ARAGOG
“And we thought it was going to attack us!” said Ron, leaning
against the car and patting it. “I wondered where it had gone!”
Harry squinted around on the floodlit ground for signs of more
spiders, but they had all scuttled away from the glare of the head-
lights.
“We’ve lost the trail,” he said. “C’mon, let’s go and find them.”
Ron didn’t speak. He didn’t move. His eyes were fixed on a point
some ten feet above the forest floor, right behind Harry. His face
was livid with terror.
Harry didn’t even have time to turn around. There was a loud
clicking noise and suddenly he felt something long and hairy seize
him around the middle and lift him off the ground, so that he was
hanging facedown. Struggling, terrified, he heard more clicking,
and saw Ron’s legs leave the ground, too, heard Fang whimpering
and howling — next moment, he was being swept away into the
dark trees.
Head hanging, Harry saw that what had hold of him was march-
ing on six immensely long, hairy legs, the front two clutching him
tightly below a pair of shining black pincers. Behind him, he could
hear another of the creatures, no doubt carrying Ron. They were
moving into the very heart of the forest. Harry could hear Fang
fighting to free himself from a third monster, whining loudly, but
Harry couldn’t have yelled even if he had wanted to; he seemed to
have left his voice back with the car in the clearing.
He never knew how long he was in the creature’s clutches; he
only knew that the darkness suddenly lifted enough for him to see
that the leaf-strewn ground was now swarming with spiders. Cran-
ing his neck sideways, he realized that they had reached the ridge of
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