The professors' first reaction to Professor McGonagall's words was blank confusion.
What did those students possibly have to do with their search for the attacker?
Snape might have made Leonard sound suspicious, but none of the other professors had actually listed him as a suspect.
And besides, what did she mean by saying they had "appeared"? Had they gone missing?
Leonard had spent far too little time in the Chamber of Secrets dealing with Voldemort for it to count as disappearing, and Hogwarts Castle was so vast that there was no way the professors could keep track of every student's movements.
The professors, including Headmaster Dumbledore, all stared at Professor McGonagall in bafflement.
Professor McGonagall wasted no time and immediately said, "Sir Cadogan found them. Mr. William was with three other students. Apart from Mr. William, the other three are all unconscious and appear to be injured. Mr. Weasley looks to be in the worst condition. They are on their way to the Hospital Wing now."
Sir Cadogan was a talkative portrait. His "home" was on the seventh floor, but he often wandered from portrait to portrait throughout the castle, chatting with other paintings and even provoking them, under the grand name of dueling.
"Then that's perfect. Let's go meet them," Dumbledore said at once. "It sounds as though they've been through quite a lot. Perhaps they'll bring us a few surprises."
The professors had only just stepped out of the Hospital Wing together when they saw Leonard coming toward them.
Leonard was walking in front, with three swaying stretchers following behind him.
The sight was a little outside the professors' expectations. They had assumed all four students would be in terrible shape, but now it seemed only the other three were in a mess. Leonard, on the other hand, looked as though he had merely gone out for a walk and happened to pick up three injured people on the way back.
"Oh, all the professors are here." Leonard noticed their stares, looked up, and greeted them. "Mission accomplished. I brought Potter and the others back."
There were still damp patches on his clothes, and the stretchers behind him were dripping constantly as though they had just been hauled out of the water.
That was because Leonard had deliberately chosen to leave the Chamber through the pipes. Otherwise, he would have had no way to explain how he had gone in and out of the Chamber.
The professors stared at him for several seconds, then shifted their gaze from Leonard's face to Ron Weasley's.
Chaos broke out immediately.
"Quick, let Madam Pomfrey examine them."
"That's Weasley, isn't it? He looks awful."
...
The injured students were naturally handed over to Madam Pomfrey, while Leonard, as the only conscious person who knew what had happened, naturally received a very warm "welcome" from the professors.
They were desperate to know exactly what had happened.
But Dumbledore had clearly noticed something. He sent the other professors away and allowed only Snape and Professor McGonagall to come along with him. Even Professor Sprout, despite how much she cared about Leonard, was not allowed to follow.
The three of them arrived at the Headmaster's office. The moment they entered, the phoenix perched on the paulownia stand noticed Leonard and immediately grew wary, crying out at him.
"Mr. William, can you tell us exactly what happened? Did you find out who the attacker was?" Dumbledore asked, soothing the slightly agitated phoenix as he spoke.
"The one behind all of this was the Dark Lord," Leonard said to the professors gathered around him. "His state was very strange. I had no way to affect him, but he couldn't hurt me either, not until he summoned the Basilisk."
At the words "the Dark Lord," Snape visibly stiffened for a moment, his eyes instinctively flicking toward Dumbledore.
Professor McGonagall's expression darkened at once. "Mr. William, that is not something you can say lightly."
"I'm not speaking lightly. Professor Raymons can testify to it," Leonard said.
Harris Raymons was far more than just someone in the know. He could be called the main culprit behind this whole disturbance. But Leonard had no intention of exposing Harris Raymons's research into Horcruxes. Instead, he intended to push certain matters onto Harris Raymons's shoulders.
"Then how did you survive an encounter with a Basilisk?" Snape pressed. "I don't believe you had the power to deal with one on your own. Where is the Basilisk now? And where is this Dark Lord you mentioned?"
Right. That was the real priority.
Professor McGonagall snapped back to herself and inwardly cursed her own lack of focus. Compared with Voldemort, who probably would not dare show his face again after exposing himself in front of Dumbledore, the Basilisk was far more urgent.
After all, Voldemort showing up was not exactly unprecedented. Last year, wasn't Quirrell's mysterious death connected to Voldemort? And afterwards, Voldemort had fled.
Whatever Voldemort's goal had been this year, now that he had been exposed, he was unlikely to dare show himself again.
The real problem was still the Basilisk. That beast was too dangerous, and it certainly would not care about wizarding titles. It could easily threaten the lives of students inside the castle.
The immediate priority was to find the Basilisk and eliminate that danger.
"You don't need to worry about the Basilisk," Leonard said at an unhurried pace. "Because Professor Raymons already dealt with it."
"What do you mean by 'dealt with it'?" Professor McGonagall asked, momentarily taken aback.
"It was killed." Leonard's expression remained grave. "I personally saw Professor Raymons use a special kind of magic to kill the Basilisk and reduce it to nothing."
As he said that, Leonard deliberately glanced at Dumbledore.
Dumbledore understood at once. He realized that the "special kind of magic" Leonard was referring to must be ancient magic. Otherwise, there would have been no reason for him to put it so vaguely.
But could Harris actually use ancient magic as well? He certainly was not the heir to ancient magic, or there would have been no need for him to seek Leonard out.
That meant he clearly possessed some method of using ancient magic, and that method most likely came from Raven.
That realization stirred a trace of caution in Dumbledore toward the secretive organization.
He suddenly felt that this ancient group, long aloof from the world, had begun to change.
Dumbledore's face was grave, but this was not the time to dwell on Raven. He looked at Leonard and said, "Can you explain what exactly happened? For example, how did you find the Dark Lord, and where did you find Mr. Potter and the others?"
That was not a question that could be answered carelessly.
Leonard's face did not change in the slightest, but his mind was already racing.
The biggest point of suspicion in everything he had done was how he had grasped the outline of events so quickly. He had gone to find Harris Raymons almost immediately after things started happening, and then he had found Harry Potter and the others.