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What made it worse, he was somewhat lost. Underground pipes crisscrossed everywhere and he no longer remembered which turn he'd wandered from to get here.
Fortunately, this place was full of corpses.
Several small rats flipped up and rushed into the fork ahead. Anthony slowly followed behind them and felt their light points disappear in the distance. From the message the rats brought him, there were no dead ends ahead—all paths interconnected.
So Anthony left a small rat candlestick on every path he'd walked—Soul Fire burned weakly in their eyes, uneven walls stretched Anthony's shadow into strange shapes, and under flickering Soul Fire illumination appeared increasingly terrifying.
Anthony walked following the broadest light flow in magical perception, marked the path toward that wall, and assigned several unlucky small animals to scout at each fork.
His monotonous footsteps echoed in the tunnel, accompanied by occasional drip-drops of water shattering on the ground. Anthony started considering whether he should summon some Wraith Mice purely for playing and hearing their squeaks. His cat might not be particularly happy, but he increasingly felt he needed companionship now...
Perhaps he should've allowed the cat to follow down.
Just then, he discovered a scouting skeleton rat seemed to have walked into a dead end and was anxiously circling in place ahead, then suddenly stopped at some position and jumped upward. Anthony curiously glanced at that fork and found under his forward command, the rat desperately tried climbing the mud-covered, slippery arched wall—right above its head was a passage leading upward.
He pattered over, looked at that passage, reached out and grabbed the skeleton rat, and placed it in the passage. The rat struggled to claw at the steep passage and tried crawling forward a few steps.
"Forget it," Anthony said, pulled the rat down, and withdrew magic from it. The rat skeleton trembled and scattered into a pile of fragments before him.
This was another reason he disliked using Necromancy. Even knowing the other was already dead, every time he withdrew magic, he still felt he'd killed it again.
He summoned nearby bone remains, piled them under his feet and beside his hands, and then started rock climbing. If he were a living person, he'd say this night he did quite a lot of cardio.
White bones were fixed in midair by magic. Anthony climbed along them upward—the Room of Requirement was really too high—and finally impatiently used more Necromancy, let a group of skeletal Wraiths surround and crowd around him, and automatically lifted their summoner along the track supported by other remains.
If there were a choice, he'd prefer using all furred Wraiths, but the Basilisk cafeteria had really few summonable Wraiths and too many bones.
The Room of Requirement quietly waited for him. Anthony cast Scourgify on his clothes and shoes, stepped on this group of summons and opened the door, and looked back.
Unlike Skeleton Cat or Wraith Chicken kept as pets, he hadn't poured much Necromancy into these tool summons and didn't give them much autonomy, just purely controlled them. Unlike Skeleton Cat that could freely walk the castle, these things would collapse into a pile of broken bone frames once leaving his magic range.
He somewhat worried they'd get stuck in the passage middle like that dead rat before.
Anthony tapped a Wraith Mouse and gave it more magic.
"Squeak?" the rat said.
"Take all these things down," Anthony commanded. "Then stay below and don't come out."
"Squeak squeak."
Anthony hesitated. "When I go down again I'll find another way up and then you can come together."
Hopefully his cat wouldn't be too angry. But when a rat that regained consciousness stared at him with pitch-black little eyes begging by twitching whiskers, Anthony found it hard to say "then I'll withdraw magic and let you return to death's embrace."
"Fizzing Whizzbees," he said to the gargoyle.
Though still deep night, Anthony still went downstairs to the Headmaster's office. Dumbledore had said his office always welcomed Anthony.
The gargoyle jumped aside and revealed stairs leading to the Headmaster's office.
Professor Sprout told Anthony that Dumbledore had a habit—even though he never went to the staff room for tea, the third shelf in the snack cabinet, second box from the right, contained the Headmaster's office password.
For over a month, the box always held Fizzing Whizzbees. Anthony hoped this was just because Dumbledore was too lazy to change passwords, not because he was too busy and constantly away from school.
The instrument that would tremble and spew smoke stood motionless on the desk. Moonlight through half-drawn curtains cast a serene glow over it. Fawkes stood quietly on his perch watching him.
"Is the Headmaster in?" Anthony asked softly, afraid of startling the phoenix.
Fawkes looked at him quite intelligently, then at Dumbledore's desk, and called softly.
Anthony walked to the desk and found a note left on top:
"Temporarily away. Urgent matters can find Minerva, specific Dark Magic or potion injuries find Severus. P.S., need help can contact me through Fawkes."
Now Anthony understood why Professor McGonagall's expression wasn't great when leaving the Headmaster's office last time.
He considered whether the Basilisk belonged to "urgent matters" or "Dark Magic," or perhaps "need help." Like an operator asking "Would you like business consultation, problem feedback, or other services?" For a moment, he'd feel his problem combined all options.
Finally he decided to find Snape.
Not because he thought the Basilisk wasn't urgent—though considering this big fellow had slept beneath the castle for years, however urgent couldn't be that urgent—but because Professor McGonagall might be sleeping, but based on his perception passing Snape's potions room in the passage, either Snape was still awake or his potion ingredients were happily throwing a party and moving around the potions room.
Either case wouldn't bring him guilt for disturbing sleep. Since Snape was working overtime anyway, solving his problem might even be more fun.
Anthony knocked on the door and felt his Wraith Mouse working hard moving bones.
"Does the phrase 'three in the morning' have any meaning to you, Anthony?" Snape irritably opened the door.
"A time when we're both still awake?" Anthony countered. "The Headmaster's office note told me to find you."
Snape tightened his brow.
Anthony said straight to the point, "I came to ask you for a dead snake."
He suddenly understood how to pass through that door. He needed Parseltongue.
And quite conveniently, he was a highly talented necromancer and could control any corpse... which naturally included snake corpses.
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