In the dimly lit office.
Snape felt the magic he cast on Ian's magic wand fail. He immediately frowned and quickly pulled out the Living Map he had confiscated to check Quirrell's location.
After seeing that Quirrell was already staying in his bedroom, Snape finally breathed a slight sigh of relief. He thought that no matter how bold Ian was, he wouldn't dare to provoke a professor by barging into their quarters.
"That slippery lazybones!"
Perhaps believing Ian had really run out of options and used magic to clean the bathroom, Snape didn't get up. He just muttered a quiet complaint and continued with his experiments.
The magic potion in the cauldron was bubbling, and he was trying to find a way to bypass Ian's Infinite Firepower Potion to concoct an alternative to it.
...
Ian didn't have difficulty making choices.
Seeing the two passages revealed after the statue stood up, he only hesitated for a moment before heading into the passage behind the Slytherin statue. The long stone passage was much more modest compared to the ancient underground palace.
Having already broken some rules, Ian immediately raised his magic wand, dispelling the darkness in the passage. Although this passage wasn't leaking, it felt even more uncomfortable to walk through than a leaking one.
Ian's Lighting Spell illuminated the environment of the passage. The walls of the duct were pitch black and dirty, having not been cleaned for a long time, with various small animal bones scattered all over.
Moss was growing on the mold-covered bones, and the mold seemed to be parasitizing on the moss, making the entire passage smell terribly foul. Ian felt his stomach revolting.
He quickly cast a Bubble Head Charm on himself to prevent him from throwing up his dinner. As he continued his exploration, Ian soon reached a platform connecting to a tunnel.
"Creak creak creak~"
Peering out from the opened stone wall, he immediately saw the silhouette of a gigantic creature lying motionless on the platform outside, like a sculpture.
"Indeed, this connects to Slytherin's true Secret Chamber." The glow from Ian's magic wand shone on the platform, and the enormous snake skin with its green hue was clearly visible.
It lay coiled on the small platform's ground, its inside hollow, evidently the shed skin of Slytherin's Snake Monster, a very precious kind of magic potion material.
Ian jumped onto the platform from the stone wall without hesitation, packed up all the snake skin into his money bag, then glanced towards the deeper region ahead.
He knew.
Slytherin's Secret Chamber, and that big treasure Snake Monster, were still there.
"Today I discovered an even more astonishing secret in Hogwarts, the Snake Monster will have to wait for another free time." Ian weighed his options and quickly darted back into the passage behind the stone wall.
A night's time wasn't much, he definitely needed to manage his time efficiently. Following the stench back the way he came, Ian quickly returned to that spacious, grand underground palace.
The two stone statues were still standing there linked to Ian.
"Why didn't the statues of Gryffindor and Ravenclaw stand up? I'm clearly a Ravenclaw, and I've even received Lady Ravenclaw's recognition more than once!"
Ian believed that the other two statues also had similar passages behind them, but no matter how he tried casting newly learned spells, the two stone statues still showed no intention of standing up.
"Does this mean that cold women and hot-blooded men are the hardest to win over?" Ian even tried using the Hufflepuff and Slytherin statues to pry the other two founders' statues from the wall, but after fussing over it for a while, it was all in vain. The Ravenclaw and Gryffindor statues seemed to have their bottoms welded in place.
Perhaps a giant dragon could lift up these two founders?
Those things were much larger than the over ten-meter tall statues.
"Corpse Reappearance!"
Ian raised his magic wand and cast a spell on the massive dragon bones in the center of the underground palace. However, this attempt only further proved his theory about the prehistoric giant dragon's magic resistance.
"Creak creak creak~"
The dragon skeleton only shook violently; Ian's magic couldn't successfully control it. This wasn't just an issue of the dragon bones' magic resistance but also Ian's insufficient magic power and magic strength.
"Is this what it feels like to have a treasure but be unable to access it..." Unwilling to give up, Ian increased his magic output and tried several more times, but the dragon skeleton only performed a jump and shook in place.
From the feedback coming from his repeated failed magic attempts, Ian felt that even if Dumbledore and Grindelwald came, they wouldn't fare much better at controlling this bone dragon.
"At least I still have you two."
Ian could only comfort himself with the two large stone statues. Although riding on the shoulder of a large stone statue wasn't as cool as riding on a bone dragon's head, these statues of the four founders did have a certain iconic value.
At the Quidditch finals.
He wanted to ride the Slytherin statue to cheer for his own house, surely weakening the momentum and fighting spirit of the Slytherin team considerably.
What can I say, Ian didn't really like Quidditch much, but he did enjoy earning points for his house. He was motivated by anything that could prevent other houses from earning house points.
And who wouldn't like making a grand, stunning entrance?
"I have to find a way to move you two outside. You should stand outside the castle to deter mischief-makers, it would be best if during a 'loss of control', you could squash Quirrell and Voldemort into hamburger patties with one step." Ian regretfully looked at the two gigantic stone statues under his control, muttering as he gave up using the Dancing Spell on the dragon bones again.