Harry Potter 02 - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

drop of his Polyjuice Potion, Harry slipped into the middle cubicle.
    ‘Ready?’ he called.
    ‘Ready,’ came Ron and Hermione’s voices.
    ‘One … two … three …’
    Pinching his nose, Harry drank the Potion down in two large gulps. It tasted like overcooked cabbage.
    Immediately, his insides started writhing as though he’d just swallowed live snakes – doubled up, he wondered whether he was going to be sick – then a burning sensation spread rapidly from his stomach to the very ends of his fingers and toes. Next, bringing him gasping to all fours, came a horrible melting feeling, as the skin all over his body bubbled like hot wax, and before his eyes, his hands began to grow, the fingers thickened, the nails broadened and the knuckles were bulging like bolts. His shoulders stretched painfully and a prickling on his forehead told him that hair was creeping down towards his eyebrows; his robes ripped as his chest expanded like a barrel bursting its hoops; his feet were agony in shoes four sizes too small …
    As suddenly as it had started, everything stopped. Harry lay face down on the cold stone floor, listening to Myrtle gurgling morosely in the end toilet. With difficulty, he kicked off his shoes and stood up. So this was what it felt like, being Goyle. His large hands trembling, he pulled off his old robes, which were hanging a foot above his ankles, pulled on the spare ones and laced up Goyle’s boat-like shoes. He reached up to brush his hair out of his eyes and met only the short growth of wiry bristles, low on his forehead. Then he realised that his glasses were clouding his eyes, because Goyle obviously didn’t need them. He took them off and called, ‘Are you two OK?’ Goyle’s low rasp of a voice issued from his mouth.
    ‘Yeah,’ came the deep grunt of Crabbe from his right.
    Harry unlocked his door and stepped in front of the cracked mirror. Goyle stared back at him out of dull, deep-set eyes. Harry scratched his ear. So did Goyle.
    Ron’s door opened. They stared at each other. Except that he looked pale and shocked, Ron was indistinguishable from Crabbe, from the pudding-basin haircut to the long, gorilla arms.
    ‘This is unbelievable,’ said Ron, approaching the mirror and prodding Crabbe’s flat nose. ‘Unbelievable.’
    ‘We’d better get going,’ said Harry, loosening the watch that was cutting into Goyle’s thick wrist. ‘We’ve still got to find out where the Slytherin common room is, I only hope we can find someone to follow …’
    Ron, who had been gazing at Harry, said, ‘You don’t know how bizarre it is to see Goyle thinking .’ He banged on Hermione’s door. ‘C’mon, we need to go …’
    A high-pitched voice answered him. ‘I – I don’t think I’m going to come after all. You go on without me.’
    ‘Hermione, we know Millicent Bulstrode’s ugly, no one’s going to know it’s you.’
    ‘No – really – I don’t think I’ll come. You two hurry up, you’re wasting time.’
    Harry looked at Ron, bewildered.
    ‘ That looks more like Goyle,’ said Ron. ‘That’s how he looks every time a teacher asks him a question.’
    ‘Hermione, are you OK?’ said Harry through the door.
    ‘Fine – I’m fine … Go on –’
    Harry looked at his watch. Five of their precious sixty minutes had already passed.
    ‘We’ll meet you back here, all right?’ he said.
    Harry and Ron opened the door of the bathroom carefully, checked that the coast was clear and set off.
    ‘Don’t swing your arms like that,’ Harry muttered to Ron.
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘Crabbe holds them sort of stiff …’
    ‘How’s this?’
    ‘Yeah, that’s better.’
    They went down the marble staircase. All they needed now was a Slytherin whom they could follow to the Slytherin common room, but there was nobody around.
    ‘Any ideas?’ muttered Harry.
    ‘The Slytherins always come up to breakfast from over there,’ said Ron, nodding at the entrance to the dungeons. The words had barely left his mouth when a girl with long curly hair emerged from the entrance.
    ‘Excuse me,’ said Ron, hurrying up to her, ‘we’ve forgotten the way to our common room.’
    ‘I beg your pardon?’ said the girl stiffly. ‘Our common room? I’m a Ravenclaw.’
    She walked away, looking suspiciously back at them.
    Harry and Ron hurried down the stone steps into the darkness, their footsteps echoing particularly loudly as Crabbe and Goyle’s huge feet hit the floor, feeling that this wasn’t