Chapter 202: An Unexpected Pure-blood Victim, Is Harry Potter the Heir of Slytherin?
The Great Hall was warm, thick with the mingled scents of food and comfort.
All around, students were talking excitedly about the Christmas holidays, swapping plans for going home or deciding who would stay at Hogwarts. And thanks to Leonardo providing enough Mandrakes for a full batch of Mandrake Restorative Draught, every victim who had been petrified earlier in the term had recovered and woken. The shadow hanging over the castle had lifted, at least a little.
The Slytherin table, in particular, had been the most relaxed of all.
Most of the students there came from pure-blood families. As for the rumour that the Heir of Slytherin meant to purge "Mudbloods", many of them had treated it with distant indifference. A few even held a quiet, ugly approval.
That fragile calm was shattered when the Slytherin prefect, Gemma Farley, strode in.
Her face was paper-white. When she spoke, there was a tremor in her voice she could not quite hide.
"Blaise Zabini and the Bloody Baron were attacked in a corridor. They've been petrified."
A stunned silence fell over the hall, and then the noise came roaring back, a sudden, frantic surge of voices.
This time, the loudest reaction came from the people who had only moments ago looked untouched by it all.
"Zabini? He's a pure-blood!"
"How can it be… how can it be a pure-blood?"
Panic spread across the Slytherin table like a sickness. Students who had believed themselves safe, mere spectators, realised in one sickening moment that they could be next.
That old certainty collapsed. In its place came fear, sharp and personal.
Voices tangled together, rising higher and higher.
"I'm writing to my father. I'm leaving early."
"Dumbledore and the professors should find whoever's doing this, now."
"This is ridiculous. My mum's on the Board of Governors. The school has to answer for this."
Nearby, Draco Malfoy's expression had gone dark.
Blaise Zabini, the boy whose mother was infamous for her seven dead husbands and the fortunes she inherited from them.
Not long ago, Draco had even shown off his customised map in front of Zabini, just a little, just enough to feel superior.
And now that familiar face had been petrified without a sound.
Draco's gaze flicked instinctively to Daphne Greengrass.
Sure enough, worry was written all over her face.
Their eyes met across the table. No words were needed. The meaning was clear, and the same for both of them.
Go to Leonardo.
At the same time, prefects from every House stood up at once, trying to wrestle order back into the chaos.
"Stay calm. All students are to return to their House common rooms immediately. No one is to wander the corridors."
Uneasy, confused, and suddenly afraid, students poured out of the Great Hall in different streams, heading for the staircases and passageways that led to their Houses.
…
In an empty stretch of corridor, Headmaster Dumbledore stood tall and still, his blue eyes behind half-moon spectacles sweeping over the scene with quiet intensity.
The professors clustered nearby, their faces grim.
Blaise Zabini sat slumped against the cold stone wall, mouth slightly open, his face fixed in pale horror. One hand was raised in front of him, as if he had tried to ward off something at the last instant.
More unsettling still was the figure hovering a short distance away.
The Bloody Baron, Slytherin's ghost, had gone black and rigid, frozen mid-glide. Even his half-transparent body looked deadened, as though the very air inside him had turned to stone.
His face held the same terror as Zabini's.
A ghost petrified.
It was beyond anything anyone understood.
"Even a ghost…" Professor Flitwick's thin voice trembled with disbelief.
The professors circled the two victims, trading hushed opinions, all of it threaded with bafflement.
How could a ghost be struck down?
Then a confident voice cut through the low murmurs.
"If I may say a few words, Headmaster, Professors."
Gilderoy Lockhart straightened his richly embroidered robes and stepped forward, his signature smile already in place. He cleared his throat, making sure every eye turned to him.
He paced to Zabini, lifted his wand, and gestured elegantly towards the petrified boy's frozen expression.
"Observe Mr Zabini's face. It's remarkably vivid. Before he was petrified, he must have seen his attacker, and whatever he saw was frightening enough to leave him in absolute terror."
"We already have the restorative draught. Once Mr Zabini is revived, he can tell us, in his own words, who did this."
Lockhart's eager speech painted him as calm, sharp-eyed, and deeply concerned for his students.
In truth, it did not matter whether Zabini woke sooner or later. He had only caught a glimpse of the basilisk as it slipped away.
As the one directing it, Lockhart did not need to trail after the creature every moment. There was little chance of him being seen.
And a mastermind never truly hopes their victim will speak.
Tom's plan, after all, was meant to finish soon.
Once Lockhart "defeated" the basilisk and saved Hogwarts, he would have nothing to fear.
No one suspects a "hero".
Several professors looked thoughtful.
Only Snape gave Lockhart a cold sideways glance and let out a faint sound through his nose, almost too quiet to hear.
Dumbledore's gaze moved slowly between Lockhart and Zabini. Behind the half-moon spectacles, his eyes remained as deep and unreadable as ever.
…
In the Room of Requirement, Draco's voice carried a tight edge of fear.
"Leonardo, do you think we should go home early? Zabini's a pure-blood, and he still got attacked. What if the next one is…"
He did not finish, but the terror was plain enough.
Daphne looked steadier than Draco, but even her composed face held a trace of helpless uncertainty.
Zabini's attack had landed like a hammer-blow on those who took pride in pure-blood status.
How long had it been?
The "Heir of Slytherin" had been talking about driving out Muggle-born students, and now he had struck a pure-blood without hesitation.
Leonardo listened without interrupting. If he had to sum up what he felt in a single word, it would be this.
Desperate.
Lockhart, or rather the young Tom Riddle hidden inside that diary, was rushing.
They were desperate to create something bigger. To drive fear higher. To force the school into deeper chaos.
Lockhart's motives were easy enough to read. The bigger the storm, the greater the profit. More victims meant more panic, more confusion, and when he finally staged his "heroic" entrance and ended it all, the praise and glory would only swell.
As for Tom…
Leonardo's gaze slid, unnoticed, to the corner of the room, where Harry was drilling Expelliarmus with Hermione and Ron.
Tom had already marked Harry as the final target.
Helping Lockhart build fame was the sort of lie only a man drunk on his own vanity would swallow. The one truly controlling the basilisk was Tom, and Lockhart had already been taken in completely by those honeyed words.
More than once, Leonardo had slipped into Lockhart's office to watch in secret. Lockhart had been gathering rare materials, dragon's blood among them, to help the Tom in the diary regain strength.
Whatever story Tom fed him, the real plan was obvious.
He meant to return. To rebuild his body.
And once he reappeared as a living boy again, he wouldn't creep away quietly. He'd bring blood and havoc to Hogwarts.
Using the basilisk to kill?
Leonardo pushed the thought aside and returned his attention to Draco and Daphne.
"Draco, Daphne, have you written to your families about this?"
They both nodded at once.
Draco spoke quickly, irritation tangled up with his anxiety.
"Of course I have. My father told me not to go anywhere alone. Snape's supposed to keep an eye on me, and the Board of Governors are already discussing it. They've never liked Dumbledore much, anyway."
Daphne's voice was calmer.
"I wrote to my mother too. She said she's already spoken to the Ministry and the Board. They want pressure applied."
When they mentioned Dumbledore, the distance in their tone was nearly identical.
For most old pure-blood families, it was difficult to feel warmth towards the greatest wizard alive. To them, Dumbledore was too harsh on the pure-blood Houses, too willing to deny them what they believed was theirs by right.
Leonardo had spoken with Dumbledore about it before. The Headmaster was not trying to elevate Muggle-born students or crush pure-bloods. He pursued something wider, something harder.
Fairness.
And that, in itself, was the problem.
What pure-blood families called "targeting" was often no more than the loss of privileges they had enjoyed for centuries. When a long-standing system of benefit is shaken, the ones who benefited most are always the first to call it injustice. Their resentment, inevitably, lands on the person who pushes the change.
They weren't losing rights. They were losing advantages.
And if Dumbledore truly meant to punish pure-bloods, Slytherin would not have taken the House Cup six years running.
Dumbledore…
The diary's Tom was frozen in the mind of a fifteen or sixteen-year-old boy. His memories stopped there. And in that dark, ambitious student life, the person he would remember most vividly was the professor who never once let his guard down.
The diary's Tom was frozen in the mind of a fifteen or sixteen-year-old boy. His memories stopped there. And in that dark, ambitious student life, the person he would remember most vividly was the professor who never once let his guard down.
It was Dumbledore who brought Tom into Hogwarts. Dumbledore who forced him to apologise to the other orphans with magic. Dumbledore who watched him, always, as if waiting for the moment he would strike.
A boy with a rotten core, twisted pride, and a deep, long hatred.
Tom would want to punish Dumbledore. But he would not do it head-on, unless he fancied being crushed the moment he regained flesh.
No. He'd go sideways.
He would use slaughter inside the school to ruin Dumbledore's name, to make the Headmaster look like a failure.
Disgrace him. Break the school. Let everyone else do the blaming.
But there was one crucial condition.
Dumbledore had to be out of the school.
Otherwise, a basilisk was only a basilisk. Dumbledore could subdue it with a flick of his wand.
Leonardo's thoughts ran fast.
Draco and Daphne had both described their parents' responses. Other families who disliked Dumbledore would think the same. They would pressure the Board. They would push the Ministry.
And Dumbledore, being Dumbledore, would allow himself to be bound by process and rules. He respected Hogwarts' governance. He would listen to the Ministry, even when he hated doing it.
That pressure would drain his attention and time. If it grew sharp enough, it could even force him to leave the school temporarily.
And that would be Tom's moment.
Leonardo wondered, briefly, if Dumbledore would ask him to help keep watch again, the way he had last year. If so, Leonardo might have to request a proper "fee" this time. A look at Hogwarts' magical core, perhaps.
If he could draw a little emotional energy from the castle itself, he might finally close the gap. He still had a long way to go before he could meet the bare minimum needed for the Philosopher's Stone.
"Right," Leonardo said, reining himself in. "Don't panic."
He pulled several pairs of spectacles from his pocket, all different styles.
Draco and Daphne exchanged a baffled look. They could not see what was special about a few ordinary frames.
"Leonardo, what are those for?"
"In an emergency," Leonardo said, "they'll block your sight. They'll stop you from seeing what you shouldn't."
He did not over-explain. Instead, he called Harry, Hermione, and Ron over and handed each of them a pair as well.
"And if you hate wearing frames," he added, "there are invisible ones too."
He produced a slim rectangular case. Inside, neat rows of thin contact lenses lay in place.
These lenses were an alchemical item he had made using thestral tail hair as the main material. Their effect was simple.
They blurred and blocked anything directly tied to death.
If someone faced the basilisk's lethal gaze, the lenses would form a barrier automatically.
To everyone else they looked clear and colourless. To Leonardo, who had already witnessed death, they appeared as dark as heavy sunglasses.
"And if you're still worried," he said lightly, "you can carry a rooster around with you. As long as you don't mind the trouble."
"A rooster?"
They stared at him, completely lost.
Leonardo did not elaborate. He clapped his hands once, sharp enough to drag their attention back to the present.
"Right. Lesson time. Today we practise how to respond to attacks from living creatures."
He flicked his wand.
A dozen snakes appeared across the empty floor, already sliding and coiling as they moved.
"Eek!"
Hermione and Daphne both shrieked and, without thinking, jumped in front of Leonardo as if to shield him with their bodies.
Harry, Ron, and Draco weren't much better; all three had gone pale and rigid.
Ron was the first to find his voice. Ron never missed a chance.
"Malfoy," he said, with a nasty little grin, "your House badge is a snake. What's the matter, scared of them?"
Draco snapped upright at once, pride stiffening his spine.
"Don't come whinging to me when one of them decides you look like lunch."
Harry kept his eyes on the shifting coils on the floor, swallowing as one slid past his shoe.
"Why snakes?" he asked, glancing at Leonardo without taking his wand off them.
Leonardo's mouth curved.
"Desensitisation."
Then he flicked his wand towards the floor again, brisk and matter-of-fact.
"Right. Don't flail. Keep your distance, and work as a pair."
They started in, trying to drive the snakes back or hold them in place with the spells they knew, shouting incantations over the soft scrape of scales on stone.
But for some reason, far more snakes slithered towards Harry than anyone else.
Harry was waving his wand so hard it looked ready to smoke, still struggling to keep up.
Finally, startled and cornered, he blurted, "Get away from me!"
He did not notice his voice changing, dropping into something low and rough. What came out was not English at all, but a string of unsettling hisses, like the sound a snake makes right before it strikes.
The Room of Requirement fell dead silent.
Everyone froze, eyes locked on Harry with stunned disbelief.
"Parseltongue?" Draco was the first to speak, his voice pitching high. He stared at Harry as if seeing him for the first time, shock and suspicion and a thin thread of fear twisting together in his expression.
Harry looked genuinely blank.
He glanced around the room. Leonardo still looked calm, but everyone else wore the same stricken expression, as though something horrific had just unfolded.
"Parseltongue? What's that?"
"You mean… what I just did, talking to the snakes? Don't wizards do that?"
Then, as if remembering something from a different life, he hurried on.
"I talked to a snake at the zoo once. A huge one. It told me it had never been to Brazil. That was before I knew anything about magic, before I even knew I was a wizard."
Hermione stepped in, breath tight, eyes wide behind her fear.
"Talking to snakes is extremely rare in witches and wizards, Harry, especially if it's natural. You haven't studied it on purpose, have you?"
Harry shook his head, still bewildered.
Why would anyone go out of their way to learn snake language? It was beyond foreign. It was a different species.
Hermione drew a shaky breath and made herself go on.
"In the legends, Salazar Slytherin, one of the founders of Hogwarts, was a Parselmouth."
Harry went very still.
The Sorting Hat had wanted to put him in Slytherin in his first year. It had insisted he'd do well there. He'd begged not to be sorted into that House, and only then had the Hat sent him to Gryffindor.
So did that mean…
Draco seemed to arrive at the same thought. He shot a quick look at Leonardo, then back at Harry, standing there among the snakes as if none of them could touch him. Draco swallowed, and when he spoke his voice wavered.
"Potter… you're not the Heir of Slytherin, are you?"