Dumbledore seemed to possess the power to see through people's hearts.
Just as Harry was feeling puzzled, he spoke: "Harry, if you come closer and look, you'll realize it's just a snake skin."
Harry's steps became lighter as he walked over.
Sure enough, as he got close, he saw a gigantic, vivid green snake skin, at least twenty feet long.
It was clearly the skin of a venomous snake, curled up on the tunnel floor, empty inside.
"What kind of snake is this?" Harry asked curiously. "Was Myrtle poisoned?"
"A Basilisk. It was the stare of a Basilisk that killed Myrtle." Dumbledore sighed.
"A stare can kill?" Harry hurriedly shut his eyes, which had just been looking around.
"Yes. But if it's an indirect gaze, it only causes Petrified. It's a creature created by Herpo the Foul, a despicable Dark Wizard—hatched from a chicken egg beneath a toad." Dumbledore stood up. "Stop closing your eyes, Harry. We should go in."
"Go in? What if we encounter the Basilisk? Do glasses count as indirect gazing?" Harry suddenly forgot his earlier deduction about the Chamber being safe. Going in meant no house points, no money... why risk his life?
Basil, who had finished planting evidence in the Chamber and creating the Voldemort Echo (but hadn't checked the Echo's name or stats yet), coughed awkwardly.
Because of his constant emphasis on money and utilitarian talk...
Harry didn't seem as easily swayed by his own desire for adventure as in the original books.
In the tunnel, Dumbledore almost stumbled, thinking: "Is this really Harry?"
In his expectation, Harry should have said with a hint of excitement: "Let's go."
"Why isn't he like James at all? So much like Lily. Is it because of that Basil Granger again?"
Among everyone around Harry, only this Granger was a variable.
Outwardly, Dumbledore remained calm and collected.
He said peacefully to Harry, "Look at my right hand."
Harry opened his eyes and looked.
Dumbledore's hand was slender and pale, showing almost no signs of age.
A few seconds later, just as Harry was about to wonder if Dumbledore was showing off his nice hands, silver-white flames ignited on Dumbledore's hand.
"Your hand—" Harry started to say, but then saw the flame detach from Dumbledore's hand and fly toward his eyes along his line of sight.
He didn't even have time to close his eyes before the growing fireball touched his eyeballs.
But instead of a burning sensation, he felt a wave of coolness.
The dirt and slime on his body also fell off automatically, sliding smoothly onto the wet ground.
Opening his eyes, he felt dizzy, and his vision was blurry.
Dumbledore's voice came from beside his ear.
"Harry, you can try taking off your glasses."
Take off my glasses? Am I not nearsighted? Harry was puzzled.
But he took them off anyway. The world, which should have been blurry, was now crystal clear.
"Haha, I'm not nearsighted anymore?" Harry was thrilled and threw his glasses on the ground.
"Harry," Dumbledore hesitated, "this is only temporary. The flame I created residing in your eyes will prevent you from being harmed by the Basilisk's stare."
Harry quickly picked up his glasses.
The lenses were cracked. A short syllable came from Dumbledore behind him, and as Harry's fingers touched the frame, they felt warm, and the lenses were restored as good as new.
He put the glasses in his pocket, his inner hesitation vanishing.
This magical scene made him realize one thing: beside him was Albus Dumbledore—the greatest wizard of this era, no, in known history.
What was a mere Basilisk?
In Basil's words, he just needed to be an inanimate accessory and cling to the carry's thigh.
With this newfound confidence, they soon turned corner after corner and arrived before a wall.
It looked very solid, carved with two entwined snakes, their eyes set with large, glittering emeralds.
"If Basil saw this, he'd definitely try to pry these emeralds off," Harry thought with a silly grin, but then denied it the next second. "No, Basil must have been here. He surely tried, but couldn't pry them off. Should I ask Dumbledore for help later?"
"Also, that snake skin is probably worth a lot too. Basil found it first, so it should count as his. When we get out, I'll mention it to Dumbledore."
Raised with a British education where "finders keepers" was ingrained, and unaware of the advanced socialist concept of handing it over to the state for 50 bucks and a pennant, Harry thought this way.
He didn't dwell on it and hissed directly at the two snakes.
"Open."
The two snakes separated, the stone wall cracked down the middle, and slowly slid open to disappear on both sides.
"This is—" Harry was dumbstruck.
What met his eyes was a sea of green.
The stone pillars and the floor were completely covered by dense vines and tendrils of Devil's Snare.
And Dumbledore beside him seemed to have discovered something even more astonishing.
Suddenly, a breeze blew past Harry.
Dumbledore's figure vanished from the spot and reappeared at the foot of the monkey-faced statue at the end of the room.
Harry stood still, not daring to approach.
Ever since the Troll incident after the Halloween feast, he knew Devil's Snare feared light.
But Basil's Devil's Snare didn't.
He worried Basil's Devil's Snare came from here.
Once he stepped in, he would be entangled and strangled by the dense tendrils and vines.
About ten minutes later, Dumbledore's figure disappeared from the monkey statue, and another breeze blew past.
Holding a pierced black-covered diary, he stood beside Harry.
"T. M. Riddle," Harry read word for word from the exposed first page.
Then he gasped. "Tom Riddle, Voldemort!"
He hurriedly looked at Dumbledore. "Hagrid told me this. Tom Riddle is Voldemort, two years ahead of him. The diary Basil received belonged to Voldemort, but... why did you?"
Concern for his friend made Harry's intelligence spike.
Everything about entering the wizarding world, Hagrid's words, picking up the package at Gringotts, inexplicably sending them to the forbidden corridor on the fourth floor... could the Troll also be arranged by Dumbledore behind the scenes?
The so-called father's diary Basil received was Voldemort's.
Then could his Invisibility Cloak also be... Voldemort's?
Suddenly, he didn't miss the Invisibility Cloak left up there anymore.
Dumbledore didn't expect Harry to start suspecting him.
He just thought Harry was explaining why he knew Voldemort's real name.
He squeezed a smile onto his heavy face: "I know all of this."
Harry's heart skipped a beat, and he subconsciously took a few steps back.
Then he drew his wand.
And pointed it at Dumbledore.
"Harry... what is this?" Dumbledore asked calmly.
Not feeling tense at all about being pointed at by a wand.
Instead, he looked like a benevolent elder, his eyes full of concern.
But the more he acted like this, the whiter Harry's knuckles became as he gripped his wand.
"Tell me, is that Invisibility Cloak also Voldemort's!"