Harry POV
'Things are not looking good,' Harry thought to himself as he sat in the Gryffindor common room.
When he'd returned to Hogwarts from Winter break, everyone had been on edge. Nearly Headless Nick's and Collin Creevy's petrification was on everyone's mind, and Mr. Filch had been a lot worse leading up to the Winter hols due to Miss Norris' current state as well.
Yet when he had gone to Madam Pomfry and handed over five vials of Mandrake Draught – three for Collin, Nick, and Miss Norris, two for emergencies – people had noticed.
A lot of students who'd been saying that Harry was the Heir of Slytherin had changed their tune after that. Even Filch had been effusive in his thanks, and Collin had ended up following Harry around like a baby duck. Or a leech, as Fred and George had joking called it at one point.
Some, unfortunately, doubled-down, thinking that Harry had been the one to petrify the two and use the Mandrake Draught as some sort of way to get clout by acting like a savior. But those people had been arseholes already and nobody really listened to them anymore, either.
Of course, Ron, Hermione, Neville, Susan, and Hannah had been aghast when he'd told them Edward's suggestion about what had caused the petrification in the first place. None had wanted to believe him. But he managed to wear them down and win them over. Hermione had been the first to cave. And with that, the other four found themselves unable to deny the logic behind it.
'Not that the teachers listened to my warnings,' Harry thought bitterly. McGonagall had tutted and shooed him off, Flitwick had been intrigued by the idea but ultimately dismissive, and Lockheart had just laughed and gone off on a tangent about the time he'd fought a basilisk himself and saved a village in Uruguay from its predation.
Needless to say, Harry was not happy that none of the professors were listening to him. Again. Sadly, the petrification had caused the victims to loose their memories. They didn't remember anything from an hour before they were petrified. Not even Nick! Which was very odd seeing as he was ghost and thus didn't have a brain, but magic was weird.
The next oddity had been during Valentine's Day. He'd gotten a bunch of cards. Delivered by surly dwarves in pink, red, and white uniforms, but cards all the same.
The only people he knew personally whose cards he'd gotten were Hannah, Susan, Ginny and Luna. The former and latter had done so out of friendship. Susan and Ginny had both been… mushy in their words. It made Harry blush and feel tingly in his stomach. He ignored those feelings, however.
Yet there had been one card he'd received. It'd been unsigned, but that wasn't unusual. A lot of the card's he'd gotten from the dwarven cupids hadn't had names on them. But this wasn't a love letter. Instead, it was a warning. Or maybe a threat?
'Stay away!' Somebody had scrawled in blood. 'They're all dead, and you're next!'
The next morning, it was announced that all of Hagrid's roosters had been killed, immediately making Harry and his friends extremely suspicious.
'The only real weakness of the Basilisk was the crowing of a rooster,' he mused. It drove home his theory about Slytherin's Monster being the infamous King of Serpents. Whoever had summoned it was killing off the only things that could reasonably stop it.
So, here he was, sitting and thinking about who could have sent him that ominous letter while also listening to Ron and Hermione argue about how to sneak into the Slytherin common room to snoop around for answers.
And yes, they weren't arguing about ifthey should do it, but how. It was honestly kinda funny.
"Polyjuice potion is undetectable and would let us mingle with the Slytherins far more easily if we're wearing one of their faces," Hermione said.
"Two words: Invisibility Cloak," Ron retorted, and Harry smirked as he cut off Hermione's argument at the knees. "It would be a lot easier to sneak in that way. Besides, you just want to try and brew a higher-level potion like Polyjuice because you think it'd be 'educational.'"
"Well, so what!" Hermione huffed. "Pretending to be a Slytherin would make it easier to ask questions and blend in!"
"We'd still need to find out what their password is before we could even enter, regardless," Neville pointed out. He sat next to Harry, listening to the other two argue.
"It's probably something dumb, like 'Pureblood,'" Ron scoffed. Harry nodded.
"You're probably right about that," he agreed. "The Slytherins don't seem to be very cunning for a house that supposedly endorses that virtue."
"Plus, Polyjuice won't let us know how to act like the person we're impersonating," Neville added. "We'd be caught out instantly if we start doing things out of character from them."
"Why don't we just ask somebody, then?" Harry suggested.
"I don't they any Slytherins would just tell us what the password is," Hermione frowned.
"No, I meant, why don't we ask a Slytherin if they know anything?" Harry said. Seeing his friend's faces scrunch up at that, he continued, "Not all of them are like Draco. I think one or two would be might be willing to help us."
"I don't know about that," Ron replied, unsure.
"Why don't we try that first before we start plotting ways to sneak into the dungeons," Harry offered. "And if it doesn't work, we can just follow some Slytherins into their common room while using the cloak."
"Alright, fine," Hermione sighed, while Ron grinned as his infiltration idea was selected.
"Who should we ask first?" Neville wondered.
"Daphne Greengrass," Harry said after thinking it over. Neville frowned, but nodded.
"Ah, I see. She isn't part of Malfoy's clique at all. Makes sense she'd be the Slytherin most likely to hear us out."
Mind made up, the four of them decided to track her down tomorrow. Which they did, finding her alone with two other people in the library.
"Daphne, can I talk to you for a minute?" Harry asked. Quietly, of course. This was the library, after all, and Madam Pince had ears like a bat!
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