A Yearning for Polyjuice

Professor McGonagall rapped twice on the oak door with the griffin knocker.

'Come in,' said a voice from inside.

Harry's insides turned over. He'd been in trouble before, plenty of times. He'd been in Snape's office and Filch's office and McGonagall's own office, and once, last year, in the Forbidden Forest at midnight with something drinking unicorn blood a few feet away from him. But he'd never been here. Hardly anybody ever came here. And he was coming here now because people thought he'd done something terrible.

Professor McGonagall opened the door, and they went in.

Dumbledore was behind his desk. He rose as they entered, and looked at Harry over his half-moon spectacles, a long, quiet, searching look that Harry couldn't read at all. Then he looked at Professor McGonagall.

'Mr Finch-Fletchley,' Professor McGonagall said, low and quick. 'And Sir Nicholas. The corridor by the loose window. Potter found them.'

'So I gathered.' Dumbledore came round the desk. 'I'd better see them both at once, I think. Poppy will want me. Harry, would you be good enough to wait here for me? I shan't be long. Make yourself comfortable.'

And he went out with Professor McGonagall, and the door closed softly behind them, and Harry was alone in Dumbledore's office.

For a moment he simply stood there on the rug, with his hands in his pockets, too nervous to move.

Then, slowly, with a trepidation that was nearly reverence, he began to look round. He couldn't help it. He wondered how many people ever got to see this room, and for a moment, just a small one, he let himself feel very special indeed.

It was a large and beautiful circular room, full of funny little noises. A number of curious silver instruments stood on spindle-legged tables, whirring and emitting little puffs of smoke. The walls were covered with portraits of old headmasters and headmistresses, all of whom were snoozing gently in their frames. There were witches in tall hats and wizards in long beards, and one very fat old wizard with a pipe and a parrot, and a thin-lipped witch with her hair scraped back so tightly that she looked astonished even asleep. So many strange and eccentric wizards and witches. There was also an enormous, claw-footed desk, and, sitting on a shelf behind it, a shabby, tattered wizard's hat. The Sorting Hat.

But it was one of the portraits that Harry found his eyes going back to.

It hung a little apart from the others, between two bookcases, and the first odd thing about it was that it didn't move. It wasn't asleep. It simply wasn't a wizard painting at all. It was a perfectly ordinary Muggle oil painting, in a plain gold frame, of a man in golden armour, the man in it was quite still, the way people in Muggle paintings always are.

The second odd thing was the man himself.

His head was completely bald. Not a hair on it. And his skin was blue, a deep, calm, even blue, like the sky just after the sun has gone down. He was wearing a sort of high-collared golden breastplate covered in strange curling designs, and he was looking out of the painting with an expression Harry had only ever seen on Dumbledore himself: very patient, very wise, and very, very kind, as though he'd been watching over something precious for a long time and expected to go on watching for a long time yet. There was a little brass plate screwed to the bottom of the frame. It said, For Albus. From your friend who keeps watch. May the Power protect you.

Harry stared at it for a long time. He had the oddest feeling, though he couldn't have said why, that the blue man in the gold armour was somebody important. Maybe some magical being or just a human who happened to have funny coloured skin. Then he shook himself, turned away, and his eyes fell on the Sorting Hat again.

He hesitated.

Then he looked at the door. Then at the sleeping portraits. Then he walked round the desk, very quietly, lifted the Hat off its shelf, and put it on.

It was much too big for him and slid down over his eyes, just as it had done the last time he'd worn it. And it was heavier than he remembered. Much heavier. As he settled it on his head, something inside the brim seemed to shift, he heard very faintly, a sound like a bell that has been struck a long way off. Then it was gone, and he was sitting in the dark inside the Hat, waiting.

'Back again so soon?' said a small voice in his ear. 'Something on your mind, I'd say, Harry Potter. Something sharp.'

'Er... yes,' Harry muttered. 'Sorry. Sorry to bother you. I only wanted to ask -'

'Whether I got it wrong,' said the Hat briskly. 'Whether you're where you belong. Yes. I've had a great many people ask me that over the years. I'll tell you what I tell them all: you were a hard one to place, Potter. One of the hardest. But I don't change my mind, and I haven't changed it about you.'

Harry's heart leapt.

'That sadness and pain, that need to prove yourself, the drive and resolve I noticed in you before even you did, these are all traits that Slytherin always prized.'

Harry's heart came down again, rather hard.

He sat very still under the Hat. He didn't know if it meant Slytherin the house or Slytherin the man. It had sounded, just then, a little like both.

'But Slytherin's evil,' he said. 'Everybody knows that. Slytherins are... they're all...'

'Evil?' The Hat's voice had gone sharp. If a hat could bristle, it was bristling. 'Salazar Slytherin was never evil, boy. Never. He was difficult. He was proud, and he was suspicious, and he had good reason to be, given what had been done to people like him before the four of them ever came together. He quarrelled with Godric over a great many things, and at the end over one thing too many. Then he went away. It broke Helga's heart. But evil? No. He would never have stood for it. Not in himself. And never, ever in his house.' There was a pause, and when it spoke again, the Hat's voice was quieter, and almost wistful, like it was talking about somebody it knew.

'Do you want to know something, Harry Potter? When I touched your mind, that first night, saw who you were and what you'd been through, what you'd made of it... of all the minds I've ever sat on, yours reminded me the most of Slytherin's.'

Harry didn't know what to say to that. It frightened him, a bit.

'Godric would have been proud of you too,' the Hat added, almost kindly, as if it had felt him flinch. 'Make no mistake about that. Very proud. But I'll say it again, because you need to hear it, and nobody else is going to say it to you. You'd have done well in Slytherin. Very well. And there'd have been no shame in it. Not one bit.'

Harry thought, suddenly and without meaning to, of Dracina Malfoy. Of the shining look on her face in the Great Hall. Of the word heir, screamed at him across a duel. He thought that she might very well be the Heir of Slytherin, and he found that the thought made him sadder than he'd have admitted to anybody. But he didn't know why.

'But all the dark wizards,' he said. 'All of them. They all came out of Slytherin. Voldemort did. Everyone says so.'

'That's not Slytherin's fault,' said the Hat. 'Slytherin takes the ambitious, and the cunning. And there's nothing wicked in either of those, not in itself. But they're common enough in wicked men, I grant you. Just as common as Gryffindor's courage, or Ravenclaw's cleverness. Any of those can be turned to evil, in the wrong hands. Even Hufflepuff's kindness, even its loyalty and its welcome, can be bent, Harry, by somebody who's convinced herself she's working for the greater good.' The Hat paused, as though it were remembering someone. 'And a great many of the darkest wizards I ever sat on started off with the very best of intentions. Oh, yes. The very best. Before they were drawn away. Before the master of all that darkness got his hooks into them and pulled.'

'Who?' said Harry. 'Who's the master of-'

The Hat made a sudden noise. It was a horrible, choking, gagging sort of noise, as though somebody had shoved something down its throat. And then it went limp on Harry's head, and was silent, and when he pulled it off it was nothing but a crumpled, patched old hat in his hands, and it didn't say another word.

'Hello?' said Harry, giving it a little shake. 'Are you all right? What did you...'

The gagging noise came again.

But it wasn't coming from the Hat. Harry spun round.

He wasn't alone after all. On a golden perch behind the door sat a bird. It was the most decrepit-looking bird Harry had ever seen. It looked like a half-plucked turkey. Its eyes were dull, its feathers were sparse and grey, and as Harry watched, two more of them drifted off its tail and floated to the floor. It looked back at him balefully and made its gagging noise again.

Harry thought it looked very ill. He was just thinking that all he needed was for Dumbledore's pet bird to drop dead while he was alone in the office with it, when the bird burst into flames.

Harry yelled and backed away into the desk. He looked wildly round for a jug of water, a vase, anything, but there wasn't one. The bird, meanwhile, had become a ball of fire. It gave one long, loud, ringing shriek, and the next second there was nothing left of it at all but a small, smouldering heap of ash on the floor beneath the perch.

'Ah,' said a mild voice behind him. 'I see you've met Fawkes.'

Harry jumped so violently he nearly dropped the Sorting Hat.

Dumbledore was standing just inside the door. Harry hadn't heard it open. He hadn't heard anything. And he had no idea how long Dumbledore had been there.

He looked up at him. And he couldn't help it, he looked at him with exactly the same feeling he'd had in the hospital wing at the end of last year, lying in bed with the Stone gone and Quirrell gone and Dumbledore sitting beside him: the feeling that here was the one person in the whole world who could put anything right. It must have shown on his face. And something flickered across Dumbledore's face in answer. It was only there for a moment. It looked almost like pain. Harry noticed it, and found it odd, and then it was gone and Dumbledore was only smiling at him, and Harry decided he must have imagined it.

'Have you... have you been there the whole time, Professor?'

Dumbledore chuckled.

'Only for the more interesting part,' he said. 'I didn't like to interrupt. It sounded like a fascinating conversation. The Hat so rarely gets anyone to talk to. It gets terribly lonely up on that shelf.'

Harry went red and put the Hat back very carefully where he'd found it. Then he pointed at the little pile of ash.

'Um, that wasn't me, by the way, professor. That bird looked quite ill. I'm very sorry,' Harry said, nervously but kindly.

To his astonishment, Dumbledore smiled.

'And not before time,' he said. 'He's been looking simply dreadful for days. I've been telling him to stop dawdling and get on with it.' He chuckled at the look on Harry's face. 'Fawkes is a phoenix, Harry. When the time comes for a phoenix to die, it bursts into flame, and then it rises again out of its own ashes. Watch.'

Harry looked down, just in time to see a tiny, wrinkled, newborn chick poke its head out of the ashes. It was every bit as ugly as the old one.

'It's a pity your first sight of him should be on a Burning Day,' said Dumbledore, settling himself in the high-backed chair behind his desk. 'Most of the time he's really very handsome. Scarlet and gold, like a sunset. Remarkable creatures, phoenixes. They can lift enormous weights, and their tears will heal almost any wound, and there is no friend more faithful in the world. They're some of the very last remnants of a long gone age, Harry.'

In the shock of Fawkes going up in flames, Harry had forgotten why he was there. But it all came flooding back as Dumbledore folded his long hands on the desk and fixed him with that penetrating, light-blue stare.

Before Dumbledore could say another word, though, the office door flew open with an almighty bang and Hagrid burst in. He had a wild look in his eyes, and his snowy balaclava was perched on top of his shaggy black head, and the dead rooster was still swinging from his fist.

'Professor Dumbledore, it weren't Harry!' Hagrid said urgently. 'I was talkin' to him, sir, I was talkin' to him not two minutes before tha' lad was found, there's no way he coulda...'

Dumbledore opened his mouth, but Hagrid was in full flood, and waving the rooster about as he talked, so that feathers went everywhere.

'...an' I'll say it to the Ministry, sir, I'll say it in front o' the whole Wizengamot if I've got ter...'

'Hagrid...'

'...yeh've got the wrong one, Professor, I know Harry, he'd never in a million...'

'Hagrid!' said Dumbledore loudly. 'I do not believe that Harry attacked anybody.'

'Oh,' said Hagrid. The rooster sank slowly to his side. 'Oh. Righ'. Well. I'll... I'll jus' wait outside, then, Professor.'

And he stomped out again, looking very embarrassed, and shut the door behind him with enormous care.

'You don't think it was me, Professor?' said Harry, hardly daring to hope.

'I do not, Harry,' said Dumbledore, brushing rooster feathers off his blotter. But his face had gone grave again. 'Nevertheless, I should like a word with you.'

Harry waited, his heart thumping, while Dumbledore considered him over the tips of his long fingers.

'I must ask you, Harry,' he said gently, 'whether there's anything at all you'd like to tell me. Anything you think I ought to know. However small. However strange.'

Harry didn't know what to say.

He thought of Malfoy shouting, 'You'll be next, Mudblood!' at Hermione, in front of the whole school, on the night Mrs Norris was found. He thought of all her strange, wild behaviour since, and the duel, and the way she'd looked at him afterwards. He thought of the Polyjuice Potion, bubbling away quietly in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. Then he thought of the voice he'd heard, twice now, in the walls, and remembered what Ron had said about hearing voices that nobody else could hear. And he thought about what everyone was saying about him, and the cold, creeping dread that he was somehow, in some way he didn't understand, connected with Salazar Slytherin.

And for a moment, sitting in that big chair in that big room, Harry Potter was nothing but a scared little boy.

'I... no. No, professor. Everything is being handled.'

Dumbledore raised an eyebrow.

Harry cursed himself silently. Being handled. What had he gone and said that for?

'Not to worry, Harry,' Dumbledore said, in a warm, grandfatherly voice. 'I'm sure you have this all well in hand and are keeping yourself safe.'

He leaned very heavily on the last word.

Harry nodded. Dumbledore nodded back, contentedly, as if that settled it.

If Harry had been a little older, or a little less frightened, he might have noticed what was in Dumbledore's eyes just then. He might have seen the grave concern there, and known that Dumbledore knew perfectly well he'd just been lied to. He might even have seen, behind the concern, how carefully Dumbledore was weighing things up: what he could do, and what he couldn't, and how far he could move without stirring up something much bigger and much older than a schoolboy's secret, something that was waiting, out there in the dark, for him to make exactly that mistake. But Harry wasn't older, and he was very frightened, and so he only saw an old man smiling kindly at him over his spectacles.

Dumbledore rose, and came round the desk, and laid a gentle hand on Harry's shoulder, and walked him to the door himself.

Hagrid was waiting outside on the landing, wedged into the space at the top of the moving staircase with his knees up round his ears, still clutching the rooster.

'All righ', Harry?' he said anxiously, struggling up. 'He didn' blame yeh? Course he didn'. Course he didn'. I knew he wouldn'. Dumbledore's got more sense than the whole Ministry put together.' He clapped Harry on the back so hard his glasses slid down his nose. 'Come on. I'll walk yeh back ter the tower. Not havin' yeh go on yer own, not with things the way they are.'

They went down the moving staircase together, which was a very tight squeeze, and past the gargoyle, and along the corridors, with the snow still beating against the dark windows. Hagrid kept up a steady stream of talk the whole way, about the rooster, and the Blood-Sucking Bugbear he was going to have a word with if he ever caught it, and how Fang had got his head stuck in a bucket on Tuesday. Harry knew he was doing it on purpose, to stop him thinking. He was grateful.

At the foot of the Gryffindor staircase, Hagrid stopped.

'Harry,' he said, and his beetle-black eyes had gone serious. 'Them Hufflepuffs. An' the rest of 'em. Whatever they're sayin'. Yeh don' listen to it, righ'? Yeh hear me? I knew yer mum an' dad. There wasn' a dark bone in either of 'em, an' there's not one in you.' He hesitated. 'An' if there's somethin' yeh're not tellin' Dumbledore, which I'm not sayin' there is, mind, but if there was... yeh can always tell me. Any time. I won' go blabbin'.'

Harry thought of the last time Hagrid had been trusted with a secret, and of a stranger in a hood buying him drinks in the Hog's Head, and Fluffy, and a dragon egg. He managed a smile.

'Thanks, Hagrid,' he said. 'I know.'

The double attack on Justin and Nearly Headless Nick turned what had been nervousness into real panic.

Oddly enough, it was what had happened to Nearly Headless Nick that seemed to frighten people most. Everybody had their own theory about what could have done it to Justin. But what could possibly do that to a ghost? What terrible power could hurt someone who was already dead? People asked each other in whispers in the corridors and over breakfast, and nobody had an answer, and the not having one was worse than any answer could have been. There was very nearly a stampede to book seats on the Hogwarts Express so that people could go home for Christmas.

'Carry on like this and it'll just be us,' Ron said to Harry and Hermione, watching the queue for Professor McGonagall's list stretch halfway down the corridor. 'Us, and Malfoy, and Crabbe and Goyle. That'll be cosy. Christmas crackers with the Slytherins. I can't wait.'

Crabbe and Goyle, who always did whatever Malfoy did, had put their names down to stay over the holidays too. Harry suspected they were quietly relieved that Neville was going home.

But Harry was glad most people were leaving. He was sick of it. He was sick of people flattening themselves against the walls when he came round a corner, as if he might bite. He was sick of the muttering, and the pointing, and the hissing, actual hissing, as he went past, from people who seemed to think it was funny. Even Malfoy joined in. But oddly enough, she only ever did it when Crabbe and Goyle were with her, and even then it was a feeble sort of hiss, and she always looked at him afterwards as if she were waiting to see whether he'd liked it.

Fred and George, on the other hand, thought the whole thing was hilarious.

'Stand aside, stand aside!' Fred bellowed, striding ahead of Harry down the third-floor corridor one morning, scattering terrified second-years. 'Heir of Slytherin coming through! Thoroughly evil! Mind your ankles!'

'Highly dangerous!' George chimed in from behind. 'Do not make eye contact! Do not offer him food! He bites!'

Percy came round the corner and stopped dead.

'This,' he said icily, 'is not a joke.'

'Move, Percy,' said Fred. 'Harry's got places to be.'

'He's popping down to the Chamber of Secrets,' said George, 'for a nice cup of tea and a biscuit with his giant fanged pet.'

'Oh, don't,' Ginny wailed. She'd come up behind them with an armful of books, and her face was white. It was what she said every time Fred asked Harry at the top of his voice who he was planning to finish off next, or George jumped back from him in the Great Hall and held up a huge clove of garlic to ward him off. 'Please don't. It's not funny.'

Harry didn't mind. It made him feel better, if anything, that Fred and George at least thought the idea of his being Slytherin's heir was completely ridiculous.

But their antics seemed to be drawing in Dracina Malfoy.

Every time she passed them in a corridor while Fred and George were at it, she slowed down. She watched. And there was a look on her face that Harry couldn't make head or tail of. It wasn't a sneer. It was almost approval. As though Fred and George had finally, by accident, said something she agreed with. For some bizarre reason, probably to do with her being a bully in general, Malfoy had begun telling anyone who'd listen that Harry Potter was the Heir of Slytherin, and that he would rise, and that he'd rid the school of every last Mudblood in it.

'It's because she's dying to tell everyone it's really her,' said Ron, with an air of great wisdom. 'You know what she's like. She can't stand anyone being better than her at anything. And now you're getting all the credit for her dirty work and she's having to go round pretending she's pleased about it.'

'But she's saying it seriously, not sarcastically. That's what's bothering me,' said Harry.

He was remembering the Duelling Club. The snake slumped on the floor. The look on her face when she'd seen it obey him.

'It's like she actually believes it,' Harry finished.

'She's not right in the head, Harry. We've all seen that now,' Hermione insisted.

Ron put a hand on her shoulder, without saying anything.

Harry looked at Hermione properly, and didn't much like what he saw. She'd been completely fixated on the Polyjuice Potion for weeks, and it showed. She looked tired, and pale. She'd started snapping at people, at Neville, at Ron, even once at Professor Flitwick, and there was an intensity in her that was even fiercer than usual, as though something inside her had been wound up very tight and was still being wound.

'Not for long,' said Hermione, under her breath. 'Soon...'

She said it with a sort of relish. Harry didn't know what she meant by it, and he didn't like to ask.

Then Hermione seemed to notice Ron's hand on her shoulder. She looked at it for a second as though she'd forgotten he was there. Then she reached up and gave it a quick, grateful squeeze, and some of the tightness went out of her face, and she was herself again.

'The Polyjuice's nearly ready. We'll be getting the truth out of her any day now,' Hermione said, with satisfaction.

That night, Harry couldn't sleep. At about three in the morning he gave up trying, and went down to the common room for a glass of water, and found that the fire was still lit.

Hermione was asleep in the armchair nearest it.

She had Moste Potente Potions open on her lap and her quill still in her hand, and there was a long smear of ink across her cheek where she'd dropped off on top of her notes. She was muttering in her sleep. Harry went over to wake her and tell her to go up to bed, and as he bent down he caught a few of the words.

'I was first... she can't have...'

Harry stood very still.

Then Hermione's eyes flew open, and she saw him, and she sat bolt upright so fast that the book slid off her lap and hit the floor with a thump.

'Harry! What... what time is it?'

'Late,' said Harry. 'You were asleep. You were talking.'

'Was I?' Hermione bent quickly and picked up the book. Her cheeks had gone pink. 'What did I say?'

Harry hesitated.

'Nothing,' he said. 'Couldn't make it out. Go to bed, Hermione. You look done in.'

She went. But Harry stayed by the fire for a long time afterwards, looking at the embers, with an odd, uneasy feeling that he didn't have a name for.

He had another one of those feelings two days later, on the last afternoon of term, when Malfoy caught him alone.

It was on a staircase between the Charms corridor and the library. Harry had gone back for a book Ron had left behind, and Malfoy came down the stairs as he was going up, without Crabbe, or Goyle, or Pansy, or anybody. She stopped two steps above him, so that for once she was taller.

'Potter.'

'Not now, Malfoy.'

'I'm not going to hex you.' She looked round quickly, up and down the empty stairs, the way people do when they're about to tell a secret. Then she leaned down towards him, and her voice dropped so low he could barely hear it. 'I know.'

'Know what?'

'It's all right. You don't have to pretend. Not with me.' Her eyes were enormous. There were shadows under them so dark they looked like bruises. 'I saw you. With the snake. I know what you are. And I won't tell. I'd never, ever tell. I just... I wanted you to know that I know. And that I'm on your side. I've always been on your side. Even when it didn't look like it. Especially when it didn't look like it.'

'Malfoy, I'm not the Heir of Slytherin,' said Harry slowly, as if he were talking to somebody very young, or very ill. 'I'm not. I was telling that snake to leave Justin alone.'

She smiled at him. It was a very tender smile, and a very patient one, and it made Harry's skin crawl.

'Of course you were,' she said softly. 'Of course you were, Harry. That's what you'd have to say. I understand. He said you would.'

'Who said?'

But she'd already gone, running lightly down the stairs, and when he leaned over the banister to shout after her, she'd vanished round the corner, and all he could hear was her footsteps, and then, very faint, the sound of her laughing.

At last the term ended, and a silence as deep as the snow on the grounds settled over the castle.

Harry found it peaceful rather than gloomy. He liked having the run of Gryffindor Tower with Hermione and the Weasleys. They could play Exploding Snap as loudly as they liked without anybody complaining, and practise duelling in private in the empty common room, with the furniture pushed back against the walls. Fred, George and Ginny had all decided to stay at school rather than go out to Egypt with Mr and Mrs Weasley to visit Bill. Percy, who disapproved of what he called their childish behaviour, didn't spend much time in the common room. He'd already told them, very pompously, that he was only staying over Christmas because it was his duty as a Prefect to support the teachers through this difficult time.

Harry didn't care why any of them were staying. He was just glad they were. He'd started, very tentatively, and without ever saying so out loud, to think of the Weasleys as a sort of family. Not his family, exactly. He didn't dare think that. But something near it. And having all of them there with him at Christmas, filling up the tower with noise and Exploding Snap and Fred's fireworks, was the closest thing to a proper family Christmas he'd ever had.

On Christmas Eve the snow stopped, and the sun came out on a world gone white and blazing, and the Weasleys dragged him out into the grounds for a snowball fight.

It was brilliant. It was war. Fred and George built a fort by the frozen lake and defended it with snowballs that had been bewitched to chase people, and Ron and Harry stormed it, and Ginny, who turned out to have a throwing arm like a Beater's, took Percy's hat off at forty yards when he came out to tell them all to be careful. Hermione had come out too, in two scarves, and stood on the edge of it all laughing, and every so often somebody would hit her by accident and she'd shriek and throw one back very badly, and somehow it always seemed to land on Ron.

At one point, flat on his back in a snowdrift with Fred sitting on his chest, Harry looked up at the castle. And saw, very high up, in one of the tall windows on the lake side of the castle, a pale face.

Somebody was watching them. A girl, with long fair hair. She had both hands pressed against the glass. She was quite still, and even from all the way down there, Harry thought she looked terribly alone.

Then Fred shoved a handful of snow down the back of his neck, and when Harry had finished yelling and looked up again, the window was empty.

Later, when they'd all gone in to thaw out by the fire, Ginny sidled up to him. She'd gone very red, the way she always did.

'I've got you something,' she said in a rush. 'For Christmas. It's not much. It's only... I made it.'

It was a card. She'd painted it herself, and it showed a little figure on a broomstick, with black hair and round glasses, catching a golden Snitch against a blue sky. It wasn't very good. But it had obviously taken her ages.

'It's brilliant, Ginny,' said Harry, and meant it. 'Thanks.'

Ginny went redder still, and squeaked, and fled up the girls' staircase. Harry propped the card up on the mantelpiece, next to the treacle fudge he was planning to soften, and when he turned round Hermione was looking at it. She didn't say anything at all.

Christmas morning dawned cold and white.

Harry and Ron, the only ones left in their dormitory, were woken at a very early hour by Hermione, who burst in fully dressed, carrying presents for both of them.

'Up!' she said loudly, and dragged back the curtains at the window, so that a blaze of white snow-light fell across both beds.

'Hermione,' Ron groaned, throwing an arm over his eyes. 'You can't come in here. It's the boys' dormitory. There are rules.'

'Happy Christmas to you too,' said Hermione, and threw his present at him. 'I've been up nearly an hour. I've just been down to add the last of the lacewings. It's ready.'

Harry sat up, suddenly wide awake.

'You're sure?'

'Completely,' said Hermione, shoving Scabbers aside so that she could sit on the end of Ron's bed. Scabbers squeaked indignantly. 'And if we're going to do it, I think it ought to be tonight.'

At that moment Hedwig swooped in through the window, carrying a very small package in her beak.

'Hello, you,' said Harry happily, as she landed on his bed. 'Have you forgiven me, then? For the car?'

She nibbled his ear affectionately, which was a much better present than the one she'd brought him. That turned out to be from the Dursleys. They had sent Harry a single toothpick and a note telling him to find out whether he could stay at Hogwarts over the summer holidays, too.

Harry turned the toothpick over in his fingers and laughed. He had no idea what the Dursleys were going on about. He had no intention of ever going back to them again. Not ever. He'd be going home with the Weasleys come the summer. Mrs Weasley had said so herself, in the kitchen at the Burrow, with her hand on his head. As long as you want.

The rest of Harry's presents were a great deal more satisfactory. Hagrid had sent him a large tin of treacle fudge, which Harry decided to soften by the fire before he tried to eat it. Ron had given him Flying with the Cannons, a book of interesting facts about his favourite Quidditch team. And Hermione had bought him a magnificent eagle-feather quill, long and dark and glossy, in a little box lined with green velvet.

'Do you like it?' she said anxiously, watching his face. 'I didn't know if you'd... I wanted to get you something you'd use every day. Something you'd keep.'

'It's brilliant, Hermione,' said Harry. 'Thanks.'

He opened the last present. It was a new hand-knitted jumper from Mrs Weasley, a deep, warm, Gryffindor red this time, with a gold H on the front, and a large plum cake. He held the jumper for a long moment without saying anything. Last year's had been the first present anybody had ever given him. This one was the second Christmas in a row that somebody had thought of him. He found that he was so delighted, and so touched by how thoughtful and kind Mrs Weasley was, that he had to look out of the window for a bit until his eyes stopped stinging.

Then he propped up her card on his bedside table, with a fresh stab of guilt. He was thinking of Mr Weasley's car, which nobody had seen since it had crashed into the Whomping Willow and roared off into the Forest, and of the bout of rule-breaking that he and Ron were planning for later that very evening.

Nobody, not even somebody who was dreading drinking Polyjuice Potion in a few hours, could have failed to enjoy Christmas dinner at Hogwarts.

The Great Hall looked magnificent. There were a dozen frost-covered Christmas trees, and thick streamers of holly and mistletoe criss-crossing the ceiling, and enchanted snow falling, warm and dry, from the enchanted sky. Dumbledore led them in several of his favourite carols, with Hagrid booming louder and louder with every goblet of eggnog he put away. Percy hadn't noticed that Fred had bewitched his Prefect badge so that it now read Pinhead, and kept asking them all what they were sniggering about.

Once, between the turkey and the pudding, Harry looked up and found Dumbledore watching him from the staff table. Dumbledore smiled, and raised his goblet very slightly, the way you'd raise a glass to a friend across a room. Harry raised his pumpkin juice back. He felt warm right through to his toes.

He didn't even care that Dracina Malfoy was making loud, snide remarks from the Slytherin table.

She was wearing a new blouse. It was dark green silk with little silver buttons all the way down, and very obviously expensive, and she was talking about it, loudly, to the whole of the near-empty Slytherin table, so that every Slytherin there had to hear about where it came from and how much it had cost. She kept checking their faces for a reaction. Then, every single time, she'd check Harry's.

Harry wouldn't give her the satisfaction. He kept his face perfectly blank and went on eating his pudding. He wasn't going to look annoyed, and he wasn't going to look upset, and he certainly wasn't going to look jealous, which was what she was obviously after.

Except that it didn't seem to be what she was after either. The blanker he looked, the more frustrated she got. By the time the crackers came round she'd stopped talking about the blouse altogether and was just glaring at him, with her lips pressed together and her knuckles white round her goblet, as though he'd failed some test that he hadn't known he was sitting. It was so annoying.

With a bit of luck, Harry thought, Malfoy would be getting what was coming to her in a few hours' time.

Although, privately, and despite everything Hermione said, Harry still wasn't sure. He still had a sneaking feeling that tonight might turn out to prove Dracina wasn't the heir at all. Maybe there was a perfectly rational explanation for all of it. Maybe she just liked going round the castle at night, talking to herself, and saying Tom to empty chairs, and telling people they'd be next, and looking at snakes as if they were birthday presents. Maybe she was just very, very keen on interior decoration. Maybe the hissing in the walls was the plumbing.

Of course it was Malfoy, Harry told himself firmly. Of course the heir had to be Dracina. What other explanation could there possibly be?

He found that he didn't feel nearly as sure of it as he'd have liked.

Harry and Ron had barely finished their third helpings of Christmas pudding when Hermione hustled them out of the Hall to go over the plan for the evening.

'We still need a bit of the people you're changing into,' said Hermione, in a very matter-of-fact voice. But it was that same insistent tone she always seemed to use now when the subject was Malfoy, as though she were sending them off to the supermarket for a box of washing powder that she needed for a war. 'And obviously, it'll be best if you can get something of Crabbe and Goyle's; they're Malfoy's best friends, She tells them everything. I've watched her. She confides in them even though they're so gormless. She doesn't even notice how stupid they are.'

She said it smugly.

'Great plan, Hermione,' Harry said dryly. 'But you're missing that we also need to make sure the real Crabbe and Goyle can't burst in on us while we're interrogating her. In your war plan, did you ever figure that into it?'

Hermione nodded. She'd known he'd ask, and she'd been waiting for it, and she knew the answer would impress him.

'It's all taken care of,' she went on smoothly, sailing straight past the stunned looks on Harry and Ron's faces. She held up two plump little chocolate cakes, beautifully iced. 'These have got a Sleeping Draught in them. Only a simple one. All you need to do is leave them somewhere Crabbe and Goyle will find them. You know how greedy they are, and how thick. They'll eat them, they won't even think. Then, once they're out cold, you pull out a few of their hairs and put them away in a broom cupboard till we're done.'

Harry and Ron looked at each other in disbelief.

'And then we feed them to the fishes, I suppose?' Harry said dryly.

'Hermione, I don't think...' Ron said diplomatically, trying to find the words.

'Hermione, Please. This could go really badly wrong,' said Harry insistently.

But there was a steely glint in Hermione's eye that was not at all unlike the one Professor McGonagall sometimes got.

'Without their hair the Potion's worthless,' she said sternly. 'A month's work down the drain. You do want to find out what Malfoy's up to, don't you? Or have you changed your minds?'

'All right,' said Harry. 'All right. Fine. What about you, then? Whose hair are you going to be yanking out?'

'Oh, I've got mine already!' said Hermione brightly. She pulled a tiny glass bottle out of her pocket and held it up. There was a single dark hair inside it. 'Millicent Bulstrode. At the Duelling Club, remember, when she had me in that headlock? This was on my robes afterwards. And she's gone home for the holidays, so I'll just have to tell the Slytherins I've decided to come back early.'

She bustled off to check on the Potion again. Ron turned to Harry with an expression of deepest doom.

'Have you ever,' he said, 'in your whole life, heard of a plan with more ways of going wrong?'

'No, first time for me, mate,' Harry said sarcastically.

And despite how dire it all was, they both burst out laughing.

But to Harry and Ron's complete amazement, the first part of the plan went exactly as smoothly as Hermione had said it would.

They hung about in the empty Entrance Hall after Christmas tea, waiting. Crabbe and Goyle had stayed behind on their own at the Slytherin table, working their way through fourth helpings of trifle. Harry had balanced the two chocolate cakes on the end of the banisters, where nobody could miss them.

There'd been a scene at the Slytherin table, just before. Harry had seen it on his way out. Malfoy had left something lying beside her plate while she reached for the cream, something small and black, and Goyle had absently put out one fat hand towards it. Then Malfoy had turned on him like a cat. She'd screamed at him. She'd snatched it up, clutched it to her chest, and screamed at him, right there in the Great Hall in front of the staff table, until Goyle had gone purple and Professor Sprout had half risen from her seat. Then she'd stormed out with the thing held against her heart, leaving Crabbe and Goyle looking sullen and bewildered over their trifle.

It was the black book. Harry was sure of it. He'd seen it before, in Potions, with the ink sinking into the page. He'd seen her hand go to it at the Duelling Club, again and again, as if she couldn't help it. And he was starting to notice, now that he thought about it, that the book was never very far from Malfoy. Not ever. Not at meals, not in lessons, not in the corridors. She carried it everywhere. It was precious to her. But why?

Now Crabbe and Goyle came shambling out of the Great Hall, and Harry and Ron ducked behind a suit of armour next to the front doors.

'Bloody hell, look at them. They could play for one of Dean's football teams if they ever started having English people again. The state of them,' Ron whispered ecstatically.

Crabbe had spotted the cakes. He pointed them out to Goyle with a grunt of delight, and grabbed them both, and gave one to Goyle. Grinning stupidly, they each stuffed a whole cake into their large mouths. For a moment they both chewed greedily, with looks of triumph on their faces. Then, without the slightest change of expression, they both toppled over backwards onto the floor.

Much the hardest part was getting them into the cupboard across the hall.

Harry got Crabbe under the arms and heaved. Crabbe weighed about as much as a small rhinoceros, and he had a great deal more of him in places than seemed strictly necessary, and by halfway across the hall Harry was muttering several distinctly unchristian words under his breath at Crabbe's expense. Ron gave him a look of deep sympathy and support. Then he got hold of Goyle's ankles, and heaved, and launched into a tirade of his own that went on all the way to the cupboard door and would have made Fred and George proud.

Once the pair of them were safely stowed among the buckets and mops, Harry yanked out a couple of the bristles that covered Goyle's low forehead, and Ron pulled out a few of Crabbe's hairs. They also took Crabbe and Goyle's shoes, because their own would be far too small once they had Crabbe and Goyle's feet. Then, still stunned at what they'd just done, they sprinted up the marble staircase towards Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.

'Bloody hell,' cried an exasperated Ron, as it began to sink in what they were actually about to do.

'I know, Ron. I know,' Harry waved his hands.

'Bloody Hermione,' groaned Ron.

'I know, that too. Bloody hell...' Harry sighed.

They went on like that the whole way up, bitterly agreeing with each other about what a way it was to spend Christmas Day, and whose fault it all was, until they reached the bathroom.

They could hardly see for the thick black smoke pouring out of the cubicle where Hermione was stirring the cauldron. Pulling their robes up over their faces, Harry and Ron knocked softly on the door.

'Hermione?'

They heard the scrape of the lock, and Hermione came out, shiny-faced and anxious. Behind her they could hear the gloop, gloop of the bubbling, treacle-thick Potion. Three glass tumblers were standing ready on the toilet seat.

'Have you got them?' Hermione said breathlessly.

Harry held up Goyle's hair between finger and thumb with a great dramatic flourish, like a magician producing a rabbit out of a hat. Hermione giggled.

'Brilliant. And I've smuggled these out of the laundry,' she said, holding up a small sack. 'Bigger robes. You'll need them once you're the size of Crabbe and Goyle.'

The three of them stared down into the cauldron. Close to, the Potion looked like thick, dark mud, bubbling sluggishly.

'I've done it right,' said Hermione, nervously going over the splotched page of Moste Potente Potions one more time. 'I'm sure I have. It looks exactly how the book says it ought to look... Once we've drunk it, we've got one hour exactly, and then we turn back into ourselves.'

'What now?' Ron whispered.

'Now we split it into three, and put the hairs in.'

Hermione ladled big dollops of the Potion into each of the glasses. Then, with her hand trembling, she shook Millicent Bulstrode's hair out of its little bottle into the first glass.

The Potion hissed like a kettle coming to the boil and frothed up wildly. A second later it had turned a sickly sort of yellow.

'Eurgh,' said Ron, eyeing it with loathing. 'Millicent Bulstrode, extra strength. That's going to taste foul, that is.'

'Go on, then,' said Hermione. 'Yours.'

Harry dropped Goyle's hair into the middle glass, and Ron put Crabbe's into the last one. Both glasses hissed and frothed. Goyle's went the khaki colour of a bogey. Crabbe's went a dark, murky brown.

'Cream of Goyle soup. Lovely,' Harry said, drier than a desert after a heatwave.

Ron and Hermione reached for their glasses.

'Hang on,' said Harry. 'We'd better not all drink them in here: once we turn into Crabbe and Goyle we won't fit. And Millicent Bulstrode's... well she's a big girl, Hermione.'

'Fair point,' said Ron, unlocking the door. 'One each, then. Separate cubicles.'

Taking great care not to spill a drop, Harry slipped into the middle cubicle.

'Everyone ready?' he called.

'Ready,' came Ron's voice, and then Hermione's.

'On three, then. One... two... three...'

Harry held his breath and tipped the whole lot down his throat in one go. It went down like cold gravy with lumps in it, and it tasted of boiled socks, and underneath the socks of something much worse that he didn't want to think about.

For a second, nothing happened.

Then his stomach clenched like a fist. Something hot and heavy went rolling outwards from it, through his chest and down his arms and into his legs, and he fell forward onto his hands on the cold tiles, gasping. It felt as though somebody had got hold of him at both ends and was rolling him out like pastry. His hands swelled under his eyes like dough left by a fire, the fingers going thick and blunt, the knuckles coming up like walnuts. His shoulders pushed outwards with a horrible creaking ache, and he heard the seams of his robes give way one after another, pop, pop, pop, like a row of buttons. His forehead crawled. His scalp crawled. And his feet, crammed into his own trainers, felt as though they were being crushed in a vice.

Then it was over, all at once, the way a cramp lets go.

Harry lay with his cheek on the stone floor, breathing hard, listening to Myrtle moaning to herself somewhere at the far end of the bathroom. Very slowly he sat up. He prised off his trainers. He peeled off the rags of his own robes, which now came barely past his knees, and dragged on the big spare ones from Hermione's sack, and stuffed his huge new feet into Goyle's enormous shoes. The world was swimming. It took him a moment to work out why. He pulled his glasses off, and the blur cleared at once. Goyle, it seemed, could see perfectly well. It was about the only thing Goyle could do perfectly well.

He let himself out of the cubicle and went to the cracked mirror over the sinks.

Goyle looked back at him. The little dull eyes, sunk deep under a shelf of brow. The heavy, drooping jaw. The hair growing so low on the forehead that there was barely any forehead left at all. Harry lifted one hand and touched his own cheek, and Goyle lifted one hand and touched his, and Harry felt his stomach turn right over.

The door of the next cubicle banged open, and Crabbe came out.

Except it was Ron. It was Ron looking out of Crabbe's face, pale and stunned, and that was much worse than Crabbe looking out of it. He came over and stood next to Harry at the mirror and stared at himself.

'I've got his nose,' said Ron, in a slow, thick voice that wasn't his at all. He poked it. 'Look at it. It's like a potato that's given up on life.'

Harry looked at the two of them in the mirror, side by side, Crabbe and Goyle, huge and lumpen and vacant, and the thought came into his head before he could stop it. What on earth did someone as pretty as Dracina ever see in these two thickos? Why would she want them following her about everywhere?

He waved the thought away. It was a stupid thing to wonder. Why did he keep thinking about Dracina at all?

His watch strap was biting into Goyle's wrist like a tourniquet. He let it out to the last hole.

'Come on,' he said. 'Clock's ticking. And we haven't even worked out how we're getting into their common room yet.'

'Don't frown,' said Ron, wincing. 'Mate, please. Goyle's face isn't built for frowning. It looks like it's about to slide off.' He went and thumped on Hermione's door. 'Come on, Hermione, we've got to go...'

'I... I'm fine,' said Hermione's voice, from the other side of the door. It was high and strange. 'I'm fine. But I'm not coming. You'll have to go without me.'

'Hermione, nobody's going to laugh, honest. We all look horrible. Look at us. We're Crabbe and Goyle...'

'I'm not coming,' said Hermione. Her voice had gone up even higher, and there was panic in it, and something else, something furious. 'I said I'm fine! Go! You're wasting time! Don't worry about me! Just go!'

'Are you sure you're all...'

'GO!'

Ron looked at Harry, bewildered. Harry looked back.

'Come on,' he said at last, reluctantly. 'She said go.'

As they went, Harry thought he heard something from behind the cubicle door. It was a small, wet, whimpering sound, the sound of somebody trying very hard not to cry. And under it, quite faintly, Hermione's voice.

'I thought I did it right. I thought I was right.'

Harry stopped.

'Get a move on, mate,' said Ron, in Crabbe's voice, tugging at his sleeve. 'We've only got an hour. She'll be all right. She's Hermione.'

They went.

Halfway down the stairs, Harry and Ron both stopped dead at the same moment, and looked at each other in horror.

'We don't know where it is,' said Ron. 'The Slytherin common room. We haven't got a clue.'

'Then we'll have to follow somebody,' said Harry. 'Act natural. Act like them.'

They tried. They did their best, on the way down the marble staircase, to walk the way Crabbe and Goyle walked, which was a sort of slouching, knuckle-dragging shamble with the shoulders hunched up and the mouth hanging open. They weren't very good at it. Ron kept forgetting and walking normally. Harry kept forgetting to let his mouth hang open.

All they needed now was a Slytherin they could follow down to the Slytherin common room. But the Entrance Hall was deserted.

'Any ideas?' Harry muttered.

'They always come up from over there in the mornings,' said Ron, nodding towards the entrance to the dungeons.

The words were hardly out of his mouth when a girl with long curly hair came out of it.

'Scuse me,' said Ron, hurrying up to her. 'We've, er, forgotten how to get back to our common room.'

The girl looked him up and down.

'Your common room?' she said stiffly. 'I'm in Ravenclaw.'

She walked off, looking back over her shoulder at them suspiciously.

They went down the steps into the dungeons, Goyle's great flat feet slapping on the stone so loudly that Harry winced at every step. The passages branched, and branched again, and wound back on themselves like a ball of wool a kitten had been at. There wasn't a soul about. They went deeper and deeper under the castle, and the air got colder and wetter, and every few minutes one or other of them looked at his watch and wished he hadn't.

'Oh, brilliant,' Harry muttered, after the third dead end. 'Marvellous. Really. Who designed this place? Who looked at a dungeon and thought, you know what this needs, more corridors that go nowhere? I hope Slytherin enjoyed himself. I hope he had a lovely time.'

'Oi,' said Ron. 'Stop that.'

'Stop what?'

'That. That's you. That's not Goyle. Goyle doesn't do sarcasm, mate, Goyle doesn't know what sarcasm is. You're standing there being all dry and clever with his face on, it's creepy. Grunt or something.'

Harry grunted. It came out rather sarcastically.

Fifteen minutes had gone, and they were beginning to panic, when a door creaked somewhere up ahead.

'Finally,' breathed Ron. 'Slytherin. Got to be.'

Somebody was stepping out of a little side room into the passage. They hurried towards him, and then both pulled up short, and Harry felt his heart drop into Goyle's enormous shoes. It was Percy.

'Percy?' said Ron, startled out of being Crabbe. 'What are you doing all the way down here?'

Percy drew himself up. He'd gone rather pink about the ears.

'I hardly think,' he said, 'that's any concern of yours. Crabbe, is it?'

'Er... yeah. Yeah. Crabbe. That's me.'

'Then you can take yourself off to bed, Crabbe, and your friend with you,' said Percy severely. 'Roaming about down here in the dark, with things the way they are. It's asking for trouble.'

'Well, you're roaming about down here,' said Ron.

'I,' said Percy, swelling, 'am a Prefect. It's my job to roam. Whatever's loose in this castle isn't going to go for a Prefect.'

There was a sharp clicking sound behind them, like somebody snapping their fingers. Harry turned round.

Dracina Malfoy was sauntering up the passage towards them. She was still wearing the green silk blouse, with a black cloak thrown over it, and she had her chin up and her hands in her cloak pockets, and for once she looked exactly like her old self: proud, bored, and perfectly sure that the whole world had been arranged for her convenience.

She clicked her fingers again.

'Crabbe. Goyle. There you are. I've been looking for you everywhere. Have you been pigging out in the Great Hall all this time? Come on. Now.'

'They'll do no such thing,' said Percy. 'They're going straight to bed. And so are you, Miss Malfoy. It isn't safe for students to be...'

Malfoy looked at him. She looked at him slowly, up and down, from his polished shoes to his polished badge, and the corner of her lip curled.

'Isn't it, Weasley? How very good of you to say so. I'll be sure to tell my father how concerned you were. He's a governor of Hogwarts, you know. He takes a very great interest in the conduct of the prefects. Particularly the ones from families who can't afford new robes.' She tilted her head. 'Is that a new badge, Weasley? It looks very shiny. Did your whole family have to club together for it?'

Percy went scarlet, from his collar to the roots of his hair.

'Now look here-'

'No, you look here.' Malfoy took one step towards him. She wasn't tall, but somehow she seemed to tower. 'These two are coming with me. To our common room. Which is where you've just told them to go. So you've got exactly what you wanted, haven't you? Unless you'd like to stand here and argue about it, in a dark corridor, where it isn't safe. Is that what you'd like? I'm sure Father would be fascinated to hear about it.'

Percy opened his mouth, and shut it again, and opened it.

Then he stepped back. He did it stiffly, with enormous dignity, as though stepping back had been his own idea all along.

'Very well,' he said. 'Straight there. All three of you.'

Malfoy swept past him. Harry and Ron shuffled after her. As they passed Percy, Harry saw him staring after Malfoy with a look of the most profound dislike, and heard him mutter something under his breath.

'...and I only hope Harry's got more sense than to go anywhere near that one, that's all I can say, because if he does, Merlin help him...'

Harry nearly turned round. What on earth did Percy mean by that? Go near her? Why would Harry go anywhere near Malfoy? He couldn't think what Percy could possibly be on about.

'Peter Weasley,' said Malfoy, with disgust, as they turned the corner. She clicked her fingers again, without looking round, and kept walking. 'Prowling about down here like he owns the place.'

'Percy,' said Ron, before he could stop himself.

'What?'

'His name is Percy.'

'Whatever,' said Malfoy, with a wave of her hand. 'Peter, Percy, it's all the same. There are so many of them, I can't be expected to keep count. They breed like Flobberworms.'

Ron's huge hands curled into fists. Harry trod on his foot.

Malfoy didn't notice. She was walking fast, and talking faster, and it took Harry a little while to realise that she wasn't really talking to them at all. She was just talking. It all came pouring out of her, the way water comes out of a burst pipe.

'And that stupid Potter didn't even notice my blouse. Did you see him? Sitting there stuffing his face. I wore it all through dinner and he didn't so much as look. I had it sent from Paris. Paris. But of course he wouldn't notice. How could he? Those Muggles brought him up. Those disgusting, ignorant, horrible Muggles. They never taught him anything. They never taught him how to appreciate fine things. Nice things. Pretty things. He wouldn't know a beautiful thing if it sat down next to him at dinner.'

She was quiet for about five steps.

'I'm better than him at Potions, you know. Much better. I stirred his Swelling Solution for him and it came out perfect, and Professor Snape couldn't even find anything wrong with it, did you see the Professor's face? And I got him to look at me the other day. In the Charms corridor. Properly look. For nearly three whole seconds. I counted.' Another few steps. 'He's got a bit of his hair that sticks up at the back. It never goes down, whatever he does to it. Have you noticed? It's so stupid. He ought to do something about it. He's lost weight again, too. He's always losing weight. Someone ought to make him eat more. I don't know why nobody ever makes him...'

Harry walked behind her in a sort of daze. It was the strangest thing he'd ever listened to. Every other word out of her mouth seemed to be Potter. Stupid Potter, or something she'd noticed about Potter, or something Potter had done that was stupid, or something about Potter that she'd seen. He didn't know what to make of it. It was all so nasty. Wasn't it?

Then her face changed.

'And Granger,' she said.

Her voice had dropped. It had gone quiet, and flat, and very, very cold, and Harry felt the hair rise on the back of Goyle's thick neck.

'Always Granger. Always there. Always sitting next to him, and touching him, and doing his collar, and buying him presents. I know she does. I know she did. Who does she think she is?' Malfoy's hands had come out of her pockets and were clenching and unclenching at her sides. 'That's what they are, you know, Mudbloods. That's what they do. They're thieves. They steal magic that was never meant for them, they steal places at our schools, they steal everything they can get their dirty hands on. They steal things that don't belong to them.' She laughed, a horrible little laugh. 'But not for much longer. Oh, no. Not for much longer. We'll see how much she can steal when she...'

She stopped. She stopped walking, too, quite suddenly, in front of a stretch of bare, damp stone wall.

'Pureblood,' she said.

She said it with relish, rolling it round her mouth like a sweet. A stone door concealed in the wall slid open.

Harry sighed inwardly. Even when she didn't know anybody was listening, even when it was only Crabbe and Goyle, all Dracina Malfoy could ever do was prove, over and over and over again, what a bully she was. He hadn't liked a single thing she'd said about him. Not one. He hadn't noticed, because he didn't know how to notice it, the worry in the things she'd said, and the longing, the way she'd counted the seconds he'd looked at her, the way she'd wanted somebody to make him eat. He'd only heard stupid. And he hadn't liked what she'd said about Hermione, either. Not at all. She'd talked about Hermione as though she had plans for her. As though there were something she was going to do.

Once again, in spite of all her cruel words, Harry found himself hoping that she wasn't the Heir of Slytherin.

He followed her through the gap in the wall.

They came out into the Slytherin common room.

It had been dug out of the bedrock under the castle, and it felt like it. The walls were rough, bare stone, beaded with damp, and the ceiling hung so low that Crabbe's head, on Ron's shoulders, very nearly brushed it. Lamps of thick green glass swung from it on long iron links, giving out a light the colour of pondweed, so that everything in the room looked as though it were under water. Which, Harry realised with a little lurch, it was. Somewhere over their heads, through all that rock, was the black lake. He thought he could almost hear it pressing down. A fire was burning in a vast stone hearth, and the mantelpiece above it had been carved, by somebody with a great deal of time and a nasty imagination, into a long row of grinning skulls with serpents winding in and out of their eye sockets. A tapestry on the far wall showed a long-dead witch in green doing something extremely unpleasant to a dragon. Every chair was black. Every cushion was green. Every candlestick was a silver snake. It was cold, and it was damp, and it was gloomy, and it looked, Harry thought, like every evil wizard's lair in every story he'd ever read, all rolled into one.

He thought of the Sorting Hat. Salazar Slytherin was never evil, boy. He looked round at the skulls and the chains and the nasty tapestry, and he thought that it was all very well for the Hat to say so. But the place where Slytherin's own students slept every night seemed to have gone out of its way to prove every single thing anybody had ever said about them.

The stone door slid shut behind them.

The moment the wall closed behind them, a change came over Malfoy.

It was as though somebody had cut a string. All the pride went out of her shoulders. She went to the high-backed chair nearest the fire and sank into it, and sat there, very small and hunched, with her knees drawn up, and the green light from the lamps fell on her face, and Harry saw properly, for the first time that evening, how ill she looked.

It was worse, in that light, than it had been at the Duelling Club. Much worse. Her skin had a greyish, waxy sheen to it, and her lips were pale, and the shadows under her eyes had spread until they nearly met her cheekbones. Her hair, which she'd always been so particular about, was lank and dull. She looked like someone who'd been ill for a long time and hadn't told anyone.

From inside her cloak she took out a small black book.

She held it in both hands, in her lap. Like a little girl holds a kitten. Her thumbs moved slowly over the cover, stroking it. And as she held it, some of the tightness went out of her face, and she let out a long, soft breath, as though she'd been holding it all day.

'You two can go,' she said, without looking up. 'Go and do... whatever it is you do. I've got work to do.'

Ron, beside him, began to get up. Harry didn't.

'What's that?' he heard himself say. 'That book. Dracina, what is that?'

He didn't even realise he'd called her by her first name. It just came out. But Ron noticed. Harry felt him go still beside him, and then heard him let out a long, slow breath through Crabbe's nose, the breath of somebody who has seen something coming for a very long way off and now it's arrived. Ron didn't say anything.

Malfoy didn't seem to notice either. She waved one hand vaguely.

'It's just a diary, Goyle. Don't fuss. I've told you. I write things in it. My thoughts. Then there's Tom. He's ever so supportive.' She smiled down at the book, a soft, private smile. 'He understands everything. Everything. Nobody's ever understood me the way Tom does.'

'Who's Tom?' said Harry.

Malfoy looked up at him. She looked genuinely surprised.

'Tom,' she said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. 'Tom. My friend. Honestly, Goyle. I've told you about Tom. I've told you both. Loads of times.' A little line appeared between her eyebrows. 'Haven't I? I'm sure I have. I'm sure I...'

Her fingers tightened on the book. Harry saw the knuckles whiten.

'I've been having... trouble remembering things,' she said slowly. 'Lately. Little things. It's nothing. It's just...' Her voice had gone strange and far away, as though she were talking from the other end of a long corridor. 'I keep finding myself places. Do you know? I'll be sitting in here, by the fire, talking to Tom. And then I'll... I'll be somewhere else. On a staircase. Or in a corridor I don't know. Once I was in a bathroom, an old girls' bathroom, the one that's broken and out of order, all on my own, in the dark, The taps were running, and I didn't know how I'd got there. I didn't know how long I'd been there. My shoes were wet.' She looked down at her hands. 'And there was something on my hands. Red. Like paint. And I couldn't think where it had come from, and I had to scrub and scrub...'

Harry felt something cold creep up his spine and settle at the back of his neck. An old girls' bathroom, all broken and out of order. The taps running. He thought of the flooded corridor outside Myrtle's bathroom on the night Mrs Norris was found. He thought of the words on the wall, glittering wet and red in the torchlight.

'Did you tell Tom?' he said, very carefully. 'About losing time?'

'Of course I did. I tell Tom everything.' She smiled again. 'He said not to worry. He said it's only because I'm tired. He said I mustn't tell anyone else, because they wouldn't understand, they'd try to take him away from me, and then I'd be all alone again. And he's right. He's always right.' She laid her cheek against the cover of the book for a moment, like a child against a pillow. 'I am tired. I'm so tired, Goyle. All the time. And I feel ill. My head hurts. I can't eat. It must be stress. It's that Mudblood girl.' Her face twisted. 'She won't leave him alone. She won't leave what's mine alone. Every time I look round she's there, touching him, and I can't sleep, I lie awake thinking about it, and Tom says...'

She stopped. She blinked, and seemed to come back from somewhere.

'But it doesn't matter how ill I feel,' she said, quite briskly. 'Tom's been ever so understanding about Harry. He says...' She caught herself. Her chin came up. 'About stupid Potter, I mean. About stupid Potter.'

She opened the book on her knee. Then she took a quill out of her cloak pocket, and a little bottle of ink, and uncorked it, and dipped the quill, and bent over the blank page. She seemed to have forgotten completely that Crabbe and Goyle were there.

Harry was hanging on every word. He didn't know he was doing it, but he was sitting forward on the very edge of his chair with his huge hands clenched on his knees, watching her face as if he could do something about whatever was wrong with it if only he watched hard enough. He wanted to tell her to put the book down. He wanted to take it out of her hands and throw it on the fire. He didn't understand why. He only knew that there was something about that book, the way she held it, the way it seemed to drink her up while she held it, that frightened him more than anything she'd said.

It had something to do with the Chamber. He was sure of it. He didn't know how, and he didn't know why, but the book and the Chamber were tangled up together somehow, and Dracina was tangled up in the middle of them both.

Ron was watching him. Harry didn't notice.

Then, quite suddenly, Malfoy laughed. She shut the book with a snap and stood up.

'Oh! I nearly forgot. I've got something to show you. Wait there.'

She went off through a door on the far side of the room, taking the book with her, and came back a minute later holding what looked like a newspaper cutting. She shoved it under Ron's nose.

'There. That'll cheer you up.'

Harry saw Ron's eyes widen in shock. He read the cutting fast, let out a very forced laugh, and passed it to Harry.

It had been cut out of the Daily Prophet, and it said:

MINISTRY OFFICIAL FINED OVER FLYING CAR

Arthur Weasley, who heads the Ministry's Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office, has been ordered to pay a fine of fifty Galleons after admitting to enchanting a Muggle motor car.

Mr Lucius Malfoy, a member of the Board of Governors of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, into whose grounds the car was flown and crashed earlier this year, has demanded that Mr Weasley step down. 'This man has made the Ministry a laughing-stock,' Mr Malfoy said. 'He has no business writing our laws. His absurd Muggle Protection Act ought to be thrown out at once.'

Mr Weasley could not be reached for comment. His wife informed this newspaper's reporters that if they did not get off her doorstep she would set the family ghoul on them.

'Well?' said Malfoy impatiently, as Harry handed it back. 'Isn't it hilarious?'

'Yeah,' said Harry flatly. 'Hilarious.'

'Arthur Weasley's so in love with Muggles he ought to break his wand over his knee and go and live with them,' said Malfoy, with deep contempt. 'You'd never think the Weasleys were pure-bloods. Not the way they carry on.'

Ron's face, or rather Crabbe's, had gone purple and was twisting with fury.

'What's wrong with you, Crabbe?' Malfoy snapped.

'Bellyache,' Ron grunted.

'Well, take yourself off to the hospital wing, then, and kick a few of the Mudbloods in there on your way past. From me.' Malfoy snickered. 'Do you know, I can't believe the Prophet still hasn't printed a word about the attacks.' She went on, thoughtfully, 'Dumbledore must be keeping it all quiet. He'll be thrown out if it doesn't stop. Father says he's the worst Headmaster this school's ever had. He adores Muggle-borns. No proper Headmaster would ever have let a little worm like Creevey through the gates.'

And she lifted an imaginary camera to her eye, and began to snap away at the air, bouncing up and down on her toes with her eyes huge and shining. It was a cruel impression, and a very good one.

'Oh, Harry! Harry, Harry, can I have a picture? Can I have two? Will you sign it? Will you sign my arm? Can I carry your bag, Harry? Can I be you, Harry?'

She dropped her hands and looked at them.

Harry was so angry he couldn't move. Colin was lying in the hospital wing, as stiff as a board, with his camera still held up in front of his face. Colin had never done anything to anybody. He'd only ever been excited, and friendly, and a bit too much. He didn't deserve any of it. Of course, just as Harry had been starting to get really worried about Malfoy, just as he'd been starting to feel sorry for her, she'd gone and shown him all over again, exactly how nasty she could be.

'What's the matter with you two?'

Far too late, Harry and Ron forced themselves to laugh. But Malfoy seemed satisfied. Perhaps Crabbe and Goyle were always slow on the uptake.

She sat back down by the fire, and pulled the black book back into her lap, and her face changed again. It went soft. It went far away.

'I think I know who the heir is,' said Malfoy reverently. 'I could help him.'

She stroked the cover of the book.

'If only he'd let me,' she said longingly.

Harry stared at her.

Surely she couldn't mean him. Surely. But then he remembered the Duelling Club, and the snake lying down at his feet, and her face, shining like a lamp. It's you. It was always you. And the staircase, and I know what you are, and I won't tell. Maybe she really did think it was him. All because he happened to be able to talk to snakes.

And if she thought it was him...

Then she didn't think it was her.

Harry's mind was racing so fast he could hardly keep up with it. If Dracina didn't believe she was the heir, then maybe she wasn't. Maybe she wasn't the one controlling the creature at all. Maybe she didn't even know where the Chamber was. But then, what about the book? What about the red on her hands, and the wet shoes, and the bathroom with the taps running, and the hours she couldn't remember? What about Tom, who told her not to tell anyone, and who was always right? The book had something to do with all of this. Whatever the book was. He was more and more sure of it.

Ron's jaw had dropped so far that Crabbe's face looked even more gormless than usual. He'd been completely, absolutely certain that Malfoy was the heir. Luckily, Malfoy didn't notice. And Harry, thinking fast, leaned forward.

'But you must have some idea who's behind it all...'

'You know I haven't, Goyle, how many times do I have to tell you?' snapped Malfoy. 'And father won't tell me anything about the last time the Chamber was opened, either. Of course, it was fifty years ago, so it was before his time, but he knows all about it, and he says that it was all kept quiet I knew he was planning something with it. But not what. I thought I was able to warn...'

She trailed off.

'That stupid house elf didn't follow my orders properly. It never does. It's broken!'

She was shaking with rage. Her hands were trembling on the book. She mumbled something under her breath, so low that Harry only just caught it.

'It's not my fault.'

Then she composed herself, with an effort that Harry could actually see, smoothing her face out like somebody smoothing a crumpled sheet.

'I think Father was trying to tell me, I read between the lines. Father knows I'm smart enough to do that. He said in not so many words that last time the Chamber of Secrets was opened, a Mudblood died. So I bet it's only a matter of time before one of them's killed this time... I hope it's Granger,'

She said it with relish, and giggled. It was a high, thin, mad sort of giggle, and it went on for much too long, and it made every hair on Goyle's thick arms stand up.

Then, quite suddenly, her face dropped, and went grave and frightened.

'I think he's being forced to do something with the Chamber. I... I don't know what but he tried to warn me. I don't think he wanted to do this at all. But... but we can take advantage. Tom said so. He wants me and Ha...'

She trailed off again, staring into the fire, lost in thought. Her lips went on moving, but no sound came out.

Harry felt sick. He was beginning to understand, now, much more clearly than he wanted to, that this book, this diary, whatever it really was, was making Dracina very, very ill. Not just tired. Not just stressed. Ill. In her head. She'd gone from giggling to frightened to somewhere else entirely in the space of a few breaths, and none of it seemed to be coming from her at all. It was coming from the book. From Tom.

Beside him, Ron was clenching Crabbe's gigantic fists until the knuckles cracked. He was still back on I hope it's Granger. Harry could see it in his face. Feeling that it would give the game away rather badly if Ron punched Malfoy in the mouth, Harry shot him a warning look, and said quickly, 'D'you know if they caught whoever did it? Last time?'

'Oh, yes...' said Malfoy. She seemed to come back to herself with a jerk. 'Yes. They were expelled. Thrown out. They'll be rotting in Azkaban, I expect, if they're still alive.'

'Azkaban?' said Harry, before he could stop himself.

Malfoy looked at him in disbelief.

'Azkaban, Goyle. The wizards' prison? On the island? With the Dementors?' She shook her head slowly. 'Honestly. If your brain got any slower it would start going backwards.'

She shifted restlessly in her chair.

'Father hinted to me to keep out of danger and let the heir of Slytherin get on with it. He says the school needs ridding of all the Mudblood filth, but not to get mixed up in it. As I said, I really don't think his heart is actually in it. I think he's worried about me but I can handle myself. I know Ha- uh the heir wouldn't hurt me. Of course, Father has got a lot on his plate at the moment. You know the Ministry of Magic raided our Manor last week?'

Harry did his best to make Goyle's dull face look worried.

'Mm,' said Malfoy. 'Not that they found much. Father's got some rather precious Dark artifacts, you know. Very old. Very valuable. But we've a room under the floor of the drawing room that nobody knows about. Nobody from the Ministry would ever find it. They walked right over the top of it.' She smiled a small, smug smile. 'Twice.'

Ron caught Harry's eye. Harry saw him file that away.

At that moment, two Slytherin girls came through from the dormitories and wandered towards the fire. One of them was Pansy Parkinson. The other was a thin, dark girl Harry thought was called Tracey Davis. They were laughing.

'...honestly, can you imagine?' Pansy was saying loudly. 'Potter? The Heir of Slytherin? Potter? Have you seen him? He's like a broom handle with glasses on. A strong wind would have him over. Can you imagine Salazar Slytherin's great-great-whatever looking like that?'

Tracey sniggered.

Harry felt Malfoy go rigid in the chair beside him. She'd stopped breathing. Her fingers had closed on the diary so hard that the cover creaked.

'I expect those Muggles he lives with starve him,' Pansy went on, with a toss of her head. 'They must do. He's skin and bone. Well, I'd starve him too, if I had to live with him. I bet it's a punishment for being so annoying...'

Malfoy came out of the chair like a cork out of a bottle.

'SHUT UP!'

Pansy jumped about a foot in the air. Tracey squealed.

'Shut up, shut up, shut UP! How dare you! How dare you say that! You don't know anything! You don't know anything about him, you stupid, stupid, stupid...'

She was screaming. It wasn't like the screaming on the Quidditch pitch, or in the Great Hall at the Duelling Club. It was worse. It was wilder. The words were tumbling out of her so fast, and so jumbled, and so high, that Harry could only catch bits of them, here and there, like pieces of something broken being swept along in a flood.

'...the heir... he's the heir, you... you show some respect... you'll all have to show respect, all of you, when he... how dare... it's not my... it wasn't my... I told it, I told that stupid... I said warn him, I said warn... and it went and... three days... three days, Pansy, and bread, and... and bars... on the window... it's not my fault... I didn't know... how could I have known... he'll rise, he'll rise and they'll all be gone, every last one, and then he'll... and then he'll come for... his... his princess... and it'll all be... it'll all be all right... it'll all...'

And somewhere in the middle of it, the rage ran out.

Harry watched it happen. Her voice cracked, and wobbled, and went thin, and the screaming turned into something else. Something much worse to listen to. Her shoulders began to shake. Her face crumpled. By the end of it she wasn't shouting at Pansy at all any more. She'd sunk down onto the hearthrug with her arms wrapped round herself and she was crying, great ugly, gulping sobs, rocking backwards and forwards, the way Dobby had rocked on the end of Harry's bed in the hospital wing.

'It wasn't my fault,' she wept. 'It wasn't my fault. It wasn't... the bars... it wasn't...'

Pansy, white-faced and frightened, dropped down beside her and put her arms round her.

'Shh. Shh. Dracina, it's all right. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I didn't mean... I didn't know you... shh. It's all right. Nobody's saying it's your fault. Shh...'

Harry sat frozen in his chair. Bars. Three days. Bread. Something had gone through him at the word bars like an electric shock. For a single wild second he thought... But no. How could she know? How could Dracina Malfoy possibly know anything about that? She couldn't. It was nonsense. She was raving. She didn't know what she was saying. Dobby. He told her. He told her because she told him to...warn him? Not stop him. But somehow Dobby interpreted it wrong. But why did Dracina even do all of that?

Ron nudged him. Hard.

Harry looked round. Ron didn't say anything. He just pointed, very slightly, with one fat finger.

The diary was lying on the seat of the chair Malfoy had leapt out of. She'd dropped it when she stood up. It was lying there on the green velvet, all on its own, small and black and shabby, with nobody's hand on it for the first time Harry could remember.

Harry nodded.

He stood up. He walked over to the chair, as slowly and stupidly as he could manage, the way Goyle would walk, and picked up the diary, and tucked it inside his robes. It was oddly cold against his chest. Malfoy didn't look up. Pansy didn't look up. Nobody was looking at anything but the sobbing girl on the hearthrug.

Then he walked to the stone wall, and Ron came after him, and it slid open for them, and they were out.

'Mate,' Ron began, in a hoarse whisper, the moment the wall had closed behind them. 'Mate, what the hell was...'

He stopped. Harry had stopped too. They were both staring at each other.

Ron's hair was turning red.

It was happening at the roots first, a flame of colour creeping up through Crabbe's dull brown. And his nose was getting longer. Harry looked down at his own hands. They were shrinking. The fingers were thinning out. He could feel the shoulders of Goyle's robes beginning to slide down his arms.

'Run!' said Harry.

They ran. Harry's feet were sliding about inside Goyle's enormous shoes, and he had to hitch up his robes with both hands as he shrank. They pelted along the dungeon passages, round corners, up steps, with their bodies changing under them as they went, and burst up into the dark Entrance Hall, which was full of a muffled hammering. It was coming from the broom cupboard where they'd shut Crabbe and Goyle.

They kicked off the shoes, left them in a heap outside the cupboard door, and sprinted up the marble staircase in their socks, all the way to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.

'Well,' Ron panted, as he slammed the bathroom door behind them, 'that wasn't for nothing. All right, we still don't know who's doing it. But I'm writing to Dad first thing tomorrow, and I'm telling him to have a look under the Malfoys' drawing room. And,' he added, looking at Harry, 'it's not her, is it? It's not her. She doesn't even think it's her. She thinks it's you.'

'No,' said Harry slowly. 'I don't think it is her. Not the way we thought.'

He checked his face in the cracked mirror. He was back to normal. He put his glasses on, and the world came back into focus. Then he looked down at the small black book in his hand.

He didn't know what it was. He didn't understand any of it. But he knew one thing. That book had something to do with all of this. With Dracina going places she couldn't remember. With the red on her hands and the wet shoes and the taps running in a girls' bathroom. With the voice that told her she mustn't tell anyone, and that it was always right. With the Chamber. And whatever else it was, getting it away from her had to be a good idea. She was going absolutely mental. And from everything she'd said, Harry was almost certain now that the book was what was doing it to her.

Ron was hammering on the door of Hermione's cubicle.

'Hermione, come out, you're not going to believe-'

'Go away!' Hermione squeaked.

Harry and Ron looked at each other.

'What's wrong?' said Ron. 'You've got to be back to yourself by now. We are...'

But Moaning Myrtle came gliding through the door of the cubicle. Harry had never seen her looking so happy.

'Ooooooh, just you wait,' she said, with deep satisfaction. 'It's horrible!'

They heard the lock slide back, and Hermione came out. She was sobbing, and she had her robes pulled right up over her head.

'What's up?' said Ron uncertainly. 'Are you still a bit... Millicent-ish? Have you got her nose or something?'

Hermione let her robes drop.

Ron backed into the sink.

Her face was covered in black fur. Her eyes had gone yellow, with narrow slits for pupils. And two long, pointed, furry ears were poking up out of her bushy hair.

'It was a c-cat hair!' she howled. 'It must have been off M-Millicent's cat! It was on her robes and I never thought to... and you're not supposed to use the P-Potion for animals! It says so! It says so in the book!'

'Oh,' said Ron. 'Oh, blimey.'

'Everyone's going to tease you,' said Myrtle happily. 'For ever.'

'It's all right, Hermione,' said Harry quickly. 'It's all right. We'll take you up to the hospital wing. Madam Pomfrey won't ask anything. She never does...'

Hermione burst into fresh tears. She lunged forward, towards Harry, with her arms out.

But Ron was quicker. He stepped in between them, and caught her, and held on to her tightly, furry face and all, and let her cry into the front of his robes. Over the top of her head, he gave Harry a look. It was a knowing sort of look, a leave this one to me, mate sort of look. Harry gave it back to him with real gratitude, and squeezed Ron's arm.

It took a very long time to persuade Hermione to leave the bathroom. Moaning Myrtle sped them on their way with a delighted cackle.

'Ooooh, just wait till they all see your tail!'

Madam Pomfrey, as Harry had promised, didn't ask a single question. She took one look at Hermione, and her lips went very thin, and she said only, 'Polyjuice gone wrong, is it? Animal hair? Hm,' in a voice that made it quite clear she'd seen this before, probably more than once. Then she whisked Hermione into a bed in the far corner and pulled the curtains round it.

Before she went behind them, Hermione caught hold of Harry's sleeve with one furry hand.

'Don't tell anyone,' she whispered fiercely. 'Promise me. Don't let anyone come and see me like this. And don't let her find out. Not her. Promise, Harry.'

'I promise,' said Harry.

'And I want to hear everything,' Hermione added, sniffing. 'Everything she said. Tomorrow. Every word.'

The curtain closed.

It was very late when Harry and Ron finally got back to Gryffindor Tower. The common room was empty. Fred and George must have gone up hours ago. The fire had sunk to a red glow, and the only sound was the wind in the chimney.

Harry sat down in the armchair nearest the fire and took the diary out of his robes.

It was very ordinary to look at. It was small and thin, with a shabby black cover worn pale at the corners, the sort of thing you'd find for a few pence in a junk shop. Harry opened it. The pages were blank. Every single one. He riffled through the whole thing, from the front to the back, and there wasn't a mark on any of them. Not a word. Not a blot. Not the faintest trace of everything Dracina had poured into it.

'Nothing,' said Ron, looking over his shoulder. 'It's empty. How can it be empty? She's been writing in it for months. We've seen her.'

'I don't know' said Harry slowly. 'In Potions. I saw her write in it. Then she looked at it like... like it responded to her.'

He turned it over. On the back cover, in faded gold letters, almost worn away, was a name.

Harry stared at it. And for a moment, everything in the room seemed to go very quiet.

'T,' said Ron, in a small voice.

'Tom,' said Harry.

He opened the front cover again, more carefully this time. Printed in tiny letters inside, half rubbed away, was a date. It was fifty years old. Almost exactly fifty years.

It was fifty years ago, Dracina had said. The last time the Chamber was opened.

Ron let out a long, low whistle, and sat down very suddenly on the arm of the chair.

'Fifty years,' he said. 'Harry. Fifty years.'

'I know.'

They sat and looked at it for a long time, neither of them saying anything. The fire ticked and settled in the grate.

And as Harry sat there, with the diary open on his knees, he found that his hand had drifted, all on its own, towards the eagle-feather quill that Hermione had given him that morning, lying on the table beside the chair. He found that he wanted, quite badly, very badly indeed, to dip it in ink and write something on that clean, blank, waiting page. Just one line. Just to see. Just to see if anybody would write back.

He snatched his hand away as though the quill had bitten him.

'What?' said Ron, startled.

'Nothing,' said Harry. His heart was hammering. 'Nothing. I just... I don't think we should write in it. Not yet. Not till we know what it is.'

'You weren't going to, were you?'

'No,' said Harry. 'No. Course not.'

He shut the diary. He took it up to the dormitory, and wrapped it in his Invisibility Cloak, and pushed it right down to the very bottom of his trunk, underneath everything else, and shut the lid, and locked it.

Then he lay in bed in the dark for a long time, listening to Ron's breathing, thinking about a girl crying on a hearthrug in a room under the lake, with her friend's arms round her and her own wrapped round nothing at all.

It wasn't my fault. It wasn't my fault. The bars...

He wondered whether she'd noticed yet that it was gone.

He wondered what she would do when she did.