FicWad

Note: For this chapter, speech via patronus is in italics.


Chapter 57: Slytherin's Monster, Part I


In early February, Dumbledore announced that most of the security precautions at Hogwarts would be relaxed, leaving in place only the usual curfew, which the students were reminded was to be taken very seriously. The school reacted with the predictable wild guessing concerning what new, secret measures, if any, had been put in place, and whether the staff was as sick of escorting everyone around as the students were of being escorted.

Two weeks later, at lunchtime on a Monday, Fred and George Weasley approached the staff table and reported that no one had seen their brother Charlie since Friday evening. He had missed Quidditch practice the day before, despite the upcoming game with Ravenclaw next weekend. Simple pointing spells had failed; a few staff members quickly confirmed that result.

The twins tried to be reassuring:


"We're sure it wasn't the, um . . ."

". . . basilisk. Charlie doesn't go out in the halls at night . . ."

". . . but he does go to the Forbidden Forest . . ."

". . . all the time! So we think maybe you should look there . . ."

". . . but you should floo our mum first and ask her to check the clock."


Dumbledore stood up at once, taking the boys with him to his office. On the way, once they were out of earshot, he stopped and turned to them.

"I am aware," he said, "that you boys have in your possession a remarkable artifact. Would I be correct in presuming you have already consulted it?"

The twins looked at each other in shock.

"It will not be taken from you." Dumbledore waited a moment and tried to rein in his serious expression — intimidating Fred and George wouldn't be helpful. Finally he inferred his answer from their gestures. "Ah. Very well. I would have been remiss were I not to pursue every option to find your brother."


The twins nodded, accepting that. "Um," said George, "there are lots of places not on the map, that are still in the castle . . ."

"I would imagine so," said Dumbledore. "Do you have any reason to think Charlie might be in one of them?"


The twins shook their heads.

"No . . ."

". . . not at all . . ."

". . . Charlie spends all his free time outdoors, even in the winter!"

"He never even leaves Gryffindor Tower by the door if he can help it . . ."

". . . so he wouldn't have been in the halls, and we know he goes to the Forbidden Forest all the time . . ."

". . . but he could be anywhere in it. We really don't know! But he never misses practice . . ."

". . . so he wouldn't have just decided not to come back. Probably."


Dumbledore sighed, making a mental note to check the wards around Gryffindor tower.

Once they reached his office, he flooed the Burrow. Molly Weasley, in a mixture of worry and irritation, reported that the clock simply said "School". It was agreed that this was encouraging but not very informative, since the next most likely options were "Mortal Peril" and "Lost".

The Headmaster observed that while Charlie was certainly lost from everyone else's perspective, it had to be Charlie's perspective alone that the clock reflected. Molly confirmed this; for a parent, it was one of the clock's most exasperating features. It would have been convenient, sort of, if its hands could point to "Petrified By A Basilisk In The Third Floor Hallway, A Few Feet From The Painting Of An Owl In A Hat". Unfortunately Arthur had failed to anticipate the need for that when ordering the clock, a fact the twins would tease their father about again and again in the future.


After closing the floo connection, Dumbledore saw that the twins were looking at him expectantly. He stroked his beard.

"Is there anyone else your brother might have spoken to?"


The twins shrugged.

"Hagrid?"

"Professor Kettleburn?"



To the Headmaster's dismay, this turned out to exhaust the pool of people who had ever wanted to hear about anything Charlie did outside of quidditch. But it was a start.


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While the prospect of a protracted and thorough search of the grounds was much more appealing to Albus than the paperwork which otherwise awaited him, he was not so irresponsible as to go rushing off without trying simpler methods. These, uniformly, failed.

Further attempts at pointing spells, or at least the ones Albus knew that could be cast without a lengthy ritual, did nothing. Apparating several miles from the school allowed Albus to obtain generalized results, confirming Charlie's location within the Forbidden Forest, but at any closer approach the spells failed.

House elves shook their heads. An owl returned from the forest an hour or so after being sent; Albus guessed there had been fifteen minutes of confused searching followed by forty-five of being ashamed of itself. Fawkes simply trilled when Dumbledore asked him to find Charlie.

Albus cancelled all classes for the day. Students were sent to their dormitories.

The entire staff was called to the meeting room off of the Great Hall, chattering as they came in.

Albus watched Pomona lean across the table to Sybill. "I'm sure his parents must by beside themselves with worry," she said. "Ah, Sybill, do you suppose . . ."

Trelawney waited expectantly, looking especially wide-eyed and owlish through her glasses.

"Do you suppose, I mean, that spell you said you used in the greenhouses . . ."

"Oh! It won't work outdoors. It would go all over the place, I'd pass out in a few seconds, and the spell would end."

Sprout grimaced as some of the other faculty tried to disguise their amusement. It was clear this sounded like an excuse to them.

Nervously, Sprout tried to proceed diplomatically. "Just in case, you know, if you do know anything that would work . . ."

"Oh! Uh, he's probably somewhere protected from scrying, right? But we might not have much time . . . I would need a calf, about three months old—"

"No!" Several expressions indicated this was unacceptable; the others rolled their eyes in skepticism.

"Oh, sorry. They are difficult to get. Then, a few hours with the Hogwarts ovens — I'd need to make bread — and, uh, five secretary birds—"

"No!"

"Right, short notice. The brain and spinal column of—"

"NO!"

"Oh . . . I think the rest would all be considered Dark Arts. I'm sorry."



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Aurora stopped Sybill in the hall. Dumbledore had taken the faculty he considered competent for the task and headed for the forest, leaving the two of them behind with a few others.

"Sybill?"

"Oh! I'm sorry. Hi."

"Those were real rituals you were describing, correct?"

"Oh. Yes. I don't know if they would be powerful enough. Hogwarts has some very strange magic."

"What was the brain from?"

"Steppe owl. The nearest one is probably in Russia, though. It wasn't a very good idea, but I was nervous."

"It seemed that Professor Sprout almost believed in the . . . Maze-Walker of Ur?"

"Yes, that was it."

"But the others did not."

"No."

"Once their opinion of you is fixed, it does not change. It does not matter what you do." This was stated as fact.

Sybill nodded, slowly. "I shouldn't rely on that, though."

Aurora laughed. "I keep forgetting this is a good thing for you!"

They walked in silence for a while.

"Could we try the Eye?" Aurora asked.

"I was going to! You're welcome to try, too, of course . . ."

"Good. I will bring the vodka."




~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


On Tuesday, March 5, at precisely 2:16 AM, eight of the Headmaster's alarms were activated simultaneously. This woke him up with a start and elicited a screech from Fawkes, who teleported to the bedroom to escape the noise in the office.

Albus had no time for affectionate comments to his familiar. Given the alarms he was hearing, this would be trouble and would not be over quickly. Something or someone had passed through the plane of several sets of outer wards.

Albus ran to the bathroom, then to his closet, and threw on a robe he had not worn in several years. Four minutes after waking, Elder Wand in hand, he found himself completely unable to open his bedroom door. It was magically locked, and he became increasingly concerned as successive unlocking spells failed.

Although he could not distinguish them all, there were now eleven devices sounding. The intruder was probably standing at the main doors — assuming the problems with his door were not a coincidence, it was something that was either extremely powerful, or interacting very oddly with the castle's wards, or both.

He was unable to apparate to his office. Something was definitely wrong with the wards. Rather than let him waste time blasting the door open (it was highly reinforced), Fawkes took him to the office, where the phoenix was rewarded with a silencing spell around his perch.

2:25 AM. Fourteen devices were sounding, some obviously malfunctioning. Dumbledore checked them all methodically.

Something had come into the Entrance Courtyard, then opened and passed through the main doors. While he watched, another three alarms sounded, indicating it had gotten as far as the Grand Staircase. Four others that should logically have gone off had not, which was puzzling. Albus took a minute to fiddle unproductively with several adjustable devices.

2:29. A half dozen instruments squealed, beeped, clicked, or chimed their last, only to be replaced by about the same number being newly set off. Thirty seconds later saw another half dozen break or overload. Albus had lost track; these were no longer useful (and puzzling out the meaning of the mysteriously unactivated ones was impossible without more information). There were ways to overload monitoring charms, but these were not failing in a way that suggested deliberate interference. At least, he couldn't imagine any kind of bizarre accident that could break them like this.


One more thing to try:

"Could I get a house elf here?"

Nothing happened. That was a bad sign in the short term, though no worse than the headmaster's own inability to apparate in his school. In the long term it suggested there were existing ways — maybe existing magics of the castle — that could control house elf apparation. He had no time to be excited about that, though.

Albus considered, and rejected, contacting other staff members at this point. Whatever was happening was too dangerous to ask anyone else to approach. Although he had feared a Death Eater attack initially, truthfully he did not expect to find ordinary human intruders anymore, at least not unaccompanied by some powerful monster, or perhaps some magical apparatus or artifact. None of the possibilities were good.

Yes, best to leave most of the staff asleep for now, if possible, and alert them with a patronus if need be. Erasmus was supposed to be patrolling; Albus summoned his his silver phoenix to contact him. It was 2:32.

"Erasmus. Something has entered the castle through the main doors. It came through to the Grand Staircase. Do not approach it. Where are you?"

Thirty seconds, and the patronus returned with Eeles' reply: "Third floor, 'round the corner from the stairs. Just passed the library. Haven't seen or heard a damn thing. Now what?"

Albus wished Eeles could cast the patronus charm himself, because the ability to send back regular reports would be extremely useful at this point. It was a difficult spell, though, and dementors weren't exactly a monster of the wilderness. They would have to improvise:

"Silence yourself. Head for the stairs in the Clock Tower and try to get to the sixth floor. Do you know where Minerva's suite is?"

Another thirty-five seconds. "Got it — Silencio, Muffliato. Her name's on the door, right? Just a second . . ."

There was a pause, then Eeles continued. "Crap. Go!"

The last word was evidently directed to the patronus itself. It wasn't clear why Eeles had shooed it away — probably he heard or saw something and wanted to avoid having the patronus draw attention. There was nothing Albus could do to help him without risking exactly that; Erasmus was on his own for now, whether he knew what he was doing or not.

Albus revised his plan. He was not a complete fool.

He gave a new message to his patronus:

"Go to each of the heads of house, starting with Severus and Minerva. Do not wait for responses, and return when you are finished. Tell them this: Something dangerous has come into the castle. I cannot tell from my instruments what it may be. I believe Erasmus encountered it on the third floor near the library, then shooed my patronus away. The castle has locked many doors and only Fawkes is able to travel freely; wait for him and he will take you to your houses. Stand guard and alert the other staff. I will look for Erasmus now. Good luck to us all."


Albus wasted another thirty seconds on the door to his office before giving up. "Fawkes!" He summoned the phoenix to shoulder. "Base of the Grand Staircase. Now." They were gone in a ball of flames.

Blackness. The torches and lamps were all out, from the ground level upwards to whatever the topmost floor was right now.

He listened carefully. Silence, which meant the staircases had stopped moving. No grumbling portraits, either. Enhancing his hearing, he listened again; still nothing. A frontal Death Eater assault would probably not look at all like this.

He would not need to travel by phoenix fire for the next few minutes, at least.

"Fawkes, you know what to do, right?"

"Breet."

"Thank you, old friend. Come to me when you are done. I expect I will need you soon enough."

Fawkes vanished in his ball of flames. It was 2:44.


He decided that the safest course for the rest of the school was to draw the intruder's attention toward himself. He hoped the basilisk was indeed sealed in the Chamber of Secrets for now, because he could not afford to go blindfolded into whatever lay ahead.

"Lumos Maxima!"

The headmaster's ball of light shot upwards, illuminating the stairwell floor by floor as it went. It was enough to confirm that the stairs were indeed motionless, but before reaching the top, the spell winked out.

"Lumos!" Albus cast it normally this time. The shadows of every corner, railing, unlit lamp, and carved ornament moved eerily around him as he walked towards the stairs. He cast several protective charms, then disillusioned himself for good measure before stepping cautiously onto the first step. The stairs remained stationary. For now, that was good. A few seconds later, Minerva's patronus swooped down out of the darkness to perch four steps in front of him. Her voice echoed up and down the stairwell as the little cat moved its mouth. Albus had never quite gotten used to that effect.

"Albus, what on earth is going on? This is no time to play the mysterious old man -- I'm locked in my quarters!"

So much for any sort of discretion. He had to smile. After casting a silencing bubble that encompassed himself and the cat, he replied. "I suppose I didn't need to sneak up on anything, after all. That was unfortunately very loud, and I am quite exposed here -- just a moment. I am walking to the second floor. Our intruder's presence has destroyed half the intruments in my office, I think, but beyond that I know nothing. We are literally in the dark, in fact, as it has turned out all the lights." That might hold her for a few minutes.

Apparently the other three heads of house had simply taken him at his word, since he did not hear back from them.

The stairs to the next floor were on the far side; he had to walk around. Silence still prevailed. That worried him. Whatever Eeles had run into had either walked into the Defense Professor's silencing spells or was using some of its own. Or it was finished with Eeles, and waiting for Albus. Or it had simply moved on by now, and might be extremely difficult to locate.

After finally reaching the third floor, he rested his wand in his palm. "Point me Erasmus Eeles." The wand merely spun in his hand. Something had deliberately obscured the Defense Professor's location. Maybe Fawkes would be able to find him, although Albus wasn't sure he should risk sending the phoenix into danger.

It was 2:54. Albus sent the light from his lumos around the stairwell, revealing a few sleeping portraits, and a few that were awake and puzzled-looking, but nothing else. Very well.

There were five corridors leading away from the stairs here, two of which would take him towards the library. He shot his ball of light off down the nearest one, down to where the hallway turned. Along the way it revealed closed doors, a suit of armor, and some recessed niches that held sculpture — possible hiding places.

"Hominem revelio!" Nothing.

He sent three balls of light to stand before these; one for each niche, so he could see if anything was flushed by what he was about to try. Unfortunately, experience had taught him that this had to be dealt with methodically.

First, bursts of purple fireworks — his signature attention-getting magic. Nothing. In a pitched battle, the right strategy would be to send concussive spells into any potentially hostile space, once allies had a chance to identify themselves. He wasn't sure what he was dealing with here, though.

At this point Fawkes reappeared, settled on Albus' shoulder, and peered curiously down the hall.

"What do you think, Fawkes?"

Unfortunately the phoenix took this as a request for reconnaissance and took off towards the nearest globe of light.

"Fawkes, no!"

It was too late — Fawkes was at the first niche almost immediately, then past a set of armor, past the second niche , then the third — weaving from side to side, but not reacting. He wheeled around at the end of the hall, then disappeared down it in one direction, then the other. A moment later Albus heard a burst of flame, and Fawkes reappeared on his shoulder.

"Trt."

"That was unnecessary, but thank you. We need to keep moving."

Albus thought for a moment, then blocked the entrance to that corridor with a conjured sheet of chain mail. He added a few bells and jinxes for good measure. The iron would vanish eventually, but in the meantime it was mostly non-magical and required banishment, not dispelling. Anyone trying to get through would have to carefully silence everything or risk revealing their presence.

He had gotten to the stage of sending fireworks down the second hall when he felt Fawkes tense and ruffle his feathers.

"Fft. Tr." Fawkes tensed and dug his claws into the shoulder he was perched on.

"Hmm?"

"Breet!" There was a burst of flame, and they were in the Great Hall. The lights were out, but everything was dimly illuminated by the artificial starlight from the ceiling.

"What was that for? Is it in here?"

"Terr-ooo." It was a noise Albus had come to regard as apologetic. Fawkes nuzzled his ear, said "prt!", and vanished in flames.

"Hominem revelio! Lumos Maxima!"

This time the light persisted, but the hall appeared to be empty. A series of detection spells confirmed this, at least to a reasonable degree of confidence.

The doors were, as he expected, locked.

"Fawkes?"

The Great Hall was one of the most defensible locations in the castle. It had thick doors and its own set of wards. When there was an emergency, staff and students tended to congregate there. Breaking the door down would be extremely difficult, and would, given the ancient magic involved, possibly leave no chance of full repairs. It would be an absolute last resort. The other entrance — the side door to the staff room — posed its own challenges. Fawkes perhaps knew all this.

Albus could only guess he had been deposited here to keep him out of trouble. It was insulting. There would be words about this later.


He took the opportunity to check in with his other staff members.

He woke Hagrid first, since he was the only one not in the castle.

"Hrm? Aw, Fang, no. It's the middle o' the night." There was a pause as the patronus repeated its message; it wasn't very intelligent about what to record. "Ah, hrm, Professor, sorry about that. I'll jus' peek out the door here . . . Don' see a thing. Quiet, too. . . . No, nothin'. Should I go up ter the castle an' have a look?"

"No, stay where you are, but keep watch. I will check back with you later. Thank you, Hagrid."


Sybill and Aurora, both with quarters in high towers, could see nothing out of the ordinary. Sybill added something about the castle having too many dimensions, and that she was very sorry about something, then followed this with a half minute of mumbling that the patronus didn't pick up. Aurora sounded confused and asked why Albus wasn't seeking outside help, and whether she should try to break a window.

The answer to the second was a clear 'no, not yet', but he didn't have any really good response the first. He had seriously considered sending his patronus off to Amelia, except that he didn't want to call in the aurors — potentially putting them in harm's way — without some concrete idea of what they might be able to do to help.

His contemplation was interrupted, though, by the distant sounds of Fawkes' screeches, several thumps, and a ringing bang akin to hitting stone with a sledgehammer. Within the space of a minute these came nearer — presumably down the Grand Staircase — and were soon clearly at the main entrance, not far from the Great Hall. They faded away.

"Hagrid, did you just see anything leave the castle?"

The reply came with the faint sounds of Fawkes screeching in the background. "Well, firs' there was Fawkes callin' — still is —, an' then somethin' big an' long — sorry, Professor, but it looked like a big snake — too far away ter see its eyes, should've been more careful, but 's gone now — jus' a moment ago, too — poured i'self right over the bridge an' fell down the hill. Sounded like it fell aways, but it's a long ways down righ' there, too. Oh, Fawkes is af'er it still! . . . Never heard him so mad! . . . Oh, an' there goes somebody on a broom, I think, tearin' off over me — never seen a broom go so fas', couldn' get a look . . ."

There was more screeching, followed by a distant, echoing series of cracks. "Soun's like it broke the ice! An' Fawkes is down there, circlin', maybe . . . doesn' sound like he's lettin' up, either . . . you'd better go back ter Professor Dumbledore an' ask wha' ter do next."

"Thank you!," Albus replied when the patronus reappeared a few seconds later, "I believe that is good news indeed! And, yes, I think the doors have just unlocked! Please listen to see what Fawkes does, and watch for any other brooms."

The doors, finally responding to him, swung open in front of the headmaster as he ran to the entrance hall.

"Lumos Maxima!"

The ball of light hurtled before him.

The main doors stood open, letting in cold air and Fawkes' cries. Dumbledore sent his lumos out across the entrance courtyard, revealing a wide, undulating track leading away towards the bridge. He attempted an apparation again; this time he succeeded, fetching Filius from the Ravenclaw tower and going straight to the bridge.

"Fawkes! Get away from the lake!" he yelled. There was a burst of fire from below, and a corresponding one a few feet away as the phoenix appeared on the railing. "If you want to be helpful, get me Minerva and Severus," he said, and sent his lumos into the chasm as Fawkes disappeared.

It wasn't until they had walked most of the way to the center of the bridge, and Fawkes had returned with the other heads of house, that they spotted a black, jagged area in the ice far below. A combined glacius froze it over. The risk to the various lake-dwellers was regrettable, but with any luck the basilisk would succumb to hypothermia before it could escape or do any harm.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


At the base of the Grand Starcase, there was spattered, dark-red blood and a variety of broken debris. Part of a stone banister had been dramatically smashed. Several portraits had been knocked down and damaged; their occupants had fled elsewhere. A lantern had been knocked off the wall on the second floor. Its bent metal frame had bounced into a dark corner, leaving scattered glass shards everywhere.

The damage extended up to the third floor, starting not far from the point where Fawkes had tensed and flamed Albus away. By the time they arrived there, the lights were working again.

In that corridor, several suits of armor had been knocked over, and there were traces of blood smeared on the floor. Turning the corner, there was a foul smell, thicker smears of blood, and further down, an area where the floors, walls, and ceiling were smoking.

"Stop!" shouted Severus, adding, simply, "venom."

"Fawkes couldn't have done that himself, could he?" asked Flitwick.

"Perhaps," said Severus, "he might have tricked it, causing it to break its tooth on the wall. It seems unlikely, though."

Albus nodded. The basilisk was probably too effective a hunter to make errors like that. He hadn't mentioned the rider on the broom to anyone else, but it was a safe guess from the scene before them that Fawkes had not faced the snake alone.

"Severus, I believe you are best able to deal with this. Please try to make this hall passable again while taking note of any residual magic that might let us reconstruct what happened."

Severus nodded, but said nothing, having already begun casting diagnostic spells over the area.

"Minerva, Filius, Pomona — please look for Erasmus. It is my hope that he will not have been taken beyond this floor. If he is injured, time may be of the essence." Albus sighed. "If we do not finish by morning, we will need to cordon off the area to prevent students from wandering through."


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The portraits would have to be sent out for repair, but Albus was able to fix the stonework and lantern on his own.

The broken bannister was the obvious candidate for the sound of metal on stone that Albus had heard, but he had so far not elected to mention that. No one else had questioned how a basilisk and a phoenix could have smashed stone in that way. Albus verified that the blood all had a single source, took a sample of it, and cleaned the staircase up entirely — well before anyone else might have gotten to it.

By 5:30 AM Erasmus was still missing. Albus woke several other faculty members, gave them minimal details, then told them to eat breakfast quickly and join in the search.


He didn't hear from Severus for another half hour. The man had been meticulous in his investigation of the venom-splattered hall. It had been immediately obvious to him that the altercation had begun in a nearby storeroom, but he did not even look inside before he had scanned the hallway in every way he knew — thoroughly enough that all details could be seen in a penseive.

Severus spent an equivalent amount of time on the door itself. Some massive burst of magic had obliterated what he could only suppose had been concealment wards. Since these appeared to have interacted with the castle's own magic, it would have been extremely interesting to be able to study them, but there wasn't enough organized magic left to work with.

The room itself smelled strongly of reptile urine. The basilisk — the existence of which had been definitively resolved by the venom in the hall — had most likely stayed in the room for over a month. There was a pile of droppings in the corner which Severus had dissected, concluding that the basilisk had eaten three house elves.

(Zent later confirmed that they were missing, but was baffled by Albus' attempt to explain why this should have been reported. The idea that humans might have cared one way or the other was too alien.)

Severus' theory was that while it was in the Chamber of Secrets, the basilisk remained in a magically-induced state of quiescence, leaving it with a minimal need for food. Removed from that environment, awake, and left to its own devices by whomever had released it, the basilisk had simply done what came naturally when the house elves had appeared in front of it. Assuming its metabolism resembled that of other snakes, it had been adequately fed during its stay on the third floor.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Albus had one more task to take care of personally before he could in fairness turn to anything else. Back in his office, he dug around in drawers which he had not opened in years, looking for a box he had not opened in decades.

Here was a scroll of blank parchment, a small spray bottle, and a foot-long metal cylinder with a screw-on lid. Albus cut off enough parchment for a small note, reached for his quill, and, with great care, composed his message, glyph by glyph. This was a language that few other wizards had bothered to learn. So far as Albus knew, no one else in the country could actually write in it.

The spray bottle was the sort used for perfume. Albus squeezed the little bulb, spreading fixative over the note (and much of his desk). This was followed by a further charm for waterproofing. The note was rolled up and put in the cylinder. Albus sighed, then rooted through the drawer a second time, at last coming up with a large, six-chambered whistle.

He apparated to the far end of the lake. Better safe than sorry. There was a bitter wind and the snow crunched under his shoes. Sunrise wouldn't be for another hour and a half. He cast a warming charm on himself, then a cutting charm on the lake ice. Soon he levitated a disc of it, several feet wide, bringing it up and setting it down somewhere back in the woods.

Albus blew the whistle and waited.

Five minutes later, nothing had happened. He renewed his warming charm and blew the whistle again.

It was very cold. He sympathized, but the note needed to be delivered. Extremely carefully, he cast a sonorus on the whistle, reinforced the ice near him, then lay down on his stomach. He held the whistle under the water and blew. It looked ridiculous and sent up a stream of bubbles, but it ought to have been effective. He blew once more for good measure, then stood back up.

Ten minutes later, he was still standing there. The squid never arrived. It was not a good sign.

Reluctantly, he cast a series of charms on the message tube and sent it on its way, then refroze the hole in the lake.


The lake was extremely deep, and very few creatures could survive the pressure at the depth of the Mer-peoples' village. The basilisk was unlikely to go down that far, at least not voluntarily, but the warning had to be delivered nevertheless.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Albus returned to his office.


"Well, Fawkes, Erasmus predicted a circus. I'm afraid we are now obligated to create one. I will need you to deliver something for me in a few minutes."

"Tshroo."

The letter (and phoenix) were sent off to Amelia, with instructions in the letter to floo him, and to Fawkes to ensure the letter was actually read.

He summoned an elf to bring him breakfast, and had managed to eat peacefully for several minutes before the floo 'ding'ed and Amelia's head appeared in it.

"Albus, what do I have to do? I have praised this bird over and over, since I assume this note is for real. But he just keeps going 'dreet!' at me and won't leave me alone! Oh, fine, there he goes. Did you tell him to not let up until I flooed you?"

Albus smiled as the phoenix reappeared. "No, not exactly. That was his idea. And yes, the note is for real. Hogwarts has a full-grown basilisk in its lake. Or at least, it did several hours ago, and we have seen no sign of it escaping."

This was misleading; no one had been watching the lake.

"That's . . . lovely, Albus. Thank you for letting me know. What on earth do you want me to do about it?"

"I haven't the foggiest idea."

"I was afraid of that. I suppose you will need some sort of auror presence in Hogsmeade . . ."

"I would have gone there myself if you did not. Thank you."

She thought for a moment. "I think we can make the basilisk the problem of the Dragon Research and Restraint people. Who knows, they might even be happy about it. Is there anything else you think I should know?"

"It apparently ate several house elves recently, so we do not believe it is hungry."

"Wonderful. Anything else?"

"No."

"Fine. I will. . . do something. Damn it." She ended the connection.

Albus sent Fawkes to deliver notes to several people in Hogsmeade, starting with his brother. The notes were all variations on 'This bird has chased a basilisk into the lake. Keep the goats indoors.'



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Story status: I have a decent chunk of text that I haven't made major edits to for a while. I'm posting what I've got in the hopes of motivating myself to write more.

After that, I have maybe thirty different things that have to happen before I can introduce a third time traveler, and for the most part there is no logical chronological order to them. I need to sort of pick some and dive in and get back to writing.

I will tell you if I ever abandon this story. I can't imagine doing so, though, since I have an enormous number of ideas, and enough material to go on for many in-story years at the current level of detail. Encouraging reviews are always encouraging!