Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (16 page)

      “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. “Professer 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.”

      A clock chimed somewhere.

      “Midnight,” said Harry. “We’d better get to bed before Snape comes along and tries to frame us for something else.”

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 All-Purpose 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?” said 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.

      History of Magic was the dullest subject on their schedule. 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 staff room 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 slipping 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.”