Being a Dog

"Incredible. Can our great headmaster see this?" Snape's sarcastic voice rang out. Aya poked her head out of the hole, her face dusty but expressionless. He went on, "Look, just look. A lovely Gryffindor student, working so hard to unclog the castle's drains in the middle of the night."

"You're welcome. It was my duty," Aya replied confidently. She kicked a few times, stepped on Xiaohua's back behind her, and climbed out of the hole. Her tail was wrapped around the big rooster, which had jumped down as soon as it emerged and was pecking at her tail fur in an attempt to escape.

"I wasn't praising you!" Snape seized Aya by the back of her collar, his face dark. "Now tell me, why were you digging a hole in the bathroom in the middle of the night? Myrtle said she went out for a little while and came back to find her home like this. Her tears have nearly flooded the Headmaster's Office!"

Once on the floor, the rooster began clucking and wandering around. Xiaohua shrank, crawled out of the hole, stretched, and began licking her wet paws.

"I was helping her renovate!" Aya struggled down to the floor and copied the rooster, holding her head high and puffing out her chest. Though the place was in ruins, she spoke with complete confidence. "This bathroom was so old. I was happy to help!"

"...I don't think Hogwarts has reached the point where it needs students to help renovate the castle, and... Miss Myrtle never requested a bathroom renovation." Dumbledore pushed up his glasses and looked Aya over. Aside from her slightly wet clothes, muddy shoes, and somewhat messy hair, there was nothing unusual about her.

"She never requested one?" Aya was a little surprised. Her eyes shifted, and she promptly turned the accusation around. "Then, Headmaster, you need to reflect on yourself. Have you never cared about how the ghosts live? Is that why they've never raised such a basic and reasonable request?"

"I don't think a ghost has any need for anything," Snape said, looking toward a bathroom stall to one side. Its door was half open, and there was a toilet inside. "A new model of toilet, perhaps?"

As soon as he finished speaking, a faint sobbing came from the stall.

"How rude, Professor Snape." Aya shook her head with a sigh and gave him a disapproving look.

Snape tightened his grip on his wand.

Tonight should have been a peaceful, quiet night, a rare chance to relax on a weekend. It was only the first week of term, and he had already finished marking those Trolls' homework. He had been reading a newly acquired guide to Potions when Dumbledore's Phoenix Patronus, which irritated him on sight, arrived at his office with a message.

Overtime, overtime, overtime!

Was he even getting paid extra for this overtime?

When he and Dumbledore followed Myrtle, who had reported the incident, to the abandoned bathroom on the third floor, they found that someone had violently smashed the sinks. Debris was scattered everywhere, and a dog hole covered in countless claw marks had been left in the wall.

Snape stared at the dog hole, finding it exceptionally familiar. The shape, the marks—he seemed to have seen them somewhere last term.

The schoolgirl ghost's weeping filled his ears as she recounted the tragic story of how her home had been broken into. If he might be frank, had the ghost not always liked to peep into the boys' bathroom at this hour, she wouldn't have had her home broken into without knowing who the culprit was.

"All right, miss, can you tell me why you were here tonight—and brought a chicken with you?" Dumbledore gently interrupted Snape's "spellcasting."

"...I was taking it for a walk! Free-range chicken tastes much better than caged chicken." Aya showed no guilt whatsoever. She nodded emphatically after saying it, only for the big rooster beside her to run over and peck her hard. "Ow—I'm telling the truth!" she said angrily, grabbing one of its wings.

"Ha, a Gryffindor miss who lies as easily as she breathes," Snape said mockingly. "Dumbledore, I still have a bottle of Veritaserum. I think you'll need it."

Aya pouted. How could keeping quiet about a quest count as lying?

She was embellishing the truth!

"I was eliminating a threat to the people!" Aya planted her hands on her hips. "That was the reward I deserved!"

"...What have you done this time?" Dumbledore asked.

"Unclogged the drains!" Aya said confidently. "I got rid of something that might have become drain poop. You really ought to reward me. I was making a contribution to the school."

Snape scoffed and folded his arms. "Impossible. House-elves clean the castle's regularly used drains. What could you possibly have cleared out?"

"Hehe..." Aya laughed without changing her expression. Snape felt as though his eyes had been assaulted and squeezed them shut. "You have to promise not to take my stuff, and then I'll tell you."

"...When have we ever taken your things?" Dumbledore took a deep breath. They had never succeeded in taking anything, all right?

"Trying to take them counts too." Aya wagged a finger.

Snape had grown impatient listening to her prattle on. Tonight was nothing more than another incident involving this beast person wandering around at night. He turned to go back and continue studying his new guide to Potions. Behind him, however, Aya saw Dumbledore nod and promise she wouldn't have to hand anything over, and happily boasted, "I got a red material. It said it was a Basilisk!"

Snape stopped in his tracks.

But then again...

There was no harm in listening a little longer.

Dumbledore's eyes widened. He had no attention to spare for who the "it" in Aya's words was, but—a Basilisk in the school?! He couldn't help looking toward the little hole behind him.

Aya thought the old headmaster really ought to get a pair of round glasses like Harry's. She hadn't expected Dumbledore, at over a hundred years old, to still be able to open his eyes so wide. Those half-moon spectacles weren't big enough!

The sobbing in the stall suddenly grew louder, then fell silent.

"It was incredible. It was the first time I'd seen such a big monster here, and it was pretty hard to beat. But Xiaohua and I took it down together." With one hand on her hip, Aya gestured with the other, making a grabbing motion as she chattered excitedly. "I figured the Basilisk was the loot. I couldn't find anything else in that place. How stingy. My first BOSS battle, and the only reward was the BOSS's body."

"Who knows whether what you're saying is true?" Snape said expressionlessly.

"Xiaohua and the rooster know?" Aya scratched her head, then realized something. "Merchant?"

"Buy!" Snape's voice was as resolute as if he were applying to join the Party.

"But it's too small in here. If I take it out, this bathroom really will need renovating." Aya wasn't worried about damaging public property; she was mainly worried they'd want her to pay for it afterward.

Her original plan had been to slip away immediately after the deed. There was no surveillance in the castle, and as long as Myrtle didn't come back, there would be no witnesses.

She hadn't expected Myrtle and the people she'd called over to catch her red-handed.

Snape signaled Dumbledore with his eyes. Dumbledore caught the frantic hint and suggested rather helplessly, "Then shall we go outside the castle and see your loot?"

"Sure! I need to return Hagrid's chicken anyway," Aya readily agreed. "Mr. Merchant, sorry for the trouble, but please clean up after me. I don't want to be fined." In front of the headmaster, Aya politely proposed a transaction between friends.

For the sake of the red material, Snape condescended to repair a bathroom—with a few Reparos.

After the three returned the rooster and reached an open patch by the Black Lake, Aya looked at the pitch-black sky and the two tall adults behind her, one in black and one in white. For some reason, she wondered if she had already been caught by the black and white guardians of the underworld.

"There's enough room here, isn't there?" Snape looked at the grass around them. They were already at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, and he could hardly wait. "Take it out."

Aya walked a few steps away and took out the Basilisk's corpse. The heavy thud as it hit the ground startled some birds in the Forbidden Forest into flight.

Dumbledore and Snape both hurried forward a couple of steps to examine it.

It was a Basilisk.

Its eyes were even still open.

Both adults knew about Basilisks. One had learned about them because of an ingredient in a lost Potions recipe he had come across by chance; the other had simply lived a long time and seen a great deal.

They both knew the Basilisk's weakness, and, remembering the rooster Aya had just returned, assumed its crowing had killed the Basilisk.

"Although a Basilisk appearing in the school is a failure of my duties as headmaster, but..." Dumbledore rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Miss Hawthorne, perhaps the next time you encounter something like this, you could tell the headmaster first?"

Aya pursed her lips. No way. If she had told the headmaster today, this Basilisk wouldn't have belonged to her.

What was hers would be hers in the end, and even if it wasn't hers, she could still try to make it hers. It wasn't about profit; it was simply in her genes to chase rewards~

"This Basilisk is too big." Snape sighed, for once. He wanted it but lacked the means. If he wanted to be a conscientious merchant, there was no way he could afford it. Fortunately, he was only a professor. He planned to take the long view and force himself to pay in installments with a clear conscience. "How about I take some venom first?"

"Sure~" Aya said happily. She could definitely make more money selling it in parts. Aya hinted furiously, "This is a red material, you know."

At the Basilisk's head, Snape conjured an iron bar to prop open its mouth and collect the venom. Dumbledore stood beside Aya and asked her how she had carried out her deed that night.

"Oh? You went down through the drain?"

"Oh—a very large room?"

"...And pillars with snakes coiled around them? What did the statue look like?"

"...You knocked the statue's head off?!"

"Otherwise, how could I have found the Basilisk?" Aya was a little puzzled. "That was the only place with an opening, and I didn't know how to open it. What else could I do but search for it physically?"

"..." Dumbledore felt his soul floating in the air. From Aya's description of the statue's appearance, he already knew who it was, and he also knew what that room was.

Although Hogwarts: A History was an ordinary introductory book, with quite a few copies in the school library, few students actually read it all the way through. Dumbledore, an outstanding former student of Hogwarts and its current outstanding headmaster, had naturally read it. One passage recorded information about the Chamber of Secrets.

According to legend, Salazar Slytherin, the Founder of Slytherin, had strongly opposed Hogwarts admitting Muggle-born wizards. These differences in belief had ultimately led him to part ways with the other three Founders of Hogwarts. When he left Hogwarts, he left the Chamber of Secrets behind, along with a terrifying thing inside it, so that, when the time was right, it would purge the school of everyone unworthy of studying magic.

But for centuries, everyone had believed it was only a legend—the Chamber of Secrets had never been opened. In all that long time, no information about it had been recorded anywhere else apart from that book.

Even Dumbledore had once dismissed it. His predecessors and the mischievous students who came flooding into the school each year had searched the castle countless times, and not one of them had found the Chamber of Secrets.

Seen that way, the Basilisk was very likely the terrifying thing from the legend... Judging by its length, it was at least a few hundred years old.

And it was very fitting for Slytherin.

"...So, Headmaster, you really should give me an award. If it weren't for me, that thing would have kept growing and clogged the school's drains sooner or later..." Aya muttered. As Snape tucked the Basilisk Venom away, he tossed her a large bag of Galleons.

"Perhaps..." Dumbledore said quietly, remembering the incident that had led to Hagrid's expulsion-Myrtle's death.

By the time Aya returned to her dormitory, it was already well past midnight. When Dumbledore escorted her to the common room entrance, he told her frankly that he would be keeping a close eye on her from then on.

Aya crawled into the common room with a pout, spent a long time washing and scrubbing in the washroom, then changed into clean clothes and lay down in her warm bed.

It was fine. Tomorrow was the weekend, and she could sleep in!

She could worry about being watched later. Harry still had his Invisibility Cloak, after all. At worst, she could borrow it once a week!

When Aya woke the next morning, she remembered that she hadn't finished yesterday's quest.

She had reached level thirty by defeating the Basilisk, but her progress on the quest to learn about it was still at zero. It wasn't a big problem, though. She had dealt with the major part, so what was this little bit?

When Aya sat with Harry and the others to pass the time the next day, they could all see that she was in a good mood.

"What did you do last night?" Harry asked curiously. Ron was slaughtering his Wizard's Chess pieces, and he needed a distraction. Ron looked over too.

Although Aya was rarely in a bad mood, they looked at her tail. It was wagging at least as much as it had last time in Diagon Alley.

Aya's tail paused. She raised her head and said with a perfectly straight face, "I went to be a dog last night."

"...What?" Hermione looked up from her book in confusion. She was sitting on the sofa beside them. "What dog?"

"Be a dog."

"What do you mean, be a dog?"

"Me."

"Be what dog?"

"...Hermione, has your brain been corrupted?" Ron asked worriedly. "If your brain's gone, we're all done for when finals come."

"I told you not to read too many of Lockhart's books." Aya shook her head. "Fortunately, I don't have much room to be corrupted."

"At least you know yourself." Ron pursed his lips and moved a piece in his hand. "Harry, I won again."

"Oh..." Harry let out a long sigh of disappointment, laboriously fished a piece of chocolate from his pocket, and tossed it to Ron. "Another game!"