Harry Potter 02 - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

armful of withered stalks onto the compost heap and found himself face to face with 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 came to work at the same Shrivelfig as Harry 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.
    ‘Do you think it’s Malfoy, Harry?’ Ernie asked.
    ‘No,’ said Harry, so firmly that Ernie and Hannah stared.
    A second later, Harry spotted something that made him hit Ron over the hand with his pruning shears.
    ‘Ouch! What’re you –’
    Harry was pointing at the ground a few feet away. 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.
    Harry watched the spiders running away.
    ‘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 and Ron lagged behind the others so they could talk out of earshot.
    ‘We’ll have to use the Invisibility Cloak again,’ Harry told Ron. ‘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.
    Preferring not to answer that question, Harry said, ‘There are good things in there, too. The centaurs are all right, and the unicorns.’
    Ron had never been into the Forbidden Forest before. Harry had entered it only once, and had hoped never to do so again.
    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.
    Ron started to say that he didn’t think so, somehow, but stopped in mid-sentence when Harry kicked him hard under the desk.
    ‘We weren’t there, remember?’ Harry muttered.
    But 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 Harry so much that he yearned to throw Gadding with Ghouls right in Lockhart’s stupid face. Instead he contented himself with scrawling a note to Ron: ‘Let’s do it tonight.’
    Ron read the message, swallowed hard and looked sideways at the empty seat usually filled by Hermione. The sight seemed to stiffen his resolve, and he nodded.
    *
    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 midnight.
    Harry went to get 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 and Ron to a few games of Exploding Snap and Ginny sat watching them, very subdued in Hermione’s usual chair. Harry and Ron kept losing on