From Hogwarts to Sturhaven

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Ever since he received his father's Invisibility Cloak, Harry has become obsessed with taking nighttime walks in the castle.

That night, he lay in bed unable to sleep, when he suddenly remembered the three ghosts who had spoken to him from inside the armor. So he put on an invisibility cloak, dodged Filch and the night-patrolling professor, and arrived at the third floor of the castle.

Carefully stepping over a puddle of water at the entrance to the girls' restroom, Harry arrived in front of the armor. He looked it over for a long time but couldn't see any ghostly glow.

Just as he was about to speak, he heard a strange voice coming from the girls' restroom: "Open it."

Harry tiptoed toward the wooden door with the "Out of Order" sign and quietly opened it a crack.

Looking through the crack in the door, there was no one inside, but for some reason, there was a large hole in the area where the sink should be.

"The Chamber of Secrets in Slytherin!" Harry's mind was filled with images of the monsters in the Chamber of Secrets.

After discussing it with his friends, Harry had begun to doubt that there really was a monster in the Chamber of Secrets that could survive for a thousand years. But now that he had seen the entrance to the Chamber, Harry's heart was immediately filled with fear.

“I must tell the professor! Professor McGonagall… or Headmaster Dumbledore!” Harry thought.

"Wait... what if Ivy really is the heir to Slytherin?" Another question popped into Harry's mind. "Maybe he's just researching magic... researching magic that requires a quiet environment... he's over a hundred years old, he knows what he's doing..."

Before Harry could even process the question, he saw a cloud of mist drift out from the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. The mist quickly gathered in the small bathroom and suddenly transformed into a person.

Even with only a faint candlelight in the bathroom, Harry could see his face clearly.

One sentence kept echoing in Harry's mind: "Ivy really is the heir to Slytherin!"

He also felt that it was quite reasonable for Ivy to be Slytherin's successor. After all, he had saved Hogwarts from the hands of goblins more than a hundred years ago and knew magical ancient magic. Salazar—Slytherin himself—would find it hard to refuse such an excellent successor if he were to be resurrected.

Ivy's face flashed by in the dim candlelight and then disappeared.

Harry realized it was some kind of invisibility magic, so he quickly moved aside from the doorway to avoid being bumped into.

The bathroom door was opened and then closed.

Harry knew Ivy had left, but he wasn't sure if he had been discovered.

Harry's mind was in turmoil, and he didn't even know how he got back to his bed through the hallways and stairs.

…………

Harry woke up early the next morning to Wood's vigorous shaking.

Seeing Harry's terrified expression, Wood explained, "No practice today, but we're going to the Quidditch pitch—there's a Slytherin vs. Ravenclaw match. We can study their tactics! Especially you, Harry, keep a close eye on Slytherin's Seeker! Although Malfoy is a rookie, their broomsticks are no pushovers."

Slytherin! Slytherin!

Slytherins are everywhere!

Harry looked away from Malfoy's green Quidditch uniform, unable to stop thinking about Ivy.

On one hand, he felt he should tell Professor Ivy that he was Slytherin's heir; on the other hand, he felt he shouldn't betray his friend. He was also worried about continued bloodshed in the castle and feared that he had misunderstood Ivy—that it wasn't Slytherin's Chamber at all, but another hidden passage within the castle.

Harry's good friend Ron complained to him more than once about his twin brother, saying that they knew all the secret passages in the castle, but never revealed a single one to Ron.

If what Harry saw last night wasn't the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, but some secret passage...

Harry watched the entire match with a distracted expression, and then immediately went to find his two good friends—Hermione and Ron.

“Ivy is really the heir to Slytherin?” Ron looked like he already knew. “No one in Slytherin is more suitable than him.”

“No… that was just my guess…” Harry corrected, “I meant, I saw him walk into a passage…”

"In the girls' restroom?" Hermione asked. "Did you see the monster?"

“What? No…” Harry shook his head.

“How wide is the passageway? About the same width as the hole in the wall of the underground classroom that was smashed through by the giant beast during Halloween?” Hermione continued to ask.

“Oh… I’m afraid it can’t go in. There’s only room for one person at most… something like a water pipe…” Harry frowned as he recalled.

“In most cases, Ivy is unrelated to what happened in the castle. We all know how big that beast in the underground classroom was,” Hermione calmly analyzed. “Perhaps he was just there doing some magical research. You know he’s always so secretive, and he often goes in and out of the restricted section of the library. I asked Mrs. Pince, and she said that Professor Dumbledore gave Ivy a note allowing him to borrow every book in the restricted section.”

"I know what Ivy's been up to there!" Ron suddenly shouted. "Raising a dragon! Remember? Ivy told us he was keeping Hagrid's dragon in the castle! At first, I was worried it would burn the castle down!"

“Yes!” Harry exclaimed, beaming. “It’s been so long, I’d completely forgotten about it. That makes perfect sense! Hagrid didn’t want to send the dragon away, and Ivy happened to know about a secret chamber, so they kept the dragon there! I can’t believe Hagrid never told us about this!”

“Perhaps even Hagrid doesn’t know where the dragon is hiding,” Hermione said seriously. “Hagrid can’t hide anything. Think of Nicolas Flamel last year.”

Harry and Ron had to admit that Hermione was right.

In the days that followed, they never worried about the secret room or Ivy again.

Harry, in particular, was consumed by Quidditch training, which took up almost all of his free time. Wood became increasingly frantic, sending them flying through storms and sometimes even with lightning in the sky.

However, their hard training clearly paid off. In the match against Slytherin, they miraculously achieved a great victory. Less than five minutes into the game, Harry had already caught the Golden Snitch, and Malfoy didn't even have time to see where it was.

This victory boosted Gryffindor's score significantly, especially given the Weasley twins' unusually good behavior this year.

This puts Gryffindor in first place in the House Cup rankings for the first time.

"It's only temporary!" Malfoy said angrily to the hourglass of the Academy Cup.

Harry walked past him happily: "If it weren't for your encouragement, I probably wouldn't have been able to catch the Golden Snitch."

"You! Don't be so happy, Potter!"

Seeing Malfoy's contorted face, Harry couldn't help but laugh out loud.

He began to understand why Malfoy always liked to bully others; sometimes it was indeed quite satisfying.

Harry's good mood lasted for almost a week until Professor McGonagall came to collect the list of students staying at school for Christmas.

He, Ron, and Hermione all signed it, and then they walked through the foyer and into the Great Hall where they saw a group of people gathered around the notice board.

“Lockhart wants to start a dueling club!” Seamus said. “Can he really manage it? Even Professor Victor didn’t do that. His dueling skills are so high!”

“I’m afraid I can’t do it, children,” Lockhart’s voice came from the doorway, and everyone turned around, surprised.

Harry had never seen Lockhart so disheveled. His usually gleaming robes were now tattered, and his body and face were covered in blood. His golden hair looked like a bird's nest. Harry noticed a particularly frightening wound on his arm, where the flesh was turned inside out!

Perhaps the only thing that hasn't changed is his eight gleaming white teeth: "Can you take me to the school clinic?"

After saying that, he collapsed.

Chapter 182 Gilderoy Lockhart and the Secret Chamber

“I knew Professor Lockhart lived up to his name!” Hermione said arrogantly to Ron.

Hermione's mood fluctuated after the students in the Great Hall hurriedly took Lockhart to the school hospital.

Lockhart claimed that he had dealt with the monster in the Chamber of Secrets, and that there would be no more bloodshed related to the Chamber of Secrets at Hogwarts.

However, Lockhart remained silent when people asked what the monster in the secret room was.

If people pressed him, he would say, "If you want to know what the monster in the locked room was and how I defeated it, then look forward to my new book, *Giddro Lockhart and the Locked Room*! You're sure to have a lot of fun in it!"

“Could it be Lockhart…” Ron hesitated before speaking.

“Professor!” Hermione corrected.

“Okay… I see. Was Professor Lockhart’s previous poor performance all an act?” Ron tried to avoid Hermione’s eyes, as if that would stop her from getting angry. “But he really didn’t teach us anything, did he?”

“Look at his wounds, Ron! Do you really think they’re fake?” Hermione exclaimed. “He’s just testing us in his own way!”

“I’m starting to look forward to his Duel Club now…” Harry had completely stopped caring about the Chamber of Secrets and the monsters inside.

Hermione gave him a look, which Harry took as a "you know what's good for you" look.

The three of them did their homework in the common room for a while. Before Harry and Ron's minds were filled with anticipation for the Christmas holidays, Hermione suddenly stood up: "You should go apologize to him!"

"Apologize? To whom?" Ron seemed to have just woken up from a dream, completely confused about the current situation.

“Of course it’s for Professor Lockhart!” Hermione pressed.

"Why? I'm not the only one who thinks he's a good-for-nothing!" Ron excused himself.

"So that I can learn something real in Defense Against the Dark Arts class!" Hermione's reasoning was very convincing.

But Harry thought things weren't that simple: "I think you just wanted to visit him at the school hospital. I saw you writing him a greeting card before."

“You should apologize to him too, Harry!” Mother Bird strutted away from the Gryffindor common room.

Outside Madam Pomfrey's office, Hermione is requesting permission to visit.

“No.” Mrs. Pomfrey tidied the medical records in her hands. “You are the third group of people to visit him today.”

“He’s our professor!” Hermione said eagerly.

“As far as I know, Miss Granger, he is the professor of all the students.” Mrs. Pomfrey glared at her and tapped the stack of parchment in her hand.

"Just five minutes!"

"no!"

"Three minutes!"

"no!"

“Popito!” Lockhart’s cheerful voice came from the ward; he had apparently heard the argument outside. “Don’t let me cause a scene. Let them in! Miss Granger is my best student!”

Harry and Ron watched as a blush rose on Hermione's cheeks.

"Sigh..." Mrs. Pomfrey sighed and opened the door to the ward for the three of them. "Alright, if you insist. Please, all of you, remember before you go in, no loud noises allowed."

Lockhart, dressed in a hospital gown, lay on the hospital bed with a bright smile on his face, showing no trace of the disheveled state he had appeared just a few days prior.