Glancing around, I saw the slithering mass of snakes slowly quell back into stone. I took a deep breath of the stale air, an affixed torch alighting right before me, before the one further down the rounded stairs illuminated the next few steps. I grabbed my chest while I froze, unsure if I would like what I would see down there. Wondering if I could just return to my room, and hope things would work out themselves.

But with a small clink of glass against my fingernail, rekindled my desire to run forward to danger, to take action before it was too late. With purpose, I walked down the descending steps, flickering firelight illuminating the pathway.

A few stories down, I came to the very same door Merlin had described earlier. I pressed my hand against the splintered wood, the faded artwork leaving chips of paint between my fingertips. I looked up to see the door had a circular knocker on it, being held in the mouth of a serpent, the very same serpent that was painted, coiled around the shield of Hogwarts. With no other handle, I grasped the metal knocker, and let it fall back against the door. With a single thud, I waited for a moment, nothing happening.

Just as I was about to think of other ways of removing the door, I stumbled back from the movement I witnessed through the corner of my eye. Taking a closer look at the door again, I saw the metal snake’s eyes glimmer a green glow as it spat out the circular knocker, now held against the door, standing straight out, as if gravity had stopped just for it. The metal serpent paid it no mind, instead staring directly at me with a judgment gaze, staring particularly closely at the Slytherin seal on my robes.

“To enter inssside, a SSSlytherin one mussst be.” He hissed, nodding his head slightly after double checking my robes once again, while I was left dumbfounded. ‘This is new. did Salazar add this after throwing Merlin out?’ “What doesss a SSSerpent do during winter?” He asked, making me ponder for a moment at what he was doing. ‘Salazar had made this as a test for any Slytherin to complete. It’s not spoken in parseltongue, and the question is what any Slytherin would know. Perhaps this was placed to thwart Merlin from returning, but allowing others inside?’

I took a deep breath, confident with my answer, seeing as this was not a sort of trick question. “They Brumate.” After a few seconds of silence, the serpent glaring down at me, it hissed once again. “SSCertaintly.” The circular door knocker then rose back up into the serpent’s mouth, and the door slowly creaked open.

I licked my dried lips as I entered inside, the room still remained just as Merlin described it. Parchments and books strewn about everywhere. The chandelier made like a medusa, a woman’s head gracefully smiling down at all below her, her serpent hair curling upwards to hold the lit candles. All but one particular portion. Instead of a box at the center of the desk at the back of the room, now laid a torn up book in its place.

I slowly walked through the strewn about papers, taking a closer look at the large desk. The book laid open, pages torn out, leaving it lopsided. I grabbed the open portion, and used my finger as a bookmark while closing it, looking at the front cover. All that I saw was the black leather, biding the remaining pages together, no telling marks anywhere to be found. I flipped open to the first page, but only now discovered that most of the front portion of the book had been torn out. At least 50 pages, ripped right out.

With a sigh, I glanced over towards my right, a single page catching my eye, its golden text shimmering from the candlelight above. With my free hand, I held it up closer to my eyes to read aloud, murmuring the words under my breath. “The perfect peace… Experiment logs and findings.” I moved the page to the front portion of the open book, and held back a gasp at the tear matching the first page perfectly.

I immediately scoured around the room, searching for any other missing pages that may have been torn out and cast aside, but to no avail. All other parchments spoke of outdated spells and potions, things one might learn at Hogwarts regardless. ‘It’s almost as if…’ I began wondering, but while shuffling around, I accidentally kicked over the cauldron in the center of the room. I soon stopped it from rolling with my foot, but noticed the ashes it previously rested on looked strange.

I knelt down, looking at the charred remains of an old fire. The blackened wood pieces rested on something else. I carefully brushed them aside, and could now see blackened paper. I grabbed the top few, and lifted them up, now seeing the portions of protected pages remained from the heat of the flames encompassing them. Much of it was burnt, leaving only a few sentences “-cimen 2. The continued use of the curse has proven successful. Less and less uncommanded movements have been documented. After brai-”

I gulped, my heart pounding with unease. Pieces were uncovering, yet the full picture alluded me. However, that somehow managed to place my mind in a more  precarious situation than knowing what I might be responsible for. I tore through the rest of the burnt pages, but each one was left worse than the last.

I took the burnt pages, and placed them back on the large desk beside the book they were torn from. With nothing left to read from them, I sighed before turning back to the book pages, still attached to the binding, reading aloud the words written on the page from my great ancestor. “Epilogue… What you have just read were the findings I had discovered. Only to be seen by Slytherin eyes, eyes that understand the reason for purity and segregation.”

With each word, I felt my stomach turn and twist in disgust, but I continued on. “However after my latest betrayal from one I had thought to be my student, I have unfortunately lost faith in just the Slytherin name. Blood is thicker than water, and only one of my lineage shall have the power of fulfilling my will, and their destiny. I have left instructions to them, hidden away for only them to see. Take this book to them, and they shall complete the rest.”

I hummed in confusion, my mind processing all this new information that yielded more questions than answers. The most prominent escaping my lips. “If Salazar placed the guard at the door to stop Merlin from coming back, and assumed another would read the entirety of his book… Who burned it?” I asked myself, staring at the blackened lump of pages. Thinking in silence, I was startled by the sound of my own stomach growling, jerking me to attention before embarrassment overtook me. With no hint as to the location of the Chamber of Secrets, and only cryptic messages left and burned, I decided it best to eat breakfast, not much more could be gained from this room, especially on an empty stomach.