The Diary
Hermione remained in the hospital wing for several weeks. There was a flurry of rumor about her disappearance when the rest of the school arrived back from their Christmas holidays, because of course everyone thought that she had been attacked. So many students filed past the hospital wing trying to catch a glimpse of her that Madam Pomfrey took out her curtains again and placed them around Hermione’s bed, to spare her the shame of being seen with a furry face.
Harry, Ron, and the Hamato brothers went to visit her every evening. When the new term started, they brought her each day’s homework.
“If I’d sprouted whiskers, I’d take a break from work,” said Ron, tipping a sack of books onto Hermione’s bedside table one evening.
“Don’t be silly, Ron, I’ve got to keep up,” Hermione said briskly. Her spirits were greatly improved by the fact that all the hair had gone from her face and her eyes were slowly turning back to brown. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any new leads?” she added in a whisper, so that Madam Pomfrey couldn’t hear her.
“Nothing,” said Harry gloomily.
“I was so sure it was Malfoy,” Ron muttered.
“You’ve said that a hundred times,” Raph said.
“I still mean it.”
Donnie turned to Hermione, a frown on his face. “This school keeps secrets better than a space robot,” he said. “I can’t find anything on the Chamber of Secrets or what’s happening in New York.”
Before Hermione could respond, Harry pointed to something gold sticking out from under Hermione’s pillow. “What’s that?” he asked.
“Just a get well card,” said Hermione hastily, trying to poke it out of sight, but Ron was too quick for her. He pulled it out, flicked it open, and read aloud:
“To Miss Granger, wishing you a speedy recovery, from your concerned teacher, Professor Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defense League, and five-time winner of Witch Weekly’s Most Charming Smile Award.”
Ron looked up at Hermione, disgusted.
“You sleep with this under your pillow?”
But Hermione was spared answering by Madam Pomfrey sweeping over with her evening dose of medicine.
“Is Lockhart the smarmiest bloke you’ve ever met, or what?” Ron said as they left the infirmary and started toward the Gryffindor Tower. Donnie nodded his agreement, but Mikey snorted.
“He seems like a cool dude,” he said, and Harry genuinely couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
Leo, however, stayed silent, seemingly lost in thought as they started up some stairs.
Harry, Ron, and Raph had to get back to the Gryffindor Tower—Snape had given them so much homework, Harry thought he was likely to be in the sixth year before he finished it. Ron was just asking Donnie how many rat tails you were supposed to add to a Hair Raising Potion when an angry outburst from the floor above reached their ears.
“That’s Filch,” Harry muttered as they hurried up the stairs and paused, out of sight, listening hard.
“You don’t think someone else’s been attacked?” said Ron tensely.
Donnie shook his head. “He sounded too angry for someone to have been attacked. It’s probably just a mess or something.”
Indeed, the sound of Filch’s irritated, hysterical voice reached their ears, and they listened.
“Even more work for me! Mopping all night, like I haven’t got enough to do! No, this is the final straw, I’m going to Dumbledore—”
His footsteps receded along the out-of-sight corridor, and they heard a distant door slam.
They all poked their heads around the corner. Filch had clearly been manning his usual lookout post: They were once again at the spot where Mrs. Norris had been attacked. They saw at a glance what Filch had been shouting about. A great flood of water stretched over half the corridor, and it looked as though it was still seeping from under the door of Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom. Now that Filch had stopped shouting, they could hear Myrtle’s wails echoing off the bathroom walls.
“Now what’s up with her?” said Ron.
“Let’s go and see,” Harry said, making to go into the bathroom, but an arm held him back.
“We’ll go first,” Raph said, his eyes narrowed. He and his brothers didn’t even bother to hold their robes over their ankles as they stepped through the great wash of water to the door bearing its OUT OF ORDER sign. As always they ignored it, and Harry and Ron entered the bathroom behind Leo, Raph, Donnie, and Mikey.
Moaning Myrtle was crying, if possible, louder and harder than ever before. She seemed to be hiding down her usual toilet. It was dark in the bathroom—the candles had been extinguished in the great rush of water that had left both walls and floors soaking wet.
“What’s up, Myrtle?” said Harry.
“Who’s that?” Myrtle glugged miserably. “Come to throw something else at me?”
They waded across to her stall, and Harry said, “Why would I throw something at you?”
“Yeah, dude, that’s just uncool,” Mikey added.
“Don’t ask me,” Myrtle said, suddenly shouting, and they were all taken aback as she emerged with a wave of yet more water, which splashed onto the already-sopping floor. “Here I am, minding my own business, and someone thinks it’s funny to throw a book at me…”
“But… wouldn’t it just go right through you?” Raph said, raising a brow. “I mean, you are a ghost, right?”
But though Harry was inclined to agree, Raph had said the wrong thing. Myrtle puffed herself up and shrieked, “Let’s all throw books at Myrtle, because she can’t feel it! Ten points if you can get it through her stomach! Fifty points if it goes through her head! Well, ha, ha, ha! What a lovely game, I don’t think!”
“Who threw it at you?” Leo asked.
“I don’t know… I was just sitting in my U-bend, thinking about death, and it fell right through the top of my head,” said Myrtle, glaring at them. “It’s over there, it got washed out…”
They looked under the sink where Myrtle was pointing. A small, thin book lay there. It had a shabby black cover and was as wet as everything else in the bathroom. Harry stepped forward to pick it up, but Ron suddenly flung out an arm to hold him back.
“What?” said Harry.
“Are you crazy?” said Ron. “It could be dangerous.”
“Ron’s right,” Leo said. “We don’t know what that thing is.”
But Harry laughed. “Dangerous?” he said. “Come off it, it’s a book, how could it be dangerous?”
“You’d be surprised,” said Ron, who was looking at it apprehensively. “Some of the books the Ministry’s confiscated Dad’s told me—there was one that burned your eyes out. And everyone who reads Sonnets of a Sorcerer spoke in limericks for the rest of their lives. And some old witch in Bath had a book that you could never stop reading! You just had to wander around with your nose in it, trying to do everything one-handed. And—”
“We get the point,” Mikey said, a bit sourly.
The little book lay on the floor, nondescript and soggy.
“Well, we won’t find out unless we look at it,” Harry said, and before anyone could stop him, he ducked around Ron and picked it up off the floor.
He saw at once that it was a diary, and the faded year on the cover told him it was fifty years old. He opened it eagerly. On the first page he could just make out the name T. M. Riddle in smudged ink.
“Hang on,” said Ron, who had approached cautiously and was looking over Harry’s shoulder while the others hung back. “I know that name… T. M. Riddle got an award for special services to the school fifty years ago.”
“How on earth d’you know that?” said Harry in amazement.
“Because Filch made me polish his shield about fifty times in detention,” Ron said, his voice filled with resentment. “That was the one I burped slugs all over. If you’d wiped slime off a name for an hour, you’d remember it, too.”
“Wait a minute,” Donnie said suddenly, coming up to stand behind Harry and Ron. “Did you say T. M. Riddle?”
Harry showed him the cover.
Donnie frowned. “T. M. Riddle,” he repeated, as if testing the name out on his tongue. “T. M. Riddle…”
“Is there a point you’re trying to make, Donnie, or do you just really like that name?” Leo said.
Donnie shook his head. “It sounds really familiar,” he said. “Not trophy-room familiar, but something…” He shook his head again. “I’ll think about it.”
Harry peeled the wet pages apart. They were completely blank. There wasn’t the faintest trace of writing on any of them, not even Auntie Mabel’s birthday, or dentist, half-past three.
“He never wrote in it,” Harry said, disappointed.
“I wonder why someone wanted to flush it away?” wondered Ron.
“Probably just cheap quality,” Mikey said. Everybody turned to him. “What? It’s possible.”
Harry turned to the back cover of the book and saw the printed name of a variety store on Vauxhall Road, London.
“He must have been Muggle-born,” said Harry thoughtfully. “To have bought a diary from Vauxhall Road…”
“There’s a really good pizza place right around there,” Mikey said. “But I don’t think there’s a journal shop.”
“Well, it’s not much use to you,” said Ron. He dropped his voice. “Fifty points if you can get it through Myrtle’s nose.”
Harry, however, pocketed it.
Hermione left the hospital wing, de-whiskered, tail-less, and fur-free at the beginning of February. On her first evening back in Gryffindor Tower, Harry showed her T. M. Riddle’s diary and told her the story of how they had found it.
“Oooh, it might have hidden powers,” Hermione said enthusiastically, taking the diary and looking at it closely.
“If it has, it’s hiding them very well,” said Ron.
“Maybe it’s shy,” Raph said.
“I don’t know why you don’t chuck it, Harry,” Ron said.
“I wish I knew why someone did try to chuck it,” Harry said, frowning. “I wouldn’t mind knowing how Riddle got an award for special services to Hogwarts, either.”
“Could’ve been anything,” Ron said. “Maybe he got thirty O.W.L.s or saved a teacher from the giant squid. Maybe he murdered Myrtle; that would’ve done everyone a favor…”
“Whatever it was, Donnie said to be careful with that thing,” Raph said, pointing at the diary in Harry’s hand. “That name’s got him all sorts of worked up—and he’s getting more and more annoyed every time he can’t find it in a book.”
But Harry could tell from the arrested look on Hermione’s face that she was thinking what he was thinking.
“What?” said Ron, looking from one to the other.
“Well, the Chamber of Secrets was opened fifty years ago, wasn’t it?” Harry said. “That’s what Malfoy said.”
“Yeah…” said Ron slowly.
“And this diary is fifty years old,” said Hermione.
“So?”
“Oh, geeze,” Raph said with a sigh.
“Oh, Ron, wake up,” snapped Hermione. “We know the person who opened the Chamber of Secrets last time was expelled fifty years ago. We know T. M. Riddle got an award for special services to the school fifty years ago. Well, what if Riddle got his special award for catching the Heir of Slytherin? His diary would probably tell us everything—where the Chamber is, and how to open it, and what sort of creature lives in it—the person who’s behind the attacks this time wouldn’t want that lying around, would they?”
“That’s a brilliant theory, Hermione,” said Ron, “with just one tiny little flaw. There’s nothing written in his diary.”
But Hermione was pulling her wand out of her bag.
“It might be invisible ink!” she whispered. She tapped the diary three times and said, “Aparecium!”
Nothing happened. Undaunted, Hermione shoved her hand back into her bag and pulled out what appeared to be a bright red eraser.
“It’s a Revealer, I got it in Diagon Alley,” she said.
She rubbed hard on January first. Nothing happened.
“I’m telling you, there’s nothing to find in there,” said Ron. “Riddle just got a diary for Christmas and couldn’t be bothered filling it in.”
Harry couldn’t explain, even to himself, why he didn’t just throw Riddle’s diary away. The fact was that even though he knew the diary was blank, he kept absentmindedly picking it up and turning the pages, as though it were a story he wanted to finish. And while Harry was sure he had never heard the name T. M. Riddle before, it still seemed to mean something to him, almost as though Riddle was a friend he’d had when he was very small, and half-forgotten. But this was absurd. He’d never had friends before Hogwarts—Dudley had made sure of that.
Nevertheless, Harry was determined to find out more about Riddle, so next day at break, he headed for the trophy room to examine Riddle’s special award, accompanied by an interested Hermione, a thoroughly unconvinced Ron (who told them he’d seen enough of the trophy room to last him a lifetime), and a seemingly bored Raph.
Riddle’s burnished gold shield was tucked away in a corner cabinet. It didn’t carry details of why it had been given to him (“Good thing, too, or it’d be even bigger and I’d still be polishing it,” said Ron). However, they did find Riddle’s name on an old Medal for Magical Merit, and on a list of old Head Boys.
“He sounds like Percy,” said Ron, wrinkling his nose in disgust. “Prefect, Head Boy… probably top of every class—”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” said Hermione in a slightly hurt voice.
The sun had now begun to shine weakly on Hogwarts again. Inside the castle, the mood had grown more hopeful. There had been no more attacks since those on Justin and Nearly Headless Nick, and Madam Pomfrey was pleased to report that the Mandrakes were becoming moody and secretive, meaning that they were fast leaving childhood.
“The moment their acne clears up, they’ll be ready for repotting again,” Harry heard her telling Filch kindly one afternoon. “And after that, it won’t be long until we’re cutting them up and stewing them. You’ll have Mrs. Norris back in no time.”
Perhaps the Heir of Slytherin had lost his or her nerve, thought Harry. It must be getting riskier and riskier to open the Chamber of Secrets, with the school so alert and suspicious. Perhaps the monster, whatever it was, was even now settling itself down to hibernate for another fifty years…
Ernie Macmillan of Hufflepuff didn’t take this cheerful view. He was still convinced that Harry was the guilty one, that he had “given himself away” at the Dueling Club. Peeves wasn’t helping matters; he kept popping up in the crowded corridors singing “Oh, Potter, you rotter…” now with a dance routine to match.
Gilderoy Lockhart seemed to think he himself had made the attacks stop. Harry overheard him telling Professor McGonagall so while the Gryffindors and Ravenclaws were lining up for Transfiguration. “I don’t think there’ll be any more trouble, Minerva,” he said, tapping his nose knowingly and winking. “I think the Chamber has been locked for good this time. The culprit must have known it was only a matter of time before I caught him. Rather sensible to stop now, before I came down hard on him.”
Donnie scowled, glancing at Harry as if to say Can you believe him?
“You know, what the school needs now is a morale-booster. Wash away the memories of last term! I won’t say any more just now, but I think I know just the thing…”
He tapped his nose again and strode off.
Lockhart’s idea of a morale-booster became clear at breakfast time on February fourteenth. Harry hadn’t had much sleep because of a late-running Quidditch practice the night before, and he hurried down to the Great Hall, slightly late. He thought, for a moment, that he’d walked through the wrong doors.
The walls were all covered with large, lurid pink flowers. Worse still, heart-shaped confetti was falling from the pale blue ceiling. Harry went over to the Gryffindor table, where Ron was sitting looking sickened, and Hermione seemed to have been overcome with giggles. Raph was glowering at everybody and everything, including Mikey, who was seemingly trying to console him.
“What’s going on?” Harry asked them all, sitting down and wiping confetti off his bacon.
Ron pointed to the teachers’ table, apparently too disgusted to speak. Lockhart, wearing lurid pink robes to match the decorations, was waving for silence. The teachers on either side of him were looking stony-faced. From where he sat, Harry could see a muscle forming in Professor McGonagall’s cheek. Snape looked as though someone had just fed him a large beaker of Skele-Gro.
“Happy Valentine’s Day!” Lockhart shouted. “And may I thank the forty-six people who have so far sent me cards! Yes, I have taken the liberty of arranging this little surprise for you all—and it doesn’t end here!”
Lockhart clapped his hands, and through the doors to the entrance hall marched a dozen surly-looking dwarfs. Not just any dwarfs, however. Lockhart had them all wearing golden wings and carrying harps.
“My friendly, card-carrying cupids!” beamed Lockhart. “They will be roving around the school today delivering your valentines! And the fun doesn’t stop there! I’m sure my colleagues will want to enter into the spirit of the occasion! Why not ask Professor Snape to show you how to whip up a Love Potion! And while you’re at it, Professor Flitwick knows more about Entrancing Enchantments than any wizard I’ve ever met, the sly old dog!”
Professor Flitwick buried his face in his hands. Snape was looking as though the first person to ask him for a Love Potion would be force-fed poison.
“What’s up with you?” Harry asked Raph, who looked as though he was one second away from flipping the table over.
“Raph’s just upset because his girlfriend’s not here,” Mikey said sadly, patting Raph on the shoulder.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione all stopped eating and stared at Raph.
“You have a girlfriend?” Hermione said, twisting her head around as if she could sense who the girl would be. “Who?”
“None of your business,” Raph snapped. He glared at Mikey. “And no, I don’t have a girlfriend, I had a girlfriend, there’s a difference—”
“I feel you bro,” Mikey said. “Trust me. And Dee’s not doing any better—”
“One more word and I punch your teeth down your throat,” Raph said. He glared at Harry, Ron, and Hermione. “The same goes for you, too.”
The breakfast was carried out in an awkward silence.
“Please, Hermione, tell me you weren’t one of the forty-six,” Ron said as they left the Great Hall for their first lesson. Hermione suddenly became very interested in searching her bag for her schedule and didn’t answer.
All day long, the dwarfs kept barging into their classes to deliver valentines, to the annoyance of the teachers—and Raph, whose face darkened with each valentine—and late that afternoon, as the Gryffindors were walking upstairs for Charms, one of the dwarfs caught up with Harry.
“Oy, you! ‘Arry Potter!” shouted a particularly grim-looking dwarf, elbowing people out of the way to get to Harry.
Hot all over at the thought of being given a valentine in front of a line of first years, which happened to include Ginny Weasley, Harry tried to escape. The dwarf, however, cut his way through the crowd by kicking people’s shins, and reached him before he’d gone two paces.
“I’ve got a musical message to deliver to ‘Arry Potter in person,” he said, twanging his harp in a threatening sort of way.
“Not here,” Harry hissed, trying to escape.
“Stay still!” grunted the dwarf, grabbing hold of Harry’s bag and pulling him back.
“Let me go!” Harry snarled, tugging.
With a loud ripping noise, his bag split in two. His books, wand, parchment, and quill spilled onto the floor, and his ink bottle smashed over everything.
Harry scrambled around, trying to pick it all up before the dwarf started singing, causing something of a holdup in the corridor, despite his friends’ best attempts to help.
“What’s going on here?” came the cold, drawling voice of Draco Malfoy, and Raph immediately scoffed. Harry started stuffing everything feverishly into his ripped bag, desperate to get away before Malfoy could hear his musical valentine.
“What’s all this commotion?” said another familiar voice as Percy Weasley arrived.
Losing his head, Harry tried to make a run for it, but the dwarf seized him around the knees and brought him crashing to the floor.
“Right,” he said, sitting on Harry’s ankles. “Here is your singing valentine:
His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad,
His hair as dark as a blackboard,
I wish he was mine,
He’s really divine,
The hero who conquered the Dark Lord. ”
Harry would have given all the gold in Gringotts to evaporate on the spot. Trying valiantly to laugh along with everyone else, he got up, his feet numb from the weight of the dwarf, as Percy Weasley did his best to disperse the crowd, some of whom were crying with mirth.
“Off you go, off you go, the bell rang five minutes ago, off to class, now,” he said, shooing some of the younger students away. “And you, Malfoy—”
Harry, glancing over, saw Malfoy stoop and snatch something up. Leering, he showed it to Crabbe and Goyle, and Harry realized with a jolt that it was Riddle’s diary.
“Give that back,” he said quietly.
“Wonder what Potter’s written in this?” said Malfoy, who obviously hadn’t noticed the year on the cover and thought he had Harry’s own diary. A hush fell over the onlookers, and Raph’s shoulders were tense, his face contorted in barely-controlled rage. Ginny was staring from the diary to Harry, looking terrified.
“Hand it over, Malfoy,” said Percy sternly.
“When I’ve had a look,” Malfoy said, waving the diary tauntingly at Harry.
Percy said, “As a school Prefect—”
But Harry had lost his temper. He pulled out his wand and shouted, “Expelliarmus!” and just as Snape had disarmed Lockhart, so Malfoy found the diary shooting out of his hand into the air. Ron, grinning broadly, caught it.
“Harry!” Percy said loudly. “No magic in the corridors. I’ll have to report this, you know!”
But Harry didn’t care; he was one-up on Malfoy, and that was worth five points from Gryffindor any day. Malfoy was looking furious, and as Ginny passed him to enter her classroom, he yelled spitefully at her, “I don’t think Potter liked your valentine much!”
Ginny covered her face with her hands and ran into class. Snarling, Ron pulled out his wand, too, but Harry and Raph pulled him away, not wanting him to spend the entirety of Charms belching up slugs.
It wasn’t until they had reached Professor Flitwick’s class that Harry noticed something rather strange about Riddle’s diary. All his other books were drenched in scarlet ink. The diary, however, was as clean as it had been before the ink bottled and smashed all over it. He tried to point this out to Raph and Ron, but Ron was having trouble with his wand again; large purple bubbles were blossoming out of the end, and he wasn’t much interested in anything else. Raph had returned to his gloomy state, his eyes distant, as though he were in a memory rather than in Charms class.
Harry went to bed before anyone else in his dormitory that night. This was partly because he didn’t think he could stand Fred and George singing, “His eyes are as green as a fresh-pickled toad” one more time, and partly because he wanted to examine Riddle’s diary again, and he knew that Ron thought he was wasting his time.
Harry sat on his four-poster bed and flicked through the blank pages, not one of which had a trace of scarlet ink on it. Then he pulled a new bottle out of his bedside cabinet, dipped his quill into it, and dropped a blot onto the first page of the diary.
The ink shone brightly on the paper for a second and then, as though it was being sucked into the page, vanished. Excited, Harry loaded up his quill a second time and wrote, My name is Harry Potter.
The words shone momentarily on the page and they, too, sank without a trace. Then, at last, something happened.
Oozing back out of the page, in his very own ink, came words Harry had never written.
Hello, Harry Potter. My name is Tom Riddle. How did you come by my diary?
Those words, too, faded away, but not before Harry had started to scribble back.
Someone tried to flush it down a toilet.
He waited eagerly for Riddle’s reply.
Lucky that I recorded my memories in some more lasting way than ink. But I always knew that there would be those who would not want this diary read.
What do you mean? Harry scrawled, blotting the page in his excitement.
I mean that this diary holds memories of terrible things. Things that were covered up, but that still happened—things that happened in a land far from here, and things that happened at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
That’s where I am now, Harry wrote quickly. I’m at Hogwarts, and horrible stuff’s been happening. Do you know anything about the Chamber of Secrets?
His heart was hammering. Riddle’s reply came quickly, his writing became untidier, as though he was hurrying to tell all he knew.
Of course I know about the Chamber of Secrets. In my day, they told us it was a legend, that it did not exist. But this was a lie. In my fifth year, the Chamber was opened and the monster attacked several students, finally killing one. I caught the person who’d opened the Chamber and he was expelled. But the Headmaster, Professor Dippet, ashamed that such a thing had happened at Hogwarts, forbade me to tell the truth. A story was given out that the girl had died in a freak accident. They gave me a nice, shiny, engraved trophy for my trouble and warned me to keep my mouth shut. But I knew it could happen again. The monster lived on, and the one who had the power to release it was not imprisoned. And so these memories have sat here, eternalized and alone in this diary, until someone else came along, a friend. And now… you’ve come along, too.
Harry nearly upset his ink bottle in his hurry to write back.
It’s happening again now. There have been three attacks and no one seems to know who’s behind them. Who was it last time?
I can show you, if you like, came Riddle’s reply. You don’t have to take my word for it. I can take you inside my memory of the night when I caught him.
Harry hesitated, his quill suspended over the diary. What did Riddle mean? How could he be taken inside somebody else’s memory? He glanced nervously at the door to the dormitory, which was growing dark. When he looked back at the diary, he saw fresh words forming.
Let me show you.
Harry paused for a fraction of a second and then wrote one word.
Okay.
“So we know that the Malfoys are connected to whatever’s going on in New York,” Donnie mused as he and Leo walked down the hall. It was late, but the brothers were meeting up at the Room of Requirement for a very last-minute meeting before they would head to bed.
A nod. “But we still don’t know who’s behind the attacks.”
“And, contrary to popular belief, they’re not just going to stop,” Donnie said bitterly. “Lockhart’s an idiot.”
Leo was tempted to agree with him, but just then, the Room of Requirement door opened. The two of them stepped in.
And paused.
A rack of weapons was waiting for them, filled with all the essentials: shurikens, grappling hooks, and—to Donnie’s delight—smoke bombs.
Raph and Mikey stepped in not a moment later, and their eyes landed on the weapons in front of them. No one spoke, confusion and something like excitement swirling around them.
Mikey broke the silence first. “Dudes,” he said, a grin creeping onto his face, “this is awesome.”
The four of them stepped up, each of them claiming a few shurikens, smoke bombs, and a grappling hook.
“I feel like a ninja again,” Donnie said, fidgeting with the grappling hook.
Raph sucked in a breath, and his brothers all turned to him, concern written across their features.
“Raph?” Leo said. “ What’s wrong?”
Raph held up a shuriken so they could see, and his smile wobbled when their eyes widened. The Hamato Clan symbol was on each of the shurikens, and it reminded them so much of home that another wave of silence engulfed the room. This silence was tentative, a little heavy, but there was something bittersweet about seeing their old clan’s symbol.
Leo shook his thoughts clear. “If the Room is giving us more weapons, then that must mean something’s coming—something big.”
His brothers all nodded, grateful for the change of subject.
“Last year, we got our weapons around Christmas time,” Donnie said. “We’re halfway into February now—I wonder if that’s just a coincidence, or if the Room purposefully gives us what we need a certain time before we need it.”
“Well, whenever it is, we’ll be ready,” Raph said, his jaw set in determination. “Not like last year.”
“Let’s hope we don’t have a repeat of last year,” Mikey said. “I know I didn’t appreciate it, and I definitely know Dee didn’t either.”
Indeed, there were two large scars on Donnie’s back from where the Turducken had scratched him; he had been an inch from death, bleeding profusely. Luckily, Leo saved him using his healing hands, but… Donnie shuddered.
“Let’s hope not.”
Raph caught up to Ron on his way back to the Gryffindor Tower, only to see Ron frowning.
“You haven’t seen Harry anywhere, have you?” he asked as Raph approached.
“Not since dinner,” Raph said. “He might be in the dormitory.”
So the two of them made their way up to their dormitory, and when Ron opened the door, he smiled and said, “There you are.”
Harry sat up from where he lay on the bed, sweating and shaking, his face pale as death.
“What’s up?” Raph said, looking at him in concern.
“It was Hagrid,” Harry said, breathless. He looked at them. “Hagrid opened the Chamber of Secrets fifty years ago.”