harry potter book of crimes

"Whoever the basilisk looks at will die. But no one here died - because none of them looked directly at it!"

Having said this, Harry looked eagerly at the page in his hand. The more he looked at it, the brighter his heart became.

"The crowing of the rooster is fatal to it too!" he read aloud, "Hagrid's roosters have been killed! Once the Chamber of Secrets is opened, the heir of Slytherin will never want a rooster near the castle!"

"But how could a basilisk crawl around?" Ron said, "A big ugly snake, someone will definitely see it!"

Harry pointed to the two words scrawled at the bottom of the paper.

"Pipe!" he said, "Ron, it keeps moving in the pipe. I keep hearing that noise in the wall..."

Ron grabbed Harry's arm.

"The entrance to the secret room!" he said hoarsely, "Maybe it's in a bathroom? Maybe it's in--"

"Moaning Myrtle's bathroom!" said Harry.

"This means," Harry said, "I am not the only one in this school who knows Parseltongue. The heirs of Slytherin also know it, so they can always control the Basilisk."

"Oh, yes..." Ron was excited for a while, but soon he changed to an angry and helpless expression.

"Yes, but even if we know this, what can we do... I think we have to go find Professor McGonagall."

"Yes, let's go to the staff room," Harry said, as the rain started to rise. "She will be there in ten minutes. get out of class will be over soon."

"No matter who the heir is, you can't go wrong by taking action first!" Harry said firmly.

After saying that, the two of them hurried downstairs.

They didn't want Professor McGonagall to find them wandering in another corridor, so they walked directly into the empty staff room.

It was a large room surrounded by wood panels and filled with black wooden chairs. Harry and Ron were pacing around inside, too excited to sit down.

However, the bell for the end of get out of class never rang.

Instead, Professor McGonagall's voice echoed in the corridor, amplified many times by magic.

"All students will return to their respective dormitories immediately, and all teachers will return to the staff lounge! Please act immediately!"

Harry turned around sharply and glared at Ron.

"Did something happen again? At this time?"

"Maka! It must be him!" Ron said, "I want to find him!"

"Don't jump to conclusions, Ron." Harry said, looking around.

To his left was an ugly wardrobe filled with robes worn by teachers in class.

"Hide here. We'll hear what's going on, and then we'll tell them what we find."

They hid in the wardrobe and listened to the footsteps of hundreds of people walking upstairs. Then, the door to the staff room was pushed open hard. Harry and Ron looked through the layers of musty-smelling robes.

As the teachers walked into the room one by one, some looked confused and some were scared out of their wits.

Later, Professor McGonagall arrived.

"Something happened again," she said to the silent teachers in the room. "A student was kidnapped by a monster and taken directly into the secret room."

Professor Flitwick let out a scream, and Professor Sprout suddenly covered his mouth with both hands.

Snape, clutching the back of a chair tightly, asked, "How can you be sure?"

"The Heir of Slytherin," said Professor McGonagall, who looked very pale, "left another line of words. Just below the last words, it said: Her bones will remain in the Chamber of Secrets forever."

Professor Flitwick couldn't help crying.

"Who is it?" Mrs. Huo Qi's knees weakened and she slumped down in a chair. "Which student is it?"

"Ginny Weasley," said Professor McGonagall.

Harry felt Ron fall silently to the floor of the wardrobe next to him.

"We must send all the students home tomorrow," said Professor McGonagall. "That's the end of Hogwarts. Dumbledore used to say..."

The door to the staff lounge was slammed open again.

Ron, who fell down on the floor of the wardrobe, even thought it was Maka, but it turned out to be Lockhart, with a smile on his face.

"Sorry, I'm late..."

He didn't seem to notice that the other teachers were staring at him with a look that could be said to be hateful.

Snape took a step forward.

"Here comes the man who solves the problem," he said, "and it's this man. Lockhart, a girl was kidnapped by a monster. She was taken into the secret chamber - the time has finally come for you to show off your glory."

He originally thought that Lockhart would be panicked by this, but what surprised him was that Lockhart still maintained his bright and calm expression.

"Yes, of course... I'm going to the office to make preparations." Lockhart smiled and left the staff room under the strange looks of the professors.

…

When Lockhart hurried back to the third floor and opened the door to his office, the smile on his face immediately fell.

"Oh - God!" He closed the office door and said towards the desk, "Do you really want me to go to the secret room to deal with that terrifying basilisk... I mean, since you already knew about me

The secret..."

"Actually, I don't want to either."

On the armchair next to the desk, an expressionless young man was leaning on the backrest. The cuff of his left arm was rolled up, and there was a large scratch on his forearm, which was bleeding faintly at the moment.

.

This young man holds a ball of cotton wool with tweezers in his right hand, and is applying a light green liquid to his wound!

"As you can see, the basilisk was really difficult to deal with, and in the end, it slipped away."

"But Professor Lockhart, you don't have to worry too much. Although the basilisk can slow down its growth through dormancy, it does not stop growing after all," the young man said. "It is already too old, and it is still seriously injured.

, even if one eye is blind, there won’t be much danger.”

"...Isn't this material for a novel delivered to your door?"

Lockhart nodded with difficulty, but then muttered: "Isn't there another eye..."

At this time, the young man put the tweezers in his hand on the table, took out a roll of bandage and wrapped it around his arm. He said as he wrapped it.

"You're just going with me. I need experimental materials, and you need novel materials. Isn't it just right?" He said, "You don't have to do anything. You don't even need to recite a spell to achieve your goal. What's more?

Is there anything better than this?"

"Okay, okay! Even if you don't say so much, I have to do it..." Lockhart shook his head and said, "It's hard to believe that you are only in your second year this year."

"As long as you focus enough," the young man put down his sleeves, then raised his head and looked at Lockhart and said, "The power of your Forgetting Curse must be master-level, isn't it?"

"But it's not like I was blocked by you."

The young man walked to the door and opened the office door.

"Because I focus on magic, and you focus on opportunism."

After that, he left quickly.

Lockhart looked at the slowly closing office door and murmured: "Maka McClane...McClane, is that an ancient pure-blood wizard family? Why haven't you heard of it?"

…

At this time, the deans of each house went to inform the students what had happened. They had to tell them that the Hogwarts Express would take them home early tomorrow morning.

And other teachers make sure not to let a single student stay outside the dormitory.

The teachers stood up and left one by one.

This was probably the most difficult day in Harry's life. He, Ron, Fred and George were sitting in a corner of the Gryffindor common room, and no one could say a word. Percy was not there, so he sent

He picked up an owl to deliver a message to Mrs. Weasley, and then locked himself in the dormitory.

An afternoon has never passed as slowly as today, and Gryffindor House has never seemed so crowded and silent.

When the sun was about to set, Fred and George couldn't sit still any longer, so they went back to the dormitory to sleep.

"Ginny must know something, Harry," said Ron, speaking to him for the first time since they hid in the staff room wardrobe, "that's why she was taken away... after all she did with Percy.

It has nothing to do with her silly things. She must have discovered something related to the secret room... maybe she met Maka! That must be the case, so she would——"

Ron rubbed his eyes desperately, and anger gradually appeared on his face, "I mean, she is a pureblood, and she didn't get her turn! There can't be any other reason for this!"

Harry could see the sun, red as blood, sinking below the horizon.

He has never been so sad as he is now. Even if they can do something, no matter what it is.

"Harry," said Ron, "do you think it's possible that she hasn't - you know -"

Harry looked at Ron's angry, frustrated expression for a while, and didn't know what to say.

Although Harry had always felt that one should not easily doubt his friends without evidence. However, Maka's various behaviors this semester were so suspicious that he had to feel depressed.

"I think we should go find Lockhart and tell him what we know." Ron said suddenly, "Isn't he planning to enter the Chamber of Secrets? We can tell him where we think the Chamber of Secrets is and tell him what's in the Chamber of Secrets.

It’s a basilisk!”

Harry couldn't think of any other way, but he also wanted to do something, so he nodded and agreed to Ron's proposal.

The Gryffindors around them were in a sad mood and felt sorry for the Weasley brothers, so no one tried to stop Harry and Ron as they stood up, crossed the room, and climbed out of the portrait hole.

As they walked downstairs to Lockhart's office, they noticed that the corridor was getting a little dark.

Night has fallen...