That evening, the Hufflepuff common room was expanded several times over, just as usual. Long tables were neatly arranged throughout the space, laden with a dazzling variety of food. Students, dressed in everyday clothes or pajamas, moved freely among the tables to help themselves, or sat in small groups chatting together.
Quite a few of them still looked worried, barely picking at their food before setting it aside. Thankfully, with friends at their sides and the atmosphere of the feast carrying them along, a bit of light gradually returned to their eyes, and they began laughing and talking with those around them.
"…It's really enviable."
In a corner of the room, Baron sat on a tall stool with a suitcase at his feet. Holding a cup of lemon tea, he took small sips as he spoke to Avada beside him. "The Slytherin common room has been completely deserted lately. You could use it as a library and still have plenty of space."
"Why's that?" Avada asked, puzzled.
Logically speaking, Slytherin students—supposedly the safest ones, least likely to be targeted by the 'will of the castle'—should have been the most relaxed.
"Most of the students who are fanatical about blood purity have been roaming the corridors, showing off how their 'pure blood' has been acknowledged by Hogwarts. I ran into a few of them on the way here—smug as anything."
Baron sighed. "There are plenty like that in Slytherin. If my grades weren't decent and I hadn't earned the house a fair number of points, I'd probably be getting targeted too. Once they're gone, the ones left behind are mostly people unhappy with the current situation. Naturally, no one's in the mood to relax and chat…"
"Anyway, enough about that. Let me show you the good stuff I came up with." He stood up, picked up the suitcase, and shifted farther to the side. "It's not really suitable to show this in front of a crowd that's singing, dancing, and enjoying a feast."
Avada followed with his plate, glancing curiously at the suitcase. If he wasn't mistaken, there was something alive inside—and it was just an ordinary animal, not a magical creature with any kind of magical structure…
Had Baron picked up something unusual in the Forbidden Forest? But if it was just an ordinary animal, what was so special about it?
"You're still certain the thing petrifying students is a Basilisk, not some 'will of the castle,' right?" Baron leaned closer and asked in a low, conspiratorial voice.
"Of course," Avada nodded without hesitation. After Snape's personal confirmation, he had no doubts left.
"Good."
Baron nodded as well, a satisfied smile spreading across his face. "After hearing about the Basilisk from you, I went to the library and looked up a huge amount of information on Basilisks. I even got a note from Professor Kettleburn to check the Restricted Section, and wrote home to ask for some books on dangerous creatures from our collection…"
"And in the process, I learned something interesting. While Basilisks are lethally dangerous to almost every other creature, there's one type of animal—one that isn't even a magical creature—that fears them to an extreme degree. So much so that it's practically evolved the ability to sense a Basilisk. The moment they realize one is nearby, they'll do anything to flee…"
"Spiders!"
Avada nearly shouted the word, barely managing to control his volume. He knew exactly what Baron had come up with.
Damn it—how had he never thought of this himself?!
"That's right—spiders!" Baron's grin widened when he saw Avada's excitement, clearly delighted to have found a kindred spirit. "So if we make use of that trait, couldn't we create a precise Basilisk early-warning device?"
"And spiders aren't hard to come by. We could even give one to every Muggle-born student—tell them that the moment their spider starts acting strange, they should close their eyes and run…"
"…You're a genius," Avada said sincerely. "Your idea could save who knows how many people."
At that moment, his admiration for Baron reached an all-time high. Even after learning the Basilisk's traits and weaknesses from Avada, Baron had continued researching on his own, trying to find ways to save more people. In the end, he'd uncovered a detail that even Avada—the transmigrator—had overlooked, and it was the perfect solution for the current situation.
The Basilisk could block its ears to negate rooster crows and wear coverings to avoid its gaze—but as long as it lived, it could never evade a spider's instinctive perception.
Unless the Board of Governors and the diary wiped out every spider in the entire castle and the Forbidden Forest—much to Ron's delight—this loophole would always exist.
"Actually, when Snape first said it was the castle's will petrifying students, I doubted it for a while too," Baron admitted, no longer bothering to hide his pride. "After all, rooster crows really had stopped working…"
"But then a classmate of mine who keeps a pet spider complained that it'd been in terrible condition lately. That jogged my memory about that obscure bit of knowledge. After looking into it and discovering that a lot of people's pet spiders had been acting the same way, I confirmed that the culprit was the Basilisk again."
"So when you went into the Forbidden Forest…"
"To catch spiders," Baron shrugged. "Spiders aren't exactly rare, but when you actually need them, you can't find any for ages. Then I remembered that back in first year, we discovered a colony of giant spiders in the forest, didn't we? So I figured I'd go there and catch a few…"
"You went into an Acromantula nest by yourself?!" Avada stared at him in disbelief.
"Of course not. I'm not that eager to feed myself to spiders," Baron said lightly. "I just wandered around the outskirts and caught a few small, lone Acromantulas. I've been carrying them around to detect the Basilisk these past few days. Some of them got worked half to death, so I had to go back to the forest regularly to replenish my supply… and that's how I got caught."
"Then why didn't you tell the professor who caught you that you were saving the school?"
"Because I still have a bunch of problems to solve—and that's why I came to you."
Baron's expression gradually sobered, his brow furrowing slightly. "The Acromantulas I catch usually struggle violently and try to escape the moment they get a chance. That makes it hard to tell whether their intense reaction is because they've sensed the Basilisk, or if they're just trying to get away from me. Compared to a Basilisk, I might actually seem more threatening to them…"
"I've been trying to solve this problem for days now, but I haven't made any progress."
"..."
(End of Chapter)