Harry Potter 02 - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

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 Ron.
    They waited, shivering, hardly daring to move.
    ‘D’you think it’s gone?’ Harry whispered.
    ‘Dunno –’
    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!’ Ron shouted, his voice breaking with relief. ‘Harry, it’s our car!’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Come on!’
    Harry blundered after Ron towards the light, stumbling and tripping, and a moment later they had emerged into a clearing.
    Mr Weasley’s car was 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 Harry, who could feel him quivering. His breathing slowing down again, Harry stuffed his wand back into his robes.
    ‘And we thought it was going to attack us!’ said Ron, leaning against the car and patting it. ‘I wondered where it had gone!’
    Harry squinted around on the floodlit ground for signs of more spiders, but they had all scuttled away from the glare of the headlights.
    ‘We’ve lost the trail,’ he said. ‘C’mon, let’s go and find them.’
    Ron didn’t speak. He didn’t move. His eyes were fixed on a point some ten feet above the Forest floor, right behind Harry. His face was livid with terror.
    Harry didn’t even have time to turn around. There was a loud clicking noise and suddenly he felt something long and hairy seize him around the middle and lift him off the ground, so that he was hanging, face down. Struggling, terrified, he heard more clicking, and saw Ron’s legs leave the ground too, heard Fang whimpering and howling – next moment, he was being swept away into the dark trees.
    Head hanging, Harry saw that what had hold of him was marching on six immensely long, hairy legs, the front two clutching him tightly below a pair of shining black pincers. Behind him, he could hear another of the creatures, no doubt carrying Ron. They were moving into the very heart of the Forest. Harry could hear Fang fighting to free himself from a third monster, whining loudly, but Harry couldn’t have yelled even if he had wanted to; he seemed to have left his voice back with the car in the clearing.
    He never knew how long he was in the creature’s clutches; he only knew that the darkness suddenly lifted enough for him to see that the leaf-strewn ground was now swarming with spiders. Craning his neck sideways, he 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 Harry 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.
    Harry fell to the ground on all fours as the spider released him. Ron and Fang thudded down next to him. Fang wasn’t howling any more, but cowering silently on the spot. Ron looked exactly like Harry felt. His mouth was stretched wide in a kind of silent scream and his eyes were popping.
    Harry suddenly realised that the spider which had dropped him was saying something. It had been hard to tell, because he clicked his pincers with every word he spoke.
    ‘Aragog!’ it called. ‘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