Harry Potter 02 & The Chamber Of Secrets (Illustrated) (30 page)

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

‘Come now,’ he cried, beaming around him, ‘why all these long faces?’

People swapped exasperated looks, but nobody answered.

‘Don’t you people realise,’ 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 per cent 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 mid-sentence 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 onwards, the Gryffindors had nowhere else to go. They also had plenty to talk about, with the result that the common room often didn’t empty until past midnight.

Harry went to get the Invisibility Cloak out of his trunk right after dinner, and spent the evening sitting on it, waiting for the room to clear. Fred and George challenged Harry and Ron to a few games of Exploding Snap and Ginny sat watching them, very subdued in Hermione’s usual chair. Harry and Ron kept losing on purpose, trying to finish the games quickly, but even so, it was well past midnight when Fred, George and Ginny finally went to bed.

Harry and Ron waited for the distant sounds of two dormitory doors closing before seizing the Cloak, throwing it over themselves, and climbing through the portrait hole.

It was another difficult journey through the castle, dodging all the teachers. At last they reached the Entrance Hall, slid back the lock on the oak front doors, squeezed between them, trying to stop any creaking, and stepped out into the moonlit grounds.

‘Course,’ said Ron abruptly, as they strode across the black grass, ‘we might get to the Forest and find there’s nothing to follow. Those spiders might not’ve been going there at all. I know it looked like they were moving in that sort of general direction, but …’

His voice tailed 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.

‘C’mon, Fang, we’re going for a walk,’ said Harry, patting his leg, and Fang bounded happily out of the house behind them, dashed to the edge of the Forest and lifted his leg against a large sycamore tree.

Harry took out his wand, murmured,
‘Lumos!’
and a tiny light appeared at the end of it, just enough to let them watch the path for signs of spiders.

‘Good thinking,’ said Ron. ‘I’d light mine too, but you know - it’d probably blow up or something …’

Harry tapped Ron on the shoulder, pointing at the grass. Two solitary spiders were hurrying away from the wandlight into the shade of the trees.

‘OK,’ 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 for about twenty minutes, not speaking, listening hard for noises other than breaking twigs and rustling leaves. Then, when the trees had become thicker than ever, so that the stars overhead were no longer visible, and Harry’s wand shone alone in the sea of dark, they saw their spider guides leaving the path.

Harry paused, trying to see where the spiders were going, but everything outside his little sphere of light was pitch black. He had never been this deep into the Forest before. He could vividly remember Hagrid advising him not to leave the Forest path last time he’d been in here. But Hagrid was miles away now, probably sitting in a cell in Azkaban, and he had also said to follow the spiders.

Something wet touched Harry’s hand and he jumped backwards, crushing Ron’s foot, but it was only Fang’s nose.

‘What d’you reckon?’ Harry said to Ron, whose eyes he could just make out, reflecting the light from his wand.

‘We’ve come this far,’ said Ron.

So they followed the darting shadows of the spiders into the trees. They couldn’t move very quickly now; there were tree roots and stumps in their way, barely visible in the near blackness. Harry could feel Fang’s hot breath on his hand. More than once, they had to stop, so that Harry could crouch down and find the spiders in the wandlight.

They walked for what seemed like at least half an hour, their robes snagging on low-slung branches and brambles. After a while, they noticed that the ground seemed to be sloping downwards, though the trees were as thick as ever.

Then Fang suddenly let loose a great, echoing bark, making both Harry and Ron jump out of their skins.

‘What?’ said Ron loudly, looking around into the pitch dark, and gripping Harry’s elbow very hard.

‘There’s something moving over there,’ Harry breathed. ‘Listen … Sounds like something big.’

They listened. Some distance to their right, the something big was snapping branches as it carved a path through the trees.

‘Oh no,’ said Ron. ‘Oh no, oh no, oh -‘

‘Shut up,’ said Harry frantically. ‘It’ll hear you.’

‘Hear
me
?’ said Ron in an unnaturally high voice. ‘It’s already heard Fang!’

The darkness seemed to be pressing on their eyeballs as they stood, terrified, waiting. There was a strange rumbling noise and then silence.

‘What d’you think it’s doing?’ said Harry.

‘Probably getting ready to pounce,’ said Ron.

They waited, shivering, hardly daring to move.

‘D’you think it’s gone?’ Harry whispered.

‘Dunno -‘

Then, to their right, came a sudden blaze of light, so bright in the darkness that both of them flung up their hands to shield their eyes. Fang yelped and tried to run, but got lodged in a tangle of thorns and yelped even louder.

‘Harry!’ Ron shouted, his voice breaking with relief. ‘Harry, it’s our car!’

‘What?’

‘Come on!’

Harry blundered after Ron towards the light, stumbling and tripping, and a moment later they had emerged into a clearing.

Mr Weasley’s car was standing, empty, in the middle of a circle of thick trees under a roof of dense branches, its headlamps ablaze. As Ron walked, open-mouthed, towards it, it moved slowly towards him, exactly like a large, turquoise dog greeting its owner.

‘It’s been here all the time!’ said Ron delightedly, walking around the car. ‘Look at it. The Forest’s turned it wild …’

The wings of the car were scratched and smeared with mud. Apparently it had taken to trundling around the Forest on its own. Fang didn’t seem at all keen on it; he kept close to Harry, who could feel him quivering. His breathing slowing down again, Harry stuffed his wand back into his robes.

‘And we thought it was going to attack us!’ said Ron, leaning against the car and patting it. ‘I wondered where it had gone!’

Harry squinted around on the floodlit ground for signs of more spiders, but they had all scuttled away from the glare of the headlights.

‘We’ve lost the trail,’ he said. ‘C’mon, let’s go and find them.’

Ron didn’t speak. He didn’t move. His eyes were fixed on a point some ten feet above the Forest floor, right behind Harry. His face was livid with terror.

Harry didn’t even have time to turn around. There was a loud clicking noise and suddenly he felt something long and hairy seize him around the middle and lift him off the ground, so that he was hanging, face down. Struggling, terrified, he heard more clicking, and saw Ron’s legs leave the ground too, heard Fang whimpering and howling - next moment, he was being swept away into the dark trees.

Head hanging, Harry saw that what had hold of him was marching on six immensely long, hairy legs, the front two clutching him tightly below a pair of shining black pincers. Behind him, he could hear another of the creatures, no doubt carrying Ron. They were moving into the very heart of the Forest. Harry could hear Fang fighting to free himself from a third monster, whining loudly, but Harry couldn’t have yelled even if he had wanted to; he seemed to have left his voice back with the car in the clearing.

He never knew how long he was in the creature’s clutches; he only knew that the darkness suddenly lifted enough for him to see that the leaf-strewn ground was now swarming with spiders. Craning his neck sideways, he realised that they had reached the rim of a vast hollow, a hollow which had been cleared of trees, so that the stars shone brightly onto the worst scene he had ever clapped eyes upon.

Spiders. Not tiny spiders like those surging over the leaves below. Spiders the size of carthorses, eight-eyed, eight-legged, black, hairy, gigantic. The massive specimen that was carrying Harry made its way down the steep slope, towards a misty domed web in the very centre of the hollow, while its fellows closed in all around it, clicking their pincers excitedly at the sight of its load.

Harry fell to the ground on all fours as the spider released him. Ron and Fang thudded down next to him. Fang wasn’t howling any more, but cowering silently on the spot. Ron looked exactly like Harry felt. His mouth was stretched wide in a kind of silent scream and his eyes were popping.

Harry suddenly realised that the spider which had dropped him was saying something. It had been hard to tell, because he clicked his pincers with every word he spoke.

‘Aragog!’ it called. ‘Aragog!’

And from the middle of the misty domed web, a spider the size of a small elephant emerged, very slowly. There was grey in the black of his body and legs, and each of the eyes on his ugly, pincered head was milky white. He was blind.

‘What is it?’ he said, clicking his pincers rapidly.

‘Men,’ clicked the spider who had caught Harry.

‘Is it Hagrid?’ said Aragog, moving closer, his eight milky eyes wandering vaguely.

‘Strangers,’ clicked the spider who had brought Ron.

‘Kill them,’ clicked Aragog fretfully. ‘I was sleeping …’

‘We’re friends of Hagrid’s,’ Harry shouted. His heart seemed to have left his chest to pound in his throat.

Click, click, click went the pincers of the spiders all around the hollow.

Aragog paused.

‘Hagrid has never sent men into our hollow before,’ he said slowly.

‘Hagrid’s in trouble,’ said Harry, breathing very fast. ‘That’s why we’ve come.’

‘In trouble?’ said the aged spider, and Harry thought he heard concern beneath the clicking pincers. ‘But why has he sent you?’

Harry thought of getting to his feet, but decided against it; he didn’t think his legs would support him. So he spoke from the ground, as calmly as he could.

‘They think, up at the school, that Hagrid’s been setting a - a - something on students. They’ve taken him to Azkaban.’

Aragog clicked his pincers furiously, and all around the hollow the sound was echoed by the crowd of spiders; it was like applause, except applause didn’t usually make Harry feel sick with fear.

‘But that was years ago,’ said Aragog fretfully. ‘Years and years ago. I remember it well. That’s why they made him leave the school. They believed that
I
was the monster that dwells in what they call the Chamber of Secrets. They thought that Hagrid had opened the Chamber and set me free.’

‘And you … you didn’t come from the Chamber of Secrets?’ said Harry, who could feel cold sweat on his forehead.

‘I!’ said Aragog, clicking angrily. ‘I was not born in the castle. I come from a distant land. A traveller gave me to Hagrid when I was an egg. Hagrid was only a boy, but he cared for me, hidden in a cupboard in the castle, feeding me on scraps from the table. Hagrid is my good friend, and a good man. When I was discovered, and blamed for the death of a girl, he protected me. I have lived here in the Forest ever since, where Hagrid still visits me. He even found me a wife, Mosag, and you see how our family has grown, all through Hagrid’s goodness …’

Harry summoned what remained of his courage.

‘So you never - never attacked anyone?’

‘Never,’ croaked the old spider. ‘It would have been my instinct, but from respect of Hagrid, I never harmed a human. The body of the girl who was killed was discovered in a bathroom. I never saw any part of the castle but the cupboard in which I grew up. Our kind like the dark and the quiet …’