Can the Basilisk Pre-arrange Murder?
If it's not led by someone, it could easily injure students other than its target during an attack, or even professors—Voldemort wouldn't be that stupid; he rarely harms pure-blood students, after all, he's not as extreme as Cohen.
Besides, Slytherin must have given the Basilisk strict orders, such as forbidding it from indiscriminately killing students—this old Dumbledore is a pure-blood fanatic, not a murderer.
"What's that sound?!" Harry heard it too—he noticed Cohen looking around. "Cohen? Did you hear it too?"
"Yes." Cohen didn't lie to Harry. He needed Harry on his side regarding the Basilisk attack, especially given Voldemort's plot to frame him.
If someone had an indefensible identity, the protagonist had to be dragged into it too, so everyone would be safe—Dumbledore wouldn't suspect Harry, and therefore couldn't suspect Cohen.
"What did you hear?" Ron struggled to swat away three house-elves that rushed towards him.
"He seems to be looking for something?" Harry asked, puzzled. "I don't quite understand—that sound is really unsettling…"
Cohen wanted to hear where the sound was going, but the elves were too noisy—
so Cohen raised his wand and chanted a few words towards the ceiling, pretending it was the effect of a spell, but in reality, he was draining the souls of the surrounding elves.
They fell to the ground one by one, crawling aimlessly.
"What kind of spell is that?!" Hermione exclaimed, showing intense curiosity.
"The spell Lockhart just mentioned," Cohen made up, "A special attack against elves."
With that, Cohen used a levitation charm to throw the soulless elves into their cage and kindly covered it with a cloth.
"Give it back to him later—" Cohen said.
[Leave a mark…leave a mark…]
The basilisk's voice was moving in another direction, towards another corridor on the third floor.
Harry, standing nearby, held his breath, listening to the strange sound, his eyes following its movement.
"Are you possessed?" Ron looked at Cohen and Harry worriedly—it was quiet, but Cohen and Harry were straining their ears to hear something.
"Wait—" Harry refused Ron's offer to speak, "Listen carefully…"
[Blood…blood will do…where is the blood…]
"Blood?" Harry's eyes widened in horror.
"Let's go!"
Cohen grabbed Harry, shoved open the door, and ran out—going alone would certainly arouse suspicion, but with Harry, it was a different story.
Harry had his mother's sacrificial protection spell; it wouldn't be a problem.
He'd drag them all down with him!
"You two wait for us!" Ron and Hermione didn't even have time to pack their bags—they rushed out after Cohen and Harry.
The basilisk's voice echoed through the walls, leading to an empty corridor—it seemed to be avoiding people; snakes can locate students by temperature.
It chose a secluded spot.
Cohen and the others came to a corner with a heavy door—it would take time to open, and the basilisk seemed to have already left the wall.
[Blood…blood…]
Besides the basilisk's mutterings, there was a rustling sound of something scraping against the wall.
"Bang!"
Cohen, too lazy to ram the door, cast a spell, and the door swung open with a loud crash.
Cohen saw a snake's tail burrowing into the wall—and Harry was a step too slow; he had almost been pulled over by the rushing Cohen.
The basilisk had left a solid wall, indicating that Hogwarts' walls were movable—no wonder the basilisk could emerge from the pipes at any time.
Cohen led Harry to the spot where the basilisk had disappeared, and there they saw "blood."
"Rat?"
Harry looked at the two gray rat corpses on the ground, their blood pooling in the ground, with thin trails around them—as if someone had dipped a quill pen in the blood to write something…
"Here." Cohen looked up and saw the words on the wall—the basilisk could actually write, no wonder it was a Slytherin pet.
[Where are you]
"What does that mean?" Harry's heart, which had just stopped beating, started racing again—it even felt a little absurd.
After such a tense series of events… all someone wrote "Where are you" with the blood of two rats?
"You ran too fast!"
Hermione and Ron arrived just in time:
"What happened?"
Hermione patted her chest, panting. She also saw the rat corpses in the corner and the words on the wall.
"Don't tell me you ran so fast just to kill two rats and write on the wall with their blood…that's too childish."
"Rat?!" Ron looked at the rat corpses in panic—he almost mistook them for Scabbers.
"It wasn't Scabbers, and it wasn't us," Harry explained to Ron and Hermione. "Cohen and I heard something from inside the walls—wait, didn't you hear it?"
"What sound?" Hermione asked, puzzled. "Ron and I didn't hear anything. We just saw you two suddenly run out like madmen—"
"The sound said 'where,' and 'blood…" Harry recalled. "I thought someone was going to attack someone—Cohen probably thought so too, right?"
"Yes," Cohen said. "But…"
His gaze fell on the two fat rats.
"We didn't expect the victims to be two rats."
"Maybe it was someone's prank," Hermione guessed. "But it's a bit too gory. Filch will be furious if he finds out—we—"
"You should have known… what happens when you dirty the hallway floor, right?" Filch appeared menacingly behind the four of them. His cat, Mrs. Norris, saw the rat carcasses on the floor and darted over to pick them up.
Unsurprisingly, they were all given time-outs.
"We already had one time-out!" Ron grumbled on the way back to the common room.
"He has no evidence at all." Hermione was also a little unhappy—it was the first time she'd been put in solitary confinement, and for a reason that wasn't even true.
"Twice is no different from once," Harry replied casually, still thinking about the voice and the blood-written words on the wall.
"I want to go to sleep," Cohen said goodbye to the three.
"But it's only 3:30!" Ron asked, puzzled. "We can go see Hagrid—isn't it too early to go to sleep?"
"No," Cohen shook his head. "I'm sleepy, going to get some sleep. See you at the dinner party."
Cohen had to hurry to Lockhart's to check on things.
The basilisk's actions didn't seem to be part of Voldemort's plan—why would Voldemort kill rats?
And the message the basilisk left on the wall…
"Where are you?"
Cohen muttered to himself.
Who was the basilisk looking for?
Could it be him?
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(End of Chapter)