Chapter Nineteen: The Chamber Opens
As the days went on, it seemed like Daphne's plans were coming along nicely. Colin had stopped tailing Harry quite as much, so it appeared Ginny had talked to him like Daphne had asked.
To Daphne's concern, though, Ginny seemed to be pretty stressed by life at Hogwarts. She often looked a bit pale and tired, even though she was adamant that everything was alright.
The attempts to improve Slytherin's reputation seemed to be doing fairly well, too, according to Gemma, who said that she had received fewer reports of bullying than before. Malfoy, still bound by his promise to Snape, seemed to try and avoid Daphne whenever he could, and she was absolutely fine with that. Pansy had told her he'd become fully absorbed in Quidditch training instead, and Daphne was curious as to how Harry would do against a team with much better equipment than his own.
Harry, meanwhile, had been invited to the deathday party of the Gryffindor ghost Nearly Headless Nick, and he'd been allowed to take his friends along. Daphne had no idea what a deathday party might be like, so she agreed to come and on Halloween, she met the Gryffindors in the dungeons to go to the party. As they got closer to the party, the temperature dropped, and Daphne wished she'd worn a thicker cloak, but the sight of the party itself made up for a bit of it.
The dungeon in which the party was being held was full of hundreds of ghosts, more than she'd ever seen in one place before. The music was abysmal, but it certainly gave the party a unique atmosphere.
"Shall we have a look around?" Harry suggested.
"Careful not to walk through anyone," Ron said nervously, and they set off around the edge of the dance floor.
Daphne spotted the Bloody Baron in a corner, being avoided even by the other ghosts, and wondered if she should go and say hi, but the Baron had never been one for socializing.
"Oh, no," Hermione said, stopping abruptly. "Turn back, turn back, I don't want to talk to Moaning Myrtle…"
"Who?" Harry asked as they backtracked quickly.
"You don't want to know…" Daphne muttered. She didn't really want to run into Myrtle either. The memories of her first meeting with the sad ghost still made her cringe with embarrassment.
"She haunts one of the toilets in the girls' bathroom on the second floor," Hermione explained.
"She haunts a toilet?"
"Yes. It's been out of order all year because she keeps having tantrums and flooding the place."
"And I'm glad it is," Daphne said quickly. She really didn't want to talk about Myrtle any more than she had to so as not to have to relive those memories. "Look, food!"
She quickly walked over to a long table at the other side of the dungeon, but as soon as she arrived there she wished she hadn't. All the food on the table was rotten, and the smell hit her like a punch to the face.
She gagged and took a step back. "Oh, that's just…ew," she said.
She looked at the rotten fish, burned cakes, maggoty haggis, molded cheese, and the massive, tombstone-shaped cake from a distance.
A portly ghost approached the table, crouched low, and walked through it with his mouth wide open.
"Can you taste it if you walk through it?" Harry asked.
"Almost," the ghost said sadly, before drifting away.
"I expect they've let it rot to give it a stronger flavor," Hermione said, inspecting the putrid haggis with a pinched nose.
"Can we move? I feel sick," Ron said.
Daphne nodded quickly. The smell was really beginning to get to her.
They had barely turned around, however, when a little man swooped suddenly from under the table and came to a halt in midair before them.
"Hello, Peeves," Harry said cautiously.
Unlike the ghosts around them, Peeves the Poltergeist was the very reverse of pale and transparent. He was wearing a bright orange party hat, a revolving bow tie, and a broad grin on his wide, wicked face.
"Nibbles?" he said sweetly, offering them a bowl of peanuts covered in fungus.
"No thanks," Hermione said.
"Heard you talking about poor Myrtle," Peeves said, his eyes dancing. "Rude you was about poor Myrtle."
He took a deep breath and bellowed, "OY! MYRTLE!"
"Oh, no, Peeves, don't tell her what I said, she'll be really upset," Hermione whispered frantically.
"I didn't mean it, I don't mind her — er, hello, Myrtle."
The squat ghost of a girl had glided over. She had the glummest face Harry had ever seen, half-hidden behind lank hair and thick, pearly spectacles.
"What?" she said sulkily.
"How are you, Myrtle?" Hermione said in a falsely bright voice. "It's nice to see you out of the toilet."
Daphne took a half-step to the side so she was partly hidden behind Harry, and she found a specific stone in the dungeon floor to focus really hard on for the next few moments, fervently hoping Myrtle or Peeves wouldn't notice her.
Fortunately for her, neither did, since Peeves was having too much fun harassing Myrtle, though Harry gave Daphne a half-amused, half-curious look as to why she suddenly wanted to be out of sight.
To Daphne's unending relief, he didn't get a chance to ask her about it, because Nearly Headless Nick came up to them to ask what they thought about the party, and then he was interrupted by the arrival of the Headless Hunt, who disrupted the party to such a degree that Ron found a chance to say, "I can't stand much more of this."
"Let's go," Harry agreed, and Daphne was very glad he said that. She was cold, hungry, and fairly terrified that Myrtle would return.
They backed toward the door, nodding and beaming at everyone who looked at them, and a minute later were hurrying back up the passageway full of black candles.
"Pudding might not be finished yet," Ron said hopefully, leading the way to the steps to the entrance hall.
Harry, however, had come to a sudden stop, and seemed to be listening intently for something.
"Harry, what're you–?"
"It's that voice again…shut up a minute…"
He closed his eyes and Daphne strained her ears, trying to make out any voices, but she couldn't hear anything.
"Listen!" Harry said urgently.
Daphne glanced at Hermione and Ron, who seemed just as baffled as she was.
"This way!" Harry shouted, and he began to run up the stairs into the entrance hall, and then up to the first floor, with Daphne and the others right behind him.
"Harry, what're we–"
"SHH!"
Harry paused for just a moment, then shouted, "It's going to kill someone!"
He stormed off again, taking the next flight of stairs three steps at a time. They dashed all across the second floor, and Daphne was getting more worried by the second about what Harry was hearing, until at long last they rounded a final corner into a deserted corridor…where something was shining on the wall ahead of them.
They approached slowly, squinting through the darkness. Foot-high words had been written on the wall between two windows, shimmering in the light cast by the flaming torches.
THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED
ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE
"What's that thing…hanging underneath?" Ron asked with a slight quiver in his voice.
They got closer, and Harry almost slipped in a pool of water on the floor. Daphne tried to make out what the dark shadow beneath the text was…and she realized it at the same moment as the others.
Mrs. Norris, Filch's cat, was hanging by her tail from the torch bracket. She was stiff as a board, her eyes wide and staring.
For a few seconds, they didn't move.
Then Ron said, "Let's get out of here."
"Shouldn't we try and help–" Harry began awkwardly.
"Trust me," Ron said. "We don't want to be found here."
But at that moment, the sound of hundreds of feet coming up the stairs echoed through the halls, and before they could do more than take a single step, the corridor had been filled from both sides by students…who immediately stopped talking as the people spotted both the writing, and the cat hanging beneath it.
Then, someone shouted through the quiet. "Enemies of the Heir, beware! You'll be next, Mudbloods!"
Malfoy. Of course, it was Malfoy. He had pushed to the front of the crowd, grinning widely at the sight of the hanging cat.
"What is wrong with you?!" Daphne shouted. "Do you think this is funny?!"
"Very," Malfoy said with a sneer.
"What's going on here? What's going on?"
Attracted by the shouting, Filch came through the crowd. Then he saw Mrs. Norris and fell back, clutching his face in horror.
"My cat! My cat! What's happened to Mrs. Norris?!" he shrieked.
Then, his wide, bulging eyes fell on Harry. "You! You! You've murdered my cat! You've killed her! I'll kill you! I'll–"
"Argus!"
Dumbledore had arrived, followed by a number of other teachers. In seconds, he had swept past Daphne and the others and detached Mrs. Norris from the torch bracket.
"Come with me, Argus," he said to Filch.
"You too, Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley, Miss Granger, Miss Greengrass."
Lockhart stepped forward eagerly. "My office is nearest, Headmaster…just upstairs. Please feel free…"
"Thank you, Gilderoy," Dumbledore said.
The crowd parted to let them pass, and Daphne shot a withering glance at Malfoy as she walked past. She then looked at Lockhart and tried to assess whether he really wanted to help, or was just trying to get more publicity out of the situation.
They entered Lockhart's darkened office, and Daphne shook her head at the sight of all the pictures of himself Lockhart had hung around the place. Most of the frames were empty as the Lockharts inside tried to hide themselves because they had their hair in rollers.
After Lockhart had lit the candles on his desk, Dumbledore lay Mrs. Norris down on the desk and began examining her.
Daphne exchanged tense looks with her friends and watched Dumbledore work.
Snape and McGonagall looked over his shoulder, and to Daphne's surprise, Snape almost looked happy.
Lockhart, meanwhile, was making all sorts of inane suggestions, like Mrs. Norris having been killed with something called the Transmogrifian Torture, and Daphne wondered idly if it would be difficult to learn so she could cast it on Lockhart and Malfoy alike.
Filch, meanwhile, sat slumped in a chair by the desk, his face in his hands, and despite her dislike of the man, Daphne felt sorry for him.
Eventually, Dumbledore straightened up. "She's not dead, Argus," he said.
Lockhart stopped abruptly in the middle of counting all the murders he had prevented.
"Not dead?" Filch choked, looking through his fingers at Mrs. Norris. "But why's she all…stiff and frozen?"
"She has been Petrified," Dumbledore said — "Ah, I thought so!" Lockhart said — "But how, I cannot say."
"Ask him!" shrieked Filch, turning his blotched and tearstained face to Harry.
"No second-year could have done this," Dumbledore said firmly. "It would take Dark Magic of the most advanced–"
"He did it, he did it!" Filch spat, his pouchy face purpling. "You saw what he wrote on the wall! He found– in my office– he knows I'm a– I'm a– He knows I'm a Squib!"
"I never touched Mrs. Norris!" Harry said loudly. "And I don't even know what a Squib is."
"Rubbish!" snarled Filch. "He saw my Kwikspell letter!"
"If I might speak, Headmaster," Snape said from the shadows, and Daphne hoped against all hope he'd at least be somewhat fair. "Potter and his friends may simply have been in the wrong place at the wrong time…But we do have a set of suspicious circumstances here. Why was he in the upstairs corridor at all? Why wasn't he at the Halloween feast?"
Harry, Hermione, Ron, and Daphne all launched into an explanation about the deathday party.
"…there were hundreds of ghosts, they'll tell you we were there–"
"But why not just join the feast afterward?" Snape said. "Why go up to that corridor?"
"My fault!" Daphne said quickly. "I, er, thought I heard Peeves say there was some trouble on the second floor."
"Miss Greengrass, your proclivity for jumping to Potter's defense is well-known, but as far as excuses go, this was a paltry attempt," Snape said.
"Er, information is most dangerous when one does not fully comprehend the true value or nature of the information they possess," Daphne said, echoing the words Snape had said to her the year before. They seemed appropriate, given that Daphne had no idea what was going on, only that telling the truth seemed like a bad idea.
Snape blinked, and Daphne could swear that Dumbledore smiled a bit. Harry, Hermione, and Ron just gave her surprised looks.
Snape looked suspiciously at Harry. "And what information would that be, I wonder?" he asked.
He stared into Harry's eyes, who looked back nervously.
After a moment, Snape frowned, but otherwise his expression didn't change.
"My cat has been Petrified!" Filch yelled, seemingly dissatisfied with how the interrogation was going. "I want to see some punishment!"
"We will be able to cure her, Argus," Dumbledore said patiently. "Professor Sprout has recently managed to procure some Mandrakes. As soon as they have reached their full sizes, I will have a potion made that will revive Mrs. Norris."
"I'll make it," Lockhart butted in. "I must have done it a hundred times. I could whip up a Mandrake Restorative Draught in my sleep–"
"Excuse me," Snape said icily. "But I believe I am the Potions master at this school."
There was a very awkward pause.
"You may go," Dumbledore said to Daphne, Harry, Hermione, and Ron.
Snape looked up from glaring murderously at Lockhart and said, "Miss Greengrass, a word in my office, please, where we will be free from…" He glared at Lockhart. "…interruptions."
Daphne said a quick goodbye to her friends, then followed Snape down into the dungeons. She was seeing quite a lot of his office, lately. The monstrosities in the jars on the shelves barely even bothered her anymore.
"Miss Greengrass, I want to know the truth of what happened tonight, even more so because you chose to use my own warning to you against me."
"Will you use it against Harry?" Daphne asked.
"As I did not catch him red-handed and I do not consider him capable of Petrifying that cat, I see very little chance of that," Snape said, and Daphne could hear that that seemed to disappoint him greatly. "I would, however, caution you very strongly against lying to me. I take no pleasure in punishing students from my own House, but do not think for a second that I won't."
Daphne nodded. She knew that Harry would probably want to keep this a secret, but she saw no real way of lying her way out now. She'd intended to help, but it would seem that her attempt had backfired spectacularly.
"We intended to go to the Great Hall after the deathday party, but then Harry said he heard a voice. Neither Hermione, nor Ron, nor I could hear it, but Harry was adamant and followed it. According to him, the voice said it would kill someone. That's how we found the writing and Filch's cat."
Snape looked into her eyes, and she stared back as calmly as she could. She'd told the truth, after all, however unwillingly.
"Potter is hearing voices…" Snape muttered. "Certainly not something he'd want to say with that fop present…"
Daphne tried to stifle a laugh and partially succeeded by pretending it was cough instead, which drew Snape's attention back onto her.
"Very well, Miss Greengrass, I believe you. It does little to vouch for Potter's sanity, but I believe you were right to withhold this detail from…certain people. Do not talk about this with anyone other than Potter, Weasley, and Granger. Five points to Slytherin for thinking ahead. You may go."
Daphne stood up and walked out of Snape's office. It was just like Snape to give her points for failing to help her friends, but she supposed she should be glad she didn't get them deducted instead.
But for now, she had something else to worry about. The writing on the wall had said something about the 'Chamber of Secrets'. She knew she'd read something like that, and when she got back to her dorm, she looked in her trunk for her old copy of Hogwarts: A History.
She'd read the book on the train to Hogwarts in her first year at the insistence of her parents, but had thrown in it in her trunk afterwards and never taken it out again. Even so, she recalled seeing a mention of the Chamber in the book, and she wanted to know what it was about.
She found the correct chapter and quickly skimmed it, feeling worse with every word she read. Supposedly, the Chamber had been built by Slytherin himself, kept secret from the other founders, and been sealed until his true heir could open it to purge the school of witches and wizards with Muggle ancestry.
Malfoy had shouted that the Mudbloods would be next, so he was clearly aware what the Chamber was for.
Then, a sickening realization struck her: she'd been trying to improve Slytherin's reputation with the other Houses, and as a result, a lot of bullies had been stopped…and many of those bullies were purebloods. What if her attempt to fix Slytherin from within was the reason someone had decided to do this?
But who would it be? It wouldn't be Malfoy himself. There was no way he could Petrify anything, even a cat. But could he have convinced another student to do it? Maybe Marcus Flint…although Flint didn't seem talented enough to pull off magic of that caliber either.
And none of that answered the question of why Harry had heard a voice. Were they trying to frame him? But who would possibly be talented enough to do all of that?
She didn't know what was going on, but she was determined to find out.