Chapter 164 - A Visit to the Chamber! (Patreon)

{Dumbledore's Office, Hogwarts}

{31th Oct 1991} 

{Rigel's POV}

...

"So what happened? I just woke up and was whisked away by the headmaster?" I enquired. He directed the question at Amelia, who was most likely to be in my corner. 

"Well..." She hesitated. Her eyes met with Fudge, who shrugged. "We are not quite sure ourselves. And Dumbledore, instead of answering our questions, vanished." Her statement ended with a glare punctured toward Dumbledore.

I turned to Dumbledore with a questioning look. The old man rubbed his beard and sighed, "It was late last night. It started with the dementers attack. They all tried to rush the school grounds, so I led the other teachers to stop their advances."

"The Dementers?" Fudge asked, confused. He could already see that this point likely needed to be... fudged out of the official story so that he wouldn't get any heat over the incident. 

"Wait, now that I think about it, why are they still patrolling Hogwarts with Sirius exonerated or something like that?" I asked. My question drew an enquiring look toward the minister, who didn't like the attention.

"We needed to keep the facade of a hunt until the trials. Today, my first order of business would be to call off their search permits and send them back to Azkaban," Fudge explained with a straight face. There was no hint of embarrassment on his face for the blatant lie. I was pretty sure that he had forgotten about the dementers entirely.

"...As I was saying. I and the rest of the professors rushed to stop them. At the same time, I put the school in lockdown and locked down the entrances to the common rooms so that no students wandered around. A few students were outside during the curfew, and while Minerva dealt with the ones closer to the Gryffindor common room, I went after those closer to the dungeons." Dumbledore continued his explanation of the events of last night.

"It was then that I felt the chamber open through the wards I had placed around it. Some dark creature was then detected through the Hogwarts wards, and I rushed to stop it. Unfortunately, the entrance to the chamber and its neighboring corridors are usually deserted, making it the perfect spot for nightly trysts. I was too late to save Mr. Flint and Miss. Hoyt." Albus finished his little tale. I could feel his mana turn a shade darker. The frequency of its pulsations clearly told me that he was in an agitated state. 

My senses were trained on this phenomenon. With Albus having so much mana that he was literally a light bulb to my mana sense, the change in emotions could be seen a little more easily. A blue window appeared in front of me, telling me that my skill had leveled up, although it had been a while since my Mana sense had seen an increment.

...

[Skill 'Archaic Mana Sense' leveled up to level 5]

...

All of a sudden, my sixth sense's worldview shifted. Everyone's light became a lot sharper. Like a film of oil had been removed from my eyes, my sense of mana was definitely better, plus it had a hint of something else mixed in with it. It was an extra layer, like emotions, but something that I hadn't felt before. Though I didn't know what it was, it would take some experimenting to figure out what these new sensations meant. 

"...you are saying the Chamber of Secrets was opened, which is just a myth. That Salazar Slytherin had left behind a Basilik hidden underneath Hogwarts?" Fudge asked, his emotions going wild, and I couldn't decipher them right now. But the excitement was plainly written on his face, though the feeling I could attribute it to remained to be seen.

"Yes, the chamber was opened last night to let the Basilisk out. I had several precautions and preventive measures in place. The timing of the Demeter assault made several of them obsolete and distracted me enough that it took me a couple of minutes to reach the entrance." Albus sighed and held up his hand. Stopping further questions and pointing toward me.

"That's why I wanted Rigel to be here. He's the only one who can access the chamber to show you that the threat to the students' safety has been killed." Dumbledore threw me under the bus straight away. I could feel several gazes turn to me.

"Well... who's up for a secret visit to the Chamber of Secrets?" I asked. After that, the proceedings began to blur together as I focused on understanding my newly evolved mana senses. Many people displayed similar reactions and emotions, which I quickly attributed to curiosity. However, that ranged from devoted excitement in the cases of Lucius Malfoy and Narcissa to almost disinterest in Amelia's case.

'I wonder if I can use the existence of the chamber and its existence to bang a couple of sixth and seventh years. Other than Evelyn, a couple of pretty ones are still left in Slytherin.' 

My interest and curiosity quickly changed to disbelief as we stood before Myrtle's bathroom door. Other than Dumbledore, everyone else looked at the doors with varied emotions.

"The entrance to the fabled chamber of secrets is in the girl's toilet?" Lucius finally broke the silence, his words and the sneer on his face revealing his incredulity at the situation.

"Yup, you know the ghost that haunts this bathroom?" I asked as I pushed the doors open. 

"Yeah, Myrtle Warren, a girl who died here around 50 years ago," Amelia replied. Her eyes scanned the place, searching for the aforementioned ghost.

"Yes, Myrtle, unfortunately, was the last victim of the Basilisk." I continued as I walked over to the center of the room. I remember which sink it was from the last time I arrived here so I simply walked over to it and spoke, "~Open~"

The whole sink started collapsing on itself and quickly transformed into a hole that led straight down at a slant. "~Stairs~" I tried, but the entrance didn't budge. Apparently, it wasn't a multipurpose command, and the entrance was less flexible than I had hoped it was.

I turn back to see the look on everyone's face at the now revealed chamber and their reactions to me using parsletongue. My eyes scanned Narcissa's flushed face for a moment.

'Yeah, I'm gonna say that's arousal.'

...