HP: Azkaban's Outstanding Graduate

Long after the first attack, the truth about the second attack was deliberately suppressed by the principal and professors.

Gradually, the "locked room legend" became a topic of conversation among students, and Professor McGonagall's school rule requiring students to wear protective goggles also became the subject of many complaints.

Once the novelty wears off, students can be seen everywhere in the corridors with their glasses pushed up to their foreheads or casually hanging on their lapels—only when the professors' stern gaze sweeps over them will they reluctantly put them back on.

Meanwhile, Percy Weasley stood in the aisle, staring intently at the second-year students who had just finished their Potions class.

Under his "deduction warning," all the students obediently put on their glasses.

The air still carried the lingering scent of toad entrails and wormwood. Harry, Ron, and Hermione, carrying heavy books, moved slowly with the flow of people.

Suddenly, a very faint rustling sound, like fingernails scraping against rotten wood, pierced through the students' laughter and footsteps and reached Harry's ears.

Harry stopped abruptly, his expression instantly changing.

That voice... he hadn't heard it in a long time!

"What's wrong, Harry?" Ron grumbled, having been pulled off balance by him. Hermione looked at him with a puzzled expression.

"Shh!" Harry raised a finger, frowned, and listened intently. "That voice... it sounds like it's..."

"What's that sound?" Hermione looked around warily.

The corridor was crowded with people, dozens of students from two colleges squeezed together, the noise of laughter and the clatter of books rising and falling. "It's too noisy here, you must have misheard?"

Harry didn't answer, but slowly bent down, his ears almost touching the wall.

"Gah—!"

A harsh, piercing cry exploded overhead!

The three were startled and looked in the direction of the sound. They saw that Sagrais's raven, Lochtis, with its feathers gleaming with a cold, hard sheen, had landed steadily on the high windowsill next to them.

Several sharp-eyed students immediately crowded around excitedly. Harry straightened up at this moment and shook his head helplessly at Ron and Hermione: "Maybe...maybe I really misheard, it was too noisy."

"I told you it was a false alarm!" Ron breathed a dramatic sigh of relief, then subconsciously tightened his glasses even more.

“However,” Hermione adjusted her protective glasses, her gaze behind the lenses still tinged with worry, “it’s always good to be cautious. Professor Greengrass has been investigating, hasn’t he? We can tell him about this ‘suspected case’ this afternoon.”

Harry thought about it and agreed: "Okay, we'll talk about it this afternoon. Let's go back to the tower to put the books away first; I'm starving."

The three of them then moved closer to the windowsill, wanting to see the raven that rarely appeared.

Someone offered the other person owl food, but Loctis merely glanced at it arrogantly and turned away disdainfully.

“It eats iron!” Simo warned.

“That doesn’t seem to be iron…” Neville said uncertainly.

“Hey, say something! Say something for us!” Parvati Petil called out to the raven with anticipation.

Lochteus tilted its small, black head and stared at her with its eerie eyes.

"Quiet!"

His signature hoarse voice rang out again, still sounding as awful as sandpaper.

The students all took a step back, but immediately surrounded them again.

"Is this the only sentence it knows?" Dean Thomas scratched his head in disappointment.

"Probably..." Simon was unwilling to give up and tentatively reached out to touch the other's metallic feathers.

Loctis nimbly shrank his neck to avoid Seamus's hand, while simultaneously opening his beak: "Fool!"

The young wizards watching froze, their faces flushing red and then turning pale with embarrassment.

“…Well,” Dean Thomas said dryly, “at least it proves that its vocabulary is more than one.”

Loctis turned his little head from side to side, seemingly scrutinizing the crowd below, making a soft gurgling sound in his throat.

What does it eat?

“Mithril!” Hermione answered without hesitation. “Professor Greengrass fed it that.”

"Then its food expenses must be quite high..." Ron muttered, clicking his tongue.

Just then, Malfoy, along with Crabbe and Goyle, pushed through the crowd, took a small pinch of shimmering mithril from his pocket, and held it out to Raven.

He didn't speak, but the smugness in his eyes betrayed him.

But the raven still didn't eat the mithril in Malfoy's hand; instead, it continued to tilt its head and scan the crowd.

"Food...slaughter..."

A non-human, soul-ripping roar exploded in Harry's ears without warning!

Immediately following was a deafening crash as the wall shattered with tremendous force!

Boom!!

The students instinctively looked in the direction from which the sound came.

At the corner of the corridor ahead, rubble rained down like raindrops, and amidst the billowing dust, a gigantic, suffocatingly terrifying figure, radiating an aura of destruction, suddenly burst forth from the shattered wall!

Everyone froze instantly.

The moment the enormous snake shadow appeared, its molten gold-like eyes locked onto the nearest student's back, and then its fang-filled mouth immediately snapped down with a stench!

Whoosh!

The little wizard's figure shattered with a sound—it turned out to be the mirrored corner of the castle, and what was bitten to pieces was just the cold, mirrored glass.

A wave of fear erupted among the students!

monster!

A living, breathing giant snake that wants to eat people!

Its body was extremely thick and covered with heavy scales. Its huge, ferocious head was held high, almost touching the high ceiling of the corridor.

What's most terrifying are its enormous, vertical, molten gold-colored pupils! Those pupils contain a terrifying magical power capable of freezing life!

Even more terrifying, along the path the basilisk had rushed out of, dozens of young wizards, who had just finished class and were laughing and joking as they prepared to return to the common room, were unfortunately scattered about.

The smiles on their faces hadn't even had time to fade before they froze under those two destructive beams of yellow light!

Time seemed to have been paused at that moment.

A Slytherin girl was bending down to pick up a fallen book, her fingertips just an inch from the parchment, when she instantly froze into a stiff statue.

The smiles on the faces of the two Gryffindor boys, who were arm in arm, froze into eternal astonishment, their bodies petrified as they remained in their forward-moving posture.

The students who had formed a circle in front of the raven also looked over when they heard the sound, but they only had time to make eye contact with the Eye of Destruction before they turned into a circle of cold stone statues in different poses.

A Gryffindor student who had fallen to the ground raised his wand in terror. The faint light of the spell flickered for only a moment at the tip of his wand before he and the light faded into a deathly gray.

One Slytherin student reacted a little faster and tried to turn and run away, but in the instant he instinctively looked back, the posture of turning his head and the extreme fear on his face were frozen in time.

A silent yellow light swept across the corridor. In an instant, dozens of stone statues of various shapes and frozen expressions appeared in the corridor.

The space, which was just moments ago full of life, has instantly transformed into a cold, stone-carved cemetery.

The only sounds in the air were the basilisk's heavy, fishy breathing and the sound of tumbling stones.

Harry lowered his head almost as soon as the basilisk appeared, then shouted to the few young wizards who hadn't yet been affected:

"Don't look back! Run!!!"

Then he grabbed Ron and Hermione and ran off in another direction.

The group ran frantically, their footsteps echoing haphazardly in the empty corridor.

In the chaos, Hermione's glasses fell to the ground with a "thud," but she had no time to care.

Most deadly of all, in the midst of the chaotic sprint, Hermione clearly heard the "rustling" sound of scales scraping against the cold stone floor behind her—the sound was so close, like a countdown to death!

A tremendous fear gripped her, and almost instinctively, she turned her head to look back—

Swish!

A raven flew past her, its sharp claws grazing her eyes precisely, drawing blood instantly.

"what--!"

Hermione let out a scream and then painfully covered her eyes.

Hermione!

Harry instinctively tried to turn back, but Ron suddenly shoved him hard!

"Go find the professor!" Ron's shout was firm and decisive, without the slightest hesitation.

Then he abruptly stopped and turned to pounce on Hermione, who was covering her eyes and groaning in pain.

Harry felt a sharp pain in his heart, as if he had been stabbed. He forced himself to turn away and continued running frantically down the corridor.

However, the sight ahead almost drove him to despair—around the corner, a group of unsuspecting young wizards were walking towards him, chatting and laughing!

"Don't come any closer! Get out of here!!"

Harry waved his arms frantically, trying to stop them from stepping into the corridor of death.

But this warning turned into an even more deadly curse.

Several students who heard the shouts instinctively looked up, their confused gazes passing over Harry and instantly catching sight of the enormous, dark, terrifying shadow deep in the corridor—the massive body that seemed to be a manifestation of a nightmare, and the huge vertical pupils that looked like molten gold.

Time seemed to freeze for a moment.

Before a look of astonishment could even creep onto their faces, the petrified grayness had already spread mercilessly. The young wizards froze in place, transforming into one cold stone sculpture after another, each with a different pose.

wrong!

Big mistake!

Harry's heart sank into an ice cave.

He realized with despair that in such extreme fear, any sudden sound or any huge unknown entity would attract humanity's most primal instinct—to take a look!

The basilisk that lurked in the corridor, with its enormous and undeniable presence, meant the end of life with just a glance.

Chapter 90 Cremation and Burial

Harry ran frantically, his mind churning with images of the petrified man.