Defense Against the Dark Arts office, candlelight flickering.
Gilderoy Lockhart tossed a pair of flashy golden spectacles onto the desk, picked up his peacock-quill pen, and started scribbling furiously in the battered old diary. He wrote everything: Dumbledore announcing the monster was a basilisk, the professors sweeping the castle, the emergency distribution of protective glasses made with thestral tail hair…
The reply appeared almost instantly.
"Glasses don't change a thing. We were only planning to petrify kids anyway. Now the glasses just save us the trouble of hunting for puddles or mirrors to kill through reflection. And that student named Lucien? Ignore him. He's irrelevant to the plan."
Inside the diary.
Teenage Tom Riddle toyed with an identical pair of golden glasses.
He turned them over in his pale fingers, black eyes cold and flat.
"Thestral tail hair…"
He flicked the glasses into the air and caught them again.
"First he supplies mandrakes and speeds up the petrification cures, slowing the panic. Now he hands out these little toys…"
Tom's voice stayed perfectly calm.
"Lucien Grafton is starting to get on my nerves."
But the irritation lasted only a second. Tom had bigger things to worry about: stockpiling life force until he could rebuild a real body.
Once he had flesh again, everything else would fall into place.
Priority one: send the basilisk after Harry Potter.
Dealing with the annoying Lucien kid? That could happen on the side.
And these glasses?
Tom closed his fist. The golden frames shattered into drifting sparks.
"Even if they really can block the basilisk's gaze and stop instant death—so what?"
The basilisk could crush a human body under one coil, its venom could melt bone, and its scales shrugged off most curses like raindrops.
"When the time comes and a crowd of panicking children is running around, the basilisk won't even need its eyes. One sweep of its tail, one spray of venom—massacre achieved."
Tom leaned back in the imaginary headmaster's chair, relaxed.
"I hope Lucien sticks close to Harry Potter when that day comes."
He pushed the distractions aside and wrote again:
"My friend, the plan continues unchanged. How's the collection going on that temporary magic-boosting potion I gave you the recipe for? The one that makes spells extra flashy—vital for your heroic entrance."
Outside the diary.
Lockhart grinned as the new words appeared.
"Oh, don't worry! I'm almost done—only one tiny ingredient left!"
Total lie. He'd finished brewing it weeks ago. Tested it on a toad; the thing had bounced around like it drank twelve cups of coffee. Seemed harmless—just a stamina and power booster, exactly like Tom said.
Even though Tom had been nothing but helpful, Lockhart still didn't fully trust anything he was supposed to drink.
Sometimes Lucien gave him the creeps—like the kid could see straight through all his smiles—but most of the time the boy acted normal enough.
Lockhart scratched the back of his neck (weird itch) and kept writing.
Unseen above him, a tiny spider hung upside-down on a thread of silk, eight eyes staring fixedly at the diary and the draft on the desk.
A microscopic black vortex swirled in midair. Every word on the page appeared clearly in Lucien's vision hundreds of yards away.
A magic-boosting potion, huh? Interesting.
———
Storm raging—heavy rain, thunder, lightning cracking the sky.
Lucien strolled down the corridor, silver-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, dark green eyes scanning the passing students through the lenses.
Thanks to the professors, every kid in the castle was now wearing either thestral-hair glasses or invisible protective contacts.
"Lucien," Harry asked nervously, pushing his own round glasses up, "is something big about to happen again?"
He couldn't explain it, but the last few days he'd felt the same crawling dread he'd had right before facing Quirrell last year.
"Yeah," Ron chimed in, rubbing at his eyes (he'd gone with the contacts and hated them). "Curfews, canceled Quidditch—is this all because of the Chamber?"
Even Ron, who could be thick as a troll sometimes, had noticed the castle feeling like a powder keg. The weather outside wasn't helping.
Hermione, who'd been quiet until now, suddenly looked straight at Lucien.
"These glasses—are they because the monster in the Chamber kills with its eyes? I read about creatures that can injure or kill just by looking at someone…"
Lucien gave her an approving nod. Smart girl, and she reads everything. In the original story she was the one who first figured out it was a basilisk.
"You're exactly right. The monster in the Chamber is—"
Harry suddenly clapped both hands over his ears, face twisting in pain and terror.
"It's back… that voice… I can hear it again!"
Lucien shut up. He heard it too—not Parseltongue, but thanks to the unicorn blessing he could understand animals just fine.
A thick, wet, slithering scrape echoed faintly from inside the walls.
Lucien's pupils spun into black vortexes behind his glasses. He snapped his head toward the end of the corridor.
Evil, ice-cold magic was moving fast inside the walls—no, inside the castle's ancient plumbing.
Here it comes.
Silver-black wand slid into his hand with a flick of his wrist.
Lightning split the sky outside. Thunder BOOMED so hard the windows rattled.
At the exact same moment—
KABOOM!
The stone wall at the end of the corridor exploded outward in a web of cracks. Dust and chunks of rock rained down.
Lucien's wand was already moving. A wave of gentle but unstoppable force wrapped around the nearest confused students and shoved them safely backward.
At the same time his left hand slapped his robe pocket.
A streak of black-red shot out with a screech, rocketing toward the collapsing wall.
BOOM!
The entire wall blew apart in a second, violent explosion. Smoke and debris filled the hallway like fog.
And in the churning dust, two enormous yellow lanterns blazed to life—cold, deadly, the size of dinner plates.
A bone-chilling hiss filled the air as massive emerald-green scales flashed in and out of view.
Just as those lethal eyes were about to emerge fully—
KRA-KOOOOOM!!!!
A colossal explosion detonated right in the center of the smoke.
Raw magical backlash erupted like a shockwave.
The gigantic creature that had barely revealed itself roared in pain, got blasted backward, and smashed straight through the side wall and out into the storm.
In the settling dust stood a sleek alchemical puppet—black and red metallic sheen—now calmly at Lucien's side.
Its left arm was scorched and warped from channeling way too much power in one burst. The Philosopher's Stone embedded in its chest pulsed angry red.
Overload damage. Still need to work on the energy conduits.
Lucien sent a silent command. Without hesitation the puppet stomped once, turned into a black-red comet, and punched through the broken wall after the basilisk.
Its job: drive the snake out onto the open grounds where there was room to fight.
Lucien flipped his wrist; several vials of petrification antidote appeared. He shoved them into Harry's arms.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione were still frozen, mouths open.
"Some kids got hit anyway—go check on them!"
Even with the glasses, a few unlucky students had been too close and caught enough of the basilisk's gaze to turn to stone.
Instructions fired off rapid-fast, Lucien was already walking toward the gaping hole in the wall. Rain and wind howled in.
"Wait—Lucien, what are you doing?!" Hermione yelled, snapping out of it first.
Too late. Under their horrified eyes, Lucien stepped off the edge and dropped out of sight.
"I'm off to protect the future of the wizarding world."
His voice floated back up, perfectly calm.
The trio lunged to the edge, hands outstretched—
WHOOSH!
A blast of wind knocked them back. Then a dazzling golden shape burst upward through the storm, lightning crackling around it.
Harry, with the best eyes, caught a glimpse: an enormous, majestic bird wreathed in electric arcs, Lucien riding on its back, already streaking toward the lawns outside the castle.
"Harry!" Hermione grabbed his arm like a vice. "That voice you heard—it was Parseltongue! The monster is a snake—a basilisk!"
Everything clicked in her brain in under two seconds: the eyes, the petrifications, Harry hearing voices in the walls…
"We have to get the professors—NOW!"
Harry and Ron didn't need telling twice.
Harry shoved the antidote vials at a terrified nearby second-year. "Get these to the petrified kids!"
Then the three of them bolted in opposite directions down the corridor.
One person going to find a teacher was too slow—splitting up was fastest.
They had to get help.
They had to save Lucien!