The encounter with Luna Lovegood clung to Orion like a damp cloak. It was an anomaly in his otherwise perfectly structured universe.
He spent the entirety of the following day trapped within the architecture of his own mind, his Mind Arts working overtime to process the cognitive dissonance.
"Did you see Potter's face in Potions?" Draco crowed during lunch, practically vibrating with malicious joy. "Snape vanished his entire cauldron! Said it looked like swamp mud. He's losing it, Orion. The pressure of being the Heir is cracking him!"
Orion didn't respond. He methodically cut a piece of roast beef, his dark blue eyes staring blankly at his plate.
"Orion?" Draco waved a hand in front of his face. "Are you even listening to me? I said Snape gave him a zero!"
"I heard you, Draco," Orion murmured softly, his voice devoid of its usual sharp edge. "A zero. Riveting."
His lectures were a blank, he did not even recall when he went to a lecture and returned, much less which subject it was about.
That evening, tucked away behind the silenced velvet curtains of his four-poster bed, Orion stared at the ceiling, his hands laced behind his head.
"Okay, spill it," Sparkle's interface finally flared to life, a bright, demanding blue in the dim light. "You have been brooding all day. You ignored Draco's gloating. You barely blinked when Lockhart almost set his own cape on fire. It is completely unlike you. What is going on?"
Orion let out a long, slow breath, closing his eyes.
"I am bothered, Sparkle," Orion admitted quietly. "And I don't know why."
"It's the Lovegood girl," Sparkle diagnosed instantly. "The Nargles speech."
"Yes," Orion frowned in the dark.
"Are you planning to do something about it?"
"That is the crux of the problem," Orion sat up, leaning against the headboard. "Typically, this does not concern me. I am not a prefect. I am not a Gryffindor crusader. Defending a Ravenclaw outcast against her own housemates yields zero strategic benefit for me."
He picked up his wand, twirling it restlessly between his fingers.
"The most efficient course of action would be to anonymously inform Professor Flitwick," Orion reasoned aloud. "Let the Head of House deal with the bullies. But it won't work. The bullying is insidious—stolen shoes, jammed knockers, whispers. Luna herself won't report them because she believes it will only aggravate the 'Nargles'. And without her testimony or hard proof, Flitwick's hands are tied."
"So, you're going to let it go?" Sparkle asked gently.
"No," Orion's jaw tightened. "I am not going to leave it as is."
"Why? You just said it doesn't benefit you."
"Because it offends me," Orion stated coldly, his eyes flashing. "Draco is an arrogant bigot, yes, but he attacks people to their faces. He wants the glory of the fight. What those Ravenclaws are doing to Luna... it is cowardly. It is inefficient cruelty. They lock an eleven-year-old girl out of her own home in the freezing cold because she's different, and she just... accepts it."
He looked at his wand.
"I have a few things in mind," Orion murmured, a dangerous, calculating light entering his eyes. "But it requires a bit more planning to execute flawlessly. I cannot afford to be seen as a vigilante. It must be subtle. It must be devastating."
Later that night, the dormitory plunged into the heavy silence of deep sleep.
Orion was not asleep. He was sitting at the small desk inside his expanded trunk-study, bathed in the soft blue glow of his Ring of the Midnight Reader. He was meticulously writing a something on small pieces of thick parchment, his brow furrowed in concentration.
CRACK.
The sound was muffled by the trunk's enchantments, but Orion jumped slightly, his quill skidding across the page.
Dobby stood at the foot of the ladder, wringing his tea towel, his large eyes wide with frantic urgency.
"Master Orion!" Dobby squeaked, his voice pitching high with panic.
Orion dropped the quill instantly, the ongoing plan forgotten. The change in the elf's demeanor was all the confirmation he needed.
"Report, Dobby."
"The red-haired girl!" Dobby cried, hopping from foot to foot. "The Weasley girl! She has thrown the bad book away!"
Orion stood up, his heart hammering a sudden, heavy rhythm against his ribs. The waiting was over. The endgame had officially begun.
"Where?" Orion demanded, grabbing his dragon-hide boots.
"In the bathroom of the crying ghost!" Dobby pointed a trembling finger toward the ceiling. "On the second floor! Dobby watched her! She was very confused, Master! She was crying and shaking! She threw the book into the wet bowl! Then she ran!"
She tried to flush a Horcrux down the toilet, Orion thought, a hysterical bubble of laughter threatening to escape his chest. The sheer, mundane absurdity of it, but understandable.
"Good work, Dobby," Orion said, his voice dropping into a cold, focused register. "We don't have much time. Potter's narrative gravity will pull him to that bathroom sooner rather than later. The best time to secure it is tonight. Right now."
He pulled his dark, tactical robes over his pajamas. He strapped the Hawthorn wand into his forearm holster.
"Stay with me, Dobby," Orion instructed. "Keep yourself completely hidden. If I give the word, you pull us out. Understood?"
"Dobby understands! Dobby will be a shadow!"
The elf snapped his fingers, vanishing into thin air, though Orion knew his presence was still nearby.
Orion climbed out of the trunk, sealing it with a tap of his wand. He pulled the Marauder's Map from his inventory.
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."
The ink flooded the parchment. He scanned the second floor. Filch was on the fourth floor. Snape was in his office. The corridor leading to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom was blissfully, terrifyingly empty.
"Mischief managed."
Orion slipped out of the Slytherin dungeon, moving like a ghost through the cold, silent castle. He ascended the stairs, his breathing shallow and controlled. Every shadow looked like a basilisk; every creak of the floorboards sounded like a possibility for a petrifying gaze.
He reached the second floor. The corridor was damp, smelling of old stone and mildew.
He pushed open the heavy wooden door to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. It groaned in protest, echoing loudly in the stillness.
The bathroom was exactly as he remembered it from the Polyjuice incident—dimly lit by flickering candles, the mirrors cracked and clouded. The floor was covered in a thin layer of murky water.
There was no wailing. Myrtle was absent, likely having fled the moment Ginny hurled a book at her toilet.
Orion moved swiftly toward the stalls. He ignored the ornate, snake-carved sinks in the center of the room. His focus was entirely on the last cubicle.
He pushed the stall door open.
There, resting half-submerged in the U-bend of the toilet, was a small, unassuming black diary. Its cover was worn and wet, but Orion knew of dark magic that it contained beneath it's simple looks.
Orion didn't hesitate. He drew his wand.
"Tergeo," he murmured.
A cleaning charm washed over the diary, siphoning the toilet water and grime away instantly.
He reached out and plucked the book from the porcelain bowl. It felt unnaturally heavy in his hand, cold to the touch, like holding a piece of dry ice.
"Got you," Orion whispered, a fierce, triumphant grin breaking across his face.
He shoved the diary deep into the inner pocket of his robes, securing the clasp.
The Chamber was closed. The attacks were over. He held the key to the entire plot in his hand.
Orion turned to leave, his mind already racing with plans on how to study the Horcrux safely, when the silence of the bathroom was shattered.
It wasn't a simple voice. It wasn't a footstep.
It was a sound like a massive, wet sheet of canvas being dragged across stone. A heavy, slithering scrape that vibrated through the floor tiles and up through Orion's boots.
And then, a voice echoed from the very walls themselves. It was a cold, sibilant hiss, devoid of any human warmth, dripping with ancient, venomous hunger.
"...blood... I smell blood... let me rip... let me out..."
Orion froze. Every muscle in his body locked tight. The blood drained from his face, turning him as pale as a ghost.
Thanks to the All-Speak, it wasn't just hissing. It was a clear, decipherable threat of imminent death.
The Basilisk was awake. And it was moving through the pipes directly behind the walls of the bathroom.
Orion didn't look back toward the sinks. He didn't turn around to investigate the noise. His survival instincts, honed by a past life and a sharp intellect, screamed in absolute terror.
He slammed his eyes shut, squeezing them tight until he saw stars.
"Dobby!" Orion shouted, his voice ringing loud and frantic in the echoing bathroom, completely abandoning stealth. "Keep your eyes closed and take me out of here! NOW!"
He thrust his hand out blindly into the damp air.
He felt cold, spindly fingers close around his wrist with a grip like a vise.
The heavy, slithering sound grew slightly erratic, directly behind the central pillar of sinks. A sound like slamming of something on the walls happened, though there was no grinding sound, meaning the Chamber entrance had not opened, at the very least.
Orion felt the familiar, jarring compression of Apparition—the sensation of being squeezed through a very tight rubber tube.
The damp smell of the bathroom vanished, replaced instantly by the sudden, rushing displacement of air.