December 1992, 2nd year
The holidays arrived in a flurry of snow and snow and more snow and Lynea was the only one who was really happy about that, as usual.
The attack on Finch-Fletchley and Sir Nicholas had thrown the school into a state of panic and most students couldn't wait to get on the Hogwarts Express and as far away from the castle as possible. This left the six Slytherins alone with the Weasleys, Oliver Wood, and the teachers.
They celebrated Yule in their common room, opened their presents together and ate the meal Professor Snape had kindly provided them with. Then they exchanged stories and showed each other different traditions. They couldn't light a Yule Log, sadly, but they had redecorated the Christmas Tree to become a Yule Tree and when Lynea retired to her empty dormitory, she lit a black candle in the window and watched its light be reflected on the frozen surface of the lake outside as Choco lay in her lap, purring.
With nearly everyone away, the castle was eerily silent. The Weasley's and Wood spent most of the time in Gryffindor Tower, so it felt like the Slytherins had the whole castle to themselves. It was a nice break from all the dark glares and frightened glances, the whispering and pointing and hissing. As if there was a point in behaving so childishly – Lynea could honestly not understand what the other students hoped to achieve with their behaviour.
On Christmas morning, Harry's snowy owl swept down during breakfast. They were eating meals at a singular table instead of the big house tables this year, but the Slytherins had managed to avoid the Gryffindors every meal so far. It helped that the red-heads weren't early risers and Wood always ate with them.
"Who sent you a letter?" Draco asked curiously.
"The Dursleys," Harry said, holding up a toothpick. "They sent me a 'present' and asked how long it will take until I can leave permanently."
"They've been informed already?"
Harry shrugged. "Seems like it."
"Naenia has been working on it for nearly three months, now," Lynea said.
They spent the rest of the morning sitting by one of the fireplaces in the common room. Draco and Harry played chess, Lynea and Theodore buried their heads in books, Vincent and Gregory played exploding snap. After lunch, Harry decided he wanted to visit Hagrid and to the others' relief he requested to do it alone. There was no one in the castle who could possibly harm Harry, because nearly all students had gone home, and the others would take a walk around the grounds, staying close to Hagrid's hut, so they supposed he should be fine.
In the end, Lynea and Draco wandered around on their own, because the other three didn't want to leave the warmth of the common room. Draco complained loudly and very dramatically, but simmered down to grumbling when Lynea cast a warming charm on him.
The snow was beautiful. A thick layer covered everything in sight, even the frozen surface of the great lake, and snowflakes were softly falling from the sky. They could see their breaths puff out in small clouds and their inane chatter was the only sound to be heard in the quietness of the winter.
At some point, the Weasley twins and their little brother came out to play in the snow. Lynea and Draco kept a watchful eye out, just in case they were planning something, but it seemed like the red-heads really only wanted to play in the snow.
"That looks like fun," Harry commented when he finally left Hagrid's hut and joined them by the lake.
"And also very wet and very cold," Draco said dryly.
Harry laughed. "That's what we have magic for."
Draco grumbled something under his breath, then said, "Let's go back inside. I want to sit in front of the fire for a while before dinner."
"We could play another round of chess," Harry mused as they made the track back to the castle.
"Do you wish to lose again so soon?" Draco teased. "How many times has it been, now?"
"Hey!" Harry exclaimed indignantly. "I am improving. I only learned chess a year ago. I didn't get to play since I was little."
Draco laughed. "Sure. Blame it on being inexperienced. I will hold you to that when you are still losing to me as an adult. Too bad Tracey went home, she's the only one who can give me a real challenge."
"I think Theodore could easily win, too," Lynea said. "If you manage to rope him into a game."
"The last time I played against your cousin …" Draco furrowed his brows. "That must have been years ago. I remember that he was really good. Why doesn't he play anymore?"
Lynea shrugged. "Books are more important, I guess? His thirst for knowledge knows no bounds. So we need to bait him with knowledge somehow, if we want to –" Lynea gasped as something hard and cold collided with her head.
Both Harry and Draco yelped in surprise.
She swirled around and saw the three Weasleys pointing at them and laughing to themselves. Lynea smirked as she drew her wand and made a circling motion. The snow at her feet rose into the air and formed three snowballs. With another wave of her wand the snowballs launched themselves at the red-heads, who were so busy laughing they never even saw the attack coming until it was too late.
Ronald Weasley fell to the ground with a groan, while the twins stood there, too stunned to move.
Then one of them gasped loudly. "You can do nonverbal magic?"
"That's –" The other twin began.
"Brilliant!"
"Awesome!"
"So cool!"
And then they started a war.
When they finally called it a truce and trudged back to the castle, where they split off to go to their respective common rooms, all six of them where soaking wet and chilled to the bone. Draco very loudly complained about it all, Lynea quietly laughed to herself and Harry had a dopey smile plastered on his face.
Lynea was fairly convinced that they had just made two new friends. All it had taken was a snowball fight.
And indeed, when dinner came around, the Weasley twins actually roped the Slytherins into their conversations, convincing Harry to sing along with some carols and subtly drawing their attention to their elder brother's prefect badge that now spelled 'Pinhead'. They all kept snickering to the boy's great confusion. Not even Wood took mercy on him.
Ronald Weasley, who had partaken in the snowball fight just as much as Lynea and her friends had, didn't seem very happy with this turn of events and mostly kept to himself during the whole meal. Lynea couldn't say that she minded much.
As for their little sister … The little Weasley girl seemed rather intimidated by it all. Lynea supposed she was a more of a shy thing and having none of her friends around probably didn't make this any easier. It was fascinating how different each of the Weasley children was.
"I can't believe you befriended the Weasley twins," Theodore said after pudding was finished.
They had left rather late, because Vincent and Gregory hadn't been satisfied even after their third helping of pudding, while the other four had barely made it through the first – and Lynea had already made sure to make her portion of the main course as small as possible. But they hadn't wanted to leave the two boys behind by themselves, either, so they had continued to chat among themselves until they were finally finished.
"Maybe they will keep us out of their pranks now," Draco mused.
Lyne huffed. "I doubt it. They didn't even spare themselves from the one they pulled on Halloween."
"That one was pretty harmless, though," Draco said. "Pansy told me some really wild stories from the upper years."
"I think they won't involve us in any of the nastier ones," Lynea said.
"Like the itching powder?" Gregory said.
Lynea gave him a lopsided smile. "I believe that one was aimed at you and Vincent in particular. But there's hope they will remember we were friends for a day and go easier on us all."
"Only a day?" Harry asked. "Not for the foreseeable future?"
Lynea shrugged. "Depends on them, doesn't it? We are, let's see … a Necromancer, the son of a known Death Eater and the Heir of Slytherin. Oh, and Slytherins, obviously."
"I think the twins aren't as biased as the others," Harry said. "They seem like really cool people."
A figure came around the corner and Lynea instinctively pushed Harry behind herself and drew her wand.
"It's only Wood," Theodore said as the Gryffindor hurried past them. "I wonder what he was doing down here …"
"Oh, I have a fairly good idea," Lynea said. "Haven't you been listening to Pansy?"
"Reckon we'll run across the Pinhead, too?" Draco asked.
They rounded the corner Wood had come from and found themselves face to face with the eldest Weasley (the eldest currently attending Hogwarts, that is). Draco shot the others a knowing smirk.
"What are you doing down here?" Harry asked.
"That," the Weasley said stiffly, "is none of your business, Potter. You better hurry along, now. It's not safe wandering dark corridors these days."
Draco raised an eyebrow. "Isn't that exactly what you are doing?"
Weasley puffed up his chest. "I am a prefect. Nothing is going to attack me."
Lynea barely supressed a snort. As if Slytherin's Monster cared about his status as a prefect.
"Come now," Draco said to the others. "Let's go." And without another glance at Weasley, he took the lead to the common room.
They were barely inside, when they all erupted into laughter.
"Oh, that was hilarious," Draco said. "Who does he think he is fooling? And did you notice that his badge still spelled 'Pinhead'?"
"At least we ran into them separately," Lynea said. "Can you imagine what would have happened, had we caught them making out in the dungeons? Pansy is going to love this."
"By the way," Draco said, wandering over to the armchairs. "Did you read the Prophet lately?"
"Are you talking about the article about Arthur Weasley?" Theodore asked and Draco nodded.
They settled down in front of one of the fireplaces and Draco set up his chess set as he told them about the article.
"They fined him fifty Galleons for bewitching a Muggle car – his sons were apparently caught flying around with it over the summer. My father even gave the Daily Prophet an interview about the matter. He sent me a cutting, I could go and retrieve it if you want, it's rather funny."
"Doesn't Mr Weasley work for the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office?" Theodore asked.
Draco nodded. "Arthur Weasley loves the Muggles so much he should snap his wand in half and go and join them."
"Don't be mean, Draco," Harry scolded. "I've only seen the man once, but he seemed like a friendly person."
Draco raised an eyebrow. "Beating my father seems friendly to you?"
"Er –" Harry hesitated, then a smirk slowly spread across his face. "Yeah, I would say your father needed to be brought down a peg or two."
Lynea laughed. "Draco, your meanness is rubbing off on him."
Draco huffed and ignored their comments. "You know, I'm surprised the Daily Prophet hasn't reported all these attacks, yet. I suppose Dumbledore is trying to hush it all up just like it was hushed up last time. He'll be sacked if it doesn't stop soon. Although that would probably be a mercy to this school."
"I can agree with you there," Lynea said. "But I don't understand why he is trying to hush it up, in the first place. Dumbledore has always been on the side of the muggleborn, so why isn't he doing anything?"
Draco shrugged. "Beats me."
"Maybe he is doing something," Harry said, "but behind the scenes – a secret investigation."
"Because the investigations ever turn up anything," Draco said. "They never linked all those incidents in our first-year to Quirrel. No one has found out that a house-elf bewitched the Bludgers and we are still in the dark about the people who threw a bloody vase at us."
"Maybe we should start our own investigation," Lynea said jokingly. "We found all the other culprits so far."
"That's actually not a bad idea," Harry said.
Lynea raised an eyebrow. "You realize I was joking right? We are not going to let you put yourself in a dangerous situation."
Harry rolled his eyes. "We would be putting me out of a dangerous situation. Or do you honestly think the vase was a one-time thing? And I still need to find out what that mysterious voice was."
"The one from Samhain? The one only you could hear?" Draco asked.
"It's some kind of snake," Theodore said and all eyes went to him. "What? It's obvious. Harry is a Parselmouth and he doesn't even realize it when he's speaking Parseltongue. Of course he would be able to hear what the snake is saying, while we would just dismiss the hissing as some sound from the castle." Theodore paused. "Actually, couldn't it be possible that the snake Harry heard was Slytherin's Monster?"
"Clever you," Draco said. "That makes so much sense."
Theodore nodded. "Of course Salazar Slytherin would use some kind of snake as his monster. It could be a Runespoor, although they come from Africa. I don't think it's a Horned Serpent, those are native to America and prefer to live in bodies of water, but if it lives in the lake … Maybe a Hydra?"
"Oh!" Lynea exclaimed and then she and Theodore simultaneously said, "A Basilisk!"
"Of course!" Theodore said. "It would make so much sense. The Basilisk is also known as the King of Serpents, after all. It can live many hundred years, possesses a deadly poison and a deadly stare. The only thing fatal to a Basilisk is the crowing of a rooster, but if Slytherin hid it in some secret chamber, then I doubt he would have to worry about that."
"Hagrid actually told me some animal killed his rooster," Harry said slowly.
"See?" Theodore said. "The heir must have killed it to protect the Basilisk."
"And a Basilisk can attack in several different ways," Lynea mused. "It can simply wound its victims, but it can also kill them with either its venom or its stare. But it's a being of Death, I should have been able to sense it." She paused. "Although I suppose that the castle's magic could have shielded it just as well. Slytherin probably put a few protections in place and its not like I'm very good at sensing magic, yet."
"You said it kills people with its stare," Harry said. "Then how come all the victims were merely petrified so far?"
"Let's see, what do we remember about the crime scenes?" Theodore said.
"Sir Nicholas," Lynea said instantly. "We didn't see in what position Finch-Fletchley was found, but as they were both found at the same time, I think we can safely assume Finch-Fletchley saw the Basilisk through Sir Nicholas' ghostly body. And Sir Nicholas was already dead."
"Colin was holding his camera when they brought him in," Harry said. "The film inside it burned away."
"And I believe there was a puddle of water on the floor beneath Filch's cat," Draco said. "The torchlight reflected from it." He frowned. "Why was there a puddle?"
"Myrtle," Lynea said. "The message was written in front of her bathroom. I asked around a bit after we encountered her at Sir Nicholas' Death Day Party and according to the other ghosts, she likes being dramatic and gets upset quite easily. She often floods the whole bathroom, so it's not that uncommon to find puddles of water in front of it."
Draco shuddered. "Am I glad she only haunts the girl's bathroom."
"She seemed fine at the party, though," Harry said. "Not the easiest person to be around, but not that bad, either."
Draco made a dismissive gesture. "That was because Lynea used her Necromancer charm on Myrtle."
"It's definitely a Basilisk, then," Lynea said.
The others nodded.
"All the pieces fit," Theodore said.