Summer was creeping over the grounds around the castle; sky and lake alike turned periwinkle blue and flowers large as cabbages burst into bloom in the greenhouses. But with no Hagrid visible from the castle windows, striding the grounds with Fang at his heels, the scene didn't look right to Cassie; no better, in fact, than the inside of the castle, where things were so horribly wrong.
Harry, Cassie and Ron had tried to visit Hermione, but visitors were now barred from the hospital wing.
"We're taking no more chances," Madam Pomfrey told them severely through a crack in the hospital door. "No, I'm sorry, there's every chance the attacker might come back to finish these people off ..."
With Dumbledore gone, fear had spread as never before, so that the sun warming the castle walls outside seemed to stop at the mullioned windows. There was barely a face to be seen in the school that didn't look worried and tense, and any laughter that rang through the corridors sounded shrill and unnatural and was quickly stifled.
Hagrid's hint about the spiders was Cassie, Ron and Harry's main concern but, the trouble was, there didn't seem to be a single spider left in the castle to follow. Harry and Cassie looked everywhere they went, helped (rather reluctantly) by Ron. They were hampered, of course, by the fact that they weren't allowed to wander off on their own, but had to move around the castle in a pack with the other Gryffindors. Most of their fellow students seemed glad that they were being shepherded from class to class by teachers, but the three of them found it very irksome.
One person, however, seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the atmosphere of terror and suspicion. Draco Malfoy was strutting around the school as though he had just been appointed Head Boy. Cassie didn't realise what he was so pleased about until the Potions lesson about a fortnight after Dumbledore and Hagrid had left, when, sitting right behind Malfoy, Cassie overheard him gloating to Crabbe and Goyle.
"I always thought Father might be the one who got rid of Dumbledore," he said, not troubling to keep his voice down. "I told you he thinks Dumbledore's the worst Headmaster the school's ever had. Maybe we'll get a decent Headmaster now. Someone who won't want the Chamber of Secrets closed. McGonagall won't last long, she's only filling in ..."
Snape swept past Cassie, making no comment about Hermione's empty seat and cauldron beside her.
"Sir," said Malfoy loudly. "Sir, why dont you apply for the Headmaster's job?"
"Now, now, Malfoy," said Snape, though he couldn't suppress a thin-lipped smile. "Professor Dumbledore has only been suspended by the governors. I dare say he'll be back with us soon enough."
"Yeah, right," said Malfoy, smirking. "I expect you\d have Father"s vote, sir, if you wanted to apply for the job. I"ll tell Father you"re the best teacher here, sir ..."
Snape smirked as he swept off around the dungeon, fortunately not spotting Seamus Finnigan, who was pretending to vomit into his cauldron.
"I'm quite surprised the Mudbloods haven\t all packed their bags by now," Malfoy went on. "Bet you five Galleons the next one dies. Pity it wasn't Granger ..."
The bell rang at that moment, which was lucky; at Malfoy's last words, Ron had leapt off his stool, and in the scramble to collect bags and books, his attempts to reach Malfoy went unnoticed. While Cassie would be entirely happy to let Ron pulverise Malfoy and overjoyed to join him, it wouldn't bode well for their investigations if any of them got detentions, or worse, expelled.
"Let me at him," Ron growled, as Harry and Cassie hung onto his arms. "I don't care, I don't need my wand, I'm going to kill him with my bare hands –"
"Hurry up, I"ve got to take you all to Herbology," barked Snape over the class's heads, and off they went, crocodile fashion, with Harry, Ron and Cassie bringing up the rear, Ron still trying to get loose. It was only safe to let go of him when Snape had seen them out of the castle, and they were making their way across the vegetable patch towards the greenhouses.
The Herbology class was very subdued; there were now two missing from their number, Justin and Hermione. Professor Sprout set them all to work pruning the Abyssinian Shrivelfigs. When Harry went to tip an armful of withered stalks onto the compost heap, he was greeted by Ernie Macmillan.
Ernie took a deep breath and said, very formally, "I just want to say, Harry, that I"m sorry I ever suspected you. I know you'd never attack Hermione Granger, and I apologise for all the stuff I said. We're all in the same boat now, and, well –"
He held out a pudgy hand, and Harry shook it.
Ernie and his friend Hannah joined their bench and begin to prune the same Shrivelfig as Harry, Cassie and Ron.
"That Draco Malfoy character," said Ernie, breaking off dead twigs, "he seems very pleased about all this, doesn't he? D"you know, I think he might be Slytherin"s heir."
"That's clever of you," said Ron, who didn't seem to have forgiven Ernie as readily as Harry.
Cassie murmured her agreement, snapping the branches off with a little more force than necessary, she was still simmering with rage over Malfoy's comments about Hermione.
"Do you think it's Malfoy, Harry?" Ernie asked pointedly.
"No," said Harry, so firmly that Ernie and Hannah stared.
A second later, Harry gave both Cassie and Ron a sharp elbow in the side.
"Ouch! What're you –" Cassie stopped brandishing her gardening shears at Harry when she noticed what he was pointing at - several large spiders were scurrying across the earth.
"Oh, yeah," said Ron, trying, and failing, to look pleased. "But we can't follow them now ..."
Ernie and Hannah were listening curiously.
"Looks like they're heading for the Forbidden Forest ..."
And Ron looked even unhappier about that.
At the end of the lesson Professor Sprout escorted the class to their Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson. Harry, Cassie and Ron lagged behind the others so they could talk out of earshot.
"We'll have to use the Invisibility Cloak again," Harry told them. "We can take Fang with us. He's used to going into the Forest with Hagrid, he might be some help."
"Right," said Ron, who was twirling his wand nervously in his fingers. "Er – aren't there – aren't there supposed to be werewolves in the Forest?" he added, as they took their usual places at the back of Lockhart"s classroom.
"There are good things in there, too." Cassie pointed out "The centaurs are all right, and the unicorns."
Lockhart bounded into the room and the class stared at him. Every other teacher in the place was looking grimmer than usual, but Lockhart appeared nothing short of buoyant.
"Come now," he cried, beaming around him, "why all these long faces?"
People swapped exasperated looks, but nobody answered.
"Don't you people realise," said Lockhart, speaking slowly, as though they were all a bit dim, "the danger has passed! The culprit has been taken away."
"Says who?" said Dean Thomas loudly.
"My dear young man, the Minister of Magic wouldn't have taken Hagrid if he hadn't been one hundred per cent sure that he was guilty," said Lockhart, in the tone of someone explaining that one and one made two.
"Oh, yes he would," said Ron, even more loudly than Dean.
"I flatter myself I know a touch more about Hagrid"s arrest than you do, Mr Weasley," said Lockhart in a self-satisfied tone.
Lockhart's disgusting cheeriness, his hints that he had always thought Hagrid was no good, his confidence that the whole business was now at an end, irritated Cassie so much that she yearned to throw Gadding with Ghouls right in Lockhart's stupid face. Just as her hand curled around the spine, Harry slid a note across the desk "Let's do it tonight." and Cassie gave a firm nod, repeated by Ron as he too read the note.
The Gryffindor common room was always very crowded these days, because from six o'clock onwards, the Gryffindors had nowhere else to go. They also had plenty to talk about, with the result that the common room often didn't empty until past mid- night.
Harry got the Invisibility Cloak out of his trunk right after dinner, and spent the evening sitting on it, waiting for the room to clear. Fred and George challenged Harry, Cassie and Ron to a few games of Exploding Snap and Ginny sat watching them, very subdued in Hermione's usual chair. The three of them kept losing on purpose, trying to finish the games quickly, but even so, it was well past midnight when Fred, George and Ginny finally went to bed.
Harry, Cassie and Ron waited for the distant sounds of two dormitory doors closing before seizing the Cloak, throwing it over themselves, and climbing through the portrait hole.
It was another difficult journey through the castle, dodging all the teachers. At last they reached the Entrance Hall, slid back the lock on the oak front doors, squeezed between them, trying to stop any creaking, and stepped out into the moonlit grounds.
"Course," said Ron abruptly, as they strode across the black grass, "we might get to the Forest and find there"s nothing to follow. Those spiders might not"ve been going there at all. I know it looked like they were moving in that sort of general direction, but ..."
His voice tailed away hopefully.
They reached Hagrid's house, sad and sorry-looking with its blank windows. When Harry pushed the door open, Fang went mad with joy at the sight of them. Worried he might wake everyone at the castle with his deep, booming barks, they hastily fed him treacle fudge from a tin on the mantelpiece, which glued his teeth together.
They left the Invisibility Cloak on Hagrid's table. There would be no need for it in the pitch-dark Forest.
"C'mon, Fang, we're going for a walk," said Cassie, patting her leg, and Fang bounded happily out of the house behind them, dashed to the edge of the Forest and lifted his leg against a large sycamore tree.
Harry took out his wand, murmured, "Lumos!" and a tiny light appeared at the end of it, just enough to let them watch the path for signs of spiders. Cassie cast the same spell, holding it under her chin so her face became creepy and distorted.
"Ooooh" she said in a scary voice, going up to Ron.
"Piss off," said Ron. "I'd light mine too, but you know it'd probably blow up or something ..."
Harry tapped them both on the shoulder, pointing at the grass. Two solitary spiders were hurrying away from the wandlight into the shade of the trees.
"OK," Ron sighed, as though resigned to the worst, "I'm ready. Let's go."
So, with Fang scampering around them, sniffing tree roots and leaves, they entered the Forest. By the glow of Harry and Cassie's wands, they followed the steady trickle of spiders moving along the path. They walked for about twenty minutes, not speaking, listening hard for noises other than breaking twigs and rustling leaves. Then, when the trees had become thicker than ever, so that the stars overhead were no longer visible, and the two wands shone alone in the sea of dark, they saw their spider guides leaving the path.
Cassie had never been this deep into the Forest before. She could vividly remember Hagrid advising her not to leave the Forest path last time she'd been in here. But Hagrid was miles away now, probably sitting in a cell in Azkaban, and he had also said to follow the spiders.
"What d'you reckon?" Cassie said to the other two, two pairs of eyes was all that she could see reflecting off the light of her wand.
"We've come this far," said Ron and Harry nodded, leading the way off the path.
So they followed the darting shadows of the spiders into the trees. They couldn't move very quickly now; there were tree roots and stumps in their way, barely visible in the near blackness. More than once, they had to stop, so that Harry and Cassie could crouch down and find the spiders in the wandlight.
They walked for what seemed like at least half an hour, their robes snagging on low-slung branches and brambles. After a while, they noticed that the ground seemed to be sloping downwards, though the trees were as thick as ever.
Then Fang suddenly let loose a great, echoing bark, making Harry, Cassie and Ron jump out of their skins.
"What?" said Ron loudly, looking around into the pitch dark, and gripping Cassie's elbow very hard.
"There's something moving over there," Harry breathed. "Listen ... Sounds like something big."
They listened. Some distance to their right, the something big was snapping branches as it carved a path through the trees.
"Oh no," said Ron. "Oh no, oh no, oh –"
"Shut up," said Cassie frantically and Ron's grip tightened again. "It'll hear you."
"Hear me?" said Ron in an unnaturally high voice. "It's already heard Fang!"
The darkness seemed to be pressing on their eyeballs as they stood, terrified, waiting. There was a strange rumbling noise and then silence.
"What d'you think it's doing?" said Harry.
"Probably getting ready to pounce," said Cassie, voice trembling.
They waited, shivering, hardly daring to move.
"D'you think it's gone?" Harry whispered.
"Dunno –" replied Ron
Then, to their right, came a sudden blaze of light, so bright in the darkness that both of them flung up their hands to shield their eyes. Fang yelped and tried to run, but got lodged in a tangle of thorns and yelped even louder.
"Harry…Cassie," Ron shouted, his voice breaking with relief. "it's the car!"
"What?"
"Come on!"
Cassie blundered after Ron and Harry towards the light, stumbling and tripping, and a moment later they had emerged into a clearing.
It was a light blue Ford Angelia and Cassie recognized it as the car Harry and Ron had flown to Hogwarts back in September. Iwas standing, empty, in the middle of a circle of thick trees under a roof of dense branches, its headlamps ablaze. As Ron walked, open-mouthed, towards it, it moved slowly towards him, exactly like a large, turquoise dog greeting its owner.
"It's been here all the time!" said Ron delightedly, walking around the car. "Look at it. The Forest's turned it wild ..."
The wings of the car were scratched and smeared with mud. Apparently it had taken to trundling around the Forest on its own. Fang didn't seem at all keen on it; he kept close to Cassie, who could feel him quivering.
"And we thought it was going to attack us!" said Ron, leaning against the car and patting it. "I wondered where it had gone!"
"We've lost the trail," Harry said, peering round at the forest floor. "C'mon, let's go and find them."
Cassie walked over to join Harry and then looked around for Ron but he was frozen in place and his eyes were fixed on a point some ten feet above the Forest floor, right behind her and Harry. His face was livid with terror.
Something tugged on the long plait down Cassie's back but before she could turn around she was lifted off the ground by something huge and hairy. All she could hear was a loud clicking and as she struggled, terrified, the grip around her hair tightened, yanking her face upwards before she was being carried swiftly through the dark trees.
Cassie saw that what had hold of her was marching on six immensely long, hairy legs, the front two clutching her tightly below a pair of shining black pincers, one pincer which her plait was woven around.. Behind him, she could hear another two of the creatures, no doubt carrying Ron and Harry. They were moving into the very heart of the Forest. Cassie could hear Fang fighting to free himself from a fourth monster, whining loudly.
She never knew how long he was in the creature's clutches; she only knew that the darkness suddenly lifted enough for him to see that the leaf-strewn ground was now swarming with spiders. Craning her neck sideways, she realised that they had reached the rim of a vast hollow, a hollow which had been cleared of trees, so that the stars shone brightly onto the worst scene he had ever clapped eyes upon.
Spiders. Not tiny spiders like those surging over the leaves below. Spiders the size of carthorses, eight-eyed, eight-legged, black, hairy, gigantic. The massive specimen that was carrying Cassie made its way down the steep slope, towards a misty domed web in the very centre of the hollow, while its fellows closed in all around it, clicking their pincers excitedly at the sight of its load.
Cassie fell to the ground on all fours as the spider released her. She heard a slicing noise as she fell and when she landed, she saw the spider still had half her plait in its pincers. As she reached up to feel her now shorter hair, she could have sworn the spider grinned nastily at her.
Harry, Ron and Fang thudded down next to her. Fang wasn't howling any more, but cowering silently on the spot. Ron looked exactly like Cassie felt. His mouth was stretched wide in a kind of silent scream and his eyes were popping.
"Aragog!" the spiders began to call. "Aragog!"
And from the middle of the misty domed web, a spider the size of a small elephant emerged, very slowly. There was grey in the black of his body and legs, and each of the eyes on his ugly, pincered head was milky white. He was blind.
"What is it?" he said, clicking his pincers rapidly.
"Men," clicked the spider that had caught Harry
"And a female" clicked Cassie's spider, it seemed to be stroking the end of her plait with its other pincer, she could still see the purple ribbon hanging there.
"Is it Hagrid?" said Aragog, moving closer, his eight milky eyes wandering vaguely.
"Strangers," clicked the spider that had caught Ron.
"Kill them," clicked Aragog fretfully. "I was sleeping ..."
"We're friends of Hagrid"s," Harry shouted.
Click, click, click went the pincers of the spiders all around the hollow.
Aragog paused.
"Hagrid has never sent men into our hollow before," he said slowly.
"Hagrid's in trouble," said Harry, breathing very fast. "That's why we've come."
"In trouble?" said the aged spider, and Cassie thought he heard concern beneath the clicking pincers. "But why has he sent you?"
"They think, up at the school, that Hagrid's been setting a – a – something on students. They've taken him to Azkaban." Cassie called up to the spider, her voice shaking.
Aragog clicked his pincers furiously, and all around the hollow the sound was echoed by the crowd of spiders; it was like applause.
"But that was years ago," said Aragog fretfully. "Years and years ago. I remember it well. That's why they made him leave the school. They believed that I was the monster that dwells in what they call the Chamber of Secrets. They thought that Hagrid had opened the Chamber and set me free."
"And you ... you didn't come from the Chamber of Secrets?" said Harry, Cassie could see the sweat beading on his forehead.
"I!" said Aragog, clicking angrily. "I was not born in the castle. I come from a distant land. A traveller gave me to Hagrid when I was an egg. Hagrid was only a boy, but he cared for me, hidden in a cupboard in the castle, feeding me on scraps from the table. Hagrid is my good friend, and a good man. When I was discovered, and blamed for the death of a girl, he protected me. I have lived here in the Forest ever since, where Hagrid still visits me. He even found me a wife, Mosag, and you see how our family has grown, all through Hagrid's goodness ..."
"So you never – never attacked anyone?" stuttered Cassie
"Never," croaked the old spider. "It would have been my instinct, but from respect of Hagrid, I never harmed a human. The body of the girl who was killed was discovered in a bathroom. I never saw any part of the castle but the cupboard in which I grew up. Our kind like the dark and the quiet ..."
"But then ... Do you know what did kill that girl?" said Harry. "Because whatever it is, it"s back and attacking people again –"
His words were drowned by a loud outbreak of clicking and the rustling of many long legs shifting angrily; large black shapes shifted all around him.
"The thing that lives in the castle," said Aragog, "is an ancient creature we spiders fear above all others. Well do I remember how I pleaded with Hagrid to let me go, when I sensed the beast moving about the school."
"What is it?" said Harry urgently.
More loud clicking, more rustling; the spiders seemed to be closing in.
"We do not speak of it!" said Aragog fiercely. "We do not name it! I never even told Hagrid the name of that dread creature, though he asked me, many times."
Aragog seemed to be tired of talking. He was backing slowly into his domed web, but his fellow spiders continued to inch slowly towards Harry, Cassie and Ron.
"We'll just go, then," Harry called desperately to Aragog.
"Go?" said Aragog slowly. "I think not ..."
"But – but –" Cassie did not think she'd ever been this terrified.
"My sons and daughters do not harm Hagrid, on my command. But I cannot deny them fresh meat, when it wanders so willingly into our midst. Goodbye, friends of Hagrid."
Towering above them was a solid wall of spiders, clicking, their many eyes gleaming in their ugly black heads. Cassie stood frozen, she could feel death closing in around her and her hand trembled as it reached for her wand in her robe pocket. Then, a loud, long note sounded, and a blaze of light flamed through the hollow.
Mr Weasley's car was thundering down the slope, headlamps glaring, its horn screeching, knocking spiders aside; several were thrown onto their backs, their endless legs waving in the air. The car screeched to a halt in front of Harry, Cassie and Ron and the doors flew open.
"Get Fang!" Harry yelled, diving into the front seat; Ron seized the boarhound round the middle and threw him, yelping, into the back of the car and Cassie climbed in next to him. The doors slammed shut. Ron didn't touch the accelerator but the car didn't need him; the engine roared and they were off, hitting more spiders. They sped up the slope, out of the hollow, and they were soon crashing through the Forest, branches whipping the windows as the car wound its way cleverly through the widest gaps, following a path it obviously knew.
Ron's mouth was still open in the silent scream, but his eyes weren't popping any more.
"Are you two OK?" Cassie said, leaning over into the front seat
Ron stared straight ahead, he hadn't spoken at all since they'd been captured by the spiders.
They smashed their way through the undergrowth, Fang howling loudly next to Cassie in the back seat, and she saw the wing mirror snap off as they squeezed past a large oak. After ten noisy, rocky minutes, the trees thinned, and Cassie could again see patches of sky.
The car stopped so suddenly that Cassie was jolted into the back on Ron's seat. They had reached the edge of the Forest. Fang flung himself at the window in his anxiety to get out and when Cassie leant over him to open the door, he shot off through the trees to Hagrid's house, tail between his legs. Cassie gave herself a minute, then climbed out of the car too, joining the boys as they stood at the front of the car, pale and shocked.
As soon as Harry went back into Hagrid's cabin to get the Invisibility Cloak, Ron leant over and was violently sick into the pumpkin patch. Cassie hurried over, rubbing his back until he had finished retching.
"Follow the spiders," said Ron weakly, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. "I'll never forgive Hagrid. We're lucky to be alive."
"I bet he thought Aragog wouldn't hurt friends of his," said Harry.
"That's exactly Hagrid's problem!" said Ron, thumping the wall of the cabin. "He always thinks monsters aren\t as bad as they"re made out, and look where it's got him! A cell in Azkaban!" He was shivering uncontrollably now "What was the point of sending us in there? What have we found out, I'd like to know?"
"That Hagrid never opened the Chamber of Secrets," said Cassie, taking off her robe and draping it around Ron's shoulder's, then prodding him in the arm to make him walk. "He was innocent."
Ron gave a loud snort. Evidently, hatching Aragog out in a cupboard wasn't his idea of being innocent.
"Bloody spiders" Cassie muttered darkly, reaching round again to feel her hair "Took off half my hair"
"Oh yeah" Harry noted with shock, feeling the jagged ends of her hair, now resting just below her shoulders.
As the castle loomed nearer, Harry threw the Cloak around the three of them, then pushed the creaking front doors ajar. They walked carefully back across the Entrance Hall and up the marble staircase, holding their breath as they passed corridors where watchful sentries were walking. At last they reached the safety of the Gryffindor common room, where the fire had burned itself into glowing ash.