The silence in Snape's office was absolute, vibrating with the unspoken revelations and the raw, maternal fury radiating from Narcissa Malfoy. The pickled specimens in their jars seemed to hold their breath.
Lucius Malfoy, standing rigidly near the unlit hearth, swallowed audibly. The sound was unnaturally loud in the quiet room.
He looked at his youngest son—the boy who had just casually admitted to descending into the lair of an apex predator—and then quickly shifted his gaze away, unable to meet Orion's cold, knowing blue eyes.
"Regardless," Lucius said, his voice regaining a fraction of its usual smooth, patrician drawl, though the underlying tension was undeniable. He adjusted his grip on his silver-headed cane. "We can say that Orion was exceptional at dealing with the situation. He acted with... decisive clarity."
Narcissa's head snapped toward her husband. The glare she leveled at him could have frozen the Black Lake solid. It was a look that promised a very long, very unpleasant conversation the moment they returned to the privacy of the Manor.
Lucius faltered slightly under the intensity of the stare, his knuckles whitening on his cane.
"The... the good thing is that he is fine," Lucius added hastily, attempting to appease his wife while maintaining his authoritative facade. "Both of our sons are unharmed. And Dumbledore will certainly answer for this negligence. To allow a Class XXXXX beast to roam the plumbing of a school... the Board of Governors will be furious."
He turned his attention back to Orion, his expression shifting from defensive to probing. The politician was returning to the surface, seeking intelligence.
"Tell me, Orion," Lucius asked, his grey eyes narrowing slightly as he studied his son's impassive face. "Are you aware of the identity of the Heir? The one who actually opened the Chamber and controlled the beast? Have you any guesses?"
Orion met his father's gaze. He saw the calculation there. Lucius was testing the waters. He needed to know if his plot with the diary had been exposed, or if the blame for the monster's release was still safely anonymous.
Orion knew exactly what Lucius wanted to hear. And he knew exactly how to deliver it to maximize his own advantage.
"I have no idea, Father," Orion denied smoothly, his voice devoid of hesitation. He offered a slight, dismissive shrug. "There was no sign of the Heir in the Chamber or the immediate vicinity. Whoever they are, they were intelligent enough to flee before the Aurors breached the entrance to kill the Basilisk."
A microscopic, almost imperceptible release of tension smoothed the lines around Lucius's eyes.
Lucius nodded slowly, turning his attention to Professor Snape, who was standing silently in the shadows near his desk, watching the family dynamic with his usual, cynical detachment.
"Well, Severus," Lucius drawled, a nasty, familiar sneer curling his lip as he shifted the narrative back to his preferred targets. "My suggestion would be to keep a very close eye on the Weasley children."
Draco, who had been uncharacteristically quiet since his mother's frantic embrace, perked up immediately at the mention of his favorite victims.
Lucius paced a few slow steps across the stone floor, his cane tapping rhythmically.
"Their father," Lucius spat the word with profound disgust, "recently raided our Manor. A week or so after Christmas. He tore through my private study and the drawing room with a team of Ministry thugs, searching for dark artifacts."
Lucius stopped, a vicious, triumphant gleam in his eye. "And he found absolutely nothing. He was mad about it. Humiliated, really."
He looked back at Snape, his tone dripping with insinuation.
"If the father acts in such a reckless, desperate manner... we can probably expect the same volatile behavior from his children. They are known for their disregard for the rules. It would not surprise me if one of them stumbled upon something they shouldn't have, or decided to play a dangerous prank that spiraled out of control."
Orion let out a short, sharp scoff. The sound was abrasive, cutting through Lucius's carefully constructed deflection like a knife.
He knew exactly what his father was doing. Lucius was deliberately pushing the scrutiny toward the Weasleys, trying to retroactively frame Ginny—the very girl he had slipped the diary to—for the chaos, without realizing that the diary was no longer in her possession. He was attempting to weaponize Snape's bias to clean up his own mess.
Every head in the room turned toward Orion.
Lucius frowned, clearly displeased by the interruption. Narcissa looked at him with mild surprise. Draco looked confused. Even Snape raised a dark, inquisitive eyebrow.
"You find my assessment amusing, Orion?" Lucius asked coldly, his grip tightening on his cane.
"Not amusing, Father," Orion replied, dropping his arms to his sides and adopting a look of profound, practical exhaustion. "Merely logistically impossible."
He gestured vaguely toward the Potions Master.
"If Uncle Sev is to keep an eye on every Weasley in Hogwarts, he will need significantly more than a single pair of eyes."
Orion ticked them off on his fingers, his voice dripping with dry sarcasm.
"There is Percy, the pompous prefect who practically lives in the library. There are the twins, who are mostly spending every weekend in detention with Filch and still managing to explode toilets on the every floor. There is Ronald, who can barely manage to tie his own shoes without Granger's supervision. And there is the youngest girl, Ginny, who spends most of her time looking terrified of her classmates."
Orion shook his head, looking at his father with an expression of weary disbelief.
"Considering the sheer, overwhelming volume of red hair in this castle," Orion concluded, "tasking a single Head of House with monitoring their collective, bumbling incompetence while simultaneously managing his own duties is... highly inefficient. It is a waste of Professor Snape's valuable time."