Chapter 339 337. The secret room that cannot be opened
Hermione came to the girls' bathroom for the second time.
She had already searched for all the suspicious places on the entire first floor, but she still found nothing, which made her wonder if she had missed something.
So, she started the second search from the beginning, and now she came to this public girls' bathroom again.
Hermione is actually no stranger to this place.
When she was a "slave" in this castle, the main job she usually had to do was to clean the place, so when she checked for the first time, compared with the meeting hall and storage room, which she had never entered before, The lavatory was undoubtedly familiar to her and couldn't be more familiar.
But even so, she was not sloppy during the first inspection, and carefully checked every corner of the entire bathroom.
And this second time, Hermione was more careful than before, she didn't even let go of the details in the brick joints and the pattern on the faucet.
Finally, this time she had some gains that she had never had before.
On the side of a copper faucet that never comes out of water, a tiny snake is uniquely carved.
After seeing this, Hermione immediately showed a happy expression on her face. She hugged Fox in her arms with some excitement, then tightened the invisibility cloak, and opened the Marauder's Map to observe the nearby people again.
Now it is less than ten minutes before the end of the last class, and there are already some students near the first floor who have no classes in the afternoon and come down early to go to the auditorium for dinner.
If the faucet she discovered was really the entrance to the secret room that Dumbledore asked her to help find, then if any student came to the bathroom after it was opened, it would definitely expose Hermione herself.
So Hermione didn't take the next step, but slowly retreated from the bathroom, and then found a storage room where the castle administrator used to discard sundries, and hid in it.
Now that she has roughly determined the specific target, there is no need to take the risk of looking for it from room to room, and the public use of the girls' bathroom has helped her a lot of cover.
She just needs to wait patiently until it gets dark and after the curfew starts, pay attention to the Aurors patrolling the castle before trying to open the secret room.
In this way, Hermione waited patiently in the corner of the storage room. When it was time for dinner, the footsteps outside began to become denser. She shrank her head more carefully, even afraid that the invisibility cloak would accidentally slip off her body and make her Standing on her shoulders, Fox exposed its brightly colored feathers, thus attracting the attention of the students outside through the window, and she deliberately held it in her arms.
It might be because of the difficulty in breathing, which made Fawkes peck the back of Hermione's hand with his sharp beak in dissatisfaction, but he didn't make any rebellious moves.
She just waited quietly until it was completely dark, until the curfew began at nine o'clock at night.
Fox was nestled in her arms, as if falling asleep. Hermione herself was probably nervous, so even though she didn't have dinner, she didn't feel much hunger.
During this period of time, she never took her eyes off the Marauder's Map for more than three minutes.
She watched fewer and fewer students wandering around in the castle until they all returned to their respective lounges after the curfew began. She also saw those **** students after dinner, just like her previous life here, It was sealed into the basement early.
Similarly, after the curfew was implemented on the students, more Aurors also began to pour into Hogwarts.
They came in through the gate together at around eight o'clock in the evening, and it seemed that they first apparated to Hogsmeade together, and then walked to the school.
With the addition of the manpower who had been staying in the castle before, the number of guarding Aurors reached seventeen.
This is not much different from when Hermione just got the Marauder's Map and observed the number of patrols in the castle under curfew.
Of the seventeen Aurors, two were mainly responsible for guarding the gates of Hogwarts, two were guarding the gates of the castle, and one was dedicated to staring in the direction of the Hogwarts carriage from a height at the position of the Astronomy Tower, and the remaining twelve Individuals are all patrolling around the castle.
They were divided into a team of two and a team of six, each responsible for different areas, and the team responsible for the area where the girls' bathroom was located on the first floor took at least 20 minutes to patrol back and forth from this place. This was enough time for Hermione to try to open the Chamber of Secrets entrance.
As long as the patrolling Aurors are not disturbed during the period of time when the secret room may be opened, it will be much safer to enter the secret room afterwards.
These Aurors certainly wouldn't search every room, even the women's bathroom.
Hermione didn't choose to wait too long. She stared at the Marauder's Map, and after confirming that the two Aurors who were patrolling on the first floor had reached the other side of the castle, she was ready to act.
However, when she had just grabbed the Marauder's Map in her hand and led Fox out of the storage room, in a place where a bunch of people's names were gathered, one name suddenly left the place where he should be.
Hermione was taken aback by the name.
She really never thought that under the strict curfew control of Hogwarts Castle today, there are still people who dare to violate the school rules!
That person seemed to be familiar with Auror's patrol rules at night, and he easily found a suitable emptiness 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 climbed into a secret passage.
That secret passage was also one of the reference targets she chose to sneak into Hogwarts Castle, but it was abandoned because it was too dangerous. Now it is discovered by someone and is using it.
Hermione watched him crawl forward little by little in the secret passage, until he completely climbed out of the edge of the Marauder's Map and disappeared within the scope of the entire Hogwarts school, and then 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, as long as they eat and drink to be a master, there is no need to take risks to break the rules. She did not expect to find a strange one tonight.
In the storage room, she waited for a time difference when the Aurors repeated their patrols, and then, wearing an invisibility cloak, led Fox to the girls' bathroom that she had discovered during the day.
Withdrawing her wand, she used the weakest wand illumination spell she could control, and soon she found the faucet engraved with a snake-like mark.
"Ahem."
Hermione cleared her throat nervously, and then let out an unpleasant "hissing" sound from her mouth.
Of course, this voice was not something she could know by herself, but she barely mastered it after practicing with the portrait in the principal's office of Dumbledore for an afternoon.
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. After the end, there was only silence in response to her.
This involuntarily made Hermione frowned. She tried to adjust her tone and pronunciation, and tried the snake language again at the faucet, but in the end she still didn't get any response.
After that, she tried many times, but the result was only failure.
Finally, Hermione finally confirmed that it was definitely not a problem with her pronunciation, either she simply went to the wrong place, or the password to enter this secret room had been changed!
After reaching this conclusion, although Hermione felt a sense of frustration, she didn't continue to stay in the bathroom.
She carefully controlled her footsteps, observing the movements of the patrolling Aurors on the Marauder's Map, and soon reached the fourth floor of the castle, then got into the entrance of the secret passage behind the mirror, and used Mirage in the secret passage Shaped, let Fox lead himself back to the carriage.
After returning to her room, Hermione sat on the bed, took two big breaths at first, then didn't stay for a moment, walked out of her dormitory with Fox, and went to Dumbledore's principal's office.
This place looks like the tomb of a group of eight-eyed giant spiders, or it would be more appropriate to say that it is a mass grave.
There are spider corpses everywhere in the big pit, and not all of them are whole bodies, almost all of them have been dismembered.
The valuable internal organs, venom, and silk sacs of these spiders have all been dug out, and what is now abandoned here is only the useless torso and ugly skin.
It is estimated that they have died for a while. Jon looked at the spider leg closest to his feet. There were already many small holes made by insects on it, and the surface was dried and crusted, just like in the snow in winter. like dead branches.
From the spider corpses in this place, Jon can probably see what the acromantulas who originally lived here have experienced.
They are not magical animals that are beneficial to wizards, and the venom and body parts they possess are very useful, so Voldemort or some high-level person in the castle ordered them to be slaughtered here.
Kill all the acromantulas, take away the useful parts, and discard the useless ones, and it becomes a mass grave like it is today.
Although Jon was shocked by the scene in front of him, he didn't feel much regret for Hagrid. After all, judging from the actions of these acromantulas in the original book, they were in Hogwarts under the control of Voldemort. It can only be said that Ci became what he is now, because he was unlucky, and he was ruthless when he met someone, and he didn't even treat wizards of the blood as human beings, let alone them.
Around the big pit full of spider corpses, Jon carefully identified and searched among them.
The others don't matter, but even if Aragog died, he was sure that his body was here, so that he could go back and explain to Hagrid.
Hoss followed Jon uneasily. Even though Jon didn't pluck its side neck, it didn't run around happily. It seemed that it didn't like this place very much.
Thinking about it, it should be true. As the lair of the giant arachnid, there are huge spider webs everywhere. Even if Hoth's racial talent allows him to run fast, as long as he is caught in the spider web, it is very difficult to survive. There is a high probability that it will become a meal for a few spiders.
Jon observed a large circle around the big pit, and finally found a corpse much larger than other spiders among the corpses of spiders.
It is obvious that even a normal acromantula is not a physique that can be grown casually, and most of its body position is still intact, except for the venom. When you are old, your organs have begun to fail and die, and there is no way to have more value.
Jon looked at Aragog's broken body from a distance, and he could already imagine how sad Hagrid would be when he heard the news.
But after learning that it was indeed dead, Jon didn't intend to stay here for a long time. He took Hoss out of the spider cemetery, returned to the dense woods, turned over and rode on it.
Now the sun has just set to the west, and it seems that it will be a while before it completely sets. Jon patted Hoss on the bald head.
"Besides Aragog, do you know the other two? I remember Hagrid told me that Parson is a horse man, and you are also a horse. You, uh, shouldn't be unfamiliar with it?"
At the end of these words, even Jon himself felt a little unconfident.
Based on the disposition of this perverted donkey, it might really be able to harass the little girl among the horse people, and it might not be that the horse people have always wanted to beat it to death.
But after hearing Jon's question, Hoss obviously became a little excited. It jumped up and yelled twice, as if promising something to Jon, and then turned into wind and began to shuttle in the Forbidden Forest.
Soon, it traveled a long distance and brought Jon to an abandoned tribe.
It can be seen at a glance that this is the camp where the horse people lived in the past, but now it is already dilapidated. Most of the wooden houses have collapsed to the ground, and some buildings still have traces of being burned, leaving only a piece of almost buried land that has been buried by the years. Burnt black.
After seeing the scene here, Jon finally began to feel heavy.
Unlike the giant arachnids, although the centaurs have always been classified as magical animals by the wizards, they are a group of races as intelligent as humans, and they are basically friendly to the wizards, such as The Ministry of Magic had a centaur liaison office all year round.
But with the current situation, even if their situation is better than that of the Acantaraman, it will not be too easy.
(end of this chapter)