"So, what exactly are you doing out here?" Maurise crouched down, looking at Draco with genuine amusement.
"Let me go first!" Draco kept his voice low, but his intense irritation was blatantly obvious. "That is, unless you actively want to attract a patrolling professor."
"I don't think you fully grasp the situation here," Maurise cast a mildly condescending glance at him, his tone perfectly flat. "I could easily leave you tied up right here and walk away without facing a single consequence. Then, tomorrow morning, Filch or some random professor will find you wriggling on the floor..."
Draco's pale face visibly darkened. Maurise was completely right. No matter how the scenario played out, Draco would be the only one suffering the consequences.
"What exactly do you want?" Draco squeezed the words out through clenched teeth.
"Hmm... why don't you start by telling me what you were doing out here?" Maurise asked, his eyes narrowing slightly.
Draco's jaw tightened. He stubbornly fixed his gaze on a landscape painting hanging on the nearby wall. "...The library," he finally admitted, his voice dripping with reluctance. "I was reading in the library."
"The Restricted Section?" Maurise pressed.
Draco offered no response, but his silence was a blatant confirmation.
Maurise decided not to interrogate him further on the matter. Robert had mentioned during their gathering that students from other Houses occasionally sneaked into the Restricted Section. Clearly, Draco Malfoy was one of those daring few.
"Alright then. How exactly did you guarantee you wouldn't get caught? You certainly don't know the Disillusionment Charm yet," Maurise deduced.
"Potions and a few Dark magical artifacts..." Draco answered rapidly. "Now let me go. I answered your question."
Being interrogated while tied up and sprawled on the stone floor was a profound, unbearable humiliation for the proud Slytherin.
Maurise casually pointed his wand. The thick ropes binding Draco instantly dissolved into thin air.
Draco scrambled to his feet, rubbing his stiff arms and wrists with a deep scowl. He shot Maurise a venomous glare. "I will remember this, Black. You just wait."
What an incredibly unoriginal threat.
Having delivered his pathetic parting words, Draco immediately turned to leave.
"I haven't dismissed you yet, Malfoy."
Maurise's voice was not loud, but it possessed a commanding chill that forced Draco to freeze dead in his tracks.
He whipped his head back around. "What else could you possibly want? Do not push your luck!"
"Come with me," Maurise chuckled darkly. "You do not have the right to refuse. Besides, this little excursion actually concerns you."
"What?" Draco instinctively took a half-step backward. A deep, sinking feeling of pure dread settled in his stomach.
The two boys walked in tandem through the pitch-black corridors of Hogwarts. During their silent march, Draco inevitably noticed the eerie, levitating black notebook drifting just ahead of them. However, thoroughly intimidated by Maurise's silent pressure, he wisely kept his mouth shut.
Eventually, they stopped directly in front of the second-floor girls' lavatory.
Maurise stepped aside, gesturing toward the door with an undeniable tone of command. "You go in first."
"You want me to go in there?" Draco balked, his pureblood sensibilities instantly rebelling. "What on earth are we doing here?" He was completely bewildered.
"Do not ask questions," Maurise cast him a chilling sideways glance. "Just do exactly as I say. I promise you will leave with all your limbs intact."
Draco swallowed hard. He knew he had absolutely no choice in the matter. Taking a shaky breath, he pushed the lavatory door open with trembling hands.
Naturally, absolutely nothing jumped out to kill him. It was just an ordinary, highly neglected, out-of-order bathroom.
The only thing remotely special about this place was its permanent resident: the ghost known as Moaning Myrtle. Maurise had heard numerous complaints about her from other Ravenclaw students. She was the ghost of a teenage girl wearing Ravenclaw robes, known for her incredibly erratic temper and profound emotional instability.
As expected, the moment Myrtle spotted the two boys, she instantly erupted into a deafening, hysterical wail.
"Oh! Boys! Two nasty boys have barged into my private bathroom! Have you come to point and laugh at miserable, pathetic, dead Myrtle?!"
Draco jumped out of his skin at the sudden, piercing shriek. When he finally identified the source of the noise, his face twisted into an expression of unadulterated disgust. "Shut up, you miserable, weeping ghost."
Myrtle's wails instantly doubled in volume.
"I am going to tell the entire school! I will tell everyone you are a disgusting pervert sneaking into the girls' bathroom in the middle of the night! I am going to throw leeches into your stupid blonde hair! I might not be able to physically touch them, but I can certainly imagine it!"
She shrieked relentlessly at Malfoy. Her hysterical sobbing echoed off the tiled walls, creating an incredibly ear-splitting racket.
Draco's face cycled rapidly between an angry red and a sickly pale. She was a ghost. He had absolutely no magical means to shut her up.
Standing near the sinks, Maurise simply shook his head.
'What a spoiled, foolish brat.'
Of all the entities in the castle to provoke, he picked a petty ghost. What was Draco planning to do if Myrtle actually held a grudge and decided to wail outside his dormitory bed every single night for the next five years?
Myrtle sobbed hysterically for nearly two full minutes before finally retreating into one of the corner stalls, her wails dying down into muffled, pathetic hiccups.
Maurise massaged his throbbing temples and turned his attention back to the floating notebook. "Alright, Tom. What next?"
The moment the words left his mouth, the spectral, translucent figure of Tom Riddle materialized right in the center of the lavatory.
Draco stared blankly at the sudden apparition.
'Is this... another ghost?'
Tom did not waste a single second. He turned toward a specific copper tap on the central sink. Opening his mouth slightly, he emitted a series of chilling, low-pitched hissing sounds.
'Parseltongue!'
Absolute, unadulterated terror flooded Draco's face.
Immediately following the hiss, the copper tap glowed with a blinding white light. The entire sink mechanism began to shift and rotate downwards. A few seconds later, a massive, dark pipe completely exposed itself, easily large enough for a grown man to slide into.
"Is... is this...?" Draco stammered, his entire body trembling violently as he looked at Maurise.
The answer was already glaringly obvious.
Maurise offered a thoroughly terrifying, cheerful smile and nodded. "I believe you have already guessed correctly. Welcome to the entrance of the Chamber of Secrets. Are you mentally prepared to face the legendary monster lurking within?"
'The Chamber of Secrets... the monster...'
Every last drop of blood drained from Draco's face. He opened his mouth to scream, but his vocal cords were completely paralyzed by fear. 'He has to be joking... right?'
"Down you go," Maurise urged casually. "You get the profound honor of being the vanguard. Once we finish exploring this little dungeon, you can go straight back to your warm bed."
He spoke with such breezy indifference, one might have assumed they were simply heading down to the Great Hall for a plate of eggs and bacon.
"The vanguard?" Draco pointed a trembling finger at his own chest. "Me?"
"Yes, you," Maurise confirmed with absolute certainty. "Oh, please do not worry yourself. You are a proud pureblood. The monster inside the Chamber will not harm a single hair on your head."
Maurise was absolutely certain that century-old pipe was going to be disgustingly filthy. Throwing Draco down first to sweep away the cobwebs and grime was simply practical.
Seeing Draco remain frozen in absolute terror, Maurise let out a disappointed sigh. "Let me give you a hand."
He took a swift step forward. Before Draco could even register the movement, Maurise firmly grabbed the back of the boy's collar. Using Draco's own shifting weight, Maurise effortlessly shoved the younger, shorter boy directly over the edge of the gaping pipe.
"Have a safe trip."
"No, wait, AAAAAHHH!!"
Draco's desperate, shrieking wail echoed wildly before rapidly fading into the suffocating darkness of the pipe.
Maurise stood at the edge of the sink, tilting his head and listening carefully to the fading echoes for a few seconds. Hmm. He honestly couldn't accurately judge how deep the drop actually was based on the screams.
'Come to think of it,' he pondered idly, 'why on earth did Salazar Slytherin design the grand entrance to his legendary secret lair as a massive plumbing fixture?'
Maurise furrowed his brow slightly at the architectural absurdity. Tossing the distracting thought aside, he hopped up onto the sink and slid smoothly down into the pipe to follow his reluctant vanguard.