Chapter Text
Nymphadora Tonks could be terrible at stealth, if it was the kind that involved moving quietly. Luckily, while her own movements tended to be loud and clumsy, Tonks knew her way around the school almost as well as the Weaselys.
Hogwarts had been shut down for the past week. A basilisk was no laughing matter after all; aurors and unspeakables were doing their best to move through the castle in systematic sweeps. Of course, the castle was designed to confuse invaders, and it seemed to view combat-trained witches and wizards looking to unearth one of it’s founders’ secrets as just that.
On a good day, they could access half the castle at a time.
On a bad day, staircases moved half-way through a group, meaning several aurors had to wander back to the Great Hall alone.
Today was decidedly a bad day.
And damn it, if she had to pass stupid Myrtle’s bathroom one more time trying to make it to the stairs, Tonks was going to stomp in there and curse the ghost to death all over again.
That thought slowed her down. Wait. As part of the run-down before Moody let her join the basilisk-hunting trip (given he could see through walls, sending Moody would just be a waste of Mandrake Drought) Tonks had read profiles on all the ghosts. The file on Myrtle was far thinner than the others, partially, Moody claimed, because she was killed after his time but before he hit his stride in the office.
Tonks had only made the mistake of using that bathroom once in her own schooling, and remembered what Myrtle looked like. Pale, of course. But no discoloration to suggest poison, no blue lips to suggest asphyxiation, no bloody wounds. It was as if…
As if the ghost just fell over and died.
Tonks quickly turned around, returning to the bathroom.
Myrtle was killed during the last Chamber incident, but if she had been killed by Argog, she would show distinctive black veins. But she didn’t. In fact, Myrtle looked to be in perfect health, meaning that she was likely killed by the basilisk. How the hell had nobody remembered the contemporary witness right under their…
Tonks was unable to finish the thought as she slipped on the flooded floor and slid across to the sinks. Groaning, the trainee pulled herself up, bending over the sink in front of her and waiting for the dizziness to pass. Dumb clutzy feet.
“That tap’s never worked.” Myrtle complained. Tonks just sighed. Great way to start the conversation with the morose spirit, sliding on her ass.
Tonks mentally prepared herself for the trial that would be interrogating Myrtle, and then opened her eyes.
Two tiny emeralds in a carved, diamond-shaped head stared back.
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That year, a team of over a dozen aurors, five unspeakables, and seven representatives from the ICW, and two ‘personally invested civilians with relevant experience’ succeeded in killing the largest basilisk in recorded history. The group did so by covering the room in roosters, asking the ICW representative from India (where parslemouths were more common) to open the statue’s mouth, and then hitting the fowl with so many tickling charms they had no choice but to caw.
The group, led by Kingsley Shackbolt, came to be known as the Basilisk Brigade, identified by their distinct, scaly coats. Of interest was the fact that all of the aurors either trained directly under, or were trained by someone who was in turn trained directly under one Alastor Moody.
Although Mad-eye himself could not participate on account of his prosthetic, the group did publicly present their senior auror with a coat made of the beast’s skin, matching those commissioned for each participant. The presentation was accompanied by dozens of heartfelt speeches about the man’s caring nature and kind tutalege in the middle of the Ministry lobby.
Years later, when Moody finally retired, the DMLE’s pensive would be put to great use examining all the looks on the man’s face.
Trainees in later generations, including the twins Alastor and Remus Potter, took copious notes of the curses Moody used against Sirius and Remus when he discovered the coat was pranks.
Lily and Molly Potter, as well as James Black and Edward Tonks-Lupin grew up amongst prank war that ensued, a chain of hilarious, harmless attacks that would last generations more and eventually encompass most of Hogwarts, half the Ministry, and would reach as far as the continent.
When the muggle world eventually found out about the wizards among them, the integration was peaceful and bloodless. After all, the muggles reasoned, how ready for combat could an entire society embroiled in a permanent prank-war be?
This logical fallacy was called into question years later, when two countries went to war, and their magical populations managed to divert a nuke strike. The Supreme Mugwump of the ICW, one Arthur Granger-Lovegood said, in a statement, “Of course we know how to diffuse those things! And yes we have divinators constantly monitoring the world’s most powerful weapons depots. Moody’s law, ‘CONSTANT VIGILANCE!’ and all that.”
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Platform 9 ¾ was filled for what would be the final time of this school year, and all parents were excited to see their children home. Especially considering the upheaval of the last few months.
First, there was the possessed teacher at Hogwarts. At the time, the DMLE kept the spirit’s true identity “under wraps”, but that was now no longer necessary. The anchors Voldemort used to keep himself bound to the world of the living were all destroyed. The public had few details on what they were, but they knew one had been used to open the Chamber of Secrets, in which a basilisk was hidden. That basilisk was sent out to petrify (and possibly kill) students by a first-year that got possessed by one of the aforementioned anchors. The first-year’s identity was being kept strictly private, but speculation was rampant. Many suspected one of the Death Eater’s children. It would be poetic justice, after all.
(The Grangers knew this was untrue, but when Madam Bones told them what had happened to Hermione, they made a deal with their daughter; she got to stay at Hogwarts as long as she cooperated with her therapist and didn’t tell anyone what happened until after everything died down.)
The gossip ground to a halt for a few minutes as the scarlet steamer pulled in. Children exited quickly and with much fanfare, the pureblood families (what was left of them) whisking their children away immediately, and the muggle-borns and halfbloods creating a traffic jam for the gate, everyone eager to get home.
Nobody paid any mind to the two Hufflepuffs who ran to a group of four adults, one woman and three men, or when Harry Potter called Mad-eye Moody “Gramps”. After all, with Voldemort gone for good, the young boy was guaranteed a long, Death-Eater and heroism free life.