The Gryffindors were paired up with the Slytherins for their flying lesson, and there was a fairly even spread of students who'd brought their own brooms and students who would be learning on the school-provided ones. Of his friends, Harry was the only one who had opted to learn on his own broomstick, rather than a school-provided one. Hermione, Dean, and Neville were all standing beside rickety-looking old things that Harry nearly winced to look at. The shafts were knobbly and he didn't care what the man in the shop had said, cushioning charms or not, those had to be uncomfortable.
The lesson went well, no one fell off (though Neville looked terrified that he would the whole time), and Madame Hooch declared that any students interested in recreational flying could either seek out their house's quidditch captain, or otherwise just be careful that none of the quidditch teams were practising if they wanted to do laps around the quidditch pitch.
"Think you'll try out for the team?" Dean asked Harry as they all headed back inside.
Harry shrugged, not sure how to answer.
"You did buy your own broom," Neville joined in with a smile, the only second-year in their group of friends that had actually grown up with the sport.
"He has homework to do," Hermione pointed out. "And he could fall to his death!"
Harry rolled his eyes and shared a significant look with Neville and Dean. A look that said, very simply, "girls!" He hadn't honestly thought all that much of the sport when he'd watched the inter-house competition the previous school year. Certainly he'd cheered for Gryffindor – and the twins particularly, since they were the beaters for the team – and Lee had been very clever with his commentary, but... no. It wasn't really his thing.
Flying, on the other hand, that was awesome. The broomstick hadn't been as uncomfortable as he'd feared. It had been very comfortable to sit on, in fact, and riding it was like nothing he'd ever done before. The broom had seemed to respond to his thoughts, it had handled so smoothly. Yeah, he could get used to flying.
~oOo~
"Don't look up," Neville warned Harry in a whisper as he returned to their table in the common room – he'd gone to fetch a book from the library. A task long taken away from Herminone, as she always came back with the biggest books in excess of what was needed. All very interesting, certainly, but not when a professor only wanted three inches worth of parchment.
"Why?" Harry whispered back.
"Firstie with a camera and an eager look on his face," Neville answered.
Harry's head dropped sharply into the only slightly soft cushioning of his book. There was a distinct thump.
"We'll deal with it Harry," Fred and George offered, and pushed out of their chairs.
"Thanks guys," Harry answered from where he still had his head in his book.
The conversation that the twins had with the firstie (one Colin Creevey, apparently) was not hushed, and got the message Harry had conveyed to the twins back on the train when he was a firstie finally conveyed to the rest of the house: yes, his name is Harry Potter. No, he isn't that one. How could he be, after all, when he clearly doesn't have that scar that the other Harry Potter is so very famous for?
And it was true that he didn't. After the various rituals that the goblins had put him through back before his first year, Harry's infamous scar had finally started to fade, as all scars do, and it being just a hair-thing thing rather than a great big gash, well, once it stopped being red all the time it had faded away to nearly nothingness by Christmas of his first year. Before which time it had been well hidden by his hair.
The firstie lowered his camera, stepped up, and apologised to Harry for the mistake.
"Colin," Harry said, looking the boy in the eye. "Regardless of whether a person is famous or not, you should always think about if they want their picture taken before you go creeping about with a camera and an itchy finger over the shutter button."
Colin slumped a little where he stood, and nodded in understanding.
"That said," Harry continued, "if you're good at photography, then I bet there's a lot of people who would be willing to part with a coin or two for some good shots of the castle, or a quidditch game, to send home."
"I know I would like a picture of me in front of the castle to send to my parents," Hermione offered with a smile. "I'd pay... five knuts for a good shot. And maybe another one of me with my friends all together by the lake."
Colin brightened up. "I could do that!" he instantly agreed.
"If you can get some good shots of the Gryffindor-Slytherin quidditch game in a couple of weeks, I'd buy some," Oliver Wood joined in from the next table.
Colin nodded eagerly.
"Maybe we could make a calendar with the quidditch team and sell it to raise money so we'll have some new brooms," Katie Bell – who had been discussing quidditch strategy with Oliver – suggested.
"I'd buy that!"
"Me too!"
"Yeah!"
The agreements rang around the room.
Harry smiled at the star-struck first-year as he stood there holding his camera. "Looks to me like you've got customers," he told the boy.
Colin nodded enthusiastically, and let himself be dragged into planning the calendar with Oliver and Katie.
~oOo~
Halloween came, and Mrs Norris went the way of certain ancient trees. That is to say, she had been discovered petrified. Not dead as such, but definitely no longer to be counted as being among the living. Mr Filch was really quite distressed by the whole matter. The students, it has to be said, were decidedly not, and he blamed them for the state of his cat because of it.
Hermione was all fired up about investigating the cause by breakfast the next morning, much like she had been curious the previous school year about finding out what Dumbledore had been hiding on the third floor (she never did find out). Unlike that venture in curiosity, however, the boys happily encouraged her researching into the matter. Even Harry.
"Really?" Hermione checked as she looked around at all of them.
They all nodded solemnly.
"Knowing what did that will mean that we'll hopefully be able to avoid or counter it for ourselves," Neville pointed out. "This is the sort of curiosity that could save lives, rather than endanger them."
"We'll help," Fred and George offered.
"I'd have thought the what was obvious," Harry said. "I'm more concerned with the how, myself."
"Obvious?" the rest of them chorused, incredulously.
Harry nodded. "Certainly," he agreed. "What is Slytherin famously associated with?"
"Dark witches and wizards?" Lee offered.
"You-Know-Who and his followers?" Neville joined in.
"Being anti-muggle-born?" Dean hazarded.
"Potions?" Hermione guessed when Harry shook his head at the previous guesses.
"Snakes!" Fred and George cheered together a moment later.
Harry nodded, though he was rolling his eyes at them having taken so long to figure it out. "So, what's sort of magical snake could do this? Because Slytherin wouldn't be interested in a non-magical snake, and non-magical snakes don't petrify their prey without leaving a mark anyway."
Around the table was a collective moment of "Erm..."
Harry groaned in lament. "Really!" he grumbled. "I know there are Greek myths about the Medusa that turned to stone anybody that looked upon her face, but she only had snakes for hair, wasn't actually a snake. And there was a serpent hatched from the egg of a cockerel that could kill you by looking at you, but I don't remember if it was a cockatrice or a basilisk. The two seemed fairly interchangeable in the myths I read in primary."
"A basilisk!" the twins breathed, eyes wide.
"That would do it," Lee agreed.
"But it kills with eye-contact," Neville objected through wide-eyed and nearly stammering fear. "It doesn't petrify."
"If seen directly. If seen indirectly," Lee countered, "then you get the stone effect Mrs Norris is currently suffering from."
"Yikes," Dean said lowly. "So... how do we protect ourselves from something that kills us when we see it? Apart from walking around with blindfolds on like that Ravenclaw first-year over there, I mean."
"What?" Hermione near yelped.
Dean nodded and pointed to the little blonde girl who was walking around with a blindfold on, somehow managing to not bump into anybody or anything as she went. "I've no idea how she's doing that," he added. "And as impressive as it is, I'm not really thrilled with the idea of following her example."
"Blind man's charm," Lee said. "Magic can do lots of things, but fixing eyes isn't one of them. We can do all sorts of things with glasses, but not eyes. The blind man's charm essentially describes your surroundings to you so you can manoeuvre around any obstacles safely, a little voice whispering in your ear about obstructions and stuff."
Dean nodded in acceptance of the information, and Hermione added an "Uh-huh," but that didn't answer the issue of how to be safe in a castle with a basilisk. Without wearing a blindfold as they walked around the castle, at any rate.
"Hang about a mo," George said as he pulled a book out of the bag he and Fred shared. "We've got Care today, so we've got the book," he explained as he pulled out a slim volume entitled Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. "Alright chaps, here we go. 'B'... basilisk!" he declared, and slammed the book down, open, for everybody to lean in and read from their own odd angles.
"A cock's crow?" Harry asked as he reached the end of the passage where it stated that such was fatal to a basilisk. "Seriously?"
"And then there's still finding the thing before it kills you," Dean added cynically.
"Forge? Gred?" Lee asked.
The twins grinned in answer. "We know just the thing," they answered together happily.
"It might take us a bit of time," Fred cautioned.
"But there'll be basilisk parts all ripe for harvest before we break for Christmas," George promised.
"Which just leaves the mystery of who is controlling the thing," Hermione declared happily.
"Slytherin's supposed heir," Dean answered. "It was written in suspicious red all over the wall, remember?"
Hermione waved him off. "Yes, but who is that?" she pressed.
"Didn't the evil tosser, the one with the followers in the dorky masks who all had such fun killing and torturing, claim to be the heir of Slytherin?" Harry asked with deliberate nonchalance as he returned to his breakfast.
Dean swore.
Hermione, for once, didn't reprimand him for it.
But Professor Loki did.
"Mr Thomas, that was both uncouth and uncreative," Professor Loki informed the boy from behind him. "Messers Weasley, if you do anything in an attempt to 'deal with' the situation of a basilisk in the castle, then I will be forced to borrow epithets from Professor Snape. I would not enjoy that."
"Will you be doing something then, Professor Loki?" Harry questioned. Any other adult, he wouldn't have asked. Any other adult, he'd have just assumed they'd do bugger-all. He actually respected and trusted Professor Loki though, so he actually did check that detail.
Loki inclined his head. "Certainly," he agreed regally. "Oh, and one more thing," he added over his shoulder, as he turned to continue on his way out of the hall. "Ten points to Gryffindor each for the use of sound logic in deductive reasoning. Such qualities are far too rare, and not given enough praise or recognition."
~oOo~
There were no further incidences of petrification, nor any more extreme cases (such as death) after that. That didn't stop there from being a Duelling Club instigated, so that the students might have some idea of how to defend themselves against an unknown threat – as no one else had figured out that the castle had a basilisk problem, and none of them (nor Professor Loki) had shared it around, it hadn't made it through the rumour mill either.
Curious, Harry and his friends all agreed to check it out. If it was good, they'd learn something potentially useful. If it wasn't, well, it might be a laugh.
When Harry spotted Professor Loki propping up a wall, he had high hopes, and by dint of having a destination as he made his way through the crowd, his friends all followed him until he reached the Runes Professor's side.
"Are you helping with instructing the Duelling Club, Professor?" Harry asked.
Loki smiled down at the boy, amusement practically radiating from him. "No," he answered. "I've come along to laugh. Though I may yet be called upon."
"Who is leading the Duelling Club, Professor?" Hermione asked hopefully.
"Can everybody see me?" called out a voice from the duelling platform that had been set up for the club, interrupting Loki before he could even open his mouth to answer. "Can everybody hear me?"
Hermione perked up and whipped around, eager for whatever the teacher would have to say.
The boys all groaned silently. Lockhart. Seriously? Lockhart was leading the Duelling Club? It made no sense! Professor Flitwick was a known champion of the professional duelling circuit, so why wasn't he the one in charge? Why was that- that- that fop up there?!
And then he called Snape up to assist him.
Actually, that wasn't so bad. The boys all exchanged smirks and gave the potions master (known to want the DADA position) their full attention. He may yet utterly humiliate the useless dandy. That, they could at least enjoy. Snape may yet teach them something, even if they all knew that Lockhart wouldn't.
"Ten knuts says Snape sends Lockhart arse-over-tea-kettle," Harry offered.
"No bet," Lee and the twins answered easily, all three of them smirking.
It wasn't long before Lockhart was, literally, sent arse-over-tea-kettle by Snape's spell – expelliarmus, as it just so happened.
"Tut," Loki said from behind the boys. "He messed it up."
"How's that, Professor?" Harry asked.
"Looked like it worked to us," the twins added.
Loki chuckled. "Because Professor Snape had too much hiss in the first syllable, and his gesture was too long in the up-down swing, it sent his opponent flying backwards, but still holding his wand. It should have sent Professor Lockhart's wand flying from his hand – and into Professor Snape's – with no physical effect on Professor Lockhart at all," Loki explained with a smile. "Of course, he should know that," Loki continued thoughtfully, "so it's entirely possible he did it on purpose."
"Never thought I'd say it," George announced softly, "but I think we need to send flowers and a thank-you note to Snape for this."
His twin nodded in solemn, shocked, agreement.
Lockhart climbed to his feet once more and started babbling pointlessly, which Snape countered with cool words, and then looked out at the students for someone to call up to have a try themselves. After they'd only demonstrated how to salute, bow, and walk away from each other, oh, and one spell.
"Mr Potter? How about you?" Lockhart called when he spotted the boy. "And perhaps against... Mr Longbottom?"
"If Mr Longbottom has the same talent at spell casting as he does with potions, then there would be nothing left of Mr Potter," Snape countered firmly. "Perhaps someone from my own house?" he suggested, almost politely. Almost.
Of course, Lockhart was an idiot, so he didn't really notice and deferred to his fellow teacher – who silently ordered Malfoy up onto the stage.
"Cancel the flowers," Harry said flatly.
"Mr Potter?" Lockhart repeated with that stupid grin on his face.
"I don't recall agreeing to get up there," Harry answered flatly, only to get 'a few friendly shoves' from his friends until he was essentially forced up by them. Once the formalities were through, Harry repeated the spell Snape had used, complete with the imperfections that Professor Loki had made note of. Malfoy was sent arse-over-tea-kettle just as Lockhart had been.
Rather than repeating the disarming spell again once he regained his feet, Malfoy responded instead by shouting out "Serpensortia!"
The spell conjured a small king cobra, which landed quite some distance from Harry. It was, frankly, more of a danger to the students gathered close to the stage at that point than it was to Harry. He lowered his wand.
For some reason, Malfoy looked smug about that. That would need to be corrected.
"Don't worry Potter, I'll get rid of it," Snape said and stepped around Malfoy.
"Allow me, Professor Snape!" Lockhart said with a grin, and likewise moved to step around Harry.
Harry stuck out his elbow to catch the fop in the gut, and stepped up himself.
"It's just a snake," he said with a shrug, and gently collected the venomous reptile, and even draped it around his shoulders. "Nothing to be scared of if you don't piss them off," he explained, and then raised his wand at Malfoy again. "Furnunculus," he cast at the other boy with one hand, while he gently stroked the snake with the other hand.
With that, Harry climbed down from the stage – and with a king cobra resting on his shoulders, no one was going to try and stop him for fear of pissing off the snake. He walked straight back to his friends and Professor Loki.
"Mate, seriously?" Dean asked.
"It isn't even fully grown yet," Harry said. "Don't worry about it. I'll find a basket for it to sleep in or something. I'll take it back to its native country next holidays."
"Does it have to stay in our dorms until then though?" Dean pressed.
"I solemnly swear," Harry said, and raised his hand, "you will not wake up to find this snake in your bed."
Loki smiled at the boy and took to gently stroking the reptile as well.