The car stopped so suddenly that they were nearly thrown into the windshield. They had reached the edge of the forest. Fang flung himself at the window in his anxiety to get out, and when Harry opened the door, he shot off through the trees to Hagrid’s house, tail between his legs. Harry got out too, and after a minute or so, Ron seemed to regain the feeling in his limbs and followed, still stiff-necked and staring. Harry gave the car a grateful pat as it reversed back into the forest and disappeared from view.
Harry went back into Hagrid’s cabin to get the Invisibility Cloak. Fang was trembling under a blanket in his basket. When Harry got outside again, he found Ron being violently sick in the pumpkin patch.
“Follow the spiders,” said Ron weakly, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.” I’ll never forgive Hagrid. We’re lucky to be alive.”
“I bet he thought Aragog wouldn’t hurt friends of his,” said Harry.
“That’s exactly Hagrid’s problem!” said Ron, thumping the wall of the cabin.” He always thinks monsters aren’t as bad as they’re made out, and look where it’s got him! A cell in Azkaban!” He was shivering uncontrollably now.” What was the point of sending us in there? What have we found out, Id like to know?”
“That Hagrid never opened the Chamber of Secrets,” said Harry, throwing the cloak over Ron and prodding him in the arm to make him walk.” He was innocent.”
Ron gave a loud snort. Evidently, hatching Aragog in a cupboard wasn’t his idea of being innocent.
As the castle loomed nearer Harry twitched the cloak to make sure their feet were hidden, then pushed the creaking front doors ajar. They walked carefully back across the entrance hall and up the marble staircase, holding their breath as they passed corridors where watchful sentries were walking. At last they reached the safety of the Gryffindor common room, where the fire had burned itself into glowing ash. They took off the cloak and climbed the winding stair to their dormitory.
Ron fell onto his bed without bothering to get undressed. Harry, however, didn’t feel very sleepy. He sat on the edge of his fourposter, thinking hard about everything Aragog had said.
The creature that was lurking somewhere in the castle, he thought, sounded like a sort of monster Voldemort. even other monsters didn’t want to name it. But he and Ron were no closer to finding out what it was, or how it Petrified its victims. Even Hagrid had never known what was in the Chamber of Secrets.
Harry swung his legs up onto his bed and leaned back against his pillows, watching the moon glinting at him through the tower window.
He couldn’t see what else they could do. They had hit dead ends everywhere. Riddle had caught the wrong person, the Heir of Slytherin had got off, and no one could tell whether it was the same person, or a different one, who had opened the Chamber this time. There was nobody else to ask. Harry lay down, still thinking about what Aragog had said.
He was becoming drowsy when what seemed like their very last hope occurred to him, and he suddenly sat bolt upright.
“Ron,” he hissed through the dark, “Ron.”
Ron woke with a yelp like Fang’s, stared wildly around, and saw Harry.
“Ron.that girl who died. Aragog said she was found in a bathroom,” said Harry, ignoring Neville’s snufing snores from the corner.” What if she never left the bathroom? What if she’s still there?”
Ron rubbed his eyes, frowning through the moonlight. And then he understood, too.
“You don’t think. not Moaning Myrtle?” A ll those times we were in that bathroom, and she was just three toilets away,” said Ron bitterly at breakfast next day,
“and we could’ve asked her, and now. . .”
It had been hard enough trying to look for spiders. Escaping their teachers long enough to sneak into a girls’ bathroom, the girls’ bathroom, moreover, right next to the scene of the first attack, was going to be almost impossible.
But something happened in their first lesson, Transfiguration, that drove the Chamber of Secrets out of their minds for the first time in weeks. Ten minutes into the class, Professor McGonagall told them that their exams would start on the first of June, one week from today.