The Observer Effect

      Harry swallowed hard. One of those who made a habit of prowling Hogwarts by night had found them after all—and Harry would have been lying if he’d claimed he wouldn’t rather have run into anyone else instead: prefects from another House, the caretaker, or even the cat, whatever hidden threat she might actually have posed.       He glanced at Draco and said quietly, ‘Malfoy, go back without me. I need to stay for a bit. Please don’t ask questions—it’s to do with something I can’t talk about.’       Draco narrowed his eyes. ‘And is it to do with where you keep disappearing after lessons as well?’ he asked anyway.       Harry nodded, widening his eyes meaningfully, and Draco seemed to catch on—he sighed, got to his feet, and shepherded his cronies away, saying, as a parting shot, ‘Take care on your way back, Potter—don’t get caught.’       Tom, who had been waiting with deceptive calm for them to be alone, gave Harry a broad smile. ‘Go on, then,’ he said softly, twirling his wand between his fingers—a gesture which, as Harry had learnt, either soothed him or helped him think more deeply. ‘Do tell what ingenious plan lies behind that little escapade. Don’t skimp on the details—I’m dying to hear them all. Well?’       Harry said nothing, looking guilty. He had no plan to speak of, and the whole business with the snake had been pure panic and temper.       ‘Very well. In that case, perhaps you can explain how any of this serves my plan? Our plan, which, if memory serves, we have discussed more than once. The idea was that you’d reveal yourself only to Slytherin—first to the upper years, to secure yourself some protection, then to the younger ones, your future followers and subordinates. Or was there a notice I missed, and that redhead and his little friends are now in our House?’       Harry kept his silence. ‘It was an accident’ and ‘I didn’t think’ were on the tip of his tongue, but he knew how pathetic and helpless that would sound. If there was a surer way to infuriate Tom, he couldn’t think of it.       ‘Well? Cat got your tongue, boy?’ Tom cocked his head, regarding Harry with the impassive interest of an entomologist who has stumbled upon a previously unknown species. ‘You’ve behaved with astonishing good sense up to now, to the point I was almost forgetting you are, in fact, nothing but a foolish, impulsive child, unable to stick to the simplest of strategies.’       It stung so much that Harry’s eyes prickled. Worse—the rebuke was perfectly justified. But bursting into tears would be to admit, once and for all, that he really was nothing but a snivelling little boy who couldn’t be trusted with anything serious. Harry gave himself a mental clip round the ear and tried to pull himself together. He needed to wriggle out of this. To justify himself. Immediately.       He remembered the pain of the Cruciatus—the skittish thought circled at the edge of his mind, whispering, ‘What if he does it again? What if?’—but pain cannot be conjured up by will alone, and so the recollection remained abstract, like the memory of a memory. The clarity that had followed, however, he recalled quite distinctly—and he seized on that with both hands. His spine straightened, his shoulders squared, his head lifted from where it had hunkered down between them. He clasped his hands behind his back and rocked from heel to toe. The words lined up in the right order in his head, as if they had been waiting in readiness.       ‘I see what I did wrong,’ he said carefully, steering clear of the phrase “It won’t happen again”, because it begged the reply “Once was one time too many”. ‘But it can still be turned to our advantage.’       ‘Explain,’ Tom said, raising an eyebrow. ‘We’ve lost ground on several fronts—the Heir’s identity is no longer a House secret; the Gryffindors won’t hold their tongues, and soon, you may be sure, rumours will be all over the school, and then they’ll reach the Headmaster, who has you under close scrutiny already, despite our efforts to avoid it. Where’s the advantage?’ With each word, his voice grew colder, and the word ‘Headmaster’ practically scorched. Harry wanted very much to flinch, but forced himself to keep his back straight.       ‘You know my reputation,’ he began, circling in a little. ‘You know the image that was made for me. The sainted infant. The hero who destroyed the Dark Lord.’ Tom’s mouth curled in mocking amusement, and Harry matched him with a smile which he knew was the mirror image of the one on the face before him. ‘I am a banner of victory. Rather tarnished now, since I’m a Slytherin—which means that, by definition, I’m of dubious moral fibre. An evil wizard—if not yet, then in time, as we all are in most people’s eyes. But the Heir of Salazar? Will that not stain me far more?’       Tom understood him—Harry could see it in the change of his smirk.       ‘I don’t want to be The Boy Who Lived By Accident, nor do I wish to be their standard-bearer,’ Harry went on, warming to his theme; thoughts that had long been stacking up in the dark corners of his mind suddenly came into focus. ‘I want glory of my own, and mine alone. And when the Dark Lord returns—when you return—no one should be in any doubt whose side I am on.’       Tom pocketed his wand and took a step sideways, beginning to circle Harry; it took effort not to turn his head to follow him. ‘Are you so sure I mean to claw my way back to power?’ Tom asked, curious. ‘I previously chose quite a turbulent way of life, the consequences of which cast a long, dark shadow. What if I were to renounce my ambitions?’       Harry barely smothered a laugh. ‘You?’       Tom stopped in front of him, clasping his hands behind his back as well. ‘There is certainly a logic to your argument,’ he concluded, and smiled to himself. ‘Moreover, as luck would have it, I have a suitable scapegoat in mind—we’ll use him if things go pear-shaped. That does not alter the fact that you behaved with monumental stupidity,’ he added sternly.       Harry swallowed the ‘I know’ and the ‘I’m so sorry’. Instead, he told the truth. ‘I couldn’t lose to a blood traitor.’       ‘Then you must be stronger,’ Tom replied without a shred of sympathy. ‘Or at least cleverer.’       ‘I will be,’ Harry promised wholeheartedly. It seemed he had managed to clamber out of the hole he had dug for himself. Yes, the consequences would have to be dealt with for some time yet, but winning back Tom’s good graces mattered above everything else.       ‘Listen,’ he said, remembering. ‘How did you end up here, anyway?’       ‘The Bloody Baron reported that you’d gone wandering in the middle of the night,’ Tom explained offhandedly. Harry goggled at him.       ‘The House ghost spies for you?!’       ‘Not only him,’ Tom returned, self-satisfied. ‘A little proper motivation, and they turn as meek as lambs.’       Harry tried to picture ‘proper motivation’ as executed by Tom. ‘Obey me, or I’ll do to you what I did to Peeves?’ he ventured. Tom smirked.       ‘You’ve grasped the essence. But enough loitering about; let’s go. To prevent any fresh misunderstandings, I shall, just this once, escort you. And we’ll add a little flourish.’       He drew his wand and, murmuring ‘Invisibilis!’, touched it to Harry’s brow. Harry shuddered—it felt as if a raw egg had cracked over his crown. Something icy seemed to trickle down his body—he glanced down automatically to see what it was—and discovered he could no longer see his hands, his legs, or indeed himself at all: only a thin, wavering shimmer, like air rippling over hot tarmac on a summer’s day.       ‘Brilliant!’ he exclaimed, delighted.       ‘In case we meet anyone on the way.’       No one crossed their path, and once he had reached his bed in safety, Harry fell asleep before his cheek could touch the pillow.       He dreamt of ghosts bowing in obsequious deference—and then the ghosts darkened, thickened, and became people with faintly familiar faces.       ‘My Lord,’ Draco breathed, his hair grown long somehow—and he looked odd in general: much older, almost Tom’s age. But Harry could not have cared less about the quirks of Malfoy physiognomy, because, upon hearing that form of address, he felt—       —someone shaking him none too gently by the shoulder. He opened his eyes.       ‘Merlin, you’re finally awake,’ grumbled a perfectly ordinary-looking Malfoy, hair cropped short and wearing a very annoyed expression. ‘Were you planning to sleep the day away? Up you get, or we’ll be late for breakfast because of you!’       At breakfast that Wednesday, the young Slytherins, for the first time, raised the subject that had been preying so much on Harry’s mind.       ‘Do you lot know who opened the Chamber last time?’ Draco asked, in all innocence, between two spoonfuls of porridge dusted with sugar. ‘The Dark Lord, that’s who,’ he added, and threw Harry a meaningful look.       ‘They convicted someone else,’ put in Pike, who was drowning his own porridge in honey. Draco pulled a face and flicked a dismissive hand.       ‘They’ll convict whoever, just to shut up a lot of panicking idiots. Our lot know from the horse’s mouth who the true Heir of Slytherin was. My father told me—not in every detail, obviously.’ Malfoy waggled his eyebrows and smirked, smug as you like. ‘In any case—a half-giant? No one in their right mind believed that slapped-together story—not even the Wizengamot, or they wouldn’t have let him out after a paltry sentence. He’d have got the Dementor’s Kiss, and he got off with a broken wand and expulsion.’       Harry put two and two together. ‘A half-giant?’ he said, doubtful, adjusting his glasses. ‘Someone actually thought Hagrid was the Heir?’       Draco smiled like a cat. ‘That’s exactly my point. Of course not.’       ‘Anyone taking bets yet?’ Nott asked matter-of-factly, having spent the whole time arranging a face out of beans on his plate. He admired his masterpiece, then began to squash the beans with the flat of his fork.       ‘Bets?’ Harry arched an eyebrow.       ‘On which Mudblood’s going to pay with their life this time,’ Greengrass explained brightly, delicately pinching a crumb from her toast. ‘That’s what happened before, after all.’       ‘We’ve only two in our year: Granger and Finch-Fletchley,’ Malfoy said, spreading his hands, a cup of tea balanced in one hand. ‘Or are we counting half-bloods as well? Potter, who would you back?’       Harry nearly choked, trying to smother a nervous laugh with bacon. They were calmly discussing wagers, and the odds rather depended on him, whether there would be any point to a book at all. And Malfoy, cunning little beast that he was, knew it.       But there was something far more important he needed to clarify.       ‘So,’ he checked, just to be sure, ‘when the Dark Lord opened the Chamber of Secrets, a student died, is that right? And Hagrid was blamed for the whole thing? Mordred, but why?’       Those around him stared with undisguised pity, as if at someone sadly lacking in wits.       ‘Because someone had to be,’ Nott said, in the patient tone one uses on very small children when answering “Why does the wind blow?” or “Why is water wet?”       ‘They even found some sort of evidence, apparently.’ Draco shrugged. ‘I didn’t bother with the finer points.’       ‘Tremble, enemies of the Heir,’ Zabini intoned, wrinkling his nose. ‘So, are we placing bets or not? I propose we start at five Sickles.’       ‘Show a bit of respect!’ Malfoy protested. ‘Not less than a Galleon,’ he finished firmly.       No one had yet managed to scrub off the writing that announced the Heir’s advent, though, plainly, they had tried. Harry suspected Tom had taken a creative approach to an irremovability charm—the usual sort lasted three hours at best; it might have been some obscure, little-known curse, but Harry would have put money on a bespoke invention. For the first couple of days, a scowling Filch could be found near the sinister graffiti, clutching a rag and a tin of solvent; then the measures turned radical—first a section of carving was chiselled away, then a portion of the stone beneath. Now the path to Transfiguration class ran past an actual trench, barbarously hacked out of a wall adorned with reliefs. The trench was a good six inches deep, and from its bottom the undefeated inscription still threw down the gauntlet to all who walked the corridor.       It was doing its work, bit by bit—and the witnesses and participants in the midnight duel had, predictably, failed to keep their tongues behind their teeth. By Friday, idle chatter, previously focused on Peeves’s strange and terrifying escapade, had changed tack. More and more often, in the whispers at the House tables, one could catch the word ‘Heir’. Slytherins spoke it with visible scepticism; the others, with equally obvious dislike. Soon that dislike took on a far more tangible form.       Peeves, laid to rest—not necessarily in peace, but securely—seemed to have bequeathed the business of his un-life to a multitude of students, among whom the Gryffindors embraced his legacy with particular zeal. Moving between classes now required great care and a keen eye on one’s footing—of all the Lions, it seemed, only Granger refrained from sticking out a foot, and then only for fear of accidentally losing precious points. Shoves and ‘accidental’ collisions in the corridors became the done thing. Harry learnt to keep a firm hold on his schoolbag and pin it with an elbow—there was little joy in gathering scattered parchments and textbooks from the floor while people tried to tread on them in passing. His inkwell, thankfully, had been enchanted by the maker to be shatterproof and spill-proof, but there was no point even keeping count of broken quills.       At least no one tried to slip anything nasty into his food—the meals that appeared on the school tables three times a day were prepared by Hogwarts’ house-elves, and their mysterious religion, or some other belief no less powerful, strictly forbade them to harm witches and wizards, even on the orders of their own master, as Tom had told him long ago. True, that only applied to direct physical harm—they could, for instance, enchant a cornice to come crashing down on your head, and they were perfectly capable of wearing you down with a foul temper or calculated incompetence, but at least he could stop worrying about poison. As for taking comestibles from another wizard’s hand, Harry had always thought it the height of stupidity anyway (Malfoy and his chocolates from home, needless to say, did not count).       Harry gritted his teeth and endured—he had seen worse. He had spent several years in a Muggle school in a similarly warm and friendly atmosphere, and he had survived. Here, at least, he had friends nearby—well, one friend and his two bodyguards—who warded off a portion of the attentions.       He visited the Room of Hidden Things alone—and, a fortnight later, it landed him in trouble.       The unpleasantness began on the library floor. A staircase deposited Harry right in front of the doors to the Deadly Corridor. He waited for the wretched contraption to swing back, cursing it every which way, and got Filch instead, who, for some reason, decided Harry was dying to slip into forbidden territory. Harry, who knew from Tom what—or rather, who—was housed there, had no such desire, but convincing the caretaker proved oddly difficult. Only the sudden appearance of Quirrell saved him—for once, the hapless professor performed a useful service, and in his very field, one might say; Defence Against Filch really ought to be on the DADA syllabus. Unfortunately, the delay meant that it wasn’t only Quirrell who noticed Harry wandering about on his own.       Someone called to him from behind—a Gryffindor voice—and Harry only quickened his pace, but three more turned out of a side corridor ahead. One of them was Dean Thomas, a half-blood—and that was when Harry realised he was in real trouble.       He glanced back and saw Seamus Finnigan—yes, parallel lessons meant Harry knew that idiot’s name—and the other two, whom he didn’t know, he mentally labelled ‘the beefy one’ and ‘the curly one’. A third-year and a second-year, both Gryffindors as well. Regardless of the ban on magic outside lessons, Harry whipped out his wand.       ‘Oi, Potty—’ Finnigan began, but Harry, deciding this qualified as a ‘last resort’, stunned him without a second thought—‘Stupefy!’—and bolted the other way, now clear of that opponent.       He didn’t get away. Behind him came: ‘Locomotor Mortis!’ and his legs stuck together at once, sending him crashing hard to the floor. He failed to break his fall, taken by surprise, and only by luck saved his face. His glasses flew off—the sound they made as they landed did not bode well—and his wand shot from his hand and skittered away. Ignoring his glasses and the pain from a barked shoulder and knees, Harry scrambled towards it—and then someone’s foot came down between his shoulder blades. He heard them counter the Stunning Spell on Finnigan; a groan turned into a muddled curse.       ‘In a hurry, are you?’ an unfamiliar voice jeered, and a second—Thomas—chimed in, ‘We wanted to invite you to play a lovely game.’       Harry heaved and rolled, and the one standing on his back—the curly one—lost his balance. Harry grabbed the nearest leg and dragged him down; if it had been one-on-one, it would have turned into a very nasty scrap on the flagstones—but the curly one wasn’t alone, and they had Harry pinned, wrenching his arms with ham-fisted clumsiness. The lack of glasses made it worse—he could barely make out their faces, the corridor walls were a blur, and the blessed doors of empty classrooms he might have slammed behind him were just amorphous dark smudges.       ‘It’s called “Heir of Slugs”!’ the beefy one announced with glee, and all four of them guffawed at their side-splitting wit.       A wave of bleak despair washed over Harry. ‘Tom,’ he thought. ‘Tom!’       But Tom, of course, did not come.       When they let him go—deigned to let him go, having had their fun—Harry was retching up slugs after every third breath. He had never felt so wretched in his life. He managed to crawl to his wand, not caring that he was crushing sluggishly oozing molluscs into a sickly mash, and almost wept with relief—it was intact. Somehow, between bouts of vomiting, he lifted the hexes from himself and got on all fours.       Things went faster after that—he found his glasses within seconds. Shaking the slugs off, he saw with dismay that the right lens had split down the middle. Still, it was better than nothing, and, after a hasty wipe with his handkerchief—the only thing on him that remained clean—he perched them on his nose. The corridor snapped back into focus. Clinging to the wall, Harry got to his feet and set off, hunched over, retching as he went, in search of an unlocked classroom. The fourth door yielded, and Harry crammed himself behind the back row of empty, dusty desks like a wounded animal.       The residual effects of the Slug-Vomiting Hex wore off fairly swiftly—six or seven bouts later. Harry spat the last mollusc onto the pile of its fellows and froze, twisted up, panting. He was flooded with such blinding, all-consuming hatred that at first it refused even to settle into coherent thoughts.       He could not show himself in the dungeons looking like this. Absolutely not. It was bad enough that those swine would crow about their feat—and he had no doubt they would—but he had to make it look, to everyone else, as if nothing had happened. And he absolutely, positively had to take revenge—and in such a way that, thereafter, not a single bastard would dare so much as contemplate anything of the sort. He had already made a mistake in ignoring the general boorishness. He should have taught them a lesson there and then. Well, now it had become an urgent necessity.       He straightened up. Every stitch he wore, from his shoes to his tie, was fouled with Mordred knows what. Dried slime tugged nastily at his skin. A vile taste coated his mouth. Harry knew one place, and one place only, where he could go in such a state.       His destination lay one floor below, and, fortunately, there was a shorter way down without returning to the main staircases. Harry opened the door of his hiding place, bathing in his own mortification, and cast a furtive look about. The corridor was still deserted, save for the slugs writhing on the floor. He slipped behind a tapestry to the concealed door, darted down a staircase—set into the stone and, thank Merlin, perfectly motionless—and found himself in a passage lined with vases and suits of armour. Portraits hung on the walls—a witch in a flowered hat raised her eyebrows at the sight of him. He silently made a rude gesture, and she covered herself with her fan in scandalised shock.       Peering round the corner with every possible precaution, Harry made sure there were no witnesses—there were no pictures in the neighbouring corridor, and, luckily for him, no living souls either—then scurried the last few steps and tugged open the door marked ‘Out of Order’.       It was abandoned and filthy, this out-of-order lavatory. Time had done a thorough job on it—the long mirror, its amalgam peeling in stains, was streaked; the stone basins were cracked; the brass taps were green with verdigris. Paint flaked from the cubicle doors; one of them hung forlornly from a single surviving hinge. The damp stone floor reflected the light of magical candles that flared at Harry’s entry; even they looked sorry for themselves—little dribbled stubs, barely smoking in their sconces.       It was a girls’ lavatory too, though for many years now it had been used by only one girl, who did so on a permanent basis. One could safely say she had more or less moved in.       There was water here, however, and Harry, turning a tap that squealed shrilly, washed his face with relish and rinsed out his mouth. Shaking the drops from his hair, he caught a movement in the mirror at the edge of his vision. Someone was peering from the end cubicle. Harry straightened and put on his glasses.       ‘Hello, Myrtle,’ he said.       The ghost drifted into the middle of her squalid domain. Myrtle’s appearance suited her surroundings—a plump, spotty creature with lank little pigtails hanging on either side of a bespectacled head. In life, Miss Warren had been a singularly unattractive girl, and death had done nothing to improve matters. She giggled unsteadily.       ‘You’re not a girl,’ she observed, stating the obvious.       ‘Neither are you. You’re a ghost,’ Harry replied, eyeing his filthy robes and wondering if the basin would serve for a quick scrub.       Myrtle burst into tears. ‘Everyone laughs at me,’ she said miserably through sobs. ‘And you’re just the same! Go on, laugh! Are you happy now I’m dead…’       ‘Very,’ Harry confirmed, deciding that where he was headed next his clothes would only get worse. ‘Stop blubbing. Better tell me this—has anyone been in here recently?’       ‘No one comes to see me,’ Myrtle moaned. ‘People forgot about me even when I was alive. They didn’t even look for my body. And quite right—who would want me…’       ‘No one,’ Harry agreed again, and walked along the row of basins; the one he needed refused to show itself. ‘Listen, you’d better shove off for a bit. I need to be on my own. I’m sure you know what that’s like.’       The ghost set off wailing again, which gave Harry an idea—he began turning every tap in turn until he found the one that would not run. Looking closely, he picked out, under a layer of oxidation, a faint little snake scratched into the dulled metal.       ‘Seriously, Myrtle, clear off. Go and have a swim in the lake or something,’ Harry said, impatience rising. He was still shaking with humiliation and fury, and the company of a lachrymose ghost was the last thing he needed.       The spectral girl stamped her foot. ‘You’ve no right to drive me out!’ she argued. ‘This is my lavatory! I died here! Right there, in that cubicle…’       ‘Did you, really?’ Harry didn’t quite believe it.       He hadn’t known such particulars. Everything he knew about the lavatory ghost he’d gleaned from his classmates, whose conversation he had overheard by chance. The information boiled down to a short set of facts: an abandoned girls’ loo was haunted by an unquiet spirit named Myrtle, known as Moaning Myrtle, after her principal occupation. The phantom was not violent on the whole, though now and then she flooded the lavatory and the adjoining corridor. That was all. Harry was only interested because the ghost had had the cheek to take up residence in premises already intended for very different purposes, unrelated to personal hygiene, but closely tied to his own mission as Heir.       Myrtle positively blossomed. Her eyes lit with a fanatical gleam; her tears dried at once. She even seemed to glow a fraction brighter.       ‘Oh yes,’ she said fervently. ‘You’ve no idea what a nightmare it was! Ooh! I was hiding in here because Olive Hornby was teasing me again, calling me a speccy four-eyes—which is very hurtful, I’ll have you know! So I locked myself in a cubicle to have a little cry. Then someone came in. He said something in a funny made-up language. Through the gap under the door I saw feet, and I realised it was a boy—and of course I looked out to tell him to clear off. And that’s when it happened!’ At this, she swelled with importance and floated higher. ‘I died!’ she finished with great drama.       ‘How did you die?’ Harry asked, baffled.       ‘I don’t know.’ Myrtle wilted. ‘I only had time to see two huge yellow eyes… And that was all…’       ‘Two huge yellow eyes,’ Harry repeated to himself.       ‘And these eyes,’ he clarified, ‘they didn’t happen to have vertical pupils, did they?’       Myrtle fell into thought. ‘Possibly,’ she agreed, uncertain.       Harry finally realised which questions he ought to be asking.       ‘Myrtle, how old are you?’       ‘Fourteen.’ The ghost coiled a strand of her scant hair round a translucent finger, coquettishly. Harry clicked his tongue, irritated.       ‘No, I meant something else—how long have you been here? When did you die? You must remember such an important date.’ He could not resist the dig.       ‘Oh yes!’ she confirmed with enthusiasm, missing the irony. ‘The twelfth of June, nineteen forty-three, a Saturday, the day before the summer holidays began.’       ‘Myrtle,’ Harry said, already knowing the answer deep down, ‘tell me one more thing—only don’t take offence, all right? You’re Muggle-born, aren’t you?’       The reply was a piercing wail. The ghost shot into the air, then plunged into a toilet with a splash, dousing everything nearby in murky water. Harry shuddered, disgusted. He was left in the lavatory alone—just as the conversation had become genuinely interesting. Still, the main point was clear enough.       Myrtle Warren had been the Muggle-born whose life Tom had paid to open the Chamber of Secrets.       And who would pay for Harry? Was Myrtle to have company?       He turned to the false basin and gave an order in a language which, in all of magical Britain, only one other wizard, whose name, however, no longer featured among the living, could have understood: ‘Open.’       The tap with the scratched snake flared opalescently and began to spin. A moment later, the basin slid aside with a grinding noise, revealing the maw of a wide pipe. Harry swung his legs into the dark shaft, lit his wand with Lumos, wriggled, pushed off, and began a long slide down.       The descent was like a fairground ride—a grim version of an ice-slide, with slime in place of ice. Branching off to either side, narrower than the main shaft, side pipes flickered past. Just when it seemed it would go on forever, his speed dropped sharply—then stopped altogether, ending in a short drop. Harry thumped down onto a heap of something sharp and brittle that crunched beneath him, and almost lost his wand. The little flame at its tip picked out small white bones—the floor of the stone corridor he had slid into was carpeted with them. Harry got up, rubbed his bruised backside, and moved on.       A dead, subterranean hush filled the tunnel, so that the crunching underfoot and the sound of his breathing seemed unnaturally loud. The wandlight sparkled from beads of moisture that pitted the walls. The passage ended in a smooth, unbroken wall, on which two stone serpents were intertwined in a circle. At a fresh command in Parseltongue, they shivered and slid apart—and through the gap Harry stepped at last into Salazar’s secret chamber.       A high, spacious hall greeted him with a greenish gloom. Stone snakes coiled round the soaring pillars, and the same snakes were carved upon the ceiling. The light of his Lumos cast sharp shadows that trembled and shifted with every step, so that it seemed the reptiles were moving and lifting their flat heads to watch him.       At the far end of the chamber towered a colossal statue, depicting a gaunt, ill-favoured old man with a long but straggling beard. The sight cheered Harry up—indeed, what better to hide in the most secret place in Hogwarts, accessible to the Founder alone and his descendants? Naturally, an outsized sculptural self-portrait. No doubt remained: Salazar Slytherin and Tom Riddle were very much related by blood.       As if in answer to his thoughts, a tall figure stepped from the shadow between two columns. Harry turned to the newcomer.       ‘Myrtle told you I was here?’ he asked tetchily.       Tom approached wearing a look of polite surprise. ‘Myrtle? Whom do you mean?’       ‘So,’ Harry noted, grimly satisfied, ‘not all the Hogwarts ghosts answer to you, do they? I mean Myrtle Warren—though you may not even remember her name. The girl the basilisk killed. She turned into a lavatory ghost. Funny, isn’t it?’       ‘Ah, that Myrtle.’ Tom’s cheek twitched. ‘She was, even in life, little more than the end product of digestion, so I’m not surprised. No, I’ve not yet had the pleasure of making her acquaintance. That is easily remedied. As for you—your presence here was reported to me by alerting wards. They were intended for other, uninvited guests, mind you. I confess, I assumed you’d prefer to make your first visit here as a pair.’ Tom tilted his head and fixed Harry with a long, searching look.       ‘Something has happened,’ he concluded, with certainty, then commanded, imperiously, ‘Talk.’       And Harry did—at first stumbling over every other word with shame, but by the end of his account he was shaking all over, and was breathless with fury.       ‘I want to kill them. I really do. I know I mustn’t, but…’       ‘Get a grip,’ Tom cut in coldly, his face, as Harry spoke, settling into that unpleasantly familiar, empty mask. ‘The slightest carelessness on our part, and the Ministry could shut the school.’       ‘I know!’ Harry flared. ‘I’m not an idiot, however much you take me for one! It’s just—’ He switched his tone abruptly, summoning the softest, most pleading voice he could manage, despite the circumstances. ‘Tom! Tom, please, will you teach me the Cruciatus Curse?’       ‘Yes,’ Tom said—and before Harry could rejoice, dashed his hopes without mercy. ‘But not today. First, your wand could be checked—how would you explain it, then? Second, I’ve an idea every bit as good. I’m sure you’ll like it,’ he added, with a gloomy, anticipatory smile.       For all that Tom could be terrifying, he was, in truth, an elder brother to the core. He cleaned Harry’s clothes—with a passing rebuke that it was high time he learnt those charms himself. He mended his glasses. He plucked a lone, straggling slug from Harry’s hair and tightened his tie knot—a shade tighter than Harry liked.       ‘That will do, I think,’ he pronounced, after a critical inspection of his handiwork. ‘Now, follow me.’       They made for the passage hidden behind the statue, which served as an exit straight into the Slytherin portion of the school dungeons. Unfortunately, it was an exit, not an entrance—the secret door opened only from within. It led to one of the many empty rooms, of which the castle had, in various parts, altogether too many. Harry found himself wondering why—had Hogwarts once taught more subjects? Or had there been more students? Both, perhaps?       All such thoughts were blown from his head as soon as Tom began to explain his scheme. He was absolutely right—Harry liked it.

* * *

      The locations of the House common rooms were supposed to be secret, but only Slytherin had managed to keep the secret in any meaningful sense. Everyone knew the Badgers’ entrance was somewhere near the kitchens; the Ravens would admit anyone who could answer the guardian’s riddle—a sort of discrimination on intellectual grounds, and, as for the Lions, their lair was a secret everyone knew.       Setting an ambush nearby, therefore, was no trouble at all—especially with a wizard on your side who could lay concealment charms so deftly that they were scarcely distinguishable from the effect of an Invisibility Cloak.       Thanks to them, the curly-haired second-year, Cormac McLaggen, suspected nothing until a Stunning Spell caught him squarely in the back. His limp body slid across the floor, obeying some unseen force, and soon vanished through a door onto one of the castle’s many balconies, which, most conveniently, jutted out at seventh-floor height; only a watcher perched on the Astronomy Tower might have noticed anything, and even then the slope of the roof would have been a nuisance.       The capricious Scottish weather in the last week of September offered little warmth, and a fine, drizzling rain was falling—as if the clouds, bored of hanging in the sky, were gently sifting themselves down to earth like flour through a sieve. The wind had the run of the spires, frisking between turrets and towers, whistling through crenellations and window-slits. The sun, sinking behind the clouds, shed a muddy, diffuse, pinkish light that lent everything a troubled, oppressive cast. But when McLaggen opened his eyes, he saw none of it. All that presented itself to his view was the rough, time-gnawed surface of the stone flags paving the balcony.       Sore, ruffled, bewildered, and disorientated, he got to his feet—and only then noticed a small, dour Slytherin in round glasses. None other than Harry Potter himself—a phoney hero, a dirty scrapper, a nasty Parselmouth, and the butt of a recent, successful prank. Cormac grabbed for the wand pocket sewn into his robes, and found it empty.       ‘Evening,’ said Potter, baring his teeth in a horrid, curiously unnatural smile. ‘I’d like to invite you to play a lovely game.’       McLaggen was about to rush the snake-brat and give his smug face a proper going-over with his fists, since he’d been deprived of his wand—but his knees stuck together, though Potter had said nothing like the Leg-Locker Curse. The momentum of his first, sweeping stride sent Cormac crashing onto all fours.       ‘It’s called “Aurors and Death Eaters”,’ Potter went on, as if nothing were amiss, drawing his wand from his sleeve with calm, almost lazy precision. He smiled more widely and announced, ‘Bagsy, I’m the Death Eater.’