After his conversation with Myrtle, Adrian was standing in the echoing silence of the abandoned bathroom, having gained frustratingly little useful information from the encounter.

The young ghost's fragile and hypersensitive nature had made her have deeply neurotic tendencies and getting clear information from her was nearly impossible.

Throughout their brief conversation, Myrtle gone off into unrelated complaints and nonsensical observations. The topic would quickly drift away from the main point.

One moment she would be describing mysterious sounds in the pipes, the next she would launch into a tearful monologue about how the other ghosts avoided her at Nearly Headless Nick's parties.

The conversation had reached its end when Myrtle, looking offended by something in Adrian's tone or expression, fled into one of the bathroom stalls shut the door, and refused to come out.

Adrian waited several minutes outside the locked stall, listening to the muffled sounds of sobbing echoing from within, but he couldn't coax her out. He made a mental note to return when she had sufficient time to calm her emotions, though he had little hope that their future conversation would be more productive than this first attempt.

With Myrtle temporarily unwilling to talk, Adrian turned his attention to the bathroom, beginning examining every faucet here.

He remembered that the entrance to the Chamber was marked by a special faucet. Finally, he found a brass faucet in the corner with a small snake carved on its side.

Adrian crouched down, carefully examining this special faucet.

The faucet appeared to have been unused for many years, and no water could flow from it.

This had to be the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets.

However, although he had found the entrance, Adrian couldn't speak Parseltongue, so naturally he couldn't open the Chamber's entrance.

Of course, even if he could enter the Chamber, it probably wouldn't serve much purpose. It might even alert the culprit and make them more cautious.

This was something Adrian didn't want to see happen.

His primary goal at the moment was to find whoever had released the basilisk, not to deal with the creature itself.

With this thinking in mind, Adrian began trying an alternative approach to the problem—one that would allow him to monitor the Chamber's entrance without alerting its user.

From his robes, he took out a Chomping Cabbage to serve as a monitor.

[Species: Chomping Cabbage]

[Trait: Parasitic]

After casting a shrinking spell on the Chomping Cabbage, Adrian placed it in a crevice near the faucet.

"Listen very carefully," Adrian whispered to the miniaturized Chomping Cabbage. "Your mission is to maintain constant surveillance of this area. If someone makes strange sounds near this faucet or approaches it, secretly hide on their body."

The Chomping Cabbage swayed its body to show it understood.

After completing these arrangements, Adrian took one final look around the bathroom.

During his survey, he was mildly surprised to discover that Myrtle had somehow emerged from her self-imposed exile in the toilet stall. She was now hovering on the edge of one of the washbasins, her translucent body swinging its legs back and forth like a melancholy child as she observed his activities with curiosity.

"What exactly are you doing, Professor?" She asked.

"Just implementing some protective measures," Adrian replied tactfully, giving her a reassuring smile.

Myrtle tilted her head in confusion and suddenly began sobbing again.

Adrian could only shake his head helplessly and leave the bathroom.

That's just how Myrtle was as a ghost—after becoming a spirit, her desire to cry seemed infinitely amplified.

Despite her difficult personality, Adrian felt great sympathy for Myrtle.

She was just an innocent victim.

It was precisely because the basilisk had killed Myrtle that Voldemort had been able to successfully create his first Horcrux.

It was truly... infuriating.

What kind of person could so cruelly take the life of another completely unrelated person?

Adrian couldn't understand it.

He didn't want to understand it either.

After placing the Chomping Cabbage in its surveillance position, Adrian established a routine of checking on his miniature spy every few days, always timing his visits to coincide with periods when the bathroom was least likely to be disturbed by students or staff members.

Each inspection followed the same disappointing pattern. The tiny plant would sway eagerly when Adrian approached, clearly excited to report on its activities, but its communications inevitably revealed nothing more significant than Myrtle's occasional dramatic appearances and the ordinary comings and goings of the castle's house-elves during their cleaning duties.

The basilisk and whoever had released it seemed to have vanished completely from the school, taking no further visible action that might provide clues to their identity or intentions.

Naturally, the Chomping Cabbage gained no information either.

The trail had gone cold, leaving him with little choice but to continue his vigilant waiting and hope that when Ray recovered from his petrification, he might be able to provide some crucial piece of information.

One week after the Halloween incident, Adrian was standing in his greenhouse, in front of the petrified Ray.

In his hands, Adrian held a bottle of green potion that was the fruit of a week's intensive brewing. The Mandrake Restorative Draught was one of the most complex healing potions in existence, requiring precise timing, exact measurements, and ingredients that could only be harvested under specific lunar conditions.

"I hope this works," Adrian murmured softly. Despite his confidence in the potion's theoretical effectiveness, he couldn't entirely suppress a flutter of anxiety about the outcome.

With care, Adrian began pouring the restorative draught over Ray's petrified form, watching as the thick liquid spread across the stone-like surface and began seeping into the cracks that had developed during the week of magical stasis.

As the liquid slowly seeped in, new cracks began appearing on the statue's surface.The cracks multiplied, and suddenly, the statue's surface began flaking off like an eggshell, revealing the soft feathers beneath.

Ray suddenly shook his wings vigorously, letting out a clear cry as the color of life gradually returned to his eyes.

"Ray!" Adrian joyfully opened his arms.

The recovered Ray rushed to him, affectionately nuzzling his cheek with his beak.

"Thank goodness..."

Seeing Ray recover from his petrified state, Adrian breathed a long sigh of relief.

Fortunately, Ray had some resistance to the basilisk's petrification magic. If it had been any other creature under the basilisk's direct gaze, there would have been almost no chance of survival.

"Ray, can you tell me what happened before you were petrified?" Adrian asked while stroking Ray's head.

Adrian knew from long experience that Ray could understand human speech perfectly well. However, the communication barrier worked in only one direction; while Ray could understand Adrian's words, the reverse was not true.

Ray responded immediately to the request, launching into a series of calls, cries, and words that clearly contained detailed information about his experience.

His body language was equally expressive—he spread his wings to demonstrate flight patterns, pointed his beak in specific directions to indicate locations, and even mimicked the movements he had made during the moments before his petrification.

Despite Ray's obvious intelligence and his clear desire to communicate vital information, Adrian was completely unable to interpret the complex symphony of sounds and gestures.

"Wait!" Adrian exclaimed suddenly, his memory sparked by a flash of inspiration. "I have something that might help us."

He hurried toward the greenhouse's storage area, as Ray watched with curious interest.

After several minutes of searching through shelves of books, potions, and magical artifacts, Adrian emerged triumphantly with a book in his hands.

The cover had a printed title that read: "Seventeen Translations of Thunderbird Language:"

This book had been a gift from Ruskin. Adrian had nearly forgotten about the book's existence until this moment of need, but now it seemed like exactly the tool required to unlock Ray's testimony.

"This should solve our communication problem," Adrian said with satisfaction, settling into a comfortable chair as he opened the book in front of Ray.

The book's pages were completely blank. However, Ruskin's accompanying letter had explained the magic involved: the pages would remain empty until they were exposed to actual Thunderbird vocalizations, at which point they would automatically generate written translations of whatever sounds they detected.

Ray immediately understood what Adrian wanted from him. He came near the open book and began repeating his earlier explanations, this time speaking more slowly to ensure that the magical translation process could accurately capture his testimony.

As Ray's calls and cries reached the enchanted pages, words began appearing across the blank parchment, translating the Thunderbird's language into clear, readable English text.

According to the translated text that gradually filled the pages, Ray had been playing above Hogwarts castle when he came over the courtyard and suddenly saw a pair of yellowish eyes glowing in the darkness.

In fact, Ray had sensed the danger—those eyes were extremely dangerous. Unfortunately, the basilisk's petrification magic happened in an instant, and by the time Ray realized what was happening, it was too late.

What followed was simple: Ray was petrified by the basilisk and fell from the sky, crashing to the ground.

Fortunately, even while petrified, Ray's body remained incredibly sturdy and suffered no damage.

After his impact with the courtyard, Ray remembered nothing else until the moment Adrian's restorative potion had freed him from his petrified prison.

After understanding what had happened, Adrian fell into deep thought.

Could this really have been nothing more than a case of bad timing? Had the basilisk simply came out from the Chamber for reasons of its own—perhaps driven by hunger or restlessness after decades of confinement—only to encounter Ray purely by chance?

The possibility troubled Adrian more than he cared to admit.

If the attack had been random rather than targeted, it suggested that the mysterious heir might be operating without a clear plan or specific objectives. Such unpredictability would make them far more dangerous and much harder to anticipate or counter.

Even if the basilisk's encounter with Ray had been accidental, however, the creature had definitely been released by someone with both the knowledge and the ability to access Slytherin's hidden chamber. As for this person who had released the basilisk, Ray had no impression of them—he hadn't noticed any other creatures at the scene.

Once again, the investigation had reached a frustrating dead end, leaving Adrian with more questions than answers despite Ray's successful recovery.

Recognizing that Ray had already suffered enough due to this mysterious threat, Adrian established new safety protocols designed to prevent any repetition of the Halloween night incident.

"From now on," He said to Ray firmly, "I want you to return home well before sunset each day. No more late-night flights around the castle grounds."

Ray naturally nodded in agreement—he had no desire to experience becoming a statue again.

The next day, when Harry and the others noticed Ray flying around above Hogwarts as if nothing had happened, so they immediately ran to Adrian's office to inquire about the situation.

"As you can see," Adrian told the three, "Ray is fine now."

"That's wonderful," Harry breathed a sigh of relief. "Hermione found some information about the Chamber. We wanted to come and tell you."

"Sit down and tell me," Adrian waved his hand, and three chairs from the corner slid over to his desk.

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