Chapter 185. Memory Phial
Everyone had just left Wesson's office.
"Hun…gry… hun…"
That familiar voice began echoing in Harry's mind again.
Yet, strangely, the information the Basilisk conveyed was unusually simple: hunger.
Perhaps the Basilisk really was starving.
Let's hope wizards aren't on the Basilisk's menu….
As they walked along the corridor, Harry tried to pinpoint the Basilisk's location from the broken, intermittent sounds.
To be honest, it was difficult. The voice seemed to sound directly inside his skull, and he couldn't clearly tell where it was coming from.
As they passed a door, Harry suddenly stopped.
Ron and Hermione almost ran into him.
They looked at the door in confusion and realised it was Gilderoy Lockhart's office.
"What's wrong with you?" Ron tugged Harry's sleeve and murmured, "Aren't we going to alert Professor McGonagall?"
Harry didn't answer. He was fully focused.
The Basilisk's voice seemed… to be coming from this direction.
He stepped forward and pushed lightly at Lockhart's office door.
"Creak—"
The wooden door swung open.
Hermione and Ron looked at each other.
"We've got to go in and have a look," Harry said gravely to Ron and Hermione. "Take out your wands."
Ron and Hermione did as told and slipped into Lockhart's office with Harry.
The office was pitch-black; only a little moonlight seeped through the gap in the curtains to give the faintest glow.
By that dim light, Harry looked around. The layout was the same as the last time he'd been here, except there seemed to be even more portraits of Lockhart on the surrounding walls.
"How vain can this bloke be…" Ron muttered under his breath.
It was hard to see why he'd want to hang so many portraits of himself on the walls.
Harry tried to imagine it: if his dormitory were covered with portraits of Harry Potter, he'd certainly have nightmares. At the moment, the Lockharts in the portraits all wore similar golden pyjamas, reclining in chairs or on sofas with their eyes closed, resting.
However, the portraits weren't important.
Harry stared tensely at the surroundings.
The voice he'd just heard seemed to have come from here.
Yet, after carefully checking every corner of the office, they found nothing.
"What are we even doing?" Ron whispered cautiously to Harry. "If Lockhart suddenly comes back and finds we've broken into his office…"
At that moment—
"Oh!"
Hermione's voice came from the side.
Harry and Ron looked over at once to see her fumbling to catch a portrait that had nearly fallen.
"What are you doing?" Harry asked her in a low voice.
"I accidentally knocked it and it fell," Hermione explained, a little embarrassed. "We've got to hang it back. Keep it down—we don't want to wake the portraits."
Harry was about to wonder how Hermione could be so clumsy when Ron suddenly spoke.
"Wait!"
He tilted his head back, pointing above Hermione.
Behind the patch of wall where the portrait had hung, there was a hidden compartment.
Inside the compartment were several transparent phials, and within each phial faint white light flickered—slightly conspicuous in the dark.
Harry waved his wand and murmured a spell, and one of the phials floated into his hand.
He peered closely. Inside were strands of silvery-white substance, flowing elegantly within the glass like spider-silk pulled by invisible fingers—sometimes tangling, sometimes unfurling.
Beautiful…
That was his first thought.
"What is that?" Ron, by habit, looked to Hermione.
When encountering unfamiliar things, asking Hermione was rarely wrong.
Hermione stared at the white stuff for a few seconds, then slowly shook her head. "Maybe I can look it up in the library tomorrow."
Although Harry didn't know what it was, he felt certain it must be very important.
Just then, footsteps sounded outside the door.
They weren't loud, but in the quiet night they stood out sharply.
"—!"
Harry immediately stuffed the phial into his pocket, threw the Invisibility Cloak over them all—he'd had it ready for ages—while Hermione gently hung the portrait back in its original place.
The footsteps gradually receded and didn't enter the office.
They all breathed a sigh of relief.
When the footsteps had completely faded, Harry said, "It might be a professor. Let's follow and take a look."
The three of them, under the Invisibility Cloak, left Lockhart's office.
Following the direction the steps had gone, they saw Professor McGonagall on patrol.
"Professor McGonagall!" Harry suddenly whisked aside the Invisibility Cloak behind her.
Professor McGonagall seemed startled and turned at once.
When she saw it was the three of them, her face tightened at once.
"What are you doing here?" She looked rather angry.
Whatever the reason, three young witches and wizards appearing in the corridor at this hour was simply improper.
As quickly as he could, Harry explained why they were there—he had heard the Basilisk's voice.
Knowing about Harry's Parseltongue, Professor McGonagall's expression turned grave at once.
"Mr Potter," Professor McGonagall said sternly, a trace of concern in her voice, "patrolling is not a task for students. Return to your dormitory at once."
"But—"
Harry, anxious, wanted to say more.
"Enough!" Professor McGonagall cut him off, her voice sharp. "This is the professors' responsibility. If you truly heard something, you should more than ever return immediately to someplace safe."
Hermione tugged Harry's sleeve and whispered, "Professor McGonagall is right, Harry. We should go back."
She had no wish to make Professor McGonagall angry.
Escorted by Professor McGonagall, they returned to the Gryffindor common room.
Harry had wanted to guide Professor McGonagall by the sound, but—just his luck—the hoarse voice no longer appeared in his mind.
All night long, he worried whether a few petrified figures would show up in the corridor come morning.
At last dawn broke. Harry had barely slept all night, and judging by the dark circles under Ron's eyes, he hadn't fared much better.
When they arrived at the Great Hall, hearts in their mouths, they found nearly half the professors present.
They all looked exhausted.
They had patrolled all through the night.
Just as breakfast was drawing to a close, Hermione arrived late.
"I finally know what that thing is!" she said excitedly the moment she sat down. "I thought about it all night, and I've just been to the library."
"What?" Harry looked puzzled. "What are you talking about?"
"The phial," Hermione looked at him and said helplessly, "give it to me."
Only then did Harry remember that, in last night's panic, he had taken from Lockhart's office a small phial containing an unknown white substance.
That phial was still in his pocket.
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