The Unspeakable Competition
The following morning, everyone woke up to find the golem and obstacles gone. Their dining table had also vanished and the door to the outside had been left open. None of the students wanted to go out alone, so when the whole house was awake, Cedric cautiously took the lead and they ventured out into the corridor, all together.
Outside their door, next to the exit to the courtyard was a golden cage on a stand. At the bottom of the stand was a glowing blue ring on the floor. Inside the cage was a large rooster. It stared at the group of children for a moment, then looked outside at the rising sun, crowing loudly. When it was done with its call, they heard another crow, from down the hall. Turning that way, they saw another cage set up at the next junction. Even further down, next to the main staircase was yet another cage with a bird that echoed the crow. They could hear a chain of noises from other birds throughout the castle after the ones they could see stopped making noise.
Luna listened to the sound and commented, "This is going to make the nargle population explode."
The group shuffled towards the great hall, where another bird had been posted just inside the door. The same blue ring was on the floor around this one as the others. Many students were already in the hall eating breakfast and watched as the Scamanders entered.
Lee reached out to touch the cage, but someone yelled, "Lhee! Thtop!"
He turned around to see Fred calling out to him, with his tongue hanging out of his mouth. George was standing next to him with one arm hanging limp.
Han told him, "It makes you lose feeling where you touch it. Dumbledore says it will come back in thirty minutes."
Lee started laughing as he asked, "So you touched it with your hand and Fred thought it would be a good idea to put his tongue on it?"
"Thad aboth thu thize oth ith," Chewie said, then shook his head back and forth as his tongue flopped around. Quite a few other people started laughing as the Scamanders took their seats.
In the middle of the meal, Dumbledore approached the lectern to address the hall, "Good morning everyone. You'll all be happy to know that on Monday, we will be resuming classes. I hope yesterday's lockdown was not too hard on any of you. Assuming that news has not reached you yet, Thursday night, while on patrol, Hufflepuff prefect - Gabriel Truman was found petrified in the same way as Mrs. Norris had been the week before. We have identified how this was done and placed the roosters you see around the school to prevent another attack. Unfortunately, it will still be another few months until we can revive Mr. Truman. Please enjoy your breakfasts, we are working to ensure your safety."
Dumbledore stepped back down and back to his meal, leaving everyone with a million questions. The only people not whispering and trying to formulate ideas of what was going on were at the Scamander table, as they all had some knowledge that there was some kind of monster on the loose inside Hogwarts. Their attention to eating and lack of whispering was picked up slowly and by the end of the meal, nearly every student at their table was being interrogated about what they knew by someone else. They didn't know much, though enough mentions of a monster at the school were passed around so students started formulating their own ideas.
Harry and Lyra hadn't noticed when Brandt came in, with Lyra spotting him first, and poking Harry toward his presence speaking with Dumbledore at the head table. Their conversation lasted only a few moments before both of them, along with Snape, Newt, and Tina got up and started heading out of the room. On the way, Brandt waved over the two children to join them. Once out of the room, they went into an empty classroom where all the adults proceeded to cast more privacy spells than Harry and Lyra knew to exist before sitting down around the room.
"I think that should be enough," Brandt said with a sigh. "Arcturus is doing damage control at The Ministry right now. Armando Dippet's portrait made an appearance there and has been causing absolute chaos by saying that Harry is trying to bring a Five-X Wizard Killer into Britain."
"To be fair, that's exactly what he's trying to do," Newt said plainly.
"Is there seriously a basilisk in Hogwarts?" Brandt asked.
"It certainly appears so," Dumbledore said wearily, "and that it has been here since Hogwarts was founded. Young Harry's explanation of the serpent on his island certainly matches the description of the creature that killed the first basilisk, sounding like a rooster is not the guardian we thought it was."
"Then why are there roosters all over Hogwarts?" Brandt asked.
"Because whoever released the Basilisk thinks it will be," Snape told him. "The longer this person thinks the birds are protecting the school, the safer everyone will be. There is also a small chance that Harry's assumption is incorrect and the rooster's crow will be enough to kill a basilisk."
Harry just shook his head at such a ridiculous idea, and asked, "Has anyone heard back from Nestor?"
"Not yet, Mr. Potter," Newt told him.
"Is there anything else we can do now?" Lyra asked.
"Not right now," Brandt told them. "Your extra lessons are canceled until further notice. Stick close to the roosters around the school, even if they don't do anything. Obey the curfew, don't sneak out."
"I've never snuck out before," Lyra said innocently.
"Don't start now, Miss Black," Dumbledore told her.
The group left the classroom and Brandt pulled the children to the side, "I need to join Arcturus at the Ministry. You two need to stay safe, do not go chasing after this creature, it is far more deadly than you can imagine."
"Less so to us," Harry brushed off Brandt's warning. "We are emissaries of the Usurper."
"I don't know what that means, and I don't care," Brandt said sternly. "Be careful, if you're going to be outside of your common room, don't go alone and take Whispers everywhere you go. He might be able to give you a few seconds' warning so you can run away. Either the roosters will kill this thing," both of them shook their heads, to which Brandt snapped his fingers in their faces to get their attention, "or the Usurper will do it. Not the two of you."
With that said, he walked them back to the common room and took his leave. As soon as they were inside, Lee started to approach them with questions, but a quick shake of their heads told him they couldn't tell him anything, he just shrugged and headed past them, out of the room. Lyra went to her dorm while Harry managed to find Whispers in the greenhouse, helping Neville with a project.
Whispers was trying to catch all the spiders in the room and then have them deposited in a terrarium. He was a lot more nimble and able to handle them more easily without hurting them. Neville was following him around with a jar to catch them and then put them in a larger glass box. They caught a particularly large one with orange bands on its legs and after it had been put away, Neville gave his partner a few flobberworms which he gobbled up.
Neville had looked right past Harry and Lyra a few times while collecting the spiders, but when the project was completed, he looked at them like he was seeing them for the first time.
"The spiders keep the garden safe from more harmful bugs," he told them like he was quoting from a book. "Whispers is good at catching them. Now they all want to run away though."
Down in the terrarium they had gathered in, they were all clustered towards one end of the box. One had climbed up the side and was pushing the lid up. Harry kneeled next to it and pushed the spider back in then cast a locking charm on the top.
"That should do the trick," Neville smiled. "There are plenty of other bugs in here, so I wonder why they don't want to spin webs anymore and just keep trying to get away." He just stared at the terrarium for nearly twenty seconds before pulling his wand out, and with great effort, levitated it up to a shelf on the wall.
Harry looked at the terrarium as the spiders were all clustered to one side of it. He knew they must be fleeing from the basilisk the same way the horseshoe crab had been doing. The Serpent King would need to be killed for the spiders to go back to the way they were before. However, first, they would need the Usurper to come. There was still no word from Nestor.
Harry took his little brother and went to find Lyra. She was with the other girls, watching Luna try to perform a ribbon dance of some kind with different colored blindfolds. She was levitating them one at a time in the air like a juggling act; throwing one up, then switching to the next one, working hard to keep all of them up. It was quite mesmerizing to watch and was nearly five minutes before one finally touched the ground.
Sue commented, "That was beautiful, why were you doing it?"
"Oh, I just thought it would be fun," Luna said with a smile. "We all might need to wear blindfolds soon enough and it's good practice for the levitation charm besides."
Patricia, who was watching as well, decided it was a good idea and conjured a stack of strips of cloth for everyone else to practice with. Everyone started with three but soon figured out that it was a lot harder than it looked. The problem wasn't with levitating the pieces of cloth, it was releasing the spell and recasting it at a moving target. Lyra got a bit frustrated as she practiced, occasionally burning up the conjured cloth.
When she was just about to give up, Harry told her, "This is good practice for when you start doing your hair with magic."
That bit of motivation carried her for the next hour before everyone's magic was exhausted. This was the first day in quite a while that Harry and Lyra had completely off from studies and tutoring, and they couldn't use it to go exploring. There were only a few places they could be, so Lyra suggested they visit Gryffindor, then Ravenclaw, and then see if they could talk to any of their Slytherin friends through the Well of Serpents.
After passing many caged roosters up the main staircase, they arrived at the Gryffindor entrance, Harry bowed to the large woman in the toga in their entrance portrait, and greeted her, "Good day, Miss. My sister and I were hoping to visit friends in Gryffindor. Can you get someone to open the door?"
"Students shouldn't be roaming the halls right now," she replied.
Lyra answered, "Well, we could go all the way back through the castle or seek shelter in the House of Lions."
She seemed to think for a moment before exiting her frame. A minute later, it swung open to reveal Percy Weasley.
"Can I help the two of you?" he asked.
"We just wanted to visit some friends," Harry told him.
He tried to stare them down, but they did not give in. He sighed and said, "Well, we've already got one of you in here. If I can't get rid of him, I guess I'll let you in too." Then he moved out of the way to allow them to climb up into the portrait hole. "Who are you coming to see?"
"Lavender and Parvati," Lyra answered.
Harry just shrugged, "I'm following her. We're going to Ravenclaw afterward."
Percy led the two of them into the small common room. Once they were in the small tower room, Lyra and Whispers ran off, up the stairs to her friends' room, leaving Harry in the common area. He spotted Lee with Alicia on the couch talking and started to walk towards them, only to have Lee give him a tiny shake of the head for him to back off. Harry looked around the room and spied Seamus reading a book next to Dean and Ron playing chess.
Ron looked up from the game, and said, "Has this become Scamander tower today?"
Before Harry could respond, Dean replied, "Quiet now. You're just peeved that I'm winning for once."
Harry sat down next to Seamus as Ron refocused on the board, speeding up his moves. The chessboard he had learned to play with on the plane had been a muggle set. The one they were using had pieces that moved on their own, spoke to each other, and gave tiny battle cries when attacking or moans when they were injured. It was quite interesting to watch.
Dean had Ron on the ropes, having captured his queen before Harry had arrived. However, after a few more minutes, Ron smiled and told his knight to advance, then called, "Checkmate."
"What?" Dean looked around the board. "How the heck did you pull that off?" He tipped over his king and Ron's pieces started cheering and singing while Dean's all looked sad and started to march back to their original positions.
"You lost when you sat down," Ron said with a triumphant smirk. "Seamus, fancy a round?"
"Nope, I've got History reading to do. Play against Harry," he said without looking up from his book.
Ron cautiously looked towards Harry, "Do you know how to play chess?"
Harry just shrugged, "I learned a couple of months ago. I guess I could give it a shot."
With a sigh, Ron said, "Well, at least it will be different. Sometimes I get tired of beating the two of you."
"No you don't," Seamus responded quickly, still without putting down his book.
As Harry was setting up his pieces, one of the pawns called out, "Who's this bloke? Why should we follow his orders?"
Dean leaned over, "Sorry Harry. These are my pieces, I have to tell them to obey." Leaning down to them, he said dramatically, "Look alive men!" They all stood at attention and looked towards him. "This here is your replacement general - Harry the Great. What he lacks in tactics he makes up for with real-life experience. He has fought dark lords and evil children, he might give us a chance at defeating the Crimson Lord Weasley and his troops."
Harry smiled as the pieces cheered and saluted Harry. He looked towards Ron, "You're the Crimson Lord?"
"Yeah, and Dean is a dark wizard, and Seamus is an evil leprechaun. Sometimes you just need to rile up your troops or they won't do what you say," he replied.
Harry just shrugged as they both finished setting up the pieces. The pieces weren't white or black, but they looked different enough so that didn't matter. Harry lost the coin toss and Ron went first… though he just stared at Harry for quite a while. It went on for a while until he decided to do something else.
The delay tactic was just Ron trying to throw him off balance, so he just pulled out his wand and cast a tiny halo spell around the heads of his King and Queen.
The bishops next to them both gasped in awe and kneeled, calling out, "Our leaders have been sanctified! We shall follow Harry the Great until the end of our days!"
"That's a cool spell," Dean commented. "Don't worry, they won't actually follow you. They're my pieces, they reset after each game."
Ron seemed to have made up his mind to start and ordered a pawn to march forward. Not having much experience or thought process in his decisions, Harry made his move quickly, and while he wasn't familiar with the positions on the board, he did it by hand, with all of his pieces calling that they had been 'Blessed by the hand of Harry the Great' each time they were moved. Ron started to call out his next move but then hesitated, looking to the other side of the board and ordering a piece there to advance. Harry felt some kind of tingle all over when he switched his choice. That happened for the rest of the game, all ten moves for each of them before Ron won.
Dean had been watching the game closely, and said, "Something about that was different. What gives, Ron?"
"It just felt like he was going to do something more dramatic," Ron replied. "Well, I guess I can tell everyone that I went to war against Harry Potter and won."
Seamus put down his book, "Try dueling him sometime, or even Lyra. They'll eat you alive."
Harry wasn't used to the kind of banter between the boys here, so he stayed silent, just shrugging at their remarks.
Dean looked at him funny, then said, "You're technically a first-year, so I guess you won't learn the repair spell for another month. Next time you play Wizard Chess, you need to repair all your pieces when you're done."
He pulled out his wand and started fixing up the pieces that Ron had taken out during their game. Despite not having learned the spell, Harry made sure to watch all of Ron and Dean's wand movements and pronunciation so it would be easier to learn when they started it in Charms class. Just as they finished putting the pieces away, a bookcase near them shifted and slid to the side revealing a dark passage, none of the others batted an eye as Fred and George came out from the hidden corridor. They both looked around the room, first giving a smile and wave to Lee, before spotting Harry sitting with the others.
"It's an invasion of Scamanders!" Statler announced.
"Though it looks like Alicia and Ronald have already subdued them," Waldorf chuckled.
They both turned to each other and had a hushed conversation which seemed like they were just yelling "Whisper whisper mumble," over and over in loud voices.
When they were done, one of them pointed at Harry, while the other one pointed towards Lee, "Come with me if you want to live!"
Dean stared at the two of them before falling apart laughing, "You've got to do the voice deeper, and with an accent!"
Both twins looked confused, and asked, "Why?"
"How did you just quote a movie without having seen the movie?" Dean asked.
They shared a look before responding together, "Because we're awesome?"
Lee had gotten up and waved over Harry to join him, and the four of them re-entered the hidden passageway that the Twins had come out of.
"Where are we going?" Harry asked.
"To one of the Twins' secret labs," Lee told him as they walked down a winding staircase.
Arriving at a blank patch of wall in the middle of the spiral stairs, one of the twins pulled out his wand and tapped on a few stones, which opened up a doorway similar to the entrance of Diagon Alley. The group walked in to find a small lab with a large cauldron, two prep tables, a bookcase, and several shelves of ingredients. Harry spotted the Pinocchio's Tinctures on the shelves that he and Lyra had finished at the beginning of February.
"Lee, you were always great at procurement, and Harry has a knack for potions," one of them said.
Lee whispered to Harry, "That's George."
Fred added, "We're working on the puzzle that the Unspeakable gave the students. They say they don't give rewards, but they're always on the lookout for recruits and that would be the only job in the Ministry that my brother or I would accept."
"So what have you got so far?" Harry asked.
"We snuck into the infirmary," Fred told him, "and ran tests on Gabriel. We could figure out that he's petrified, which can be done with a wand at the level of a jinx or a hex, which is easily fixed. This seems to be like a curse, which is not."
Harry told them, "I was there when Mrs. Norris was found. Mr. Scamander said that the cat was in something called Kulivrian equilibrium."
"Excellent," George smiled and pulled out a quill, "How do you spell that?" Harry just shrugged, so he just continued, "Anyways, the more tests we ran, the stranger it got. The curse seems to give inconclusive results if the person is dead or alive, and the diagnostics read as if it is some kind of transfiguration curse."
"That just sounds like you need a mandrake draught to cure it," Lee commented.
"What's that?" Harry asked.
Fred went to one of their shelves and pulled down a large clay pot with green leaves coming out the top. George and Lee each took two sets of earmuffs off the shelves and passed them to Harry and Fred and put theirs on themselves. Once they were all secured, Fred grabbed the leaves coming out of the dirt and gave them a yank. Harry was shocked when he saw that the leaves were attached to what looked like a very ugly baby that had limbs similar to a brown carrot. The limbs were flailing and the tiny mouth on its face was opening and closing in silence. Fred put the thing back into the pot and covered it up with dirt, pushing down on it before removing his earmuffs.
"That was a juvenile mandrake," he told Harry. "If we didn't have ear protection on, the screams would have made us faint. If that was a fully mature mandrake, it would have killed us."
George added, "There is a potion made from the mature ones that can reverse some curses and people stuck in transfigured states. The problem we're having is that the other ingredients and the instructions aren't written down anywhere. It's a secret."
Harry looked at the leaves in the pot as they rustled around, "Why is a mandrake even used? What other properties does it have?"
"Not much," Lee told him. "It's used for some general medicinal purposes, and the leaves are chewed on for the first stage of the Animagus ritual. They supposedly taste disgusting and give you hallucinations."
"Do you know what part of the mandrake is used in the potion?" Harry asked, everyone shook their heads. "How does the scream kill people?" The other three shrugged. "Why do you need mandrake leaves, specifically, for the animagus ritual?" Now they all just looked confused.
"That's just what's in books," Lee replied.
Harry didn't know what to say. After having found out that everyone in the entire world seemed to believe that a chicken could kill the King of Serpents based on what was in an old book, there's no way he'd trust a cure for its petrifying gaze, based on books as well.
"Then that's what we need to figure out first," Harry told them. "Why the mandrake is medicinal, why the screams kill, and why it's used in the animagus ritual." He paused to look at the plant on the shelf. "Can you get more of these?"
"We can probably knick one or two without a lot of fuss," Fred said. "A whole bunch are grown every year for the second-year students to practice with. Though they are very expensive; we stole two mature ones last year to finance most of our activities for the current year."
Harry was already thinking about what to do for a few experiments, and said, "Ok, I have a few ideas. Where can we get a few small animals, like rats or squirrels?"
"We can get a rat!" Fred exclaimed.
"It's probably going to die," Harry told him.
Fred made a face and looked to his brother who shook his head, then to Lee who just started laughing, then back to Harry, and said, "I guess not. I can conjure a few if that works."
"Better if they're real. It just needs to be small animals… Ten should be enough." Harry said after thinking for a moment.
"I'll get something," Lee told them.
"We'll get more mandrakes," George added.
Thinking about the basilisk as a snake, Harry added, "We should probably also get ingredients used in antidotes. I'm guessing a large number of mistletoe leaves and berries."
"I'll get the ingredients from our other laboratories," Fred said. "We can meet back here next Saturday."
With everyone in agreement, they left the room and headed back up to the Gryffindor common room. When they got out, Lyra was chatting with Seamus, Lavender, and Dean while Parvati was playing chess with Ron. All the girls had their hair styled into various complex styles. Lyra's, being so long, had multiple styles in different sections that went almost to her feet. Parvati's was in two thin braids that went in front of both shoulders and Lyra had added some colored Sarimanok feathers at different parts of the braid. Lavender's looked like a mess at first, but under closer examination, it was layered in such a way that the curls stayed together instead of fanning out if she moved her head around.
As Harry was looking at what was going on around him, he felt a tag on his occlumency shield. He had been trying to keep it up at a low level, as full strength gave him a headache when he kept it up for too long. It felt like one of Whispers's probing attacks, and just as he was trying to figure out what it was, his little brother landed on his back, knocking him onto the floor.
Everyone laughed, including Whispers as Harry got back to his feet. He looked at his little brother and said, "Do that again."
Whispers looked confused, but then nodded slowly and vanished. Harry took out one of the blindfolds that were still in his pocket from juggling and put it over his eyes. He imagined that everyone in the room was looking at him right now. He concentrated and brought up his occlumency shields. He had been imagining them as a translucent blue dome over his head, covered in spikes. So he waited patiently to see if the feeling he got was going to repeat itself.
Nearly thirty seconds later, he felt that same tag again on his shield. It felt like it was on the right side of his shield. Trusting his instincts, he jumped forward and heard a gasp from everyone in the room. Not knowing exactly what happened, he just waited and felt another tag on the front of his shield, right next to his eyes. So he took a big step to the left and heard another gasp and scattered applause. After a few more seconds in darkness, his shield lit up with nearly a dozen tags from every possible angle. Not knowing what to do, he just waved his hands all over the place and ducked down into a ball. Nothing happened, so he stood up slowly and took off the cloth covering his eyes.
Whispers stood up straight and his eyes glowed blue as he stared at Harry. He could see out of the corner of his eyes as Whispers raised his right hand, and Harry felt a tag from that side on his shield. Then Whispers raised his other hand and Harry felt a tag on the other side. This would be something he should tell Símone when they had their next lesson. The Hidden somehow used Legilimency for their future sight.
"How did you do that?" Lyra broke the silence. "You moved as he could."
Harry looked around the room at the expectant faces of the other Gryffindors, "Wasn't good enough. Let's head down to Ravenclaw."
There was a series of disappointing noises from the Lions in the room as they headed out with Whispers.
As they went down the stairs, he told Lyra what he had just experienced. Lyra asked if it would work with other people, but he didn't know. He asked Lyra to try and hit him while his eyes were closed. After bringing up his shield to full strength, he focused on predicting Lyra's attack but got knocked out of his thoughts by a slap to the side of his head.
"I don't think it works on people," Lyra said with a smile as Harry opened his eyes and rubbed the spot that had been hit.
When they arrived at the Ravenclaw common room, the door opened to him without a riddle, like before, but they walked in on what was a full house meeting. Every member of the house was gathered around the side of the room by the tall window, with a few students looking down from the balconies above. One of the prefects at the front had been talking but everyone stopped and turned to them as they entered.
"The door is supposed to be locked," the prefect who had been speaking said. "Ravenclaws only right now."
They started to turn and leave, as Penny stood up, "Mr. Potter has prefect privileges. The house granted them to him for bringing Hermione to the infirmary."
"What about his sister?" someone asked.
Hermione stood up, "You might as well let her stay, they don't keep secrets between them."
The prefect leading the meeting shrugged and addressed them, "Find a seat."
Hermione waved them over and had two spots cleared out when they arrived. Whispers climbed into Hermione's lap, but he was too big, so he ended up curling up on the rug at her feet.
"Quick recap;" the prefect began, "The project from the Unspeakables is obviously a recruiting task. I'm sure we all saw Professor Vector pointing out her favorites when they were all here. Every R&D leader should gather a team and get started on this. However, we will make sure we're all on the same page before we begin. Does anyone have any ideas for what is causing the petrifications?"
A boy across the room stood up, "It's almost certainly a Gorgon." There was a great amount of murmuring as he continued, "Nothing else I can think of would cause this type of petrification."
The prefect responded, "Mr. Trillis, please explain what that is for those who don't know."
The boy sounded a bit annoyed and asked, "Does anyone here not know about Medusa?" Harry, Lyra, Whispers, and a few others raised their hands. "She was a woman from Greek Mythology who had snakes for hair and could turn people to stone by looking at them. Medusa was a Gorgon, which is a subspecies of a Lamia, which are basically like Snake-Centaurs; Human top half, snake lower half. Gorgons differ from regular Lamias as they have snakes for hair and the whole petrification business. Any other questions?"
An older student stood up, "If it is a Gorgon, why are all the professors treating it like a basilisk?" There were many murmurs of agreement from the group. The student explained to everyone there, "For those who don't know, a basilisk is a serpent that can live for centuries, kill people with a look, and will be killed by the crowing of a rooster. There's no other reason for them to deploy roosters around the school unless they thought it was a basilisk."
Harry and Lyra were shocked but kept their silence. If everyone in Ravenclaw thought that it was a basilisk, then the entire school would know by tomorrow. At least none of them knew that the roosters weren't the kingslayers everyone thought they were.
Hermione stood up, "If the Gorgon is part snake like a Lamia, maybe this one is part basilisk. I've seen Centaurs that had the bottom half from different types of horses, maybe this one is from a specific snake. As a result, this one shares the weakness of the basilisk."
"Good idea, Miss Granger," the prefect praised her. "However, that would mean that it would also share some of the same strengths as well. It's also possible that all of us are wrong, but it's good to get these ideas out in the open. Leaders, get your teams together and get started. Even though they aren't Eagles, you can be sure there are at least a few other smart people in other houses working on this that might finish before we do. Now, go!"
Everyone started to scatter with Whispers jumping up and grabbing Harry so he didn't get trampled. Penny pulled Harry and Lyra over to a corner as Hermione followed. Penny pulled out a piece of paper and started scribbling down some information.
When she was finished, she passed the paper to Hermione, saying, "Try to get these people if they are still available." Hermione took the list and ran off. Penny turned back to Harry and Lyra, "You two are basically Ravenclaws, want to join us?"
Harry responded, "I'm actually already working on it with Fred and George."
Penny froze as Lyra said, "That's what you were doing with them and Lee?"
Penny stepped around them and pulled her wand out, firing a cannon blast into the air which caused everyone to stop and focus on her, "Heads up everyone!" she called out. "I just got confirmation that the Terror Twins have a head start on us!" There were gasps of shock from everyone around the room as the organizational efforts doubled. Penny looked back at Lyra, "Does that mean you're still free?"
"I guess so?" Lyra replied hesitantly.
"We're not supposed to go anywhere alone right now," Harry told Penny. "If she's going to be here, I can just hang out in the common room while you do your project."
"I'll write to Brandt," Penny told him. "I can be her escort at any time you're unavailable."
Harry wasn't on board with that plan, but he could always wait to hear what Brandt had to say before stepping in.
Lyra, on the other hand, wasn't going to wait, "That sounds fine," she told Penny. "We were told not to go anywhere alone, not that Harry had to be with me."
Harry didn't want to fight with his sister, so he just said, "If not me, then Whispers goes with you." Lyra just nodded in response.
At that moment, Hermione returned with three older students and Padma Patil. Even though Penny wasn't the oldest anymore, she was still acting as the leader of the group, and told the others that Lyra would be joining them on the project.
"What about Mr. Potter?" one of the others asked.
"He is working with the Weasleys," Penny told the others which made them look at him with various undecipherable expressions. "We'll hold our initial planning meeting now, in conference room four. You'll be ok in the common room, Harry?"
"I'll just spend some time here with Whispers," he told them, then watched them head off down a hallway, assumingly to conference room four.
Only one Ravenclaw remained in the common room, he wore a large red patch on the shoulder of his uniform. Harry ignored him and spent the next few hours going over some homework and having staring contests with Whispers. When he wasn't being played with, Whispers explored the common room, climbing the bookcases up to the ceiling at one point before returning to Harry. Shortly before dinner, a small bell rang in the common room, and the one student with the red patch who hadn't gone to work on a project got up and started heading down the hallway to the dorms.
He could hear a lot of groaning and complaining as that student started yelling into the rooms that it was time for dinner. At one point there was the sound of spellfire and more yelling as students started coming out of the hallways, heading towards the exit. Finally, Lyra and her group came back into the common room and rejoined Harry. Together, they all went to the Great Hall. When they arrived, the two of them went to sit at the Hufflepuff table, picking an empty spot next to Theo and across from Hannah, who looked pleasantly surprised at them sitting there.
Harry asked in a quiet voice, "So are the Hufflepuffs working on the task from the Unspeakables too?"
Theo smiled, "Yeah, and it's actually fun. If I were still in Slytherin, I'd have to either swear an oath to work on a team or get everyone on my team to swear not to betray me or steal the ideas for themselves. The Puffs just do everything together and hopefully, we'll have some sort of shared reward. I doubt that the Unspeakables will give anything at all, but I'll be using the project to build my reputation. How's Scamander working on it?"
Harry and Lyra immediately felt a bit ashamed, they weren't working on it with their own house, but with others.
Lyra told him, "Harry's working with the Weasley Twins. I'm working with a group in Ravenclaw. We both got pulled in before even the option to do it with our own house came up."
"Well, you should do something with them," Hannah told them sternly. "Houses are like your family after all."
Harry nodded and got up to return to his own table, grabbing a seat next to Cedric. The older boy took note of Harry's expression and asked, "What's wrong?"
Lyra joined him as he responded, "Lyra and I both joined projects in other houses to work on the task from the Unspeakables. We didn't even think of working with everyone here."
Cedric looked a bit surprised at their admission, "As long as it gets done. The Unspeakables did say they already had a solution, they just wanted to see if any of us could figure it out too. I know you're already on a project and I'd bet a few other people in the house are too, but let's have a house meeting tonight and we can discuss how to go about it. We can make an impact, even if it isn't something big. Go and spread the word to everyone else."
After dinner, all the Scamanders gathered around the fire pit in the common room. Newt and Tina stood off to the side to observe as Cedric began the meeting.
"I've been informed that all the other houses are working on the task from the Unspeakables to try to create the treatment for Gabriel Truman and Mrs. Norris that they will be able to use by the end of the term. This isn't necessary for us to do as a house because the two of them will be cured regardless of if we can figure it out on our own or not. However, it will be good for everyone to do something, in some capacity. First of all, how many people are working on this already with another house?"
Harry, Lyra, Lee, Patricia, Megan, Colin, and William all raised their hands.
"That's more than I thought," Cedric said as he twisted his lips in thought. "Here is what I'm proposing: We can create a project board here in the Scamander common room. Share any ideas you feel comfortable with and we will put them up there. That way we can combine everything we know from across the houses and possibly help everyone that way. Sounds good?"
There was a scattering of nods across the room, and Cedric called to their head of house, "Mr. Scamander? Is it possible to get another board in here?"
Newt whispered something into his hands and a few seconds later, the entrance door opened to reveal Astray pulling in a large chalkboard. He thanked the Urisk and levitated the board across the room to where Cedric was standing.
He picked up the chalk and asked, "Let's start with solutions and work backward. What are some ways that someone can be cured of petrification?"
Ideas were thrown out and Cedric put up: Counter-curse, potion, ritual, blessing, and runic spell.
"What are the possible causes of petrification?"
Colin whispered to William and they raised their hands, and Colin started, "The Slytherins seem to be convinced it's a basilisk."
"But some kind of hybrid," Greg amended. "Because their gaze kills, not petrifies."
Harry whispered to Lyra, "Why doesn't anyone know that it can also petrify? Everyone knows about the roosters from that diary, and it also talks about petrifying an entire army." Lyra just shrugged.
Cedric continued talking, "That seems like the most logical explanation to all the roosters. What do you think, Mr. Scamander?"
Newt looked a bit on the spot and worried that the big secret had been discovered by so many, so quickly. Luckily, Tina answered for him, "The staff is under strict instructions not to discuss the nature of the attacks at the school."
Cedric gave her a slow nod as if understanding that she had confirmed their hypothesis with her lack of a response. Turning back to the rest of the students, "This is only my opinion, but this is a matter of protecting the school and the people in it. The Unspeakables can have their competition, but anything about the basilisk needs to be public knowledge. Therefore, any information I figure out will be put on this board to be shared with the house. Anyone can take it to another house and share it with them. I encourage everyone else to put what they think up here as well."
When the meeting was over, Harry approached Newt and Tina, "I think everyone figured out the basilisk. The Ravenclaws all know but they think it's a Gorgon that's part-basilisk, combine that with the Slytherins and the other two will know by morning."
Newt looked a bit put out that everyone knew, and said, "What I don't understand is why the students aren't panicking! It's the King of the Serpents! It kills with a glance!"
Tina just rubbed his back, while saying, "The good news is that people are reading your books. They all know about the creature and its weaknesses, and that the faculty is defending them with all the roosters around the school."
"I guess so," Newt sighed as he ran his hand through his gray hair. "Still, I'm going to go and inform Albus, tell him that everyone knows about it," he said and walked out of the room.