“Let’s see. . . .”
Nick’s head wobbled a little on his ruff as he turned hither and thither, peering over the heads of the swarming students.
“That’s her over there, Harry, the young woman with the long hair.”
Harry looked in the direction of Nick’s transparent, pointing finger and saw a tall ghost who caught sight of Harry looking at her, raised her eyebrows, and drifted away through a solid wall.
Harry ran after her. Once through the door of the corridor into which she had disappeared, he saw her at the very end of the passage, still gliding smoothly away from him.
“Hey — wait — come back!”
She consented to pause, floating a few inches from the ground. Harry supposed that she was beautiful, with her waist-length hair and floor-length cloak, but she also looked haughty and proud. Close to, he recognized her as a ghost he had passed several times in the corridor, but to whom he had never spoken.
“You’re the Gray Lady?”
She nodded but did not speak.
“The ghost of Ravenclaw Tower?”
“That is correct.”
Her tone was not encouraging.
“Please: I need some help. I need to know anything you can tell me about the lost diadem.”
A cold smile curved her lips.
“I am afraid,” she said, turning to leave, “that I cannot help you.”
“WAIT!”
He had not meant to shout, but anger and panic were threatening to overwhelm him. He glanced at his watch as she hovered in front of him: It was a quarter to midnight.
“This is urgent,” he said fiercely. “If that diadem’s at Hogwarts, I’ve got to find it, fast.”
“You are hardly the first student to covet the diadem,” she said disdainfully. “Generations of students have badgered me —”
“This isn’t about trying to get better marks!” Harry shouted at her. “It’s about Voldemort — defeating Voldemort — or aren’t you interested in that?”
She could not blush, but her transparent cheeks became more opaque, and her voice was heated as she replied, “Of course I — how dare you suggest — ?”
“Well, help me, then!”
Her composure was slipping.
“It — it is not a question of —” she stammered. “My mother’s diadem —”
“Your mother’s?”
She looked angry with herself.
“When I lived,” she said stiffly, “I was Helena Ravenclaw.”
“You’re her daughter? But then, you must know what happened to it!”
“While the diadem bestows wisdom,” she said with an obvious effort to pull herself together, “I doubt that it would greatly increase your chances of defeating the wizard who calls himself Lord —”
“Haven’t I just told you, I’m not interested in wearing it!” Harry said fiercely. “There’s no time to explain — but if you care about Hogwarts, if you want to see Voldemort finished, you’ve got to tell me anything you know about the diadem!”
She remained quite still, floating in midair, staring down at him, and a sense of hopelessness engulfed Harry. Of course, if she had known anything, she would have told Flitwick or Dumbledore, who had surely asked her the same question. He had shaken his head and made to turn away when she spoke in a low voice.
“I stole the diadem from my mother.”
“You — you did what?”
“I stole the diadem,” repeated Helena Ravenclaw in a whisper. “I sought to make myself cleverer, more important than my mother. I ran away with it.”
He did not know how he had managed to gain her confidence, and did not ask; he simply listened, hard, as she went on:
“My mother, they say, never admitted that the diadem was gone, but pretended that she had it still. She concealed her loss, my dreadful betrayal, even from the other founders of Hogwarts.
“Then my mother fell ill — fatally ill. In spite of my perfidy, she was desperate to see me one more time. She sent a man who had long loved me, though I spurned his advances, to find me. She knew that he would not rest until he had done so.”
Harry waited. She drew a deep breath and threw back her head.
“He tracked me to the forest where I was hiding. When I refused to return with him, he became violent. The Baron was always a hot-tempered man. Furious at my refusal, jealous of my freedom, he stabbed me.”
“The Baron? You mean — ?”
“The Bloody Baron, yes,” said the Gray Lady, and she lifted aside the cloak she wore to reveal a single dark wound in her white chest. “When he saw what he had done, he was overcome with remorse. He took the weapon that had claimed my life, and used it to kill himself. All these centuries later, he wears his chains as an act of penitence . . . as he should,” she added bitterly.
“And . . . and the diadem?”
“It remained where I had hidden it when I heard the Baron blundering through the forest toward me. Concealed inside a hollow tree.”
“A hollow tree?” repeated Harry. “What tree? Where was this?”
“A forest in Albania. A lonely place I thought was far beyond my mother’s reach.”
“Albania,” repeated Harry. Sense was emerging miraculously from confusion, and now he understood why she was telling him what she had denied Dumbledore and Flitwick. “You’ve already told someone this story, haven’t you? Another student?”
She closed her eyes and nodded.
“I had . . . no idea. . . . He was . . . flattering. He seemed to . . . to understand . . . to sympathize. . . .”
Yes, Harry thought, Tom Riddle would certainly have understood Helena Ravenclaw’s desire to possess fabulous objects to which she had little right.
“Well, you weren’t the first person Riddle wormed things out of,” Harry muttered. “He could be charming when he wanted. . . .”