That night, once Bathsheda finally gave up pacing and drifted off to sleep, Cassian stayed put at the desk. A half-finished mug of tea sat by his elbow, cooling fast. His pen scratching over parchment, trying to piece his thoughts together into something useful.

Horcruxes.

Plural.

He remembered the word too well. Back on Earth, one evening they sat around, his mates debating whether the proper plural was “Horcruxes” or “Horcruxi.” He’d given them a deadpan look, one that said, seriously, you are arguing about fake dark artefacts while I am trying to enjoy my beer? But they kept going. Someone even tried dragging Latin etymology into it.

Here, though? It wasn’t a laughing matter.

He tapped the pen against his notebook, staring at the words he just scrawled. Diary. Sentience. Memory imprint or soul fragment?

He remembered little to nothing concrete. Pieces, more like. The term Horcrux was stuck in his head like an annoying tune he couldn’t shake, but it was vague. He was certain there were more than one, that they were tied to Voldemort somehow. He even had the foggy impression of Harry hunting them… or was Harry one of them? The memory wasn’t clear enough to trust.

But what really gnawed at him was the name from the diary, Tom Marvolo Riddle.

It sounded harmless. Normally, he would have dismissed it as a fake… something the cursed object made up to play nice. But Dumbledore’s reaction… the faint tightening around the eyes, the pause before speaking. That told him the name was real.

So the question was, how did Tom Riddle fit into all this? What was the link between this polite little diary and Voldemort, the walking nightmare of modern Britain?

Cassian pinched the bridge of his nose, staring at the scrawled notes in front of him. Names. Fragments. Guesses. None of it fit neatly.

“Tom Marvolo Riddle,” he muttered aloud, trying the name again like it might suddenly click. “Sounds like someone who would sell you dodgy furniture at Borgin and Burkes, not a maniac capable of gutting half the country.”

He grabbed his pen and scratched down another line. Voldemort’s real name? Apprentice? Relative?

“Or maybe just a right bastard with bad taste in middle names,” he added under his breath.

Bathsheda stirred slightly on the sofa behind him, pulling the blanket tighter around her shoulders. She didn’t wake, but her brow furrowed faintly before smoothing out again.

Cassian let out a quiet sigh and rubbed his jaw. Whoever Tom Riddle was, this wasn’t just some leftover magic in a book.

He leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling beam. The room was silent except for the faint pops from the fireplace.

“All right, Riddle,” he muttered, tapping his knee. “What are you? And what the hell are you playing at?”

He didn’t like having this many blanks in the story. As a historian, that itch for answers was worse than any curse.

Cassian dropped the pen and shoved a hand through his hair. “I hate mysteries,” he said softly. “Always lead to someone dying or a library fire. Hopefully it’s not the library fire.”

***

The next day turned out to be an absolute mess.

A blizzard had rolled in overnight, smothering the castle in a blanket of snow so thick you couldn’t see the grounds from the upper windows. The wind howled like a banshee, rattling the leaded glass panes and sending little flurries drifting in through the tiniest gaps. And, of course, right in the middle of it all came the third attack.

Justin Finch-Fletchley and Nearly Headless Nick were found stiff as boards, frozen mid-step in the corridor outside the library.

It didn’t help that Justin had pointed fingers at Potter during the Duelling Club fiasco. The boy had been giving Harry the wide-eyed, terrified look of someone convinced he was sharing a school with a nascent Dark Lord. Even after Cassian had tried to ram some sense into them all, the whispering hadn’t stopped.

Now this. Two more victims. One of them the very same person pointing fingers at Potter.

It wasn’t good for the boy.

The next few days were a balancing act between prying gossip out of the students and stopping them from whipping themselves into a proper mob. Cassian found himself in more staff meetings than classes, trading sharp words with Snape over whether Potter had “a darkness about him” or whether the boy was simply unlucky.

Thankfully, Christmas break arrived a few days later and most of the children vanished home in a flurry of cloaks and trunks. The castle emptied out overnight, leaving only a handful of students and staff rattling around the drafty corridors.

Cassian stood at one of the high windows, mug in hand, watching the snow pile high against the courtyard arches. “Quiet at last,” he murmured, blowing on his tea. “I might actually get through a day without catching some first-year crying about Parseltongue in the loos.”

Bathsheda joined him, tugging her dressing gown tighter against the chill. “Don’t get used to it. Once the holidays end, it’ll start all over again.”

He gave a faint hum, lips twitching slightly. “Maybe I’ll take my own holiday. See if I can’t dig a tunnel to Spain.”

“Cassian.”

“Kidding. Mostly.” He turned from the window, setting his mug down. “But God, we need a lead. Anything. Otherwise we are just sitting ducks while someone plays puppet master with a cursed diary.”

Bathsheda’s gaze flicked towards the desk where their notes lay scattered. “We’ve checked everything. There is nothing left to test.”

Cassian raked a hand through his hair, muttering under his breath. “Bloody Riddle. I’ve got half a mind to take a shovel and dig him up for answers.”

Bathsheda shot him a sharp look.

He held up both hands. “I said half a mind. Relax.”

“There’s a damned monster roaming the bloody corridors because we were too bloody careless with that diary.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t start.”

“I am not starting. I’m pointing out facts.” He leaned forward, rubbing his hands over his face. “We’ve been sitting on that thing for weeks, telling ourselves it was harmless as long as no one wrote in it. Now we’ve got kids turning into statues, and our names painted on the walls in blood.”

He let out a long breath and pulled her in, his chin resting lightly on her hair. “Sorry,” he murmured. “I feel bloody guilty.”

Bathsheda stayed quiet, but her fingers curled into the front of his robe.

Cassian’s arms tightened a little around her. “If I hadn’t been so curious, we could’ve burned it straight away. You said it from the start… destroy it, don’t play games.”

“You are not the only one who thought keeping it might help,” she said softly. “I agreed. Don’t pin it all on yourself.”

He let out a low laugh. “No, I will take my share. I’ve been poking at the damned thing since September. Thought I was clever. Thought I could keep the bloody thing caged until I wrung answers out of it.”

“You weren’t wrong,” she said quietly. “We learned plenty. Just not fast enough.”

Still, neither of them slept well that night.

The diary hadn’t just disappeared… it had slithered out of their grasp. And now, with the castle nearly empty and the snow piling higher by the hour, Cassian couldn’t help but feel the quiet wasn’t going to last.

Something was coming.

***

Over the Christmas holidays, Cassian finally got a lead. He was out helping Hagrid haul in Christmas trees, that could’ve passed for a small hill, when the half-giant grumbled about something odd.

“Damn foxes, they’ve been at the roosters again,” Hagrid said, tossing a spruce over his shoulder casually. “Two more this morning. Found em dead in the shed.”

Cassian froze halfway through brushing snow off his coat. “Sorry, foxes?”

“Yeah. Little blighters snuck in. Been happening a lot lately.”

“First question, since when can foxes break wards?” Cassian held his gloves in his teeth and started tugging them on properly. “Second question, how long has this been going on?”

Hagrid stopped, scratching his beard. “A month, maybe two? Hard to say. Didn’t think much of it at first. Chickens will drop dead sometimes, natural way of things.”

Cassian frowned. Hogwarts never had an outdoor shed. Hagrid and the elves kept the animals in proper enclosures… isolated, warded against pests, and reinforced with enough magic to keep even the most determined Kneazle out. Yeah, magic could do that. He remembered sneaking into one of those sheds as a dare back in his student days to steal a few eggs. Got pecked half to death by a mob of furious chickens for his trouble. No bloody fox could breach those wards.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose, eyes narrowing. “So you’re telling me foxes got into the sheds, killed roosters, and then… what? Left without eating or dragging off a single carcass?”

Hagrid shifted his bulk uncomfortably, boots crunching in the snow. “Aye. That is the strange part. Nothing taken. Just a mess of feathers and dead roosters.”

Cassian let out a sharp breath, watching it fog in the cold air. “Yeah, because that sounds like classic fox behaviour… break in, murder for sport, and bugger off without so much as a nibble.”

He thanked Hagrid, muttered something about foxes not being that clever, and strode back to the castle so fast he nearly skidded on an icy step. He didn’t bother knocking, slammed open the door to the Headmaster’s office. 

Dumbledore looked up from his desk, quill hovering mid-stroke. “Professor Rosier.”

Cassian dropped into the chair opposite with a thud. “It is a bloody basilisk.”

The quill stilled. Dumbledore set it aside, his blue eyes sharp behind those half-moon spectacles.

“Basilisk’s gaze is lethal, Cassian. How did you reach that conclusion?”

Cassian dragged a hand through his hair, leaving it sticking up at odd angles. “I was helping Hagrid bring in trees, yeah, and he mentioned someone’s been killing roosters. He thinks it’s foxes. Foxes. In Hogwarts’ sheds.”

Dumbledore let out a chuckle. “Bless his heart.”

Cassian stared at him, unimpressed. “Bless his heart all you like, but even Hagrid should know better. The sheds are warded tighter than the kitchen. No fox is waltzing in and snapping necks for fun.”

Dumbledore leaned back slightly, his fingers steepled. “Go on.”

“It clicked after he said roosters specifically. Basilisks are vulnerable to a rooster’s crow, aren’t they? Painful to them, in fact. If something’s slithering through the castle, knocking off poultry isn’t random… it’s self-defence.”

Dumbledore’s gaze sharpened, but he didn’t speak.

“And then there is the Petrifications,” Cassian added, pacing a few steps before turning back. “Mrs Norris. Creevey. Finch-Fletchley. All alive, but frozen solid. If they’d seen the thing directly, they would be corpses. The reflections, the water on the floor… whatever way they looked at it saved their lives. That lines up too well to be coincidence.”

Dumbledore’s fingers tapped idly in the air. “Mrs Norris saw it through water on the floor. Creevey had his camera between him and the creature. And Mr Finch-Fletchley…” he paused, “was behind Nearly Headless Nick. A ghost cannot die, but he can be petrified.”

Cassian gave pecking nods, as he paced. “Makes sense. Slytherin’s mascot is a snake. If he built some hidden chamber, why wouldn’t he shove a bloody basilisk in there for good measure?”

Dumbledore’s expression soured, even if only slightly.

Cassian didn’t miss it. He stopped, fixing the old man with a pointed look. “You know something, don’t you? Is it Voldemort?”

Not a Spoiler, Just an image! ↓

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Author Rant ↓ 

Spoiler

Every now and then I think I feel engagement. Turns out it’s just the candle flickering.

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