Hogwarts' Golden Glory

"Merlin!" Hermione suddenly stopped in her tracks.

Colin Crevey had somehow climbed onto the base of an armored suit of armor along the corridor.

The camera lens was pointed at Harry, and the shutter was frantically pressed.

"Perfect! This angle is amazing!"

Colin's voice trembled with excitement, "Could you please raise your wand and strike a casting pose, like you did when you fought the Mystic?"

Flashes of light blazed in succession, illuminating the corridor as if it were daytime.

Harry raised his hand to shield his eyes from the blinding light.

"Crivy!" Percy Weasley roared from behind.

"Get off Sir Bartók's armor immediately! That armor is an artifact from the chaos of 1592!"

Colin slipped and fell forward.

Harry instinctively reached out to take it.

Suddenly, the ancient armor came to life, and the rusty iron gauntlets precisely grabbed Colin by the back of his collar.

"Th...thank you..." Colin stammered, the camera still dangling from his neck.

A deep voice came from inside the armored mask: "Next time you step on my shield, I'll poke your ass with my spear."

After saying that, it gently placed Colin back on the ground, and he returned to a still state.

Hermione's lips trembled slightly: "The last time that armor moved was when Peeves was stuffing dung balls into its helmet..."

Ron swallowed hard. "I bet Fred and George were behind it."

After experiencing that situation, Colin's behavior became more restrained.

Everyone quietly returned to their dormitories.

Harry never saw Kane again after that.

At this moment, Kane had clearly forgotten Dumbledore's earlier instructions.

He headed alone toward the Forbidden Forest.

Even in September, the edge of the Forbidden Forest still carried a chill!

Kane was standing next to the Whomping Willow.

"You're late, little pony."

A voice came from behind the tree, and Ferenze walked over.

"The time when Mars and Saturn were in conjunction has passed."

"What's going on with this unusual situation in the Forbidden Forest?"

The centaur pawed at the ground restlessly with its forelegs.

"Starting from last full moon, the spiders in the forest began to migrate en masse."

Kane had a suspicion when he heard the word "spider".

Then Ferencze continued.

"It's not just the spiders; the unicorns have started refusing to drink from the Black Lake's tributary, and the Thestral cubs are restless in their nests."

His golden eyes turned toward the depths of the Forbidden Forest. "Last night, when Jupiter passed through Scorpio, we discovered the first body."

Kane looked in the direction the other person was pointing.

The tip of the wand glowed with a cold blue light, illuminating a patch of scrambled bushes ahead.

Three tree guards were nailed to the trunk of a beech tree.

Their tiny bodies have an unnatural grayish-white color, as if all their life force has been drained away.

What's most chilling are their eyes—they've all turned a cloudy, milky white, covered with a thin layer of crystals.

"Petrified?" Kane crouched down, his wand flashing across the corpse.

Ferenze's mane moved without wind: "This isn't ordinary petrification magic. Look here—"

He pointed to the base of the tree trunk, where there were several deep scratches with eerie yellowish-green edges.

"Something enormous passed through here... carrying deadly poison."

Kane's pupils suddenly contracted.

"Basilisk." The word slipped from his lips like an ice cube.

The centaur abruptly took a step back, its forelegs raised high: "Impossible! That kind of creature only exists in Salazar Slytherin's Chambers of Secrets!"

"First, look at these marks..." Kane's fingertip hovered over the dents, without touching them directly.

"It appears every five feet, in an S-shaped pattern."

He took a piece of parchment from his dragon-skin bag and quickly sketched out the pattern of the marks, "which matches the movement characteristics of some large snake-like creature."

Ferenze's golden eyes narrowed slightly: "The largest snakes in the Forbidden Forest are just ordinary vipers; they couldn't possibly leave such marks."

Kane did not answer immediately.

His gaze swept over the roots of the surrounding trees—where several pieces of silvery-white spider webs were scattered.

The silk threads, which should have been covered with dew, were dry and broken, as if they had been corroded by some kind of strong acid.

Further away, a few strands of grayish-white hairs, petrified into fragile crystals, hung from the trunk of a beech tree.

"Moreover, the descendants of Aragog never leave their territory."

Kane spoke softly, the light from his wand turning towards several deep scratches on the tree trunk.

"Unless a predator emerges that they cannot defeat."

"But you must understand, the basilisk is their natural enemy!"

The centaur suddenly tensed: "You're implying..."

"The secret chamber was opened fifty years ago, and a girl was even killed there. So the basilisk is definitely real. You centaurs should be careful in the Forbidden Forest these days!"

Kane took Tom Riddle's diary out of his bag.

The diary was always with him!

Who released that serpent monster?

It's very likely not Voldemort!

You should know that Voldemort's remnant soul is still hiding somewhere!

"I have to go," Kane said suddenly, quickly closing his diary.

"If the basilisk is indeed active in the Forbidden Forest, I need to be prepared."

Upon returning to Hogwarts Castle, Kane went straight to the Room of Requirement.

As he walked to the wall opposite the tapestry, he focused his mind, thinking, "I need a place where I can research ways to fight the basilisk."

When the door with its serpentine knocker appeared, Kane pushed it open without hesitation.

The room was transformed into a spacious laboratory, with the walls covered with ancient books and charts about magical creatures.

Various magical materials were scattered on a long table. Kane quickly pulled out "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" and "Defense Against Medieval Magic" from the bookshelf.

At the same time, he took out several basilisk scales from his inner bag, which he had bought at a high price in Knockturn Alley—supposedly from the basilisk he had killed earlier.

"First, protective gear," Kane muttered to himself, waving his wand and sending a piece of mithril floating into the air.

He chanted an incantation, and the metal began to stretch and deform.

The alchemy he learned from Nicholas Lemaître was no simple matter.

"The basilisk's gaze is deadly, but indirect eye contact will only petrify... some kind of reflective mirror is needed..."

"Filch's cat saw the basilisk through the water on the ground, Colin saw it through the camera, Justin the ghost saw it through Nick, and Hermione saw it through the reflection in the mirror."

The basilisk's power is certainly not to be underestimated, and its venom is no joke.

It wasn't until late at night that Kane completed the first batch of protective gear: a pair of silver bracers inlaid with basilisk scales, capable of withstanding some impacts.

A pair of specially made glasses.

The lens was enchanted with a powerful confusion spell, which could distort the line of sight that looked directly into the basilisk's eyes.

I promise I won't die just because I see it.

There was also a small bottle of a concoction made from mandrake and unicorn hair.