Chapter 100: The Basilisk's Shadow

Stone ground against stone beneath the sinks. Edward flattened himself behind the stall door and lowered his face before the opening widened. The Flame Mask covered his eyes with a darkened sheet of fire, leaving him able to make out the floor and the nearest shapes without exposing his gaze.

A massive serpent pulled itself from the passage under the basin. Its scales dragged over the tiles with a sound like wet leather across rock. Edward saw the curve of its body, the blunt edge of its jaw, and the shadow it cast against the opposite wall. He did not look higher.

The creature was larger than any snake described in his school texts. Its body was thicker than a tree trunk, dark green scales catching the weak lamplight whenever it moved. A bitter, animal smell filled the bathroom. The heat in Edward's hands surged in answer, but he kept his fingers closed and his breathing shallow.

A hiss came from somewhere beyond the doorway. It was too measured to be an ordinary snake and too distant for Edward to distinguish its source. The Basilisk turned at once. Its head passed the stall, close enough for its breath to stir dust along the floor, then continued into the corridor.

Edward remained still. He counted a full minute after the last scale disappeared, then another. Only when two full minutes had passed without another scrape or hiss did he let the Flame Mask thin.

He had not been hidden by some miraculous protection. The creature had been obeying a command and had never searched the stalls. Had it turned, or had Edward looked directly at its face, the mask might not have saved him. Treating survival as proof of immunity would be fatal.

The floor closed behind the Basilisk with another slow turn of stone. By the time Edward stepped out, the sink looked ordinary again. He marked the serpent-shaped tap with a harmless tracing charm, but the spell found no seam and revealed no mechanism.

Myrtle floated near the ceiling, pale and furious. "What was that?"

"Something dangerous," Edward said. "Stay above the floor and do not follow it."

"I am already dead."

"That does not mean it cannot hurt you."

The answer checked her complaint. Nearly Headless Nick had been petrified despite having no living body, and Edward had no reason to assume Myrtle was safe.

He left the bathroom with his face covered and his eyes fixed on the flagstones. Going after the serpent alone would achieve nothing. Crossing the castle while it moved through the pipes was nearly as reckless, so he reached the nearest classroom, locked the door, and sent a silver warning toward Snape's office. The message named the bathroom, described the serpent, and told Snape not to approach without eye protection.

No reply came. Edward waited until the heat in his palms faded, then returned to the dungeons by the shortest occupied route. He woke Draco and ordered him to keep everyone inside. Explanations could wait until morning, when professors and witnesses were present.

At dawn, Snape's answer lay beside Edward's breakfast plate. The professor had received the warning after completing a patrol and had sealed the third-floor corridor. Edward was to report after Potions with a written account. Until then, he was not to investigate anything.

The instruction was sensible. It also arrived too late to stop the next attack.

The bell had barely ended the lesson when a scream carried from the library passage.

"Two students!" someone shouted from the corridor. "They have been petrified!"

Edward left with Snape rather than running ahead. Students poured from nearby classrooms and clogged the stair, forcing the professor to clear a path with a crack of his wand.

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Hermione Granger and Penelope Clearwater lay near the library entrance. Their limbs were rigid, their eyes open and unseeing. A small hand mirror rested between them, its glass cracked but not shattered. Hermione still held a page torn from a library book. The folded Flame Mask ward Edward had given her remained in her pocket.

He stopped outside arm's reach. The urge to check her breathing fought with the knowledge that moving evidence might hide the manner of attack.

Madam Pomfrey arrived with two stretchers. "Back, all of you. Give them air."

Dumbledore and McGonagall kept the crowd away while Snape examined the stones around the victims. Neither girl bore a curse mark or physical wound. Madam Pomfrey confirmed that both were alive before directing the stretchers toward the hospital wing.

Harry and Ron stood at the edge of the crowd, white-faced. Harry took one step toward Hermione, but McGonagall stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

"You may visit when Madam Pomfrey permits it," she said. "For now, return to your common room with Mr. Weasley."

No accusation followed. Fear had produced enough rumours in the castle already.

Dumbledore lifted the mirror by its handle and studied the damaged surface. "Miss Clearwater did not need this to read."

"Hermione did not either," Harry said. "She said they were using it to look around corners."

Edward looked from the mirror to the library window, then down the corridor. Four attacks, four barriers between the victims and the creature.

Mrs. Norris had seen something reflected in water spread across the floor. Colin Creevey had raised his camera, and the film inside had burned. Justin Finch-Fletchley had looked through Nearly Headless Nick's transparent body. Now Hermione and Penelope had carried a mirror because they already suspected that direct sight was dangerous.

"They never saw it directly," Edward said.

Snape's attention shifted to him. "Explain."

Edward gave the sequence without embellishment. "The creature left the bathroom last night. I saw its body through the Flame Mask and kept my gaze down. It was a Basilisk. Every victim who survived encountered its eyes through a reflection, a lens, or a ghost."

"And a direct view?" McGonagall asked.

"Would kill."

The corridor went silent around them. Dumbledore did not challenge the conclusion. He asked Snape for Edward's written warning and read it before turning to the staff.

"The castle will move under escort until further notice," he said. "Portraits are to report any sound from inside the walls. No student is to pursue it, regardless of what they believe they have discovered."

McGonagall began assigning prefects to groups. Snape sealed the library passage and ordered Filch to keep everyone away from standing water and blind corners. Professor Flitwick went to place opaque screens at the busiest intersections.

Edward examined the torn page only after Dumbledore allowed it. Most of the text had been marked with Hermione's cramped notes. One sentence described the Basilisk's fatal gaze; beneath it, she had written PIPES and underlined the word twice.

She had reached the same answer from another direction. The attack had caught her while she was trying to verify it, not because she had ignored every warning.

"The parchment in her pocket was never opened," Snape observed.

"It takes too long to unfold," Edward said. "And the mask was never tested against a Basilisk. We cannot hand out more and pretend that makes anyone safe."

Snape's expression remained severe, but he nodded once. "A limitation worth recognizing before it kills someone."

Edward felt the rebuke and accepted it. He had treated the ward as a useful precaution, then allowed others to treat it as protection. The difference mattered.

Dumbledore placed Hermione's page inside an evidence sleeve. "You will give Professor Snape every detail of what you saw. After that, you will return to your common room."

"Yes, Headmaster."

"You will not enter that bathroom again."

Edward met his gaze. "I understand."

He did. Knowing where the entrance lay did not make him the person best equipped to open it. A boy with a private theory and an unstable gift for fire could not replace trained adults, no matter how urgent the danger felt.

Before leaving, he looked once toward the hospital wing. Hermione had warned Harry about the castle, investigated the attacks, and carried a mirror so that another student would not have to turn a blind corner first. Whatever differences separated them, cowardice was not among them.

Edward returned to the dungeons with Snape's restrictions written in his pocket. The Basilisk was real, it travelled through the pipes, and someone capable of speaking Parseltongue was directing it. Those facts narrowed the search, but they did not identify the heir.

His immediate task was smaller. He had to keep Slytherin students together, end their night wandering, and prevent Draco's suspicion of Harry from turning into another danger inside the castle.

The search for the person behind the attacks could begin only after everyone understood how to survive the creature itself.