I'll Make You See

Harry might have been quite bored in the hospital wing, under the watchful eye of Madam Pomfrey. Luckily, he was in agonising pain from having thirty-three bones slowly regrown, and that kept him busy.

He passed the long grey hours of early morning cursing under his breath and working out all the nasty things he was going to do to a rotating cast of people. He started with Dobby. Then he moved on to Lockhart. Then, a bit less certainly, Malfoy. Then back round to Dobby again, because Dobby had been first and deserved the most.

Every so often he glanced across at Colin's bed. The curtains had been drawn round it, to give Colin a bit of dignity while he lay there, Petrified, with his camera still held up in front of his face. Harry was more and more sure that whatever had done it was some sort of creature, and that it was under Malfoy's control, and the thought made him so angry that he ate the last of the sugared violets without tasting it. They'd been left by a stranger. Probably Ginny. She was a bit funny around Harry, these days, and he'd noticed. It made sense to him. Not that he'd ever take advantage. She was Ron's sister, and younger than him, too. You didn't do that to your best mate. Harry knew that much.

Seeing that he was awake, Madam Pomfrey came bustling over with a breakfast tray. While he ate she took hold of his right arm and began bending it, and straightening it, and pulling each of his fingers in turn, as though she were checking the keys on a piano.

'That'll do nicely,' she said, as Harry spooned porridge clumsily into his mouth with his left hand and dripped some on the blanket. 'Everything's where it ought to be. Eat up, and then you can go.'

Harry dressed as fast as he could. He was desperate to get to Ron and Hermione and tell them about Colin, and Dobby, and everything. He pulled his jumper over his head, grabbed his wand, and hurried out of the ward.

There was somebody sitting on the window seat just outside the doors.

It was Dracina Malfoy. She was huddled up in the corner of the seat with her knees drawn up and her arms round them, and for a moment Harry didn't recognise her, because she looked so ill. There were deep violet shadows under her eyes, as though she hadn't slept in a week. Her hair, which was always so perfect, was loose and tangled, and there was ink on her fingers, a great deal of ink, black and smeared, right up to the knuckles. Her lips were moving. She was talking to herself very quietly, in a rapid, steady murmur, the way people say their times tables.

She saw him and stopped.

'Is it back?' she said.

'What?'

'Your arm.' Her eyes went to it and stayed there. 'Is it back? All the bones? Can you move your fingers?'

Harry, bewildered, wiggled them at her.

Malfoy let out a long breath, and something in her shoulders seemed to give way. Then, quite suddenly, she laughed. It was a high, thin, odd little laugh that went on slightly too long.

'Good,' she said. 'Good. Then he was wrong, wasn't he? He said you'd never fly again. He said it didn't matter, because you wouldn't need to, after. But you can. So he doesn't know everything.' She stopped, and blinked, as though she'd heard herself. 'Not that I care. Get away from me, Potter. Why are you always looming?'

'Who said I'd never fly again?' said Harry. 'Flint?'

'Go away.'

She put her face down on her knees. Harry stood there a moment longer, completely lost, and then went, because there didn't seem to be anything else to do. When he looked back from the end of the corridor she'd lifted her head again, and her lips were moving again, and she was looking at the wall as if somebody were standing there.

As he passed the library, Percy Weasley came strolling out of it, looking in much better spirits than the last time they'd met.

'Ah, Harry! Splendid flying yesterday, quite splendid,' said Percy. 'You'll be pleased to hear Gryffindor have gone top for the House Cup. Fifty points, all down to you!'

'Thank you Percy but hopefully I'll never have to pull that trick again.'

Percy gave a sensible little chuckle and wagged his finger at Harry.

'Oh, you.' said Percy, doing his very best to look and sound personable. It wasn't working. But Harry couldn't fault him for trying. At least he wasn't moaning at him for once.

'Oh, me.' Harry replied, doing his best to be charming, so as not to look suspicious. 'Have you seen Ron anywhere? Or Hermione?'

'I haven't, no,' said Percy, and his smile faded. 'I do hope Ron hasn't gone and got himself into another girls' lavatory...'

Harry let out a false laugh that he hoped sounded reassuring.

'Oh no, I'm sure he's busy with other...things.' Harry said, trying not to sound suspicious.

He walked off. Then, when he was quite sure Percy had gone the other way, he doubled back and made for the exact place Percy had told Ron off for going. He couldn't think why Ron and Hermione would be in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom again. But he checked very carefully that there was no sign of Filch or any prefects, and then he opened the door, and heard their voices coming from inside a locked cubicle.

'Only me,' he said, shutting the door behind him.

There was a clunk, a splash, and a gasp from inside the cubicle, and then Hermione's eye appeared at the keyhole.

'Harry! You nearly gave me a heart attack. Quick, get in. How's the arm?'

'It's good. The agonizing pain of regrowing my bones built character.,' said Harry dryly.

He was trying not to think about the horrible pain of it all by making a joke of it. Dobby would pay. That preening poofter Lockhart would pay. Maybe even Malfoy would pay, if she really had anything to do with it. But for some reason, a reason Harry couldn't quite bring himself to admit, he couldn't quite make himself believe that Malfoy had anything to do with it. Not all the way. Not even after everything she'd said, and everything she'd done, and the way she'd looked on that window seat just now, muttering at nobody.

He squeezed into the cubicle. An old cauldron was balanced on the lavatory seat, and a crackling noise from underneath the rim told him they'd lit a fire under it. Conjuring up small, portable, waterproof fires was one of Hermione's specialities.

'We'd have come and found you,' said Ron, as Harry fumbled the cubicle door locked again, 'only we thought we'd better make a start on the Polyjuice. This is the safest place for it. Nobody comes in here. Well, nobody except Myrtle.'

Harry began to tell them about Colin. It was harder than he'd expected. His voice went strange halfway through, because he kept thinking about the grapes, and about Colin creeping up the stairs in the dark to bring them to him, and if Harry hadn't been in the hospital wing then Colin wouldn't have been on those stairs at all.

But Hermione was already nodding.

'We know,' she said. 'Professor McGonagall was telling Professor Flitwick about it at breakfast, and we heard. That's why we've started early.'

She saw his face. She put down the bundle of knotgrass she was holding and took hold of both his hands.

'Harry, listen to me. It is not your fault. You were lying in bed with no bones in your arm. You didn't send him up there. You didn't ask him to come. You didn't do anything at all except be someone he looked up to, and that's not a crime.' She squeezed. 'Whoever did this did it. Not you. Her.'

'The sooner we get a confession out of Malfoy, the better,' snarled Ron. 'D'you know what I think? She was in such a foul temper after the Quidditch match and Flint had a go at her, she took it out on Colin.'

'There's something else,' said Harry, watching Hermione tear up bundles of knotgrass and throw them into the potion. 'Dobby came to see me. In the middle of the night.'

Ron and Hermione looked up, amazed.

Harry told them everything Dobby had told him, and all the things he hadn't. He told them that it had been Dobby who'd sealed the barrier at King's Cross, and that he was sure now that it had been Malfoy who'd ordered him to keep Harry away from Hogwarts.

'Only then she made him iron his hands for doing it,' Harry said. 'He showed me. He's got bandages on all ten fingers. And he said she's got a terrible temper. He doesn't understand what she wants, and neither do I.' He rubbed his face. 'It doesn't make any sense. Why would you order someone to do something and then punish them for doing it?'

Ron and Hermione listened with their mouths open.

'Hang on,' said Hermione. 'The Chamber's been opened before? He actually said that?'

'Well, that's it, then. That settles it,' said Ron triumphantly. 'Lucius Malfoy. He was here, wasn't he, when he was a kid? He must have opened it back then, and now he's gone and told dear old Dracina how to do it. Course he has. It's obvious. I just wish Dobby'd said what sort of monster it is. How's it getting round the castle without anyone seeing it? That's what I want to know.'

'It might be invisible,' said Hermione, prodding leeches down to the bottom of the cauldron with a stick. 'Or it might be able to change its shape. Look like a suit of armour, or a tapestry, or something. There's a thing called a Chameleon Ghoul that can...'

'You've read too many books, Hermione,' said Ron, tipping a bag of dead lacewings on top of the leeches. He screwed up the empty bag and looked round at Harry. 'So. Dobby shut the barrier on us. And now he's broken your arm.' He shook his head slowly. 'You know what, mate? That elf's going to keep on saving your life until you're dead.'

By Monday morning the news that Colin Creevey had been attacked, and was lying as though dead in the hospital wing, had spread right through the school.

The air was suddenly thick with rumours and suspicion. The first-years took to moving round the castle in tight little huddles, as though they were afraid they'd be picked off if they went anywhere alone. Ginny Weasley, who sat next to Colin in Charms, was beside herself. The two of them had made friends at the start of term, apparently, over how much they both admired Harry, which Harry found very flattering and embarrassing in equal measure when Ron told him. Fred and George, though, were going about cheering her up all wrong.

'Boo!'

Harry, coming down the staircase to breakfast on Tuesday, saw George leap out from behind a statue of Boris the Bewildered, covered from head to foot in shaggy orange fur. Ginny screamed so loudly that a portrait of a sleeping monk fell off its nail.

'Got you!' said George happily. 'Go on, Gin, you've got to laugh, it's...'

'You pair of absolute...' Percy came charging down the stairs, purple in the face, with his Prefect badge flashing. 'Do you know she's been having nightmares? Do you? She's been waking up the whole dormitory! That's it. That is it. I'm writing to Mum. Tonight. And I shall tell her exactly what you've been doing, and exactly who has been doing it, and I shall underline your names twice.'

The fur and the boils stopped after that.

Harry found Ginny afterwards, sitting on the bottom step with her face in her sleeve.

'You all right?' he said awkwardly, sitting down next to her.

Ginny jumped about a foot. Then she went red, and shook her head, and then nodded, and then shook it again.

'It's Colin,' she said, into her sleeve. 'He was going to show me how his camera worked. He said he'd teach me to make the pictures move. And now he's...' She swallowed. 'And it's not just that. It's... Harry, can I tell you something?'

'Course.'

'Malfoy stopped me. Yesterday. In the corridor by the Charms classroom.' Ginny's voice had dropped to a whisper. 'She came right up close and she looked at me for ages, like I was something she was trying to remember. And then she asked me, Do you love him? Just like that. Do you love him?'

'Love who?' said Harry.

Ginny looked at him. She went, if possible, even redder. She opened her mouth, and closed it again, and looked at her shoes.

'I don't know,' she mumbled. 'She didn't say. But I didn't answer. I just ran. And when I looked back she was writing something down. In a little black book. And smiling.'

Harry felt something cold go down his back.

'Stay with Ron,' he told her. 'Or with Hermione. Don't go anywhere on your own. All right?'

Ginny nodded, and wiped her nose on her sleeve, and looked at him as though he'd just given her a present.

Meanwhile, out of sight of the teachers, a roaring trade had sprung up all over the castle in talismans, amulets and other protective objects. Neville Longbottom bought a large, evil-smelling green onion, a pointed purple crystal and a rotting newt's tail before the other Gryffindor boys in his dormitory pointed out that he was in no danger at all, being a pure-blood and therefore very unlikely to be attacked. They also pointed out, while they were at it, that Neville could perfectly well look after himself, seeing as he'd taken on Crabbe and Goyle single-handed last year. But Neville, as usual, had an excuse ready for that, and for why it didn't count, and why he wasn't really brave, or able to do anything much at all.

'It went for Filch's cat first, didn't it?' Neville said, clutching the onion. His round face was pale with fright. 'And Filch is a Squib. And I'm practically one. Everyone knows. Gran says so all the time. It's only a matter of time before it works out I'm-'

'Neville.' Harry put down his quill. 'You're not a Squib. You're nowhere near. You've got a wand and it works, doesn't it? I've seen it work.'

'Sometimes,' said Neville.

'Everyone's only works sometimes. Look at Seamus. He set fire to his eyebrows on Thursday.' Seamus, across the dormitory, said 'Oi,' without much conviction. 'And you battered Crabbe and Goyle by yourself because you thought it was the right thing to do.Neville. I don't care what your gran says. You're as brave as anyone in Gryffindor. Braver than most.'

Neville looked at him for a long moment. Then he went pink, and smiled, and put the onion down on his bedside table, and after a while he even stopped holding his nose near it.

It was at dinner, a few days later, that Harry first noticed something was wrong at the Slytherin table.

He'd only looked across because he'd heard somebody laugh, and it was such an odd sound in the subdued, rumour-filled Great Hall that half the people near him had looked too. It was Malfoy. She was sitting at the end of the Slytherin table, a little apart, with her plate full and untouched in front of her and her fork lying beside it. She'd laughed at nothing. There was nobody near her. She was looking at the empty space on the bench beside her and smiling, and her lips were moving.

Pansy Parkinson, two places down, edged a little further away and leaned across.

'Dracina? Who are you talking to?'

'Nobody,' said Malfoy at once, without turning round. Then, more softly, still smiling at the empty air, 'Tom.' Then, sharply, as if she'd been caught, 'Nobody! I said nobody, Pansy, are you deaf?'

'Who's Tom?' Ron muttered.

'Dunno,' said Harry. 'Some Slytherin?'

'There isn't a Tom in Slytherin. Not in our year. There's Theodore Nott, but nobody calls him Tom.' Ron shuddered. 'She's going round the twist, mate. You can see it.'

Hermione said nothing at all. She was watching Malfoy over the rim of her goblet with a small, thoughtful, satisfied expression, the way you'd watch a rival's candle burn down.

In the second week of December Professor McGonagall came round as usual, collecting the names of everyone who'd be staying at school over Christmas. Harry, Ron and Hermione all signed her list. They'd heard that Malfoy was staying too, which struck them as extremely suspicious. The holidays would be the perfect time to use the Polyjuice Potion and wheedle a confession out of her.

Harry saw it happen. He was coming out of Transfiguration behind Professor McGonagall, and Malfoy was waiting in the corridor, and she stepped in front of Professor McGonagall and took the list and the quill from her hand without being asked and wrote her name on it, in a fast, spiky scrawl.

'Your parents are content for you to stay, Miss Malfoy?' said Professor McGonagall.

'Father's busy,' said Malfoy. 'And I'm needed here.'

'Needed?'

'I've got work.' She handed the quill back. 'Lots of it.'

Professor McGonagall looked at her for a moment, over the tops of her square spectacles. Then she did something Harry had never seen her do to a Slytherin. She put out one hand and tilted Malfoy's chin up, quite gently, so that the light from the window fell on her face.

'Miss Malfoy. When did you last sleep through the night?'

Malfoy jerked her chin away.

'I sleep perfectly well, Professor. Thank you.' She stepped back. 'I've never slept better. I have the most wonderful dreams.'

She walked off. Professor McGonagall watched her go with her mouth pressed into a thin line, and then she looked down at the name on her list for rather a long time, and Harry, who'd seen her look at a great many things in that way over the past few weeks, didn't like it at all.

The only trouble with the holiday plan was that the potion was only half-made. They still needed the Bicorn horn and the Boomslang skin, and the only place in the castle to get them was Snape's private store-cupboard.

'Easy enough.' Harry told them all, meaning the exact opposite.

Privately he thought he'd rather walk up to Slytherin's legendary monster and introduce himself than have Snape catch him robbing his office.

'What we need,' said Hermione briskly, as Thursday afternoon's double Potions came closer and closer, 'is a distraction. Something big enough that nobody's looking at Snape's office door. Then one of us slips in and gets what we need, and slips out again.'

Harry and Ron looked at her nervously.

'And it had better be me who does the actual taking,' Hermione went on, in a matter-of-fact voice. But there was that edge in it, the hidden one that came into it these days whenever she was talking about anything to do with Malfoy. 'You two are on your last chance as it is. One more thing and you'll be expelled. I haven't got a single mark against me. So all you've got to do is cause enough chaos to keep Snape busy for five minutes or so.'

Harry smiled feebly. Deliberately causing chaos in one of Snape's Potions lessons was about as safe as tickling a sleeping dragon on the nose.

'Oh, just chaos,' he said. 'Right. Fine. In Snape's dungeon. With Snape in it. Snape, who docked me five points last week for breathing in a sarcastic way. Do you know what he'll do, Hermione? He'll take me apart. He'll use bits of me in the next lesson. You'll be stirring me into your Swelling Solution.'

'You'll be fine.'

'He'll have me pickled. He'll put me in a jar on his shelf with all the other horrible things and nobody will ever-'

'Harry.' Hermione looked at him, very steadily. 'You faced Quirrell. You faced Voldemort, with his face sticking out of the back of somebody's head. You can face Snape for five minutes. I've got complete faith in you. I always have.'

Harry opened his mouth. He found he didn't really have an answer to that, so he shut it again.

'Fine,' he said grumpily. 'Fine. I'll do it. But if he pickles me, I'm going to haunt you. Both of you. I'm going to haunt Ron's socks.'

'They're already haunted,' said Ron. 'Go on, then. What d'you want to set off?'

Potions lessons were held in one of the big dungeons, and Thursday afternoon's began the way they always did. Twenty cauldrons stood steaming between the wooden desks, with brass scales and jars of ingredients ranged along the benches beside them. Snape drifted through the fumes like a bat through smoke, dropping acid little remarks on the Gryffindors' work, while the Slytherins sniggered their approval.

Dracina Malfoy, who was Snape's favourite, kept flicking puffer-fish eyes at Ron and Harry. Ron and Harry both knew perfectly well that if they flicked anything back, they'd be in detention before they could say unfair. She'd been absolutely dreadful to both of them since the Quidditch match. Still sore about losing, Hermione said, and taking it out on Harry, who'd beaten her.

Harry's Swelling Solution was much too runny. Malfoy was quick to point it out.

'Oh dear, Potter. Look at that. It's like gravy.' And then, to Harry's horror, she got up from her own bench and came over to his, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, and picked up his stirring rod. 'You're doing it wrong. You've been doing it wrong all term. Anticlockwise, Potter, anticlockwise, seven times, then once the other way, I told you that in October...'

'You didn't tell me anything in October,' said Harry. 'Get... leave it, Malfoy. Leave my potion alone. Give that back.'

She didn't give it back. She stirred, slowly, seven times, anticlockwise, with her head bent over his cauldron so close that the steam curled up round her face and dampened the loose strands of her hair. Her hand was steady, but there was a tremor in her other hand, the empty one, which kept opening and closing at her side as if it were used to holding something and couldn't find it.

From two tables away came a low, rumbling sound. It took Harry a moment to realise it was Hermione. She was growling. Quite quietly, deep in her throat, like a lioness watching something come too near her cubs.

Malfoy didn't look round. She didn't so much as flick her eyes in Hermione's direction. It was as though Hermione weren't in the room at all, as though there were simply an empty space at that table where nobody worth noticing happened to be standing.

'There,' said Malfoy softly, laying the rod down. 'That's better. You see? You'd be hopeless without me.'

She went back to her own bench. Harry stared after her, his face burning, with no idea at all what had just happened.

But he had more important things to think about. He was waiting for Hermione's signal, and he barely listened as Snape paused at his desk to sneer at the potion, which was, much to Snape's evident disappointment, now exactly the right thickness. Snape moved on to torment Neville. Hermione caught Harry's eye across the dungeon, and nodded.

Harry ducked down behind his cauldron, pulled one of Fred's Filibuster fireworks out of his pocket, and gave it a quick prod with his wand. It started to fizz and spit. He knew he only had seconds. He straightened up, took aim, and lobbed it across the dungeon, and it dropped neatly into Goyle's cauldron with a small plop.

Goyle's potion went off like a bomb.

It erupted out of the cauldron in a great fizzing green fountain and came down over half the class. People shrieked as the Swelling Solution spattered them. Seamus's ear inflated like a pink cushion. Pansy Parkinson's lip swelled up over her chin. Malfoy got a faceful, and her nose began to blow up like a balloon, bigger, and bigger, until her eyes were crossing to look at it.

Harry bit the inside of his cheek so hard he tasted blood. It was no good. A snort escaped him anyway.

Malfoy heard it. Her head swung round, nose and all, and she looked straight at him over the top of it, and her eyes went wide and wet and furious.

'You!' she shrieked, though it came out thick and honking, through the nose. 'Wad you laughing? Wad you laughing ad be? By father will hear aboud this! By father will find oud whoever did it ad he'll... he'll punish theb...'

Goyle was blundering about with his hands clapped over his eyes, which had swollen up to the size of dinner plates, and walking into the desks. Snape was trying to restore order and find out what had happened. In the middle of all the confusion, Harry saw Hermione slide quietly out through the door.

'Quiet!' Snape's voice cracked across the dungeon like a whip. 'QUIET! Anyone who has been splashed will come to my desk at once for a Deflating Draught. And when I discover who is responsible for this, they WILL be sorry.'

Harry tried very hard not to laugh as he watched Malfoy hurry forward, her head drooping under the weight of a nose like a small melon. He managed it. Just.

Half the class lumbered up to Snape's desk, some weighed down by arms like clubs, others unable to talk through enormous puffy lips. As they did, Harry saw Hermione slip back into the dungeon, with the front of her robes bulging. When everybody had swallowed a dose of antidote and the swellings had all gone down, Snape swept over to Goyle's cauldron and fished out the blackened, twisted remains of the firework.

The dungeon went very quiet.

'Should I ever learn,' Snape said softly, 'who threw this... I will see that person FINALLY expelled.'

Harry arranged his face into what he hoped was an expression of mild, innocent puzzlement. Snape was looking straight at him. The bell, which rang ten minutes later, had never sounded so sweet.

'He knows,' Harry said to Ron and Hermione, as they hurried back towards Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. 'He knows it was me. I could see it.'

Hermione tipped the stolen ingredients into the cauldron and began to stir feverishly.

'Two weeks,' she said happily. 'Two weeks, and it's done.'

'He can't prove anything, though,' Ron said to Harry. 'What's he going to do?'

'He's Snape,' said Harry, as the potion frothed and bubbled. 'He'll think of something horrible.'

Hermione wasn't listening. She'd stopped stirring. She was staring down into the cauldron, and the happy look had gone right off her face.

'She touched your things,' she said.

'What?'

'Malfoy. In Potions. She came over to your bench and she picked up your stirring rod and she stirred your potion.' Hermione's voice was very low and very even. 'Your potion, Harry. Your cauldron. And she stood right up next to you, right up next to you, as if she had every right to be there, and she said you'd be hopeless without her.'

'Yeah, well, she's mental,' said Harry uncomfortably. 'You said so yourself. It doesn't matter.'

'It matters.' Hermione began to stir again, slowly. Seven times. Anticlockwise. Harry didn't think she knew she was doing it. 'It matters a great deal. Some people need to learn where they're not wanted. And if they won't learn...' She smiled, suddenly and brightly, at the potion. 'Well. That's what the Polyjuice is for, isn't it? To find out exactly what she's been doing. And then everybody will know. And then she'll be gone.'

Ron looked at Harry. Harry looked at Ron. Neither of them said anything at all.

A week later, Harry, Ron and Hermione were crossing the Entrance Hall when they spotted a little knot of people clustered round the noticeboard, reading a piece of parchment that had just been pinned up. Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas waved them over, looking excited.

'They're doing a Duelling Club!' said Seamus. 'Starts tonight! I could do with some duelling lessons, me. You never know when they'll come in useful...'

'What, you think Slytherin's monster's going to challenge you to a duel?' said Ron.

But he read the notice with interest all the same.

'Might be handy, though,' he said to Harry and Hermione, as they went in to dinner. 'Fancy it?'

Harry and Hermione did. So at eight o'clock that evening they hurried back down to the Great Hall.

The long tables had vanished. In their place, a golden stage had appeared along one wall, lit by thousands of candles that floated overhead. The enchanted ceiling was velvety black again, scattered with frosty stars, and most of the school seemed to be crammed in underneath it, all clutching their wands and buzzing with excitement.

'Who d'you think's going to teach it?' said Hermione, as they edged into the chattering crowd. 'I read that Professor Flitwick was a champion duellist when he was younger. I hope it's him.'

'Just so long as it isn't...' Harry began.

He ended with a groan. Gilderoy Lockhart was striding onto the stage, resplendent in robes of deep plum. Behind him, in his usual black, came Snape.

'Of course, of bloody course,' moaned Harry.

Lockhart waved his arms for silence.

'Gather round, gather round, everybody! Can you all see me? At the back there? Can you all hear me? Wonderful!' He beamed round at them all. 'Professor Dumbledore has been gracious enough to let me set up this little Duelling Club, so that I may train you all to protect yourselves, as I myself have had to do on more occasions than I could possibly count. For the full and thrilling details, of course, you've only to consult my books.'

He swept an arm towards Snape.

'And may I present my assistant for the evening, Professor Snape! He informs me he's dabbled in a little duelling himself, in his time, and he's very sportingly agreed to help me show you how it's done before we begin. Now, there's no need for any of you to worry. I promise faithfully I'll give him back to you in one piece. You'll still have a Potions master on Monday, ha ha!'

'Shame,' Ron muttered in Harry's ear. 'Be nice if they both went up in smoke.'

Snape's upper lip was curling slowly upwards. Harry couldn't understand why Lockhart was still smiling. If Snape had looked at Harry like that, he'd have been out of the Hall and halfway to the Forbidden Forest by now.

Lockhart and Snape turned to face each other and bowed. At least, Lockhart bowed, with a great deal of twirling of his hands and a flourish at the end. Snape gave a single irritable jerk of the head. Then they raised their wands in front of them, like swords.

'You'll observe,' Lockhart told the silent crowd, 'that we are holding our wands in the traditional duelling stance. On the count of three, we each cast our first spell. Naturally, neither of us will be trying to kill the other.'

'Speak for yourself,' Harry murmured, watching Snape's teeth.

'One... two... three...'

Both of them swung their wands up and back over their shoulders. Snape cried out, 'Expelliarmus!'

There was a dazzling flash of scarlet light. Lockhart was blasted clean off his feet. He flew backwards off the end of the stage, hit the wall with a thump, and slid down it to sprawl on the floor.

Malfoy and some of the other Slytherins cheered. Hermione didn't. She was sullen.

'I hope it hurt' she whispered through her fingers, about the fallen Lockhart.

'Me too.' Said Harry. Ron nodded in agreement.

Lockhart was getting unsteadily to his feet. His hat had fallen off and his wavy hair was standing up on end.

'And there you have it!' he said, tottering back up onto the stage. 'A Disarming Charm! As you can see, I've been parted from my wand... ah, thank you, Miss Brown, how kind... Yes. A capital idea to demonstrate that one, Professor Snape. Though, if you'll forgive me for saying so, you did rather telegraph it. I could see it coming from a mile off. If I'd wanted to block it, it would have been child's play. I simply thought it would be more instructive for the students to see it land...'

Snape was looking murderous. Perhaps Lockhart noticed, because he said, quite quickly, 'Well! That's quite enough demonstrating for one evening! I'll come among you and put you into pairs. Professor Snape, if you'd be so good as to lend a hand...'

They moved through the crowd, matching people up. Lockhart put Neville with Justin Finch-Fletchley. But Snape reached Harry and Ron first.

'I think it's time,' Snape said, with a thin smile, 'that the famous trio had a little time apart. Weasley, you'll go with Finnigan. Potter...'

Harry had already moved automatically towards Hermione.

'Oh, I don't think so,' said Snape, smiling coldly. 'Miss Malfoy. Come here, if you please. I'd be curious to see what you make of our celebrated Mr Potter.'

Of course it had to be Dracina Malfoy, Harry thought. No matter. He'd trounce her, the same way he'd trounced her at Quidditch.

'And Miss Granger. You may go with Miss Bulstrode.'

Malfoy came strutting over, smirking. Behind her came a Slytherin girl Harry vaguely recognised, Millicent Bulstrode, broad and square-shouldered, who looked as though she'd be more at home wrestling trolls than duelling. Hermione gave her a weak smile. It was not returned.

'Face your partners!' called Lockhart, back up on the stage. 'And bow!'

Harry and Malfoy barely dipped their heads. Neither of them took their eyes off the other.

Close to, she looked worse than she had on the window seat. Much worse. The shadows under her eyes had gone almost purple, and her skin had a waxy, greyish look to it, like a candle that's been left in a cold room, and her eyes were too bright. She was breathing quickly. There was a fever-spot of colour high up on each cheek. Harry couldn't help noticing how unhealthy she looked, and he didn't know why it bothered him as much as it did.

'I'm not going easy on you, Potter. I'll make you see!'

Whatever it was that Malfoy wanted Harry to see, it couldn't be anything good.

'Wands up!' shouted Lockhart. 'On my count of three, you cast your charm to disarm your partner. Only to disarm them, mind. Let's not have any accidents. One... two... three...'

Harry swung his wand up over his shoulder. But Malfoy had already started on two.

'Everte Statum!'

The spell hit Harry square in the chest like a swinging door. He went backwards off his feet and turned right over in the air, and landed hard on his back, with all the breath knocked out of him and the candles spinning overhead. Somebody near him gasped. He heard Malfoy laugh, a high, wild, delighted laugh.

'Did you see? Did you see that, Potter? I told you!'

He was up before he'd properly thought about it. He pointed his wand straight at her.

'Rictusempra!'

A jet of silver light caught Malfoy in the stomach. She doubled up, wheezing, as though somebody were tickling her all over at once, and for a second she was laughing for real, helplessly, tears springing out of her eyes. But even doubled over she kept her wand up. And through the laughter she gasped out the next spell before Harry was ready for it.

'Tarantallegra!'

Harry's legs went mad. They jerked out from under him and began to dance, a frantic, kicking, high-stepping quickstep, all by themselves, and he couldn't stop them. He went jigging sideways across the floor into a knot of Ravenclaws, who scattered.

'Ha! Look at him! Look at the hero!' Malfoy had got her breath back. She came after him, wand out, and her voice was rising with every word. 'Dance, Potter! Go on! You liked it so much with the Bludger, all your twirling about! I said I'd teach you, didn't I? I said I'd teach you if you only asked!'

'Finite!' Harry gasped, jabbing his wand at his own knees. It was the one counter-charm he knew. It half worked. His legs slowed to a wobbly shuffle, and he caught himself on a pillar, and turned, and fired back the first thing that came into his head.

'Flipendo!'

Malfoy flicked her wand sideways. The jinx glanced off it in a spray of blue sparks and hit a suit of armour behind her, which fell over with a crash like a cutlery drawer being emptied down the stairs.

'Steady on!' called Lockhart from the stage. He sounded startled. 'Steady on, Miss Malfoy! I did say disarm, I did distinctly say disarm, didn't I...'

Neither of them heard him.

All around them, people had stopped their own duels to watch. Harry was dimly aware of it, a widening ring of faces at the edge of his vision. Neville and Justin had stopped. Ron and Seamus had stopped. Even Hermione and Millicent Bulstrode, who'd been locked together in a sort of headlock, had broken apart and were staring. But Harry wasn't looking at any of them. He was looking at Malfoy.

She was different. He'd known she was different for weeks, really, without letting himself think about it. But now, here, with her wand pointed at him, he could see it clearly for the first time. It wasn't the old Malfoy at all, the sneering, preening one with Crabbe and Goyle at her elbows. This one's eyes were too wide, and too bright, and they didn't blink enough. Her left hand kept going to the front of her robes and pressing there, flat, over a place where nothing was, and then jerking away again as though it had burned her. And she kept glancing to one side, quickly, the way you'd glance at somebody standing next to you to see if they approved.

There was nobody standing next to her.

'Furnunculus!' Harry shouted.

She ducked it. It went over her head and hit Crabbe, and Crabbe howled as his face erupted in boils.

'Is that it?' Malfoy said. 'Is that all you've got? Boils? Boils, Potter? You're supposed to be the Boy Who Lived! You're supposed to be special! He said you were special! He said you'd understand, in the end, he said I'd only have to be patient...'

'Who said?' Harry shouted. 'Who are you talking about?'

'Nobody!' Her voice cracked. 'Densaugeo!'

Harry threw himself sideways. The jinx skimmed past his ear and hit the floor, and the flagstone it hit sprouted a row of long, yellowish teeth. A girl near the front screamed.

'Miss Malfoy!' Lockhart had come to the very edge of the stage. His smile had gone a bit fixed. 'Harry! I really must... ha ha... I really think that's quite enough of...'

'Shut up!' Malfoy screamed at him, without looking round.

Lockhart shut up.

Harry saw his face as he did. It was a very strange face. All the bounce had gone out of it, all at once, like air out of a balloon, and what was left looked suddenly older. Lockhart was staring from Malfoy to Harry and back again, and his lips were moving soundlessly, and Harry, just for a second, had the oddest feeling that Lockhart had understood something. Something he'd read about in a book, maybe. Or even written about. Lockhart's hand went to his collar and loosened it. He took a small step backwards.

'Locomotor Mortis!' Harry yelled, which was a jinx he'd only ever seen Malfoy use on Neville, and it astonished him that he even knew it.

It caught her legs. They snapped together. She toppled, and went down on one knee, and for a moment she just knelt there on the cold floor of the Great Hall with her wand hand braced against the stones, panting, her pale hair hanging round her face.

Then she looked up at him through it.

'You ate them,' she said. 'Didn't you?'

'Ate what?'

'All of them. Every single one. And you didn't even...' Her voice wobbled, badly. 'You didn't even know. You didn't even wonder. You think it was her, don't you? Or that little Weasley. You think it was some... some...'

'I don't know what you're talking about!' Harry shouted. He honestly didn't. He was cross, and sore, and very confused, and he'd had about enough. 'You're mad, Malfoy! You're mad! You go round being horrible to everyone, you're horrible to Hermione, you're horrible to Ron, you're horrible to me, and then you get upset because I don't know what you're on about! What's wrong with you?'

'You!' she screamed. 'You're what's wrong with me!'

She broke the Leg-Locker with a slash of her wand, the counter-jinx coming out of her in a snarl, and was on her feet again.

Snape stepped down off the stage.

He came towards them quite slowly, through the ring of watching students, which parted for him, and Harry thought he was going to put a stop to it. But he didn't. He stopped a few yards away, with his wand half raised, and he looked at Malfoy. Not at Harry. Only at Malfoy. And something happened to Snape's face that Harry had never seen happen to it before.

It went grey. It went quite grey, and quite still, like he'd seen a ghost, and for a moment the sallow, sneering look was wiped off it entirely and there was nothing there at all but a sort of terrible recognition.

'Foolish girl,' Snape said, very low. It wasn't meant for anyone to hear. Harry only heard it because he was the nearest. 'Foolish, foolish girl. They never look back. They never once...'

He stopped. His mouth closed hard. He raised his wand.

'Enough,' he said, much louder. 'Miss Malfoy. Potter. Lower your wands. You will both...'

'Rictusempra!'

'Tarantallegra!'

The two jinxes crossed in the air. Snape had to jerk aside to avoid them both, and his black robes flared out round him, and from somewhere in the crowd somebody laughed, nervously, and was very quickly hushed. Lockhart had come down from the stage now, too, on the other side. Between them, the two teachers tried to close in.

'Now, now, now,' said Lockhart, holding up both hands, as if he were trying to calm a pair of hippogriffs. 'Let's all just take a deep breath. Perhaps... perhaps a little demonstration of blocking, eh? Blocking's terribly important! Harry, why don't you... and Miss Malfoy, if you'd just...'

Neither of them looked at him. Every time Snape or Lockhart stepped forward, Harry and Malfoy shifted round each other, still circling, still firing, and the teachers had to step back again or be hit. It was like trying to separate two cats in a sack. Harry was hardly aware of them at all. There was only Malfoy's white face across the gap, and her wand, and her voice.

'Saint Potter! Precious perfect Potter! Can't even see what's in front of his face!'

'Better than what's in front of yours! Bleach-head!'

'Half-blood!'

'Daddy's girl!'

'Granger's lapdog!'

'At least she's not mental!'

That landed. Harry saw it land. Malfoy flinched as if he'd hit her with something solid, and for a second her eyes went completely black, all pupil, and Harry felt a thrill of real fear go through him for the first time.

All round the Hall the watching students had gone quiet. It wasn't the excited quiet of a crowd at a fight any more. It was the other kind. A first-year Hufflepuff near the doors had started to cry. Two Ravenclaw girls were holding on to each other. And yet nobody was leaving. They were all leaning in, frightened and fascinated at once, the way people lean in to watch a storm come over the hills.

'They're going to kill each other,' somebody whispered.

'Look at her face...'

'Look at his...'

Malfoy was swaying on her feet now. She was exhausted. Harry could see it. Her wand arm had begun to shake, and her breath was coming in sobs, and she'd gone so pale she was almost transparent, like Nearly Headless Nick. She looked as though one more spell would knock her over. And she looked desperate. More desperate than Harry had ever seen anybody look.

She lifted her wand one last time.

'Fine,' she whispered. 'Fine. If you won't see... I'll show you.'

And she cried, 'Serpensortia!'

The end of her wand exploded. Harry watched, frozen, as a long black snake shot out of it, fell heavily to the floor between them, and reared up, ready to strike. There were screams. The crowd surged backwards, and suddenly there was a great empty space in the middle of the Hall, and people were shoving and scrambling for the doors.

'Don't move, Potter,' said Snape. He sounded almost lazy again. He was enjoying the sight of Harry standing motionless, eye to eye with an angry snake. 'I'll deal with...'

'Leave this one to me!' cried Lockhart.

He brandished his wand at the snake, and there was a loud bang. The snake, instead of vanishing, was flung ten feet into the air and came down again with a smack on the floor. Furious, hissing horribly, it slithered straight towards Justin Finch-Fletchley, who'd been too slow to run, and raised itself up again in front of him, fangs bared, poised to strike.

Harry didn't know what made him do it. He didn't even decide to. One moment he was standing still and the next he was walking towards it, and he heard himself shouting at the snake, 'Leave him! Get back! Leave him alone!'

And, miraculously, inexplicably, the snake stopped.

It slumped to the floor, as limp as a coil of wet rope, and turned its flat head, and its eyes found Harry's. It looked at him. Harry thought afterwards, almost respectfully. As if it were waiting to be told what to do next.

Harry felt the fear drain out of him. He knew the snake wouldn't hurt anybody now. Though he couldn't have explained how he knew.

He looked up.

Malfoy was staring at him.

She was standing quite still in the middle of the empty floor, with her wand hanging forgotten at her side. All the anger had gone out of her face. All the exhaustion, too. Her lips had parted. Her eyes had gone huge and shining, the damned twinkle larger than ever and fixed on Harry. Her silver eyes were fixed on him with an expression that Harry had never seen on anybody's face before and couldn't put a name to. If he'd had to put a name to it, he might have said it looked like the expression of somebody in church.

'It's you,' she breathed. 'It is you. It was always you. He said...'

She pressed both hands flat against her robes, over her heart, and her face lit up from the inside like a lamp. She looked, for that one moment, happier than Harry had ever seen her. Happier than he'd seen anybody. And it frightened him more than everything else that evening put together.

He looked away from her. He looked at Justin, and grinned, expecting Justin to look relieved, or puzzled, or grateful. He'd just saved his life, after all.

Justin wasn't any of those things. He was white, and shaking, and furious, and terrified.

'What's your game, Potter?' he shouted. 'What d'you think you're doing?'

And before Harry could say a single word, Justin had turned on his heel and run out of the Hall.

Snape stepped forward, waved his wand, and the snake vanished in a little puff of black smoke. But Snape, too, was looking at Harry in an unexpected way. It was a shrewd, calculating look, a weighing look, and Harry didn't like it at all. He was also dimly aware of an ominous muttering all round the walls of the Great Hall, a low, rising, rustling murmur, like the sound of a lot of people saying the same thing to each other at once.

Then somebody tugged at the back of his robes.

'Come on,' said Ron's voice in his ear. 'Move. Come on. Now.'

Ron steered him out of the Hall, with Hermione hurrying along beside them. As they went through the doors, the people on either side drew away from them, as though they were frightened of catching something. Harry looked back, once, over his shoulder.

Malfoy hadn't moved. She was still standing in the middle of the floor where the snake had been, still with her hands pressed over her heart, watching him go. Pansy was tugging at her sleeve. She didn't seem to notice. She was smiling, and her lips were moving, and Harry would have bet anything he owned that she was talking to someone who wasn't there.

Harry had no idea what was going on, and neither Ron nor Hermione explained a thing until they'd dragged him all the way up to the empty Gryffindor common room. Then Ron shoved Harry into an armchair and stood over him.

'You're a Parselmouth,' he said. 'Why didn't you say?'

'I'm a what?' said Harry.

'A Parselmouth!' said Ron. 'You can talk to snakes!'

'I know,' said Harry. 'I mean, that's only the second time I've ever done it. The first time I set a boa constrictor on my cousin Dudley at the zoo, by accident... it's a long story... but he deserved it. The snake was telling me it had never been to Brazil, and I sort of let it out without meaning to. That was before I even knew I was a wizard...'

'A boa constrictor told you it had never been to Brazil?' said Ron faintly.

'So?' said Harry. 'Loads of people here can do it. Can't they?'

'No,' said Ron. 'No, they can't. It's not a normal sort of thing, Harry. It's really rare. And this is bad. This is really, really bad.'

'What's bad?' said Harry, beginning to get angry. 'What's wrong with everybody? Look, if I hadn't told that snake to back off Justin...'

'Oh. Is that what you said to it?'

'What d'you mean? You were there. You heard me.'

'I heard you speaking Parseltongue,' said Ron, 'snake language. You could have been saying anything. No wonder Justin panicked, Look, you're my mate and I know you meant well. But from everyone else's perspective you sounded like you were egging the snake on or something. They might... They might think it was creepy, mate.'

Harry gaped at him.

'I was talking a different language? But I didn't know... how can you talk a language and not even know you're doing it?'

Ron shook his head. Both he and Hermione were looking as though somebody had died. Harry couldn't see what was so terrible about it.

'D'you want to tell me what's wrong with stopping a dirty great snake biting Justin's head off? I saved him a job with the Headless hunt. Who'd want to plod about with that lot of idiots?'

Harry's attempt at a joke didn't land. Ron sighed, in exactly the same way Mrs Weasley sighed at Mr Weasley whenever he started talking about electricity.

'It matters,' said Hermione at last, in a hushed voice. 'It matters, Harry, because that's what Salazar Slytherin was known for. Talking to snakes. It's why Slytherin's emblem is a serpent in the first place.'

'Ah' Harry said, realising everything at once. 'Bugger.'

'Yeah, Hermione's right mate. This looks dreadful for you. I'm just being honest. But it's not good. Not good at all for you, mate.' Ron had his hand on Harry's arm, supportively. 'Give it till breakfast and they'll all be saying you're his long-lost great-great-great-great-grandson.'

'But I can't be...' said Harry, with a panic he couldn't quite explain.

The last thing he needed, or wanted, was to be lumped in with the sort of dark wizards the Malfoys were descended from.

'You'd have a hard job proving it,' said Hermione. 'He was alive a thousand years ago. For all anybody knows, you might be.'

Ron went up to bed not long afterwards, yawning and still shaking his head. Harry stayed by the fire. After a while, he realised Hermione had stayed too.

She'd curled up in the armchair opposite with her knees tucked under her, and she was looking at him in the firelight. Not reading. Just looking.

'You were amazing tonight,' she said quietly. 'You know that, don't you?'

'I was a Parselmouth tonight,' said Harry gloomily. 'Apparently that's bad.'

'I don't care what you are.' Hermione said it very simply, the way you'd say the sky was blue. 'If you were Slytherin's great-great-whatever-grandson, I wouldn't care. If you were a snake yourself, I wouldn't care. You're Harry. That's all that matters. And I'm not going anywhere. Whatever they say about you tomorrow. Whatever anyone says.'

'Thanks, Hermione,' said Harry, and meant it.

She was quiet for a moment.

'She looked at you,' she said. 'Malfoy. After. Did you see how she looked at you?'

'She looked mad.'

'Yes,' said Hermione. 'She did.' She got up, and smoothed down her skirt, and paused by his chair, and for a second her hand rested on the top of his head, very lightly, like a bird landing. 'Go to bed, Harry. Don't worry about any of it. I'll take care of things. I always do.'

Harry lay awake for hours that night. Through a gap in the hangings of his four-poster he watched snow beginning to drift past the tower window, and wondered.

Could he be descended from Salazar Slytherin? He didn't know anything about his father's family, after all. The Dursleys had never let him ask questions about his wizarding relatives. Never.

Very quietly, he tried to say something in Parseltongue. The words wouldn't come. It seemed he needed to be face to face with a snake to do it.

I'm in Gryffindor, Harry told himself. The Sorting Hat put me in Gryffindor. It wouldn't have done that if there was any Slytherin in me...

Oh, wouldn't it, said a nasty little voice at the back of his mind. Have you forgotten what it said? Have you forgotten where it wanted to put you first?

Harry rolled over. He kept seeing Malfoy's face. Not the furious face, or the mad one. The last one. The shining one. It's you. It was always you. He didn't understand it at all, and the not understanding sat in his stomach like a cold stone.

He'd see Justin tomorrow in Herbology, he told himself. He'd explain. He'd tell him he'd been calling the snake off, not egging it on, which, he thought angrily, punching his pillow into shape, any idiot ought to have worked out for himself.

By the next morning, however, the snow that had started in the night had thickened into a blizzard so heavy that the last Herbology lesson of term was cancelled. Professor Sprout wanted to put socks and scarves on the Mandrakes, which was a fiddly job she wouldn't trust to anyone else, now that it mattered so much for the Mandrakes to grow quickly and bring Mrs Norris and Colin Creevey back.

Harry fretted about it by the fire in the Gryffindor common room, while Ron and Hermione spent their free lesson playing wizard chess.

'Harry, honestly,' said Hermione, exasperated, as one of Ron's bishops dragged her knight off his horse by the ankle and hauled him, kicking, off the board. 'Either sit still or go and find him. You're making me lose.'

'You were losing anyway,' said Ron.

Harry wasn't listening. He was watching the little stone knight, who'd got back to his feet at the edge of the board and was shaking his tiny fist at the bishop and calling for his horse. For no reason Harry could have explained, it made him think of Malfoy. Of Malfoy kneeling on the floor of the Great Hall with her hair round her face. Of a picture book with a knight in it, slammed shut.

That irritated him. So he got up and left through the portrait hole, wondering where Justin might be.

The castle was darker than it usually was in the daytime, because of the thick, swirling grey snow at every window. Shivering, Harry walked past classrooms where lessons were going on and caught snatches of what was happening inside. Professor McGonagall was shouting at somebody who, by the sound of it, had turned his friend into a badger. Harry resisted the urge to take a look and walked on, thinking that Justin might be using his free lesson to catch up on some work, and deciding to try the library first.

A group of the Hufflepuffs who ought to have been in Herbology were indeed sitting at the back of the library. But they didn't seem to be doing much work. Between the long rows of high bookshelves, Harry could see that they had their heads close together, deep in some absorbing conversation. He couldn't tell whether Justin was among them. He was walking towards them when some of what they were saying reached his ears, and he stopped, hidden in the Invisibility section, to listen.

'...so I said to Justin, stay up in the dormitory,' a stout boy was saying. 'Keep your head down. If Potter's picked him out as the next one, the best thing he can do is not be seen for a bit. He's been half expecting something like this, you know, ever since he let slip to Potter he was Muggle-born. Told him he'd had a place at Eton and everything. You don't go telling people that sort of thing with Slytherin's heir wandering about, do you?'

'So you really think it's Potter, Ernie?' said a girl with blonde plaits anxiously.

'Hannah.' The stout boy said it very solemnly. 'He talks to snakes. Everyone knows that's what dark wizards do. Go on. Name me one decent wizard who could talk to snakes. You can't. They used to call Slytherin himself Serpent-tongue.'

There was a good deal of heavy murmuring at this. Ernie went on.

'Think about what was on that wall. Enemies of the Heir, Beware. Potter falls out with Filch, and next thing you know, Filch's cat's been done. And that little first-year, Creevey, he's snapping away at Potter lying in the mud at the match, getting right on his nerves, and next thing you know, Creevey's been done too.'

'But he's always seemed so nice,' said Hannah uncertainly. 'And he's the one who got rid of You-Know-Who. He can't be all bad. Can he?'

Ernie lowered his voice mysteriously. The Hufflepuffs bent their heads closer, and Harry edged nearer so that he could hear.

'Nobody knows how he lived through that. Think about it. He was a baby. That curse should have blown him to bits. You'd have to be a really powerful dark wizard to come out of something like that in one piece.' He dropped his voice still further, until it was hardly more than a breath. 'Maybe that's why You-Know-Who went after him in the first place. Didn't fancy the competition. Makes you wonder what else Potter can do that he hasn't shown us yet.'

Harry couldn't take any more. He cleared his throat loudly and stepped out from behind the bookshelves. If he hadn't been feeling so angry he'd have found the sight that greeted him funny. Every one of the Hufflepuffs looked as though they'd been Petrified on the spot, and the colour was draining out of Ernie's face as though somebody had pulled a plug.

Harry decided to go theatrical, to mock the sheer idiocy of it. He drew himself up and spread his arms wide.

'Greetings, pathetic mortals' said Harry. ' It is I, the Dark Lord Potter. And I'm looking for Justin Finch-Fletchley.'

He wiggled his fingers at them spookily. He was quite determined to show these idiots just how stupid they'd sounded.

It didn't work. Instead, the Hufflepuffs' very worst fears had clearly just been confirmed. Hannah let out a small squeak. They all turned and looked fearfully at Ernie.

'What d'you want him for?' said Ernie, in a quavering voice.

Harry dropped his arms. He dropped the act, too, and let the irritation into his voice.

'I want to explain to him about the snake. What really happened at the Duelling Club.'

Ernie bit his white lips. Then he took a deep breath.

'We saw it,' he said. 'All of us. We were there.'

'Brilliant, then with those bountiful wizard given powers of observation, you must've noticed that, after I spoke to it, the snake backed off?' said Harry.

'What I saw,' said Ernie stubbornly, though he was trembling all over as he said it, 'was you hissing at it, and sending it at Justin.'

'No I bloody didn't you colossal idiot. Wind your neck back in. I tried to save him from the snake that MALFOY summoned, I might add.'

'He was lucky, that's all I'm saying,' said Ernie. 'He was very lucky. And before you start getting any ideas,' he added hastily, 'my family goes back nine generations of witches and wizards, every single one, and my blood's as pure as anybody's in this school, so...'

'I don't care what sort of blood you've got!' said Harry fiercely. 'Those ideas are bloody dreadful and need to change. Anyways, Why would I want to attack Muggle-borns? I was raised by muggles, you thick plonker.'

'Everyone says you can't stand those Muggles you live with,' said Ernie quickly.

Harry laughed. It was a short, bitter sort of laugh.

'Nobody could live with the Dursleys and not hate them,' he said. 'You come and spend a summer in my bedroom, and we'll see how much you like them.'

He turned on his heel and stormed out of the library, earning himself a filthy look from Madam Pince, who was polishing the gilded cover of a large spellbook.

He blundered off along the corridor, hardly noticing where he was going, he was in such a fury. The result was that he walked straight into something very large and solid that knocked him flat on his back.

'Hagrid! Sorry,' Harry said, looking up.

Hagrid's face was completely hidden by a woolly balaclava crusted with snow, but it couldn't possibly have been anybody else, since he filled most of the corridor in his moleskin overcoat. A dead rooster dangled from one of his huge gloved hands.

'Steady, Harry,' he said, pulling the balaclava up so he could talk. 'Wha' are yeh doin' out o' class?'

'Cancelled,' said Harry, getting up. 'What're you doing up here?'

Hagrid lifted the floppy rooster.

'Tha's the second one this term,' he said. 'Foxes, maybe. Or a Blood-Suckin' Bugbear. Either way, I'll be needin' the Headmaster ter say I can put a charm round the hen-coop.' He peered more closely at Harry from under his thick, snow-speckled eyebrows. 'Yeh all righ', Harry? Yeh look all het up.'

Harry couldn't bring himself to repeat what Ernie and the other Hufflepuffs had been saying about him.

'I'm fine,' he said. 'Got to go, Hagrid. Transfiguration's next and I need my books.'

He walked off, still seething.

Wizards were all mental, he thought. Mental and thick, the whole lot of them. He walked on, cursing and muttering under his breath about the state of wizarding society, and the stupidity of anyone who'd believe a word Ernie Macmillan said, and the stupidity of Ernie Macmillan, and the general, all-round, thoroughgoing stupidity of everybody.

He's been half expecting something like this, you know, ever since he let slip to Potter he was Muggle-born...

Harry stamped up a staircase and turned along another corridor, which was particularly dark. The torches had been blown out by a strong, icy draught that was whistling in through a loose pane in one of the windows. The snow was flinging itself against the glass. Harry slowed down without meaning to.

Somebody was singing.

It was very faint, and it was coming from somewhere further along the corridor, or perhaps round the corner at the far end, it was hard to tell with the wind. It was a girl's voice. It was high and sweet and a little cracked, and it was singing something slow and old-fashioned, a lullaby, the kind of song you'd sing to a baby to get it to sleep. Harry couldn't make out the words. But there was something about it that made the hairs rise on the back of his neck, the way they had on the night of the Deathday Party, when he'd heard the voice in the walls.

'Hello?' he said.

The singing stopped. He heard, very faintly, the sound of quick light footsteps going away round the far corner. Then there was nothing but the wind.

Myrtle, Harry told himself. Probably Myrtle, wandering. She'd sounded a bit like Myrtle. A bit.

He was halfway down the passage when he tripped headlong over something lying on the floor.

He turned to squint at what he'd fallen over, and felt as though his stomach had dissolved.

Justin Finch-Fletchley was lying on the flagstones, rigid and cold, with a look of shock frozen on his face and his eyes staring blankly up at the ceiling. And that wasn't all. Beside him was another figure, the strangest sight Harry had ever seen.

It was Nearly Headless Nick. But he wasn't pearly-white and see-through any more. He'd gone black and smoky, and he was floating, quite still and quite flat, six inches above the floor. His head was half off, and his face wore exactly the same expression of shock as Justin's.

Harry scrambled to his feet. His heart was going like a drum. He stared at them both, and something rose up in him that wasn't quite fear and wasn't quite anger, but was a great deal of both.

'No,' he said. 'No, no, no. Not now. Not you. Justin, you idiot, what are you doing up here? You were supposed to be in your dormitory! Ernie told you to stay in your dormitory! And you...' He rounded on the floating, smoky shape of Nick. 'You're dead! You're already dead! How do you even... how does something do that to a ghost?'

Neither of them answered. Of course they didn't. Justin went on staring at the ceiling.

'D'you know what this is going to look like?' Harry said to them, and his voice was shaking. 'D'you have any idea? I was just in the library, telling half of Hufflepuff I'm not the Heir of Slytherin, and now I'm standing over you on my own in a dark corridor and you're the one who ran away from me last night. They're going to say I did it. They're all going to say I did it! You couldn't have got Petrified anywhere else, could you? You couldn't have picked a corridor with somebody in it?'

As he stood there, a door right beside him burst open with a bang, and Peeves the poltergeist came zooming out.

'Well, if it isn't Potty Potter, out all on his own!' Peeves cackled, knocking Harry's glasses askew as he bounced past. 'Where's Potty going? What's Potty sneaking about for, eh? What's Potty...'

Peeves stopped, halfway through a somersault. Upside down, he'd caught sight of Justin and Nearly Headless Nick.

All of Harry's anger went out of him in one go. He knew exactly what Peeves was going to do.

Peeves flipped himself the right way up, filled his lungs, and, before Harry could stop him, screamed, 'ANOTHER ONE! ANOTHER ONE'S BEEN GOT! THE LIVING AND THE DEAD, THERE'S NOBODY SAFE! RUN! RUN FOR IT! ANOTHER ONE'S BEEN GOOOOOT!'

Bang. Bang. Bang. Door after door flew open all down the corridor, and people came flooding out. For several long minutes there was such confusion that Justin was in real danger of being trodden on, and people kept standing in Nearly Headless Nick and leaping out of him again with yells of horror. Harry found himself pinned flat against the wall while the teachers shouted for quiet. Professor McGonagall came running, followed by her own class, one of whom still had black-and-white striped hair. She raised her wand and set off a loud bang that brought instant silence, and ordered everyone back into their classrooms.

The scene had barely begun to clear when Ernie the Hufflepuff came pelting round the corner, panting.

'Caught him!' Ernie shouted. His face was stark white. He flung out his arm and pointed dramatically at Harry. 'Caught him red-handed!'

'Enough, Mr Macmillan!' said Professor McGonagall sharply.

Peeves was bobbing overhead, grinning wickedly down at it all. Peeves always loved chaos. As the teachers bent over Justin and Nearly Headless Nick, examining them, he burst into song.

'Oh Potter, the plotter, he's at it again,

He's stiffened the students and now the dead men...'

'Out, Peeves!' barked Professor McGonagall, and Peeves shot away backwards down the corridor, with his tongue stuck out at Harry.

Justin was carried up to the hospital wing by Professor Flitwick and Professor Sinistra of the Astronomy department. But nobody seemed to know what to do about Nearly Headless Nick. In the end, Professor McGonagall conjured a large fan out of thin air and handed it to Ernie, with instructions to waft Nearly Headless Nick up the stairs. This Ernie did, fanning Nick along ahead of him like a silent black hovercraft.

That left Harry and Professor McGonagall alone together.

'Come with me, Potter,' she said.

'Professor,' said Harry at once, 'I swear I didn't...'

'It isn't my decision to make, Potter,' said Professor McGonagall curtly.

They marched in silence round a corner, and she stopped in front of a large and extremely ugly stone gargoyle.

'Sherbet lemon!' she said.

This was evidently a password, because the gargoyle sprang suddenly to life and hopped aside, and the wall behind it split in two. Even full of dread about what was coming, Harry couldn't help being amazed. Behind the wall was a spiral staircase that was moving smoothly upwards, like an escalator. As he and Professor McGonagall stepped onto it, he heard the wall thud shut behind them. They rose in circles, higher and higher, round and round, until at last, feeling slightly dizzy, Harry saw a gleaming oak door ahead of them, with a brass knocker in the shape of a griffin.

He knew where he was being taken now. This had to be where Dumbledore lived.