Harry Potter: Westeros's Plant Life

They had just left Professor Westeros's office corridor when suddenly.

"Hungry... hungry..."

The whisper began echoing through his mind. Harry's hand instinctively went to his scar. However, what was strange was that The basilisk's message was quite simple this time, it was just about hunger.

'The basilisk must be truly starving,' Harry thought with dread. 'Hopefully wizards weren't on the basilisk's menu...'

While walking through the corridor, Harry tried to locate the basilisk's position through the intermittent sounds.

Honestly, this was quite difficult. Those sounds seemed to resonate directly inside his skull, making it impossible for him to clearly distinguish their source.

As they passed a door, Harry suddenly stopped in his tracks.

Ron and Hermione in whispered conversation about Professor Westeros, nearly collided with him.

"Bloody hell, Harry!" Ron whispered, steadying himself.

They followed Harry's gaze to a door adorned with a brass nameplate that read "Professor Gilderoy Lockhart".

"What's wrong?" Ron tugged at Harry's sleeve, and whispered creased with concern. "Aren't we supposed to notify Professor McGonagall?"

Harry raised a hand for silence, his green eyes were blurred as he concentrated intently on listening.

He stepped forward and gently pushed Lockhart's office door.

Creak—

The wooden door swung open with a creak.

Hermione and Ron exchanged glances, their eyes widening with a mixture of curiosity and uneasiness.

"We need to go in and take a look," Harry said gravely to Ron and Hermione. His hand moved instinctively to his wand pocket. "Get your wands out. Something's not right here."

Ron and Hermione complied, following Harry as they snuck into Lockhart's office. The office was pitch black inside, with only moonlight filtering through gaps in the curtains to provide a faint glow.

By the moonlight, Harry observed their surroundings with growing unease. The office layout remained the same as during his last unwelcome visit, but something had changed. The portraits of Lockhart on every available wall space seemed to have multiplied like a narcissistic infection.

"How narcissistic can this guy get..." Ron muttered under his breath, his voice tinged with disgust as he counted at least twenty different versions of Lockhart. "It's like a bloody museum dedicated to his own face."

Ron couldn't understand what twisted psychology would drive someone to surround themselves with portraits of their own image.

Harry shuddered, imagining his own dormitory filled with countless Harry Potters staring back at him—he'd definitely have nightmares for weeks.

At this late hour, all the Lockharts wore matching golden silk pajamas leaning back in chairs or on sofas with their eyes closed, resting. Even in sleep, their expressions managed to look smugly self-satisfied.

However, the gallery of self-worship wasn't what attracted Harry's attention. Harry tensely surveyed the environment around them.

The basilisk's voice had definitely came from this place—he was certain of it.

Yet after checking every corner of the office, they found nothing out of the ordinary.

"What exactly are we doing here?" Ron asked Harry carefully, his eyes darting nervously toward the door. "If Lockhart suddenly comes back and finds us breaking into his office...'"

Just then—

"Oh!"

Hermione's startled exclamation came. Harry and Ron turned around to see her frantically trying to support a large portrait that had nearly crashed to the floor.

"What are you doing?" Harry looked at her with alarm, his voice tightening with worry.

"I accidentally bumped into it while examining the wall," Hermione explained, her cheeks flushing with embarrassment. "I need to hang it back up carefully, we can't wake the portraits."

Harry was wondering why Hermione was being so clumsy when Ron suddenly spoke up.

"Wait!"

Ron lifted his head, pointing with a finger at the wall above Hermione's head.

Behind where the portrait had been hanging, clearly visible now in the moonlight, was a hidden compartment.

Inside the hidden compartment sat several transparent crystal bottles, each one glowing with an ethereal, faint white light that seemed rather conspicuous in the surrounding darkness.

Harry raised his wand and quietly whispered, "Wingardium Leviosa."

One of the bottles lifted from its resting place and floated gently into his palm.

He held it closer to examine its contents. Inside the bottle, silvery-white thread-like substances flowed. These mysterious materials moved like living silk, sometimes tangling together in complex patterns, sometimes stretching out.

'Beautiful,' was his first thought.

"What is this?" Ron asked, his voice hushed with awe as he habitually turned to their resident genius.

When encountering something mysterious, asking Hermione was usually the right choice.

Hermione stared at the white substances for a few seconds before slowly shaking her head. "Maybe I can go to the library tomorrow to research it."

Although Harry didn't know what they had discovered, he had a feeling it must be very important.

Just then, the sound of footsteps echoed from the corridor outside. The tap-tap-tap wasn't particularly loud, but in the silence of the sleeping castle, each footfall seemed to thunder.

"!" Harry's eyes went wide with panic.

He immediately stuffed the bottle into his pocket and covered everyone with the invisibility cloak he'd prepared, while Hermione gently hung the portrait back in its original position.

The footsteps gradually faded away without entering the office.

This made everyone breathe a sigh of relief.

Once the footsteps had completely disappeared, Harry said, "It might be a professor on patrol. We should follow at a distance and see who it is."

The three of them, covered by the invisibility cloak, left Lockhart's office.

Following the fading echo of the footsteps, they caught sight of a familiar figure at the far end of the corridor. Professor McGonagall's silhouette was unmistakable even in the dim torchlight.

"Professor McGonagall!" Harry called out as he suddenly threw off the invisibility cloak, appearing behind her.

Professor McGonagall spun around reflexively, her hand immediately going to her wand before she recognized the familiar faces in front of her. Her face showed a moment of genuine startlement before quickly shifting to stern disapproval.

"Potter! Granger! Weasley! What are you doing wandering the corridors at this hour?"

Whatever the reason, three young wizards appearing in the corridor at this hour was definitely inappropriate.

Harry explained as quickly as possible why they were there. He told her about hearing the basilisk's voice again.

Professor McGonagall knew about Harry's Parseltongue gift, so her expression immediately became serious.

"Mr. Potter," Professor McGonagall said seriously with a trace of worry, "while I appreciate your... unique insights into this situation, patrolling these corridors for dangerous creatures is absolutely not something students should be doing. You must return to your dormitory immediately—"

"But Professor—" Harry urgently wanted to say something more.

"Enough!" Professor McGonagall interrupted him, her voice sharp. "This is the professors' responsibility, not yours. If you really heard something, then the most helpful thing you can do is return to safety where you cannot become additional victims."

Hermione tugged at Harry's sleeve and whispered, "Professor McGonagall is right, Harry. We should go back."

She didn't want to anger Professor McGonagall.

Under Professor McGonagall's escort, they returned to the Gryffindor common room.

Harry had wanted to use the voice to point Professor McGonagall in the right direction, but unfortunately, those hoarse sounds no longer appeared in his mind.

All night, he worried whether there would be several petrified figures in the corridors by morning.

When dawn finally broke over the Scottish Highlands, Harry felt as though he'd barely slept at all. His eyes were gritty with exhaustion and worry.

Judging by Ron's dark circles and the way he moved like a zombie, his best friend's condition wasn't much better.

After making their way to the Great Hall with unease, expecting to hear terrible news, Harry was surprised to discover that nearly half the Hogwarts faculty was present at the high table. They all looked thoroughly exhausted.

They had clearly been patrolling all night, taking Harry's warning seriously enough to have a search of the entire castle.

Near the end of breakfast time, Hermione burst through the Great Hall doors with excitement.

"I finally know what that was!" She said breathlessly as she practically threw herself into the seat beside them. "I couldn't sleep after what we found, so I spent the entire night in the library researching every advanced magical substance I could think of."

"What?" Harry blinked at her with genuine confusion, his sleep-deprived mind struggling to catch up with her enthusiasm. "What are you talking about?"

"The bottle, Harry!" Hermione looked at him with a mixture of excitement and exasperation, her voice dropped to an urgent whisper. "The bottle with the silvery-white substances that you took from Lockhart's hidden compartment. You still have it, don't you?"

Only then did the memory fully resurface through his exhaustion-fogged mind. In his panic the previous night, he had indeed taken one of those mysterious crystal bottles containing the beautiful, flowing white substances from Lockhart's secret compartment.

The bottle was still tucked in his robes pocket.

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