Who let this Dementor into Hogwarts!

Chapter 146 It’s too late to explain!

"I just like to eat field mice," the Count protested, "I don't like raw field mice! Where can I steal dozens of them for you?"

"Then let's start with twenty." Cohen lowered his requirements.

"Why not buy it?" the count said earnestly, "You have so much money! A few mice won't make you bankrupt..."

"good idea……"

Cohen nodded and pulled a small stack of silver Sickles from his pocket.
"You should be able to buy more efficiently than you can catch, so take this change and go buy it."

"I knew you... Wait a minute—you gave up on me catching voles for you just because of efficiency issues, right?" The count said dejectedly, "You don't like me anymore, you have a new little basilisk to like..."

"What are you talking about?"

Cohen rubbed the earl's head.

"I never liked you at all."

If the Room of Requirement had life, it certainly had never seen an owl and a Dementor fighting.

In the end, Cohen won because the Count didn't dare to use his claws and mouth to break Cohen's skin and let the liquid curse get on him, so he just flapped his wings and patted Cohen's face.

After the Count took his purse to buy the mouse, Cohen packed his schoolbag and prepared to go to class.

His and Voldemort's previous plan of "framing Harry first and then killing him" might not go so smoothly, because Harry now always moves around in crowded places, and since he no longer needs to secretly study Polyjuice Potion with Ron and Hermione (because Cohen directly provided a channel to buy Polyjuice Potion), he now violates school rules less frequently.

Harry actually didn't break the school rules? How could I have such a dream...

"Ten points from Gryffindor."

In the afternoon Potions class, Snape said coldly,
"Because you wasted the potion ingredients, Mr. Potter."

Snape's "Mr. Potter" was forced out from between his teeth, and it sounded like Harry had done something unethical.

After class, Harry was extremely resentful.

"What does it mean to 'not waste materials'?" Harry said viciously. "Should I vomit a pot of confusion potion out of my stomach?"

"He'd have docked you 50 points for 'disgusting behavior in class,'" Cohen said. "Be happy. Classes are limited. At least he only docked you 10 points this time."

"This isn't the first or second time Snape has done this." Hermione nodded. "Let me tell you some good news. I already have some ideas about the monster in the Chamber of Secrets."

"What?!" Harry and Ron said in unison.

"What?" Cohen also pretended to be dumb, "Am I finally going to know what that perverted creature that crawled into my bed is?"

"Come with me." Hermione led the three of them towards the fifth floor, which was the direction of the library. "But you may have to borrow the books, because my loan quota for this week is full."

"But today is Monday!" Ron's eyes widened.

"It's Monday afternoon," Hermione corrected. "I checked out seven books this morning, and I haven't finished them yet, Ron. If I send them back, there's a good chance someone else will have them, and I'll have to wait another week."

"I'm guessing your next sentence will be 'Finals are only four months away,'" Cohen said wisely.

"Less than four months," said Hermione.

The task of borrowing the books was given to Cohen because Cohen "really wanted to study the creature that crawled onto his bed" - but in fact this was just Cohen's preparation for public opinion for his advance research on glasses that "prevented the basilisk's gaze from killing people."

Legendary Monsters and Their Characteristics

Cohen successfully borrowed the book, because there had been no fourth attack for a long time and the students had no idea what the monster was.

They arrived at an empty classroom, and Cohen slammed the heavy, old books onto the table.

"Pages 177 and 327." Hermione even remembered the page numbers clearly. "I think these are the two most likely creatures—or perhaps not particularly likely, because one of them is so big that I don't think it could fit into the boys' dormitory."

"Big?" Ron raised his eyebrows. "A troll?"

"Then the victim would be reduced to pulp instead of a vegetable, Ron," said Harry.

"Page one hundred and seventy-seven..."

Cohen turned to the corresponding page.

"Gorgon? (Gorgon)"

"The three Gorgons, the Gorgon, Sissiana, Euryale, and Medusa," Hermione said. "Among them, Medusa is the one that cannot grow. Anyone who looks at her turns to stone."

"Although those people were 'petrified', they didn't seem to turn into real stone..." said Harry.

"And if a girl who can't grow up crawled into my bed, I think I could tell," Cohen said. "I'd think she'd be a greasy male covered in scales."

"It's not some 'girl who never grows up'." Hermione shook her head. "Gorgons are all huge. Even Medusa is at least ten feet tall. You can compare it with Hagrid." "I'm stunned." Ron said.

"Stop filling my head with weird images!" Cohen screamed. "You weren't the ones who got crawled into!"

"I'm most suspicious of this, but it's most likely in Egypt or Africa. There have been reports of Gorgon sightings in newspapers before," Hermione said. "And the monster in the Chamber of Secrets should have been in the school for at least a thousand years."

"The next one is page 327, right?" Cohen turned the page according to the page number Hermione had mentioned before. "Basilisk."

Not very realistic.

Cohen thought the illustrations were a bit too aggressive and didn't quite fit Sissoko's slacker image.

"The basilisk, also known as the snake king," Hermione said, pointing to the content in the book. "This snake can grow to a very large size and usually lives for hundreds of years. It is hatched from a rooster's egg by a toad."

"The way a basilisk kills..." Harry searched for the spot Hermione pointed at. "In addition to its deadly fangs, its stare can also kill people - but no one has died here, and we can't possibly deal with a basilisk that will kill with just one look..."

"Because the victims never met their attackers' eyes, death is reduced to petrification, much like Medusa's," Hermione said cleverly. "Remember? When Filch's cat was killed, the floor beneath it was all water—it must have seen the basilisk through the water. And Filch, when Coin and I found him, he was facing the mirror with an expression as if he had seen a ghost—"

"Colin!" Harry said suddenly, raising his voice. "Yes—it all fits together—Colin was holding the camera—and the film is melting!"

"A big ugly snake crawling around the school..." Ron shuddered.

“It’s actually quite pretty.”

Cohen corrected Ron's misconception.

"It's smoother than Norbert—if it doesn't kill people, of course."

"The noises Harry and Coin heard were in the walls," said Hermione. "Guess what's in the walls of Hogwarts?"

"Bricks?" Ron asked.

"It's the pipe..." Hermione was a little helpless about Ron's slowness. "Why do you always get the wrong answer?"

"Because it will make you very happy." Ron suddenly realized:

"You always have the right answer."

Hermione said nothing, but looked at Ron in surprise.

"I mean, when you're happy you'll give us homework to copy." Ron's next sentence still came out.

"..."

Hermione shook her head in disappointment and returned to the topic.

"Think about it, it was left in the Chamber of Secrets by Salazar Slytherin. The Chamber of Secrets must be underground in Hogwarts, and underground is where all the pipes of Hogwarts converge, so the basilisk can appear in various places in Hogwarts. Besides, Cohen's owl helped me get "Hogwarts: A History" from home. The book mentioned that Slytherin was the most famous Parseltongue."

"What snake?" asked Harry.

"Parseltongue," Hermione explained. "Someone who can talk to snakes. That's how Slytherin can control the Basilisk—the Basilisk fits the description of the Chamber of Secrets monster almost perfectly, and it can squeeze into the Gryffindor dormitory."

"I can talk to snakes too..." Harry suddenly thought. "I once talked to a snake at the zoo, and it said it had never been to Brazil..."

"Me too," Cohen said. "I just adopted a little snake—could that be why we can hear things in the walls?"

"That makes more sense," Hermione nodded. "But I've read in books that Parseltongues should be rare—why are half of us Parseltongues?"

"Maybe the book is out of date," Harry guessed.

"Then why would it go after Cohen?" Ron said. "I mean, if it's already in the dorm, it should eat us all, right?"

“Maybe I just have a strong attraction to magical creatures,” Cohen said. “First it was Norbert and the unicorns, then the Thestrals, and now there’s a basilisk.”

"You should be thankful that you turned off the lights that day," Hermione said fearfully, "If you had seen its eyes then..."

"We need to go tell Professor Dumbledore," said Harry. "Can he handle the Basilisk?"

"Dumbledore kills nine basilisks a second, if he knows where they're hiding."
-
Dumbledore obviously didn't know where the basilisk was hiding, otherwise he would have killed the old basilisk long ago.

However, Harry still hurriedly took the three of them to the headmaster's office and told Dumbledore about the information.

Dumbledore cast a gratified look at Cohen - he thought that Cohen had told his friend the secret of the basilisk, and that he had sacrificed his own family for the sake of justice.

But things were not as simple as Dumbledore thought. That night, Voldemort also happened to come to find Cohen.

"The basilisk has awakened." Voldemort emerged from another book that was sent to him.

"You're awake now, no time to explain to you," Cohen said. "Let's freeze our hands!"

(End of this chapter)