Harry Potter 02 & The Chamber Of Secrets (Illustrated) (26 page)

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 newsagent’s in 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.Ls or saved a teacher from the giant squid. Maybe he murdered Myrtle, that would’ve done everyone a favour …’

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 the 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 absent-mindedly picking it up and turning the pages, as though it was 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 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 re-potting 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 Duelling 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 them. Rather sensible to stop now, before I came down hard on them.

‘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 the 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 come over rather giggly.

‘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 timetable 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 them caught up with Harry.

‘Oy, 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 queue 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 the lot.

Harry scrambled around, trying to pick it all up before the dwarf started singing, causing something of a hold-up 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 realised 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’d got one over 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.’