"Maledictus... a curse passed down through generations..."
The dim yellow light illuminated the space in front of Sherlock's desk.
After teaching the second-year classes in the morning, he began preparing the lesson plan for next week's class on snake-like dark creatures. Apart from teaching a class for fourth-year students in the afternoon, he spent the rest of his time holed up in his office, preparing materials.
Unknowingly, the sky outside had already darkened. Sherlock stood up from his chair and paced back and forth in the office to stretch his stiff body.
He hadn't eaten dinner, and he wasn't in the mood to.
Hogwarts was in a chaotic state right now, though it wasn't due to his own subjective will.
However, the current mess was inextricably linked to his appearance.
Sherlock was not a selfless hero, but he didn't want to shirk the responsibilities he should bear.
Having transmigrated into this world and taken over the Original Owner's identity as a professor at Hogwarts, he had to accept the obligations that came with the convenience the Original Owner provided.
Protecting this school and the children within it was his duty and responsibility.
Otherwise, to be honest, even if his presence caused an unexpected deviation from the original storyline, leading to Hogwarts failing to resolve the Chamber of Secrets incident and ultimately closing down, that would actually allow Sherlock to justifiably distance himself from this place.
But Sherlock felt that would be too low, and he honestly couldn't face himself if he did that.
Creating a problem he couldn't solve himself and then fleeing in panic was the act of a coward among cowards.
So Sherlock had always been very keen on catching the Heir of Slytherin, almost telling Dumbledore all the clues he knew from watching movie explanations in his previous life.
But in the current situation, those clues were clearly useless, and things were developing in an increasingly unknown direction.
Sherlock stood quietly by the window, looking at the dark mountains outside, and murmured to himself,
"It has completely deviated from the original plot... it's truly chaotic..."
At the same time, in the Gryffindor common room.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione had been discussing for a long time with worried expressions, but hadn't come up with any solution.
"Never mind, let's just go back to sleep. We'll look for clues about the Heir of Slytherin later, to see who is more suspicious besides Malfoy."
They parted ways in the common room, and Harry and Ron walked back to their dormitory together.
"Why aren't Neville and Seamus back yet?"
Seeing the empty dormitory, Harry asked in confusion.
Ron, however, knew the reason.
"After dinner this afternoon, I saw them being caught by Snape. Snape looked very upset; it seemed like there was a problem with the potion they brewed together in the last Potions class, and they were punished by processing potion ingredients."
Harry's face immediately showed an expression of sympathy for Neville and Seamus.
"I hope they come back alive."
He wearily sat on his bed. Just as he was about to lie down, the corner of his eye suddenly caught sight of a worn-out diary that had appeared on his desk at some point.
Harry sat up from the bed again. He walked to his desk with a confused expression, picked up the diary, and asked Ron,
"Is this yours?"
Ron was drawn by his words, turned to look, and shook his head.
"I've never kept a diary." He shrugged and reminded, "I suggest you don't open it. Many curses in the wizarding world are released through books, like the infamous Wizard's Thirteen Sonnets."
But as he warned, Harry had already opened the diary.
The old, yellowed pages inside were blank, with no writing at all.
"This is just an ordinary notebook, not as terrifying as you say."
Ron was taking off his sweater, preparing to take a shower before curfew.
"Alright, maybe you accidentally picked up someone else's notebook in class. Anyway, nothing's written on it, so the person who lost it probably won't look for it again. I'm going to take a bath; hope I don't get stopped by Filch when I come back."
With that, he hurried out of the dormitory, leaving Harry alone in the room.
He sat at his desk, continuing to examine the blank diary by himself.
Ron's guess was clearly wrong, as Harry noticed the faded date on the diary's cover indicated it was fifty years old.
And the diary wasn't entirely blank; on the first page, he could only make out a name written in faint, blurry ink: Tom Riddle.
Flipping further, not a single letter appeared.
Finally, Harry turned to the back cover and saw the name of a newsagent in Vauxhall Road, London, printed on it.
"Riddle must have been a Muggle," Harry mused to himself, "that's why he bought a diary on Vauxhall Road..."
Harry spent a long time studying the diary, but couldn't figure anything out from it.
Then he yawned and returned to bed.
But after waiting for a long time for Ron or Neville to return, Harry, bored again, sat back down at his desk.
He took out a bottle of ink, dipped his quill, and tried to write something in the blank diary.
However, his pen tip glided across the page, leaving a streak of ink that quickly disappeared as if absorbed by the diary!
Harry's eyes widened.
He tried picking up the ink bottle and dripping ink into the diary. The diary was like a dry sponge, absorbing all the ink that fell onto it.
As Harry stared in amazement at this magical scene, a line of black text suddenly appeared on the previously blank page.
"Hello, no need to pour more ink. You can write in the diary and communicate with me."
Harry became excited; he felt like he had discovered something incredible.
He picked up his quill again and wrote in the diary.
"Hello, my name is Harry Potter."
The diary quickly replied.
"Hello, Harry Potter, my name is Tom Riddle. How did you find my diary?"
These words also quickly disappeared, but only after Harry had started writing hastily.
"I don't know why, it just appeared on my desk."
"They tried to get rid of me, but luckily I recorded my past in a more lasting way than ink. I always knew there were some people who didn't want this diary to be read."
Harry became even more excited; he vaguely felt that Riddle in this diary must know about the Chamber of Secrets!
"What do you mean?"
He wrote sloppily, pressing so hard that he tore the paper.
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