"If Mr. Principal determines that no further preparations are needed, I will open this entrance now." Regulus walked to the sink and tapped the faucet with his finger.

"I'd like to see if you have any tricks up your sleeve." Snape crossed his arms on his chest, raised his big aquiline nose, and stood by the sink with an expression as if he was watching a good show.

Dumbledore nodded slowly, signaling Regulus to start.

But Regulus took no action.

"What's wrong? Do you still want to have an appearance ceremony?" Snape asked sarcastically.

"I just think it's better not to let the students see this..." Regulus turned towards the door and said.

As soon as he finished speaking, a little witch opened the bathroom door and rushed in.

Her eyes were red and swollen, her hair was messy, and she looked like she was crying.

"What makes you unhappy, Miss Granger?" Dumbledore asked softly.

Hermione was so frightened that she belatedly discovered that in this long-abandoned bathroom, stood the school principal and Professor Snape, who was most feared and hated by Gryffindors.

"Deng...Professor Dumbledore...S..." Hermione sobbed as she greeted several people.

The happiest person at this time was Myrtle. She floated to Hermione and said in an exaggerated tone: "I forgot to tell you that this Miss Granger often comes here to keep me company recently. , I’ve been thinking about inviting her to share this bathroom with me after she dies.”

Snape's eyebrows knitted together.

"Miss Myrtle, we will discuss the allocation of this bathroom later." Dumbledore said. "I want to know why Miss Granger came to this place during lunch time. You should be in the Great Hall." It’s just with friends.”

"Because others are praising Harry for doing well, I think it is wrong for him to violate school rules." Hermione wiped the tears from her face, tried hard to calm down her emotions, and began to explain what had just happened.

It had to be said that even in an emotional state, Hermione's thinking was still very clear and her speech was very organized. From her description, Regulus quickly outlined the scene just now.

Just now, Harry was not expelled by Professor McGonagall. Instead, he was selected into the Gryffindor Quidditch team, becoming the youngest Chaser in a century.

Then, Harry finally took out his Nimbus 2000 from under the box openly and opened the eyes of his classmates in the Gryffindor common room.

Hermione, who has always regarded school rules as extremely important, "untimely" poured cold water on her classmates when they were celebrating. Of course, she was unanimously reprimanded by the little lions.

Therefore, she could only find this unused bathroom to release her emotions.

"Potter is exactly like his father. He is mediocre and arrogant. He has already violated school rules fifty times in less than a month after entering school. He never listens carefully in my classes." Snape quickly got into the mood. , began to verbally criticize Harry, not caring about the few bystanders beside him, "If he were studying in my college, I would have expelled him long ago."

Dumbledore had a helpless smile on his face.

"What you saw is what you expected to see, Severus." Dumbledore turned to Snape and said, "According to other professors, Harry is a gifted child with a very interesting personality. Optimistic, humble..."

Hermione was confused, but she quickly figured out one thing.

Snape did have a very deep prejudice against Harry, and he did target him everywhere. This was not an evaluation of Harry and Ron from their own perspective.

"I think that our education seems to have neglected this aspect, which is how to teach children to deal with interpersonal relationships." Dumbledore said again, "After we deal with this matter, I will consider investing some money in this aspect. Energy...I think you would agree with this point of view, right?"

Snape's face returned to its previous cold and gloomy state, and he nodded stiffly.

"Now, Miss Granger, what you have to do is go back to the Great Hall for dinner." Dumbledore said. "As you can see, Professor Snape, Professor Black and I have some things to deal with that are not suitable for students." Get involved.”

Although Dumbledore's tone was calm, there was an undoubted majesty in it.

Hermione subconsciously walked outside the bathroom, and by the time she reacted, the door had been closed again.

"Regulus, let's get started." After sealing the bathroom door with magic, Dumbledore signaled that the mechanism could be opened.

So Regulus walked to the faucet carved with serpentine patterns and said in a hissing voice: "Open it."

Hearing that Regulus could speak Parseltongue, Snape's face briefly showed surprise, but he quickly hid it with an unfathomable mask.

The marble top of the pillar in the middle of the sink suddenly floated into the air, and then the eight sinks below also moved, slowly moving in the direction they faced.

After a few clicks, the sink stopped moving.

Then, the sink with the snake-shaped mark at the beginning slowly sank to the ground, and the floor that was originally behind it slid over, covering the hole left after the sink sank into the ground.

After the mechanism was in place, the three of Regulus looked at the current sink. There was already a thick pipe that could easily allow a person to get in.

"This is what it looked like at that time. The pair of yellow eyes came out of here." Myrtle floated to the top of the pipe, took a look inside, and floated back to herself as if she had been greatly frightened. toilet room.

"It seems that we have fulfilled an important wish of the previous principals of Hogwarts." Dumbledore blinked, "Gentlemen, let us go and see what the great Salazar Slytherin left for us. Give me a gift."

After saying that, the old principal took the lead, jumped into the pipe, and disappeared in the blink of an eye.

"Professor Snape?" Regulus glanced at Snape, "Shall we go in too?"

"I'll follow you," Snape said firmly.

Regulus stopped talking and jumped directly into the pipe. He felt Snape making the same move behind him.

For the second time in one day, Regulus experienced this feeling: being in a dark, slimy and endless slide.

He could feel that around this pipe, there were many other pipes branching out in all directions, with different thicknesses, but none of them were as thick as this pipe.

The slope of the pipe was much steeper than the previous secret passage. Regulus realized that they should have slipped to a place very deep underground in the school, even deeper than Snape's office and Slytherin's dungeon. Much more.

He heard Snape's uncontrollable body hitting the pipe behind him, and the Potions teacher's muttered curses.

After sliding down for an unknown period of time, the slope of the slide gradually flattened out. Regulus emerged from the mouth of the pipe and flew several meters due to inertia.

Fortunately, he had good body coordination and adjusted his body posture in mid-air in time, landing firmly on the ground.

Just a few crisp sounds were heard, and something was crushed under the feet.

He found that the place where he was staying was a spacious stone tunnel, and Dumbledore was already standing there waiting for them. A light ball floated above his head, like a small sun, emitting soft light and illuminating the tunnel.

Immediately afterwards, Snape flew out of the pipe mouth.

Obviously, his balance ability was not as good as Regulus's, and his posture in the air was wrong. He was about to fall to the ground bruised and bruised, while Dumbledore just stood by and watched with a smile, as if he had no intention of helping.

Regulus sighed, waved his wand, and the spell hit Snape. The Potions Professor's body hovered in the air, his hooked nose stopped less than a foot above the ground, avoiding contact with the person there. The fate of a rat skeleton in close contact.

Then, the spell was lifted, and Snape lay on the ground as if being gently put down.

"Clean up!" Snape stood up and used his wand to clean away the dirt stuck to his body.

He usually used this spell to deal with failed potions brewed by students, and he had already mastered it very well during his many years of teaching career.

Then, he flew up and kicked the rat skeleton away viciously.

But Snape soon discovered that his actions were in vain, because the floor of the tunnel was full of small animal bones. The bottom ones had turned into debris, no different from soil, and the top ones were There were even traces of fur on some of the bodies.

"It seems that the basilisk didn't eat very well." Regulus shook his head. "Maybe Slytherin didn't consider this issue at the beginning, so his pet could only eat some rats that fell in from the pipes."

"Let's go." Dumbledore pointed to the other end of the tunnel, and the light ball floated forward with his gesture, illuminating the entrance of the tunnel.

The ground there was very damp, with water droplets occasionally falling from overhead, and there were even some cracks in the stone walls of the ceiling.

"Gentlemen, we'd better take out our wands," said Dumbledore. "To be honest, I haven't seen a real basilisk... It never hurts to be careful..."

The old headmaster laughed mid-sentence, because both Regulus and Snape had their wands ready to deal with any threat that might arise at any time.

Dumbledore stepped into the tunnel first, following the light group, advancing slowly, holding the wand seemingly casually in his hand.

Regulus and Snape followed him about one meter behind him, guarding the intersections to prevent threats that might jump out at any time.

After turning a dark corner, the three of them slowed down.

For there was the outline of a coiled mass, lying motionless at the end of the tunnel.

"This is the scariest snake slough I have ever seen." Regulus walked up to the thing with a gloomy expression, tapped the snake skin with his wand, and made a muffled sound.

"We have to see more clearly." There was a click in Dumbledore's sleeve, and another small ball of light floated out from nowhere, hovering directly above the snake slough.

Under the light, the snake skin looked green and very bright.

Judging from the snake slough, the basilisk is very large, at least much longer than the twenty feet written in Newt Scamander's book.

Nagini was already very large, but the snake's body was not even one-fifth that of the Basilisk.

"Is this thing still alive?" Snape reached out and broke off a small piece from the snake's slough and put it in his pocket. "Headmaster, you know that for centuries, things like basilisk venom have been poisoned. Only exists in legends..."

"I promise you, Severus," Dumbledore said, "If we deal with the basilisk, I promise that all the materials on it will be handed over to you."

Snape pursed his lips and stopped talking.

After crossing the huge snakeskin, they turned along the tunnel one after another, and finally came to a solid wall made of granite.

There is a circular iron door on the wall, with seven snakes of different lengths on it. The snakes' eyes are inlaid with large, shining emeralds.

Regulus walked straight to the door, cleared his throat, and spoke to the longest snake in the center in a low, hoarse hiss: "Open."

From the end of the body of the seven snakes, an eighth snake made of iron swam out. The snake swam along the edge of the circular iron door like a living snake. Every time it swam in front of a snake, the body of that snake swam. It will retract with a heavy click.

After seven muffled sounds, the iron door slowly opened, revealing what was inside.

It was a long, dimly lit room.Inside, there are many stone pillars carved with entangled snakes, towering up to support the ceiling, and the upper ends of the pillars are hidden in the strange darkness.

The whole room was filled with a green light, which came from the glowing green stones surrounding the pillars, causing those pillars to cast dark shadows in the room that exuded an ominous atmosphere.

Regulus got through the circular iron door first and climbed down the rusty iron ladder.

Several stalactites hang down from the roof next to it, and water drops drip from it.

Snape and Dumbledore climbed down from the hole one after another, following Regulus. The footsteps of the three of them were very light, but every sound of footsteps would echo in the empty and silent room.

The three of them stood ready, because no one could be sure whether the long-hungry basilisk was lurking in a dark corner behind a certain stone pillar, ready to attack at any time and enjoy the fresh human flesh that it had not enjoyed in thousands of years?

After all, the basilisk killed Myrtle 50 years ago, but did not have time to eat her body.

The carved stone snakes on the stone pillars are lifelike.

The hollow eye sockets of those snakes seemed to have been staring at the progress of several people.

Finally, when the three of them passed the last group of stone pillars, a huge statue suddenly appeared in front of them.

Tap the screen to use advanced tools Tip: You can use left and right keyboard keys to browse between chapters.

You'll Also Like