Harry Potter 02 - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

surrounded by a knot of curious people.
    Harry was on the point of telling Ron and Hermione about Filch and the Kwikspell course when the Salamander suddenly whizzed into the air, emitting loud sparks and bangs as it whirled wildly round the room. The sight of Percy bellowing himself hoarse at Fred and George, the spectacular display of tangerine stars showering from the Salamander’s mouth, and its escape into the fire, with accompanying explosions, drove both Filch and the Kwikspell envelope from Harry’s mind.
    *
    By the time Hallowe’en arrived, Harry was regretting his rash promise to go to the Deathday Party. The rest of the school were happily anticipating their Hallowe’en feast; the Great Hall had been decorated with the usual live bats, Hagrid’s vast pumpkins had been carved into lanterns large enough for three men to sit in and there were rumours that Dumbledore had booked a troupe of dancing skeletons for the entertainment.
    ‘A promise is a promise,’ Hermione reminded Harry bossily. ‘You said you’d go to the Deathday Party.’
    So, at seven o’clock, Harry, Ron and Hermione walked straight past the doorway to the packed Great Hall, which was glittering invitingly with gold plates and candles, and directed their steps instead towards the dungeons.
    The passageway leading to Nearly Headless Nick’s party had been lined with candles too, though the effect was far from cheerful: these were long, thin, jet-black tapers, all burning bright blue, casting a dim, ghostly light even over their own living faces. The temperature dropped with every step they took. As Harry shivered and drew his robes tightly around him, he heard what sounded like a thousand fingernails scraping an enormous blackboard.
    ‘Is that supposed to be music ?’ Ron whispered. They turned a corner and saw Nearly Headless Nick standing at a doorway hung with black velvet drapes.
    ‘My dear friends,’ he said mournfully, ‘welcome, welcome … so pleased you could come …’
    He swept off his plumed hat and bowed them inside.
    It was an incredible sight. The dungeon was full of hundreds of pearly-white, translucent people, mostly drifting around a crowded dance floor, waltzing to the dreadful, quavering sound of thirty musical saws, played by an orchestra on a black-draped platform. A chandelier overhead blazed midnight blue with a thousand more black candles. Their breath rose in a mist before them; it was like stepping into a freezer.
    ‘Shall we have a look around?’ Harry suggested, wanting to warm up his feet.
    ‘Careful not to walk through anyone,’ said Ron nervously, and they set off around the edge of the dance floor. They passed a group of gloomy nuns, a ragged man wearing chains, and the Fat Friar, a cheerful Hufflepuff ghost, who was talking to a knight with an arrow sticking out of his forehead. Harry wasn’t surprised to see that the Bloody Baron, a gaunt, staring Slytherin ghost covered in silver bloodstains, was being given a wide berth by the other ghosts.
    ‘Oh no,’ said Hermione, stopping abruptly. ‘Turn back, turn back, I don’t want to talk to Moaning Myrtle –’
    ‘Who?’ said Harry, as they backtracked quickly.
    ‘She haunts the girls’ toilet on the first floor,’ said Hermione.
    ‘She haunts a toilet ?’
    ‘Yes. It’s been out of order all year because she keeps having tantrums and flooding the place. I never went in there anyway if I could avoid it, it’s awful trying to go to the loo with her wailing at you –’
    ‘Look, food!’ said Ron.
    On the other side of the dungeon was a long table, also covered in black velvet. They approached it eagerly, but next moment had stopped in their tracks, horrified. The smell was quite disgusting. Large, rotten fish were laid on handsome silver platters; cakes, burned charcoal black, were heaped on salvers; there was a great maggoty haggis, a slab of cheese covered in furry green mould and, in pride of place, an enormous grey cake in the shape of a tombstone, with tar-like icing forming the words,
     
    Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington
    died 31st October, 1492
     
    Harry watched, amazed, as a portly ghost approached the table, crouched low and walked through it, his mouth held wide so that it passed through one of the stinking salmon.
    ‘Can you taste it if you walk through it?’ Harry asked him.
    ‘Almost,’ said the ghost sadly, and he drifted away.
    ‘I expect they’ve let it rot to give it a stronger flavour,’ said Hermione