The monster struggled, and the vines could be seen to snap off the floor, but Evans changed tactics, waving his wand, and the vines sprouted from the seats, the floor, the ceiling, and the luggage racks around him, sinking into the bones of the skeleton and pinning it in place.
He then tried a series of spells on the skeleton: a blast spell, a cut spell, a separation spell, and even a vanishing spell, all of which failed to do any real damage to the skeleton, causing Tom and Dumbledore to frown.
The noise outside the carriage grew louder, Evans sighed, grabbed one of the skeleton's arms and disappeared with the Charm 'Apparition', the messy carriage dissipated like smoke, everything vanished and Tom could only see himself and Dumbledore, everything else was plunged into swirling darkness.
Then, a new scene emerged.
This time he and Dumbledore were in what must have been Evans' laboratory. The skeleton was securely strapped to a table, and the flames in its eyes were now much dimmer.
Evans approached the wall on the left side of the room, and only then did Tom realize that there was a slate hanging, with a few lines written on it.
Natural exhaustion (very slow).
Repeatedly crushing bones accelerates energy consumption (Either it is consumed faster or the skeleton consumes it faster).
Power with divine blessing (phoenix blood, weapon made by elves - doubtful)
Power with a curse (unicorn blood curse).
Evans apparently researched how to destroy the skeleton, and not only found a way, but also lodged his own complaints.
Tom looked at Professor Dumbledore, who was silent for a second, "I'll look for Fawkes later."
"That would be great." Tom himself had his own plans, he still had some blood from the unicorn that Voldemort had hunted in the Forbidden Forest, and it can be used.
Evans began using strange tools and spells to test the skeleton on the table. For the rest of the experiment, he had no luck. But before the memory ended, he grabbed a copy of "A Short Collection of Celtic History" and a "Life of Caesar" from his bookshelf.
Dumbledore reached out his hand to hold Tom's elbow, the scene in the lab quickly dissipated, the darkness engulfed everything and Tom slowly rose into the air with Dumbledore, made a slow turn and landed back on the ground. Tom was back in Dumbledore's office. Nothing seemed to have changed in the office, but something seemed to be different. The Pensioner was glowing in front of him, and Professor Dumbledore was standing beside him.
When he landed, Tom told Dumbledore his innermost doubts about: what power it was that could kill a man and turn his body into a mad monster after death.
Dumbledore placed Caesar's gold coin on his desk, and as he looked at it, and thought of the Celtic words the fat man had shouted earlier, the fog of history lifted before his eyes, and he had a guess.
"Do you know the history of the Celts?" Dumbledore took a seat in the lab and motioned Tom to sit next to him.
"The Celts had a very long and illustrious history, they had a highly developed civilization and their magic was first class, but the expansion of Roman civilization in the second and first centuries BC hit the people hard. Caesar declared in 57 BC that most of the Gauls had fallen into the hands of the Roman Empire."
"The remaining Gauls rallied for their freedom and fought a duel to the death against the Roman Empire, 50,000 Gauls were besieged by over 100,000 Romans in Alesia, and finally the Gallic leader Vercingetorix surrendered to the Romans."
"The words the man just shouted came from this battle. Vercingetorix put on his best clothes, surrendered to Caesar, the supreme military commander of the Romans, and six years later was displayed like an animal in a triumphal ceremony by the Romans, and finally hanged."
Dumbledore told Tom a story that seemed to have nothing to do with what had just happened on the train, and Tom was dumbfounded: the story Dumbledore was telling had to be true, so the gold coin was most likely....
"Celtic curse..." sighed Dumbledore. In any case, Caesar had not done the right thing.
Dumbledore was silent for a while, then drew his wand and extracted a memory from his temple. He watched as his memory sank to the bottom of the Pensive, then sighed.
"An eventful day..."
It had been an eventful day. The Chamber had just opened, one person was hospitalized, and now the Celtic curse was slowly breaking free of its chains and returning to haunt the world.
"Looks like we have some investigating to do." Dumbledore had made up his mind. Of course, he brought Professor Lockhart into the group without asking for his opinion at all. Did the power tool man want to be comfortable in the warehouse as a storeman? No way! Join the team and explore the big world!
[Trigger mission: Slay demons on horseback (prologue)]
[Mission objective: Follow and assist Dumbledore in his investigation of the "fancy train attack"].
Tom had also received a mission from the system.
Of course, even if he was just a support tool, if he wanted to join the team, he had to receive a level up, a set of holy relics, an upgrade to his movements and skills, and finally a weapon. Dumbledore wasn't the kind of boss who wanted his horse to run and not feed it, so he took Tom straight to his office.
Leaving the headmaster's office empty and silent.
...
Despite it being Saturday, Harry was in a very bad mood and sighed worriedly.
"Harry, if you ask me, you don't have to worry, it might be some ghost that did it." Ron was clutching a bag of sandwiches and cookies, eating them eagerly. He and Harry had been in the library all day, which had caused them to miss lunchtime. But Ron's brother Fred had disappeared for a while when he heard about it, then returned with a huge bag of food.
"There will never be hunger at Hogwarts." Those were his words, but Fred refused to tell Ron where he had gotten the bag of food.
"But why?" Harry was a little confused, "Why would the ghost take me to the scene of the crime? And why me?" puzzled, he reached into Ron's bag and pulled out a roast chicken leg.
On the day of the attack on the Chamber of Secrets, he heard a strange voice. The voice took him to the site of the attack. Since that day, it had been a constant source of worry for Harry. He had tried to figure out what the voice was and why he could hear it.