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"Of the many fearsome lands that haunt our land, there is none more curious nor deadly than the Basilisk, known also as the King of Serpents. This snake, which may reach a gigantic size, and live many hundreds of years, is born from a chicken's egg, hatched beneath a toad. Its methods of killing are most wondrous, for aside its most deadly and venomous fangs, the Basilisk has a murderous stare, and all who are fixed with the beam of its eye shall suffer instant death. Spider flee before the Basilisk, for it is their natural enemy, and the Basilisk flees only before the crowning of a rooster, which is fatal to it."
Nigel finished the long paragraph in a dubitative voice. The Potter Heiress didn't blame him in the least. Some books were saying particularly stupid things, but this one was an award winner by itself.
"Well this garbage was unsurprisingly unhelpful." Said Alexandra, sighing in a theatrical manner. "What was the name of this one?"
"Most Macabre Monstrosities." Replied the Gryffindor, putting back the book on the table of their study room with a disgusted glance.
"Figures. We will put it back with the other useless books which give misleading information and should be thrown out of any respectable library." The green-eyed witch took her quill and noted the book's title on the parchment before her. "Best write the name to make sure we don't try to use this waste of paper for anything important in our studies."
All of the conversation was in whispers, protected by spells of repulsion and disorientation. Unable to use their private study room, the Ravenclaw witch and the Gryffindor wizard had to use a little frequented wing of the library and hope their spells and the boring aspect of the Runes which were invented two thousand years before the Christ managed to deter all potential spies. They were only two of their group left now. Never before had the absence of Hermione and Morag had been so deeply felt.
"It won't be in this book we will find a solution anyway." It was Nigel's turn to sigh with a disappointed mood. "And all the methods you found to be protected from a Basilisk were pretty...expensive?"
"You can say it, Nigel. They are ruinous." Alexandra remarked, trying to loosen her tightening fists. In a perfect world, the teachers and some of their fellow students would have helped financially get them rid of the Monster of Slytherin. But this was Hogwarts, and even their fellow Ravenclaws preferred to be deaf, blind and embrace a cowardly attitude when it came to the Heir of Slytherin.
"Yes...I don't think we have the gold for one of the plans you have made, never mind all of them." The admission was pronounced in an even lower tone, as a crack behind them of an ancient bookshelf resonated.
"That's right. On the other hand...all the gold in the world will not be of great use if we drop dead the next day."
There might be a small mountain of gold waiting in her trust vault by her standards, but it wouldn't be very useful if she didn't survive this year.
"You have a point."
"I'd rather not have one." Sighed the Potter Heiress. "Especially given what is against us."
Basilisk.
Alexandra had supposed that after Brise-Roc and confronting a gigantic Salamander from an unknown Hell head-on, there had been no magical animals left to frighten her in this world and the next.
Now she knew how naive it had been. The Monster of the Chamber of Secrets truly deserved its title.
Basilisk. The King of Serpents. The Bane of Moldavia. The Doom of the Aztecs. The Herald of Death. And a lot of nicknames and titles that were neither polite nor amusing to repeat in public.
Of the eighty-nine creatures types classed XXXXX by the International Confederation of Wizards, the colossal snake was one of the most dangerous in its own right. That was quite saying something, because to enter this category the animal had to be a known wizard-killer, be incredibly hard to slay for a battalion of conventional Aurors - or whatever the country's equivalent was – and be quasi-impossible to tame. If the thing was impossible to kill by mortal means, then it was a XXXXXX-class creature. The Basilisk avoided this latter category. Barely.
The fangs would have been bad enough. Covered in lethal venom which killed practically everything magical and non-magical living being in twenty-six seconds, the dentition of a Basilisk could have shamed a T-Rex. The only known antidote to the poison was Phoenix tears, and it was extremely debatable if it would do any good after the abomination had swallowed a leg or an arm of yours.
Second weapon was the deathly glare. Apparently the species of Medusa, a species created by Greek wizards having way too much free time for idiocies and develop their god-like ego, had had too much limitations for certain magical evil geniuses. The answer was the Basilisk. At maturity, the snake could control the sheer magical power of its eyes, and the victim would be stunned, petrified or killed depending on the Basilisk intention. At first, Alexandra had wondered why the 'stunned' capacity was important. The Potter Heiress now realised she could have lived with ignorance. The Basilisk loved its sustenance alive.
But the worst part was the too-many-times-forgotten scales of the monster. A Basilisk shed its skin once every couple of years and the new scales replacing the former were always more resistant to magical means. At fifty years of age, Basilisks had been known to survive point-blank Killing Curses, the lethal and impossible to parry Unforgiveable spell. A Middle Ages peasant armed with a pitchfork had more chances against a Basilisk than an Auror in his prime.
After that, the over-developed sense of smell was kind of unimpressive. Like the sharks, a Basilisk could smell a drop of blood, but at a distance of a hundred kilometres once mature. Goodbye surprise effect.
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