FicWad

The Harry Potter universe is the creation of J.K. Rowling. This is fanfiction. The standard disclaimers apply.


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Chapter 45: An Incident in the Nighttime


Monday, January 14, 1991


When Charlie came down to the common room on his way to breakfast, he found Professor McGonagall waiting.

Well, he had been out of his bunk for the whole weekend. It was silly to think no one would notice. There was probably some ward or something that had tipped her off. Damn it. She looked really displeased, too.

"Good morning, Charlie. I'm afraid you may not leave the dormitory right now." Crap, he thought, but she continued. "There have been some incidents overnight which will necessitate greater security precautions for the foreseeable future." At his puzzled look, she explained "I'm sorry. I'm afraid I can't tell you anything right now, and you will hear more than you want to know soon enough. I will be able to tell you more when the other professors have finished their investigations. In the meantime, would you do me the favor of fetching your prefect for me?"

That really didn't seem to be about him or anything he had done. Huh. He was relieved both for that and for the chance to get away from her to where she couldn't see his face.

Fairly soon the common room was filling up with students wanting both to know what was going on, and to head on to breakfast, but the prefects had been instructed to keep them here until a professor arrived to escort them. McGonagall had left after locking them in (someone had pushed past the prefects and tried to leave anyway, but the door wouldn't open).

Twenty minutes later several house elves appeared, shocking the few muggleborn first-years who hadn't seen one yet. They didn't have any news, but they did conjure some tables and send breakfast up. Food rapidly changed the atmosphere from worry to excitement. While the common room could be configured to allow every single Gryffindor to meet in it at once, ordinarily it was not, and changing it around required everyone staying out of the way for two hours while McGonagall and Dumbledore fiddled and swore a lot. In short, it was pretty crowded.

So far the incident seemed to be a net plus for everyone, since being locked in meant no classes, probably. No doubt they would eventually get antsy from being cooped up, but for now they just wanted to know what had happened. (Charlie, of course, had never in the past hesitated go out a window via broom, and so had no sense of claustrophobia whatsoever. He was unusual in this respect, though.)

Speculation had settled on one of two general theories. The first was that there was something dangerous in the castle. The second was that the danger, if any, had passed, and the professors didn't want the culprits to escape or be able to cover their tracks. Fred and George looked as puzzled as everyone else, and Charlie could read them well enough that he was sure they weren't involved. Or at least, he mentally corrected himself, they hadn't done anything they realized could cause a major crisis.

After another twenty minutes had gone by, Professor McGonagall re-entered through the portrait, holding a sheet of paper. Charlie thought she still looked upset, though it was always hard to tell.

"Would you all please return to your dormitories?" she said, adding "I will be with you shortly."

This turned out to merely be a convenient way to call roll, presumably to determine if anyone was missing. The prefect came around shortly thereafter, letting them know that all Gryffindors were accounted for—three in the hospital wing from flying accidents yesterday, and the rest present in the dormitories. Apparently McGonagall had looked incredibly relieved at the end, but had not explained why, and had once again left, locking the portrait door behind her.

Further speculation held that something must have happened to students from other houses, and that perhaps some of them were in fact still missing. Charlie knew the twins could probably hide from Dumbledore himself if they really wanted to, but the average Hogwarts student wouldn't be able to hold out for a whole morning while the castle was being combed by the entire staff.

After another half hour, their head of house once more appeared, asking the prefects to help her escort the entire house to the Great Hall, and to prevent them from talking to anyone else along the way. When they arrived, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw had already been seated, and Slytherin was trickling in. The Slytherins' expressions ranged from mildly curious to indifferent. The Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws seemed very unhappy. Dumbledore was already standing in front of the faculty table, looking quite grave. When they were seated, he held up his hand, requesting silence—students had learned that if they did not actually become silent, Dumbledore was quite capable of silencing them himself, so he usually received grudging cooperation on this point.

"I will be brief, to curb your speculation. Several students and a staff member were taken to the hospital wing this morning after being found paralyzed in the halls. Their symptoms are identical to one another's, and are consistent with the effects of a basilisk's gaze." He paused, briefly, to let that sink in. "A thorough search of the castle by the staff this morning revealed no further clues."

The hall erupted in murmurs; Dumbledore wandlessly silenced them with a wave of his hand, and continued.

"The patients can be cured, eventually, but the restorative draught requires ingredients we might not be able to obtain for some time. Until then we also cannot obtain their stories. Needless to say, this is an extremely serious matter, and if you have any information that might be at all relevant, it is imperative that you bring it to the attention of a faculty member.

Some of you may have heard legends about Salazar Slytherin leaving a basilisk behind in the school to carry out his instructions. I believe these should be considered a distraction, as any basilisk loose in the school would be extremely dangerous, regardless of who it belonged to." He allowed himself a small smile. "Nevertheless, in part because of the legends, you may be assured this is a contingency that Hogwarts staff has occasionally discussed.

We will be taking precautions that some of you will no doubt be unhappy with, but they are necessary to allow the school to continue operating safely under the circumstances. Let me be clear: Hogwarts will stay open. It has faced far worse threats than a loose monster or two."

Dumbledore then outlined his plan, which by the faces of the faculty really had been agreed upon in advance. Odd. Charlie wondered if there was a book of plans, going monster-by-monster, and whether Dumbledore would let him see it.


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The precautions for dealing with a basilisk turned out to be straightforward, mostly. Students would be required to travel in groups, escorted by at least one adult.

Detection spells had been put in place. Charlie suspected these really had been in place already, and had simply failed to catch anything. This was only odd if you had no personal experience trying to outwit animals; Charlie was utterly unsurprised that a basilisk could evade Dumbledore, even without Salazar Slytherin keying it into the wards. Heck, the twins, Bill, and himself could all do it easily enough.

The worrisome part, which Dumbledore had, puzzlingly, left out, was that the victims had all been paralyzed and not killed outright. If it were really a basilisk (and he wasn't convinced it was), that meant every single one of them had met its gaze either in a reflection or through a transparent material. At least, if the legends about basilisks were true. No wizards in recent history had admitted to experimenting with them, and Charlie didn't think the centuries-old original texts were all that reliable. Charlie was pretty confident on this point, because he had read every single thing in the Hogwarts library about large reptiles.

It was that legend-like quality to the accepted wisdom that made Charlie suspicious about the roosters. Dumbledore had lifted the live-poultry rule in order to bring a number of the birds in, then set most of them loose in the halls. Supposedly more would be added as soon as they could be obtained. How was a rooster's crow supposed to hurt a magical snake? That kind of vulnerability usually turned out to be overstated, in Charlie's experience.

The only certainty was that Hogwarts would become considerably noisier and messier. The noisiness was, he supposed, the whole point, and silencing charms could be placed on classroom and dormitory doors. But it became rapidly clear that the castle had no automatic charms for removing chicken manure.

The paralyzed staff member turned out to be Mr. Filch, who was found alongside his cat, apparently chasing after a group of Ravenclaws who had been out "exploring" at night. Amateurs, he thought, having long ago learned to evade Filch and Mrs. Norris. Dumbledore had explained the school would hire a replacement caretaker as soon as possible, but under the circumstances that was going to require a background check, and until then the halls had to be scourgified by hand.

Both Eeles and Kettleburn had been instructed to cover basilisks in their next classes. Charlie was absolutely fascinated by their divergent responses: Both noted that a human handler might have been involved, both went briefly over the accepted wisdom about basilisks' gazes, and both recommended running away if at all possible. From there on, though, their approaches were very different.

Eeles discussed practical tips for detecting and escaping from monsters, with liberal use of anecdotes from his jobs at dragon reserves. He talked about how large reptiles hunted and defended themselves, and the magic-resistant properties of certain species' hides (all correct, by Charlie's reckoning). He reviewed spells and potions for augmenting one's senses, and made the class practice fighting with their eyes closed. Eeles' vision of a basilisk was of something quite big, in the same category as the dragons he was used to.

Kettleburn came to class with a ball python around his arm and a poisonous viper in a cage. He described the process for creating a basilisk, compared it to other magically created serpents like ashwinders, and asserted that despite the magical origin, basilisks were, by all accounts, basically like other snakes. He reviewed snake anatomy, letting students hold the python while he walked around the class with the viper (after stunning it and forcing its mouth open—Kettleburn was being unusually cautious!). He talked about the supposed properties and uses of basilisk venom, how to milk its fangs if you managed to subdue it, and mentioned a few shops in Diagon Alley that would be thrilled to buy it. Kettleburn's vision of a basilisk was of something small, recently hatched, and at least as adorable as the ashwinders Dumbledore had forbidden him from breeding.


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Charlie would have been hard-pressed to come up with something that would distract him from thoughts of the weekend's events, but the news of the petrified students was almost adequate. By the end of the day, though, he was unable to think about anything other than the nymph.

Even if Slytherin really had left a basilisk around to terrorize the school, it was nothing compared to the problems Hufflepuff's legacy could cause if anyone else had contact with her, and the decision to tell anyone else about it would be irreversible (at least, assuming memory charms were not an option). There was no question in Charlie's mind that abandoning the nymph was a bad act—she was clearly a thinking, feeling, extremely intelligent being, and she didn't in any way deserve the fate the founders had left her to.

A dragon, he thought, could easily find itself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like any large, dangerous creature, they tended to either get killed or chained up if they showed an excessive interest in humans. From the dragon's point of view this was all very puzzling, of course—you eat one human child, and suddenly there are hordes of humans chasing after you, as if you had tried to pick a fight with them in particular, when really you just wanted to curl up and take a nap. But it can't really sit down and reason with an angry mob of wizards, making the case that it, being a dragon, was a natural part of the ecosystem, that it was the child who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and how if humans would just learn to co-exist with it these incidents would never happen. Well, people like Charlie would make that argument, of course, but they tended to all wind up working on dragon reserves, and the various Ministries of Magic rarely listened to them.

Really coexisting with dragons in fact involved accepting that occasionally something—or someone—that you care about might get eaten. What would it mean for Hogwarts to learn to coexist with the nymph? Accepting lots of accidents involving loss of sexual or mental autonomy? What if she got socially integrated into the school and then got scared that she would be abandoned again? And how the bloody hell would the Wizengamot, or the Board of Governors, or, Merlin save us, the Prophet and Quibbler react?

He certainly felt a strong compulsion to go see her again as soon as possible. Hufflepuff's Glade, sure, he would have wanted to go back to right away, even without the nymph—it was the most beautiful place he had ever seen. But the aching longing he felt about seeing her again was unlike anything he had felt before. It had to be magic. Charlie didn't resent that—he would never resent a magical creature for doing what it did naturally—but it still made him intensely uncomfortable.

Charlie wanted to ask someone for advice.

Oliver would probably just tell him to "stay the hell away from her" (and, presumably, concentrate on Quidditch). Fred and George would try to exploit the nymph to cause trouble, and she would be only too willing to help—he didn't want to think about that.

Adults were not much better.

McGonagall, he surmised, would go straight to Dumbledore, so that wasn't very interesting. He wondered what a Headmaster McGonagall would do—probably sigh a lot, go visit the nymph out of a feeling of obligation, and come up with some strict terms about visitation which would undoubtedly go horribly wrong somehow, but probably less wrong than anyone else's plans.

Dumbledore would be too trusting, too willing to give her chances. He would think like a storybook hero, too, unable to pass up something that made life much more complicated and exciting, however ill-advised. On the other hand, Dumbledore personally stood the best chance of resisting anything the nymph tried (to be fair, it would probably be unconscious magic, but still). There were rumors about the man, since he had never been seen to be attracted to women. The rumors were plausible enough that Charlie was actually tempted to go to the man on that basis alone, but he suspected the nymph's magic could override that kind of thing with barely a thought. Frustrating.

As to the other professors, most would just wonder why he came to them. Eeles would just tell Charlie to run away. Kettleburn would go there and never leave the Glade, probably using the nymph to help round out his life lists of magical birds and beasts. Charlie felt some remorse about not telling Kettleburn, actually. The discovery of the Glade explained so many mysteries that the old professor had wondered about over the years. It was just that Kettleburn would inevitably do something unbelievably reckless and disaster would follow.

No. For now, at least, this was Charlie's problem, and he would have to think about it some more before deciding to do anything.


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Severus Snape stalked down the corridors of Hogwarts, blindfolded, hunting the basilisk. Behind him were Quirinius and Filius, with Erasmus bringing up the rear. They were doing a surprisingly good job of not crashing into things, thanks to a combination of charms and potions that let their other senses compensate for the loss of sight.

The four of them together were more than a match for a basilsk of any size, he was sure of it. At least, so long as Filius kept up his shield—the little half-goblin was a former Olympic duelist, after all, and had tested his shield against regular dragons in the past. And Erasmus was nearly a professional monster-wrangler, right? Just spending his days carefully avoiding dragons ought to have taught him something.

One of the things that it had taught him, it turned out, was to wear lots of dragon repellant. "Well, it works!" he had insisted, uncorking the bottle and offering it to Severus to sniff.

It was one of the most unpleasant things he had ever smelled, and he said so.

"Oh, come on," Eeles had replied, "you're the potions master—you work with stuff that stinks all the time, don't you?"

"Yes, but I don't go around wearing it like cheap cologne! Nevertheless, if it were a remotely good idea, I would go along with it unhesitatingly, despite the fact that I suspect it repels humans much better than dragons. I'm sure for the purposes of your former jobs it did, as you say, work, but that's exactly the problem—we're trying to find the basilisk, not offend its no-doubt delicate aesthetic sensibilities."

"You have to admit, Erasmus," Filius had added, "that it hasn't exactly been tested on basilisks."

Eeles snorted. "Nothing has been tested on basilisks! There's a bloody law against breeding them in every country, and no one has seen one in a thousand years!"

"Ah, er, yes . . ." Quirinius, so far quiet, spoke up, and was apparently unprepared for everyone turning to look at him. Severus wondered what his issue was -- a few run-ins with werewolves or vampires might give you some trauma, but Quirinius' whole personality had changed since he returned from his sabbatical. He had been quiet before, certainly, but Severus hardly thought introversion was pathological. What Quirinius had never shown before was social anxiety—he had always been calm, cool, confident, offering his thoughts only when asked or when it seemed absolutely necessary. And the rest of the faculty usually listened. Now it seemed like he was suddenly unused to being listened to, which was odd.

Anyway, Quirrel was continuing. "That's the Ashwinder Doctrine. It gets formulated in different ways, depending on the country, but generally the principle is that you should abstain from breeding certain dangerous magical creatures, like ashwinders or basilisks—"

"So that was why Silvanus got in so much trouble!" Eeles interjected.

"No," Severus had to explain, "he manages to get in trouble just by standing there, breathing. The ashwinder incident was just the most notorious. Quirinius, please continue?"

"Ah, thanks. So, the principle constraining experiments is that you should avoid breeding them in anticipation of something someone else might potentially do so in the future. That's partly just out of caution, but partly because you can't expect to get the same results experimenting on 'friendly' monsters as you would in a real, adversarial situation."

"What," asked Eeles, "you can't just, you know, poke it with a stick?"

"No, not unless you have some concrete, current justification for it, and even then, you first have to consider whether there is some adequate, independent source of information."

"What, like anything you learn while you're actually fighting it?"

"Precisely. You rely on various dark wizards to come along and do the experimentation for you—"

"—So the government's hands stay clean?"

Quirrel had not yet faced the full brunt of Eeles' scorn; so far he seemed to react by ignoring it. "That's one way of looking at it, certainly, although it presumes the government is not 'dark', whatever you mean by that . . . But there's also a question of whether you actually want the Ministry to be breeding its own monsters. That may seem purely philosophical, but it bothers some people, because it can get out of hand, and lead to investigations that are, well, broader than originally authorized." Eeles was nodding, and for a moment Severus saw the old Quirrel, able to find someone's areas of sympathy and use them to make his point (in this case, Eeles' own skepticism about government, or at least about the British one). "In the case of basilisks, though," Quirrel continued, "there are a number of highly regarded medieval treatises by actual basilisk breeders."

"Let me guess, one of those was by your own guy, Slytherin?"

"No, actually. Salazar only mentioned them in passing."

"So, how do you know this is his basilisk, then?" Eeles looked genuinely confused.

"We don't!" Severus cut in. "None of us are saying that. Albus specifically disclaimed belief in it, even."

"I thought he was just saying that for appearances . . ."

"While I admit," Severus said, "that the Headmaster does, indeed, occasionally play little games like that, in this case the matter is more straightforward. I agree with him. None of us have seen the basilisk, or any Chamber of Secrets, or any proof that Salazar Slytherin was involved in any way!"

"Is this some stupid house rivalry thing again?" Eeles asked, "because if so, I could go take a nap until you are all done or something."

Severus declined to take the bait. "Perhaps we should just let Quirinius finish? It sounds like he knows what Salazar actually wrote."

"Ah, thank you. He—he mentioned in a letter that his toad was probably getting bored, and then several months later started referring to something named, um, 'Daisy'. 'Dægesēge', actually."

All three of them stared at Quirrel with an 'are you serious?' look.

"Er, there's a book of some of his writings in the library."

Filius broke the silence. "Ah, how to put this . . . I think we were more surprised at the name than the fact that you knew about it."

"Oh."

"So is the legendary monster a girl, then?"

Severus snorted. "What, are you going to ask it out?" He sighed; Eeles was no fun to pick on, really. "Supposedly the males have a red crest and the females don't. If we catch it and neutralize its gaze, you can see for yourself. But I'm afraid the only way to find out its name would be to ask it." After that he managed to steer the conversation back to the task at hand.


And so he was now out here in a blindfold, looking for a giant, deadly snake that would probably try to eat him. Albus had put him in charge, designated his team, and headed off to bed. Fine. At least he had delegated to someone competent.

He wasn't taking the lead out of some misguided pride at being put in charge—he was in fact probably the best at fighting dirty, unconventional battles, and stood the best chance of actually taking down the basilisk. Or at least he was the most likely to try. Really Quirinius was the only weak fighter—presumably Dumbledore had put him there for the experience, but right now he was almost a dead weight if anything happened.

Severus considered it an 'almost' because Flitwick had insisted that Quirrel carry a rooster.

"Well-regarded texts aside, I fear it won't make any difference," Filius had said when he suggested it. "Fawkes would probably be a lot more helpful, but we might as well take the rooster, just in case."

"Or for the sake of appearances?" suggested Eeles.

Everyone else declined to comment.


They were down near the kitchens. With their augmented hearing, they could make out the house elves banging around with pots and pans. Severus had rarely had call to go in there, and did not seek out excuses. Elves made him uncomfortable.

They rounded a corner and went down some stairs, putting them somewhere in the vicinity of the Hufflepuff common room. In the distance, they heard some voices, which stopped after a minute—some students were out in the halls. Not even prefects were allowed out under the current rules, and so far as he knew, the four professors were supposed to be alone patrolling the halls tonight.

Severus sighed. The students were an irritating distraction, but he was obligated to deal with them.

"I suppose letting them stay out to get petrified or eaten is not an option?"

"Why Severus," joked Flitwick, "I thought you enjoyed handing out detentions!"

The others couldn't see him smiling. "Normally I take a certain enjoyment in it, that is true. However in this case I doubt I can devise a punishment worse than the basilisk itself."

"Yes, yes, you're right. Going out into its hunting grounds at night really ought to be its own deterrant."


Severus and the others were too far away to be heard coming, and had anyway cast a silencing bubble around themselves. Unfortunately their stealth proved to be profoundly embarrassing in this case, as it was now obvious that the students were hiding in a broom closet, making out. Severus' magically augmented hearing brought him every moan, gasp, and whimper with complete clarity. He was grateful the others were wearing blindfolds, and couldn't see his expressions.

He didn't really want the students to see him wearing a blindfold, especially ones from outside of his house, as these presumably were. No matter that he did, in fact, have a really good reason for wearing one—dignity would win out over safety in this case. It occurred to him that the sight of the four professors wearing blindfolds would probably be quite terrifying, but what was the point of that if he didn't get to see the students' expressions? Actually the rooster would probably ruin the effect, he realized.

This contemplation ended as he reached the door. He rapped three times on it, slowly, then drawled out a practiced "Hello." He could count on everyone in the school recognizing him from that alone. "I don't suppose you have a basilisk in there, hm?" Silence. "Seeing as how you are still alive, at least for now, I think it would be best to get your robes on and come with me." Rustling. "Ah, good, you are still alive. Although it would have been awfully convenient for us if you had the basilisk in there, too. Pity."

He enjoyed imagining the horrified faces of the professors behind him, but didn't turn around.

They escorted the two red-faced students back to the Hufflepuff dorms. Snape attempted, briefly, using legilimency on them just to make sure they weren't covering up the basilisk after all, but pulled away immediately upon finding their memories preoccupied with the last half hour. He didn't need to know about that.

The rest of the night was a loss, basilisk-wise, although eventually Severus had the group drop the silencing bubble. Ostensibly this was to try to attract the monster, rather than walk past it without a confrontation. In reality he wanted to know if he could form an image of his surroundings from the echoes of his footfalls, which by the end of the night he could, at least sort of. This was utterly fascinating.

It was also useless for detecting chicken droppings.






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Author's notes:


Yes, it has been a while since my last update, relative to my previous writing speed. Unfortunately I don't have an enormous backlog to post right now, but I do have this, and it's ready to go. The story is not dead and will not be unless I say so—I'm just working more slowly atm. :P


I don't always reveal jokes like this, but five points for your house if you caught the awful pun motivating the dialogue between the professors, and ten if you got most of it without looking it up. If you got it and are not an American, you get another ten, and may be very impressed with yourself.