"Amazing, the entrance to Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets is actually located in the girls' bathroom?"

Rufus Scrimgeour habitually surveyed the surroundings, speaking softly in a calm tone.

"Incredible, how did the Dark Lord find this entrance back then, and how did Slytherin manage to hide it?"

This was probably one of the darkest and most depressing places he had ever seen.

Beneath a large, stained and cracked mirror was a row of stone sinks with peeling surfaces.

The floor was damp, and a few candle stubs burned low in their holders, casting a dim light that made the floor look eerie. The wooden doors of the stalls were peeling and covered in carvings; one door was hanging precariously from a broken hinge.

Through the gap behind the door, Moaning Myrtle was cautiously peering at the wizards outside, afraid to make a sound.

As the Head of the Auror Office, Scrimgeour was not concerned with the location of the battle, but rather with the outcome and the potential dangers of the surrounding environment—when chasing criminals in the magical world, if you weren't careful, even a snuffbox could jump up and bite you.

Decades ago, the Chamber of Secrets at Hogwarts had been opened, ultimately leading to the death of a Ravenclaw student.

The corresponding files in the Ministry of Magic contained a detailed record of the investigation at the time:

The Hogwarts Board of Governors, the entire Hogwarts faculty, the Ministry of Magic Auror Office, and the Ministry of Magic Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes jointly conducted a comprehensive search of Hogwarts after the incident, but no one found any clues about the entrance to the Chamber.

Obviously, as the primary crime scene where Myrtle's body was discovered, this bathroom was naturally the most closely scrutinized area.

However, just like the investigations by successive faculty members and headmasters of Hogwarts over the past thousand years, people still had not found the legendary Chamber.

It was also for this reason that even though Tom Riddle framed Rubeus Hagrid for opening the Chamber and found evidence that Hagrid was raising dangerous magical creatures at school, Albus Dumbledore, the Transfiguration professor at the time, still insisted that Rubeus Hagrid was innocent.

In fact, it wasn't just Dumbledore and the professors at the school.

Many Ministry of Magic officials and members of the Board of Governors were also very clear at the time that Rubeus Hagrid could not be the Heir of Slytherin.

Unfortunately, under the pressure of Hogwarts possibly being permanently closed, they didn't have time to search for the truth.

They had to provide the magical community and the parents with a seemingly reasonable solution as soon as possible.

Raising dangerous creatures was enough to warrant expulsion, which was perfectly logical—people had to save Hogwarts before personal justice.

Hagrid, as a scapegoat, wasn't held in Azkaban for too long. After the school returned to calm, Dumbledore successfully persuaded the Ministry of Magic to release Hagrid and convinced the then-headmaster Armando Dippet to keep Hagrid and train him to be the gamekeeper of Hogwarts.

Many people knew that the person who truly opened the Chamber had not been found, and the Chamber still threatened Hogwarts.

Rufus Scrimgeour looked around, his gaze finally settling on the old wizard who had stopped not far away.

At this moment, Dumbledore was bending over, carefully tapping a seemingly ordinary sink with his wand.

Dozens of lights flickered beside it, all of which were magical protections previously placed by the Ministry of Magic and the professors.

Scrimgeour frowned, glanced at the solemn Dumbledore, and drew his own wand.

"There should only be one Chamber of Secrets in Hogwarts... Are you sure you haven't made a mistake?"

"Perhaps there are quite a few—"

Dumbledore straightened up, staring intently at the side of the copper tap.

Just like when he examined it decades ago, there were no traces of a magical entrance on the sink, except for the small snake carved on the side, even the pipes below were normal—except that it didn't dispense any water at all.

The tap was not connected to the Hogwarts plumbing at all, it was a decoration with no water-dispensing function.

Damn it, how hadn't he noticed this detail back then.

"However, the entrance to Salazar Slytherin's Chamber should be right here."

Dumbledore sighed, looked at the wizards behind him, and explained calmly.

"Hogwarts was founded more than a thousand years ago. At that time, people didn't have the habit of building toilets—according to historical records, wizards mostly found a secluded place to relieve themselves and then used magic to clean it up. As for the habit of separating male and female bathrooms, that's only a custom that has emerged in the last two hundred years... This is also a problem I only suddenly realized recently: perhaps we were thinking too complicatedly before."

"Too complicated? What do you mean—"

Rufus Scrimgeour asked, puzzled, continuing to wait for Dumbledore to unlock the magical barriers one by one.

Behind them, Newt Scamander and other Ministry of Magic officials were reinforcing the outer barriers while curiously perking up their ears to listen to the conversation between Dumbledore and Scrimgeour. Most people were quite interested in the reasoning process regarding the Chamber.

"As far as I know, around the 18th century, Hogwarts Castle underwent a comprehensive renovation project."

Dumbledore slowly removed the surrounding magic, recalling Ellena's previous reasoning, and continued with a complicated expression.

"Hogwarts planned a more sophisticated plumbing system, which can be said to be the biggest project. Every floor and student dormitory was within the scope of the plumbing renovation plan. During such a large-scale renovation of the castle structure, we still didn't find any traces of the Chamber. Then there can only be three reasons: 1. The magic used to hide Salazar Slytherin's Chamber is beyond imagination. 2. There has never been a Chamber from beginning to end. And..."

"During the renovation at that time, someone discovered the Chamber and hid it without anyone noticing."

Rufus Scrimgeour's eyes flickered, and he said in a deep voice, continuing Dumbledore's words.

As the Head of the Auror Office, he was too familiar with this—an inside job, that was the real reason for most unsolved cases.

"That's right. After I realized this, I specifically checked the names of the people in charge of renovating the castle at that time, as well as the student rosters for those graduating classes. In the end, we did find some strange things. The sponsor of the plumbing materials was... the Gaunt family."

"Hmm, what's so strange about that? Just because of their bloodline?"

Just then, Kingsley Shacklebolt, standing behind them, asked curiously.

"Sorry, what I mean is, the Gaunt family was also a member of the Hogwarts Board of Governors at the time, right?"

Due to the previous public trial of Peter Pettigrew and the reaffirmation of Sirius Black's relationship, he had a slight impression of this long-declined and extinct pure-blood family name. Although they had always claimed to be descendants of Slytherin, there were too many such wizarding families in the magical world.

However, with Peter Pettigrew "confessing" the Dark Lord's true identity to the public, it also indirectly confirmed the Gaunt family's bloodline origins.

"Oh, the problem here is subtle. The Gaunt family is the most Muggle-hating pure-blood family."

Dumbledore raised a finger, glanced at the small snake relief on the copper tap, and said meaningfully in a low voice.

"The wizards borrowed designs from the Muggle world to renovate Hogwarts Castle. Not only did they not strongly oppose this, but they unexpectedly sponsored some of the raw materials? Even if the male student representative at the time was named Corvinus Gaunt, that's still strange, isn't it?"

"Needless to say, we all know now that the Gaunt family is indeed descended from Salazar Slytherin."

Scrimgeour shrugged, his expression becoming a little impatient, and said roughly.

"But these are just deductions. Even if we know the whole story, it doesn't make much sense now, does it? After the Chamber of Secrets attack occurred decades ago, the Ministry of Magic, and even you yourself, thoroughly inspected this bathroom many times—"

"Parseltongue, that's where the meaning lies. Slytherin and the magical imprint of bloodline on Gaunt family members."

Dumbledore smiled slightly, looked at the bewildered Scrimgeour and the thoughtful Kingsley, and explained with a smile.

"I said just now that we've been thinking too complicatedly for nearly a thousand years—the 'key' that Salazar Slytherin left for his descendants isn't some profound magic or a ritual that might be leaked or fail. As long as you find the entrance to the Chamber, you can say 'open' in Parseltongue."

"For example, like this..."

Dumbledore cleared his throat, looked at the snake-shaped relief, and made a strange hissing sound.

Suddenly, the copper tap emitted a dazzling white light and began to spin rapidly.

Immediately afterward, the sink also moved. The originally solid walls of the sink rotated and moved away like building blocks, disappearing from everyone's eyes in less than a few seconds, replaced by an extremely thick pipe, even wide enough for Hagrid to crawl through.

"Fortunately, Parseltongue is not a language with inherent magic. It's just that the pronunciation is relatively special."

Dumbledore said casually, as if he had just spoken a sentence in Icelandic, or some other obscure foreign language.

"Professor Binns, as a ghost, can ignore the passage and travel miles downward through the soil and stone walls, arriving at Salazar Slytherin's Chamber. But if we want to go down, it's best to take this downward passage specially built for human travel—"

"Oh, there are more Parselmouths in this world than just the Slytherin line of wizards."

He turned his head and glanced at the hesitant Scrimgeour and a group of anxious Ministry of Magic officials.

"Paracelsus, he was the most famous Parselmouth in the Middle Ages. You should know what I'm talking about, Mr. Scrimgeour. I'm quite proud of my ability to learn new languages. Goblin language and Mermish are no simpler than Parseltongue. Of course, compared to a true Parselmouth, the limitations of this kind of imitation are still very large. After all, there is no grammar in snake language—"

"So, Professor Dumbledore, does this mean that we can try to communicate first..."

A hint of anticipation appeared on Newt Scamander's face. He carefully considered his words and stuttered slightly.

"Newt, I don't think—"

"Mr. Scamander, that monster below must be eliminated!"

Rufus Scrimgeour's eyes flashed with a steely hardness, and his lion-like gaze blocked the rest of Newt's words.

"It's too dangerous, and it has already claimed more than one life." He said with great conviction, "Do you want new victims to appear, or try to prove to those who have died that it is actually a harmless magical creature?"

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"Oh, alright, alright." Newt sighed deeply, "You're right, this is the price it should pay."

"So, what's the next step? Who goes down first?"

Rufus Scrimgeour ignored Newt and turned to look at Dumbledore, who was standing in front of the pipe.

Now that the entrance to the Chamber had been opened, the extermination of the Basilisk had officially begun.

From now on, every step they took could be dangerous. After all, no one could guarantee that there wouldn't be a gaping maw waiting at the exit, and more importantly, in addition to that terrible beast, there might also be Slytherin's magical traps below.

"I'll go down first, with Newt at the rear."

Dumbledore said calmly.

As the most powerful wizard recognized in the magical world today, and the Headmaster of Hogwarts, that was the meaning of his presence here.

"I'll go with you, Professor Dumbledore," Scrimgeour said.

A moment of silence.

"Sorry, I don't mean to offend you," Scrimgeour said, a smile squeezing out on his resolute, weathered face, "At least in terms of physical fitness and reaction speed, I don't think I'll hold you back, and if we're unlucky enough—"

"A very reasonable suggestion." Dumbledore nodded, "The two of us will go down together, you watch the position behind me first."

The old man drew his wand and waved it around his body, creating a hazy magical glow.

Scrimgeour also drew his wand and cast a few simple protective spells.

The two walked into the pipe one after the other, stood back to back, and at the same time released their hands and let their bodies slide down.

After Dumbledore and Scrimgeour disappeared, the remaining wizards also stepped forward in pairs, sliding down the pipes every five to ten seconds. The Hogwarts underground network of pipes was very complex, and they didn't want to collide with each other.

After everyone entered the pipes, Newt Scamander waved his wand to send a signal outside, gritted his teeth and followed.

If possible, he still wanted to try to capture the Basilisk in the Chamber alive.

After all, this might be the oldest and last Basilisk in the world today.

If Ellena, Grindelwald, or Flamel got their hands on it, there would definitely be no room for leniency—those true Dark Lords never hesitated to show their destructive power when facing such dangerous and rare magical creatures.

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Hooray!