When school resumed, it seemed as if Hogwarts was holding its breath, waiting with anxious anticipation. The rumour mill doing its work, it only took one week into the term for news of the attacked elves to reach the ears of even the less well-connected of the Muggleborn students in the castle.

And yet nobody said anything, not overtly, as if afraid that by merely raising their voices they'd become the very next targets, that they might incur the ire of the Heir —that most suspected still was at large, despite Dumbledore's announcement during last term. So the news travelled in whispered words and hushed conversations, and the fear in the air manifested into corridors that were emptier than before everyone had left for winter break, as the students opted to remain in the company of their housemates; hallways and expansive grounds outside abandoned for the safety of the classrooms, the Library and the common rooms.

Not that you'd think anything was amiss if you judged it only by the faculty, at least at first blush. The professors went through the motions —imparting lessons, patrolling the school and adding and subtracting house points— as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, as if there was no monster loose somewhere in the castle. And at moments, it even seemed to do the trick: when we were at the Great Hall for dinner —among the noise of the Gryffindors and a Dumbledore that looked upon us with placid eyes— you could almost forget about it for a while. You could almost believe that they'd already caught the beast, or chased it away perhaps. That everything was back to how it should be. And that was an easy, relieving belief to indulge in.

But then you'd notice the tension underneath McGonagall's stiff posture, or the way Flitwick's eyes seemed to dart around during Charms, as if constantly scanning the classroom's dark corners and crevices, and just like that the illusion would break once more. Just like that, the heavy reality of the situation would reassert itself: that the whole of Hogwarts was simply waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Well, almost the whole of it. Because there was one exception to the rule, one single person who dared break the unspoken rule not to speak about the whole... tenseness that had seized the school ever since Christmas, and who decided to single-handedly put an end to it with a heavy dose of misguided optimism: Gilderoy Lockhart.

And so, on Valentine's Day —just a few days ahead of my own birthday— Hogwarts was still tense and fearful, but now there were pink ribbons decorating the foreboding hallways, and a bunch of grumpy, cupid-dressed dwarves roving the school, harassing students left and right as they handed valentine cards around.

The most incredible thing was that amazingly enough, stupidly enough... it worked. Not because people decided to indulge in the spirit of love —as our professor of Defence had put it— but because of the sheer, fucking audacity of it. Because the contrast was so jarring that you had to laugh at how absurd the situation was.

Like when a very harried Blaise Zabini burst into our Transfiguration classroom, the last student to arrive and drawing all the stares. He was unusually dishevelled and sweaty, his robes all rumpled as if he had run all the way there. His eyes were wild and panicked, and he rushed to shut the door right in front of the figure of something that was chasing him, hot on his heels.

Everybody held their breath, and I saw out of the corner of my eye how McGonagall rose to her feet, wand aimed forwards and with a focused determination written on her face.

And then a gruff voice said from the other side of the door: "Oy! I still need to sing you the serenade!"

There was a moment's silence, before the entire class burst into wild laughter. A loud, almost hysterical and unhinged kind of laughter, propelled by fear. McGonagall visibly deflated with relief, sitting down at once as if her legs had suddenly failed her. She didn't even say a word when Zabini threw a crumpled valentine to the bin and loudly grumbled: "Morgana's bloody tits! It's the sixth time today!"

"Aww. Too many admirers, Zabini?" Tracey asked out-loud, prompting another wave of laughter, as I relaxed the grip on my own wand and tried to calm down my own wild heartbeats.

It was short-lived, though, because soon enough McGonagall had recovered from the scare and put an end to any lingering mirth, as she reminded us that we were about to begin a new chapter of our textbook, this time on the transfiguration of smells. And it didn't get any better from there: the class that followed leaving me with a lingering headache, both from having to follow the intricate mathematical expressions in the book, and from the pungent, heavy smells that quickly filled the air the moment we began the practical portion of the lesson.

It was mind-numbing, and by the time the hour ended most people were bouncing in their seats to leave the classroom behind, monster or not. I was quickly putting away my parchments, quill and textbook when I felt the foreboding gaze of Professor McGonagall fall on me.

"Miss Sarramond," she said, in an even tone of voice that made me immediately suspicious, "Please come to my desk, there is something I wish to discuss with you."

"Uh-oh," muttered Perks.

"Go. We will wait for you outside," said Daphne. Because we had reached the very sensible agreement that none of us in our circle should at any time be on their own, while in the corridors.

Because you know, being eaten by a monster was a totally logical concern for twelve —almost thirteen— years old girls to worry about. Stupid wizards and their lack of common sense.

Still, I couldn't help but feel that it was a different kind of monster that was now threatening to devour me, as I tentatively approached the stern figure behind the desk. McGonagall eyed me over her glasses, and waved with her hand at a couple of essays laid in front of her, one of them in a very recognisable handwriting.

"This," she said, pointing to the one on the left, "is your housemate Sean Higgs' essay on the five Exceptions to Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration. And this," she pointed to the other one, "is your own essay on the same topic, from last year–"

"Oh. Do you still keep those?"

"Yes, Miss Sarramond; I do keep them. Now... can you spot the differences?"

I looked at them closer, and remained silent. Hell... even the first and last word of every line were identical. Bloody Higgs the Younger, I was going to murder him. He was supposed to rewrite it in his own voice, switch things around; not just copy it straight!

"Care to explain?" prompted the witch, after a few seconds of me staring at the pieces of parchment.

"Er... great minds think alike?"

There was a beat of tense silence after that, in which I fully expected her to explode at me in a rain of fury. And I wondered, not for the first time, where that need of mine to needle McGonagall came from. My best guess was that her no-nonsense, holier-than-thou disciplinarian attitude simply rubbed me the wrong way. It was instinctual, her whole stitch reminding me of the bad times of my past: too close to Mrs. Coverdale, my short-lived foster mother. Too judgemental for me to feel comfortable, at ease around her.

But maybe those similarities didn't go much deeper than the surface, though. Because rather than raising her voice at me, or stand up menacingly to make full use of her higher stature, as Mrs. Coverdale —or the Giraffe— would have done, the witch simply let out a deep sigh, fixing me with a stare. A stare that didn't seem hostile, as much as it was... concerned?

"I am perplexed, Miss Sarramond," she said softly, gathering up the parchments with the evidence of the crime and putting them away. "You are certainly a capable, talented student; and yet you insist on squandering your potential, continuously challenging the norms, defying the established rules and risking disciplinary action for little gain. Very well, then; since it appears that you and Mister Higgs have so much in common, it is only just that you both share your detention together, along with a deduction of a hundred points from Slytherin." She lifted a hand, forestalling my protests and handing me a slip of parchment with the details on the detention. "I would remind you that cheating is strictly forbidden at Hogwarts, and that persisting in this path might very well lead to your eventual expulsion... although whether this will deter, or encourage you further remains unclear."

I stood there, paralysed after her short speech as if I'd just seen a basilisk, my fist scrunching up the note she'd just handed me, my heart beating fast. I wanted to reply to her, to shoot back something clever, just like I always did to Mrs. Coverdale. But I simply couldn't find what to say, couldn't conjure up any words.

McGonagall quirked an eyebrow and said: "That will be all."

Then she lowered her gaze to the parchments and textbooks still on her desk, as if I was now beneath her notice. And I had a crazy, completely bonkers, batshit insane impulse:

I could obliviate her.

The thought came unbidden, out of the blue, but I realised that it was fundamentally true. She wasn't looking at me anymore, now that she'd dismissed me, and we were alone in the room. It was evident she didn't consider me to be any threat at all, so I just needed to reach for my wand. And from all my duelling I knew that I was quick at casting; quicker than most. So even if she noticed the movement, it would already be too late by the time–

No. No, this line of thinking was stupid; dangerously so. I repressed the idea, sending it back to whatever dark crevices of my soul it had emerged from, and simply turned around and filed out the classroom, stepping hard on the flagstones as if to unleash my fury onto the world at large instead. Or perhaps as if to root myself, go back to my senses. The other girls joined me outside, exchanging worried glances when I didn't say a word; but my thoughts kept circling back to what Dumbledore had said to me the year before, his warning about standing at precipices.

"So...?" ventured Tracey.

That took me back to the present. I replied with a curt "Detention, she caught Higgs copying my homework," as I eyed the crumpled note, reading the words on it.

"Oh, fuck her!" I exclaimed aloud. Sally quickly looked behind us, terrified, but thankfully McGonagall hadn't emerged yet out of the classroom. Not that I cared right then, because I was reconsidering giving in to that impulse, after all.

"That bad?"

I showed them the slip of parchment. "Herbology! My detention is another remedial Herbology class!"

"But you were finished with those already, were you not?" asked Daphne.

"Yes! Sprout said it was only for the first term. She even congratulated me on my 'adequate progress' and everything," I explained, doing air quotes with my fingers. "McGonagall must really, really hate me."

"It's probably because of the monster," said Tracey, annoyingly reasonable. "She wouldn't want you and Higgs returning to the common room late in the day, on your own. But those remedial classes are in the morning, and there are more people around and about."

"Higgs won't be there," I said under my breath as I started to walk away from the classroom. "I'm going to feed him to one of the trolls in the Forbidden Forest."

"When is it, this detention?" asked the Greengrass heiress.

"Next week, the day after my birthday. Not that Higgs will be celebrating any new birthdays either, after I push him off the Astronomy Tower."

"It could have been worse, Sylvia. You are lucky she didn't discover you were sharing your homework with so many people."

"Not with Higgs, anymore. He'll soon be sharing his grave with the Giant Squid, once I drown him in the middle of the lake."

"Yeah," agreed Sally. "Just imagine if it'd been Snape instead. Detention until you come of age."

"I will rip out his teeth first, to use as potion ingredients," I muttered darkly.

"Uh..."

I paused, turning my gaze at them. "What, too much?" But then I saw the reason they'd stopped: a dwarf with those stupid fake wings hanging off his back was approaching our group. The girls tensed up, no doubt wondering which among us was about to be serenaded, but I simply sighed and started digging through my pockets. When the dwarf finally reached us and opened the palm of his hand, I placed three sickles on it.

"Three?" he growled, rubbing the coins against each other with his calloused fingers. "You said six, lass."

"Well, you didn't sing him the song, did you?"

He muttered something unkind under his breath, but closed a tiny fist over the coins and walked away, his wings wobbling in sync with his steps. For a moment I wondered if Lockhart would have taken the precaution to warn the dwarves about the monster, then realised that he most likely hadn't; but by the time I considered whether I should do it myself the dwarf had already turned the corner and disappeared from sight.

Oh well... he would be fine, probably.

I made to resume walking towards the Potions classroom, but the girls didn't follow; instead, they simply remained planted there, observing me with wide eyes.

"It was... you?" accused Tracey.

"What?" I replied, trying my best at projecting confused innocence, but to no avail. They were probably immunized to it at this point.

"Zabini! Do you... fancy him?"

"What?!... No! No way! Don't be silly, Tracey!"

"Then why–?"

"Because it's fun! I'm just messing with him, that's all. It's payback for not teaching me that duelling spell."

She narrowed her eyes at me. "...Right."

"Yes right," I said, nodding firmly. "Now, can we finally move on?"

There was another pause for the girls to exchange meaningful stares, but I simply ignored them and started walking ahead, forcing them to either follow me or risk leaving me on my own to fall prey to the predator from the Chamber, which the way the day was going was starting to sound more appealing by the minute.

I huffed and shook my head, as if to remove the idea, the image that Tracey had just planted inside of it. I had never even considered... and I had been an adult, besides! Or... well, had the memories of one, at least. That made the prospects of romance —the theoretical, purely imaginary prospects— much more ickier, much more confusing.

Just stupid; all of it, the whole notion. It was better to simply forget about it all.

But thanks to McGonagall and the dwarf it meant we arrived late to Potions; not by much, but just enough that Snape was already in the classroom, getting ready for the day's lesson. He paused in his preparations, looked straight at me and said, singling me out: "Nice of you to join us at last, Miss Sarramond; I see that you managed to delay your friends as well. That will be five points for your tardiness. Now sit down and open your textbooks."

Well, fuck him too. I shot him an angry stare, but walked up to Hermione's desk in a resentful silence. I knew better than to protest his unfairness by now; it would only give our head of house an excuse to punish us further, and I'd already lost too many house points today.

And yeah, it was a big contrast to how I'd reacted with McGonagall, sure. So go ahead and call me a hypocrite now. But the thing was, Snape was so morally grey as to not get that same allergic reaction out of me. He was a twat, yes, but not a self-righteous one.

Besides, his unfairness also worked in my favour at times. If we'd been Harry Potter and company arriving late instead of a bunch of snakes, he'd probably had deducted ten or more points for each of us.

It wasn't like I really cared that much about the points and the House Cup at all, but I couldn't deny that it was an effective tool at ensuring discipline, because most of the students did care about it —stupid tribalism and what have you. And that meant that, even if you didn't give a flying crap about it yourself, you were made to care by your own housemates turning their backs on you if you did something severe enough as to impact your house's chances at winning.

Something like losing more than a hundred points in a single day.

Yeah. Going back to the Slytherin common room after this wasn't going to be pretty, but I still vastly preferred facing Prefect Farley's anger than risking a new encounter with the basilisk if I decided to strike out on my own instead.

I sighed, rubbing my forehead softly, my gaze lost on the brewing diagrams spread on the textbook in front of me, Snape's voice droning monotonously in the background as he began his lecture. The frizzy haired girl next to me bit her lip for a moment, then whispered: "Don't worry about it, Sylvia. Snape is always a git to everyone."

"Yeah, I know." I nodded, eyeing the foreboding professor as he turned his back on us to write on the classroom board with nothing but his wand and some magic. His hand movements —and the matching white strokes— were so sharp and violent that I wondered if he was silently casting Sectumsempra. "And the whole deal with this monster isn't helping shit; the bat's getting grumpier by the day."

"Oh," she exclaimed, searching through her bag to extract a thick tome that was definitely not a book on potions, "that reminds me... I figured out what the monster is!"

She opened the book —Scamander's, apparently— deftly running through its pages until she reached one with a diagram depicting a very particular, serpentine creature.

"Basilisk," I read aloud. "Are you sure, Granger?"

Yeah, I was trying to act clueless, trying to play it off; but internally I was jubilant. Or well, somewhat relieved at least. I'd already shared a lot of info on this case with the other girls —and Dumbledore— and I didn't want to give out more information. At a certain point people would start questioning how it was that I knew so much. In fact, you could say that had already happened: it was the whole reason behind my falling out with Tracey after Hallowe'en, after all.

But Hermione finding out on her own and then telling me gave me a convenient excuse. Now I could warn the girls what exactly to be on the lookout for, without having to justify why I hadn't done so before, if I'd known it all along.

"Yes. Harry is pretty sure it's using the pipes to move across the school, because he– uh... nevermind. You should use a mirror to look around corners, though, that's what we've been doing since I found out."

I nodded. I had been wearing my sunglasses more often than ever, and taken to be the first of our group to turn corners and such, but she was right that a mirror would be a good extra precaution too. I asked: "Have you told any of the professors?"

"Yes. We told McGonagall. She listened to us, but warned us not to involve ourselves any further in the matter."

I shook my head. Stupid McGonagall, always thinking she knew better. "What about the Headmaster?"

"Well, Harry tried to–"

She was interrupted by a schoolbook crashing flat against our shared desk with a loud bang, making the both of us jerk in our seats. I rose my gaze sharply to find the dark, ominous figure of our professor standing right beside us, somehow having managed to approach our desk without neither of us realising.

He said: "I would advice you two to start paying more attention to the lecture at hand, if your inadequate minds are so easily distracted by trivial gossip."

"We were discussing one of the ingredients, sir," I lied smoothly.

He gritted his teeth, fixing me in a stare; then asked in an icy tone: "Indeed? And which ingredient might that be?"

"Um..." I risked a glance towards the classroom's blackboard, but before I could read any of the names written there Snape had already stepped sideways, placing himself in my line of sight and blocking the view with his own body.

"I am... waiting," he warned, after a few seconds of silence on my part.

"The snake fangs!" exclaimed Hermione. "I was wondering whether the type of snake made any difference when brewing; for example, fangs from a venomous serpent might prove themselves less stable than–"

"Clearly it does," he interrupted, sounding somehow even more irritated. "That you two aren't already aware of this fact only highlights how little attention you pay to the subject, how poor your education is."

Then his eyes narrowed slightly, a twisted, smug smirk tugging at his lips. I closed my eyes and sighed in anticipation. And sure enough:

"Perhaps it would be prudent to remedy this lack of knowledge, now that you two have so thoroughly demonstrated the deficiencies and ignorance of this class. Let's see... every student in this room shall write a two-foot essay on the differences of potency among ingredients derived from different breeds of serpents," he said, to collective groaning. "You can thank your two fellow classmates for this... enlightening task. Now, as I was saying before I was interrupted..."

Granger's face flushed red under the combined glares of almost every Slytherin and Gryffindor in the room. I simply gave them a defiant shrug, satisfied when most of them averted their gazes —one more advantage of my duelling exploits and fame. And besides, it wasn't like it was truly my fault: like Hermione had said, Snape was always a git to everyone. I'd already written my fair load of essays just because Potter had mouthed off one too many times.

But it was probably wiser to keep a low profile for the rest of the lesson. And the rest of the day as well, seeing the shape of it. So I remained politely silent in Potions, didn't say anything rude to Malfoy when he actually went and passive-aggressively thanked us for the new assignment, and on our way to the Great Hall for dinner I kept my eyes down and forced a fast pace as we walked past the cluster of Slytherins gathered around our house's hourglass, interrogating each other as to how it could be that we'd just lost our lead.

For whatever good that did. Losing points wouldn't be nearly as effective if it could be kept a secret, so there wasn't much I could do to avoid Gemma Farley's sequestering and public humiliation of me the moment I stepped foot into our common room, later in the day.

But on the bright side I had to share the spotlight with Sean Higgs —since it was all his fault, really. And my hopes lied in Higgs being someone who Farley couldn't exactly rail for too long against, given that his brother was our Quidditch team's Seeker and one of our most respected housemates; someone who our dearest Prefect wouldn't risk crossing, in other words.

As it turned out, though, that notion was a little too optimistic: Farley did rail against us, publicly, the two of us standing side by side with our gazes lowered as she made it clear she wasn't miffed at us because we had cheated, but because we'd been caught. But when I made the —very wise— argument that it wasn't my fault, but Higgs', she paused in her tirade to face me fully, all sharp cheeks and burrowed frowns. Then she quickly grabbed me by the scruff of my robes and took a few steps to the side, forcing me to follow her until we were by the stairs to the dorms.

"You don't get it?" she asked, a hint of astonishment in her voice. "You truly don't?"

I released myself with a quick push to her arm. "What? The reason why you're putting the blame only on me? Yeah, I do: you don't want to make enemies of the Higgs."

She paused for a moment, then shook her head. "No, you idiot. It's because it's your network. If you're going to get ambitious and recruit followers, it's your responsibility to make sure they don't make mistakes that end up hurting our house."

"What are you on about, Farley? I'm not recruiting followers! I'm just trading homework for favours and some money."

"Oh, really? Is that why you spent an entire hour teaching them the full body-bind curse the other day: because it was in their homework?"

It was a trick question, of course, as that particular curse was not taught in the first-year's curriculum. I shrugged and said: "They paid for it."

And they had. After the monster's existence became public knowledge, most students started paying special attention to their safety. There was safety in numbers, of course, in never being on your own. But there was safety too in honing your skills.

So by the end of January, the uptick in attendance to the Duelling Club was undeniable, as many students sought a more practical approach to defence. And after that, it didn't take long for first-year Thomas Avery to approach me one evening, and suggest I begin teaching him and his friends some of my combat spells.

I had already been teaching some of my tricks to the girls in my circle —we were currently working through the Summoning charm— and I could see the clear opportunity in Avery's request. Another source of income, of favours and good-will from the first-years and their influential families. It was win-win, so I had obviously accepted.

"It's not like I'm leading them or anything," I explained.

Farley tilted her head: "So you didn't give them a talk on the risks of assuming people's abilities from their blood purity."

"But... that was just me rambling on! Doesn't really go anywhere, does it?"

She shook her head once more, muttered an "Unbelievable," and walked away, leaving me feeling odd and confused. A state that wasn't lifted one bit when Sean Higgs approached me a few minutes later to own up for his mistake and apologise, and asked me not to expel him from the 'group'. A group I hadn't even realised existed in the first place, not as anything more than a network of one-to-one bargains.

Well, if it was going to be something official...

"It's all right," I replied to him. "We might need to ease off the blatant cheating for a while, but you are still a trusted member of the 'Order of the Hydra'."

He paused for a moment, as if taken aback, then quickly said "We are not calling it that," before walking away.

Right. So much for me being a leader.

It did mean that I wasn't as surprised as I could've been, when some of the first-years congratulated me on the day of my birthday. This time we celebrated it in our common room, rather than the creepy classroom by the dungeons —ironic, how which of these two places felt safe and which dangerous had simply switched around from last year.

All in all, it was a nice cap for the day before my detention, the girls and me sampling sponge cake and pastries while we listened to the music from Daphne's wireless.

And so I was already officially thirteen when I left for the greenhouses alongside Higgs the Younger, the morning of the day after. The castle was still cold, a faint morning mist having managed to invade the Entrance Hall through the wide open main doors. A sullen Filch —with a caged rooster by his feet— observed us walk past, his body still and his suspicious eyes following us as the bird crowed.

This was a new development, the roosters. The faculty had finally seen to do something proactive, placing them at key points across the castle. It wasn't lost on me that this had only happened after Hermione told them about the basilisk, though, which probably meant that during all this time Dumbledore was aware a monster was at large, yes, but not just just which kind of monster it was.

It was progress, nevertheless, and a step in the right direction. And that wasn't my only defence against the basilisk, either. Like many other students recently, I also held a pocket mirror to check corners with. And besides, I was wearing my sunglasses.

But there hadn't been any new reported attacks since those against the house-elves —and our regular social visits to the kitchens confirmed that to be the case— and so I was starting to tell myself that perhaps, if we were lucky, the basilisk might have left the castle already. It might have started to see it as an increasingly hostile place to be —what with the roosters and the powerful wizards hunting it— and left for greener pastures.

It was with that hope in my heart that we entered the greenhouses, the thick, humid warmth inside hitting us like a wet slap to the face, a stark contrast to the chill drafts from before. The place was empty when we arrived, but the soft noises of tools being taken out of cabinet drawers coming from the adjacent storage room told me that Sprout couldn't be far.

I stifled a groan once I glanced at the workbench, though. Upon it were twin rows of empty pots, and a large sack of dirt, which told me our detention would probably consist on repotting plant after plant. As long as they weren't Mandrakes —or Venomous Tentacula, or Spiky Bushes, or Devil's Snare— it might not be that terrible a task, but I'd rather prune dead leaves instead. Repotting always left me with traces of dirt stuck under my fingernails for the rest of the day.

I made for my usual seat when I noticed Sean Higgs remaining still, right behind me. I frowned at him, confused. I didn't know that much about the first-years' respective academic prowess, but I didn't think Higgs was particularly bad at Herbology. He certainly couldn't be half the blunderer as I was, at any rate; so what was his problem now?

I was about to voice my question when I noticed he wasn't looking at the workbench, at me, or at the door to Sprout's storage room either. No, his gaze was fixed on a point past the last workbench, near the floor. I followed it, and saw a leg sticking out from behind the table, the foot pointing up to the ceiling.

It was as if all sound had suddenly ceased, except for my heartbeats. I rushed ahead, unthinking but still with enough presence of mind as to position myself in front of Higgs and extract my wand. I advanced towards the leg, then, and discovered it was connected to a body. The body of a young boy my age, fallen to the greenhouse's floor, frozen stiff in an unnatural position.

Neville Longbottom's eyes were open, but unblinking, his paralysed face stuck in an unmoving expression of shock and surprise.