Basilisk, Contract, and Horcrux (I)

Carmichael knew what this was. It was the awe humans felt when facing a natural disaster—something that seeped from the marrow, uncontrollable, leaving them unable to even conceive of resistance.

He took a deep breath and forced himself to look away from Madara's back. Then he glanced at the Basilisk. The thirty-foot-long, nearly thousand-year-old legendary magical creature of Hogwarts was now pressing its head to the ground, its eyes shut, its body trembling slightly like an earthworm with its weak point pinned down.

Carmichael suddenly felt that the Basilisk was not so terrifying after all. Or rather, before Lord Madara, anything "terrifying" became unfrightening, because Lord Madara himself was the definition of "terrifying."

Madara took another step forward. This step was lighter than the last, yet the Basilisk's head abruptly sank lower. It was not lowering its head; its neck simply could no longer support it. That invisible, intangible yet undeniably real "weight" pressing down from Madara bore upon its head, its neck, its spine, like an enormous, cold, unseen hand pinning its head and forcing it down.

The Basilisk's head was now completely flattened against the floor. Its mouth was still open, but its jaw was pressed to the ground, its teeth sunk into the thick, slimy secretion, unable to pull free.

It was not that it wanted to lie there—it simply could not lift itself. Madara's overwhelming presence was like an invisible mountain crushing down upon its head, shattering every thought of resistance. The hissing from its mouth turned into whimpers—not the sharp, aggressive hiss of metal scraping glass, but low, pleading whimpers squeezed from deep in its throat, like a dog whose tail had been stepped on.

It wanted to run, but it did not dare. A serpent's instincts told it that when faced with a predator