The days at Hogwarts

Angelina, who was sitting on the other side, also smiled and said, "Oh, it's possible that Harry hit Mrs. Norris, but I don't think he could do it."

After the three of them finished speaking, they smiled at each other.

It’s not that they think a second-year wizard can’t beat a cat, but they are willing to believe Harry and Ron, and in their eyes, they are still children.

Everyone's curiosity was not satisfied, and Professor McGonagall returned to the common room with Harry and Ron.

"What are you all doing sitting here? What time is it? Don't you have classes tomorrow?" Professor McGonagall scolded sternly.

But it was no use. The Transfiguration Club classes brought Professor McGonagall and the students closer together. George raised his hand and shouted, "Professor, tomorrow is the weekend, so there really is no class."

"Hahahaha!" The little wizards laughed.

Professor McGonagall didn't smile or say anything. She just stood there, staring at George with a cold expression.

Everyone in the lounge felt as if they were being strangled and could no longer laugh.

"What are you still standing there for? Go back to sleep. We can talk about it tomorrow!" Percy stood up and asked everyone to go upstairs.

With Percy bearing the pressure and breaking the deadlock, the little wizards fled upstairs as if they were fleeing. They didn't want to face Professor McGonagall's direct gaze.

Percy, who was walking last, glanced at Harry and Ron at the door, then at Loren and Hermione huddled on the sofa against the wall, and went upstairs without saying a word.

"Go to bed early and don't wander around at night." Professor McGonagall turned and left the common room after giving the instructions.

Ron let out a long breath, his tense nerves relaxed, and jumped to the sofa: "You can't imagine what we encountered tonight..."

In his emotional narration, Loren and Hermione experienced their experiences immersively. Harry heard a strange sound in the basement and followed it all the way to the third floor, where he found Mrs. Norris hanging on a torch stand behind the last corner.

Hermione listened with a serious expression. Loren took the opportunity to look at Harry and saw that although he looked a little dazed, he was still calm.

Ron continued, "Dumbledore said that Mrs. Norris was not dead, but was petrified. This is a very advanced dark magic. Only when Professor Sprout's mandrake matures can we make a potion to remove the petrification."

"Harry, have you told the professors about that strange noise you heard?" Hermione asked.

"I didn't ask him to say that," Ron said quickly. "It's not a good sign to hear voices that others can't hear, even in the wizarding world."

Hearing a voice that no one else could hear, Hermione's heart moved, and she seemed to have grasped some thoughts.

Harry was thinking about the last words Dumbledore said to him tonight: "Harry, believe in your friends, believe in yourself."

What does it mean?

Shouldn't he have shown up at the crime scene to let his friends believe him? What does it mean to believe in yourself? Would he still doubt himself?

Harry's mind was full of question marks.

He looked from Ron to Hermione, then to Lauren, and after a moment's hesitation he asked, "You, believe me, don't you?"

Loren looked at Harry's doubtful expression and couldn't help laughing. "Not only do we believe in you, but everyone in Gryffindor believes in you. George just said that he thinks you two can't beat Mrs. Norris."

Hermione interrupted the boys' nonsense and sorted out the context of the incident: "We need to know what the words on the wall mean, the Chamber of Secrets, the Heir...what do they mean?"

A bell rang outside, and Harry and Ron's stomachs began to ring too.

They were cold, hungry and somewhat frightened tonight. They didn't feel it because they were tense just now, but now that they relaxed, they felt hungry and sleepy.

goooo~

goooo~

Hermione pursed her lips and said, "I have some ideas that need to be sorted out. We'll talk about the rest tomorrow. Loren took some food from the dining table, you guys go back and eat first."

Got something to eat?

Harry and Ron cheered in surprise: "Long live Granger!"

"Huh? I brought the food, why is it Hail Granger?"

"Ha ha!"

……

For the next week, the students talked about nothing else but the attack on Mrs Norris, and Filch often wandered around the third floor corridor, apparently waiting for the attacker.

When Hermione took Loren to the crime scene to investigate, she saw him using "Mrs. Skoll's All-Purpose Magic Cleaner" to scrub the words on the wall. He stood on a stool and tried his best. It looked like he wanted to break his arm, but in the end it was in vain. The words were still flashing on the stone wall.

Hermione couldn't bear to see him like this, so she used several [Stop Curse] on the wall to make the words dim and able to be erased.

Filch said nothing, wiped the wall and left. In the following days, he hid in the corridors, trying every possible excuse to put students in detention, with all kinds of reasons, even breathing too loudly, smiling frivolously and so on.

Fred said his eyes were red with anger.

Hermione also dragged Loren to Myrtle's girls' bathroom to investigate, whereupon Myrtle happily recounted her death, focusing on how she became a ghost and haunted those who laughed at her.

Inside the library.

Ron was worrying about his paper: "I can't believe it, eight inches short..."

In front of him were two copies of the paper for reference, one was Hermione's four feet seven inches long, and the other was Loren's standard three feet, no more, no less.

He said angrily to Harry beside him: "Why can Hermione write so long and the characters are so small?"

Although some young wizards looked at Harry strangely, at least Gryffindor did not, and he was living a relatively happy life these days.

Harry measured his homework with a tape measure and replied, "Loren is even more outrageous. He finished his paper before Professor Binns' class was over."

"Just grasp the main content of this chapter. Just like my thesis title, it doesn't matter if I change "Medieval European Wizarding Gathering" to "Changes in Customs in the Medieval Magic World" or "The Impact of Medieval Muggle Activities on the Magic World."

Loren came over with a large book in his hands and glanced at Harry's homework. "Oh, I wrote an extra inch. What a loss."

"That's not a big deal." Harry said with amusement, and then saw the book in his hand, "Hogwarts: A History? What are you reading this for?"

"It's not me who wants to read it, it's Hermione who wants to read it. She said it contains records about the legend of the Chamber of Secrets and asked me to help her find the book." Loren slammed the book on the table. "I have to leave for a while, please pass the book to her for me."

Harry and Ron had already opened the big book, not noticing that Loren had left.

Loren walked out of the library, turned right and went up the stairs to the corridor on the third floor where the attack took place on Halloween. He did not meet Filch, but Dumbledore was waiting there.

There were still some inconspicuous marks on the wall where the writing had left some detergent. Dumbledore pulled a piece of his sleeve, wiped off the detergent bit by bit, and tapped the wall with his wand, and all the marks disappeared without a trace.

"Principal Dumbledore, did you have to go through so much trouble to find me? You even used a Patronus to pass messages, making it seem like you were meeting with an underground organization." Loren complained. He was just looking for a book in the library when a silver phoenix suddenly flew in from the window. He was almost sniped by the phoenix with a Piercing Curse.

Dumbledore laughed twice and said, "Loren, I am too old to see clearly. Can you help me see if there are any marks on the wall?"

Loren looked carefully and said, "No, it's clean."

"The marks on the wall are easy to erase, but the marks in people's hearts will always remain."

"What do you mean?"

Dumbledore turned around and touched his head. "It's okay. I came to you because of the matter I talked about at the beginning of this school year. I need your help and would like you to go to a place with me."

The old wizard's eyes flashed. He noticed that Crabbe's face was getting paler and paler these days, and there were huge changes in the magic power in his body. If he guessed correctly, Voldemort was trying to make Crabbe into a Horcrux.

He wanted to go to the Gaunt House to find out more information about Voldemort and the Horcruxes. In addition, the school nights seemed a little restless recently.

Loren remembered that on the night of the opening banquet, he went to talk to Dumbledore about the diary Horcrux. Before leaving, Dumbledore suddenly mentioned this and he agreed to it without thinking.

He asked: "Where are we going? What preparations do we need to make?"

"We may encounter something like the diary. What preparations do you think we should make?" Dumbledore asked with a smile.

Chapter 191: Creation and Death of Malfoy [Guardian of the Sky and the Earth]

Shijiagen

Harry, Ron and Hermione gathered around "Hogwarts: A History", the pages turning making a rustling sound.

Hermione asked the two to move away in disdain, as they were blocking her from flipping through the book. "What a hassle! I really should memorize this book so I don't have to flip through the pages to find the records of the Chamber of Secrets!"

Harry and Ron trembled as they looked at the tome thicker than their fists. Is this what a top student is like?

"It's right here!" With her familiarity with the contents of the entire book, Hermione quickly found the section recording the Chamber of Secrets, in the column about Slytherin's unofficial history and legends.

Harry and Ron immediately pushed Hermione aside and couldn't wait to read the pages.

"Slytherin and Gryffindor had a fierce dispute over whether to accept Muggle students. Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff sided with Gryffindor on this issue. Slytherin left the school after that. Before leaving, Slytherin built a secret room in the castle, which the other founders knew nothing about."

"Slytherin sealed the Chamber of Secrets, and only his true heir could open it and release the horrors inside, allowing it to purify the school and purge all those who were unworthy of studying magic."

After Harry and Ron finished reading a paragraph each, they looked up at Hermione with complicated eyes. She was the little Muggle-born wizard rejected by Slytherin.

"I've known for a long time that Salazar Slytherin is a perverted old lunatic!" Ron raised his head and said solemnly, "Hermione, don't go anywhere alone recently. It's best to let Loren follow you all the time."

Harry remembered that Loren was also a Muggle-born, and added: "We will always protect you, don't worry."

Hermione was both angry and amused. She rolled up the four-foot-eight-inch History of Magic paper and patted the two idiots on the head. "Did you see the name of this chapter? It's a legend! A legend!"

Ron covered his head and muttered, "Legends have a certain basis in fact, don't they?"

"Does it say what the horrible thing in the Chamber of Secrets is?" Hermione didn't want to waste any more time with the two of them, so she grabbed the big book and found a brief note at the end of the chapter, "Some kind of monster that only the heir of Slytherin can control."

"Monster?" Harry looked at the word in confusion. "Is it related to the strange noise I heard that night?"

"Only you can hear it, no one else can, don't you understand, Harry?" Hermione suddenly lowered her voice and looked around nervously, fearing that someone might hear their discussion.

A bone-chilling chill suddenly enveloped Harry, colder than the night of the Deathday party. His hands and feet were cold, and his throat seemed to be pressed by something, making it difficult for him to speak: "You mean, Parseltongue..."

Ron suddenly realized something and looked at Harry in horror.

"Let's find an empty classroom to talk."

Hermione closed Hogwarts: A History, put the paper into her bag, and walked quickly towards the door.

Ron's eyes were glued to the paper, staring at her back eagerly: "I still have two inches to write."

"Let's go!" Harry eagerly crumpled up all his things, stuffed them into his schoolbag, and pulled Ron along.

The three of them went into an abandoned classroom in the corridor to the right of the library.

"It has the ability to petrify things and is a snake-like creature. With these two clues, I can quickly find out what kind of monster is in the Chamber of Secrets." Hermione was fully confident.

Ron was still repeating the same sentence: "I knew Salazar Slytherin was a perverted old lunatic."

Harry felt heavy in his heart, and he felt that his cold limbs were becoming as heavy as his heart. He opened his mouth, but didn't know what to say.

Parseltongue, the heir of Slytherin...

Harry had never doubted himself so much. At the beginning, the Sorting Hat had seriously considered putting him in Slytherin. When he put the hat on his head a year ago, the little voice in his ear suddenly became clear, "You will be great, you know, in your mind, Slytherin will help you to be brilliant, there is no doubt about it..."

He wondered if he was really the heir of Slytherin.

Believe in yourself, believe in your friends...

Dumbledore's gentle voice drowned out the sound of the Sorting Hat introducing the Slytherins, which made Harry feel better.

Then he became confused again. Could it be that Dumbledore had expected that he would doubt him?

"And spiders!" Ron emphasized the clues about the monster. He was very impressed by spiders. "The spiders in the castle were so scared that they all ran away. Last year, Voldemort didn't have such a big deterrent effect in the castle."

Hermione wrote down the clues: "Spiders, petrification, snakes..."

Harry looked at his two friends, struggled for a moment, and finally asked: "Do you believe that I am not the heir of Slytherin? I mean, I can speak Parseltongue, and the Sorting Hat wanted to put me in Slytherin House at that time."

Ron looked at him strangely, as if he was very confused: "Why don't you believe it? Weren't we together that night?"

Hermione seemed to see his worry, but didn't say much: "I'm going to the library to look for some books about monster atlases. If you two are free, come and help me organize the information."

With that, she stood up and walked out of the empty classroom.

Harry felt as if the weight that had been weighing on his heart had suddenly been lifted, and his breathing became easy and smooth again.

With a carefree smile, he followed his friend's footsteps, "I think there is something wrong with what Malfoy said. He jumped out at the first moment..."

……

On the other side, Dumbledore brought Loren to the principal's office.

This circular office still looked familiar to Loren. There were many exquisite silver items on the table with long and thin legs. They were rotating and emitting small puffs of smoke. The portraits of old principals, both men and women, were dozing in their frames.

But the phoenix Fawkes seemed to be sick. It leaned weakly on the gilded branch. One third of its feathers had fallen off, revealing a bare, ugly skin. The dense pores looked like small pimples that made people's scalp numb.

Loren had always thought Fox was a bit ugly, and now he looked even uglier.

Feeling his impolite gaze, Fox forced himself to stiffen his neck and yelled at him a few times, his voice dry and hoarse, as if he was suffocating.

Fox found that his voice had changed, and he became depressed. He folded his wings and claws and retreated into a corner, looking at Loren with a sad look. His aggrieved look was both pitiful and funny.

In the blink of an eye, the phoenix lost a few more feathers. Loren looked at the principal: "Is it really okay for Fox to be like this?"

"Well, I've been telling it to hurry up and complete Nirvana sooner, but it doesn't want to become what it was when it was a child." Dumbledore smiled helplessly, "I guess it will take until around Christmas."

Dumbledore came and sat down on the high-backed chair behind the desk. He poured two cups of tea, handed one to Loren, and took the cup himself and held it to his mouth, but he was hesitant to drink it.

He seemed to be hesitating about something.