Chapter 56 — The Writing on the Wall

Harry moved before I could ask another question. He followed the wall to the corner, stopped and turned his head while I caught up. Ron and Hermione came behind us, with the food parcel crumpling in Ron’s hand. I told Harry to slow down; if something was there, running straight towards it seemed a poor way to find out what.

‘It’s moving,’ he said. He looked at me as though he had briefly forgotten we were following. I listened again, finding nothing I could separate from the ordinary sounds of the castle. That did not prove there was nothing for him to hear. My own magic had spent the previous year providing reasons not to expect everybody’s experience to match.

I asked which way it was going. Harry pointed and continued more carefully, with me beside him. At the next turn, torchlight shone on water spread over the floor. He stopped abruptly enough that Ron almost walked into his back, then said the voice had gone. Hermione asked where, but Harry could only tell us that it had stopped.

The passage offered doors, torches and wet stone. None explained a voice moving inside a wall. Ron made a disgusted sound and lifted his foot. A line of spiders was travelling along the edge of the corridor, with more emerging through a crack and joining the others on their way towards an opening near a window.

I watched them pass. They did not scatter when we moved; they kept going, apparently finding the same direction preferable to everything behind them. Hermione crouched with her robes clear of the water and admitted she had never seen them behave like that. I was about to look for the beginning of the line when red shapes in the puddle caught my attention.

For a moment I thought something lay beneath the water. Then a shape became a reflected letter, and I looked up. Words stretched across the wall between the windows, large enough to read from the far end of the passage. The Chamber of Secrets had been opened, the message declared. Enemies of the heir were warned to beware.

Hermione asked whether it was blood. I moved close enough to catch a sharp smell and looked at the thick run beneath one letter. It smelt like paint, I told her. That answered one unpleasant question without making the threat harmless. I had known boys who expected frightening people to become acceptable when they called it a joke afterwards.

Harry said my name from the right. Beneath a torch bracket hung a striped shape I recognised before I understood its position. Mrs. Norris was rigid in the light, her fur raised and her eyes fixed on something we could no longer see. Ron stepped back, asking whether she was dead.

I went nearer and stopped short of touching her. There was no movement I could recognise as breathing, but I did not know what had made her so still. Harry said she looked bound. Hermione studied the coat and eyes, then said it was different from the Body-Binds we had seen.

I remembered Neville unable to move on the sofa last year and the practice figures in our workshop. Sprout’s distinction came back with an unpleasant clarity. I asked whether this might be the deeper petrification, and Hermione said it was possible. We needed a teacher rather than an argument over which of our guesses sounded best.

Footsteps reached us before we could set off to find one. Dinner had ended, and groups came round the corner, slowing when they saw us and stopping when they noticed the wall. Someone read the warning aloud. People behind pushed forward to see, so I raised a hand and asked the nearest students to keep back without touching anything.

Malfoy appeared among the Slytherins. He looked at the message, then towards Hermione. ‘You’re next, Mudblood,’ he said. I turned on him at once, asking him to repeat it. He moved closer to the students beside him, but another voice interrupted before he could decide whether their presence made him brave enough to answer.

Filch forced his way through the crowd, demanding to know what was happening. He had begun an accusation against Harry when he saw the cat. His face changed so completely that I forgot Malfoy for a moment. He went towards Mrs. Norris with raised hands, stopped short of touching her, then turned back to us.

‘You killed her,’ he said. Harry denied it and began explaining that we had found her, but Filch caught his collar before he could finish. I stepped between them, taking hold of Filch’s wrist while Harry tried to pull away. The grip tightened. I put my other arm between the hand and Harry’s chest, trying to keep the cloth from closing against his throat.

‘Let him go!’ I said. ‘He was with us!’ Filch was shaking, staring past me at Harry without seeming to hear. I could not persuade him to release the collar, and pulling harder risked dragging Harry with it. Then Dumbledore’s voice cut through the passage, ordering Argus to let go at once.

McGonagall reached us a moment later and put a hand on Filch’s arm. Between her and the order, his fingers finally opened. I drew Harry back beside me while he coughed and loosened his collar. Dumbledore looked from him to Filch, his voice carrying clearly enough for those nearest us to hear.

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‘You will not put your hands on a student,’ he said. ‘Stand back while I examine her.’ Filch made a broken sound and obeyed. The teachers began clearing the corridor, with prefects gathering their houses and Snape sending lingering students after the others. I stayed beside Harry, my hand still on his sleeve.

Dumbledore examined Mrs. Norris before lifting her down. He told Filch that she was alive and had been petrified. Filch repeated the word alive as though he needed to hear it more than once, then stared at the rigid body. Relief had given him something beyond us to look at, though it did little to soften the glances he still sent towards Harry.

Lockhart arrived close enough to offer his opinion. He said he had recognised the condition immediately and regretted not being present when it happened. Nobody asked him to demonstrate a remedy. Dumbledore asked McGonagall to arrange somewhere the cat could be properly examined and kept safe, then turned towards us.

I explained that we had met Harry near Lockhart’s office and come down the passage together. Mrs. Norris had already been hanging there when we arrived. Snape looked at Harry and pointed out his absence from dinner. Lockhart confirmed that he had been assisting with correspondence, finding time to mention the quantity before McGonagall added that it had been at her instruction.

Harry’s shoulders lowered. I described where the rest of us had sat, who had seen us leave and the food we had brought. Ron looked down at the parcel as though surprised to find it still in his hand. We had only been in the corridor a few minutes, I said, and Snape asked why we had come this way.

I glanced at Harry. Filch stood close enough to hear, looking ready to seize on anything that might explain his cat. An interested face still appeared at the corner until McGonagall sent its owner away. I did not want to invent an answer or give Harry’s account for him in front of somebody who had just seized his collar.

‘There’s something else,’ I said. ‘I’d like Harry to tell you himself, in private.’ Harry looked at me and nodded. Snape’s expression did not soften, but he waited while Filch objected. Dumbledore told him there would be an investigation, and that anger did not supply evidence against the first people to find Mrs. Norris.

Filch wanted somebody punished. Dumbledore answered that they would investigate who had harmed her and arrange her treatment. Professor Sprout’s mandrakes were growing well, and a restorative draught could be made when they were ready. It was a prospect of help rather than an immediate cure. Filch looked back at the cat and fell quiet.

Before we left the corridor, I pointed out the water and described the line of spiders, including the direction they had gone. The writing remained on the wall. Dumbledore listened without presenting any one of those things as an explanation, and the teachers took charge of the passage while we were moved away from it.

Only Dumbledore and McGonagall entered the nearby room with us. Once the door closed, Dumbledore asked Harry what had brought us there. Harry described hearing the voice in Lockhart’s office, then again after leaving it. I told them where we had met him and where he had stopped. Hermione and Ron confirmed the parts they had witnessed.

Dumbledore asked whether the words had been distinct. Harry said they had concerned killing and being hungry. When the headmaster turned to the rest of us, we explained that we had heard nothing. Harry looked between us and insisted it had been there, with a desperation I recognised from somebody expecting the next person to dismiss him.

‘I believe you heard it,’ I told him. Dumbledore nodded and said the unanswered question was what Harry had heard and why it had been clear to him alone. That gave the teachers something to investigate. Harry had been right to tell them, he added, and I watched some of the tension leave my friend’s hands.

The questions continued. Dumbledore asked where Harry first noticed the voice, whether he could follow its direction and whether anything about it seemed familiar. Harry answered carefully, stopping when he could not remember rather than trying to make the account tidier. No sudden explanation emerged to make the wet corridor less frightening.

‘If you hear it again, tell a member of staff immediately,’ Dumbledore said. ‘Say where you are and what you hear. Do not follow it alone.’ Ron pointed out that we had been with Harry. Dumbledore said he was glad of that, but four students could still find themselves in danger together. I remembered the room beneath the trapdoor and found nothing useful to add.

Before we left, I repeated what Malfoy had said to Hermione. It had been a threat made beside an injured animal, and I did not intend to let it become ordinary unpleasantness merely because he had spoken from within a crowd. Dumbledore’s face grew still. McGonagall said she would follow it up with Snape, and Hermione looked at me without speaking.

McGonagall took us towards Gryffindor herself. There would be extra patrols that evening, and nobody was to use the attack as a reason to search the castle after curfew. She gave the instruction without suggesting that being frightened or finding Mrs. Norris had been an offence. Harry stayed close as we walked, quieter now that he had finished telling his story.

At the portrait hole, he waited until she had gone before saying he had thought I would stop him telling Dumbledore. I explained that I had wanted him to finish the account before Filch decided what it meant. Hermione agreed. Harry nodded slowly, still unsettled, but the explanation had been his to give and the teachers had heard it.

Inside, everybody wanted news. We told them that Mrs. Norris was alive and the teachers were investigating. The voice remained outside the discussion; it was a clue we had reported, not something the whole house needed to argue over before breakfast. I retrieved the parcel from Ron and finally put the food in front of Harry.

He ate a little while Ron sat beside him. Hermione watched the fire without opening her book, and I kept seeing the red letters reflected in the puddle. Finding paint instead of blood had offered a few seconds of relief in the corridor. It had done nothing to make the thing hanging beside the warning less frightening.