That same morning …
Professor Vector held the book up to continue the reading. "Chapter 8," she said, "The Deathday Party. Well, that doesn't sound very pleasant." She glanced up a some of the castle ghosts who had been listening in. "For the living, I mean."
Still, after the excitement of the previous chapter, this one started out fairly mundane, the worst trouble being the foul weather, which caused a spate of colds around the school. Percy had bullied Ginny into taking some Pepperup Potion for that, although they now knew it probably hadn't been a cold that caused her trouble.
Harry, meanwhile, was preoccupied by Wood's aggressive practice schedule. After one particularly muddy practice, he ran into Nearly-Headless Nick, who was moping after reading a letter denying him entry into the Headless Hunt.
"How do ghosts send letters, anyway?" Hermione mused. Everyone else shrugged.
Harry was subsequently apprehended by Filch, who wanted to make an example of him for tracking mud into the castle.
"You can't really help tracking in mud in bad weather," Ginny pointed out. "What are you supposed to do?"
"Clean your shoes with magic?" Ron suggested.
"No magic in the corridors," Hermione said. "That's another school rule."
"And you'd never break one of those, would you?" Ron said, to general amusement. "It's not like anyone pays attention to that one."
"Hmph. At least Filch is gone now," she said.
Nick managed to distract Filch by getting Peeves to smash a vanishing cabinet, but it didn't quite work, since Harry didn't think to run for it before Filch got back. ('Prankster instincts need work,' said Fred.) Instead, he decided to snoop into Filch's Kwikspell Course. Learning Filch was a Squib wasn't a surprise now, since the blood purists had been much more out in the open this year, but at the time, Filch was so embarrassed about using Kwikspell that he let Harry go.
"What is Kwikspell for, anyway?" asked Hermione. "I won't help Squibs at all, will it? Is it for people who need remedial classes?"
"More or less," said George. "I hear loads of people take the Potions course when they can't get into Snape's N.E.W.T. class."
Things continued to run downhill when Nick guilted Harry into agreeing to attend his deathday party, and to rope Ron and Hermione into it too. Ron was less than amused.
"'Why would anyone want to celebrate the day they died?' said Ron, who was halfway through his Potions homework and grumpy. 'Sounds dead depressing to me…'"
"Ha! Good one, Ron," said George.
"It's really a shame," Hermione whispered. "There ought to be a lot of history in that kind of event."
"—in the case of Fred and George Weasley, trying to find out what would happen if you fed a Filibuster firework to a salamander…" Vector paused. "Those boys have an interesting relationship with animals."
"They have an interesting relationship with life, Septima," McGonagall corrected, "and I wish them luck in continuing it away from here."
"You know you love us!" Fred called out, and his friends laughed.
Predictably, the salamander made quite the mess in the Common Room.
Meanwhile, Ron's prediction about the deathday party turned out to be accurate. Between the freezing cold, the blue-flamed candles, and the orchestra of musical saws, it was indeed "dead depressing." Plus, many of the students gagged when Vector described the rotten food that was laid out.
"Probably should've figured a party for ghosts wouldn't have anything you could eat," Neville pointed out.
The party only degenerated as Peeves ratted out Hermione's unkind words about Moaning Myrtle, causing Myrtle to fly crying from the room, and then the Headless Hunt showed up and blatantly upstaged Nick during his speech, and by then, it had all fallen apart.
Hermione sighed: "It's sad for Nick, but you really can't play Head Hockey if you're head's still attached. He'd be the odd one out even if he did join."
Harry nodded. Maybe he ought to have told Nick that from the start, but ghost always looked so morose about it.
"And then Harry heard it.
"'…Rip…tear…kill…'"
The Great Hall was instantly alert, any whispered conversations ceasing. Professor Vector wasn't as dramatic as Professor Flitwick, but the way she hissed the words—she must have known what it was, Harry thought.
"It was the same voice, the same cold, murderous voice he had heard in Lockhart's office."
Just like Lockhart, Ron and Hermione couldn't hear the voice, but the Harry in the book wasn't dissuaded; he followed it.
Auror Tonks groaned loudly from the end of the table: "And of course he runs off after the mysterious, disembodied voice who wants to kill somebody. This is really the kind of thing that you need to leave to professionals."
"Quite," Kingsley agreed.
"Well," Snape cut in. "We saw how that turned out in the previous book."
"Special circumstances," Tonks protested. "He had more options this time."
"And yet, knowing what happened that year, I'm sure we will see more of the same."
Harry started to turn red. They had already established his tendency to run off like that in first year, but he'd kind of been set up for that one by Dumbledore. Hearing his thoughts read back to him now, he wasn't sure if he knew even at the time why he ran after the basilisk's voice. It just sort of seemed like the thing to do.
Ron and Hermione, of course, were thoroughly bewildered in the book until Hermione noticed the writing on the wall.
"THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN
"OPENED. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE."
The words sounded as ominous as ever, but far more ominous was the fact that Filch's cat was hanging, seemingly dead, from a torch bracket. Some of the younger students, who hadn't been there that year, gasped in horror, even though most of them were acquainted with Mrs. Norris and didn't especially like her. Ron (sensibly) didn't want to be caught there, but it was too late. Half the school was coming up from the Halloween Feast and ran right into the three of them, apparently standing at the scene of the crime.
"Really, I think that's just my luck by this point," Harry muttered.
And of course, Draco Malfoy couldn't help but make his opinion known: "'Enemies of the Heir, beware!' Ugh, you're right, Aurora. I didn't like this word when I was a Slytherin student, and I don't like it now. 'You'll be next, Mudbloods!'"
"Hmph. Entirely inappropriate," McGonagall sniffed.
"We did try to keep that sort of thing in line that year," Vector pointed out. "At least I know I did."
"As did I, Septima," she replied. "Sadly, in the midst of crisis, things will slip through."
Snape said nothing. He had hated having to tolerate that word as Head of Slytherin, but tolerate it he had, at least in the Common Room, for that was one area where he could least afford to make waves with his students' parents. Though he had given Draco as much of a talking-to as he'd dared about discretion afterwards. That lesson never seemed to sink in with the boy.
"Anyway—" Vector said. "Oh, there's a bit more." She read the last few lines and passed the book to Professor Babbling. "It's your turn, Bathsheda, though I fear things won't improve much."
That evening …
Half an hour later, as Dumbledore finished up his glass of mead, a knock sounded on his door.
"Enter," he called.
McGonagall and Snape entered the room. Dumbledore immediately waved his wand and shut the door behind Snape, sealing it with the most powerful locking and silencing charms he knew.
"Now, we shall not be disturbed," he said, retaking his seat behind his desk.
"How shall we do this?" asked McGonagall as she and Snape took their seats in front of him. "Would you read it out loud to us, or…?"
"We should read silently," said Snape. "We have no need of the public spectacle Umbridge and now Potter have insisted upon, and we have no time to waste. We can read it individually, take down our notes, and discuss them at the end of each chapter."
"I agree with Severus," said Dumbledore. "Here—" and with a flick of his wand, two additional copies of the book appeared on his desk for the Heads of Hogwarts. "Let us first skim through the chapters leading up to the day when Dolores discovered these books. We can discuss our ideas after that."
The three of them exchanged looks, then opened their respective copies and began to read.