Chapter 206

He bowed at Harry, saying no more as he turned around and galloped back into the forest.

Harry kept an ear out until the sound of the hooves faded away before he activated his Unicorn Boost perk and ran to the east, plotting out the quickest route through the trees as he darted through the low hanging branches and vines, looking for some indication of what Firenze meant by following the spiders.

It didn't take him long to find out.

About five minutes of continuous full speed running later, he spotted something on the forest floor and stopped to investigate. Several large spiders were scuttling over the dead leaves and half-melted snow, moving in an unnaturally straight line as though taking the shortest route to a prearranged meeting.

A window suddenly popped up in the corner of his vision.

Ping!

Arachnid Empathy active!

And in that moment, the line of spiders stopped moving. In his own mind, through his empathy skill, he could clearly sense every bit of primal fear and the need for safety that filled the spiders' mind, and he knew that each of those spiders knew his own fear, anger and worry, at least the best they could understand.

"I need to meet Aragog," he said, hoping that the spiders would somehow be able to understand his intentions through the empathy.

The spiders seemed to look at him curiously, before a spike of panic come through his empathy skill and they scattered completely.

Harry didn't even have time to turn around. There was a scuttle and a shuffle and a loud clicking noise, and suddenly he felt something long and hairy seize him around the middle and lift him off the ground so that he was hanging facedown.

"What do you want with Aragog, wizard?" whatever was holding him said. It was hard to comprehend its speech since it seemed oddly clickety sounding.

Harry could make out in the darkness that whatever it was had eight legs, and immediately knew that he was being held by one of Aragog's children. He held himself from simply burning the creature to a crisp and said what he hoped would get him to meet Aragog, "I am a friend of Hagrid's. Hagrid is in trouble and I need Aragog's help to save him."

There was no reply. He heard more clicking, and next moment, he was being carried away into the dark trees. He did not know how long he was in the acromantula's clutches, but he knew that the leaf-strewn ground around him when he stopped was now swarming with spiders.

Not tiny spiders like those surging over the leaves below. Spiders the size of carthorses, eight-eyed, eight-legged, black, hairy, gigantic. The massive specimen that was carrying Harry made its way down the steep slope of a vast hollow towards a misty, domed web in the very center, while its fellow brethren closed in all around it, clicking their pincers excitedly at the sight of its load.

Harry fell to the ground on all fours as the spider released him.

"Aragog!" the spider that had dropped him 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.

"What is it?" he said, clicking his pincers rapidly.

"Man," clicked the spider who had caught Harry.

"Is it Hagrid?" said Aragog, moving closer, his eight milky eyes wandering vaguely.

"Stranger. Says he is friend of Hagrid," clicked the spider. Click, click, click went the pincers of the spiders all around the hollow, as a wave of unease had spread through them. Aragog paused.

"Hagrid has never sent men into our hollow before," he said slowly.

"Hagrid is in trouble," said Harry quickly, trying to get his word in before the massive creature lost patience, "That's why I have come."

"In trouble?" said the aged spider, and Harry thought he heard concern beneath the clicking pincers. "But why has he sent you?"

Harry thought of getting to his feet but decided against it. Not showing any dominance and hostility seemed like a good thing to do. Besides, if he needed to escape, he simply had to say two words to drop into an ID. So he spoke from the ground, keeping his voice incredibly calm as he tried to use his Arachnid Empathy to connect to the ancient acromantula.

"They think that Hagrid's been setting something on students. Something that petrified them. They've taken him to Azkaban for it."

Aragog clicked his pincers furiously, "But that was years ago. I remember it well. That is why they made him leave the school. They believed 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."

"But you didn't come from the Chamber did you? It was something else. Some kind of snake. And it was all blamed on you." said Harry, eagerly. Aragog was providing information that he was sure no human would have remembered in the wake of the Fidelius. Maybe he had actually found a way to break the Fidelius charm and expose the Heir.

"Yes," croaked the old spider. "It would have been my instinct to harm humans, but out of respect for Hagrid, I never did so. 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."

Harry grinned. He finally knew where Myrtle had died! If he looked around in her bathroom enough, he was sure he could find some clue or the other to find where the entrance to the Chamber was.

"Do you know what did kill that girl?" he eagerly asked, looking for the last piece of the puzzle, but his words were drowned by loud clicking and the rustling of many long legs shifting around him.

"The thing that lives in the castle," said Aragog, "is an ancient creature we spiders fear above all others.I remember well, how I pleaded with Hagrid to let me go when I sensed the beast moving about the school. We do not speak of it. We do not name it. I never even told Hagrid the name of that creature, though he asked me, many times."

Harry could feel the spiders pressing together around him on all sides. Not wanting to use destructive force and lose any chance of finding out what the Beast really was, Harry decided to use the other approach.

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