In This Hogwarts Without a Savior

Hermione came to the girls' bathroom for the second time.

She had searched all the suspicious locations on the entire first floor, but still found nothing, which made her wonder if she had missed something.

So, she started her second search from scratch, and now she came to the public girls' bathroom.

Hermione was actually no stranger to this place.

When she was still a "slave" in this castle, her main job was to clean this place. So during the first inspection, compared to the meeting hall and storage room that she had never entered before, The bathroom was undoubtedly very familiar to her.

But even so, she was not careless during the first inspection and carefully checked every corner of the bathroom.

And this second time, Hermione was more careful than before. She didn't even miss the details in the cracks of the bricks and the patterns on the faucets.

Finally, this time she gained something she had never experienced before.

A tiny snake is uniquely carved on one side of a copper faucet that never produces water.

After seeing this, Hermione's face suddenly showed an expression of joy. She hugged Fox tightly in her arms with some excitement, then tightened the invisibility cloak, opened the Marauder's Map and observed the people nearby again.

It is now less than ten minutes before the last class ends, and some students near the first floor who do not have classes in the afternoon have come down early to go to the auditorium for dinner.

If the faucet she found was really the entrance to the secret room that Dumbledore asked her to help find, then if any students came to the bathroom after opening it, Hermione would definitely be exposed.

So Hermione did not take the next step, but slowly retreated from the bathroom, then found a storage room used by the castle administrator to discard debris, and hid in it.

Now that she has roughly determined the specific target, she no longer has to take the risk of searching from room to room. The public use of the girls' bathroom also gives her a lot of cover.

She just had to wait patiently until dark and the curfew started, and pay attention to the Aurors patrolling the castle before trying to open the secret room.

In this way, Hermione waited patiently in the corner of the storage room. At dinner time, the footsteps outside obviously began to become denser. She shrank her head even more cautiously, even afraid that the invisibility cloak would accidentally slip off her body and cause her to fall. Standing on her shoulder, the fox exposed its brightly colored feathers and thus caught the attention of the students outside through the window, and she made a point of holding it in her arms.

Perhaps because his breathing became difficult, Fox pecked the back of Hermione's hand with his sharp beak with some dissatisfaction, but did not make any rebellious move.

She just waited quietly until it got completely dark, until the curfew started at nine o'clock at night.

Fawkes was nestled in her arms, as if asleep. Hermione herself was probably nervous, so even though she hadn't eaten dinner, she didn't feel much hunger.

During this period of time, she did not take her eyes off the Marauder's Map for more than three minutes.

She saw fewer and fewer students wandering around in the castle, until after the curfew started, they all returned to their respective lounges. She also saw the hemp students after dinner, just like her life here before, It was sealed into the basement early.

Similarly, after the curfew was imposed on the students, more Aurors began to pour into Hogwarts.

They came in together through the gate at around eight o'clock in the evening. It seemed that they apparated to Hogsmeade first, and then walked to the school.

Including the manpower that had been left in the castle before, the number of Aurors guarding the castle reached seventeen.

This was not much different from when Hermione had just gotten the Marauder's Map and observed the number of patrols under curfew in the castle.

There are seventeen Aurors, two of whom are mainly responsible for guarding the gate of Hogwarts, two who guard the gate of the castle, one who is dedicated to keeping an eye on the direction of the Hogwarts carriage from a high position in the Astronomy Tower, and the remaining twelve. Individuals are all patrolling around the castle.

They were divided into a team of two people and a team of six, each responsible for different areas. The team responsible for the area where the girls' bathroom is located on the first floor would take at least more than 20 minutes to patrol back and forth from this place. This was enough time for Hermione to try to open the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets.

As long as the patrolling Aurors are not disturbed during the period of time when the secret room may be opened, it will be much safer to enter the secret room afterwards.

Of course, these Aurors would not search every room, not even the women's bathroom.

Hermione did not choose to wait too long. She stared at the Marauder's Map and after confirming that the two Aurors patrolling the first floor had reached the other side of the castle, she was ready to take action.

However, when she had not just grabbed the Marauder's Map in her hand and led Fox out of the storage room, in a place where a bunch of names were gathered, one name suddenly escaped from the place where he should have been.

Hermione was stunned by the name's behavior.

She really didn't expect that under such strict curfew control in Hogwarts Castle, someone would dare to violate school rules!

The man seemed to be familiar with the Auror patrol rules at night. He easily found a suitable place and walked all the way to the fourth floor of the castle.

Hermione watched him arrive at a remote corner of the corridor on the fourth floor, and then climbed into a secret passage.

That secret passage was once one of her reference targets when she chose to sneak into Hogwarts Castle, but it was abandoned because it was too dangerous. Now, as expected, it has been discovered and used by someone.

Hermione watched him crawl forward bit by bit in the secret passage, until he completely climbed out of the edge of the Marauder's Map and disappeared within the scope of the entire Hogwarts school, and then looked up from the map again.

This discovery made Hermione feel a little weird.

Before, she had always thought that these people in this castle only needed to eat and drink well and be the masters. There was no need to take risks and break the rules. Unexpectedly, she found an alien tonight.

But this incident can only be a small episode for her. She has not forgotten that she has a mission.

In the storage room, she waited for the time difference between a repeat Auror patrol, and then, wearing an invisibility cloak, she took Fox to the girls' bathroom that she had discovered during the day.

Pulling out her wand and using the weakest wand illuminating spell she could control, she soon found the faucet engraved with the snake's mark.

"Ahem."

Hermione cleared her throat nervously, and then let out an unpleasant "hissing" sound from her mouth.

Of course, she didn't know this voice by herself, but after practicing with the portrait in Principal Dumbledore's office for an entire afternoon, she barely mastered it.

But I don't know whether it was because her pronunciation was not standard enough or because of something else, but there was no abnormality in the entire bathroom.

It was as if Hermione had just performed a snake-sounding performance without an audience. After it was over, there was only silence in response to her.

This made Hermione frown. She tried to adjust her tone and pronunciation, and tried the snake language again at the faucet, but in the end she still didn't get any response.

After that, she tried many times, but always failed.

Finally, Hermione finally confirmed that it was definitely not a problem with her pronunciation. Either she was looking in the wrong place, or the password to enter the secret room had been changed!

After coming to this conclusion, although Hermione felt a sense of frustration in her heart, she did not continue to linger in the bathroom.

She carefully controlled her steps, observing the movements of the patrolling Aurors on the Marauder's Map, and soon arrived at the fourth floor of the castle. Then she got into the entrance of the secret passage behind the mirror, and used phantom movement in the secret passage. Form, Fox took him back to the carriage.

After returning to her room, Hermione sat on the bed, first took two deep breaths, and then without stopping for a moment, she took Fawkes directly out of her dormitory and went to Dumbledore's principal's office.

This place looks like the grave of an entire group of Acromantulas, or it would be more appropriate to call it a mass grave.

There were corpses of spiders everywhere in the pit, and not all of them were whole corpses, almost all of them had been dismembered.

The valuable internal organs, venom, and silk sacs have all been dug out of these spiders, and now only the useless trunks and ugly skins are left.

They must have been dead for some time. Jon looked at the spider leg closest to his feet. There were already many small holes made by insects on it, and the surface was also dried and crusted, just like the snow in winter. Like dead branches.

From the spider corpses here, Jon could probably tell what the Acromantulas who originally lived here had gone through.

They themselves are not magical animals that are beneficial to wizards, and the venom and part of their body tissues are very useful, so Voldemort or someone high up in the castle ordered a massacre of them here.

Kill all the Acromantulas, take away the useful parts, and throw away the useless ones, and it will become a mass grave like this.

Although Jon was shocked when he saw the scene in front of him, he didn't feel much regret for Hagrid in his heart. After all, judging from what these Acromantulas did in the original book, they were in Hogwart under Voldemort's control. It can only be said that Ci became like this because of his bad luck. He met someone who was so cruel that even hemp wizards didn't treat him as human beings, let alone them.

Walking around the large pit filled with spider corpses, Jon carefully identified and searched for it.

The rest didn't matter, but even if Aragog died, he was sure that its body was here so that he could go back and explain to Hagrid.

Hoss followed Jon uneasily. Even though Jon didn't pick at the side of its neck, it didn't run around happily. It didn't seem to like this place.

Thinking about it, it is indeed true. As the home of the Acromantula, there are huge spider webs everywhere. No matter how fast Hoth's racial talent allows him to run, as long as he is trapped in the spider web, it will be difficult to survive. There is a high probability that it will become a meal for a few spiders.

Jon observed a large circle around the large pit, and finally found a corpse among the spider corpses that was much larger than the other spiders.

It is obvious that even a normal Acromantula does not have a physique that can be grown casually, and most of its body parts are still intact, except for the venom. It is obvious that the spider-killing wizard dislikes it for being too big. As we get older, the organs in our body have begun to fail and become necrotic, and there is no way we can have any more value.

Jon looked at Aragog's broken body from a distance, and he could already imagine how sad Hagrid would be when he learned the news.

But after learning that it was indeed dead, Jon had no intention of staying here for long. He led Hoss out of the spider graveyard, returned to the dense woods, and turned over to ride on it.

The sun was just setting in the west now, and it seemed that it would be a long time before it completely set. Jon patted Hoss's bald head.

"Besides Aragog, do you know the other two? I remember Hagrid told me that Parson is a centaur, and you are also a horse. You, uh, shouldn't be unfamiliar with them, right?"

By the end of these words, even Jon himself felt a little unconfident.

Based on the nature of this perverted donkey, it might really be able to harass the little girl among the horse people, even if the horse people always want to kill it.

But after hearing Jon's question, Hoss became obviously excited. He jumped up on his front hooves and yelled twice, as if to promise something to Jon. Then he turned into wind and began to shuttle through the Forbidden Forest.

Soon, it crossed a long distance and brought Jon to an abandoned tribe.

It can be seen at a glance that this is the camp where the centaurs lived in the past, but now it is in dilapidated condition. Most of the wooden houses have collapsed to the ground, and some buildings still have signs of being burned, leaving only a piece of land that has been almost buried by the years. Burnt.

After seeing the scene here, Jon finally began to feel heavy.

Unlike Acromantulas, although centaurs have always been classified as magical animals by wizards, they are a group of races that are as intelligent as humans. They can usually get along well with wizards, such as The Ministry of Magic has always maintained a centaur liaison office.

But with the current situation, even if their situation is better than that of the Acromantula, they will not be in a good situation.