Gerald pointed at the brass tap beside the sink, engraved with a little snake.
Nagini slithered up to the washbasin, flicked her tongue rapidly through the air a few times, then let out a series of hisses.
But the tap did not budge, and nothing happened to the washbasin.
She turned her head and looked at Gerald with her amber slit pupils.
"Master, it didn't work."
"Not again! You're a monster, just like him!" Moaning Myrtle clung to the chandelier, trembling like a leaf.
Her glasses slipped off her nose and fell through the air, passing through her translucent body onto the floor before floating back onto her face.
How could she not be afraid? Back then, she had heard a boy talking in the Washroom, making hissing sounds, and then she had died without knowing why.
"There's nothing to make a fuss about, Myrtle. It's only a snake."
While soothing the fragile nerves of the girl ghost who had been dead for years, Gerald took a small glass bottle from his Object-Storing Talisman.
He had only two bottles of Paracelsus's Voice-Changing Potions left. He had not used them since learning the basic syllables of Parseltongue last time.
He held the potion bottle up to the moonlight spilling in from the corridor and gave it a shake. The amber liquid left fine ripples along the glass.
Then he pulled out the stopper, tipped his head back, and took a mouthful. The instant the potion slid down his throat, the muscle tissue there began rapidly writhing and changing shape, and a familiar tingling spread from the root of his tongue to his Adam's apple.
"Chamber of Secrets, open."
Gerald spoke to the brass tap engraved with the little snake.
This time, what came out of his mouth was not English, but