With a clear goal, everyone's motivation was incredibly strong.
Dudley's gaze swept across the bookshelf and immediately spotted several books that might relate to the Chamber monster: "Unknown Ancient Magical Creatures", "Secrets of Serpentine Magical Beings", and "Complete Guide to Dark Magic Creatures".
Dudley waved his wand, and these books immediately flew before him as he began rapidly flipping through their contents one by one.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione also found several books that might record such creatures and quickly searched through them.
"The Black Magic Eye Snake has yellow eyes!" Ron said loudly as if he'd discovered treasure, but before Dudley and the others could gather around, he negated it himself.
"Unfortunately, this snake only lives for decades. It can't live that long."
"Ron, please be certain before speaking. Don't make such a commotion," Hermione couldn't help saying with obvious exasperation.
"Alright," Ron said sheepishly. He knew he'd gotten overly excited.
The group began searching again.
This time they were all much more cautious. Some snakes might fit one or two of the descriptions, but didn't match one or two others. These could basically be ruled out directly.
Time passed minute by minute. Madam Pince had already come to urge them several times, each time being convinced by Dudley's Beyonder abilities, but this certainly wasn't a long-term solution.
Suddenly, Harry's eyes lit up. He'd found an ancient magical creature called a basilisk that seemed to fit their previous speculations very well.
However, he didn't speak immediately but quickly read through the book's description of basilisks. The more he read, the more he felt it matched their guesses about the monster in the Chamber.
"Found it! Come over here quickly," Harry said excitedly.
"What?" Hermione lifted her dishevelled hair from the pile of books, her gaze somewhat dazed.
Ron also looked over. His eyes were now full of various snakes described in books.
Dudley was the first to react and quickly ran over.
After Hermione and Ron came to their senses, they immediately gathered around.
"Wait... something seems wrong," Harry's expression suddenly changed as he frowned.
"Another false alarm," Ron said with obvious dejection.
"This basilisk really matches our speculation. They have huge bodies, can live hundreds to thousands of years, and are natural enemies of spiders. But basilisks have terrifying lethality. Their gaze can directly kill humans, not the petrification we mentioned."
Harry frowned with confusion.
No matter how he looked at it, this basilisk seemed to fit the speculation, but the only discrepancy was that the danger of meeting a basilisk's gaze was much greater. Direct death, not petrification.
"Wait, maybe our speculation was wrong!" Dudley suddenly thought of something.
Since everything else matched well with only one item being different, was it possible that they'd been wrong about this one thing from the beginning?
"Because we've never looked directly at the basilisk!" Hermione blurted out with sudden realisation.
"What?" Ron was still in a confused state.
"You and Harry saw the basilisk through a mirror. That yellow light was its eyeball. Ghosts can't be killed; they can only be petrified. And Filch and his cat, along with Crabbe, were there; there was water on the ground at the time. They all saw the basilisk through reflections, not direct eye contact, so they wouldn't die," Dudley explained.
"Many powerful dark magics have this characteristic. When not fully effective, they produce lighter symptoms like petrification, unconsciousness, etc."
"Compared to direct death, petrification's already a relatively light consequence."
"Also, when the Chamber was opened fifty years ago, a girl died, remember? We always thought that monster killed that girl by other means, but now it seems she died from looking directly at the basilisk."
"So what's locked in the Chamber is a basilisk?" Ron finally caught on.
"Exactly," Dudley nodded.
They'd finally figured out what was locked in Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets.
This founder of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry had truly arranged for such a dangerous magical creature in the school to eliminate Muggle-born wizards.
"Didn't Slytherin know the consequences of doing this? Hogwarts might close directly because of this!" Harry said with obvious anger.
If the attacks continued, Hogwarts might very well choose to close because of this incident. This was what Professor McGonagall had told them before.
And the culprit behind all this was actually a founder of this school.
"We can't use today's perspective to speculate how people from a thousand years ago thought," Dudley said reasonably.
"So how do we deal with this basilisk now?" Hermione asked.
Since they'd found the monster in the Chamber, the next step was how to eliminate it.
"Basilisks are very dangerous creatures. We need to prepare well," Ron said quickly.
His face was somewhat pale. Obviously, the book's description of basilisks made him feel very frightened. Just making eye contact would cause death, and even seeing it through other means would cause immediate petrification.
How was a group of second-year students supposed to deal with such a terrible creature?
"Perhaps we should look for ways to avoid petrification, or potions that could help us survive for a while," Hermione said thoughtfully.
"Uh..." Dudley looked at the group, his mouth twitching slightly.
"What? Are we wrong?" Harry asked strangely.
"What gave you the courage to think you could deal with a basilisk yourselves?" Dudley asked with obvious bewilderment.
Harry and the others looked at each other, not knowing how to answer for a moment.
"This is Hogwarts. We're here to study."
"Why should a group of second-year students deal with something like a basilisk? We just need to tell the school this information, don't we?"
Dudley spread his hands.
"That seems... reasonable," Harry nodded thoughtfully.
The library fell into silence for a moment.
They didn't know why, but upon learning about the basilisk, their first thought wasn't to immediately tell the school, but how to handle this matter themselves.
Was it because their strength had improved under Dudley's guidance, making them arrogant?
Or had Dudley's powerful abilities already given them the illusion that they could solve all problems themselves?
After a long while, Ron hesitantly said, "Do you think there might be treasures Slytherin left behind in his Chamber? After all, he was one of Hogwarts' founders, one of the greatest wizards from a thousand years ago."
"Also, a basilisk's corpse should be quite valuable, right?"