53 Roll for a stealth check

"Are you sure this is a good idea? The professors gave him access to this place. I doubt that he could get into the Lord's suit just like that." Ron said, looking around, making sure no one unwanted stumbled into their meeting.

"If we want to know more, this is our only chance. Hagrid and McGonagall haven't told us anything, and the rest of the Professors are just pretending he doesn't exist." Harry said.

Each of them tried to ask the Professors about the monster, but each of their attempts hit a wall. No matter who they asked, how many books they read – and nothing.

Hermione was unusually quiet when they decided to sneak into his room. The usually fair and strict girl was ready to do anything to get her sleep back. She needed proof that he wasn't a danger to the Wizarding world – that he wasn't a danger to her and her friends! 

The girl was prepared to feel terrible if he turned out to be nice and kind, but for now her doubts kept her moving forward with this plan. 

"He may be the one who revived the Basilisk, and the Professors may simply not know about it." She reminded Ron of the possibility. "And we're just going to look, we won't touch anything. It's not something bad, we're just worried…"

Ron wasn't sure who she was trying to convince – him or herself. But both of his friends were sure that they had to do it. What kind of man would he be if he refused to help them?

Holding the Marauders' map in his hands, Harry followed the point on the map with a single, unreadable name. Ron and Hermione sat with him under his Invisibility Cloak, which was barely enough to cover the three of them.

For the last month, they took turns tracking the monster's movements on the map, recording his routine hour by hour, trying to catch the perfect moment to try to get inside his room. Imagine their surprise when they noticed that he was attending classes for second years!

"He should have disappeared somewhere by now, it's already one o'clock in the afternoon…" Harry muttered. "Usually by this time he leaves his room-" as if hearing his words, the tracks disappeared from the map into the unknown. "Never mind. Let's go."

To tell the truth, Harry had no idea where the monster had disappeared to over the weekend. His traces could not be found on the map for several hours, which meant that he had left Hogwarts.

Harry didn't have a solution to this riddle, but he didn't need one right now. The main thing was that they had a chance to get inside.

"Ron-" 

"I know, I know." He muttered, taking out his new wand. "Contra conscientiam."

A gray, murky-looking ball of dim light tore off the tip of his wand and hit the portrait of Sir Graham. That man dropped the book he was holding in his hands and stopped after a moment, freezing in the picture. It was unnatural, to see him freeze, after knowing that he could move and even talk freely. 

"Contra conscientiam." Ron said again and Lady Elizabeth, who had just noticed her friend's condition, also froze with her mouth hanging open.

"Now we just need to open the lock." Hermione said, climbing out from under the invisibility cloak. 

Harry quickly rolled up his Cloak and tucked it into his belt. All three got to their feet and approached the portrait, confident that no one would be able to see them now.

Once they were close enough to the portrait to be heard, they proceeded to the second step of the plan. Putting his wand to the parchment of the map, Harry tapped on the password that was written in a strange runic language under the door to the monster's room. 

"Legit illud magna." The spell left his wand and the letters lit up for a moment.

A couple of seconds passed and complete silence reigned in the Hall. When the trio had already begun to think that the spell had failed and looked at each other to figure out what to do next, the map suddenly exploded with a cacophony of sounds.

"What's going on?!" Ron asked, covering his ears with his hands.

The names of students and professors sounded simultaneously, interrupting each other and deafening the trio.

"It's reading everything at once!" Harry hissed back.

Suddenly, one sentence sounded much louder than the rest. A language that sounded like someone had played a broken vinyl record backwards cut its way through the tangle of English and the portrait suddenly opened up.

Closing the map, silence returned to the corridor, making Harry breathe a sigh of relief.

"Great, let's go inside, I don't think we have much time." Harry said, putting the map away in his robes.

The trio crossed the threshold of the room, prepared for anything unexpected, but even the broadest of expectations couldn't prepare them for what awaited on the other side. 

At first glance, it was the most ordinary room of a teenager their age. But as soon as they took a closer look, this picture fell apart before their eyes like wet paper.

On the bookshelves, right next to books and stacks of parchment, lay someone's bones. Strange runes were carved into the smooth stone walls, their meaning only the craziest scientist could even hope to decipher, and torn scrolls with sloppy inscriptions lay on the table under the rays of the morning sun.

"Looks creepy." Ron said, his eyes glued to a jar of fermented spider eyes. "It's like someone stuck Snape's lab in their living room."

Harry couldn't help but agree. He didn't expect to see so many strange things just by walking into the living room, in his mind, something so dark people hide in hidden closets. Definitely not in the living room adjacent to the kitchen. Who can cook when there are someone's eyes on the shelf just a couple of meters away from you?

Hermione didn't say anything, she just looked at the two doors that were located deeper in the living room. "If he leaves these things open for display, then how dark are the things he hides?" She asked and the guys shuddered.

Walking inside, the trio closed the door behind them, scattering around the room in search of… something that would prove the dark nature of the creature that had somehow managed to deceive all the professors. It's not like they could talk to him openly, right?

Leaving her two friends to search the living room, Hermione opened the door closest to the exit. The bathroom behind it looked untouched, even empty, as if it had never been used before.

Without closing the door, she continued further. The last room was supposed to be the creature's bedroom, where all his dark secrets would most likely be hidden.

The room itself looked more lived-in than all the others combined. The bed, although made, was still rumpled. On the table that stood directly under the small window, there were parchments and quills lying around, one of which was still writing something.

Hermione moved closer to the table, looking at the sheet of parchment. The language in which the quill wrote was definitely of Slavic origin. But that wasn't the only thing on the table.

Drawings of zombies, skeletons, spiders and strange green creatures hung just above the table, the description of each creature was written in a strange mixture of English and the same Slavic language. Most of them were unfamiliar to the girl's eyes.

One of these creatures looked like a huge, cubic golem, with red vein-like paths cutting paths through its body. The only words she could read were [Redstone] and [Abomination].

"Right, let's see what's in here," she muttered to herself, making magical copies of a few particularly interesting-looking notes to translate later.

Putting a couple of copied sheets of parchment into her bag, Hermione began to search the drawers of her desk, but found nothing suspicious. None of them were even closed! It was like he didn't even have secrets!

Top drawers – nothing. Bottom drawers – nothing. Even the hidden drawer on the side of the table was simply empty! It's like that monster didn't even know about the existence of this hidden compartment!

"No," she muttered, speeding up her search. "No, no, no." Her hands began to shake. His notes, pieces of parchment, ingredients, even those bones that lay in the living room were just that – bones.

"There's nothing." She muttered, shocked to the core. "No, that can't be true! I just haven't found anything dark yet."

She opened each drawer and looked for the second bottom inside. She looked at the legs of the chair for any hidden buttons. Hermione even crawled under the bed, ready to face some corpse that the monster had left there for dinner.

Nothing.

Hermione stood in the middle of the room, not moving a muscle. It seemed that the girl even stopped breathing and became a statue.

Suddenly, she turned around and quickly walked towards the exit, her eye immediately catching Harry, who was looking at the collection of books that was in the living room. The boy muttered spells under his breath, trying to catch even a hint of dark magic from the thick volumes.

"Did you two find anything?" She asked quickly, clenching her hands into fists.

"No," Ron replied, leaving the bathroom. "There's only a toothbrush in there and it's pink. I doubt it belongs to our guy."

"Books and potion parts. There's a couple of odd things in the kitchen cupboard, but nothing you couldn't find at a nearby Apothecary." Harry added, shaking his head.

Hermione looked at them with wide eyes. "Nothing…?" A small gasp left her lips. "No dark books? Cursed objects?"

Harry grimaced. "Only one book on necromancy," Hermione breathed a sigh of relief, "but it only describes how to spot the signs of necromancy and identify a caster. I think I saw something similar in the forbidden section."

Small shocks swept through the girl's body. How could this be possible?

"Guys, I think we made a mistake." Ron started hesitantly, drawing questioning glances from his friends. "Maybe he's not an evil guy after all?" Seeing Hermione open her mouth, the redhead raised his palm to interrupt her tirade. "Hermione, if he had professors helping him, wouldn't there be a reason for that? I know you've seen him do very brutal things, but did he do anything bad?"

Hermione and Harry were about to explode with indignation, but Ron beat them to it again.

"No, think about it. Of all your encounters with this monster, he just looked scary and evil, but did he do anything truly bad?"

All three knew the answer to this question very well, but no one dared to say it out loud.

"Let's just leave this case while we have the chance? If the professors trust him and nothing terrible happened at the school because of him, then what right do we have to go through his things?"

For a couple of minutes no one dared to utter a word. Hermione and Harry mentally tried to find reasons to justify themselves, but could not come up with anything.

Harry gave in first, sighing heavily and letting his guilt consume his mind. Glancing at Hermione, he slowly closed his hand around hers and pulled the girl towards the exit.

"Come on, we have nothing else to do here."

Ron breathed a sigh of relief. He was ready to drag his friends out of here by force if he needed it, but the fact that they agreed with him was much better.

Only when the Golden Trio was about to leave the apartment, the space near the exit collapsed in on itself, exploding with purple sparks and blinding the Gryffindors. They blinked, rubbing their eyes to get rid of the white spots in their vision, and it was only a couple of seconds before they were able to see what had arrived in the living room.

A tall, black figure, clad in a mixture of leather and iron armor, stood between them and the exit. The newcomer's face was mostly hidden behind an iron helmet, but there was no doubt in the trio's minds as to his identity.

The hidden monster of Hogwarts returned home, holding a two-meter battle ax in his hands.

Harry, with growing horror, dared to look into the eyes of this monster and emerald green met purple amethyst.

This was his first mistake.