At least this way she wouldn't have to make her friends feel awkward by sitting in the dorms while everyone else was at the Halloween Feast; this way she wouldn't have to watch them flail about, not knowing how to make her feel better about the night her parents died in front of her. The passageway leading to Nearly Headless Nick's party had been lined with candles, though the effect was far from cheerful: These were long, thin, jet-black tapers, all burning bright blue, that cast a dim, ghostly light over her still living face. The temperature dropped with every step she took. As Heri shivered and drew her robes tightly around her, she heard what sounded like a thousand fingernails scraping an enormous blackboard. Was that supposed to be music? She turned a corner and saw Nearly Headless Nick standing at a doorway hung with black velvet drapes. "My dear friend," he said extravagantly "Welcome, welcome . . . so pleased you could come . . ." He swept off his plumed hat and bowed her inside. It was an incredible sight. The dungeon was full of hundreds of pearly-white, translucent people, mostly drifting around a crowded dance floor, waltzing to the dreadful, quavering sound of thirty musical saws, played by an orchestra on a raised, black-draped platform. A chandelier overhead blazed midnight-blue with a thousand more black candles. Heri's breath rose in a mist before her; it was like stepping into a freezer. Heri opted to take a walk around the perimeter in hopes of heating up her feet. Taking care not to walk through anyone, she set off around the edge of the dance floor. She passed a group of gloomy nuns, a ragged man wearing chains, and the Fat Friar, the cheerful Hufflepuff ghost, who was talking to a knight with an arrow sticking out of his forehead. Heri wasn't surprised to see that the Bloody Baron, the gaunt, staring Slytherin ghost covered in silver bloodstains, was being given a wide berth by the other spectres. On the other side of the hall was a long table, also covered in black velvet. She approached it curiously but next moment had stopped in her tracks, gob-smacked The smell was quite disgusting! Large, rotten fish were laid on handsome silver platters; cakes, burned charcoal-black, were heaped on serving trays; there was a great maggoty haggis, a slab of cheese covered in furry green mould and, in pride of place, an enormous grey cake in the shape of a tombstone, with tar-like icing forming words: Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington died 31st October 1492 Heri watched, amazed, as a portly ghost approached the table, crouched low, and walked through it, his mouth held wide so that it passed through one of the stinking salmon. "Can you taste it if you walk through it?" Heri asked him, curiosity getting the better of her. "Almost," said the ghost sadly, and he drifted away. Heri resolved then and there that when she ever died, she wouldn't stick around as a ghost if she could help it. She'd rather her soul be wiped from existence altogether than pine after putrid slop she wouldn't feed to the pigs of her most hated enemy. Heri eventually ended up in a conversation with the stocky ghost of a former Hogwarts student named Myrtle and Peeves the Poltergeist of all people. Peeves was being his usual awful self and had gotten poor Myrtle to crying. Wailing really, there was a reason she was known as Moaning Myrtle. "Come now, Myrtle," said Heri, trying to soothe the miserable spirit. "You know Peeves says things like that just to get a reaction. More than half the things he says aren't true in the least bit and I certainly wasn't talking badly about you; I've only just met you tonight!" "Don't lie to me," Myrtle gasped, tears now flooding down her face, while Peeves chuckled happily over her shoulder. "D'you think I don't know what people call me behind my back? Fat Myrtle! Ugly Myrtle! Miserable, moaning, moping Myrtle!" "You've forgotten pimply," Peeves tacked on. Moaning Myrtle burst into anguished sobs. Heri glared something fierce at Peeves. "You keep your awful words to yourself, Peeves! Myrtle feels badly enough by herself!" Without thinking, Heri reached out her hand to pat the other girl on the back, not remembering that ghosts were insubstantial. It seemed that reality had forgotten the fact as well since Heri's hand landed on Myrtle's shoulder just as it would have if she had been touching Wayne's shoulder. She got in two quick pats before all three of them froze and stared at Heri's hand as if it had fallen off. "You can touch me!" Myrtle yelped, her eyes bugging out of her head. Her exclamation drew the attention of nearby ghosts. Soon it was as if every phantom in the room was beside themselves with shock. Suffice to say the party then become less about Sir Nicholas' death and more about Heri's new found powers. It turned out that the ability to physically touch a ghost was unheard of. The day after Halloween, Heri heard about the horrible thing done to Mrs Norris, Mr Filch's wretched cat. She was told by a riveted Megan about the words painted on the walls, the declaration by someone claiming to be the Heir of Slytherin which was also a threat to muggleborns, if what Megan had overheard was to be believed. 'The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir, beware.' Heri had a sinking feeling in her stomach that this was part of the danger Dobby was trying to protect her from. The teachers had sprung into action at the first hint of danger, already wary from the fore-warning they had gotten via Heri. Students were now required to travel in groups at all times outside of the common rooms. Prefects had their tardiness to their classes overlooked as they accompanied the younger years from lesson to lesson. While many of the older students thought it was all overkill ("Nothing but a melodramatic threat and a harassed cat," griped Marcus when Heri asked him about it), the three youngest years were jumping at shadows.
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