.

Harry, who was looking up “Dittany” in One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi, didn’t look up until he heard Ron say, “Hagrid! What are you doing in the library?”

Hagrid shuffled into view, hiding something behind his back. 

He looked very out of place in his moleskin overcoat.

“Jus’ lookin’,” he said, in a shifty voice that got their interest at once. “An’ what’re you lot up ter?” He looked suddenly suspicious. “Yer not still lookin’ fer Nicolas Flamel, are yeh?”

“Oh, we found out who he is ages ago,” said Ron impressively. “And we know what that dog’s guarding, it’s a Sorcerer’s St —”

“Shhhh!” Hagrid looked around quickly to see if anyone was listening. “Don’ go shoutin’ about it, what’s the matter with yeh?”

“There are a few things we wanted to ask you, as a matter of fact,” said Harry, “about what’s guarding the Stone apart from Fluffy —”

“SHHHH!” said Hagrid again. “Listen — come an’ see me later, I’m not promisin’ I’ll tell yeh anythin’, mind, but don’ go rabbitin’ about it in here, students aren’ s’pposed ter know. They’ll think I’ve told yeh —”

“See you later, then,” said Harry.

Hagrid shuffled off.

“What was he hiding behind his back?” said Hermione thoughtfully. “Do you think it had anything to do with the Stone?”

“I’m going to see what section he was in,” said Ron, who’d had enough of working. He came back a minute later with a pile of books in his arms and slammed them down on the table.

“Dragons!” he whispered. “Hagrid was looking up stuff about dragons! Look at these: Dragon Species of Great Britain and Ireland; From Egg to Inferno, A Dragon Keeper’s Guide.”

“Hagrid’s always wanted a dragon, he told me so the first time I ever met him,” said Harry.

“But it’s against our laws,” said Ron. “Dragon breeding was outlawed by the Warlocks’ Convention of 1709, everyone knows that. It’s hard to stop Muggles from noticing us if we’re keeping dragons in the back garden — anyway, you can’t tame dragons, it’s dangerous. You should see the burns Charlie’s got off wild ones in Romania.”

“But there aren’t wild dragons in Britain?” said Harry.

“Of course there are,” said Ron. “Common Welsh Green and Hebridean Blacks. The Ministry of Magic has a job hushing them up, I can tell you. Our kind have to keep putting spells on Muggles who’ve spotted them, to make them forget.”

“So what on earth’s Hagrid up to?” said Hermione.

When they knocked on the door of the gamekeeper’s hut an hour later, they were surprised to see that all the curtains were closed. Hagrid called “Who is it?” before he let them in, and then shut the door quickly behind them.

It was stifling hot inside. Even though it was such a warm day, there was a blazing fire in the grate. Hagrid made them tea and offered them stoat sandwiches, which they refused.

“So — yeh wanted to ask me somethin’?”

“Yes,” said Harry. There was no point beating around the bush. “We were wondering if you could tell us what’s guarding the Sorcerer’s Stone apart

from Fluffy.”

Hagrid frowned at him.

“O’ course I can’t,” he said. “Number one, I don’ know meself. Number two, yeh know too much already, so I wouldn’ tell yeh if I could. That Stone’s here fer a good reason. It was almost stolen outta Gringotts — I s’ppose yeh’ve worked that out an’ all? Beats me how yeh even know abou’ Fluffy.”

“Oh, come on, Hagrid, you might not want to tell us, but you do know, you know everything that goes on round here,” said Hermione in a warm, flattering voice. Hagrid’s beard twitched and they could tell he was smiling. “We only wondered who had done the guarding, really.” Hermione went on. “We wondered who Dumbledore had trusted enough to help him, apart from you.”

Hagrid’s chest swelled at these last words. Harry and Ron beamed at Hermione.

“Well, I don’ s’pose it could hurt ter tell yeh that . . . let’s see . . . he borrowed Fluffy from me . . . then some o’ the teachers did enchantments . . . Professor Sprout — Professor Flitwick — Professor McGonagall —” he ticked them off on his fingers, “Professor Quirrell — an’ Dumbledore himself did somethin’, o’ course. Hang on, I’ve forgotten someone. Oh yeah, Professor Snape.”

“Snape?”

“Yeah — yer not still on abou’ that, are yeh? Look, Snape helped protect the Stone, he’s not about ter steal it.”

Harry knew Ron and Hermione were thinking the same as he was. If Snape had been in on protecting the Stone, it must have been easy to find out how the other teachers had guarded it. He probably knew everything — except, it seemed, Quirrell’s spell and how to get past Fluffy.

“You’re the only one who knows how to get past Fluffy, aren’t you, Hagrid?” said Harry anxiously. “And you wouldn’t tell anyone, would you? Not even one of the teachers?”

“Not a soul knows except me an’ Dumbledore,” said Hagrid proudly.

“Well, that’s something,” Harry muttered to the others. “Hagrid, can we have a window open? I’m boiling.”

“Can’t, Harry, sorry,” said Hagrid. Harry noticed him glance at the fire. Harry looked at it, too.

“Hagrid — what’s that?”

But he already knew what it was. In the very heart of the fire, underneath the kettle, was a huge, black egg.

“Ah,” said Hagrid, fiddling nervously with his beard, “That’s — er . . .”

“Where did you get it, Hagrid?” said Ron, crouching over the fire to get a closer look at the egg. “It must’ve cost you a fortune.”

“Won it,” said Hagrid. “Las’ night. I was down in the village havin’ a few drinks an’ got into a game o’ cards with a stranger. Think he was quite glad ter get rid of it, ter be honest.”

“But what are you going to do with it when it’s hatched?” said Hermione.

“Well, I’ve bin doin’ some readin’,” said Hagrid, pulling a large book from under his pillow. “Got this outta the library — Dragon Breeding for Pleasure and Profit — it’s a bit outta date, o’ course, but it’s all in here. Keep the egg in the fire, ’cause their mothers breathe on ’em, see, an’ when it hatches, feed it on a bucket o’ brandy mixed with chicken blood every half hour. An’ see here — how ter recognize diff’rent eggs — what I got there’s a Norwegian Ridgeback. They’re rare, them.”

He looked very pleased with himself, but Hermione didn’t.

“Hagrid, you live in a wooden house,” she said.

But Hagrid wasn’t listening. 

He was humming merrily as he stoked the fire. 

So now they had something else to worry about: what might happen to Hagrid if anyone found out he was hiding an illegal dragon in his hut.

“Wonder what it’s like to have a peaceful life,” Ron sighed, as evening after evening they struggled through all the extra homework they were getting. Hermione had now started making study schedules for Harry and Ron, too. 

It was driving them nuts.

Then, one breakfast time, Hedwig brought Harry another note from Hagrid. He had written only two words: It’s hatching.

Ron wanted to skip Herbology and go straight down to the hut. 

Hermione wouldn’t hear of it.

“Hermione, how many times in our lives are we going to see a dragon hatching?” Ron asked her in a long groan.

Hermione began to tap her fingers. “We’ve got lessons, we’ll get into trouble, and that’s nothing to what Hagrid’s going to be in when someone finds out what he’s doing —”

“Shut up!” Harry whispered.

Draconia Malfoy was only a few feet away and she had stopped dead to listen. 

How much had she heard? 

Harry didn’t like the look on Draconia’s face at all, a mixture of curiosity and alarm.

Ron and Hermione argued all the way to Herbology and in the end, Hermione agreed to run down to Hagrid’s with the other two during morning break. When the bell sounded from the castle at the end of their lesson, the three of them dropped their trowels at once and hurried through the grounds to the edge of the forest. 

Hagrid greeted them, looking flushed and excited.

“It’s nearly out.” He panted as he ushered them inside.

The egg was lying on the table. There were deep cracks in it. Something was moving inside; a funny clicking noise was coming from it.

They all drew their chairs up to the table and watched with bated breath.

All at once there was a scraping noise and the egg split open. The baby dragon flopped onto the table. It wasn’t exactly pretty; Harry thought it looked like a crumpled, black umbrella. Its spiny wings were huge compared to its skinny jet body, it had a long snout with wide nostrils, the stubs of horns and bulging, orange eyes.

It sneezed, and a couple of sparks flew out of its snout.

“Isn’t he beautiful?” Hagrid murmured. 

He reached out a hand to stroke the dragon’s head. It snapped at his fingers, showing pointed fangs.

“Bless him, look, he knows his mummy!” said Hagrid.

“Hagrid,” said Hermione, “how fast do Norwegian Ridgebacks grow, exactly?”

Hagrid was about to answer when the color suddenly drained from his face — he leapt to his feet and ran to the window.

“What’s the matter?” Hermione asked

“Someone was lookin’ through the gap in the curtains — it’s a kid — she’s runnin’ back up ter the school.”

Harry bolted to the door and looked out. Even at a distance there was no mistaking her.

Draconia had seen the dragon, and was in enough of a hurry that she fell and skidded along the grass before regaining her feet again.

Something about the hard look lurking on Draconia’s face during the next week made Harry, Ron, and Hermione very nervous, though she would glance and smile waspishly at Harry before ignoring him again. 

They spent most of their free time in Hagrid’s darkened hut, trying to reason with him. 

“Just let him go,” Harry urged. “Set him free.” 

“I can’t,” said Hagrid. “He’s too little. He’d die.”

They looked at the dragon. 

It had grown three times in length in just a week. Smoke kept furling out of its nostrils. Hagrid hadn’t been doing his gamekeeping duties because the dragon was keeping him so busy. 

There were empty brandy bottles and chicken feathers all over the floor.

“I’ve decided to call him Norbert,” said Hagrid, looking at the dragon with misty eyes. “He really knows me now, watch. Norbert! Norbert! Where’s Mummy?”

“He’s lost his marbles,” Ron muttered in Harry’s ear.

“Hagrid,” said Harry loudly, “give it two weeks and Norbert’s going to be as long as your house. Malfoy could go to Dumbledore at any moment.”

Hagrid bit his lip.

“I — I know I can’t keep him forever, but I can’t jus’ dump him, I can’t.” 

Harry suddenly turned to Ron.

“Charlie,” he said.

“You’re losing it, too,” said Ron. “I’m Ron, remember?”

“No — Charlie — your brother, Charlie. In Romania. Studying dragons. We could send Norbert to him. Charlie can take care of him and then put him back in the wild!”

“Brilliant!” said Ron. “How about it, Hagrid?”

And in the end, Hagrid agreed that they could send an owl to Charlie to ask him.

The following week dragged by. 

Wednesday night found Hermione and Harry sitting alone in the common room, long after everyone else had gone to bed. The clock on the wall had just chimed midnight when the portrait hole burst open. 

Ron appeared out of nowhere as he pulled off Harry’s Invisibility Cloak. He had been down at Hagrid’s hut, helping him feed Norbert, who was now eating dead rats by the crate.

“It bit me!” he said, showing them his hand, which was wrapped in a bloody handkerchief. “I’m not going to be able to hold a quill for a week. I tell you, that dragon’s the most horrible animal I’ve ever met, but the way Hagrid goes on about it, you’d think it was a fluffy little bunny rabbit. When it bit me he told me off for frightening it. And when I left, he was singing it a lullaby.”

There was a tap on the dark window.

“It’s Hedwig!” said Harry, hurrying to let her in. “She’ll have Charlie’s answer!”

The three of them put their heads together to read the note. 

“Dear Ron,

How are you? Thanks for the letter — I’d be glad to take the Norwegian Ridgeback, but it won’t be easy getting him here. I think the best thing will be to send him over with some friends of mine who are coming to visit me next week. Trouble is, they mustn’t be seen carrying an illegal dragon.

Could you get the Ridgeback up the tallest tower at midnight on Saturday? They can meet you there and take him away while it’s still dark.

Send me an answer as soon as possible.

Love, Charlie”

They looked at one another.

“We’ve got the Invisibility Cloak,” said Harry. “It shouldn’t be too difficult — I think the cloak’s big enough to cover two of us and a Norbert.”

It was a mark of how bad the last week had been that the other two agreed with him. Anything to get rid of Norbert — and Draconia.

There was a hitch. By the next morning, Ron’s bitten hand had swollen to twice its usual size. 

He didn’t know whether it was safe to go to Madam Pomfrey — would she recognize a dragon bite? By the afternoon, though, he had no choice. The cut had turned a nasty shade of green. 

It looked as if Norbert’s fangs were poisonous.

Harry and Hermione rushed up to the hospital wing at the end of the day to find Ron in a terrible state in bed.

“It’s not just my hand,” he whispered, “although that feels like it’s about to fall off. Malfoy told Madam Pomfrey she wanted to borrow one of my books so she could come and have a good laugh at me. She kept threatening to tell her what really bit me and was nagging at me for ‘letting the big oaf put my friends in danger’ — I’ve told her it was a dog, but I don’t think she believes me — I shouldn’t have looked at her at the Quidditch match, that’s why she’s doing this.”

Harry squinted at Ron. “Stared at her?”

Hermione slapped Harry on the arm to get him back at the task at hand, and they both tried to calm Ron down.

“It’ll all be over at midnight on Saturday,” said Hermione, but this didn’t soothe Ron at all. On the contrary, he sat bolt upright and broke into a sweat.

“Midnight on Saturday!” he said in a hoarse voice. “Oh no — oh no — I’ve just remembered — Charlie’s letter was in that book Malfoy took, she’s going to know we’re getting rid of Norbert!”

Harry and Hermione didn’t get a chance to answer. Madam Pomfrey came over at that moment and made them leave, saying Ron needed sleep.

“It’s too late to change the plan now,” Harry told Hermione. “We haven’t got time to send Charlie another owl, and this could be our only chance to get rid of Norbert. We’ll have to risk it. And we have got the Invisibility Cloak, Malfoy doesn’t know about that.”

They found Fang the boarhound sitting outside with a bandaged tail when they went to tell Hagrid, who opened a window to talk to them.

“I won’t let you in,” he puffed. “Norbert’s at a tricky stage — nothin’ I can’t handle.”

When they told him about Charlie’s letter, his eyes filled with tears, although that might have been because Norbert had just bitten him on the leg.

“Aargh! It’s all right, he only got my boot — jus’ playin’— he’s only a baby, after all.”

The baby banged its tail on the wall, making the windows rattle. 

Harry and Hermione walked back to the castle feeling Saturday couldn’t come quickly enough.

They would have felt sorry for Hagrid when the time came for him to say good-bye to Norbert if they hadn’t been so worried about what they had to do. It was a very dark, cloudy night, and they were a bit late arriving at Hagrid’s hut because they’d had to wait for Peeves to get out of their way in the entrance hall, where he’d been playing tennis against the wall. 

Hagrid had Norbert packed and ready in a large crate.

“He’s got lots o’ rats an’ some brandy fer the journey,” said Hagrid in a muffled voice. “An’ I’ve packed his teddy bear in case he gets lonely.”

From inside the crate came ripping noises that sounded to Harry as though the teddy was having his head torn off.

“Bye-bye, Norbert!” Hagrid sobbed, as Harry and Hermione covered the crate with the Invisibility Cloak and stepped underneath it themselves. “Mummy will never forget you!”

How they managed to get the crate back up to the castle, they never knew. 

Midnight ticked nearer as they heaved Norbert up the marble staircase in the entrance hall and along the dark corridors. Up another staircase, then another — even one of Harry’s shortcuts didn’t make the work much easier.

“Nearly there!” Harry panted as they reached the corridor beneath the tallest tower.

Then a sudden movement ahead of them made them almost drop the crate. Forgetting that they were already invisible, they shrank into the shadows, staring at the dark outlines of two people grappling with each other ten feet away. 

A lamp flared.

Professor McGonagall, in a tartan bathrobe and a hair net, had Draconia by the ear.

“Detention!” she shouted. “And twenty points from Slytherin! Wandering around in the middle of the night, how dare you —”

“You don’t understand, Professor. Harry Potter’s coming, he’s got a dragon!” She wailed, wincing at the grip the woman had on her ear. “That big degenerate is putting Harry and other students in dan- Ow! Why do you keep twisting it?! When my father hears about this-!”

“What utter rubbish! How dare you tell such lies! Come on — I shall see Professor Snape about you, Malfoy!”

The steep spiral staircase up to the top of the tower seemed the easiest thing in the world after that. 

Not until they’d stepped out into the cold night air did they throw off the Cloak, glad to be able to breathe properly again. 

Hermione did a sort of jig.

“Malfoy’s got detention! I could sing!”

“Don’t,” Harry advised her.

Chuckling about Draconia, they waited, Norbert thrashing about in his crate. About ten minutes later, four broomsticks came swooping down out of the darkness.

Charlie’s friends were a cheery lot. They showed Harry and Hermione the harness they’d rigged up so they could suspend Norbert between them. They all helped buckle Norbert safely into it and then Harry and Hermione shook hands with the others and thanked them very much.

At last, Norbert was going . . . going . . . and gone.

They slipped back down the spiral staircase, their hearts as light as their hands, now that Norbert was off them. No more dragon — Draconia in detention — what could spoil their happiness?

The answer to that was waiting at the foot of the stairs. As they stepped into the corridor, Filch’s face loomed suddenly out of the darkness.

“Well, well, well,” he whispered, “we are in trouble.”

They’d left the Invisibility Cloak on top of the tower.

Chapter 10 : Book 1: Chapter 15 (Extreme Deviation)

Things couldn’t have been worse.

Filch took them down to Professor McGonagall’s study on the first floor, where they sat and waited without saying a word to each other. 

Hermione was trembling. 

Excuses, alibis, and wild cover-up stories chased each other around Harry’s brain, each more feeble than the last. He couldn’t see how they were going to get out of trouble this time. 

They were cornered. 

How could they have been so stupid as to forget the Cloak? There was no reason on earth that Professor McGonagall would accept for their being out of bed and creeping around the school in the dead of night, let alone being up the tallest Astronomy Tower, which was out-of-bounds except for classes.

Add Norbert and the Invisibility Cloak, and they might as well be packing their bags already.

Had Harry thought that things couldn’t have been worse? 

He was wrong. 

When Professor McGonagall appeared, she was leading Neville.

“Harry!” Neville burst out, the moment he saw the other two. “I was trying to find you to warn you, I heard Malfoy saying he was going to catch you, he said you had a drag-”

Harry shook his head violently to shut Neville up, but Professor McGonagall had seen. 

She looked more likely to breathe fire than Norbert as she towered over the three of them.

“I would never have believed it of any of you. Mr. Filch says you were up in the Astronomy Tower. It’s one o’clock in the morning. Explain yourselves.” She puffed, her jaw so clenched that her cheeks had turned white.

It was the first time Hermione had ever failed to answer a teacher’s question. 

She was staring at her slippers, as still as a statue.

“I think I’ve got a good idea of what’s been going on,” said Professor McGonagall. “It doesn’t take a genius to work it out. You fed Draconia Malfoy some cock-and-bull story about a dragon, trying to get her out of bed and into trouble. I’ve already caught her. I suppose you think it’s funny that Longbottom here heard the story and believed it, too?”

Harry caught Neville’s eye and tried to tell him without words that this wasn’t true, because Neville was looking stunned and hurt. 

Poor, blundering Neville. Harry knew what it must have cost him to try and find them in the dark, to warn them.

“I’m disgusted,” said Professor McGonagall. “Four students out of bed in one night! I’ve never heard of such a thing before! You, Miss Granger, I thought you had more sense. As for you, Mr. Potter, I thought Gryffindor meant more to you than this. All three of you will receive detentions. Yes, you too, Mr. Longbottom, nothing gives you the right to walk around school at night, especially these days, it’s very dangerous. And fifty points will be taken from Gryffindor.”

“Fifty?!” Harry gasped.

They would lose the lead, the lead he’d won in the last Quidditch match.

“Fifty points, each,” said Professor McGonagall, breathing heavily through her long, pointed nose.

“Professor, please-!” Harry began, almost coming to his feet. “You can’t-!”

“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do, Potter. Now get back to bed, all of you. I’ve never been more ashamed of Gryffindor students.”

A hundred and fifty points lost. 

That put Gryffindor in last place. 

In one night, they’d ruined any chance Gryffindor had had for the House Cup. Harry felt as though the bottom had dropped out of his stomach. 

How could they ever make up for this?

Harry didn’t sleep all night. 

He could hear Neville sobbing into his pillow for what seemed like hours. Harry couldn’t think of anything to say to comfort him. He knew Neville, like himself, was dreading the dawn. 

What would happen when the rest of Gryffindor found out what they’d done?

At first, Gryffindors passing the giant hourglasses that recorded the House points the next day thought there’d been a mistake. 

How could they suddenly have a hundred and fifty points fewer than yesterday? 

Then the story started to spread: Harry Potter, the famous Harry Potter, their hero of two Quidditch matches, had lost them all those points.

Him, and a couple of other stupid first years.

From being one of the most popular and admired people at the school, Harry was suddenly the most hated. 

Even Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs turned on him, because everyone had been longing to see Slytherin lose the House Cup. Everywhere Harry went, people pointed and didn’t trouble to lower their voices as they insulted him. 

Slytherins, on the other hand, clapped as he walked past them, whistling and cheering, 

“Thanks Potter, we owe you one!” One boy shouted out, his face alight with malice.

Only Ron stood by him.

“They’ll all forget this in a few weeks. Fred and George have lost loads of points in all the time they’ve been here, and people still like them.”

“They’ve never lost a hundred and fifty points in one go, though, have they?” asked Harry miserably.

“Well… no.” Ron admitted.

It was a bit late to repair the damage, but Harry swore to himself not to meddle in things that weren’t his business from now on. He’d had it with sneaking around and spying. He felt so ashamed of himself that he went to Wood and offered to resign from the Quidditch team.

“Resign?!” Wood thundered. “What good’ll that do? How are we going to get any points back if we can’t win at Quidditch?”

But even Quidditch had lost its fun. 

The rest of the team wouldn’t speak to Harry during practice, and if they had to speak about him, they called him “the Seeker”.

Hermione and Neville were suffering, too. They didn’t have as bad a time as Harry, because they weren’t as well-known, but nobody would speak to them, either. 

Hermione had stopped drawing attention to herself in class, keeping her head down and working in silence.

Harry was almost glad that the exams weren’t far away. All the studying he had to do kept his mind off his misery. He, Ron, and Hermione kept to themselves, working late into the night, trying to remember the ingredients in complicated potions, learn charms and spells by heart, memorize the dates of magical discoveries and goblin rebellions. . . .

Then, about a week before the exams were due to start, Harry’s new resolution not to interfere in anything that didn’t concern him was put to an unexpected test. 

Walking back from the library on his own one afternoon, he heard somebody whimpering from a classroom up ahead. As he drew closer, he heard Quirrell’s voice.

“No — no — not again, please —”

It sounded as though someone was threatening him. 

Harry moved closer.

“All right — all right —” he heard Quirrell sob.

Next second, Quirrell came hurrying out of the classroom, straightening his turban. He was pale and looked as though he was about to cry. 

He strode out of sight.

Harry didn’t think Quirrell had even noticed him. He waited until Quirrell’s footsteps had disappeared, then peered into the classroom. It was empty, but a door stood ajar at the other end. Harry was halfway toward it before he remembered what he’d promised himself about not meddling.

All the same, he’d have gambled twelve Sorcerer’s Stones that Snape had just left the room, and from what Harry had just heard, Snape would be walking with a new spring in his step: Quirrell seemed to have given in at last.

Harry went back to the library, where Hermione was testing Ron on Astronomy, and told them what he’d heard.

“Snape’s done it, then!” gasped Ron. “If Quirrell’s told him how to break his Anti-Dark Force spell-”

“There’s still Fluffy, though,” said Hermione.

“Maybe Snape’s found out how to get past him without asking Hagrid,” said Ron, looking up at the thousands of books surrounding them. “I bet there’s a book somewhere in here telling you how to get past a giant three-headed dog. So what do we do, Harry?”

The light of adventure was kindling again in Ron’s eyes, but Hermione answered before Harry could.

“Go to Dumbledore. That’s what we should have done ages ago. If we try anything ourselves we’ll be thrown out for sure.”

“But we’ve got no proof!” said Harry. “Quirrell’s too scared to back us up. Snape’s only got to say he doesn’t know how the troll got in at Halloween and that he was nowhere near the third floor. Who do you think they’ll believe, him or us? It’s not exactly a secret we hate him, Dumbledore’ll think we made it up to get him sacked. Filch wouldn’t help us if his life depended on it, he’s too friendly with Snape, and the more students get thrown out, the better, he’ll think. And don’t forget, we’re not supposed to know about the Stone or Fluffy. That’ll take a lot of explaining.”

Hermione looked convinced, but Ron didn’t.

“If we just do a bit of poking around…”

“No,” said Harry flatly, “we’ve done enough poking around.”

He pulled a map of Jupiter toward him and started to learn the names of its moons.

The following morning, notes were delivered to Harry, Hermione, and Neville at the breakfast table. 

They were all the same:

“Your detention will take place at eleven o’clock tonight. Meet Mr. Filch in the entrance hall.”

Harry had forgotten they still had detentions to do in the furor over the points they’d lost. He half expected Hermione to complain that this was a whole night of studying lost, but she didn’t say a word. 

Like Harry, she felt they deserved what they’d got.

At eleven o’clock that night, they said good-bye to Ron in the common room and went down to the entrance hall with Neville. Filch was already there, and so was Draconia. 

Harry had forgotten that Draconia had gotten a detention, too.

“Follow me,” said Filch, lighting a lamp and leading them outside.

“I bet you’ll think twice about breaking a school rule again, won’t you, eh?” he said, leering at them. “Oh yes . . . hard work and pain are the best teachers if you ask me. . . . It’s just a pity they let the old punishments die out . . . hang you by your wrists from the ceiling for a few days, I’ve got the chains still in my office, keep ’em well oiled in case they’re ever needed. . . . Right, off we go, and don’t think of running off, now, it’ll be worse for you if you do.”

They marched off across the dark grounds. 

Neville kept sniffing. 

Harry wondered what their punishment was going to be. It must be something really horrible, or Filch wouldn’t be sounding so delighted.

The moon was bright, but clouds scudding across it kept throwing them into darkness. Ahead, Harry could see the lighted windows of Hagrid’s hut. 

Then they heard a distant shout.

“Is that you, Filch? Hurry up, I want ‘ter get started.”

Harry’s heart rose; if they were going to be working with Hagrid it wouldn’t be so bad. 

His relief must have showed in his face, because Filch said, “I suppose you think you’ll be enjoying yourself with that oaf? Well, think again, boy — it’s into the forest you’re going and I’m much mistaken if you’ll all come out in one piece.”

At this, Neville let out a little moan, and Draconia stopped dead in her tracks.

“The forest?” She repeated, and she didn’t sound quite as cool as usual as she glanced at the looming, dark trees in the distance. “We can’t go in there at night, there’s all sorts of things in there! Werewolves, I heard…”

Neville clutched the sleeve of Harry’s robe and made a choking noise.

“That’s your problem, is it?” said Filch, his voice cracking with glee. “Should’ve thought of them werewolves before you got in trouble, shouldn’t you?”

Hagrid came striding toward them out of the dark, Fang at his heel. He was carrying his large crossbow, and a quiver of arrows hung over his shoulder.

“Abou’ time,” he said. “I bin waitin’ fer half an hour already. All right, Harry, Hermione?”

“Shouldn’t be too friendly to them, Hagrid,” said Filch coldly, “they’re here to be punished, after all.”

“That’s why yer late, is it?” said Hagrid, frowning at Filch. “Bin lecturin’ them, eh? ’Snot your place ter do that. Yeh’ve done yer bit, I’ll take over from here.”

“I’ll be back at dawn,” said Filch, “for what’s left of them,” he added nastily, and he turned and started back toward the castle, his lamp bobbing away in the darkness.

Malfoy now turned to Hagrid.

“I’m not going in that forest,” She said, and Harry was pleased to hear the note of panic in her voice. “Why are students going in there anyway? Why am I even here?! All I was trying to do was to keep Harry from walking a drag-”

“Yeh are if yeh want ter stay at Hogwarts!” said Hagrid fiercely, cutting across Draconia. “Yeh’ve done wrong an’ now yeh’ve got ter pay fer it.”

Draconia looked a bit more paler than usual, if such a thing was possible, and Harry felt a little better watching her panic “But this is servant stuff, it’s not for students to do! I thought we’d be copying lines or… or something! If my father knew I was doing this, he’d-”

“-tell yer that’s how it is at Hogwarts,” Hagrid growled. “Copyin’ lines! What good’s that ter anyone? Yeh’ll do summat useful or yeh’ll get out. If yeh think yer father’d rather you were expelled, then get back off ter the castle an’ pack. Go on!”

Draconia didn’t move. 

She looked at Hagrid furiously, but then dropped her gaze.

“Bet you wish you were scribbling on more Quidditch magazines, don’t you?” Harry mumbled to her, looking up at the dark sky.

“S-Shut it, Potter.” Draconia muttered, her fists balled at her side.

“Right then,” said Hagrid, “now, listen carefully, ’cause it’s dangerous what we’re gonna do tonight, an’ I don’ want no one takin’ risks. Follow me over here a moment.”

He led them to the very edge of the forest. Holding his lamp up high, he pointed down a narrow, winding earth track that disappeared into the thick black trees. A light breeze lifted their hair as they looked into the forest.

“Look there,” said Hagrid, “see that stuff shinin’ on the ground? Silvery stuff? That’s unicorn blood. There’s a unicorn in there bin hurt badly by summat. This is the second time in a week. I found one dead last Wednesday. We’re gonna try an’ find the poor thing. We might have ter put it out of its misery.”

“And what if whatever hurt the unicorn finds us first?!” Draconia protested, unable to keep the fear out of her voice.

“There’s nothin’ that lives in the forest that’ll hurt yeh if yer with me or Fang,” said Hagrid. “An’ keep ter the path. Right, now, we’re gonna split inter two parties an’ follow the trail in diff’rent directions. There’s blood all over the place, it must’ve bin staggerin’ around since last night at least.”

“I want Fang,” said Draconia quickly, looking at Fang’s long teeth.

“All right, but I warn yeh, he’s a right coward,” said Hagrid. “So me, Harry, an’ Hermione’ll go one way an’ Draconia, Neville, an’ Fang’ll go the other. Now-”

“Neville?!” Draconia protested, looking at the whimpering boy with an open mask of disgust. “I don’t want Neville, he’ll just leave me to get eaten by whatever is killing the unicorns! I want Potter!”

Harry turned to look at Draconia with an air of deep hatred, then shook his head at Hagrid. “I’d rather have Hermione, thanks.”

“I want Hermione!” Neville spoke up, quickly calculating his chances of living beyond the night. “She knows the most spells!”

Hagrid, not having the patience for this, reached out a hand and rearranged the students manually. “Fine, den! Harry, yer wit Draconia. Hermione, yer with Neville. Everyone happy now?”

Harry certainly wasn’t now that he found himself standing beside Draconia with a fuming temper.

“Anyway, if any of us finds the unicorn, we’ll send up green sparks, right? Get yer wands out an’ practice now — that’s it — an’ if anyone gets in trouble, send up red sparks, an’ we’ll all come an’ find yeh — so, be careful — let’s go.”

The forest was black and silent. 

A little way into it they reached a fork in the earth path, and Hermione , Neville, and Hagrid took the left path while Draconia, Harry, and Fang took the right, each group holding a flicking lantern.

They walked in silence, their eyes on the ground. Every now and then a ray of moonlight through the branches above lit a spot of silver-blue blood on the fallen leaves below.

Harry glanced sideways at Draconia, still annoyed as they slowly walked along the forest trail.

“Could a werewolf be killing the unicorns, Malfoy?” Harry asked. “You are from a true magical family, so I assume you know.”

“How am I supposed to know, Potter?” Draconia replied, one hand gripping Fang’s collar while the other was firmly attached to her wand. “Do I look or sound like I go traipsing about the woods gawking after unicorns?”

Harry looked at her, and she looked at him, the lantern that Harry held casting them in golden light.

There was genuine fear in Draconia’s green-gray eyes, and she was white knuckling Fang’s collar.

To be honest, Harry thought she looked as if she were going to cry.

With an inward eyeroll, Harry offered her the sagging sleeve of his lantern arm. “Do you want to hold onto my sleeve so you don’t wander off?”

“Wander off?” Draconia spat, using her anger to push away the fear. “Do I look like an invalid squib to you? Just going to go wandering off into the night to be eaten by ghouls?”

Harry looked at her for a long moment, then Draconia let go of the wand in her pocket and pinched at Harry’s sleeve.

“If you breathe a word about this, Potter…”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Malfoy.”

“Right then.” Draconia sniffed, though she seemed a bit more fortified.

“Right, then.” Harry said flatly, and set back off at their walk.

They walked past a mossy tree stump. Harry could hear running water, and assumed there must be a stream somewhere close by. There were still spots of unicorn blood here and there along the winding path.

“You all right, Draconia ?” Harry whispered. “I’m not sure what we’ll actually do if we see the unicorn anywa-”

Harry froze, and Draconia whipped her head from Harry, to where he was looking.

“What?” Draconia hissed at Harry, pulling herself close to his side and Fang along with her. “What?!”

Harry’s legs felt a little wobbly, but he pulled Draconia and Fang off the trail, ducking behind a tree and snuffing their lantern. “Be q-quiet, I don’t know what that is!”

Harry and Draconia tucked themselves behind a great oak tree, both of their hearts hammering in their chests as they peaked around the tree’s trunk into the glooming dark. 

They pulled out their wands, held in trembling hands, and raised them, ready to fire whatever spells they could manage to remember. 

The two of them and Fang listened, the great hound standing behind Draconia so whatever creature ahead of them had something else to eat first. Something was slithering over dead leaves nearby, and it sounded like a cloak trailing along the ground. 

Harry was squinting up the dark path, but after a few seconds, the sound faded away.

“I don’t… I don’t know what that was,” he murmured. “I just saw… you know. Movement.”

“A werewolf?” Draconia suggested.

“... I don’t think it was?” Harry replied quietly, though he was not sure if he could tell a werewolf from a husky at this point. “Let’s… uh… let’s keep walking.”

They walked forward more slowly, ears straining for the faintest sound as they relit the lantern and kept it as low as they dared. 

Suddenly, in a clearing ahead, something definitely moved.

“Who’s there?” Draconia called out rather bravely, though she was clutching onto Harry’s arm with panicked, clawed fingers. “I… I have a big dog! He’ll tear you to bits if you get close!”

Harry glanced down at Fang, who was, again, standing behind the both of them and looking around their bodies.

Into the clearing came — was it a man, or a horse? To the waist, a man, with red hair and beard, but below that was a horse’s gleaming chestnut body with a long, reddish tail. 

Harry and Draconia’s jaws dropped.

The Centaur stared at them for a long moment, Harry and Draconia too stunned to speak, though it seemed the Centaur tired of the long silence between them.

“I am Ronan.” The Centaur said, looking from Harry, to Draconia.

“... Hi.” Harry said, and in a lack of knowing what else to do, held out his hand to the Centaur as Ronan stepped closer. “I’m… Harry.”

“Good evening to you, Harry,” said Ronan as he took Harry’s hand. He had a deep, sorrowful voice. “Is Hagrid nearby? I had thought I had heard him amongst the trees…”

“He’s… nearby.” said Draconia, pulling Fang as far as she could so the hound was no longer behind her. “We have his dog, see?”

“I noticed.” said Ronan flatly, a bemused smile on his face. “Students, are you? And do you learn much, up at the school?”

Harry glanced at Draconia, who caught his eyes, and he turned back to the Centaur. “Er… yes?”

“A bit,” said Draconia timidly.

“A bit. Well, that’s something.” Ronan sighed. He flung back his head and stared at the sky. “Mars is bright tonight.”

“... Yeah” said Harry, glancing up, too, as Draconia did. “Um… we’re trying to find a… a unicorn?”

“A hurt, unicorn?” Draconia added, still having not let go of Harry’s sleeve.

Ronan didn’t answer immediately. He stared unblinkingly upward, then sighed again.

“Always the innocent are the first victims,” he said. “So it has been for ages past, so it is now.”

The two stared at Ronan with wide, bewildered eyes, while Fang whined beside them.

“Mars is bright tonight,” Ronan repeated, looking at the two students pointedly. “Unusually bright.”

“... Do you… have any opinions on whats going on… a little closer, than Mars?” Draconia asked, now starting to get a little annoyed, and her haughty frown was starting to find its way back onto her lips.

Harry nodded. “A little closer to the forest, perhaps?”

Yet again, Ronan took a while to answer. At last, he said, “The forest hides many secrets.”

A movement in the trees behind Ronan made Harry and Draconia nearly jolt into the air, and Harry felt Draconia pull herself right up beside him while clutching his arm. 

However it was only a second centaur, black haired and bodied and wilder looking than Ronan.

“Bane,” said Ronan, turning to the other Centaur. “Does all go well this night?”

“Good evening, Ronan.” Bane replied boredly, looking from Ronan to the students and hound. “I hope you are well.”

It took a moment for Harry to realize that Bane was addressing him, and he cleared his throat as his lantern flickered. “Er… well enough. We were just asking about a… injured ah… unicorn, you see.”

Bane walked over to stand next to Ronan. He looked skyward.

“Mars is bright tonight,” he said simply.

“So we’ve heard,” Draconia mumbled angrily, looking down at her hands and then quickly stepping away from Harry with a jerk of her body. “Well… if neither of you… sirs haven’t seen anything. We’ll… just be off… then.”

Harry and Draconia slowly turned and walked out of the clearing, staring over their shoulders at Ronan and Bane until the trees blocked their view.

“What an annoying breed,” said Draconia irritably, “Like trying to get a straight answer from a Remembrall.”

“Are there many of them in here?” asked Harry.

“I don’t know.” Draconia muttered, though she had once again taken a bit of Harry’s sleeve between her thumb and pointer finger. “The books in class say they are littered all over the forest.

“D’you think that was a Centaur we heard earlier?” asked Harry.

“Did that sound like hooves to you?” Draconia asked with a waspish air. “Knowing our luck, whatever killed that stupid unicorn just crossed our path and went off into the night!”

They walked on through the dense, dark trees. Harry kept looking nervously over his shoulder. He had the nasty feeling they were being watched. 

He wished he had Hagrid and his crossbow with them, instead of the massive, cowardly dog and a girl who would rather spend her time belittling him every chance she got. 

They had just passed a bend in the path when Draconia grabbed Harry’s arm.

“Potter, look! Red sparks! Hagrid must have found the whatever-it-is!”

“Let’s go!” Harry shouted, tucking his wand in his pocket so he could switch the lantern to his other hand, taking Draconia’s in his own. “Let’s group up with them so we don’t run into anything else!”

They both went crashing away through the undergrowth as Fang surged forward out of Draconia’s hand, howling ahead as he sought Hagrid in the distance. 

Draconia spluttered as leaves and branches swiped at her face, and her face was livid. “Potter! Slow down! I’m going to trip on these roots!”

“Don’t fall down, then!” Harry panted, turning to glare at Draconia. “You can fly around on a broom but you can’t manage to run through a forest?!”

Draconia furrowed her brows at Harry, though she looked rather pink in the lantern light. “This is nothing like riding a broom! If I had a broom, I’d already be there and you’d be panting after me!”

At last, a great crunching noise announced their arrival out of the foliage. 

Hermione, Neville, and Hagrid were there with fang by a great tree, though Hagrid was fuming. Neville, it seemed, had gone into the woods to pee, and had ended up stumbling up behind Hermione and grabbing her as he tripped over a root. 

Hermione had panicked, and sent up the sparks.

“We’ll be lucky ter catch anythin’ now, with the racket you two were makin’.” Hagrid mumbled, leaning back with a sigh as he hefted his crossbow. “Right, well, the night ain’t gettin any younger, let’s git back to ‘er den.”

So, Harry set off once again into the heart of the forest with Draconia and Fang. They walked for nearly half an hour, deeper and deeper into the forest, until the path became almost impossible to follow because the trees were so thick. 

Harry, feeling Draconia once again grabbing onto his sleeve, thought the blood seemed to be getting thicker. There were splashes on the roots of a tree, as though the poor creature had been thrashing around in pain close by. Harry could see a clearing ahead, through the tangled branches of an ancient oak.

“Look…” Harry murmured, holding out his arm to stop Draconia.

She had been trying to pick leaves and sticks out of her hair, and came to a stop beside him with a squeak.

Something bright white was gleaming on the ground, glowing in the moonlight. 

They inched closer.

It was the unicorn all right, and it was dead. 

Harry had never seen anything so beautiful and sad. Its long, slender legs were stuck out at odd angles where it had fallen and its mane was spread pearly-white on the dark leaves.

Harry had taken one step toward it when a slithering sound made him freeze where he stood. A bush on the edge of the clearing quivered. . . . Then, out of the shadows, a hooded figure came crawling across the ground like some stalking beast. 

Harry, Draconia, and Fang stood transfixed, Draconia’s fingers digging into Harry’s arm in a quiet, but surging, panic. The cloaked figure reached the unicorn, lowered its head over the wound in the animal’s side, and began to drink its blood with horrible, thick slurps.

Draconia, her face rippling with horror, let out a terrible scream and bolted, and so did Fang. The hooded figure raised its head and looked right at Harry, unicorn blood dribbling down its front. 

It got to its feet and came swiftly toward Harry… but he couldn’t move due to fear.

Then a pain like he’d never felt before pierced his head; it was as though his scar were on fire. Half blinded, he staggered backward. He heard hooves behind him, galloping, and something jumped clean over Harry, charging at the figure.

The pain in Harry’s head was so bad he fell to his knees. It took a minute or two to pass. When he looked up, the figure had gone. A centaur was standing over him, though not Ronan or Bane. This one looked younger, with white-blond hair and a palomino body.

“Are you all right?” said the centaur, pulling Harry to his feet.

“Yes — thank you — what was that?”

The centaur didn’t answer. He had astonishingly blue eyes, like pale sapphires. He looked carefully at Harry, his eyes lingering on the scar that stood out, livid, on Harry’s forehead.

“You are the Potter boy,” he said. “You had better get back to Hagrid. The forest is not safe at this time — especially for you. Can you ride? It will be quicker this way.

“My name is Firenze,” he added, as he lowered himself on to his front legs so that Harry could clamber onto his back.

There was suddenly a sound of more galloping from the other side of the clearing. Ronan and Bane came bursting through the trees, their flanks heaving and sweaty.

“Firenze!” Bane thundered. “What are you doing? You have a human on your back! Have you no shame? Are you a common mule?”

“Do you realize who this is?” said Firenze. “This is the Potter boy. The quicker he leaves this forest, the better.”

“What have you been telling him?” growled Bane. “Remember, Firenze, we are sworn not to set ourselves against the heavens. Have we not read what is to come in the movements of the planets?”

Ronan pawed the ground nervously. “I’m sure Firenze thought he was acting for the best,” he said in his gloomy voice.

Bane kicked his back legs in anger. “For the best! What is that to do with us? Centaurs are concerned with what has been foretold! It is not our business to run around like donkeys after stray humans in our forest!”

Firenze suddenly reared on to his hind legs in anger, so that Harry had to grab his shoulders to stay on.

“Do you not see that unicorn?” Firenze bellowed at Bane. “Do you not understand why it was killed? Or have the planets not let you in on that secret? I set myself against what is lurking in this forest, Bane, yes, with humans alongside me if I must.”

Firenze whisked around with Harry clutching on as best he could, and they plunged off into the trees, leaving Ronan and Bane behind them.

Harry didn’t have a clue what was going on, the whole ordeal being a rather large helping of mental whiplash.

“Why’s Bane so angry?” he asked. “What was that thing you saved me from, anyway?”

Firenze slowed to a walk, warned Harry to keep his head bowed in case of low-hanging branches, but did not answer Harry’s question. They made their way through the trees in silence for so long that Harry thought Firenze didn’t want to talk to him anymore. They were passing through a particularly dense patch of trees, however, when Firenze suddenly stopped.

“Harry Potter, do you know what unicorn blood is used for?”

“No,” said Harry, startled by the odd question. “We’ve only used the horn and tail hair in Potions.”

“That is because it is a monstrous thing, to slay a unicorn,” said Firenze. “Only one who has nothing to lose, and everything to gain, would commit such a crime. The blood of a unicorn will keep you alive, even if you are an inch from death, but at a terrible price. You have slain something pure and defenseless to save yourself, and you will have but a half-life, a cursed life, from the moment the blood touches your lips.”

Harry stared at the back of Firenze’s head, which was dappled silver in the moonlight.

“But who’d be that desperate?” Harry wondered aloud. “If you’re going to be cursed forever, death’s better, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Firenze agreed, “unless all you need is to stay alive long enough to drink something else — something that will bring you back to full strength and power — something that will mean you can never die. Mr. Potter, do you know what is hidden in the school at this very moment?”

“The Sorcerer’s Stone! Of course — the Elixir of Life! But I don’t understand who —”

“Can you think of nobody who has waited many years to return to power, who has clung to life, awaiting their chance?”

It was as though an iron fist had clenched suddenly around Harry’s heart. Over the rustling of the trees, he seemed to hear once more what Hagrid had told him on the night they had met: “Some say he died. Codswallop, in my opinion. Dunno if he had enough human left in him to die.”

“Do you mean,” Harry croaked, “that was Vol —”

“Harry! Harry, are you all right?”

Hermione was running toward them down the path, Hagrid puffing along behind her with a fainted Draconia in his arms.

“I’m fine,” said Harry, hardly knowing what he was saying. “The unicorn’s dead, Hagrid, it’s in that clearing back there. What happened to her?”

“Passed out cold’er she did.” Hagrid groused, Draconia limp in his arms. “Feinted right as she found us.”

“This is where I leave you,” Firenze murmured as Hagrid hurried off to examine the unicorn. “You are safe now.” 

Harry slid off his back, thudding down onto his heels.

“Good luck, Harry Potter,” said Firenze. “The planets have been read wrongly before now, even by centaurs. I hope this is one of those times.”

He turned and cantered back into the depths of the forest, leaving Harry shivering behind him.

After the long walk back, which Draconia seemed to never recover from or awake despite Harry catching her peeking past slitted eyes a few times, they finally made it back to the castle.

Ron had fallen asleep in the dark common room, waiting for them to return. He shouted something about Quidditch fouls when Harry roughly shook him awake. In a matter of seconds, though, he was wide-eyed as Harry began to tell him and Hermione what had happened in the forest.

Harry couldn’t sit down. He paced up and down in front of the fire. He was still shaking.

“Snape wants the Stone for Voldemort . . . and Voldemort’s waiting in the forest . . . and all this time we thought Snape just wanted to get rich. . . .”

“Stop saying the name!” said Ron in a terrified whisper, as if he thought Voldemort could hear them.

Harry wasn’t listening.

“Firenze saved me, but he shouldn’t have done so. . . . Bane was furious . . . he was talking about interfering with what the planets say is going to happen. . . . They must show that Voldemort’s coming back. . . . Bane thinks Firenze should have let Voldemort kill me. . . . I suppose that’s written in the stars as well.”

“Will you stop saying the name!” Ron hissed.

“So all I’ve got to wait for now is Snape to steal the Stone,” Harry went on feverishly, “then Voldemort will be able to come and finish me off. . . . Well, I suppose Bane’ll be happy.”

Hermione looked very frightened, but she had a word of comfort.

“Harry, everyone says Dumbledore’s the only one You-Know-Who was ever afraid of. With Dumbledore around, You-Know-Who won’t touch you. Anyway, who says the centaurs are right? It sounds like fortune-telling to me, and Professor McGonagall says that’s a very imprecise branch of magic.”

The sky had turned light before they stopped talking. They went to bed exhausted, their throats sore. But the night’s surprises weren’t over.

When Harry pulled back his sheets, he found his Invisibility Cloak folded neatly underneath them. 

There was a note pinned to it:

“Just in case.”

Chapter 11 : Book 1: Chapter 16-17

In Chapter 16, Harry goes through his testing with Ron and Hermione, and then braves the trials set forth by the teachers as he seeks the stone. There is very little deviation from the story as far as Draconia goes, except that Harry and Draconia have an unspoken agreement to not discuss what had happened in the Forbidden Forest, though their contact is sparse due to testing and Harry’s adventures.

It was Quirrell.

“You!” gasped Harry.

Quirrell smiled. His face wasn’t twitching at all.

“Me,” he said calmly. “I wondered whether I’d be meeting you here, Potter.”

“But I thought — Snape —”

“Severus?” Quirrell laughed, and it wasn’t his usual quivering treble, either, but cold and sharp. “Yes, Severus does seem the type, doesn’t he? So useful to have him swooping around like an overgrown bat. Next to him, who would suspect p-p-poor, st-stuttering P-Professor Quirrell?”

Harry couldn’t take it in. This couldn’t be true, it couldn’t.

“But Snape tried to kill me!”

“No, no, no. I tried to kill you. Your friend Miss Granger accidentally knocked me over as she rushed to set fire to Snape at that Quidditch match. She broke my eye contact with you. Another few seconds and I’d have got you off that broom. I’d have managed it before then if Snape hadn’t been muttering a countercurse, trying to save you.”

“Snape was trying to save me?”

“Of course,” said Quirrell coolly. “Why do you think he wanted to referee your next match? He was trying to make sure I didn’t do it again. Funny, really . . . he needn’t have bothered. I couldn’t do anything with Dumbledore watching. All the other teachers thought Snape was trying to stop Gryffindor from winning, he did make himself unpopular . . . and what a waste of time, when after all that, I’m going to kill you tonight.”

Quirrell snapped his fingers. Ropes sprang out of thin air and wrapped themselves tightly around Harry.

“You’re too nosy to live, Potter. Scurrying around the school on Halloween like that, for all I knew you’d seen me coming to look at what was guarding the Stone.”

“You let the troll in?”

“Certainly. I have a special gift with trolls — you must have seen what I did to the one in the chamber back there? Unfortunately, while everyone else was running around looking for it, Snape, who already suspected me, went straight to the third floor to head me off — and not only did my troll fail to beat you to death, that three-headed dog didn’t even manage to bite Snape’s leg off properly. Now, wait quietly, Potter. I need to examine this interesting mirror.”

It was only then that Harry realized what was standing behind Quirrell. It was the Mirror of Erised.

“This mirror is the key to finding the Stone,” Quirrell murmured, tapping his way around the frame. “Trust Dumbledore to come up with something like this . . . but he’s in London . . . I’ll be far away by the time he gets back. . . .”

All Harry could think of doing was to keep Quirrell talking and stop him from concentrating on the mirror.

“I saw you and Snape in the forest —” he blurted out.

“Yes,” said Quirrell idly, walking around the mirror to look at the back. “He was on to me by that time, trying to find out how far I’d got. He suspected me all along. Tried to frighten me — as though he could, when I had Lord Voldemort on my side. . . .”

Quirrell came back out from behind the mirror and stared hungrily into it.

“I see the Stone . . . I’m presenting it to my master . . . but where is it?”

Harry struggled against the ropes binding him, but they didn’t give. He had to keep Quirrell from giving his whole attention to the mirror.

“But Snape always seemed to hate me so much.”

“Oh, he does,” said Quirrell casually, “heavens, yes. He was at Hogwarts with your father, didn’t you know? They loathed each other. But he never wanted you dead.”

“But I heard you a few days ago, sobbing — I thought Snape was threatening you.”

For the first time, a spasm of fear flitted across Quirrell’s face.

“Sometimes,” he said, “I find it hard to follow my master’s instructions — he is a great wizard and I am weak —”

“You mean he was there in the classroom with you?” Harry gasped.

“He is with me wherever I go,” said Quirrell quietly. “I met him when I traveled around the world. A foolish young man I was then, full of ridiculous ideas about good and evil. Lord Voldemort showed me how wrong I was. There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it. . . . Since then, I have served him faithfully, although I have let him down many times. He has had to be very hard on me.” Quirrell shivered suddenly. “He does not forgive mistakes easily. When I failed to steal the Stone from Gringotts, he was most displeased. He punished me . . . decided he would have to keep a closer watch on me. . . .”

Quirrell’s voice trailed away. Harry was remembering his trip to Diagon Alley — how could he have been so stupid? He’d seen Quirrell there that very day, shaken hands with him in the Leaky Cauldron.

Quirrell cursed under his breath.

“I don’t understand . . . is the Stone inside the mirror? Should I break it?”

Harry’s mind was racing. What I want more than anything else in the world at the moment, he thought, is to find the Stone before Quirrell does. So if I look in the mirror, I should see myself finding it — which means I’ll see where it’s hidden! But how can I look without Quirrell realizing what I’m up to?

He tried to edge to the left, to get in front of the glass without Quirrell noticing, but the ropes around his ankles were too tight: he tripped and fell over. Quirrell ignored him. He was still talking to himself.

“What does this mirror do? How does it work? Help me, Master!”

And to Harry’s horror, a voice answered, and the voice seemed to come from Quirrell himself.

“Use the boy . . . Use the boy . . .” 

Quirrell rounded on Harry. “Yes — Potter — come here.”

He clapped his hands once, and the ropes binding Harry fell off. Harry got slowly to his feet.

“Come here,” Quirrell repeated. “Look in the mirror and tell me what you see.”

Harry walked toward him.

I must lie, he thought desperately. I must look and lie about what I see, that’s all.

Quirrell moved close behind him. Harry breathed in the funny smell that seemed to come from Quirrell’s turban. He closed his eyes, stepped in front of the mirror, and opened them again.

He saw his reflection, pale and scared-looking at first. But a moment later, the reflection smiled at him. It put its hand into its pocket and pulled out a blood-red stone. It winked and put the Stone back in its pocket — and as it did so, Harry felt something heavy drop into his real pocket. Somehow — incredibly — he’d gotten the Stone.

“Well?” said Quirrell impatiently. “What do you see?”

Harry screwed up his courage.

“I see myself shaking hands with Dumbledore,” he invented. “I — I’ve won the House Cup for Gryffindor.”

Quirrell cursed again.

“Get out of the way,” he said. As Harry moved aside, he felt the Sorcerer’s Stone against his leg. 

Dare he make a break for it?

But he hadn’t walked five paces before a high voice spoke, though Quirrell wasn’t moving his lips.

“He lies . . . He lies . . .”

“Potter, come back here!” Quirrell shouted. “Tell me the truth! What did you just see?”

The high voice spoke again. “Let me speak to him . . . face-to-face. . . .”

“Master, you are not strong enough!”

“I have strength enough . . . for this. . . .”

Harry felt as if Devil’s Snare was rooting him to the spot. He couldn’t move a muscle. Petrified, he watched as Quirrell reached up and began to unwrap his turban. 

What was going on? 

The turban fell away. 

Quirrell’s head looked strangely small without it. Then he turned slowly on the spot.

Harry would have screamed, but he couldn’t make a sound. Where there should have been a back to Quirrell’s head, there was a face, the most terrible face Harry had ever seen. It was chalk white with glaring red eyes and slits for nostrils, like a snake.

“Harry Potter . . .” it whispered.

Harry tried to take a step backward but his legs wouldn’t move.

“See what I have become?” the face said. “Mere shadow and vapor . . . I have form only when I can share another’s body . . . but there have always been those willing to let me into their hearts and minds. . . . Unicorn blood has strengthened me, these past weeks . . . you saw faithful Quirrell drinking it for me in the forest . . . and once I have the Elixir of Life, I will be able to create a body of my own. . . . Now . . . why don’t you give me that Stone in your pocket?”

So he knew. 

The feeling suddenly surged back into Harry’s legs. He stumbled backward.

“Don’t be a fool,” snarled the face. “Better save your own life and join me . . . or you’ll meet the same end as your parents. . . . They died begging me for mercy. . . .”

“LIAR!” Harry shouted suddenly.

Quirrell was walking backward at him, so that Voldemort could still see him. The evil face was now smiling.

“How touching . . .” it hissed. “I always value bravery. . . . Yes, boy, your parents were brave. . . . I killed your father first, and he put up a courageous fight . . . but your mother needn’t have died . . . she was trying to protect you. . . . Now give me the Stone, unless you want her to have died in vain.”

“NEVER!” Harry bellowed, and sprang toward the flame door, but Voldemort screamed at him as soon as he moved. 

“SEIZE HIM!” 

The next second, Harry felt Quirrell’s hand close on his wrist. At once, a needle-sharp pain seared across Harry’s scar; his head felt as though it was about to split in two; he yelled, struggling with all his might, and to his surprise, Quirrell let go of him. 

The pain in his head lessened — he looked around wildly to see where Quirrell had gone, and saw him hunched in pain, looking at his fingers — they were blistering before his eyes.

“Seize him! SEIZE HIM!” shrieked Voldemort again, and Quirrell lunged, knocking Harry clean off his feet, landing on top of him, both hands around Harry’s neck — Harry’s scar was almost blinding him with pain, yet he could see Quirrell howling in agony.

“Master, I cannot hold him — my hands — my hands!”

And Quirrell, though pinning Harry to the ground with his knees, let go of his neck and stared, bewildered, at his own palms — Harry could see they looked burned, raw, red, and shiny.

“Then kill him, fool, and be done!” screeched Voldemort.

Quirrell raised his hand to perform a deadly curse, but Harry, by instinct, reached up and grabbed Quirrell’s face —

The man screamed, as if he had pressed his face close over an open flame.

Quirrell rolled off him, his face blistering, too, and then Harry knew: Quirrell couldn’t touch his bare skin, not without suffering terrible pain — his only chance was to keep hold of Quirrell, keep him in enough pain to stop him from doing a curse.

Harry jumped to his feet, caught Quirrell by the arm, and hung on as tight as he could. Quirrell screamed and tried to throw Harry off — the pain in Harry’s head was building — he couldn’t see — he could only hear Quirrell’s terrible shrieks and Voldemort’s yells of, “KILL HIM! KILL HIM!” and other voices, maybe in Harry’s own head, crying, “Harry! Harry!”

He felt Quirrell’s arm wrenched from his grasp, knew all was lost, and fell into blackness, down . . . down . . . down . . .

Something gold was glinting just above him. 

The Snitch! 

He tried to catch it, but his arms were too heavy.

He blinked. It wasn’t the Snitch at all. It was a pair of glasses. 

How strange.

He blinked again. 

The smiling face of Albus Dumbledore swam into view above him.

“Good afternoon, Harry,” said Dumbledore.

Harry stared at him, then he remembered: “Sir! The Stone! It was Quirrell! He’s got the Stone! Sir, quick —”

“Calm yourself, dear boy, you are a little behind the times,” said Dumbledore. “Quirrell does not have the Stone.”

“Then who does? Sir, I —”

“Harry, please relax, or Madam Pomfrey will have me thrown out.”

Harry swallowed and looked around him. He realized he must be in the hospital wing. He was lying in a bed with white linen sheets, and next to him was a table piled high with what looked like half the candy shop.

“Tokens from your friends and admirers,” said Dumbledore, beaming. “What happened down in the dungeons between you and Professor Quirrell is a complete secret, so, naturally, the whole school knows. I believe your friends Misters Fred and George Weasley were responsible for trying to send you a toilet seat. No doubt they thought it would amuse you. Madam Pomfrey, however, felt it might not be very hygienic, and confiscated it.”

“How long have I been in here?”

“Three days. Mr. Ronald Weasley and Miss Granger will be most relieved you have come round, they have been extremely worried.”

“But sir, the Stone —”

“I see you are not to be distracted. Very well, the Stone. Professor Quirrell did not manage to take it from you. I arrived in time to prevent that, although you were doing very well on your own, I must say.”

“You got there? You got Hermione’s owl?”

“We must have crossed in midair. No sooner had I reached London than it became clear to me that the place I should be was the one I had just left. I arrived just in time to pull Quirrell off you —”

“It was you.”

“I feared I might be too late.”

“You nearly were, I couldn’t have kept him off the Stone much longer —”

“Not the Stone, boy, you — the effort involved nearly killed you. For one terrible moment there, I was afraid it had. As for the Stone, it has been destroyed.”

“Destroyed?” said Harry blankly. “But your friend — Nicolas Flamel —”

“Oh, you know about Nicolas?” said Dumbledore, sounding quite delighted. “You did do the thing properly, didn’t you? Well, Nicolas and I have had a little chat, and agreed it’s all for the best.”

“But that means he and his wife will die, won’t they?”

“They have enough Elixir stored to set their affairs in order and then, yes, they will die.”

Dumbledore smiled at the look of amazement on Harry’s face.

“To one as young as you, I’m sure it seems incredible, but to Nicolas and Perenelle, it really is like going to bed after a very, very long day. After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure. You know, the Stone was really not such a wonderful thing. As much money and life as you could want! The two things most human beings would choose above all — the trouble is, humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them.”

Harry lay there, lost for words. Dumbledore hummed a little and smiled at the ceiling.

“Sir?” said Harry. “I’ve been thinking . . . Sir — even if the Stone’s gone, Vol-, I mean, You-Know-Who —”

“Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.”

“Yes, sir. Well, Voldemort’s going to try other ways of coming back, isn’t he? I mean, he hasn’t gone, has he?”

“No, Harry, he has not. He is still out there somewhere, perhaps looking for another body to share . . . not being truly alive, he cannot be killed. He left Quirrell to die; he shows just as little mercy to his followers as his enemies. Nevertheless, Harry, while you may only have delayed his return to power, it will merely take someone else who is prepared to fight what seems a losing battle next time — and if he is delayed again, and again, why, he may never return to power.”

Harry nodded, but stopped quickly, because it made his head hurt. Then he said, “Sir, there are some other things I’d like to know, if you can tell me . . . things I want to know the truth about. . . .”

“The truth.” Dumbledore sighed. “It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution. However, I shall answer your questions unless I have a very good reason not to, in which case I beg you’ll forgive me. I shall not, of course, lie.”

“Well . . . Voldemort said that he only killed my mother because she tried to stop him from killing me. But why would he want to kill me in the first place?”

Dumbledore sighed very deeply this time.

“Alas, the first thing you ask me, I cannot tell you. Not today. Not now. You will know, one day . . . put it from your mind for now, Harry. When you are older . . . I know you hate to hear this . . . when you are ready, you will know.”

And Harry knew it would be no good to argue.

“But why couldn’t Quirrell touch me?”

“Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. He didn’t realize that love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark. Not a scar, no visible sign . . . to have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever. It is in your very skin. Quirrell, full of hatred, greed, and ambition, sharing his soul with Voldemort, could not touch you for this reason. It was agony to touch a person marked by something so good.”

Dumbledore now became very interested in a bird out on the windowsill, which gave Harry time to dry his eyes on the sheet. 

When he had found his voice again, Harry said, “And the Invisibility Cloak — do you know who sent it to me?”

“Ah — your father happened to leave it in my possession, and I thought you might like it.” Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled. “Useful things . . . your father used it mainly for sneaking off to the kitchens to steal food when he was here.”

“And there’s something else . . .”

“Fire away.”

“Quirrell said Snape —”

“Professor Snape, Harry.”

“Yes, him — Quirrell said he hates me because he hated my father. Is that true?”

“Well, they did rather detest each other. Not unlike yourself and Miss Malfoy. And then, your father did something Snape could never forgive.” 

“What?”

“He saved his life.”

“What?”

“Yes . . .” said Dumbledore dreamily. “Funny, the way people’s minds work, isn’t it? Professor Snape couldn’t bear being in your father’s debt. . . . I do believe he worked so hard to protect you this year because he felt that would make him and your father even. Then he could go back to hating your father’s memory in peace. . . .”

Harry tried to understand this but it made his head pound, so he stopped.

“And sir, there’s one more thing . . .”

“Just the one?”

“How did I get the Stone out of the mirror?”

“Ah, now, I’m glad you asked me that. It was one of my more brilliant ideas, and between you and me, that’s saying something. You see, only one who wanted to find the Stone — find it, but not use it — would be able to get it, otherwise they’d just see themselves making gold or drinking Elixir of Life. My brain surprises even me sometimes. . . . Now, enough questions. I suggest you make a start on these sweets. Ah! Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans! I was unfortunate enough in my youth to come across a vomitflavored one, and since then I’m afraid I’ve rather lost my liking for them — but I think I’ll be safe with a nice toffee, don’t you?”

He smiled and popped the golden-brown bean into his mouth. Then he choked and said, “Alas! Ear wax!”

Madam Pomfrey, the nurse, was a nice woman, but very strict.

 “Just five minutes,” Harry pleaded.

“Absolutely not.”

“You let Professor Dumbledore in. . . .”

“Well, of course, that was the headmaster, quite different. You need rest.” 

“I am resting, look, lying down and everything. Oh, go on, Madam Pomfrey . . .”

“Oh, very well,” she said. “But five minutes only.” 

And she let Ron and Hermione in.

“Harry!” Hermione looked ready to fling her arms around him again, but Harry was glad she held herself in as his head was still very sore. “Oh, Harry, we were sure you were going to — Dumbledore was so worried —”

“The whole school’s talking about it,” said Ron. “What really happened?”

It was one of those rare occasions when the true story is even more strange and exciting than the wild rumors. Harry told them everything: Quirrell; the mirror; the Stone; and Voldemort. Ron and Hermione were a very good audience; they gasped in all the right places, and when Harry told them what was under Quirrell’s turban, Hermione screamed out loud.

“So the Stone’s gone?” said Ron finally. “Flamel’s just going to die?”

“That’s what I said, but Dumbledore thinks that — what was it? —‘to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.’”

“I always said he was off his rocker,” said Ron, looking quite impressed at how crazy his hero was.

“So what happened to you two?” said Harry.

“Well, I got back all right,” said Hermione. “I brought Ron round… and were rather surprised to see Malfoy running towards us with a lantern, said she had a ‘funny feeling’ we were up to something. I’m not exactly sure what she was going on about, but it took a while to shake her — and we were dashing up to the owlery to contact Dumbledore when we met him in the entrance hall — he already knew — he just said, ‘Harry’s gone after him, hasn’t he?’ and hurtled off to the third floor.”

“D’you think he meant you to do it?” said Ron. “Sending you your father’s cloak and everything?”

“Well,” Hermione exploded, “if he did — I mean to say — that’s terrible — you could have been killed.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Harry thoughtfully. “He’s a funny man, Dumbledore. I think he sort of wanted to give me a chance. I think he knows more or less everything that goes on here, you know. I reckon he had a pretty good idea we were going to try, and instead of stopping us, he just taught us enough to help. I don’t think it was an accident he let me find out how the mirror worked. It’s almost like he thought I had the right to face Voldemort if I could. . . .”

“Yeah, Dumbledore’s off his rocker, all right,” said Ron proudly. “Listen, you’ve got to be up for the end-of-year feast tomorrow. The points are all in and Slytherin won, of course — you missed the last Quidditch match, we were steamrollered by Ravenclaw without you — but the food’ll be good.”

At that moment, Madam Pomfrey bustled over.

“You’ve had nearly fifteen minutes, now OUT,” she said firmly. 

Harry sat there, alone and slowly picked at the massive mountain of treats left around him. He read a book as much as his head would allow while eating fudge or doing his best to pick at the safest Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans.

Despite his care, he still managed to run across one that tasted like a car tire.

When he was rummaging around for a chocolate frog, the sun setting in the windows around the Hospital Wing, Harry saw an odd little glow from under a large pile of sweets. 

He pushed his hand through until he thought he had his fingers around it, and pulled out a small, paper lantern that was filled with warm light.

“What?” Harry murmured with a bemused smile, turning the paper lantern from side to side in his fingers. 

He noticed that the front of the lantern had a little paper door, and he carefully opened it to expose the bright interior. It must have taken quite a bit of clever magic, but someone had managed to create a small mote of light that sat in the middle of the lantern, though it had an odd shape.

Harry thought it looked a bit like a horse, but the craftsmanship of the spell still left a lot to be desired… at the same time it may have just been a large dog.

Harry held it up to eye level, trying to read some words that had been written on the inner-side of the door flap, written there in tight, tiny lettering.

“Hurry up, we still need to have our wizard’s duel, Potter! Someone has to put that big head of yours back in its place!”

Harry snorted, which hurt his head, and he closed the door flap, setting the lantern down on the bedside table with the rest of his gifts. His head thrumming lightly, he laid his glasses on the table and his head down on the soft pillow. His eyes drifted over the lantern one more time, before closing them to sleep.

After a good night’s sleep, Harry felt nearly back to normal.

“I want to go to the feast,” he told Madam Pomfrey as she straightened his many candy boxes, making sure none of them were in risk of crushing the little paper lantern. “I can, can’t I?”

“Professor Dumbledore says you are to be allowed to go,” she said sniffily, as though in her opinion Professor Dumbledore didn’t realize how risky feasts could be. “And you have another visitor.”

“Oh, good,” said Harry, half expecting it to be the ever-annoying Draconia Malfoy. “Who is it?”

Hagrid sidled through the door as he spoke. As usual when he was indoors, Hagrid looked too big to be allowed. 

He sat down next to Harry, took one look at him, and burst into tears.

“It’s — all — my — ruddy — fault!” he sobbed, his face in his hands. “I told the evil git how ter get past Fluffy! I told him! It was the only thing he didn’t know, an’ I told him! Yeh could’ve died! All fer a dragon egg! I’ll never drink again! I should be chucked out an’ made ter live as a Muggle!”

“Hagrid!” said Harry, shocked to see Hagrid shaking with grief and remorse, great tears leaking down into his beard. “Hagrid, he’d have found out somehow, this is Voldemort we’re talking about, he’d have found out even if you hadn’t told him.”

“Yeh could’ve died!” sobbed Hagrid. “An’ don’ say the name!”

“VOLDEMORT!” Harry bellowed, and Hagrid was so shocked, he stopped crying. “I’ve met him and I’m calling him by his name. Please cheer up, Hagrid, we saved the Stone, it’s gone, he can’t use it. Have a Chocolate Frog, I’ve got loads. . . .”

Hagrid wiped his nose on the back of his hand, glanced down at the paper lantern, and it seemed to have made him remember something, “That reminds me. I’ve got yeh a present.”

“It’s not a stoat sandwich, is it?” said Harry anxiously, and at last Hagrid gave a weak chuckle.

“Nah. Dumbledore gave me the day off yesterday ter fix it. ’Course, he shoulda sacked me instead — anyway, got yeh this . . .”

It seemed to be a handsome, leather-covered book. Harry opened it curiously. It was full of wizard photographs. Smiling and waving at him from every page were his mother and father.

“Sent owls off ter all yer parents’ old school friends, askin’ fer photos . . . knew yeh didn’ have any . . . d’yeh like it?”

Harry couldn’t speak, but Hagrid understood.

Harry made his way down to the end-of-year feast alone that night. 

He had been held up by Madam Pomfrey’s fussing about, insisting on giving him one last checkup, so the Great Hall was already full. It was decked out in the Slytherin colors of green and silver to celebrate Slytherin’s winning the House Cup for the seventh year in a row. A huge banner showing the Slytherin serpent covered the wall behind the High Table.

When Harry walked in there was a sudden hush, and then everybody started talking loudly at once. He slipped into a seat between Ron and Hermione at the Gryffindor table and tried to ignore the fact that people were standing up to look at him.

Fortunately, Dumbledore arrived moments later, and the babble died away.

“Another year gone!” Dumbledore said cheerfully. “And I must trouble you with an old man’s wheezing waffle before we sink our teeth into our delicious feast. What a year it has been! Hopefully your heads are all a little fuller than they were . . . you have the whole summer ahead to get them nice and empty before next year starts. . . .

“Now, as I understand it, the House Cup here needs awarding, and the points stand thus: In fourth place, Gryffindor, with three hundred and twelve points; in third, Hufflepuff, with three hundred and fifty-two; Ravenclaw has four hundred and twenty-six and Slytherin, four hundred and seventy-two.”

A storm of cheering and stamping broke out from the Slytherin table. Harry could see Draconia Malfoy banging her goblet on the table. 

It was a sickening sight, despite the lantern, knowing they were only winning due to him forgetting his cloak at the tower.

“Yes, yes, well done, Slytherin,” said Dumbledore. “However, recent events must be taken into account.”

The room went very still. The Slytherins’ smiles faded a little.

“Ahem,” said Dumbledore. “I have a few last-minute points to dish out. Let me see. Yes . . .

“First — to Mr. Ronald Weasley . . .”

Ron went purple in the face, looking like a radish with a bad sunburn.

“. . . for the best-played game of chess Hogwarts has seen in many years, I award Gryffindor House fifty points.”

Gryffindor cheers nearly raised the bewitched ceiling; the stars overhead seemed to quiver. 

Percy could be heard telling the other prefects, “My brother, you know! My youngest brother! Got past McGonagall’s giant chess set!”

At last there was silence again.

“Second — to Miss Hermione Granger . . . for the use of cool logic in the face of fire, I award Gryffindor House fifty points.”

Hermione buried her face in her arms; Harry strongly suspected she had burst into tears. 

Gryffindors up and down the table were beside themselves — they were a hundred points up.

“Third — to Mr. Harry Potter . . .” said Dumbledore. The room went deadly quiet. “For pure nerve and outstanding courage, I award Gryffindor House sixty points.”

The din was deafening. 

Those who could add up while yelling themselves hoarse knew that Gryffindor now had four hundred and seventy-two points — exactly the same as Slytherin. They had tied for the House Cup — if only Dumbledore had given Harry just one more point.

Dumbledore raised his hand. The room gradually fell silent.

“There are all kinds of courage,” said Dumbledore, smiling. “It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends. I therefore award ten points to Mr. Neville Longbottom.”

Someone standing outside the Great Hall might well have thought some sort of explosion had taken place, so loud was the noise that erupted from the Gryffindor table. Harry, Ron, and Hermione stood up to yell and cheer as Neville, white with shock, disappeared under a pile of people hugging him. 

He had never won so much as a point for Gryffindor before. 

Harry, still cheering, nudged Ron in the ribs and pointed at Malfoy, who couldn’t have looked more stunned and if she’d just had the Body-Bind Curse put on her.

As Ron looked away to slap Neville’s back, Harry and Draconia Malfoy’s eyes met. She looked as if she were going through all the stages of grief in one fell swoop, then she narrowed her eyes at Harry, and looked away.

Harry, for the life of him, couldn’t figure out if she were frowning, or trying not to smile.

“Which means,” Dumbledore called over the storm of applause, for even Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff were celebrating the downfall of Slytherin, “we need a little change of decoration.”

He clapped his hands. 

In an instant, the green hangings became scarlet and the silver became crimson and gold; the huge Slytherin serpent vanished and a towering Gryffindor lion took its place. Snape was shaking Professor McGonagall’s hand, with a horrible, forced smile. He caught Harry’s eye and Harry knew at once that Snape’s feelings toward him hadn’t changed one jot. 

This didn’t worry Harry. It seemed as though life would be back to normal next year, or as normal as it ever was at Hogwarts.

It was the best evening of Harry’s life, better than winning at Quidditch, or Christmas, or knocking out mountain trolls . . . he would never, ever forget tonight.

Harry had almost forgotten that the exam results were still to come, but come they did. To their great surprise, both he and Ron passed with good marks; Hermione, of course, had the best grades of the first years. 

Even Neville scraped through, his good Herbology mark making up for his abysmal Potions one. They had hoped that Goyle, who was almost as stupid as she was mean, might be thrown out, but she had passed, too. 

It was a shame, but as Ron said, you couldn’t have everything in life.

And suddenly, their wardrobes were empty, their trunks were packed, Neville’s toad was found lurking in a corner of the toilets; notes were handed out to all students, warning them not to use magic over the holidays.

“I always hope they’ll forget to give us these,” said Fred Weasley sadly.

 Hagrid was there to take them down to the fleet of boats that sailed across the lake; they were boarding the Hogwarts Express; talking and laughing as the countryside became greener and tidier; eating Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans as they sped past Muggle towns; pulling off their wizard robes and putting on jackets and coats; pulling into platform nine and three-quarters at King’s Cross station.

It took quite a while for them all to get off the platform. A wizened old guard was up by the ticket barrier, letting them go through the gate in twos and threes so they didn’t attract attention by all bursting out of a solid wall at once and alarming the Muggles.

“You must come and stay this summer,” said Ron, “both of you — I’ll send you an owl.”

“Thanks,” said Harry, “I’ll need something to look forward to.”

People jostled them as they moved forward toward the gateway back to the Muggle world. Some of them called out:

“Bye, Harry!” 

“See you, Potter!”

“Still famous,” said Ron, grinning at him.

“Not where I’m going, I promise you,” said Harry.

He, Ron, and Hermione passed through the gateway together.

“There he is, Mum, there he is, look!”

It was Ginny Weasley, Ron’s younger sister, but she wasn’t pointing at Ron.

“Harry Potter!” she squealed. “Look, Mum! I can see —”

“Be quiet, Ginny, and it’s rude to point.” Mrs. Weasley fussed down at Ginny, then smiled down at them. “Busy year?”

“Very,” said Harry. “Thanks for the fudge and the sweater, Mrs. Weasley.”

“Oh, it was nothing, dear.”

“Ready, are you?” It was Uncle Vernon, still purple-faced, still mustached, still looking furious at the nerve of Harry, carrying an owl in a cage in a station full of ordinary people. 

Behind him stood Aunt Petunia and Dudley, looking terrified at the very sight of Harry.

“You must be Harry’s family!” said Mrs. Weasley.

“In a manner of speaking,” said Uncle Vernon. “Hurry up, boy, we haven’t got all day.” 

He walked away.

Harry hung back for a last word with Ron and Hermione.

“See you over the summer, then.”

“Hope you have — er — a good holiday,” said Hermione, looking uncertainly after Uncle Vernon, shocked that anyone could be so unpleasant.

“Oh, I will,” said Harry, and they were surprised at the grin that was spreading over his face. “They don’t know we’re not allowed to use magic at home. I’m going to have a lot of fun with Dudley this summer.”

As he bid his friends goodbye, Harry gathered his things and went off after the Dursleys.

The ride back to their house was quiet, save for Hedwig, who kept trying to nip at Dudley through the bars of her cage, and Harry found himself once again in his new, yet old, room. He put his trunk in front of his bed, Hedwig on her little side table, but rummaged around in his trunk before turning in for the day.

Beside his many books, scrolls of parchment, and his quill and ink pot, Harry set a little paper lantern down on the side table beside his bed.

Chapter 12 : Book 2: Chapter 1 (adjustments, slight deviations)

Ch 1

Not for the first time, an argument had broken out over breakfast at number four, Privet Drive. Mr. Vernon Dursley had been woken in the early hours of the morning by a loud, hooting noise from his nephew Harry’s room.

“Third time this week!” he roared across the table. “If you can’t control that owl, it’ll have to go!”

Harry tried, yet again, to explain.

“She’s bored,” he said. “She’s used to flying around outside. If I could just let her out at night —”

“Do I look stupid?” snarled Uncle Vernon, a bit of fried egg dangling from his bushy mustache. “I know what’ll happen if that owl’s let out.”

He exchanged dark looks with his wife, Petunia.

Harry tried to argue back but his words were drowned by a long, loud belch from the Dursleys’ son, Dudley.

“I want more bacon.”

“There’s more in the frying pan, sweetums,” said Aunt Petunia, turning misty eyes on her massive son. “We must build you up while we’ve got the chance. . . . I don’t like the sound of that school food. . . .”

“Nonsense, Petunia, I never went hungry when I was at Smeltings,” said Uncle Vernon heartily. “Dudley gets enough, don’t you, son?”

Dudley, who was so large his bottom drooped over either side of the kitchen chair, grinned and turned to Harry. “Pass the frying pan.”

“You’ve forgotten the magic word,” said Harry irritably.

The effect of this simple sentence on the rest of the family was incredible: Dudley gasped and fell off his chair with a crash that shook the whole kitchen; Mrs. Dursley gave a small scream and clapped her hands to her mouth; Mr. Dursley jumped to his feet, veins throbbing in his temples.

“I meant ‘please’!” said Harry quickly. “I didn’t mean —”

“WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU,” thundered his uncle, spraying spit over the table, “ABOUT SAYING THE ‘M’ WORD IN OUR HOUSE?”

“But I —”

“HOW DARE YOU THREATEN DUDLEY!” roared Uncle Vernon, pounding the table with his fist.

“I just —”

“I WARNED YOU! I WILL NOT TOLERATE MENTION OF YOUR ABNORMALITY UNDER THIS ROOF!”

Harry stared from his purple-faced uncle to his pale aunt, who was trying to heave Dudley to his feet.

“All right,” said Harry, “all right . . .”

Uncle Vernon sat back down, breathing like a winded rhinoceros and watching Harry closely out of the corners of his small, sharp eyes.

Ever since Harry had come home for the summer holidays, Uncle Vernon had been treating him like a bomb that might go off at any moment, because Harry Potter wasn’t a normal boy. 

As a matter of fact, he was as not normal as it is possible to be.

Harry Potter was a wizard — a wizard fresh from his first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. And if the Dursleys were unhappy to have him back for the holidays, it was nothing to how Harry felt.

He missed Hogwarts so much it was like having a constant stomachache. He missed the castle, with its secret passageways and ghosts, his classes (though perhaps not Snape, the Potions master), the mail arriving by owl, eating banquets in the Great Hall, sleeping in his four-poster bed in the tower dormitory, visiting the gamekeeper, Hagrid, in his cabin next to the Forbidden Forest in the grounds, and, especially, Quidditch, the most popular sport in the Wizarding world (six tall goalposts, four flying balls, and fourteen players on broomsticks).

All Harry’s spellbooks, his wand, robes, cauldron, and top-of-the-line Nimbus Two Thousand broomstick had been locked in a cupboard under the stairs by Uncle Vernon the instant Harry had come home. 

What did the Dursleys care if Harry lost his place on the House Quidditch team because he hadn’t practiced all summer? 

What was it to the Dursleys if Harry went back to school without any of his homework done? 

The Dursleys were what wizards called Muggles (not a drop of magical blood in their veins), and as far as they were concerned, having a wizard in the family was a matter of deepest shame. Uncle Vernon had even padlocked Harry’s owl, Hedwig, inside her cage, to stop her from carrying messages to anyone in the Wizarding world.

Harry looked nothing like the rest of the family. 

Uncle Vernon was large and neckless, with an enormous black mustache; Aunt Petunia was horsefaced and bony; Dudley was blond, pink, and porky. 

Harry, on the other hand, was small and skinny, with brilliant green eyes and jet-black hair that was always untidy. He wore round glasses, and on his forehead was a thin, lightning-shaped scar.

It was this scar that made Harry so particularly unusual, even for a wizard. This scar was the only hint of Harry’s very mysterious past, of the reason he had been left on the Dursleys’ doorstep eleven years before.

At the age of one years old, Harry had somehow survived a curse from the greatest dark sorcerer of all time, Lord Voldemort, whose name most witches and wizards still feared to speak. Harry’s parents had died in Voldemort’s attack, but Harry had escaped with his lightning scar, and somehow — nobody understood why — Voldemort’s powers had been destroyed the instant he had failed to kill Harry.

So Harry had been brought up by his dead mother’s sister and her husband. He had spent ten years with the Dursleys, never understanding why he kept making odd things happen without meaning to, believing the Dursleys’ story that he had got his scar in the car crash that had killed his parents.

And then, exactly a year ago, Hogwarts had written to Harry, and the whole story had come out. Harry had taken up his place at wizard school, where he and his scar were famous… but now the school year was over, and he was back with the Dursleys for the summer, back to being treated like a dog that had rolled in something smelly.

The Dursleys hadn’t even remembered that today happened to be Harry’s twelfth birthday. Of course, his hopes hadn’t been high; they’d never given him a real present, let alone a cake — but to ignore it completely . . .

At that moment, Uncle Vernon cleared his throat importantly and said, “Now, as we all know, today is a very important day.”

Harry looked up, hardly daring to believe it.

“This could well be the day I make the biggest deal of my career,” said Uncle Vernon.

Harry went back to his toast. 

Of course, he thought bitterly, Uncle Vernon was talking about the stupid dinner party. 

He’d been talking of nothing else for two weeks. Some rich builder and his wife were coming to dinner and Uncle Vernon was hoping to get a huge order from him (Uncle Vernon’s company made drills).

“I think we should run through the schedule one more time,” said Uncle Vernon. “We should all be in position at eight o’clock. Petunia, you will be — ?”

“In the lounge,” said Aunt Petunia promptly, “waiting to welcome them graciously to our home.”

“Good, good. And Dudley?”

“I’ll be waiting to open the door.” Dudley put on a foul, simpering smile. “May I take your coats, Mr. and Mrs. Mason?”

“They’ll love him!” cried Aunt Petunia rapturously.

“Excellent, Dudley,” said Uncle Vernon. Then he rounded on Harry. “And you?”

“I’ll be in my bedroom, making no noise and pretending I’m not there,” said Harry tonelessly, then bit into his toast with a crunch.

“Exactly,” said Uncle Vernon nastily. “I will lead them into the lounge, introduce you, Petunia, and pour them drinks. At eight-fifteen —”

“I’ll announce dinner,” said Aunt Petunia.

“And, Dudley, you’ll say —”

“May I take you through to the dining room, Mrs. Mason?” said Dudley, offering his fat arm to an invisible woman.

“My perfect little gentleman!” sniffed Aunt Petunia.

“And you?” said Uncle Vernon viciously to Harry.

“I’ll be in my room, making no noise and pretending I’m not there,” said Harry dully.

“Precisely. Now, we should aim to get in a few good compliments at dinner. Petunia, any ideas?”

“Vernon tells me you’re a wonderful golfer, Mr. Mason. . . . Do tell me where you bought your dress, Mrs. Mason. . . .”

“Perfect . . . Dudley?”

“How about — ‘We had to write an essay about our hero at school, Mr. Mason, and I wrote about you’.”

This was too much for both Aunt Petunia and Harry. Aunt Petunia burst into tears and hugged her son, while Harry ducked under the table so they wouldn’t see him laughing, trying to keep from coughing on his toast.

“And you, boy?” Uncle Vernon growled.

Harry fought to keep his face straight as he emerged.

“I’ll be in my room, making no noise and pretending I’m not there,” he said.

“Too right, you will,” said Uncle Vernon forcefully. “The Masons don’t know anything about you and it’s going to stay that way. When dinner’s over, you take Mrs. Mason back to the lounge for coffee, Petunia, and I’ll bring the subject around to drills. With any luck, I’ll have the deal signed and sealed before the news at ten. We’ll be shopping for a vacation home in Majorca this time tomorrow.”

Harry couldn’t feel too excited about this. He didn’t think the Dursleys would like him any better in Majorca than they did on Privet Drive.

“Right — I’m off into town to pick up the dinner jackets for Dudley and me. And you,” he snarled at Harry. “You stay out of your aunt’s way while she’s cleaning.”

Harry left through the back door. 

It was a brilliant, sunny day. 

He crossed the lawn, slumped down on the garden bench, and sang under his breath. “Happy birthday to me . . . happy birthday to me . . .”

No cards, no presents, and he would be spending the evening pretending not to exist. He gazed miserably into the hedge. He had never felt so lonely. More than anything else at Hogwarts, more even than playing Quidditch, Harry missed his best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. 

They, however, didn’t seem to be missing him at all. 

Neither of them had written to him all summer, even though Ron had said he was going to ask Harry to come and stay.

The only letter he had received was from Draconia Malfoy, of all people, which was mostly just her recounting all the lovely and expensive things she had done all summer break, and her asking him how is “dull” life was going after being “such the hero”.

Even if Harry could right back, he was sure he would have just sent her a package of Hedwig’s droppings.

Countless times, Harry had been on the point of unlocking Hedwig’s cage by magic and sending her to Ron and Hermione with a letter, but it wasn’t worth the risk. Underage wizards weren’t allowed to use magic outside of school. 

Harry hadn’t told the Dursleys this; he knew it was only their terror that he might turn them all into dung beetles that stopped them from locking him in the cupboard under the stairs with his wand and broomstick. 

For the first couple of weeks back, Harry had enjoyed muttering nonsense words under his breath and watching Dudley tearing out of the room as fast as his fat legs would carry him. But the long silence from Ron and Hermione had made Harry feel so cut off from the magical world that even taunting Dudley had lost its appeal — and now Ron and Hermione had forgotten his birthday.

What wouldn’t he give now for a message from Hogwarts? 

From any witch or wizard? 

He’d almost be glad of a sight of his archenemy, Draconia Malfoy, just to be sure it hadn’t all been a dream. . . .

Not that his whole year at Hogwarts had been fun. At the very end of last term, Harry had come face-to-face with none other than Lord Voldemort himself. Voldemort might be a ruin of his former self, but he was still terrifying, still cunning, still determined to regain power. 

Harry had slipped through Voldemort’s clutches for a second time, but it had been a narrow escape, and even now, weeks later, Harry kept waking in the night, drenched in cold sweat, wondering where Voldemort was now, remembering his livid face, his wide, mad eyes.

Harry suddenly sat bolt upright on the garden bench. He had been staring absent-mindedly into the hedge — and the hedge was staring back. Two enormous green eyes had appeared among the leaves.

Harry jumped to his feet just as a jeering voice floated across the lawn.

“I know what day it is,” sang Dudley, waddling toward him.

The huge eyes blinked and vanished.

“What?” said Harry, not taking his eyes off the spot where they had been.

“I know what day it is,” Dudley repeated, coming right up to him.

“Well done,” said Harry. “So you’ve finally learned the days of the week.”

“Today’s your birthday,” sneered Dudley. “How come you haven’t got any cards? Haven’t you even got friends at that freak place?”

“Better not let your mum hear you talking about my school,” said Harry coolly.

Dudley hitched up his trousers, which were slipping down his fat bottom.

“Why’re you staring at the hedge?” he said suspiciously.

“I’m trying to decide what would be the best spell to set it on fire,” said Harry.

Dudley stumbled backward at once, a look of panic on his fat face.

“You c-can’t — Dad told you you’re not to do m-magic — he said he’ll chuck you out of the house — and you haven’t got anywhere else to go — you haven’t got any friends to take you —”

“Jiggery pokery!” said Harry in a fierce voice. “Hocus pocus — squiggly wiggly —”

“MUUUUUUM!” howled Dudley, tripping over his feet as he dashed back toward the house. “MUUUUM! He’s doing you know what!”

Harry paid dearly for his moment of fun. 

As while neither Dudley nor the hedge was in any way hurt, Aunt Petunia knew he hadn’t really done magic, and he still had to duck as she aimed a heavy blow at his head with the soapy frying pan. 

Then she gave him work to do, with the promise he wouldn’t eat again until he’d finished.

While Dudley lolled around watching and eating ice cream, Harry cleaned the windows, washed the car, mowed the lawn, trimmed the flower beds, pruned and watered the roses, and repainted the garden bench. 

The sun blazed overhead, burning the back of his neck. 

Harry knew he shouldn’t have risen to Dudley’s bait, but Dudley had said the very thing Harry had been thinking himself . . . maybe he didn’t have any friends at Hogwarts. . . .

Wish they could see famous Harry Potter now, he thought savagely as he spread manure on the flower beds, his back aching, sweat running down his face. I bet Malfoy would be cackling like mad if she saw me pulling weeds from a bunch of rocks…

It was half past seven in the evening when at last, exhausted, he heard Aunt Petunia calling him.

“Get in here! And walk on the newspaper!”

Harry moved gladly into the shade of the gleaming kitchen. On top of the fridge stood tonight’s pudding: a huge mound of whipped cream and sugared violets. A loin of roast pork was sizzling in the oven.

“Eat quickly! The Masons will be here soon!” snapped Aunt Petunia, pointing to two slices of bread and a lump of cheese on the kitchen table. She was already wearing a salmon-pink cocktail dress.

Harry washed his hands and bolted down his pitiful supper. 

The moment he had finished, Aunt Petunia whisked away his plate. “Upstairs! Hurry!”

As he passed the door to the living room, Harry caught a glimpse of Uncle Vernon and Dudley in bow ties and dinner jackets. He had only just reached the upstairs landing when the doorbell rang and Uncle Vernon’s furious face appeared at the foot of the stairs.

“Remember, boy — one sound —”

Harry crossed to his bedroom on tiptoe, slipped inside, closed the door, and turned to collapse on his bed.

The trouble was, there was already someone sitting on it.

Chapter 13 : Book 2: Chapter 2 (adjustment)

Harry managed not to shout out, but it was a close thing. The little creature on the bed had large, bat-like ears and bulging green eyes the size of tennis balls. Harry knew instantly that this was what had been watching him out of the garden hedge that morning.

As they stared at each other, Harry heard Dudley’s voice from the hall. “May I take your coats, Mr. and Mrs. Mason?”

The creature slipped off the bed and bowed so low that the end of its long, thin nose touched the carpet. Harry noticed that it was wearing what looked like an old pillowcase, with rips for arm- and leg-holes.

“Er — hello,” said Harry nervously.

“Harry Potter!” said the creature in a high-pitched voice Harry was sure would carry down the stairs. “So long has Dobby wanted to meet you, sir . . . Such an honor it is. . . .”

“Th-thank you,” said Harry, edging along the wall and sinking into his desk chair, next to Hedwig, who was asleep in her large cage. He wanted to ask, “What are you?” but thought it would sound too rude, so instead he said,

“Who are you?”

“Dobby, sir. Just Dobby. Dobby the house-elf,” said the creature.

“Oh — really?” said Harry. “Er — I don’t want to be rude or anything, but — this isn’t a great time for me to have a house-elf in my bedroom.”

Aunt Petunia’s high, false laugh sounded from the living room. The elf hung his head.

“Not that I’m not pleased to meet you,” said Harry quickly, “but, er, is there any particular reason you’re here?”

“Oh, yes, sir,” said Dobby earnestly. “Dobby has come to tell you, sir . . . it is difficult, sir . . . Dobby wonders where to begin. . . .”

“Sit down,” said Harry politely, pointing at the bed.

To his horror, the elf burst into tears — very noisy tears.

“S-sit down!” he wailed. “Never . . . never ever . . .”

Harry thought he heard the voices downstairs falter.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, “I didn’t mean to offend you or anything —”

“Offend Dobby!” choked the elf. “Dobby has never been asked to sit down by a wizard — like an equal —”

Harry, trying to say “Shh!” and look comforting at the same time, ushered Dobby back onto the bed where he sat hiccoughing, looking like a large and very ugly doll. At last he managed to control himself, and sat with his great eyes fixed on Harry in an expression of watery adoration.

“You can’t have met many decent wizards,” said Harry, trying to cheer him up.

Dobby shook his head. Then, without warning, he leapt up and started banging his head furiously on the window, shouting, “Bad Dobby! Bad Dobby!”

“Don’t — what are you doing?” Harry hissed, springing up and pulling Dobby back onto the bed — Hedwig had woken up with a particularly loud screech and was beating her wings wildly against the bars of her cage.

“Dobby had to punish himself, sir,” said the elf, who had gone slightly cross-eyed. “Dobby almost spoke ill of his family, sir. . . .”

“Your family?”

“The wizard family Dobby serves, sir. . . . Dobby is a house-elf — bound to serve one house and one family forever. . . .”

“Do they know you’re here?” asked Harry curiously.

Dobby shuddered.

“Oh, no, sir, no . . . Dobby will have to punish himself most grievously for coming to see you, sir. Dobby will have to shut his ears in the oven door for this. If they ever knew, sir —”

“But won’t they notice if you shut your ears in the oven door?”

“Dobby doubts it, sir. Dobby is always having to punish himself for something, sir. They lets Dobby get on with it, sir. Sometimes they reminds me to do extra punishments. . . .”

“But why don’t you leave? Escape?”

“A house-elf must be set free, sir. And the family will never set Dobby free . . . Dobby will serve the family until he dies, sir. . . .”

Harry stared.

“And I thought I had it bad staying here for another four weeks,” he said. “This makes the Dursleys sound almost human. Can’t anyone help you? Can’t I?”

Almost at once, Harry wished he hadn’t spoken. Dobby dissolved again into wails of gratitude.

“Please,” Harry whispered frantically, “please be quiet. If the Dursleys hear anything, if they know you’re here —”

“Harry Potter asks if he can help Dobby . . . Dobby has heard of your greatness, sir, but of your goodness, Dobby never knew. . . .”

Harry, who was feeling distinctly hot in the face, said, “Whatever you’ve heard about my greatness is a load of rubbish. I’m not even top of my year at Hogwarts; that’s Hermione, she —”

But he stopped quickly, because thinking about Hermione was painful.

“Harry Potter is humble and modest,” said Dobby reverently, his orb-like eyes aglow. “Harry Potter speaks not of his triumph over He-Who-Must-NotBe-Named —”

“Voldemort?” said Harry.

Dobby clapped his hands over his bat ears and moaned, “Ah, speak not the name, sir! Speak not the name!”

“Sorry,” said Harry quickly. “I know lots of people don’t like it. My friend Ron —”

He stopped again. Thinking about Ron was painful, too.

Dobby leaned toward Harry, his eyes wide as headlights.

“Dobby heard tell,” he said hoarsely, “that Harry Potter met the Dark Lord for a second time, just weeks ago . . . that Harry Potter escaped yet again.”

Harry nodded and Dobby’s eyes suddenly shone with tears.

“Ah, sir,” he gasped, dabbing his face with a corner of the grubby pillowcase he was wearing. “Harry Potter is valiant and bold! He has braved so many dangers already! But Dobby has come to protect Harry Potter, to warn him, even if he does have to shut his ears in the oven door later. . . . Harry Potter must not go back to Hogwarts.”

There was a silence broken only by the chink of knives and forks from downstairs and the distant rumble of Uncle Vernon’s voice.

“W-what?” Harry stammered. “But I’ve got to go back — term starts on September first. It’s all that’s keeping me going. You don’t know what it’s like here. I don’t belong here. I belong in your world — at Hogwarts.”

“No, no, no,” squeaked Dobby, shaking his head so hard his ears flapped. “Harry Potter must stay where he is safe. He is too great, too good, to lose. If Harry Potter goes back to Hogwarts, he will be in mortal danger.”

“Why?” said Harry in surprise.

“There is a plot, Harry Potter. A plot to make most terrible things happen at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry this year,” whispered Dobby, suddenly trembling all over. “Dobby has known it for months, sir. Harry Potter must not put himself in peril. He is too important, sir!”

“What terrible things?” said Harry at once. “Who’s plotting them?”

Dobby made a funny choking noise and then banged his head frantically against the wall.

“All right!” cried Harry, grabbing the elf’s arm to stop him. “You can’t tell me. I understand. But why are you warning me?” A sudden, unpleasant thought struck him. “Hang on — this hasn’t got anything to do with Vol- — sorry — with You-Know-Who, has it? You could just shake or nod,” he added hastily as Dobby’s head tilted worryingly close to the wall again.

Slowly, Dobby shook his head.

“Not — not He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, sir —”

But Dobby’s eyes were wide and he seemed to be trying to give Harry a hint. 

Harry, however, was completely lost.

“He hasn’t got a brother, has he?”

Dobby shook his head, his eyes wider than ever.

“Well then, I can’t think who else would have a chance of making horrible things happen at Hogwarts,” said Harry. “I mean, there’s Dumbledore, for one thing — you know who Dumbledore is, don’t you?”

Dobby bowed his head.

“Albus Dumbledore is the greatest headmaster Hogwarts has ever had. Dobby knows it, sir. Dobby has heard Dumbledore’s powers rival those of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named at the height of his strength. But, sir” — Dobby’s voice dropped to an urgent whisper — “there are powers Dumbledore doesn’t . . . powers no decent wizard . . .”

And before Harry could stop him, Dobby bounded off the bed, seized Harry’s desk lamp, and started beating himself around the head with earsplitting yelps.

A sudden silence fell downstairs. Two seconds later Harry, heart thudding madly, heard Uncle Vernon coming into the hall, calling, “Dudley must have left his television on again, the little tyke!”

“Quick! In the closet!” hissed Harry, stuffing Dobby in, shutting the door, and flinging himself onto the bed just as the door handle turned.

“What — the — devil — are — you — doing?” said Uncle Vernon through gritted teeth, his face horribly close to Harry’s. “You’ve just ruined the punch line of my Japanese golfer joke. . . . One more sound and you’ll wish you’d never been born, boy!”

He stomped flat-footed from the room. Shaking, Harry let Dobby out of the closet.

“See what it’s like here?” he said. “See why I’ve got to go back to Hogwarts? It’s the only place I’ve got — well, I think I’ve got friends.” 

“Friends who don’t even write to Harry Potter?” said Dobby slyly. 

“I expect they’ve just been — wait a minute,” said Harry, frowning. “How do you know my friends haven’t been writing to me?”

Dobby shuffled his feet. “Harry Potter mustn’t be angry with Dobby. Dobby did it for the best —”

“Have you been stopping my letters?”

“Dobby has them here, sir,” said the elf. 

Stepping nimbly out of Harry’s reach, he pulled a thick wad of envelopes from the inside of the pillowcase he was wearing. Harry could make out Hermione’s neat writing, Ron’s untidy scrawl, and even a scribble that looked as though it was from the Hogwarts gamekeeper, Hagrid.

Dobby blinked anxiously up at Harry.

“Harry Potter mustn’t be angry. . . . Dobby hoped . . . if Harry Potter thought his friends had forgotten him . . . Harry Potter might not want to go back to school, sir. . . .”

Harry wasn’t listening. He made a grab for the letters, but Dobby jumped out of reach.

“Harry Potter will have them, sir, if he gives Dobby his word that he will not return to Hogwarts. Ah, sir, this is a danger you must not face! Say you won’t go back, sir!”

“No,” said Harry angrily. “Give-... hang on. Why didn’t you stop Malfoy’s letter?”

“Mistress Draconia Malfoy is no friend of Harry Potter! Dobby saw no need to stop Mistress Malfoy’s letters… except for a few.”

“A few?!” Harry growled, then lunged for Dobby as the elf danced out of his reach. “Forget Malfoy, give me my friends’ letters!”

“Then Harry Potter leaves Dobby no choice,” said the elf sadly, tucking the letters back into his pillowcase, including a cool-green one that Harry had not noticed before.

Before Harry could move, Dobby had darted to the bedroom door, pulled it open, and sprinted down the stairs.

Mouth dry, stomach lurching, Harry sprang after him, trying not to make a sound. He jumped the last six steps, landing catlike on the hall carpet, looking around for Dobby. 

From the dining room he heard Uncle Vernon saying, “. . . tell Petunia that very funny story about those American plumbers, Mr. Mason. She’s been dying to hear . . .”

Harry ran up the hall into the kitchen and felt his stomach disappear.

Aunt Petunia’s masterpiece of a pudding, the mountain of cream and sugared violets, was floating up near the ceiling. On top of a cupboard in the corner crouched Dobby.

“No,” croaked Harry. “Please . . . they’ll kill me. . . .”

“Harry Potter must say he’s not going back to school —”

“Dobby . . . please . . .”

“Say it, sir —”

“I can’t —”

Dobby gave him a tragic look. “Then Dobby must do it, sir, for Harry Potter’s own good.”

The pudding fell to the floor with a heart-stopping crash. Cream splattered the windows and walls as the dish shattered. With a crack like a whip, Dobby vanished.

There were screams from the dining room and Uncle Vernon burst into the kitchen to find Harry, rigid with shock, covered from head to foot in Aunt Petunia’s pudding.

At first, it looked as though Uncle Vernon would manage to gloss the whole thing over. 

“Just our nephew — very disturbed — meeting strangers upsets him, so we kept him upstairs. . . .” 

He shooed the shocked Masons back into the dining room, promised Harry he would flay him to within an inch of his life when the Masons had left, and handed him a mop. Aunt Petunia dug some ice cream out of the freezer and Harry, still shaking, started scrubbing the kitchen clean.

Uncle Vernon might still have been able to make his deal — if it hadn’t been for the owl.

Aunt Petunia was just passing around a box of after-dinner mints when a huge barn owl swooped through the dining room window, dropped a letter on Mrs. Mason’s head, and swooped out again. 

Mrs. Mason screamed like a banshee and ran from the house shouting about lunatics. Mr. Mason stayed just long enough to tell the Dursleys that his wife was mortally afraid of birds of all shapes and sizes, and to ask whether this was their idea of a joke.

Harry stood in the kitchen, clutching the mop for support, as Uncle Vernon advanced on him, a demonic glint in his tiny eyes.

“Read it!” he hissed evilly, brandishing the letter the owl had delivered. “Go on — read it!”

Harry took it. 

It did not contain birthday greetings. 

“Dear Mr. Potter,

We have received intelligence that a Hover Charm was used at your place of residence this evening at twelve minutes past nine.

As you know, underage wizards are not permitted to perform spells outside school, and further spellwork on your part may lead to expulsion from said school (Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery, 1875, Paragraph C).

We would also ask you to remember that any magical activity that risks notice by members of the non-magical community (Muggles) is a serious offense under section 13 of the International Confederation of Warlocks’ Statute of Secrecy.

Enjoy your holidays! Yours sincerely,

Mafalda Hopkirk

IMPROPER USE OF MAGIC OFFICE

Ministry of Magic”

Harry looked up from the letter and gulped.

“You didn’t tell us you weren’t allowed to use magic outside school,” said Uncle Vernon, a mad gleam dancing in his eyes. “Forgot to mention it. . . . Slipped your mind, I daresay. . . .”

He was bearing down on Harry like a great bulldog, all his teeth bared. “Well, I’ve got news for you, boy. . . . I’m locking you up. . . . You’re never going back to that school . . . never . . . and if you try and magic yourself out — they’ll expel you!”

And laughing like a maniac, he dragged Harry back upstairs.

Uncle Vernon was as bad as his word. The following morning, he paid a man to fit bars on Harry’s window. He himself fitted a cat-flap in the bedroom door, so that small amounts of food could be pushed inside three times a day. They let Harry out to use the bathroom morning and evening. Otherwise, he was locked in his room around the clock.

Three days later, the Dursleys were showing no sign of relenting, and Harry couldn’t see any way out of his situation. He lay on his bed watching the sun sinking behind the bars on the window and wondered miserably what was going to happen to him.

What was the good of magicking himself out of his room if Hogwarts would expel him for doing it? 

Yet life at Privet Drive had reached an all-time low. Now that the Dursleys knew they weren’t going to wake up as fruit bats, he had lost his only weapon. Dobby might have saved Harry from horrible happenings at Hogwarts, but the way things were going, he’d probably starve to death anyway.

The cat-flap rattled and Aunt Petunia’s hand appeared, pushing a bowl of canned soup into the room. Harry, whose insides were aching with hunger, jumped off his bed and seized it. The soup was stone-cold, but he drank half of it in one gulp. Then he crossed the room to Hedwig’s cage and tipped the soggy vegetables at the bottom of the bowl into her empty food tray. She ruffled her feathers and gave him a look of deep disgust.

“It’s no good turning your beak up at it — that’s all we’ve got,” said Harry grimly.

He put the empty bowl back on the floor next to the cat-flap and lay back down on the bed, somehow even hungrier than he had been before the soup.

Supposing he was still alive in another four weeks, what would happen if he didn’t turn up at Hogwarts? 

Would someone be sent to see why he hadn’t come back? 

Would they be able to make the Dursleys let him go?

The room was growing dark, save for the little paper lantern.

Harry laid down on his simple, sad little bed and laid on his side, watching the little lantern flicker with its simple, sad little light.

Why was Malfoy sending me letters, anyway? Harry wondered to himself, blinking at the light. And why would Dobby keep letters from her if it was just more of her gloating about how nice her life was? 

Exhausted, stomach rumbling, mind spinning over the same unanswerable questions, Harry fell into an uneasy sleep.

He dreamed that he was on show in a zoo, with a card reading UNDERAGE WIZARD attached to his cage. People goggled through the bars at him as he lay, starving and weak, on a bed of straw. 

He saw Dobby’s face in the crowd and shouted out, asking for help, but Dobby called, “Harry Potter is safe there, sir!” and vanished. 

Then the Dursleys appeared and Dudley rattled the bars of the cage, laughing at him.

“Stop it,” Harry muttered as the rattling pounded in his sore head. “Leave me alone… cut it out . . . I’m trying to sleep. . . .”

He opened his eyes. Moonlight was shining through the bars on the window. And someone was goggling through the bars at him: a freckle-faced, red-haired, long-nosed someone.

Ron Weasley was outside Harry’s window.

Chapter 14 : Book 2: Chapter 3 (adjustments)

Ron!” breathed Harry, creeping to the window and pushing it up so they could talk through the bars. “Ron, how did you — What the — ?”

Harry’s mouth fell open as the full impact of what he was seeing hit him. Ron was leaning out of the back window of an old turquoise car, which was parked in midair. 

Grinning at Harry from the front seats were Fred and George, Ron’s elder twin brothers.

“All right, Harry?” asked George.

“What’s been going on?” said Ron. “Why haven’t you been answering my letters? I’ve asked you to stay about twelve times, and then Dad came home and said you’d got an official warning for using magic in front of Muggles —”

“It wasn’t me — and how did he know?”

“He works for the Ministry,” said Ron. “You know we’re not supposed to do spells outside school —”

“You should talk,” said Harry, staring at the floating car.

“Oh, this doesn’t count,” said Ron. “We’re only borrowing this. It’s Dad’s, we didn’t enchant it. But doing magic in front of those Muggles you live with —”

“I told you, I didn’t — but it’ll take too long to explain now — look, can you tell them at Hogwarts that the Dursleys have locked me up and won’t let me come back, and obviously I can’t magic myself out, because the Ministry’ll think that’s the second spell I’ve done in three days, so —”

“Stop gibbering,” said Ron. “We’ve come to take you home with us.”

“But you can’t magic me out either —”

“We don’t need to,” said Ron, jerking his head toward the front seat and grinning. “You forget who I’ve got with me.”

“Tie that around the bars,” said Fred, throwing the end of a rope to Harry.

“If the Dursleys wake up, I’m dead,” said Harry as he tied the rope tightly around a bar and Fred revved up the car.

“Don’t worry,” said Fred, “and stand back.”

Harry moved back into the shadows next to Hedwig, who seemed to have realized how important this was and kept still and silent. The car revved louder and louder and suddenly, with a crunching noise, the bars were pulled clean out of the window as Fred drove straight up in the air. 

Harry ran back to the window to see the bars dangling a few feet above the ground. 

Panting, Ron hoisted them up into the car. Harry listened anxiously, but there was no sound from the Dursleys’ bedroom.

When the bars were safely in the back seat with Ron, Fred reversed as close as possible to Harry’s window.

“Get in,” Ron said.

“But all my Hogwarts stuff — my wand — my broomstick —”

“Where is it?”

“Locked in the cupboard under the stairs, and I can’t get out of this room —”

“No problem,” said George from the front passenger seat. “Out of the way, Harry.”

Fred and George climbed catlike through the window into Harry’s room. Harry tried to hiss out a warning for them to look out for the little paper lantern, the one thing he had managed to hide from the Dursley’s, but Fred’s shoe crunched it down with a quiet crumple of paper.

The lantern fluttered, then went out, mangled in a pitiful accordion of paper.

“Oop, sorry there Harry.” Fred whispered with an awkward, apologetic smile, then gently stepped down onto the floorboards.

Harry shook his head from side to side as he gathered the little ruined lantern, setting it on the bed. “It’s… it’s alright, let’s just get out of here.”

You had to hand it to them, though, thought Harry, as George took an ordinary hairpin from his pocket and started to pick the lock.

“A lot of wizards think it’s a waste of time, knowing this sort of Muggle trick,” said Fred, “but we feel they’re skills worth learning, even if they are a bit slow.”

There was a small click and the door swung open.

“So — we’ll get your trunk — you grab anything you need from your room and hand it out to Ron,” whispered George.

“Watch out for the bottom stair — it creaks,” Harry whispered back as the twins disappeared onto the dark landing.

Harry dashed around his room, collecting his things and passing them out of the window to Ron, and slipping the ruined lantern into his pocket. 

Then he went to help Fred and George heave his trunk up the stairs. 

Harry heard Uncle Vernon cough.

At last, panting, they reached the landing, then carried the trunk through Harry’s room to the open window. Fred climbed back into the car to pull with Ron, and Harry and George pushed from the bedroom side. 

Inch by inch, the trunk slid through the window.

Uncle Vernon coughed again.

“A bit more,” panted Fred, who was pulling from inside the car. “One good push —”

Harry and George threw their shoulders against the trunk and it slid out of the window into the back seat of the car.

“Okay, let’s go,” George whispered.

But as Harry climbed onto the windowsill there came a sudden loud screech from behind him, followed immediately by the thunder of Uncle Vernon’s voice.

“THAT RUDDY OWL!”

“I’ve forgotten Hedwig!”

Harry tore back across the room as the landing light clicked on — he snatched up Hedwig’s cage, dashed to the window, and passed it out to Ron.

He was scrambling back onto the chest of drawers when Uncle Vernon hammered on the unlocked door — and it crashed open.

For a split second, Uncle Vernon stood framed in the doorway; then he let out a bellow like an angry bull and dived at Harry, grabbing him by the ankle.

Ron, Fred, and George seized Harry’s arms and pulled as hard as they could.

“Petunia!” roared Uncle Vernon. “He’s getting away! HE’S GETTING AWAY!”

But the Weasleys gave a gigantic tug and Harry’s leg slid out of Uncle Vernon’s grasp.

Harry was in the car, and he slammed the door shut.

“Put your foot down, Fred!” yelled Ron, and the car shot suddenly toward the moon.

Harry couldn’t believe it — he was free. 

He rolled down the window, the night air whipping his hair, and looked back at the shrinking rooftops of Privet Drive. 

Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and Dudley were all hanging, dumbstruck, out of Harry’s window.

“See you next summer!” Harry yelled.

The Weasleys roared with laughter and Harry settled back in his seat, grinning from ear to ear.

“Let Hedwig out,” he told Ron. “She can fly behind us. She hasn’t had a chance to stretch her wings for ages.”

George handed the hairpin to Ron and, a moment later, Hedwig soared joyfully out of the window to glide alongside them like a ghost.

“So — what’s the story, Harry?” said Ron impatiently. “What’s been happening?”

Harry told them all about Dobby, the warning he’d given Harry and the fiasco of the violet pudding. 

There was a long, shocked silence when he had finished.

“Very fishy,” said Fred finally.

“Definitely dodgy,” agreed George. “So he wouldn’t even tell you who’s supposed to be plotting all this stuff?”

“I don’t think he could,” said Harry. “I told you, every time he got close to letting something slip, he started banging his head against the wall.”

He saw Fred and George look at each other.

“What, you think he was lying to me?” said Harry.

“Well,” said Fred, “put it this way — house-elves have got powerful magic of their own, but they can’t usually use it without their master’s permission. I reckon old Dobby was sent to stop you coming back to Hogwarts. Someone’s idea of a joke. Can you think of anyone at school with a grudge against you?”

“Yes,” said Harry and Ron together, instantly.

“Draconia Malfoy,” Harry explained. “She hates me.”

“Draconia Malfoy?” said George, turning around. “Not Lucius Malfoy’s daughter?”

“Must be, it’s not a very common name, is it?” said Harry. “Why?”

“I’ve heard Dad talking about him,” said George. “He was a big supporter of You-Know-Who.”

“And when You-Know-Who disappeared,” said Fred, craning around to look at Harry, “Lucius Malfoy came back saying he’d never meant any of it. Load of dung — Dad reckons he was right in You-Know-Who’s inner circle.”

Harry had heard these rumors about Malfoy’s family before, and they didn’t surprise him at all.

“I don’t know whether the Malfoys own a house-elf. . . .” said Harry.

“Well, whoever owns him will be an old Wizarding family, and they’ll be rich,” said Fred.

“Yeah, Mum’s always wishing we had a house-elf to do the ironing,” said George. “But all we’ve got is a lousy old ghoul in the attic and gnomes all over the garden. House-elves come with big old manors and castles and places like that; you wouldn’t catch one in our house. . . .”

Harry was silent. 

Judging by the fact that Draconia Malfoy usually had the best of everything, her family was rolling in wizard gold; he could just see Malfoy strutting around a large manor house. 

Sending the family servant to stop Harry from going back to Hogwarts also sounded exactly like the sort of thing Malfoy would do. 

Had Harry been stupid to take Dobby seriously?

“I’m glad we came to get you, anyway,” said Ron. “I was getting really worried when you didn’t answer any of my letters. I thought it was Errol’s fault at first —”

“Who’s Errol?”

“Our owl. He’s ancient. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d collapsed on a delivery. So then I tried to borrow Hermes —”

“Who?”

“The owl Mum and Dad bought Percy when he was made prefect,” said Fred from the front.

“But Percy wouldn’t lend him to me,” said Ron. “Said he needed him.”

“Percy’s been acting very oddly this summer,” said George, frowning. “And he has been sending a lot of letters and spending a load of time shut up in his room. . . . I mean, there’s only so many times you can polish a prefect badge. . . . You’re driving too far west, Fred,” he added, pointing at a compass on the dashboard. 

Fred twiddled the steering wheel.

“So, does your dad know you’ve got the car?” said Harry, guessing the answer.

“Er, no,” said Ron, “he had to work tonight. Hopefully we’ll be able to get it back in the garage without Mum noticing we flew it.”

“What does your dad do at the Ministry of Magic, anyway?” Harry asked.

“He works in the most boring department,” said Ron. “The Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office.”

Harry blinked. “The what?”

“It’s all to do with bewitching things that are Muggle-made, you know, in case they end up back in a Muggle shop or house. Like, last year, some old witch died and her tea set was sold to an antiques shop. This Muggle woman bought it, took it home, and tried to serve her friends tea in it. It was a nightmare — Dad was working overtime for weeks.”

“What happened?” Harry asked.

“The teapot went berserk and squirted boiling tea all over the place and one man ended up in the hospital with the sugar tongs clamped to his nose. Dad was going frantic — it’s only him and an old warlock called Perkins in the office — and they had to do Memory Charms and all sorts of stuff to cover it up —”

“But your dad — this car —”

Fred laughed. “Yeah, Dad’s crazy about everything to do with Muggles; our shed’s full of Muggle stuff. He takes it apart, puts spells on it, and puts it back together again. If he raided our house he’d have to put himself under arrest. It drives Mum mad.”

“That’s the main road,” said George, peering down through the windshield. “We’ll be there in ten minutes. . . . Just as well, it’s getting light. . . .”

A faint pinkish glow was visible along the horizon to the east.

Fred brought the car lower, and Harry saw a dark patchwork of fields and clumps of trees.

“We’re a little way outside the village,” said George. “Ottery St. Catchpole.”

Lower and lower went the flying car. The edge of a brilliant red sun was now gleaming through the trees.

“Touchdown!” said Fred as, with a slight bump, they hit the ground. 

They had landed next to a tumbledown garage in a small yard, and Harry looked out for the first time at Ron’s house.

It looked as though it had once been a large stone pigpen, but extra rooms had been added here and there until it was several stories high and so crooked it looked as though it were held up by magic (which, Harry reminded himself, it probably was). 

Four or five chimneys were perched on top of the red roof.

A lopsided sign stuck in the ground near the entrance read, THE BURROW. Around the front door lay a jumble of rubber boots and a very rusty cauldron. Several fat brown chickens were pecking their way around the yard.

“It’s not much,” said Ron.

“It’s wonderful,” said Harry happily, thinking of Privet Drive.

They got out of the car.

“Now, we’ll go upstairs really quietly,” said Fred, “and wait for Mum to call us for breakfast. Then, Ron, you come bounding downstairs going, ‘Mum, look who turned up in the night!’ and she’ll be all pleased to see Harry and no one need ever know we flew the car.”

“Right,” said Ron. “Come on, Harry, I sleep at the at the top-

Ron had gone a nasty greenish color, his eyes fixed on the house. 

The other three wheeled around.

Mrs. Weasley was marching across the yard, scattering chickens, and for a short, plump, kind-faced woman, it was remarkable how much she looked like a saber-toothed tiger.

“Ah,” hummed Fred.

“Oh, dear,” murmured George.

Mrs. Weasley came to a halt in front of them, her hands on her hips, staring from one guilty face to the next. She was wearing a flowered apron with a wand sticking out of the pocket.

“So!” she spat, her eyes livid.

“Morning, Mum!” said George, in what he clearly thought was a jaunty, winning voice.

“Have you any idea how worried I’ve been?” said Mrs. Weasley in a deadly whisper.

Fred said, gesturing towards Harry. “Sorry, Mum, but see, we had to —”

All three of Mrs. Weasley’s sons were taller than she was, but they cowered as her rage broke over them.

“Beds empty! No note! Car gone — could have crashed — out of my mind with worry — did you care? — never, as long as I’ve lived — you wait until your father gets home, we never had trouble like this from Bill or Charlie or Percy —”

“Perfect Percy,” muttered Fred.

“YOU COULD DO WITH TAKING A LEAF OUT OF PERCY’S BOOK!” yelled Mrs. Weasley, prodding a finger in Fred’s chest. “You could have died, you could have been seen, you could have lost your father his job —”

It seemed to go on for hours. 

Mrs. Weasley had shouted herself hoarse before she turned on Harry, who backed away.

“I’m very pleased to see you, Harry, dear,” she said, her voice suddenly rather calm. “Come in and have some breakfast.”

She turned and walked back into the house and Harry, after a nervous glance at Ron who nodded encouragingly, followed her.

The kitchen was small and rather cramped. There was a scrubbed wooden table with chairs in the middle, and Harry sat down on the edge of his seat, looking around. 

He had never been in a wizard house before, now that he thought about it.

The clock on the wall opposite him had only one hand and no numbers at all. Written around the edge were things like “Time to make tea”, “Time to feed the chickens”, and “You’re late”. 

Books were stacked three deep on the mantelpiece, books with titles like “Charm Your Own Cheese”, “Enchantment in Baking”, and “One Minute Feasts — It’s Magic!”, and unless Harry’s ears were deceiving him, the old radio next to the sink had just announced that coming up was “Witching Hour, with the popular singing sorceress, Celestina Warbeck.”

Mrs. Weasley was clattering around, cooking breakfast a little haphazardly, and throwing dirty looks at her sons as she threw sausages into the frying pan. 

Every now and then she muttered things like “don’t know what you were thinking of,” and “never would have believed it.”

“I don’t blame you, dear,” she assured Harry, tipping eight or nine sausages onto his plate. “Arthur and I have been worried about you, too. Just last night we were saying we’d come and get you ourselves if you hadn’t written back to Ron by Friday. But really,” She added three fried eggs to his plate, “flying an illegal car halfway across the country — anyone could have seen you —”

She flicked her wand casually at the dishes in the sink, which began to clean themselves, clinking gently in the background.

“It was cloudy, Mum!” said Fred.

“You keep your mouth closed while you’re eating!” Mrs. Weasley snapped.

“They were starving him, Mum!” said George.

“And you!” said Mrs. Weasley, but it was with a slightly softened expression that she started cutting Harry bread and buttering it for him.

At that moment there was a diversion in the form of a small, redheaded figure in a long nightdress, who appeared in the kitchen, gave a small squeal, and ran out again.

“Ginny,” said Ron in an undertone to Harry. “My sister. She’s been talking about you all summer.”

“Yeah, she’ll be wanting your autograph, Harry,” Fred said with a grin, but he caught his mother’s eye and bent his face over his plate without another word. 

Nothing more was said until all four plates were clean, which took a surprisingly short time.

“Blimey, I’m tired,” yawned Fred, setting down his knife and fork at last. “I think I’ll go to bed and —”

“You will not!” snapped Mrs. Weasley. “It’s your own fault you’ve been up all night. You’re going to de-gnome the garden for me; they’re getting completely out of hand again.”

“Oh, Mum —” Fred groaned.

He did not like gnomes.

“And you two are going to help him,” she said, glaring at Ron and George. She then turned to Harry. “You can go up to bed, dear. You didn’t ask them to fly that wretched car —”

But Harry, who felt wide awake, said quickly, “I’ll help Ron. I’ve never seen a de-gnoming —”

“That’s very sweet of you, dear, but it’s dull work,” said Mrs. Weasley. “Now, let’s see what Lockhart’s got to say on the subject —”

As she pulled a heavy book from the stack on the mantelpiece, George groaned.

“Mum, we know how to de-gnome a garden —” He muttered, rubbing his hands down his tired face.

Harry looked at the cover of Mrs. Weasley’s book. Written across it in fancy gold letters were the words “Gilderoy Lockhart’s Guide to Household Pests”. There was a big photograph on the front of a very good-looking wizard with wavy blond hair and bright blue eyes. 

As always in the Wizarding world, the photograph was moving; the wizard, who Harry supposed was Gilderoy Lockhart, kept winking cheekily up at them all. 

Mrs. Weasley beamed down at him.

“Oh, he is marvelous,” she said. “He knows his household pests, all right, it’s a wonderful book. . . .”

“Mum fancies him,” said Fred, in a very audible whisper.

“Don’t be so ridiculous, Fred,” said Mrs. Weasley, her cheeks rather pink. “All right, if you think you know better than Lockhart, you can go and get on with it, and woe betide you if there’s a single gnome in that garden when I come out to inspect it.”

Yawning and grumbling, the Weasleys slouched outside with Harry behind them. The garden was large, and in Harry’s eyes, exactly what a garden should be. 

The Dursleys wouldn’t have liked it — there were plenty of weeds, and the grass needed cutting — but there were gnarled trees all around the walls, plants Harry had never seen spilling from every flower bed, and a big green pond full of frogs.

“Muggles have garden gnomes, too, you know,” Harry told Ron as they crossed the lawn.

“Yeah, I’ve seen those things they think are gnomes,” said Ron, bent double with his head in a peony bush, “like fat little Santa Clauses with fishing rods. . . .”

There was a violent scuffling noise, the peony bush shuddered, and Ron straightened up. 

“This is a gnome,” he said grimly.

“Gerroff me! Gerroff me!” squealed the gnome.

It was certainly nothing like Santa Claus. 

It was small and leathery looking, with a large, knobby, bald head exactly like a potato. Ron held it at arm’s length as it kicked out at him with its horny little feet; he grasped it around the ankles and turned it upside down.

“This is what you have to do,” he said. He raised the gnome above his head and started to swing it in great circles like a lasso. Seeing the shocked look on Harry’s face, Ron added, “It doesn’t hurt them — you’ve just got to make them really dizzy so they can’t find their way back to the gnomeholes.”

He let go of the gnome’s ankles, and it flew twenty feet into the air, landing with a thud in the field over the hedge.

“Pitiful,” said Fred. “I bet I can get mine beyond that stump.”

Harry learned quickly not to feel too sorry for the gnomes. He decided just to drop the first one he caught over the hedge, but the gnome, sensing weakness, sank its razor-sharp teeth into Harry’s finger and he had a hard job shaking it off — until —

“Wow, Harry — that must’ve been fifty feet. . . .”

The air was soon thick with flying gnomes.

“See, they’re not too bright,” said George, seizing five or six gnomes at once. “The moment they know the de-gnoming’s going on they storm up to have a look. You’d think they’d have learned by now just to stay put.”

Soon, the crowd of gnomes in the field started walking away in a straggling line, their little shoulders hunched.

“They’ll be back,” said Ron as they watched the gnomes disappear into the hedge on the other side of the field. “They love it here. . . . Dad’s too soft with them; he thinks they’re funny. . . .”

Just then, the front door slammed.

“He’s back!” said George. “Dad’s home!”

They hurried through the garden and back into the house.

Mr. Weasley was slumped in a kitchen chair with his glasses off and his eyes closed. He was a thin man, going bald, but the little hair he had was as red as any of his children’s. He was wearing long green robes, which were dusty and travel-worn.

“What a night,” he mumbled, groping for the teapot as they all sat down around him. “Nine raids. Nine! And old Mundungus Fletcher tried to put a hex on me when I had my back turned. . . .”

Mr. Weasley took a long gulp of tea and sighed.

“Find anything, Dad?” said Fred eagerly.

“All I got were a few shrinking door keys and a biting kettle,” yawned Mr. Weasley. “There was some pretty nasty stuff that wasn’t my department, though. Mortlake was taken away for questioning about some extremely odd ferrets, but that’s the Committee on Experimental Charms, thank goodness. . . .”

“Why would anyone bother making door keys shrink?” said George.

“Just Muggle-baiting,” sighed Mr. Weasley. “Sell them a key that keeps shrinking to nothing so they can never find it when they need it. . . . Of course, it’s very hard to convict anyone because no Muggle would admit their key keeps shrinking — they’ll insist they just keep losing it. Bless them, they’ll go to any lengths to ignore magic, even if it’s staring them in the face. . . . But the things our lot have taken to enchanting, you wouldn’t believe —”

“LIKE CARS, FOR INSTANCE?”

Mrs. Weasley had appeared, holding a long poker like a sword

. Mr. Weasley’s eyes jerked open. He stared guiltily at his wife. “C-cars, Molly, dear?”

“Yes, Arthur, cars,” said Mrs. Weasley, her eyes flashing. “Imagine, a wizard buying a rusty old car and telling his wife all he wanted to do with it was take it apart to see how it worked, while really he was enchanting it to make it fly.”

Mr. Weasley blinked. “Well, dear, I think you’ll find that he would be quite within the law to do that, even if — er — he maybe would have done better to, um, tell his wife the truth. There’s a loophole in the law, you’ll find. . . . As long as he wasn’t intending to fly the car, the fact that the car could fly wouldn’t —”

“Arthur Weasley, you made sure there was a loophole when you wrote that law!” shouted Mrs. Weasley. “Just so you could carry on tinkering with all that Muggle rubbish in your shed! And for your information, Harry arrived this morning in the car you weren’t intending to fly!”

“Harry?” said Mr. Weasley blankly. “Harry who?”

He looked around, saw Harry, and jumped. “Good lord! Is that Harry Potter?! Very pleased to meet you, Ron’s told us so much about —”

“Your sons flew that car to Harry’s house and back last night!” shouted Mrs. Weasley. “What have you got to say about that, eh?”

“Did you really?” said Mr. Weasley eagerly. “Did it go all right? I — I mean,” he faltered as Mrs. Weasley’s eyes became so angry that Harry was surprised sparks didn’t fly out from them, “that — that was very wrong, boys — very wrong indeed. . . .”

“Let’s leave them to it,” Ron muttered to Harry as Mrs. Weasley swelled like a bullfrog. “Come on, I’ll show you my bedroom.”

They slipped out of the kitchen and down a narrow passageway to an uneven staircase, which wound its way, zigzagging up through the house. On the third landing, a door stood ajar. Harry just caught sight of a pair of bright brown eyes staring at him before it closed with a snap.

“Ginny,” said Ron. “You don’t know how weird it is for her to be this shy. She never shuts up normally —”

They climbed two more flights until they reached a door with peeling paint and a small plaque on it, saying RONALD’S ROOM.

Harry stepped in, his head almost touching the sloping ceiling, and blinked. It was like walking into a furnace: Nearly everything in Ron’s room seemed to be a violent shade of orange: the bedspread, the walls, even the ceiling. Then Harry realized that Ron had covered nearly every inch of the shabby wallpaper with posters of the same seven witches and wizards, all wearing bright orange robes, carrying broomsticks, and waving energetically.

“Your Quidditch team?” said Harry.

“The Chudley Cannons,” said Ron, pointing at the orange bedspread, which was emblazoned with two giant black C’s and a speeding cannonball. “Ninth in the league.”

Harry’s lips twitched in a smile, remembering when Draconia Malfoy had said, “it will be a warm day in Durmstrang before I park my broom with the Chudley Cannons. Absolutely motley lot.”

“What are you smiling about?” Ron asked with a laugh.

Harry shook his head. “Nothing, Ron. Nothing important, anyway.”

Ron’s school spellbooks were stacked untidily in a corner, next to a pile of comics that all seemed to feature “The Adventures of Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle”. 

Ron’s magic wand was lying on top of a fish tank full of frog spawn on the windowsill, next to his fat gray rat, Scabbers, who was snoozing in a patch of sun.

Harry stepped over a pack of self-shuffling playing cards on the floor and looked out of the tiny window. In the field far below he could see a gang of gnomes sneaking one by one back through the Weasleys’ hedge. Then he turned to look at Ron, who was watching him almost nervously, as though waiting for his opinion.

“It’s a bit small,” said Ron quickly. “Not like that room you had with the Muggles. And I’m right underneath the ghoul in the attic; he’s always banging on the pipes and groaning. . . .”

But Harry, grinning widely, said, “This is the best house I’ve ever been in.”

Ron’s ears went pink.

Chapter 15 : Book 2: Chapter 4 (adjustments)

Life at the Burrow was as different as possible from life on Privet Drive.

The Dursleys liked everything neat and ordered; the Weasleys’ house burst with the strange and unexpected. 

Harry got a shock the first time he looked in the mirror over the kitchen mantelpiece and it shouted, “Tuck your shirt in, scruffy!”.

The ghoul in the attic howled and dropped pipes whenever he felt things were getting too quiet, and small explosions from Fred and George’s bedroom were considered perfectly normal. What Harry found most unusual about life at Ron’s, however, wasn’t the talking mirror or the clanking ghoul: It was the fact that everybody there seemed to like him.

Mrs. Weasley fussed over the state of his socks and tried to force him to eat fourth helpings at every meal. 

Mr. Weasley liked Harry to sit next to him at the dinner table so that he could bombard him with questions about life with Muggles, asking him to explain how things like plugs and the postal service worked.

“Fascinating!” he would say as Harry talked him through using a telephone. “Ingenious, really, how many ways Muggles have found of getting along without magic.”

Harry heard from Hogwarts one sunny morning about a week after he had arrived at the Burrow. He and Ron went down to breakfast to find Mr. and Mrs. Weasley and Ginny already sitting at the kitchen table. 

The moment she saw Harry, Ginny accidentally knocked her porridge bowl to the floor with a loud clatter. Ginny seemed very prone to knocking things over whenever Harry entered a room. She dived under the table to retrieve the bowl and emerged with her face glowing like the setting sun. 

Pretending he hadn’t noticed this, Harry sat down and took the toast Mrs. Weasley offered him.

“Letters from school,” said Mr. Weasley, passing Harry and Ron identical envelopes of yellowish parchment, addressed in green ink. “Dumbledore already knows you’re here, Harry — doesn’t miss a trick, that man. You two’ve got them, too,” he added, as Fred and George ambled in, still in their pajamas.

For a few minutes there was silence as they all read their letters. Harry’s told him to catch the Hogwarts Express as usual from King’s Cross station on September first. There was also a list of the new books he’d need for the coming year:

SECOND-YEAR STUDENTS WILL REQUIRE:

The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2 by Miranda Goshawk

Break with a Banshee by Gilderoy Lockhart 

Gadding with Ghouls by Gilderoy Lockhart 

Holidays with Hags by Gilderoy Lockhart 

Travels with Trolls by Gilderoy Lockhart 

Voyages with Vampires by Gilderoy Lockhart 

Wanderings with Werewolves by Gilderoy Lockhart 

Year with the Yeti by Gilderoy Lockhart

Fred, who had finished his own list, peered over at Harry’s.

“You’ve been told to get all Lockhart’s books, too!” he said. “The new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher must be a fan — bet it’s a witch.”

At this point, Fred caught his mother’s eye and quickly busied himself with the marmalade.

“That lot won’t come cheap,” said George, with a quick look at his parents. “Lockhart’s books are really expensive. . . .”

“Well, we’ll manage,” said Mrs. Weasley, but she looked worried. “I expect we’ll be able to pick up a lot of Ginny’s things secondhand.”

“Oh, are you starting at Hogwarts this year?” Harry asked Ginny.

She nodded, blushing to the roots of her flaming hair, and put her elbow in the butter dish. Fortunately no one saw this except Harry, because just then Ron’s elder brother Percy walked in. 

He was already dressed, his Hogwarts prefect badge pinned to his sweater vest.

“Morning, all,” said Percy briskly. “Lovely day.”

He sat down in the only remaining chair but leapt up again almost immediately, pulling from underneath him a molting, gray feather duster — at least, that was what Harry thought it was, until he saw that it was breathing.

“Errol!” said Ron, taking the limp owl from Percy and extracting a letter from under its wing. “Finally — he’s got Hermione’s answer. I wrote to her saying we were going to try and rescue you from the Dursleys.”

He carried Errol to a perch just inside the back door and tried to stand him on it, but Errol flopped straight off again, so Ron laid him on the draining board instead, muttering, “Pathetic.” 

Then he ripped open Hermione’s letter and read it out loud:

“‘Dear Ron, and Harry if you’re there,

I hope everything went all right and that Harry is okay and that you didn’t do anything illegal to get him out, Ron, because that would get Harry into trouble, too. I’ve been really worried and if Harry is all right, will you please let me know at once, but perhaps it would be better if you used a different owl, because I think another delivery might finish your one off.’”

“‘I’m very busy with schoolwork, of course’ — How can she be?” said Ron in horror. “We’re on vacation! — 

‘and we’re going to London next Wednesday to buy my new books. Why don’t we meet in Diagon Alley?

‘Let me know what’s happening as soon as you can. Love from

Hermione.’”

“Well, that fits in nicely, we can go and get all your things then, too,” said Mrs. Weasley, starting to clear the table. “What’re you all up to today?”

Harry, Ron, Fred, and George were planning to go up the hill to a small paddock the Weasleys owned. It was surrounded by trees that blocked it from view of the village below, meaning that they could practice Quidditch there, as long as they didn’t fly too high. 

They couldn’t use real Quidditch balls, which would have been hard to explain if they had escaped and flown away over the village; instead they threw apples for one another to catch. They took turns riding Harry’s Nimbus Two Thousand, which was easily the best broom; Ron’s old Shooting Star was often outstripped by passing butterflies.

Five minutes later they were marching up the hill, broomsticks over their shoulders. They had asked Percy if he wanted to join them, but he had said he was busy. Harry had only seen Percy at mealtimes so far; he stayed shut in his room the rest of the time.

“Wish I knew what he was up to,” said Fred, frowning. “He’s not himself. His exam results came the day before you did; twelve O.W.L.s and he hardly gloated at all.”

“Ordinary Wizarding Levels,” George explained, seeing Harry’s puzzled look. “Bill got twelve, too. If we’re not careful, we’ll have another Head Boy in the family. I don’t think I could stand the shame.”

Bill was the oldest Weasley brother. He and the next brother, Charlie, had already left Hogwarts. Harry had never met either of them, but knew that Charlie was in Romania studying dragons and Bill in Egypt working for the wizards’ bank, Gringotts.

“Dunno how Mum and Dad are going to afford all our school stuff this year,” said George after a while. “Five sets of Lockhart books! And Ginny needs robes and a wand and everything. . . .”

Harry said nothing. 

He felt a bit awkward: Stored in an underground vault at Gringotts in London was a small fortune that his parents had left him. Of course, it was only in the Wizarding world that he had money; you couldn’t use Galleons, Sickles, and Knuts in Muggle shops. 

He had never mentioned his Gringotts bank account to the Dursleys; he didn’t think their horror of anything connected with magic would stretch to a large pile of gold.

Mrs. Weasley woke them all early the following Wednesday. 

After a quick half a dozen bacon sandwiches each, they pulled on their coats and Mrs. Weasley took a flowerpot off the kitchen mantelpiece, peering inside.

“We’re running low, Arthur,” she sighed. “We’ll have to buy some more today. . . . Ah well, guests first! After you, Harry dear!”

And she offered him the flowerpot.

Harry stared at them all watching him.

“W-what am I supposed to do?” he stammered.

“He’s never traveled by Floo powder,” said Ron suddenly. “Sorry, Harry, I forgot.”

“Never?” said Mr. Weasley. “But how did you get to Diagon Alley to buy your school things last year?”

“I went on the Underground —”

“Really?” said Mr. Weasley eagerly. “Were there escapators? How exactly —”

“Not now, Arthur,” said Mrs. Weasley snappily, then turned to Harry with a kinder voice. “Floo powder’s a lot quicker, dear, but goodness me, if you’ve never used it before —”

“He’ll be all right, Mum,” said Fred. “Harry, watch us first.”

He took a pinch of glittering powder out of the flowerpot, stepped up to the fire, and threw the powder into the flames.

With a roar, the fire turned emerald green and rose higher than Fred, who stepped right into it, shouted, “Diagon Alley!” and vanished.

“You must speak clearly, dear,” Mrs. Weasley told Harry as George dipped his hand into the flowerpot. “And be sure to get out at the right grate. . . .”

“The right what?” said Harry nervously as the fire roared and whipped George out of sight, too.

Mrs. Weasley fidgeted with her fingers. “Well, there are an awful lot of wizard fires to choose from, you know, but as long as you’ve spoken clearly —”

“He’ll be fine, Molly, don’t fuss,” said Mr. Weasley, helping himself to Floo powder, too.

“But, dear, if he got lost, how would we ever explain to his aunt and uncle?”

“They wouldn’t mind,” Harry reassured her. “Dudley would think it was a brilliant joke if I got lost up a chimney, don’t worry about that.”

“Well . . . all right . . . you go after Arthur,” said Mrs. Weasley. “Now, when you get into the fire, say where you’re going —”

“And keep your elbows tucked in,” Ron advised.

“And your eyes shut,” said Mrs. Weasley. “The soot —”

“Don’t fidget,” said Ron. “Or you might well fall out of the wrong fireplace —”

“But don’t panic and get out too early; wait until you see Fred and George.”

Trying hard to bear all this in mind, Harry took a pinch of Floo powder and walked to the edge of the fire. He took a deep breath, scattered the powder into the flames, and stepped forward; the fire felt like a warm breeze; he opened his mouth and immediately swallowed a lot of hot ash.

“D-Dia-gon Alley,” he coughed.

It felt as though he were being sucked down a giant drain. He seemed to be spinning very fast — the roaring in his ears was deafening — he tried to keep his eyes open but the whirl of green flames made him feel sick — something hard knocked his elbow and he tucked it in tightly, still spinning and spinning — now it felt as though cold hands were slapping his face — squinting through his glasses he saw a blurred stream of fireplaces and snatched glimpses of the rooms beyond — his bacon sandwiches were churning inside him — he closed his eyes again wishing it would stop, and then —

He fell, face forward, onto cold stone and felt the bridge of his glasses snap.

Dizzy and bruised, covered in soot, he got gingerly to his feet, holding his broken glasses up to his eyes. He was quite alone, but where he was, he had no idea. 

All he could tell was that he was standing in the stone fireplace of what looked like a large, dimly lit wizard’s shop — but nothing in here was ever likely to be on a Hogwarts school list.

A glass case nearby held a withered hand on a cushion, a bloodstained pack of cards, and a staring glass eye. Evil-looking masks stared down from the walls, an assortment of human bones lay upon the counter, and rusty, spiked instruments hung from the ceiling. Even worse, the dark, narrow street Harry could see through the dusty shop window was definitely not Diagon Alley.

The sooner he got out of here, the better. Nose still stinging where it had hit the hearth, Harry made his way swiftly and silently toward the door, but before he’d got halfway toward it, two people appeared on the other side of the glass — and one of them was the very last person Harry wanted to meet when he was lost, covered in soot, and wearing broken glasses: Draconia Malfoy.

Harry looked quickly around and spotted a large black cabinet to his left. He shot inside it and pulled the doors closed, leaving a small crack to peer through. 

Seconds later, a bell clanged, and Draconia stepped into the shop.

The man who followed could only be Draconia’s father. He had the same pale, pointed face and identical cold, gray-green eyes. 

Mr. Malfoy crossed the shop, looking lazily at the items on display, and rang a bell on the counter before turning to his daughter and saying, “Touch nothing, Draconia.”

Draconia, who had reached for the glass eye, said, “I thought you were going to buy me a present.”

“I said I would buy you a racing broom,” said her father, drumming his fingers on the counter.

“What’s the good of that if I’m not on the House team?” muttered Draconia, looking sulky and bad-tempered. “Harry Potter got a Nimbus Two Thousand last year. Special permission from Dumbledore so he could play for Gryffindor. He’s not even that good, it’s just because he’s famous . . . famous for having a stupid scar on his forehead. All he does is get himself into trouble at school, too.”

Draconia bent down to examine a shelf full of skulls.

Awful lot of spite for someone sending me letters… Harry thought to himself, keeping his breathing soft and shallow so they wouldn’t hear him inside.

“Everyone thinks he’s so smart, wonderful Potter with his scar and his broomstick.” Draconia groused again, her eyes narrowed as she looked down at the skulls. “It’s like he-”

“You have told me this at least a dozen times already,” said Mr. Malfoy, speaking over his daughter with a quelling look. “And I would remind you that it is not prudent to appear less than fond of Harry Potter, not when most of our kind regard him as the hero who made the Dark Lord disappear- ah, Mr. Borgin.”

A stooping man had appeared behind the counter, smoothing his greasy hair back from his face as Draconia crossed her arms, glaring up at her father before looking back down at the skulls.

“Mr. Malfoy, what a pleasure to see you again,” said Mr. Borgin in a voice as oily as his hair. “Delighted — and young Lady Malfoy, too — charmed. How may I be of assistance? I must show you, just in today, and very reasonably priced —”

“I’m not buying today, Mr. Borgin, but selling,” said Mr. Malfoy.

“Selling?” The smile faded slightly from Mr. Borgin’s face.

“You have heard, of course, that the Ministry is conducting more raids,” said Mr. Malfoy, taking a roll of parchment from his inside pocket and unraveling it for Mr. Borgin to read. “I have a few — ah — items at home that might embarrass me, if the Ministry were to call. . . .”

Mr. Borgin fixed a pair of pince-nez to his nose and looked down the list. “The Ministry wouldn’t presume to trouble you, sir, surely?”

Mr. Malfoy’s lip curled.

“I have not been visited, yet. The name Malfoy still commands a certain respect, yet the Ministry grows ever more meddlesome. There are rumors about a new Muggle Protection Act — no doubt that flea-bitten, Muggleloving fool Arthur Weasley is behind it —”

Harry felt a hot surge of anger as Draconia gave a snort.

“— and as you see, certain of these poisons might make it appear —”

“I understand, sir, of course,” said Mr. Borgin. “Let me see . . .”

“Can I have that?” interrupted Draconia, pointing at the withered hand on its cushion.

“Ah, the Hand of Glory!” said Mr. Borgin, abandoning Mr. Malfoy’s list and scurrying over to Draconia. “Insert a candle and it gives light only to the holder! Best friend of thieves and plunderers! Your daughter has fine taste, sir.”

“I do hope that my daughter will amount to more than a thief or a plunderer, Borgin,” said Mr. Malfoy coldly.

Mr. Borgin said quickly, “No offense, sir, no offense meant —”

“Though, if her grades don’t pick up,” said Mr. Malfoy, more coldly still, “that may indeed be all she is fit for —”

“It’s not my fault,” retorted Draconia. “The teachers all have favorites, that Hermione Granger —”

“I would have thought you’d be ashamed that a girl of no wizarding family beat you in every exam,” snapped Mr. Malfoy. “Yet, and yet, all you have done this summer is write letters to someone who you refuse to make mention of, instead of studying your books or doing your homework.”

“Ha!” said Harry under his breath, pleased to see Draconia looking both abashed and angry.

“Did they ever write back? I don’t remember you getting much in the way of post.” Mr. Malfoy said airily.

Draconia suddenly looked rather sad, though quickly wiped it off of her face with a pink-cheeked twinge of anger. “No… all I did was waste my time.”

Harry frowned at that, swallowing in his throat as he glanced away into the darkness of the cabinet.

“It’s the same all over,” said Mr. Borgin, in his oily voice. “Wizard blood is counting for less everywhere —”

“Not with me,” said Mr. Malfoy, his long nostrils flaring.

“No, sir, nor with me, sir,” said Mr. Borgin, with a deep bow.

“In that case, perhaps we can return to my list,” said Mr. Malfoy shortly. “I am in something of a hurry, Borgin, I have important business elsewhere today —”

They started to haggle. 

Harry watched nervously as Draconia drew nearer and nearer to his hiding place, examining the objects for sale. 

It had only been a year or so, but she still looked the same. Her blonde hair drifted down her shoulders in thick bands, her nails perfectly manicured, and painted, though she kept idling chewing on the inside of her lip, as if something was on her mind.

Harry found it rather odd that a girl so pretty could be so… mean.

Draconia paused to examine a long coil of hangman’s rope and to read, smirking, the card propped on a magnificent necklace of opals:

 Caution: Do Not Touch. Cursed — Has Claimed the Lives of Nineteen Muggle Owners to Date.

“Idiots.” Draconia muttered as turned away and saw the cabinet right in front of her. She walked forward with a hop to her step, eyeing the cabinet as she stretched out her hand for the handle.

“Done,” said Mr. Malfoy at the counter. “Come, Draconia —”

Draconia turned with a frown towards her father, her fingers curling back and away from the handle.

Harry wiped his forehead on his sleeve as Draconia turned away, letting out the breath he had been holding in her lungs.

“Good day to you, Mr. Borgin. I’ll expect you at the manor tomorrow to pick up the goods.”

The moment the door had closed, Mr. Borgin dropped his oily manner.

“Good day yourself, Mister Malfoy, and if the stories are true, you haven’t sold me half of what’s hidden in your manor. . . .”

Muttering darkly, Mr. Borgin disappeared into a back room. 

Harry waited for a minute in case he came back, then, quietly as he could, slipped out of the cabinet, past the glass cases, and out of the shop door.

Clutching his broken glasses to his face, Harry stared around. 

He had emerged into a dingy alleyway that seemed to be made up entirely of shops devoted to the Dark Arts. The one he’d just left, Borgin and Burkes, looked like the largest, but opposite was a nasty window display of shrunken heads and, two doors down, a large cage was alive with gigantic black spiders. 

Two shabby-looking wizards were watching him from the shadow of a doorway, muttering to each other. Feeling jumpy, Harry set off, trying to hold his glasses on straight and hoping against hope he’d be able to find a way out of here.

An old wooden street sign hanging over a shop selling poisonous candles told him he was in “Knockturn Alley”. 

This didn’t help, though, as Harry had never heard of such a place. 

He supposed he hadn’t spoken clearly enough through his mouthful of ashes back in the Weasleys’ fire. Trying to stay calm, he wondered what to do.

“Not lost are you, my dear?” said a voice in his ear, making him jump.

An aged witch stood in front of him, holding a tray of what looked horribly like whole human fingernails. She leered at him, showing mossy teeth. 

Harry backed away.

“I’m fine, thanks,” he said. “I’m just —”

“HARRY! What d’yeh think yer doin’ down there?”

Harry’s heart leapt. 

So did the witch; a load of fingernails cascaded down over her feet and she cursed as the massive form of Hagrid, the Hogwarts gamekeeper, came striding toward them, beetle-black eyes flashing over his great bristling beard.

“Hagrid!” Harry croaked in relief. “I was lost — Floo powder —”

Hagrid seized Harry by the scruff of the neck and pulled him away from the witch, knocking the tray right out of her hands. Her shrieks followed them all the way along the twisting alleyway out into bright sunlight. 

Harry saw a familiar, snow-white marble building in the distance — Gringotts Bank. Hagrid had steered him right into Diagon Alley.

“Yer a mess!” said Hagrid gruffly, brushing soot off Harry so forcefully he nearly knocked him into a barrel of dragon dung outside an apothecary. “Skulkin’ around Knockturn Alley, I dunno — dodgy place, Harry — don’ want no one ter see yeh down there —”

“I realized that,” said Harry, ducking as Hagrid made to brush him off again. “I told you, I was lost — what were you doing down there, anyway?”

“I was lookin’ fer a Flesh-Eatin’ Slug Repellent,” growled Hagrid. “They’re ruinin’ the school cabbages. Yer not on yer own?”

“I’m staying with the Weasleys but we got separated,” Harry explained. “I’ve got to go and find them. . . .”

They set off together down the street.

“How come yeh never wrote back ter me?” said Hagrid as Harry jogged alongside him.

He had to take three steps to every stride of Hagrid’s enormous boots, which was nearly a jog to Harry’s lungs. 

Harry explained all about Dobby and the Dursleys.

“Lousy Muggles,” growled Hagrid. “If I’d’ve known —”

“Harry! Harry! Over here!”

Harry looked up and saw Hermione Granger standing at the top of the white flight of steps to Gringotts. She ran down to meet them, her bushy brown hair flying behind her.

“What happened to your glasses? Hello, Hagrid — Oh, it’s wonderful to see you two again — Are you coming into Gringotts, Harry?”

“As soon as I’ve found the Weasleys,” said Harry.

“Yeh won’t have long ter wait,” Hagrid said with a grin.

Harry and Hermione looked around: Sprinting up the crowded street were Ron, Fred, George, Percy, and Mr. Weasley.

“Harry,” Mr. Weasley panted. “We hoped you’d only gone one grate too far. . . .” He mopped his glistening bald patch. “Molly’s frantic — she’s coming now —”

“Where did you come out?” Ron asked.

“Knockturn Alley,” said Hagrid grimly.

“Excellent!” said Fred and George together.

“We’ve never been allowed in,” said Ron enviously.

“I should ruddy well think not,” growled Hagrid.

Mrs. Weasley now came galloping into view, her handbag swinging wildly in one hand, Ginny just clinging onto the other. “Oh, Harry! Oh, my dear — you could have been anywhere —”

Gasping for breath, she pulled a large clothes brush out of her bag and began sweeping off the soot Hagrid hadn’t managed to beat away. Mr. Weasley took Harry’s glasses, gave them a tap of his wand, and returned them, good as new.

“Well, gotta be off,” said Hagrid, who was having his hand wrung by Mrs. Weasley (“Knockturn Alley! If you hadn’t found him, Hagrid!”). “See yer at Hogwarts!” 

And he strode away, head and shoulders taller than anyone else in the packed street.

“Guess who I saw in Borgin and Burkes?” Harry asked Ron and Hermione as they climbed the Gringotts steps. “Malfoy and her father.”

“Did Lucius Malfoy buy anything?” asked Mr. Weasley sharply behind them. 

“No, he was selling —”

“So he’s worried,” said Mr. Weasley with grim satisfaction. “Oh, I’d love to get Lucius Malfoy for something. . . .”

“You be careful, Arthur,” said Mrs. Weasley with a hard chide as they were bowed into the bank by a goblin at the door. “That family’s trouble. Don’t go biting off more than you can chew —”

“So you don’t think I’m a match for Lucius Malfoy?” asked Mr. Weasley indignantly, but he was distracted almost at once by the sight of Hermione’s parents, who were standing nervously at the counter that ran all along the great marble hall, waiting for Hermione to introduce them.

After a brief bit of chatter, it seemed that Hermione’s parents were rather eager to depart.

“But you’re Muggles!” said Mr. Weasley delightedly. “We must have a drink! What’s that you’ve got there? Oh, you’re changing Muggle money. Molly, look!” He pointed excitedly at the ten-pound notes in Mr. Granger’s hand.

“Meet you back here,” Ron said to Hermione as the Weasleys and Harry were led off to their underground vaults by another Gringotts goblin.

The vaults were reached by means of small, goblin-driven carts that sped along miniature train tracks through the bank’s underground tunnels. Harry enjoyed the breakneck journey down to the Weasleys’ vault, but felt dreadful, far worse than he had in Knockturn Alley, when it was opened. 

There was a very small pile of silver Sickles inside, and just one gold Galleon. Mrs. Weasley felt right into the corners before sweeping the whole lot into her bag. Harry felt even worse when they reached his vault. He tried to block the contents from view as he hastily shoved handfuls of coins into a leather bag.

Back outside on the marble steps, they all separated. 

Percy muttered vaguely about needing a new quill. 

Fred and George had spotted their friend from Hogwarts, Lee Jordan. 

Mrs. Weasley and Ginny were going to a secondhand robe shop. 

Mr. Weasley was insisting on taking the Grangers off to the Leaky Cauldron for a drink, asking numerous questions about their money, and something about the hooky bits in plumbing.

“We’ll all meet at Flourish and Blotts in an hour to buy your schoolbooks,” said Mrs. Weasley, setting off with Ginny. “And not one step down Knockturn Alley!” she shouted at the twins’ retreating backs.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione strolled off along the winding, cobbled street. The bag of gold, silver, and bronze jangling cheerfully in Harry’s pocket was clamoring to be spent, so he bought three large strawberry-and-peanut-butter ice creams, which they slurped happily as they wandered up the alley, examining the fascinating shop windows. 

Ron gazed longingly at a full set of Chudley Cannon robes in the windows of Quality Quidditch Supplies until Hermione dragged them off to buy ink and parchment next door. 

In Gambol and Japes Wizarding Joke Shop, they met Fred, George, and Lee Jordan, who were stocking up on Dr. Filibuster’s Fabulous Wet-Start No-Heat Fireworks, and in a tiny junk shop full of broken wands, lopsided brass scales, and old cloaks covered in potion stains they found Percy, deeply immersed in a small and deeply boring book called “Prefects Who Gained Power”.

“A study of Hogwarts prefects and their later careers,” Ron read aloud off the back cover. “That sounds fascinating. . . .”

“Go away,” Percy snapped.

“’Course, he’s very ambitious, Percy, he’s got it all planned out. . . . He wants to be Minister of Magic . . .” Ron told Harry and Hermione in an undertone as they left Percy to it.

An hour later, they headed for Flourish and Blotts. 

They were by no means the only ones making their way to the bookshop. 

As they approached it, they saw to their surprise a large crowd jostling outside the doors, trying to get in. The reason for this was proclaimed by a large banner stretched across the upper windows:

“GILDEROY LOCKHART

will be signing copies of his autobiography

MAGICAL ME

today 12:30 P.M. to 4:30 P.M.”

“We can actually meet him!” Hermione squealed. “I mean, he’s written almost the whole booklist!”

The crowd seemed to be made up mostly of witches around Mrs. Weasley’s age. 

A harassed-looking wizard stood at the door, saying, “Calmly, please, ladies. . . . Don’t push, there . . . mind the books, now. . . .”

Harry, Ron, and Hermione squeezed inside. A long line wound right to the back of the shop, where Gilderoy Lockhart was signing his books. They each grabbed a copy of The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2 and sneaked up the line to where the rest of the Weasleys were standing with Mr. and Mrs. Granger.

“Oh, there you are, good,” said Mrs. Weasley. She sounded breathless and kept patting her hair. “We’ll be able to see him in a minute. . . .”

Gilderoy Lockhart came slowly into view, seated at a table surrounded by large pictures of his own face, all winking and flashing dazzlingly white teeth at the crowd. The real Lockhart was wearing robes of forget-me-not blue that exactly matched his eyes; his pointed wizard’s hat was set at a jaunty angle on his wavy hair.

A short, irritable-looking man was dancing around taking photographs with a large black camera that emitted puffs of purple smoke with every blinding flash.

“Out of the way, there,” he snarled at Ron, moving back to get a better shot. “This is for the Daily Prophet —”

“Big deal,” said Ron, rubbing his foot where the photographer had stepped on it.

Gilderoy Lockhart heard him. 

He looked up. 

He saw Ron — and then he saw Harry. 

He stared, then he leapt to his feet and positively shouted, “It can’t be? Harry Potter!”

The crowd parted, whispering excitedly; Lockhart dived forward, seized Harry’s arm, and pulled him to the front. 

The crowd burst into applause. 

Harry’s face burned as Lockhart shook his hand for the photographer, who was clicking away madly, wafting thick smoke over the Weasleys.

“Nice big smile, Harry,” said Lockhart, through his own gleaming teeth. “Together, you and I are worth the front page.”

When he finally let go of Harry’s hand, Harry could hardly feel his fingers. He tried to sidle back over to the Weasleys, but Lockhart threw an arm around his shoulders and clamped him tightly to his side.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said loudly, waving for quiet. “What an extraordinary moment this is! The perfect moment for me to make a little announcement I’ve been sitting on for some time!”

“When young Harry here stepped into Flourish and Blotts today, he only wanted to buy my autobiography — which I shall be happy to present him now, free of charge —” The crowd applauded again as Lockhart beamed his bright smile. 

“He had no idea,” Lockhart continued, giving Harry a little shake that made his glasses slip to the end of his nose, “that he would shortly be getting much, much more than my book, Magical Me. He and his schoolmates will, in fact, be getting the real magical me. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have great pleasure and pride in announcing that this September, I will be taking up the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!”

The crowd cheered and clapped and Harry found himself being presented with the entire works of Gilderoy Lockhart. 

Staggering slightly under their weight, he managed to make his way out of the limelight to the edge of the room, where Ginny was standing next to her new cauldron.

“You have these,” Harry mumbled to her, tipping the books into the cauldron. “I’ll buy my own —”

“Bet you loved that, didn’t you, Potter?” said a voice Harry had no trouble recognizing, despite how quiet it was in the din of people around them. 

He straightened up and found himself face-to-shin with Draconia Malfoy, who was wearing her usual sneer from a half level above them.

“Famous, illustrious, prestigious, Harry, Potter,” said Draconia, looking more irritable by the second as she glared at Harry and leaned on the hand rail. “Can’t even go into a bookshop without making the front page and everyone trying to take your picture.”

“Leave him alone, he didn’t want all that!” said Ginny. 

It was the first time she had spoken in front of Harry, and she was glaring at Malfoy.

“Potter, you’ve got yourself a girlfriend!” drawled Malfoy, rapidly tapping her index fingers on the rail like the rattling ends of snake tails. 

Ginny went scarlet as Ron and Hermione fought their way over, both clutching stacks of Lockhart’s books.

“Oh, it’s you,” said Ron, looking at Malfoy as if she were something unpleasant on the sole of his shoe. “Bet you’re surprised to see Harry here, eh?”

“Not as surprised as I am to see you in a shop that doesn’t peddle used goods, Weasley,” retorted Malfoy, her eyes flicking to Harry before returning to Ron. “I suppose your parents will go hungry for a month to pay for all those.”

Ron went as red as Ginny. He dropped his books into the cauldron, too, and started toward the little staircase leading to Malfoy, but Harry and Hermione grabbed the back of his jacket.

“Ron!” said Mr. Weasley, struggling over with Fred and George. “What are you doing? It’s too crowded in here, let’s go outside.”

“Well, well, well — Arthur Weasley.”

It was Mr. Malfoy. 

He stood with his hand on Draconia’s shoulder, sneering in just the same way.

“Lucius,” said Mr. Weasley, nodding coldly.

“Busy time at the Ministry, I hear,” said Mr. Malfoy. “All those raids . . . I hope they’re paying you overtime?”

He reached into Ginny’s cauldron and extracted, from amid the glossy Lockhart books, a very old, very battered copy of A Beginner’s Guide to Transfiguration.

“Obviously not,” Mr. Malfoy said. “Dear me, what’s the use of being a disgrace to the name of wizard if they don’t even pay you well for it?”

Mr. Weasley flushed darker than either Ron or Ginny.

“We have a very different idea of what disgraces the name of wizard, Malfoy,” he said.

“Clearly,” said Mr. Malfoy, his pale eyes straying to Mr. and Mrs. Granger, who were watching apprehensively. “The company you keep, Weasley . . . and I thought your family could sink no lower.”

There was a thud of metal as Ginny’s cauldron went flying off the chair with a spray of books. 

Mr. Weasley had thrown himself at Mr. Malfoy, knocking him backward into a bookshelf which rattled and tottered dangerously. Dozens of heavy spellbooks came thundering down on all their heads, though the two men seemed to not notice as their hands flew at each other.

There was a yell of, “Get him, Dad!” from Fred or George.

Mrs. Weasley was shrieking, “No, Arthur, no!” 

The crowd stampeded backward, knocking more shelves over, and there were shouts of alarm. 

“Gentlemen, please — please!” cried the assistant.

Then, louder than all came the booming voice of Hagrid. “Break it up, there, gents, break it up —”

Hagrid waded toward them through the sea of books. In an instant he had pulled Mr. Weasley and Mr. Malfoy apart. 

Mr. Weasley had a cut lip and Mr. Malfoy had been hit in the eye by an Encyclopedia of Toadstools. 

He was still holding Ginny’s old Transfiguration book, and he thrust it at her, his eyes glittering with malice.

“Here, girl — take your book — it’s the best your father can give you —” Pulling himself out of Hagrid’s grip he beckoned to Draconia and swept from the shop.

“Yeh should’ve ignored him, Arthur,” said Hagrid, almost lifting Mr. Weasley off his feet as he straightened his robes. “Rotten ter the core, the whole family, everyone knows that — no Malfoy’s worth listenin’ ter — bad blood, that’s what it is — come on now — let’s get outta here.”

The assistant looked as though he wanted to stop them leaving, but he barely came up to Hagrid’s waist and seemed to think better of it. They hurried up the street, the Grangers shaking with fright.

Mrs. Weasley beside herself with fury. “A fine example to set for your children . . . brawling in public . . . what Gilderoy Lockhart must’ve thought —”

“He was pleased,” said Fred. “Didn’t you hear him as we were leaving? He was asking that bloke from the Daily Prophet if he’d be able to work the fight into his report — said it was all publicity —”

But it was a subdued group that headed back to the fireside in the Leaky Cauldron, where Harry, the Weasleys, and all their shopping would be traveling back to the Burrow using Floo powder. 

They said good-bye to the Grangers, who were leaving the pub for the Muggle street on the other side; Mr. Weasley started to ask them how bus stops worked, but stopped quickly at the look on Mrs. Weasley’s face.

Harry took off his glasses and put them safely in his pocket before helping himself to Floo powder, looking down at the ash in his palm. 

It definitely wasn’t his favorite way to travel, compared to a broom, anyway

Chapter 16 : Book 2: Chapter 5-6 (summary, adjustments)

Harry and Ron arrive via the poor Ford Anglia to Hogwarts as per normal, arriving after being blocked from the train station by the magical machinations of Dobby, the house elf. The womping willow, being caught by Snape, and their by-the-teeth skid into the school year goes unchanged… though someone was curious why Harry was not at his usual seat during the start of year banquet, and sorting.

The next day, however, Harry barely grinned once. Things started to go downhill from breakfast in the Great Hall. The four long House tables were laden with tureens of porridge, plates of kippers, mountains of toast, and dishes of eggs and bacon, all beneath the enchanted ceiling (today, a dull, cloudy gray). 

Harry and Ron sat down at the Gryffindor table next to Hermione, who had her copy of “Voyages with Vampires” propped open against a milk jug. 

There was a slight stiffness in the way she said “Morning,” which told Harry that she was still disapproving of the way they had arrived. 

Neville Longbottom, on the other hand, greeted them cheerfully. Neville was a roundfaced and accident-prone boy with the worst memory of anyone Harry had ever met.

“Mail’s due any minute — I think Gran’s sending a few things I forgot.”

Harry had only just started his porridge when, sure enough, there was a rushing sound overhead and a hundred or so owls streamed in, circling the hall and dropping letters and packages into the chattering crowd. A big, lumpy package bounced off Neville’s head and, a second later, something large and gray fell into Hermione’s jug, spraying them all with milk and feathers.

“Errol!” growled Ron, pulling the bedraggled owl out by the feet. Errol slumped, unconscious, onto the table, his legs in the air and a damp red envelope in his beak.

“Oh, no —” Ron gasped.

“It’s all right, he’s still alive,” said Hermione, prodding Errol gently with the tip of her finger.

“It’s not that — it’s that.” Ron was pointing at the red envelope. It looked quite ordinary to Harry, but Ron and Neville were both looking at it as though they expected it to explode.

“What’s the matter?” said Harry.

“She’s — she’s sent me a Howler,” said Ron faintly.

“You’d better open it, Ron,” said Neville in a timid whisper. “It’ll be worse if you don’t. My gran sent me one once, and I ignored it and” — he gulped — “it was horrible.”

Harry looked from their petrified faces to the red envelope.

“What’s a Howler?” he asked.

But Ron’s whole attention was fixed on the letter, which had begun to smoke at the corners.

“Open it,” Neville urged. “It’ll all be over in a few minutes —”

Ron stretched out a shaking hand, eased the envelope from Errol’s beak, and slit it open. 

Neville stuffed his fingers in his ears. 

A split second later, Harry knew why. He thought for a moment it had exploded; a roar of sound filled the huge hall, shaking dust from the ceiling.

“— STEALING THE CAR, I WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN SURPRISED IF THEY’D EXPELLED YOU, YOU WAIT TILL I GET HOLD OF YOU, YOU LITTLE IDIOTIC HALFWHIT. I DON’T SUPPOSE YOU STOPPED TO THINK WHAT YOUR FATHER AND I WENT THROUGH WHEN WE SAW IT WAS GONE —”

Mrs. Weasley’s yells, a hundred times louder than usual, made the plates and spoons rattle on the table, and echoed deafeningly off the stone walls. People throughout the hall were swiveling around to see who had received the Howler, and Ron sank so low in his chair that only his crimson forehead could be seen.

“— LETTER FROM DUMBLEDORE LAST NIGHT, I THOUGHT YOUR FATHER WOULD DIE OF SHAME, WE DIDN’T BRING YOU UP TO BEHAVE LIKE THIS, YOU AND HARRY COULD BOTH HAVE DIED —”

Harry had been wondering when his name was going to crop up. He tried very hard to look as though he couldn’t hear the voice that was making his eardrums throb.

“— ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTED — YOUR FATHER’S FACING AN INQUIRY AT WORK, IT’S ENTIRELY YOUR FAULT AND IF YOU PUT ANOTHER TOE OUT OF LINE WE’LL BRING YOU STRAIGHT BACK HOME.”

A ringing silence fell. The red envelope, which had dropped from Ron’s hand, burst into flames and curled into ashes. 

Harry and Ron sat stunned, as though a tidal wave had just passed over them. A few people laughed and, gradually, a babble of talk broke out again.

Hermione closed “Voyages with Vampires” and looked down at the top of Ron’s head. “Well, I don’t know what you expected, Ron, but you —”

“Don’t tell me I deserved it,” snapped Ron.

Harry pushed his porridge away. His insides were burning with guilt. 

Mr. Weasley was facing an inquiry at work. After all Mr. and Mrs. Weasley had done for him over the summer . . .

But he had no time to dwell on this; Professor McGonagall was moving along the Gryffindor table, handing out course schedules. Harry took his and saw that they had double Herbology with the Hufflepuffs first.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione left the castle together, crossed the vegetable patch, and made for the greenhouses, where the magical plants were kept. At least the Howler had done one good thing: Hermione seemed to think they had now been punished enough and was being perfectly friendly again.

As they neared the greenhouses they saw the rest of the class standing outside, waiting for Professor Sprout. Harry, Ron, and Hermione had only just joined them when she came striding into view across the lawn, accompanied by Gilderoy Lockhart. Professor Sprout’s arms were full of bandages, and with another twinge of guilt, Harry spotted the Whomping Willow in the distance, several of its branches now in slings.

Professor Sprout was a squat little witch who wore a patched hat over her flyaway hair; there was usually a large amount of earth on her clothes and her fingernails would have made Aunt Petunia faint. 

Gilderoy Lockhart, however, was immaculate in sweeping robes of turquoise, his golden hair shining under a perfectly positioned turquoise hat with gold trimming.

“Oh, hello there!” he called, beaming around at the assembled students. “Just been showing Professor Sprout the right way to doctor a Whomping Willow! But I don’t want you running away with the idea that I’m better at Herbology than she is! I just happen to have met several of these exotic plants on my travels . . .”

“Greenhouse three today, chaps!” said Professor Sprout, who was looking distinctly disgruntled, not at all her usual cheerful self.

There was a murmur of interest. They had only ever worked in greenhouse one before — greenhouse three housed far more interesting and dangerous plants. 

Professor Sprout took a large key from her belt and unlocked the door. Harry caught a whiff of damp earth and fertilizer mingling with the heavy perfume of some giant, umbrella-sized flowers dangling from the ceiling. 

He was about to follow Ron and Hermione inside when Lockhart’s hand shot out.

“Harry! I’ve been wanting a word — you don’t mind if he’s a couple of minutes late, do you, Professor Sprout?” Judging by Professor Sprout’s scowl, she did mind, but Lockhart said, “That’s the ticket,” and closed the greenhouse door in her face.

“Harry,” said Lockhart, his large white teeth gleaming in the sunlight as he shook his head. “Harry, Harry, Harry.”

Completely nonplussed, Harry said nothing.

“When I heard — well, of course, it was all my fault. Could have kicked myself.”

Harry had no idea what he was talking about. 

He was about to say so when Lockhart went on, “Don’t know when I’ve been more shocked. Flying a car to Hogwarts! Well, of course, I knew at once why you’d done it. Stood out a mile. Harry, Harry, Harry.”

It was remarkable how he could show every one of those brilliant teeth even when he wasn’t talking.

“Gave you a taste for publicity, didn’t I?” said Lockhart. “Gave you the bug. You got onto the front page of the paper with me and you couldn’t wait to do it again.”

“Oh, no, Professor, see —”

“Harry, Harry, Harry,” said Lockhart, reaching out and grasping his shoulder. “I understand. Natural to want a bit more once you’ve had that first taste — and I blame myself for giving you that, because it was bound to go to your head — but see here, young man, you can’t start flying cars to try and get yourself noticed. Just calm down, all right? Plenty of time for all that when you’re older. Yes, yes, I know what you’re thinking! ‘It’s all right for him, he’s an internationally famous wizard already!’ But when I was twelve, I was just as much of a nobody as you are now. In fact, I’d say I was even more of a nobody! I mean, a few people have heard of you, haven’t they? All that business with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named!” He glanced at the lightning scar on Harry’s forehead. “I know, I know — it’s not quite as good as winning Witch Weekly’s Most-Charming-Smile Award five times in a row, as I have — but it’s a start, Harry, it’s a start.”

He gave Harry a hearty wink and strode off. 

Harry stood stunned for a few seconds, then, remembering he was supposed to be in the greenhouse, he opened the door and slid inside.

Professor Sprout was standing behind a trestle bench in the center of the greenhouse. About twenty pairs of different-colored earmuffs were lying on it. 

When Harry had taken his place between Ron and Hermione, she said, “We’ll be repotting Mandrakes today. Now, who can tell me the properties of the Mandrake?”

To nobody’s surprise, Hermione’s hand was first into the air.

“Mandrake, or Mandragora, is a powerful restorative,” said Hermione, sounding as usual as though she had swallowed the textbook. “It is used to return people who have been transfigured or cursed from their original state.”

“Excellent. Ten points to Gryffindor,” said Professor Sprout. “The Mandrake forms an essential part of most antidotes. It is also, however, dangerous. Who can tell me why?”

Hermione’s hand narrowly missed Harry’s glasses as it shot up again.

“The cry of the Mandrake is fatal to anyone who hears it,” she said promptly.

“Precisely. Take another ten points,” said Professor Sprout. “Now, the Mandrakes we have here are still very young.”

She pointed to a row of deep trays as she spoke, and everyone shuffled forward for a better look. A hundred or so tufty little plants, purplish green in color, were growing there in rows. They looked quite unremarkable to Harry, who didn’t have the slightest idea what Hermione meant by the “cry” of the Mandrake.

“Everyone take a pair of earmuffs,” said Professor Sprout.

There was a scramble as everyone tried to seize a pair that wasn’t pink and fluffy.

“When I tell you to put them on, make sure your ears are completely covered,” said Professor Sprout. “When it is safe to remove them, I will give you the thumbs-up. Right — earmuffs on.”

Harry snapped the earmuffs over his ears. They shut out sound completely. Professor Sprout put the pink, fluffy pair over her own ears, rolled up the sleeves of her robes, grasped one of the tufty plants firmly, and pulled hard.

Harry let out a gasp of surprise that no one could hear.

Instead of roots, a small, muddy, and extremely ugly baby popped out of the earth. The leaves were growing right out of his head. He had pale green, mottled skin, and was clearly bawling at the top of his lungs.

“He” because it was… well, rather obvious.

Professor Sprout took a large plant pot from under the table and plunged the Mandrake into it, burying him in dark, damp compost until only the tufted leaves were visible. Professor Sprout dusted off her hands, gave them all the thumbs-up, and removed her own earmuffs.

“As our Mandrakes are only seedlings, their cries won’t kill yet,” she said calmly as though she’d just done nothing more exciting than water a begonia. “However, they will knock you out for several hours, and as I’m sure none of you want to miss your first day back, make sure your earmuffs are securely in place while you work. I will attract your attention when it is time to pack up. Four to a tray — there is a large supply of pots here — compost in the sacks over there — and be careful of the Venomous Tentacula, it’s teething.”

She gave a sharp slap to a spiky, dark red plant as she spoke, making it draw in the long feelers that had been inching sneakily over her shoulder.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione were joined at their tray by a curly-haired Hufflepuff boy Harry knew by sight but had never spoken to.

“Justin Finch-Fletchley,” he said brightly, shaking Harry by the hand. “Know who you are, of course, the famous Harry Potter. . . . And you’re Hermione Granger — always top in everything” Hermione beamed as she had her hand shaken too. “— and Ron Weasley. Wasn’t that your flying car?”

Ron didn’t smile. The Howler was obviously still on his mind.

“That Lockhart’s something, isn’t he?” said Justin happily as they began filling their plant pots with dragon dung compost. “Awfully brave chap. Have you read his books? I’d have died of fear if I’d been cornered in a telephone booth by a werewolf, but he stayed cool and — zap — just fantastic. My name was down for Eton, you know. I can’t tell you how glad I am I 1came here instead. Of course, Mother was slightly disappointed, but since I made her read Lockhart’s books I think she’s begun to see how useful it’ll be to have a fully trained wizard in the family. . . .”

After that they didn’t have much chance to talk. Their earmuffs were back on and they needed to concentrate on the Mandrakes. Professor Sprout had made it look extremely easy, but it wasn’t. The Mandrakes didn’t like coming out of the earth, but didn’t seem to want to go back into it either. They squirmed, kicked, flailed their sharp little fists, and gnashed their teeth; Harry spent ten whole minutes trying to squash a particularly fat one into a pot.

By the end of the class, Harry, like everyone else, was sweaty, aching, and covered in earth. Everyone traipsed back to the castle for a quick wash and then the Gryffindors hurried off to Transfiguration.

That was one of the things that really amused Harry; the Hogwarts showers.

While they had baths, around the size of a small hot tub that always had a sudsy, bubbly foam around them, they also had showers in neat little rows of stalls. The Dursleys always had a sparkling clean shower due to Aunt Petunia being the neat-freak that she was, and she would have had a heart attack if she saw the ones at Hogwarts.

Stained with patina, the old brass spouts spat comforting hot water for as long as one could bear, there were glass bottles of shampoo and conditioner on a tidy little shelf, and bars of soap for anyone to use. No matter the time of day, there was always a nice, clean towel waiting for anyone who left the showers on a tarnished brass hook, and fresh robes waiting for you on the benches that ran along the center of the shower lanes.

Harry didn’t bother with showering though, just scrubbing his hands and arms while fluffing the dirt from his hair.

Professor McGonagall’s classes were always hard work, but today was especially difficult. Everything Harry had learned last year seemed to have leaked out of his head during the summer. He was supposed to be turning a beetle into a button, but all he managed to do was give his beetle a lot of exercise as it scuttled over the desktop avoiding his wand.

Ron was having far worse problems. 

He had patched up his wand with some borrowed Spellotape, but it seemed to be damaged beyond repair. It kept crackling and sparking at odd moments, and every time Ron tried to transfigure his beetle it engulfed him in thick gray smoke that smelled of rotten eggs. Unable to see what he was doing, Ron accidentally squashed his beetle with his elbow and had to ask for a new one. 

Professor McGonagall wasn’t pleased.

Harry was relieved to hear the lunch bell. 

His brain felt like a wrung sponge. 

Everyone filed out of the classroom except him and Ron, who was whacking his wand furiously on the desk.

“Stupid — useless — thing —”

“Write home for another one,” Harry suggested as the wand let off a volley of bangs like a firecracker.

“Oh, yeah, and get another Howler back,” said Ron, stuffing the now hissing wand into his bag. “‘It’s your own fault your wand got snapped —’”

They went down to lunch, where Ron’s mood was not improved by Hermione’s showing them the handful of perfect coat buttons she had produced in Transfiguration.

“What’ve we got this afternoon?” said Harry, hastily changing the subject.

“Defense Against the Dark Arts,” said Hermione at once.

“Why,” demanded Ron, seizing her schedule, “have you outlined all Lockhart’s lessons in little hearts?”

Hermione snatched the schedule back, blushing furiously.

They finished lunch and went outside into the overcast courtyard. 

Hermione sat down on a stone step and buried her nose in “Voyages with Vampires” again. Harry and Ron stood talking about Quidditch for several minutes before Harry became aware that he was being closely watched. Looking up, he saw the very small, mousy-haired boy he’d seen trying on the Sorting Hat last night staring at Harry as though transfixed. 

He was clutching what looked like an ordinary Muggle camera, and the moment Harry looked at him, he went bright red.

“All right, Harry? I’m — I’m Colin Creevey,” he said breathlessly, taking a tentative step forward. “I’m in Gryffindor, too. D’you think — would it be all right if — can I have a picture?” he said, raising the camera hopefully.

“A picture?” Harry repeated blankly.

“So I can prove I’ve met you,” said Colin Creevey eagerly, edging further forward. “I know all about you. Everyone’s told me. About how you survived when You-Know-Who tried to kill you and how he disappeared and everything and how you’ve still got a lightning scar on your forehead,” His eyes raked Harry’s hairline, “and a boy in my dormitory said if I develop the film in the right potion, the pictures’ll move.” Colin drew a great shuddering breath of excitement and said, “It’s amazing here, isn’t it? I never knew all the odd stuff I could do was magic till I got the letter from Hogwarts. My dad’s a milkman, he couldn’t believe it either. So I’m taking loads of pictures to send home to him. And it’d be really good if I had one of you” — he looked imploringly at Harry — “maybe your friend could take it and I could stand next to you? And then, could you sign it?”

“Signed photos? You’re giving out signed photos, Potter?”

Loud and scathing, Draconia Malfoy’s voice echoed around the courtyard. She had stopped right behind Colin, flanked, as she always was at Hogwarts, by her large and thuggish cronies, Crabbe and Goyle.

“Everyone line up!” Draconia called out jeerfully to the crowd. “Harry Potter’s giving out signed photos!”

“No, I’m not,” said Harry angrily, his fists clenching. “Shut up, Malfoy.”

“You’re just jealous,” piped up Colin, whose entire body was about as thick as Crabbe’s neck.

“Jealous?” said Draconia, who didn’t need to shout anymore: Half the courtyard was listening in. “Of what? I don’t want a foul scar right across my head, thanks. I don’t think getting your head cut open makes you that special, myself.”

Crabbe and Goyle were sniggering stupidly.

“Eat slugs, Malfoy,” said Ron angrily. 

Crabbe stopped laughing and started rubbing his knuckles in a menacing way.

“Be careful, Weasley,” sneered Draconia. “You don’t want to start any trouble or your mummy’ll have to come and take you away from school.” She put on a shrill, piercing voice. “‘If you put another toe out of line’ —”

A knot of Slytherin fifth years nearby laughed loudly at this.

“Weasley would like a signed photo, too, Potter,” smirked Malfoy. “It’d be worth more than his family’s whole house —”

Ron whipped out his Spellotaped wand, but Hermione shut ‘Voyages with Vampires’ with a snap and whispered, “Look out!”

“What’s all this, what’s all this?” Gilderoy Lockhart was striding toward them, his turquoise robes swirling behind him. “Who’s giving out signed photos?”

Harry started to speak but he was cut short as Lockhart flung an arm around his shoulders and thundered jovially, “Shouldn’t have asked! We meet again, Harry!”

Pinned to Lockhart’s side and burning with humiliation, Harry saw Malfoy slide smirking back into the crowd, though she quickly frowned as she moved away.

“Come on then, Mr. Creevey,” said Lockhart, beaming at Colin. “A double portrait, can’t do better than that, and we’ll both sign it for you.”

Colin fumbled for his camera and took the picture as the bell rang behind them, signaling the start of afternoon classes.

“Off you go, move along there,” Lockhart called to the crowd, and he set off back to the castle with Harry, who was wishing he knew a good Vanishing Spell, still clasped to his side.

“A word to the wise, Harry,” said Lockhart paternally as they entered the building through a side door. “I covered up for you back there with young Creevey — if he was photographing me, too, your schoolmates won’t think you’re setting yourself up so much. . . .”

Deaf to Harry’s stammers, Lockhart swept him down a corridor lined with staring students and up a staircase.

“Let me just say that handing out signed pictures at this stage of your career isn’t sensible — looks a tad bigheaded, Harry, to be frank. There may well come a time when, like me, you’ll need to keep a stack handy wherever you go, but” — he gave a little chortle — “I don’t think you’re quite there yet.”

They had reached Lockhart’s classroom and he let Harry go at last. 

Harry yanked his robes straight and headed for a seat at the very back of the class, where he busied himself with piling all seven of Lockhart’s books in front of him, so that he could avoid looking at the real thing.

The rest of the class came clattering in, and Ron and Hermione sat down on either side of Harry.

“You could’ve fried an egg on your face,” said Ron. “You’d better hope Creevey doesn’t meet Ginny, or they’ll be starting a Harry Potter fan club.”

“Shut up,” snapped Harry. 

The last thing he needed was for Lockhart to hear the phrase “Harry Potter fan club.”

When the whole class was seated, Lockhart cleared his throat loudly and silence fell. He reached forward, picked up Neville Longbottom’s copy of “Travels with Trolls”, and held it up to show his own, winking portrait on the front.

“Me,” he said, pointing at it and winking as well. “Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defense League, and five-time winner of Witch Weekly’s Most-Charming-Smile Award — but I don’t talk about that. I didn’t get rid of the Bandon Banshee by smiling at her!”

He waited for them to laugh; a few people smiled weakly.

“I see you’ve all bought a complete set of my books — well done. I thought we’d start today with a little quiz. Nothing to worry about — just to check how well you’ve read them, how much you’ve taken in —”

When he had handed out the test papers he returned to the front of the class and said, “You have thirty minutes — start — now!”

Harry looked down at his paper and read:

1. What is Gilderoy Lockhart’s favorite color?
2. What is Gilderoy Lockhart’s secret ambition?
3. What, in your opinion, is Gilderoy Lockhart’s greatest achievement to

date?

On and on it went, over three sides of paper, right down to:

1. When is Gilderoy Lockhart’s birthday, and what would his ideal gift

be?

Half an hour later, Lockhart collected the papers and rifled through them in front of the class.

“Tut, tut — hardly any of you remembered that my favorite color is lilac. I say so in ‘Year with the Yeti’. And a few of you need to read ‘Wanderings with Werewolves’ more carefully — I clearly state in chapter twelve that my ideal birthday gift would be harmony between all magic and non-magic peoples — though I wouldn’t say no to a large bottle of Ogden’s Old Firewhisky!”

He gave them another roguish wink. 

Ron was now staring at Lockhart with an expression of disbelief on his face; Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas, who were sitting in front, were shaking with silent laughter. Hermione, on the other hand, was listening to Lockhart with rapt attention and gave a start when he mentioned her name.

“. . . but Miss Hermione Granger knew my secret ambition is to rid the world of evil and market my own range of hair-care potions — good girl! In fact” He flipped her paper over. “full marks! Where is Miss Hermione Granger?”

Hermione raised a trembling hand.

“Excellent!” beamed Lockhart. “Quite excellent! Take ten points for Gryffindor! And so — to business —”

He bent down behind his desk and lifted a large, covered cage onto it.

“Now — be warned! It is my job to arm you against the foulest creatures known to wizardkind! You may find yourselves facing your worst fears in this room. Know only that no harm can befall you whilst I am here. All I ask is that you remain calm.”

In spite of himself, Harry leaned around his pile of books for a better look at the cage. Lockhart placed a hand on the cover. Dean and Seamus had stopped laughing now. Neville was cowering in his front row seat.

“I must ask you not to scream,” said Lockhart in a low voice. “It might provoke them.”

As the whole class held its breath, Lockhart whipped off the cover.

“Yes,” he said dramatically. “Freshly caught Cornish pixies!”

Seamus Finnigan couldn’t control himself. He let out a snort of laughter that even Lockhart couldn’t mistake for a scream of terror.

“Yes?” He smiled at Seamus.

“Well, they’re not — they’re not very — dangerous, are they?” Seamus choked.

“Don’t be so sure!” said Lockhart, waggling a finger annoyingly at Seamus. “Devilish tricky little blighters they can be!”

The pixies were electric blue and about eight inches high, with pointed faces and voices so shrill it was like listening to a lot of budgies arguing. The moment the cover had been removed, they had started jabbering and rocketing around, rattling the bars and making bizarre faces at the people nearest them.

“Right, then,” Lockhart said loudly. “Let’s see what you make of them!” 

And he opened the cage.

It was pandemonium. 

The pixies shot in every direction like rockets. Two of them seized Neville by the ears and lifted him into the air. Several shot straight through the window, showering the back row with broken glass. The rest proceeded to wreck the classroom more effectively than a rampaging rhino. 

They grabbed ink bottles and sprayed the class with them, shredded books and papers, tore pictures from the walls, upended the wastebasket, grabbed bags and books, and threw them out of the smashed window. Within minutes, half the class was sheltering under desks and Neville was swinging from the iron chandelier in the ceiling.

“Come on now — round them up, round them up, they’re only pixies,” Lockhart shouted.

He rolled up his sleeves, brandished his wand, and bellowed, “Peskipiksi Pesternomi!”

It had absolutely no effect.

One of the pixies seized his wand and threw it out of the window, too. Lockhart gulped and dived under his own desk, narrowly avoiding being squashed by Neville, who fell a second later as the chandelier gave way.

The bell rang and there was a mad rush toward the exit. In the relative calm that followed, Lockhart straightened up, caught sight of Harry, Ron, and Hermione, who were almost at the door, and said, “Well, I’ll ask you three to just nip the rest of them back into their cage.” 

He swept past them and shut the door quickly behind him.

“Can you believe him?” roared Ron as one of the remaining pixies bit him painfully on the ear.

“He just wants to give us some hands-on experience,” said Hermione, immobilizing two pixies at once with a clever Freezing Charm and stuffing them back into their cage.

“Hands on?” said Harry, who was trying to grab a pixie dancing out of reach with its tongue out. “Hermione, he didn’t have a clue what he was doing —”

“Rubbish,” said Hermione. “You’ve read his books — look at all those amazing things he’s done —”

“He says he’s done,” Ron muttered.

Chapter 17 : Book 2: Chapter 7 (adjustments, additions)

Harry spent a lot of time over the next few days dodging out of sight whenever he saw Gilderoy Lockhart coming down a corridor. Harder to avoid was Colin Creevey, who seemed to have memorized Harry’s schedule. 

Nothing seemed to give Colin a bigger thrill than to say, “All right, Harry?” six or seven times a day and hear, “Hello, Colin,” back, however exasperated Harry sounded when he said it.

Hedwig was still angry with Harry about the disastrous car journey and Ron’s wand was still malfunctioning, surpassing itself on Friday morning by shooting out of Ron’s hand in Charms and hitting tiny old Professor Flitwick squarely between the eyes, creating a large, throbbing green boil where it had struck. 

So with one thing and another, Harry was quite glad to reach the weekend. 

He, Ron, and Hermione were planning to visit Hagrid on Saturday morning. Harry, however, was shaken awake several hours earlier than he would have liked by Oliver Wood, Captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team.

“Whassamatter?” said Harry groggily. 

“Quidditch practice!” said Wood. “Come on!”

Harry squinted at the window. There was a thin mist hanging across the pink-and-gold sky. Now that he was awake, he couldn’t understand how he could have slept through the racket the birds were making.

“Oliver,” Harry croaked. “It’s the crack of dawn.”

“Exactly,” said Wood. He was a tall and burly sixth year and, at the moment, his eyes were gleaming with a crazed enthusiasm. “It’s part of our new training program. Come on, grab your broom, and let’s go,” said Wood heartily. “None of the other teams have started training yet; we’re going to be first off the mark this year —”

Yawning and shivering slightly, Harry climbed out of bed and tried to find his Quidditch robes.

“Good man,” said Wood. “Meet you on the field in fifteen minutes.”

When he’d found his scarlet team robes and pulled on his cloak for warmth, Harry scribbled a note to Ron explaining where he’d gone and went down the spiral staircase to the common room, his Nimbus Two Thousand on his shoulder. 

He had just reached the portrait hole when there was a clatter behind him and Colin Creevey came dashing down the spiral staircase, his camera swinging madly around his neck and something clutched in his hand.

“I heard someone saying your name on the stairs, Harry! Look what I’ve got here! I’ve had it developed, I wanted to show you —”

Harry looked bemusedly at the photograph Colin was brandishing under his nose.

A moving, black-and-white Lockhart was tugging hard on an arm Harry recognized as his own. He was pleased to see that his photographic self was putting up a good fight and refusing to be dragged into view. As Harry watched, Lockhart gave up and slumped, panting, against the white edge of the picture.

“Will you sign it?” said Colin eagerly.

“No,” said Harry flatly, glancing around to check that the room was really deserted. “Sorry, Colin, I’m in a hurry — Quidditch practice —”

He climbed through the portrait hole.

Colin scrambled through the hole after him. “Oh, wow! Wait for me! I’ve never watched a Quidditch game before!” 

“It’ll be really boring,” Harry said quickly, but Colin ignored him, his face shining with excitement.

“You were the youngest House player in a hundred years, weren’t you, Harry? Weren’t you?” asked Colin, trotting alongside him. “You must be brilliant. I’ve never flown. Is it easy? Is that your own broom? Is that the best one there is?”

Harry didn’t know how to get rid of him. It was like having an extremely talkative shadow.

“I don’t really understand Quidditch,” said Colin breathlessly. “Is it true there are four balls? And two of them fly around trying to knock people off their brooms?”

“Yes,” said Harry heavily, resigned to explaining the complicated rules of Quidditch. “They’re called Bludgers. There are two Beaters on each team who carry clubs to beat the Bludgers away from their side. Fred and George Weasley are the Gryffindor Beaters.”

“And what are the other balls for?” Colin asked, tripping down a couple of steps because he was gazing open-mouthed at Harry.

“Well, the Quaffle — that’s the biggish red one — is the one that scores goals. Three Chasers on each team throw the Quaffle to each other and try and get it through the goalposts at the end of the pitch — they’re three long poles with hoops on the end.”

“And the fourth ball —”

“— is the Golden Snitch,” said Harry, “and it’s very small, very fast, and difficult to catch. But that’s what the Seeker’s got to do, because a game of Quidditch doesn’t end until the Snitch has been caught. And whichever team’s Seeker gets the Snitch earns his team an extra hundred and fifty points.”

“And you’re the Gryffindor Seeker, aren’t you?” said Colin in awe.

“Yes,” said Harry as they left the castle and started across the dewdrenched grass. “And there’s the Keeper, too. He guards the goalposts. That’s it, really.”

But Colin didn’t stop questioning Harry all the way down the sloping lawns to the Quidditch field, and Harry only shook him off when he reached the changing rooms.

 Colin called after him in a piping voice, “I’ll go and get a good seat, Harry!” and hurried off to the stands.

The rest of the Gryffindor team were already in the changing room. Wood was the only person who looked truly awake. Fred and George Weasley were sitting, puffy-eyed and tousle-haired, next to fourth year Alicia Spinnet, who seemed to be nodding off against the wall behind her. Her fellow Chasers, Katie Bell and Angelina Johnson, were yawning side by side opposite them.

“There you are, Harry, what kept you?” said Wood briskly. “Now, I wanted a quick talk with you all before we actually get onto the field, because I spent the summer devising a whole new training program, which I really think will make all the difference. . . .”

Wood was holding up a large diagram of a Quidditch field, on which were drawn many lines, arrows, and crosses in different-colored inks. He took out his wand, tapped the board, and the arrows began to wiggle over the diagram like caterpillars. As Wood launched into a speech about his new tactics, Fred Weasley’s head drooped right onto Alicia Spinnet’s shoulder and he began to snore.

The first board took nearly twenty minutes to explain, but there was another board under that, and a third under that one. 

Harry sank into a stupor as Wood droned on and on.

“So,” said Wood, at long last, jerking Harry from a wistful fantasy about what he could be eating for breakfast at this very moment up at the castle. “Is that clear? Any questions?”

“I’ve got a question, Oliver,” said George, who had woken with a start. “Why couldn’t you have told us all this yesterday when we were awake?”

Wood wasn’t pleased.

“Now, listen here, you lot,” he said, glowering at them all. “We should have won the Quidditch Cup last year. We’re easily the best team. But unfortunately — owing to circumstances beyond our control —”

Harry shifted guiltily in his seat. He had been unconscious in the hospital wing for the final match of the previous year, meaning that Gryffindor had been a player short and had suffered their worst defeat in three hundred years.

Wood took a moment to regain control of himself. Their last defeat was clearly still torturing him.

“So this year, we train harder than ever before. . . . Okay, let’s go and put our new theories into practice!” Wood shouted, seizing his broomstick and leading the way out of the locker rooms. 

Stiff-legged and still yawning, his team followed.

They had been in the locker room so long that the sun was up completely now, although remnants of mist hung over the grass in the stadium. As Harry walked onto the field, he saw Ron and Hermione sitting in the stands.

“Aren’t you finished yet?” called Ron incredulously.

“Haven’t even started,” said Harry, looking jealously at the toast and marmalade Ron and Hermione had brought out of the Great Hall. “Wood’s been teaching us new moves.”

He mounted his broomstick and kicked at the ground, soaring up into the air. The cool morning air whipped his face, waking him far more effectively than Wood’s long talk. 

It felt wonderful to be back on the Quidditch field. 

He soared right around the stadium at full speed, racing Fred and George.

“What’s that funny clicking noise?” called Fred as they hurtled around the corner.

Harry looked into the stands. Colin was sitting in one of the highest seats, his camera raised, taking picture after picture, the sound strangely magnified in the deserted stadium.

“Look this way, Harry! This way!” he cried shrilly.

“Who the ruddy hell is that?” asked Fred, turning upside down on his broom to get a good look at Colin.

“No idea,” Harry lied, putting on a spurt of speed that took him as far away as possible from the shuttering camera of the boy.

“What’s going on?” said Wood, frowning, as he skimmed through the air toward them. “Why’s that first year taking pictures? I don’t like it. He could be a Slytherin spy, trying to find out about our new training program.”

“He’s in Gryffindor,” said Harry quickly.

“And the Slytherins don’t need a spy, Oliver,” said George.

“What makes you say that?” said Wood testily.

“Because they’re here in person,” said George, pointing.

Several people in green robes were walking onto the field, broomsticks in their hands.

“I don’t believe it!” Wood hissed in outrage. “I booked the field for today! We’ll see about this!”

Wood shot toward the ground, landing rather harder than he meant to in his anger, staggering slightly as he dismounted. 

Harry, Fred, and George followed.

“Flint!” Wood bellowed at the Slytherin Captain. “This is our practice time! We got up specially! You can clear off now!”

Marcus Flint was even larger than 

Wood. He had a look of trollish cunning on his face as he replied, “Plenty of room for all of us, Wood.”

Angelina, Alicia, and Katie had come over, too. There were no girls on the Slytherin team as far as Harry could see, who stood shoulder to shoulder, facing the Gryffindors, leering to a man.

“But I booked the field!” said Wood, positively spitting with rage. “I booked it!”

“Ah,” said Flint. “But I’ve got a specially signed note here from Professor Snape. ‘I, Professor S. Snape, give the Slytherin team permission to practice today on the Quidditch field owing to the need to train their new Seeker.’”

“You’ve got a new Seeker?” said Wood, distracted. “Where?”

And from behind the six large figures before them came a seventh, smaller player, smirking all over her pale, pointed face. 

It was Draconia Malfoy.

“Aren’t you Lucius Malfoy’s daughter?” said Fred, looking at Malfoy with dislike.

“Funny you should mention Draconia’s father,” said Flint as the whole Slytherin team smiled still more broadly. “Let me show you the generous gift he’s made to the Slytherin team.”

All seven of them held out their broomsticks. Seven highly polished, brand new handles and seven sets of fine gold lettering spelling the words “Nimbus Two Thousand and One” gleamed under the Gryffindors’ noses in the early morning sun.

“Very latest model. Only came out last month,” said Flint carelessly, flicking a speck of dust from the end of his own. “I believe it outstrips the old Two Thousand series by a considerable amount. As for the old Cleansweeps,” He smiled nastily at Fred and George, who were both clutching Cleansweep Fives, “sweeps the board with them.”

None of the Gryffindor team could think of anything to say for a moment. 

Draconia was smirking so broadly her cold grey-green eyes were reduced to slits.

She and Harry looked at each other, and there was an instantaneous tension between the two that crackled in the early morning air.

“Oh, look,” said Flint. “A field invasion.”

Ron and Hermione were crossing the grass to see what was going on.

“What’s happening?” Ron asked Harry. “Why aren’t you playing? And what’s she doing here?”

He was looking at Draconia, taking in her Slytherin Quidditch robes.

“I’m the new Slytherin Seeker, Weasley,” said Draconia, smugly. “Everyone’s just been admiring the brooms my father’s bought our team. The best of the bloodlines have to have the best of the brooms, after all.”

Ron gaped, openmouthed, at the seven superb broomsticks in front of him.

“Good, aren’t they?” said Draconia smoothly, running her hand down the haft of her room via the the finger of her brand new Quidditch gloves. “But perhaps the Gryffindor team will be able to raise some gold and get new brooms, too. You could raffle off those Cleansweep Fives, I suppose. I expect a museum would bid for them for children to ride around on after going through Potter’s own wing...”

The Slytherin team howled with laughter.

“At least no one on the Gryffindor team had to buy their way in,” said Hermione sharply, stepping up beside Harry as she pointed to him. “They got in on pure talent.”

The smug look on Draconia’s face flickered.

Harry watched as Draconia’s face twisted at the lips, a hot anger taking her eyes as she looked from Hermione to Harry, and she jabbed a furious finger at Hermione.

“N-no one asked your opinion, you filthy little Mudblood know-it-all!” she spat with venom.

Harry knew at once that Draconia had said something really bad because there was an instant uproar at her words. 

Flint had to dive in front of Draconia to stop Alicia and Angelina jumping on her, Fred bellowed, “How dare you!”, and Ron plunged his hand into his robes, pulled out his wand, yelling, “You’ll pay for that one, Malfoy!” and pointed it furiously under Flint’s arm at Draconia’s face.

A loud bang echoed around the stadium and a jet of green light shot out of the wrong end of Ron’s wand, hitting him in the stomach and sending him reeling backward onto the grass.

“Ron! Ron! Are you all right?” squealed Hermione, running to him from Harry.

Ron opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. Instead he gave an almighty belch and several slugs dribbled out of his mouth onto his lap.

The Slytherin team were paralyzed with laughter. 

Flint was doubled up, hanging onto his new broomstick for support. 

Draconia however screwed up her face in disgust, stomping her foot as she leaned forwards in outrage towards Ron. “Slugs?! Eugh! You have some nerve, Weasely! I should suppose its for the best your parents can’t afford new wands!”

The Gryffindors were gathered around Ron, who kept belching large, glistening slugs. 

Nobody seemed to want to touch him.

“We’d better get him to Hagrid’s, it’s nearest,” said Harry to Hermione, who nodded bravely, and the pair of them pulled Ron up by the arms.

“What happened, Harry? What happened? Is he ill? But you can cure him, can’t you?” Colin had run down from his seat and was now dancing alongside them as they left the field. 

Ron gave a huge heave and more slugs dribbled down his front.

“Oooh,” said Colin, fascinated and raising his camera. “Can you hold him still, Harry?”

“Get out of the way, Colin!” said Harry angrily. 

He and Hermione supported Ron out of the stadium and across the grounds toward the edge of the forest.

“Nearly there, Ron,” said Hermione as the gamekeeper’s cabin came into view. “You’ll be all right in a minute — almost there —”

They were within twenty feet of Hagrid’s house when the front door opened, but it wasn’t Hagrid who emerged. 

Gilderoy Lockhart, wearing robes of palest mauve today, came striding out.

“Quick, behind here,” Harry hissed, dragging Ron behind a nearby bush. 

Hermione followed, somewhat reluctantly.

“It’s a simple matter if you know what you’re doing!” Lockhart was saying loudly to Hagrid. “If you need help, you know where I am! I’ll let you have a copy of my book. I’m surprised you haven’t already got one — I’ll sign one tonight and send it over. Well, good-bye!” 

And he strode away toward the castle.

Harry waited until Lockhart was out of sight, then pulled Ron out of the bush and up to Hagrid’s front door. 

They knocked urgently.

Hagrid appeared at once, looking very grumpy, but his expression brightened when he saw who it was. “Bin wonderin’ when you’d come ter see me — come in, come in — thought you mighta bin Professor Lockhart back again —”

Harry and Hermione supported Ron over the threshold into the one-roomed cabin, which had an enormous bed in one corner, and a fire crackling merrily in the other. Hagrid didn’t seem perturbed by Ron’s slug problem, which Harry hastily explained as he lowered Ron into a chair.

“Better out than in,” he said cheerfully, plunking a large copper basin in front of him. “Get ’em all up, Ron.”

“I don’t think there’s anything to do except wait for it to stop,” said Hermione anxiously, watching Ron bend over the basin. “That’s a difficult curse to work at the best of times, but with a broken wand —”

Hagrid was bustling around making them tea. His boarhound, Fang, was slobbering over Harry.

“What did Lockhart want with you, Hagrid?” Harry asked, scratching Fang’s ears.

“Givin’ me advice on gettin’ kelpies out of a well,” growled Hagrid, moving a half-plucked rooster off his scrubbed table and setting down the teapot. “Like I don’ know. An’ bangin’ on about some banshee he banished. If one word of it was true, I’ll eat my kettle.”

It was most unlike Hagrid to criticize a Hogwarts teacher, and Harry looked at him in surprise. 

Hermione, however, said in a voice somewhat higher than usual, “I think you’re being a bit unfair. Professor Dumbledore obviously thought he was the best man for the job —”

“He was the on’y man for the job,” said Hagrid, offering them a plate of treacle toffee, while Ron coughed squelchily into his basin. “An’ I mean the on’y one. Gettin’ very difficult ter find anyone fer the Dark Arts job. People aren’t too keen ter take it on, see. They’re startin’ ter think it’s jinxed. No one’s lasted long fer a while now. So tell me,” said Hagrid, jerking his head at Ron. “Who was he tryin’ ter curse?”

“Malfoy called Hermione something — it must’ve been really bad, because everyone went wild.” Harry said with a shrug.

“It was bad,” said Ron hoarsely, emerging over the tabletop looking pale and sweaty. “Malfoy called her ‘Mudblood,’ Hagrid —”

Ron dived out of sight again as a fresh wave of slugs made their appearance. 

Hagrid looked outraged.

“She didn’!” he growled at Hermione.

“She did,” she replied. “But I don’t know what it means. I could tell it was really rude, of course —”

“It’s about the most insulting thing she could think of,” gasped Ron, coming back up. “Mudblood’s a really foul name for someone who is Muggle-born — you know, non-magic parents. There are some wizards — like Malfoy’s family — who think they’re better than everyone else because they’re what people call pure-blood.” He gave a small burp, and a single slug fell into his outstretched hand. He threw it into the basin and continued, “I mean, the rest of us know it doesn’t make any difference at all. Look at Neville Longbottom — he’s pure-blood and he can hardly stand a cauldron the right way up.”

“An’ they haven’t invented a spell our Hermione can’ do,” said Hagrid proudly, making Hermione go a brilliant shade of magenta.

“It’s a disgusting thing to call someone,” said Ron, wiping his sweaty brow with a shaking hand. “Dirty blood, see. Common blood. It’s ridiculous. Most wizards these days are half-blood anyway. If we hadn’t married Muggles we’d’ve died out.”

He retched and ducked out of sight again.

“Well, I don’ blame yeh fer tryin’ ter curse her, Ron,” said Hagrid loudly over the thuds of more slugs hitting the basin. “Bu’ maybe it was a good thing yer wand backfired. ’Spect Lucius Malfoy would’ve come marchin’ up ter school if yeh’d cursed his daughter. Least yer not in trouble.”

Harry would have pointed out that trouble didn’t come much worse than having slugs pouring out of your mouth, but he couldn’t; Hagrid’s treacle toffee had cemented his jaws together.

“Harry,” said Hagrid abruptly as though struck by a sudden thought. “Gotta bone ter pick with yeh. I’ve heard you’ve bin givin’ out signed photos. How come I haven’t got one?”

Furious, Harry wrenched his teeth apart.

“I have not been giving out signed photos,” he said hotly. “If Lockhart’s still spreading that around —”

But then he saw that Hagrid was laughing.

“I’m on’y jokin’,” he said, patting Harry genially on the back and sending him face first into the table. “I knew yeh hadn’t really. I told Lockhart yeh didn’ need teh. Yer more famous than him without tryin’.”

“Bet he didn’t like that,” said Harry, sitting up and rubbing his chin.

“Don’ think he did,” said Hagrid, his eyes twinkling. “An’ then I told him I’d never read one o’ his books an’ he decided ter go. Treacle toffee, Ron?” he added as Ron reappeared.

“No thanks,” said Ron weakly. “Better not risk it.”

“Come an’ see what I’ve bin growin’,” said Hagrid as Harry and Hermione finished the last of their tea.

In the small vegetable patch behind Hagrid’s house were a dozen of the largest pumpkins Harry had ever seen. Each was the size of a large boulder.

“Gettin’ on well, aren’t they?” said Hagrid happily. “Fer the Halloween feast . . . should be big enough by then.”

“What’ve you been feeding them?” said Harry.

Hagrid looked over his shoulder to check that they were alone.

“Well, I’ve bin givin’ them — you know — a bit o’ help —”

Harry noticed Hagrid’s flowery pink umbrella leaning against the back wall of the cabin. Harry had reason to believe before now that this umbrella was not all it looked; in fact, he had the strong impression that Hagrid’s old school wand was concealed inside it. 

Hagrid wasn’t supposed to use magic. He had been expelled from Hogwarts in his third year, but Harry had never found out why — any mention of the matter and Hagrid would clear his throat loudly and become mysteriously deaf until the subject was changed.

“An Engorgement Charm, I suppose?” said Hermione, halfway between disapproval and amusement. “Well, you’ve done a good job on them.”

“That’s what yer little sister said,” said Hagrid, nodding at Ron. “Met her jus’ yesterday.” Hagrid looked sideways at Harry, his beard twitching. “Said she was jus’ lookin’ round the grounds, but I reckon she was hopin’ she might run inter someone else at my house.” He winked at Harry. “If yeh ask me, she wouldn’ say no ter a signed —”

“Oh, shut up,” said Harry dryly, turning away from the group with a swing of his arms. 

Ron snorted with laughter and the ground was sprayed with slugs.

“Watch it!” Hagrid roared, pulling Ron away from his precious pumpkins.

It was nearly lunchtime and as Harry had only had one bit of treacle toffee since dawn, he was keen to go back to school to eat. They said good-bye to Hagrid and walked back up to the castle, Ron hiccoughing occasionally, but only bringing up two very small slugs.

They had barely set foot in the cool entrance hall when a voice rang out, “There you are, Potter — Weasley.” Professor McGonagall was walking toward them, looking stern. “You will both do your detentions this evening.”

“What’re we doing, Professor?” said Ron, nervously suppressing a burp.

“You will be polishing the silver in the trophy room with Mr. Filch,” said Professor McGonagall. “And no magic, Weasley — elbow grease.”

Ron gulped. 

Argus Filch, the caretaker, was loathed by every student in the school.

“And you, Potter, will be helping Professor Lockhart answer his fan mail,” said Professor McGonagall.

“Oh n — Professor, can’t I go and do the trophy room, too?” said Harry desperately.

“Certainly not,” said Professor McGonagall, raising her eyebrows. “Professor Lockhart requested you particularly. Eight o’clock sharp, both of you.”

Harry and Ron slouched into the Great Hall in states of deepest gloom, Hermione behind them, wearing a well-you-did-break-school-rules sort of expression. 

Harry didn’t enjoy his shepherd’s pie as much as he’d thought. 

Both he and Ron felt they’d got the worse deal.

“Filch’ll have me there all night,” said Ron heavily. “No magic! There must be about a hundred cups in that room. I’m no good at Muggle cleaning.”

“I’d swap anytime,” said Harry hollowly. “I’ve had loads of practice with the Dursleys. Answering Lockhart’s fan mail . . . he’ll be a nightmare. . . .”

Saturday afternoon seemed to melt away, and in what seemed like no time, it was five minutes to eight, and Harry was dragging his feet along the second-floor corridor to Lockhart’s office. He gritted his teeth and knocked.

The door flew open at once, and Lockhart beamed down at him.

“Ah, here’s the scalawag!” he said. “Come in, Harry, come in —”

Shining brightly on the walls by the light of many candles were countless framed photographs of Lockhart. He had even signed a few of them. Another large pile lay on his desk.

“You can address the envelopes!” Lockhart told Harry, as though this was a huge treat. “This first one’s to Gladys Gudgeon, bless her — huge fan of mine —”

The minutes snailed by. 

Harry let Lockhart’s voice wash over him, occasionally saying, “Mmm” and “Right” and “Yeah.” 

Now and then he caught a phrase like, “Fame’s a fickle friend, Harry,” or “Celebrity is as celebrity does, remember that.”

The candles burned lower and lower, making the light dance over the many moving faces of Lockhart watching him. Harry moved his aching hand over what felt like the thousandth envelope, writing out Veronica Smethley’s address. 

It must be nearly time to leave, Harry thought miserably, please let it be nearly time. . . .

And then he heard something — something quite apart from the spitting of the dying candles and Lockhart’s prattle about his fans.

It was a voice, a voice to chill the bone marrow, a voice of breathtaking, ice-cold venom.

“Come . . . come to me. . . . Let me rip you. . . . Let me tear you. . . . Let me kill you. . . .”

Harry gave a huge jump and a large lilac blot appeared on Veronica Smethley’s street.

“What?” he said loudly.

“I know!” said Lockhart. “Six solid months at the top of the best-seller list! Broke all records!”

“No,” said Harry frantically. “That voice!”

“Sorry?” said Lockhart, looking puzzled. “What voice?” 

“That — that voice that said — didn’t you hear it?”

Lockhart was looking at Harry in high astonishment.

“What are you talking about, Harry? Perhaps you’re getting a little drowsy? Great Scott — look at the time! We’ve been here nearly four hours! I’d never have believed it — the time’s flown, hasn’t it?”

Harry didn’t answer. 

He was straining his ears to hear the voice again, but there was no sound now except for Lockhart telling him he mustn’t expect a treat like this every time he got detention. 

Feeling dazed, Harry left.

It was so late that the Gryffindor common room was almost empty. Harry went straight up to the dormitory. 

Ron wasn’t back yet. 

Harry pulled on his pajamas, got into bed, and waited. 

Half an hour later, Ron arrived, nursing his right arm and bringing a strong smell of polish into the darkened room.

“My muscles have all seized up,” he groaned, sinking on his bed. “Fourteen times he made me buff up that Quidditch Cup before he was satisfied. And then I had another slug attack all over a Special Award for Services to the School. Took ages to get the slime off. . . . How was it with Lockhart?”

Keeping his voice low so as not to wake Neville, Dean, and Seamus, Harry told Ron exactly what he had heard.

“And Lockhart said he couldn’t hear it?” said Ron. Harry could see him frowning in the moonlight. “D’you think he was lying? But I don’t get it — even someone invisible would’ve had to open the door.”

“I know,” said Harry, lying back in his four-poster and staring at the canopy above him. “I don’t get it either.”

Chapter 18 : Book 2: Chapter 8 (major summary, minor addition)

This chapter is changed very little from its original state, though there is one amendment to the chapter:

“Shouldn’t we try and help —” Harry began awkwardly.

“Trust me,” said Ron. “We don’t want to be found here.”

But it was too late. A rumble, as though of distant thunder, told them that the feast had just ended. From either end of the corridor where they stood came the sound of hundreds of feet climbing the stairs, and the loud, happy talk of well-fed people; next moment, students were crashing into the passage from both ends.

The chatter, the bustle, the noise died suddenly as the people in front spotted the hanging cat. 

Harry, Ron, and Hermione stood alone, in the middle of the corridor, as silence fell among the mass of students pressing forward to see the grisly sight.

Then someone shouted through the quiet.

“Enemies of the Heir, beware! You’ll be next, Mudbloods!”

It was Draconia Malfoy. 

She had pushed to the front of the crowd, her cold eyes alive, her usually bloodless face flushed as she grinned at the sight of the hanging, immobile cat.

She then looked at Hermione, with malice in her eyes.

Chapter 19 : Book 2: Chapter 9 (editing, adjustments)

“What’s going on here? What’s going on?”

Attracted no doubt by Malfoy’s shout, Argus Filch came shouldering his way through the crowd. Then he saw Mrs. Norris and fell back, clutching his face in horror.

“My cat! My cat! What’s happened to Mrs. Norris?” he shrieked. And his popping eyes fell on Harry. “You!” he screeched. “You! You’ve murdered my cat! You’ve killed her! I’ll kill you! I’ll —”

“Argus!”

Dumbledore had arrived on the scene, followed by a number of other teachers. In seconds, he had swept past Harry, Ron, and Hermione and detached Mrs. Norris from the torch bracket.

“Come with me, Argus,” he said to Filch. “You, too, Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley, Miss Granger.”

Lockhart stepped forward eagerly. “My office is nearest, Headmaster — just upstairs — please feel free —”

“Thank you, Gilderoy,” said Dumbledore.

The silent crowd parted to let them pass. Lockhart, looking excited and important, hurried after Dumbledore; so did Professors McGonagall and Snape.

As they entered Lockhart’s darkened office there was a flurry of movement across the walls; Harry saw several of the Lockharts in the pictures dodging out of sight, their hair in rollers. The real Lockhart lit the candles on his desk and stood back. 

Dumbledore laid Mrs. Norris on the polished surface and began to examine her. Harry, Ron, and Hermione exchanged tense looks and sank into chairs outside the pool of candlelight, watching.

The tip of Dumbledore’s long, crooked nose was barely an inch from Mrs. Norris’s fur. He was looking at her closely through his half-moon spectacles, his long fingers gently prodding and poking. Professor McGonagall was bent almost as close, her eyes narrowed. 

Snape loomed behind them, half in shadow, wearing a most peculiar expression: It was as though he was trying hard not to smile. 

And Lockhart was hovering around all of them, making suggestions.

“It was definitely a curse that killed her — probably the Transmogrifian Torture — I’ve seen it used many times, so unlucky I wasn’t there, I know the very countercurse that would have saved her. . . .”

Lockhart’s comments were punctuated by Filch’s dry, racking sobs. He was slumped in a chair by the desk, unable to look at Mrs. Norris, his face in his hands. 

Much as he detested Filch, Harry couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for him, though not nearly as sorry as he felt for himself. If Dumbledore believed Filch, he would be expelled for sure.

Dumbledore was now muttering strange words under his breath and tapping Mrs. Norris with his wand, but nothing happened: She continued to look as though she had been recently stuffed.

“. . . I remember something very similar happening in Ouagadogou,” said

Lockhart, “a series of attacks, the full story’s in my autobiography, I was able to provide the townsfolk with various amulets, which cleared the matter up at once. . . .”

The photographs of Lockhart on the walls were all nodding in agreement as he talked. 

One of them had forgotten to remove his hair net.

At last Dumbledore straightened up. “She’s not dead, Argus,” he said softly.

Lockhart stopped abruptly in the middle of counting the number of murders he had prevented.

“Not dead?” choked Filch, looking through his fingers at Mrs. Norris. “But why’s she all — all stiff and frozen?”

“She has been Petrified,” said Dumbledore 

“Ah! I thought so!” said Lockhart.

Dumbledore ignored him, turning to Filch. “But how, I cannot say. . . .”

“Ask him!” shrieked Filch, turning his blotched and tearstained face to Harry.

“No second year could have done this,” said Dumbledore firmly. “It would take Dark Magic of the most advanced —”

“He did it, he did it!” Filch spat, his pouchy face purpling. “You saw what he wrote on the wall! He found — in my office — he knows I’m a — I’m a —” Filch’s face worked horribly. “He knows I’m a Squib!” he finished.

“I never touched Mrs. Norris!” Harry said loudly, uncomfortably aware of everyone looking at him, including all the Lockharts on the walls. “And I don’t even know what a Squib is.”

“Rubbish!” snarled Filch. “He saw my Kwikspell letter!”

“If I might speak, Headmaster,” said Snape from the shadows, and Harry’s sense of foreboding increased; he was sure nothing Snape had to say was going to do him any good.

“Potter and his friends may have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said, a slight sneer curling his mouth as though he doubted it. “But we do have a set of suspicious circumstances here. Why was he in the upstairs corridor at all? Why wasn’t he at the Halloween feast?”

Harry, Ron and Hermione all launched into an explanation about the deathday party. “. . . there were hundreds of ghosts, they’ll tell you we were there —”

“But why not join the feast afterward?” said Snape, his black eyes glittering in the candlelight. “Why go up to that corridor?”

Ron and Hermione looked at Harry.

“Because — because —” Harry said, his heart thumping very fast; something told him it would sound very far-fetched if he told them he had been led there by a bodiless voice no one but he could hear, “because we were tired and wanted to go to bed,” he said.

“Without any supper?” said Snape, a triumphant smile flickering across his gaunt face. “I didn’t think ghosts provided food fit for living people at their parties.”

“We weren’t hungry,” said Ron loudly as his stomach gave a huge rumble.

Snape’s nasty smile widened.

“I suggest, Headmaster, that Potter is not being entirely truthful,” he said. “It might be a good idea if he were deprived of certain privileges until he is ready to tell us the whole story. I personally feel he should be taken off the Gryffindor Quidditch team until he is ready to be honest.”

“Really, Severus,” said Professor McGonagall sharply, “I see no reason to stop the boy playing Quidditch. This cat wasn’t hit over the head with a broomstick. There is no evidence at all that Potter has done anything wrong.”

Dumbledore was giving Harry a searching look. His twinkling light-blue gaze made Harry feel as though he were being X-rayed.

“Innocent until proven guilty, Severus,” he said firmly.

Snape looked furious. 

So did Filch.

“My cat has been Petrified!” he shrieked, his eyes popping. “I want to see some punishment!”

“We will be able to cure her, Argus,” said Dumbledore patiently. “Professor Sprout recently managed to procure some Mandrakes. As soon as they have reached their full size, I will have a potion made that will revive Mrs. Norris.”

“I’ll make it,” Lockhart butted in. “I must have done it a hundred times. I could whip up a Mandrake Restorative Draught in my sleep —”

“Excuse me,” said Snape icily. “But I believe I am the Potions master at this school.”

There was a very awkward pause.

“You may go,” Dumbledore said to Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

They went, as quickly as they could without actually running. When they were a floor up from Lockhart’s office, they turned into an empty classroom and closed the door quietly behind them. 

Harry squinted at his friends’ darkened faces. “D’you think I should have told them about that voice I heard?”

“No,” said Ron, without hesitation. “Hearing voices no one else can hear isn’t a good sign, even in the Wizarding world.”

Something in Ron’s voice made Harry ask, “You do believe me, don’t you?”

“’Course I do,” said Ron quickly. “But — you must admit it’s weird. . . .”

“I know it’s weird,” said Harry. “The whole thing’s weird. What was that writing on the wall about? The Chamber Has Been Opened. . . . What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know, it rings a sort of bell,” said Ron slowly. “I think someone told me a story about a secret chamber at Hogwarts once . . . might’ve been Bill. . . .”

“And what on earth’s a Squib?” said Harry.

To his surprise, Ron stifled a snigger.

“Well — it’s not funny really — but as it’s Filch,” he said. “A Squib is someone who was born into a Wizarding family but hasn’t got any magic powers. Kind of the opposite of Muggle-born wizards, but Squibs are quite unusual. If Filch’s trying to learn magic from a Kwikspell course, I reckon he must be a Squib. It would explain a lot. Like why he hates students so much.” Ron gave a satisfied smile. “He’s bitter.”

“... Can someone explain why Malfoy looked at me in the hallway?” Hermione asked aloud, rather angry that neither Ron nor Harry had brought it up.

Ron looked to her. “Eh?”

“What?” Harry asked, rather caught off guard by the question.

“Malfoy!” Hermione barked. “She looked right at me and smiled, as if she hoped I were next! Did neither of you two notice!?”

There was an odd, awkward pause, then a clock chimed somewhere.

“Midnight,” said Harry quickly, running his hands down his robes. “We’d better get to bed before Snape comes along and tries to frame us for something else.”

Harry and Ron made for the door, while Hermione looked after them, her face incredulous.

“Really?” She asked, stalking after them. “Really, none of you noticed?”

For a few days, the school could talk of little else but the attack on Mrs. Norris. Filch kept it fresh in everyone’s minds by pacing the spot where she had been attacked, as though he thought the attacker might come back. 

Harry had seen him scrubbing the message on the wall with Mrs. Skower’s AllPurpose Magical Mess Remover, but to no effect; the words still gleamed as brightly as ever on the stone. When Filch wasn’t guarding the scene of the crime, he was skulking red-eyed through the corridors, lunging out at unsuspecting students and trying to put them in detention for things like “breathing loudly” and “looking happy.”

Ginny Weasley seemed very disturbed by Mrs. Norris’s fate. According to Ron, she was a great cat lover.

“But you haven’t really got to know Mrs. Norris,” Ron told her bracingly. “Honestly, we’re much better off without her.” 

Ginny’s lip trembled. 

“Stuff like this doesn’t often happen at Hogwarts,” Ron assured her. “They’ll catch the maniac who did it and have him out of here in no time. I just hope he’s got time to Petrify Filch before he’s expelled- I’m only joking!” Ron added hastily as Ginny blanched.

The attack had also had an effect on Hermione. 

It was quite usual for Hermione to spend a lot of time reading, but she was now doing almost nothing else. Nor could Harry and Ron get much response from her when they asked what she was up to, and not until the following Wednesday did they find out.

Harry had been held back in Potions, where Snape had made him stay behind to scrape tubeworms off the desks. After a hurried lunch, he went upstairs to meet Ron in the library, and saw Justin Finch-Fletchley, the Hufflepuff boy from Herbology, coming toward him. 

Harry had just opened his mouth to say hello when Justin caught sight of him, turned abruptly, and sped off in the opposite direction.

Harry found Ron at the back of the library, measuring his History of Magic homework. Professor Binns had asked for a three-foot-long composition on “The Medieval Assembly of European Wizards.”

“I don’t believe it, I’m still eight inches short. . . .” said Ron furiously, letting go of his parchment, which sprang back into a roll. “And Hermione’s done four feet seven inches and her writing’s tiny.”

“Where is she?” asked Harry, grabbing the tape measure and unrolling his own homework.

“Somewhere over there,” said Ron, pointing along the shelves. “Looking for another book. I think she’s trying to read the whole library before Christmas.”

Harry told Ron about Justin Finch-Fletchley running away from him.

“Dunno why you care. I thought he was a bit of an idiot,” said Ron, scribbling away, making his writing as large as possible. “All that junk about Lockhart being so great —”

Hermione emerged from between the bookshelves. 

She looked irritable and at last seemed ready to talk to them.

“All the copies of Hogwarts: A History have been taken out,” she said, sitting down next to Harry and Ron. “And there’s a two-week waiting list. I wish I hadn’t left my copy at home, but I couldn’t fit it in my trunk with all the Lockhart books.”

“Why do you want it?” asked Harry.

“The same reason everyone else wants it,” said Hermione, “to read up on the legend of the Chamber of Secrets.”

“What’s that?” said Harry quickly.

“That’s just it. I can’t remember,” said Hermione, biting her lip. “And I can’t find the story anywhere else —”

“Hermione, let me read your composition,” said Ron desperately, checking his watch.

“No, I won’t,” said Hermione, suddenly severe. “You’ve had ten days to finish it —”

“I only need another two inches, come on —”

The bell rang. 

Ron and Hermione led the way to History of Magic, bickering.

Harry felt a cold chill down his spine, and turned, looking up and around.

From the bridge of one of the great stairs, he saw Draconia staring down at him, and she gave a visible jolt when she realized Harry had seen her.

She turned hard on her heel with a swish of blonde hair and walked away, pretending as if she hadn’t seen Harry at all.

“What is that about?” Harry hissed under his breath, turning around only to look over his shoulder again to make sure she wasn’t still up there.

History of Magic was the dullest subject on their schedule, though Harry was still trying to figure out why Draconia had been watching him from on high. 

Professor Binns, who taught it, was their only ghost teacher, and the most exciting thing that ever happened in his classes was his entering the room through the blackboard. Ancient and shriveled, many people said he hadn’t noticed he was dead. He had simply got up to teach one day and left his body behind him in an armchair in front of the staffroom fire; his routine had not varied in the slightest since.

Today was as boring as ever. 

Professor Binns opened his notes and began to read in a flat drone like an old vacuum cleaner until nearly everyone in the class was in a deep stupor, occasionally coming-to long enough to copy down a name or date, then falling asleep again. He had been speaking for half an hour when something happened that had never happened before. 

Hermione put up her hand.

Professor Binns, glancing up in the middle of a deadly dull lecture on the International Warlock Convention of 1289, looked amazed.

“Miss — er — ?”

“Granger, Professor. I was wondering if you could tell us anything about the Chamber of Secrets,” said Hermione in a clear voice.

Dean Thomas, who had been sitting with his mouth hanging open, gazing out of the window, jerked out of his trance; Lavender Brown’s head came up off her arms and Neville Longbottom’s elbow slipped off his desk.

Professor Binns blinked.

“My subject is History of Magic,” he said in his dry, wheezy voice. “I deal with facts, Miss Granger, not myths and legends.” He cleared his throat with a small noise like chalk snapping and continued, “In September of that year, a subcommittee of Sardinian sorcerers —”

He stuttered to a halt. 

Hermione’s hand was waving in the air again.

“Miss Grant?”

“Please, sir, don’t legends always have a basis in fact?”

Professor Binns was looking at her in such amazement, Harry was sure no student had ever interrupted him before, alive or dead.

“Well,” said Professor Binns slowly, “yes, one could argue that, I suppose.” He peered at Hermione as though he had never seen a student properly before. “However, the legend of which you speak is such a very sensational, even ludicrous tale —”

But the whole class was now hanging on Professor Binns’s every word. He looked dimly at them all, every face turned to his. Harry could tell he was completely thrown by such an unusual show of interest.

“Oh, very well,” he said slowly. “Let me see . . . the Chamber of Secrets . . .

“You all know, of course, that Hogwarts was founded over a thousand years ago — the precise date is uncertain — by the four greatest witches and wizards of the age. The four school Houses are named after them: Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin. They built this castle together, far from prying Muggle eyes, for it was an age when magic was feared by common people, and witches and wizards suffered much persecution.”

He paused, gazed blearily around the room, and continued.

“For a few years, the founders worked in harmony together, seeking out youngsters who showed signs of magic and bringing them to the castle to be educated. But then disagreements sprang up between them. A rift began to grow between Slytherin and the others. Slytherin wished to be more selective about the students admitted to Hogwarts. He believed that magical learning should be kept within all-magic families. He disliked taking students of Muggle parentage, believing them to be untrustworthy. After a while, there was a serious argument on the subject between Slytherin and Gryffindor, and Slytherin left the school.”

Professor Binns paused again, pursing his lips, looking like a wrinkled old tortoise.

“Reliable historical sources tell us this much,” he said. “But these honest facts have been obscured by the fanciful legend of the Chamber of Secrets. The story goes that Slytherin had built a hidden chamber in the castle, of which the other founders knew nothing. Slytherin, according to the legend, sealed the Chamber of Secrets so that none would be able to open it until his own true heir arrived at the school. The heir alone would be able to unseal the Chamber of Secrets, unleash the horror within, and use it to purge the school of all who were unworthy to study magic.”

There was silence as he finished telling the story, but it wasn’t the usual, sleepy silence that filled Professor Binns’s classes. There was unease in the air as everyone continued to watch him, hoping for more. 

Professor Binns looked faintly annoyed.

“The whole thing is arrant nonsense, of course,” he said. “Naturally, the school has been searched for evidence of such a chamber, many times, by the most learned witches and wizards. It does not exist. A tale told to frighten the gullible.”

Hermione’s hand was back in the air.

“Sir — what exactly do you mean by the ‘horror within’ the Chamber?”

“That is believed to be some sort of monster, which the Heir of Slytherin alone can control,” said Professor Binns in his dry, reedy voice.

The class exchanged nervous looks.

“I tell you, the thing does not exist,” said Professor Binns, shuffling his notes. “There is no Chamber and no monster.”

“But, sir,” said Seamus Finnigan, “if the Chamber can only be opened by Slytherin’s true heir, no one else would be able to find it, would they?”

“Nonsense, O’Flaherty,” said Professor Binns in an aggravated tone. “If a long succession of Hogwarts headmasters and headmistresses haven’t found the thing —”

“But, Professor,” piped up Parvati Patil, “you’d probably have to use Dark Magic to open it —”

“Just because a wizard doesn’t use Dark Magic doesn’t mean he can’t, Miss Pennyfeather,” snapped Professor Binns. “I repeat, if the likes of Dumbledore —”

“But maybe you’ve got to be related to Slytherin, so Dumbledore couldn’t —” began Dean Thomas, but Professor Binns had had enough.

“That will do,” he said sharply. “It is a myth! It does not exist! There is not a shred of evidence that Slytherin ever built so much as a secret broom cupboard! I regret telling you such a foolish story! We will return, if you please, to history, to solid, believable, verifiable fact!”

And within five minutes, the class had sunk back into its usual torpor.

“I always knew Salazar Slytherin was a twisted old loony,” Ron told Harry and Hermione as they fought their way through the teeming corridors at the end of the lesson to drop off their bags before dinner. “But I never knew he started all this pure-blood stuff. I wouldn’t be in his House if you paid me. Honestly, if the Sorting Hat had tried to put me in Slytherin, I’d’ve got the train straight back home. . . .”

Hermione nodded fervently, but Harry didn’t say anything. 

His stomach had just dropped unpleasantly.

Harry had never told Ron and Hermione that the Sorting Hat had seriously considered putting him in Slytherin. He could remember, as though it were yesterday, the small voice that had spoken in his ear when he’d placed the hat on his head a year before.

“You could be great, you know, it’s all here in your head, and Slytherin would help you on the way to greatness, no doubt about that. . . .”

But Harry, who had already heard of Slytherin House’s reputation for turning out Dark wizards, had thought desperately, “Not Slytherin!” and the hat had said, “Oh, well, if you’re sure . . . better be Gryffindor. . . .”

As they were shunted along in the throng, Colin Creevey went past.

“Hiya, Harry!”

“Hullo, Colin,” said Harry automatically.

“Harry — Harry — a boy in my class has been saying you’re —”

But Colin was so small he couldn’t fight against the tide of people bearing him toward the Great Hall.

They heard him squeak, “See you, Harry!” and he was gone.

“What’s a boy in his class saying about you?” Hermione wondered.

“That I’m Slytherin’s heir, I expect,” said Harry, his stomach dropping another inch or so as he suddenly remembered the way Justin Finch-Fletchley had run away from him at lunchtime.

“People here’ll believe anything,” said Ron in disgust.

The crowd thinned and they were able to climb the next staircase without difficulty.

“D’you really think there’s a Chamber of Secrets?” Ron asked Hermione.

“I don’t know,” she said, frowning. “Dumbledore couldn’t cure Mrs. Norris, and that makes me think that whatever attacked her might not be — well — human.”

As she spoke, they turned a corner and found themselves at the end of the very corridor where the attack had happened. They stopped and looked. The scene was just as it had been that night, except that there was no stiff cat hanging from the torch bracket, and an empty chair stood against the wall bearing the message “The Chamber of Secrets Has Been Opened.”

“That’s where Filch has been keeping guard,” Ron muttered.

They looked at each other. 

The corridor was deserted.

“Can’t hurt to have a poke around,” said Harry, dropping his bag and getting to his hands and knees so that he could crawl along, searching for

clues.

“Scorch marks!” he said. “Here — and here —”

“Come and look at this!” said Hermione. “This is funny. . . .”

Harry got up and crossed to the window next to the message on the wall. Hermione was pointing at the topmost pane, where around twenty spiders were scuttling, apparently fighting to get through a small crack. A long, silvery thread was dangling like a rope, as though they had all climbed it in their hurry to get outside.

“Have you ever seen spiders act like that?” said Hermione wonderingly.

“No,” said Harry, “have you, Ron? Ron?”

He looked over his shoulder. 

Ron was standing well back and seemed to be fighting the impulse to run.

“What’s up?” said Harry.

“I — don’t — like — spiders,” said Ron tensely.

“I never knew that,” said Hermione, looking at Ron in surprise. “You’ve used spiders in Potions loads of times. . . .”

“I don’t mind them dead,” said Ron, who was carefully looking anywhere but at the window. “I just don’t like the way they move. . . .”

Hermione giggled.

“It’s not funny,” spat Ron, fiercely. “If you must know, when I was three, Fred turned my — my teddy bear into a great big filthy spider because I broke his toy broomstick. . . . You wouldn’t like them either if you’d been holding your bear and suddenly it had too many legs and . . .”

He broke off, shuddering. 

Hermione was obviously still trying not to laugh. 

Feeling they had better get off the subject, Harry said, “Remember all that water on the floor? Where did that come from? Someone’s mopped it up.”

“It was about here,” said Ron, recovering himself to walk a few paces past Filch’s chair and pointing. “Level with this door.”

He reached for the brass doorknob but suddenly withdrew his hand as

though he’d been burned.

“What’s the matter?” said Harry.

“Can’t go in there,” said Ron gruffly. “That’s a girls’ toilet.”

“Oh, Ron, there won’t be anyone in there,” said Hermione, standing up and coming over. “That’s Moaning Myrtle’s place. Come on, let’s have a look.”

And ignoring the large “OUT OF ORDER” sign, she opened the door.

It was the gloomiest, most depressing bathroom Harry had ever set foot in. Under a large, cracked, and spotted mirror were a row of chipped sinks. The floor was damp and reflected the dull light given off by the stubs of a few candles, burning low in their holders; the wooden doors to the stalls were flaking and scratched and one of them was dangling off its hinges.

Hermione put her fingers to her lips and set off toward the end stall. When she reached it she said, “Hello, Myrtle, how are you?”

Harry and Ron went to look. Moaning Myrtle was floating above the tank of the toilet, picking a spot on her chin.

“This is the girls’ bathroom,” she said, eyeing Ron and Harry suspiciously. “They’re not girls.”

“No,” Hermione agreed. “I just wanted to show them how — er — nice it is in here.”

She waved vaguely at the dirty old mirror and the damp floor.

“Ask her if she saw anything,” Harry mouthed at Hermione.

“What are you whispering?” said Myrtle, staring at him.

“Nothing,” said Harry quickly. “We wanted to ask —”

“I wish people would stop talking behind my back!” said Myrtle, in a voice choked with tears. “I do have feelings, you know, even if I am dead —”

“Myrtle, no one wants to upset you,” said Hermione. “Harry only —”

“No one wants to upset me! That’s a good one!” howled Myrtle. “My life was nothing but misery at this place and now people come along ruining my death!”

“We wanted to ask you if you’ve seen anything funny lately,” said Hermione quickly. “Because a cat was attacked right outside your front door on Halloween.”

“Did you see anyone near here that night?” said Harry.

“I wasn’t paying attention,” said Myrtle dramatically. “Peeves upset me so much I came in here and tried to kill myself. Then, of course, I remembered that I’m — that I’m —”

“Already dead,” said Ron helpfully.

Myrtle gave a tragic sob, rose up in the air, turned over, and dived headfirst into the toilet, splashing water all over them and vanishing from sight, although from the direction of her muffled sobs, she had come to rest somewhere in the U-bend.

Harry and Ron stood with their mouths open, but Hermione shrugged wearily and said, “Honestly, that was almost cheerful for Myrtle. . . . Come on, let’s go.”

Harry had barely closed the door on Myrtle’s gurgling sobs when a loud voice made all three of them jump.

“RON!”

Percy Weasley had stopped dead at the head of the stairs, prefect badge agleam, an expression of complete shock on his face.

“That’s a girls’ bathroom!” he gasped. “What were you — ?”

“Just having a look around,” Ron shrugged. “Clues, you know —”

Percy swelled in a manner that reminded Harry forcefully of Mrs. Weasley.

“Get — away — from — there —” Percy said, striding toward them and starting to bustle them along, flapping his arms. “Don’t you care what this looks like? Coming back here while everyone’s at dinner —”

“Why shouldn’t we be here?” said Ron hotly, stopping short and glaring at Percy. “Listen, we never laid a finger on that cat!”

“That’s what I told Ginny,” said Percy fiercely, “but she still seems to think you’re going to be expelled, I’ve never seen her so upset, crying her eyes out, you might think of her, all the first years are thoroughly overexcited by this business —”

“You don’t care about Ginny,” said Ron, whose ears were now reddening. “You’re just worried I’m going to mess up your chances of being Head Boy —”

“Five points from Gryffindor!” Percy said tersely, fingering his prefect badge. “And I hope it teaches you a lesson! No more detective work, or I’ll write to Mum!”

And he strode off, the back of his neck as red as Ron’s ears.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione chose seats as far as possible from Percy in the common room that night. 

Ron was still in a very bad temper and kept blotting his Charms homework. When he reached absently for his wand to remove the smudges, it ignited the parchment. Fuming almost as much as his homework, Ron slammed The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2 shut. 

To Harry’s surprise, Hermione followed suit.

“Who can it be, though?” she said in a quiet voice, as though continuing a conversation they had just been having. “Who’d want to frighten all the Squibs and Muggle-borns out of Hogwarts?”

“Let’s think,” said Ron in mock puzzlement. “Who do we know who thinks Muggle-borns are scum?”

He looked at Hermione. 

Hermione looked back, unconvinced. “If you’re talking about Malfoy —”

“Of course I am!” said Ron. “You heard her— ‘You’ll be next, Mudbloods!’ — come on, you’ve only got to look at her foul rat face to know it’s her—”

“Malfoy, the Heir of Slytherin?” said Hermione skeptically. “If you ask me, she only looked at me and said that because she probably li-”

“Look at her family,” said Harry over her, closing his books, too. “The whole lot of them have been in Slytherin; she’s always boasting about it. They could easily be Slytherin’s descendants. Her father’s definitely evil enough.”

“They could’ve had the key to the Chamber of Secrets for centuries!” said Ron. “Handing it down, father to son… or daughter…”

“Well,” said Hermione cautiously, rolling her eyes at the two boys. “I suppose it’s possible. . . .”

“But how do we prove it?” asked Harry darkly, remembering how he had seen her watching him from the stairs.

“There might be a way,” said Hermione slowly, dropping her voice still further with a quick glance across the room at Percy. “Of course, it would be difficult. And dangerous, very dangerous. We’d be breaking about fifty school rules, I expect —”

“If, in a month or so, you feel like explaining, you will let us know, won’t you?” said Ron irritably.

“All right,” said Hermione coldly. “What we’d need to do is to get inside the Slytherin common room and ask Malfoy a few questions without her realizing it’s us.”

“But that’s impossible,” Harry said as Ron laughed.

“No, it’s not,” said Hermione. “All we’d need would be some Polyjuice Potion.”

“What’s that?” said Ron and Harry together.

“Snape mentioned it in class a few weeks ago —”

“D’you think we’ve got nothing better to do in Potions than listen to Snape?” muttered Ron.

“It transforms you into somebody else. Think about it! We could change into three of the Slytherins. No one would know it was us. Malfoy would probably tell us anything. She’s probably boasting about it in the Slytherin common room right now, if only we could hear her.”

“This Polyjuice stuff sounds a bit dodgy to me,” said Ron, frowning. “What if we were stuck looking like three of the Slytherins forever?”

“It wears off after a while,” said Hermione, waving her hand impatiently. “But getting hold of the recipe will be very difficult. Snape said it was in a book called Moste Potente Potions and it’s bound to be in the Restricted Section of the library.”

There was only one way to get out a book from the Restricted Section: You needed a signed note of permission from a teacher.

“Hard to see why we’d want the book, really,” said Ron, “if we weren’t going to try and make one of the potions.”

“I think,” said Hermione, “that if we made it sound as though we were just interested in the theory, we might stand a chance. . . .”

“Oh, come on, no teacher’s going to fall for that,” said Ron. “They’d have to be really thick. . . .”

Chapter 20 : Book 2: Chapter 10 (editing, adjustments)

Since the disastrous episode of the pixies, Professor Lockhart had not

brought live creatures to class. 

Instead, he read passages from his books to them, and sometimes reenacted some of the more dramatic bits. He usually picked Harry to help him with these reconstructions; so far, Harry had been forced to play a simple Transylvanian villager whom Lockhart had cured of a Babbling Curse, a yeti with a head cold, and a vampire who had been unable to eat anything except lettuce since Lockhart had dealt with him.

Harry was hauled to the front of the class during their very next Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson, this time acting a werewolf. If he hadn’t had a very good reason for keeping Lockhart in a good mood, he would have refused to do it.

“Nice loud howl, Harry — exactly — and then, if you’ll believe it, I pounced — like this — slammed him to the floor — thus — with one hand, I managed to hold him down — with my other, I put my wand to his throat — I then screwed up my remaining strength and performed the immensely complex Homorphus Charm — he let out a piteous moan — go on, Harry — higher than that — good — the fur vanished — the fangs shrank — and he turned back into a man. Simple, yet effective — and another village will remember me forever as the hero who delivered them from the monthly terror of werewolf attacks.”

The bell rang and Lockhart got to his feet.

“Homework — compose a poem about my defeat of the Wagga Wagga Werewolf! Signed copies of Magical Me to the author of the best one!”

The class began to leave. 

Harry returned to the back of the room, where Ron and Hermione were waiting.

“Ready?” Harry muttered.

“Wait till everyone’s gone,” said Hermione nervously. “All right . . .”

She approached Lockhart’s desk, a piece of paper clutched tightly in her hand, Harry and Ron right behind her.

“Er — Professor Lockhart?” Hermione stammered. “I wanted to — to get this book out of the library. Just for background reading.” She held out the piece of paper, her hand shaking slightly. “But the thing is, it’s in the Restricted Section of the library, so I need a teacher to sign for it — I’m sure it would help me understand what you say in ‘Gadding with Ghouls’ about slow-acting venoms —”

“Ah, ‘Gadding with Ghouls’!” said Lockhart, taking the note from Hermione and smiling widely at her. “Possibly my very favorite book. You enjoyed it?”

“Oh, yes,” said Hermione eagerly. “So clever, the way you trapped that last one with the tea-strainer —”

“Well, I’m sure no one will mind me giving the best student of the year a little extra help,” said Lockhart warmly, and he pulled out an enormous peacock quill. “Yes, nice, isn’t it?” he said, misreading the revolted look on Ron’s face. “I usually save it for book signings.”

He scrawled an enormous loopy signature on the note and handed it back to Hermione.

“So, Harry,” said Lockhart, while Hermione folded the note with fumbling fingers and slipped it into her bag. “Tomorrow’s the first Quidditch match of the season, I believe? Gryffindor against Slytherin, is it not? I hear you’re a useful player. I was a Seeker, too. I was asked to try for the National Squad, but preferred to dedicate my life to the eradication of the Dark Forces. Still, if ever you feel the need for a little private training, don’t hesitate to ask. Always happy to pass on my expertise to less able players. . . .”

Harry made an indistinct noise in his throat and then hurried off after Ron and Hermione.

“I don’t believe it,” he said as the three of them examined the signature on the note. “He didn’t even look at the book we wanted.”

“That’s because he’s a brainless git,” said Ron. “But who cares, we’ve got what we needed —”

“He is not a brainless git,” said Hermione shrilly as they half ran toward the library.

Ron shook his head ruefully. “Just because he said you were the best student of the year —”

They dropped their voices as they entered the muffled stillness of the library. Madam Pince, the librarian, was a thin, irritable woman who looked like an underfed vulture.

“Moste Potente Potions?” she repeated suspiciously, trying to take the note from Hermione; but Hermione wouldn’t let go.

“I was wondering if I could keep it,” she said breathlessly.

“Oh, come on,” said Ron, wrenching it from her grasp and thrusting it at Madam Pince. “We’ll get you another autograph. Lockhart’ll sign anything if it stands still long enough.”

Madam Pince held the note up to the light, as though determined to detect a forgery, but it passed the test. She stalked away between the lofty shelves and returned several minutes later carrying a large and moldy-looking book. Hermione put it carefully into her bag and they left, trying not to walk too quickly or look too guilty.

Five minutes later, they were barricaded in Moaning Myrtle’s out-of-order bathroom once again. Hermione had overridden Ron’s objections by pointing out that it was the last place anyone in their right minds would go, so they were guaranteed some privacy. 

Moaning Myrtle was crying noisily in her stall, but they were ignoring her, and she them.

Hermione opened Moste Potente Potions carefully, and the three of them bent over the damp-spotted pages. 

It was clear from a glance why it belonged in the Restricted Section. 

Some of the potions had effects almost too gruesome to think about, and there were some very unpleasant illustrations, which included a man who seemed to have been turned inside out and a witch sprouting several extra pairs of arms out of her head.

“Here it is,” said Hermione excitedly as she found the page headed The Polyjuice Potion. 

It was decorated with drawings of people halfway through transforming into other people. Harry sincerely hoped the artist had imagined the looks of intense pain on their faces.

“This is the most complicated potion I’ve ever seen,” said Hermione as they scanned the recipe. “Lacewing flies, leeches, fluxweed, and knotgrass,” she murmured, running her finger down the list of ingredients. “Well, they’re easy enough, they’re in the student store-cupboard, we can help ourselves. . . . Oooh, look, powdered horn of a bicorn — don’t know where we’re going to get that — shredded skin of a boomslang — that’ll be tricky, too — and of course a bit of whoever we want to change into.”

“Excuse me?” said Ron sharply. “What d’you mean, a bit of whoever we’re changing into? I’m drinking nothing with Crabbe’s toenails in it —”

Hermione continued as though she hadn’t heard him.

“We don’t have to worry about that yet, though, because we add those bits last. . . .”

Ron turned, speechless, to Harry, who had another worry.

“D’you realize how much we’re going to have to steal, Hermione? Shredded skin of a boomslang, that’s definitely not in the students’ cupboard. What’re we going to do, break into Snape’s private stores? I don’t know if this is a good idea. . . .”

Hermione shut the book with a snap.

“Well, if you two are going to chicken out, fine,” she said. There were bright pink patches on her cheeks and her eyes were brighter than usual. “I don’t want to break rules, you know. I think threatening Muggle-borns is far worse than brewing up a difficult potion. But if you don’t want to find out if it’s Malfoy, I’ll go straight to Madam Pince now and hand the book back in.”

“I never thought I’d see the day when you’d be persuading us to break rules,” said Ron. “All right, we’ll do it. But not toenails, okay?”

“How long will it take to make, anyway?” said Harry as Hermione, looking happier, opened the book again.

“Well, since the fluxweed has got to be picked at the full moon and the lacewings have got to be stewed for twenty-one days . . . I’d say it’d be ready in about a month, if we can get all the ingredients.”

“A month?” said Ron. “Malfoy could have attacked half the Muggle-borns in the school by then!” But Hermione’s eyes narrowed dangerously again, and he added swiftly, “But it’s the best plan we’ve got, so full steam ahead, I say.”

However, while Hermione was checking that the coast was clear for them to leave the bathroom, Ron muttered to Harry, “It’ll be a lot less hassle if you can just knock Malfoy off her broom tomorrow.”

Harry snorted. “I should have done that the first day we were learning, less of a crowd.”

The two chuckled to each other, then nodded to Hermione when she waved her hand at them.

Harry woke early on Saturday morning and lay for a while thinking about the coming Quidditch match. He was nervous, mainly at the thought of what Wood would say if Gryffindor lost, but also at the idea of facing a team mounted on the fastest racing brooms gold could buy. 

He had never wanted to beat Slytherin so badly. After half an hour of lying there with his insides churning, he got up, dressed, and went down to breakfast early, where he found the rest of the Gryffindor team huddled at the long, empty table, all looking uptight and not speaking much.

As eleven o’clock approached, the whole school started to make its way down to the Quidditch stadium. It was a muggy sort of day with a hint of thunder in the air. Ron and Hermione came hurrying over to wish Harry good luck as he entered the locker rooms. 

The team pulled on their scarlet Gryffindor robes, then sat down to listen to Wood’s usual pre-match pep talk.

“Slytherin has better brooms than us,” he began. “No point denying it. But we’ve got better people on our brooms. We’ve trained harder than they have, we’ve been flying in all weathers —” 

“Too true,” muttered George Weasley. “I haven’t been properly dry since August” 

“— and we’re going to make them rue the day they let that little bit of slime, Malfoy, buy her way onto their team.” Chest heaving with emotion, Wood turned to Harry. “It’ll be down to you, Harry, to show them that a Seeker has to have something more than a rich father. Get to that Snitch before Malfoy or die trying, Harry, because we’ve got to win today, we’ve got to.”

“So no pressure, Harry,” said Fred, winking at him.

As they walked out onto the pitch, a roar of noise greeted them; mainly cheers, because Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff were anxious to see Slytherin beaten, but the Slytherins in the crowd made their boos and hisses heard, too. 

Madam Hooch, the Quidditch teacher, asked Flint and Wood to shake hands, which they did, giving each other threatening stares and gripping rather harder than was necessary.

“On my whistle,” said Madam Hooch. “Three . . . two . . . one . . .”

With a roar from the crowd to speed them upward, the fourteen players rose toward the leaden sky. 

Harry flew higher than any of them, squinting around for the Snitch.

“Alright there, Scarhead?” yelled Draconia, shooting underneath him as though to show off the speed of her broom. Looping up over him with a wild smile that Harry, oddly enough, could understand, she winked at him and slapped at his broom’s branches. “Try to keep up on that old relic!”

Harry had no time to reply, though he had a few retorts for her touching his broom. 

At that very moment, a heavy black Bludger came pelting toward him; he avoided it so narrowly that he felt it ruffle his hair as it passed.

“Close one, Harry!” said George, streaking past him with his club in his hand, ready to knock the Bludger back toward a Slytherin. Harry saw George give the Bludger a powerful whack in the direction of Adrian Pucey, but the Bludger changed direction in midair and shot straight for Harry again.

Harry dropped quickly to avoid it, and George managed to hit it hard toward Draconia. 

“Ah!” Draconia screamed, shrinking up her shoulders to receive the bludger on her armor… but it never made contact.

Draconia looked up and around, blinking stupidly. “Huh?!”

Once again, the Bludger swerved around Draconia like a boomerang and shot at Harry’s head.

Harry put on a burst of speed and zoomed toward the other end of the pitch.

He could hear the Bludger whistling along behind him. 

What was going on? 

Bludgers never concentrated on one player like this; it was their job to try and unseat as many people as possible. . . .

Fred Weasley was waiting for the Bludger at the other end. Harry ducked as Fred swung at the Bludger with all his might; the Bludger was knocked off course.

“Gotcha!” Fred yelled happily, but he was wrong; as though it was magnetically attracted to Harry, the Bludger pelted after him once more and Harry was forced to fly off at full speed.

It had started to rain; Harry felt heavy drops fall onto his face, splattering onto his glasses. 

He didn’t have a clue what was going on in the rest of the game until he heard Lee Jordan, who was commentating, say, “Slytherin lead, sixty points to zero —”

The Slytherins’ superior brooms were clearly doing their jobs, and meanwhile the mad Bludger was doing all it could to knock Harry out of the air. Fred and George were now flying so close to him on either side that Harry could see nothing at all except their flailing arms and had no chance to look for the Snitch, let alone catch it.

“Someone’s — tampered — with — this — Bludger!” Fred grunted, swinging his bat with all his might at it as it launched a new attack on Harry.

“We need time out,” said George, trying to signal to Wood and stop the Bludger breaking Harry’s nose at the same time.

Wood had obviously got the message. 

Madam Hooch’s whistle rang out and Harry, Fred, and George dived for the ground, still trying to avoid the mad Bludger.

“What’s going on?” said Wood as the Gryffindor team huddled together, while Slytherins in the crowd jeered. “We’re being flattened. Fred, George, where were you when that Bludger stopped Angelina scoring?”

“We were twenty feet above her, stopping the other Bludger from murdering Harry, Oliver,” said George angrily. “Someone’s fixed it — it won’t leave Harry alone. It hasn’t gone for anyone else all game. The Slytherins must have done something to it.”

“But the Bludgers have been locked in Madam Hooch’s office since our last practice, and there was nothing wrong with them then. . . .” said Wood, anxiously.

Madam Hooch was walking toward them. Over her shoulder, Harry could see the Slytherin team jeering and pointing in his direction, though Draconia looked frustrated, as if she had been robbed of something.

“Listen,” said Harry as she came nearer and nearer, “with you two flying around me all the time the only way I’m going to catch the Snitch is if it flies up my sleeve. Go back to the rest of the team and let me deal with the rogue one.”

“Don’t be thick,” said Fred. “It’ll take your head off.”

Wood was looking from Harry to the Weasleys.

“Oliver, this is insane,” said Alicia Spinnet angrily. “You can’t let Harry deal with that thing on his own. Let’s ask for an inquiry —”

“If we stop now, we’ll have to forfeit the match!” said Harry. “And we’re not losing to Slytherin just because of a crazy Bludger! Come on, Oliver, tell them to leave me alone!”

“This is all your fault,” George said angrily to Wood. “‘Get the Snitch or die trying,’ what a stupid thing to tell him —”

Madam Hooch had joined them.

“Ready to resume play?” she asked Wood.

Wood looked at the determined look on Harry’s face.

“All right,” he said. “Fred, George, you heard Harry — leave him alone and let him deal with the Bludger on his own.”

The rain was falling more heavily now. On Madam Hooch’s whistle, Harry kicked hard into the air and heard the telltale whoosh of the Bludger behind him. Higher and higher Harry climbed; he looped and swooped, spiraled, zigzagged, and rolled. 

Slightly dizzy, he nevertheless kept his eyes wide open, rain was speckling his glasses and ran up his nostrils as he hung upside down, avoiding another fierce dive from the Bludger. 

He could hear laughter from the crowd; he knew he must look very stupid, but the rogue Bludger was heavy and couldn’t change direction as quickly as Harry could; he began a kind of roller-coaster ride around the edges of the stadium, squinting through the silver sheets of rain to the Gryffindor goalposts, where Adrian Pucey was trying to get past Wood.

A whistling in Harry’s ear told him the Bludger had just missed him again; he turned right over and sped in the opposite direction.

“Training for the ballet, Potter?!” yelled Draconia as Harry was forced to do a stupid kind of twirl in midair to dodge the Bludger. “What are you even doing? Where are your beaters?! We’re supposed to be having a duel out here, Potter! You still owe me my duel!”

He fled, the Bludger trailing a few feet behind him; and then, glaring back at Draconia in hatred, he saw it — the Golden Snitch. 

It was hovering inches above Draconia’s left ear — and Draconia, busy grousing at Harry, hadn’t seen it.

The rain must have been deafening her ears, unable to hear the buzzing of its golden wings.

For an agonizing moment, Harry hung in midair, not daring to speed toward Draconia in case she looked up and saw the Snitch.

He had stayed still a second too long. 

“Wait, what?!” Harry heard Draconia shout, having watched the bludger arc through the air oddly, ignoring Flint, then hissed when it made a rocketing bee-line for Harry. “Oh! Potter!”

WHAM.

The Bludger had hit him at last, smashed into his elbow, and Harry felt his arm break.

Dimly, dazed by the searing pain in his arm, he slid sideways on his rain-drenched broom, one knee still crooked over it, his right arm dangling useless at his side — the Bludger came pelting back for a second attack, this time aiming at his face — Harry swerved out of the way, one idea firmly lodged in his numb brain: get to Malfoy.

Through a haze of rain and pain he dived for the shimmering, and what he presumed to be a sneering face, below him and saw her eyes widen with fear.

He had thought Draconia was afraid he was coming for her, but Harry was surprised to see her face was instead rippling with rain-drenched concern, and she was making a straight, rocketing line towards him.

The snitch was still buzzing around by her ear, as well.

“Your arm!” She gasped, reaching out to him with a soaked glove. “Potter, your arm is broken! I heard the bone!”

Harry took his remaining hand off his broom, and reached out with his one good hand.

Draconia smiled brightly, reaching out for his hand as well, but her face dropped when Harry’s arm surged past her face, the wet sleeve of his team robes sliding along her wet cheeks.

 He felt his fingers close on the cold Snitch but was now only gripping the broom with his legs, and there was a yell from the crowd below as he headed straight for the ground, trying hard not to pass out.

Draconia whipped her head around, saw the struggling snitch in Harry’s hand, and fumed from atop her broom. “POTTER! YOU WRETCH!”

With a splattering thud he hit the mud, and rolled off his broom. 

His arm was hanging at a very strange angle; riddled with pain, he heard, as though from a distance, a good deal of whistling and shouting. 

He focused on the Snitch clutched in his good hand.

“Aha,” he said vaguely. “We’ve won.”

He looked up at Draconia, ripping up and down on her broom in a furious tirade… then he fainted.

He came around, rain falling on his face, still lying on the field, with someone leaning over him. 

He saw a glitter of teeth.

“Oh, no, not you,” he moaned.

“Doesn’t know what he’s saying,” said Lockhart loudly to the anxious crowd of Gryffindors pressing around them. “Not to worry, Harry. I’m about to fix your arm.”

“No!” said Harry. “I’ll keep it like this, thanks. . . .”

He tried to sit up, but the pain was terrible. He heard a familiar clicking noise nearby.

“I don’t want a photo of this, Colin,” he said loudly, teeth bared in agony.

“Lie back, Harry,” said Lockhart soothingly. “It’s a simple charm I’ve used countless times —”

“Why can’t I just go to the hospital wing?” said Harry through clenched teeth.

“He should really, Professor,” said a muddy Wood, who couldn’t help grinning even though his Seeker was injured. “Great capture, Harry, really spectacular, your best yet, I’d say —”

Through the thicket of legs around him, Harry spotted Fred and George Weasley, wrestling the rogue Bludger into a box while Draconia looked on, still piping mad but quite eager to see why the Bludger had been acting so oddly. 

“What’s wrong with it?” Draconia spat out, shaking her head with a tousle of wet, blonde hair. “It ruined my duel with Potter! How am I supposed to beat Potter if the damned Bludgers aren’t following the rules?!”

“How are we supposed to know?!” George roared, taking the Bludger to the chin with a growl as Fred pulled down on it.

“Buzz off you dark-blooded brat!” Fred said with a strain of his voice, shoving the Bludger down into the box.

It was still putting up a terrific fight.

“Stand back,” said Lockhart, who was rolling up his jade-green sleeves.

“No — don’t —” said Harry weakly, but Lockhart was twirling his wand and a second later had directed it straight at Harry’s arm.

A strange and unpleasant sensation started at Harry’s shoulder and spread all the way down to his fingertips. 

It felt as though his arm was being deflated. 

He didn’t dare look at what was happening. He had shut his eyes, his face turned away from his arm, but his worst fears were realized as the people above him gasped and Colin Creevey began clicking away madly. 

His arm didn’t hurt anymore — nor did it feel remotely like an arm.

“Ah,” said Lockhart. “Yes. Well, that can sometimes happen. But the point is, the bones are no longer broken. That’s the thing to bear in mind. So, Harry, just toddle up to the hospital wing — ah, Mr. Weasley, Miss Granger, would you escort him? — and Madam Pomfrey will be able to — er — tidy you up a bit.”

As Harry got to his feet, he felt strangely lopsided. Taking a deep breath he looked down at his right side. What he saw nearly made him pass out again.

Poking out of the end of his robes was what looked like a thick, fleshcolored rubber glove. He tried to move his fingers. 

Nothing happened.

“Eugh!” Draconia yelled, recoiling away from Harry despite the few steps she had taken towards him. “Look at his arm!”

Lockhart hadn’t mended Harry’s bones. 

He had removed them. 

Madam Pomfrey wasn’t at all pleased when they arrived.

“You should have come straight to me!” she raged, holding up the sad, limp remainder of what, half an hour before, had been a working arm. “I can mend bones in a second — but growing them back —”

“You will be able to, won’t you?” said Harry desperately.

“I’ll be able to, certainly, but it will be painful,” said Madam Pomfrey grimly, throwing Harry a pair of pajamas. “You’ll have to stay the night. . . .”

Hermione waited outside the curtain drawn around Harry’s bed while Ron helped him into his pajamas. It took a while to stuff the rubbery, boneless arm into a sleeve.

“How can you stick up for Lockhart now, Hermione, eh?” Ron called through the curtain as he pulled Harry’s limp fingers through the cuff. “If Harry had wanted deboning he would have asked.”

“Anyone can make a mistake,” said Hermione. “And it doesn’t hurt anymore, does it, Harry?”

“No,” said Harry, getting into bed. “But it doesn’t do anything else either.” 

As he swung himself onto the bed, his arm flapped pointlessly.

Hermione and Madam Pomfrey came around the curtain. Madam Pomfrey was holding a large bottle of something labeled “Skele-Gro”.

“You’re in for a rough night,” she said, pouring out a steaming beakerful and handing it to him. “Regrowing bones is a nasty business.”

So was taking the Skele-Gro. 

It burned Harry’s mouth and throat as it went down, making him cough and splutter. Still tut-tutting about dangerous sports and inept teachers, Madam Pomfrey retreated, leaving Ron and Hermione to help Harry gulp down some water.

“We won, though,” said Ron, a grin breaking across his face. “That was some catch you made. Malfoy’s face . . . she looked ready to kill. . . .”

“I want to know how she fixed that Bludger,” said Hermione darkly.

“We can add that to the list of questions we’ll ask her when we’ve taken the Polyjuice Potion,” said Harry, sinking back onto his pillows. “I hope it tastes better than this stuff. . . .”

“If it’s got bits of Slytherins in it? You’ve got to be joking,” said Ron.

The door of the hospital wing burst open at that moment. Filthy and soaking wet, the rest of the Gryffindor team had arrived to see Harry.

“Unbelievable flying, Harry,” said George. “I’ve just seen Marcus Flint yelling at Malfoy. Something about having the Snitch on top of her head and not noticing, and trying to help you or something of the sort. Malfoy didn’t seem too happy.”

They had brought cakes, sweets, and bottles of pumpkin juice; they gathered around Harry’s bed and were just getting started on what promised to be a good party when Madam Pomfrey came storming over, shouting, “This boy needs rest, he’s got thirty-three bones to regrow! Out! OUT!”

And Harry was left alone, with nothing to distract him from the stabbing pains in his limp arm.

He had thought he was going to be alone for the night, but he heard Pomfrey shouting at someone else after a little while.

“Absolutely not!” She said crisply, her voice echoing about the Hospital Wing.

There was a murmur.

“I don’t care, he needs to rest!”

Another murmur.

“Your fa-, ugh, you have two minutes, and then I’m sending you right back out!”

Harry sat up in his bed, blinking tiredly. 

Who on earth wanted to see him this late in the day?

To his surprise, it was Draconia Malfoy of all people, still soddenly wet in her Slytherin team robes and her blonde hair a mess. Her gray-green eyes were puffy, as if she had been crying, and she sniffed loudly as she came before the end of Harry’s bed.

They were both quiet, Harry eyeing her as she glared at him through her red eyes.

“I think you’ve only got but a minute left, Malfoy.” Harry murmured after a while, watching her closely.

Even in this state, she still had an oddly… regal air about her than Harry could never make heads or tails of.

Draconia sniffed angrily, pointing her broom at Harry’s arm. “That dunderhead Lockhart removed all the bones in your arm. Absolute joke of a Dark Arts teacher.”

“Yeah.” Harry said with a grin, though he squashed it as fast as Draconia did her smile.

“You’d think Dumbledore would be able to source better staff for this school.” Draconia said dismissively, taking a few wet, sodden steps in a circle around the end of Harry’s bed. “That doesn’t count, you know.”

“What doesn’t count?” Harry asked, once again annoyed at Draconia for her usual disdain for those whom he actually liked.

“That game!” Draconia said fiercely, rounding on Harry as she gripped the edge of his bed with her free hand. “I had you! I was going to let us score a few more points, and then I would have had you! I barely even got to show you my flying skills, how much better I am than you, all because of some…” She let go of the bed and whirled her hand in the air irritably. “Some stupid Bludger!”

Harry raised his eyebrows. “Rather presumptuous of you, seeing as to how I got the Snitch and you didn’t-”

“I THOUGHT YOU WERE REACHING FOR M-” Draconia nearly screamed in a fury, almost coming around to the side of Harry’s bed in a rage before she stopped herself, instead towering over him and breathing heavily.

She let out a long growl from her throat, her robes dripping drops of water onto the polished floor, before turning around with a swish of sodden cloak and hair. “Next time, Potter! Next time you are mine!”

She kicked the door open with a thud of her Quidditch boots, and was gone.

Harry just shook his head with a puff of air from his nose. “What a sore loser.”

Hours and hours later, Harry woke quite suddenly in the pitch blackness and gave a small yelp of pain: His arm now felt full of large splinters. For a second, he thought that was what had woken him. 

Then, with a thrill of horror, he realized that someone was sponging his forehead in the dark.

“Get off!” he said loudly, and then, “Dobby!”

The house-elf’s goggling tennis ball eyes were peering at Harry through the darkness. A single tear was running down his long, pointed nose.

“Harry Potter came back to school,” he whispered miserably. “Dobby warned and warned Harry Potter. Ah sir, why didn’t you heed Dobby? Why didn’t Harry Potter go back home when he missed the train?”

Harry heaved himself up on his pillows and pushed Dobby’s sponge away.

“What’re you doing here?” he said. “And how did you know I missed the train?”

Dobby’s lip trembled and Harry was seized by a sudden suspicion.

“It was you!” he said slowly. “You stopped the barrier from letting us through!”

“Indeed yes, sir,” said Dobby, nodding his head vigorously, ears flapping. “Dobby hid and watched for Harry Potter and sealed the gateway and Dobby had to iron his hands afterward” — he showed Harry ten long, bandaged fingers — “but Dobby didn’t care, sir, for he thought Harry Potter was safe, and never did Dobby dream that Harry Potter would get to school another way!”

He was rocking backward and forward, shaking his ugly head. “Dobby was so shocked when he heard Harry Potter was back at Hogwarts, he let his master’s dinner burn! Such a flogging Dobby never had, sir. . . .”

Harry slumped back onto his pillows.

“You nearly got Ron and me expelled,” he said fiercely. “You’d better get lost before my bones come back, Dobby, or I might strangle you.”

Dobby smiled weakly. “Dobby is used to death threats, sir. Dobby gets them five times a day at home.”

He blew his nose on a corner of the filthy pillowcase he wore, looking so pathetic that Harry felt his anger ebb away in spite of himself.

“Why d’you wear that thing, Dobby?” he asked curiously.

“This, sir?” said Dobby, plucking at the pillowcase. “’Tis a mark of the house-elf’s enslavement, sir. Dobby can only be freed if his masters present him with clothes, sir. The family is careful not to pass Dobby even a sock, sir, for then he would be free to leave their house forever.”

Dobby mopped his bulging eyes and said suddenly, “Harry Potter must go home! Dobby thought his Bludger would be enough to make —”

“Your Bludger?” said Harry, anger rising once more. “What d’you mean, your Bludger? You made that Bludger try and kill me?”

“Not kill you, sir, never kill you!” said Dobby, shocked. “Dobby wants to save Harry Potter’s life! Better sent home, grievously injured, than remain here, sir! Dobby only wanted Harry Potter hurt enough to be sent home!”

“Oh, is that all?” said Harry angrily. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me why you wanted me sent home in pieces?”

“Ah, if Harry Potter only knew!” Dobby groaned, more tears dripping onto his ragged pillowcase. “If he knew what he means to us, to the lowly, the enslaved, we dregs of the magical world! Dobby remembers how it was when He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was at the height of his powers, sir! We house elves were treated like vermin, sir! Of course, Dobby is still treated like that, sir,” he admitted, drying his face on the pillowcase. “But mostly, sir, life has improved for my kind since you triumphed over He-Who-Must-Not-BeNamed. Harry Potter survived, and the Dark Lord’s power was broken, and it was a new dawn, sir, and Harry Potter shone like a beacon of hope for those of us who thought the dark days would never end, sir. . . . And now, at Hogwarts, terrible things are to happen, are perhaps happening already, and Dobby cannot let Harry Potter stay here now that history is to repeat itself, now that the Chamber of Secrets is open once more —”

Dobby froze, horrorstruck, then grabbed Harry’s water jug from his bedside table and cracked it over his own head, toppling out of sight. A second later, he crawled back onto the bed, cross-eyed, muttering, “Bad Dobby, very bad Dobby . . .”

“So there is a Chamber of Secrets?” Harry whispered. “And — did you say it’s been opened before? Tell me, Dobby!” He seized the elf’s bony wrist as Dobby’s hand inched toward the water jug. “But I’m not Muggle-born — how can I be in danger from the Chamber?”

“Ah, sir, ask no more, ask no more of poor Dobby,” stammered the elf, his eyes huge in the dark. “Dark deeds are planned in this place, but Harry Potter must not be here when they happen — go home, Harry Potter, go home. Harry Potter must not meddle in this, sir, ’tis too dangerous —”

“Who is it, Dobby?” Harry said, keeping a firm hold on Dobby’s wrist to stop him from hitting himself with the water jug again. “Who’s opened it? Who opened it last time?”

“Dobby can’t, sir, Dobby can’t, Dobby mustn’t tell!” squealed the elf. “Go home, Harry Potter, go home!”

“I’m not going anywhere!” said Harry fiercely. “One of my best friends is Muggle-born; she’ll be first in line if the Chamber really has been opened —”

“Harry Potter risks his own life for his friends!” moaned Dobby in a kind of miserable ecstasy. “So noble! So valiant! But he must save himself, he must, Harry Potter must not —”

Dobby suddenly froze, his bat ears quivering. Harry heard it, too. There were footsteps coming down the passageway outside.

“Dobby must go!” breathed the elf, terrified. 

There was a loud crack, and Harry’s fist was suddenly clenched on thin air. He slumped back into bed, his eyes on the dark doorway to the hospital wing as the footsteps drew nearer.

Next moment, Dumbledore was backing into the dormitory, wearing a long woolly dressing gown and a nightcap. He was carrying one end of what looked like a statue. Professor McGonagall appeared a second later, carrying its feet. 

Together, they heaved it onto a bed.

“Get Madam Pomfrey,” whispered Dumbledore, and Professor McGonagall hurried past the end of Harry’s bed out of sight. Harry lay quite still, pretending to be asleep. He heard urgent voices, and then Professor McGonagall swept back into view, closely followed by Madam Pomfrey, who was pulling a cardigan on over her nightdress. 

He heard a sharp intake of breath.

“What happened?” Madam Pomfrey whispered to Dumbledore, bending over the statue on the bed.

“Another attack,” said Dumbledore. “Minerva found him on the stairs.”

“There was a bunch of grapes next to him,” said Professor McGonagall. “We think he was trying to sneak up here to visit Potter.”

Harry’s stomach gave a horrible lurch. Slowly and carefully, he raised himself a few inches so he could look at the statue on the bed. 

A ray of moonlight lay across its staring face.

It was Colin Creevey. 

His eyes were wide and his hands were stuck up in front of him, holding his camera.

“Petrified?” whispered Madam Pomfrey.

“Yes,” said Professor McGonagall. “But I shudder to think . . . If Albus hadn’t been on the way downstairs for hot chocolate — who knows what might have —”

The three of them stared down at Colin. Then Dumbledore leaned forward and wrenched the camera out of Colin’s rigid grip.

“You don’t think he managed to get a picture of his attacker?” said Professor McGonagall eagerly.

Dumbledore didn’t answer. He opened the back of the camera.

“Good gracious!” said Madam Pomfrey.

A jet of steam had hissed out of the camera. 

Harry, three beds away, caught the acrid smell of burnt plastic.

“Melted,” said Madam Pomfrey wonderingly. “All melted . . .”

“What does this mean, Albus?” Professor McGonagall asked urgently. 

“It means,” said Dumbledore, “that the Chamber of Secrets is indeed open again.”

Madam Pomfrey clapped a hand to her mouth. 

Professor McGonagall stared at Dumbledore. “But, Albus . . . surely . . . who?”

“The question is not who,” said Dumbledore, his eyes on Colin. “The question is, how. . . .”

And from what Harry could see of Professor McGonagall’s shadowy face, she didn’t understand this any better than he did.

Chapter 21 : Book 2: Chapter 11 (major deviation)

Harry woke up on Sunday morning to find the dormitory blazing with winter sunlight and his arm reboned, but very stiff. 

He sat up quickly and looked over at Colin’s bed, but it had been blocked from view by the high curtains Harry had changed behind yesterday. Seeing that he was awake, Madam Pomfrey came bustling over with a breakfast tray and then began bending and stretching his arm and fingers.

“All in order,” she said as he clumsily fed himself porridge left-handed. “When you’ve finished eating, you may leave.”

Harry dressed as quickly as he could and hurried off to Gryffindor Tower, desperate to tell Ron and Hermione about Colin and Dobby, but they weren’t there. Harry left to look for them, wondering where they could have got to and feeling slightly hurt that they weren’t interested in whether he had his bones back or not.

As Harry passed the library, Percy Weasley strolled out of it, looking in far better spirits than last time they’d met.

“Oh, hello, Harry,” he said. “Excellent flying yesterday, really excellent. Gryffindor has just taken the lead for the House Cup — you earned fifty points!”

“You haven’t seen Ron or Hermione, have you?” said Harry.

“No, I haven’t,” said Percy, his smile fading. “I hope Ron’s not in another girls’ toilet. . . .”

Harry forced a laugh, watched Percy walk out of sight, and then headed straight for Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom. He couldn’t see why Ron and Hermione would be in there again, but after making sure that neither Filch nor any prefects were around, he opened the door and heard their voices coming from a locked stall.

“It’s me,” he said, closing the door behind him. 

There was a clunk, a splash, and a gasp from within the stall and he saw Hermione’s eye peering through the keyhole.

“Harry!” she said. “You gave us such a fright — come in — how’s your arm?”

“Fine,” said Harry, squeezing into the stall. An old cauldron was perched on the toilet, and a crackling from under the rim told Harry they had lit a fire beneath it. 

Conjuring up portable, waterproof fires was a speciality of Hermione’s.

“We’d’ve come to meet you, but we decided to get started on the Polyjuice Potion,” Ron explained as Harry, with difficulty, locked the stall again. “We’ve decided this is the safest place to hide it.”

Harry started to tell them about Colin, but Hermione interrupted. “We already know — we heard Professor McGonagall telling Professor Flitwick this morning. That’s why we decided we’d better get going —”

“The sooner we get a confession out of Malfoy, the better,” snarled Ron. “D’you know what I think? She was in such a foul temper after the Quidditch match, she took it out on Colin.”

“There’s a few things,” said Harry, watching Hermione tearing bundles of knotgrass and throwing them into the potion. “Malfoy came to see me only a few hours before Colin arrived petrified, so that may actually be true, Ron. As well, Dobby came to visit me in the middle of the night.”

Ron and Hermione looked up, both horrified and amazed. Harry told them what  Draconia and said everything Dobby had told him — or hadn’t told him. 

Hermione and Ron listened with their mouths open.

“The Chamber of Secrets has been opened before?” Hermione said. “And what was Malfoy going on about the match not counting?”

“This settles it,” said Ron in a triumphant voice. “Lucius Malfoy must’ve opened the Chamber when he was at school here and now he’s told dear old Draconia how to do it. It’s obvious. Wish Dobby’d told you what kind of monster’s in there, though. I want to know how come nobody’s noticed it sneaking around the school.”

“Maybe it can make itself invisible,” said Hermione, prodding leeches to the bottom of the cauldron. “Or maybe it can disguise itself — pretend to be a suit of armor or something — I’ve read about Chameleon Ghouls —”

“You read too much, Hermione,” said Ron, pouring dead lacewings on top of the leeches. 

He crumpled up the empty lacewing bag and looked at Harry. “So Dobby stopped us from getting on the train and broke your arm. . . .” He shook his head. “You know what, Harry? If he doesn’t stop trying to save your life he’s going to kill you.”

The news that Colin Creevey had been attacked and was now lying as though dead in the hospital wing had spread through the entire school by Monday morning. 

The air was suddenly thick with rumor and suspicion. 

The first years were now moving around the castle in tight-knit groups, as though scared they would be attacked if they ventured forth alone.

Ginny Weasley, who sat next to Colin Creevey in Charms, was distraught, but Harry felt that Fred and George were going the wrong way about cheering her up. 

They were taking turns covering themselves with fur or boils and jumping out at her from behind statues. They only stopped when Percy, apoplectic with rage, told them he was going to write to Mrs. Weasley and tell her Ginny was having nightmares.

Meanwhile, hidden from the teachers, a roaring trade in talismans, amulets, and other protective devices was sweeping the school. Neville Longbottom bought a large, evil-smelling green onion, a pointed purple crystal, and a rotting newt tail before the other Gryffindor boys pointed out that he was in no danger; he was a pureblood, and therefore unlikely to be attacked.

“They went for Filch first,” Neville said, his round face fearful. “And everyone knows I’m almost a Squib.”

In the second week of December Professor McGonagall came around as usual, collecting names of those who would be staying at school for Christmas. Harry, Ron, and Hermione signed her list; they had heard that Malfoy was staying, which struck them as very suspicious. 

The holidays would be the perfect time to use the Polyjuice Potion and try to worm a confession out of her.

Unfortunately, the potion was only half finished. 

They still needed the bicorn horn and the boomslang skin, and the only place they were going to get them was from Snape’s private stores. Harry privately felt he’d rather face Slytherin’s legendary monster than let Snape catch him robbing his office.

“What we need,” said Hermione briskly as Thursday afternoon’s double Potions lesson loomed nearer, “is a diversion. Then one of us can sneak into Snape’s office and take what we need.”

Harry and Ron looked at her nervously.

“I think I’d better do the actual stealing,” Hermione continued in a matter-of-fact tone. “You two will be expelled if you get into any more trouble, and I’ve got a clean record. So all you need to do is cause enough mayhem to keep Snape busy for five minutes or so.”

Harry smiled feebly. 

Deliberately causing mayhem in Snape’s Potions class was about as safe as poking a sleeping dragon in the eye with your foot in its mouth.

Potions lessons took place in one of the large dungeons. 

Thursday afternoon’s lesson proceeded in the usual way. 

Twenty cauldrons stood steaming between the wooden desks, on which stood brass scales and jars of ingredients. Snape prowled through the fumes, making waspish remarks about the Gryffindors’ work while the Slytherins sniggered appreciatively. 

Draconia Malfoy, who was Snape’s favorite student, kept flicking her eyes at Ron and Harry, who knew that if they retaliated they would get detention faster than you could say “Unfair”.

Harry’s Swelling Solution was far too runny, but he had his mind on more important things. He was waiting for Hermione’s signal, and he hardly listened as Snape paused to sneer at his watery potion. When Snape turned and walked off to bully Neville, Hermione caught Harry’s eye and nodded.

Harry ducked swiftly down behind his cauldron, pulled one of Fred’s Filibuster fireworks out of his pocket, and gave it a quick prod with his wand. The firework began to fizz and sputter. Knowing he had only seconds, Harry straightened up, took aim, and lobbed it into the air.

It landed right on target in Goyle’s cauldron.

Goyle’s potion exploded, showering the whole class. 

People shrieked as splashes of the Swelling Solution hit them. 

Draconia got a faceful and her nose began to swell like a balloon; Goyle blundered around, her hands over her eyes, which had expanded to the size of dinner plates.

Snape was trying to restore calm and find out what had happened. Through the confusion, Harry saw Hermione slip quietly into Snape’s office.

“Silence! SILENCE!” Snape roared. “Anyone who has been splashed, come here for a Deflating Draught — when I find out who did this —”

Harry tried not to laugh as he watched Draconia hurry forward, her head drooping with the weight of a nose like a small melon. 

As half the class lumbered up to Snape’s desk, some weighted down with arms like clubs, others unable to talk through gigantic puffed-up lips, Harry saw Hermione slide back into the dungeon, the front of her robes bulging.

When everyone had taken a swig of antidote and the various swellings had subsided, Snape swept over to Goyle’s cauldron and scooped out the twisted black remains of the firework. 

There was a sudden hush.

“If I ever find out who threw this,” Snape whispered, “I shall make sure that person is expelled.”

Harry arranged his face into what he hoped was a puzzled expression. Snape was looking right at him, and the bell that rang ten minutes later could not have been more welcome.

“He knew it was me,” Harry told Ron and Hermione as they hurried back to Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom. “I could tell.”

Hermione threw the new ingredients into the cauldron and began to stir feverishly.

“It’ll be ready in two weeks,” she said happily.

“Snape can’t prove it was you,” said Ron reassuringly to Harry. “What can he do?”

“Knowing Snape, something foul,” said Harry as the potion frothed and bubbled.

A week later, Harry, Ron, and Hermione were walking across the entrance hall when they saw a small knot of people gathered around the notice board, reading a piece of parchment that had just been pinned up. 

Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas beckoned them over, looking excited.

“They’re starting a Dueling Club!” said Seamus. “First meeting tonight! I wouldn’t mind dueling lessons; they might come in handy one of these days. . . .”

“What, you reckon Slytherin’s monster can duel?” said Ron, but he, too, read the sign with interest.

“Could be useful,” he said to Harry and Hermione as they went into dinner. “Shall we go?”

Harry and Hermione were all for it, so at eight o’clock that evening they hurried back to the Great Hall. The long dining tables had vanished and a golden stage had appeared along one wall, lit by thousands of candles floating overhead. The ceiling was velvety black once more and most of the school seemed to be packed beneath it, all carrying their wands and looking excited.

“I wonder who’ll be teaching us?” said Hermione as they edged into the chattering crowd. “Someone told me Flitwick was a dueling champion when he was young — maybe it’ll be him.”

“As long as it’s not —” Harry began, but he ended on a groan.

Gilderoy Lockhart was walking onto the stage, resplendent in robes of deep plum and accompanied by none other than Snape, wearing his usual black.

Lockhart waved an arm for silence and called, “Gather round, gather round! Can everyone see me? Can you all hear me? Excellent! Now, Professor Dumbledore has granted me permission to start this little dueling club, to train you all in case you ever need to defend yourselves as I myself have done on countless occasions — for full details, see my published works.”

“Let me introduce my assistant, Professor Snape,” said Lockhart, flashing a wide smile. “He tells me he knows a tiny little bit about dueling himself and has sportingly agreed to help me with a short demonstration before we begin. Now, I don’t want any of you youngsters to worry — you’ll still have your Potions master when I’m through with him, never fear!”

“Wouldn’t it be good if they finished each other off?” Ron muttered in Harry’s ear.

Snape’s upper lip was curling. 

Harry wondered why Lockhart was still smiling; if Snape had been looking at him like that he’d have been running as fast as he could in the opposite direction.

Lockhart and Snape turned to face each other and bowed; at least, Lockhart did, with much twirling of his hands, whereas Snape jerked his head irritably. 

Then they raised their wands like swords in front of them.

“As you see, we are holding our wands in the accepted combative position,” Lockhart told the silent crowd. “On the count of three, we will cast our first spells. Neither of us will be aiming to kill, of course.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that,” Harry murmured, watching Snape baring his teeth.

“One — two — three!”

Both of them swung their wands above their heads and pointed them at their opponent.

Snape cried: “Expelliarmus!” There was a dazzling flash of scarlet light and Lockhart was blasted off his feet.

He flew backward off the stage, smashed into the wall, and slid down it to sprawl on the floor.

Draconia and some of the other Slytherins cheered. 

Hermione was dancing on tiptoes. 

“Do you think he’s all right?” she squealed through her fingers.

“Who cares?” said Harry and Ron together, having to fight to not cheer themselves.

Lockhart was getting unsteadily to his feet. His hat had fallen off and his wavy hair was standing on end.

“Well, there you have it!” he said, tottering back onto the platform. “That was a Disarming Charm — as you see, I’ve lost my wand — ah, thank you, Miss Brown — yes, an excellent idea to show them that, Professor Snape, but if you don’t mind my saying so, it was very obvious what you were about to do. If I had wanted to stop you it would have been only too easy — however, I felt it would be instructive to let them see . . .”

Snape was looking murderous. 

Possibly Lockhart had noticed, because he said, “Enough demonstrating! I’m going to come amongst you now and put you all into pairs. Professor Snape, if you’d like to help me —”

They moved through the crowd, matching up partners. 

Lockhart teamed Neville with Justin Finch-Fletchley, but Snape reached Harry and Ron first.

“Time to split up the dream team, I think,” he sneered. “Weasley, you can partner Finnigan. Potter —”

Harry moved automatically toward Hermione.

“I don’t think so,” said Snape, smiling coldly. “Miss Malfoy, come over here. Let’s see what you make of the famous Potter. And you, Miss Granger — you can partner Miss Bulstrode.”

Draconia strutted over, smirking. “Looks like we finally get to have our duel after all, Potter.” 

Behind her walked another Slytherin girl who reminded Harry of a picture he’d seen in “Holidays with Hags”, the effect doubled by the fine features of Draconia beside her. 

She was large and square and her heavy jaw jutted aggressively. 

Hermione gave her a weak smile that she did not return.

“Face your partners!” called Lockhart, back on the platform. “And bow!”

Harry and Draconia barely inclined their heads, not taking their eyes off each other.

“Wands at the ready!” shouted Lockhart. “When I count to three, cast your charms to Disarm your opponents — only to disarm them — we don’t want any accidents — one . . . two . . . three —”

Harry swung his wand high, but Draconia had already started on “two”, eager to get the jump on Harry after he got the jump on her during the Quidditch match. 

Her spell hit Harry so hard he felt as though he’d been hit over the head with a saucepan. He stumbled, but everything still seemed to be working, and wasting no more time, Harry pointed his wand straight at Draconia and shouted.

“Rictusempra!”

A jet of silver light hit Draconia in the stomach and she doubled up as her hair floofed out around her head, wheezing.

“I said Disarm only!” Lockhart shouted in alarm over the heads of the battling crowd as Draconia sank to her knees. 

Harry had hit her with a Tickling Charm, and she could barely move from the laughing. Draconia was laughing so hard that she was angrily smiling at him, giggling and wiping at her eyes with her free hand while she gripped her wand with the other.

Her smile and her angry eyes gave Harry…

Well, he wasn’t sure what it was, but he suddenly didn’t like it.

 Harry hung back, with a vague feeling it would be unsporting to bewitch Draconia while she was on the floor, but this was a mistake.

Gasping for breath and still giggling, Draconia pointed her wand at Harry’s knees, choked, “Tarantallegra!” and the next second Harry’s legs began to jerk around out of his control in a kind of quickstep.

“Stop! Stop!” screamed Lockhart, but Snape took charge.

“Finite Incantatem!” he shouted.

Harry’s feet stopped dancing, Draconia stopped laughing, and they were able to look up.

Though, Draconia was still giggling on her own, something she was having difficulty controlling as she shorted, and Harry had to fight to not grin in his own amusement.

A haze of greenish smoke was hovering over the scene. 

Both Neville and Justin were lying on the floor, panting.

Ron was holding up an ashen-faced Seamus, apologizing for whatever his broken wand had done.

But, Hermione and Millicent Bulstrode were still moving; Millicent had Hermione in a headlock and Hermione was whimpering in pain, both their wands laying forgotten on the floor. 

Harry leapt forward and tired to pull Millicent off, but was difficult: She was a lot bigger than he was.

“Milli!” Draconia growled, picking up a book that had fallen out of someones bag during the chaos and throwing it at the three. “Let go of that mudblood Granger, this is now how we pure bloods do things!”

The book bounced off of Harry’s shoulder, and he yelled in pain as Millicent let go of Hermione with a loud roar of frustration.

Harry picked up the book and threw it back at Draconia. “Watch where you’re throwing, Malpractice.”

“Stuff it, Potty!” Draconia roared back, suddenly not so keen on giggling anymore. 

“Dear, dear,” said Lockhart, skittering through the crowd, looking at the aftermath of the duels. “Up you go, Macmillan. . . . Careful there, Miss Fawcett. . . . Pinch it hard, it’ll stop bleeding in a second, Boot — I think I’d better teach you how to block unfriendly spells,” said Lockhart, standing flustered in the midst of the hall. He glanced at Snape, whose black eyes glinted, and looked quickly away. “Let’s have a volunteer pair — Longbottom and Finch-Fletchley, how about you —”

“A bad idea, Professor Lockhart,” said Snape, gliding over like a large and malevolent bat. “Longbottom causes devastation with the simplest spells. We’ll be sending what’s left of Finch-Fletchley up to the hospital wing in a matchbox.” 

Neville’s round, pink face went pinker. 

“How about Malfoy and Potter?” said Snape with a twisted smile, and the two looked at him with glaring eyes.

“Excellent idea!” said Lockhart, gesturing Harry and Malfoy into the middle of the hall as the crowd backed away to give them room.

“Now, Harry,” said Lockhart. “When Draconia points her wand at you, you do this.”

He raised his own wand, attempted a complicated sort of wiggling action, and dropped it. 

Snape smirked as Lockhart quickly picked it up, saying, “Whoops — my wand is a little overexcited —”

Snape moved closer to Draconia, bent down, and whispered something in her ear. 

Draconia smirked, too.

 Harry looked up nervously at Lockhart and said, “Professor, could you show me that blocking thing again?”

“Scared?” muttered Draconia, so that Lockhart couldn’t hear him as he spoke into Harry’s ear.

“You wish,” said Harry out of the corner of his mouth, wiggling his wand at her in a dismissive fashion.

Lockhart cuffed Harry merrily on the shoulder. “-And just do what I did, Harry!”

Harry furrowed his brows, whipping his head around to Lockhart. “What, drop my wand?”

But Lockhart wasn’t listening.

“Three — two-” he shouted, counting down.

Harry needed to get Draconia on the backfoot quickly, so he raised his brows and smiled at her.

“You do have a cute laugh, by the way.” He muttered quietly, just audible to her over Lockhart’s shouting.

“One-!” Lockhart called out, hands raised.

Draconia flushed so quickly that it looked as if someone had made her cheeks go red with magic, and she narrowed her eyes angrily as she smiled. “You little-”

“Go!” Lockhart shouted.

Draconia shook her head angrily with a flick of blonde hair, then raised her wand quickly, bellowing, “Serpensortia!”

The end of her wand exploded with a warp of hot air and a crack of smoke. 

Harry watched, aghast, as a long black snake shot out of it, fell heavily onto the floor between them, then raised itself, ready to strike. 

There were screams as the crowd backed swiftly away, clearing the floor.

“Don’t move, Potter,” said Snape lazily with a roll of his eyes, clearly enjoying the sight of Harry standing motionless, eye to eye with the angry snake. “I’ll get rid of it, and that was not what I said to say, Malfoy.”

“Allow me!” shouted Lockhart. He brandished his wand at the snake and there was a loud bang.

The snake, instead of vanishing, flew ten feet into the air and fell back to the floor with a loud smack. Enraged and hissing furiously, it slithered straight toward Justin Finch-Fletchley and raised itself again, fangs exposed, poised to strike.

Harry wasn’t sure what made him do it. 

He wasn’t even aware of deciding to do it. 

All he knew was that his legs were carrying him forward as though he was on casters and that he had shouted stupidly at the snake, “Leave him alone!” 

Miraculously — inexplicably — the snake slumped to the floor, docile as a thick, black garden hose, its eyes now on Harry. 

Harry felt the fear drain out of him. He knew the snake wouldn’t attack anyone now, though how he knew it, he couldn’t have explained.

He looked up at Justin, grinning, expecting to see Justin looking relieved, or puzzled, or even grateful — but certainly not angry and scared.

“What do you think you’re playing at?” he shouted, and before Harry could say anything, Justin had turned and stormed out of the hall.

Snape stepped forward, waved his wand, and the snake vanished in a small puff of black smoke. Snape, too, was looking at Harry in an unexpected way: It was a shrewd and calculating look, and Harry didn’t like it. 

He was also dimly aware of an ominous muttering all around the walls. Then he felt a tugging on the back of his robes.

“Come on,” said Ron’s voice in his ear. “Move — come on —”

Ron steered him out of the hall, Hermione hurrying alongside them.

“Potter.” Draconia called out, her face still flush but her eyes worried, looking from Snape, to the door Harry was rushing through. “Potter, wait!” 

As they went through the doors, the people on either side drew away as though they were frightened of catching something, backing towards Draconia and blocking the way with their bodies. Harry didn’t have a clue what was going on, and neither Ron nor Hermione explained anything until they had dragged him all the way up to the empty Gryffindor common room. 

Ron pushed Harry into an armchair and said, “You’re a Parselmouth?! Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I’m a what?” said Harry.

“A Parselmouth!” said Ron. “You can talk to snakes!”

“I know,” said Harry. “I mean, that’s only the second time I’ve ever done it. I accidentally set a boa constrictor on my cousin Dudley at the zoo once — long story — but it was telling me it had never seen Brazil and I sort of set it free without meaning to — that was before I knew I was a wizard —”

“A boa constrictor… told you it had never seen Brazil?” Ron repeated faintly.

“So?” said Harry. “I bet loads of people here can do it.”

“Oh, no they can’t,” said Ron. “It’s not a very common gift. Harry, this is bad.”

“What’s bad?” said Harry, starting to feel quite angry. “What’s wrong with everyone? Listen, if I hadn’t told that snake not to attack Justin —”

“Oh, that’s what you said to it?”

“What d’you mean? You were there — you heard me —”

“I heard you speaking Parseltongue,” said Ron. “Snake language. You could have been saying anything — no wonder Justin panicked, you sounded like you were egging the snake on or something — it was creepy, you know —”

Harry gaped at him. “I spoke a different language? But — I didn’t realize — how can I speak a language without knowing I can speak it?”

Ron shook his head. Both he and Hermione were looking as though someone had died. Harry couldn’t see what was so terrible.

“D’you want to tell me what’s wrong with stopping a massive snake biting off Justin’s head?” he said. “What does it matter how I did it as long as Justin doesn’t have to join the Headless Hunt?”

“It matters,” said Hermione, speaking at last in a hushed voice, “because being able to talk to snakes was what Salazar Slytherin was famous for. That’s why the symbol of Slytherin House is a serpent.”

Harry’s mouth fell open.

“Exactly,” said Ron. “And now the whole school’s going to think you’re his great-great-great-great-grandson or something —”

“But I’m not,” said Harry, with a panic he couldn’t quite explain.

“You’ll find that hard to prove,” said Hermione. “He lived about a thousand years ago; for all we know, you could be.”

Harry lay awake for hours that night. 

Through a gap in the curtains around his four-poster he watched snow starting to drift past the tower window, and wondered . . .

Could he be a descendant of Salazar Slytherin? 

He didn’t know anything about his father’s family, after all. The Dursleys had always forbidden questions about his Wizarding relatives.

Quietly, Harry tried to say something in Parseltongue. 

The words wouldn’t come. 

It seemed he had to be face-to-face with a snake to do it.

But I’m in Gryffindor, Harry thought. The Sorting Hat wouldn’t have put me in here if I had Slytherin blood. . . .

“Ah”, said a nasty little voice in his brain, “but the Sorting Hat wanted to put you in Slytherin, don’t you remember?”.

Harry turned over. 

He’d see Justin the next day in Herbology and he’d explain that he’d been calling the snake off, not egging it on, which (he thought angrily, pummeling his pillow) any fool should have realized.

By next morning, however, the snow that had begun in the night had turned into a blizzard so thick that the last Herbology lesson of the term was canceled. 

Professor Sprout wanted to fit socks and scarves on the Mandrakes, a tricky operation she would entrust to no one else, now that it was so important for the Mandrakes to grow quickly and revive both Mrs. Norris and Colin Creevey.

Harry fretted about this next to the fire in the Gryffindor common room, while Ron and Hermione used their time off to play a game of wizard chess.

“For heaven’s sake, Harry,” said Hermione, exasperated, as one of Ron’s bishops wrestled her knight off his horse and dragged him off the board. “Go and find Justin if it’s so important to you.”

So Harry got up and left through the portrait hole, wondering where Justin might be.

The castle was darker than it usually was in daytime because of the thick, swirling gray snow at every window. 

Shivering, Harry walked past classrooms where lessons were taking place, catching snatches of what was happening within. Professor McGonagall was shouting at someone who, by the sound of it, had turned his friend into a badger. 

Resisting the urge to take a look, Harry walked on by, thinking that Justin might be using his free time to catch up on some work, and deciding to check the library first.

A group of the Hufflepuffs who should have been in Herbology were indeed sitting at the back of the library, but they didn’t seem to be working. Between the long lines of high bookshelves, Harry could see that their heads were close together and they were having what looked like an absorbing conversation. 

He couldn’t see whether Justin was among them. 

He was walking toward them when something of what they were saying met his ears, and he paused to listen, hidden in the Invisibility section.

“So anyway,” a stout boy was saying, “I told Justin to hide up in our dormitory. I mean to say, if Potter’s marked him down as his next victim, it’s best if he keeps a low profile for a while. Of course, Justin’s been waiting for something like this to happen ever since he let slip to Potter he was Muggleborn. Justin actually told him he’d been down for Eton. That’s not the kind of thing you bandy about with Slytherin’s heir on the loose, is it?”

“You definitely think it is Potter, then, Ernie?” said a girl with blonde pigtails anxiously.

“Hannah,” said the stout boy solemnly, “he’s a Parselmouth. Everyone knows that’s the mark of a dark wizard. Have you ever heard of a decent one who could talk to snakes? They called Slytherin himself Serpent-tongue.”

There was some heavy murmuring at this, and Ernie went on, “Remember what was written on the wall? Enemies of the Heir, Beware. Potter had some sort of run-in with Filch. Next thing we know, Filch’s cat’s attacked. That first year, Creevey, was annoying Potter at the Quidditch match, taking pictures of him while he was lying in the mud. Next thing we know — Creevey’s been attacked.”

“He always seems so nice, though,” said Hannah uncertainly, “and, well, he’s the one who made You-Know-Who disappear. He can’t be all bad, can he?”

Ernie lowered his voice mysteriously, the Hufflepuffs bent closer, and Harry edged nearer so that he could catch Ernie’s words.

“No one knows how he survived that attack by You-Know-Who. I mean to say, he was only a baby when it happened. He should have been blasted into smithereens. Only a really powerful dark wizard could have survived a curse like that.” He dropped his voice until it was barely more than a whisper, and said, “That’s probably why You-Know-Who wanted to kill him in the first place. Didn’t want another Dark Lord competing with him. I wonder what other powers Potter’s been hiding?”

Harry couldn’t take anymore. 

Clearing his throat loudly, he stepped out from behind the bookshelves. If he hadn’t been feeling so angry, he would have found the sight that greeted him funny: Every one of the Hufflepuffs looked as though they had been Petrified by the sight of him, and the color was draining out of Ernie’s face.

“Hello,” said Harry. “I’m looking for Justin Finch-Fletchley.”

The Hufflepuffs’ worst fears had clearly been confirmed. They all looked fearfully at Ernie.

“What do you want with him?” said Ernie in a quavering voice.

“I wanted to tell him what really happened with that snake at the Dueling Club,” said Harry.

Ernie bit his white lips and then, taking a deep breath, said, “We were all there. We saw what happened.”

“Then you noticed that after I spoke to it, the snake backed off?” said Harry.

“All I saw,” said Ernie stubbornly, though he was trembling as he spoke, “was you speaking Parseltongue and chasing the snake toward Justin.”

“I didn’t chase it at him!” Harry said, his voice shaking with anger. “It didn’t even touch him!”

“It was a very near miss,” said Ernie. “And in case you’re getting ideas,” he added hastily, “I might tell you that you can trace my family back through nine generations of witches and warlocks and my blood’s as pure as anyone’s, so —”

“I don’t care what sort of blood you’ve got!” said Harry fiercely. “Why would I want to attack Muggle-borns?”

“I’ve heard you hate those Muggles you live with,” said Ernie swiftly.

“It’s not possible to live with the Dursleys and not hate them,” said Harry. “I’d like to see you try it.”

He turned on his heel and stormed out of the library, earning himself a reproving glare from Madam Pince, who was polishing the gilded cover of a large spell book.

Harry blundered up the corridor, barely noticing where he was going as he was in such a fury. The result was that he walked into something very large and solid, which knocked him backward onto the floor.

“Oh, hello, Hagrid,” Harry said, looking up.

Hagrid’s face was entirely hidden by a woolly, snow-covered balaclava, but it couldn’t possibly be anyone else, as he filled most of the corridor in his moleskin overcoat. A dead rooster was hanging from one of his massive, gloved hands.

“All righ’, Harry?” he said, pulling up the balaclava so he could speak. “Why aren’t yeh in class?”

“Canceled,” said Harry, getting up. “What’re you doing in here?”

Hagrid held up the limp rooster.

“Second one killed this term,” he explained. “It’s either foxes or a BloodSuckin’ Bugbear, an’ I need the headmaster’s permission ter put a charm around the hen coop.”

He peered more closely at Harry from under his thick, snow-flecked eyebrows. “Yeh sure yeh’re all righ’? Yeh look all hot an’ bothered —”

Harry couldn’t bring himself to repeat what Ernie and the rest of the Hufflepuffs had been saying about him.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “I’d better get going, Hagrid, it’s Transfiguration next and I’ve got to pick up my books.”

He walked off, his mind still full of what Ernie had said about him.

“Justin’s been waiting for something like this to happen ever since he let slip to Potter he was Muggle-born. . . .”

Harry stamped up the stairs and turned along another corridor, which was particularly dark; the torches had been extinguished by a strong, icy draft that was blowing through a loose windowpane. He was halfway down the passage when he tripped headlong over something lying on the floor.

He turned to squint at what he’d fallen over and felt as though his stomach had dissolved.

Justin Finch-Fletchley was lying on the floor, rigid and cold, a look of shock frozen on his face, his eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. And that wasn’t all. Next to him was another figure, the strangest sight Harry had ever seen.

It was Nearly Headless Nick, no longer pearly-white and transparent, but black and smoky, floating immobile and horizontal, six inches off the floor. His head was half off and his face wore an expression of shock identical to Justin’s.

Harry got to his feet, his breathing fast and shallow, his heart doing a kind of drumroll against his ribs. 

He looked wildly up and down the deserted corridor and saw a line of spiders scuttling as fast as they could away from the bodies. The only sounds were the muffled voices of teachers from the classes on either side.

He could run, and no one would ever know he had been there. But he couldn’t just leave them lying here. . . . He had to get help. . . . 

Would anyone believe he hadn’t had anything to do with this?

As he stood there, panicking, a door right next to him opened with a bang. Peeves the Poltergeist came shooting out.

“Why, it’s potty wee Potter!” cackled Peeves, knocking Harry’s glasses askew as he bounced past him. “What’s Potter up to? Why’s Potter lurking —”

Peeves stopped, halfway through a midair somersault. Upside down, he spotted Justin and Nearly Headless Nick. He flipped the right way up, filled his lungs and, before Harry could stop him, screamed, “ATTACK! ATTACK! ANOTHER ATTACK! NO MORTAL OR GHOST IS SAFE! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! ATTAAAACK!”

Crash — crash — crash — door after door flew open along the corridor and people flooded out. 

For several long minutes, there was a scene of such confusion that Justin was in danger of being squashed and people kept standing in Nearly Headless Nick. Harry found himself pinned against the wall as the teachers shouted for quiet. Professor McGonagall came running, followed by her own class, one of whom still had black-and-white-striped hair. 

She used her wand to set off a loud bang, which restored silence, and ordered everyone back into their classes. No sooner had the scene cleared somewhat than Ernie the Hufflepuff arrived, panting, on the scene.

“Caught in the act!” Ernie yelled, his face stark white, pointing his finger dramatically at Harry.

“That will do, Macmillan!” said Professor McGonagall sharply.

Peeves was bobbing overhead, now grinning wickedly, surveying the scene; Peeves always loved chaos. 

As the teachers bent over Justin and Nearly Headless Nick, examining them, Peeves broke into song.

“Oh, Potter, you rotter, oh, what have you done, You’re killing off students, you think it’s good fun —”

“That’s enough, Peeves!” barked Professor McGonagall, and Peeves zoomed away backward, with his tongue out at Harry.

Justin was carried up to the hospital wing by Professor Flitwick and Professor Sinistra of the Astronomy department, but nobody seemed to know what to do for Nearly Headless Nick. In the end, Professor McGonagall conjured a large fan out of thin air, which she gave to Ernie with instructions to waft Nearly Headless Nick up the stairs. This Ernie did, fanning Nick along like a silent black hovercraft. 

This left Harry and Professor McGonagall alone together.

“This way, Potter,” she said.

“Professor,” said Harry at once, “I swear I didn’t —”

“This is out of my hands, Potter,” said Professor McGonagall curtly.

They marched in silence around a corner and she stopped before a large and extremely ugly stone gargoyle.

“Lemon drop!” she said. 

This was evidently a password, because the gargoyle sprang suddenly to life and hopped aside as the wall behind him split in two. Even full of dread for what was coming, Harry couldn’t fail to be amazed. Behind the wall was a spiral staircase that was moving smoothly upward, like an escalator. 

As he and Professor McGonagall stepped onto it, Harry heard the wall thud closed behind them. They rose upward in circles, higher and higher, until at last, slightly dizzy, Harry saw a gleaming oak door ahead, with a brass knocker in the shape of a griffin.

He knew now where he was being taken. 

This must be where Dumbledore lived.

Chapter 22 : Book 2: Chapter 12 (adjustments)

They stepped off the stone staircase at the top, and Professor McGonagall rapped on the door with her knuckles. 

It opened silently and they entered. 

Professor McGonagall told Harry to wait and left him there, alone.

Harry looked around. One thing was certain: of all the teachers’ offices Harry had visited so far this year, Dumbledore’s was by far the most interesting. If he hadn’t been scared out of his wits that he was about to be thrown out of school, he would have been very pleased to have a chance to look around it.

It was a large, beautiful, circular room, full of funny little noises. A number of curious silver instruments stood on spindle-legged tables, whirring and emitting little puffs of smoke. The walls were covered with portraits of old headmasters and headmistresses, all of whom were snoozing gently in their frames. There was also an enormous, claw-footed desk, and, sitting on a shelf behind it, a shabby, tattered wizard’s hat — the Sorting Hat.

Harry hesitated. 

He cast a wary eye around the sleeping witches and wizards on the walls. Surely it couldn’t hurt if he took the hat down and tried it on again? Just to see . . . just to make sure it had put him in the right House —

He walked quietly around the desk, lifted the hat from its shelf, and lowered it slowly onto his head. It was much too large and slipped down over his eyes, just as it had done the last time he’d put it on. Harry stared at the black inside of the hat, waiting. 

Then a small voice said in his ear, “Bee in your bonnet, Harry Potter?”

“Er, yes,” Harry muttered. “Er — sorry to bother you — I wanted to ask —”

“You’ve been wondering whether I put you in the right House,” said the hat smartly. “Yes . . . you were particularly difficult to place. But I stand by what I said before” — Harry’s heart leapt — “you would have done well in Slytherin —”

Harry’s stomach plummeted, grabbing the point of the hat and pulling it off. It hung limply in his hand, grubby and faded. 

Harry pushed it back onto its shelf, feeling sick.

“You’re wrong,” he said aloud to the still and silent hat. 

It didn’t move. 

Harry backed away, watching it. Then a strange, gagging noise behind him made him wheel around.

He wasn’t alone after all. Standing on a golden perch behind the door was a decrepit-looking bird that resembled a half-plucked turkey. Harry stared at it and the bird looked balefully back, making its gagging noise again. Harry thought it looked very ill. Its eyes were dull and, even as Harry watched, a couple more feathers fell out of its tail.

Harry was just thinking that all he needed was for Dumbledore’s pet bird to die while he was alone in the office with it, when the bird burst into flames.

Harry yelled in shock and backed away into the desk. He looked feverishly around in case there was a glass of water somewhere but couldn’t see one; the bird, meanwhile, had become a fireball.

It gave one loud shriek and next second, there was nothing but a smoldering pile of ash on the floor.

The office door opened. 

Dumbledore came in, looking very somber.

“Professor,” Harry gasped. “Your bird — I couldn’t do anything — he just caught fire —”

To Harry’s astonishment, Dumbledore smiled.

“About time, too,” he said. “He’s been looking dreadful for days; I’ve been telling him to get a move on.”

He chuckled at the stunned look on Harry’s face.

“Fawkes is a phoenix, Harry. Phoenixes burst into flame when it is time for them to die and are reborn from the ashes. Watch him . . .”

Harry looked down in time to see a tiny, wrinkled, newborn bird poke its head out of the ashes. It was quite as ugly as the old one.

“It’s a shame you had to see him on a Burning Day,” said Dumbledore, seating himself behind his desk. “He’s really very handsome most of the time, wonderful red and gold plumage. Fascinating creatures, phoenixes. They can carry immensely heavy loads, their tears have healing powers, and they make highly faithful pets.”

In the shock of Fawkes catching fire, Harry had forgotten what he was there for, but it all came back to him as Dumbledore settled himself in the high chair behind the desk and fixed Harry with his penetrating, light-blue stare.

Before Dumbledore could speak another word, however, the door of the office flew open with an almighty bang and Hagrid burst in, a wild look in his eyes, his balaclava perched on top of his shaggy black head and the dead rooster still swinging from his hand.

“It wasn’ Harry, Professor Dumbledore!” said Hagrid urgently. “I was talkin’ ter him seconds before that kid was found, he never had time, sir —”

Dumbledore tried to say something, but Hagrid went ranting on, waving the rooster around in his agitation, sending feathers everywhere.

“— it can’t’ve bin him, I’ll swear it in front o’ the Ministry o’ Magic if I have to —”

“Hagrid, I —” Dumbledore said tiredly, then closed his eyes as Hagrid bellowed over him.

“— yeh’ve got the wrong boy, sir, I know Harry never —”

“Hagrid!” said Dumbledore loudly, running a finger down his temple. “I do not think that Harry attacked those people.”

“... Oh,” said Hagrid, the rooster falling limply at his side. “Right. I’ll wait outside then, Headmaster.”

And he stomped out, looking embarrassed.

“You don’t think it was me, Professor?” Harry repeated hopefully as Dumbledore brushed rooster feathers off his desk.

“No, Harry, I don’t,” said Dumbledore, though his face was somber again. “But I still want to talk to you.”

Harry waited nervously while Dumbledore considered him, the tips of his long fingers together.

“I must ask you, Harry, whether there is anything you’d like to tell me,” he said gently. “Anything at all.”

Harry didn’t know what to say. 

He thought of Draconia shouting, “You’ll be next, Mudbloods!” and of the Polyjuice Potion simmering away in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom. Then he thought of the disembodied voice he had heard twice and remembered what Ron had said.

“Hearing voices no one else can hear isn’t a good sign, even in the Wizarding world.” 

He thought, too, about what everyone was saying about him, and his growing dread that he was somehow connected with Salazar Slytherin. . . .

“No,” said Harry. “There isn’t anything, Professor. . . .”

Dumbledore raised his eyebrows. “Nothing?”

“No, Professor.”

“Nothing at all?”

Harry fidgeted with the pockets of his robes. “So, sir.”

Dumbledore glanced down at his desk top, fingers steepled over them, then he nodded once towards Harry. “Very well, Harry. You may go then.”

Harry turned, made his way past the lightly chirping Fawkes, and back down the moving staircase.

The double attack on Justin and Nearly Headless Nick turned what had hitherto been nervousness into real panic. 

Curiously, it was Nearly Headless Nick’s fate that seemed to worry people most. 

“What could possibly do that to a ghost?” people asked each other.

“What terrible power could harm someone who was already dead?” 

There was almost a stampede to book seats on the Hogwarts Express so that students could go home for Christmas.

“At this rate, we’ll be the only ones left,” Ron told Harry and Hermione. “Us, Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle. What a jolly holiday it’s going to be.”

Crabbe and Goyle, who always did whatever Draconia did, had signed up to stay over the holidays, too, but Harry was glad that most people were leaving.

He was tired of people skirting around him in the corridors, as though he were about to sprout fangs or spit poison; tired of all the muttering, pointing, and hissing as he passed.

Fred and George, however, found all this very funny. 

They went out of their way to march ahead of Harry down the corridors, shouting, “Make way for the Heir of Slytherin, seriously evil wizard coming through. . . .”

Percy was deeply disapproving of this behavior.

“It is not a laughing matter,” he said coldly.

“Oh, get out of the way, Percy,” said Fred. “Harry’s in a hurry.”

“Yeah, he’s off to the Chamber of Secrets for a cup of tea with his fanged servant,” said George, chortling.

Ginny didn’t find it amusing either.

“Oh, don’t!” she wailed every time Fred asked Harry loudly who he was planning to attack next, or when George pretended to ward Harry off with a large clove of garlic when they met.

Harry didn’t mind; it made him feel better that Fred and George, at least, thought the idea of his being Slytherin’s heir was quite ludicrous. 

But their antics seemed to be aggravating Draconia Malfoy, who looked increasingly sour each time she saw them at it.

“It’s because she’s bursting to say it’s really her,” said Ron knowingly. “You know how she hates anyone beating her at anything, and you’re getting all the credit for her dirty work.”

“Not for long,” said Hermione in a satisfied tone. “The Polyjuice Potion’s nearly ready. We’ll be getting the truth out of her any day now.”

At last the term ended, and a silence as deep as the snow on the grounds descended on the castle. 

Harry found it peaceful, rather than gloomy, and enjoyed the fact that he, Hermione, and the Weasleys had the run of Gryffindor Tower, which meant they could play Exploding Snap loudly without bothering anyone, and practice dueling in private. 

Fred, George, and Ginny had chosen to stay at school rather than visit Bill in Egypt with Mr. and Mrs. Weasley. Percy, who disapproved of what he termed their childish behavior, didn’t spend much time in the Gryffindor common room. He had already told them pompously that he was only staying over Christmas because it was his duty as a prefect to support the teachers during this troubled time.

Christmas morning dawned, cold and white. 

Harry and Ron, the only ones left in their dormitory, were woken very early by Hermione, who burst in, fully dressed and carrying presents for them both.

“Wake up!” she said loudly, pulling back the curtains at the window. “It’s Christmas!”

“Hermione — you’re not supposed to be in here —” said Ron, shielding his eyes against the light.

“Merry Christmas to you, too,” said Hermione, throwing him his present. “I’ve been up for nearly an hour, adding more lacewings to the potion. It’s ready.”

Harry sat up, suddenly wide awake. “Are you sure?”

“Positive,” said Hermione, shifting Scabbers the rat so that she could sit down on the end of Ron’s four-poster. “If we’re going to do it, I say it should be tonight.”

At that moment, Hedwig swooped into the room, carrying a very small package in her beak.

“Hello,” said Harry happily as she landed on his bed. “Are you speaking to me again?”

She nibbled his ear in an affectionate sort of way, which was a far better present than the one that she had brought him, which turned out to be from the Dursleys. They had sent Harry a toothpick and a note telling him to find out whether he’d be able to stay at Hogwarts for the summer vacation, too.

The rest of Harry’s Christmas presents were far more satisfactory. Hagrid had sent him a large tin of treacle toffee, which Harry decided to soften by the fire before eating; Ron had given him a book called “Flying with the Cannons”, a book of interesting facts about his favorite Quidditch team, and Hermione had bought him a luxury eagle-feather quill. Harry opened the last present to find a new, hand-knitted sweater from Mrs. Weasley and a large plum cake. 

He read her card with a fresh surge of guilt, thinking about Mr. Weasley’s car (which hadn’t been seen since its crash with the Whomping Willow), and the bout of rule-breaking he and Ron were planning next.

No one, not even someone dreading taking Polyjuice Potion later, could fail to enjoy Christmas dinner at Hogwarts.

The Great Hall looked magnificent. Not only were there a dozen frostcovered Christmas trees and thick streamers of holly and mistletoe crisscrossing the ceiling, but enchanted snow was falling, warm and dry, from the ceiling. Dumbledore led them in a few of his favorite carols, Hagrid booming more and more loudly with every goblet of eggnog he consumed. 

Percy, who hadn’t noticed that Fred had bewitched his prefect badge so that it now read “Pinhead,” kept asking them all what they were sniggering at. 

Harry didn’t even care that Draconia Malfoy was making loud, snide remarks about his new sweater from the Slytherin table. 

With a bit of luck, Draconia would be getting her comeuppance in a few hours time anyway.

Harry and Ron had barely finished their third helpings of Christmas pudding when Hermione ushered them out of the hall to finalize their plans for the evening.

“We still need a bit of the people you’re changing into,” said Hermione matter-of-factly, as though she were sending them to the supermarket for laundry detergent. “And obviously, it’ll be best if you can get something of Crabbe’s and Goyle’s; they’re Malfoy’s best friends, she’ll tell them anything. And we also need to make sure the real Crabbe and Goyle can’t burst in on us while we’re interrogating her.

“I’ve got it all worked out,” she went on smoothly, ignoring Harry’s and Ron’s stupefied faces. She held up two plump chocolate cakes. “I’ve filled these with a simple Sleeping Draught. All you have to do is make sure Crabbe and Goyle find them. You know how greedy they are, they’re bound to eat them. Once they’re asleep, pull out a few of their hairs and hide them in a broom closet.”

Harry and Ron looked incredulously at each other. “Hermione, I don’t think —”

“That could go seriously wrong —” Ron trailed after, looking as if Hermione had asked him to go give the whomping willow a kiss.

But Hermione had a steely glint in her eye not unlike the one Professor McGonagall sometimes had.

“The potion will be useless without Crabbe’s and Goyle’s hair,” she said sternly. “You do want to investigate Malfoy, don’t you?”

“Oh, all right, all right,” said Harry. “But what about you? Whose hair are you ripping out?”

“I’ve already got mine!” said Hermione brightly, pulling a tiny bottle out of her pocket and showing them the single hair inside it. “Remember Millicent Bulstrode wrestling with me at the Dueling Club? She left this on my robes when she was trying to strangle me! And she’s gone home for Christmas — so I’ll just have to tell the Slytherins I’ve decided to come back.”

When Hermione had bustled off to check on the Polyjuice Potion again, Ron turned to Harry with a doom-laden expression. “Have you ever heard of a plan where so many things could go wrong?” 

But to Harry’s and Ron’s utter amazement, stage one of the operation went just as smoothly as Hermione had said. They lurked in the deserted entrance hall after Christmas tea, waiting for Crabbe and Goyle who had remained alone at the Slytherin table, shoveling down fourth helpings of trifle. Harry had perched the chocolate cakes on the end of the banisters. When they spotted Crabbe and Goyle coming out of the Great Hall, Harry and Ron hid quickly behind a suit of armor next to the front door.

“How thick can you get?” Ron whispered ecstatically as Crabbe gleefully pointed out the cakes to Goyle and grabbed them. 

Grinning stupidly, they stuffed the cakes whole into their large mouths. 

For a moment, both of them chewed greedily, looks of triumph on their faces. Then, without the smallest change of expression, they both keeled over backward onto the floor with the dullest thud of fat bodies that Harry had ever heard.

He wondered if Dudley would have made the same, or perhaps a louder, sound.

By far the hardest part was hiding them in the closet across the hall. Once they were safely stowed among the buckets and mops, Harry yanked out a couple of the bristles that covered Goyle’s forehead and Ron pulled out several of Crabbe’s hairs. They also stole their shoes, because their own were far too small for Crabbe and Goyle sized feet. 

Then, still stunned at what they had just done, they sprinted up to Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom.

They could hardly see for the thick black smoke issuing from the stall in which Hermione was stirring the cauldron. Pulling their robes up over their faces, Harry and Ron knocked softly on the door.

“Hermione?”

They heard the scrape of the lock and Hermione emerged, shiny-faced and looking anxious. Behind her they heard the “gloop gloop!” of the bubbling, glutinous potion. 

Three glass tumblers stood ready on the toilet seat.

“Did you get them?” Hermione asked breathlessly.

Harry showed her Goyle’s hair.

“Good. And I sneaked these spare robes out of the laundry,” Hermione said, holding up a small sack. “You’ll need bigger sizes once you’re Crabbe and Goyle.”

The three of them stared into the cauldron. Close up the potion looked like thick, dark mud, bubbling sluggishly.

“I’m sure I’ve done everything right,” said Hermione, nervously rereading the splotched page of Moste Potente Potions. “It looks like the book says it should . . . once we’ve drunk it, we’ll have exactly an hour before we change back into ourselves.”

“Now what?” Ron whispered.

Hermione closed the book with a thud of pages. “We separate it into three glasses and add the hairs.”

Hermione ladled large dollops of the potion into each of the glasses. Then, her hand trembling, she shook Millicent Bulstrode’s hair out of its bottle into the first glass.

The potion hissed loudly like a boiling kettle and frothed madly. A second later, it had turned a sick sort of yellow.

“Urgh — essence of Millicent Bulstrode,” said Ron, eyeing it with loathing. “Bet it tastes disgusting.”

“Add yours, then,” said Hermione.

Harry dropped Goyle’s hair into the middle glass and Ron put Crabbe’s into the last one. Both glasses hissed and frothed: Goyle’s turned the khaki color of a booger, Crabbe’s a dark, murky brown.

“Hang on,” said Harry as Ron and Hermione reached for their glasses. “We’d better not all drink them in here. . . . Once we turn into Crabbe and Goyle we won’t fit. And Millicent Bulstrode’s no pixie.”

“Good thinking,” said Ron, unlocking the door. “We’ll take separate stalls.”

Careful not to spill a drop of his Polyjuice Potion, Harry slipped into the middle stall.

“Ready?” he called.

“Ready,” came Ron’s and Hermione’s voices.

“One — two — three —”

Pinching his nose, Harry drank the potion down in two large gulps. 

It tasted like overcooked cabbage, which may have been a blessing compared to what it looked like.

Immediately, his insides started writhing as though he’d just swallowed live snakes — doubled up, he wondered whether he was going to be sick — then a burning sensation spread rapidly from his stomach to the very ends of his fingers and toes.

Bringing him gasping to all fours, there came a horrible melting feeling, as the skin all over his body bubbled like hot wax. Before his eyes, his hands began to grow, the fingers thickened, the nails broadened, the knuckles bulging like bolts.

His shoulders stretched painfully and a prickling on his forehead told him that hair was creeping down toward his eyebrows. His robes ripped as his chest expanded like a barrel bursting its hoops, and his feet were agony in shoes four sizes too small.

As suddenly as it had started, everything stopped. Harry lay facedown on the stone-cold floor, listening to Myrtle gurgling morosely in the end toilet.

With difficulty, he kicked off his shoes and stood up. 

So this was what it felt like, being Goyle. 

Harry knew she was a larger girl, much like Millicent, but far more brutal as her rugby physique would announce… but he didn’t really feel feminine.

Being taller was nice, though.

His large hand trembling, Harry pulled off his old robes, which were hanging a foot above his ankles, pulled on the spare ones, and laced up Goyle’s boatlike shoes. He was glad that Goyle was rather flat chested, as the thought of having to tangle with a bra made him both laugh and glad that he was just a boy.

He reached up to brush Goyle’s hair out of his eyes, her bangs low on his forehead. Then he realized that his glasses were clouding his eyes because Goyle obviously didn’t need them, so he took them off and called, “Are you two okay?” 

Harry felt odd, hearing Goyle’s low rasp of a voice issuing from his mouth.

“Yeah,” came the deep grunt of Crabbe from his right.

Harry unlocked his door and stepped in front of the cracked mirror. Goyle stared back at him out of dull, deepset eyes. 

Harry scratched his ear. 

So did Goyle.

Ron’s door opened. 

They stared at each other, except that he looked pale and shocked. Ron was indistinguishable from Crabbe, from the pudding-bowl haircut to the long, gorilla arms.

“This is unbelievable,” said Ron, approaching the mirror and prodding Crabbe’s flat nose. “Unbelievable. What’s it like being a girl?”

Harry shrugged. “Beats me, Goyle wasn’t much of a girl to begin with.”

Ron let out a snorting laugh, sounding a lot like Crabbe, and Harry found himself not liking it.

“We’d better get going,” said Harry, loosening the watch that was cutting into Goyle’s thick wrist. “We’ve still got to find out where the Slytherin common room is. I only hope we can find someone to follow . . .”

Ron, who had been gazing at Harry, said, “You don’t know how bizarre it is to see Goyle thinking…” He banged on Hermione’s door. “C’mon, we need to go —”

A high-pitched voice answered him.

“I — I don’t think I’m going to come after all. You go on without me.”

“Hermione, we know Millicent Bulstrode’s ugly, no one’s going to know it’s you —”

“No — really — I don’t think I’ll come. You two hurry up, you’re wasting time —”

Harry looked at Ron, bewildered.

“That looks more like Goyle,” said Ron. “That’s how she looks every time a teacher asks her a question.”

“Hermione, are you okay?” said Harry through the door.

“Fine — I’m fine — go on —”

Harry looked at his watch. Five of their precious sixty minutes had already passed.

“We’ll meet you back here, all right?” he said.

Harry and Ron opened the door of the bathroom carefully, checked that the coast was clear, and set off.

“Don’t swing your arms like that,” Harry muttered to Ron.

“Eh?”

“Crabbe holds them sort of stiff. . . .”

“How’s this?”

“Yeah, that’s better. . . .”

“Well if I’m swinging my arms wrong, make sure you walk like a girl then.”

“Goyle doesn’t even walk like a girl.”

“Yes she does, she’s just more stompy about it.”

“How about this?”

“There, that’s got more Goyle to it.”

They went down the marble staircase. All they needed now was a Slytherin that they could follow to the Slytherin common room, but there was nobody around.

“Any ideas?” muttered Harry.

“The Slytherins always come up to breakfast from over there,” said Ron, nodding at the entrance to the dungeons. The words had barely left his mouth when a girl with long, curly hair emerged from the entrance.

“Excuse me,” said Ron, hurrying up to her. “We’ve forgotten the way to our common room.”

“I beg your pardon?” said the girl stiffly. “Our common room? I’m a Ravenclaw, Crabbe. I know your test scores are low, but you should at least be able to tell blue from green.”

She walked away, looking suspiciously back at them.

Harry and Ron hurried down the stone steps into the darkness, their footsteps echoing particularly loudly as Crabbe’s and Goyle’s huge feet hit the floor, feeling that this wasn’t going to be as easy as they had hoped.

The labyrinthine passages were deserted. 

They walked deeper and deeper under the school, constantly checking their watches to see how much time they had left. After a quarter of an hour, just when they were getting desperate, they heard a sudden movement ahead.

“Ha!” said Ron excitedly. “There’s one of them now!”

The figure was emerging from a side room. As they hurried nearer, however, their hearts sank. 

It wasn’t a Slytherin, it was Percy.

“What’re you doing down here?” said Ron in surprise.

Percy looked affronted.

“That,” he said stiffly, “is none of your business. It’s Crabbe, isn’t it?”

“Wh — oh, yeah,” said Ron.

“Well, get off to your dormitories,” said Percy sternly. “It’s not safe to go wandering around dark corridors these days.”

“You are,” Ron pointed out in Crabbe’s voice.

“I,” said Percy, drawing himself up, “am a prefect. Nothing’s about to attack me.”

A voice suddenly echoed behind Harry and Ron. 

Draconia Malfoy was strolling toward them, and for the first time in his life, Harry was pleased to see her.

“There you are,” she drawled, looking at them with a flick of her blonde hair. “Have you two been pigging out in the Great Hall all this time? I’ve been looking for you; I want to show you something really funny.”

Draconia glanced witheringly at Percy.

“And what’re you doing down here, Weasley?” she sneered.

Percy looked outraged.

“You want to show a bit more respect to a school prefect!” he said. “I don’t like your attitude!”

Draconia sneered and motioned for Harry and Ron to follow her. 

Harry almost said something apologetic to Percy, but caught himself just in time. 

He and Ron hurried after Draconia, who said as they turned into the next passage, “That Peter Weasley —”

“Percy,” Ron corrected her automatically.

“Whatever,” said Draconia, wiggling her fingers in the air dismissively. “I’ve noticed him sneaking around a lot lately. And I bet I know what he’s up to. He thinks he’s going to catch Slytherin’s heir single-handed.”

She gave a short, derisive laugh. Harry and Ron exchanged excited looks.

Malfoy paused by a stretch of bare, damp stone wall.

“What’s the new password again?” She said to Harry, turning around to look at whom she thought was Goyle.

“Er —” said Harry.

“Oh, yeah — pure-blood!” said Draconia, not listening, and a stone door concealed in the wall slid open. 

Draconia marched through it, so Harry and Ron followed her.

The Slytherin common room was a long, low, underground room with rough stone walls and ceiling from which round, greenish lamps were hanging on chains. A fire was crackling under an elaborately carved mantelpiece ahead of them, and several Slytherins were silhouetted around it in high-backed chairs.

“Wait here,” said Draconia to Harry and Ron, motioning them to a pair of empty chairs set back from the fire. “I’ll go and get it — my father’s just sent it to me —”

Wondering what Draconia was going to show them, Harry and Ron sat down, doing their best to look at home.

Draconia came back a minute later, holding what looked like a newspaper clipping. 

He thrust it under Ron’s nose.

“That’ll give you a laugh,” She said with a beaming smile, sitting down in her own chair and folding one of her legs over the other.

Harry saw Ron’s eyes widen in shock. He read the clipping quickly, gave a very forced laugh, and handed it to Harry.

It had been clipped out of the Daily Prophet, and it said:

“INQUIRY AT THE MINISTRY OF MAGIC

Arthur Weasley, Head of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office, was today fined fifty Galleons for bewitching a Muggle car.

Mr. Lucius Malfoy, a governor of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where the enchanted car crashed earlier this year, called today for Mr. Weasley’s resignation.

“Weasley has brought the Ministry into disrepute,” Mr. Malfoy told our reporter. “He is clearly unfit to draw up our laws and his ridiculous Muggle Protection Act should be scrapped immediately.”

Mr. Weasley was unavailable for comment, although his wife told reporters to clear off or she’d set the family ghoul on them.”

“Well?” asked Draconia impatiently as Harry handed the clipping back to her. “Don’t you think it’s funny? That’s how Potter got here in the first place! If it wasn’t for that massive dork breaking the rules, we would have had an entire year without that showoff running around!”

“Ha, ha,” said Harry bleakly.

Draconia glared at Goyle with an agitated frown, expecting a little more from the girl, then tossed the clipping down onto the ground with a sniff.

“Arthur Weasley loves Muggles so much he should snap his wand in half and go and join them,” said Malfoy scornfully, kicking her crossed foot back and forth in the air. “You’d never know the Weasleys were purebloods, the way they behave.”

Ron’s — or rather, Crabbe’s — face was contorted with fury. 

“What’s up with you, Crabbe?” snapped Draconia. 

“Stomachache,” Ron grunted.

“Well, go up to the hospital wing and give all those Mudbloods a kick from me,” said Draconia, snickering. “You know, I’m surprised the Daily Prophet hasn’t reported all these attacks yet.” 

She went on thoughtfully. “I suppose Dumbledore’s trying to hush it all up. He’ll be sacked if it doesn’t stop soon. Father’s always said old Dumbledore’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to this place. He loves Muggle-borns. A decent headmaster would never’ve let slime like that Creevey in.”

Draconia started taking pictures with an imaginary camera and did a cruel, but accurate, impression of Colin.

“‘Potter, can I have your picture, Potter? Can I have your autograph? Can I lick your shoes, please, Potter?’” She moved her camera-formed hands around in the air, as if tracking Harry on a broom. “He was there at the practice, you know. ‘Potter, look over here! Wow, look at Potter go!’ and so on. You would think the little Mudblood had been sending him letters all summer professing his love.”

She dropped his hands and frowned, as if remembering something unpleasant, then looked at Harry and Ron. “What’s the matter with you two?”

Far too late, Harry and Ron forced themselves to laugh, but Draconia seemed satisfied; perhaps Crabbe and Goyle were always slow on the uptake.

“Saint Potter, the Mudbloods’ friend,” said Draconia slowly. “He’s another one with no proper wizard feeling, or he wouldn’t go around with that jumped-up Granger Mudblood. And people think he’s Slytherin’s heir!”

Harry and Ron waited with bated breath: Draconia was surely seconds away from telling them it was her— but then —

“I wish I knew who it is,” said Draconia petulantly. “I could help them.”

Ron’s jaw dropped so that Crabbe looked even more clueless than usual. Fortunately, Malfoy didn’t notice. 

Harry, thinking fast, said, “You must have some idea who’s behind it all. . . .”

“You know I haven’t, Goyle, how many times do I have to tell you?” snapped Draconia. “And Father won’t tell me anything about the last time the Chamber was opened either. Of course, it was fifty years ago, so it was before his time, but he knows all about it, and he says that it was all kept quiet and it’ll look suspicious if I know too much about it. But I know one thing — last time the Chamber of Secrets was opened, a Mudblood died. So I bet it’s a matter of time before one of them’s killed this time. . . . I hope it’s that know-it-all, Granger,” she said with relish.

Ron was clenching Crabbe’s gigantic fists. 

Feeling that it would be a bit of a giveaway if Ron punched Draconia, Harry shot him a warning look and said, “D’you know if the person who opened the Chamber last time was caught?”

“Oh, yeah . . . whoever it was, was expelled,” said Draconia, leaning back in her comfortable chair. “They’re probably still in Azkaban.”

“Azkaban?” askedHarry, puzzled.

“Azkaban — the wizard prison, Goyle,” said Draconia, looking at ‘her’ in disbelief. “Honestly, if you were any slower, you’d be going backward. I told you that when I was talking about those letters that Potter never responded to.”

“Letters?” Harry asked, suddenly remembering what Dobby had said to him in his own room.

Draconia hung her head back with an “Ugh!”, then sat forward, uncrossing her legs. “Yes, the letters. Does anything stick in that thick head of yours?”

Draconia then looked rather upset, fidgeting and picking at her robe sleeves. “I just thought… you know, after the first few… even an angry one…”

Harry barked out a laugh, which Draconia did not seem to take well, glaring at Harry as if she were about to strike Goyle.

She shifted restlessly in her chair, then cleared her throat with a wave of her hand, “Father says to keep my head down and let the Heir of Slytherin get on with it. He says the school needs ridding of all the Mudblood filth, but not to get mixed up in it. Of course, he’s got a lot on his plate at the moment. You know the Ministry of Magic raided our manor last week?”

Harry tried to force Goyle’s dull face into a look of concern, which was harder to do after the mention of the letters.

“Yeah . . .” said Draconia. “Luckily, they didn’t find much. Father’s got some very valuable Dark Arts stuff. But luckily, we’ve got our own secret chamber under the drawing-room floor-”

“Ho!” said Ron.

Draconia looked at him. 

So did Harry. 

Ron blushed. 

Even his hair was turning red… no, no it was turning red. 

His nose was also slowly lengthening. 

Their hour was up.

Ron was turning back into himself, and from the look of horror he was suddenly giving Harry, he must be, too.

They both jumped to their feet.

“Medicine for my stomach,” Ron grunted, and without further ado they sprinted the length of the Slytherin common room.

“Crabbe!?” Draconia shouted, coming onto her feet with clap of her heels to the cold, stone floor. “Goyle! Where are you going?!”

They hurled themselves at the stone wall, and dashed up the passage, hoping against hope that Draconia hadn’t noticed anything. 

Harry could feel his feet slipping around in Goyle’s huge shoes and had to hoist up his robes as he shrank; they crashed up the steps into the dark entrance hall, which was full of a muffled pounding coming from the closet where they’d locked Crabbe and Goyle. 

Leaving their shoes outside the closet door, they sprinted in their socks up the marble staircase toward Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom.

“Well, it wasn’t a complete waste of time,” Ron panted, closing the bathroom door behind them. “I know we still haven’t found out who’s doing the attacks, but I’m going to write to Dad tomorrow and tell him to check under the Malfoys’ drawing room. Also what was that about lett-”

“We should focus on the other things, Ron.” Harry cut across him. “Like making sure your dad knows about the hidden chamber in Malfoy’s home.”

Ron nodded with a shake of his head. “Ah, yeah. Right!”

Harry checked his face in the cracked mirror. 

He was back to normal. 

He put his glasses on as Ron hammered on the door of Hermione’s stall.

“Hermione, come out, we’ve got loads to tell you —”

“Go away!” Hermione squeaked.

Harry and Ron looked at each other.

“What’s the matter?” said Ron. “You must be back to normal by now, we are —”

But Moaning Myrtle glided suddenly through the stall door. Harry had never seen her looking so happy.

“Ooooooh, wait till you see,” she said. “It’s awful —”

They heard the lock slide back and Hermione emerged, sobbing, her robes pulled up over her head.

“What’s up?” said Ron uncertainly. “Have you still got Millicent’s nose or something?”

Hermione let her robes fall and Ron backed into the sink.

Her face was covered in black fur. Her eyes had turned yellow and there were long, pointed ears poking through her hair.

“It was c-cat hair!” she howled. “M-Millicent Bulstrode m-must have a cat! And the p-potion isn’t supposed to be used for animal transformations!”

“Uh-oh,” said Ron.

“You’ll be teased something dreadful,” said Myrtle happily.

“It’s okay, Hermione,” said Harry quickly. “We’ll take you up to the hospital wing. Madam Pomfrey never asks too many questions. . . .”

It took a long time to persuade Hermione to leave the bathroom. 

Moaning Myrtle sped them on their way with a hearty guffaw. “Wait till everyone finds out you’ve got a tail!”

Chapter 23 : Book 2: Chapter 13 (adjustments)

Hermione remained in the hospital wing for several weeks. 

There was a flurry of rumor about her disappearance when the rest of the school arrived back from their Christmas holidays, because of course everyone thought that she had been attacked. 

So many students filed past the hospital wing trying to catch a glimpse of her that Madam Pomfrey took out her curtains again and placed them around Hermione’s bed, to spare her the shame of being seen with a furry face.

Harry and Ron went to visit her every evening. When the new term started, they brought her each day’s homework.

“If I’d sprouted whiskers, I’d take a break from work,” said Ron, tipping a stack of books onto Hermione’s bedside table one evening.

“Don’t be silly, Ron, I’ve got to keep up,” said Hermione briskly. Her spirits were greatly improved by the fact that all the hair had gone from her face and her eyes were turning slowly back to brown. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any new leads?” she added in a whisper, so that Madam Pomfrey couldn’t hear her.

“Nothing,” said Harry gloomily.

“I was so sure it was Malfoy,” said Ron, for about the hundredth time. He sighed, leaning his head back. “I almost wish Harry would have gotten some of her lett-”

“What’s that?” asked Harry loudly, shoving Ron to make him stop speaking and pointing to something gold sticking out from under Hermione’s pillow.

“Just… a get well card,” said Hermione curiously, watching as Ron spilled out of his chair with a curse. 

She tried to poke it out of sight, but Ron saw her attempting the sleight of hand as he got up from the floor. 

With an answering shove at Harry, he reached over and pulled it out, flicking it open, as he read aloud:

“To Miss Granger, wishing you a speedy recovery, from your concerned teacher, Professor Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defense League, and five-time winner of Witch Weekly’s Most-Charming-Smile Award.”

Ron looked up at Hermione, disgusted. “You sleep with this under your pillow?”

But Hermione was spared answering by Madam Pomfrey sweeping over with her evening dose of medicine, as well as to see just who had fallen out of their chair.

“Is Lockhart the smarmiest bloke you’ve ever met, or what?” Ron said to Harry as they left the infirmary and started up the stairs toward Gryffindor Tower. 

Snape had given them so much homework, Harry thought he was likely to be in the sixth year before he finished it. Ron was just saying he wished he had asked Hermione how many rat tails you were supposed to add to a Hair-Raising Potion when an angry outburst from the floor above reached their ears.

“That’s Filch,” Harry muttered as they hurried up the stairs and paused, out of sight, listening hard.

“You don’t think someone else’s been attacked?” said Ron tensely.

They stood still, their heads inclined toward Filch’s voice, which sounded quite hysterical.

“— even more work for me! Mopping all night, like I haven’t got enough to do! No, this is the final straw, I’m going to Dumbledore —”

His footsteps receded along the out-of-sight corridor and they heard a distant door slam.

They poked their heads around the corner. 

Filch had clearly been manning his usual lookout post: They were once again on the spot where Mrs. Norris had been attacked. 

They saw at a glance what Filch had been shouting about. 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. 

Now that Filch had stopped shouting, they could hear Myrtle’s wails echoing off the bathroom walls.

“Now what’s up with her?” asked Ron.

“Let’s go and see,” said Harry, and holding their robes over their ankles they stepped through the great wash of water to the door bearing its “OUT OF ORDER” sign, ignored it as always, and entered.

Moaning Myrtle was crying, if possible, louder and harder than ever before. 

She seemed to be hiding down her usual toilet. 

It was dark in the bathroom because the candles had been extinguished in the great rush of water that had left both walls and floor soaking wet.

“What’s up, Myrtle?” said Harry.

“Who’s that?” glugged Myrtle miserably. “Come to throw something else at me?”

Harry waded across to her stall and said, “Why would I throw something at you?”

“Don’t ask me,” Myrtle shouted, emerging with a wave of yet more water, which splashed onto the already sopping floor. “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 Harry, reasonably. “I mean, it’d just go right through you, wouldn’t it?”

He had said the wrong thing. 

Myrtle puffed herself up 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?” asked Harry.

“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,” said Myrtle, glaring at them. “It’s over there, it got washed out. . . .”

Harry and Ron looked under the sink where Myrtle was pointing. 

A small, thin book lay there. It had a shabby black cover and was as wet as everything else in the bathroom. 

Harry stepped forward to pick it up, but Ron suddenly flung out an arm to hold him back.

“What?” asked Harry.

“Are you crazy?” said Ron. “It could be dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” said Harry, laughing. “Come off it, how could it be dangerous?”

“You’d be surprised,” said Ron, who was looking apprehensively at the book. “Some of the books the Ministry’s confiscated — Dad’s told me — there was one that burned your eyes out. And everyone who read Sonnets of a Sorcerer spoke in limericks for the rest of their lives. And some old witch in Bath had a book that you could never stop reading! You just had to wander around with your nose in it, trying to do everything one-handed. And —”

“All right, I’ve got the point,” said Harry.

The little book lay on the floor, nondescript and soggy.

“Well, we won’t find out unless we look at it,” he said, and he ducked around Ron and picked it up off the floor.

Harry saw at once that it was a diary, and the faded year on the cover told him it was fifty years old. He opened it eagerly. On the first page he could just make out the name “T. M. Riddle” in smudged ink.

“Hang on,” said Ron, who had approached cautiously and was looking over Harry’s shoulder. “I know that name. . . . T. M. Riddle got an award for special services to the school fifty years ago.”

“How on earth d’you know that?” asked Harry in amazement.

“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.”

Harry peeled the wet pages apart. 

They were completely blank. 

There wasn’t the faintest trace of writing on any of them, not even Auntie Mabel’s birthday, or dentist: half-past three.

“He never wrote in it,” said Harry, disappointed.

“I wonder why someone wanted to flush it away?” asked Ron curiously.

Harry turned to the back cover of the book and saw the printed name of a variety store on Vauxhall Road, London.

“He must’ve been Muggle-born,” said Harry thoughtfully. “To have bought a diary from Vauxhall Road. . . .”

“Well, it’s not much use to you,” said Ron. He dropped his voice. “Fifty points if you can get it through Myrtle’s nose.”

Harry, however, pocketed it.

Hermione left the hospital wing, de-whiskered, tail-less, and fur-free, at the beginning of February. On her first evening back in Gryffindor Tower, Harry showed her T. M. Riddle’s diary and told her the story of how they had found it.

“Oooh, it might have hidden powers,” said Hermione enthusiastically, taking the diary and looking at it closely.

“If it has, it’s hiding them very well,” said Ron. “Maybe it’s shy. I don’t know why you don’t chuck it, Harry.”

“I wish I knew why someone did try to chuck it,” said Harry. “I wouldn’t mind knowing how Riddle got an award for special services to Hogwarts either.”

“Could’ve been anything,” said Ron. “Maybe he got thirty O.W.L.s or saved a teacher from the giant squid. Maybe he murdered Myrtle; that would’ve done everyone a favor. . . .”

But Harry could tell from the arrested look on Hermione’s face that she was thinking what he was thinking.

“What?” said Ron, looking from one to the other.

“Well, the Chamber of Secrets was opened fifty years ago, wasn’t it?” Harry murmured. “That’s what Malfoy said.”

“Yeah . . .” Ron drawled slowly.

“And this diary is fifty years old,” said Hermione, tapping it excitedly.

“So?”

“Oh, Ron, wake up,” snapped Hermione. “We know the person who opened the Chamber last time was expelled fifty years ago. We know T. M. Riddle got an award for special services to the school fifty years ago. Well, what if Riddle got his special award for catching the Heir of Slytherin? His diary would probably tell us everything — where the Chamber is, how to open it, what sort of creature lives in it — the person who’s behind the attacks this time wouldn’t want that lying around, would they?”

“That’s a brilliant theory, Hermione,” said Ron, “with just one tiny little flaw. There’s nothing written in his diary.”

But Hermione was pulling her wand out of her bag.

“It might be invisible ink!” she whispered.

She tapped the diary three times and said, “Aparecium!”

Nothing happened. 

Undaunted, Hermione shoved her hand back into her bag and pulled out what appeared to be a bright red eraser.

“It’s a Revealer, I got it in Diagon Alley,” she said.

She rubbed hard on January first. Nothing happened.

“I’m telling you, there’s nothing to find in there,” said Ron. “Riddle just got a diary for Christmas and couldn’t be bothered filling it in.”

Hermione tried everything she could think of, but found the diary to be a hard spell to flick. After a while she gave the diary back to Harry, and the day continued.

Harry couldn’t explain, even to himself, why he didn’t just throw Riddle’s diary away. The fact was that even though he knew the diary was blank, he kept absentmindedly picking it up and turning the pages, as though it were a story he wanted to finish. 

While Harry was sure he had never heard the name T. M. Riddle before, it still seemed to mean something to him, almost as though Riddle was a friend he’d had when he was very small, and had half forgotten. 

But this was absurd: He’d never had friends before Hogwarts, Dudley had made sure of that.

Nevertheless, Harry was determined to find out more about Riddle, so next day at break, he headed for the trophy room to examine Riddle’s special award, accompanied by an interested Hermione and a thoroughly unconvinced Ron, who told them he’d seen enough of the trophy room to last him a lifetime.

Riddle’s burnished gold shield was tucked away in a corner cabinet. 

It didn’t carry details of why it had been given to him, though Ron remarked, “Good thing, too, or it’d be even bigger and I’d still be polishing it”. 

However, they did find Riddle’s name on an old Medal for Magical Merit, and on a list of old Head Boys.

“He sounds like Percy,” said Ron, wrinkling his nose in disgust. “Prefect, Head Boy . . . probably top of every class —”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” said Hermione in a slightly hurt voice. 

The sun had now begun to shine weakly on Hogwarts again. Inside the castle, the mood had grown more hopeful. 

There had been no more attacks since those on Justin and Nearly Headless Nick, and Madam Pomfrey was pleased to report that the Mandrakes were becoming moody and secretive, meaning that they were fast leaving childhood.

“The moment their acne clears up, they’ll be ready for repotting again,” Harry heard her telling Filch kindly one afternoon. “And after that, it won’t be long until we’re cutting them up and stewing them. You’ll have Mrs. Norris back in no time.”

Perhaps the Heir of Slytherin had lost his or her nerve, thought Harry. It must be getting riskier and riskier to open the Chamber of Secrets, with the school so alert and suspicious. Perhaps the monster, whatever it was, was even now settling itself down to hibernate for another fifty years. . . .

Ernie Macmillan of Hufflepuff didn’t take this cheerful view. He was still convinced that Harry was the guilty one, that he had “given himself away” at the Dueling Club. 

Peeves wasn’t helping matters; he kept popping up in the crowded corridors singing “Oh, Potter, you rotter . . .” now with a dance routine to match.

Gilderoy Lockhart seemed to think he himself had made the attacks stop. Harry overheard him telling Professor McGonagall so while the Gryffindors were lining up for Transfiguration.

“I don’t think there’ll be any more trouble, Minerva,” he said, tapping his nose knowingly and winking. “I think the Chamber has been locked for good this time. The culprit must have known it was only a matter of time before I caught him. Rather sensible to stop now, before I came down hard on him. You know, what the school needs now is a morale-booster. Wash away the memories of last term! I won’t say any more just now, but I think I know just the thing. . . .”

He tapped his nose again and strode off.

Lockhart’s idea of a morale-booster became clear at breakfast time on February fourteenth. Harry hadn’t had much sleep because of a late-running Quidditch practice the night before, and he hurried down to the Great Hall, slightly late. 

He thought, for a moment, that he’d walked through the wrong doors.

The walls were all covered with large, lurid pink flowers. 

Worse still, heartshaped confetti was falling from the pale blue ceiling. Harry went over to the Gryffindor table, where Ron was sitting looking sickened, and Hermione seemed to have been overcome with giggles.

“What’s going on?” Harry asked them, sitting down and wiping confetti off his bacon.

Ron pointed to the teachers’ table, apparently too disgusted to speak. 

Lockhart, wearing lurid pink robes to match the decorations, was waving for silence. 

The teachers on either side of him were looking stony-faced. 

From where he sat, Harry could see a muscle going in Professor McGonagall’s cheek. 

Snape looked as though someone had just fed him a large beaker of Skele-Gro.

“Happy Valentine’s Day!” Lockhart shouted grandly, spinning on his feet with his arms in the air. “And may I thank the fortysix people who have so far sent me cards! Yes, I have taken the liberty of arranging this little surprise for you all — and it doesn’t end here!”

Lockhart clapped his hands and through the doors to the entrance hall marched a dozen surly-looking dwarfs. Not just any dwarfs, however. Lockhart had them all wearing golden wings and carrying harps.

“My friendly, card-carrying cupids!” beamed Lockhart. “They will be roving around the school today delivering your valentines! And the fun doesn’t stop here! I’m sure my colleagues will want to enter into the spirit of the occasion! Why not ask Professor Snape to show you how to whip up a Love Potion! And while you’re at it, Professor Flitwick knows more about Entrancing Enchantments than any wizard I’ve ever met, the sly old dog!”

Professor Flitwick buried his face in his hands, shaking it from side to side.

 Snape was looking as though the first person to ask him for a Love Potion would be force-fed poison.

With a knife.

Through their stomach.

“Please, Hermione, tell me you weren’t one of the forty-six,” groaned Ron as they left the Great Hall for their first lesson. 

Hermione suddenly became very interested in searching her bag for her schedule, and didn’t answer.

All day long, the dwarfs kept barging into their classes to deliver valentines to the annoyance of the teachers, and late that afternoon as the Gryffindors were walking upstairs for Charms, one of the dwarfs caught up with Harry.

“Oi, you! ’Arry Porr’r!” shouted a particularly grim-looking dwarf, elbowing people out of the way to get to Harry.

Hot all over at the thought of being given a valentine in front of a line of first years, which happened to include Ginny Weasley, Harry tried to escape with a snap of his body, lurching into a run. 

“Oi!” the dwarf bellowed, his face becoming angrily determined. “No one runs from Agrathyn!”

The dwarf cut his way through the crowd by kicking people’s shins, bowling over students at the knees in order to catch up with Harry.

Before Harry could reach the tallest staircase he could find, the dwarf, Agrathyn, had caught him with a tackle around the knees.

Harry bounced off the stone floor of the castle with a “woof!” of air leaving his lungs, and groaned painfully as his glasses skittered to a stop at the bottom of the first step.

“I’ve got a musical message to deliver to ’Arry Porr’r in person!” he said, letting go and standing up with a twang of his harp… though in a rather threatening sort of way.

“Not here,” Harry hissed, trying to escape as he scrabbled for his glasses.

“Stay still!” grunted the dwarf, grabbing hold of Harry’s bag and pulling him back.

“Let me go!” Harry snarled, getting to his feet and tugging.

With a loud ripping noise, his bag split in two. 

His books, wand, parchment, and quill spilled onto the floor, ending with his ink bottle smashed over everything.

Harry scrambled around, trying to pick it all up before the dwarf started singing, causing something of a holdup in the corridor.

“What’s going on here?” came the cold, drawling voice of Draconia Malfoy. “Potter? Why are you fighting that dwarf? Decide to pick on someone your own size?”

Harry started stuffing everything feverishly into his ripped bag as people laughed quietly around him, desperate to get away before Draconia could hear his musical valentine.

“What’s all this commotion?” said another familiar voice as Percy Weasley arrived.

Losing his head, Harry tried to make a run for it, but the dwarf seized him around the knees again and brought him crashing to the floor.

“Right,” he said, sitting on Harry’s ankles with a tinkle of the heart-shaped bells on his costume wings. “Here is your singing valentine: 

His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad, 

His hair is as dark as a blackboard. 

I wish he was mine, he’s really divine, 

The hero who conquered the Dark Lord.”

Harry would have given all the gold in Gringotts to evaporate on the spot. 

Trying valiantly to laugh along with everyone else, he got up, his feet numb from the weight of the dwarf, as Percy Weasley did his best to disperse the crowd, some of whom were crying with mirth.

“Off you go, off you go, the bell rang five minutes ago, off to class, now,” he said, shooing some of the younger students away. “And you, Malfoy —”

Harry, glancing over, saw Malfoy stoop and snatch up something. 

Leering, she showed it to Crabbe and Goyle, and Harry realized that she’d gotten Riddle’s diary.

“Give that back,” said Harry quietly.

“I do wonder what Potter’s written in this?” said Draconia, who obviously hadn’t noticed the year on the cover and thought she had Harry’s own diary. “Imagine the quiet inner-mind of the chosen one…”

A hush fell over the onlookers. 

Ginny was staring from the diary to Harry, looking terrified.

“Hand it over, Malfoy,” said Percy sternly.

“When I’ve had a look, Potter.” said Draconia, waving the diary tauntingly at Harry. “I dare say I am as curious as anyone else would be…”

Percy said, “As a school prefect —” but Harry had lost his temper. 

He pulled out his wand and shouted, “Expelliarmus!” and just as Snape had Disarmed Lockhart, so Draconia found the diary shooting out of her hand into the air. 

Ron, grinning broadly, caught it.

“Harry!” said Percy loudly. “No magic in the corridors. I’ll have to report this, you know!”

But Harry didn’t care, he was one-up on Draconia, and that was worth five points from Gryffindor any day. 

Draconia was looking furious, and as Ginny passed her to enter her classroom, she yelled spitefully after her, “I don’t think Potter liked your valentine much!”

Draconia then turned on her heel with a whirl of blond hair, and stamped away.

Ginny covered her face with her hands, as red as a Weasley could get, and ran into class. 

Snarling, Ron pulled out his wand, too, but Harry pulled him away. 

Ron didn’t need to spend the whole of Charms belching slugs.

It wasn’t until they had reached Professor Flitwick’s class that Harry noticed something rather odd about Riddle’s diary. 

All his other books were drenched in scarlet ink. The diary, however, was as clean as it had been before the ink bottle had smashed all over it. 

He tried to point this out to Ron, but Ron was having trouble with his wand again; large purple bubbles were blossoming out of the end, and he wasn’t much interested in anything else.

Harry went to bed before anyone else in his dormitory that night. 

This was partly because he didn’t think he could stand Fred and George singing, “His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad” one more time, and partly because he wanted to examine Riddle’s diary again, knowing that Ron thought he was wasting his time.

Harry sat on his four-poster and flicked through the blank pages, not one of which had a trace of scarlet ink on it. 

Then he pulled a new bottle out of his bedside cabinet, dipped his quill into it, and dropped a blot onto the first page of the diary.

The ink shone brightly on the paper for a second and then, as though it was being sucked into the page, vanished. 

Excited, Harry loaded up his quill a second time and wrote, “My name is Harry Potter.”

The words shone momentarily on the page and they, too, sank without trace. 

Then, at last, something happened.

Oozing back out of the page, in his very own ink, came words Harry had never written.

“Hello, Harry Potter. My name is Tom Riddle. How did you come by my diary?”

These words, too, faded away, but not before Harry had started to scribble back.

“Someone tried to flush it down a toilet.” He waited eagerly for Riddle’s reply.

The words slowly appeared on the page. “Lucky that I recorded my memories in some more lasting way than ink. But I always knew that there would be those who would not want this diary read.”

“What do you mean?” Harry scrawled, blotting the page in his excitement.

“I mean that this diary holds memories of terrible things. Things that were covered up. Things that happened at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”

“That’s where I am now,” Harry wrote quickly. “I’m at Hogwarts, and horrible stuff’s been happening. Do you know anything about the Chamber of Secrets?”

His heart was hammering. 

Riddle’s reply came quickly, his writing becoming untidier, as though he was hurrying to tell all he knew.

“Of course I know about the Chamber of Secrets. In my day, they told us it was a legend, that it did not exist. But this was a lie. In my fifth year, the Chamber was opened and the monster attacked several students, finally killing one. I caught the person who’d opened the Chamber and he was expelled. But the headmaster, Professor Dippet, ashamed that such a thing had happened at Hogwarts, forbade me to tell the truth. A story was given out that the girl had died in a freak accident. They gave me a nice, shiny, engraved trophy for my trouble and warned me to keep my mouth shut. But I knew it could happen again. The monster lived on, and the one who had the power to release it was not imprisoned.”

Harry nearly upset his ink bottle in his hurry to write back.

“It’s happening again now. There have been three attacks and no one seems to know who’s behind them. Who was it last time?”

“I can show you, if you like,” came Riddle’s reply. “You don’t have to take my word for it. I can take you inside my memory of the night when I caught him.”

Harry hesitated, his quill suspended over the diary. 

What did Riddle mean? 

How could he be taken inside somebody else’s memory? 

He glanced nervously at the door to the dormitory, which was growing dark. 

When he looked back at the diary, he saw fresh words forming.

“Let me show you.”

Harry paused for a fraction of a second and then wrote two letters. 

“OK.”

The pages of the diary began to blow as though caught in a high wind, stopping halfway through the month of June. Mouth hanging open, Harry saw that the little square for June thirteenth seemed to have turned into a minuscule television screen. 

His hands trembling slightly, he raised the book to press his eye against the little window, and before he knew what was happening, he was tilting forward; the window was widening, he felt his body leave his bed, and he was pitched headfirst through the opening in the page, into a whirl of color and shadow.

He felt his feet hit solid ground, and stood, shaking, as the blurred shapes around him came suddenly into focus.

He knew immediately where he was. This circular room with the sleeping portraits was Dumbledore’s office — but it wasn’t Dumbledore who was sitting behind the desk. A wizened, frail-looking wizard, bald except for a few wisps of white hair, was reading a letter by candlelight. 

Harry had never seen this man before.

“I’m sorry,” he said shakily. “I didn’t mean to butt in —”

But the wizard didn’t look up. 

He continued to read, frowning slightly. 

Harry drew nearer to his desk and stammered, “Er — I’ll just go, shall I?”

Still the wizard ignored him. 

He didn’t seem even to have heard him. 

Thinking that the wizard might be deaf, Harry raised his voice.

“Sorry I disturbed you. I’ll go now,” he half-shouted.

The wizard folded up the letter with a sigh, stood up, walked past Harry without glancing at him, and went to draw the curtains at his window.

The sky outside the window was ruby-red; it seemed to be sunset. The wizard went back to the desk, sat down, and twiddled his thumbs, watching the door.

Harry looked around the office. No Fawkes the phoenix — no whirring silver contraptions. This was Hogwarts as Riddle had known it, meaning that this unknown wizard was headmaster, not Dumbledore, and he, Harry, was little more than a phantom, completely invisible to the people of fifty years ago.

There was a knock on the office door.

“Enter,” said the old wizard in a feeble voice.

A boy of about sixteen entered, taking off his pointed hat. A silver prefect’s badge was glinting on his chest. He was much taller than Harry, but he, too, had jet-black hair.

“Ah, Riddle,” said the headmaster.

“You wanted to see me, Professor Dippet?” said Riddle. 

He looked nervous.

“Sit down,” said Dippet. “I’ve just been reading the letter you sent me.”

“Oh,” said Riddle. 

He sat down, gripping his hands together very tightly.

“My dear boy,” said Dippet kindly, “I cannot possibly let you stay at school over the summer. Surely you want to go home for the holidays?”

“No,” said Riddle at once. “I’d much rather stay at Hogwarts than go back to that — to that —”

“You live in a Muggle orphanage during the holidays, I believe?” said Dippet curiously.

“Yes, sir,” said Riddle, reddening slightly.

“You are Muggle-born?”

“Half-blood, sir,” said Riddle. “Muggle father, witch mother.”

“And are both your parents — ?”

“My mother died just after I was born, sir. They told me at the orphanage she lived just long enough to name me — Tom after my father, Marvolo after my grandfather.”

Dippet clucked his tongue sympathetically.

“The thing is, Tom,” he sighed, “special arrangements might have been made for you, but in the current circumstances. . . .”

“You mean all these attacks, sir?” said Riddle, and Harry’s heart leapt, and he moved closer, scared of missing anything.

“Precisely,” said the headmaster. “My dear boy, you must see how foolish it would be of me to allow you to remain at the castle when term ends. Particularly in light of the recent tragedy . . . the death of that poor little girl. . . . You will be safer by far at your orphanage. As a matter of fact, the Ministry of Magic is even now talking about closing the school. We are no nearer locating the — er — source of all this unpleasantness. . . .”

Riddle’s eyes had widened.

“Sir — if the person was caught — if it all stopped —”

“What do you mean?” said Dippet with a squeak in his voice, sitting up in his chair. “Riddle, do you mean you know something about these attacks?”

“No, sir,” said Riddle quickly.

But Harry was sure it was the same sort of “no” that he himself had given Dumbledore.

Dippet sank back, looking faintly disappointed.

“You may go, Tom. . . .”

Riddle slid off his chair and slouched out of the room. Harry followed him.

Down the moving spiral staircase they went, emerging next to the gargoyle in the darkening corridor. Riddle stopped, and so did Harry, watching him. 

Harry could tell that Riddle was doing some serious thinking. He was biting his lip, his forehead furrowed.

Then, as though he had suddenly reached a decision, he hurried off, Harry gliding noiselessly behind him. They didn’t see another person until they reached the entrance hall, when a tall wizard with long, sweeping auburn hair and a beard called to Riddle from the marble staircase.

“What are you doing, wandering around this late, Tom?”

Harry gaped at the wizard. 

He was none other than a fifty-years-younger Dumbledore.

“I had to see the headmaster, sir,” said Riddle.

“Well, hurry off to bed,” said Dumbledore, giving Riddle exactly the kind of penetrating stare Harry knew so well. “Best not to roam the corridors these days. Not since . . .”

He sighed heavily, bade Riddle good night, and strode off. Riddle watched him walk out of sight and then, moving quickly, headed straight down the stone steps to the dungeons, with Harry in hot pursuit.

But to Harry’s disappointment, Riddle led him not into a hidden passageway or a secret tunnel but to the very dungeon in which Harry had Potions with Snape. The torches hadn’t been lit, and when Riddle pushed the door almost closed, Harry could only just see him, standing stock-still by the door, watching the passage outside.

It felt to Harry that they were there for at least an hour. All he could see was the figure of Riddle at the door, staring through the crack, waiting like a statue. And just when Harry had stopped feeling expectant and tense and started wishing he could return to the present, he heard something move beyond the door.

Someone was creeping along the passage. He heard whoever it was pass the dungeon where he and Riddle were hidden. Riddle, quiet as a shadow, edged through the door and followed, Harry tiptoeing behind him, forgetting that he couldn’t be heard.

For perhaps five minutes they followed the footsteps, until Riddle stopped suddenly, his head inclined in the direction of new noises. Harry heard a door creak open, and then someone speaking in a hoarse whisper.

“C’mon . . . gotta get yeh outta here. . . . C’mon now . . . in the box . . .”

There was something familiar about that voice. . . .

Riddle suddenly jumped around the corner. Harry stepped out behind him. He could see the dark outline of a huge boy who was crouching in front of an open door, a very large box next to it.

“Evening, Rubeus,” said Riddle sharply.

The boy slammed the door shut and stood up.

“What yer doin’ down here, Tom?”

Riddle stepped closer.

“It’s all over,” he said. “I’m going to have to turn you in, Rubeus. They’re talking about closing Hogwarts if the attacks don’t stop.”

“What d’yeh —”

“I don’t think you meant to kill anyone. But monsters don’t make good pets. I suppose you just let it out for exercise and —”

“It never killed no one!” said the large boy, backing against the closed door. 

From behind him, Harry could hear a funny rustling and clicking.

“Come on, Rubeus,” said Riddle, moving yet closer. “The dead girl’s parents will be here tomorrow. The least Hogwarts can do is make sure that the thing that killed their daughter is slaughtered. . . .”

“It wasn’t him!” roared the boy, his voice echoing in the dark passage. “He wouldn’! He never!”

“Stand aside,” said Riddle, drawing out his wand.

His spell lit the corridor with a sudden flaming light. The door behind the large boy flew open with such force it knocked him into the wall opposite. 

And out of it came something that made Harry let out a long, piercing scream unheard by anyone —

A vast, low-slung, hairy body and a tangle of black legs; a gleam of many eyes and a pair of razor-sharp pincers — Riddle raised his wand again, but he was too late. 

The thing bowled him over as it scuttled away, tearing up the corridor and out of sight. Riddle scrambled to his feet, looking after it; he raised his wand, but the huge boy leapt on him, seized his wand, and threw him back down, yelling, “NOOOOOOO!”

The scene whirled, the darkness became complete; Harry felt himself falling and, with a crash, he landed spread-eagled on his four-poster in the Gryffindor dormitory, Riddle’s diary lying open on his stomach.

Before he had had time to regain his breath, the dormitory door opened and Ron came in.

“There you are,” he said. “You got another valentine, the dwarf looked as if he was ready to rip people in half to get it out of his hands-”

Harry sat up. 

He was sweating and shaking.

“What’s up?” said Ron, looking at him with concern as he handed the letter to Harry.

“It was Hagrid, Ron!” Harry shouted, taking the valentine with an angry scoff and tossing it away. “Hagrid opened the Chamber of Secrets fifty years ago!”

Chapter 24 : Book 2: Chapter 14-15 (summary, additions, adjustments)

Chapter 14 stands as it was, with Harry, Ron, and Hermione digging into Hagrid’s past, as well as Lucius presenting Fudge in order to have Hagrid and Dumbledor removed from the school. Hermione, attempting to track down what the monster is, is Petrified. In this chapter, with a cryptic warning from Hagrid, Harry and Ron must contend with Aragog, the creature from the journal’s past, in order to find the answers to save their friend.

Summer was creeping over the grounds around the castle; sky and lake alike turned periwinkle blue and flowers large as cabbages burst into bloom in the greenhouses. But with no Hagrid visible from the castle windows, striding the grounds with Fang at his heels, the scene didn’t look right to Harry; no better, in fact, than the inside of the castle, where things were so horribly wrong.

Harry and Ron had tried to visit Hermione, but visitors were now barred from the hospital wing.

“We’re taking no more chances,” Madam Pomfrey told them severely through a crack in the infirmary door. “No, I’m sorry, there’s every chance the attacker might come back to finish these people off. . . .”

With Dumbledore gone, fear had spread as never before, so that the sun warming the castle walls outside seemed to stop at the mullioned windows. There was barely a face to be seen in the school that didn’t look worried and tense, and any laughter that rang through the corridors sounded shrill and unnatural and was quickly stifled.

Harry constantly repeated Dumbledore’s final words to himself. 

“I will only truly have left this school when none here are loyal to me. . . . Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.” 

But what good were these words? Who exactly were they supposed to ask for help, when everyone was just as confused and scared as they were?

Hagrid’s hint about the spiders was far easier to understand — the trouble was, there didn’t seem to be a single spider left in the castle to follow. Harry looked everywhere he went, helped (rather reluctantly) by Ron. They were hampered, of course, by the fact that they weren’t allowed to wander off on their own, but had to move around the castle in a pack with the other Gryffindors. 

Most of their fellow students seemed glad that they were being shepherded from class to class by teachers, but Harry found it very irksome.

One person, however, seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the atmosphere of terror and suspicion. 

Draconia Malfoy was strutting around the school as though she had just been appointed Head Girl. 

Harry didn’t realize what she was so pleased about until the Potions lesson about two weeks after Dumbledore and Hagrid had left, when, sitting right behind Draconia, Harry overheard her gloating to Crabbe and Goyle.

“I always thought Father might be the one who got rid of Dumbledore,” she said, not troubling to keep her voice down. “I told you he thinks Dumbledore’s the worst headmaster the school’s ever had. Maybe we’ll get a decent headmaster now. Someone who won’t want the Chamber of Secrets closed. McGonagall won’t last long, she’s only filling in. . . .”

Snape swept past Harry, making no comment about Hermione’s empty seat and cauldron.

“Sir.” said Draconia loudly. “Sir, why don’t you apply for the headmaster’s job?”

“Now, now, Malfoy,” said Snape, though he couldn’t suppress a thin-lipped smile. “Professor Dumbledore has only been suspended by the governors. I daresay he’ll be back with us soon enough.”

“Yeah, right,” said Draconia, smirking. “I expect you’d have Father’s vote, sir, if you wanted to apply for the job — I’ll tell Father you’re the best teacher here, sir —”

Snape smirked as he swept off around the dungeon, fortunately not spotting Seamus Finnigan, who was pretending to vomit into his cauldron.

“I’m quite surprised the Mudbloods haven’t all packed their bags by now,” Draconia went on. “Bet you five Galleons the next one dies. Pity it wasn’t Granger…”

The bell rang at that moment, which was lucky; at Draconia’s last words, Ron had leapt off his stool, and in the scramble to collect bags and books, his attempts to reach her went unnoticed.

“Let me at her!” Ron growled as Harry and Dean hung onto his arms. “I don’t care, I don’t need my wand, I’m going to kill her with my bare hands!”

“Hurry up, I’ve got to take you all to Herbology,” barked Snape over the class’s heads, and off they marched, with Harry, Ron, and Dean bringing up the rear, Ron still trying to get loose. 

It was only safe to let go of him when Snape had seen them out of the castle and they were making their way across the vegetable patch toward the greenhouses.

The Herbology class was very subdued; there were now two missing from their number, Justin and Hermione.

Professor Sprout set them all to work pruning the Abyssinian Shrivelfigs. 

Harry went to tip an armful of withered stalks onto the compost heap and found himself face-to-face with Ernie Macmillan. 

Ernie took a deep breath and said, very formally, “I just want to say, Harry, that I’m sorry I ever suspected you. I know you’d never attack Hermione Granger, and I apologize for all the stuff I said. We’re all in the same boat now, and, well —”

He held out a pudgy hand, and Harry shook it.

Ernie and his friend Hannah came to work at the same Shrivelfig as Harry and Ron.

“That Draconia Malfoy character,” said Ernie, breaking off dead twigs, “she seems very pleased about all this, doesn’t she? D’you know, I think she might be Slytherin’s heir.”

“That’s clever of you,” said Ron, who didn’t seem to have forgiven Ernie as readily as Harry.

“Do you think it’s Malfoy, Harry?” Ernie asked.

“No,” said Harry, so firmly that Ernie and Hannah stared.

A second later, Harry spotted something.

Several large spiders were scuttling over the ground on the other side of the glass, moving in an unnaturally straight line as though taking the shortest route to a prearranged meeting. 

Harry hit Ron over the hand with his pruning shears.

“Ouch! What’re you —”

Harry pointed out the spiders, following their progress with his eyes screwed up against the sun.

“Oh, yeah,” said Ron, trying, and failing, to look pleased. “But we can’t follow them now —”

Ernie and Hannah were listening curiously.

Harry’s eyes narrowed as he focused on the spiders. If they pursued their fixed course, there could be no doubt about where they would end up. “Looks like they’re heading for the Forbidden Forest. . . .”

Ron looked even unhappier about that.

At the end of the class, Professor Sprout escorted the class to their Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson. Harry and Ron lagged behind the others so they could talk out of earshot.

“We’ll have to use the Invisibility Cloak again,” Harry told Ron. “We can take Fang with us. He’s used to going into the forest with Hagrid, he might be some help.”

“Right,” said Ron, who was twirling his wand nervously in his fingers. “Er — aren’t there — aren’t there supposed to be werewolves in the forest?” he added as they took their usual places at the back of Lockhart’s classroom.

Preferring not to answer that question, Harry said, “There are good things in there, too. The centaurs are all right, and the unicorns . . .”

Ron had never been into the Forbidden Forest before. 

Harry had entered it only once and had hoped never to do so again.

The old memory of looking at Draconia’s face in the lantern light flitted across Harry’s mind, but he stamped it out like a bug, no matter how it gave him an odd little tickle in his chest.

Lockhart bounded into the room and the class stared at him. Every other teacher in the place was looking grimmer than usual, but Lockhart appeared nothing short of buoyant.

“Come now,” he cried, beaming around him. “Why all these long faces?”

People swapped exasperated looks, but nobody answered.

“Don’t you people realize,” said Lockhart, speaking slowly, as though they were all a bit dim, “the danger has passed! The culprit has been taken away —”

“Says who?” said Dean Thomas loudly.

“My dear young man, the Minister of Magic wouldn’t have taken Hagrid if he hadn’t been one hundred percent sure that he was guilty,” said Lockhart, in the tone of someone explaining that one and one made two.

“Oh, yes he would,” said Ron, even more loudly than Dean.

“I flatter myself I know a touch more about Hagrid’s arrest than you do, Mr. Weasley,” said Lockhart in a self-satisfied tone.

Ron started to say that he didn’t think so, somehow, but stopped in midsentence when Harry kicked him hard under the desk.

“We weren’t there, remember?” Harry muttered.

But Lockhart’s disgusting cheeriness, his hints that he had always thought Hagrid was no good, his confidence that the whole business was now at an end, irritated Harry so much that he yearned to throw “Gadding with Ghouls” right in Lockhart’s stupid face. 

Instead he contented himself with scrawling a note to Ron: “Let’s do it tonight”.

Ron read the message, swallowed hard, and looked sideways at the empty seat usually filled by Hermione. 

The sight seemed to stiffen his resolve, and he nodded.

The Gryffindor common room was always very crowded these days, because from six o’clock onward the Gryffindors had nowhere else to go. They also had plenty to talk about, with the result that the common room often didn’t empty until past midnight.

Harry went to get the Invisibility Cloak out of his trunk right after dinner, and spent the evening sitting on it, waiting for the room to clear. Fred and George challenged Harry and Ron to a few games of Exploding Snap, and Ginny sat watching them, very subdued in Hermione’s usual chair. 

Harry and Ron kept losing on purpose, trying to finish the games quickly, but even so, it was well past midnight when Fred, George, and Ginny finally went to bed.

Harry and Ron waited for the distant sounds of two dormitory doors closing before seizing the cloak, throwing it over themselves, and climbing through the portrait hole.

It was another difficult journey through the castle, dodging all the teachers. 

At last they reached the entrance hall, slid back the lock on the oak front doors, squeezed between them, trying to stop any creaking, and stepped out into the moonlit grounds.

“’Course,” said Ron abruptly as they strode across the black grass, “we might get to the forest and find there’s nothing to follow. Those spiders might not’ve been going there at all. I know it looked like they were moving in that sort of general direction, but . . .”

His voice trailed away hopefully.

They reached Hagrid’s house, sad and sorry-looking with its blank windows. When Harry pushed the door open, Fang went mad with joy at the sight of them. Worried he might wake everyone at the castle with his deep, booming barks, they hastily fed him treacle toffee from a tin on the mantelpiece, which glued his teeth together.

Harry left the Invisibility Cloak on Hagrid’s table. There would be no need for it in the pitch-dark forest.

“C’mon, Fang, we’re going for a walk,” said Harry, patting his leg, and Fang bounded happily out of the house behind them, dashed to the edge of the forest, and lifted his leg against a large sycamore tree.

Harry took out his wand, murmured, “Lumos!” and a tiny light appeared at the end of it, just enough to let them watch the path for signs of spiders.

“Good thinking,” said Ron. “I’d light mine, too, but you know — it’d probably blow up or something. . . .”

Harry tapped Ron on the shoulder, pointing at the grass. Two solitary spiders were hurrying away from the wandlight into the shade of the trees.

“Okay,” Ron sighed as though resigned to the worst, “I’m ready. Let’s go.”

So, with Fang scampering around them, sniffing tree roots and leaves, they entered the forest. By the glow of Harry’s wand, they followed the steady trickle of spiders moving along the path. They walked behind them for about twenty minutes, not speaking, listening hard for noises other than breaking twigs and rustling leaves. Then, when the trees had become thicker than ever, so that the stars overhead were no longer visible, and Harry’s wand shone alone in the sea of dark, they saw their spider guides leaving the path.

Harry paused, trying to see where the spiders were going, but everything outside his little sphere of light was pitch-black. He had never been this deep into the forest before. He could vividly remember Hagrid advising him not to leave the forest path last time he’d been in here. But Hagrid was miles away now, probably sitting in a cell in Azkaban, and he had also said to follow the spiders.

Something wet touched Harry’s hand and he jumped backward, crushing Ron’s foot, but it was only Fang’s nose.

“What d’you reckon?” Harry said to Ron, whose eyes he could just make out, reflecting the light from his wand.

“We’ve come this far,” said Ron.

So they followed the darting shadows of the spiders into the trees. They couldn’t move very quickly now; there were tree roots and stumps in their way, barely visible in the near blackness. Harry could feel Fang’s hot breath on his hand. More than once, they had to stop, so that Harry could crouch down and find the spiders in the wandlight.

They walked for what seemed like at least half an hour, their robes snagging on low-slung branches and brambles. After a while, they noticed

that the ground seemed to be sloping downward, though the trees were as thick as ever.

Then Fang suddenly let loose a great, echoing bark, making both Harry and Ron jump out of their skins.

“What?” said Ron loudly, looking around into the pitch-dark, and gripping Harry’s elbow very hard.

“There’s something moving over there,” Harry breathed. “Listen . . . sounds like something big. . . .”

They listened. Some distance to their right, the something big was snapping branches as it carved a path through the trees.

“Oh, no,” said Ron. “Oh, no, oh, no, oh —”

“Shut up,” said Harry frantically. “It’ll hear you.”

“Hear me?” said Ron in an unnaturally high voice. “It’s already heard Fang!”

The darkness seemed to be pressing on their eyeballs as they stood, terrified, waiting. There was a strange rumbling noise and then silence.

“What d’you think it’s doing?” said Harry.

“Probably getting ready to pounce,” said Ron.

They waited, shivering, hardly daring to move.

“D’you think it’s gone?” Harry whispered.

“Dunno —”

Then, to their right, came a sudden blaze of light, so bright in the darkness that both of them flung up their hands to shield their eyes. Fang yelped and tried to run, but got lodged in a tangle of thorns and yelped even louder.

“Harry!” Ron shouted, his voice breaking with relief. “Harry, it’s our car!”

“What?”

“Come on!”

Harry blundered after Ron toward the light, stumbling and tripping, and a

moment later they had emerged into a clearing.

Mr. Weasley’s car was standing, empty, in the middle of a circle of thick trees under a roof of dense branches, its headlights ablaze. As Ron walked, openmouthed, toward it, it moved slowly toward him, exactly like a large, turquoise dog greeting its owner.

“It’s been here all the time!” said Ron delightedly, walking around the car. “Look at it. The forest’s turned it wild. . . .”

The sides of the car were scratched and smeared with mud. Apparently it had taken to trundling around the forest on its own. Fang didn’t seem at all keen on it; he kept close to Harry, who could feel him quivering. His breathing slowing down again, Harry stuffed his wand back into his robes.

“And we thought it was going to attack us!” said Ron, leaning against the car and patting it. “I wondered where it had gone!”

Harry squinted around on the floodlit ground for signs of more spiders, but they had all scuttled away from the glare of the headlights.

“We’ve lost the trail,” he said. “C’mon, let’s go and find them.”

Ron didn’t speak. He didn’t move. His eyes were fixed on a point some ten feet above the forest floor, right behind Harry. His face was livid with terror.

Harry didn’t even have time to turn around. There was a loud clicking noise and suddenly he felt something long and hairy seize him around the middle and lift him off the ground, so that he was hanging facedown. Struggling, terrified, he heard more clicking, and saw Ron’s legs leave the ground, too, heard Fang whimpering and howling — next moment, he was being swept away into the dark trees.

Head hanging, Harry saw that what had hold of him was marching on six immensely long, hairy legs, the front two clutching him tightly below a pair of shining black pincers. Behind him, he could hear another of the creatures, no doubt carrying Ron. They were moving into the very heart of the forest. Harry could hear Fang fighting to free himself from a third monster, whining loudly, but Harry couldn’t have yelled even if he had wanted to; he seemed to have left his voice back with the car in the clearing.

He never knew how long he was in the creature’s clutches; he only knew that the darkness suddenly lifted enough for him to see that the leaf-strewn ground was now swarming with spiders. Craning his neck sideways, he realized that they had reached the ridge of a vast hollow, a hollow that had been cleared of trees, so that the stars shone brightly onto the worst scene he had ever laid eyes on.

Spiders. Not tiny spiders like those surging over the leaves below. Spiders the size of carthorses, eight-eyed, eight-legged, black, hairy, gigantic. The massive specimen that was carrying Harry made its way down the steep slope toward a misty, domed web in the very center of the hollow, while its fellows closed in all around it, clicking their pincers excitedly at the sight of its load.

Harry fell to the ground on all fours as the spider released him. Ron and Fang thudded down next to him. Fang wasn’t howling anymore, but cowering silently on the spot. Ron looked exactly like Harry felt. His mouth was stretched wide in a kind of silent scream and his eyes were popping.

Harry suddenly realized that the spider that had dropped him was saying something. It had been hard to tell, because he clicked his pincers with every word he spoke.

“Aragog!” it called. “Aragog!”

And from the middle of the misty, domed web, a spider the size of a small elephant emerged, very slowly. There was gray in the black of his body and legs, and each of the eyes on his ugly, pincered head was milky white. 

He was blind.

“What is it?” he said, clicking his pincers rapidly.

“Men,” clicked the spider who had caught Harry.

“Is it Hagrid?” said Aragog, moving closer, his eight milky eyes wandering vaguely.

“Strangers,” clicked the spider who had brought Ron.

“Kill them,” clicked Aragog fretfully. “I was sleeping. . . .”

“We’re friends of Hagrid’s,” Harry shouted. 

His heart seemed to have left

his chest to pound in his throat.

Click, click, click went the pincers of the spiders all around the hollow.

Aragog paused.

“Hagrid has never sent men into our hollow before,” he said slowly.

“Hagrid’s in trouble,” said Harry, breathing very fast. “That’s why we’ve come.”

“In trouble?” said the aged spider, and Harry thought he heard concern beneath the clicking pincers. “But why has he sent you?”

Harry thought of getting to his feet but decided against it; he didn’t think his legs would support him. So he spoke from the ground, as calmly as he could.

“They think, up at the school, that Hagrid’s been setting a — a — something on students. They’ve taken him to Azkaban.”

Aragog clicked his pincers furiously, and all around the hollow the sound was echoed by the crowd of spiders; it was like applause, except applause didn’t usually make Harry feel sick with fear.

“But that was years ago,” said Aragog fretfully. “Years and years ago. I remember it well. That’s why they made him leave the school. They believed that I was the monster that dwells in what they call the Chamber of Secrets. They thought that Hagrid had opened the Chamber and set me free.”

“And you . . . you didn’t come from the Chamber of Secrets?” said Harry, who could feel cold sweat on his forehead.

“I!” said Aragog, clicking angrily. “I was not born in the castle. I come from a distant land. A traveler gave me to Hagrid when I was an egg. Hagrid was only a boy, but he cared for me, hidden in a cupboard in the castle, feeding me on scraps from the table. Hagrid is my good friend, and a good man. When I was discovered, and blamed for the death of a girl, he protected me. I have lived here in the forest ever since, where Hagrid still visits me. He even found me a wife, Mosag, and you see how our family has grown, all through Hagrid’s goodness. . . .”

Harry summoned what remained of his courage.

“So you never — never attacked anyone?”

“Never,” croaked the old spider. “It would have been my instinct, but out of respect for Hagrid, I never harmed a human. The body of the girl who was killed was discovered in a bathroom. I never saw any part of the castle but the cupboard in which I grew up. Our kind like the dark and the quiet. . . .”

“But then . . . Do you know what did kill that girl?” said Harry. “Because whatever it is, it’s back and attacking people again —”

His words were drowned by a loud outbreak of clicking and the rustling of many long legs shifting angrily; large black shapes shifted all around him.

“The thing that lives in the castle,” said Aragog, “is an ancient creature we spiders fear above all others. Well do I remember how I pleaded with Hagrid to let me go, when I sensed the beast moving about the school.”

“What is it?” said Harry urgently.

More loud clicking, more rustling; the spiders seemed to be closing in.

“We do not speak of it!” said Aragog fiercely. “We do not name it! I never even told Hagrid the name of that dread creature, though he asked me, many times.”

Harry didn’t want to press the subject, not with the spiders pressing closer on all sides. Aragog seemed to be tired of talking. He was backing slowly into his domed web, but his fellow spiders continued to inch slowly toward Harry and Ron.

“We’ll just go, then,” Harry called desperately to Aragog, hearing leaves rustling behind him.

“Go?” said Aragog slowly. “I think not. . . .”

“But — but —”

“My sons and daughters do not harm Hagrid, on my command. But I cannot deny them fresh meat, when it wanders so willingly into our midst. Good-bye, friend of Hagrid.”

Harry spun around. Feet away, towering above him, was a solid wall of spiders, clicking, their many eyes gleaming in their ugly black heads.

Even as he reached for his wand, Harry knew it was no good, there were too many of them, but as he tried to stand, ready to die fighting, a loud, long note sounded, and a blaze of light flamed through the hollow.

Mr. Weasley’s car was thundering down the slope, headlights glaring, its horn screeching, knocking spiders aside; several were thrown onto their backs, their endless legs waving in the air. 

The car screeched to a halt in front of Harry and Ron and the doors flew open.

“Get Fang!” Harry yelled, diving into the front seat.

Ron seized the boarhound around the middle and threw him, yelping, into the back of the car — the doors slammed shut — Ron didn’t touch the accelerator but the car didn’t need him.

The engine roared and they were off, hitting more spiders. They sped up the slope, out of the hollow, and they were soon crashing through the forest, branches whipping the windows as the car wound its way cleverly through the widest gaps, following a path it obviously knew.

Harry looked sideways at Ron. 

His mouth was still open in the silent scream, but his eyes weren’t popping anymore.

“Are you okay?” Harry asked, fixing his askew glasses.

Ron stared straight ahead, unable to speak.

They smashed their way through the undergrowth, Fang howling loudly in the back seat, and Harry saw the side mirror snap off as they squeezed past a large oak. 

After ten noisy, rocky minutes, the trees thinned, and Harry could again see patches of sky.

The car stopped so suddenly that they were nearly thrown into the windshield. 

They had reached the edge of the forest. 

Fang flung himself at the window in his anxiety to get out, and when Harry opened the door, he shot off through the trees to Hagrid’s house, tail between his legs. Harry got out too, and after a minute or so, Ron seemed to regain the feeling in his limbs and followed, still stiff-necked and staring. 

Harry gave the car a grateful pat as it reversed back into the forest and disappeared from view.

Harry went back into Hagrid’s cabin to get the Invisibility Cloak. Fang was trembling under a blanket in his basket. 

When Harry got outside again, he found Ron being violently sick in the pumpkin patch.

“Follow the spiders,” said Ron weakly, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “I’ll never forgive Hagrid. We’re lucky to be alive.”

“I bet he thought Aragog wouldn’t hurt friends of his,” said Harry.

“That’s exactly Hagrid’s problem!” said Ron, thumping the wall of the cabin. “He always thinks monsters aren’t as bad as they’re made out, and look where it’s got him! A cell in Azkaban!” He was shivering uncontrollably now. “What was the point of sending us in there? What have we found out, I’d like to know?”

“That Hagrid never opened the Chamber of Secrets,” said Harry, throwing the cloak over Ron and prodding him in the arm to make him walk. “He was innocent.”

Ron gave a loud snort. Evidently, hatching Aragog in a cupboard wasn’t his idea of being innocent.

As the castle loomed nearer Harry twitched the cloak to make sure their feet were hidden, stepping along the pathway to the grand front doors.

Harry and Ron came to a stop when they saw someone sitting in the shadow of the doors, a long-glass to her eye, and she was smiling to herself. The moon shifted out from behind the clouds, and the two of them bent forward at the neck in utter shock.

It was Draconia Malfoy.

“Marvelous thing, that car.” Draconia murmured, watching the old Ford Anglia do victorious donuts on a nearby hill. “Got to Harry just in time.” She smiled as she watched the Anglia flick its lights a few times at the castle, then speed away into the forest. “Good thing that blaggard Macmillan knows a thing or two about those Muggle… radio whatcha’callits, and saw Harry watching those spiders.”

“Since when does she call you Harry?” Ron whispered to Harry, who shook his head back and forth in stunned silence.

“If I’m lucky, something ate Weasley.” Draconia giggled as she snapped the long-glass shut with a press of her hands. “Two more pieces off the board in one year…”

“That little bi-” Ron said with a flare of color to his face, and it took Harry wrapping his arm around his mouth to keep him from breaking their concealment.

Draconia checked around her, then slowly slid past the doors as she opened them, sneaking back into the castle.

After a while, Ron and Harry pushed the creaking front doors ajar for themselves, Ron muttering the entire way. They walked carefully back across the entrance hall and up the marble staircase, holding their breath as they passed corridors where watchful sentries were walking. 

At last they reached the safety of the Gryffindor common room, where the fire had burned itself into glowing ash. They took off the cloak and climbed the winding stair to their dormitory.

Ron fell onto his bed without bothering to get undressed. 

Harry, however, didn’t feel very sleepy. 

He sat on the edge of his four-poster, thinking hard about everything Aragog had said, and the fact that Draconia may be the reason why he was alive in the first place.

The creature that was lurking somewhere in the castle, he thought, sounded like a sort of monster Voldemort — even other monsters didn’t want to name it. 

But he and Ron were no closer to finding out what it was, or how it Petrified its victims. 

Even Hagrid had never known what was in the Chamber of Secrets.

How the hell did Macmillan find out? Let alone end up talking to Draconia? Harry thought as well, blinking at the drapings of his bed. Why would she even bother speaking to a Hufflepuff?

Harry swung his legs up onto his bed and leaned back against his pillows, watching the moon glinting at him through the tower window.

He pushed Draconia from his mind, and couldn’t see what else they could do. They had hit dead ends everywhere. 

Riddle had caught the wrong person, the Heir of Slytherin had got off, and no one could tell whether it was the same person, or a different one, who had opened the Chamber this time. 

There was nobody else to ask. 

Harry lay down, still thinking about what Aragog had said.

He was becoming drowsy when what seemed like their very last hope occurred to him, and he suddenly sat bolt upright.

“Ron,” he hissed through the dark, “Ron —”

Ron woke with a yelp like Fang’s, stared wildly around, and saw Harry.

“Ron — that girl who died. Aragog said she was found in a bathroom,” said Harry, ignoring Neville’s snuffling snores from the corner. “What if she never left the bathroom? What if she’s still there?”

Ron rubbed his eyes, frowning through the moonlight. And then he understood, too.

“You don’t think — not Moaning Myrtle?

Chapter 25 : Book 2: Chapter 16 (Editing)

“All those times we were in that bathroom, and she was just three toilets

away,” said Ron bitterly at breakfast next day, “and we could’ve asked her, and now . . .”

It had been hard enough trying to look for spiders. Escaping their teachers long enough to sneak into a girls’ bathroom, the girls’ bathroom, moreover, right next to the scene of the first attack, was going to be almost impossible.

But something happened in their first lesson, Transfiguration, that drove the Chamber of Secrets out of their minds for the first time in weeks. Ten minutes into the class, Professor McGonagall told them that their exams would start on the first of June, one week from today.

“Exams?” howled Seamus Finnigan. “We’re still getting exams?”

There was a loud bang behind Harry as Neville Longbottom’s wand slipped, vanishing one of the legs on his desk. Professor McGonagall restored it with a wave of her own wand, and turned, frowning, to Seamus.

“The whole point of keeping the school open at this time is for you to receive your education,” she said sternly. “The exams will therefore take place as usual, and I trust you are all studying hard.”

Studying hard! It had never occurred to Harry that there would be exams with the castle in this state. There was a great deal of mutinous muttering around the room, which made Professor McGonagall scowl even more darkly.

“Professor Dumbledore’s instructions were to keep the school running as normally as possible,” she said. “And that, I need hardly point out, means finding out how much you have learned this year.”

Harry looked down at the pair of white rabbits he was supposed to be turning into slippers. What had he learned so far this year? He couldn’t seem to think of anything that would be useful in an exam.

Ron looked as though he’d just been told he had to go and live in the Forbidden Forest.

“Can you imagine me taking exams with this?” he asked Harry, holding up his wand, which had just started whistling loudly.

Three days before their first exam, Professor McGonagall made another announcement at breakfast.

“I have good news,” she said, and the Great Hall, instead of falling silent, erupted.

“Dumbledore’s coming back!” several people yelled joyfully.

“You’ve caught the Heir of Slytherin!” squealed a girl at the Ravenclaw table.

“Quidditch matches are back on!” roared Wood excitedly.

When the hubbub had subsided, Professor McGonagall said, “Professor Sprout has informed me that the Mandrakes are ready for cutting at last. Tonight, we will be able to revive those people who have been Petrified. I need hardly remind you all that one of them may well be able to tell us who, or what, attacked them. I am hopeful that this dreadful year will end with our catching the culprit.”

There was an explosion of cheering. Harry looked over at the Slytherin table and wasn’t at all surprised to see that Draconia Malfoy hadn’t joined in. 

She hadn’t been very happy to see Ron the following morning, either, and seemed rather dark around the lower eyes from lack of sleep.

Ernie Macmillan on the other hand looked jubilant, though equally tired.

Ron was looking happier than he’d looked in days.

“It won’t matter that we never asked Myrtle, then!” he said to Harry. “Hermione’ll probably have all the answers when they wake her up! Mind you, she’ll go crazy when she finds out we’ve got exams in three days’ time. She hasn’t studied. It might be kinder to leave her where she is till they’re over.”

Just then, Ginny Weasley came over and sat down next to Ron. She looked tense and nervous, and Harry noticed that her hands were twisting in her lap.

“What’s up?” said Ron, helping himself to more porridge.

Ginny didn’t say anything, but glanced up and down the Gryffindor table with a scared look on her face that reminded Harry of someone, though he couldn’t think who.

“Spit it out,” said Ron, watching her.

Harry suddenly realized who Ginny looked like. She was rocking backward and forward slightly in her chair, exactly like Dobby did when he was teetering on the edge of revealing forbidden information.

“I’ve got to tell you something,” Ginny mumbled, carefully not looking at Harry.

“What is it?” said Harry.

Ginny looked as though she couldn’t find the right words.

“What?” said Ron.

Ginny opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Harry leaned forward and spoke quietly, so that only Ginny and Ron could hear him.

“Is it something about the Chamber of Secrets? Have you seen something? Someone acting oddly?”

Ginny drew a deep breath and, at that precise moment, Percy Weasley appeared, looking tired and wan.

“If you’ve finished eating, I’ll take that seat, Ginny. I’m starving, I’ve only just come off patrol duty.”

Ginny jumped up as though her chair had just been electrified, gave Percy a fleeting, frightened look, and scampered away. Percy sat down and grabbed a mug from the center of the table.

“Percy!” said Ron angrily. “She was just about to tell us something important!”

Halfway through a gulp of tea, Percy choked. “What sort of thing?” he said, coughing.

“I just asked her if she’d seen anything odd, and she started to say —” 

“Oh — that — that’s nothing to do with the Chamber of Secrets,” said Percy at once.

“How do you know?” said Ron, his eyebrows raised.

“Well, er, if you must know, Ginny, er, walked in on me the other day when I was — well, never mind — the point is, she spotted me doing something and I, um, I asked her not to mention it to anybody. I must say, I did think she’d keep her word. It’s nothing, really, I’d just rather —”

Harry had never seen Percy look so uncomfortable.

“What were you doing, Percy?” said Ron, grinning. “Go on, tell us, we won’t laugh.”

Percy didn’t smile back.

“Pass me those rolls, Harry, I’m starving.”

Harry knew the whole mystery might be solved tomorrow without their help, but he wasn’t about to pass up a chance to speak to Myrtle if it turned up — and to his delight it did, midmorning, when they were being led to History of Magic by Gilderoy Lockhart.

Lockhart, who had so often assured them that all danger had passed, only to be proved wrong right away, was now wholeheartedly convinced that it was hardly worth the trouble to see them safely down the corridors. His hair wasn’t as sleek as usual; it seemed he had been up most of the night, patrolling the fourth floor.

“Mark my words,” he said, ushering them around a corner. “The first words out of those poor Petrified people’s mouths will be ‘It was Hagrid.’ Frankly, I’m astounded Professor McGonagall thinks all these security measures are necessary.”

“I agree, sir,” said Harry, making Ron drop his books in surprise.

“Thank you, Harry,” said Lockhart graciously while they waited for a long line of Hufflepuffs to pass. “I mean, we teachers have quite enough to be getting on with, without walking students to classes and standing guard all night. . . .”

“That’s right,” said Ron, catching on. “Why don’t you leave us here, sir, we’ve only got one more corridor to go —”

“You know, Weasley, I think I will,” said Lockhart. “I really should go and prepare my next class —”

And he hurried off.

“Prepare his class,” Ron sneered after him. “Gone to curl his hair, more like.”

They let the rest of the Gryffindors draw ahead of them, then darted down a side passage and hurried off toward Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom. But just as they were congratulating each other on their brilliant scheme —

“Potter! Weasley! What are you doing?”

It was Professor McGonagall, and her mouth was the thinnest of thin lines.

“We were — we were —” Ron stammered. “We were going to — to go and see —”

“Hermione,” said Harry. Ron and Professor McGonagall both looked at him.

“We haven’t seen her for ages, Professor,” Harry went on hurriedly, treading on Ron’s foot, “and we thought we’d sneak into the hospital wing, you know, and tell her the Mandrakes are nearly ready and, er, not to worry —”

Professor McGonagall was still staring at him, and for a moment, Harry thought she was going to explode, but when she spoke, it was in a strangely croaky voice.

“Of course,” she said, and Harry, amazed, saw a tear glistening in her beady eye. “Of course, I realize this has all been hardest on the friends of those who have been . . . I quite understand. Yes, Potter, of course you may visit Miss Granger. I will inform Professor Binns where you’ve gone. Tell Madam Pomfrey I have given my permission.”

Harry and Ron walked away, hardly daring to believe that they’d avoided detention. As they turned the corner, they distinctly heard Professor McGonagall blow her nose.

“That,” said Ron fervently, “was the best story you’ve ever come up with.”

They had no choice now but to go to the hospital wing and tell Madam Pomfrey that they had Professor McGonagall’s permission to visit Hermione.

Madam Pomfrey let them in, but reluctantly.

“There’s just no point talking to a Petrified person,” she said, and they had to admit she had a point when they’d taken their seats next to Hermione. It was plain that Hermione didn’t have the faintest inkling that she had visitors, and that they might just as well tell her bedside cabinet not to worry for all the good it would do.

“Wonder if she did see the attacker, though?” said Ron, looking sadly at Hermione’s rigid face. “Because if he sneaked up on them all, no one’ll ever know. . . .”

But Harry wasn’t looking at Hermione’s face. He was more interested in her right hand. It lay clenched on top of her blankets, and bending closer, he saw that a piece of paper was scrunched inside her fist.

Making sure that Madam Pomfrey was nowhere near, he pointed this out to Ron.

“Try and get it out,” Ron whispered, shifting his chair so that he blocked Harry from Madam Pomfrey’s view.

It was no easy task. Hermione’s hand was clamped so tightly around the paper that Harry was sure he was going to tear it. While Ron kept watch he tugged and twisted, and at last, after several tense minutes, the paper came free.

It was a page torn from a very old library book. Harry smoothed it out

eagerly and Ron leaned close to read it, too.

Of the many fearsome beasts and monsters that roam our land, there is none more curious or more deadly than the Basilisk, known also as the King of Serpents. This snake, which may reach gigantic size and live many hundreds of years, is born from a chicken’s egg, hatched beneath a toad. Its methods of killing are most wondrous, for aside from its deadly and venomous fangs, the Basilisk has a murderous stare, and all who are fixed with the beam of its eye shall suffer instant death. Spiders flee before the Basilisk, for it is their mortal enemy, and the Basilisk flees only from the crowing of the rooster, which is fatal to it.

And beneath this, a single word had been written, in a hand Harry recognized as Hermione’s. Pipes.

It was as though somebody had just flicked a light on in his brain.

“Ron,” he breathed. “This is it. This is the answer. The monster in the Chamber’s a basilisk — a giant serpent! That’s why I’ve been hearing that voice all over the place, and nobody else has heard it. It’s because I understand Parseltongue. . . .”

Harry looked up at the beds around him.

“The basilisk kills people by looking at them. But no one’s died — because no one looked it straight in the eye. Colin saw it through his camera. The basilisk burned up all the film inside it, but Colin just got Petrified. Justin . . . Justin must’ve seen the basilisk through Nearly Headless Nick! Nick got the full blast of it, but he couldn’t die again . . . and Hermione and that Ravenclaw prefect were found with a mirror next to them. Hermione had just realized the monster was a basilisk. I bet you anything she warned the first person she met to look around corners with a mirror first! And that girl pulled out her mirror — and —”

Ron’s jaw had dropped.

“And Mrs. Norris?” he whispered eagerly.

Harry thought hard, picturing the scene on the night of Halloween.

“The water . . .” he said slowly. “The flood from Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom. I bet you Mrs. Norris only saw the reflection. . . .”

He scanned the page in his hand eagerly. The more he looked at it, the more it made sense.

“‘The Basilisk flees only from the crowing of the rooster, which is fatal to it’!” he read aloud. “Hagrid’s roosters were killed! The Heir of Slytherin didn’t want one anywhere near the castle once the Chamber was opened! ‘Spiders flee before the Basilisk’! It all fits!”

“But how’s the basilisk been getting around the place?” said Ron. “A giant snake . . . Someone would’ve seen . . .”

Harry, however, pointed at the word Hermione had scribbled at the foot of the page.

“Pipes,” he said. “Pipes . . . Ron, it’s been using the plumbing. I’ve been hearing that voice inside the walls. . . .”

Ron suddenly grabbed Harry’s arm.

“The entrance to the Chamber of Secrets!” he said hoarsely. “What if it’s a bathroom? What if it’s in —”

“— Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom,” said Harry.

They sat there, excitement coursing through them, hardly able to believe it.

“This means,” said Harry, “I can’t be the only Parselmouth in the school. The Heir of Slytherin’s one, too. That’s how he’s been controlling the basilisk.”

“What’re we going to do?” said Ron, whose eyes were flashing. “Should we go straight to McGonagall?”

“Let’s go to the staffroom,” said Harry, jumping up. “She’ll be there in ten minutes. It’s nearly break.”

They ran downstairs. Not wanting to be discovered hanging around in another corridor, they went straight into the deserted staffroom. It was a large, paneled room full of dark, wooden chairs. Harry and Ron paced around it, too excited to sit down.

But the bell to signal break never came.

Instead, echoing through the corridors came Professor McGonagall’s voice, magically magnified.

“All students to return to their House dormitories at once. All teachers return to the staffroom. Immediately, please.”

Harry wheeled around to stare at Ron. “Not another attack? Not now?”

“What’ll we do?” said Ron, aghast. “Go back to the dormitory?”

“No,” said Harry, glancing around. There was an ugly sort of wardrobe to his left, full of the teachers’ cloaks. “In here. Let’s hear what it’s all about. Then we can tell them what we’ve found out.”

They hid themselves inside it, listening to the rumbling of hundreds of people moving overhead, and the staffroom door banging open. From between the musty folds of the cloaks, they watched the teachers filtering into the room. Some of them were looking puzzled, others downright scared. Then Professor McGonagall arrived.

“It has happened,” she told the silent staffroom. “A student has been taken by the monster. Right into the Chamber itself.”

Professor Flitwick let out a squeal. Professor Sprout clapped her hands over her mouth. Snape gripped the back of a chair very hard and said, “How can you be sure?”

“The Heir of Slytherin,” said Professor McGonagall, who was very white, “left another message. Right underneath the first one. ‘Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever.’”

Professor Flitwick burst into tears.

“Who is it?” said Madam Hooch, who had sunk, weak-kneed, into a chair. “Which student?”

“Ginny Weasley,” said Professor McGonagall.

Harry felt Ron slide silently down onto the wardrobe floor beside him.

“We shall have to send all the students home tomorrow,” said Professor McGonagall. “This is the end of Hogwarts. Dumbledore always said . . .”

The staffroom door banged open again. For one wild moment, Harry was sure it would be Dumbledore. But it was Lockhart, and he was beaming.

“So sorry — dozed off — what have I missed?”

He didn’t seem to notice that the other teachers were looking at him with something remarkably like hatred. Snape stepped forward.

“Just the man,” he said. “The very man. A girl has been snatched by the monster, Lockhart. Taken into the Chamber of Secrets itself. Your moment has come at last.”

Lockhart blanched.

“That’s right, Gilderoy,” chipped in Professor Sprout. “Weren’t you saying just last night that you’ve known all along where the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets is?”

“I — well, I —” sputtered Lockhart.

“Yes, didn’t you tell me you were sure you knew what was inside it?” piped up Professor Flitwick.

“D-did I? I don’t recall —”

“I certainly remember you saying you were sorry you hadn’t had a crack at the monster before Hagrid was arrested,” said Snape. “Didn’t you say that the whole affair had been bungled, and that you should have been given a free rein from the first?”

Lockhart stared around at his stony-faced colleagues.

“I — I really never — you may have misunderstood —”

“We’ll leave it to you, then, Gilderoy,” said Professor McGonagall. “Tonight will be an excellent time to do it. We’ll make sure everyone’s out of your way. You’ll be able to tackle the monster all by youself. A free rein at last.”

Lockhart gazed desperately around him, but nobody came to the rescue. He

didn’t look remotely handsome anymore. His lip was trembling, and in the absence of his usually toothy grin, he looked weak-chinned and feeble.

“V-very well,” he said. “I’ll — I’ll be in my office, getting — getting ready.”

And he left the room.

“Right,” said Professor McGonagall, whose nostrils were flared, “that’s got him out from under our feet. The Heads of Houses should go and inform their students what has happened. Tell them the Hogwarts Express will take them home first thing tomorrow. Will the rest of you please make sure no students have been left outside their dormitories.”

The teachers rose and left, one by one.

It was probably the worst day of Harry’s entire life. He, Ron, Fred, and George sat together in a corner of the Gryffindor common room, unable to say anything to each other. Percy wasn’t there. He had gone to send an owl to Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, then shut himself up in his dormitory.

No afternoon ever lasted as long as that one, nor had Gryffindor Tower ever been so crowded, yet so quiet. Near sunset, Fred and George went up to bed, unable to sit there any longer.

“She knew something, Harry,” said Ron, speaking for the first time since they had entered the wardrobe in the staffroom. “That’s why she was taken. It wasn’t some stupid thing about Percy at all. She’d found out something about the Chamber of Secrets. That must be why she was —” Ron rubbed his eyes frantically. “I mean, she was a pureblood. There can’t be any other reason.”

Harry could see the sun sinking, blood-red, below the skyline. This was the worst he had ever felt. If only there was something they could do. Anything.

“Harry,” said Ron. “D’you think there’s any chance at all she’s not — you know —”

Harry didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t see how Ginny could still be alive.

“D’you know what?” said Ron. “I think we should go and see Lockhart.

Tell him what we know. He’s going to try and get into the Chamber. We can tell him where we think it is, and tell him it’s a basilisk in there.”

Because Harry couldn’t think of anything else to do, and because he wanted to be doing something, he agreed. The Gryffindors around them were so miserable, and felt so sorry for the Weasleys, that nobody tried to stop them as they got up, crossed the room, and left through the portrait hole.

Darkness was falling as they walked down to Lockhart’s office. There seemed to be a lot of activity going on inside it. They could hear scraping, thumps, and hurried footsteps.

Harry knocked and there was a sudden silence from inside. Then the door opened the tiniest crack and they saw one of Lockhart’s eyes peering through it.

“Oh — Mr. Potter — Mr. Weasley —” he said, opening the door a bit wider. “I’m rather busy at the moment — if you would be quick —”

“Professor, we’ve got some information for you,” said Harry. “We think it’ll help you.”

“Er — well — it’s not terribly —” The side of Lockhart’s face that they could see looked very uncomfortable. “I mean — well — all right —”

He opened the door and they entered.

His office had been almost completely stripped. Two large trunks stood open on the floor. Robes, jade-green, lilac, midnight-blue, had been hastily folded into one of them; books were jumbled untidily into the other. The photographs that had covered the walls were now crammed into boxes on the desk.

“Are you going somewhere?” said Harry.

“Er, well, yes,” said Lockhart, ripping a life-size poster of himself from the back of the door as he spoke and starting to roll it up. “Urgent call — unavoidable — got to go —”

“What about my sister?” said Ron jerkily.

“Well, as to that — most unfortunate —” said Lockhart, avoiding their eyes

as he wrenched open a drawer and started emptying the contents into a bag. “No one regrets more than I —”

“You’re the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher!” said Harry. “You can’t go now! Not with all the Dark stuff going on here!”

“Well — I must say — when I took the job —” Lockhart muttered, now piling socks on top of his robes. “nothing in the job description — didn’t expect —”

“You mean you’re running away?” said Harry disbelievingly. “After all that stuff you did in your books —”

“Books can be misleading,” said Lockhart delicately.

“You wrote them!” Harry shouted.

“My dear boy,” said Lockhart, straightening up and frowning at Harry. “Do use your common sense. My books wouldn’t have sold half as well if people didn’t think I’d done all those things. No one wants to read about some ugly old Armenian warlock, even if he did save a village from werewolves. He’d look dreadful on the front cover. No dress sense at all. And the witch who banished the Bandon Banshee had a hairy chin. I mean, come on —”

“So you’ve just been taking credit for what a load of other people have done?” said Harry incredulously.

“Harry, Harry,” said Lockhart, shaking his head impatiently, “it’s not nearly as simple as that. There was work involved. I had to track these people down. Ask them exactly how they managed to do what they did. Then I had to put a Memory Charm on them so they wouldn’t remember doing it. If there’s one thing I pride myself on, it’s my Memory Charms. No, it’s been a lot of work, Harry. It’s not all book signings and publicity photos, you know. You want fame, you have to be prepared for a long hard slog.”

He banged the lids of his trunks shut and locked them.

“Let’s see,” he said. “I think that’s everything. Yes. Only one thing left.”

He pulled out his wand and turned to them.

“Awfully sorry, boys, but I’ll have to put a Memory Charm on you now.

Can’t have you blabbing my secrets all over the place. I’d never sell another book —”

Harry reached his wand just in time. Lockhart had barely raised his, when Harry bellowed, “Expelliarmus!”

Lockhart was blasted backward, falling over his trunk; his wand flew high into the air; Ron caught it, and flung it out of the open window.

“Shouldn’t have let Professor Snape teach us that one,” said Harry furiously, kicking Lockhart’s trunk aside. Lockhart was looking up at him, feeble once more. Harry was still pointing his wand at him.

“What d’you want me to do?” said Lockhart weakly. “I don’t know where the Chamber of Secrets is. There’s nothing I can do.”

“You’re in luck,” said Harry, forcing Lockhart to his feet at wandpoint. “We think we know where it is. And what’s inside it. Let’s go.”

They marched Lockhart out of his office and down the nearest stairs, along the dark corridor where the messages shone on the wall, to the door of Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom.

They sent Lockhart in first. Harry was pleased to see that he was shaking.

Moaning Myrtle was sitting on the tank of the end toilet.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said when she saw Harry. “What do you want this time?”

“To ask you how you died,” said Harry.

Myrtle’s whole aspect changed at once. She looked as though she had never been asked such a flattering question.

“Ooooh, it was dreadful,” she said with relish. “It happened right in here. I died in this very stall. I remember it so well. I’d hidden because Olive Hornby was teasing me about my glasses. The door was locked, and I was crying, and then I heard somebody come in. They said something funny. A different language, I think it must have been. Anyway, what really got me was that it was a boy speaking. So I unlocked the door, to tell him to go and use his own toilet, and then —” Myrtle swelled importantly, her face shining. “I died.”

“How?” said Harry.

“No idea,” said Myrtle in hushed tones. “I just remember seeing a pair of great, big, yellow eyes. My whole body sort of seized up, and then I was floating away. . . .” She looked dreamily at Harry. “And then I came back again. I was determined to haunt Olive Hornby, you see. Oh, she was sorry she’d ever laughed at my glasses.”

“Where exactly did you see the eyes?” said Harry.

“Somewhere there,” said Myrtle, pointing vaguely toward the sink in front of her toilet.

Harry and Ron hurried over to it. Lockhart was standing well back, a look of utter terror on his face.

It looked like an ordinary sink. They examined every inch of it, inside and out, including the pipes below. And then Harry saw it: Scratched on the side of one of the copper taps was a tiny snake.

“That tap’s never worked,” said Myrtle brightly as he tried to turn it.

“Harry,” said Ron. “Say something. Something in Parseltongue.”

“But —” Harry thought hard. The only times he’d ever managed to speak Parseltongue were when he’d been faced with a real snake. He stared hard at the tiny engraving, trying to imagine it was real.

“Open up,” he said.

He looked at Ron, who shook his head.

“English,” he said.

Harry looked back at the snake, willing himself to believe it was alive. If he moved his head, the candlelight made it look as though it were moving.

“Open up,” he said.

Except that the words weren’t what he heard; a strange hissing had escaped him, and at once the tap glowed with a brilliant white light and began to spin. Next second, the sink began to move; the sink, in fact, sank, right out of sight, leaving a large pipe exposed, a pipe wide enough for a man to slide into.

Harry heard Ron gasp and looked up again. He had made up his mind what he was going to do.

“I’m going down there,” he said.

He couldn’t not go, not now they had found the entrance to the Chamber, not if there was even the faintest, slimmest, wildest chance that Ginny might be alive.

“Me too,” said Ron.

There was a pause.

“Well, you hardly seem to need me,” said Lockhart, with a shadow of his old smile. “I’ll just —”

He put his hand on the door knob, but Ron and Harry both pointed their wands at him.

“You can go first,” Ron snarled.

White-faced and wandless, Lockhart approached the opening.

“Boys,” he said, his voice feeble. “Boys, what good will it do?”

Harry jabbed him in the back with his wand. Lockhart slid his legs into the pipe.

“I really don’t think —” he started to say, but Ron gave him a push, and he slid out of sight. Harry followed quickly. He lowered himself slowly into the pipe, then let go.

It was like rushing down an endless, slimy, dark slide. He could see more pipes branching off in all directions, but none as large as theirs, which twisted and turned, sloping steeply downward, and he knew that he was falling deeper below the school than even the dungeons. Behind him he could hear Ron, thudding slightly at the curves.

And then, just as he had begun to worry about what would happen when he hit the ground, the pipe leveled out, and he shot out of the end with a wet thud, landing on the damp floor of a dark stone tunnel large enough to stand in. Lockhart was getting to his feet a little ways away, covered in slime and white as a ghost. Harry stood aside as Ron came whizzing out of the pipe, too.

“We must be miles under the school,” said Harry, his voice echoing in the black tunnel.

“Under the lake, probably,” said Ron, squinting around at the dark, slimy walls.

All three of them turned to stare into the darkness ahead.

“Lumos!” Harry muttered to his wand and it lit again. “C’mon,” he said to Ron and Lockhart, and off they went, their footsteps slapping loudly on the wet floor.

The tunnel was so dark that they could only see a little distance ahead. Their shadows on the wet walls looked monstrous in the wandlight.

“Remember,” Harry said quietly as they walked cautiously forward, “any sign of movement, close your eyes right away. . . .”

But the tunnel was quiet as the grave, and the first unexpected sound they heard was a loud crunch as Ron stepped on what turned out to be a rat’s skull. Harry lowered his wand to look at the floor and saw that it was littered with small animal bones. Trying very hard not to imagine what Ginny might look like if they found her, Harry led the way forward, around a dark bend in the tunnel.

“Harry — there’s something up there —” said Ron hoarsely, grabbing Harry’s shoulder.

They froze, watching. Harry could just see the outline of something huge and curved, lying right across the tunnel. It wasn’t moving.

“Maybe it’s asleep,” he breathed, glancing back at the other two. Lockhart’s hands were pressed over his eyes. Harry turned back to look at the thing, his heart beating so fast it hurt.

Very slowly, his eyes as narrow as he could make them and still see, Harry edged forward, his wand held high.

The light slid over a gigantic snake skin, of a vivid, poisonous green, lying curled and empty across the tunnel floor. The creature that had shed it must have been twenty feet long at least.

“Blimey,” said Ron weakly.

There was a sudden movement behind them. Gilderoy Lockhart’s knees had given way.

“Get up,” said Ron sharply, pointing his wand at Lockhart.

Lockhart got to his feet — then he dived at Ron, knocking him to the ground.

Harry jumped forward, but too late — Lockhart was straightening up, panting, Ron’s wand in his hand and a gleaming smile back on his face.

“The adventure ends here, boys!” he said. “I shall take a bit of this skin back up to the school, tell them I was too late to save the girl, and that you two tragically lost your minds at the sight of her mangled body — say goodbye to your memories!”

He raised Ron’s Spellotaped wand high over his head and yelled,

“Obliviate!”

The wand exploded with the force of a small bomb. Harry flung his arms over his head and ran, slipping over the coils of snake skin, out of the way of great chunks of tunnel ceiling that were thundering to the floor. Next moment, he was standing alone, gazing at a solid wall of broken rock.

“Ron!” he shouted. “Are you okay? Ron!”

“I’m here!” came Ron’s muffled voice from behind the rockfall. “I’m okay — this git’s not, though — he got blasted by the wand —”

There was a dull thud and a loud “ow!” It sounded as though Ron had just kicked Lockhart in the shins.

“What now?” Ron’s voice said, sounding desperate. “We can’t get through — it’ll take ages. . . .”

Harry looked up at the tunnel ceiling. Huge cracks had appeared in it. He had never tried to break apart anything as large as these rocks by magic, and now didn’t seem a good moment to try — what if the whole tunnel caved in?

There was another thud and another “ow!” from behind the rocks. They were wasting time. Ginny had already been in the Chamber of Secrets for

hours. . . . Harry knew there was only one thing to do.

“Wait there,” he called to Ron. “Wait with Lockhart. I’ll go on. . . . If I’m not back in an hour . . .”

There was a very pregnant pause.

“I’ll try and shift some of this rock,” said Ron, who seemed to be trying to keep his voice steady. “So you can — can get back through. And, Harry —”

“See you in a bit,” said Harry, trying to inject some confidence into his shaking voice.

And he set off alone past the giant snake skin.

Soon the distant noise of Ron straining to shift the rocks was gone. The tunnel turned and turned again. Every nerve in Harry’s body was tingling unpleasantly. He wanted the tunnel to end, yet dreaded what he’d find when it did. And then, at last, as he crept around yet another bend, he saw a solid wall ahead on which two entwined serpents were carved, their eyes set with great, glinting emeralds.

Harry approached, his throat very dry. There was no need to pretend these stone snakes were real; their eyes looked strangely alive.

He could guess what he had to do. He cleared his throat, and the emerald eyes seemed to flicker.

“Open,” said Harry, in a low, faint hiss.

The serpents parted as the wall cracked open, the halves slid smoothly out of sight, and Harry, shaking from head to foot, walked inside.

Chapter 26 : Book 2: Chapter 17-18 (deviation)

Chapter 17 of the story proceeds as normal. Harry and Ron battle Lockhart below in the sewers, they both gain entrance to the chamber of secrets, and Ginny is rescued. Tom Riddle is defeated along with the great Basilisk, Harry is saved by the timely arrival of Fawkes, and the story continues on to Chapter 18:

For a moment there was silence as Harry, Ron, Ginny, and Lockhart stood

in the doorway of McGonagall’s office, covered in muck, slime, and in Harry’s case, blood. 

Then there was a scream.

“Ginny!”

It was Mrs. Weasley, who had been sitting crying in front of the fire. She leapt to her feet, closely followed by Mr. Weasley, and both of them flung themselves on their daughter.

Harry, however, was looking past them. 

Professor Dumbledore was standing by the mantelpiece, beaming, next to Professor McGonagall, who was taking great, steadying gasps, clutching her chest. 

Fawkes went whooshing past Harry’s ear and settled on Dumbledore’s shoulder, just as Harry found himself and Ron being swept into Mrs. Weasley’s tight embrace.

“You saved her! You saved her! How did you do it?” She sobbed, her fingers as strong as iron.

“I think we’d all like to know that,” said Professor McGonagall weakly.

Mrs. Weasley let go of Harry, who hesitated for a moment, then walked over to the desk and laid upon it the Sorting Hat, the ruby-encrusted sword, and what remained of Riddle’s diary.

Then he started telling them everything. For nearly a quarter of an hour he spoke into the rapt silence: He told them about hearing the disembodied voice, how Hermione had finally realized that he was hearing a basilisk in the pipes; how he and Ron had followed the spiders into the forest, that Aragog had told them where the last victim of the basilisk had died; how he had guessed that Moaning Myrtle had been the victim, and that the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets might be in her bathroom. . . .

“Very well,” Professor McGonagall prompted him as he paused, “so you found out where the entrance was — breaking a hundred school rules into pieces along the way, I might add — but how on earth did you all get out of there alive, Potter?”

So Harry, his voice now growing hoarse from all this talking, told them about Fawkes’s timely arrival and about the Sorting Hat giving him the sword. But then he faltered. He had so far avoided mentioning Riddle’s diary — or Ginny. She was standing with her head against Mrs. Weasley’s shoulder, and tears were still coursing silently down her cheeks. What if they expelled her? Harry thought in panic. Riddle’s diary didn’t work anymore. . . . How could they prove it had been he who’d made her do it all?

Instinctively, Harry looked at Dumbledore, who smiled faintly, the firelight glancing off his half-moon spectacles.

“What interests me most,” said Dumbledore gently, “is how Lord Voldemort managed to enchant Ginny, when my sources tell me he is currently in hiding in the forests of Albania.”

Relief — warm, sweeping, glorious relief — swept over Harry.

“W-what’s that?” said Mr. Weasley in a stunned voice. “You-Know-Who? En-enchant Ginny? But Ginny’s not . . . Ginny hasn’t been . . . has she?”

“It was this diary,” said Harry quickly, picking it up and showing it to Dumbledore. “Riddle wrote it when he was sixteen. . . .”

Dumbledore took the diary from Harry and peered keenly down his long, crooked nose at its burnt and soggy pages.

“Brilliant,” he said softly. “Of course, he was probably the most brilliant student Hogwarts has ever seen.” 

He turned around to the Weasleys, who were looking utterly bewildered. “Very few people know that Lord Voldemort was once called Tom Riddle. I taught him myself, fifty years ago, at Hogwarts. He disappeared after leaving the school . . . traveled far and wide . . . sank so deeply into the Dark Arts, consorted with the very worst of our kind, underwent so many dangerous, magical transformations, that when he resurfaced as Lord Voldemort, he was barely recognizable. Hardly anyone connected Lord Voldemort with the clever, handsome student who was once Head Boy here.”

“But, Ginny,” said Mrs. Weasley. “What’s our Ginny got to do with — with — him?”

“His d-diary!” Ginny sobbed. “I’ve b-been writing in it, and he’s been w-writing back all year —”

“Ginny!” said Mr. Weasley, flabbergasted. “Haven’t I taught you anything? What have I always told you? Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain. Why didn’t you show the diary to me, or your mother? A suspicious object like that, it was clearly full of Dark Magic —”

“I d-didn’t know,” sobbed Ginny. “I found it inside one of the books Mum got me. I th-thought someone had just left it in there and forgotten about it —”

“Miss Weasley should go up to the hospital wing right away,” Dumbledore interrupted in a firm voice. “This has been a terrible ordeal for her. There will be no punishment. Older and wiser wizards than she have been hoodwinked by Lord Voldemort.” He strode over to the door and opened it. “Bed rest and perhaps a large, steaming mug of hot chocolate. I always find that cheers me up,” he added, twinkling kindly down at her. “You will find that Madam Pomfrey is still awake. She’s just giving out Mandrake juice — I daresay the basilisk’s victims will be waking up any moment.”

“So Hermione’s okay!” said Ron brightly.

“There has been no lasting harm done, Ginny,” said Dumbledore.

Mrs. Weasley led Ginny out, and Mr. Weasley followed, still looking deeply shaken.

“You know, Minerva,” Professor Dumbledore said thoughtfully to Professor McGonagall, “I think all this merits a good feast. Might I ask you to go and alert the kitchens?”

“Right,” said Professor McGonagall crisply, also moving to the door. “I’ll leave you to deal with Potter and Weasley, shall I?”

“Certainly,” said Dumbledore.

She left, and Harry and Ron gazed uncertainly at Dumbledore. What exactly had Professor McGonagall meant with “deal” with them? 

Surely — surely — they weren’t about to be punished?

“I seem to remember telling you both that I would have to expel you if you broke any more school rules,” said Dumbledore.

Ron opened his mouth in horror.

“Which goes to show that the best of us must sometimes eat our words,” Dumbledore went on, smiling. “You will both receive Special Awards for Services to the School and — let me see — yes, I think two hundred points apiece for Gryffindor.”

Ron went as brightly pink as Lockhart’s valentine flowers and closed his mouth again.

“But one of us seems to be keeping mightily quiet about his part in this dangerous adventure,” Dumbledore added. “Why so modest, Gilderoy?”

Harry gave a start. 

He had completely forgotten about Lockhart. 

He turned and saw that Lockhart was standing in a corner of the room, still wearing his vague smile. When Dumbledore addressed him, Lockhart looked over his shoulder to see who he was talking to.

“Professor Dumbledore,” Ron said quickly, “there was an accident down in the Chamber of Secrets. Professor Lockhart —”

“Am I a professor?” said Lockhart in mild surprise. “Goodness. I expect I was hopeless, was I?”

“He tried to do a Memory Charm and the wand backfired,” Ron explained quietly to Dumbledore.

“Dear me,” said Dumbledore, shaking his head, his long silver mustache quivering. “Impaled upon your own sword, Gilderoy!”

“Sword?” said Lockhart dimly. “Haven’t got a sword. That boy has, though.” He pointed at Harry. “He’ll lend you one.”

“Would you mind taking Professor Lockhart up to the infirmary, too?” Dumbledore said to Ron. “I’d like a few more words with Harry. . . .”

Lockhart ambled out with Ron, the red haired boy casting a curious look back at Dumbledore and Harry as he closed the door.

Dumbledore crossed to one of the chairs by the fire.

“Sit down, Harry,” he said, and Harry sat, feeling unaccountably nervous.

“First of all, Harry, I want to thank you,” said Dumbledore, eyes twinkling again. “You must have shown me real loyalty down in the Chamber. Nothing but that could have called Fawkes to you.”

He stroked the phoenix, which had fluttered down onto his knee. 

Harry grinned awkwardly as Dumbledore watched him.

“And so you met Tom Riddle,” said Dumbledore thoughtfully. “I imagine he was most interested in you. . . .”

Suddenly, something that was nagging at Harry came tumbling out of his mouth.

“Professor Dumbledore . . . Riddle said I’m like him. Strange likenesses, he said. . . .”

“Did he, now?” said Dumbledore, looking thoughtfully at Harry from under his thick silver eyebrows. “And what do you think, Harry?”

“I don’t think I’m like him!” shouted Harry, more loudly than he’d intended. “I mean, I’m — I’m in Gryffindor, I’m . . .”

But he fell silent, a lurking doubt resurfacing in his mind.

“Professor,” he started again after a moment. “The Sorting Hat told me I’d— I’d have done well in Slytherin. Everyone thought I was Slytherin’s heir for a while . . . because I can speak Parseltongue. . . .”

“You can speak Parseltongue, Harry,” said Dumbledore calmly, “because Lord Voldemort — who is the last remaining descendant of Salazar Slytherin — can speak Parseltongue. Unless I’m much mistaken, he transferred some of his own powers to you the night he gave you that scar. Not something he intended to do, I’m sure. . . .”

“Voldemort put a bit of himself in me?” Harry said, thunderstruck.

“It certainly seems so.”

“So I should be in Slytherin,” Harry said, looking desperately into Dumbledore’s face. “The Sorting Hat could see Slytherin’s power in me, and it —”

“Put you in Gryffindor,” said Dumbledore calmly. “Listen to me, Harry. You happen to have many qualities Salazar Slytherin prized in his handpicked students. His own very rare gift, Parseltongue — resourcefulness — determination — a certain disregard for rules,” he added, his mustache quivering again. “Yet the Sorting Hat placed you in Gryffindor. You know why that was. Think.”

“It only put me in Gryffindor,” said Harry in a defeated voice, “because I asked not to go in Slytherin. . . .”

“Exactly,” said Dumbledore, beaming once more. “Which makes you very different from Tom Riddle. It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” Harry sat motionless in his chair, stunned. “If you want proof, Harry, that you belong in Gryffindor, I suggest you look more closely at this.”

Dumbledore reached across to Professor McGonagall’s desk, picked up the blood-stained silver sword, and handed it to Harry. Dully, Harry turned it over, the rubies blazing in the firelight. And then he saw the name engraved just below the hilt.

Godric Gryffindor.

“Only a true Gryffindor could have pulled that out of the hat, Harry,” said

Dumbledore simply.

For a minute, neither of them spoke. Then Dumbledore pulled open one of the drawers in Professor McGonagall’s desk and took out a quill and a bottle of ink.

“What you need, Harry, is some food and sleep. I suggest you go down to the feast, while I write to Azkaban — we need our gamekeeper back. And I must draft an advertisement for the Daily Prophet, too,” he added thoughtfully. “We’ll be needing a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. . . . Dear me, we do seem to run through them, don’t we?”

Harry got up and crossed to the door. 

He had just reached for the handle, however, when the door burst open so violently that it bounced back off the wall.

Lucius Malfoy stood there, fury in his face, and cowering behind his legs, heavily wrapped in bandages, was Dobby.

“Good evening, Lucius,” said Dumbledore pleasantly.

Mr. Malfoy almost knocked Harry over as he swept into the room. 

Dobby went scurrying in after him, crouching at the hem of his cloak, a look of abject terror on his face.

The elf was carrying a stained rag with which he was attempting to finish cleaning Mr. Malfoy’s shoes. Apparently Mr. Malfoy had set out in a great hurry, for not only were his shoes half-polished, but his usually sleek hair was disheveled. 

Ignoring the elf bobbing apologetically around his ankles, he fixed his cold eyes upon Dumbledore.

“So!” he said “You’ve come back. The governors suspended you, but you still saw fit to return to Hogwarts.”

“Well, you see, Lucius,” said Dumbledore, smiling serenely, “the other eleven governors contacted me today. It was something like being caught in a hailstorm of owls, to tell the truth. They’d heard that Arthur Weasley’s daughter had been killed and wanted me back here at once. They seemed to think I was the best man for the job after all. Very strange tales they told me, too. . . . Several of them seemed to think that you had threatened to curse their families if they didn’t agree to suspend me in the first place.”

Mr. Malfoy went even paler than usual, but his eyes were still slits of gray-green fury.

“So — have you stopped the attacks yet?” he sneered. “Have you caught the culprit?”

“We have,” said Dumbledore, with a smile.

“Well?” said Mr. Malfoy sharply. “Who is it?”

“The same person as last time, Lucius,” said Dumbledore. “But this time, Lord Voldemort was acting through somebody else. By means of this diary.”

He held up the small black book with the large hole through the center, watching Mr. Malfoy closely. 

Harry, however, was watching Dobby.

The elf was doing something very odd. His great eyes fixed meaningfully on Harry, he kept pointing at the diary, then at Mr. Malfoy, and then hitting himself hard on the head with his fist.

“I see . . .” said Mr. Malfoy slowly to Dumbledore.

“A clever plan,” said Dumbledore in a level voice, still staring Mr. Malfoy straight in the eye. “Because if Harry here” — Mr. Malfoy shot Harry a swift, sharp look — “and his friend Ron hadn’t discovered this book, why — Ginny Weasley might have taken all the blame. No one would ever have been able to prove she hadn’t acted of her own free will. . . .”

Mr. Malfoy said nothing. 

His face was suddenly masklike.

“And imagine,” Dumbledore went on, “what might have happened then. . . . The Weasleys are one of our most prominent pure-blood families. Imagine the effect on Arthur Weasley and his Muggle Protection Act, if his own daughter was discovered attacking and killing Muggle-borns. . . . Very fortunate the diary was discovered, and Riddle’s memories wiped from it. Who knows what the consequences might have been otherwise. . . .”

Mr. Malfoy forced himself to speak.

“Very, fortunate,” he said stiffly.

And still, behind his back, Dobby was pointing, first to the diary, then to Lucius Malfoy, then punching himself in the head.

And Harry suddenly understood. 

He nodded at Dobby, and Dobby backed into a corner, now twisting his ears in punishment.

“Don’t you want to know how Ginny got hold of that diary, Mr. Malfoy?” said Harry.

Lucius Malfoy rounded on him.

“How should I know how the stupid little girl got hold of it?” he said.

“Because you gave it to her,” said Harry. “In Flourish and Blotts. You picked up her old Transfiguration book and slipped the diary inside it, didn’t you?”

He saw Mr. Malfoy’s white hands clench and unclench.

“Prove it,” he hissed.

“Oh, no one will be able to do that,” said Dumbledore, smiling at Harry. “Not now that Riddle has vanished from the book. On the other hand, I would advise you, Lucius, not to go giving out any more of Lord Voldemort’s old school things. If any more of them find their way into innocent hands, I think Arthur Weasley, for one, will make sure they are traced back to you. . . .”

Lucius Malfoy stood for a moment, and Harry distinctly saw his right hand twitch as though he was longing to reach for his wand. 

Instead, he turned to his house-elf. “We’re going, Dobby!”

He wrenched open the door as the elf came hurrying up to him, and he kicked him right through it. 

They could hear Dobby squealing with pain all the way along the corridor. 

Harry stood for a moment, thinking hard. Then it came to him —

“Professor Dumbledore,” he said hurriedly. “Can I give that diary back to Mr. Malfoy, please?”

“Certainly, Harry,” said Dumbledore calmly. “But hurry. The feast, remember. . . .”

Harry grabbed the diary and dashed out of the office. He could hear Dobby’s squeals of pain receding around the corner. Quickly, wondering if this plan could possibly work, Harry took off one of his shoes, pulled off his slimy, filthy sock, and stuffed the diary into it. Then he ran down the dark corridor.

He caught up with them at the top of the stairs.

“Mr. Malfoy,” he gasped, skidding to a halt, “I’ve got something for you —”

And he forced the smelly diary into Lucius Malfoy’s hand.

“What the — ?”

Mr. Malfoy ripped the sock out of the diary, threw it aside, then looked furiously from the ruined book to Harry.

“You’ll meet the same sticky end as your parents one of these days, Harry Potter,” he said softly. “They were meddlesome fools, too.”

“Come, Dobby.” He said as he turned to go, but halted after a few steps, turning back around. “Come, Dobby. I said, come.”

But Dobby didn’t move. He was holding up Harry’s disgusting, slimy sock, and looking at it as though it were a priceless treasure.

“Master has given a sock,” said the elf in wonderment. “Master gave it to Dobby.”

“What’s that?” spat Mr. Malfoy. “What did you say?”

“Got a sock,” said Dobby in disbelief. “Master threw it, and Dobby caught it, and Dobby — Dobby is free.”

Lucius Malfoy stood frozen, staring at the elf. 

Then he lunged at Harry. “You’ve lost me my servant, boy!”

But Dobby shouted, “You shall not harm Harry Potter!”

There was a loud bang, and Mr. Malfoy was thrown backward. He crashed down the stairs, three at a time, landing in a crumpled heap on the landing below. He got up, his face livid, and pulled out his wand, but Dobby raised a long, threatening finger.

“You shall go now,” he said fiercely, pointing down at Mr. Malfoy. “You shall not touch Harry Potter. You shall go now.”

Lucius Malfoy had no choice. With a last, incensed stare at the pair of them, he swung his cloak around him and hurried out of sight.

“Harry Potter freed Dobby!” said the elf shrilly, gazing up at Harry, moonlight from the nearest window reflected in his orb-like eyes. “Harry Potter set Dobby free!”

“Least I could do, Dobby,” said Harry, grinning. “Just promise never to try and save my life again.”

The elf’s ugly brown face split suddenly into a wide, toothy smile.

“I’ve just got one question, Dobby,” said Harry as Dobby pulled on Harry’s sock with shaking hands. “You told me all this had nothing to do with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, remember? Well —”

“It was a clue, sir,” said Dobby, his eyes widening, as though this was obvious. “Was giving you a clue. The Dark Lord, before he changed his name, could be freely named, you see?”

“Right,” said Harry weakly. “Well, I’d better go. There’s a feast, and my friend Hermione should be awake by now. . . .”

Dobby threw his arms around Harry’s middle and hugged him.

“Harry Potter is greater by far than Dobby knew!” he sobbed. “Farewell, Harry Potter!”

As Dobby pressed his middle finger and thumb together, a thought occurred to him despite the jubilation of freedom, and he smiled a little more softly as he looked back up at Harry.

“Harry Potter sir! Sir… Harry Potter would be, remiss, if he did not check his mail, sir.”

Harry blinked down at Dobby. “What?”

Dobbly merely let out a happy laugh, and with a snap of his fingers, Dobby disappeared in a loud cracking warp of air.

Harry stood there, confused, sockless, then looked at the stairs.

The diary was laying on the last step, pages askew.

Harry trotted down, retrieved the diary, gave it back to Dumbledore, and then made his way back down the stairs, smiling broadly to himself despite the wet, squishing sounds from his shoes.

Harry had been to several Hogwarts feasts, but never one quite like this. Everybody was in their pajamas, and the celebration lasted all night. 

Harry didn’t know whether the best bit was Hermione running toward him, screaming “You solved it! You solved it!”, Justin hurrying over from the Hufflepuff table to wring his hand and apologize endlessly for suspecting him, or Hagrid turning up at half past three, cuffing Harry and Ron so hard on the shoulders that they were knocked into their plates of trifle.

Then there was his and Ron’s four hundred points for Gryffindor securing the House Cup for the second year running, or Professor McGonagall standing up to tell them all that the exams had been canceled as a school treat. 

“Oh, no!” cried out Hermione, oddly distraught at the news.

Lastly Dumbledore announced that, unfortunately, Professor Lockhart would be unable to return next year, owing to the fact that he needed to go away and get his memory back. 

Quite a few of the teachers joined in the cheering that greeted this news.

“Shame,” said Ron, helping himself to a jam doughnut. “He was starting to grow on me.”

The rest of the final term passed in a haze of blazing sunshine. 

Hogwarts was back to normal with only a few, small differences. 

Defense Against the Dark Arts classes were canceled, Ron remarking that “ we’ve had plenty of practice at that anyway,” with a disgruntled noise from Hermione, and Lucius Malfoy had been sacked as a school governor. 

Draconia was no longer strutting around the school as though she owned the place. On the contrary, she looked resentful and sulky to anyone else’s eye… but that was not entirely true.

When Draconia and Harry met eyes in the hallways, the blonde haired girl would always smile slyly at Harry, making little motions with her hands as if she were moving the steering wheel of a car.

The first time he caught her doing it, Harry had been too stunned to reply, but the second time around, he held his hand to his eye, as if he were looking through a long-glass.

This had brought Draconia to a stumbling, shocked halt in the hallway when Harry passed her, though she seemed to smile at Harry with a more gustful, broad smile as she made little spider-leg motions with her fingers.

Harry, in return, would then pretend he was driving a car, beaming back at her while honking his imaginary horn.

Only Ron understood what they were doing, and constantly gave Harry curious looks, making both Harry and Draconia quickly look away and pretend they hadn’t been caught for the tenth time in a row.

Crabbe and Goyle were as confused as Hermione… though the two Slytherins always looked confused anyway.

As well, Ginny Weasley was perfectly happy again, and back to her chattering, talkative self.

Too soon, it was time for the journey home on the Hogwarts Express. 

Packing up his trunk was always a torturous thing for Harry, knowing where he had to go during the summer, and he made it take as long as he dared. 

As he was rolling up his socks and checking around his bed for any others he had forgotten… he spied an envelope.

Harry stared at it for a long moment, remembering Ron bringing it him one night during Valentines day, and he blinked from behind his glasses.

Dobby’s voice murmured from his memory.

“Harry Potter sir! Sir… Harry Potter would be, remiss, if he did not check his mail, sir.”

With a click of his teeth, Harry pulled around his legs and sat down on the stone tower floor, resting his back against his bed as he quickly ripped the side of the valentine open.

“At least this doesn’t involve a dwarf singing to me.” Harry muttered, and opened the valentine.

There were words there, in soft, green, glittering ink.

“I have nothing but a single, poor valentine to give, 

To the one who flies a broom as if he had wings. 

I wish I was brave, to just once say goodbye, 

To the boy, a hero, for all whom hope brings.”

Harry stared down at the valentine, looking at the back of it for a name, then turned it back around to stare at the letters.

“Did Ginny get better at writing poems…?” Harry thought to himself, then put the valentine back into its envelope before tossing it into his trunk.

Harry, Ron, Hermione, Fred, George, and Ginny got a compartment to themselves, after making their way to the train. They made the most of the last few hours in which they were allowed to do magic before the holidays. 

They played Exploding Snap, set off the very last of Fred and George’s Filibuster fireworks, and practiced Disarming each other by magic. 

Harry was getting very good at it.

They were almost at King’s Cross when Harry remembered something.

“Ginny — what did you see Percy doing, that he didn’t want you to tell anyone?”

“Oh, that,” said Ginny, giggling. “Well — Percy’s got a girlfriend.” 

Fred dropped a stack of books on George’s head. “What?”

“It’s that Ravenclaw prefect, Penelope Clearwater,” said Ginny. “That’s who he was writing to all last summer. He’s been meeting her all over the school in secret. I walked in on them kissing in an empty classroom one day. He was so upset when she was — you know — attacked. You won’t tease him, will you?” she added anxiously.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Fred, who was looking like his birthday had come early.

“Definitely not,” said George, sniggering.

The Hogwarts Express slowed and finally stopped.

Harry pulled out his quill and a bit of parchment and turned to Ron and Hermione.

“This is called a telephone number,” he told Ron, scribbling it twice, tearing the parchment in two, and handing it to them. “I told your dad how to use a telephone last summer — he’ll know. Call me at the Dursleys’, okay? I can’t stand another two months with only Dudley to talk to. . . .”

“Your aunt and uncle will be proud, though, won’t they?” said Hermione as they got off the train and joined the crowd thronging toward the enchanted barrier. “When they hear what you did this year?”

“Proud?” said Harry. “Are you crazy? All those times I could’ve died, and I didn’t manage it? They’ll be furious! Oh, and Ginny, well done on the new poem! You’re really getting the hang of it!”

“New poem?” She asked, confused, but the bustle of the train made her quickly get her things together with everyone else.

And then, together, they walked back through the gateway to the Muggle world.

Chapter 27 : Book 3: Chapter 1-4

Ch 1-4

To the surprise of few who have been following this re-write, Book 3 starts with very few changes.

However, Harry has been getting letters from a secret admirer in the same, glittery, green ink as the valentine from the previous year, and has been exchanging letters back and forth with this person as the weeks wear on in summer.

Hedwig, frustrated by the amount of subterfuge she has to go through, is always met by another owl at a designated meeting place on King’s Cross Station, the two owls trading letters back and forth like mysterious middlemen.

To Harry’s disappointment the letters begin to slow, leaving him a rather foul mood at the night of his Aunt Marge’s arrival.

Disgruntled, as he had been enjoying the secret letters describing broom racing, Quidditch, and anything else pertaining to Harry and the other person’s hobbies, Marge says one word too many about Harry’s parents causing the… literal, blow up.

Harry is forced to flee, as always, and the story begins in the Leaky Cauldron.

Chapter 28 : Book 3: Chapter 5 (major deviation)

Tom woke Harry the next morning with his usual toothless grin and a cup of tea, though there was something new that caught Harry’s eye. 

“A letter came for you in the night, Mr. Potter.” Tom said, setting down Harry’s tea. “Your owl is resting with the others, and I figured I would save her the strife with letting her sleep into the morning. Rather nippy little thing, when she is tired.”

“Thanks!” Harry replied, eagerly taking the letter and then smiling apologetically at the barman. “And sorry, about Hedwig.”

“Not at all, not at all.” Tom said with a wave of his freshly bandaged hand. “Breakfast will be ready soon, Mr. Potter, don’t be late.”

Harry sat up in his bed upon his pillows and opened the letter, unfurling it to be greeted by the green, sparkling ink.

“Harry,

Things have gone absolutely mad around here since my last letter, and I apologise for the time it took for this one to arrive. My mother and father have been in an absolute state, and have been watching the owl so closely that I’m surprised they can’t tell the sound of its wings on the wind.

How are those Muggles, the Turdleys? Are they still being themselves? How did the visit with Marge the Barge go?

Its nearly time for a school again, but remember, these letters are a secret. Don’t be nosey and asking around or it becomes a lot less fun!

See you soon, though you won’t see me, ha ha!

-Green Streak”

Harry snorted out a laugh, quickly wrote up a fresh letter detailing all that had happened the night of him inflating marge, Fudge, and the rest, and bundled the letter together for his owl.

Harry got dressed, and was just persuading a disgruntled Hedwig to take the letter when Ron banged his way into the room, pulling a sweatshirt over his head and looking irritable.

Harry whipped the letter behind his back, then into his back pocket, smiling brightly at Ron. “Ron! Heeeyyy!”

“The sooner we get on the train, the better,” Ron said, completely ignoring Harry. “At least I can get away from Percy at Hogwarts. Now he’s accusing me of dripping tea on his photo of Penelope Clearwater. You know,” Ron grimaced, “his girlfriend. She’s hidden her face under the frame because her nose has gone all blotchy. . . .”

Harry slowly moved Hedwig behind his back, gesturing the letter at her with little jerking motions after fishing it from his back pocket.

“So, er, I’ve got something to tell you by the way,” Harry began as he felt Hedwig begrudgingly take the letter, but they were interrupted by Fred and George, who had looked in to congratulate Ron on infuriating Percy again.

Hedwig pecked Harry on the ear as she flew away, letter in claw.

They headed down to breakfast, where Mr. Weasley was reading the front page of the Daily Prophet with a furrowed brow and Mrs. Weasley was telling Hermione and Ginny about a love potion she’d made as a young girl. 

All three of them were rather giggly.

“What were you saying?” Ron asked Harry as they sat down. 

“Later,” Harry muttered as Percy stormed in.

Harry had no chance to speak to Ron or Hermione in the chaos of leaving; they were too busy heaving all their trunks down the Leaky Cauldron’s narrow staircase and piling them up near the door, with Hermes and Percy’s screech owl perched on top in their cages. A small wickerwork basket stood beside the heap of trunks, spitting loudly.

“It’s all right, Crookshanks,” Hermione cooed through the wickerwork. “I’ll let you out on the train. Harry, where is Hedwig?”

“You won’t,” snapped Ron. “What about poor Scabbers, eh?”

He pointed at his chest, where a large lump indicated that Scabbers was curled up in his pocket. Hermione rolled her eyes at Ron, then looked at Harry, pointedly.

Harry shrugged, her empty cage on his own trunk. “Oh… probably hunting, she’ll be back soon.”

Mr. Weasley, who had been outside waiting for the Ministry cars, stuck his head inside.

“They’re here,” he said. “Harry, come on.”

Mr. Weasley marched Harry across the short stretch of pavement toward the first of two old-fashioned dark green cars, each of which was driven by a furtive-looking wizard wearing a suit of emerald velvet.

“In you get, Harry,” said Mr. Weasley, glancing up and down the crowded street.

Harry got into the back of the car and was shortly joined by Hermione, Ron, and, to Ron’s disgust, Percy.

The journey to King’s Cross was very uneventful compared with Harry’s trip on the Knight Bus. 

The Ministry of Magic cars seemed almost ordinary, though Harry noticed that they could slide through gaps that Uncle Vernon’s new company car certainly couldn’t have managed. They reached King’s Cross with twenty minutes to spare; the Ministry drivers found them trolleys, unloaded their trunks, touched their hats in salute to Mr. Weasley, and drove away, somehow managing to jump to the head of an unmoving line at the traffic lights.

Mr. Weasley kept close to Harry’s elbow all the way into the station.

“Right then,” he said, glancing around them. “Let’s do this in pairs, as there are so many of us. I’ll go through first with Harry- oh! Hold on.”

Hedwig came flapping down with an annoyed hoot, and Harry quickly put her in her cage.

“Right! On we go then.” Mr. Weasley called out gamely as he strolled toward the barrier between platforms nine and ten, pushing Harry’s trolley and apparently very interested in the InterCity 125 that had just arrived at platform nine. 

With a meaningful look at Harry, he leaned casually against the barrier. 

Harry imitated him.

In a moment, they had fallen sideways through the solid metal onto platform nine and three-quarters, and looked up to see the Hogwarts Express, a scarlet steam engine, puffing smoke over a platform packed with witches and wizards seeing their children onto the train.

Percy and Ginny suddenly appeared behind Harry. They were panting and had apparently taken the barrier at a run.

“Ah, there’s Penelope!” said Percy, smoothing his hair and going pink again. 

Ginny caught Harry’s eye, and they both turned away to hide their laughter as Percy strode over to a girl with long, curly hair, walking with his chest thrown out so that she couldn’t miss his shiny badge.

Once the remaining Weasleys and Hermione had joined them, Harry and Ron led the way to the end of the train, past packed compartments, to a carriage that looked quite empty. 

They loaded the trunks onto it, stowed Hedwig and Crookshanks in the luggage rack, then went back outside to say goodbye to Mr. and Mrs. Weasley.

Mrs. Weasley kissed all her children, then Hermione, and finally, Harry. 

He was embarrassed, but really quite pleased, when she gave him an extra hug.

“Do take care, won’t you, Harry?” she said as she straightened up, her eyes oddly bright. Then she opened her enormous handbag and said, “I’ve made you all sandwiches. . . . Here you are, Ron . . . no, they’re not corned beef. . . . Fred? Where’s Fred? Here you are, dear. . . .”

“Harry,” said Mr. Weasley quietly, “come over here a moment.”

He jerked his head toward a pillar, and Harry followed him behind it, leaving the others crowded around Mrs. Weasley.

“There’s something I’ve got to tell you before you leave —” said Mr. Weasley, in a tense voice.

“It’s all right, Mr. Weasley,” said Harry. “I already know.”

“You know? How could you know?”

“I — er — I heard you and Mrs. Weasley talking last night. I couldn’t help hearing,” Harry added quickly. “Sorry —”

“That’s not the way I’d have chosen for you to find out,” said Mr. Weasley, looking anxious.

“No — honestly, it’s okay. This way, you haven’t broken your word to Fudge and I know what’s going on.”

“Harry, you must be very scared —”

“I’m not,” said Harry sincerely. “Really,” he added, because Mr. Weasley was looking disbelieving. “I’m not trying to be a hero, but seriously, Sirius Black can’t be worse than Voldemort, can he?”

Mr. Weasley flinched at the sound of the name but overlooked it.

“Harry, I knew you were, well, made of stronger stuff than Fudge seems to think, and I’m obviously pleased that you’re not scared, but —”

“Arthur!” called Mrs. Weasley, who was now shepherding the rest onto the train. “Arthur, what are you doing? It’s about to go!”

“He’s coming, Molly!” said Mr. Weasley, but he turned back to Harry and kept talking in a lower and more hurried voice. “Listen, I want you to give me your word —”

“— that I’ll be a good boy and stay in the castle?” said Harry gloomily.

“Not entirely,” said Mr. Weasley, who looked more serious than Harry had ever seen him. “Harry, swear to me you won’t go looking for Black.”

Harry stared. “What?”

There was a loud whistle. 

Guards were walking along the train, slamming all the doors shut.

“Promise me, Harry,” said Mr. Weasley, talking more quickly still, “that whatever happens —”

“Why would I go looking for someone I know wants to kill me?” said Harry blankly.

“Swear to me that whatever you might hear —”

“Arthur, quickly!” cried Mrs. Weasley.

Steam was billowing from the train; it had started to move. 

Harry ran to the compartment door, Ron throwing it open and standing back to let him on. They leaned out of the window and waved at Mr. and Mrs. Weasley until the train turned a corner and blocked them from view.

“I need to talk to you in private,” Harry muttered to Ron and Hermione as the train picked up speed.

“Go away, Ginny,” said Ron.

“Oh, that’s nice,” said Ginny huffily, and she stalked off.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione set off down the corridor, looking for an empty compartment, but all were full except for the one at the very end of the train.

This had only one occupant, a man sitting fast asleep next to the window. Harry, Ron, and Hermione checked on the threshold. The Hogwarts Express was usually reserved for students and they had never seen an adult there before, except for the witch who pushed the food cart.

The stranger was wearing an extremely shabby set of wizard’s robes that had been damaged in several places. He looked ill and exhausted. 

Though quite young, his light brown hair was flecked with gray.

“Who d’you reckon he is?” Ron hissed as they sat down and slid the door shut, taking the seats farthest away from the window.

“Professor R. J. Lupin,” whispered Hermione at once.

“How d’you know that?”

“It’s on his case,” she replied, pointing at the luggage rack over the man’s head, where there was a small, battered case held together with a large quantity of neatly knotted string. The name Professor R. J. Lupin was stamped across one corner in peeling letters.

“Wonder what he teaches?” said Ron, frowning at Professor Lupin’s pallid profile.

“That’s obvious,” whispered Hermione. “There’s only one vacancy, isn’t there? Defense Against the Dark Arts.”

Harry, Ron, and Hermione had already had two Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers, both of whom had lasted only one year. There were rumors that the job was jinxed.

“Well, I hope he’s up to it,” said Ron doubtfully. “He looks like one good hex would finish him off, doesn’t he? Anyway . . .” He turned to Harry. “What were you going to tell us?”

Harry explained all about Mr. and Mrs. Weasley’s argument and the warning Mr. Weasley had just given him. When he’d finished, Ron looked thunderstruck, and Hermione had her hands over her mouth. She finally lowered them to say, “Sirius Black escaped to come after you? Oh, Harry . . . you’ll have to be really, really careful. Don’t go looking for trouble, Harry —”

“I don’t go looking for trouble,” said Harry, nettled. “Trouble usually finds me, doesn’t it?”

“How thick would Harry have to be, to go looking for a nutter who wants to kill him?” said Ron shakily.

They were taking the news worse than Harry had expected. Both Ron and Hermione seemed to be much more frightened of Black than he was.

“No one knows how he got out of Azkaban,” said Ron uncomfortably. “No one’s ever done it before. And he was a top-security prisoner too.” 

“But they’ll catch him, won’t they?” asked Hermione earnestly. “I mean, they’ve got all the Muggles looking out for him too. . . .” 

“What’s that noise?” said Ron suddenly.

A faint, tinny sort of whistle was coming from somewhere. 

They looked all around the compartment.

“It’s coming from your trunk, Harry,” said Ron, standing up and reaching into the luggage rack. 

A moment later he had pulled the Pocket Sneakoscope out from between Harry’s robes. It was spinning very fast in the palm of Ron’s hand and glowing brilliantly.

“Is that a Sneakoscope?” said Hermione interestedly, standing up for a better look.

“Yeah . . . mind you, it’s a very cheap one,” Ron said. “It went haywire just as I was tying it to Errol’s leg to send it to Harry.”

“Were you doing anything untrustworthy at the time?” said Hermione shrewdly.

“No! Well . . . I wasn’t supposed to be using Errol. You know he’s not really up to long journeys . . . but how else was I supposed to get Harry’s present to him?”

“Stick it back in the trunk,” Harry advised as the Sneakoscope whistled piercingly, “or it’ll wake him up.”

He nodded toward Professor Lupin. 

Ron stuffed the Sneakoscope into a particularly horrible pair of Uncle Vernon’s old socks, which deadened the sound, then closed the lid of the trunk on it.

“We could get it checked in Hogsmeade,” said Ron, sitting back down. “They sell that sort of thing in Dervish and Banges, magical instruments and stuff. Fred and George told me.”

“Do you know much about Hogsmeade?” asked Hermione keenly. “I’ve read it’s the only entirely non-Muggle settlement in Britain —”

“Yeah, I think it is,” said Ron in an offhand sort of way, “but that’s not why I want to go. I just want to get inside Honeydukes!”

“What’s that?” said Hermione.

“It’s this sweetshop,” said Ron, a dreamy look coming over his face, “where they’ve got everything. . . . Pepper Imps — they make you smoke at the mouth — and great fat Chocoballs full of strawberry mousse and clotted cream, and really excellent sugar quills, which you can suck in class and just look like you’re thinking what to write next —”

“But Hogsmeade’s a very interesting place, isn’t it?” Hermione pressed on eagerly. “In Sites of Historical Sorcery it says the inn was the headquarters for the 1612 goblin rebellion, and the Shrieking Shack’s supposed to be the most severely haunted building in Britain —”

“— and massive sherbet balls that make you levitate a few inches off the ground while you’re sucking them,” said Ron, who was plainly not listening to a word Hermione was saying.

Hermione looked around at Harry. “Won’t it be nice to get out of school for a bit and explore Hogsmeade?”

“’Spect it will,” said Harry heavily. “You’ll have to tell me when you’ve found out.”

“What d’you mean?” said Ron.

“I can’t go. The Dursleys didn’t sign my permission form, and Fudge wouldn’t either.”

Ron looked horrified.“You’re not allowed to come? But — no way — McGonagall or someone will give you permission —”

Harry gave a hollow laugh. Professor McGonagall, head of Gryffindor House, was very strict.

“— or we can ask Fred and George, they know every secret passage out of the castle —”

“Ron!” said Hermione sharply. “I don’t think Harry should be sneaking out of school with Black on the loose —”

“Yeah, I expect that’s what McGonagall will say when I ask for permission,” said Harry bitterly.

“But if we’re with him,” said Ron spiritedly to Hermione, “Black wouldn’t dare —”

“Oh, Ron, don’t talk rubbish,” snapped Hermione. “Black’s already murdered a whole bunch of people in the middle of a crowded street. Do you really think he’s going to worry about attacking Harry just because we’re there?”

She was fumbling with the straps of Crookshanks’s basket as she spoke.

“Don’t let that thing out!” Ron said, but too late.

Crookshanks leapt lightly from the basket, stretched, yawned, and sprang onto Ron’s knees.

The lump in Ron’s pocket trembled and he shoved Crookshanks angrily away. “Get out of here!”

“Ron, don’t!” said Hermione angrily.

Ron was about to answer back when Professor Lupin stirred. They watched him apprehensively, but he simply turned his head the other way, mouth slightly open, and slept on.

The Hogwarts Express moved steadily north and the scenery outside the window became wilder and darker while the clouds overhead thickened. People were chasing backward and forward past the door of their compartment. Crookshanks had now settled in an empty seat, his squashed face turned toward Ron, his yellow eyes on Ron’s top pocket.

At one o’clock, the plump witch with the food cart arrived at the compartment door.

“D’you think we should wake him up?” Ron asked awkwardly, nodding toward Professor Lupin. “He looks like he could do with some food.”

Hermione approached Professor Lupin cautiously.

“Er — Professor?” she said. “Excuse me — Professor?”

He didn’t move.

“Don’t worry, dear,” said the witch as she handed Harry a large stack of Cauldron Cakes. “If he’s hungry when he wakes, I’ll be up front with the driver.”

“I suppose he is asleep?” said Ron quietly as the witch slid the compartment door closed. “I mean — he hasn’t died, has he?”

“No, no, he’s breathing,” whispered Hermione, taking the Cauldron Cake Harry passed her.

He might not be very good company, but Professor Lupin’s presence in their compartment had its uses. 

Midafternoon, just as it had started to rain, blurring the rolling hills outside the window, they heard footsteps in the corridor again, and their three least favorite people appeared at the door: Draconia Malfoy, flanked by her cronies, Vincent Crabbe and Gregoria Goyle.

Draconia Malfoy and Harry had been enemies ever since they had met on their very first train journey to Hogwarts, though that had gone a bit funny during the end of last year when Harry and Ron caught her watching the Ford Anglia through a spy glass. 

Draconia, who had a pale, regal, sneering face, was in Slytherin House; She played Seeker on the Slytherin Quidditch team, the same position that Harry played on the Gryffindor team. 

Crabbe and Goyle seemed to exist only to do Malfoy’s bidding. They were both wide and musclely; Crabbe was taller, with a pudding-bowl haircut and a very thick neck; Goyle had short, bristly hair and long, gorilla-ish arms, especially for a girl.

“Well, well-!,” Draconia called out in what started as a happy, cheerful voice, but it died away when she saw Hermione and Ron sitting with Harry. Pulling hard to open the compartment door, it rattled to a slamming stop in its socket, and Harry watched Draconia quickly put together her face into a sneering, discontent scowl. “Potty and the Weasel, back together at last.”

Draconia then made little spidery motions with her fingers at Ron, who glared at her with a wrinkle of his nose that threatened to turn into a snarl.

Crabbe and Goyle chuckled trollishly, though Harry noted they were, as usual, too dull to notice the switch in Draconia’s demeanor.

“I heard your father finally got his hands on some gold this summer, Weasley,” teased Draconia. “Did your mother die of shock?”

Ron stood up so quickly he knocked Crookshanks’s basket to the floor. 

Professor Lupin gave a snort.

“Who’s that?” asked Draconia, taking an automatic step backward as she spotted Lupin.

“New teacher,” said Harry, who got to his feet, too, in case he needed to hold Ron back. “What were you saying, Malformed?”

Draconia’s gray-green eyes narrowed, though she had to fight to not grin at Harry. 

She wasn’t fool enough to pick a fight right under a teacher’s nose, no matter how fun the spar would be.

“Touche’, Putter.” he muttered, putting on a sardonically resentful tone to it as she turned to Crabbe and Goyle. “C’mon, let’s go.”

Harry and Ron sat down again, Ron massaging his knuckles.

“I’m not going to take any crap from Malfoy this year,” he said angrily. “I mean it. If she makes one more crack about my family, I’m going to get hold of her head and —”

Ron made a violent gesture in midair.

“Ron for goodness sake, she’s still a girl!” hissed Hermione, pointing at Professor Lupin, “be careful . . .”

But Professor Lupin was still fast asleep.

The rain thickened as the train sped yet farther north; the windows were now a solid, shimmering gray, which gradually darkened until lanterns flickered into life all along the corridors and over the luggage racks. 

The train rattled, the rain hammered, the wind roared, but still, Professor Lupin slept.

“We must be nearly there,” said Ron, leaning forward to look past Professor Lupin at the now completely black window.

The words had hardly left him when the train started to slow down.

“Great,” said Ron, getting up and walking carefully past Professor Lupin to try and see outside. “I’m starving. I want to get to the feast. . . .”

“We can’t be there yet,” said Hermione, checking her watch.

“So why’re we stopping?”

The train was getting slower and slower. As the noise of the pistons fell away, the wind and rain sounded louder than ever against the windows.

Harry, who was nearest the door, got up to look into the corridor. All along the carriage, heads were sticking curiously out of their compartments.

The train came to a stop with a jolt, and distant thuds and bangs told them that luggage had fallen out of the racks. Then, without warning, all the lamps went out and they were plunged into total darkness.

“What’s going on?” said Ron’s voice from behind Harry.

“Ouch!” gasped Hermione. “Ron, that was my foot!”

Harry felt his way back to his seat. “D’you think we’ve broken down?”

“Dunno . . .” Ron said.

There was a squeaking sound, and Harry saw the dim black outline of Ron, wiping a patch clean on the window and peering out.

“There’s something moving out there,” Ron said. “I think people are coming aboard. . . .”

The compartment door suddenly opened and someone fell painfully over Harry’s legs.

“Sorry — d’you know what’s going on? — Ouch — sorry —”

“Hullo, Neville,” said Harry, feeling around in the dark and pulling Neville up by his cloak.

“Harry? Is that you? What’s happening?”

“No idea — sit down —”

There was a loud hissing and a yelp of pain; Neville had tried to sit on Crookshanks.

“I’m going to go and ask the driver what’s going on,” came Hermione’s voice. 

Harry felt her pass him, heard the door slide open again, and then a thud and two loud squeals of pain.

“Who’s that?”

“Who’s that?”

“Ginny?”

“Hermione?”

“What are you doing?”

“I was looking for Ron —”

“Come in and sit down —”

“Not here!” said Harry hurriedly. “I’m here!”

“Ouch!” said Neville.

“Quiet!” said a hoarse voice suddenly.

Professor Lupin appeared to have woken up at last. 

Harry could hear movements in his corner. 

None of them spoke.

There was a soft, crackling noise, and a shivering light filled the compartment. 

Professor Lupin appeared to be holding a handful of flames. They illuminated his tired, gray face, but his eyes looked alert and wary.

“Stay where you are,” he said in the same hoarse voice, and he got slowly to his feet with his handful of fire held out in front of him.

But the door slid slowly open before Lupin could reach it.

Standing in the doorway, illuminated by the shivering flames in Lupin’s hand, was a cloaked figure that towered to the ceiling. Its face was completely hidden beneath its hood. Harry’s eyes darted downward, and what he saw made his stomach contract. 

There was a hand protruding from the cloak and it was glistening, grayish, slimy-looking, and scabbed, like something dead that had decayed in water. . . .

But it was visible only for a split second. 

As though the creature beneath the cloak sensed Harry’s gaze, the hand was suddenly withdrawn into the folds of its black cloak.

And then the thing beneath the hood, whatever it was, drew a long, slow, rattling breath, as though it were trying to suck something more than just the air from its surroundings.

An intense cold swept over them all. 

Harry felt his own breath catch in his chest. The cold went deeper than his skin. It was inside his chest, it was inside his very heart. . . .

Harry’s eyes rolled up into his head. 

He couldn’t see. 

He was drowning in cold. 

There was a rushing in his ears as though of water. He was being dragged downward, the roaring growing louder . . .

And then, from far away, he heard screaming, terrible, terrified, pleading screams. He wanted to help whoever it was, he tried to move his arms, but couldn’t . . . a thick white fog was swirling around him, inside him —

“Harry! Harry! Are you all right?”

Someone was slapping his face.

“W-what?”

Harry opened his eyes; there were lanterns above him, and the floor was shaking — the Hogwarts Express was moving again and the lights had come back on. He seemed to have slid out of his seat onto the floor. 

Ron and Hermione were kneeling next to him, and above them he could see Neville and Professor Lupin watching. 

Harry felt very sick; when he put up his hand to push his glasses back on, he felt cold sweat on his face.

Ron and Hermione heaved him back onto his seat.

“Are you okay?” Ron asked nervously.

“Yeah,” replied Harry numbly, looking quickly toward the door. The hooded creature had vanished. “What happened? Where’s that — that thing? Who screamed?”

“No one screamed,” said Ron, more nervously still.

Harry looked around the bright compartment. Ginny and Neville looked back at him, both very pale. “But I heard screaming —”

A loud snap made them all jump. 

Professor Lupin was breaking an enormous slab of chocolate into pieces.

“Here,” he said to Harry, handing him a particularly large piece. “Eat it. It’ll help.”

Harry took the chocolate but didn’t eat it.

“What was that thing?” he asked Lupin.

“A dementor,” said Lupin, who was now giving chocolate to everyone else. “One of the dementors of Azkaban.”

Everyone stared at him. Professor Lupin crumpled up the empty chocolate wrapper and put it in his pocket.

“Eat,” he repeated. “It’ll help. I need to speak to the driver, excuse me . . .”

He strolled past Harry and disappeared into the corridor.

“Are you sure you’re okay, Harry?” said Hermione, watching Harry anxiously.

“I don’t get it. . . . What happened?” said Harry, wiping more sweat off his face.

Neville, voice still shaky, pointed to the doorway. “Well — that thing — the dementor — stood there and looked around. I mean, I think it did, I couldn’t see its face,— and you — you —”

“We thought you were having a fit or something,” said Ron, who still looked scared. “You went sort of rigid and fell out of your seat and started twitching —”

“And Professor Lupin stepped over you, and walked toward the dementor, and pulled out his wand,” said Hermione, “and he said, ‘None of us is hiding Sirius Black under our cloaks. Go.’ But the dementor didn’t move, so Lupin muttered something, and a silvery thing shot out of his wand at it, and it turned around and sort of glided away. . . .”

“It was horrible,” said Neville, in a higher voice than usual. “Did you feel how cold it got when it came in?”

“I felt weird,” said Ron, shifting his shoulders uncomfortably. “Like I’d never be cheerful again. . . .”

Ginny, who was huddled in her corner looking nearly as bad as Harry felt, gave a small sob. Hermione went over and put a comforting arm around her.

“But didn’t any of you — fall off your seats?” said Harry awkwardly.

“No,” said Ron, looking anxiously at Harry again. “Ginny was shaking like mad, though. . . .”

Harry didn’t understand. He felt weak and shivery, as though he were recovering from a bad bout of flu; he also felt the beginnings of shame. 

Why had he gone to pieces like that, when no one else had?

Professor Lupin had come back. He paused as he entered, looked around, and said, with a small smile, “I haven’t poisoned that chocolate, you know. . . .”

Harry took a bite and to his great surprise felt warmth spread suddenly to the tips of his fingers and toes.

“We’ll be at Hogwarts in ten minutes,” said Professor Lupin. “Are you all right, Harry?”

Harry didn’t ask how Professor Lupin knew his name.

“Fine,” he muttered, embarrassed.

They didn’t talk much during the remainder of the journey. At long last, the train stopped at Hogsmeade station, and there was a great scramble to get outside; owls hooted, cats meowed, and Neville’s pet toad croaked loudly from under his hat. 

It was freezing on the tiny platform, rain driving down in icy sheets.

“Firs’ years this way!” called a familiar voice. 

Harry, Ron, and Hermione turned and saw the gigantic outline of Hagrid at the other end of the platform, beckoning the terrified-looking new students forward for their traditional journey across the lake.

“All righ’, you three?” Hagrid yelled over the heads of the crowd. 

They waved at him, but had no chance to speak to him because the mass of people around them was shunting them away along the platform. 

Harry, Ron, and Hermione followed the rest of the school along the platform and out onto a rough mud track, where at least a hundred stagecoaches awaited the remaining students, each pulled, Harry could only assume, by an invisible horse, because when they climbed inside and shut the door, the coach set off all by itself, bumping and swaying in procession.

The coach smelled faintly of mold and straw. 

Harry felt better since the chocolate, but still weak. Ron and Hermione kept looking at him sideways, as though frightened he might collapse again.

As the carriage trundled toward a pair of magnificent wrought iron gates, flanked with stone columns topped with winged boars, Harry saw two more towering, hooded dementors standing guard on either side. A wave of cold sickness threatened to engulf him again; he leaned back into the lumpy seat and closed his eyes until they had passed the gates. 

The carriage picked up speed on the long, sloping drive up to the castle; Hermione was leaning out of the tiny window, watching the many turrets and towers draw nearer. At last, the carriage swayed to a halt, and Hermione and Ron got out.

As Harry stepped down, a drawling, delighted voice sounded in his ear.

“You fainted, Potter? Is Longbottom telling the truth? You actually fainted?”

Draconia elbowed past Hermione to block Harry’s way up the stone steps to the castle, her face attempting to be gleeful, but her pale gray-green eyes flicked back and forth along Harry’s face in a worried manner.

Not unlike Mrs. Weasley, before he had gotten onto the train.

“Shove off, Malfoy,” said Ron, whose jaw was clenched.

“Did you faint as well, Weasley?” asked Draconia loudly, rounding on him while making her signature, anti-Ron spidery fingers. “Did the scary old dementor frighten you too?”

Ron made a noise akin to a sputtering chainsaw trying to rev, but Draconia turned back to Potter, lowering her voice.

“Potter,” She began, but her voice died away due to another.

“Is there a problem?” said a mild voice. 

Professor Lupin had just gotten out of the next carriage.

Draconia gave Professor Lupin an insolent stare, which took in the patches on his robes, and the dilapidated suitcase. 

With a tiny hint of sarcasm in her voice, she said, “Oh, no — er — Professor,” then she smirked at Harry, keeping her voice low enough so only the two of them could hear the breathy, “Chocolate, Potter. Chocolate” leave her lips as she turned away.

Crabbe and Goyle met her in step, making the rude, crawling motions with their fingers at Ron.

Hermione prodded Ron in the back to make him hurry, and the three of them joined the crowd swarming up the steps. They stepped through the giant oak front doors, into the cavernous entrance hall, which was lit with flaming torches, were greeted by the magnificent marble staircase that led to the upper floors.

The door into the Great Hall stood open at the right; Harry followed the crowd toward it, but had barely glimpsed the enchanted ceiling, which was black and cloudy tonight, when a voice called, “Potter! Granger! I want to see you both!”

Harry and Hermione turned around, surprised.

 Professor McGonagall, Transfiguration teacher and head of Gryffindor House, was calling over the heads of the crowd. 

She was a stern-looking witch who wore her hair in a tight bun, and her sharp eyes were framed with square spectacles. Harry fought his way over to her with a feeling of foreboding: Professor McGonagall had a way of making him feel he must have done something wrong.

“There’s no need to look so worried — I just want a word in my office,” she told them. “Move along there, Weasley.”

Ron stared as Professor McGonagall ushered Harry and Hermione away from the chattering crowd; they accompanied her across the entrance hall, up the marble staircase, and along a corridor.

Once they were in her office, a small room with a large, welcoming fire, Professor McGonagall motioned Harry and Hermione to sit down. She settled herself behind her desk and said abruptly, “Professor Lupin sent an owl ahead to say that you were taken ill on the train, Potter.”

Before Harry could reply, there was a soft knock on the door and Madam Pomfrey, the nurse, came bustling in.

Harry felt himself going red in the face. 

It was bad enough that he’d passed out, or whatever he had done, without everyone making all this fuss.

“I’m fine,” he said, “I don’t need anything —”

“Oh, it’s you, is it?” said Madam Pomfrey, ignoring this and bending down to stare closely at him. “I suppose you’ve been doing something dangerous again?”

“It was a dementor, Poppy,” said Professor McGonagall.

They exchanged a dark look, and Madam Pomfrey clucked disapprovingly.

“Setting dementors around a school,” she muttered, pushing back Harry’s hair and feeling his forehead. “He won’t be the last one who collapses. Yes, he’s all clammy. Terrible things, they are, and the effect they have on people who are already delicate —”

“I’m not delicate!” said Harry crossly.

“Of course you’re not,” said Madam Pomfrey absentmindedly, now taking his pulse.

“What does he need?” said Professor McGonagall crisply. “Bed rest? Should he perhaps spend tonight in the hospital wing?”

“I’m fine!” said Harry, jumping up. 

The thought of what Draconia Malfoy would say if he had to go to the hospital wing was torture.

“Well, he should have some chocolate, at the very least,” said Madam Pomfrey, who was now trying to peer into Harry’s eyes.

“I’ve already had some,” said Harry. “Professor Lupin gave me some. He gave it to all of us.”

“Did he, now?” said Madam Pomfrey approvingly. “So we’ve finally got a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher who knows his remedies?”

“Are you sure you feel all right, Potter?” Professor McGonagall said sharply.

“Yes,” said Harry.

“Very well. Kindly wait outside while I have a quick word with Miss Granger about her course schedule, then we can go down to the feast together.”

Harry went back into the corridor with Madam Pomfrey, who left for the hospital wing, muttering to herself. 

He had to wait only a few minutes; then Hermione emerged looking very happy about something, followed by Professor McGonagall, and the three of them made their way back down the marble staircase to the Great Hall.

It was a sea of pointed black hats; each of the long House tables was lined with students, their faces glimmering by the light of thousands of candles, which were floating over the tables in midair. Professor Flitwick, who was a tiny little wizard with a shock of white hair, was carrying an ancient hat and a four-legged stool out of the hall.

“Oh,” said Hermione softly, “we’ve missed the Sorting!”

New students at Hogwarts were sorted into Houses by trying on the Sorting Hat, which shouted out the House they were best suited to (Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, or Slytherin). 

Professor McGonagall strode off toward her empty seat at the staff table, and Harry and Hermione set off in the other direction, as quietly as possible, toward the Gryffindor table. 

People looked around at them as they passed along the back of the hall, and a few of them pointed at Harry. 

Had the story of his collapsing in front of the dementor traveled that fast?

He and Hermione sat down on either side of Ron, who had saved them seats.

“What was all that about?” he muttered to Harry.

Harry started to explain in a whisper, but at that moment the headmaster stood up to speak, and he broke off.

Professor Dumbledore, though very old, always gave an impression of great energy. He had several feet of long silver hair and beard, half-moon spectacles, and an extremely crooked nose. He was often described as the greatest wizard of the age, but that wasn’t why Harry respected him. You couldn’t help trusting Albus Dumbledore, and as Harry watched him beaming around at the students, he felt really calm for the first time since the dementor had entered the train compartment.

“Welcome!” said Dumbledore, the candlelight shimmering on his beard. “Welcome to another year at Hogwarts! I have a few things to say to you all, and as one of them is very serious, I think it best to get it out of the way before you become befuddled by our excellent feast. . . .”

Dumbledore cleared his throat and continued, “As you will all be aware after their search of the Hogwarts Express, our school is presently playing host to some of the dementors of Azkaban, who are here on Ministry of Magic business.”

He paused, and Harry remembered what Mr. Weasley had said about Dumbledore not being happy with the dementors guarding the school.

“They are stationed at every entrance to the grounds,” Dumbledore continued, “and while they are with us, I must make it plain that nobody is to leave school without permission. Dementors are not to be fooled by tricks or disguises — or even invisibility cloaks,” he added blandly, and Harry and Ron glanced at each other. “It is not in the nature of a dementor to understand pleading, or excuses. I therefore warn each and every one of you to give them no reason to harm you. I look to the prefects, and our new Head Boy and Girl, to make sure that no student runs afoul of the dementors,” he said.

Percy, who was sitting a few seats down from Harry, puffed out his chest again and stared around impressively. Dumbledore paused again; he looked very seriously around the hall, and nobody moved or made a sound.

“On a happier note,” he continued, “I am pleased to welcome two new teachers to our ranks this year.

“First, Professor Lupin, who has kindly consented to fill the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.”

There was some scattered, rather unenthusiastic applause. Only those who had been in the compartment on the train with Professor Lupin clapped hard, Harry among them. Professor Lupin looked particularly shabby next to all the other teachers in their best robes.

“Look at Snape!” Ron hissed in Harry’s ear.

Professor Snape, the Potions master, was staring along the staff table at Professor Lupin. It was common knowledge that Snape wanted the Defense Against the Dark Arts job, but even Harry, who hated Snape, was startled at the expression twisting his thin, sallow face. 

It was beyond anger: It was loathing. 

Harry knew that expression only too well; it was the look Snape wore every time he set eyes on Harry.

“As to our second new appointment,” Dumbledore continued as the lukewarm applause for Professor Lupin died away. “Well, I am sorry to tell you that Professor Kettleburn, our Care of Magical Creatures teacher, retired at the end of last year in order to enjoy more time with his remaining limbs. However, I am delighted to say that his place will be filled by none other than Rubeus Hagrid, who has agreed to take on this teaching job in addition to his gamekeeping duties.”

Harry, Ron, and Hermione stared at one another, stunned. Then they joined in with the applause, which was tumultuous at the Gryffindor table in particular. 

Harry leaned forward to see Hagrid, who was ruby-red in the face and staring down at his enormous hands, his wide grin hidden in the tangle of his black beard.

“We should’ve known!” Ron roared, pounding the table. “Who else would have assigned us a biting book?”

Harry, Ron, and Hermione were the last to stop clapping, and as Professor Dumbledore started speaking again, they saw that Hagrid was wiping his eyes on the tablecloth.

“Well, I think that’s everything of importance,” said Dumbledore. “Let the feast begin!”

The golden plates and goblets before them filled suddenly with food and drink. 

Harry, suddenly ravenous, helped himself to everything he could reach and began to eat.

It was a delicious feast; the hall echoed with talk, laughter, and the clatter of knives and forks. Harry, Ron, and Hermione, however, were eager for it to finish so that they could talk to Hagrid. They knew how much being made a teacher would mean to him. 

Hagrid wasn’t a fully qualified wizard; he had been expelled from Hogwarts in his third year for a crime he had not committed. 

It had been Harry, Ron, and Hermione who had cleared Hagrid’s name last year.

At long last, when the last morsels of pumpkin tart had melted from the golden platters, Dumbledore gave the word that it was time for them all to go to bed, and they got their chance.

“Congratulations, Hagrid!” Hermione squealed as they reached the teachers’ table.

“All down ter you three,” said Hagrid, wiping his shining face on his napkin as he looked up at them. “Can’ believe it . . . great man, Dumbledore . . . came straight down to me hut after Professor Kettleburn said he’d had enough. . . . It’s what I always wanted. . . .”

Overcome with emotion, he buried his face in his napkin, and Professor McGonagall shooed them away.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione joined the Gryffindors streaming up the marble staircase and, very tired now, along more corridors, up more and more stairs, to the hidden entrance to Gryffindor Tower. 

A large portrait of a fat lady in a pink dress asked them, “Password?”

“Coming through, coming through!” Percy called from behind the crowd. “The new password’s ‘Fortuna Major’!”

“Oh no,” said Neville Longbottom sadly. 

He always had trouble remembering the passwords.

Through the portrait hole and across the common room, the girls and boys divided toward their separate staircases. 

Harry climbed the spiral stair with no thought in his head except how glad he was to be back. 

They reached their familiar, circular dormitory with its five four-poster beds, and Harry, looking around, felt he was home at last.

He then spied a small note on his bed, a few holes in it telling him that Hedwig must have dropped it off… or one owl or another.

Usually Hedwing brought his letters straight to him, so Harry wagered on the latter.

He picked it up, and smiled in surprise down at the green, sparkling ink:

“Harry,

Remember to eat chocolate! Why on earth were you trying to fight a dementor for? Wasn’t last year enough excitement?

-Green Streak”

Harry chuckled, folding the note neatly and setting it in his trunk with the others.

“Word always travels fast.” Harry sighed out, then groaned.

Tomorrow, Draconia was going to eat him alive…

Chapter 29 : Book 3: Chapter 6 (extreme deviation)

Ch 6

When Harry, Ron, and Hermione entered the Great Hall for breakfast the next day, the first thing they saw was Draconia Malfoy, who seemed to be entertaining a large group of Slytherins with a very funny story. 

As they passed, Malfoy did a ridiculous impression of a swooning fit and there was a roar of laughter.

“Ignore her,” said Hermione, who was right behind Harry. “Just ignore her, it’s not worth it. . . .”

“Hey, Potter!” shrieked Pansy Parkinson, a Slytherin girl with a face like a pug. “Potter! The dementors are coming, Potter! Woooooooo!”

The Slytherins laughed raucously with Pansy, though Draconia looked at the girl, annoyed, and pelted her in the face with an emerald green napkin.

Harry dropped into a seat at the Gryffindor table, next to George Weasley.

“New third-year course schedules,” said George, passing them over. “What’s up with you, Harry?”

“Malfoy,” said Ron, sitting down on George’s other side and glaring over at the Slytherin table.

George looked up in time to see Draconia holding Pansy by the ear, and appeared to be giving her a stern talking to while pointing over at the Gryffindor table.

The other Slytherins were still laughing, though this time at Pansy.

“That little git,” George said calmly. “Not even her own house is safe. She wasn’t so cocky last night when the dementors were down at our end of the train. Came running into our compartment, didn’t she, Fred?”

“Nearly wet herself,” said Fred, with a contemptuous glance at Draconia.

“I wasn’t too happy myself,” said George. “They’re horrible things, those dementors. . . .”

“Sort of freeze your insides, don’t they?” said Fred.

“You didn’t pass out, though, did you?” said Harry in a low voice.

“Forget it, Harry,” said George bracingly. “Dad had to go out to Azkaban one time, remember, Fred? And he said it was the worst place he’d ever been, he came back all weak and shaking. . . . They suck the happiness out of a place, dementors. Most of the prisoners go mad in there.”

“Anyway, we’ll see how happy Malfoy looks after our first Quidditch match,” said Fred. “Gryffindor versus Slytherin, first game of the season, remember?”

The only time Harry and Draconia had faced each other in a Quidditch match, Draconia had definitely come off worse, though Harry hadn’t exactly come out unscathed either. 

Feeling slightly more cheerful, Harry helped himself to sausages and fried tomatoes.

Hermione was examining her new schedule.

“Ooh, good, we’re starting some new subjects today,” she said happily.

“Hermione,” said Ron, frowning as he looked over her shoulder, “they’ve messed up your schedule. Look — they’ve got you down for about ten subjects a day. There isn’t enough time.”

“I’ll manage. I’ve fixed it all with Professor McGonagall.”

“But look,” said Ron, laughing, “see this morning? Nine o’clock, Divination. And underneath, nine o’clock, Muggle Studies. And” — Ron leaned closer to the schedule, disbelieving — “look — underneath that, Arithmancy, nine o’clock. I mean, I know you’re good, Hermione, but no one’s that good. How’re you supposed to be in three classes at once?”

“Don’t be silly,” said Hermione shortly. “Of course I won’t be in three

classes at once.”

“Well, then —”

“Pass the marmalade,” said Hermione.

“But —”

“Oh, Ron, what’s it to you if my schedule’s a bit full?” Hermione snapped. “I told you, I’ve fixed it all with Professor McGonagall.”

Just then, Hagrid entered the Great Hall. He was wearing his long moleskin overcoat and was absentmindedly swinging a dead polecat from one enormous hand.

“All righ’?” he said eagerly, pausing on the way to the staff table. “Yer in my firs’ ever lesson! Right after lunch! Bin up since five gettin’ everythin’ ready. . . . Hope it’s okay. . . . Me, a teacher . . . honestly. . . .”

He grinned broadly at them and headed off to the staff table, still swinging the polecat.

“Wonder what he’s been getting ready?” said Ron, a note of anxiety in his voice.

The hall was starting to empty as people headed off toward their first lesson. 

Ron checked his course schedule. “We’d better go, look, Divination’s at the top of North Tower. It’ll take us ten minutes to get there. . . .”

They finished their breakfasts hastily, said good-bye to Fred and George, and walked back through the hall. As they passed the Slytherin table, Draconia did yet another impression of a fainting fit. 

The shouts of laughter followed Harry into the entrance hall.

The journey through the castle to North Tower was a long one. Two years at Hogwarts hadn’t taught them everything about the castle, and they had never been inside North Tower before.

“There’s — got — to — be — a — shortcut,” Ron panted as they climbed their seventh long staircase and emerged on an unfamiliar landing, where there was nothing but a large painting of a bare stretch of grass hanging on the stone wall.

“I think it’s this way,” said Hermione, peering down the empty passage to the right.

“Can’t be,” said Ron. “That’s south, look, you can see a bit of the lake out of the window . . .”

Harry was watching the painting. 

A fat, dapple-gray pony had just ambled onto the grass and was grazing nonchalantly. Harry was used to the subjects of Hogwarts paintings moving around and leaving their frames to visit one another, but he always enjoyed watching it. A moment later, a short, squat knight in a suit of armor clanked into the picture after his pony. 

By the look of the grass stains on his metal knees, he had just fallen off.

“Aha!” he yelled, seeing Harry, Ron, and Hermione. “What villains are these, that trespass upon my private lands! Come to scorn at my fall, perchance? Draw, you knaves, you dogs!”

They watched in astonishment as the little knight tugged his sword out of its scabbard and began brandishing it violently, hopping up and down in rage. But the sword was too long for him; a particularly wild swing made him overbalance, and he landed facedown in the grass.

“Are you all right?” said Harry, moving closer to the picture.

“Get back, you scurvy braggart! Back, you rogue!” The knight seized his sword again and used it to push himself back up, but the blade sank deeply into the grass and, though he pulled with all his might, he couldn’t get it out again. 

Finally, he had to flop back down onto the grass and push up his visor to mop his sweating face.

“Listen,” said Harry, taking advantage of the knight’s exhaustion, “we’re looking for the North Tower. You don’t know the way, do you?”

“A quest!” The knight’s rage seemed to vanish instantly. He clanked to his feet and shouted, “Come follow me, dear friends, and we shall find our goal, or else shall perish bravely in the charge!”

He gave the sword another fruitless tug, tried and failed to mount the fat pony, gave up, and cried, “On foot then, good sirs and gentle lady! On! On!” 

And he ran, clanking loudly, into the left side of the frame and out of sight.

They hurried after him along the corridor, following the sound of his armor. Every now and then they spotted him running through a picture ahead.

“Be of stout heart, the worst is yet to come!” yelled the knight, and they saw him reappear in front of an alarmed group of women in crinolines, whose picture hung on the wall of a narrow spiral staircase.

Puffing loudly, Harry, Ron, and Hermione climbed the tightly spiraling steps, getting dizzier and dizzier, until at last they heard the murmur of voices above them and knew they had reached the classroom.

“Farewell!” cried the knight, popping his head into a painting of some sinister-looking monks. “Farewell, my comrades-in-arms! If ever you have need of noble heart and steely sinew, call upon Sir Cadogan!”

“Yeah, we’ll call you,” muttered Ron as the knight disappeared, “if we ever need someone mental.”

They climbed the last few steps and emerged onto a tiny landing, where most of the class was already assembled. There were no doors off this landing, but Ron nudged Harry and pointed at the ceiling, where there was a circular trapdoor with a brass plaque on it.

“‘Sybill Trelawney, Divination teacher,’” Harry read. “How’re we supposed to get up there?”

As though in answer to his question, the trapdoor suddenly opened, and a silvery ladder descended right at Harry’s feet. 

Everyone got quiet.

“After you,” said Ron, grinning, so Harry climbed the ladder first.

He emerged into the strangest-looking classroom he had ever seen. In fact, it didn’t look like a classroom at all, more like a cross between someone’s attic and an old-fashioned tea shop. 

At least twenty small, circular tables were crammed inside it, all surrounded by chintz armchairs and fat little poufs. Everything was lit with a dim, crimson light; the curtains at the windows were all closed, and the many lamps were draped with dark red scarves. 

It was stiflingly warm, and the fire that was burning under the crowded mantelpiece was giving off a heavy, sickly sort of perfume as it heated a large copper kettle. The shelves running around the circular walls were crammed with dusty-looking feathers, stubs of candles, many packs of tattered playing cards, countless silvery crystal balls, and a huge array of teacups.

Ron appeared at Harry’s shoulder as the class assembled around them, all talking in whispers.

“Where is she?” Ron said.

A voice came suddenly out of the shadows, a soft, misty sort of voice.

“Welcome,” it said. “How nice to see you in the physical world at last.”

Harry’s immediate impression was of a large, glittering insect. 

Professor Trelawney moved into the firelight, and they saw that she was very thin; her large glasses magnified her eyes to several times their natural size, and she was draped in a gauzy spangled shawl. Innumerable chains and beads hung around her spindly neck, and her arms and hands were encrusted with bangles and rings.

“Sit, my children, sit,” she said, and they all climbed awkwardly into armchairs or sank onto poufs. 

Harry, Ron, and Hermione sat themselves around the same round table.

“Welcome to Divination,” said Professor Trelawney, who had seated herself in a winged armchair in front of the fire. “My name is Professor Trelawney. You may not have seen me before. I find that descending too often into the hustle and bustle of the main school clouds my Inner Eye.”

Nobody said anything to this extraordinary pronouncement. 

Professor Trelawney delicately rearranged her shawl and continued, “So you have chosen to study Divination, the most difficult of all magical arts. I must warn you at the outset that if you do not have the Sight, there is very little I will be able to teach you. Books can take you only so far in this field. . . .”

At these words, both Harry and Ron glanced, grinning, at Hermione, who looked startled at the news that books wouldn’t be much help in this subject.

“Many witches and wizards, talented though they are in the area of loud bangs and smells and sudden disappearings, are yet unable to penetrate the veiled mysteries of the future,” Professor Trelawney went on, her enormous, gleaming eyes moving from face to nervous face. “It is a gift granted to few. You, boy,” she said suddenly to Neville, who almost toppled off his pouf. “Is your grandmother well?”

“I think so,” said Neville tremulously.

“I wouldn’t be so sure if I were you, dear,” said Professor Trelawney, the firelight glinting on her long emerald earrings. 

Neville gulped. 

Professor Trelawney continued placidly. “We will be covering the basic methods of Divination this year. The first term will be devoted to reading the tea leaves. Next term we shall progress to palmistry. By the way, my dear,” she shot suddenly at Parvati Patil, “beware a red-haired man.”

Parvati gave a startled look at Ron, who was right behind her, and edged her chair away from him.

“In the second term,” Professor Trelawney went on, “we shall progress to the crystal ball — if we have finished with fire omens, that is. Unfortunately, classes will be disrupted in February by a nasty bout of flu. I myself will lose my voice. And around Easter, one of our number will leave us forever.”

A very tense silence followed this pronouncement, but Professor Trelawney seemed unaware of it.

“I wonder, dear,” she said to Lavender Brown, who was nearest and shrank back in her chair, “if you could pass me the largest silver teapot?”

Lavender, looking relieved, stood up, took an enormous teapot from the shelf, and put it down on the table in front of Professor Trelawney.

“Thank you, my dear. Incidentally, that thing you are dreading — it will happen on Friday the sixteenth of October.”

Lavender trembled.

“Now, I want you all to divide into pairs. Collect a teacup from the shelf, come to me, and I will fill it. Then sit down and drink, drink until only the dregs remain. Swill these around the cup three times with the left hand, then turn the cup upside down on its saucer, wait for the last of the tea to drain away, then give your cup to your partner to read. You will interpret the patterns using pages five and six of Unfogging the Future. I shall move among you, helping and instructing. Oh, and dear” — she caught Neville by the arm as he made to stand up — “after you’ve broken your first cup, would you be so kind as to select one of the blue-patterned ones? I’m rather attached to the pink.”

Sure enough, Neville had no sooner reached the shelf of teacups when there was a tinkle of breaking china. 

Professor Trelawney swept over to him holding a dustpan and brush and said, “One of the blue ones, then, dear, if you wouldn’t mind . . . thank you. . . .”

When Harry and Ron had had their teacups filled, they went back to their table and tried to drink the scalding tea quickly. 

They swilled the dregs around as Professor Trelawney had instructed, then drained the cups and swapped them.

“Right,” said Ron as they both opened their books at pages five and six. “What can you see in mine?”

“A load of soggy brown stuff,” said Harry. 

The heavily perfumed smoke in the room was making him feel sleepy and stupid.

“Broaden your minds, my dears, and allow your eyes to see past the mundane!” Professor Trelawney cried through the gloom.

Harry tried to pull himself together.

“Right, you’ve got a crooked sort of cross . . .” He consulted Unfogging the Future. “That means you’re going to have ‘trials and suffering’ — sorry about that — but there’s a thing that could be the sun . . . hang on . . . that means ‘great happiness’ . . . so you’re going to suffer but be very happy. . . .”

“You need your Inner Eye tested, if you ask me,” said Ron, and they both had to stifle their laughs as Professor Trelawney gazed in their direction.

“My turn . . .” Ron peered into Harry’s teacup, his forehead wrinkled with effort. “There’s a blob a bit like a bowler hat,” he said. “Maybe you’re going to work for the Ministry of Magic. . . .”

He turned the teacup the other way up.

“But this way it looks more like an acorn. . . . What’s that?” He scanned his copy of Unfogging the Future. “‘A windfall, unexpected gold.’ Excellent, you can lend me some . . . and there’s a thing here,” he turned the cup again, “that looks like an animal . . . yeah, if that was its head . . . it looks like a hippo . . . no, a sheep . . .”

Professor Trelawney whirled around as Harry let out a snort of laughter.

“Let me see that, my dear,” she said reprovingly to Ron, sweeping over and snatching Harry’s cup from him. 

Everyone went quiet to watch.

Professor Trelawney was staring into the teacup, rotating it counterclockwise. “The falcon . . . my dear, you have a deadly enemy.”

“But everyone knows that,” said Hermione in a loud whisper. 

Professor Trelawney stared at her.

“Well, they do,” said Hermione. “Everybody knows about Harry and You-Know-Who.”

Harry and Ron stared at her with a mixture of amazement and admiration. They had never heard Hermione speak to a teacher like that before. Professor Trelawney chose not to reply. 

She lowered her huge eyes to Harry’s cup again and continued to turn it. “The club . . . an attack. Dear, dear, this is not a happy cup. . . .”

“I thought that was a bowler hat,” said Ron sheepishly.

“The skull . . . danger in your path, my dear. . . .”

Everyone was staring, transfixed, at Professor Trelawney, who gave the cup a final turn, gasped, and then screamed.

There was another tinkle of breaking china; Neville had smashed his second cup. Professor Trelawney sank into a vacant armchair, her glittering hand at her heart and her eyes closed.

“My dear boy . . . my poor, dear boy . . . no . . . it is kinder not to say . . . no . . . don’t ask me. . . .”

“What is it, Professor?” said Dean Thomas at once. 

Everyone had got to their feet, and slowly they crowded around Harry and Ron’s table, pressing close to Professor Trelawney’s chair to get a good look at Harry’s cup.

“My dear,” Professor Trelawney’s huge eyes opened dramatically, “you have the Grim.”

“The what?” said Harry.

He could tell that he wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand; Dean Thomas shrugged at him and Lavender Brown looked puzzled, but nearly everybody else clapped their hands to their mouths in horror.

“The Grim, my dear, the Grim!” cried Professor Trelawney, who looked shocked that Harry hadn’t understood. “The giant, spectral dog that haunts churchyards! My dear boy, it is an omen — the worst omen — of death!”

Harry’s stomach lurched. 

That dog on the cover of Death Omens in Flourish and Blotts — the dog in the shadows of Magnolia Crescent . . . Lavender Brown clapped her hands to her mouth too. 

Everyone was looking at Harry, everyone except Hermione, who had gotten up and moved around to the back of Professor Trelawney’s chair.

“I don’t think it looks like a Grim,” she said flatly.

Professor Trelawney surveyed Hermione with mounting dislike. “You’ll forgive me for saying so, my dear, but I perceive very little aura around you. Very little receptivity to the resonances of the future.”

Seamus Finnigan was tilting his head from side to side.

“It looks like a Grim if you do this,” he said, with his eyes almost shut, “but it looks more like a donkey from here,” he said, leaning to the left.

“When you’ve all finished deciding whether I’m going to die or not!” shouted Harry, taking even himself by surprise. 

Now nobody seemed to want to look at him.

“I think we will leave the lesson here for today,” said Professor Trelawney in her mistiest voice. “Yes . . . please pack away your things. . . .”

Silently the class took their teacups back to Professor Trelawney, packed away their books, and closed their bags. 

Even Ron was avoiding Harry’s eyes.

“Until we meet again,” said Professor Trelawney faintly, “fair fortune be yours. Oh, and dear” — she pointed at Neville — “you’ll be late next time, so mind you work extra-hard to catch up.”

Harry, Ron, and Hermione descended Professor Trelawney’s ladder and the winding stair in silence, then set off for Professor McGonagall’s Transfiguration lesson. It took them so long to find her classroom that, early as they had left Divination, they were only just in time.

Harry chose a seat right at the back of the room, feeling as though he were sitting in a very bright spotlight; the rest of the class kept shooting furtive glances at him, as though he were about to drop dead at any moment. 

He hardly heard what Professor McGonagall was telling them about Animagi (wizards who could transform at will into animals), and wasn’t even watching when she transformed herself in front of their eyes into a tabby cat with spectacle markings around her eyes.

“Really, what has got into you all today?” said Professor McGonagall, turning back into herself with a faint pop, and staring around at them all. “Not that it matters, but that’s the first time my transformation’s not got applause from a class.”

Everybody’s heads turned toward Harry again, but nobody spoke. 

Then Hermione raised her hand. “Please, Professor, we’ve just had our first Divination class, and we were reading the tea leaves, and —”

“Ah, of course,” said Professor McGonagall ruefully with a roll of her eyes, suddenly frowning. “There is no need to say any more, Miss Granger. Tell me, which of you will be dying this year?”

Everyone stared at her.

“Me,” said Harry, finally.

“I see,” said Professor McGonagall, fixing Harry with her beady eyes. “Then you should know, Potter, that Sybill Trelawney has predicted the death of one student a year since she arrived at this school. None of them has died yet. Seeing death omens is her favorite way of greeting a new class. If it were not for the fact that I never speak ill of my colleagues —”

Professor McGonagall broke off, and they saw that her nostrils had gone white. 

She went on, more calmly, “Divination is one of the most imprecise branches of magic. I shall not conceal from you that I have very little patience with it. True Seers are very rare, and Professor Trelawney —”

She stopped again, and then said, in a very matter-of-fact tone, “You look in excellent health to me, Potter, so you will excuse me if I don’t let you off homework today. I assure you that if you die, you need not hand it in, though a note would be preferred.”

Hermione laughed. 

Harry felt a bit better. 

It was harder to feel scared of a lump of tea leaves away from the dim red light and befuddling perfume of Professor Trelawney’s classroom. 

Not everyone was convinced, however. 

Ron still looked worried, and Lavender whispered, “But what about Neville’s cup?”

When the Transfiguration class had finished, they joined the crowd thundering toward the Great Hall for lunch.

“Ron, cheer up,” said Hermione, pushing a dish of stew toward him. “You heard what Professor McGonagall said.”

Ron spooned stew onto his plate and picked up his fork but didn’t start.

“Harry,” he said, in a low, serious voice, “you haven’t seen a great black dog anywhere, have you?”

“Yeah, I have,” said Harry. “I saw one the night I left the Dursleys’.”

Ron let his fork fall with a clatter.

“Probably a stray,” said Hermione calmly.

Ron looked at Hermione as though she had gone mad.

“Hermione, if Harry’s seen a Grim, that’s — that’s bad,” he said. “My — my uncle Bilius saw one and — and he died twenty-four hours later!”

“Coincidence,” said Hermione airily, pouring herself some pumpkin juice.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” said Ron, starting to get angry. “Grims scare the living daylights out of most wizards!”

“There you are, then,” said Hermione in a superior tone. “They see the Grim and die of fright. The Grim’s not an omen, it’s the cause of death! And Harry’s still with us because he’s not stupid enough to see one and think, ‘right, well, I’d better kick the bucket then!’.”

Ron mouthed wordlessly at Hermione, who opened her bag, took out her new Arithmancy book, and propped it open against the juice jug.

“I think Divination seems very woolly,” she said, searching for her page. “A lot of guesswork, if you ask me.”

“There was nothing woolly about the Grim in that cup!” said Ron hotly.

“You didn’t seem quite so confident when you were telling Harry it was a sheep,” said Hermione coolly.

Ron narrowed his eyes at Hermione. “Professor Trelawney said you didn’t have the right aura. You just don’t like being bad at something for a change!”

He had touched a nerve. 

Hermione slammed her Arithmancy book down on the table so hard that bits of meat and carrot flew everywhere.

“If being good at Divination means I have to pretend to see death omens in a lump of tea leaves, I’m not sure I’ll be studying it much longer! That lesson was absolute rubbish compared with my Arithmancy class!” She snatched up her bag, and stalked away.

Ron frowned after her.

“What’s she talking about?” he said to Harry. “She hasn’t been to an Arithmancy class yet.”

Harry was pleased to get out of the castle after lunch. 

Yesterday’s rain had cleared; the sky was a clear, pale gray, and the grass was springy and damp underfoot as they set off for their first-ever Care of Magical Creatures class.

Ron and Hermione weren’t speaking to each other. 

Harry walked beside them in silence as they went down the sloping lawns to Hagrid’s hut on the edge of the Forbidden Forest. It was only when he spotted three only-too-familiar backs ahead of them that he realized they must be having these lessons with the Slytherins. 

Draconia was talking animatedly to Crabbe and Goyle, who were chortling. 

Harry was quite sure he knew what they were talking about.

Hagrid was waiting for his class at the door of his hut. He stood in his moleskin overcoat, with Fang the boarhound at his heels, looking impatient to start.

“C’mon, now, get a move on!” he called as the class approached. “Got a real treat for yeh today! Great lesson comin’ up! Everyone here? Right, follow me!”

For one nasty moment, Harry thought that Hagrid was going to lead them into the forest; Harry had had enough unpleasant experiences in there to last him a lifetime. 

However, Hagrid strolled off around the edge of the trees, and five minutes later, they found themselves outside a kind of paddock. 

There was nothing in there.

“Everyone gather ’round the fence here!” he called. “That’s it — make sure yeh can see — now, firs’ thing yeh’ll want ter do is open yer books —”

“How?” said the cold, drawling voice of Draconia Malfoy.

“Eh?” said Hagrid.

“How, do we open our books?” Draconia repeated. She took out her copy of ‘The Monster Book of Monsters’, which she had bound shut with a length of rope. “Everytime I try to open this bloody thing, it starts snapping around like an underfed goblin spotting loose coins.”

Other people took theirs out too; some, like Harry, had belted their book shut; others had crammed them inside tight bags or clamped them together with binder clips.

“Hasn’ — hasn’ anyone bin able ter open their books?” said Hagrid, looking crestfallen.

The class all shook their heads.

“Yeh’ve got ter stroke ’em,” said Hagrid, as though this was the most obvious thing in the world. “Look —”

He took Hermione’s copy and ripped off the Spellotape that bound it. The book tried to bite, but Hagrid ran a giant forefinger down its spine. The book shivered with a purr, and then fell open and lay quiet in his hand.

“Oh, how silly we’ve all been!” Draconia angrily scoffed, jostling her beastly book in the air by the rope she had tied it with. “We should have stroked them! Why didn’t we guess!”

“I — I thought they were funny,” Hagrid said uncertainly to Hermione.

“Oh, tremendously funny!” Shouted Draconia, visibly livid as her blonde hair began to frizz. “Really witty giving us books that try and rip our hands off! Do you have any idea how many of my socks this evil little thing chewed apart? How many of my shoes I can’t even wear anymore?!”

“Shut up, Malfoy,” said Harry quietly, raising his brows to her in a way that only she, Ron, and Harry could understand. 

Hagrid was looking downcast and Harry wanted Hagrid’s first lesson to be a success.

Draconia glared at Harry as if he were insane, pointing at the still struggling book with bared, angry teeth, but scoffed again and looked skywards.

“I… suppose it is the fault of the… publisher? Breeder? Whatever the blazes that made these books, for not putting a.. warning label, or perhaps an instruction pamphlet with the book.” Draconia huffed, then began to give her book the angriest petting Harry had ever seen in her life.

This seemed to allow Hagrid some shade of brightness to return to his face, though he was still thrown off track.

“Aye, well, I was guess’n dey woulda, I sh’pose. Righ’ then,” said Hagrid, who seemed to have lost his thread, “so — so yeh’ve got yer books an’ — an’ — now yeh need the Magical Creatures. Yeah. So I’ll go an’ get ’em. Hang on . . .”

He strode away from them into the forest and out of sight.

“God, this place is going to the dogs,” said Malfoy loudly, giving her angry little book a furious shake as one of her half-chewed socks fell out of its pages. “That oaf teaching classes, my father’ll have a fit when I tell him —”

“Shut up, Malfoy,” Harry repeated.

Draconia looked angrily down at her once brilliant blue sock, now full of chewholes, and side eyed Harry with venom. “Careful, Potter, there’s a dementor behind you —”

“Oooooooh!” squealed Lavender Brown, pointing toward the opposite side of the paddock.

Trotting toward them were a dozen of the most bizarre creatures Harry had ever seen. They had the bodies, hind legs, and tails of horses, but the front legs, wings, and heads of what seemed to be giant eagles, with cruel, steelcolored beaks and large, brilliantly orange eyes. 

The talons on their front legs were half a foot long and deadly looking. 

Each of the beasts had a thick leather collar around its neck, which was attached to a long chain, and the ends of all of these were held in the vast hands of Hagrid, who came jogging into the paddock behind the creatures.

“Gee up, there!” he roared, shaking the chains and urging the creatures toward the fence where the class stood. Everyone drew back slightly as Hagrid reached them and tethered the creatures to the fence.

“Hippogriffs!” Hagrid roared happily, waving a hand at them. “Beau’iful, aren’ they?”

Harry could sort of see what Hagrid meant. 

Once you got over the first shock of seeing something that was half horse, half bird, you started to appreciate the hippogriffs’ gleaming coats, changing smoothly from feather to hair, each of them a different color: stormy gray, bronze, pinkish roan, gleaming chestnut, and inky black.

“So,” said Hagrid, rubbing his hands together and beaming around, “if yeh wan’ ter come a bit nearer —”

No one seemed to want to. 

Harry, Ron, and Hermione, however, approached the fence cautiously.

“Now, firs’ thing yeh gotta know abou’ hippogriffs is, they’re proud,” said Hagrid. “Easily offended, hippogriffs are. Don’t never insult one, ’cause it might be the last thing yeh do.”

Draconia, Crabbe, and Goyle weren’t listening; they were talking in an undertone and Harry had a nasty feeling they were plotting how best to disrupt the lesson, or were discussing how many socks her book had consumed to miff Hagrid.

“Yeh always wait fer the hippogriff ter make the firs’ move,” Hagrid continued. “It’s polite, see? Yeh walk toward him, and yeh bow, an’ yeh wait. If he bows back, yeh’re allowed ter touch him. If he doesn’ bow, then get away from him sharpish, ’cause those talons hurt. Right — who wants ter go first?”

Most of the class backed farther away in answer. 

Even Harry, Ron, and Hermione had misgivings. 

The hippogriffs were tossing their fierce heads and flexing their powerful wings; they didn’t seem to like being tethered like this.

“No one?” said Hagrid, with a pleading look.

“I’ll do it,” said Harry.

There was an intake of breath from behind him, and both Lavender and Parvati whispered, “Oooh, no, Harry, remember your tea leaves!”

Harry ignored them. 

He climbed over the paddock fence.

“Good man, Harry!” roared Hagrid. “Right then — let’s see how yeh get on with Buckbeak.”

He untied one of the chains, pulled the gray hippogriff away from its fellows, and slipped off its leather collar. The class on the other side of the paddock seemed to be holding its breath. 

Draconia’s eyes were narrowed maliciously, hoping that Hagrid somehow messed up his first day by getting Harry mauled.

“Easy, now, Harry,” said Hagrid quietly. “Yeh’ve got eye contact, now try not ter blink. . . . Hippogriffs don’ trust yeh if yeh blink too much. . . .”

Harry’s eyes immediately began to water, but he didn’t shut them. Buckbeak had turned his great, sharp head and was staring at Harry with one fierce orange eye.

“Tha’s it,” said Hagrid. “Tha’s it, Harry . . . now, bow . . .”

Harry didn’t feel much like exposing the back of his neck to Buckbeak, but he did as he was told. He gave a short bow and then looked up.

The hippogriff was still staring haughtily at him. It didn’t move.

“Ah,” said Hagrid, sounding worried. “Right — back away, now, Harry, easy does it —”

But then, to Harry’s enormous surprise, the hippogriff suddenly bent its scaly front knees and sank into what was an unmistakable bow.

“Well done, Harry!” said Hagrid, ecstatic. “Right — yeh can touch him! Pat his beak, go on!”

Feeling that a better reward would have been to back away, Harry moved slowly toward the hippogriff and reached out toward it. He patted the beak several times and the hippogriff closed its eyes lazily, as though enjoying it.

The class broke into applause, all except for Draconia, Crabbe, and Goyle, who were looking deeply disappointed.

“Righ’ then, Harry,” said Hagrid. “I reckon he might’ let yeh ride him!”

This was more than Harry had bargained for. 

He was used to a broomstick, but he wasn’t sure a hippogriff would be quite the same.

“Yeh climb up there, jus’ behind the wing joint,” said Hagrid, “an’ mind yeh don’ pull any of his feathers out, he won’ like that. . . .”

Harry put his foot on the top of Buckbeak’s wing and hoisted himself onto its back. 

Buckbeak stood up. 

Harry wasn’t sure where to hold on; everything in front of him was covered with feathers.

“Go on, then!” roared Hagrid, slapping the hippogriff’s hindquarters.

Without warning, twelve-foot wings flapped open on either side of Harry; he just had time to seize the hippogriff around the neck before he was soaring upward. 

It was nothing like a broomstick, and Harry knew which one he preferred.

The hippogriff’s wings beat uncomfortably on either side of him, catching him under his legs and making him feel he was about to be thrown off; the glossy feathers slipped under his fingers and he didn’t dare get a stronger grip. Instead of the smooth action of his Nimbus Two Thousand, he now felt himself rocking backward and forward as the hindquarters of the hippogriff rose and fell with its wings.

Buckbeak flew him once around the paddock and then headed back to the ground; this was the bit Harry had been dreading; he leaned back as the smooth neck lowered, feeling he was going to slip off over the beak, then felt a heavy thud as the four ill-assorted feet hit the ground. 

He just managed to hold on and push himself straight again.

“Good work, Harry!” roared Hagrid as everyone except Draconia, Crabbe, and Goyle cheered. “Okay, who else wants a go?”

Emboldened by Harry’s success, the rest of the class climbed cautiously into the paddock. Hagrid untied the hippogriffs one by one, and soon people were bowing nervously, all over the paddock. 

Neville ran repeatedly backward from his, which didn’t seem to want to bend its knees. 

Ron and Hermione practiced on the chestnut, while Harry watched.

Draconia, Crabbe, and Goyle had taken over Buckbeak. 

He had bowed to Draconia, who was now patting his beak, looking disdainful.

“Would rather be on my broom that petting you, you big… horse bird.” Draconia muttered.

Harry, despite himself, raised his brow with a side nod of his head, which was caught by Draconia.

She smiled at him, then put on her usual, haughty face.

“This is very easy,” Draconia drawled, loud enough for Harry to hear her. “I knew it must have been, if Potter could do it. . . . I bet you’re not dangerous at all, are you?” She said to the hippogriff, tilting Buckbeak’s head from side to side by his big, feathery cheeks. “Are you, you great ugly brute?”

Harry saw the hippogriffs front taloned leg move with a twitch, and his voice caught in his throat as he lunged forward. “Mal-!”

It happened in a blur of leg, and a flash of steely talons. 

Draconia let out a high-pitched scream and next moment, Hagrid was wrestling Buckbeak back into his collar as he strained to get at Draconia, who lay curled in the grass, blood blossoming over her robes.

“I’m dying!” Draconia yelled as the class panicked, her blonde hair laying frayed all behind her on the paddock grass. She snapped her eyes open, tears streaming out onto her cheeks from the pain… and she looked for Harry, before anyone else. “I’m dying, look at me! It’s killed me!”

“Yer not dyin’!” said Hagrid, who had gone very white, and he pushed her hand away as she reached out for Harry. “Someone help me — gotta get ‘er outta here —”

Hermione ran to hold open the gate as Hagrid lifted Draconia easily. 

As they passed, Harry saw that there was a long, deep gash on Draconia’s arm; blood splattered the grass and Hagrid ran with her, on and up the slope toward the castle.

Very shaken, the Care of Magical Creatures class followed at a walk. 

The Slytherins were all shouting about Hagrid.

“They should fire him straight away!” said Pansy Parkinson, who was in tears.

“It was Malfoy’s fault!” snapped Dean Thomas. 

“Yeah!” Said another Gryffindor boy, a slender Londoner named Darian Mole. “You saw what she did! You can’t treat a hippogriff like a puppy!”

Crabbe and Goyle, however, were glaring at Harry, and appeared to not care about what Buckbeak had done to Draconia.

Instead, they appeared to be more chaffed by the fact that Draconia had not reached out for them, and Harry read it plain across their faces as they muttered to each other.

They all climbed the stone steps into the deserted entrance hall.

“I’m going to see if she’s okay!” said Pansy, and they all watched her run up the marble staircase.

The Slytherins, still muttering about Hagrid, headed away in the direction of their dungeon common room

Harry, Ron, and Hermione proceeded upstairs to Gryffindor Tower.

“D’you think she’ll be all right?” said Hermione nervously.

“’Course she will. Madam Pomfrey can mend cuts in about a second,” said Harry, who had had far worse injuries mended magically by the nurse.

“That was a really bad thing to happen in Hagrid’s first class, though, wasn’t it?” said Ron, looking worried. “Trust Malfoy to mess things up for him. . . .”

They were among the first to reach the Great Hall at dinnertime, hoping to see Hagrid, but he wasn’t there.

“They wouldn’t fire him, would they?” said Hermione anxiously, not touching her steak-and-kidney pie.

“They’d better not,” said Ron, who wasn’t eating either.

Harry was watching the Slytherin table. A large group, including Crabbe and Goyle, was huddled together, deep in conversation. 

Harry was sure they were cooking up their own version of how Draconia had been injured.

“Well, you can’t say it wasn’t an interesting first day back,” said Ron gloomily.

They went up to the crowded Gryffindor common room after dinner and tried to do the homework Professor McGonagall had given them, but all three of them kept breaking off and glancing out of the tower window.

“There’s a light on in Hagrid’s window,” Harry said suddenly.

Ron looked at his watch. “If we hurried, we could go down and see him. It’s still quite early. . . .”

“I don’t know,” Hermione said slowly, and Harry saw her glance at him.

“I’m allowed to walk across the grounds,” he said pointedly. “Sirius Black hasn’t got past the dementors here, has he?”

So they put their things away and headed out of the portrait hole, glad not to meet anybody on their way to the front doors, as they weren’t entirely sure they were supposed to be out.

The grass was still wet and looked almost black in the twilight. 

When they reached Hagrid’s hut, they knocked, and a voice growled, “C’min.”

Hagrid was sitting in his shirtsleeves at his scrubbed wooden table; his boarhound, Fang, had his head in Hagrid’s lap. One look told them that Hagrid had been drinking a lot; there was a pewter tankard almost as big as a bucket in front of him, and he seemed to be having difficulty getting them into focus.

“’Spect it’s a record,” he said thickly, when he recognized them. “Don’ reckon they’ve ever had a teacher who lasted on’y a day before.”

“You haven’t been fired, Hagrid!” gasped Hermione.

“Not yet,” said Hagrid miserably, taking a huge gulp of whatever was in the tankard. “But ’s only a matter o’ time, i’n’t it, after Malfoy . . .”

“How is she?” said Ron as they all sat down. “It wasn’t serious, was it?”

“Madam Pomfrey fixed ‘er best she could,” said Hagrid dully, “but she’s sayin’ it’s still agony . . . covered in bandages . . . moanin’ . . .”

“She’s faking it,” said Harry at once. “Madam Pomfrey can mend anything. She regrew half my bones last year. Trust Malfoy to milk it for all it’s worth.”

“School gov’nors have bin told, o’ course,” said Hagrid miserably. “They reckon I started too big. Shoulda left hippogriffs fer later . . . done flobberworms or summat. . . . Jus’ thought it’d make a good firs’ lesson. . . . ’S all my fault. . . .”

“It’s all Malfoy’s fault, Hagrid!” said Hermione earnestly.

“We’re witnesses,” said Harry. “You said hippogriffs attack if you insult them. It’s Malfoy’s problem that she wasn’t listening. We’ll tell Dumbledore what really happened.”

“Yeah, don’t worry, Hagrid, we’ll back you up,” said Ron.

Tears leaked out of the crinkled corners of Hagrid’s beetle-black eyes. He grabbed both Harry and Ron and pulled them into a bone-breaking hug.

“I think you’ve had enough to drink, Hagrid,” said Hermione firmly. 

She took the tankard from the table and went outside to empty it.

“Ar, maybe she’s right,” said Hagrid, letting go of Harry and Ron, who both staggered away, rubbing their ribs. 

Hagrid heaved himself out of his chair and followed Hermione unsteadily outside. 

They heard a loud splash.

“What’s he done?” said Harry nervously as Hermione came back in with the empty tankard.

“Stuck his head in the water barrel,” said Hermione, putting the tankard away.

Hagrid came back, his long hair and beard sopping wet, wiping the water out of his eyes.

“Tha’s better,” he said, shaking his head like a dog and drenching them all. “Listen, it was good of yeh ter come an’ see me, I really —”

Hagrid stopped dead, staring at Harry as though he’d only just realized he was there.

“WHAT D’YEH THINK YOU’RE DOIN’, EH?” he roared, so suddenly that they jumped a foot in the air. “YEH’RE NOT TO GO WANDERIN’ AROUND AFTER DARK, HARRY! AN’ YOU TWO! LETTIN’ HIM!”

Hagrid strode over to Harry, grabbed his arm, and pulled him to the door.

“C’mon!” Hagrid said angrily. “I’m takin’ yer all back up ter school, an’ don’ let me catch yeh walkin’ down ter see me after dark again. I’m not worth that!”

Hagrid deposited them just beyond the great front doors of the castle, then pointed towards the grand staircase. “Up yeh’r go than’!” He fussed, still dripping wet from his plunge in the water barrel. “An’ don’ let me catch’yer back down ‘er!”

Harry, Ron, and Hermione made their way back up the stairs, both relieved that Hagrid felt better, but rather annoyed at being treated like naughty first years.

An odd, twisting thought occurred to Harry, and he cleared his throat. 

“Ah.” He said, holding up a finger. “I just remembered, I had a question about my bones after getting my arm bits grown back.”

“What?” Hermione asked with a confused smile. “What do you mean your bones?”

Harry hooked a left, casually holding out his hand. “It gets itchy, you know? Gonna ask Madam Pomfrey since it also twitches. Can’t have my arm mis… er, misbehaving before my first Quidditch match of the season.”

Hermione looked as if Harry was talking like he had taken a blow to the head, but Ron reached over and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Hooold on a moment, he may have a point.” Ron said, nodding sagely. “Can’t risk the first match.”

“Risk the first-” Hermione began, then gestured with both hands towards Harry. “He’s not going to go see about his arm bone, he’s going off to see-”

“Madam Pomfry!” Harry called back at them, turning on his feet to walk backwards awhile giving them both finger guns. “Arm bone! Gotta check it! Can’t risk it!”

Ron nodded, eyes closed. “Smart move. All’s I’m saying, rather safe than sorry.”

“Ugh.” Hermione muttered, her shoulders slumping. 

Harry quickly picked up his pace, trotting along the hallways until he came to the doors of the Hospital Wing.

It was quiet inside, and he knocked.

Madam Pomfrey opened the door with an authoritative pull, then let out a disgruntled puff of breath. “Un-believeable.”

“Miss Pomfrey, I-” Harry began, but his words trailed away as Madam Pomfrey hit him with a cool stare.

“What?” She asked, eyebrows raised. “What possible invention could you have thought up to be here at such a late hour?”

Harry scratched idly at his arm, feeling a bit stupid.

“Um…” He began, then pointed to his arm. “My bones itch?”

“That’s not the arm I gave you Skele-Grow for, Potter.” Madam Pomfrey said tightly.

Harry quickly changed which arms were pointing where. “My bones itch.”

Lips pressed tightly together, Madam Pomfrey looked over her shoulder, then back to Harry. “You have two minutes, same that I gave her.”

“Wha-” Harry said, then quickly nodded. “Yes ma’am, thank you.”

Madam Pomfrey left the door and briskly walked away with sharp clicks of her heels to the polished floor, and Harry slowly made his way over to where Draconia lay behind a curtain.

She was snoozing, clearly riding the wave of whatever pain reducing potion that Madam Pomfrey had given her, but her eyes fluttered open weakly when she heard Harry get near.

“Mmm?” Draconia murmured, her blonde hair brought back into a untidy bun, and she smiled when she spotted Harry. “Oh. Hello, Potter.”

There was a long silence as Draconia smiled up at him, though she was quickly coming back to reality and reshaping her face to be more… angrily neutral.

“Stupid bird-horse.” Draconia said to break the silence, looking away from Harry and up to the dark ceiling. 

“Hagrid told you not to disrespect them.” Harry said flatly. “Then there you went, treating a hippogriff like it was Fang.”

Draconia pursed her lips, reaching up and twirling one of her fingers in a loose strand of her long, blonde sideburns. “Seemed safe enough. That big oaf had us all in there so I figured we were alright.”

“You were showing off.”

“So what if I was?”

“You can see how dangerous that is.”

“You?” Draconia coughed out in a laugh as she sat up on her pillow. “You standing there and telling me what is and isn’t dangerous? You have some bloody nerve, Potter, after going out into the forbidden forest with Weasley of all people, to go try and find giant spiders.”

“How do you know we were talking to giant spiders?” Harry asked, surprised.

Draconia snorted. “The car told us, through the radio.” She held her hands up, fingers splayed making static noises and saying “Spiders! Ksssh, Big Spiders! Aaah big spiders kssssh!”

“You should have heard that thing over the radio, that Hufflepuff nearly died from laughing.” Draconia said ruefully. “Then you go down into those damned sewers, fighting Basilisks, the Dark Lord, wielding the sword of Gryffindor like some sort of… knight of old- Yes, Potter.” Draconia said in an annoyed drawl, seeing Harry’s face. “Everyone knows what happened down there. The Weasleys have as much ability to keep secrets as Hagrid does of walking quietly…”

Harry clicked his teeth, annoyed, as he really didn’t have any leeway in chiding her for being reckless. 

“Then there’s… me.” Draconia muttered, looking at her bandaged arm. “Brought low by a single… stupid…”

Harry looked up and away as Draconia let out an angry sniff, rubbing at her eyes.

“Stupid.” Draconia muttered, running her palms along her cheeks. She sighed, then looked around to Harry with shimmering gray-green eyes. “What do you want, Potter?”

Harry shrugged a shoulder, as he never liked how weird he felt when he looked into her eyes. “Well. You came to see me when I was in here last, so… I figured… you know.”

Draconia held her eyebrows high on her face, blinking at Harry while trying to wrangle the smile that kept wanting to crawl onto her lips. “Y-yes, Potter?”

Why do I feel stupid all of a sudden? Harry thought angrily. Why am I embarrassed?

“I figured I’d return the favor, you little blonde haired brat!” Harry nearly shouted, raising his arms in the air. “My god, why are you making this so awkward, Malfoy?!”

“I’m not making this awkward!” Draconia spat back at Harry, though she was feeling kind of woozy from the pain draught, and she blushed. “You are making it awkward, Potter!”

“You know what?” Harry said loudly, pushing his hands out from his chest in a fed up motion. “You shouldn’t have pissed off the hippogriff, and you got slashed because of it. It’s not Hagrid’s fault you are always trying to upstage me.”

Draconia, head moving in little, tight circles, looked outraged as he spoke, her face turning even more red.

“Oh!” Draconia said, aggrieved. “Oh, upstaging you, am I?! How could I ever upstage the great and powerful Potter?!” She spat, with a whole lot of tongue and teeth going into the T’s of Harry’s last name.

A high, tittering laugh caught both of their ears.

Madam Pomfrey was clearly listening.

Harry and Draconia narrowed their eyes towards her little office, then back to each other.

“Your arm better be working for the match, Malfoy.” Harry said quietly, jabbing a finger at her. “If you use that arm as an excuse not to face me on the field, I’ll never let you forget it.”

Draconia bared her teeth at Harry in a vicious grin. “Oh I’ll be there, Potter, and I’ll smear you off that slow… fucking broom of yours and let your little Mudblood friends pick you off the grass!”

Harry almost laughed at hearing Draconia curse, the sound catching in his throat, and she looked as if she herself was having trouble with the fact she had said a common “Muggle swear”.

“Fine.” Harry whisper-shouted, turning on his feet and stomping away from Draconia towards the door.

“Fine.” Draconia whisper-shouted back at him.

Harry looked over his shoulder. “Fine!”

“Fine!” Draconia yelled a little more loudly, though she was having to fight every urge to not laugh, or giggle.

“FINE!” Harry barked loudly as he openly laughed with angry amusement, holding out his arms in a ‘come and get it’ way as he spun around to face Draconia, walking backwards towards the Hospital Wing doors.

“FIIINE!” Draconia screamed loudly, bending forward to track Harry while openly smiling as she yelled with bright eyes.

“SEE YOU ON THE PITCH, Malfoy!”

“YOU WILL, POTTER.”

“I BET, MALAISE.”

“WAIT AND SEE, POTTY!”

“OH, I WILL, MALFUNCTION.”

“YEAH WELL-” Draconia went to yell, but Harry quickly opened the large door and ducked around it, shutting it tight behind him. She let the breath she had built up for her shout out through her lips, still smiling to herself. “You dunderhead…”

Draconia sniffed, giggled to herself, then sighed out unhappily, looking at her arm.

Chapter 30 : Book 3: Chapter 7 (adjustments)

Ch 7

Draconia didn’t reappear in classes until late on Thursday morning, when the Slytherins and Gryffindors were halfway through double Potions. 

She swaggered into the dungeon, her right arm covered in bandages and bound up in a sling, acting, in Harry’s opinion, as though she were the heroic survivor of some dreadful battle.

She caught Harry’s eyes, then quickly looked away.

“How is it, Draconia?” simpered Pansy Parkinson, who Harry thought was becoming quite the kiss-ass as of late. “Does it hurt much?”

“Yeah,” said Draconia, putting on a brave sort of grimace. 

But Harry saw her wink at Crabbe and Goyle when Pansy had looked away.

“Settle down, settle down,” said Professor Snape idly.

Harry and Ron scowled at each other; Snape wouldn’t have said “settle down” if they’d walked in late, he’d have given them detention. 

But Draconia had always been able to get away with anything in Snape’s classes; Snape was head of Slytherin House, and generally favored his own students above all others.

They were making a new potion today, a Shrinking Solution. Draconia set up her cauldron right next to Harry, Ron on the other side of Harry, so that they were preparing their ingredients on the same table.

“Sir,” Draconia called out, nudging Harry with her elbow sneakily, “sir, I’ll need help cutting up these daisy roots, because of my arm —”

“Weasley, cut up Malfoy’s roots for her,” said Snape without looking up.

Ron went brick red.

“There’s nothing wrong with your arm,” he hissed at Draconia.

Draconia smirked across the table at him, biting on her lip to keep from laughing. “Weasley, you heard Professor Snape. Cut up these roots.”

Ron seized his knife, pulled Draconia’s roots toward him, and began to chop them roughly, so that they were all different sizes.

“Professor,” drawled Malfoy, nudging Harry with her knee this time, “Weasley’s mutilating my roots, sir.”

Harry actually looked up towards the heavens as he took in a breath, wondering just when the hell they had become friends all of sudden.

Snape approached their table, stared down his hooked nose at the roots, then gave Ron an unpleasant smile from beneath his long, greasy black hair.

“Change roots with Malfoy, Weasley.”

“But, sir — !”

Ron had spent the last quarter of an hour carefully shredding his own roots into exactly equal pieces.

“Now,” said Snape in his most dangerous voice.

Ron shoved his own beautifully cut roots across the table at Draconia, then took up the knife again.

“And, sir, I’ll need this shrivelfig skinned,” said Malfoy, her voice full of malicious laughter.

“Potter, you can skin Malfoy’s shrivelfig,” said Snape, giving Harry the look of loathing he always reserved just for him.

Harry took Draconia’s shrivelfig as Ron began trying to repair the damage to the roots he now had to use. 

“You are ridiculous.” Harry muttered with a shake of his head, looking over to the peeved faces of Crabbe and Goyl. “You’re making your goons over there rather jealous, you know.”

Draconia snorted, watching Harry skin her shrivelfig.

Harry skinned the shrivelfig as fast as he could and flung it back across the table at Draconia without speaking. 

Draconia was smirking more broadly than ever, picking up the shrivelfig with her “good” hand..

“Seen your pal Hagrid lately?” She asked them quietly.

“None of your business,” said Ron jerkily, without looking up.

“I’m afraid he won’t be a teacher much longer,” said Malfoy in a tone of mock sorrow. “Father’s not very happy about my injury —”

“Keep talking, Malfoy, and I’ll give you a real injury,” snarled Ron.

“— he’s complained to the school governors. And to the Ministry of Magic. Father’s got a lot of influence, you know. And a lasting injury like this,” She gave a huge, fake sigh — “who knows if my arm’ll ever be the same again?”

“So that’s why you’re putting it on so thickly today,” said Harry, accidentally beheading a dead caterpillar because Draconia nudged his elbow with hers again. He closed his eyes angrily, then grabbed another caterpillar. “To try to get Hagrid fired.”

“Well,” said Draconia, lowering her voice to a whisper, “partly, Potter. But there are other benefits too.” She then raised her voice. “Weasley, slice my caterpillars for me.”

“You’ve got to be fu-” Ron spat, visibly boiling with rage.

A few cauldrons away, Neville was in trouble. 

Neville regularly went to pieces in Potions lessons; it was his worst subject, and his great fear of Professor Snape made things ten times worse. 

His potion, which was supposed to be a bright, acid green, had turned —

“Orange, Longbottom,” said Snape, ladling some up and allowing it to splash back into the cauldron, so that everyone could see. “Orange. Tell me, boy, does anything penetrate that thick skull of yours? Didn’t you hear me say, quite clearly, that only one rat spleen was needed? Didn’t I state plainly that a dash of leech juice would suffice? What do I have to do to make you understand, Longbottom?”

Neville was pink and trembling. He looked as though he was on the verge of tears.

“Please, sir,” said Hermione, “please, I could help Neville put it right —”

“I don’t remember asking you to show off, Miss Granger,” said Snape coldly, and Hermione went as pink as Neville. “Longbottom, at the end of this lesson we will feed a few drops of this potion to your toad and see what happens. Perhaps that will encourage you to do it properly.”

Snape moved away, leaving Neville breathless with fear.

“Help me!” he moaned to Hermione.

“Hey, Harry,” said Seamus Finnigan, leaning over to borrow Harry’s brass scales, “have you heard? Daily Prophet this morning — they reckon Sirius Black’s been sighted.”

“Where?” said Harry and Ron quickly. 

On the other side of the table, Draconia looked up, listening closely.

“Not too far from here,” said Seamus, who looked excited. “It was a Muggle who saw him. ’Course, she didn’t really understand. The Muggles think he’s just an ordinary criminal, don’t they? So she phoned the telephone hot line. By the time the Ministry of Magic got there, he was gone.”

“Not too far from here . . . ” Ron repeated, looking significantly at Harry. He turned around and saw Draconia watching closely. “What, Malfoy? Need something else skinned?”

But Draconia’s eyes were shining malevolently, and they were fixed on Harry. 

She leaned across the table. “Thinking of trying to catch Black single-handed, Potter? I do know how you love being in the center of the shinelight.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” said Harry offhandedly, remembering their talk last night.

Malfoy’s thin mouth was curving in a mean smile.

“Of course, if it was me,” She said quietly, touching the side of her shoulder to Harry’s, “I’d have done something before now. I wouldn’t be staying in school like a good boy, I’d be out there looking for him.”

Harry, trying to not rise to the bait, kept his face placid. “I could always ignore a teacher and try to pet a hippogriff like it’s a newborn kitten.”

Ron chuckled at Draconia’s face, who looked as if she had suddenly sucked on a lemon. “What are you talking about, Malfoy?”

“Don’t you know, Potter?” breathed Pansy Parkinson, her pug-like eyes narrowed.

She had been inching her way towards the three the entire time, wanting to be included and near Draconia.

“Know what, Parkinson?” Harry asked boredly, though Draconia looked absolutely alarmed, and went to stand.

Pansy let out a low, sneering titter of a laugh.

“Maybe you’d rather not risk your neck,” She said. “Want to leave it to the dementors, do you? But if it was me, I’d want revenge. I’d hunt him down myself.”

“What are you talking about?” said Harry angrily as Draconia came right to her feet, positively livid as Pansy Parkinson blanched at her, but at that moment Snape called out to the class. 

“You should have finished adding your ingredients by now; this potion needs to stew before it can be drunk, so clear away while it simmers… and then we’ll test Longbottom’s.”

Crabbe and Goyle laughed openly, watching Neville sweat as he stirred his potion feverishly. Hermione was muttering instructions to him out of the corner of her mouth, so that Snape wouldn’t see. 

Harry and Ron packed away their unused ingredients and went to wash their hands and ladles in the stone basin in the corner.

“What did Parkinson mean?” Harry muttered to Ron as he stuck his hands under the icy jet that poured from the gargoyle’s mouth. “Why would I want revenge on Black? He hasn’t done anything to me — yet.”

“She’s making it up,” said Ron savagely. “She’s trying to make you do something stupid. . . .”

Harrow looked over his shoulder at the girl, but was surprised to see Draconia silently tearing her a new one in quiet, angry whispers.

The end of the lesson in sight, Snape strode over to Neville, who was cowering by his cauldron.

“Everyone gather ’round,” said Snape, his black eyes glittering, “and watch what happens to Longbottom’s toad. If he has managed to produce a Shrinking Solution, it will shrink to a tadpole. If, as I don’t doubt, he has done it wrong, his toad is likely to be poisoned.”

The Gryffindors watched fearfully. 

The Slytherins looked excited. 

Snape picked up Trevor the toad in his left hand and dipped a small spoon into Neville’s potion, which was now green. He trickled a few drops down Trevor’s throat.

There was a moment of hushed silence, in which Trevor gulped; then there was a small pop, and Trevor the tadpole was wriggling in Snape’s palm.

The Gryffindors burst into applause. 

Snape, looking sour, pulled a small bottle from the pocket of his robe, poured a few drops on top of Trevor, and he reappeared suddenly, fully grown.

“Five points from Gryffindor,” said Snape, which wiped the smiles from every face. “I told you not to help him, Miss Granger. Class dismissed.”

Harry, Ron, and Hermione climbed the steps to the entrance hall. Harry was still thinking about what Parkinson had said, while Ron was seething about Snape.

“Five points from Gryffindor because the potion was all right! Why didn’t you lie, Hermione? You should’ve said Neville did it all by himself!”

Hermione didn’t answer. 

Ron looked around. “Where is she?”

Harry turned too. They were at the top of the steps now, watching the rest of the class pass them, heading for the Great Hall and lunch.

“She was right behind us,” said Ron, frowning.

Draconia passed them, though she was walking behind Crabbe and Goyle, who seemed rather miffed about something. 

She smirked at Ron, pulling on the bottom of her eye at him, and disappeared.

“There she is,” said Harry.

Hermione was panting slightly, hurrying up the stairs; one hand clutched her bag, the other seemed to be tucking something down the front of her robes.

“How did you do that?” said Ron.

“What?” said Hermione, joining them.

“One minute you were right behind us, the next moment, you were back at the bottom of the stairs again.”

“What?” Hermione looked slightly confused. “Oh — I had to go back for something. Oh no —”

A seam had split on Hermione’s bag. 

Harry wasn’t surprised; he could see that it was crammed with at least a dozen large and heavy books.

“Why are you carrying all these around with you?” Ron asked her.

“You know how many subjects I’m taking,” said Hermione breathlessly. “Couldn’t hold these for me, could you?”

“But —” Ron was turning over the books she had handed him, looking at the covers. “You haven’t got any of these subjects today. It’s only Defense Against the Dark Arts this afternoon.”

“Oh yes,” said Hermione vaguely, but she packed all the books back into her bag just the same. “I hope there’s something good for lunch, I’m starving,” she added, and she marched off toward the Great Hall.

“D’you get the feeling Hermione’s not telling us something?” Ron asked Harry.

Harry shrugged. “To be fair, there’s something we’re not telling Hermione.”

“What?” Ron asked, then snapped his fingers. “Right. Malfoy. What are we doing about that, anyway?”

“Nothing at all.” Harry sighed out. “No point, anyway.”

Professor Lupin wasn’t there when they arrived at his first Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson. They all sat down, took out their books, quills, and parchment, and were talking when he finally entered the room. Lupin smiled vaguely and placed his tatty old briefcase on the teacher’s desk. He was as shabby as ever but looked healthier than he had on the train, as though he had had a few square meals.

“Good afternoon,” he said. “Would you please put all your books back in your bags. Today’s will be a practical lesson. You will need only your wands.”

A few curious looks were exchanged as the class put away their books. They had never had a practical Defense Against the Dark Arts before, unless you counted the memorable class last year when their old teacher had brought a cageful of pixies to class and set them loose.

“Right then,” said Professor Lupin, when everyone was ready. “If you’d follow me.”

Puzzled but interested, the class got to its feet and followed Professor Lupin out of the classroom. He led them along the deserted corridor and around a corner, where the first thing they saw was Peeves the Poltergeist, who was floating upside down in midair and stuffing the nearest keyhole with chewing gum.

Peeves didn’t look up until Professor Lupin was two feet away; then he wiggled his curly-toed feet and broke into song.

“Loony, loopy Lupin,” Peeves sang. “Loony, loopy Lupin, loony, loopy Lupin —”

Rude and unmanageable as he almost always was, Peeves usually showed some respect toward the teachers. Everyone looked quickly at Professor Lupin to see how he would take this; to their surprise, he was still smiling.

“I’d take that gum out of the keyhole if I were you, Peeves,” he said pleasantly. “Mr. Filch won’t be able to get in to his brooms.”

Filch was the Hogwarts caretaker, a bad-tempered, failed wizard who waged a constant war against the students and, indeed, Peeves. However, Peeves paid no attention to Professor Lupin’s words, except to blow a loud wet raspberry.

Professor Lupin gave a small sigh and took out his wand.

“This is a useful little spell,” he told the class over his shoulder. “Please watch closely.”

He raised the wand to shoulder height, said, “Waddiwasi!” and pointed it at Peeves.

With the force of a bullet, the wad of chewing gum shot out of the keyhole and straight down Peeves’s left nostril; he whirled upright and zoomed away, cursing.

“Cool, sir!” said Dean Thomas in amazement.

“Thank you, Dean,” said Professor Lupin, putting his wand away again. “Shall we proceed?”

They set off again, the class looking at shabby Professor Lupin with increased respect. He led them down a second corridor and stopped, right outside the staffroom door.

“Inside, please,” said Professor Lupin, opening it and standing back.

The staffroom, a long, paneled room full of old, mismatched chairs, was empty except for one teacher. 

Professor Snape was sitting in a low armchair, and he looked around as the class filed in. His eyes were glittering and there was a nasty sneer playing around his mouth. 

As Professor Lupin came in and made to close the door behind him, Snape said, “Leave it open, Lupin. I’d rather not witness this.”

He got to his feet and strode past the class, his black robes billowing behind him. At the doorway he turned on his heel and said, “Possibly no one’s warned you, Lupin, but this class contains Neville Longbottom. I would advise you not to entrust him with anything difficult. Not unless Miss Granger is hissing instructions in his ear.”

Neville went scarlet. 

Harry glared at Snape.

It was bad enough that he bullied Neville in his own classes, let alone doing it in front of other teachers.

Professor Lupin had raised his eyebrows.

“I was hoping that Neville would assist me with the first stage of the operation,” he said, “and I am sure he will perform it admirably.”

Neville’s face went, if possible, even redder. 

Snape’s lip curled, but he left, shutting the door with a snap.

“Now, then,” said Professor Lupin, beckoning the class toward the end of the room, where there was nothing but an old wardrobe where the teachers kept their spare robes.

 As Professor Lupin went to stand next to it, the wardrobe gave a sudden wobble, banging off the wall.

“Nothing to worry about,” said Professor Lupin calmly because a few people had jumped backward in alarm. “There’s a boggart in there.”

Most people seemed to feel that this was something to worry about. Neville gave Professor Lupin a look of pure terror, and Seamus Finnigan eyed the now rattling doorknob apprehensively.

“Boggarts like dark, enclosed spaces,” said Professor Lupin. “Wardrobes, the gap beneath beds, the cupboards under sinks — I once met one that had lodged itself in a grandfather clock. This one moved in yesterday afternoon, and I asked the headmaster if the staff would leave it to give my third years some practice. So, the first question we must ask ourselves is, what is a boggart?”

Hermione put up her hand.

“It’s a shape-shifter,” she said. “It can take the shape of whatever it thinks will frighten us most.”

“Couldn’t have put it better myself,” said Professor Lupin, and Hermione glowed. “So the boggart sitting in the darkness within has not yet assumed a form. He does not yet know what will frighten the person on the other side of the door. Nobody knows what a boggart looks like when he is alone, but when I let him out, he will immediately become whatever each of us most fears.”

“This means,” said Professor Lupin, choosing to ignore Neville’s small sputter of terror, “that we have a huge advantage over the boggart before we begin. Have you spotted it, Harry?”

Trying to answer a question with Hermione next to him, bobbing up and down on the balls of her feet with her hand in the air, was very off-putting, but Harry had a go.

“Er — because there are so many of us, it won’t know what shape it should be?”

“Precisely,” said Professor Lupin, and Hermione put her hand down, looking a little disappointed. “It’s always best to have company when you’re dealing with a boggart. He becomes confused. Which should he become, a headless corpse or a flesh-eating slug? I once saw a boggart make that very mistake — tried to frighten two people at once and turned himself into half a slug. Not remotely frightening. The charm that repels a boggart is simple, yet it requires force of mind. You see, the thing that really finishes a boggart is laughter. What you need to do is force it to assume a shape that you find amusing. We will practice the charm without wands first. After me, please . . . Riddikulus!”

“Riddikulus!” said the class together.

“Good,” said Professor Lupin. “Very good. But that was the easy part, I’m afraid. You see, the word alone is not enough. And this is where you come in, Neville.”

The wardrobe shook again, though not as much as Neville, who walked forward as though he were heading for the gallows.

“Right, Neville,” said Professor Lupin. “First things first: What would you say is the thing that frightens you most in the world?”

Neville’s lips moved, but no noise came out.

“Didn’t catch that, Neville, sorry,” said Professor Lupin cheerfully.

Neville looked around rather wildly, as though begging someone to help him, then said, in barely more than a whisper, “Professor Snape.”

Nearly everyone laughed. 

Even Neville grinned apologetically. 

Professor Lupin, however, looked thoughtful. 1“Professor Snape . . . hmmm . . . Neville, I believe you live with your grandmother?”

“Er — yes,” said Neville nervously. “But — I don’t want the boggart to turn into her either.”

“No, no, you misunderstand me,” said Professor Lupin, now smiling. “I wonder, could you tell us what sort of clothes your grandmother usually wears?”

Neville looked startled, but said, “Well . . . always the same hat. A tall one with a stuffed vulture on top. And a long dress . . . green, normally . . . and sometimes a fox-fur scarf.”

“And a handbag?” prompted Professor Lupin.

“A big red one,” said Neville.

“Right then,” said Professor Lupin. “Can you picture those clothes very clearly, Neville? Can you see them in your mind’s eye?”

“Yes,” said Neville uncertainly, plainly wondering what was coming next.

“When the boggart bursts out of this wardrobe, Neville, and sees you, it will assume the form of Professor Snape,” said Lupin. “And you will raise your wand — thus — and cry ‘Riddikulus’ — and concentrate hard on your grandmother’s clothes. If all goes well, Professor Boggart Snape will be forced into that vulture-topped hat, and that green dress, with that big red handbag.”

There was a great shout of laughter. The wardrobe wobbled more violently.

“If Neville is successful, the boggart is likely to shift his attention to each of us in turn,” said Professor Lupin. “I would like all of you to take a moment now to think of the thing that scares you most, and imagine how you might force it to look comical. . . .”

The room went quiet. 

Harry thought . . . What scared him most in the world?

With a jolt, the sudden thought of Draconia holding his hand rammed its way into his mind. It made him feel hot, sweaty, sick, excited, and terrified all at the same time, but he pushed that away from his mind like it was a many legged spider, and he shook his head back and forth, confused.

His first actual thought was Lord Voldemort — a Voldemort returned to full strength. That made far, far more sense to Harry, and he almost laughed dryly that Draconia was the first thing his brain summoned.

But before he had even started to plan a possible counterattack on boggarmort, a horrible image came floating to the surface of his mind. . . .

A rotting, glistening hand, slithering back beneath a black cloak . . . a long, rattling breath from an unseen mouth . . . then a cold so penetrating it felt like drowning. . . .

Harry shivered, then looked around, hoping no one had noticed. 

Many people had their eyes shut tight. 

Ron was muttering to himself, “Take its legs off.” 

Harry was sure he knew what that was about, as Ron’s greatest fear was spiders.

“Everyone ready?” asked Professor Lupin.

Harry felt a lurch of fear. 

He wasn’t ready. 

How could you make a dementor less frightening? 

What if he panicked and summoned a boggart-Draconia in front of the whole class and she kept trying to hold his hand? The very thought instantly made him want to slam his head in a drawer.

But he didn’t want to ask for more time; everyone else was nodding and rolling up their sleeves.

“Neville, we’re going to back away,” said Professor Lupin. “Let you have a clear field, all right? I’ll call the next person forward. . . . Everyone back, now, so Neville can get a clear shot —”

They all retreated, backed against the walls, leaving Neville alone beside the wardrobe. 

He looked pale and frightened, but he had pushed up the sleeves of his robes and was holding his wand ready.

“On the count of three, Neville,” said Professor Lupin, who was pointing his own wand at the handle of the wardrobe. “One — two — three — now!”

A jet of light shot from the end of Professor Lupin’s wand and hit the doorknob. 

The wardrobe burst open. 

Hook-nosed and menacing, Professor Snape stepped out, his eyes flashing at Neville.

Neville backed away, his wand up, mouthing wordlessly. Snape was bearing down upon him, reaching inside his robes.

“R-R-Riddikulus!” squeaked Neville.

There was a noise like a whip crack. 

Snape stumbled; he was wearing a long, lace-trimmed dress, a towering hat topped with a moth-eaten vulture, and he was swinging a huge crimson handbag.

There was a roar of laughter; the boggart paused, confused, and Professor Lupin shouted, “Parvati! Forward!”

Parvati walked forward, her face set. 

Snape rounded on her. There was another crack, and where he had stood was a blood-stained, bandaged mummy; its sightless face was turned to Parvati and it began to walk toward her very slowly, dragging its feet, its stiff arms rising —

“Riddikulus!” cried Parvati.

A bandage unraveled at the mummy’s feet; it became entangled, fell face forward, and its head rolled off.

“Seamus!” roared Professor Lupin.

Seamus darted past Parvati.

“Crack!”

Where the mummy had once been was a woman with floor-length black hair and a skeletal, green-tinged face — a banshee. She opened her mouth wide and an unearthly sound filled the room, a long, wailing shriek that made the hair on Harry’s head stand on end —

“Riddikulus!” shouted Seamus.

The banshee made a rasping noise and clutched her throat; her voice was gone.

“Crack!” 

The banshee turned into a rat, which chased its tail in a circle, then — “crack!” — became a rattlesnake, which slithered and writhed before — “crack!” — becoming a single, bloody eyeball.

“It’s confused!” shouted Lupin. “We’re getting there! Dean!”

Dean hurried forward.

“Crack!” 

The eyeball became a severed hand, which flipped over and began to creep along the floor like a crab.

“Riddikulus!” yelled Dean.

There was a snap, and the hand was trapped in a mousetrap.

“Excellent! Ron, you next!” Ron leapt forward.

“Crack!”

Quite a few people screamed. 

A giant spider, six feet tall and covered in hair, was advancing on Ron, clicking its pincers menacingly. 

For a moment, Harry thought Ron had frozen. Then —

“Riddikulus!” bellowed Ron, and the spider’s legs vanished.

It rolled over and over, Lavender Brown squealed and ran out of its way and it came to a halt at Harry’s feet. 

He raised his wand, ready, but —

“Here!” shouted Professor Lupin suddenly, hurrying forward.

“Crack!”

The legless spider had vanished. For a second, everyone looked wildly around to see where it was. Then they saw a silvery-white orb hanging in the air in front of Lupin, who said, “Riddikulus!” almost lazily. 

“Crack!”

“Forward, Neville, and finish him off!” said Lupin as the boggart landed on the floor as a cockroach. 

“Crack!” 

Snape was back. 

This time Neville charged forward looking determined.

“Riddikulus!” he shouted, and they had a split second’s view of Snape in his lacy dress before Neville let out a great “Ha!” of laughter, and the boggart exploded, burst into a thousand tiny wisps of smoke, and was gone.

“Excellent!” cried Professor Lupin as the class broke into applause. “Excellent, Neville. Well done, everyone. . . . Let me see . . . five points to Gryffindor for every person to tackle the boggart — ten for Neville because he did it twice . . . and five each to Hermione and Harry.”

“But I didn’t do anything,” said Harry.

“You and Hermione answered my questions correctly at the start of the class, Harry,” Lupin said lightly. “Very well, everyone, an excellent lesson. Homework, kindly read the chapter on boggarts and summarize it for me . . . to be handed in on Monday. That will be all.”

Talking excitedly, the class left the staffroom. 

Harry, however, wasn’t feeling cheerful. 

Professor Lupin had deliberately stopped him from tackling the boggart. 

Why? 

Was it because he’d seen Harry collapse on the train, and thought he wasn’t up to much? 

Had he thought Harry would pass out again?

But no one else seemed to have noticed anything.

“Did you see me take that banshee?” shouted Seamus.

“And the hand!” said Dean, waving his own around.

“And Snape in that hat!”

“And my mummy!”

“I wonder why Professor Lupin’s frightened of crystal balls?” said Lavender thoughtfully.

“That was the best Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson we’ve ever had, wasn’t it?” said Ron excitedly as they made their way back to the classroom to get their bags.

“He seems like a very good teacher,” said Hermione approvingly. “But I wish I could have had a turn with the boggart —”

“What would it have been for you?” said Ron, sniggering. “A piece of homework that only got nine out of ten?”

Chapter 31 : Book 3: Chapter 8 (autistic editing)

Ch 8

In no time at all, Defense Against the Dark Arts had become most people’s favorite class. Only Draconia Malfoy and her gang of Slytherins had anything bad to say about Professor Lupin.

“Look at the state of his robes,” Draconia would say in a loud whisper as Professor Lupin passed. “He dresses like our old house-elf. Can’t they find someone who isn’t literally picked up off the street?”

But no one else cared that Professor Lupin’s robes were patched and frayed. His next few lessons were just as interesting as the first. 

After boggarts, they studied Red Caps, nasty little goblinlike creatures that lurked wherever there had been bloodshed: in the dungeons of castles and the potholes of deserted battlefields, waiting to bludgeon those who had gotten lost. 

From Red Caps they moved on to kappas, creepy water-dwellers that looked like scaly monkeys, with webbed hands itching to strangle unwitting waders in their ponds.

Harry only wished he was as happy with some of his other classes. Worst of all was Potions. 

Snape was in a particularly vindictive mood these days, and no one was in any doubt why. The story of the boggart assuming Snape’s shape, and the way that Neville had dressed it in his grandmother’s clothes, had traveled through the school like wildfire. 

Snape didn’t seem to find it funny. 

His eyes flashed menacingly at the very mention of Professor Lupin’s name, and he was bullying Neville worse than ever.

Harry was also growing to dread the hours he spent in Professor Trelawney’s stifling tower room, deciphering lopsided shapes and symbols, trying to ignore the way Professor Trelawney’s enormous eyes filled with tears every time she looked at him. He couldn’t like Professor Trelawney, even though she was treated with respect bordering on reverence by many of the class. 

Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown had taken to haunting Professor Trelawney’s tower room at lunchtimes, and always returned with annoyingly superior looks on their faces, as though they knew things the others didn’t. 

They had also started using hushed voices whenever they spoke to Harry, as though he were on his deathbed.

Nobody really liked Care of Magical Creatures, which, after the action packed first class, had become extremely dull. 

Hagrid seemed to have lost his confidence. 

They were now spending lesson after lesson learning how to look after flobberworms, which had to be some of the most boring creatures in existence.

“Why would anyone bother looking after them?” said Ron, after yet another hour of poking shredded lettuce down the flobberworms’ slimy throats.

Draconia seemed to agree, making disgusted faces and keeping her hands near her chest whenever she had to go near the things.

At the start of October, however, Harry had something else to occupy him, something so enjoyable it more than made up for his unsatisfactory classes. 

The Quidditch season was approaching, and Oliver Wood, Captain of the Gryffindor team, called a meeting one Thursday evening to discuss tactics for the new season.

There were seven people on a Quidditch team: three Chasers, whose job it was to score goals by putting the Quaffle (a red, soccer-sized ball) through one of the fifty-foot-high hoops at each end of the field; two Beaters, who were equipped with heavy bats to repel the Bludgers (two heavy black balls that zoomed around trying to attack the players); a Keeper, who defended the goalposts, and the Seeker, who had the hardest job of all, that of catching the Golden Snitch, a tiny, winged, walnut-sized ball, whose capture ended the game and earned the Seeker’s team an extra one hundred and fifty points.

Oliver Wood was a burly seventeen-year-old, now in his seventh and final year at Hogwarts. There was a quiet sort of desperation in his voice as he addressed his six fellow team members in the chilly locker rooms on the edge of the darkening Quidditch field.

“This is our last chance — my last chance — to win the Quidditch Cup,” he told them, striding up and down in front of them. “I’ll be leaving at the end of this year. I’ll never get another shot at it. Gryffindor hasn’t won for seven years now. Okay, so we’ve had the worst luck in the world — injuries — then the tournament getting called off last year. . . .” Wood swallowed, as though the memory still brought a lump to his throat. “But we also know we’ve got the best — ruddy — team — in — the — school,” he said, punching a fist into his other hand, the old manic glint back in his eye.

“We’ve got three superb Chasers.” Wood pointed at Alicia Spinnet, Angelina Johnson, and Katie Bell. “We’ve got two unbeatable Beaters.”

“Stop it, Oliver, you’re embarrassing us,” said Fred and George Weasley together, pretending to blush.

“And we’ve got a Seeker who has never failed to win us a match!” Wood rumbled, glaring at Harry with a kind of furious pride. 

“And me,” he added as an afterthought.

“We think you’re very good too, Oliver,” said George.

“Spanking good Keeper,” said Fred.

“The point is,” Wood went on, resuming his pacing, “the Quidditch Cup should have had our name on it these last two years. Ever since Harry joined the team, I’ve thought the thing was in the bag. But we haven’t got it, and this year’s the last chance we’ll get to finally see our name on the thing. . . .”

Wood spoke so dejectedly that even Fred and George looked sympathetic.

“Oliver, this year’s our year,” said Fred.

“We’ll do it, Oliver!” said Angelina.

“Definitely,” said Harry.

Full of determination, the team started training sessions, three evenings a week. The weather was getting colder and wetter, the nights darker, but no amount of mud, wind, or rain could tarnish Harry’s wonderful vision of finally winning the huge, silver Quidditch Cup.

Harry returned to the Gryffindor common room one evening after training, cold and stiff but pleased with the way practice had gone, to find the room buzzing excitedly.

“What’s happened?” he asked Ron and Hermione, who were sitting in two of the best chairs by the fireside and completing some star charts for Astronomy.

“First Hogsmeade weekend,” said Ron, pointing at a notice that had appeared on the battered old bulletin board. “End of October. Halloween.”

“Excellent,” said Fred, who had followed Harry through the portrait hole. “I need to visit Zonko’s. I’m nearly out of Stink Pellets.”

Harry threw himself into a chair beside Ron, his high spirits ebbing away. 

Hermione seemed to read his mind.

“Harry, I’m sure you’ll be able to go next time,” she said. “They’re bound to catch Black soon. He’s been sighted once already.”

“Black’s not fool enough to try anything in Hogsmeade,” said Ron. “Ask McGonagall if you can go this time, Harry. The next one might not be for ages —”

“Ron!” said Hermione. “Harry’s supposed to stay in school —”

“He can’t be the only third year left behind,” said Ron. “Ask McGonagall, go on, Harry —”

“Yeah, I think I will,” said Harry, making up his mind.

Hermione opened her mouth to argue, but at that moment Crookshanks leapt lightly onto her lap. 

A large, dead spider was dangling from his mouth.

“Does he have to eat that in front of us?” said Ron, scowling.

“Clever Crookshanks, did you catch that all by yourself?” cooed Hermione, running her fingers down the cat’s orange fut.

Crookshanks slowly chewed up the spider, his yellow eyes fixed insolently on Ron.

“Just keep him over there, that’s all,” said Ron irritably, turning back to his star chart. “I’ve got Scabbers asleep in my bag.”

Harry yawned. 

He really wanted to go to bed, but he still had his own star chart to complete. He pulled his bag toward him, took out parchment, ink, and quill, and started work.

“You can copy mine, if you like,” said Ron, labeling his last star with a flourish and shoving the chart toward Harry.

Hermione, who disapproved of copying, pursed her lips but didn’t say anything. Crookshanks was still staring unblinkingly at Ron, flicking the end of his bushy tail. Then, without warning, he pounced.

“OY!” Ron roared, seizing his bag as Crookshanks sank four sets of claws deeply into it and began tearing ferociously. “GET OFF, YOU STUPID ANIMAL!”

Ron tried to pull the bag away from Crookshanks, but Crookshanks clung on, spitting and slashing.

“Ron, don’t hurt him!” squealed Hermione; the whole common room was watching; Ron whirled the bag around, Crookshanks still clinging to it, and Scabbers came flying out of the top —

“CATCH THAT CAT!” Ron yelled as Crookshanks freed himself from the remnants of the bag, sprang over the table, and chased after the terrified Scabbers.

George Weasley made a lunge for Crookshanks but missed; Scabbers streaked through twenty pairs of legs and shot beneath an old chest of drawers. Crookshanks skidded to a halt, crouched low on his bandy legs, and started making furious swipes beneath it with his front paw.

Ron and Hermione hurried over; Hermione grabbed Crookshanks around the middle and heaved him away; Ron threw himself onto his stomach and, with great difficulty, pulled Scabbers out by the tail.

“Look at him!” he said furiously to Hermione, dangling Scabbers in front of her. “He’s skin and bone! You keep that cat away from him!”

“Crookshanks doesn’t understand it’s wrong!” said Hermione, her voice shaking. “All cats chase rats, Ron!”

“There’s something funny about that animal!” said Ron, who was trying to persuade a frantically wiggling Scabbers back into his pocket. “It heard me say that Scabbers was in my bag!”

“Oh, what rubbish,” said Hermione impatiently. “Crookshanks could smell him, Ron, how else d’you think —”

“That cat’s got it in for Scabbers!” said Ron, ignoring the people around him, who were starting to giggle. “And Scabbers was here first, and he’s ill!”

Ron marched through the common room and out of sight up the stairs to the boys’ dormitories.

Ron was still in a bad mood with Hermione next day. He barely talked to her all through Herbology, even though he, Harry, and Hermione were working together on the same puffapod.

“How’s Scabbers?” Hermione asked timidly as they stripped fat pink pods from the plants and emptied the shining beans into a wooden pail.

“He’s hiding at the bottom of my bed, shaking,” said Ron angrily, missing the pail and scattering beans over the greenhouse floor.

“Careful, Weasley, careful!” cried Professor Sprout as the beans burst into bloom before their very eyes.

They had Transfiguration next. 

Harry, who had resolved to ask Professor McGonagall after the lesson whether he could go into Hogsmeade with the rest, joined the line outside the class trying to decide how he was going to argue his case. 

He was distracted, however, by a disturbance at the front of the line.

Lavender Brown seemed to be crying. 

Parvati had her arm around her and was explaining something to Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas, who were looking very serious.

“What’s the matter, Lavender?” said Hermione anxiously as she, Harry, and Ron went to join the group.

“She got a letter from home this morning,” Parvati whispered. “It’s her rabbit, Binky. He’s been killed by a fox.”

“Oh,” said Hermione, “I’m sorry, Lavender.”

“I should have known!” said Lavender tragically. “You know what day it is?”

“Er —”

“The sixteenth of October! ‘That thing you’re dreading, it will happen on the sixteenth of October!’ Remember? She was right, she was right!”

The whole class was gathered around Lavender now. 

Seamus shook his head seriously. 

Hermione hesitated, then said, “You — you were dreading Binky being killed by a fox?”

“Well, not necessarily by a fox,” said Lavender, looking up at Hermione with streaming eyes, “but I was obviously dreading him dying, wasn’t I?”

“Oh,” said Hermione. She paused again, then blinking at Lavender. “Was Binky an old rabbit?”

“N-no!” sobbed Lavender. “H-he was only a baby!”

Parvati tightened her arm around Lavender’s shoulders.

“But then, why would you dread him dying?” said Hermione.

Parvati glared at her.

“Well, look at it logically,” said Hermione, turning to the rest of the group. “I mean, Binky didn’t even die today, did he? Lavender just got the news today” — Lavender wailed loudly — “and she can’t have been dreading it, because it’s come as a real shock —”

“Don’t mind Hermione, Lavender,” said Ron loudly, “she doesn’t think other people’s pets matter very much.”

Professor McGonagall opened the classroom door at that moment, which was perhaps lucky; Hermione and Ron were looking daggers at each other, and when they got into class, they seated themselves on either side of Harry and didn’t talk to each other for the whole class.

… It felt oddly familiar to Harry, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

Harry still hadn’t decided what he was going to say to Professor McGonagall when the bell rang at the end of the lesson, but it was she who brought up the subject of Hogsmeade first.

“One moment, please!” she called as the class made to leave. “As you’re all in my House, you should hand Hogsmeade permission forms to me before Halloween. No form, no visiting the village, so don’t forget!”

Neville put up his hand. “Please, Professor, I — I think I’ve lost —”

“Your grandmother sent yours to me directly, Longbottom,” said Professor McGonagall. “She seemed to think it was safer. Well, that’s all, you may leave.”

“Ask her now,” Ron hissed at Harry.

“Oh, but —” Hermione began.

“Go for it, Harry,” said Ron stubbornly.

Harry waited for the rest of the class to disappear, then headed nervously for Professor McGonagall’s desk.

“Yes, Potter?”

Harry took a deep breath.

“Professor, my aunt and uncle — er — forgot to sign my form,” he said.

Professor McGonagall looked over her square spectacles at him but didn’t say anything.

“So — er — d’you think it would be all right — I mean, will it be okay if I — if I go to Hogsmeade?”

Professor McGonagall looked down and began shuffling papers on her desk.

“I’m afraid not, Potter,” she said. “You heard what I said. No form, no visiting the village. That’s the rule.”

“But — Professor, my aunt and uncle — you know, they’re Muggles, they don’t really understand about — about Hogwarts forms and stuff,” Harry said, while Ron egged him on with vigorous nods. “If you said I could go —”

“But I don’t say so,” said Professor McGonagall, standing up and piling her papers neatly into a drawer. “The form clearly states that the parent or guardian must give permission.” 

She turned to look at him, with an odd expression on her face. 

Was it pity? 

“I’m sorry, Potter, but that’s my final word. You had better hurry, or you’ll be late for your next lesson.”

There was nothing to be done. 

Ron called Professor McGonagall a lot of names that greatly annoyed Hermione; Hermione assumed an “all-for-the-best” expression that made Ron even angrier, and Harry had to endure everyone in the class talking loudly and happily about what they were going to do first, once they got into Hogsmeade.

“There’s always the feast,” said Ron, in an effort to cheer Harry up. “You know, the Halloween feast, in the evening.”

“Yeah,” said Harry gloomily, “great.”

The Halloween feast was always good, but it would taste a lot better if he was coming to it after a day in Hogsmeade with everyone else. Nothing anyone said made him feel any better about being left behind. 

Dean Thomas, who was good with a quill, had offered to forge Uncle Vernon’s signature on the form, but as Harry had already told Professor McGonagall he hadn’t had it signed, that was no good. Ron halfheartedly suggested the Invisibility Cloak, but Hermione stamped on that one, reminding Ron what Dumbledore had told them about the dementors being able to see through them. 

Percy had what were possibly the least helpful words of comfort.

“They make a fuss about Hogsmeade, but I assure you, Harry, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” he said seriously. “All right, the sweetshop’s rather good, and Zonko’s Joke Shop’s frankly dangerous, and yes, the Shrieking Shack’s always worth a visit, but really, Harry, apart from that, you’re not missing anything.”

On Halloween morning, Harry awoke with the rest and went down to breakfast, feeling thoroughly depressed, though doing his best to act normally.

“We’ll bring you lots of sweets back from Honeydukes,” said Hermione, looking desperately sorry for him.

“Yeah, loads,” said Ron. He and Hermione had finally forgotten their squabble about Crookshanks in the face of Harry’s disappointment.

“Don’t worry about me,” said Harry, in what he hoped was an offhand voice, “I’ll see you at the feast. Have a good time.”

He accompanied them to the entrance hall, where Filch, the caretaker, was standing inside the front doors, checking off names against a long list, peering suspiciously into every face, and making sure that no one was sneaking out who shouldn’t be going.

“Staying here, Potter?” shouted Draconia, who was standing in line by herself and oddly absent of Crabbe and Goyle. “Scared of passing the dementors?”

Harry ignored her and made his solitary way up the marble staircase, through the deserted corridors, and back to Gryffindor Tower.

Draconia watched him go, frowning for a few minutes before setting off with everyone else.

“Password?” said the Fat Lady, jerking out of a doze.

“Fortuna… Major,” said Harry listlessly.

The portrait swung open and he climbed through the hole into the common room. It was full of chattering first and second years, and a few older students, who had obviously visited Hogsmeade so often the novelty had worn off.

“Harry! Harry! Hi, Harry!”

It was Colin Creevey, a second year who was deeply in awe of Harry and never missed an opportunity to speak to him.

“Aren’t you going to Hogsmeade, Harry? Why not? Hey” — Colin looked eagerly around at his friends — “you can come and sit with us, if you like, Harry!”

“Er — no, thanks, Colin,” said Harry, who wasn’t in the mood to have a lot of people staring avidly at the scar on his forehead. “I — I’ve got to go to the library, got to get some work done.”

After that, he had no choice but to turn right around and head back out of the portrait hole again.

“What was the point waking me up?” the Fat Lady called grumpily after him as he walked away.

Harry wandered dispiritedly toward the library, but halfway there he changed his mind; he didn’t feel like working. He turned around and came face-to-face with Filch, who had obviously just seen off the last of the Hogsmeade visitors.

“What are you doing?” Filch snarled suspiciously.

“Nothing,” said Harry truthfully, and rather boredly.

“Nothing!” spat Filch, his jowls quivering unpleasantly. “A likely story! Sneaking around on your own — why aren’t you in Hogsmeade buying Stink Pellets and Belch Powder and Whizzing Worms like the rest of your nasty little friends?”

Harry shrugged.

“Well, get back to your common room where you belong!” snapped Filch, huffing and puffing at Harry.

Harry stood there, drawing in a long breath as he eyed Filch, then turned around, walking off without hurry. 

“I’m glad your cat, Mrs. Norris, is well, Filch.” Harry said with a tired sigh. “Despite everything.”

 Filch stood there, glaring until Harry had passed out of sight, then wilted, blinking glumly at where Harry had been.

But Harry didn’t go back to the common room; he climbed a staircase, thinking vaguely of visiting the Owlery to see Hedwig, and was walking along another corridor when a voice from inside one of the rooms said, “Harry?”

Harry doubled back to see who had spoken and met Professor Lupin, looking around his office door.

“What are you doing?” said Lupin, though in a very different voice from Filch. “Where are Ron and Hermione?”

“Hogsmeade,” said Harry, in a would-be casual voice.

“Ah,” said Lupin. He considered Harry for a moment. “Why don’t you come in? I’ve just taken delivery of a grindylow for our next lesson.”

“A what?” said Harry.

He followed Lupin into his office. In the corner stood a very large tank of water. A sickly green creature with sharp little horns had its face pressed against the glass, pulling faces and flexing its long, spindly fingers.

“Water demon,” said Lupin, surveying the grindylow thoughtfully. “We shouldn’t have much difficulty with him, not after the kappas. The trick is to break his grip. You notice the abnormally long fingers? Strong, but very brittle.”

The grindylow bared its green teeth and then buried itself in a tangle of weeds in a corner.

“Cup of tea?” Lupin said, looking around for his kettle. “I was just thinking of making one.”

“All right,” said Harry awkwardly.

Lupin tapped the kettle with his wand and a blast of steam issued suddenly from the spout.

“Sit down,” said Lupin, taking the lid off a dusty tin. “I’ve only got teabags, I’m afraid — but I daresay you’ve had enough of tea leaves?”

Harry looked at him. 

Lupin’s eyes were twinkling.

“How did you know about that?” Harry asked.

“Professor McGonagall told me,” said Lupin, passing Harry a chipped mug of tea. “You’re not worried, are you?”

“No,” said Harry.

He thought for a moment of telling Lupin about the dog he’d seen in Magnolia Crescent but decided not to. He didn’t want Lupin to think he was a coward, especially since Lupin already seemed to think he couldn’t cope with a boggart.

Something of Harry’s thoughts seemed to have shown on his face, because Lupin said, “Anything worrying you, Harry?”

“No,” Harry lied. 

He drank a bit of tea and watched the grindylow brandishing a fist at him. 

“Yes,” he said suddenly, putting his tea down on Lupin’s desk. “You know that day we fought the boggart?”

“Yes,” said Lupin slowly.

“Why didn’t you let me fight it?” said Harry abruptly.

Lupin raised his eyebrows.

“I would have thought that was obvious, Harry,” he said, sounding surprised.

Harry, who had expected Lupin to deny that he’d done any such thing, was taken aback.

“Why?” he said again.

“Well,” said Lupin, frowning slightly, “I assumed that if the boggart faced you, it would assume the shape of Lord Voldemort.”

Harry stared. 

Not only was this the last answer he’d expected, but Lupin had said Voldemort’s name. The only person Harry had ever heard say the name aloud (apart from himself) was Professor Dumbledore.

“Clearly, I was wrong,” said Lupin, still frowning at Harry. “But I didn’t think it a good idea for Lord Voldemort to materialize in the staffroom. I imagined that people would panic.”

“But then,” said Harry honestly. “I — I remembered those dementors.”

“I see,” said Lupin thoughtfully. “Well, well . . . I’m impressed.” He smiled slightly at the look of surprise on Harry’s face. “That suggests that what you fear most of all is — fear. Very wise, Harry.”

Harry didn’t know what to say to that, so he drank some more tea.

“So you’ve been thinking that I didn’t believe you capable of fighting the boggart?” said Lupin shrewdly.

“Well . . . yeah,” said Harry. He was suddenly feeling a lot happier. “Professor Lupin, you know the dementors —”

He was interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Come in,” called Lupin.

The door opened, and in came Snape. He was carrying a goblet, which was smoking faintly, and stopped at the sight of Harry, his black eyes narrowing.

“Ah, Severus,” said Lupin, smiling. “Thanks very much. Could you leave it here on the desk for me?”

Snape set down the smoking goblet, his eyes wandering between Harry and Lupin.

“I was just showing Harry my grindylow,” said Lupin pleasantly, pointing at the tank.

“Fascinating,” said Snape, without looking at it. “You should drink that directly, Lupin.”

“Yes, yes, I will,” said Lupin.

“I made an entire cauldronful,” Snape continued. “If you need more.”

“I should probably take some again tomorrow. Thanks very much, Severus.”

“Not at all,” said Snape, but there was a look in his eye Harry didn’t like. 

He backed out of the room, unsmiling and watchful.

Harry looked curiously at the goblet. 

Lupin smiled.

“Professor Snape has very kindly concocted a potion for me,” he said. “I have never been much of a potion-brewer and this one is particularly complex.” He picked up the goblet and sniffed it. “Pity sugar makes it useless,” he added, taking a sip and shuddering.

“Why — ?” Harry began. Lupin looked at him and answered the unfinished question.

“I’ve been feeling a bit off-color,” he said. “This potion is the only thing that helps. I am very lucky to be working alongside Professor Snape; there aren’t many wizards who are up to making it.”

Professor Lupin took another sip and Harry had a crazy urge to knock the goblet out of his hands.

“Professor Snape’s very interested in the Dark Arts,” he blurted out. 

“Really?” said Lupin, looking only mildly interested as he took another gulp of potion.

“Some people reckon —” Harry hesitated, then plunged recklessly on, “some people reckon he’d do anything to get the Defense Against the Dark Arts job.”

Lupin drained the goblet and pulled a face.

“Disgusting,” he breathed with a disgusted exhale, setting down the goblet. “Well, Harry, I’d better get back to work. I’ll see you at the feast later.”

“Right,” said Harry, putting down his empty teacup. 

The empty goblet was still smoking as Harry left, and he couldn’t shake it from his mind as he waited in the common room.

After a long, long time, students began to return to the castle from the village.

“There you go,” said Ron, beaming with a smile after he climbed through the portrait hole. “We got as much as we could carry.”

A shower of brilliantly colored sweets fell into Harry’s lap. It was dusk, Ron and Hermione pink-faced from the cold wind and looking as though they’d had the time of their lives.

“Thanks,” said Harry, picking up a packet of tiny black Pepper Imps. “What’s Hogsmeade like? Where did you go?”

By the sound of it — everywhere. 

Dervish and Banges, the wizarding equipment shop, Zonko’s Joke Shop, into the Three Broomsticks for foaming mugs of hot butterbeer, and many places besides.

“The post office, Harry! About two hundred owls, all sitting on shelves, all color-coded depending on how fast you want your letter to get there!” Hermione said with a happy sigh.

“Honeydukes has got a new kind of fudge; they were giving out free samples, there’s a bit, look —” Ron said, pulling out a smack package from the massive pile of sweets.

“We think we saw an ogre, honestly, they get all sorts at the Three Broomsticks —”

“Wish we could have brought you some butterbeer, really warms you up —”

“What did you do?” said Hermione, looking anxious. “Did you get any work done?”

“No,” said Harry. “Lupin made me a cup of tea in his office. And then Snape came in. . . .”

He told them all about the goblet. 

Ron’s mouth fell open.

“Lupin drank it?” he gasped. “Is he mad?!”

Hermione checked her watch. “We’d better go down, you know, the feast’ll be starting in five minutes.” 

They hurried through the portrait hole and into the crowd, still discussing Snape.

“But if he — you know” — Hermione dropped her voice, glancing nervously around — “if he was trying to — to poison Lupin — he wouldn’t have done it in front of Harry.”

“Yeah, maybe,” said Harry as they reached the entrance hall and crossed into the Great Hall. 

It had been decorated with hundreds and hundreds of candle-filled pumpkins, a cloud of fluttering live bats, and many flaming orange streamers, which were swimming lazily across the stormy ceiling like brilliant water snakes.

The food was delicious; even Hermione and Ron, who were full to bursting with Honeydukes sweets, managed second helpings of everything. 

Harry kept glancing at the staff table. 

Professor Lupin looked cheerful and as well as he ever did; he was talking animatedly to tiny little Professor Flitwick, the Charms teacher. Harry moved his eyes along the table, to the place where Snape sat. 

Was he imagining it, or were Snape’s eyes flickering toward Lupin more often than was natural?

The feast finished with an entertainment provided by the Hogwarts ghosts. They popped out of the walls and tables to do a bit of formation gliding; Nearly Headless Nick, the Gryffindor ghost, had a great success with a reenactment of his own botched beheading.

It had been such a pleasant evening that Harry’s good mood couldn’t even be spoiled by Draconia, who shouted through the crowd as they all left the hall, “The dementors send their love, Potter!”

Harry, Ron, and Hermione followed the rest of the Gryffindors along the usual path to Gryffindor Tower, but when they reached the corridor that ended with the portrait of the Fat Lady, they found it jammed with students.

“Why isn’t anyone going in?” said Ron curiously.

Harry peered over the heads in front of him. The portrait seemed to be closed.

“Let me through, please,” came Percy’s voice, and he came bustling importantly through the crowd. “What’s the holdup here? You can’t all have forgotten the password — excuse me, I’m Head Boy —”

And then a silence fell over the crowd, from the front first, so that a chill seemed to spread down the corridor. 

They heard Percy say, in a suddenly sharp voice, “Somebody get Professor Dumbledore. Quick.”

People’s heads turned; those at the back were standing on tiptoe.

“What’s going on?” said Ginny, who had just arrived.

A moment later, Professor Dumbledore was there, sweeping toward the portrait; the Gryffindors squeezed together to let him through, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione moved closer to see what the trouble was.

“Oh, my —” Hermione grabbed Harry’s arm.

The Fat Lady had vanished from her portrait, which had been slashed so viciously that strips of canvas littered the floor; great chunks of it had been torn away completely.

Dumbledore took one quick look at the ruined painting and turned, his eyes somber, to see Professors McGonagall, Lupin, and Snape hurrying toward him.

“We need to find her,” said Dumbledore. “Professor McGonagall, please go to Mr. Filch at once and tell him to search every painting in the castle for the Fat Lady.”

“You’ll be lucky!” said a cackling voice.

It was Peeves the Poltergeist, bobbing over the crowd and looking delighted, as he always did, at the sight of wreckage or worry.

“What do you mean, Peeves?” said Dumbledore calmly, and Peeves’s grin faded a little. He didn’t dare taunt Dumbledore. Instead he adopted an oily voice that was no better than his cackle.

“Ashamed, Your Headship, sir. Doesn’t want to be seen. She’s a horrible mess. Saw her running through the landscape up on the fourth floor, sir, dodging between the trees. Crying something dreadful,” he said happily. 

“Poor thing,” he added unconvincingly.

“Did she say who did it?” said Dumbledore quietly.

“Oh yes, Professorhead,” said Peeves, with the air of one cradling a large bombshell in his arms. “He got very angry when she wouldn’t let him in, you see.” 

Peeves flipped over and grinned at Dumbledore from between his own legs. “Nasty temper he’s got, that Sirius Black.”

Chapter 32 : Book 3: Chapter 9 (extreme deviation)

Ch 9

Professor Dumbledore sent all the Gryffindors back to the Great Hall, where they were joined ten minutes later by the students from Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin, who all looked extremely confused.

“The teachers and I need to conduct a thorough search of the castle,” Professor Dumbledore told them as Professors McGonagall and Flitwick closed all doors into the hall. “I’m afraid that, for your own safety, you will have to spend the night here. I want the prefects to stand guard over the entrances to the hall and I am leaving the Head Boy and Girl in charge. Any disturbance should be reported to me immediately,” he added to Percy, who was looking immensely proud and important. “Send word with one of the ghosts.”

Professor Dumbledore paused, about to leave the hall, and said, “Oh, yes, you’ll be needing . . .”

One casual wave of his wand and the long tables flew to the edges of the hall and stood themselves against the walls; another wave, and the floor was covered with hundreds of squashy purple sleeping bags.

“Sleep well,” said Professor Dumbledore, closing the door behind him.

The hall immediately began to buzz excitedly; the Gryffindors were telling the rest of the school what had just happened.

“Everyone into their sleeping bags!” shouted Percy. “Come on, now, no more talking! Lights out in ten minutes!”

“C’mon,” Ron said to Harry and Hermione; they seized three sleeping bags and dragged them into a corner.

“Do you think Black’s still in the castle?” Hermione whispered anxiously. 

“Dumbledore obviously thinks he might be,” said Ron.

“It’s very lucky he picked tonight, you know,” said Hermione as they climbed fully dressed into their sleeping bags and propped themselves on their elbows to talk. “The one night we weren’t in the tower. . . .”

“I reckon he’s lost track of time, being on the run,” said Ron. “Didn’t realize it was Halloween. Otherwise he’d have come bursting in here.”

Hermione shuddered.

All around them, people were asking one another the same question: “How did he get in?”

“Maybe he knows how to Apparate,” said a Ravenclaw a few feet away. “Just appear out of thin air, you know.”

“Disguised himself, probably,” said a Hufflepuff fifth year. 

“He could’ve flown in,” suggested Dean Thomas.

“Honestly, am I the only person who’s ever bothered to read Hogwarts: A History?” said Hermione crossly to Harry and Ron.

“Probably,” said Ron. “Why?”

“Because the castle’s protected by more than walls, you know,” said Hermione. “There are all sorts of enchantments on it, to stop people entering by stealth. You can’t just Apparate in here. And I’d like to see the disguise that could fool those dementors. They’re guarding every single entrance to the grounds. They’d have seen him fly in too. And Filch knows all the secret passages, they’ll have them cov ered. . . .”

“The lights are going out now!” Percy shouted. “I want everyone in their sleeping bags and no more talking!”

The candles all went out at once. 

The only light now came from the silvery ghosts, who were drifting about talking seriously to the prefects, and the enchanted ceiling, which, like the sky outside, was scattered with stars. What with that, and the whispering that still filled the hall, Harry felt as though he were sleeping outdoors in a light wind.

Once every hour, a teacher would reappear in the hall to check that everything was quiet. Around three in the morning, when many students had finally fallen asleep, Professor Dumbledore came in. 

Harry watched him looking around for Percy, who had been prowling between the sleeping bags, telling people off for talking. Percy was only a short way away from Harry, Ron, and Hermione, who quickly pretended to be asleep as Dumbledore’s footsteps drew nearer.

“Any sign of him, Professor?” asked Percy in a whisper.

“No. All well here?” Dumbledore murmured, his voice tired.

“Everything under control, sir.”

“Good. There’s no point moving them all now. I’ve found a temporary guardian for the Gryffindor portrait hole. You’ll be able to move them back in tomorrow.”

“And the Fat Lady, sir?”

“Hiding in a map of Argyllshire on the second floor. Apparently she refused to let Black in without the password, so he attacked. She’s still very distressed, but once she’s calmed down, I’ll have Mr. Filch restore her.”

There was a pause, and Harry swore he could hear Dumbledore’s smile. “What’s this?”

Harry heard Percy turn, then snort. “Ah, appears someone slipped past me. My apologies sir.”

“No, no it’s quite alright.” Dumbledore mused. “Miss Malfoy must have simply… gotten lost from the lavatory.”

“Should I…?”

“No, Percy, let her to sleep. She seems far more comfortable there than where she was.”

Malfoy? He thought, brows coming together. Lost where? They were in a single room…

Harry heard the door of the hall creak open again, and more footsteps.

“Headmaster?” It was Snape. Harry kept quite still, listening hard. “The whole of the third floor has been searched. He’s not there. And Filch has done the dungeons; nothing there either.”

“What about the Astronomy Tower? Professor Trelawney’s room? The Owlery?” Dumbledore asked.

“All searched . . .”

“Very well, Severus. I didn’t really expect Black to linger.”

“Have you any theory as to how he got in, Professor?” asked Snape. 

Harry raised his head very slightly off his arms to free his other ear. 

“Many, Severus, each of them as unlikely as the next.”

Harry opened his eyes a fraction and squinted up to where they stood; Dumbledore’s back was to him, but he could see Percy’s face, rapt with attention, and Snape’s profile, which looked angry.

“You remember the conversation we had, Headmaster, just before — ah — the start of term?” said Snape, who was barely opening his lips, as though trying to block Percy out of the conversation.

“I do, Severus,” said Dumbledore, and there was something like warning in his voice.

“It seems — almost impossible — that Black could have entered the school without inside help. I did express my concerns when you appointed —”

“I do not believe a single person inside this castle would have helped Black enter it,” said Dumbledore, and his tone made it so clear that the subject was closed that Snape didn’t reply. 

“I must go down to the dementors,” said Dumbledore. “I said I would inform them when our search was complete.”

“Didn’t they want to help, sir?” said Percy.

“Oh yes,” said Dumbledore coldly. “But I’m afraid no dementor will cross the threshold of this castle while I am headmaster.”

Percy looked slightly abashed. 

Dumbledore left the hall, walking quickly and quietly. 

Snape stood for a moment, watching the headmaster with an expression of deep resentment on his face; then he too left.

Harry glanced sideways at Ron and Hermione. Both of them had their eyes open too, reflecting the starry ceiling.

“What was all that about?” Ron mouthed.

“I don’t know.” Harry mouthed back with a shrug, and then rolled the other way when Percy made to walk within eyeline of him.

As he rolled over, he was met with a face he never thought he’d see across from him in a sleeping bag.

Eyes closed, mouth slightly parted with locks of blonde hair over her face… was Draconia Malfoy.

—

The school talked of nothing but Sirius Black for the next few days. 

The theories about how he had entered the castle became wilder and wilder; Hannah Abbott, from Hufflepuff, spent much of their next Herbology class telling anyone who’d listen that Black could turn into a flowering shrub.

The Fat Lady’s ripped canvas had been taken off the wall and replaced with the portrait of Sir Cadogan and his fat gray pony. 

Nobody was very happy about this. 

Sir Cadogan spent half his time challenging people to duels, and the rest thinking up ridiculously complicated passwords, which he changed at least twice a day.

“He’s a complete lunatic,” said Seamus Finnigan angrily to Percy. “Can’t we get anyone else?”

“None of the other pictures wanted the job,” said Percy. “Frightened of what happened to the Fat Lady. Sir Cadogan was the only one brave enough to volunteer.”

Sir Cadogan, however, was the least of Harry’s worries. 

First, Draconia Malfoy had woken up at the same time he had, and he had to watch her stammer, splutter, and awkwardly shrimp away like a caterpillar stuck trying to leave its own cocoon.

He was now also being closely watched, and it wasn’t just Draconia. 

Teachers found excuses to walk along corridors with him, and Percy Weasley (acting, Harry suspected, on his mother’s orders) was tailing him everywhere like an extremely pompous guard dog. 

To cap it all, Professor McGonagall summoned Harry into her office, with such a somber expression on her face Harry thought someone must have died.

“There’s no point hiding it from you any longer, Potter,” she said in a very serious voice. “I know this will come as a shock to you, but Sirius Black —”

“I know he’s after me,” said Harry wearily. “I heard Ron’s dad telling his mum. Mr. Weasley works for the Ministry of Magic.”

Professor McGonagall seemed very taken aback. She stared at Harry for a moment or two, then said, “I see! Well, in that case, Potter, you’ll understand why I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be practicing Quidditch in the evenings. Out on the field with only your team members, it’s very exposed, Potter —”

“We’ve got our first match on Saturday!” said Harry, outraged. “I’ve got to train, Professor!”

Professor McGonagall considered him intently. 

Harry knew she was deeply interested in the Gryffindor team’s prospects; it had been she, after all, who’d suggested him as Seeker in the first place. He waited, holding his breath.

“Hmm . . .” Professor McGonagall stood up and stared out of the window at the Quidditch field, just visible through the rain. “Well . . . goodness knows, I’d like to see us win the Cup at last . . . but all the same, Potter . . . I’d be happier if a teacher were present. I’ll ask Madam Hooch to oversee your training sessions.”

The weather worsened steadily as the first Quidditch match drew nearer. 

Undaunted, the Gryffindor team was training harder than ever under the eye of Madam Hooch. Then, at their final training session before Saturday’s match, Oliver Wood gave his team some unwelcome news.

“We’re not playing Slytherin!” he told them, looking very angry. “Flint’s just been to see me. We’re playing Hufflepuff instead.”

“Why?” chorused the rest of the team.

“Flint’s excuse is that their Seeker’s arm’s still injured,” said Wood, grinding his teeth furiously. “But it’s obvious why they’re doing it. Don’t want to play in this weather. Think it’ll damage their chances. . . .”

There had been strong winds and heavy rain all day, and as Wood spoke, they heard a distant rumble of thunder.

“There’s nothing wrong with Malfoy’s arm!” said Harry furiously. “She’s faking it!”

“I know that, but we can’t prove it,” said Wood bitterly. “And we’ve been practicing all those moves assuming we’re playing Slytherin, and instead it’s Hufflepuff, and their style’s quite different. They’ve got a new Captain and Seeker, Cedric Diggory —”

Angelina, Alicia, and Katie suddenly giggled.

“What?” said Wood, frowning at this lighthearted behavior.

“He’s that tall, good-looking one, isn’t he?” said Angelina.

“Strong and silent,” said Katie, and they started to giggle again.

“He’s only silent because he’s too thick to string two words together,” said Fred impatiently. “I don’t know why you’re worried, Oliver, Hufflepuff is a pushover. Last time we played them, Harry caught the Snitch in about five minutes, remember?”

“We were playing in completely different conditions!” Wood shouted, his eyes bulging slightly. “Diggory’s put a very strong side together! He’s an excellent Seeker! I was afraid you’d take it like this! We mustn’t relax! We must keep our focus! Slytherin is trying to wrong-foot us! We must win!” 

“Oliver, calm down!” said Fred, looking slightly alarmed. “We’re taking Hufflepuff very seriously. Seriously.”

The day before the match, the winds reached howling point and the rain fell harder than ever. It was so dark inside the corridors and classrooms that extra torches and lanterns were lit. 

The Slytherin team was looking very smug indeed, and none more so than Draconia Malfoy.

“Ah, if only my arm was feeling a bit better!” she sighed as the gale outside pounded the windows.

“Maybe if you had some extra rest.” Harry snapped at her, which made her blush fiercely and avoid his eyes.

Harry had no room in his head to worry about anything except the match tomorrow. 

Oliver Wood kept hurrying up to him between classes and giving him tips. The third time this happened, Wood talked for so long that Harry suddenly realized he was ten minutes late for Defense Against the Dark Arts, and set off at a run with Wood shouting after him, “Diggory’s got a very fast swerve, Harry, so you might want to try looping him —”

Harry skidded to a halt outside the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, pulled the door open, and dashed inside.

“Sorry I’m late, Professor Lupin, I —”

But it wasn’t Professor Lupin who looked up at him from the teacher’s desk; it was Snape.

“This lesson began ten minutes ago, Potter, so I think we’ll make it ten points from Gryffindor. Sit down.”

But Harry didn’t move.

“Where’s Professor Lupin?” he said.

“He says he is feeling too ill to teach today,” said Snape with a twisted smile. “I believe I told you to sit down?”

But Harry stayed where he was. “What’s wrong with him?”

Snape’s black eyes glittered.

“Nothing life-threatening,” he said, looking as though he wished it were. “Five more points from Gryffindor, and if I have to ask you to sit down again, it will be fifty.”

Harry walked slowly to his seat and sat down. 

Snape looked around at the class.

“As I was saying before Potter interrupted, Professor Lupin has not left any record of the topics you have covered so far —”

“Please, sir, we’ve done boggarts, Red Caps, kappas, and grindylows,” said Hermione quickly, “and we’re just about to start —”

“Be quiet,” said Snape coldly. “I did not ask for information. I was merely commenting on Professor Lupin’s lack of organization.”

“He’s the best Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher we’ve ever had,” said Dean Thomas boldly, and there was a murmur of agreement from the rest of the class. 

Snape looked more menacing than ever. “You are easily satisfied. Lupin is hardly overtaxing you — I would expect first years to be able to deal with Red Caps and grindylows. Today we shall discuss —”

Harry watched him flick through the textbook, to the very back chapter, which he must know they hadn’t covered.

“— werewolves,” said Snape.

“But, sir,” said Hermione, seemingly unable to restrain herself, “we’re not supposed to do werewolves yet, we’re due to start hinkypunks —”

“Miss Granger,” said Snape in a voice of deadly calm, “I was under the impression that I am teaching this lesson, not you. And I am telling you all to turn to page 394.” He glanced around again. “All of you! Now!”

With many bitter sidelong looks and some sullen muttering, the class opened their books.

“Which of you can tell me how we distinguish between the werewolf and the true wolf?” said Snape.

Everyone sat in motionless silence; everyone except Hermione, whose hand, as it so often did, had shot straight into the air.

“Anyone?” Snape said, ignoring Hermione. His twisted smile was back. “Are you telling me that Professor Lupin hasn’t even taught you the basic distinction between —”

“We told you,” said Parvati suddenly, “we haven’t got as far as werewolves yet, we’re still on —”

“Silence!” snarled Snape. “Well, well, well, I never thought I’d meet a third-year class who wouldn’t even recognize a werewolf when they saw one. I shall make a point of informing Professor Dumbledore how very behind you all are. . . .”

“Please, sir,” said Hermione, whose hand was still in the air, “the werewolf differs from the true wolf in several small ways. The snout of the werewolf —”

“That is the second time you have spoken out of turn, Miss Granger,” said Snape coolly. “Five more points from Gryffindor, for being an insufferable know-it-all.”

Hermione went very red, put down her hand, and stared at the floor with her eyes full of tears. 

It was a mark of how much the class loathed Snape that they were all glaring at him, because every one of them had called Hermione a know-it-all at least once.

Ron, who told Hermione she was a know-it-all at least twice a week, said loudly, “You asked us a question and she knows the answer! Why ask if you don’t want to be told?”

The class knew instantly he’d gone too far. 

Snape advanced on Ron slowly, and the room held its breath.

“Detention, Weasley,” Snape said silkily, his face very close to Ron’s. “And if I ever hear you criticize the way I teach a class again, you will be very sorry indeed.”

No one made a sound throughout the rest of the lesson. They sat and made notes on werewolves from the textbook, while Snape prowled up and down the rows of desks, examining the work they had been doing with Professor Lupin.

“Very poorly explained . . . That is incorrect, the kappa is more commonly found in Mongolia. . . . Professor Lupin gave this eight out of ten? I wouldn’t have given it three. . . .”

When the bell rang at last, Snape held them back.

“You will each write an essay, to be handed in to me, on the ways you recognize and kill werewolves. I want two rolls of parchment on the subject, and I want them by Monday morning. It is time somebody took this class in hand. Weasley, stay behind, we need to arrange your detention.”

Harry and Hermione left the room with the rest of the class, who waited until they were well out of earshot, then burst into a furious tirade about Snape.

“Snape’s never been like this with any of our other Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers, even if he did want the job,” Harry said to Hermione. “Why’s he got it in for Lupin? D’you think this is all because of the boggart?”

“I don’t know,” said Hermione pensively. “But I really hope Professor Lupin gets better soon. . . .”

Ron caught up with them five minutes later, in a towering rage.

“D’you know what that” — (he called Snape something that made Hermione say “Ron!”) — “is making me do? I’ve got to scrub out the bedpans in the hospital wing. Without magic!” He was breathing deeply, his fists clenched. “Why couldn’t Black have hidden in Snape’s office, eh? He could have finished him off for us!”

Harry woke extremely early the next morning; so early that it was still dark. For a moment he thought the roaring of the wind had woken him. Then he felt a cold breeze on the back of his neck and sat bolt upright.

Peeves the Poltergeist had been floating next to him, blowing hard in his ear. 

“What did you do that for?” said Harry furiously.

Peeves puffed out his cheeks, blew hard, and zoomed backward out of the room, cackling.

Harry fumbled for his alarm clock and looked at it. 

It was half past four, and there was a small note on top of it. 

Cursing Peeves, he rolled over and tried to get back to sleep, but it was very difficult, now that he was awake, to ignore the sounds of the thunder rumbling overhead, the pounding of the wind against the castle walls, and the distant creaking of the trees in the Forbidden Forest. 

In a few hours he would be out on the Quidditch field, battling through that gale. 

Finally, he gave up any thought of more sleep, got up, snatched up the note, dressed, picked up his Nimbus Two Thousand, and walked quietly out of the dormitory.

As Harry opened the door, something brushed against his leg. He bent down just in time to grab Crookshanks by the end of his bushy tail and drag him outside.

“You know, I reckon Ron was right about you,” Harry told Crookshanks suspiciously. 

“There are plenty of mice around this place — go and chase them. Go on,” he added, nudging Crookshanks down the spiral staircase with his foot. “Leave Scabbers alone.”

The noise of the storm was even louder in the common room. 

Harry knew better than to think the match would be canceled; Quidditch matches weren’t called off for trifles like thunderstorms. Nevertheless, he was starting to feel very apprehensive. Wood had pointed out Cedric Diggory to him in the corridor; Diggory was a fifth year and a lot bigger than Harry. 

Seekers were usually light and speedy, but Diggory’s weight would be an advantage in this weather because he was less likely to be blown off course.

Harry whiled away the hours until dawn in front of the fire, getting up every now and then to stop Crookshanks from sneaking up the boys’ staircase again. 

Harry remembered the note, and blinked tiredly at the roaring fire in the grate, unfolding it and once again being greeted by sparkling, green, ink:

“Harry,

It turns out, the Slytherins didn’t want to risk their chances of beating Gryffindor, and managed a sly manoeuvre of having you face Hufflepuff instead. I’m willing to bet you already worked that out, though, and were fuming over it.

I don’t mind though, either way, I’ll get to see you play. I’ll be cheering for you from the stands in the rain, but you won’t know which face I’ll be, do you? Ha ha!

Inside I’ve included a little eyeglass band I found in Hogsmeade. Muggles use them to keep their eyeglasses tight to their faces, so they won’t fall away.

Clever, isn’t it?

I thought so, so, I got you one! Should help against those dreadful Hufflepuffs.

I mean really, mustard and black? They may as well be called the Bumblebees.”

Harry chuckled, then rolled down the letter a little more, pulling out the rubber eyeglass band and giving it a little stretch before looking at the rest of the letter.

“Stay safe, and watch out for Sirius Black.

The fact he was in the castle still seems so… surreal to me, and we all had to sleep in the Great Hall? My back is still sore!

Don’t worry about writing back today, focus on your game.

-Green Streak”

“Who the hell are you, Green Streak?” Harry murmured to himself, tucking the letter into his robes and then working the band around the ends of his eyeglasses.

He kept them loose, for now, but knew they were going to come dead handy during all the rain.

There was also an odd… smell to the band, and Harry idly sniffed at it as he furrowed his brows in thought.

“Perfume?” Harry muttered. 

The handwriting was obviously from a girl… and this perfume smelled way too familiar, but he just couldn’t put his finger on it.

At long last, after fiddling with the eyeglass band for awhile more, Harry thought it must be time for breakfast, so he headed through the portrait hole alone.

“Stand and fight, you mangy cur!” yelled Sir Cadogan.

“Oh, shut up,” Harry yawned, slapping at the painting with a tired hand.

He revived a bit over a large bowl of porridge, and by the time he’d started on toast, the rest of the team had turned up.

“It’s going to be a tough one,” said Wood, who wasn’t eating anything.

“Stop worrying, Oliver,” said Alicia soothingly, “we don’t mind a bit of rain.”

But it was considerably more than a bit of rain. 

Such was the popularity of Quidditch that the whole school turned out to watch the match as usual. They ran down the lawns toward the Quidditch field, heads bowed against the ferocious wind, and umbrellas being whipped out of their hands as they went. 

Just before he entered the locker room, Harry saw Pansy Parkinson, Crabbe, and Goyle, laughing and pointing at him from under an enormous umbrella on their way to the stadium.

He did not see Malfoy with them, which struck him as very odd.

The team changed into their scarlet robes and waited for Wood’s usual prematch pep talk, but it didn’t come. He tried to speak several times, made an odd gulping noise, then shook his head hopelessly and beckoned them to follow him.

The wind was so strong that they staggered sideways as they walked out onto the field. If the crowd was cheering, they couldn’t hear it over the fresh rolls of thunder. 

Rain was splattering over Harry’s glasses, and he quickly tightened them to his head. 

How on earth was he going to see the Snitch in this?

The Hufflepuffs were approaching from the opposite side of the field, wearing canary-yellow robes. The Captains walked up to each other and shook hands; Diggory smiled at Wood, but Wood now looked as though he had lockjaw and merely nodded. 

Harry saw Madam Hooch’s mouth form the words, “Mount your brooms.” 

He pulled his right foot out of the mud with a squelch and swung it over his Nimbus Two Thousand. 

Madam Hooch put her whistle to her lips and gave it a blast that sounded shrill and distant — they were off.

Harry rose fast, but his Nimbus was swerving slightly with the wind. 

He held it as steady as he could and turned, squinting into the rain.

Within five minutes Harry was soaked to his skin and frozen, hardly able to see his teammates, let alone the tiny Snitch. 

He flew backward and forward across the field past blurred red and yellow shapes, with no idea of what was happening in the rest of the game. 

He couldn’t hear the commentary over the wind. 

The crowd was hidden beneath a sea of cloaks and battered umbrellas. 

Twice Harry came very close to being unseated by a Bludger; his vision was so clouded by the rain on his glasses he hadn’t seen them coming.

He lost track of time. 

It was getting harder and harder to hold his broom straight. 

The sky was getting darker, as though night had decided to come early. 

Twice Harry nearly hit another player, without knowing whether it was a teammate or opponent; everyone was now so wet, and the rain so thick, he could hardly tell them apart.

With the first flash of lightning came the sound of Madam Hooch’s whistle; Harry could just see the outline of Wood through the thick rain, gesturing him to the ground. 

The whole team splashed down into the mud.

“I called for time-out!” Wood roared at his team. “Come on, under here —”

They huddled at the edge of the field under a large umbrella; Harry took off his glasses and wiped them hurriedly on his robes. “What’s the score?”

“We’re fifty points up,” said Wood, “but unless we get the Snitch soon, we’ll be playing into the night.”

“I’ve got no chance with these on,” Harry said exasperatedly, waving his glasses. “The band keeps them on, but it does nothing for the rain!”

At that very moment, Hermione appeared at his shoulder; she was holding her cloak over her head and was, inexplicably, beaming. “I’ve had an idea, Harry! Give me your glasses, quick!”

He handed them to her, and as the team watched in amazement, Hermione tapped them with her wand and said, “Impervius!”

“There!” she said, handing them back to Harry. “They’ll repel water!”

Wood looked as though he could have kissed her.

“Brilliant!” he called hoarsely after her as she disappeared into the crowd. “Okay, team, let’s go for it!”

Hermione’s spell had done the trick. Harry was still numb with cold, still wetter than he’d ever been in his life, but he could see. 

Full of fresh determination, he urged his broom through the turbulent air, staring in every direction for the Snitch, avoiding a Bludger, ducking beneath Diggory, who was streaking in the opposite direction. . . .

There was another clap of thunder, followed immediately by forked lightning. 

This was getting more and more dangerous. 

Harry needed to get the Snitch, and quickly.

He turned, intending to head back toward the middle of the field, but at that moment, another flash of lightning illuminated the stands, and Harry saw something that distracted him completely — the silhouette of an enormous shaggy black dog, clearly imprinted against the sky, motionless in the topmost, empty row of seats.

In front of the dog, Harry also noticed Draconia Malfoy standing out against the flash of the lightning, her hair seeming to glow like sunlight-

And her gray-green eyes, locked onto his.

Harry’s numb hands slipped on the broom handle and his Nimbus dropped a few feet. 

Shaking his sodden bangs out of his eyes, he squinted back into the stands. The dog had vanished, and Draconia was on her feet, looking around behind her while holding her cloak over her head.

“Harry!” came Wood’s anguished yell from the Gryffindor goalposts. “Harry, behind you!”

Harry looked wildly around. Cedric Diggory was pelting up the field, and a tiny speck of gold was shimmering in the rain-filled air between them —

With a jolt of panic, Harry threw himself flat to the broom-handle and zoomed toward the Snitch.

“Come on!” he growled at his Nimbus as the rain whipped his face. “Faster!”

But something odd was happening. An eerie silence was falling across the stadium. The wind, though as strong as ever, was forgetting to roar. It was as though someone had turned off the sound, as though Harry had gone suddenly deaf — what was going on?

And then a horribly familiar wave of cold swept over him, inside him, just as he became aware of something moving on the field below. . . .

Before he’d had time to think, Harry had taken his eyes off the Snitch and looked down.

At least a hundred dementors, their hidden faces pointing up at him, were standing beneath him. It was as though freezing water were rising in his chest, cutting at his insides. 

And then he heard it again. . . . Someone was screaming, screaming inside his head . . . a woman . . .

“Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!”

“Stand aside, you silly girl . . . stand aside, now. . . .” A waspish, hateful voice hissed.

“Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead —”

Numbing, swirling white mist was filling Harry’s brain. . . . 

What was he doing? 

Why was he flying? 

He needed to help her. . . . 

She was going to die. . . . 

She was going to be murdered. . . . 

He was falling, falling through the icy mist.

“Not Harry! Please . . . have mercy . . . have mercy. . . .”

A shrill voice was laughing, the woman was screaming, and Harry knew no more.

—

“Lucky the ground was so soft.” 

“I thought he was dead for sure.”

“But he didn’t even break his glasses.”

Harry could hear the voices whispering, but they made no sense whatsoever. He didn’t have a clue where he was, or how he’d got there, or what he’d been doing before he got there. 

All he knew was that every inch of him was aching as though it had been beaten.

“That was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Scariest . . . the scariest thing . . . hooded black figures . . . cold . . . screaming . . .

Harry’s eyes snapped open. 

He was lying in the hospital wing. 

The Gryffindor Quidditch team, spattered with mud from head to foot, was gathered around his bed. 

Ron and Hermione were also there, looking as though they’d just climbed out of a swimming pool.

“Harry!” said Fred, who looked extremely white underneath the mud. “How’re you feeling?”

It was as though Harry’s memory was on fast forward. 

The lightning — the Grim — Malfoy — the Snitch — and the dementors . . .

“What happened?” he groaned, sitting up so suddenly they all gasped.

“You fell off,” said Fred. “Must’ve been — what — fifty feet?”

“We thought you’d died,” said Alicia, who was shaking.

Hermione made a small, squeaky noise. Her eyes were extremely bloodshot.

“But the match,” said Harry. “What happened? Are we doing a replay?”

No one said anything. 

The horrible truth sank into Harry like a stone. “We didn’t — lose?”

“Diggory got the Snitch,” said George. “Just after you fell. He didn’t realize what had happened. When he looked back and saw you on the ground, he tried to call it off. Wanted a rematch. But they won fair and square . . . even Wood admits it.”

“Where is Wood?” said Harry, suddenly realizing he wasn’t there.

“Still in the showers,” said Fred. “We think he’s trying to drown himself.”

Harry put his face to his knees, his hands gripping his hair. 

Fred grabbed his shoulder and shook it roughly.

“C’mon, Harry, you’ve never missed the Snitch before.”

“There had to be one time you didn’t get it,” said George.

“It’s not over yet,” said Fred. “We lost by a hundred points, right? So if Hufflepuff loses to Ravenclaw and we beat Ravenclaw and Slytherin . . .”

“Hufflepuff’ll have to lose by at least two hundred points,” said George.

“But if they beat Ravenclaw . . .”

“No way, Ravenclaw is too good. But if Slytherin loses against Hufflepuff . . .”

“It all depends on the points — a margin of a hundred either way —”

Harry lay there, not saying a word. 

They had lost . . . for the first time ever, he had lost a Quidditch match.

After ten minutes or so, Madam Pomfrey came over to tell the team to leave him in peace.

“We’ll come and see you later,” Fred told him. “Don’t beat yourself up, Harry, you’re still the best Seeker we’ve ever had.”

The team trooped out, trailing mud behind them. 

Madam Pomfrey shut the door behind them, looking disapproving. 

Ron and Hermione moved nearer to Harry’s bed.

“Dumbledore was really angry,” Hermione said in a quaking voice. “I’ve never seen him like that before. He ran onto the field as you fell, waved his wand, and you sort of slowed down before you hit the ground. Then he whirled his wand at the dementors. Shot silver stuff at them. They left the stadium right away. . . . He was furious they’d come onto the grounds. We heard him —”

“Then he magicked you onto a stretcher,” said Ron. “And walked up to school with you floating on it. Everyone thought you were . . .”

His voice faded, but Harry hardly noticed. 

He was thinking about what the dementors had done to him . . . about the screaming voice. He looked up and saw Ron and Hermione looking at him so anxiously that he quickly cast around for something matter-of-fact to say.

“Did someone get my Nimbus?” Ron and Hermione looked quickly at each other.

“Er —” Ron choked, running his hand through his sodden hair.

“What?” said Harry, looking from one to the other.

“Well . . . when you fell off, it got blown away,” said Hermione hesitantly.

“And?”

“And it hit — it hit — oh, Harry — it hit the Whomping Willow.”

Harry’s insides lurched. The Whomping Willow was a very violent tree that stood alone in the middle of the grounds.

“And?” he said, dreading the answer.

“Well, you know the Whomping Willow,” said Ron. “It — it doesn’t like being hit.”

“Professor Flitwick brought it back just before you came around,” said Hermione in a very small voice.

Slowly, she reached down for a bag at her feet, turned it upside down, and tipped a dozen bits of splintered wood and twig onto the bed, the only remains of Harry’s faithful, finally beaten broomstick.

Chapter 33 : Book 3: Chapter 10 (summary)

Ch 10

Madam Pomfrey insisted on keeping Harry in the hospital wing for the rest of the weekend. 

He didn’t argue or complain, but he wouldn’t let her throw away the shattered remnants of his Nimbus Two Thousand. 

He knew he was being stupid, knew that the Nimbus was beyond repair, but Harry couldn’t help it; he felt as though he’d lost one of his best friends.

He had a stream of visitors, all intent on cheering him up. 

Hagrid sent him a bunch of earwiggy flowers that looked like yellow cabbages, and Ginny Weasley, blushing furiously, turned up with a get-well card she had made herself, which sang shrilly unless Harry kept it shut under his bowl of fruit. 

The Gryffindor team visited again on Sunday morning, this time accompanied by Wood, who told Harry in a hollow, dead sort of voice that he didn’t blame him in the slightest. 

Ron and Hermione left Harry’s bedside only at night. But nothing anyone said or did could make Harry feel any better, because they knew only half of what was troubling him.

He hadn’t told anyone about the Grim, not even Ron and Hermione, because he knew Ron would panic and Hermione would scoff. The fact remained, however, that it had now appeared twice, and both appearances had been followed by near-fatal accidents; the first time, he had nearly been run over by the Knight Bus; the second, fallen fifty feet from his broomstick. 

Was the Grim going to haunt him until he actually died? 

Was he going to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder for the beast?

And then there were the dementors. 

Harry felt sick and humiliated every time he thought of them. Everyone said the dementors were horrible, but no one else collapsed every time they went near one. 

No one else heard echoes in their head of their dying parents.

Because Harry knew who that screaming voice belonged to now. He had heard her words, heard them over and over again during the night hours in the hospital wing while he lay awake, staring at the strips of moonlight on the ceiling. 

When the dementors approached him, he heard the last moments of his mother’s life, her attempts to protect him, Harry, from Lord Voldemort, and Voldemort’s laughter before he murdered her.

Late Sunday evening, he was surprised by another visitor, and found himself blinking up at Draconia Malfoy as she strolled into the Hospital Wing.

She sat down in a chair, brushing down the pleats of her skirt and her robes, and they watched each other for a few minutes, neither saying anything.

“Not really a fair game, if you ask me.” Draconia said flatly and matter of factly after a while, picking at fluff on her robes. “Should be a rematch.”

Harry nodded. “What we’ve all been thinking on the team, but they won’t allow it.”

Draconia “tsked”, flicking a little ball of shyweed that had attached itself to her after Herbology. “Of course they won’t. Professor Snape would automatically rule against it anyway.”

“Snape can go kick gnomes.” Harry muttered, leaning back against his pillow as he sat up further. “I saw you.”

Draconia raised her brows. “Hm?”

“In the stands.”

“Ah. Well.” Draconia mused, idly playing with one of her skirt pleats. “You’re bound to see anyone being up that high.”

Harry leaned forward a bit, now rather keen about what he had seen that day. He had completely forgotten he had noticed Draconia looking around behind her when the Grim had disappeared.

“Malfoy,” Harry began, swallowing as he turned to face her on his bed. “In the stands, you were looking around after the lightning and thunder.”

Draconia chuffed out a laugh. “Oh, yeah, before the dementors came in. Dumbledore was in quite the rage, almost made me admire him.”

“What were you looking around at?” Harry asked quickly, now sitting on the side of his bed.

Draconia shrugged. “Well I had heard something growl behind me, and I thought it was Crabbe or Goyle coming back to nag me again about getting into a row with them and Parkinson. But when I turned around, there were just these odd little paw prints all over the place. Didn’t last too long, rain just wiped them away.”

Harry’s blood ran cold.

He hadn’t been imagining things at all.

The Grim had been there, watching him.

Draconia went to say something snide with a wry grin, but the look on Harry’s face caused her to instead lean forward, concerned. “Potter, are you alright? You’ve gone stone white! Come on now we’re in the Hospital Wing, Potter, the dementors can’t get you here.”

Harry just swallowed, slowly laying back down in his bed with a quiet, defeated sigh.

“By the way Potter, where is your broom? I saw it floating away off in the rain and assumed that massive oaf had fetched it for you from the forest.” Draconia said, smiling at Harry.

Harry was silent, then slowly pulled the broken shards of the broom out from under his bed.

Draconia’s smile dripped away from her lips like blood from a wound, and her eyebrows were raised eye upon her head as she let out a low, worried whine from her throat.

“Ooooh… no.” Draconia groaned, knowing exactly what this meant.

She left soon after, as Harry was not up to speaking much after showing her his shattered broom.

Harry dozed fitfully, sinking into dreams full of clammy, rotted hands and petrified pleading, jerking awake to dwell again on his mother’s voice.

It was a relief to return to the noise and bustle of the main school on Monday, where he was forced to think about other things.

The gloating jeers from the Slytherins may as well had been just background hiss for all he cared, their jubilation at Gryffindor’s defeat being known far and wide through the castle all weekend.

Pansy Parkinson, Crabbe, and Goyle spent much of their next Potions class doing dementor imitations across the dungeon.

Ron finally cracked and flung a large, slippery crocodile heart at Crabbe, which hit him in the face and caused Snape to take fifty points from Gryffindor.

“If Snape’s teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts again, I’m skiving off,” said Ron as they headed toward Lupin’s classroom after lunch. “Check who’s in there, Hermione.”

Hermione peered around the classroom door. “It’s okay!”

Professor Lupin was back at work. It certainly looked as though he had been ill. His old robes were hanging more loosely on him and there were dark shadows beneath his eyes; nevertheless, he smiled at the class as they took their seats, and they burst at once into an explosion of complaints about Snape’s behavior while Lupin had been ill.

“It’s not fair, he was only filling in, why should he give us homework?” 

“We don’t know anything about werewolves —”

“— two rolls of parchment!”

“Did you tell Professor Snape we haven’t covered them yet?” Lupin asked, frowning slightly.

The babble broke out again.

“Yes, but he said we were really behind —” 

“— he wouldn’t listen —”

“— two rolls of parchment!”

Professor Lupin smiled at the look of indignation on every face.

“Don’t worry. I’ll speak to Professor Snape. You don’t have to do the essay.”

“Oh no,” said Hermione, looking very disappointed. “I’ve already finished it!”

They had a very enjoyable lesson. 

Professor Lupin had brought along a glass box containing a hinkypunk, a little one-legged creature who looked as though he were made of wisps of smoke, rather frail and harmless-looking.

“Lures travelers into bogs,” said Professor Lupin as they took notes. “You notice the lantern dangling from his hand? Hops ahead — people follow the light — then —”

The hinkypunk made a horrible squelching noise against the glass.

When the bell rang, everyone gathered up their things and headed for the door, Harry among them, but —

“Wait a moment, Harry,” Lupin called. “I’d like a word.”

Harry doubled back and watched Professor Lupin covering the hinkypunk’s box with a cloth.

“I heard about the match,” said Lupin, turning back to his desk and starting to pile books into his briefcase, “and I’m sorry about your broomstick. Is there any chance of fixing it?”

“No,” said Harry. “The tree smashed it to bits.”

Lupin sighed. “They planted the Whomping Willow the same year that I arrived at Hogwarts. People used to play a game, trying to get near enough to touch the trunk. In the end, a boy called Davey Gudgeon nearly lost an eye, and we were forbidden to go near it. No broomstick would have a chance.”

“Did you hear about the dementors too?” said Harry with difficulty.

Lupin looked at him quickly. “Yes, I did. I don’t think any of us have seen Professor Dumbledore that angry. They have been growing restless for some time . . . furious at his refusal to let them inside the grounds. . . . I suppose they were the reason you fell?”

“Yes,” said Harry. He hesitated, and then the question he had to ask burst from him before he could stop himself. “Why? Why do they affect me like that? Am I just — ?”

“It has nothing to do with weakness,” said Professor Lupin sharply, as though he had read Harry’s mind. “The dementors affect you worse than the others because there are horrors in your past that the others don’t have. I’ve had to explain this to Miss Malfoy as well, as she came to me with the same question.”

“Same question?” Harry asked.

Lupin nodded. “Yes. She, too, was curious as to why you are affected so much more acutely than anyone else, though I am not sure how it pertains to her.” Lupin looked to Harry, he himself finding it odd. “Are you two friends?”

“... Not in a manner of speaking.” Harry replied, avoiding Professor Lupin’s eyes.

Lupin cracked a rare, sly smile, tilting his head to try and gain Harry’s eyes. “Not in a manner of speaking, you say?”

“We’re rivals.” Harry said quickly, instantly latching onto the easiest answer that others would believe. “Both seekers, you see. She may have been just trying to get information out of you. You know, for future matches.”

“I see…” Lupin said with an air of knowing more than Harry let on. “Rivals, then, you say?”

Harry cleared his throat, and Lupin smiled to himself, leaving it alone.

A ray of wintery sunlight fell across the classroom, illuminating Lupin’s gray hairs and the lines on his young face.

“Dementors,” Lupin began, allowing Harry to relax as he released his quarry, “are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them. Even Muggles feel their presence, though they can’t see them. Get too near a dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself . . . soulless and evil. You’ll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life. And the worst that happened to you, Harry, is enough to make anyone fall off their broom. You have nothing to feel ashamed of.”

“When they get near me —” Harry stared at Lupin’s desk, his throat tight. “I can hear Voldemort murdering my mum.”

Lupin made a sudden motion with his arm as though to grip Harry’s shoulder, but thought better of it. 

Suddenly, all the teasing felt like bitter acid.

There was a moment’s silence, then —

“Why did they have to come to the match?” said Harry bitterly.

“They’re getting hungry,” said Lupin coolly, shutting his briefcase with a snap. “Dumbledore won’t let them into the school, so their supply of human prey has dried up. . . . I don’t think they could resist the large crowd around the Quidditch field. All that excitement . . . emotions running high . . . it was their idea of a feast.”

“Azkaban must be terrible,” Harry muttered. 

Lupin nodded grimly. “The fortress is set on a tiny island, way out to sea, but they don’t need walls and water to keep the prisoners in, not when they’re all trapped inside their own heads, incapable of a single cheerful thought. Most of them go mad within weeks.”

“But Sirius Black escaped from them,” Harry said slowly. “He got away. . . .”

Lupin’s briefcase slipped from the desk; he had to stoop quickly to catch it.

“Yes,” he said, straightening up, “Black must have found a way to fight them. I wouldn’t have believed it possible. . . . Dementors are supposed to drain a wizard of his powers if he is left with them too long. . . .”

“You made that dementor on the train back off,” said Harry suddenly.

“There are — certain defenses one can use,” said Lupin. “But there was only one dementor on the train. The more there are, the more difficult it becomes to resist.”

“What defenses?” said Harry at once. “Can you teach me?”

“I don’t pretend to be an expert at fighting dementors, Harry . . . quite the contrary. . . .”

“But if the dementors come to another Quidditch match, I need to be able to fight them —”

Lupin looked into Harry’s determined face, hesitated, then said, “Well . . . all right. I’ll try and help. But it’ll have to wait until next term, I’m afraid. I have a lot to do before the holidays. I chose a very inconvenient time to fall ill.”

What with the promise of anti-dementor lessons from Lupin, the thought that he might never have to hear his mother’s death again, and the fact that Ravenclaw flattened Hufflepuff in their Quidditch match at the end of November, Harry’s mood took a definite upturn. 

====

Here, the story stays the same as it always has. Harry gains the Marauder’s Map from Fred and George Weasley, he enters the Old Crone’s statue, and gains access to Honeyduke’s via the trap door in the floor.

After hearing Fudge retell the tail of Sirius Black to Madam Rosemerta, he then escapes back to the castle, finding someone rather… unexpected waiting for him.

====

Chapter 34 : Book 3: Chapter 11-12 (Major Deviation and more Summaries)

Ch11-12 

Harry didn’t have a very clear idea of how he had managed to get back into the Honeydukes cellar, through the tunnel, and into the castle once more. 

All he knew was that the return trip seemed to take no time at all, and that he hardly noticed what he was doing, because his head was still pounding with the conversation he had just heard.

Why had nobody ever told him? 

Dumbledore, Hagrid, Mr. Weasley, Cornelius Fudge . . . 

Why hadn’t anyone ever mentioned the fact that Harry’s parents had died because their best friend had betrayed them?

Harry crawled through the statue of the witch and back out into the hallway after sitting and listening for a moment, making sure no one was there. It would still be a solid hour until everyone else returned, so he had plenty of time to move around unsee-

He remembered with a happy, “Ah!”, that he had just the tool for the job, and pulled out the map.

“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.” Harry whispered down at the parchment he held in his hand, and it once again crawled with lines of moving ink from his wand tip.

Harry checked around him… but there was someone sleeping in front of the portrait of Sir Cadogan. He squinted down at the little ink form, and almost leaned his head back in surprise.

It said “Draconia Malfoy (Snoozing)”, with little Z’s trailing away from her name.

Harry muttered the hiding phrase for the map and stowed it back in his robes, then climbed out, leaning around the old crones hump to peek at Draconia.

She was sitting with her back to the wall, with a little package sitting on her lap. Her head lolled sideways onto a gathering of her cloak hood so she had a little pillow, and her lips were parted again as she slept.

Harry swallowed nervously, remembering a rather familiar scene in the Great Hall, and couldn’t help but admire her hair again.

It was always bright and silky, no matter the time of day or night, and it framed her face in a way that made that odd little… worming motion crawl around in his nerves.

Sir Cadogan, spotting Harry, held his armored finger to his lips and made little rattling, tip-sabotan steps, as if asking the boy to be quiet.

The tip of his armored boot then sank into the ground and he fell forward with a rattling clatter of plate armor, the knight using some of the most modern and premium swear words Harry had ever heard a painting use.

Draconia, however, only grimaced in her sleep with angry eyebrows.

Stepping as quietly as he could, he made his way around a nearby corner, then loudly cleared his throat, stomping his feet in time to mimic someone getting closer down the hall.

Harry actually heard her snort awake, curse, then quickly totter away from the portrait of Sir Cadogan with unsure steps.

Harry chuckled to himself, then rounded the corner, swinging his arms perhaps a little too much as he strode within view of the portrait hole entrance.

As if on cue, Draconia also rounded the opposite edge of the hallway, having so hastily rubbed the sleep from her gray-green eyes that they appeared a little red.