Snape's imitation was spot-on, but his smirk carried that signature sneer, laced with an eerie chill. Madam Pomfrey arched an eyebrow at Dumbledore.
The headmaster paused, eyes flicking to the starry sky beyond the window. "Poppy, it's late. You should rest."
"Who dragged me from bed at this hour?" she huffed. "All of you, out! I need to lock up."
Dumbledore lingered, flashing a genial smile. "I'd like a word with Harry first."
She fixed him with a stern glare. "He downed Skele-Gro—his bones will knit by morning. Visit tomorrow."
Snape's lips twisted into a frosty grin at Dumbledore's mild discomfort.
---
When Vizette came to, he lay in the Chamber of Secrets, Salazar Slytherin's hidden domain. But Dumbledore and Snape were gone.
A figure emerged from the shadows: a wizard in deep green robes, clutching a hefty tome. His face was sharp and hollowed, skin ghostly pale from years buried in books, as if dusted with frost.
"Two roosters in a stone cellar... after six months... no eggs... the toad hatching stalled..."
From the research notes and the chamber's aura, Vizette knew this was Slytherin himself. He had slipped into one of the founder's memories—a rare glimpse into the basilisk's origins.
Library lore painted the beast's birth as arcane: a rooster's egg, hatched by a toad under a cockatrice. But rooster eggs? Roosters didn't lay them. Slytherin aimed to force the impossible through magic.
Vizette leaned in, intrigued. He hungered for the method to conjure such an egg, weaponize it for his own designs.
The memory unfolded like a ritual. Vizette shadowed Slytherin, watching quill scratch across parchment in endless iterations.
[Twelfth trial: Fuse rooster and hen anatomies via transfiguration... dose with fertility potions... rear for seven days.]
[Thirty-sixth: Implant suggestions in the rooster... disrupt its cycle... sustain with vitality elixirs.]
[Seventy-eighth: Infuse garnet—bearer of "fertility"—into the bird... feed mandrake paste.]
The chamber cluttered with tomes, notes, shelves, and even a makeshift coop. Slytherin's notes wove in ritual magic, transfiguration, dark arts, and mind spells. But one thread stood out: bloodline magic, a field Vizette scarcely knew. He committed it all to memory for later dissection.
At last, Slytherin synthesized his work into a master ritual, blending alchemy and blood rites.
[One hundred eighty-first: Draw the rooster's essence... seal in garnet vessel.]
[Add sunstone, flint, sulfur, magnetite, ferrous sulfate... mud the joints with mandrake root.]
Seven days passed. An egg-like form emerged, pulsing. Thestral blood—an omen of death—pumped in, then it nested in a fresh rooster for seven weeks.
[Introduce an Irish chupacabra among the flock... cull the rest with Killing Curses... the survivor shows egg signs...]
Slytherin observed the rooster's plumage dull to gray, body crumbling to ash. An oval egg remained: ashen shell veined with crimson, throbbing like veins.
He nodded, quill flying. Success.
Vizette pieced it together with his ritual knowledge. Thestral blood, chupacabra's peril, relentless Killing Curses—all infused the egg with "death." The basilisk embodied it: venomous bite, lethal gaze. Even indirect looks petrified, tied perhaps to the gemstones and stones—garnet's hold, flint's spark.
This memory was a goldmine. Vizette could revisit it, layer his growing expertise to unlock deeper secrets. Slytherin's ingenuity expanded his world.
He'd seen the Killing Curse dozens of times now, absorbing its form. A vivid green flash erupted, cold as grave mist, trailed by a whisper—malicious, insistent, death's own sigh.
It took repeated viewings to catch that murmur. Unforgivable, like the Imperius Curse. Both were simple: intone the words, and they fly. But the Killing Curse demanded true malice, a killer's intent. That's why it scarred the soul—proof of darkness within.
The wand bucked wildly too, demanding iron control. Vizette gleaned this from Slytherin's grip: knuckles white, veins straining, yet the tip jerked upward on release. Precision was everything.
—