Leonard was in no hurry to explore the Chamber of Secrets.
The more rushed something like this was, the more likely it was to go wrong, especially since exploring the Chamber of Secrets would require help from Tom Riddle's diary.
Even though the Voldemort inside this Horcrux was still the young Tom Riddle from his early years, complete with a nose, Leonard had no intention of underestimating him. If anything, he was even more wary.
In Leonard's view, this was when Tom Riddle had truly been at the peak of his intelligence. Later on, after gaining more power and splitting his soul too many times, he had probably split his brain along with it. Everything he did in his later years gave off the unmistakable air of an idiot.
It was like a top student getting into university and then somehow getting stupider.
Faced with a potential enemy like that, Leonard was not going to reveal the slightest psychological weakness.
Like taming a hawk, he would wear Tom Riddle down slowly, circling and testing him bit by bit. "One, two, three" could just count as a bit of entertainment after studying.
Tom Riddle needed to devour souls in order to stay conscious and communicate with the outside world. Without enough soul nourishment, forget using dirty tricks to tempt others into touching him. He would not even be able to stay awake.
Inside the Room of Requirement, Leonard used a dragon-hide glove to conjure a box, placed the diary inside, then used the Philosopher's Stone to create several unconscious souls and put them in the box so they could press right up against the diary.
But because the diary was wrapped in dragon hide, the Tom Riddle inside could sense the delicious aura of those souls while being completely cut off from them, unable to eat even a bite.
Tom Riddle's diary had spent so many years in the Malfoy manor, and with how cautious Lucius Malfoy was, there was no way he would have touched it himself.
You could say the Tom Riddle inside the diary had been starving all those years. He had finally managed to eat a little soul power and wake up, only to end up in a situation where he could sense food but not actually eat it. That was enough to make anyone frantic.
That was exactly the effect Leonard wanted.
He watched the diary tremble faintly inside the box, kindly tightened the dragon-hide wrapping, and then closed the lid.
You have got so many little schemes going on. Then stay in there and starve.
...
Meanwhile, in Harris Raymons's room.
After returning to his room, the first thing Harris Raymons did was throw the object in his hand onto the table. Then he pulled a bottle of vivid green potion from his pocket and drank it in one gulp.
"I didn't expect just getting close to this Diadem would make me feel tempted." Harris Raymons took a deep breath, felt the potion take effect in his body, and finally relaxed.
It was a potion that could remove mental influence, an essential supply whenever dealing with dark magic and certain ancient books.
Wizards from the past, especially powerful dark wizards, were not kind people. The books they left behind were not necessarily meant to pass knowledge on to future generations. Some existed purely to harm others, hiding deep malice within their pages.
That was hardly surprising. Dark wizards had always included plenty of lunatics who took pleasure in slaughter, bloodshed, and torture.
Fortunately, the passage of time wore down the truly lethal power in such books, leaving behind only confusion and malice that could assault the reader's mind.
That was why Raven always prepared this kind of potion when handling such books, to avoid being harmed by the traps hidden inside.
What Harris Raymons had not expected, though, was that a Horcrux made by a modern wizard would have the same kind of effect.
"Looks like I underestimated Voldemort. He probably got quite a lot out of Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets." Harris Raymons shook his head, dispelling the drowsiness brought on by the potion, then got up and took out a glass container and a Pensieve from his suitcase.
He filled the container with an unknown potion, then dropped the Ravenclaw Diadem, now a Voldemort Horcrux, into it.
As the Horcrux sank in, the evil aura it carried actually became visible to the naked eye. As the black aura spread, the liquid gradually solidified, eventually forming a huge, unusual piece of amber.
The black aura turned into a dark band that coiled around the Diadem and spread throughout the amber.
Only then did Harris Raymons let out a breath of relief. He took out some tools, chipped off a piece of the amber containing part of the black aura, ground it into powder, and sprinkled it into the Pensieve.
The Pensieve immediately gave off a faint glow. Harris Raymons hesitated for a moment, then plunged his head into it.
Five minutes later, Harris Raymons jerked upright, gasping for breath. A faint black aura covered his face, as though he had been corroded by it.
He immediately walked to the table, picked up a silver dagger, sliced open his finger, and let a few drops of blood wrapped in black aura drip out, only stopping once the blackness on his face gradually faded away.
"Hah... looking through Voldemort's memories really isn't easy." Harris Raymons applied a little Essence of Dittany to the wound, then looked at the amber, which was bigger than his head, and sighed. "How long is this going to take?"
Harris Raymons had come to Hogwarts carrying a mission from Raven. One of those tasks had come from his teacher, Raven's Second Senator, and its target was to make contact with the Heir to Ancient Magic.
The other mission was one Harris Raymons had chosen for himself, something to handle along the way. He wanted to find Slytherin's Chamber and search for whatever remnants of Salazar Slytherin's legacy were still left behind.
Using intelligence from within Raven, Harris Raymons had found the Horcrux hidden inside Hogwarts and was trying to use it as a lead, extracting memories from it to find a way into the Chamber of Secrets.
But this method required him to examine Voldemort's memories bit by bit. With Harris Raymons's physical endurance, his daily limit was only the amount of memory contained in a single small piece of amber.
To finish viewing all the memories in this huge amber, bigger than his own head, would take at least half a year. And throughout that time, he would have to be extremely careful not to be killed by the curse Voldemort had left on the Ravenclaw Diadem.
"Maybe my luck is just really good. Maybe the next piece will happen to contain memories about the Chamber of Secrets." Harris Raymons tried to joke his way through the misery and cheer himself up.
The real reason Harris Raymons had gone out of his way to take on this extra task was the warning his teacher had given him.
The curse on the position of Hogwarts Defense Against the Dark Arts professor was not something Harris Raymons wanted to die to in such a ridiculous way.
So even if it were not for Raven, for his own sake alone, Harris Raymons still had to take a trip through the Chamber of Secrets first and see whether he could find anything related to that curse.
Deep down, Harris Raymons did not really believe the curse had the power to kill him.
But... what if it did?
His teacher had said it himself. That curse had gone on a killing spree. It had not even spared Voldemort.