Aragog
Summer was creeping over the grounds around the castle; sky and lake alike turned periwinkle blue and flowers as large as cabbages burst into bloom in the greenhouses. Even Leo had forgone his sweaters and scarves and started enjoying the warmth that came with the ever-dawning sun. But with no Hagrid visible from the castle windows, striding the grounds with Fang at his heels, the scene didn’t look right to Harry; no better, in fact, that inside of the castle, where things were so horribly wrong.
Harry, Ron, and the others had all tried to visit Hermione, but visitors were now barred from the hospital wing.
“We’re taking no more chances,” Madam Pomfrey told them severely through a crack in the infirmary door. “No, I’m sorry, there’s every chance the attacker might come back to finish these people off.”
Raph had told his brothers about what had happened in Hagrid’s cottage. With Dumbledore gone, fear had spread as never before, so that the sun warming the castle walls outside seemed to stop at the mullioned windows. There was barely a face to be seen in the school that didn’t look worried and tense, and any laughter that rang through the corridors sounded shrill and unnatural and was quickly stifled. Even Mikey, who was the most up-beat person Harry knew, always wore something of a grave expression, and Harry repeatedly noticed him resting a hand on the scar on his throat.
Harry constantly repeated Dumbledore’s final words to himself: “I will only truly have left this school when none here are loyal to me. Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.” But what good were those words? Who exactly were they supposed to ask for help, when everyone was just as confused and scared as they were?
Hagrid’s hint about the spiders was far easier to understand. The trouble was, there didn’t seem to be a single spider left in the castle to follow. Harry looked everywhere he went, helped (rather reluctantly) by Ron and Raph. Raph’s brothers looked, too, but they were all hampered, of course, by the fact that they weren’t allowed to wander off on their own—they had to move around in a pack with their own House. Most of their fellow students seemed glad that they were being shepherded from class to class by teachers, but Harry found it irksome, and he could tell his friends did, too.
One person, however, seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the atmosphere of terror and suspicion. Draco Malfoy was strutting around the school as though he had just been appointed Head Boy. Every time he passed them in the hallways, Leo’s face always darkened to a scowl. Harry didn’t realize what Malfoy was so pleased about until the Potions lesson about two weeks after Dumbledore and Hagrid had left, when, sitting right behind Malfoy, Harry overheard him gloating to Crabbe and Goyle.
“I always thought Father might be the one who got rid of Dumbledore,” he said, not troubling to keep his voice down. “I told you he thinks Dumbledore’s the worst headmaster the school’s ever had. Maybe we’ll get a decent headmaster now. Someone who won’t want the Chamber of Secrets closed. McGonagall won’t last long, she’s only filling in…”
Snape swept past Harry, ignoring Raph’s clenched jaw and making no comment about Hermione’s empty seat and cauldron.
“Sir,” said Malfoy loudly. “Sir, why don’t you apply for the headmaster’s job?”
Leo scoffed quietly, his shoulders tensing as he stirred his cauldron.
“Now, now, Malfoy,” said Snape, though he couldn’t suppress a thin-lipped smile. “Professor Dumbledore has only been suspended by the governors. I daresay he’ll be back with us soon enough.”
“Yeah, right,” Malfoy said with a smirk. “I expect you’d have Father’s vote, sir, if you wanted to apply for the job—I’ll tell Father you’re the best teacher here, sir—”
Snape smirked as he swept off around the dungeon, fortunately not spotting Seamus Finnigan, who was pretending to vomit into his cauldron.
“I’m quite surprised the Mudbloods haven’t all packed their bags by now,” Malfoy went on. “Bet you five Galleons the next one dies. Pity it wasn’t Granger—”
The bell rang at that moment, which was lucky; at Malfoy’s last words, both Ron and Raph had leapt off their stools—Ron to launch himself at Malfoy, and Raph to stop him—and in the scramble to collect bags and books, their attempts to reach Malfoy went unnoticed.
“Let me at him,” Ron growled as Harry and Raph hung onto his arms while Leo blocked Ron from Snape’s line of sight. “I don’t care, I don’t need my wand, I’m going to kill him with my bare hands—”
“Hurry up, I’ve got to take you all to Herbology,” barked Snape over the class’s heads. They bid goodbye to Leo, and off they marched, with Harry, Raph, and Ron bringing up the rear, Ron still trying to get loose. It was only safe to let go of him when Snape had seen them out of the castle, and they were making their way across the vegetable patch toward the greenhouses.
The Herbology class was very subdued; there were now two missing from their number, Justin and Hermione.
Professor Sprout set them all to work pruning the Abyssinian Shrivelfigs. Harry, Ron, Raph, and Mikey all worked at the same Shrivelfig, and when Harry went to tip an armful of withered stalks onto the compost heap, he found himself face-to-face with Ernie Macmillan. Ernie took a deep breath and said, very formally, “I just want to say, Harry, that I’m sorry I ever suspected you. I know you’d never attack Hermione Granger, and I apologize for all the stuff I said. We’re all in the same boat now, and, well—”
He held out a pudgy hand, and Harry shook it.
Ernie turned to Mikey, who was watching him with a steely expression. “And I’m sorry to you, too,” he added, extending his hand toward Mikey. “It wasn’t fair of me to suspect your brother just because he’s in Slytherin—”
“No,” Mikey snapped. “It wasn’t.” But then he sighed, and, to what seemed to be Raph’s astonishment, shook Ernie’s hand. “But you’re cool, now.”
Ernie smiled, relieved, and turned back to his friends.
“That little—”
But Harry gasped, cutting off Raph’s murmur.
Several large spiders were scuttling over the ground on the other side of the glass, moving in an unnaturally straight line as though taking the shortest route to a prearranged meeting. Harry got the others’ attention and pointed out the spiders, following their progress with his eyes screwed up against the sun.
“Great,” Raph sighed.
“We can’t follow them now,” Ron said, trying—and failing—to look pleased.
Harry’s eyes narrowed as he focused on the spiders. If they pursued their fixed course, there could be no doubt about where they would end up.
“Looks like they’re heading for the Forbidden Forest…”
“We’ll do it tonight,” Mikey said quietly, and they all turned to him in surprise. “I’ll tell Dee—Raph, you think you could get Leo to meet us somewhere?”
Raph nodded. “We’ll meet up by Hagrid’s house.”
Ron frowned. “But I thought you said that there were too many people around at night now.”
“If we’re going into the Forbidden Forest, we should all be there,” Raph said.
“Besides, we’re stealthy enough that we can sneak out without being noticed, trust us,” Mikey added, and he and Raph exchanged matching grins.
“We can take Fang with us,” Harry said. “He’s used to going into the forest with Hagrid, he might be of some help.”
Raph nodded. “Good idea.” He turned to Mikey and signed something, who signed back.
“I hate it when you do that,” Ron said. “What’re you saying, anyway?”
“Don’t worry about it, little dude,” Mikey said.
“I’m taller than you—”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Gryffindors had Defense Against the Dark Arts next, and the whole class stared as Lockhart bounded into the room. Every other teacher in the place was looking grimmer than usual, but Lockhart appeared nothing short of buoyant.
“Come now,” he cried, beaming around. “Why all these long faces?”
People swapped exasperated looks, but nobody answered.
Finally, Raph broke the silence. “Probably because there’s a giant killer monster on the loose,” he said, loudly enough for Lockhart to hear.
“Water under the bridge!” he said, and the entire class looked at him incredulously. “Don’t you people realize that the danger has passed! The culprit has been taken away—”
“Says who?” said Dean Thomas loudly.
“My dear young man, the Minister of Magic wouldn’t have taken Hagrid if he hadn’t been one hundred percent sure that he was guilty,” said Lockhart, in the tone of someone explaining that one and one made two.
“Oh, yes he would,” said Ron, even more loudly than Dean.
“I flatter myself I know a touch more about Hagrid’s arrest than you do, Mr. Weasley,” said Lockhart in a self-satisfied tone.
Ron started to say that he didn’t think so, somehow, but stopped mid-sentence when Raph kicked him hard under the desk.
“We weren’t there, remember?” Harry muttered.
But Lockhart’s disgusting cheeriness, his hints that he had always thought Hagrid was no good, his confidence that the whole business was now at an end, irritated Harry so much that he yearned to throw Gadding with Ghouls right in Lockhart’s stupid face.
The Gryffindor common room was always very crowded these days, because from six o’clock onward the Gryffindors had nowhere else to go. They had plenty to talk about, with the result that the common room often didn’t empty until past midnight.
Raph and his brothers had all exchanged nods that night at dinner, signaling to each other that they knew the plan. Raph had the luxury of the Invisibility Cloak, something his brother’s didn’t. But they had been raised as ninjas for eighteen years of their lives—they could handle a few teachers.
It was well past midnight when they were finally able to sneak out of the common room, throwing the cloak over themselves and climbing out through the portrait hole.
Navigating through the castle was another challenge in itself—Raph almost felt bad for his brothers, who had to dodge dozens of teachers roaming the corridors. At last they reached the entrance hall, slid back the lock on the oak front doors, squeezed between them, trying to stop any creaking, and stepped out into the moonlit grass.
“‘Course,” said Ron abruptly as they strode across the black grass, “we might get to the forest and find there’s nothing to follow. Those spiders might not’ve been going there at all. I know it looked like they were moving in that sort of general direction, but…”
His voice trailed off, and Raph found himself secretly hoping he was right (though, with his luck, he’d have to face something worse than regular spiders).
They reached Hagrid’s house, sad and sorry-looking with its blank windows. When Harry pushed the door open, Fang went mad with joy at the sight of them. Raph quickly calmed him down, worried that Fang might wake everyone at the castle with his deep, booming barks.
Not a moment later, Leo slipped into the cabin, blending in with the shadows.
“Have you seen—?” Raph started, but then the door opened, and Mikey stepped in, whistling casually and patting Fang on the head.
“So we’re just waiting for Dee, right?” he said, surveying the people in the cabin. Raph and Leo nodded.
“How did you guys get through the castle?” Harry asked. “There were so many teachers in the halls.”
Leo shrugged. “I had a few close calls, but…”
“It was pretty simple, really,” Mikey said.
Finally, the door opened a fourth time, and Donnie came in, panting. “Peeves,” he seethed, shutting the door behind him with a click. “Why couldn’t that monster have fried him and not Nick?”
“We should get going,” Leo said, while Mikey laughed. “The spiders might be gone by now.”
Harry left the Invisibility Cloak on Hagrid’s table. There would be no need for it in the pitch-dark forest.
“C’mon, Fang, we’re going for a walk,” he said, patting his leg, and Fang bounded happily out of the house after the six of them. He dashed to the edge of the forest and lifted his leg against a large sycamore tree.
“Lumos,” Donnie murmured, holding his wand out in front of him. A tiny light appeared at the end of it, just enough to let them watch the path for signs of spiders.
“Good thinking,” Ron said. “I’d light mine, too, but you know—it’d probably blow up or something…”
“There,” Leo whispered, pointing at the grass. Two solitary spiders were hurrying away from the wandlight into the shade of the trees.
Ron grimaced. “Okay,” he said, sighing as though resigned to the worst, “I’m ready. Let’s go.”
When they got farther into the trees, the others—excluding Ron—all lit their wands, and soon they had a small circle of light that they walked within. Fang scampered around them, sniffing tree roots and leaves. They followed the steady trickle of spiders moving along the path, walking in silence for about twenty minutes and listening hard for noises other than breaking twigs and rustling leaves. Then, when the trees had become thicker than ever, so that the stars overhead were no longer visible, they saw their spider guides leaving the path.
Raph paused beside Harry, trying to see where the spiders were going. They’d never gone this deep in the forest before, and the thought of willingly chasing after spiders didn’t exactly make him feel great. It didn’t help that every call of an owl, every snap of a twig, reminded him of the farmhouse.
“What d’you reckon?” Harry said, looking around.
“We’ve come this far,” said Ron.
“Might as well keep going,” Mikey said with a shrug.
So they followed the darting shadows of the spiders into the trees. They couldn’t move very quickly now; there were tree roots and stumps in their way, barely visible outside their circle of light. Fang’s hot breath warmed Raph’s hand, the dog sticking close to him. More than once, they had to stop and crouch down to look for the spiders. They also had to be sure not to accidentally step on one, something that made Raph shudder.
They walked for what seemed like at least half an hour, their robes snagging on low-slung branches and brambles. After a while, they noticed that the ground seemed to be sloping downward, though the trees were as thick as ever.
Raph and his brothers all froze, and suddenly Fang let loose a great, echoing bark. Harry and Ron nearly both jumped out of their skins at the sudden sound.
“What?” said Ron loudly, looking around wildly and gripping Harry’s elbow tightly.
“There’s something moving over there,” Leo said.
“Listen,” Harry breathed. “It sounds like something big…”
They listened. Some distance to their right, the something big was snapping branches as it carved a path through the trees.
“Oh, no,” said Ron. “Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no—”
His voice turned muffled when Donnie put a hand over his mouth.
“It’ll hear you,” he said.
Ron tore free of Donnie’s grip—something that, Raph had to admit, was pretty impressive—and said, in an unnaturally high voice, “Hear me? It’s already heard Fang!”
The darkness seemed to be pressing on their eyes as they stood, waiting. There was a strange rumbling noise—and then silence.
“What d’you think it’s doing?” said Harry.
“Probably getting ready to pounce,” Ron responded.
Raph and his brothers didn’t bother answering—they each gripped their wands, their other hand on the weapons around their necks—and stood, tense.
“D’you think it’s gone?” Harry whispered
But then, to their right, came a sudden blaze of light, so bright in the darkness that they all had to raise their hands to shield their eyes. Fang yelped and tried to run, but got lodged in a tangle of thorns and yelped even louder.
“Guys!” Ron shouted, his voice breaking with relief. “Guys, it’s our car!”
“What?” Raph said.
“Come on!”
They all blundered after Ron toward the light, Harry 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 headlights ablaze. As Ron walked, open-mouthed, toward it, it moved slowly toward him, exactly like a large, turquoise dog greeting its owner.
“It’s been here all this time!” Ron said delightedly, walking around the car. “Look at it. The forest’s turned it wild…”
The sides 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 Raph, who could feel the dog quivering.
“And we thought it was going to attack us!” said Ron, leaning against the car and patting it. “I wondered where it had gone!”
“You can thank Leo’s bad driving for that,” Mikey said, chuckling as Leo shot him a glare.
But Donnie squinted around on the floodlit ground for signs of more spiders, but they had all scuttled away from the glare of headlights.
“We’ve lost the trail,” Donnie said. Harry sighed.
“C’mon, guys,” he said. “Let’s go and find them.”
But Raph had tensed, his eyes trained on a spot ten feet above the forest floor, right behind Harry and Donnie. He did his best to ignore the terror quickly rising in him as he said, “Harry, turn around—slowly.”
But before either he or Donnie could react, there was a loud clicking noise, and a giant spider suddenly seized them around the middle and lifted them off the ground. It wasn’t long before something grabbed Raph’s brothers, and then Raph himself, who used all of his willpower not to scream.
Head hanging, he could see that the spider walked on six immensely long, hairy legs, the front two clutching him tightly below a pair of shiny black pincers. All around him, Raph could hear more creatures, no doubt carrying his brothers, Ron, and Harry. They were moving into the very heart of the forest, and Raph could see Fang fighting to free himself from yet another monster. He was whining loudly, but Raph couldn’t even have yelled if he had wanted to; he seemed to have left his voice back in the car in the clearing.
He didn’t know 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 realized that they had reached the ridge of a vast hollow, one that had been cleared of trees, so that stars shone brightly onto the worst scene he had ever laid eyes on.
Spiders. Not tiny spiders like those surging over the leaves below. Spiders, almost bigger than Donnie’s mutated spy-roach. Spiders the size of cart horses, eight-eyed, eight-legged, black, hairy, gigantic. The massive specimen that was carrying Ron made its way down the steep slope toward a misty, domed web in the very center of the hollow, while its fellows closed in all around him, clicking their pincers excitedly at the sight of its load.
Harry and Ron fell on all floors to the ground, but Raph and his brothers rolled into a crouch, tense and ready for a fight. Raph gritted his teeth at the pain in his chest as he fell. Fang wasn’t howling anymore, but cowering silently on the spot. Ron looked exactly how Raph felt. His mouth was stretched wide in a kind of silent scream, and his eyes were popping.
Raph breathed deeply through his nose, swallowing against the lump in his throat, and even Mikey didn’t seem to have it in him to tease him. It took him a moment, because the spider clicked its pincers with every word he spoke, but Raph soon realized that the monster that had carried Harry was saying something.
“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 gray in the black of his body and legs, and each of the eyes on his ugly, pincered head was milky white. He was blind.
Raph’s own eyes widened, and something like a choked scream forced its way out of his throat as he scrambled backward.
“What is it?” the massive spider—Aragog—said, clicking his pincers rapidly.
“Men,” clicked the spider who had caught Harry.
“Is it Hagrid?” said Aragog, moving closer, his eight milky eyes wandering vaguely.
“Strangers,” the spider who caught Leo clicked.
“Kill them,” clicked Aragog fretfully. “I was sleeping…”
“We’re friends of Hagrid’s,” Harry shouted, though his voice was strained, as though it was an effort to form the words.
Click, click, click went the pincers of the spiders all around the hollow.
Aragog paused.
“Hagrid has never sent men into our hollow before,” he said slowly.
“Hagrid’s in trouble,” Mikey said.
“That’s why we came here,” Donnie added.
“In trouble?” the aged spider said, and over the pounding in his heart, Raph thought he heard concern beneath the clicking pincers. “But why has he sent you?”
“Because there’s something happening at the school,” Leo said. “Something bad. But we don’t know what’s going on, and anyone who does know either won’t tell us or is unable to, for one reason or another.”
“They think it’s Hagrid that’s been setting a monster on students,” Harry added, quickly but calmly. “They’ve taken him to Azkaban.”
Aragog clicked his pincers furiously, and all around the hollow, the sound was echoed by the crowd of spiders. It was like applause, except applause didn’t usually make Raph sick with fear.
“But that was years ago,” Aragaog said fretfully. “Years and years ago. I remember it well. That’s why they made him leave the school. They believe that I was the monster that dwells in what they call the Chamber of Secrets. They thought that Hagrid had opened the Chamber and set me free.”
“And you… you didn’t come from the Chamber of Secrets?” Raph said, finally finding his voice.
“I!” Aragog said, clicking angrily. “I was not born in the castle. I come from a distant land. A traveler gave me to Hagrid when I was an egg. Hagrid was only a boy, but he cared for me, hidden in a cupboard in the castle, feeding me on scraps from the table. Hagrid is my good friend, and a good man. When I was discovered, and blamed for the death of a girl, he protected me. I have lived here in the forest ever since, where Hagrid still visits me. He even found me a wife, Mosag, and you see how our family has grown, all through Hagrid’s goodness…”
Harry said, rather courageously, “So you never—never attacked anyone?”
“Never,” croaked the old spider. “It would have been my instinct, but out of respect for Hagrid, I never harmed a human. The body of the girl who was killed was discovered in a bathroom. I never saw any part of the castle but the cupboard in which I grew up. Our kind like the dark and the quiet…”
Donnie’s eyes were wide, and he sucked in a breath. “Do you know what killed the girl?” he asked urgently. “Because whatever it is, it’s back and attacking people again—”
His words were cut off by a loud outbreak of clicking and the rustling of many long legs shifting angrily; large black shapes shifted all around them.
“The thing that lives in the castle,” said Aragog, “is an ancient creature we spiders fear above all others. Well do I remember how I pleaded with Hagrid to let me go, when I sensed the beast moving about the school.”
Raph could see Donnie’s brain whirring, trying to piece together the clues, even as Harry said, “What is it?”
More loud clicking, more rustling; the spiders seemed to be closing in.
“We do not speak of it!” said Aragog fiercely. “We do not name it! I never even told Hagrid the name of that dread creature, though he asked me, many times.”
“We’ll just go, then,” Raph said, before Donnie or Leo or even Harry could press the spiders any longer. They were pressing closer on all sides, and Aragog seemed to be tired of talking; he was backing slowly into his domed web, but his fellow spiders continued to inch slowly toward Harry, Ron, Raph, and his brothers.
“Go?” said the old spider slowly. “I think not…”
“But—but—”
“My sons and daughters do not harm Hagrid, on my command. But I cannot deny them fresh meat, when it wanders so willingly into our midst. Good-bye, friends of Hagrid.”
Raph and his brothers were immediately up, weapons drawn. There was no way in hell Raph was dying to a bunch of spiders. But even as he lifted his sais, foregoing his wand, a loud, long note sounded, and a blaze of light flamed through the hollow.
Mr. Weasley’s car was thundering down the slope, headlights glaring, its horn screeching, knocking spiders aside. Several were thrown onto their backs, their endless legs waving in the air. The car screeched to a halt in front of them, and the doors flew open.
“I got Fang!” Raph bellowed as the others all dove into the car. He threw the dog in the trunk and leapt into the back seat. The doors slammed shut, and though nobody touched the accelerator, the engine roared; they were off, hitting more spiders as they sped up the slope, out of the hollow, and crashed through the forest, branches whipping the windows as the car wound its way cleverly through the widest gaps, following a path it obviously knew.
They smashed their way through the undergrowth, Fang howling loudly next to Raph, and the side mirror snapped off as they squeezed past a large oak. After ten noisy, rocky minutes, the trees thinned, and Raph could see patches of sky again.
The car stopped so suddenly that Harry and Mikey were nearly thrown into the windshield. They had reached the end of the forest. Fang flung himself at the window in his anxiety to get out, Raph following not far behind, and the dog shot off through the trees to Hagrid’s house, tail between his legs. Raph didn’t blame him—his heart was still thundering as the others all got out of the car. Ron didn’t seem to be any better off than he was, stiff-necked and staring. Harry gave the car a grateful pat as it reversed back into the forest and disappeared from view.
They all made their way back to the cabin. Harry went inside to grab the Invisibility Cloak, and while he was gone, Ron knelt in the pumpkin patch and became violently sick. Raph watched on sympathetically, still not completely sure if he wouldn’t soon be doing the same or not.
“Guys,” Donnie said when Harry returned from getting the Invisibility Cloak. “The girl that died… What if she’s still in the bathroom?”
Ron straightened and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
“Do you mean Moaning Myrtle?” Leo said, crossing his arms.
Harry thought for a moment. “It makes sense.”
Donnie sighed. “I wish I would’ve asked what Hermione found out,” he said. “Then we wouldn’t have to chase these insane leads all the time.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Dee.” Mikey wrapped an arm around Donnie’s shoulders. “You can’t be smart all the time.”
“We’ll talk to Myrtle, then,” Leo said. “I don’t know when we’ll find time to get away from the teachers without being noticed, but we’ll figure something out.”
There would be no more discussion, apparently. They all headed up toward the castle in differing routes, so that the teachers would not spot three different lumps moving toward the castle doors (Harry, Ron, and Raph would be hidden under the Invisibility Cloak). Navigating the corridors back to Gryffindor Tower was somehow easier than leaving the school, and it wasn’t until they were safely in their dorm that Ron finally spoke.
“Follow the spiders,” he said weakly. “Why couldn’t it have been follow the butterflies?”