Most Macabre Monstrosities

"Hermione's hand was clamped so tightly around the paper that Harry was sure he was going to tear it. While Ron kept watch he tugged and twisted, and at last, after several tense minutes, the paper came free. It was a page torn from a very old library book."

- Description.

Most Macabre Monstrosities was a very old book on beasts, a copy of which could be found in the library at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It bore information about basilisks on page 724.

In 1993, during the opening of the Chamber of Secrets, Hermione Granger suddenly realised that the monster that inhabited the Chamber was a basilisk. She sprinted to the library, where she consulted this book, and tore a page from it, where she scribbled the word "Pipes". She was, moments later, Petrified by the basilisk on her way out of the library, as she was using a mirror to look around corners. As she was taken to the Hospital wing, no one noticed that Hermione was still clutching a page from this book, untill Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley came to visit her. With the information they had gathered, and the information from the page of this book, they effectively discovered the Chamber's entrance, and slew the basilisk.

Contents
"Of the many fearsome beasts and monsters that roam our land, there is none more curious or more deadly than the Basilisk, known also as the King of Serpents. This snake, which may reach gigantic size and live many hundreds of years, is born from a chicken's egg, hatched beneath a toad. Its methods of killing are most wondrous, for aside from its deadly and venomous fangs, the Basilisk has a murderous stare, and all who are fixed with the beam of its eye shall suffer instant death. Spiders flee before the Basilisk, for it is their mortal enemy, and the Basilisk flees only from the crowing of the rooster, which is fatal to it."

Appearances

 * Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
 * Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (film)
 * Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (video game)