Chapter 181: Fear (Edited)

The subway classroom.

The host prepared so carefully and the guests also brought such a wonderful show, that it was a good time for all present, except Harry and the others, whose sorrows and joys were not shared by the humans, only found them noisy.

When the Headless Hunters had exhausted themselves and the guests had danced long enough, Nick clapped his hands, the band stopped playing and all the ghosts turned their attention to Nearly Decapitated Nick.

He straightened his collar and said in a sad, gentle tone, "My departed lords, ladies and gentlemen, it is with great regret..."

Nick tuned his speech to be more of a thank you speech at the end of the death anniversary. His intention had been to wait for the guests to arrive, but the arrival of the Headless Hunters had upended his plans and he had had to improvise to get the guests in place earlier, he knew the style of the Headless Hunters, the ghosts were a bunch of ADHD kids. Getting them to listen to him quietly until they were done venting their energy was so 90°, it didn't exist. They're like a chimney to a nest, they can't keep up.

So Nick let them dance first, and then he'd go on stage when they got tired. And sure enough, it worked. The ghosts listened patiently to his speech and the poem he had prepared.

He ended with a bow and the audience applauded thunderously.

The evening ended and the ghosts left the subway classroom two by two. Nick came down from the stage satisfied that Mr. Patrick had not yet left, and let out a resounding laugh, slapping Nick's shoulder so hard that their heads and necks parted.

Only Nick's head was still attached to his neck, so he didn't end up like Mr. Patrick.

"Yeah, Nick, that was a great death anniversary!"

Nick turned to Harry as if he hadn't heard him, "How are you guys, did you have a good time tonight?"

"Yeah."

There was no more ironic answer.

Obviously, no one would believe this answer. Mr. Patrick threw his head back on his neck and gave his mount a hard slap on the buttocks, and the ghost horse immediately broke into a run, with Mr. Patrick in hot pursuit, which he managed to catch up with. He grabbed his mount by the mane, jumped on it and, grabbing the bridle, the horse's hind legs came up. It was all so fluid that Harry wanted to clap his hands, but seeing Nick's pale face, which was not usually visible to others, he decided against it.

By then, Harry was freezing, and after the ghosts dispersed, his digestive system seemed to resume, only to realize that his stomach was as empty as a college student's brain in an exam room.

The three of them said goodbye to Nick. A minute later they were in the same hallway as before.

"Maybe the dessert session isn't over yet?" Ron launched into an unrealistic fantasy, heading into the Great Dining Hall ahead of the others.

"Where do you think our leftovers are going?" Harry was starving, even thinking about the leftovers from the Hogwarts feast.

"Have you lost your mind? why would you eat someone else's leftovers? And there will be no leftovers, only sausages, uneaten ribs, steak and lamb, stews, roast chicken and duck... Neville, do you know what happens to leftovers at Hogwarts?".

Unfortunately, Neville had no idea where the leftovers went.

"I've heard that some places have a meal where they put together various leftover stews from restaurants, make a messy pot, and everyone gathers around the pot and takes big spoonfuls of it and eats it by the spoonful." Harry began to remember the news he had seen on TV.

The three of them figured it out, and got even hungrier.

They quickened their pace.

But as they climbed the stairs, they found the Great Dining Hall surrounded by people, and as they made their way through, they ended up seeing the two lines written on the wall, the writing glowing in the torchlight.

"All enemies of the Heir will be buried!" Malfoy's face turned red with excitement as he saw the words, he looked out into the crowd and spotted Ron Weasley, the boy he hated the most, he looked at Ron with a smile on his face.

"You could be next, you pureblood traitor!"

"It's hard to say if Mr. Weasley will be buried, but you, Mr. Malfoy, will definitely be punished. Ten points off for Slytherin." Professor McGonagall's voice came from the back of the crowd. She had been drawn to the small group of assembled wizards, but had just arrived at the scene of the incident when she heard Malfoy's arrogant comments.

The small wizards fell silent for a moment, making way for Professor McGonagall.

Professor McGonagall frowned when she saw the handwriting on the wall.

"Prefects, lead your House students to the common room." He decided to evacuate the students first, before discussing it with Headmaster Dumbledore. He could already guess why Professor Dumbledore had left in such a hurry in the middle of the party.

By then, the three deans, Flitwick, Sprout and Snape had arrived and, at their silent insistence, the young wizards dutifully returned to the common room. As the students dispersed, Dumbledore's patronus appeared before the four deans and led them to the school hospital.

At the school hospital, Dumbledore had placed Victoria in a hospital bed. Madam Pomfrey was preparing a potion to replenish Victoria's energy. Tom and Hermione stood to the side, unoccupied.

Hermione's eyes wandered to the bed at the other end of the room, which was now covered by a white curtain, but Hermione knew that the real Professor Lockhart lay there.

As they watched, Professor McGonagall pushed her way through the door, followed by the other three deans.

"Albus...," she said, casting a somewhat worried glance at Victoria on the bed.

"She's fine, it's nothing serious." Dumbledore thought Victoria had only expended some of her life force, which could be replenished by the potion, and turned his attention to Tom, "Professor Lockhart, tell us what happened."

Tom came to and began to tell Dumbledore the story he had made up: he had been invited to Nick's 500th death anniversary, and in the middle of it he had received word that his office had been assaulted by an unknown creature, the temperature around Snape's body dropped a degree as he heard it.

He had papers for next week's exams in his office, so he rushed out of the basement classroom, only to see this message on his way to the office. Lives were at stake, and he immediately headed for the Chamber of Secrets....

"Wait, how do you know where the secret chamber is?" Snape interrupted Tom.

"Check the information, check the archives in the library, in fact there are clues in the notes of previous generations as to the location of the Chamber of Secrets. It was guarded by the Gaunt family for generations, until it became extinct. According to my research, it was built under a bathroom when Hogwarts was refurbished, opening it requires Parseltongue."

"And how did you open the Chamber of Secrets?" Snape had always felt that this Lockhart was very suspicious, so he moved on. Unfortunately, Lockhart didn't seem at all startled.

Tom said unhurriedly, "It was open when I went there, and I went into the Chamber of Secrets with Miss Granger and found Miss Brown already there...she seemed to have been possessed by something strange, and Professor Dumbledore found out all about it later."

Professor McGonagall realized the problem.

"So you weren't able to destroy the creature that possessed Miss Brown, were you?"

Tom shook his head.

Silence fell over the place.

"Professor Dumbledore, what happened to Miss Brown is that she took some sort of black magic item by mistake, and I suggest that her belongings and luggage in her dormitory be searched immediately. When she wakes up, she will also need to be questioned about what happened." Snape realized immediately that it had to be something very sinister, something dark.

"We must hurry, or there may be a second victim." Professor Flitwick made his position clear.

Just as Dumbledore was about to leave the college hospital room with the four deans, Tom asked a question that concerned him the most.

"Professor Dumbledore, this must have caused great psychological damage to Miss Brown, should we use the Obliviate Charm?" Tom was referring to simply using the Dismemorizing Charm to make Victoria forget the painful memories.

"Or use the Obliviate Potion, which can also erase a person's memory." Snape offered a completely new idea.

"Memories are a man's most valuable commodity, and we have no right to tamper with them," Dumbledore said gravely, raising his glasses, "Let's go to Ravenclaw tower first."

While Dumbledore and the others were discussing how to deal with Victoria in the school hospital, Peggy emerged from the Room of Requirement on the seventh floor of the castle. Riddle's diary had tasked her with hiding in the Room of Requirement when she received her signal. Halfway through the Halloween dinner, Peggy received the signal from Riddle's diary and snuck into the Room of Requirement when no one was looking.

The doors to the Room of Requirement closed slowly behind her, hiding the piles of junk inside. As the door closed, a dark aura suddenly emerged from a journal in the pile.

The black aura slowly drifted to rest in front of a worn crown....

Peggy trotted all the way and, seeing a large group of older students in front of her, followed them silently. Listening to their conversations, Peggy learned that there has been an attack on the school: the legendary Chamber of Secrets has been opened again and one of the students has been "sacrificed."

Peggy instinctively felt that this matter had something to do with the diary.

Shortly after returning to the common room, her suspicions were confirmed.

The young Ravenclaw wizards, led by the Prefects, had returned to the Ravenclaw common room. As soon as they entered, they could not contain their curiosity and began to talk about the day's attack on the Chamber of Secrets. In the wake of the attack at the beginning of the term, there had been a great deal of interest in the Chamber of Secrets in the warning.

During that time, "Hogwarts: A History" became the most popular book, and the library was completely out of stock, with reserves up to two weeks later. Everyone wanted to find out about the Chamber of Secrets, but no young wizard could find anything about it, and it was as if the story had been erased by someone, and no information or legend about it could be found.

Perhaps, of all the little wizards at Hogwarts, only Malfoy knew a little about the Chamber of Secrets. The rest of the young wizards, even the purebloods, knew very little about the Chamber of Secrets. After all, the Chamber of Secrets was a fiction to their parents and, indeed, to their grandparents. Riddle opened the Chamber in 1943, and nearly fifty years have passed. Even those who were there don't always know the truth, as the official version of the case is that another student's death was due to a student's illegal breeding of an Acromantula.

After a while, the rumors died down and the young wizards came to think that the Chamber of Secrets was something completely fabricated. This gave rise to a series of bizarre conjectures. The central theme in all of them was the same: Tom had offended someone, and had been attacked and avenged.

Some thought it had been Marcus, who wanted to take advantage by eliminating Ravenclaw's most powerful Chaser; others thought it had been Professor Snape, who must be conducting some nefarious experiment and Tom happened to be his test subject; and one outlandish theory was that Professor Lockhart was the culprit, as he had fallen in love with Hermione Granger, a second year Ravenclaw, but Tom Yodel and Hermione were close friends and so Professor Lockhart took the risk. So Professor Lockhart turned on Tom to get rid of his rival....

This story has been used as a joke by young wizards. It is true that Granger was a frequent visitor to Professor Lockhart's office, but that was because he was a teaching assistant. Professor Lockhart put out an open call for teaching assistants, so how could such a thing happen? The other candidates were not qualified.

The young wizards preferred to believe that their headmaster, Dumbledore, had defeated Grindelwald because of his beauty rather than accept such an outrageous claim. They have even come up with several similar stories, and they are all over the place.

As a result, there has been another Chamber of Secrets attack today! Once someone came up with a term, but what about the second one? Even if the Chamber of Secrets is not real, there is a real criminal in the school, constantly attacking students, lurking among them, licking his fangs and looking for his next prey...

The young wizards were frightened.

Now they were discussing it in the common room, to calm their fears. Their two main concerns were: first, what was the Chamber of Secrets and did it really exist? Secondly, which of the students had been sacrificed for the opening of the Chamber of Secrets?