Halloween
When Halloween arrived, the rains had begun. Soaking sheets of water attacked the stone castle walls, night and day, and every classroom had to be illuminated by candlelight so the students could read their notes. Harry overheard a Hufflepuff, Hannah Abbot, worrying that a leak from the ceiling was dripping into the guinea pigs’ straw in their common room. Professor Flitwick redirected an entire lesson to teaching them water-proofing spells so they could protect his bookshelves.
The only thing the rain hadn’t hurt was Slytherin’s chances in the Quidditch Cup. Daphne’s addition to the team had resulted in their best game yet: two-hundred-ninety to eighty against Gryffindor. The whole team were being greeted with handshakes and nods of respect from Slytherin students everywhere they went. Daphne was - of course - on cloud nine, especially after the congratulatory letter and cash reward owled by her parents. She was spending more than ever practising and flying on her own, and regularly came back drenched to the bone.
“Where’s Daphne?” was commonly answered by “Out flying again,” among the second years.
There was always a feast at Halloween. This year, the atrocious weather had made the feast feel more like an oasis of joy on the horizon than usual. Rumours circulated about what a Halloween feast under the bland Headmaster Rodley would look like - was it true he had banned chocolate, or hired the Weird Sisters, or that fancy dress was mandatory? The fever had infected Harry’s friends in the fashion department.
“Harry, move your arse, you’re sitting on my starched shirt!” Blaise squawked. He was darting like a kite in heavy wind around the dorm room, in a flurry of silk. “I just had that ironed and starched-”
“You mean you got an elf to starch and iron it,” corrected Tracey, leaning against the doorframe, fixing her own collar. “You probably don’t even know how to switch an iron on.”
“What kind of Muggle fantasy is that, switch it on?”
“Has anyone seen my cravat?” Goyle asked dully. His voice was beginning to break and would randomly sink low before springing right back up. As a result, he was mostly reticent these days.
“What’s a cravat?” Harry asked. He was just trying to find a pair of socks in his trunk that matched. Draco grabbed his arm as he brushed past.
“And you promise it’s a bottle green shirt,” he urged. “Because I don't trust Zabini with that voice he used.”
“Yes, Draco. Your shirt is green.”
“Has anyone seen Daphne?” Pansy hollered from the corridor.
“She’s out flying,” answered multiple people at once.
Pansy threw up her arms in defeat - her hair was half-up and half-down and she had three lipsticks in her hand - and stormed out to find her.
Last year at Halloween, the Defence teacher Professor Quirrell had set loose a mountain troll in part of the dungeons, and Harry had begun to uncover a plot that led to the discovery of Voldemort living within the school. So it wasn’t with the happiest of memories or the greatest of expectations that Harry followed the other Slytherins up to the Great Hall that evening.
It had been beautifully decorated, as usual. The enchanted ceiling was a starry black, with streaks of meteors and moonglow. Candles drifted high above every table, occasionally bobbing down to bump against a professor’s pointed hat. Harry found his seat between Blaise and Tracey, across from Draco. The blond was frowning up a storm.
“What is it now?” Blaise griped, reaching for the roasted potatoes.
“Nothing,” sulked Draco. “Potatoes.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, shut up, will you?”
Harry tuned them out. He wanted a night of some peace and quiet, for once. Turning to Tracey, he joined her conversation with an older student about third-year coursework. Just one night.
“...my friend Pansy? Parkinson?” Tracey was saying. “She’s crazy about that stuff. Runes and ancient communications. I saw her reading a book in Old Wizarding Norse last year, and it was like this thick!” She held her hands about a foot apart. “Craaaazy.”
“Oh, yeah, I know Parkinson,” said the older student, drowning a Yorkshire pudding in a lake of onion gravy. “Our parents are in business together. How is she?’
“She’s,” began Tracey, before stopping and frowning. She and Harry both looked up and down the table. There was no sign of Pansy’s familiar dark hair and stare. “Well, where is she?”
“No idea,” said Harry, and put another entire parsnip in his mouth. The food - as always - was excellent.
Tracey pushed off from the table. Her long sleeves, which she had pushed up around her elbows, came swishing down. “I’ll go find her,” she decided, and left the Great Hall.
“Suit yourself,” said the older student. “By the way, Potter-”
Harry had become used to people speaking to him as though they knew him well, when they were in fact strangers. It all came as part and parcel with the lightning scar. Lucky him.
“- what do you think of our new profs, then?” the older student asked.
“Oh!” Harry swallowed his mouthful of vegetable. “Er, not bad? I like Professor Ulysses.”
The student laughed. “Yeah, he’s different. Not a Snape fan, were you?”
“No particularly, but he was involved in a plot to exploit me and bring back Voldemort, so…” Harry shrugged. “Difficult to come back from that one.”
The conversation didn’t go very far after that.
It was late evening by the time the Great Hall emptied. The glass windows were pitch black and the stone halls echoed with the giddy sounds of a bunch of teenagers out later than usual. Comfortably full, Harry walked beside Blaise and followed the crowd, listening to the other boy complain about something at top volume.
“I HONESTLY DON’T KNOW WHERE HE GOT THE NERVE!” Blaise shouted over the bustle. “I MEAN, I’M DISRESPECTFUL MYSELF, BUT THIS IS ANOTHER LEVEL.”
“Who?” Millicent asked behind him. She was wearing a set of rosy dress robes passed down from an older sister that looked misshapen and extremely uncomfortable. She was also wearing a dour expression as a result.
“THIS SON-OF-A-BASILISK, LUKE, IN THIRD YEAR!” replied Blaise. “HONESTLY RIDICULOUS! IT’S NOT LIKE MY MOTHER COULDN’T GET HIS FATHER FIRED IN HALF A SECOND, SO-”
“Not sure, but something’s happening up there…” Harry heard someone say to their friend as they squeezed through the crowd past him.
“HE HAS FAR TOO MUCH AUDACITY FOR SOMEONE WHO COULDN’T PASS SECOND-YEAR CHARMS, I’LL SAY THAT.”
Harry craned his neck and stood on his tiptoes, trying to see over the heads of the crowd. Everyone was slowing down, and the anxious chatter was heightening. Something was definitely happening ahead, but what?
“AND IF HE HADN'T HAVE SAID THAT, MAYBE I WOULDN’T HAVE- oh.” Blaise’s tirade stopped abruptly, when he realised the corridor had fallen silent.
“What’s going on?” Harry hissed. He was blocked in on all sides. Then he heard a prefect’s voice nervously call out for a professor.
“Excuse me, excuse me, Potter…” Behind him, Professor McGonagall appeared and started parting the crowd. Harry grabbed the opportunity and followed her as she surged towards the scene. When he reached the front, he could only stop and stare.
Water had flooded a section of corridor, pouring in rain through a wide open window. In the centre of the pool lay the curled-up form of Mrs Norris, Filch’s spiteful cat. She seemed smaller in death and her fur was sticking up in sad wet spikes. On the opposite side of the flood, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley of Gryffindor stood like statues. Hermione’s hands covered her mouth and both students wore expressions of shock. Then Harry looked to the wall next to them, where McGonagall was pointing her wand, and his mouth dropped.
The message was written boldly in red, so his immediate thought was that it was someone’s blood. It seemed to still be wet - as he watched, a drop slid down the wall and splashed into the water.
“What is it?” asked a quiet voice at his shoulder. Harry turned around to see Draco hovering close to him, brow creased in confusion. It was the first time Draco had spoken without seeming angry in a few weeks.
“Someone’s written something on the wall here,” Harry whispered back. “In blood, maybe, or red paint? It says… it says The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the Heir, beware.”
“Enemies of the Heir?” Draco repeated.
“Everyone can go back to their dorms, please!” McGonagall cried, lifting her arms to shoo the crowd away. “Prefects, lead the way. No, Granger, Weasley, stay here, please. Come on!”
Only when it was clear that McGonagall was ready to dock house points, give detentions, and take no nonsense, did the crowd begin to shift. The Gryffindors had to wade through the flood in the direction of their tower. As they passed, some gave Ron and Hermione claps on the shoulder or sympathetic looks, but most ignored them. Harry noticed this, and frowned.
“Go on, shoo!” McGonagall said.
Draco grabbed Harry’s sleeve. “Did she say Granger was here? At the scene of the crime?”
“What?” Harry replied. “Yeah, she was here when I got here, with Ron…”
Draco had surged forward. “Enemies of the Heir, beware!?” he announced in a shrill voice. “You’ll be next, you Mudbloods.”
The response was immediate. McGonagall let out a shriek of disbelief. Ron Weasley jolted forwards with fiery eyes, only held back by Hermione grabbing his arm with all her might.
“You want to say that again, Malfoy?” he shouted. “Come fight me, you can’t even see!”
“You shut your mouth, blood traitor!” Draco spit back.
“Mister Malfoy, that is QUITE enough!” McGonagall thundered. “We will NOT tolerate that kind of language here - come with me, all of you.”
She whirled around in a swish of her cloak. Hermione, head bowed, followed quickly with Ron hot on her heels, though he kept his glare fixed on Draco as he went. Draco stood, arms crossed, unmoving until Harry grabbed his arm and dragged him along in pursuit of their professor. As they walked, Draco tried to yank himself free.
“What are you doing? Let me go,” he hissed. “What are we following her for?”
“She told us to-” Harry answered.
“Oh, and I suppose we just do whatever the teachers want us to, now, do we? Is that it?”
Harry ignored him. He kept a hand on Draco’s arm to guide him around the suits of armour as they turned corners and climbed staircases. In truth, Harry wondered if McGonagall would know what was going on with the strange graffiti and the seemingly dead cat. She led them to her office and held the door open as the second-years filed in one by one.
“Now,” she said through pursed lips when they stood in a line in front of her desk. She folded her hands over one another. “Would anyone like to tell me what just happened?”
Harry kept his mouth shut, largely because he had no idea what had just happened. Hermione and Draco were also silent - the former shaking slightly, face covered by her hair; the latter standing indifferent and resolute like a jaded child soldier. Though he was even pasty-whiter than usual, Ron Weasley was the first to speak.
“Professor, I dunno, but I swear it wasn’t us,” he said. “Honest - we just found her like that. I mean, the cat. We didn’t do it.”
“And the … writing?” McGonagall asked. Ron shook his head. “I see. So what exactly were you and Miss Granger doing all alone in that corridor this evening? Were the two of you not at the Halloween feast?”
“No, professor,” Hermione said quietly. “Sorry, professor.”
“Well, where were you?”
“We were at a Deathday Party,” answered Hermione. She began to explain a far-fetched story (in Harry’s unprofessional opinion) about a Gryffindor ghost, Nearly-Headless Nick, who had invited them to a basement gathering of ghouls. To Harry’s surprise, McGonagall didn’t seem to think it was nonsense; she nodded grimly.
“Very well. So you just happened to come upon this…incident with Mr Filch’s cat?”
“Yes, professor,” said Hermione, at the same time as Ron said, “I swear on my mum’s life, professor.”
Professor McGonagall removed her glasses and set them on her desk. “Very well. Do you two have anything else to say? Well, if you do think of anything, you can come and tell me. We will get to the bottom of this matter.”
She turned her flinty gaze on Draco - he couldn’t see it, of course, so Harry absorbed most of it, and shivered. “Mr Malfoy?” she said, in a tone like a polar icecap. “Do you know why you are here?”
“No, Professor.” He didn’t turn towards her.
“Mr Malfoy, you just used some completely unacceptable language towards Miss Granger here,” began McGonagall.
“No, I didn’t,” he interrupted.
“Pardon me?”
Draco angled his head in McGonagall’s direction. “It wasn’t aimed at Granger.”
“Oh, really?” McGonagall stood, scooping her glasses up. “So you just said a slur, to the hallway in general?” He didn’t reply. “Mr Malfoy, I might even have interpreted what you said as a threat.” Again, no reply. “Firstly, I will need you to apologise to Miss Granger.”
“Professor, please don’t,” Hermione broke in. “I don’t really care what he says - I don’t even know what that word meant.”
Ron looked horrified at that. McGonagall shot her a tight smile.
“Be that as it may, Mr Malfoy will still be apologising to you,” she said. “Now, Malfoy, we don’t have all day now.”
It was as if Draco hadn’t heard them at all. Harry nudged his arm.
“Come on,” he whispered. “Just do it, then we can go.”
McGonagall slipped her glasses on and shifted a couple of papers on her desk. “Regardless of how you feel about apologising for your words, I will still be giving you a detention; I want you to learn that there will be consequences for hateful behaviour-” She broke off, frowning at the parchment in her hand. “Mr Malfoy, how have you managed to get yourself multiple detentions a day all week?”
Beside them, Ron snorted into his fist. Harry glared at him.
“Ahm, it’s not funny.” McGonagall looked over her glasses at Ron, and the fact that he didn’t fall over under the force of her glare was quite impressive.
Draco sighed suddenly and sharply, thoroughly impatient. “Granger, I’m sorry you were offended. Weasley, I’m sorry you have no friends, and I’m sorry the two of you have to go to ghost parties to socialise. And, professor, I’m sorry for you that I won’t be serving detention with you this week. Goodnight.”
He spun on his heel and disappeared through the door before McGonagall could stop him.
“That boy!” she exclaimed. “Harry, go after him. I want to see him, if not tonight, then tomorrow. Go!”
Harry didn’t need to be told twice. He bolted from the office, scanning the corridor and spotting Draco’s cloak vanishing around the corner headed downstairs. He ran in pursuit. “Draco! Wait!”
His friend ignored him. He was walking with one hand trailing on the stone walls to keep him in the right direction. Harry snatched at his arm. “Stop, you’re about to fall down the stairs.”
“Potter, I think I know my way around Hogwarts.”
“I know you do…”
Harry didn’t bother asking Draco to go back to McGonagall’s office. There was no point asking a stone cliff to do backflips for you, and Draco could be the stoniest of all cliffs. Harry was just happy that Draco was speaking to him.
They walked in silence. The corridors were completely empty, giving the dusky October night an eerie desolation. Their footsteps echoed like drum beats on the stone. Draco suddenly sighed in frustration and began pulling at the neck of his dress robes.
“This bloody cravat, I can’t breathe,” he complained. “It’s too bloody small.”
“Here, let me-” Harry reached over. At first, Draco swatted his hand away, but complained when Harry drew away.
“No, it really is very tight.”
“I know, I’m trying to help...” Harry said. The silky fabric had been knotted so tight as to be locked - Draco must have been tugging at it all night. “Er, hold on, there must be a spell for this.”
“Is there? I don’t know it.”
“No, me neither.”
They stood there in the corridor, defeated for the moment. Then Draco sighed. “Come on. I’m going to bed.”
It was only as they were getting into bed that night in their respective four-posters that Harry remembered he’d had a question for Draco. He hissed his name across the room, to no reply. He tried again.
“Draco!”
“What,” the boy replied in a sleepy monotone.
“Who… who is ‘the Heir’?”
For a minute, Draco didn’t say anything, and Harry thought he might have fallen asleep. Then, “I’ll tell you later.”
“OK. Goodnight.”