"He must have done it!" Filch screamed, turning his face to Harry.

"It's impossible for a second-year student to do that," Dumbledore said firmly, "and it requires a great deal of dark magic." ”

But Filch didn't seem to agree, he still insisted that it was a good thing Harry had done.

Snape on the side even more inquired about Harry's whereabouts and tried to get him out of the Quidditch team in Gryffindor.

For a while, the scene was a little chaotic.

"As long as you are not proven guilty, you are innocent, Severus." Dumbledore was clearly still as determined.

Snape looked annoyed. Filch, of course, is the same.

"My cat is petrified!" He screamed, his eyeballs bulging outward, "I want to see someone get some punishment!" ”

"We can cure it, Filch." Dumbledore said patiently, "Lady Sprout has gotten some mandrakes lately. Once they have grown and matured, I have a medicine that can bring Lady Loris back to life. ”

"I'll make it," Lockhart interjected, "I've made it a hundred times, and I can dream and make a mandrake resurrection potion—"

"I see, give it to McGlene Tubby—" Snape squinted, only halfway through his words, but anyone with a discerning eye could hear what he meant.

In the end, it was Dumbledore who told Harry to go back first.

Naturally, the three of Harry wanted to leave sooner. They tried their best to speed up their pace and almost ran up.

When they reached the upper floor of Lockhart's office, they slipped into an empty classroom and gently closed the door. Harry narrowed his eyes at the faces of his two friends in the dark.

"You say, should I tell them about the voice I heard?" He hesitated.

Hermione was still wondering what the "Chamber of Secrets" was, while Ron stood to the side, stunned. For a while, no one answered the meaning of his words.

For days on end, the students talked about the attack on Mrs. Loris, and Filch was so good that everyone could not forget it for a moment.

He often paced around the place where Lady Loris had been killed, as if thinking that the attackers would come back. Harry saw him scrubbing the writing on the wall with the "Lady Skoll Brand Universal Miracle Stain Remover", but it seemed to be in vain, and the words still shimmered so brightly on the stone wall.

If Filch wasn't patrolling the crime scene, he would have been glaring at two red eyes, sneaking up in the hallway, and then suddenly lunging at the unsuspecting students, trying every possible excuse to keep them confined, such as their "gasping too loudly" or "grinning faces".

As for Ginny, she seems to be very upset by what happened to Lady Loris. According to Ron, she has always been very fond of cats.

From time to time, Ron comforted his precious sister, but occasionally he would stare at the air in a daze.

Judging from his friendship with Harry, Harry must have noticed his current state a long time ago. But lately Harry has been worrying about other things, too!

Not to mention anything else, just seeing him and wanting to run away was enough for him to have a headache for a while.

One day, Hermione walked out of the bookshelf. She looked annoyed, but finally willing to talk to them, presumably because Maca hadn't been in the library for the past few days.

"Several copies of Hogwarts, a school history have been borrowed," she said, taking a seat next to Harry and Ron, "and the queue for those to borrow has been in the queue for two weeks. Alas, I wish I hadn't left my one at home, but there were so many of Lockhart's thick books in the box that I couldn't fit it anymore. ”

"Why do you want to see it?" Harry asked, confused.

"For the same reason that everyone else wants to see it," said Hermione, "look up the legends about the Chamber of Secrets." ”

"What is a secret room?" Harry asked.

"Here's the problem, I don't remember exactly," Hermione said faintly, biting her lip and glancing at the back corner of the library, seemingly inadvertently, "and I can't find this story anywhere else—"

"Hermione, let me see your composition." Ron looked at his watch and said anxiously.

"No way!" Hermione glared at Ron suddenly.

Ron saw that she seemed to be in a bad mood again, so he had to pout, but his eyes also glanced at the corner.

It was almost Maka's exclusive seat, but he hadn't been seen since the petrification incident.

After a while, the class bell rang.

Ron and Hermione were silent all the way to the history of magic class. Halfway through, Harry looked at both of them hesitantly several times - he finally realized something was wrong.

"I said, why don't you ask Maca? It seems like I haven't talked to him in a while. Harry thought it was a good idea, as Maca had a good place in the hearts of the trio.

"No!" "No!"

Harry didn't expect that for the first time, Hermione and Ron would dismiss the idea in unison.

"Hmm...... What's wrong? Harry couldn't help but look puzzled.

"It's fine." "No, nothing ......"

Hermione and Ron glanced at each other, not knowing what each other was thinking, but they were undoubtedly related to Maca.

Eventually, the three of them came to the history of magic classroom in silence.

The history of magic course is still as boring as usual.

Professor Binns, the only ghost teacher at Hogwarts, walked across the blackboard to the lectern, opened his notes, and read them in a dry, low, monotone voice that hummed like an old vacuum cleaner.

The class was groggy, occasionally coming back to their senses, copying a name or date, and then falling back into a half-sleep.

But half an hour after he spoke, something happened in the class that had never happened before - Hermione raised her hand.

Professor Binns looked up suddenly, looking very surprised.

"You're—"

"I'm Granger, Professor. I don't know if you can tell us what's going on in the Chamber of Secrets. Hermione said in a clear voice.

The word "secret room" is obviously a hot topic these days, and the vast majority of students feel a little frightened about it. Hermione suddenly brought up the topic in class, as if she had poured cold water on all the sleepy classmates, and everyone sat up straight.

Professor Binns blinked.

"My course is the history of magic," he said in that dry, breathless voice, "I study facts, Miss Granger, not myths and legends. ”

He cleared his throat and lowered his head again and hummed, "Just in October of that year, a special group of magicians from the island of Quitting—"

But Hermione raised her hand again.

"I'd like to ask you, sir, legends have a certain factual basis, don't they?"

In desperation, Professor Binns had no choice but to speak slowly.

"Okay...... yes, I guess, you can say that. He looked at Hermione as if he had never looked at a student before.

"However, the legend you are talking about is a very sensational, even comical......"

In fact, Hogwarts was founded over a thousand years ago by four of the greatest witches and wizards of its time. Four houses are named after them: Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin.

In the first few years, several founders worked together in harmony, looking for young people who showed signs of magic and bringing them to the castle to be cultivated.

However, as time went on, differences slowly developed between them.

The rift between Slytherin and the others grew. He believed that Hogwarts should be more selective when it came to recruiting students, and that magical education should be limited to purely magical families.

He was reluctant to accept Muggle-born children, believing them to be unreliable.

After a few days, Slytherin and Gryffindor had a heated argument over the issue, and Slytherin left the school.

"That's what reliable historical sources tell us," Professor Binns pursed his lips, looking like a crumpled old turtle—still translucent.

“…… However, these pure facts are obscured by strange legends about the Chamber of Secrets. "The story goes that Slytherin built a secret room in the castle that the other founders didn't know about. ”

According to this legend, Slytherin sealed the Chamber of Secrets so that no one could open it until his true heir came to the school. Only the heir can open the Chamber of Secrets, release the horrors inside, and let it purify the school and rid it of all those who don't deserve to learn magic. ”

This is the end of this story. The class fell silent, and everyone stared at Professor Binns, hoping that he would continue to speak.

But as a magical historian who is obsessed with "facts", this kind of mythical speculation is obviously meaningless to him.

No matter how much the students urged him, he just didn't want to continue telling these stories, which he didn't even believe.

Soon, class ended.

The three of them were pushed aside by the crowd as Harry's admirer, Colin Creevey, walked past them and greeted Harry excitedly.

"Hello, Colin." Harry replied casually.

Harry...... Harry, one of the boys in our class has been saying that you're- " But Colin was too small to stop the flow of people pushing him into the auditorium.

All they heard was him screaming "Goodbye, Harry!" "It was completely swept away by the crowd.

"What did the boy in his class say about you?" Hermione asked, puzzled. "I guess I'm the heir of Slytherin." Harry said, his heart sinking a little more as he suddenly remembered the way Justin Finchrie had fled him at lunch.

Ron looked at Harry with a look of incessant expression.