"Mr Diggory," Harry says quietly. He'd been talking with Dumbledore, McGonagall and Hagrid for a little while, talking to them about the spiders and how long they had been in the forest - Hagrid, who had been fidgeting guiltily throughout the entire conversation, had moved off quickly as soon as he was released from the conversation, but Harry knows Amos Diggory doesn't know the man that well, and he doesn't suspect he's put together that Hagrid was likely somehow responsible for them.

"Yes, yes, you're- oh, Harry Potter! Yes, yes, hello," Diggory says, voice a little stiff. "Yes, hello." Harry knows immediately that he'd read the Daily Prophet over his breakfast, his stiff expression obviously reveals. "Don't suppose you're here hoping I know some way to get you out of the competition?"

"No, I think me and Cedric will do fine winning," Harry says. Diggory scowls slightly. "I just wanted to ask, you know, if you wanted any more details about why the spiders fled." Diggory stares at him, eyes searching Harry's face from behind the thin glass of his spectacles, his ruddy face showing all the signs of complete confusion.

"Fled?" Diggory repeats, twisting his mouth. "Potter, the only thing they're fleeing is the environment. They're too big a colony for the Forbidden Forest, and they demanded the right to leave via the gate." Harry stares at him.

"Mr Diggory," Harry says very quietly, "what has the school mentioned to you about the things on the forest? The new things?"

"New things?" Diggory repeats, drawing out the G sound.

"The Basilisk?" Harry says simply, and Diggory stares at him, and then he scoffs.

"Very funny," he says dryly, and he turns to stalk off in the opposite direction, leaving Harry watching after him.

---

"Hi, Harry," Cho says as they meet on the stairs, and he gives her an awkward smile. Her robe is ripped on the left side, and white bandages are clinging to the leg on that side, neatly tied off in Madam Pomfrey's professional manner. Harry winces in sympathy, and she says, "It barely caught me, you know, but the venom... Madam Pomfrey's put in a topical antidote for it, so I just need to keep the bandage on until tonight. Cedric carried me into the castle - I felt like a real damsel." Harry laughs, and he passes her by on the stairs, heading up the stairs to the Gryffindor tower.

Harry keeps walking up the stairs, shifting the position of the library book in his hands, and when he gets to the portrait of the Fat Lady, she looks down at him with an expression of mixed affection and ire, one of her hands going to her hips.

"So, what's your name?" Harry asks, on a whim, and with an indignant gasp of horror, the portrait swings open without her so much as asking him for the password. Harry steps over the threshold, letting the Fat Lady draw shut behind him, and he scans the Gryffindor common room's ridiculously bright hangings and furniture for Hermione or the twins.

"You shouldn't be here," says a low, dark voice from the fireplace, and Harry meets the gaze of Seamus Finnegan. His lips are curled into a slight scowl as he glares at Harry, and folded across his lap is that morning's edition of the Prophet, this one, thankfully, without any mention of Harry on the headline, but instead focusing on the Acromantula.

"Don't worry about me, Seamus," Harry says dryly. "You just tell your mummy all about me, and she'll make it all alright." Finnegan stands, clenching his hands into fists at his sides, but a stout form steps between the two of them, and George pushes Harry by the shoulders towards the stairs.

"Come on," he says, sounding amused. "Hermione's already upstairs with us."

"Oh, good," Harry mutters. "It can be a foursome."

Hermione is sat cross-legged on Fred's bed, facing him but looking down at her lap. Furiously, she loops wool over the needles in her hands, and Harry can see the square of knitted yarn she has settled in her lap, soon to be one of the first of the Weasleys' magical hats. Fred is sprawled back against the footboard, and curled up with his great weight on Fred's broad chest is Crookshanks, purring like the engine in Uncle Dursley's car.

The Gryffindor dormitory is round with windows about the outside, and stationed between some of the windows are three huge, four-poster beds curtained in bright, bright scarlet. The beds of Fred and George are on the right of the door, and to the left is the one that Harry guesses belongs to Lee Jordan. It seems like the place is missing two beds, and set up where they would be is a big, square table with three chairs around it, books and papers scattered haphazardly across the surface. Except for the trunks at the ends of their beds and an end table for each boy, though, there's no other furniture, though in the centre of the room there's a round, red rug that seems to be glued down to the boards.

"I still don't understand why you don't have wardrobes," Harry mutters. "Or a chest of drawers, or something. It's a wonder you people take so long to pack up for the summer when you have to keep all of your stuff in your trunks." George sniggers, stepping inside and dropping on his back onto his bed, letting his legs hang loosely from the side, and Harry drops the book heavily onto his chest, stepping back and grabbing a chair from the table, settling himself between the two beds. George sits up, letting the book fall open at the page Harry had marked, and he scans the page, his lips twisted into a small frown. "I asked Amos Diggory what they were going to do about the Basilisk."

"And?" Hermione asks. For a moment, the needles freeze in her hands, and when she looks at Harry, he shakes his head slightly. She spits out a short curse, and drops the needles aside, clenching her fists and putting them in her lap. "He's such an idiot. All of these people are such idiots. People are going to get killed!" Her voice raises in pitch and volume at the end of the word, edging on hysteria, and then she breathes in, forcing herself to calm down a little. "What do we do now? The Basilisk- How are we meant to kill it?"

"It says that the cry of a rooster can kill a Basilisk," George says, looking down at the page. "But I bet stabbing it would work as well."

"It so often does," Fred agrees wisely, watching the movement of the tome as George passes it over to Hermione, and she traces the page with her finger as she looks through it.

"It says they can kill with just a look," Hermione says quietly, tapping the page with a fingernail. "At least we don't have to worry about that."

"Yeah, it's just Snape doing that around here for now," Fred agrees, scrunching up his nose as Crookshanks licks him across the chin. "You want to go through a plan, Harry?" When Fred looks at him, it's with complete and utter seriousness, and Harry gives a small nod of his head.

"If the Ministry won't think about it, I think we need to. And-" Harry frowns slightly, tapping his fingers on his leg. "It's becoming bolder. I think that's why the spiders left." Hermione gives a nod of his head, and reaches for a piece of parchment, ready to take notes, and the four of them lean in together to talk it through.