The Chamber Opens

Harry could not believe Snape had awarded him points. He was not foolish enough to ask for confirmation. What if Snape came back to himself? Harry nodded and sat down.

His eyes instinctively moved to Edmund. He wanted to know why Snape had changed so dramatically after his voice became a girl's.

Harry still did not know he had become a girl. He thought only his voice had changed.

Edmund had no energy to answer him. His whole body was shaking, and his expression was painfully twisted.

Do not misunderstand. Edmund was holding back laughter.

He had not expected the scene to be this good. Snape's expression, an entire spectrum of emotion, and Harry's current lost look had struck directly at his sense of humor.

When Harry saw him like that, he immediately understood that Edmund had tricked him. Unfortunately, they were in class.

Otherwise, even if he could not beat Edmund, Harry would have thrown himself at him anyway. For the rest of Potions, everyone's sense of reality took a beating. Forty points. A full forty points.

Snape kept asking Harry questions. Harry failed to answer again and again, yet Snape always found a reason to award him points.

The Slytherins felt as though their Head of House had been drugged. They glared at Harry.

Yet the longer they looked, the more they felt that Harry in that form was actually rather pretty.

No. Absolutely not. They quickly pulled their gazes away and fled the classroom as soon as class ended.

"Hahahahahaha!"

Edmund finally could not hold back and laughed aloud.

"Edmund! I will fight you!"

Harry could not bear it anymore. Pranking him was bad enough, but laughing so openly was unforgivable.

Edmund pushed the lunging Harry away and gasped between laughs.

"Do not. I am afraid Cho and Hermione will misunderstand."

Hermione walked over with a strange expression and looked at Harry.

"I will not misunderstand anything, Edmund. Harry, however, do you want to move into the girls' dormitory?"

Harry became even more confused. What were these two talking about? Edmund conjured a mirror and handed it to him. Harry took it, looked into the glass, and nearly blacked out.

The pretty girl in the mirror was him? Why had he become a girl?

"You are joking, right, Edmund?" Harry asked, his voice close to breaking.

By now, Edmund had laughed enough. Still catching his breath, he answered, "Relax, Harry. It is only temporary. You will change back soon."

Hermione pinched Edmund. This joke had gone a little too far. He had literally changed Harry's sex.

Then she looked at Harry again. Pfft. Hermione could not help laughing too.

Harry left the two of them in despair, planning to follow Ron back to the dormitory. He did not want to wander around with a girl's face.

Then he noticed Ron staring at him strangely, face flushed red. Harry panicked.

Ron had not expected his best friend to look strangely good as a girl. His eyes drifted, and the blush on his face spread all the way to his ears.

'Why are you blushing?'

It took a full day for Harry to return to normal. From then on, he developed a deep psychological shadow toward any food or drink Edmund gave him.

Edmund, however, had no time to keep teasing Harry. Aelia sent a letter saying the shop's Wolfsbane Potion supply was almost sold out.

In the letter, Aelia also mentioned that through Wolfsbane Potion, they had recruited twenty werewolves in only a month. Those were the ones she had carefully selected for temperament, and every one of them had signed a contract.

The result was that Edmund had to spend quite a bit of time brewing another batch of Wolfsbane Potion for Aelia.

She also mentioned something that worried him. Their expansion had been too fast recently and had already affected the interests of two other major families.

Aelia had quietly recruited so many people that she had cut into someone else's source of profit.

For now, because the other families still did not know who stood behind her, they would not act recklessly. But it remained a hidden danger.

After reading the letter, Edmund decided he would go there during Christmas and deal with the problem.

Strike first. Edmund did not want someone stabbing him in the back at some future moment. Until Halloween, Edmund spent much of his spare time brewing potions inside his trunk.

Cho finally could not stand it anymore. She slipped into the trunk and dragged him out.

Edmund had given both girls permission to enter and leave the trunk freely. If anyone else approached it, the alarm would trigger immediately.

That permission proved useful today.

"I think this is unfair," Edmund complained as he was pulled out. "Why am I not allowed into the girls' dormitory, while you can come into the boys' dormitory?"

Cho gave him a fierce look.

"Shut up. What exactly do you want to do in the girls' dormitory?"

As they walked through the corridor, Cho continued complaining about his recent behavior. Edmund knew he was in the wrong, so he only smiled and did not argue. Quietly, he took her hand, preparing to soften her anger with a little sweetness.

"Ah!"

A scream cut through the corridor. Edmund and Cho looked at each other, then hurried toward the sound.

When they arrived, they saw several words written in blood across the wall:

The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the Heir, beware.

Several people were already there: Harry, Ron, and Filch.

The scream had come from Filch. He was kneeling on the floor with Mrs. Norris in his arms. Cho tightened her hand around Edmund's, frightened by the scene.

"It was you! You killed my cat! I will kill you!"

Filch screamed hysterically and lunged toward Harry. Harry stared blankly, still not fully understanding what had happened. Then an old, stern voice stopped Filch.

"Filch!"

It was Dumbledore, arriving with a group of professors.

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