Amelia Potter and the Chamber of Secrets PART 1

160

thing else at me?'

Harry waded across to her cubicle and said, 'Why would I throw something at you?'

'Don't ask me,' Myrtle shouted, emerging with a wave of yet more water, which splashed onto the already sopping floor. 'Here I am, minding my own business, and someone thinks it's funny to throw a book at me ...'

'But it can't hurt you if someone throws something at you,' said Harry, reasonably. 'I mean, it'd just go right through you, wouldn't it?'

Amelia smacked Ron upside the head once more. "Ronald Weasly that is very rude!'

He had said the wrong thing. Myrtle puffed herself up and shrieked, 'Let's all throw books at Myrtle, because she can't feel it! Ten points if you can get it through her stomach! Fifty points if it goes through her head! Well, ha ha ha! What a lovely game, I don't think!'

'Who threw it at you, anyway?' asked Harry.

'I don't know ... I was just sitting in the U-bend, thinking about death, and it fell right through the top of my head,' said Myrtle, glaring at them. 'It's over there, it got washed out.'

Harry and Ron looked under the sink, where Myrtle was pointing. A small, thin book lay there. It had a shabby black cover and was as wet as everything else in the bathroom. Harry stepped for- ward to pick it up, but Ron suddenly flung out an arm to hold him back.

'What?' said Harry.

'Are you mad?' said Ron. 'It could be dangerous.'

'Dangerous?' said Harry, laughing. 'Come off it, how could it be dangerous?'

'You'd be surprised,' said Ron, who was looking apprehensively at the book. 'Some of the books the Ministry's confiscated – Dad's told me – there was one that burned your eyes out. And everyone who read Sonnets of a Sorcerer spoke in limericks for the rest of their lives. And some old witch in Bath had a book that you could never stop reading! You just had to wander around with your nose in it, trying to do everything one-handed. And –'

'Yicks,' muttered Amelia.

'All right, I've got the point,' said Harry.

The little book lay on the floor, nondescript and soggy.

'Well, we won't find out unless we look at it,' he said, and he ducked round Ron and picked it off the floor.

Harry saw at once that it was a diary, and the faded year on the