Hogwarts Castle stood on a cliff, with the Black Lake surrounding it on three sides. Looking down from the cliff, one could see the lake water crashing against the rock face below.
Harris Raymons moved along the edge of the cliff, occasionally leaning out to look down, as if searching for something.
"The outlet for the drainage pipes should be nearby," Harris Raymons muttered to himself, recalling the clues he had found in Voldemort's memories from Ravenclaw's Diadem.
It was a diary the young Voldemort had once found at home. Its owner was named Corvinus Gaunt, a member of the Gaunt family and, by blood, one of Voldemort's ancestors.
The diary recorded an interesting event. In the eighteenth century, the headmaster at the time had overseen a renovation of Hogwarts Castle.
The renovation covered the entire pipe system running from the bathrooms on each floor to the Black Lake.
Plumbing was one of the few things wizards had adopted from Muggles.
Before that, whenever wizards used the toilet, they simply cast the Vanishing Spell to make the filth disappear. As for where it went... that was anyone's guess.
In any case, the construction of the plumbing system was the largest project Hogwarts Castle had undergone since its founding.
And Corvinus Gaunt, as the only Gaunt family student at Hogwarts at the time, had acted on instructions from his family and tampered with the work in quite a few ways during construction.
That included, but was not limited to, using the Imperius Curse and Memory Charm on the workers.
The diary did not explain the reason in detail, but Harris Raymons, as a member of the Ravens, knew quite a few secrets.
For example, the Gaunt family were actually descendants of Salazar Slytherin, one of Hogwarts' founders.
Whatever Corvinus Gaunt had gone to such lengths to hide was obviously something of great symbolic significance, such as... the Chamber of Secrets.
"So the installation of the pipes really did threaten the Chamber of Secrets' existence. Otherwise, Corvinus Gaunt would never have been this desperate."
Harris Raymons jumped off the cliff. His body slowed continuously as he fell, and in the end he landed lightly on the rocks beside the pipes.
The outlet for the castle's entire drainage system lay before him.
Looking at the pipes, which gave off a foul smell and were smeared with suspicious stains, Harris Raymons's face showed three parts disgust, three parts hesitation, and three parts helpless resignation.
Hogwarts' plumbing system had been quite advanced in the eighteenth century, and even now it still possessed a certain historical elegance.
But none of that changed the true nature of what he was looking at.
This was a sewer outlet, one that discharged all the waste produced daily by everyone in the castle.
At the thought, Harris Raymons's face turned slightly pale. It was revolting.
Especially when he thought about the possibility that he might have to crawl inside and explore the pipes, his stomach churned so badly he felt he might throw up at any moment.
But he had no choice.
"The pipe-laying project was overseen by the headmistress at the time, Dilys Derwent. She even studied the subject herself and personally designed the plumbing plans, believing the system would benefit the students' physical and mental well-being."
Harris Raymons silently sorted through the information in his head.
"This headmistress, who also worked at St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, was famous for being strict and meticulous. There's no way her plans would have allowed for any flaws, much less anything that didn't match the design..."
"So no matter how badly Corvinus Gaunt wanted to hide the Chamber of Secrets, he could never have manipulated the workers into changing the route of the pipes..."
"The most he could do was control the workers, make them ignore the Chamber while building the system, and adjust their memories a little so they wouldn't reveal anything about it."
"So..."
Harris Raymons took a deep breath, covered his nose, and looked uncertainly at the pipe in front of him.
"So this pipe definitely leads to the Chamber of Secrets. It might even bypass the Chamber's original entrance."
Not just anyone could enter the Chamber of Secrets. According to the Ravens' internal speculation, it could only be opened by a descendant of Salazar Slytherin. As for how, no one knew.
Maybe it required blood carrying Salazar Slytherin's lineage, or perhaps some kind of heirloom.
Either way, Harris Raymons had neither, so all he could do was come here to this disgusting sewer outlet.
Magic flashed, slicing through the metal grate over the mouth of the pipe.
Harris Raymons cast a Bubble-Head Charm on himself, bent over with a look of bitter misery, and crawled into the pipe.
The sewage inside sloshed over his feet. Keeping his head lowered, Harris Raymons trudged forward with a conflicted expression, stopping from time to time to inspect a branching passage.
He forced himself to ignore the soft, squelching sensation underfoot and carefully studied the layout of the surrounding pipes, matching them one by one to the plumbing plans in his memory.
The plumbing system beneath Hogwarts Castle was extremely complex. Wastewater from every floor eventually converged here, so finding the single pipe that led to the Chamber of Secrets was no easy task.
Another long-term job, and in a filthy environment like this no less.
Harris Raymons sighed, checked how much longer the Bubble-Head Charm would last, and slowly began his search.
What a miserable assignment. If only he could have found the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets and the method to open it in the memories inside Ravenclaw's Diadem.
"The method for entering the Chamber of Secrets is nothing more than saying the word 'open' in Parseltongue."
Inside the Room of Requirement, Leonard stared at Harris Raymons's location on the Marauder's Map while thinking.
In front of him lay a diary with a black cover. It was clearly just a diary, yet for some reason it looked strangely weak.
That was only natural. After all, the diary had been starved for a month.
Tom Riddle's diary needed soul power. Ever since it awakened, it had been trying to tempt Leonard, and in the process it had kept draining the tiny bit of soul power it had just obtained. It would have been stranger if it did not look weak.
"Opening the Chamber doesn't actually require real Parseltongue. Mimicking the sound is enough. In the original story, Ron Weasley did exactly that."
Wearing dragon-hide gloves, Leonard stroked his chin and smiled faintly at the diary in front of him.
"So all I need to do is find a way to trick the Tom Riddle inside the diary into telling me the syllables of the Parseltongue word for [open]... Hmm. Given Tom Riddle's intelligence, that probably won't be easy."
Voldemort had been at the peak of his intelligence in his youth. At this stage, he was probably not someone who could be easily fooled, unless Leonard could make him think he was the one doing the fooling, and make him believe he had already gained control of the person holding the diary.