CHAPTER NINE
“You don’t use your eyes, any of you, do you?” she snapped.
“Didn’t you see what it was standing on?”
“The floor?” Harry suggested. “I wasn’t looking at its feet, I was
too busy with its heads.”
“No, not the floor. It was standing on a trapdoor. It’s obviously
guarding something.”
She stood up, glaring at them.
“I hope you’re pleased with yourselves. We could all have been
killed — or worse, expelled. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to
bed.”
Ron stared after her, his mouth open.
“No, we don’t mind,” he said. “You’d think we dragged her
along, wouldn’t you?”
But Hermione had given Harry something else to think about as
he climbed back into bed. The dog was guarding something. . . .
What had Hagrid said? Gringotts was the safest place in the
world for something you wanted to hide — except perhaps Hog-
warts.
It looked as though Harry had found out where the grubby lit-
tle package from vault seven hundred and thirteen was.
162