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sun warming the castle walls outside seemed to stop at the mullioned

windows. There was barely a face to be seen in the school

* 265*

that didn't look worried and tense, and any laughter that rang through

the corridors sounded shrill and unnatural and was quickly stifled.

Harry constantly repeated Dumbledore's final words to himself "I will

only truly have left this school when none here are loyal to me... Help will

always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it." But what good

were these words? Who exactly were they supposed to ask for help,

when everyone was just as confused and scared as they were?

Hagrid's hint about the spiders was far easier to understand the

trouble was, there didn't seem to be a single spider left in the castle to

follow. Harry looked everywhere he went, helped (rather reluctantly)

by Ron. They were hampered, of course, by the fact that they weren't

allowed to wander off on their own but had to move around the castle

in a pack with the other Gryffindors. Most of their fellow students

seemed glad that they were being shepherded from class to class by

teachers, but Harry found it very irksome.

One person, however, seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the

atmosphere of terror and suspicion. Draco Malfoy was strutting

around the school as though he had just been appointed Head Boy.

Harry didn't realize what he was so pleased about until the Potions

lesson about two weeks after Dumbledore and Hagrid had left, when,

sitting right behind Malfoy, Harry overheard him gloating to Crabbe

and Goyle.

"I always thought Father might be the one who got rid of

Dumbledore," he said, not troubling to keep his voice down. "I told you

he thinks Dumbledore's the worst headmaster the school's ever

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*266*

had. Maybe we'll get a decent headmaster now. Someone who won't

want the Chamber of Secrets closed. McGonagall won't last long,

she's only filling in ......

Snape swept past Harry, making no comment about Hermione's

empty seat and cauldron.

"Sir," said Malfoy loudly. "Sir, why don't you apply for the

headmaster's job?"

"Now, now, Malfoy," said Snape, though he couldn't suppress a thin-

lipped smile. "Professor Dumbledore has only been suspended by the

governors. I daresay he'll be back with us soon enough."

"Yeah, right," said Malfoy, smirking. "I expect you'd have Father's

vote, sir, if you wanted to apply for the job - I'll tell Father you're the

best teacher here, sir -"

Snape smirked as he swept off around the dungeon, fortunately not

spotting Seamus Finnigan, who was pretending to vomit into his

cauldron.

"I'm quite surprised the Mudbloods haven't all packed their bags by

now," Malfoy went on. "Bet you five Galleons the next one dies. Pity

it wasn't Granger -"

The bell rang at that moment, which was lucky; at Malfoy's last

words, Ron had leapt off his stool, and in the scramble to collect bags

and books, his attempts to reach Malfoy went unnoticed.

"Let me at him," Ron growled as Harry and Dean hung onto his arms.

"I don't care, I don't need my wand, I'm going to kill him with my bare

hands -"

"Hurry up, I've got to take you all to Herbology," barked Snape over

the class's heads, and off they marched, with Harry, Ron, and Dean

bringing up the rear, Ron still trying to get loose. It was only

* 261*

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safe to let go of him when Snape had seen them out of the castle and

they were making their way across the vegetable patch toward the

greenhouses.

The Herbology class was very subdued; there were now two missing

from their number, Justin and Hermione.

Professor Sprout set them all to work pruning the Abyssinian

Shrivelfigs. Harry went to tip an armful of withered stalks onto the

compost heap and found himself face-to-face with Ernie Macmillan.

Ernie took a deep breath and said, very formally, "I just want to say,

Harry, that I'm sorry I ever suspected you. I know you'd never attack

Hermione Granger, and I apologize for all the stuff I said. We're all in

the same boat now, and, well -"

He held out a pudgy hand, and Harry shook it.

Ernie and his friend Hannah came to work at the same Shrivelfig as

Harry and Ron.

"That Draco Malfoy character," said Ernie, breaking off dead twigs,

"he seems very pleased about all this, doesn't he? D'you know, I think

he might be Slytherin's heir."

"That's clever of you," said Ron, who didn't seem to have forgiven

Ernie as readily as Harry.

"Do you think it's Malfoy, Harry?" Ernie asked.

"No," said Harry, so firmly that Ernie and Hannah stared.

A second later, Harry spotted something.

Several large spiders were scuttling over the ground on the other side

of the glass, moving in an unnaturally straight line as though taking the

shortest route to a prearranged meeting. Harry hit Ron over the hand

with his pruning shears.

"Ouch! What're you -"

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Harry pointed out the spiders, following their progress with his eyes

screwed up against the sun.

"Oh, yeah," said Ron, trying, and failing, to look pleased. "But we can't

follow them now -"

Ernie and Hannah were listening curiously.

Harry's eyes narrowed as he focused on the spiders. If they pursued

their fixed course, there could be no doubt about where they would

end up.

"Looks like they're heading for the Forbidden Forest . . . ."

And Ron looked even unhappier about that.

At the end of the lesson Professor Sprout escorted the class to their

Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson. Harry and Ron lagged behind

the others so they could talk out of earshot.

"We'll have to use the Invisibility Cloak again," Harry told Ron. "We

can take Fang with us. He's used to going into the forest with Hagrid,

he might be some help."

"Right," said Ron, who was twirling his wand nervously in his fingers.

"Er - aren't there - aren't there supposed to be werewolves in the

forest?" he added as they took their usual places at the back of

Lockhart's classroom.

Preferring not to answer that question, Harry said, "There are good

things in there, too. The centaurs are all right, and the unicorns ...

Ron had never been into the Forbidden Forest before. Harry had

entered it only once and had hoped never to do so again.

Lockhart bounded into the room and the class stared at him. Every

other teacher in the place was looking grimmer than usual, but

Lockhart appeared nothing short of buoyant.

2 69

"Come now," he cried, beaming around him. "Why all these long

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faces?"

People swapped exasperated looks, but nobody answered.

"Don't you people realize," said Lockhart, speaking slowly, as though

they were all a bit dim, "the danger has passed! The culprit has been

taken away -"

"Says who?" said Dean Thomas loudly.

"My dear young man, the Minister of Magic wouldn't have taken

Hagrid if he hadn't been one hundred percent sure that he was guilty,"

said Lockhart, in the tone of someone explaining that one and one

made two.

"Oh, yes he would," said Ron, even more loudly than Dean.

"I flatter myself I know a touch more about Hagrid's arrest than you

do, Mr. Weasley," said Lockhart in a self-satisfied tone.

Ron started to say that he didn't think so, somehow, but stopped in

midsentence when Harry kicked him hard under the desk.

"We weren't there, remember?" Harry muttered.

But Lockhart's disgusting cheeriness, his hints that he had always

thought Hagrid was no good, his confidence that the whole business

was now at an end, irritated Harry so much that he yearned to throw

Gadding with Ghouls right in Lockhart's stupid face. Instead he

contented himself with scrawling a note to Ron: Let's do it tonight.

Ron read the message, swallowed hard, and looked sideways at the

empty seat usually filled by Hermione. The sight seemed to stiffen his

resolve, and he nodded.

The Gryffindor common room was always very crowded these days,

because from six o'clock onward the Gryffindors had no

*270*

where else to go. They also had plenty to talk about, with the result

that the common room often didn't empty until past midnight.

230

Harry went to get the Invisibility Cloak out of his trunk right after

dinner, and spent the evening sitting on it, waiting for the room to

clear. Fred and George challenged Harry and Ron to a few games of

Exploding Snap, and Ginny sat watching them, very subdued in

Hermione's usual chair. Harry and Ron kept losing on purpose, trying

to finish the games quickly, but even so, it was well past midnight

when Fred, George, and Ginny finally went to bed.

Harry and Ron waited for the distant sounds of two dormitory doors

closing before seizing the cloak, throwing it over themselves, and

climbing through the portrait hole.

It was another difficult journey through the castle, dodging all the

teachers. At last they reached the entrance hall, slid back the lock on

the oak front doors, squeezed between them, trying to stop any

creaking, and stepped out into the moonlit grounds.

"'Course," said Ron abruptly as they strode across the black grass,

"we might get to the forest and find there's nothing to follow. Those

spiders might not've been going there at all. I know it looked like they

were moving in that sort of general direction, but. . ."

His voice trailed away hopefully.

They reached Hagrid's house, sad and sorry-looking with its blank

windows. When Harry pushed the door open, Fang went mad with joy

at the sight of them. Worried he might wake everyone at the castle

with his deep, booming barks, they hastily fed him treacle fudge from

a tin on the mantelpiece, which glued his teeth together.

Harry left the Invisibility Cloak on Hagrid's table. There would be no

need for it in the pitch-dark forest.

* 21:L *

"C'mon, Fang, we're going for a walk," said Harry, patting his leg, and

Fang bounded happily out of the house behind them, dashed to the

edge of the forest, and lifted his leg against a large sycamore tree.

Harry took out his wand, murmured, "Lumos!" and a tiny light

appeared at the end of it, just enough to let them watch the path for

231

signs of spiders.

"Good thinking," said Ron. "Id light mine, too, but you know - it'd

probably blow up or something ......

Harry tapped Ron on the shoulder, pointing at the grass. Two solitary

spiders were hurrying away from the wandlight into the shade of the

trees.

"Okay," Ron sighed as though resigned to the worst, "I'm ready. Let's

go."

So, with Fang scampering around them, sniffing tree roots and leaves,

they entered the forest. By the glow of Harry's wand, they followed

the steady trickle of spiders moving along the path. They walked

behind them for about twenty minutes, not speaking, listening hard for

noises other than breaking twigs and rustling leaves. Then, when the

trees had become thicker than ever, so that the stars overhead were

no longer visible, and Harry's wand shone alone in the sea of dark,

they saw their spider guides leaving the path.

Harry paused, trying to see where the spiders were going, but

everything outside his little sphere of *light was pitch-black. He had

never been this deep into the forest before. He could vividly

remember Hagrid advising him not to leave the forest path last time

he'd been in here. But Hagrid was miles away now, probably sitting in

a cell in Azkaban, and he had also said to follow the spiders.

* 2-V2 *

Something wet touched Harry's hand and he jumped backward,

crushing Rods foot, but it was only Fang's nose.

"What d'you reckon?" Harry said to Ron, whose eyes he could just

make out, reflecting the light from his wand.

"We've come this far," said Ron.

So they followed the darting shadows of the spiders into the trees.

They couldn't move very quickly now; there were tree roots and

stumps in their way, barely visible in the near blackness. Harry could

feel Fang's hot breath on his hand. More than once, they had to stop,

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so that Harry could crouch down and find the spiders in the wandlight.

They walked for what seemed like at least half an hour, their robes

snagging on low-slung branches and brambles. After a while, they

noticed that the ground seemed to be sloping downward, though the

trees were as thick as ever.

Then Fang suddenly let loose a great, echoing bark, making both Harry

and Ron jump out of their skins.

"What?" said Ron loudly, looking around into the pitch-dark, and

gripping Harry's elbow very hard.

"There's something moving over there," Harry breathed. "Listen ...

sounds like something big ......

They listened. Some distance to their right, the something big was

snapping branches as it carved a path through the trees.

"Oh, no," said Ron. "Oh, no, oh, no, oh -"

"Shut up," said Harry frantically. "It'll hear you."

"Hear me?" said Ron in an unnaturally high voice. "It's already heard

Fang!"

The darkness seemed to be pressing on their eyeballs as they

* 273*

stood, terrified, waiting. There was a strange rumbling noise and then

silence.

"What d'you think it's doing?" said Harry.