Chapter 15

With Dumbledore suspended and Hagrid taken to Azkaban, Hogwarts is tense. Madam Pomfrey bars visitors from the hospital wing, and Draco Malfoy gloats that his father helped remove Dumbledore. In Potions, Malfoy taunts about Muggle-borns. In Herbology, Ernie Macmillan apologizes to Harry, and Harry notices a line of spiders heading toward the Forbidden Forest.

Harry and Ron plan to follow the spiders that night under the Invisibility Cloak. In Lockhart’s class, Lockhart smugly insists Hagrid’s guilt, strengthening their resolve. After curfew they slip out, collect Fang at Hagrid’s hut, and enter the forest by wandlight, tracking the spiders deeper among the trees.

They stumble upon the Weasleys’ enchanted Ford Anglia living wild, but are immediately seized by giant spiders and carried to a vast hollow. There, the ancient Acromantula Aragog emerges. Harry explains Hagrid’s arrest; Aragog declares he never attacked humans out of respect for Hagrid and was wrongly blamed years ago. He says the real monster, an unnamed ancient creature from the castle, killed a girl whose body was found in a bathroom.

When Harry asks for more, Aragog refuses to name the beast and orders his offspring not to spare the intruders. As the spiders close in, the Ford Anglia charges into the hollow, allowing Harry, Ron, and Fang to escape and return to the edge of the forest.

Back at Hagrid’s cabin and then the dormitory, Ron is shaken and angry at Hagrid’s faith in monsters. Harry reasons they learned Hagrid is innocent and that the victim died in a bathroom. He suddenly connects this to Moaning Myrtle, concluding she may be the dead girl.