"It must have been him!" shrieked Filch, turning his face to Harry.
"A second-year couldn't do this," said Dumbledore firmly. "This requires very advanced Dark Magic."
But Filch didn't seem to agree. He was still convinced that this was Harry's doing.
Snape, on the side, added fuel to the fire by questioning Harry about his whereabouts, trying to get him kicked off the Gryffindor Quidditch team.
For a moment, the scene was a bit chaotic.
"Innocent until proven guilty, Severus," said Dumbledore, as firm as ever.
Snape looked furious. Filch, naturally, was the same.
"My cat has been Petrified!" he shrieked, his eyeballs bulging. "I want to see some punishment!"
"We will be able to cure her, Argus," said Dumbledore patiently. "Madam Sprout has recently acquired some Mandrakes. Once they have matured, I will have a potion that will revive Mrs. Norris."
"I'll make it," Lockhart chimed in. "I must have done it a hundred times. I could whip up a Mandrake Restorative Draught in my sleep—"
"I think I'd rather have Maclean do it than—" Snape said, squinting. He only spoke half a sentence, but anyone with eyes could understand his meaning.
In the end, it was Dumbledore who dismissed Harry and the others.
The trio, of course, couldn't wait to leave. They quickened their pace, almost breaking into a run.
When they reached the floor above Lockhart's office, they slipped into an empty classroom and gently closed the door. Harry squinted, looking at his two friends' faces in the dark.
"Do you think I should tell them about the voice I heard?" he asked hesitantly.
Hermione was still pondering what the "Chamber of Secrets" could be, while Ron stood to the side, lost in thought. For a moment, no one answered him.
For the next several days, the students talked of nothing else but the attack on Mrs. Norris. Filch's behavior made sure no one would forget it.
He often paced back and forth where Mrs. Norris had been attacked, as if he thought the attacker would return. Harry saw him trying to scrub the words off the wall with "Mrs. Skower's All-Purpose Magical Mess Remover," but it seemed to be a futile effort. The words still shone brightly on the stone wall.
And when Filch wasn't patrolling the crime scene, he was lurking in the corridors with his red-rimmed eyes, suddenly pouncing on unsuspecting students and trying to find any excuse to give them detention, for reasons like "breathing too loudly" or "looking happy."
As for Ginny, she seemed very upset by what had happened to Mrs. Norris. According to Ron, she had always been very fond of cats.
Ron would occasionally comfort his precious little sister, but sometimes he would just stare into the air in a daze.
Normally, given his friendship with Harry, this state would have been noticed by Harry long ago. But recently, Harry had been troubled by other things.
For one thing, the fact that people would run away at the sight of him was enough to give him a headache for a while.
One day, Hermione emerged from between the bookshelves. She looked very annoyed, but she was finally willing to talk to them, probably because Marcel hadn't been in the library for the past few days.
"All the copies of Hogwarts: A History have been checked out," she said, sitting down next to Harry and Ron. "There's a two-week waiting list. I wish I hadn't left my copy at home, but I couldn't fit it in my trunk with all of Lockhart's thick books."
"Why do you want to read it?" Harry asked, puzzled.
"The same reason everyone else does," said Hermione. "To look up the legend of the Chamber of Secrets."
"What's the Chamber of Secrets?" Harry asked immediately.
"That's just it. I can't remember," said Hermione, biting her lip. She glanced seemingly unintentionally at a corner in the back of the library and said faintly, "And I can't find the story anywhere else—"
"Hermione, let me see your essay," said Ron, looking at his watch anxiously.
"No!" Hermione suddenly glared at Ron.
Seeing that she seemed to be in a bad mood again, Ron pouted, but his gaze also swept over that corner.
That had become almost Marcel's exclusive seat, but since the petrification incident, he had not been seen there.
A moment later, the bell for class rang.
Ron and Hermione walked to their History of Magic class in silence. On the way, Harry looked at them doubtfully several times. He finally realized something was wrong.
"I say, why don't we go ask Marcel? It feels like we haven't talked to him in a while," Harry said, thinking this was a good idea. After all, Marcel held a pretty good position in the hearts of the trio.
"No!"
"No!"
Harry had not expected Hermione and Ron to reject this terrible idea in unison for the first time.
"Um... what's wrong?" Harry couldn't help but look puzzled.
"It's nothing."
"N-nothing..."
Hermione and Ron glanced at each other. Although they didn't know what the other was thinking, it was undoubtedly related to Marcel.
In the end, the three of them still walked to the History of Magic classroom in silence.
The History of Magic lesson was as dull as ever.
Professor Binns, the only ghost teacher at Hogwarts, passed through the blackboard to the front of the class. He opened his notes and began to read in a dry, monotonous drone, the constant hum like an old vacuum cleaner.
The whole class was drowsy. They would occasionally snap out of it to jot down a name or a date, and then fall back into a semi-conscious state.
But after he had been speaking for half an hour, something happened that had never happened before—Hermione raised her hand.
Professor Binns suddenly looked up, looking very surprised.
"You are—"
"I'm Granger, Professor. I was wondering if you could tell us about the Chamber of Secrets," Hermione said in a clear voice.
The term "Chamber of Secrets" was clearly a hot topic recently. The vast majority of students felt a bit of fear about it. Hermione suddenly bringing it up in class was like pouring a bucket of cold water on all the drowsy students. Everyone sat up straight.
Professor Binns blinked.
"My subject is History of Magic," he said in his dry, wheezing voice. "I deal with facts, Miss Granger, not myths and legends."
He cleared his throat and bent his head again, droning on, "In that year, in October, a subcommittee of Sardinian sorcerers—"
But Hermione raised her hand again.
"Please, sir, don't legends always have a basis in fact?"
Helplessly, Professor Binns had to slowly begin speaking.
"Well... yes, one could argue that, I suppose," he said, staring at Hermione as if he had never properly looked at a student before.
"However, the legend of which you speak is a very sensational, even ludicrous, story..."
In fact, Hogwarts was founded about a thousand years ago by the four greatest witches and wizards of the age. The four houses were named after them: Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin.
For the first few years, the founders worked together harmoniously, searching for young people who showed signs of magic and bringing them to the castle to be trained.
But as time went on, disagreements slowly arose between them.
The rift between Slytherin and the others grew wider. He believed that Hogwarts should be more selective in its student recruitment, and that magical education should be limited to pure-blood magical families.
He was unwilling to accept Muggle-born children, believing them to be untrustworthy.
After some time, Slytherin and Gryffindor had a fierce argument over this issue, and then Slytherin left the school.
"Reliable historical sources tell us this much," said Professor Binns, pursing his lips, looking like a wrinkled old turtle—a translucent one at that.
"...But these honest facts have been obscured by the fanciful legend of the Chamber of Secrets," he said. "The story goes that Slytherin had built a secret chamber in the castle, of which the other founders knew nothing."
"Slytherin, according to the legend, sealed the Chamber of Secrets so that none would be able to open it until his own true heir arrived at the school. The heir alone would be able to unseal the Chamber of Secrets, unleash the horror within, and use it to purge the school of all who were unworthy to study magic."
The story ended there. The whole class was silent, everyone staring at Professor Binns, hoping he would continue.
But as a magical historian who was obsessed with "facts," this kind of mythical, legendary speculation was clearly meaningless to him.
No matter how the students urged him, he was unwilling to continue telling these stories that even he himself did not believe.
Soon, the class was over.
The three of them were pushed aside by the crowding people. Just then, Harry's admirer, the first-year Colin Creevey, walked past them and greeted Harry enthusiastically.
"Hello, Colin," Harry replied casually.
"Harry... Harry, a boy in my class has been saying that you're—" But Colin was too small to resist the crowd pushing him towards the Great Hall.
They only heard him squeak, "See you, Harry!" and then he was completely swept away by the crowd.
"What was that boy in his class saying about you?" Hermione asked, puzzled.
"Probably that I'm the Heir of Slytherin," Harry said, his heart sinking a little further as he suddenly remembered Justin Finch-Fletchley hastily avoiding him at lunch.
Ron looked at Harry, an expression of wanting to say something but holding back on his face.
The full story is available on Patreon!: Now at 40% OFF!
patreon.com/Zefyrus