Night duty — though "midnight duty" would be more accurate — passed without any surprises or other notable encounters. Well, there was that one time Pansy and I caught a couple of third-years trying to sneak into Filch's cupboard, but the lads had used disillusionment charms so badly botched that only a blind man could have missed them. In any case, the troublemakers were duly caught and marched off to the Gryffindor common room. For obvious reasons. There, they were greeted by Hermione, evidently in the middle of some sort of brainstorming session over a book. Judging by my little sister's expression, the troublemakers were in for a proper scolding.
Having walked Pansy back down to the Slytherin dungeons, I returned to our own common room.
All quiet, all calm, all well with the world. Through the tall round windows, a peaceful night sky could be seen, and in the half-light of the common room, shadows played from the crackling flames in the great fireplace. One of the many potted plants had put out a couple of purple blooms — someone's project from last year. The project's goal had been achieved, the plant barely grew any further, but it seemed a shame to throw it out, and giving it back to Madam Sprout felt wrong too, so it stayed in the common room, blooming at night whenever someone happened to be nearby.
Spotting my armchair, the one I'd spent so much time in, I made my way over to it. It stood in the same spot as always, not far from the fire, in a fairly prominent position, next to the table where we usually gathered to do homework or whatever other business had piled up over the day.
Taking off my flat, rather unremarkable-looking rucksack, I sat down in the chair, leaned back, and pulled out the artefact holding the three-dimensional model of the house. An unfinished model. The metal of the sphere felt pleasantly cool against my hand, and the moment I applied the smallest drop of mental effort, a faint, faint glow began to shine through the chaotic lines on its surface. A schematic of the house immediately appeared in the air, made up of countless blue lines of varying thickness. Working from memory, I began adding new lines through sheer force of will.
While occupied with this routine work, I turned over in my mind, in the meantime, what to do with the basilisk skeleton. As for crafting anything out of it, the appeal had lasted only the first few seconds — a simple burst of good spirits at having stumbled upon such an interesting magical material. But now, having cooled off somewhat and begun weighing the pros and cons soberly, I was starting to arrive at rather different thoughts.
The thing is, however unique a material might be, its properties can, one way or another, be replicated through more elaborate arrangements of charms, spells, runic chains, or, failing all else, through my own dwarven methods, if working it through the local school of magic proves absurdly complicated. So as a mere source of raw material, I have no real need for the skeleton.
And yet it wasn't for nothing that, back in the Chamber itself, a thought had occurred to me — a memory of a certain blood-red bush. One could use the entire basilisk skeleton to create a single, unique, grand thing, with the skeleton serving as its foundation. After all, that same elf shard of mine had encountered truly terrifying man-made creatures in terms of raw capability, or various other products of golem-crafting built from the dead — yes, not every "undead" thing is undead in the full sense of the word.
"Not asleep?" Hannah's voice came from beside me. "Here, Your Lordship."
She handed me a mug of hot chocolate with some sort of spices in it. Naturally, I checked it all over with magic, though not ostentatiously.
"Thanks," I nodded, taking a sip, while still holding the artefact in my other hand, working on the projection. "Why 'Lordship', though?"
"You simply don't see yourself from the outside," Hannah sat down at the table, beside me. "If you did, you'd understand."
I do have a little spider in the common room too, so, switching my attention to it, I took a look at myself from the outside, but saw nothing especially remarkable — posture, a certain composure, bearing, movement, all of it spoke of good breeding and proper manners. Of course, I'm perfectly capable of carrying on like a dwarf, cracking jokes crude enough to make even the most hardened brigands' eyes bulge, but there's a time and place for everything.
"Perhaps," I nodded with a smile. "But surely 'lords' like that aren't usually very well liked. Take Malfoy, all mannered airs — he stirred up plenty of ill will in his time."
"Well, don't confuse put-on manners with natural ones. Especially since everything you do always seems... fitting, somehow. Right, natural, and that's exactly why it doesn't stand out, doesn't grate on anyone."
"I see. And why are you up, then?"
"Oh," Hannah waved a hand, taking a sip from her own mug. "The little ones are having their small dramas. Rather amusing, really. Were we ever really that ridiculous as 'baby badgers'?"
"Possibly. Listen, I'm a prefect too, you know. Why doesn't anyone bring their problems to me?"
"Oh, that's simple enough," Hannah smiled. "You're something of a higher authority, in a lot of people's eyes. They'd sooner go to the Head of House. They only come to you if it's genuinely important. A proper matter of life and death."
"Do I frighten them, or something?"
"No, of course not," Hannah took another sip, as did I. "It's just... how do I put it? It's like... you look at you, and you just understand that whatever it is you're busy with, it's bound to be far more important than our petty little problems."
"Hm," a smirk crept onto my face of its own accord. "Well, in that case, I won't try to talk you out of it. Suits me fine."
"I'd imagine so. By the way, what is it you're doing?"
"A house project."
"That it's got something to do with a house, I gathered," the girl nodded. "But I don't understand exactly what."
"Just a three-dimensional plan. Transferring the blueprints over."
"Ah... I don't know why, but it does seem important..." Hannah blinked stupidly a couple of times, then laughed quietly. "Ha-ha-ha, that's exactly what I meant. You're always doing something, going somewhere, deciding something. Nobody understands any of it, but it all seems terribly important. Now, if you were like Ernie, pulling a silly face and biting your tongue in concentration when he gets absorbed in something, you'd give off a different impression entirely. But as it is — pure 'Your Lordship'. So, a house, then..."
Hannah studied the still-unfinished schematic carefully, on which only the ground floor and cellars were fully complete, though certain features hinted at a second floor and a roof still being worked out.
"You don't do things by halves, do you."
"You're not the first to tell me that. You also think I should've started with something more modest."
"Building a house is usually a hugely expensive undertaking. But then, I suppose, given that it's you doing it... Well, I'm sure you'll manage to work something out, even in this case."
"You're right. I'll manage."
"Then there's no problem, is there. People start small not out of some whim, but because they can't manage anything bigger or better."
Hannah finished her drink — a calming one, incidentally, and one that helped structure one's thoughts. She set the mug down on the table, covered a yawn with her hand, and got up from the table.
"I'm off to bed."
"Goodnight."
Hannah left, and I was once again alone in my armchair by the fire, working on the schematic and mulling things over as I went. What sort of "thing" could one make out of the skeleton, exactly? Turn it, eventually, into something entirely new, or fashion some equivalent of a bone dragon, only in serpent form? And so what if I didn't remember the actual technique for making one? What mattered was knowing what the final result ought to look like. Given the knowledge and a rough sense of the finished product, one could always work out the path to get there.
I sat like that for about an hour, finished transferring one of the house's walls from memory onto the three-dimensional projection, and then went off to bed, since tomorrow, as ever, promised to be a long day.
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