"Just a little longer…"

Tom's grip on Lyra wasn't secure anymore.

The strenuous hold he had over her throughout the night was unparalleled — it was his strongest possession yet - and yet once the sun broke the horizon something inside of her fought back. He couldn't quite comprehend where the opposing force was coming from. It was coming from, well, nothing.

At first it perturbed him. He knew it was more powerful than anything he had come into contact with in his past, his interaction with Warren proved that already, but now it fanned the flames of his fascination with Black. An obsession of his own was emerging from the fire she ignited within him and he wanted to watch it grow. He yearned for it to devour him whole.

"We're almost there, quickly my pretties."

His girls were quiet and rapid. The basilisk slithering inside the walls never made a sound, and Black's steps were softer than a mouse. It was his own heavier footsteps that graced the corridors of Hogwarts this time and he couldn't have been more smug at the sound of his swagger. He had footsteps again. He had a presence. He was present.

Tom was prowling the hallways with Lyra at his side. He didn't need to inhabit her this time, he existed within his own form without her. The ease of which he could slither in and out of her was electrifying, it shouldn't have been so easy. Like leading a lamb to slaughter, she let him do as he pleased.

At first her obliviousness was entertaining. The irony gave him nothing but joy… but now it was beginning to chisel at his willpower. He shouldn't have inhabited her as often as he had. That wasn't his plan. His ability to keep his distance from the girl was withering like a dried sapling when it should have been a thriving flowerbud. She should have been weakened by his presence within her, but if anything it only made her stronger, and he wasn't disappointed.

He was relieved. Black was much smaller than him, he could easily crush her fragile neck with just one hand if he truly wanted to, but the mere idea made him feel sick. Actual physical sickness. It made him weak and he despised it. She was the perfect archetype of a pureblood, he always admired the Black family and their grasp on the wizarding community, but this particular heir bewitched him in a way her ancestors could never. The way no one ever could…

"You've done so well, Lyra, I wish I could reward you properly," hissed Tom, stealing a valuable moment with Black alone as she gazed up at him in wonderment.

Dawn threatened to break through the deep purple clouds beyond the seventh floor windows but he ignored it for now, he would always make more time for his girl. Potter could wait. "It pains me that you never remember our encounters, but it is for your own protection."

"If it means keeping you safe then so be it, we'll be together soon and then I will remember everything," Lyra whispered in her usual deep hiss, encapsulating Tom's every sense.

Even though he was manipulating her it still sounded so real. He pretended her words were the result of her own free will and he breathed them in as though he had functioning lungs and she was the air he needed to stay alive. He shouldn't have been so taken to the blood traitor, but he'd see to her tendencies soon enough. The pathetic excuse she had for a family would be long dead. He was gifted in particular methods of persuasion and he wasn't afraid of using them on his girl. She'd understand that it was for her own good — for their own good.

"I cannot remain in this form for long," he reminded her, inspecting the entrance of the upcoming boys bathroom where he instructed the basilisk to surface, "our task must be completed before my resurgence. Once Potter has been disposed of we shall commence our journey."

"And we'll finally be together?" purred Black, the longing in her mesmerising silver eyes growing more desperate as she pouted at him, "you won't leave me?"

"I won't leave you, I'll take care of you for eternity," he promised, reaching down in the hopes that the universe would let him caress her freckled cheek, but something struck him hard in the chest when his hand fell through her again. He still couldn't touch her, it was more infuriating than he was willing to acknowledge.

"I will never let you down, you won't have to depend on anyone else ever again. You'll have me."

"I'll have you," she repeated like a softly spoken secret, tantalising the non-existent hairs on the nape of his neck, "and we'll live together? I have a house, it can be our home." Her slender hands were twitching towards him, she was just as thirsty for contact as he was.

"We're going to live together forever," he reaffirmed, swept up in the fantasies unravelling in the dark corners of his mind, "that filthy Squib won't own you, I will. No one is allowed to have you, Black."

"I'm all yours, Tom," she testified as though she were on trial, defending her life, "I want you to have me, I don't need anyone else. You're my family."

"And you're mine, we'll create our own legacy," he vowed, never breaking their intense eye contact.

He held no reservations that she wouldn't fight back, her innocence begging to be broken like a delectable aroma in the air that only he could smell. How could he deny her the chance of ascending into the person she was destined to be? She would never obtain what he had, no one would, but given the chance he knew Black was the key to unlocking an entire aspect of magic no mere mortal could achieve and she needed to give herself to him. That's what she wanted, she was a growing girl after all, he knew the perils of puberty all too well.

"I've arrived, master… I am ready to serve," the hiss of the basilisk was more prominent now and it snapped Tom out of his infatuated stupor. He tore his gaze from Black's enchanting milky face in the darkness to acknowledge the ancient beast waiting for his command up ahead. Her effervescent scaled head poked out of the nearby bathroom like a glistening jewel in the slow-growing brightness outside. Tom hardly noticed the fluffy shadows of snowflakes cascading past the window panes. He never particularly cared for snow.

"It's your time to shine, my treasure," he hissed into Lyra's ear, rousing her, "bring Potter to me—,"

"MERLIN'S BALLSACK?!"

"AH!"

Thud!

Without thinking Tom reacted how he saw fit and saved Lyra from being discovered. The two Gryffindor early birds that stumbled across the great snake smacked into each other as they collapsed onto the floor, petrified from the reflection of the basilisk's deadly gaze in the shiny suits of armour poorly guarding the corridor. Their bodies were left in a heap while Riddle latched onto Lyra's soul, taking control of the charmed girl's body, and he forced her to flee from the seventh floor before they were caught.

When she awoke an hour later to the sounds of Hermione tearing back her bed curtains and nattering on about their upcoming essay deadlines, Lyra remembered nothing of her adventure with Tom. Only a fuzzy dream that may or may not have contained the boy trapped in her book and the overzealous butterflies that accompanied all thoughts relating to Riddle.

She didn't remember falling asleep either. That was another new occurrence in her life, but judging by the open diary and bone fragment lying under her duvet she must've dozed off whilst writing to Tom so she happily snuck her treasures into her backpack as she climbed out of bed and got ready for the day. Considering how busy she was this year Lyra had grown used to passing out in the evenings while chatting to Tom so her loss of memory wasn't alarming. There were more pressing matters to worry about now anyways.

"There's been another attack!" gushed Lavender suddenly, slamming the dorm door with unnecessary force and scaring the rest of her roommates, and Lyra immediately caught Hermione's eye as she continued.

"Two older Gryffindor boys, I think one of them is called Tim. They were found on the seventh floor, near our common room! McGonagall's downstairs talking about it now." She was still panting from her dash back up the stairs and she smoothed her kinked dark hair out of her face, showing off the tears in her eyes. "I can't believe it happened again!"

"Merlin's beard, that's awful!" gasped Sally-Ann, looking fretfully at Parvati who whose jaw was still swinging, "but this kinda proves that it's not Harry who's attacking everyone—,"

"Of course it's not Harry attacking everyone!" snapped Hermione before Lyra could open her mouth to argue, "we've been over this already, just because he's a Parselmouth doesn't mean he's suddenly a dark wizard."

It seemed as though news of Harry's display at the Duelling Club spread like wildfire. Everyone was currently discussing the likeliness of Harry being a secret evil wizard, his new found ability didn't receive the reception it deserved and his friends were constantly trying to fight his corner. Their classmates weren't as apprehensive around Harry as the rest of their year, but still, this wasn't going to improve their dispositions.

"And even if he was a reincarnation of Voldemort, he clearly didn't attack them because they're Gryffindors! Harry would start with the other houses first!" Lyra added as though she was really proving her point, but she bit her tongue as the other girls recoiled, frightened by her convoluted thought. Maybe don't joke about this…

"...Is that possible? Could he be You-Know-Who reborn?" murmured Sally-Ann, staring at them in horror, but Hermione hastily reassured the three girls that Lyra was just teasing and she tried to change the subject onto the snowstorm outside as they exited the girls tower. Lyra immediately spotted Harry and Ron waiting by the entrance to their dorm, both wearing identical concerned expressions.

"—which means that first period is cancelled and you'll be eating breakfast up here this morning while we search the castle," concluded McGonagall as she surveyed the room with a sad gleam in her usually stern gaze from the entrance of the common room, "I want you all to be on-guard and vigilant, I'll be looking to our prefects to ensure that everyone will be on their best behaviour."

Percy straightened his spine from her left and nodded along, acting as though he somehow was involved with the decision. Professor McGonagall soon left once the platters of breakfast foods and teapots were distributed throughout the common room, and Lyra snuggled into the window nook they had claimed and she sipped her tea as she waited for her friends to comment first. The bay window hidden in the corner of the tower was practically the perfect size for the four of them, with their legs crossed they managed to balance their breakfast on their knees without knocking into each other.

"Well I for one am ecstatic that we're missing Herbology this morning," Lyra decided to chirp first, getting the conversation rolling, but her mood quickly plummeted when Hermione broke the news.

"Lyra, it's week B - Herbology is a double period this morning," she reminded her, "we still have to go."

"Ah God damnit!" she huffed, scowling at her mug.

"It's pretty freaky that those boys were petrified just a few metres from here," shivered Ron, still staring at the portrait hole as though the beast was standing in its shadows, waiting to pounce at him, "and it was two Gryffindors this time, someone has it out for us."

"Or it was a mere coincidence," suggested Hermione, cutting him off with the addition of logic, "if the beast that's attacking everyone truly is a Gorgon then the chances of it having an ulterior motive is awfully slim."

"Maybe it's not a Gorgon, maybe it's something else," Harry piped up suddenly, abandoning his toast and shuffling closer to them so he could lower his voice, and Lyra's blood ran cold. From the bay window she could see the faint outline of Hagrid's hut buried beneath the fresh feet of snow in the grounds that reminded her of a gingerbread house that had been smothered with way too much powdered sugar, and she thought back to the creeping guilt on the groundskeeper's face. Could this have been Hagrid and his dangerous pets again? Why was he letting this happen? And why wasn't Dumbledore putting a stop to this?

Because Dumbledore isn't the man he pretends to be, he's hiding something… her conscience wasn't dissuaded by doubt at all, deep down she knew these attacks were a part of a bigger picture.

"What do you mean?" Ron asked Harry, slowing down his chews to mull over Harry's suggestion.

"Hermione, you said there was another beast that fits the description of these attacks," he looked to his most studious friend with a concerned crease in his brow, "what was it?"

"A basilisk," answered Hermione without needing to consult the texts in her bulging bookbag beside her, "which doesn't seem entirely implausible, but I don't think it's possible for a basilisk to kill the school's livestock without eating their bodies, and I don't think the Forbidden Forest is a suitable habitat for a giant snake."

"But it does explain something else," Harry added as an afterthought, and as Lyra caught his eye she noticed how dark the bags under his eyes were growing - he looked exhausted.

"What's wrong? What happened?" she murmured, dropping all signs of humour in her expression at the seriousness of the situation, "what have you seen?"

"It's not what I've seen, it's what I've heard," he admitted under his breath, using the heat from his tea cup to keep his shaky hands warm, "It's happened a couple of times now, I didn't think much of it at first because I thought I was just hallucinating from my lack of sleep, but I keep hearing voices."

"You're hearing voices?" repeated Ron, staring at Harry in dread, "what kind of voices? Where? When?"

"It's hard to explain but it only happens really late at night or just before dawn, sometimes it wakes me up and I can never get back to sleep afterwards," muttered Harry, his gaze drifting to the frosted window as he concentrated on his fatigued memories, "I don't think I'm hallucinating them because they're kinda muffled, like its coming from inside the walls or in the roof, it's hard to pinpoint where exactly but I know it's not happening inside my head."

"That's, um… that's not…" Hermione was struggling to admit that they should be deeply concerned by this, but Lyra beat her to it and happily interjected with her own conclusion on the matter.

"Thank you for telling us, we won't say anything, but you shouldn't be worried," she said matter-of-factly, offering him a soft smile, "maybe someone's pet snake got trapped in the walls?"

"I dunno about that," said Harry sheepishly, scratching the back of his neck, "the voices aren't exactly friendly. Unless someone around here owns a blood thirsty snake that wants to rip everyone apart and eat them…?"

"Oh," Lyra pouted, considering the likeliness of her harmless albeit optimistic suggestion, "hmm… maybe it's a pet snake with a lot of mental issues? It sounds like it needs a therapy session or two."

"Or a hundred," muttered Harry, his complexion a lot paler than usual.

"Who would bring a pet snake like that to Hogwarts?" scoffed Ron, actively trying to keep his trembling brow steady as the tried not to squirm at Harry's admission, "ugh, I'm never gonna be able to sleep again, now I know there's a murderous snake in the walls." He sat up straight, refusing to use the wall behind him as support.

"You can't bring a snake to Hogwarts as your pet, it's not on the list of approved animals," sighed Hermione, ruining their theory with a well-known fact.

"Ha! Like the school rules have stopped anyone before," guffawed Lyra, endeared by Hermione's simplistic view, "sweet, naive Hermione," she added as she patted her hand, earning one of her eye rolls.

"I know who would bring a murderous, Gryffindor-hating snake to school," growled Ron after he considered all of their options, his usually bright blue eyes darkening with hatred, "I bet it's Malfoy."

"That wouldn't surprise me at all," agreed Harry, sharing the same animosity for the Slytherin blonde as he mulled over the facts, desperately trying to connect the pieces of the puzzle together, "he brags about getting away with breaking the rules all the time, I bet he used Dobby to help sneak it in at the start of the year."

"Ooooh…" Lyra gasped, a multitude of ideas reeling from her overwhelmed brain as she thought of all the pets she could acquire with the help of Kreacher, "you know, I've always wanted a pet snake."

"Please don't use Kreacher to sneak a thousand animals into Hogwarts, we don't have the space," prefaced Harry instinctively when he spotted the growing impish smirk on Lyra's face, and she exaggerated her huff when she begrudgingly muttered a weak agreement. Fine…

"Granted, it is plausible that Malfoy would use his privileges to terrorise us in some way, but that doesn't explain the petrifications. It must be a basilisk, although I don't understand how no one has seen a gigantic snake in the corridors," concluded Hermione, bringing them back to the severity of the situation with a deflating sigh as she finished her cereal.

"If Harry's been hearing voices inside walls then it's using the plumbing," pointed out Lyra, "I mean, I assume Hogwarts has plumbing, unless the bathroom pipes are magical pipes that somehow vanish everything that gets flushed?"

"The school is fitted with a plumbing system, it's connected to the lake," explained Hermione, her eyes darting to her book bag like usual, "I feel like we're missing something key here, who would bring a basilisk to school? I highly doubt Malfoy can get his hands on one, they're exceptionally rare and not to mention very, very illegal."

"Yeah, but I bet Lucius could get his slimy claws on one," suggested Ron bitterly, and Harry nodded along.

It was hard for Lyra not to direct her twitchy eyes towards the window. Her gaze landed on the hut down in the grounds again and the nerves trapped in her stomach grew heavier with trepidation. There was only one person she knew who would realistically be able to track down a basilisk egg, but as she sat and dwelled on the groundskeeper's dark history her suspicions grew tenfold when she remembered that Myrtle died in a bathroom, surrounded by pipes. Hagrid already knew how to obtain a basilisk, he had done this before.

Lyra didn't realise how long she stared out at Hagrid's hut for but she swiftly covered up her musings by pushing the conversation on from the dreary subject plaguing the castle at the moment, failing to notice Hermione's drawn gaze too. Lyra wasn't the only one with suspicions anymore.

Second period crept up a lot faster than expected and soon everyone was filing out of the common room, heading off to their first lesson with caution in their step. The second years kept close to one another as they trekked through the castle and out towards the greenhouses, using the snow as a positive distraction as they jokingly tossed hurriedly-made snowballs at each other to improve the frosty atmosphere.

"Shame you couldn't have petrified one more person and called off second period too," muttered Lyra to Harry as they spotted the apprehensive Hufflepuffs by the walled gardens' entrance. They were huddled together, shielding themselves from the falling snow, but Lyra spotted their nervous glances towards Harry as they whispered amongst themselves.

"But two Gryffindors were attacked this time, there's no way they can still think it's me doing this," countered Harry, his defensive guard popping up, but Lyra quickly saw to his grumpy mood by patting the arms of their fellow Gryffindors and encouraging them to create their own huddle, keeping their backs to the spying Hufflepuffs.

"Ok, can we all just agree that Harry isn't the one petrifying people," she announced to the group through her chattering teeth, and they all exchanged glances, not knowing quite what to say.

"Definitely," said Hermione confidently, her hands fiddling with the clasp of her book bag with only one book on her mind.

"Obviously it's not Harry," started Ron, provoking the boys into agreeing, "he was in our dorm all night."

"I don't think it's you," added Neville quickly, being sure to get his stance out, and Dean and Seamus agreed with their own nods.

"If it was Harry then he would have attacked Malfoy first, we all know this," settled Dean, and Lyra poked Harry in the ribs before he opened his mouth and supported his statement, unintentionally making himself look worse.

"We don't think it's Harry either," Parvati gestured to herself and Lavender, and Sally-Ann seemed content that she wasn't alone in her assumptions anymore as she vigorously nodded.

"Fantastic!" Lyra beamed at them, "if you could relay these facts to the Hufflepuffs during class then that would be greeeat!"

Their small gathering disbanded as Professor Sprout called them into the walled gardens, instructing them to file into Greenhouse Three, and Lyra sidled up to Harry before they were paired off to ensure that he was feeling better. Her gut was in knots when she realised how tense and fraught he was acting, the darkening circles under his eyes worried her and her innate urge to help was bubbling at the surface, ready to act. She promised him his Parselmouth secret wouldn't get out and that failed miserably, this was the least she could do.

"If anyone says anything then just sass them, don't rise to it," she whispered, watching his reaction carefully, and his brows dipped with a wobble when he nodded.

"Thank you," he managed to spit out before they were separated into their mixed house groups.

Despite the snow coating the glass roof above the practical classroom, the greenhouse was well-lit and still stiflingly hot. Lyra peeled off her black winter cloak and joined the trio that made up her group today — Seamus, Susan, and unfortunately Zacharius — and she only half-listened as Professor Sprout began to elucidate the proper method of trimming the leaves of adolescent Mandrakes. Due to the growing number of attacks, the Herbology syllabus changed overnight and Professor Sprout was accelerating the growth of her collection of Mandrakes. They weren't growing as fast as they should have been and she pushed to incorporate them in class whenever she could.

"Although they have matured and the soil covers the majority of the root, I still need you to wear your ear muff as a precaution," she called out, and Lyra happily clamped her ears shut, drowning out most of Zach's whines of discomfort.

"Why did Potter have to attack another student, I hate dealing with Mandrakes," he moaned, prodding the tip of his trowel at the squirming Mandrake between him and Seamus. Lyra flicked some of her dirt at him, claiming to have slipped.

"Give over, Zach, Harry didn't do it," she told him, unable to keep quiet, "and don't give me that 'he's a dark wizard' bullcrap, he's obviously not."

"You're just saying that because you're his manager, you could be covering up for him so his image isn't damaged," he shot back, grinning as though he had backed her into an inescapable corner, but Seamus' chuckle cut him off and riled him up.

"Stop laughing, you're covering up for him too! I bet all of you are!" Zach claimed, pointing his trowel at Seamus who only laughed harder.

"Don't be a gobshite, Smith, why on earth would we do that? Harry's not evil, and I certainly wouldn't cover up for him if he was, we're not Slytherins," he commented, not bothering to hide his goofy grin.

"Not all Slytherins are bad," Lyra murmured under her breath, but her comment went unnoticed when Susan finished clipping her section of the shrub and added her opinion into the mix.

"I don't think Harry did it, he wouldn't attack people, he's too kind," she spoke up, fighting the subtle blush in her freckled cheeks, "and I'm not the only one who thinks so, Zacharius, you know Hannah doesn't believe it either."

"Hmm, yeah, and I wonder why you and Hannah believe Harry over all of us?" drawled Zacharius patronisingly with extra spite in his voice, and he glanced over his shoulder at the quartet on the table behind them. Ron and Harry were trying to hold a conversation with Ernie and Hannah, the latter Hufflepuff looking a lot more starry-eyed than the former, and Zacharius snickered to himself. "It couldn't be because you two won't ever stop talking about how cute he is—,"

"No!" Susan blurted out, her entire face bright red as she avoided Lyra and Seamus's looks of intrigue, "that's not why!"

"I think it is!" sang Zach, disregarding her mortified huffs as he took his time trimming the Mandrake, smiling to himself.

"Look, regardless of that," interjected Lyra, wanting to save Susan from bursting into flames, "we were all there that day at the Duelling Club, we all saw what happened. Harry was defending Penelope from the snake, he was stopping it from attacking her. Zach, you were standing right next to me, you saw what I saw. He's not running around petrifying people."

"Exactly," added Susan, solidifying her point that she believed Harry solely for that reason and no other.

"You've got to admit, it's pretty cool that we have a Parselmouth at school," encouraged Seamus, wiggling his wiry eyebrows at Zacharius, "just think of how scared the Slytherins must be feeling right now."

"That is true…" Zach uttered under his breath, narrowing his hazel eyes as he considered their points, "Suppose it's not Potter petrifying people, who do you think is?"

"I don't know," lied Lyra, nibbling on her bottom lip to stop herself from giving too much away, "but whoever it is will get caught, this won't go on forever."

"I hope so, they might close the school if it does," shivered Susan, disturbed at the very thought, "and I don't want to go to another school, I don't know any French."

The rest of the lesson dragged on once the subject of the petrification attacks fizzled out, Lyra found herself staring off in a daydream for most of it but she came when the bell tolled and Sprout instructed them to tidy up. In the corner of her eye she spotted the crooked dying tree stuffed the back of the greenhouse, its bare branches threatening to poke holes in the glass roof, but she hesitated when she realised that the clumps of emerald leaves clinging to them were sprigs of mistletoe. Ah ha! I need some of that.

Tom had been revealing the second step of his plan over the last week and the parasitic plants up in the rafters were a stark reminder. He needed her to brew a potion, and one of the ingredients happened to be mistletoe berries — the very same white berries hanging up above her.

Thankfully her opportunity came as the rest of the class started to file out of the greenhouse and she used their turnt backs as her chance to kick the delicate tree trunk. The spidery twigs tee outed and one of the clumps came loose, its vines unravelling as it caught on the spiked branches during its fall. The berries plopped onto the ground before and she swiped them up, stuffing them into her robe pockets before someone noticed, and she skipped off to join the end of the queue smiling to herself.

"That was so painful, I don't know how I'm ever going to recover from this," groaned Harry as Lyra joined the trio waiting for her outside the walled gardens, fastening their cloaks tighter against the flurries of snow around them. The grounds were so eye-wateringly bright that Lyra had to squint, the ever-expansive snow had swallowed everything up and she had the overwhelming urge to dive into it face first.

"Don't give up hope now, Zach doesn't think you did it and he's a huge gossip so that should help," Lyra reassured them, still staring at the snow in contemplation, but she snapped out of her daze when Ron piped up.

"Shall we go and see Hagrid? We've got ages until Transfiguration."

Hell no! Lyra wasn't sure she was in the right mindset to actively keep her mouth shut, visiting the suspect groundskeeper was not an option for her right now.

"Uh," Lyra started to say without coming up with an excuse first, but to her surprise she wasn't the only one who wanted to object.

"Actually, I was going to suggest we go to the library," Hermione spoke up, looking at the boys in earnest, "with everything going on I think we should start researching basilisks as soon as possible."

"Wonderful idea! Let's go," chirped Lyra, gladly hooking her arm around Hermione's, hoping to inspire movement from the boys but they already looked bored at the prospect of wasting their precious break in the stuffy, restrictive silent archives.

"Why don't you two go check out the library while we go and interrogate Hagrid?" suggested Harry, looking to Ron for back up.

"Yeah! You're way better than us at finding useful information, you know how much I struggle with fast-paced reading," Ron claimed, putting a hand on his heart and acting wounded, "I don't want to slow you down."

Harry nodded furiously. "We're doing you a favour by not coming, really. We don't want to distract you, you're both so much better at this than we are—,"

"Just go," sighed Lyra, shoving him towards the miniscule hut in the far distance and trying not to laugh at their attempt at pretending to be sad, "you're right, we are so much better than you."

"I knew you'd understand," he joked, and with a wave goodbye Lyra and Hermione watched the boys set out through the snowstorm before they began their own trek up to the castle, hunched together to preserve their heat.

After leaving their sodden cloaks with Madam Pince who refused to believe that Lyra wouldn't cause damage to the treasured volume, the girls navigated through the maze of winding bookshelves and they picked out any book that stood out to them, absently muttering recommendations as they went.

"I've read this one before but I'm sure I missed something," Hermione verbalised her thought process, her shiny nails tapping on the hardcover of More Than Just a Muggle Myth: Volume Three once they found a table big enough to hold their finds, "not much is known about basilisks, almost everyone dies before they can get close enough to study them."

"Maybe a blind adventurer has written a memoir, that would at least give them an advantage against the snake," mused Lyra, noseying through her own copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them in the hopes of finding something. If her suspicions were correct then the basilisk would have had to have been living at Hogwarts under their nose the entire time, there's no way Hagrid could secretly sneak the snake in and out multiple times without someone noticing. Not to mention Hagrid would definitely be dead if he did that, he wasn't the most careful person in the world.

"Mhm, actually that's not a bad idea, I'll be right back," Hermione considered her creative outlook. She climbed to her feet again, wandering off to find the autobiographical section of the library, leaving Lyra to her own research. Craning her neck to double-check Hermione was no longer in sight, Lyra revealed her diary from her backpack and scribbled a quick greeting to the boy on her mind.

"Good morning Riddle, I have a question."

"Good morning Black, ask away."

"Is there anywhere in the castle big enough to hide a basilisk?"

Lyra watched the parchment absorb her shimmery gel pen ink slower than usual, she could still see the tiny flecks of gold glitter on the page as Tom mulled over his answer, but before she started to doubt Tom's knowledge he scrawled back and her eyes ballooned with curiosity.

"Read Hogwarts: A History."

The returning clacks of Hermione's shiny shoes heading her way caused Lyra to jump and she rushed to shove her diary in her pocket, being careful not to squash the mistletoe as Hermione turned the corner carrying three more books.

"These explorers have supposedly searched the entirety of Scotland so let's see what they have to say, maybe they came across a basilisk in their travels," she justified, tying her unruly hair out of her way before she took up her usual reading stance in the cosy chair, but Lyra was too busy searching the table for the right book to take that information in.

The library's copy of the famed textbook poked out of the bottom of the pile and she snatched it, not bothering to fix the stack she had knocked over. She scanned the index with her finger, desperately trying to see if anything stuck out, and her heart jutted painfully when her finger paused on the words Chamber of Secrets.

She hadn't read that chapter before.

"Hermione," she eventually chirped out, catching her attention despite her eyes still glued to the page, "look at this." The chapter on the mythological chamber was short, barely a page long, but the snappy description of the secret dungeon fit perfectly with her theory. You can definitely store a basilisk in there. Nice work, Tom!

"Oh my…" Hermione gasped, abandoning the biographies without a care for their preservation, and she snatched the book from Lyra, reading it at top speed, "'the chamber is said to contain a monster of incomprehensible horror', it must be a basilisk. The chamber was supposedly created by Salazar Slytherin himself; it only makes sense that he would be able to control a basilisk; he was a Parselmouth."

"Hahaha," Lyra broke into a giggle and swung back on her chair, amused by the irony, "poor Harry, poor poor Harry. If people find out that there's a basilisk on the loose then they're definitely going to pin the blame on him."

The amount of work she was going to have to perform to keep Harry's reputation above water was going to kill her! Fuck my life, he's gonna hate this.

"Then I suppose we should keep this to ourselves for now," suggested Hermione, her expression growing more apprehensive as she re-read the stubby paragraph, her teeth chewing at her lip, "Dear Lord, the myth states that only an heir of Slytherin can control the monster… we really need to keep this a secret, that's terrifying."

"You don't actually think that Harry is an heir of Slytherin, do you?" deduced Lyra, noticing the shift in Hermione's mood, and she finally looked up from the book with uncertainty in her brindled eyes.

"No, I don't…" she trailed off, but Lyra could see her twitching, struggling to spit it out, "but Lyra… do you know if, uh… do you know if you are?"

Lyra blinked, stunned. "Me?!" she squeaked, "I don't speak Parseltongue!"

"No! Of course not! I only say that because you're related to Malfoy, I just wanted to rule it out!" Hermione spat out at high speed, wanting to reassure Lyra before she exploded.

"Well, when you put it like that," Lyra caught her breath, blindsided by Hermione's spontaneous accusation, "that makes sense, but I'm pretty sure that we're not descendants of Slytherin. I definitely would have heard about it by now, but that doesn't rule out Lucius' side of the family."

"My sentiments exactly," breathed Hermione, immensely relieved that she understood her point, "do you think it's possible? Malfoy being an heir of Slytherin, I mean?"

"Oh, one thousand percent," scoffed Lyra, "just look at him, he's such a snake."

It wasn't a wild idea, Draco being related to Salazar, but there just was no way that the ghoul was powerful enough to control an ancient beast like a basilisk. He was the biggest wimp she knew! The new thread weaving through her mind concerning the heir of Slytherin intertwined with Hagrid's history and she tried to blend them together. It was plausible, from what Tom had told her Hagrid had a wizard for a father - was he a descendant of Salazar too?

Imagine the look on Draco's face if he found out he was related to Hagrid!

"I've stolen some mistletoe and holly for the potion," Lyra secretly scribbled in her diary late one evening, trying not to yawn too widely as fatigue threatened to consume her, "and I think I can get the snake venom from Snape's top-secret storage cupboard, I know for a fact he keeps his rarest ingredients in there."

She was sitting in the bay window alone, mindlessly listening to the laughter and chatter of the common room inhabitants around her. She had been trying to catch up with her late correspondence with Tonks and Danielle who had been waiting for her reply for a few weeks, she didn't realise how neglectful she was towards them when she received yet another letter from her key worker, asking her if everything was ok.

"Good girl, Black," Tom wrote back, forever grateful for her sticky fingers, "by the new year we should be ready for you to drink it."

"It better be delicious," she warned him, "I've never ingested powdered human bone before and I really doubt it's cherry flavoured."

"It will be delicious," he promised, "it's just a simple draught, if truth be told the essence of my genes should improve the flavour. You should count yourself very lucky, Miss Black."

Thick, lethargic waves of heat invaded Lyra's face and she ducked further into her indigo knitted sweater to hide her blush from the room. She'd never admit it but she was excited to try the potion, Tom told her it was necessary for her to be able to conjure his form, she needed to physically be one with a piece of Tom in order to project him and she grinned like a soppy idiot when she found out he wanted her to ingest it. She'd never been this close to anyone before, and she yearned for an even closer connection.

"I feel incredibly lucky, you have no idea," she decided to reply, leaning against the snow-filled window pane to cool her cheeks.

"I think I have a faint idea…" he scrawled back beside her sentence, his words pressing teasingly against hers, "I really like you, Lyra, I wouldn't have asked just anyone to do this."

Oh my God!

"I really like you too," her palms were sweating as she took her time trying to flirt back with him, she didn't want to seem too needy, "I wouldn't do this for just anyone either."

"I know," wrote Tom, "that's why you're my good girl."

It was instantaneous. Lyra's hand and chin fell slack as the unyielding force climbed from the diary, invisible to all except her. It latched onto the fierce pulsating wriggling around inside of her chest, desperately trying to break free before they were lost again.

Riddle squeezed tight and consumed the girl, flooding her veins with something much stronger than magic. He could feel how much she adored him as though it was heat on his pale skin — as though he had skin. She was scorching and he had never enjoyed the warmth so much before. Tom blinked, and so did Lyra. He heaved a deep breath, and her chest rose and fell in time.

Good girl, Black… very good girl…

It was her fastest fall yet, Lyra had no chance of fighting back now. She was his for the evening, and the blank space filled her memory until—

"You're joking!" shrieked Parvati.

Lyra sat bolt up in her bed, tightly tangled in her sheets dazed and thoroughly confused. Her curtains were already pulled back, the light of a new day bathed the girls dormitory as though the night had never happened and she blinked the hazy remnants of sleep out of her eyes as the room came into focus. I swear I was just in the common room…?

"Not another one?!" gasped Lavender from her own bed as she gawked at Sally-Ann in the doorway, thick tears streaming down her round cheeks. Hermione darted out of the bathroom in a flash at the sounds of Lavender's screams and her hairbrush clattered to the floor when Sally-Ann finished breaking the latest scandal to the room.

"It's Mrs N-Norris," she barely squeaked, deeply upset by the news, "she was k-killed last night, and apparently Filch has been screaming about seeing a giant snake all morning… What is going on?!"

Lyra's gaze snapped to Hermione's as though she had charmed her and she saw her own fear reflected in her speechless expression. It was a basilisk, and this was going to kill the last of Harry's reputation. He was gonna be so pissed.

"Fuck!"