"Merlin, no!" Harry responded, "Whoever is doing it is smart enough to evade me. Longbottom doesn't have a subtle bone in his body."
"Then do you think that he's a descendant of Slytherin or something?" Crabbe asked.
"Probably not. The only reason I jumped immediately at him being a Parselmouth was because the Dark Lord was a Parselmouth. Not much is known about how Longbottom escaped the killing curse and while there are many theories, a lot of wild and raw magic was expelled that night, at least according to the Unspeakable report that was leaked to the public. It is possible that somehow the Dark Lord's magic made an imprint of sorts with Longbottom, giving him the ability to speak Parseltongue. It's far more likely than him having a magical ancestry that was hidden for centuries, while it could have been providing a lot of prestige for the family. You have to remember that before Voldemort, Parseltongue was mostly known for its rumoured healing abilities, not the weapon of terror that the Dark Lord used to his advantage."
"Yeah, but is the fact that Longbottom can speak Parseltongue mean anything when it comes to the Chamber of Secrets?" Millicent asked.
Harry shrugged, "Of course, it does, the fact that Longbottom is speaking Parseltongue correlates with the fact that I heard a few paintings say that he was following a voice to Filch's body, one that no one else could hear. Slytherin was a proud and poetic being, he would only have some kind of snake as his ultimate weapon. So, I theorized that Longbottom was a parselmouth. So, that narrowed the list of beasts into reptiles that are extremely long-lived. Looking at how the petrified bodies looked, the behavioural pattern of spiders recently, and a lot of little things, finding the beast's nature is elementary. Of course, Slytherin could have just created an entire creature just to become his ultimate weapon, but the clues are too much."
"So, what is it?" Goyle asked with an annoyed voice.
"Now, that would be me stopping you from the sense of accomplishment of finding it yourselves. Consider it a test of sorts," Harry answered with an infuriating smile on his face.
They were all obviously angry at Harry's dismissal, so he continued, "I have to admit that I can see why Dumbledore is keeping this quiet. I can see the school closing down, and him being fired if it was revealed to the public, especially since he knew about it for decades and did nothing to stop it. I can't say I would be disappointed, he's objectively the worst headmaster this school has ever had."
"You're wrong!" Crabbe exclaimed.
Damn, those kids were too easy. The Potter scion simply shrugged, "Political agenda aside, Dumbledore took out the most books from the library. Ever since his appointment, over five magical courses, were removed, over a dozen clubs were cancelled, and magical research became at an all-time low. Hogwarts graduates literally need retraining whenever they get into any kind of technical apprenticeship and a few guilds literally just reject applicants from the school automatically since our curriculum is too limited. He also has two other full-time positions on top of being headmaster, so that takes up a lot of his time."
The three imposters looked at each other hesitantly, "But he's the most powerful wizard in the world."
"I don't care about who he is. I care about the school and my education. In the unlikely event, he doesn't know what the beast is, then people would have severely overestimated his intelligence and extensive magical knowledge, but, well, that's absurd. Because if a student with less than two years of magical education can find out what it is, then he should know. So, that means that he has to know. I can only hope that he actually starts taking action against the heir, because if the monster is what I think it is, then we could all die with a single attack. The only reason this hasn't made national news is because it's just normal petrification, which can be easily remedied with a Mandrake Draught. If it was a curse or something unknown, the ministry would have been all over this."
Crabbe leaned it, "So, do you have an idea who is responsible for all of this?"
"The question is not who," Harry said, "The question is how… The key to this mystery lies in the past. To know who is responsible for the attacks today, you need to find out who was responsible the last time the chamber was opened, fifty years ago."
Crabbe's eyes widened when Harry essentially quoted Dumbledore from the stories. Longbottom must have heard it as Harry's counterpart did in the books. Deciding to excuse himself, the Potter scion spoke up, "Well, I'm kinda sweaty and need a shower. I spent two hours sparring with Daphne, you see. It's nice to see you, Milly, Greg, and Vince. Don't hesitate to come back if you have any other questions."
Well, that was fun, but everything must come to an end. He had to say that his little mission was somewhat successful. He had diverted the trio's attention with a lecture that they didn't need about the founders, taught them a lesson about the fact that Slytherin wasn't some racist asshole, and shook their faith in Dumbledore's leadership since he knew what the beast was for decades, and didn't do anything about it.
But that wasn't the cherry on top. What was the fact that the moment the three impostors turned to speak with Malfoy, Harry sneakily cast a modified revealing charm that would only work after he activates it manually? It was easy to use arithmancy to incorporate a feature like that was extracted in many curses.
This was going to cause trouble for Dumbledore immensely. There are wards around all the common rooms. Only someone sorted in Slytherin could enter the Slytherin common room. They would need to permission of the head of house or the headmaster otherwise. Dumbledore must have disabled the wards or given them access without anyone knowing, and the heads of houses were going to ask him a lot of questions about it.
Harry, then, pretended to walk up the stairs and put on his cloak of invisibility to watch the fallout and waited until they looked like they were going to leave and activated the curse. A few seconds later, while the three Gryffindors were talking to Malfoy, their features immediately reverted back to normal.
The common room stood silent before it exploded into noise. In a fraction of a second, the golden trio were unconscious on the ground and Professor Snape was called by one of the prefects.
Well, that was fun.
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