"Parseltongue" and the Basilisk (I)

At two in the morning, Hogwarts' corridors were damp and clammy, like bones soaked in a water dungeon.

The magical torches had burned down to their lowest point, their flames shrunk to nail-sized specks as they barely clung to life in their iron brackets. The light they gave off could not even illuminate their own shadows. There was no one in the portraits on the walls—not because they were asleep, but because they had all left. Weeks ago, the people in the paintings had begun moving out of their frames, relocating to portraits higher up in the castle, safer ones far from the corridors.

Some said they had heard sounds inside the walls. Some said they had seen things they should not have seen. Some said nothing at all, merely turned their frames around to face the wall, with their backs to the world. Other than an even more unrestrained Peeves, there were barely any ghosts to be seen in the corridors anymore.

After Nearly Headless Nick had been petrified, the other ghosts fell silent. They no longer drifted through the corridors, no longer came out to join the festivities during banquets, no longer burst from the walls to scare students passing by. They hid deep within their own territories, like startled fish sinking to the bottom of the water, perfectly still.

Even when students occasionally passed through, they traveled in groups and deliberately made as much noise as possible, stomping the floorboards until they creaked, as though that could frighten off whatever monster might be lurking nearby.

The entire castle was gripped by this restless panic. Even during the day, everyone was on edge.

Eddie Carmichael walked through such a corridor without making a sound.

It was not because he deliberately softened his steps, but because his boot soles