In any case.
It was the guilt of killing the woman he loved that made the Bloody Baron take his own life afterward.
Naturally, the Ravenclaw Diadem then fell into the hands of Voldemort, who had very likely orchestrated all of this.
Beyond that, because of the obsession he had held in life, the Bloody Baron became Slytherin's ghost, as if hoping that one day in the future, he might receive Helena Ravenclaw's forgiveness...
Unfortunately.
From what Helena Ravenclaw had said last time, it was clear that she still rejected the Bloody Baron.
Even so.
In Draco's view, perhaps the Grey Lady was not unable to forgive the Bloody Baron.
Rather, she could not forgive the utterly foolish version of herself who had been deceived by the Dark Lord back then.
...
In his mind, Draco recalled the intelligence and information related to those events from back then while pushing open the common room door in front of him.
As for what had happened in the past, Draco no longer had any more information in his hands. He could only piece together most of the details through inference.
Because of that, Draco had decided to seek out the people involved and try to learn something from them...
"I hit a wall with the Grey Lady... Hopefully the Bloody Baron can bring some good news."
Draco murmured to himself, slowly stating the purpose of this trip.
That was right. Draco, who was currently heading toward the lower levels of Slytherin House, was going to meet the Bloody Baron, a ghost who might not appear even a few times in an entire year at Hogwarts.
Tap, tap, tap.
"This should be the place, right?"
After Draco stopped, what appeared before him was a marble spiral staircase.
This spiral staircase, clearly leading downward, was located in a corner of the Slytherin common room.
In other words, it led to an even deeper level...
Draco reached out and touched the sealed door, then pushed it open without hesitation.
Although this staircase led to some unknown place, it had not been sealed off because of that mystery. Nor had anyone ever said it was a forbidden area, and there seemed to be nothing especially unusual about it.
But the young snakes of Slytherin seemed to share an unspoken understanding, consciously avoiding that place.
Perhaps part of the reason was that Slytherin wizards truly did not have that reckless spirit of adventure the little lions possessed.
Of course, more importantly.
Every year when the new students arrived, Snape would impatiently warn them once.
The wording was the same every year...
"You would not want to see the Bloody Baron's true appearance. Of course, if you possess that damned curiosity like those foolish Gryffindors, then by all means, go and try."
Those were Snape's original words back then, full of sarcasm and dark humor.
And from those words, one could also learn that the Bloody Baron, whose whereabouts were a mystery and who almost never appeared before wizards, stayed at the end of this spiral staircase.
As Draco recalled Snape's warning from back then, he stepped onto the spiral staircase leading to the lower level.
Perhaps because the era was so distant.
Or perhaps because too much time had passed, and the names had been forgotten.
Aside from Helena, who bore the Ravenclaw surname, most ghosts no longer seemed to be called by the names they had held in life. Instead, people referred to them more often by their behavior or appearance.
For example, the very fittingly named Nearly Headless Nick was called that because he had indeed nearly lost his head.
And the mischievous Peeves was called that because of his behavior.
It seemed that in the flow of time, both the ghosts themselves and the surrounding wizards had forgotten the surnames and names these ghosts once had.
In other words, was the Bloody Baron called the Bloody Baron because he had a great deal to do with blood?
As Draco walked downward, his thoughts could not help wandering in that direction.
At the same time, he could not help feeling curious.
What exactly lay at the end of this spiral staircase?
After all, even though he had lived at Hogwarts for so many years, and even though he was a student of Slytherin House and had passed this staircase every time he came and went, this was the first time Draco had tried to set foot in this place.
And face that... Bloody Baron.
...
Tap, tap, tap.
Draco's footsteps echoed through the narrow space.
The repeated, identical structure even gave one the illusion that time had frozen at this very moment...
It had to be said.
Compared with the Astronomy Tower where Helena Ravenclaw stayed, the Bloody Baron seemed to have gone to the other extreme, alone... a single ghost staying deep underground beneath Slytherin House.
The highest and the lowest.
It was as if the two of them, who had clearly been in the same place in life, now kept the greatest possible distance from each other...
"I have a bad feeling about this."
Draco's words were not without reason.
Damp.
Cold.
Dark.
It could be said that this place was exactly the sort of place people imagined, and the sort of place described in ghost stories, where ghosts would frequently appear and jump out to frighten people.
Draco could already picture Hermione trembling in fear...
Dim candlelight.
An empty passage.
Who could have imagined there was such a place within Hogwarts?
If Draco had not had a similar experience before, he might really have thought this was the passage leading to Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets.
After all, no matter how one looked at it, this place was indeed gloomy and oppressive...
In any case.
Although he was not sure exactly how much time had passed, Draco finally reached the end.
And at the end stood an old door.
Seeing this, Draco directly took out his wand. "Lumos!"
As light flared from the tip of his wand, Draco was finally able to see the heavy wooden door before him. Although old, it clearly carried a sense of history.
A serpent pattern was carved into the wooden door.
Perhaps it was Draco's imagination, but as the tip of his wand moved, the serpent seemed to come alive and shift slightly.
And from the strange feeling this wooden door gave off, what lay inside was most likely the target of Draco's trip.
He slowly pressed his palm against the door, then tried pushing it.
"Looks like it hasn't been used in a long time. No... rather, that's the normal situation."
After a brief pause.
Only then did Draco realize that he seemed to have just said something stupid.
Because as a ghost, the Bloody Baron did not need to reach out and open a door at all. He only needed to pass through it.
In a certain sense.
Although these ghosts had indeed lost most of their emotions, while losing those things, they had also gained some convenient methods and abilities.
At the very least, they could skip the act of opening doors.
Though that did not sound appealing at all...