CHAPTER EIGHT
“Is that supposed to be music?” Ron whispered. They turned a
corner and saw Nearly Headless Nick standing at a doorway hung
with black velvet drapes.
“My dear friends,” he said mournfully. “Welcome, welcome . . .
so pleased you could come. . . .”
He swept off his plumed hat and bowed them inside.
It was an incredible sight. The dungeon was full of hundreds of
pearly-white, translucent people, mostly drifting around a crowded
dance floor, waltzing to the dreadful, quavering sound of thirty
musical saws, played by an orchestra on a raised, black-draped plat-
form. A chandelier overhead blazed midnight-blue with a thou-
sand more black candles. Their breath rose in a mist before them;
it was like stepping into a freezer.
“Shall we have a look around?” Harry suggested, wanting to
warm up his feet.
“Careful not to walk through anyone,” said Ron nervously, and
they set off around the edge of the dance floor. They passed a group
of gloomy nuns, a ragged man wearing chains, and the Fat Friar,
a cheerful Hufflepuff ghost, who was talking to a knight with an
arrow sticking out of his forehead. Harry wasn’t surprised to see
that the Bloody Baron, a gaunt, staring Slytherin ghost covered
in silver bloodstains, was being given a wide berth by the other
ghosts.
“Oh, no,” said Hermione, stopping abruptly. “Turn back, turn
back, I don’t want to talk to Moaning Myrtle —”
“Who?” said Harry as they backtracked quickly.
“She haunts one of the toilets in the girls’ bathroom on the first
floor,” said Hermione.
“She haunts a toilet?”
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