Hogwarts: I, Tom, am really not Voldemort!

“Parseltongue!”

Draco looked at Tom in terror, then at the opened Chamber of Secrets.

“This is the Chamber of Secrets? Legend says that Slytherin's heir will return to the school to open the chamber and eliminate Muggle-born wizards. Could it be that you, Tom, are…”

“The Dark Lord!” Cassandra interrupted Draco before he could finish speaking.

“What?” Draco felt like he was hallucinating.

Cassandra gracefully curtsied to Tom: “Your Majesty, the Dark Lord!”

Draco exclaimed in a失声 voice, “You're saying Tom is the Dark Lord?”

Cassandra rolled her eyes at him and whispered, “Rearrange the letters in Tom's name.”

Draco was clever. With the hint, he quickly figured out Voldemort's little word game.

Draco's pupils dilated rapidly, and fear made his teeth chatter. He trembled, unable to speak.

Tom looked at Cassandra's antics speechlessly, his eyes twitching uncontrollably. But the words he wanted to say turned into: “Times have changed. The current rumor of eliminating Muggle-born wizards is false. Don't believe it.”

His words neither admitted nor denied being the Dark Lord, aiming for a “guess” kind of response.

“Scourgify!”

“Awake now? If so, let's go. Draco, your mental fortitude is lacking. Look how calm Cassandra is.”

After Tom finished speaking, he took the lead and entered the pipe.

Cassandra gave Draco a faint smile and followed closely behind.

Draco hesitated for a moment, then gritted his teeth and followed.

The pipe was sticky and slippery, with a disgusting smell. Compared to a long slide in an amusement park, it offered absolutely no fun.

Tom and the others endured the nausea and continued downwards. They didn't know how long it took, but they felt like they had reached a very deep place beneath the castle, possibly even the bottom of the Black Lake, before they emerged from the winding pipe and landed on a damp flat ground. Ahead was a dark stone tunnel.

“Ugh~”

The three, with a slight aversion to dirt, couldn't help but dry heave as they emerged from the pipe covered in filth.

“Scourgify!”

Only after Tom cast a Scouring Charm on everyone did they feel a little better.

“Crack!”

Recovered, Draco subconsciously took a small step back. He seemed to have stepped on something, startling him. Cassandra grabbed Tom's robe tightly.

“Lumos!”

Light shone from Tom's wand, illuminating the surroundings.

Cassandra and Draco looked down and saw a rat skull on the ground, and many other remains of small animals around it.

Their faces immediately turned ugly. Tom took the opportunity to remind them again: “If you hear a sound, close your eyes immediately.”

Cassandra and Draco quickly nodded in agreement, cast the Lumos spell, and followed Tom into the tunnel.

The tunnel was long, dark, and silent. The light from the Lumos spell could only illuminate a short distance. The sound of their footsteps on the damp ground echoed loudly in the quiet environment.

After walking for a while, Cassandra suddenly screamed “Ah!” and quickly closed her eyes. Draco followed suit.

“What's wrong? What happened?” Tom was puzzled. He hadn't heard any sound.

“Th-there…” Cassandra pointed tremblingly to the front right, with her eyes closed.

Tom looked in the direction Cassandra pointed and saw a huge shadow.

He shone his wand on it and saw a huge, emerald green snakeskin coiled on the tunnel floor, empty inside.

“You can open your eyes now. It's a snakeskin. Don't be afraid.”

Cassandra and Draco cautiously opened their eyes and carefully examined the Basilisk's shed skin. For the first time, they had a direct understanding of the kind of monster they were about to face.

Draco couldn't help but complain, “I regret it. I really shouldn't have come today.”

Cassandra added, “Right now, we're like reckless Gryffindors, not Slytherin at all.”

Tom didn't give them much time to complain and quickly led them forward. After turning countless corners, they stopped in front of a wall at the end of the tunnel.

Looking at the two intertwined stone snakes on the wall, with emeralds embedded in their eyes, Tom said to Cassandra and Draco, “We're here. This is Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets.”

Hearing that the legendary Chamber of Secrets was right in front of them, their nerves tensed up involuntarily.

With Tom's hissing “Open,” the two stone snakes separated and unwound, and the stone wall split in the middle, sliding to both sides and disappearing.

Entering the room, they passed through rows of stone pillars entwined with giant snake sculptures, until they reached the last row.

“This is Salazar Slytherin? No way, he's way too ugly!”

Looking at the monkey-like face with sparse, long whiskers on the giant statue in front of her, Cassandra couldn't believe it.

Draco felt the same way. They felt like they would never be able to look at the name Slytherin in the same way again.

“Slytherin might have become like this after being disfigured,” Tom said lightly in Slytherin's defense, then instructed the two, “Alright, stop studying the statue. You two, try to retreat as far back as possible and hide. Close your eyes, and if there's any trouble, run away quickly. Oh, right, Draco, release the rooster you're holding after you hear me shout.”

Cassandra and Draco knew that this wasn't the time to be capricious. They obediently retreated all the way to the entrance, closed their eyes tightly, and prepared to run at any time.

Tom stood alone in front of the statue, his wand gripped tightly in his hand. Small beads of sweat even seeped from his palm.

The millennium-old Basilisk raised by Slytherin would only obey him and his descendants. Tom couldn't accurately pinpoint his own existence. Once he couldn't control it, facing the attack of a millennium-old Basilisk, without Harry's protagonist halo, he wasn't fully confident that he could retreat unscathed.

Taking a deep breath, Tom closed his eyes and shouted at the statue, “Speak to me, Slytherin—greatest of the Hogwarts Four!”

As Tom's voice fell, the face of the Slytherin statue began to change. The mouth area became a black hole, and a “hissing” sound came from inside. The Basilisk's huge body slowly crawled out of the black hole.

A pair of large, lamp-like eyes stared fixedly at Tom, but it didn't attack immediately. Hearing the sound, Tom also prepared to counterattack at any time.

In the silent hall, one person and one snake faced off like this.