Amelia Potter and the Chamber of Secrets PART 1

101

saw what he wrote on the wall! He found – in my office – he knows I'm a – I'm a –' Filch's face worked horribly. 'He knows I'm a Squib!' he finished.

'I never touched Mrs Norris!' Harry said loudly, uncomfortably aware of everyone looking at him, including all the Lockharts on the walls. 'And I don't even know what a Squib is.'

'I think it is the scientific name for a group of seagulls.' Whispered Amelia to herself and Harry. 

'Rubbish!' snarled Filch. 'He saw my Kwikspell letter!'

'If I might speak, Headmaster,' said Snape from the shadows, and Harry's sense of foreboding increased; he was sure nothing Snape had to say was going to do him any good.

'Potter and his friends may have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time,' he said, a slight sneer curling his mouth as though he doubted it, 'but we do have a set of suspicious cir- cumstances here. Why were they in the upstairs corridor at all? Why weren't they at the Hallowe'en feast?'

Harry, Ron, and Hermione(Amelia didn't give a damn to talk) all launched into an explanation about the Deathday Party, '... there were hundreds of ghosts, they'll tell you we were there –' 

'But why not join the feast afterwards?' said Snape, his black eyes glittering in the candlelight. 'Why go up to that corridor?'

Ron and Hermione looked at Harry. Amelia shrugged.

'Because – because –' Harry said, his heart thumping very fast; something told him it would sound very far-fetched if he told them he had been led there by a bodiless voice no one but he could hear, 'because we were tired and wanted to go to bed,' he said.

'Without any supper?' said Snape, a triumphant smile flickering across his gaunt face. 'I didn't think ghosts provided food fit for living people at their parties.'

'We weren't hungry,' said Ron loudly, as his stomach gave a huge rumble.

Snape's nasty smile widened.

'I brought food. See cookies.' Amelia pulled the cookie out of her pocket and held it up. 

'I suggest, Headmaster, that Potter is not being entirely truthful,' he said. 'It might be a good idea if he were deprived of certain privileges until he is ready to tell us the whole story. I personally feel he should be taken off the Gryffindor Quidditch team until he is ready to be honest.'

'Really, Severus,' said Professor McGonagall sharply, 'I see no reason to stop the boy playing Quidditch. This cat wasn't hit over the head with a broomstick. There is no evidence at all that Potter