Now that there are over twenty of these, I'm just going to make a post with links to each chapter (like what the Hoot Hoot News does)
Link to that: https://theowlhouse.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000000195081
Cw: Animal? abuse (the basilisks), (censored) swears
Vee was wandering the grounds of Hogwarts, realizing that today marked two years since her escape from the Emperor’s Coven. She transformed back into her snake-like form as easily as she breathed upon finding a nice spot near the forest to lie down. Vee breathed a sigh of relief, two years of freedom, two years since the Emperor’s Coven had been her, for lack of a better word, home. Two years… since she had seen any of her siblings.
As much as Vee didn’t want to admit it, part of her wanted to go back to the Coven for the longest time, just so she could be with her siblings. Sure, they had been held captive since birth, and had never so much as seen the sun before, they had each other, and Vee missed that. She wanted to find her four siblings.
“Well, yer an awfully interesting creature,” A deep, but warm voice said. “What’re ya doing here?”
Vee opened her eyes and saw a very large man standing over her.
“Oh, hi.” She said awkwardly, “Sorry, am I in your way?”
“It can talk,” she heard him mutter quietly.
“Not at all! I jus saw yeh over here an' thought I might wan' ter get a closer look. I've never seen anything like yeh before.” The humongous man said more audibly, “D’you have a name?”
“I’m Vee,” She said, “I’m a basilisk, we’re supposed to be extinct, that’s why you haven’t seen one of my kind before,”
“A basilisk?” The man asked, “Yeh look nothin' like a basilisk! I’ve dealt with ‘em before, basilisks are fifty feet long an' can kill with a stare. Since I'm still here, summat isn' adding up.”
“Well that isn’t right at all,” Vee pondered, “I’ve never heard of us being able to kill with only a glance, all we can do is steal magic and transform. That was enough for Witches and other Demons alike to want us all gone,”
“Witches an’ Demons?” He inquired, “Are yeh from tha' other place? The Demon Realm or summat like tha'?”
Vee nodded, then got up off the ground. “Actually, could you help me with something?”
“Tha' depends, wha' d'you need me ter do?” He asked.
“Well, two years ago today, I finally got free from the prison I was born and raised in, but I had to leave my siblings behind,” She fessed.
“Lemme guess, yeh wan' ter go find your siblings?” The absolutely enormous man said, “O' course I’ll help! that’s wha' I do, I help magical creatures. It’s literally me job.”
“By the way, if we’re working together, I should probably learn your name,” She figured.
“Rubeus Hagrid, at your service.” He introduced.
“Well, Hagrid.” Vee said, “First we have to get to the prison I came from, which is under the Heart of the Titan, in the Demon Realm.”
“Lead the way,” Hagrid said.
And so, Vee did. She led the way all the way from the Owl House to under the castle, where she and her siblings had been held.
“We actually have basilisks in the Human Realm too,” Hagrid explained on the way to the castle, “But they are nothin' like wha' you’re like. Basilisks in the Human Realm are vicious, bloodthirsty monsters on'y even capable o' birth if a toad incubates a chicken egg. They can kill with a direct glance, an' petrify if the glance is indirect, like through a camera or mirror. Their venom is one o' the most destructive things in the world, if yeh don’t get ter a hospital within minutes o' infection, you’re a goner.”
“Wow,” Vee said, “That’s crazy. Basilisks here are feared, for somewhat good reason. We’re the only things capable of stealing a Witch’s magic but doesn’t hunting us to extinction seem a bit too far?”
“Yer righ', tha' is too far.” Hagrid agreed, “Much the same has happened ter countless species in the human realm. Anything the wizards fear ends up dead. But they're important ter the ecosystem! yeh can' jus remove the apex predator an' 'spect everything ter be fine!”
They approached the monolith that had been Vee’s residence for far too long and might still be where the others were.
Vee spotted the door to the only staircase down. She opened it, the once-pristine marble staircase spiraled down and down and down, into what looked to be an endless abyss of darkness.
“Erm, I’m not too sure I can fit in tha’ door, is there another way in?” Hagrid asked nervously upon sight of it.
“You could just bust it down, no one’s gonna miss it,” Vee said, “No one’s lived in the castle since Belos was defeated. The United Isles Parliament unanimously agreed to leave the building for the Titan to reclaim,”
The half-giant burst through the brick wall surrounding the doorway.
“The Titan?” Hagrid asked, confused.
“The Boiling Isles are actually the skeleton of a massive creature, known as a Titan.” Vee explained as she started to descend the spiral stairs, “Since we all live on its corpse, it’s revered almost as a God to us. Luz actually had the pleasure of meeting him right before he passed on.”
“If we’re all on his corpse, then how did Luz meet ‘im?” Hagrid inquired, rightfully curious.
“You know, it was really unclear.” Vee said, her hand on her chin.
They started to descend the stairs to the deepest part of the basement. Unfortunately, the elevator had stopped working in the months since its abandonment.
Their altitude kept declining.
After about fifty steps, the entire building shook violently. Vee almost fell down the center hole of the spiral staircase.
“What was tha’?” Hagrid asked, “Are yeh okay?”
“Yeah,” Vee said, “I’m fine,”
They continued their descent, it was almost completely dark now. Vee was sure to be a bit more cautious and started to hug the wall a bit.
They went back to descending.
And going down.
About halfway down, or so Vee guessed, Hagrid asked another question. “If Basilisks were extinct for centuries, how did Belos bring yeh back?”
“I…” Vee paused, “I don’t want to think about that.”
They kept descending.
And going down the stairs.
And lowering their elevation.
And reaching lower and lower floors of the basement.
And then they went back to just plain ol’ descending.
When they were near the bottom, Vee saw a dim light.
Vee was so excited, she almost cried, “We’re almost-”
Before she could finish her sentence, the castle rumbled again, this time much more strongly. She started to fall down the center hole. Luckily, a hand the size of a trashcan lid wrapped around her gently, stopping her from falling.
“I gotcha,” He said softly.
They went back to going down the massive stairs.
Finally reaching the bottom of the massive stairs, Vee guessed that they were about a mile below the surface, the two of them saw five cells, labeled with Roman numerals in order from farthest to closest to the stairs. On the other side of the room, there was a desk covered in papers. Cell numbers I, II and V were empty. Vee was obviously free, one of the others must have been the basilisk that had invaded the schools and died at the hands of Luz and her friends. As much as she resented Luz for that, she did understand why it happened. The real mystery was the other missing Basilisk. What had happened to II?
Hagrid stopped and looked at the desk across the room from the cells. It was littered with open books and loose papers. Among them was also a stack of pictures, still kept in a closed bin. They seemed suspiciously dust-free.
Vee looked in the other three cells. Number four, a yellow basilisk, and the one closest in age to Vee was looking thinner than one of the Hogwarts Broomsticks, and number three wasn’t much better. Her red skin was tight against her small bones.
“Vee, yeh might want ter see this,” Hagrid said, grabbing a few of the books and shoving them in a few of his many, many pockets.
“Hagrid, you might want to see this,” Vee said in perfect unison with the enormous man.
Hagrid turned around first and saw what Vee had spotted. Her siblings were still locked up! As if on instinct, he went to free III and IV. The bars were like butter when faced with the raw strength that this man could produce. Within moments, her siblings were free.
Vee went in to embrace her sisters, but Hagrid stopped her. “Yeh can embrace each other later. Let’s get out of here first,” He said quickly, “Go ahead o' me, yeh can climb faster ‘n me.”
Vee followed his orders and transformed into a human form to climb the stairs faster. She sprinted up the stairs as fast as she could. Before she knew it, she had cleared all of those stairs like it was nothing. It must have taken a while, because it was completely dark outside, as though the sun had set three hours prior. (Glancing at her watch, that was pretty close to the truth, it had set two hours and forty-five minutes prior.)
She couldn’t believe it, III and IV were still alive!
Soon, Hagrid burst through the doorway, the remaining brick shattering on contact with his immense figure.
He set III and IV, they slithered toward Vee, who transformed from her human form back to her serpentine form.
They both embraced her in a hug. “Thank you, number V,” IV said.
“You’re welcome, Ivy,” Vee said, giving her sister a name, “And you too, Trey,”
Her siblings had names now, III was now Trey, and IV was now Ivy.
A man from the Human Realm had helped Vee with something she had never dared to do alone. For that, she was eternally grateful. If Hagrid ever needed help, Vee decided that she would be right there for him.
The post arrived a bit later than usual that day, but Hermione quickly found out why, about twice the usual amount of owls had flown in today, and half of them seemed to be coming straight for her. They dropped letter after letter after letter in front of her.
Hermione opened one of them, inside was a letter that seemed to be made of clippings from the Daily Prophet, rather than being handwritten.
You are a WickEd giRL. HaRRy PottEr desErves BetteR. gO Back wherE you cAME from mUggle.
“what?” Hermione asked, dumbfounded.
She opened another, and another, they all had similar messages.
HaRrY poTter cAn Do MuCh bEtTEr than ThE liKes of yOu
You dEseRve TO be bOilEd iN FrOg SPawn
iF yOurE gOinG to BE a CoMMon wH**E, mAybE cHoOse tO mEss wiTH bOys wHo aReNT fAmOUs
HarRy pOtTEr hAs gOne ThrOugH eNougH, sTop tOyiNg wITh hiM yOu sL*T
“They’re all like it!” Hermione cried desperately.
“Ouch!” She yelped after opening another. Her hands were covered in a yellow-green liquid that smelled like gasoline and stung like hand sanitizer on an open wound. Her hands began to erupt into large yellow boils.
“Undiluted Bubotuber pus!” Ron shouted, recognizing it immediately.
Hermione tried to rub the tears out of her eyes with a napkin, but her hands were so thickly covered in yellow sores that she looked like she had a pair of thick, knobby leather gloves on.
“You’d better get to the Hospital Wing,” Harry advised, “Amity, you’re in the healing track, right?” Amity nodded, “Go with her to make sure it doesn’t get too much worse.”
Hermione got up and started to run out of the Great Hall. Amity followed her closely.
“Hermione, are you okay?” Amity asked as they walked to the Hospital Wing.
“Yeah,” Hermione lied as she failed to wipe the tears from her eyes again. “I’m fine,”
Amity seemed to not buy it for a second, but it did shut her up.
The boils did not seem to want to stop getting bigger, at this rate they were going to be bigger than her head by the time they reached the Hospital Wing.
She wasn’t far off with that guess, as it turns out. Her hands were only barely smaller than her head.
“What caused this?” Madam Pomfrey immediately interrogated, forcing her into the nearest bed.
“Bubotuber pus,” Hermione said, “I don’t think it was diluted in anything.”
“That’ll do it,” She said, grabbing a vial of a green liquid, “Good thing you came here quick, if it’s not treated quickly, Bubotuber pus can cause permanent damage and scarring, especially if it’s pure.”
“Is there any way I can help, Madam Pomfrey?” Amity asked in an extremely polite tone of voice.
“I’m sorry, but no,” She said, “I’m still not familiar enough with Demon Realm healing to trust it completely, especially when it comes to students. Bubotuber pus is very dangerous, if it’s treated improperly, the affected area can very quickly become dislodged, leaving a gaping hole in the body. I’ve seen what comes of people hit with it in unfortunate spots. I don’t think I reconstructed a single one of those faces to look the same as they did before, and I think only one of them had all of their facial organs keep working, all the rest went blind permanently, or deaf, or couldn’t smell, or-”
“I get it,” Amity cut off, “This stuff is dangerous. But she’s going to be okay, right?”
“Yes, but she won’t heal any faster if you keep pestering me,” Madam Pomfrey snapped. “Go back to breakfast, she should be out before lunch.”
“Amity, I’ll be fine,” Hermine assured, “Go back to breakfast, don’t miss class on my account. Madam Pomfrey has my complete confidence.”
Pressure from both of them made Amity finally drag herself out of the Hospital Wing, leaving Hermione and Madam Pomfrey alone.
“How did this happen?” Madam Pomfrey inquired, “What were you doing around this stuff? I thought you were smarter than this, Granger,”
“I didn’t mean to get it on me,” Hermione confessed, “I was opening my mail, and it splattered out of the envelope,”
“Why would Bubotuber pus be in your mail?” She asked reasonably.
“Hate mail,” Hermione supposed, “I got a bunch of other stuff too, ‘you deserve to be boiled in frog spawn’, ‘you are a wicked girl’, ‘you are nothing but a common sl*t’, and so on.”
“Is this because of that article that came out recently?” Madam Pomfrey asked.
“That would be the most logical conclusion,” Hermione said.
“Well, I want you to know that I don’t think that it was very honest journalism,” Madam Pomfrey assured, “I know you, and you aren’t the type of girl to do that sort of thing to the boys around you,”
The next few hours passed painfully slowly, but pass they did. Near the end of her second class, Care of Magical Creatures, Madam Pomfrey finally let Hermione out of the Hospital Wing. Her hands were bandaged so much that she still couldn’t use them.
Hermione raced outside to meet Harry and Ron for class.
“What’ve yeh done ter your hands, Hermione?” Hagrid asked when she arrived, his face full of worry.
Hermione told him about the hate mail and bubotuber puss.
“Ahh, don’ worry,” Hagrid reassured, “I got some o’ those letters too yeh know. After Rita Skeeter wrote abou’ me mum. ‘Yeh’re a monster an’ yeh should be put down’, ‘Yer mother killed innocent people an’ if you had any decency you’d kill yerself,’”
“No!” Hermione shouted, shocked.
“Yeah,” said Hagrid, heaving crates full of nifflers toward his cabin. “They’re jus’ nutters, Hermione. Don’ open ‘em if yeh get any more. Chuck ‘em straigh’ in the fire.”
The mail continued for several days. Hermione followed Hagrid’s advice. But more than a few of them were Howlers, which would explode at the Gryffindor table, shrieking insults for the entire hall to hear. Hermione was getting really sick of it all, it was starting to really hurt.
“It’ll die down,” Harry, Ron, Amity, and the others kept telling her, “If we just ignore it, people will get bored and move on,”
“I want to know how she’s listening in on private conversations if she’s banned from the grounds!” Hermione asked, infuriated.
She stayed behind in her next Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson, maybe Professor Moody had an answer.
“Well, she’s not using an invisibility cloak, I would have seen that,” Moody told her, “But there are lots of other ways you could eavesdrop on someone. Ways even my eye can’t catch.”
“Like what?” Hermione asked, her curiosity spiking.
“Oh, she could be using some sort of an eavesdropping charm, but those stay on one place, not person, so how would she have known where to place it to hear your conversation?”
“Couldn’t she have just placed one everywhere?” Hermione thought.
“Not likely,” Moody answered quickly, “It would take a lot of concentration to keep all that up. And even if she did, she would be so overwhelmed by the amount of things she would be hearing that there would be no way she could pick out yours specifically. Especially since it was probably a quiet talk.”
“What else?” Hermione asked.
“She could be using Polyjuice potion, pretending to be someone else,” Moody thought, his hand drifting to his hip-flask, “but that’s probably not it either.”
“Polyjuice potion is a real pain to make,” Hermione recalled, “And terrible if you get it wrong,”
“Exactly,” Moody replied, “Wait, how do you know about Polyjuice Potion? That’s N.E.W.T. level.”
“I read about it once,” Hermione covered. Of course, she had really done a lot more than just read about it, she had made it for Harry, Ron, and herself back when they were in their second year in order to sneak into they Slytherin common room.
“Thank you, professor,” Hermione stated, then ran to rejoin Ron and Harry.
“Well, Rita Skeeter’s definitely not using an invisibility cloak,” she told her friends through panted breaths. “Moody didn’t see her anywhere near the lake at all at the Second Task.”
“Hermione,” Ron asked, “Is there any point in telling you to drop this?”
“Nope!” Hermione said stubbornly, “I want to know how she heard me talking to Viktor! And how she found out about Hagrid’s mum!”
“Maybe she had you bugged,” Harry offered.
“Bugged?” Ron asked, “What, like, put fleas on her or something?”
Harry began to explain hidden microphones and the like.
Hermione sighed, “Aren’t you two ever going to read Hogwarts: A History?”
“What’s the point?” Ron asked, “You know it by heart, we can always just ask you,”
"Because muggle technology, electricity, phones, computers, that stuff, it all goes haywire around Hogwarts, there’s too much magic in the air. Rita must be using magic to eavesdrop, she must be… if I could just find out how… ooh, if it’s illegal, I’ll have her!”
“Do we have to start making a vendetta against Skeeter now too?” Ron asked, “Isn’t spew enough?”
“Firstly, it’s S.P.E.W, not spew,” Hermione corrected, “And secondly, no, I’m going to do this myself.”
She stormed off, it was time to check her favorite place in the entire castle, the library.