Chapter 101: Orders in Slytherin

Edward reached the Slytherin common room with Snape's written restrictions still folded in his pocket. Rumour had arrived before him. Students crowded the entrance, each repeating a different version of the attack until Hermione and Penelope had somehow been killed, cured, and abducted within the same conversation.

"They are alive," Edward said. "Madam Pomfrey has them. Listen before you add anything else."

Draco fetched the prefects while Pansy and Daphne moved the youngest students away from the doorway. Theodore closed the common-room entrance and checked the adjoining passages.

Edward read the staff instructions exactly. Students would travel in groups under prefect or professor escort. No one would wander after curfew, answer voices inside the walls, investigate hissing, or turn a blind corner without a mirror. Anyone separated from a group was to stop in the nearest occupied room and call for help.

"What about the Flame Masks?" Pansy asked.

"Collect every parchment we distributed."

Several students protested at once. Edward waited until they stopped.

"The charm has never been tested against a Basilisk. It also takes time to unfold and activate. Hermione carried one and could not use it. Treating an uncertain ward as protection will get someone killed."

Daphne began a list of recipients so no parchment would be missed. Draco objected to surrendering his until Edward reminded him that the order applied to its maker as well.

A senior prefect near the fireplace folded his arms. "Why should we help the other houses? The creature is hunting Muggle-borns. Let Gryffindor solve its own problem."

The room went quiet.

"Mrs. Norris is a cat," Edward said. "Nearly Headless Nick is a ghost. Penelope Clearwater is a prefect who was protecting another student. The Basilisk has not observed your theory."

"That is not what I meant."

"You said students outside this room could be left to die. I understood you."

Edward did not threaten a punishment he had no authority to impose. He asked the other prefects to record the statement for Snape and removed the speaker from the escort rota until the Head of House reviewed whether younger students could trust him.

"Safety information goes to every house," Edward continued. "We report facts, not blood status. If you object, take it to Professor Snape."

No one did.

They divided the practical work. Pansy and Daphne collected the parchments. Theodore copied the description of the mirror method for Ravenclaw. Draco took the list of corridor rules to the Slytherin prefects and, after a long pause, added that any lone Gryffindor was to be brought to the nearest professor rather than mocked.

When the room had settled, Theodore remained beside Edward.

"My family books call it the King of Serpents," he said. "Direct sight kills. Reflection weakens the gaze to petrification. They never name where Slytherin kept it, but they say his heir commanded it in a language no ordinary wizard could learn."

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"Parseltongue."

Theodore nodded. "That makes Potter an obvious suspect."

"An obvious suspect is not the same as a guilty one. Hermione is his closest friend, and he tried to warn people at the Dueling Club. Someone may be using his ability to direct suspicion."

"Or using him."

"Possible. Not proved."

Edward wrote the distinction in the incident log. The diary Ginny had received from Lucius remained the stronger lead, but he had no evidence connecting it to the present attack beyond its darkness and timing. He added that as an inference, not a conclusion.

The next morning brought Ministry officials and members of the Board of Governors. They questioned portraits, examined the first message, and spent more time arguing over responsibility than tracing the pipes.

Hagrid was taken to Azkaban on the strength of an accusation from fifty years earlier. Dumbledore objected that the previous incident had been misidentified and offered the current evidence about a Basilisk. Lucius Malfoy presented a removal order signed by the governors anyway.

The news reached the common room before lunch. Draco read his father's name on the notice and went pale.

"He says Dumbledore failed to protect the school," Draco said. "All twelve governors signed."

"Under threat?"

Draco looked away. "I do not know."

Edward could have used the moment to humiliate him. Instead, he placed the notice beside the safety log.

"Find out what you can without warning your father that we are investigating him. Do not steal letters or confront him. Ask your mother whether the governors met together or received separate visits."

"You think Father forced them."

"I think the signatures appeared too quickly. That is a question, not an answer."

With Dumbledore gone, McGonagall became acting headmistress and kept every restriction in place. Snape doubled the escort schedule. Flitwick charmed mirrors at intersections so students would not need to carry glass in their hands. The castle became slower, quieter, and safer, but fear still travelled through the pipes more easily than any patrol.

Edward followed the rules he had read aloud. He stopped visiting the bathroom. He did not practise concealment in occupied corridors, and he gave Snape the full record of his earlier experiments. The professor allowed him to study Basilisk history only in the open library and only with a staff-approved list.

Two details continued to trouble him. The creature obeyed Parseltongue, yet Harry's actions did not match the attacks. Ginny had possessed an enchanted diary from Lucius, but the book had vanished after the duelling incident.

"Then find the connection," Snape said when Edward presented the problem. "Do not fill the gap with whichever child your house dislikes most."

Edward requested access to old school records instead. The file from Myrtle's death named Hagrid but contained no examination of the pipes, no magical trace from his Acromantula, and no explanation for how a girl had died without a wound. The earlier inquiry had begun with a suspect and stopped when it obtained one.

He copied the omissions for McGonagall.

She read the list in her office while two portraits watched the corridor outside. "You are correct that the old inquiry was inadequate," she said. "You are not therefore authorised to reopen it by yourself."

"I brought it to you instead."

"Which is why we are having a conversation rather than assigning detention."

McGonagall asked him to mark every pipe access he had personally observed and leave conjectural routes blank. Flitwick could compare the result with Hogwarts maintenance plans, while Snape checked whether the creature's movement left venom or shed scales. Edward drew only what he knew. Several large spaces remained empty.

"Blank parchment is useful evidence too," McGonagall said. "It tells the next person where investigation is still needed."

She kept the map and gave Edward a signed copy. The exchange offered no dramatic answer, but it turned one student's private knowledge into work the staff could verify and continue.

At the next alliance meeting, Edward replaced their usual training with escort duty and evidence review. No one earned prestige for inventing a theory. Claims went into three columns: observed fact, supported inference, and unknown.

The first column held a Basilisk, the pipe system, indirect gazes, and a missing diary. The second held a Parseltongue command and possible influence over Ginny. Harry's guilt remained in the third.

That was where it stayed.

The castle could not afford another accusation built to relieve fear. Until they found the person directing the Basilisk, survival depended on discipline, witnesses, and the refusal to mistake certainty for proof.