Harry Potter 02 - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

won’t be long until we’re cutting them up and stewing them. You’ll have Mrs Norris back in no time.’
    Perhaps the heir of Slytherin had lost his or her nerve, thought Harry. It must be getting riskier and riskier to open the Chamber of Secrets, with the school so alert and suspicious. Perhaps the monster, whatever it was, was even now settling itself down to hibernate for another fifty years …
    Ernie Macmillan of Hufflepuff didn’t take this cheerful view. He was still convinced that Harry was the guilty one, that he had ‘given himself away’ at the Duelling Club. Peeves wasn’t helping matters: he kept popping up in the crowded corridors singing ‘Oh Potter, you rotter …’, now with a dance-routine to match.
    Gilderoy Lockhart seemed to think he himself had made the attacks stop. Harry overheard him telling Professor McGonagall so while the Gryffindors were lining up for Transfiguration.
    ‘I don’t think there’ll be any more trouble, Minerva,’ he said, tapping his nose knowingly and winking. ‘I think the Chamber has been locked for good this time. The culprit must have known it was only a matter of time before I caught them. Rather sensible to stop now, before I came down hard on them.
    ‘You know, what the school needs now is a morale-booster. Wash away the memories of last term! I won’t say any more just now, but I think I know just the thing …’
    He tapped his nose again and strode off.
    Lockhart’s idea of a morale-booster became clear at breakfast time on February the fourteenth. Harry hadn’t had much sleep because of a late-running Quidditch practice the night before, and he hurried down to the Great Hall slightly late. He thought, for a moment, that he’d walked through the wrong doors.
    The walls were all covered with large, lurid pink flowers. Worse still, heart-shaped confetti was falling from the pale blue ceiling. Harry went over to the Gryffindor table, where Ron was sitting looking sickened, and Hermione seemed to have come over rather giggly.
    ‘What’s going on?’ Harry asked them, sitting down, and wiping confetti off his bacon.
    Ron pointed to the teachers’ table, apparently too disgusted to speak. Lockhart, wearing lurid pink robes to match the decorations, was waving for silence. The teachers on either side of him were looking stony-faced. From where he sat, Harry could see a muscle going in Professor McGonagall’s cheek. Snape looked as though someone had just fed him a large beaker of Skele-Gro.
    ‘Happy Valentine’s Day!’ Lockhart shouted. ‘And may I thank the forty-six people who have so far sent me cards! Yes, I have taken the liberty of arranging this little surprise for you all – and it doesn’t end here!’
    Lockhart clapped his hands and through the doors to the Entrance Hall marched a dozen surly-looking dwarfs. Not just any dwarfs, however. Lockhart had them all wearing golden wings and carrying harps.
    ‘My friendly, card-carrying cupids!’ beamed Lockhart. ‘They will be roving around the school today delivering your Valentines! And the fun doesn’t stop here! I’m sure my colleagues will want to enter into the spirit of the occasion! Why not ask Professor Snape to show you how to whip up a Love Potion! And while you’re at it, Professor Flitwick knows more about Entrancing Enchantments than any wizard I’ve ever met, the sly old dog!’
    Professor Flitwick buried his face in his hands. Snape was looking as though the first person to ask him for a Love Potion would be force-fed poison.
    ‘Please, Hermione, tell me you weren’t one of the forty-six,’ said Ron, as they left the Great Hall for their first lesson. Hermione suddenly became very interested in searching her bag for her timetable and didn’t answer.
    All day long, the dwarfs kept barging into their classes to deliver Valentines, to the annoyance of the teachers, and late that afternoon, as the Gryffindors were walking upstairs for Charms, one of them caught up with Harry.
    ‘Oy, you! ’Arry Potter!’ shouted a particularly grim-looking dwarf, elbowing people out of the way to get to Harry.
    Hot all over at the thought of being given a Valentine in front of a queue of first-years, which happened to include Ginny Weasley, Harry tried to escape. The dwarf, however, cut his way through the crowd by kicking people’s shins, and reached him before he’d gone two paces.
    ‘I’ve got a musical message to deliver to ’Arry Potter in person,’ he said, twanging