Hogwarts Castle, far to the north, knew nothing of this.
In September, night falls much earlier in the Scotland Highlands than in London.
The castle lights came on one by one in the twilight, the candlesticks in the corridors flickered with warm light, and the portraits in their frames yawned and occasionally exchanged a few words.
Two weeks into the semester, apart from Professor Sprout being busy tending to the nearly ripe Mandrake in the greenhouse, and Professor Lockhart stopping students in the corridor every day to take photos and sign autographs, everything in the castle is the same as in previous years.
Harry had moved up from first to second year and was already used to the pace of Hogwarts.
He walked through the corridor with his schoolbag on his back, the knight's armor overhead rattling as he passed, and a Fat Friar in the portrait waved to him.
In the Gryffindor Common Room, Ron sat on the carpet in front of the fireplace, a Wizard's Chess set spread out beside him.
He poked the knight piece with his finger, and the opponent impatiently shifted his body and tapped the edge of the board with his spear.
"Can you hurry up?" the knight said. "My knees are getting sore from standing."
Ron rolled his eyes and pushed the chess piece forward two squares.
Hermione sat in the armchair next to her, a book so thick it could kill someone was spread out on her lap.
Harry scratched his head in annoyance. In the past few days, he had started to hear a hoarse whisper coming from deep within the walls from time to time.
He couldn't tell if it was language or something else, but every time he heard it, the scar on his forehead would feel a faint tingling.
This time it was clearer than before, "... tear... slaughter..."
The voice seemed to be whispering in his ear, carrying a damp chill, as if it were rising from the deepest depths.
Harry suddenly looked up and turned to look at the empty wall behind him.
" Harry?" Ron turned around. "What's wrong?"
"... Didn't you hear me?"
"What did you hear?" Ron looked around in confusion.
Hermione shook her head as well. "There's nothing there."
Harry looked at their confused faces and felt that something must be wrong with him.
Perhaps he had been locked up in the Dursley family for too long, perhaps he was too tired, perhaps... perhaps the voice never existed at all.
"It's nothing," Harry swallowed, "I must have misheard."
Ron shrugged and continued playing chess.
Hermione gave Harry a suspicious look, then continued reading.
Harry stared at the wall, lost in thought, his fingers unconsciously pressing against the scar on his forehead.
On the eve of Halloween, a chill crept into the air.
The pumpkin lanterns in the corridor were replaced with ones carved with ghost faces, and the candles were changed to a deep orange color.
Filch paced back and forth in the corridor, clutching a long iron chain in his hand, muttering repeatedly, "None of this year's troublemakers will get away."
But Harry wasn't really interested in Halloween.
He was thinking about something else: the invitation from Nearly Headless Nick.
"You must come," Nick floated into the Gryffindor Common Room three days ago, his head, with only a few strands of hair still attached to his neck, swaying in the candlelight.
"The 500th anniversary of their Deathday Party is a big day. I've specially invited Peeves, Bloody Baron, and all the ghosts in the castle. You can't be absent."
Ron agreed without much thought, because Nick promised "the most authentic ghost feast."
But he later learned from Fred that the ghost's feast referred to rotten fish and moldy cheese, the kind of food given to the living.
"Why didn't you say so sooner?" Ron wailed.
"It's not too late for you to know now," Fred said with a grin, patting him on the shoulder.
Regardless, on the evening of the last day of October, they changed into robes and walked through the corridor toward the underground classroom.
The abandoned underground classroom was decorated in a rather "grand" manner.
The walls were covered with black gauze resembling spiderwebs, and dozens of black candles floated in mid-air, emitting a cold, bluish-white light.
The air was filled with a damp, dusty smell, mixed with some indescribable stench of decay.
About two hundred ghosts gathered in the room, some floating in mid-air, others passing through each other's bodies.
Their voices were like the wind passing through withered leaves, carrying an empty echo.
In the corner, a ghostly band was playing an extremely eerie tune on a saw and hollow metal pipes.
Nick stood in the center of the room, his head, which looked like it was about to fall off, supported by his hand, and greeted each guest with a smile.
Seeing Harry and the others enter, he floated over. "Welcome, welcome! You're the first group of living people to arrive, that's incredibly kind of you!"
Harry forced a smile and glanced at the food on the long table.
But he regretted it after just one glance.
The table was covered with various gray, translucent foods, which looked like leftovers that had been forgotten at the bottom of the refrigerator for half a year.
A piece that looked like a fish was oozing a strange slime, and the cheese next to it was covered with fine white mold.
Ron's face turned green. "... I'd rather eat the Chocolate Frog I brought."
Hermione, however, observed the ghosts with great interest, occasionally peering closer to examine their clothing and mannerisms. She whispered:
"Look at that female ghost with the ringed neckline; I suspect she's from the 16th century. I've seen her robe style in a book."
Harry nodded absentmindedly.
He wasn't actually very hungry, but he had a strange premonition that something was going to happen tonight.
Halfway through the party, Nick floated to the center of the room and cleared his throat:
Distinguished guests, friends! Thank you all for attending my 500th anniversary of Deathday Party tonight--
Harry was listening indifferently when suddenly another voice drowned out Nick's and entered his ears.
Harry's heart skipped a beat.
"... I'm thirsty... I want to tear this apart..."
Harry turned sharply in the direction the sound came from.
It was a stone wall covered in moss, and it looked no different from all the other walls around it.
But that sound came from there.
" Harry?" Hermione noticed his expression. "What's wrong?"
"I heard—" Harry opened his mouth, then suddenly realized he was about to say something like "there's someone talking in the walls" again.
He stopped talking, shook his head, and said, "I'm going to get some fresh air."
He turned and walked towards the door, his pace quickening unconsciously.
After exiting the underground classroom, the corridor was eerily quiet.
"... starvation... killing..."
A faint, hoarse sound continued to drift in.
"What are you doing?"
Ron's voice came from behind Harry, startling him.
He turned around and saw Ron and Hermione standing at the entrance to the corridor, looking at him with puzzled expressions.
"We saw you suddenly run out," Hermione said. "Are you alright?"
"I..." Harry didn't know what to say, "You really didn't hear me?"
"What did you hear?" Ron walked over and looked around. "There's nothing here."
Harry was about to explain when a hoarse, sharp word suddenly emerged from the depths of the wall, as clear as if someone had slashed his brain.
"... Tearing..."
This time, Harry didn't hesitate; he took off running in the direction the sound came from.
" Harry!" Hermione called from behind.
They didn't chase after us, but footsteps followed, so they were clearly running.
Harry turned two corners down the corridor, and the sound grew louder, as if something was slowly crawling on the other side of the wall.
Then Harry suddenly stopped, staring in shock at the scene before him.
At the corner at the end of the corridor, there is a line of blood-written words on the stone wall.
" The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Beware, those who oppose the heir."
Harry looked down and saw Filch's grey cat Mrs. Norris, hanging stiffly from the torch stand on the ground below the text.
Its tail hung stiffly, and its eyes were wide open, showing no sign of blinking.
Harry felt like someone was choking him.
"My God..." Hermione's voice came from behind him, already distorted.
Ron stood beside her, his face as pale as a sheet. "That... that's Filch's cat..."
"Is it dead?" Hermione's voice trembled.
Harry shook his head. "I don't know."
Just then, footsteps and voices came from the other end of the corridor.
Several figures in school uniforms surged through the archway; some held wands, others whispered.
"I just heard someone running over here—" said a Ravenclaw boy.
"What's that?!" a girl screamed, pointing at the words on the wall.
In less than a minute, at least twenty students had gathered at the corner. When they saw the words on the wall and the stiff cat, their faces turned as if they had been Petrificus Totalus.
"What does this mean? What Chamber of Secrets?"
What happened to the cat? Is it dead?
"Look at that line of text... what does it mean?"
"Who wrote this? Who would hang a cat here?"
The crowd began to stir, and several Gryffindor students recognized Harry, their eyes darting back and forth between him and the cat.
"What are you doing here?" someone asked.
Harry opened his mouth, but before he could answer, a sharp voice exploded from behind the crowd.
"What's going on?! What are you doing?!"
Filch came running from the end of the corridor, his wrinkled face contorted with rage.
He gripped the iron chain in his hand, ready to arrest the students who violated the curfew, as usual.
But he stopped abruptly when he saw the words.
Filch stood frozen in place, as if he had been frozen in place.
His gaze slowly moved toward Mrs. Norris, from her stiff tail to her frozen eyes, and then he uttered a sound that was completely unlike anything a human could make.
It was a piercing howl that almost shattered eardrums, like the shriek of some wild beast whose leg had been broken.
My cat!!
He rushed over and scooped Mrs. Norris off the torch stand.
The cat's body remained unresponsive, stiff as a piece of wood.
"Who did this?! Who did this?!" Filch looked up, his eyes already red, and frantically scanned the faces of every student present.
"It's you!!" His gaze fixed on Harry, his finger pointing sharply. "It's you!! It's you again!!"
"It wasn't me! I didn't do anything!" Harry quickly took a step back.
But Filch seemed not to hear him. He held the cat and approached Harry step by step.
"He hates my cat!! I know!! You've always hated my cat!! Today you finally--"