CHAPTER EIGHT
wouldn’t open unless you asked politely, or tickled them in exactly
the right place, and doors that weren’t really doors at all, but solid
walls just pretending. It was also very hard to remember where any-
thing was, because it all seemed to move around a lot. The people
in the portraits kept going to visit each other, and Harry was sure
the coats of armor could walk.
The ghosts didn’t help, either. It was always a nasty shock when
one of them glided suddenly through a door you were trying
to open. Nearly Headless Nick was always happy to point new
Gryffindors in the right direction, but Peeves the Poltergeist was
worth two locked doors and a trick staircase if you met him when
you were late for class. He would drop wastepaper baskets on your
head, pull rugs from under your feet, pelt you with bits of chalk, or
sneak up behind you, invisible, grab your nose, and screech, “GOT
YOUR CONK!”
Even worse than Peeves, if that was possible, was the caretaker,
Argus Filch. Harry and Ron managed to get on the wrong side of
him on their very first morning. Filch found them trying to force
their way through a door that unluckily turned out to be the en-
trance to the out-of-bounds corridor on the third floor. He
wouldn’t believe they were lost, was sure they were trying to break
into it on purpose, and was threatening to lock them in the
dungeons when they were rescued by Professor Quirrell, who was
passing.
Filch owned a cat called Mrs. Norris, a scrawny, dust-colored
creature with bulging, lamplike eyes just like Filch’s. She patrolled
the corridors alone. Break a rule in front of her, put just one toe out
of line, and she’d whisk off for Filch, who’d appear, wheezing, two
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