When the first rays of morning sunlight streamed through the window, Dumbledore and Potter returned to Professor McGonagall's office.
Professor Flitwick and Professor Snape arrived at the same time.
They both looked rather disheveled, their clothes filthy.
Fortunately, neither seemed to be hurt.
"Are you all right?" Professor McGonagall stood up and looked at them with concern.
"Don't worry, Minerva."
Dumbledore looked the cleanest of them all. He smiled and nodded at Professor McGonagall.
"The trouble has all been taken care of," he said, sounding pleased. "Luckily, we discovered it early. Otherwise, the students might have faced a danger they couldn't handle."
At that, Snape snorted through his large nose and said pompously, "It wasn't a danger they couldn't handle. I think they wouldn't have stood a chance!"
He gave the few students in the office a contemptuous glance. "If our students had encountered that Basilisk, they would have had no fate but to end up as a pile of bones in the sewers!"
"A Basilisk?"
Professor McGonagall was stunned.
She asked Dumbledore in horror, "The kind created by Herpo the Foul, the monster that can kill with a single glance?"
Dumbledore nodded.
"Merlin!"
McGonagall cried out and grabbed the desk to steady herself.
She said in disbelief, "So the students nearly encountered that terrible monster! How could something like that be hidden in Hogwarts Castle?"
By then, Mrs. Weasley was already hugging Ginny so tightly that she could barely breathe, tears streaming down her face.
Mr. Weasley put his arms around them too.
Before Dumbledore and the others returned, the couple had learned a few more details: Ginny had been in close contact with the monster!
"That really was something Slytherin left behind! That monster! I'd say it's been alive for at least a thousand years!" Professor Flitwick cried.