[Part 4] "Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets" by Rowling J.K.

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𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐗𝐈𝐈. 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐏𝐎𝐋𝐘𝐉𝐔𝐈𝐂𝐄 𝐏𝐎𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍

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They stepped off the stone staircase at the top, and Professor McGonagall rapped on the door.

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 and 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.

He grabbed the point of the hat and pulled 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 —”

“— yeh’ve got the wrong boy, sir, I know Harry never —”

“Hagrid!” said Dumbledore loudly.

“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 Malfoy 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. . . .”

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 Malfoy 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 Draco Malfoy, who looked increasingly sour each time he saw them at it.

“It’s because he’s bursting to say it’s really him,” said Ron knowingly.

“You know how he hates anyone beating him at anything, and you’re getting all the credit for his 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 him any day now.”

At last the term ended, and a silence 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.

“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 frost-covered 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 Draco Malfoy was making loud, snide remarks about his new sweater from the Slytherin table.

With a bit of luck, Malfoy would be getting his comeuppance in a few hours’ time.

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, he’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 him.

“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 —”

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.

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-size 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.

“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.

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 — next, bringing him gasping to all fours, came a horrible melting feeling, as the skin all over his body bubbled like hot wax — and before his eyes, his hands began to grow, the fingers thickened, the nails broadened, the knuckles were 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 — 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.

His large hand trembling, he 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 reached up to brush his hair out of his eyes and met only the short growth of wiry bristles, low on his forehead.

Then he realized that his glasses were clouding his eyes because Goyle obviously didn’t need them — he took them off and called, “Are you two okay?”

Goyle’s low rasp of a voice issued 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.”

“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 he looks every time a teacher asks him 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. . . .”

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.”

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.

“I,” said Percy, drawing himself up, “am a prefect. Nothing’s about to attack me.”

A voice suddenly echoed behind Harry and Ron.

Draco Malfoy was strolling toward them, and for the first time in his life, Harry was pleased to see him.

“There you are,” he drawled, looking at them.

“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.”

Malfoy glanced witheringly at Percy.

“And what’re you doing down here, Weasley?” he sneered.

Percy looked outraged.

“You want to show a bit more respect to a school prefect!” he said.

“I don’t like your attitude!”

Malfoy sneered and motioned for Harry and Ron to follow him.

Harry almost said something apologetic to Percy but caught himself just in time.

He and Ron hurried after Malfoy, who said as they turned into the next passage, “That Peter Weasley —”

“Percy,” Ron corrected him automatically.

“Whatever,” said Malfoy.

“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.”

He 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?” he said to Harry.

“Er —” said Harry.

“Oh, yeah — pure-blood!” said Malfoy, not listening, and a stone door concealed in the wall slid open.

Malfoy marched through it, and Harry and Ron followed him.

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 Malfoy 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 Malfoy was going to show them, Harry and Ron sat down, doing their best to look at home.

Malfoy 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,” he said.

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?” said Malfoy impatiently as Harry handed the clipping back to him.

“Don’t you think it’s funny?”

“Ha, ha,” said Harry bleakly.

“Arthur Weasley loves Muggles so much he should snap his wand in half and go and join them,” said Malfoy scornfully.

“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 Malfoy.

“Stomachache,” Ron grunted.

“Well, go up to the hospital wing and give all those Mudbloods a kick from me,” said Malfoy, snickering.

“You know, I’m surprised the Daily Prophet hasn’t reported all these attacks yet,” he 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.”

Malfoy 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?’”

He dropped his hands and looked at Harry and Ron.

“What’s the matter with you two?”

Far too late, Harry and Ron forced themselves to laugh, but Malfoy seemed satisfied; perhaps Crabbe and Goyle were always slow on the uptake.

“Saint Potter, the Mudbloods’ friend,” said Malfoy 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: Malfoy was surely seconds away from telling them it was him — but then —

“I wish I knew who it is,” said Malfoy petulantly.

“I could help them.”

Ron’s jaw dropped so that Crabbe looked even more clueless than usual.

Fortunately, Malfoy didn’t notice, and 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 Malfoy.

“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 Granger,” he said with relish.

Ron was clenching Crabbe’s gigantic fists.

Feeling that it would be a bit of a giveaway if Ron punched Malfoy, 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 Malfoy.

“They’re probably still in Azkaban.”

“Azkaban?” said Harry, puzzled.

“Azkaban — the wizard prison, Goyle,” said Malfoy, looking at him in disbelief.

“Honestly, if you were any slower, you’d be going backward.”

He shifted restlessly in his chair and said, “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.

“Yeah . . .” said Malfoy.

“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.

Malfoy looked at him.

So did Harry.

Ron blushed.

Even his hair 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, hurled themselves at the stone wall, and dashed up the passage, hoping against hope that Malfoy 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.”

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 a 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!”

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𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐗𝐈𝐈𝐈. 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐘 𝐒𝐄𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐓 𝐃𝐈𝐀𝐑𝐘

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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.

“What’s that?” asked Harry, pointing to something gold sticking out from under Hermione’s pillow.

“Just a get well card,” said Hermione hastily, trying to poke it out of sight, but Ron was too quick for her.

He pulled it out, flicked it open, and 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.

“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?” said 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?” said 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?” said 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?” said 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?” he said.

“That’s what Malfoy said.”

“Yeah . . .” said Ron 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, and how to open it, and 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.”

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.

And 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 (“Good thing, too, or it’d be even bigger and I’d still be polishing it,” said Ron).

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, heart-shaped 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.

“And may I thank the forty-six 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.

Snape was looking as though the first person to ask him for a Love Potion would be force-fed poison.

“Please, Hermione, tell me you weren’t one of the forty-six,” said 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 Potter!” 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.

The dwarf, however, cut his way through the crowd by kicking people’s shins, and reached him before he’d gone two paces.

“I’ve got a musical message to deliver to ’Arry Potter in person,” he said, twanging his harp in a threatening sort of way.

“Not here,” Harry hissed, trying to escape.

“Stay still!” grunted the dwarf, grabbing hold of Harry’s bag and pulling him back.

“Let me go!” Harry snarled, tugging.

With a loud ripping noise, his bag split in two.

His books, wand, parchment, and quill spilled onto the floor and 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 Draco Malfoy.

Harry started stuffing everything feverishly into his ripped bag, desperate to get away before Malfoy 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 and brought him crashing to the floor.

“Right,” he said, sitting on Harry’s ankles.

“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, he showed it to Crabbe and Goyle, and Harry realized that he’d got Riddle’s diary.

“Give that back,” said Harry quietly.

“Wonder what Potter’s written in this?” said Malfoy, who obviously hadn’t noticed the year on the cover and thought he had Harry’s own diary.

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,” said Malfoy, waving the diary tauntingly at Harry.

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 Malfoy found the diary shooting out of his 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 Malfoy, and that was worth five points from Gryffindor any day.

Malfoy was looking furious, and as Ginny passed him to enter her classroom, he yelled spitefully after her, “I don’t think Potter liked your valentine much!”

Ginny covered her face with her hands 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, and knew 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.

“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.

Harry sat up.

He was sweating and shaking.

“What’s up?” said Ron, looking at him with concern.

“It was Hagrid, Ron. Hagrid opened the Chamber of Secrets fifty years ago.”

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𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐗𝐈𝐕. 𝐂𝐎𝐑𝐍𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐔𝐒 𝐅𝐔𝐃𝐆𝐄

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Harry, Ron, and Hermione had always known that Hagrid had an unfortunate liking for large and monstrous creatures.

During their first year at Hogwarts he had tried to raise a dragon in his little wooden house, and it would be a long time before they forgot the giant, three-headed dog he’d christened “Fluffy.”

And if, as a boy, Hagrid had heard that a monster was hidden somewhere in the castle, Harry was sure he’d have gone to any lengths for a glimpse of it.

He’d probably thought it was a shame that the monster had been cooped up so long, and thought it deserved the chance to stretch its many legs; Harry could just imagine the thirteen-year-old Hagrid trying to fit a leash and collar on it.

But he was equally certain that Hagrid would never have meant to kill anybody.

Harry half wished he hadn’t found out how to work Riddle’s diary.

Again and again Ron and Hermione made him recount what he’d seen, until he was heartily sick of telling them and sick of the long, circular conversations that followed.

“Riddle might have got the wrong person,” said Hermione.

“Maybe it was some other monster that was attacking people. . . .”

“How many monsters d’you think this place can hold?” Ron asked dully.

“We always knew Hagrid had been expelled,” said Harry miserably.

“And the attacks must’ve stopped after Hagrid was kicked out. Otherwise, Riddle wouldn’t have got his award.”

Ron tried a different tack.

“Riddle does sound like Percy — who asked him to squeal on Hagrid, anyway?”

“But the monster had killed someone, Ron,” said Hermione.

“And Riddle was going to go back to some Muggle orphanage if they closed Hogwarts,” said Harry.

“I don’t blame him for wanting to stay here. . . .”

“You met Hagrid down Knockturn Alley, didn’t you, Harry?”

“He was buying a Flesh-Eating Slug Repellent,” said Harry quickly.

The three of them fell silent.

After a long pause, Hermione voiced the knottiest question of all in a hesitant voice.

“Do you think we should go and ask Hagrid about it all?”

“That’d be a cheerful visit,” said Ron.

“‘Hello, Hagrid. Tell us, have you been setting anything mad and hairy loose in the castle lately?’”

In the end, they decided that they would not say anything to Hagrid unless there was another attack, and as more and more days went by with no whisper from the disembodied voice, they became hopeful that they would never need to talk to him about why he had been expelled.

It was now nearly four months since Justin and Nearly Headless Nick had been Petrified, and nearly everybody seemed to think that the attacker, whoever it was, had retired for good.

Peeves had finally got bored of his “Oh, Potter, you rotter” song, Ernie Macmillan asked Harry quite politely to pass a bucket of leaping toadstools in Herbology one day, and in March several of the Mandrakes threw a loud and raucous party in greenhouse three.

This made Professor Sprout very happy.

“The moment they start trying to move into each other’s pots, we’ll know they’re fully mature,” she told Harry.

“Then we’ll be able to revive those poor people in the hospital wing.”

The second years were given something new to think about during their Easter holidays.

The time had come to choose their subjects for the third year, a matter that Hermione, at least, took very seriously.

“It could affect our whole future,” she told Harry and Ron as they pored over lists of new subjects, marking them with checks.

“I just want to give up Potions,” said Harry.

“We can’t,” said Ron gloomily.

“We keep all our old subjects, or I’d’ve ditched Defense Against the Dark Arts.”

“But that’s very important!” said Hermione, shocked.

“Not the way Lockhart teaches it,” said Ron.

“I haven’t learned anything from him except not to set pixies loose.”

Neville Longbottom had been sent letters from all the witches and wizards in his family, all giving him different advice on what to choose.

Confused and worried, he sat reading the subject lists with his tongue poking out, asking people whether they thought Arithmancy sounded more difficult than Study of Ancient Runes.

Dean Thomas, who, like Harry, had grown up with Muggles, ended up closing his eyes and jabbing his wand at the list, then picking the subjects it landed on.

Hermione took nobody’s advice but signed up for everything.

Harry smiled grimly to himself at the thought of what Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia would say if he tried to discuss his career in wizardry with them.

Not that he didn’t get any guidance: Percy Weasley was eager to share his experience.

“Depends where you want to go, Harry,” he said.

“It’s never too early to think about the future, so I’d recommend Divination.”

People say Muggle Studies is a soft option, but I personally think wizards should have a thorough understanding of the non-magical community, particularly if they’re thinking of working in close contact with them — look at my father, he has to deal with Muggle business all the time.

My brother Charlie was always more of an outdoor type, so he went for Care of Magical Creatures.

Play to your strengths, Harry.”

But the only thing Harry felt he was really good at was Quidditch.

In the end, he chose the same new subjects as Ron, feeling that if he was lousy at them, at least he’d have someone friendly to help him.

Gryffindor’s next Quidditch match would be against Hufflepuff.

Wood was insisting on team practices every night after dinner, so that Harry barely had time for anything but Quidditch and homework.

However, the training sessions were getting better, or at least drier, and the evening before Saturday’s match he went up to his dormitory to drop off his broomstick feeling Gryffindor’s chances for the Quidditch Cup had never been better.

But his cheerful mood didn’t last long.

At the top of the stairs to the dormitory, he met Neville Longbottom, who was looking frantic.

“Harry — I don’t know who did it — I just found —”

Watching Harry fearfully, Neville pushed open the door.

The contents of Harry’s trunk had been thrown everywhere.

His cloak lay ripped on the floor.

The bedclothes had been pulled off his four-poster and the drawer had been pulled out of his bedside cabinet, the contents strewn over the mattress.

Harry walked over to the bed, openmouthed, treading on a few loose pages of Travels with Trolls.

As he and Neville pulled the blankets back onto his bed, Ron, Dean, and Seamus came in.

Dean swore loudly.

“What happened, Harry?”

“No idea,” said Harry.

But Ron was examining Harry’s robes.

All the pockets were hanging out.

“Someone’s been looking for something,” said Ron.

“Is there anything missing?”

Harry started to pick up all his things and throw them into his trunk.

It was only as he threw the last of the Lockhart books back into it that he realized what wasn’t there.

“Riddle’s diary’s gone,” he said in an undertone to Ron.

“What?”

Harry jerked his head toward the dormitory door and Ron followed him out.

They hurried down to the Gryffindor common room, which was half-empty, and joined Hermione, who was sitting alone, reading a book called Ancient Runes Made Easy.

Hermione looked aghast at the news.

“But — only a Gryffindor could have stolen — nobody else knows our password —”

“Exactly,” said Harry.

They woke the next day to brilliant sunshine and a light, refreshing breeze.

“Perfect Quidditch conditions!” said Wood enthusiastically at the Gryffindor table, loading the team’s plates with scrambled eggs.

“Harry, buck up there, you need a decent breakfast.”

Harry had been staring down the packed Gryffindor table, wondering if the new owner of Riddle’s diary was right in front of his eyes.

Hermione had been urging him to report the robbery, but Harry didn’t like the idea.

He’d have to tell a teacher all about the diary, and how many people knew why Hagrid had been expelled fifty years ago?

He didn’t want to be the one who brought it all up again.

As he left the Great Hall with Ron and Hermione to go and collect his Quidditch things, another very serious worry was added to Harry’s growing list.

He had just set foot on the marble staircase when he heard it yet again — “Kill this time . . . let me rip . . . tear . . .”

He shouted aloud and Ron and Hermione both jumped away from him in alarm.

“The voice!” said Harry, looking over his shoulder.

“I just heard it again — didn’t you?”

Ron shook his head, wide-eyed.

Hermione, however, clapped a hand to her forehead.

“Harry — I think I’ve just understood something! I’ve got to go to the library!”

And she sprinted away, up the stairs.

“What does she understand?” said Harry distractedly, still looking around, trying to tell where the voice had come from.

“Loads more than I do,” said Ron, shaking his head.

“But why’s she got to go to the library?”

“Because that’s what Hermione does,” said Ron, shrugging.

“When in doubt, go to the library.”

Harry stood, irresolute, trying to catch the voice again, but people were now emerging from the Great Hall behind him, talking loudly, exiting through the front doors on their way to the Quidditch pitch.

“You’d better get moving,” said Ron.

“It’s nearly eleven — the match —”

Harry raced up to Gryffindor Tower, collected his Nimbus Two Thousand, and joined the large crowd swarming across the grounds, but his mind was still in the castle along with the bodiless voice, and as he pulled on his scarlet robes in the locker room, his only comfort was that everyone was now outside to watch the game.

The teams walked onto the field to tumultuous applause.

Oliver Wood took off for a warm-up flight around the goalposts; Madam Hooch released the balls.

The Hufflepuffs, who played in canary yellow, were standing in a huddle, having a last-minute discussion of tactics.

Harry was just mounting his broom when Professor McGonagall came half marching, half running across the pitch, carrying an enormous purple megaphone.

Harry’s heart dropped like a stone.

“This match has been canceled,” Professor McGonagall called through the megaphone, addressing the packed stadium.

There were boos and shouts.

Oliver Wood, looking devastated, landed and ran toward Professor McGonagall without getting off his broomstick.

“But, Professor!” he shouted.

“We’ve got to play — the Cup — Gryffindor —”

Professor McGonagall ignored him and continued to shout through her megaphone: “All students are to make their way back to the House common rooms, where their Heads of Houses will give them further information. As quickly as you can, please!”

Then she lowered the megaphone and beckoned Harry over to her.

“Potter, I think you’d better come with me. . . .”

Wondering how she could possibly suspect him this time, Harry saw Ron detach himself from the complaining crowd; he came running up to them as they set off toward the castle.

To Harry’s surprise, Professor McGonagall didn’t object.

“Yes, perhaps you’d better come, too, Weasley. . . .”

Some of the students swarming around them were grumbling about the match being canceled; others looked worried.

Harry and Ron followed Professor McGonagall back into the school and up the marble staircase.

But they weren’t taken to anybody’s office this time.

“This will be a bit of a shock,” said Professor McGonagall in a surprisingly gentle voice as they approached the infirmary.

“There has been another attack . . . another double attack.”

Harry’s insides did a horrible somersault.

Professor McGonagall pushed the door open and he and Ron entered.

Madam Pomfrey was bending over a sixth-year girl with long, curly hair.

Harry recognized her as the Ravenclaw they’d accidentally asked for directions to the Slytherin common room.

And on the bed next to her was — “Hermione!” Ron groaned.

Hermione lay utterly still, her eyes open and glassy.

“They were found near the library,” said Professor McGonagall.

“I don’t suppose either of you can explain this? It was on the floor next to them. . . .”

She was holding up a small, circular mirror.

Harry and Ron shook their heads, both staring at Hermione.

“I will escort you back to Gryffindor Tower,” said Professor McGonagall heavily.

“I need to address the students in any case.”

“All students will return to their House common rooms by six o’clock in the evening. No student is to leave the dormitories after that time. You will be escorted to each lesson by a teacher. No student is to use the bathroom unaccompanied by a teacher. All further Quidditch training and matches are to be postponed. There will be no more evening activities.”

The Gryffindors packed inside the common room listened to Professor McGonagall in silence.

She rolled up the parchment from which she had been reading and said in a somewhat choked voice, “I need hardly add that I have rarely been so distressed. It is likely that the school will be closed unless the culprit behind these attacks is caught. I would urge anyone who thinks they might know anything about them to come forward.”

She climbed somewhat awkwardly out of the portrait hole, and the Gryffindors began talking immediately.

“That’s two Gryffindors down, not counting a Gryffindor ghost, one Ravenclaw, and one Hufflepuff,” said the Weasley twins’ friend Lee Jordan, counting on his fingers.

“Haven’t any of the teachers noticed that the Slytherins are all safe? Isn’t it obvious all this stuff’s coming from Slytherin? The Heir of Slytherin, the monster of Slytherin — why don’t they just chuck all the Slytherins out?” he roared, to nods and scattered applause.

Percy Weasley was sitting in a chair behind Lee, but for once he didn’t seem keen to make his views heard.

He was looking pale and stunned.

“Percy’s in shock,” George told Harry quietly.

“That Ravenclaw girl — Penelope Clearwater — she’s a prefect. I don’t think he thought the monster would dare attack a prefect.”

But Harry was only half-listening.

He didn’t seem to be able to get rid of the picture of Hermione, lying on the hospital bed as though carved out of stone.

And if the culprit wasn’t caught soon, he was looking at a lifetime back with the Dursleys.

Tom Riddle had turned Hagrid in because he was faced with the prospect of a Muggle orphanage if the school closed.

Harry now knew exactly how he had felt.

“What’re we going to do?” said Ron quietly in Harry’s ear.

“D’you think they suspect Hagrid?”

“We’ve got to go and talk to him,” said Harry, making up his mind.

“I can’t believe it’s him this time, but if he set the monster loose last time he’ll know how to get inside the Chamber of Secrets, and that’s a start.”

“But McGonagall said we’ve got to stay in our tower unless we’re in class —”

“I think,” said Harry, more quietly still, “it’s time to get my dad’s old Cloak out again.”

Harry had inherited just one thing from his father: a long and silvery Invisibility Cloak.

It was their only chance of sneaking out of the school to visit Hagrid without anyone knowing about it.

They went to bed at the usual time, waited until Neville, Dean, and Seamus had stopped discussing the Chamber of Secrets and finally fallen asleep, then got up, dressed again, and threw the Cloak over themselves.

The journey through the dark and deserted castle corridors wasn’t enjoyable.

Harry, who had wandered the castle at night several times before, had never seen it so crowded after sunset.

Teachers, prefects, and ghosts were marching the corridors in pairs, staring around for any unusual activity.

Our Invisibility Cloak didn’t stop them making any noise, and there was a particularly tense moment when Ron stubbed his toe only yards from the spot where Snape stood standing guard.

Thankfully, Snape sneezed at almost exactly the moment Ron swore.

It was with relief that they reached the oak front doors and eased them open.

It was a clear, starry night.

They hurried toward the lit windows of Hagrid’s house and pulled off the Cloak only when they were right outside his front door.

Seconds after they had knocked, Hagrid flung it open.

They found themselves face-to-face with him aiming a crossbow at them.

Fang the boarhound barked loudly behind him.

“Oh,” he said, lowering the weapon and staring at them.

“What’re you two doin’ here?”

“What’s that for?” said Harry, pointing at the crossbow as they stepped inside.

“Nothin’ — nothin’ —” Hagrid muttered.

“I’ve bin expectin’ — doesn’ matter — Sit down — I’ll make tea —” He hardly seemed to know what he was doing.

He nearly extinguished the fire, spilling water from the kettle on it, and then smashed the teapot with a nervous jerk of his massive hand.

“Are you okay, Hagrid?” said Harry.

“Did you hear about Hermione?”

“Oh, I heard, all righ’,” said Hagrid, a slight break in his voice.

He kept glancing nervously at the windows.

He poured them both large mugs of boiling water (he had forgotten to add tea bags) and was just putting a slab of fruitcake on a plate when there was a loud knock on the door.

Hagrid dropped the fruitcake.

Harry and Ron exchanged panic-stricken looks, then threw the Invisibility Cloak back over themselves and retreated into a corner.

Hagrid checked that they were hidden, seized his crossbow, and flung open his door once more.

“Good evening, Hagrid.”

It was Dumbledore.

He entered, looking deadly serious, and was followed by a second, very odd-looking man.

The stranger had rumpled gray hair and an anxious expression, and was wearing a strange mixture of clothes: a pinstriped suit, a scarlet tie, a long black cloak, and pointed purple boots.

Under his arm he carried a lime-green bowler.

“That’s Dad’s boss!” Ron breathed.

“Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic!”

Harry elbowed Ron hard to make him shut up.

Hagrid had gone pale and sweaty.

He dropped into one of his chairs and looked from Dumbledore to Cornelius Fudge.

“Bad business, Hagrid,” said Fudge in rather clipped tones.

“Very bad business. Had to come. Four attacks on Muggle-borns. Things’ve gone far enough. Ministry’s got to act.”

“I never,” said Hagrid, looking imploringly at Dumbledore.

“You know I never, Professor Dumbledore, sir —” “I want it understood, Cornelius, that Hagrid has my full confidence,” said Dumbledore, frowning at Fudge.

“Look, Albus,” said Fudge, uncomfortably.

“Hagrid’s record’s against him. Ministry’s got to do something — the school governors have been in touch —” “Yet again, Cornelius, I tell you that taking Hagrid away will not help in the slightest,” said Dumbledore.

His blue eyes were full of a fire Harry had never seen before.

“Look at it from my point of view,” said Fudge, fidgeting with his bowler.

“I’m under a lot of pressure. Got to be seen to be doing something. If it turns out it wasn’t Hagrid, he’ll be back and no more said. But I’ve got to take him. Got to. Wouldn’t be doing my duty —” “Take me?” said Hagrid, who was trembling.

“Take me where?” “For a short stretch only,” said Fudge, not meeting Hagrid’s eyes.

“Not a punishment, Hagrid, more a precaution. If someone else is caught, you’ll be let out with a full apology —” “Not Azkaban?” croaked Hagrid.

Before Fudge could answer, there was another loud rap on the door.

Dumbledore answered it.

It was Harry’s turn for an elbow in the ribs; he’d let out an audible gasp.

Mr. Lucius Malfoy strode into Hagrid’s hut, swathed in a long black traveling cloak, smiling a cold and satisfied smile.

Fang started to growl.

“Already here, Fudge,” he said approvingly.

“Good, good . . .” “What’re you doin’ here?” said Hagrid furiously.

“Get outta my house!” “My dear man, please believe me, I have no pleasure at all in being inside your — er — d’you call this a house?” said Lucius Malfoy, sneering as he looked around the small cabin.

“I simply called at the school and was told that the headmaster was here.”

“And what exactly did you want with me, Lucius?” said Dumbledore.

He spoke politely, but the fire was still blazing in his blue eyes.

“Dreadful thing, Dumbledore,” said Malfoy lazily, taking out a long roll of parchment, “but the governors feel it’s time for you to step aside. This is an Order of Suspension — you’ll find all twelve signatures on it. I’m afraid we feel you’re losing your touch. How many attacks have there been now? Two more this afternoon, wasn’t it? At this rate, there’ll be no Muggle-borns left at Hogwarts, and we all know what an awful loss that would be to the school.”

“Oh, now, see here, Lucius,” said Fudge, looking alarmed, “Dumbledore suspended — no, no — last thing we want just now —” “The appointment — or suspension — of the headmaster is a matter for the governors, Fudge,” said Mr. Malfoy smoothly.

“And as Dumbledore has failed to stop these attacks —” “See here, Malfoy, if Dumbledore can’t stop them,” said Fudge, whose upper lip was sweating now, “I mean to say, who can?”

“That remains to be seen,” said Mr. Malfoy with a nasty smile.

“But as all twelve of us have voted —” Hagrid leapt to his feet, his shaggy black head grazing the ceiling.

“An’ how many did yeh have ter threaten an’ blackmail before they agreed, Malfoy, eh?” he roared.

“Dear, dear, you know, that temper of yours will lead you into trouble one of these days, Hagrid,” said Mr. Malfoy.

“I would advise you not to shout at the Azkaban guards like that. They won’t like it at all.”

“Yeh can’ take Dumbledore!” yelled Hagrid, making Fang the boarhound cower and whimper in his basket.

“Take him away, an’ the Muggle-borns won’stand a chance! There’ll be killin’ next!”

“Calm yourself, Hagrid,” said Dumbledore sharply.

He looked at Lucius Malfoy.

“If the governors want my removal, Lucius, I shall of course step aside —” “But —” stuttered Fudge.

“No!” growled Hagrid.

Dumbledore had not taken his bright blue eyes off Lucius Malfoy’s cold gray ones.

“However,” said Dumbledore, speaking very slowly and clearly so that none of them could miss a word, “you will find that I will only truly have left this school when none here are loyal to me. You will also find that help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.”

For a second, Harry was almost sure Dumbledore’s eyes flickered toward the corner where he and Ron stood hidden.

“Admirable sentiments,” said Malfoy, bowing.

“We shall all miss your — er — highly individual way of running things, Albus, and only hope that your successor will manage to prevent any — ah — killins.”

He strode to the cabin door, opened it, and bowed Dumbledore out.

Fudge, fiddling with his bowler, waited for Hagrid to go ahead of him, but Hagrid stood his ground, took a deep breath, and said carefully, “If anyone wanted ter find out some stuff, all they’d have ter do would be ter follow the spiders. That’d lead ’em right! That’s all I’m sayin’.”

Fudge stared at him in amazement.

“All right, I’m comin’,” said Hagrid, pulling on his moleskin overcoat.

But as he was about to follow Fudge through the door, he stopped again and said loudly, “An’someone’ll need ter feed Fang while I’m away.”

The door banged shut and Ron pulled off the Invisibility Cloak.

“We’re in trouble now,” he said hoarsely.

“No Dumbledore. They might as well close the school tonight. There’ll be an attack a day with him gone.”

Fang started howling, scratching at the closed door.