Chapter 339 337 The Secret Room that Cannot Be Opened

Chapter 339 337. The Chamber of Secrets that Cannot Be Opened

Hermione came to the girls' bathroom for the second time.

She had searched all the suspicious places on the first floor, but still had no results. This made her wonder if she had missed something.

So, she started the second search from the beginning, and now she came to the public girls' bathroom again.

In fact, Hermione was not unfamiliar with this place.

When she was a "slave" in this castle, her main job was to clean here, so when she first checked, compared to the meeting room and storage room that she had never been to before, the bathroom was undoubtedly familiar to her.

But even so, she was not careless during the first inspection, and carefully checked every corner of the bathroom.

And this second time, Hermione was more careful than before, and she didn't even miss the details in the brick joints and the patterns on the faucets.

Finally, this time she had some gains that she had never had before.

On one side of a copper faucet that never produces water, a tiny snake is uniquely carved.

After seeing this, Hermione's face suddenly showed a happy expression. She hugged Fawkes in her arms with some excitement, then tightened her invisibility cloak, opened the Marauder's Map and observed the people around again.

Now there are less than ten minutes until the end of the last class, and some students on the first floor who have no classes in the afternoon have come down early to prepare for dinner in the auditorium.

If the faucet she found is really the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets that Dumbledore asked her to help find, then if a student comes to this bathroom to relieve himself after opening it, Hermione will definitely be exposed.

So Hermione did not take the next step, but slowly retreated from the bathroom, and then found a storage room where the castle manager discarded sundries and hid in it.

Since she has roughly determined the specific target, there is no need to take the risk of searching room by room. The public use of the girls' bathroom has helped her a lot of cover.

She only needed to wait patiently until it was dark and the curfew began, and then pay attention to the Aurors patrolling the castle to try to open the Chamber of Secrets.

In this way, Hermione waited patiently in the corner of the storage room. When it was dinner time, the footsteps outside began to become dense. She shrank her head more carefully, even afraid that the invisibility cloak would accidentally slip off her body, exposing Fox standing on her shoulder with its colorful feathers, thus attracting the attention of the students outside through the window. She deliberately held it in her arms.

Perhaps because of the difficulty in breathing, Fox pecked Hermione's back of the hand with his sharp beak in dissatisfaction, but did not make any resistance.

She waited quietly until it was completely dark, until the curfew began at nine o'clock in the evening.

Fox nestled in her arms, as if he was asleep. Hermione herself was probably nervous, so even if she didn't eat dinner, she didn't feel much hunger.

During this time, her eyes did not move away from the Marauder's Map for more than three minutes.

She watched as fewer and fewer students wandered around the castle until they all returned to their respective lounges after the curfew began. She also saw that the Muggle students were locked up in the basement early after dinner, just like her life here before.

Similarly, after the students were all under curfew, more Aurors began to pour into Hogwarts.

They came in from the main gate together at around eight o'clock in the evening. It seemed that they first Apparated to Hogsmeade and then walked to the school.

In addition to the people who had stayed in the castle before, the number of Aurors on guard reached seventeen.

This was not much different from the number of patrols during the curfew in the castle when Hermione first got the Marauder's Map.

Of the seventeen Aurors, two were mainly responsible for guarding the gate of Hogwarts, two were responsible for guarding the gate of the castle, one was specifically in the position of the astronomy tower to stare at the direction of the Hogwarts carriage from a high altitude, and the remaining twelve were all patrolling around the castle.

They were divided into teams of two and six, each responsible for a different area. The team responsible for the area where the girls' bathroom on the first floor was located would take at least 20 minutes to patrol from this place, which was enough time for Hermione to try to open the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets.

As long as the patrolling Aurors were not disturbed during the time when the Chamber of Secrets might make noise, it would be much safer to enter the Chamber of Secrets afterwards.

These Aurors certainly would not search every room, not even the girls' bathroom.

Hermione did not choose to wait too long. She stared at the Marauder's Map and made sure that the two Aurors patrolling on the first floor had walked to the other side of the castle, and then she was ready to take action.

However, before she had just grabbed the Marauder's Map and left the storage room with Fox, a name suddenly left the place where he was supposed to be in a place where a lot of names were gathered.

Hermione was stunned by the behavior of this name.

She really didn't expect that under the strict curfew control of Hogwarts Castle today, there were still people who dared to violate school rules!

The man seemed to be familiar with the Auror patrol rules at night. He easily found a suitable empty space and walked all the way to the fourth floor of the castle.

Hermione watched him come to the corridor on the fourth floor, a remote corner, and then crawled into a secret passage.

That secret passage was once one of her reference targets for sneaking into Hogwarts Castle, but because it was too dangerous, it was abandoned. Now it was discovered and used by someone.

Hermione watched him crawl forward little by little in the secret passage until he completely crawled out of the edge of the Marauder's Map and disappeared in the entire Hogwarts School, and then he looked up from the map again.

Such a discovery made Hermione feel a little strange.

Before, she always thought that these people in this castle just needed to eat and drink well and be the superiors, and there was no need to take risks to break the rules. Unexpectedly, she found an outlier tonight.

But this matter was only a small episode for her. She had not forgotten that she had a mission.

In the storage room, she waited for the time difference between the Aurors' repeated patrols, and then put on the invisibility cloak and took Fawkes to the girls' bathroom that she found during the day.

She took out her wand and used the weakest wand lighting spell she could control, and soon she found the faucet with the snake mark.

"Ahem."

Hermione cleared her throat nervously, and then made an unpleasant "hissing" sound from her mouth.

Of course, she couldn't make this sound by herself, but she practiced with the portrait in Headmaster Dumbledore's office for an afternoon before she barely mastered it.

But I don't know if it's because her pronunciation is not standard enough, or because of something else, there is no abnormality in the whole bathroom.

It's like Hermione just performed a snake sound performance without an audience, and after it ended, there was only silence in response to her.

This made Hermione frown, and she tried to adjust her tone and pronunciation, and tried this snake language again to the faucet, but in the end she still didn't get any response.

After that, she tried many times, but the result was always failure.

Finally, Hermione finally confirmed that it was definitely not her pronunciation that was wrong. Either she had found the wrong place, or the password to enter the secret room had been changed!

After coming to this conclusion, although Hermione felt a sense of frustration, she did not continue to stay in the bathroom.

She carefully controlled her steps, observed the movements of the patrolling Aurors on the Marauder's Map, and soon came to the fourth floor of the castle, then went into the entrance of the secret passage behind the mirror, used Apparition in the secret passage, and let Fox take her back to the carriage.

After returning to her room, Hermione sat on the bed, first took two deep breaths, and then without stopping for a moment, she took Fox and walked out of her dormitory and went to Dumbledore's office.

This place looks like the grave of a whole group of eight-eyed giant spiders, or it would be more appropriate to say that it is a mass grave.

The pit was full of spider corpses, and they were not complete corpses, almost all of them had been dismembered.

The valuable internal organs, venom and silk sacs in these spiders were all dug out, and now only useless trunks and ugly skins were left here.

They had probably died some time ago. Jon looked at the spider leg closest to his feet. There were many small holes on it caused by insects, and the surface was dried and crusted, just like dead branches in the snow in winter.

From the spider corpses on this ground, Jon could probably see what the eight-eyed giant spiders who originally lived here had experienced.

They were not magical animals that were beneficial to wizards, and their venom and some body tissues were very useful, so Voldemort or some high-ranking official in the castle ordered them to be slaughtered here.

All the eight-eyed giant spiders were killed, the useful parts were taken away, and the useless ones were discarded, which became a mass grave like today.

Although Jon was shocked by the scene in front of him, he did not feel much pity for Hagrid. After all, judging from the actions of these giant spiders in the original book, they became like this in Hogwarts under Voldemort's control. They could only blame their bad luck. They met a ruthless person who did not even treat the Machborn wizards as human beings, let alone them.

Circling the pit full of spider corpses, Jon carefully identified and searched in it.

The others didn't matter, but even if Aragog was dead, he was sure that its body was here, so that he could go back and explain to Hagrid.

Hoss followed Jon uneasily. Even if Jon didn't pull its side neck skin again, it didn't run around happily. It seemed that it didn't like this place.

Come to think of it, it should be. As the nest of the eight-eyed giant spider, this place is full of huge spider webs. Even if Hoss's racial talent allows him to run faster, once he is trapped in the spider web, it is difficult for him to survive. He will most likely become a meal for several spiders.

Jon walked around the big pit and finally found a spider corpse that was much larger than the others among the spider corpses.

It was obvious that even a normal eight-eyed giant spider could not grow up casually, and most of its parts were still intact, except for the venom, which was all taken away. It was obvious that the wizard who killed the spider disliked it because it was too old. Its organs had begun to fail and necrotize, and it had no value at all.

Jon looked at the broken body of Aragog from a distance, and he could already imagine how sad Hagrid would be when he learned the news.

But after learning that it was really dead, Jon had no intention of staying here for long. He took Hoss out of the spider graveyard and returned to the dense woods, turning over and riding on it.

Now the sun was just setting, and it looked like it would take a long time before it completely set. Jon patted Hoss's bald head.

"Besides Aragog, do you know the other two? I remember Hagrid told me that Parsons was a centaur, and you were also a centaur. You, uh, should not be unfamiliar, right?"

At the end of this, even Jon himself was a little unconfident.

Based on the nature of this lecherous donkey, it might really harass the centaur girl. The centaur has always wanted to kill it.

But after hearing Jon's question, Hoss became obviously excited. He jumped up and shouted twice, as if to promise Jon something, and then turned into wind and began to shuttle through the forbidden forest.

Soon, it crossed a long distance and brought Jon to an abandoned tribe.

It can be seen at a glance that this is the camp where the centaurs lived in the past, but now it has been dilapidated. Most of the wooden houses have collapsed to the ground, and some buildings have traces of burning, leaving only a piece of charred black that has been buried by time.

After seeing the scene here, Jon's mood finally began to become heavy.

Unlike the Acromantula, although the centaurs have always been classified as magical animals by wizards, they are a group of races with the same wisdom as humans. Usually, they can get along with wizards in a friendly manner. For example, the Ministry of Magic has always had a centaur liaison office.

But given the current situation, even if their situation is better than that of the eight-eyed giant spider, it will not be much better.