HP: Azkaban's Outstanding Graduate

“This suggestion is very valuable.” A glint of appreciation flashed in Dumbledore’s eyes, and he nodded solemnly. “Simple, direct, and effective.”

The old headmaster looked at Professor McGonagall, "Minerva, I'm leaving this to you. Make sure everyone wears their glasses until the Basilisk is dealt with."

Professor McGonagall nodded seriously.

Sagres clarified his thoughts and added, "At the same time, I also suggest installing mirrored reflective devices at every corner and in every corridor of the castle."

"no problem!"

Dumbledore had no objection, and he immediately began assigning tasks to each professor.

“Just to be on the safe side, you’ll need to stay in the school infirmary for a while, Mr. Crevy.” Dumbledore turned to the still somewhat bewildered young wizard, his tone gentle.

"Me? How long will I have to stay?" Colin asked blankly.

“It won’t be long…” Dumbledore replied, “Once Madam Pomfrey has given you a full physical examination, you can go back to class.”

The young wizard nodded obediently. Dumbledore gently patted his shoulder and said softly, "Sleep well, child, you must be exhausted..."

As soon as he finished speaking, Colin's eyelids closed involuntarily, and he instantly fell asleep.

“I personally think it’s necessary for him to temporarily forget everything that happened tonight,” Snape suggested expressionlessly, his voice as cold as ever.

“Let me do it!” Lockhart seized every opportunity to show off and stepped forward once again. “I’ve said before that I am the undisputed master in the field of memory magic! Leave this little matter to me!”

He gave an unsettling smile and boasted in a self-aggrandizing tone, "I guarantee I'll make him forget everything that happened tonight, without leaving a single trace!"

“Giddon, it’s not that I doubt your abilities…” Dumbledore replied seriously, “but this matter concerns the student’s memory, and I think it’s more appropriate for me to handle it myself.”

As he spoke, he took the wand brought by Phoenix Fox, extracted all of the little wizard's memories from that night, and put them into a glass bottle.

“Ah, Principal, forgive my bluntness…” Lockhart, seemingly oblivious to the tense atmosphere, couldn’t help but interject, “Your technique is a bit rough. Of course, I’m not bragging, after all, I’m an expert in this area!”

Everyone glared angrily at Lockhart, who was talking incessantly. He finally realized that the atmosphere was a bit off and wisely shut his mouth.

Chapter 80 Snake-like Voice

"You said before that the secret chamber was opened once fifty years ago, and a student died as a result?" Sagres asked seriously, as this was the first time he had heard this news.

“Yes, her name was Elizabeth Warren. She became a ghost after her death and has remained at Hogwarts ever since!” A glint flashed in Dumbledore’s half-moon spectacles.

“Wait a minute…” Sagres suddenly remembered something, “You mean… that Myrtle who’s always crying in the girls’ restroom?”

“It’s her…” Professor McGonagall interjected, pursing her lips, “That’s the nickname the students gave her…”

Sagles's expression was complicated, and his eyebrows were furrowed.

"Fifty years... You actually let a survivor of a locked-room mystery drift in the toilet for fifty years, and no one even bothered to ask her what she actually saw back then..." His voice was filled with disbelief.

No one spoke, and an awkward silence fell over the school infirmary. Sagres narrowed his eyes and nodded.

“Alright, then I think Porter can’t keep hiding anything this time. I need to know all the useful information!”

His voice became calm and unwavering, yet authoritative: "What do you think, Mr. Potter?"

The curtain on the next bed trembled, then was pulled open by an invisible force, revealing Harry Potter eavesdropping behind it.

“Sorry, Professor, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop…” Harry had already woken up due to the effects of the Bones, and he had heard almost the entire account of tonight’s attack from beginning to end, but at this moment he wished he were still unconscious.

“It’s alright, Potter…” Sagres gestured to stop him, “I don’t think anyone here will blame you for this, but on the condition that you tell us what you discovered during the first attack!”

“No, Professor…there’s nothing…” Harry said somewhat flusteredly, “We didn’t find anything!”

Sagres frowned. Although he didn't know what the other party was hiding, he had to find out the truth, as it could be the key to finding the murderer and the locked room.

“Harry…” Dumbledore said kindly, patting Harry’s head gently. “Don’t worry, we’re just asking.”

"We're probably not just asking!"

Sagres was no longer willing to play these tricks with them; he just wanted to have all the clues firmly in his grasp, rather than playing some guessing game here.

After all, no one can be sure that students will be safe just by wearing glasses, because the basilisk not only kills anyone it glares at, but its venom is also quite deadly.

“Tell me, Potter…” Sagles said expressionlessly, “While you have the right to remain silent, I also have the power to make you speak!”

Professor McGonagall immediately stepped forward to block the bedside: "Sagles, you can't force or threaten a student like this..."

“Of course I can, Professor McGonagall!” Sagrais’s voice was calm but unwavering. “On this point, I know better than any of you!”

Dumbledore gently patted McGonagall's shoulder and turned to try and console him: "Sagles, if Harry really knows something, I think he'll tell you..."

“What if he doesn’t? Headmaster!” Sagrais’s gaze swept steadily across the shocked faces of everyone present, his voice calm and utterly unwavering. “Hogwarts has already lost a student. How many more corpses do you expect to see here?”

"What are you saying, Sagres? Nobody wants to see the students get hurt..."

"Then why are you protecting Mr. Potter, even though he clearly knows something?" Sagrais's tone was harsh. "How many more lives do you need to lose before you realize the gravity of the situation? Or are you saying that as long as it's not someone you care about who dies, you can forever ignore such obvious clues?"

Sometimes he just couldn't understand these people's thinking. It's normal for children to be ignorant, but why are a group of adults so ignorant as well?

He looked at the silent crowd, his tone full of sarcasm, "If someone loses their life because of the basilisk again this time, then the murderer will not only be the person who opened the secret room and the basilisk."

Lockhart opened his mouth as if to say something, but Sagrais glanced at him, and he immediately pretended to be nonchalant and remained silent.

“Mr. Potter, can you tell me everything you know now? I’m not pressuring you, I’m just asking you. You can refuse…”

Of course, I can also make it impossible for you to refuse!

Sagles added in his mind.

“I said…” Harry swallowed hard, his voice trembling slightly, “but I really wasn’t the one who opened the Chamber of Secrets…”

“No one has said you were the murderer who opened the locked room!” Sagres said definitively.

Harry breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing this.

“I did hear some strange noises during the first attack…” Harry said haltingly. “The noises said it was hungry, that it wanted to tear things apart, kill things, and the strange thing is, only I could hear them. Ron and Hermione said they didn’t hear anything!”

Upon hearing this, everyone immediately fell into deep thought.

“Hunger, slaughter, tearing apart…no one else can hear it…” Sagres mused. “It sounds like the basilisk itself is saying these words, but if that’s the case…then you’re a… snake-man!”

He suddenly looked at Harry. "Mr. Potter, are you?"

“Wh…what is Parsley?” Harry looked up blankly at the professors’ expressions, which instantly turned serious.

Dumbledore's blue eyes behind his half-moon spectacles became unusually sharp: "The ability to understand the language of snakes, to converse with them, and even to control them."

“Oh!” Harry suddenly remembered something. “Then I certainly can. I once chatted with a python at a Muggle zoo…”

Harry's voice trailed off as he noticed Professor McGonagall's face turn deathly pale. Snape's lips curled into a dangerous smirk, and even the usually amiable Professor Flitwick gasped.

"This isn't strange, is it? I mean... Hogwarts has many wizards, there should be plenty of people who could do this!"

“No, Harry, Parseltongue is extremely rare, and…” Dumbledore said softly, “Salazar Slytherin was one of the most famous Parseltongues in history, which is why the symbol of Slytherin House is a snake.”

“But I’m really not the heir to Slytherin…” Harry sat up straight and said, somewhat agitated, “I didn’t open the Chamber of Secrets, and I didn’t control the Basilisk to attack anyone.”

“Calm down, Potter,” Sagres interrupted him, a thoughtful glint in his eyes. “Nobody said you were the heir, but it suddenly occurred to me that the reason we can’t find any clues about the secret room might be because only Parsley can open it.”

The expressions on everyone's faces froze instantly, as if an invisible current flashed through the air.

"A perfectly reasonable deduction!" Professor Flitwick exclaimed excitedly. "Slytherin was a Parseltongue, so his so-called successor must also be a Parseltongue. Slytherin could control snakes, so there must be a basilisk in his Chamber of Secrets serving him!"

"So, in other words, if Harry wasn't the one who opened the Chamber of Secrets, then there was another Parseltongue in the house besides him, and that person was the one who opened the Chamber of Secrets..."

"So, the most crucial question has come up..."

Sagres's voice suddenly turned unusually low. He looked directly into Dumbledore's deep blue eyes and asked, word by word:

"Voldemort—was he also a Parsleyan?"

The entire ward fell into a deathly silence.

Time seemed to stretch out for an entire century. Finally, Dumbledore slowly nodded:

"Yes."

Chapter 81 Diary

Now, Sagres has figured out almost everything he wanted to understand.

His fingertips tapped lightly on his wand, his gaze sweeping over everyone in the room.

He realized that his situation seemed rather precarious, because he suddenly realized that these so-called best wizards in Britain had allowed such obvious clues to slip through their fingers for fifty years—was this just arrogance or sheer stupidity?

The sound of the wand striking the glass was exceptionally clear in the quiet hospital room, and Sargeras felt more and more that his allies were a bunch of useless trash.

“Harry,” he turned to the boy on the hospital bed, his voice eerily calm, “now I’m giving you two choices.”

The tip of his wand glowed with a ghostly blue light. "First, help me find the murderer; second, let me erase all your memories of tonight."

Harry noticed that Sagrais's pupils contracted dangerously when he said "erasure of memories".

"I choose the first one!" Harry blurted out, his voice more urgent than he had expected. He subconsciously touched the scar on his forehead and couldn't help but swallow.

“A wise choice.” Sagres nodded slightly, then turned to Dumbledore. “I also suggest an immediate screening of the entire school’s faculty and students. Although Voldemort may not repeat his old tricks… just to be on the safe side, everyone should be checked.”

Everyone felt a chill run down their spine.

If Voldemort really comes back... who will he be hiding in this time? Harry's gaze involuntarily drifted toward the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor—who was fixing his hair in front of the medicine cabinet glass. Noticing Harry's gaze, he immediately flashed a bright smile, his teeth dazzlingly white in the candlelight.

Harry silently looked away, thinking that Voldemort probably wasn't that desperate.

“Professor Greengrass,” Ms. Pomfrey suddenly interjected, her voice trembling, “you mean the mysterious figure might… be possessing one of the students?”

She gripped the hem of her clothes tightly, her knuckles turning white.

“It’s just a possibility; we’ll only know after we investigate.” He looked at Dumbledore, who had remained silent. “You’ll arrange the screening?”

The old headmaster nodded slowly, his long, silvery-white beard trembling slightly with the movement: "Starting tomorrow. At the same time, other work cannot be neglected." His voice was very soft.

Sagrass gave a short grunt, then raised his wand and pointed it at Harry. A green light shot out from the tip of the wand, and Harry was surprised to feel his arm instantly regain feeling.

I think I'm all better!

Harry excitedly wiggled his wrist, the bones clicking softly as they healed. "Thank you so much, Master—"

But Sagles had already turned and walked towards the door, and as he stepped across the threshold, he tossed out a sentence without looking back:

"Remember your choice, Potter."