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Later, when all the fuss had died down, people started to wonder why they hadn’t seen it before. It wasn’t as if anything Harry Potter said was new information, really. They’d all heard rumors about it, and in some cases been privy to the events in question. They just… hadn’t put all the pieces together.
The Sunday a week after the drawing of the Tri-Wizard champions was a normal day, with students taking advantage of the still-decent weather to spend time outside – the OWL and NEWT year students with books in their laps and taking notes as they read – while the staff did their best to catch up with marking and prepare for the next week. The rhythm was no different for the visitors from Durmstrang Academy and Beauxbatons Academy, though they still tended to keep to themselves.
Thus, it was hardly surprising that no-one realized until later that Harry Potter hadn’t been seen all day. The fourth champion had been keeping to himself in the wake of the Hogwards-wide displeasure the students – including his own house – weren’t shy about expressing, to the extent that he was rarely seen outside classes and meals.
Thus, it was something of a surprise when, as pudding was being served at the end of the evening meal, a muddied, grim-faced Harry Potter stalked into the Great Hall.
His magic swirled around him, crackling and leaving eddies of power in his wake as he made his way to the High Table, walking between the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables. Conversations fell silent as he passed, and students looked at each other, shocked and unable to bring themselves the break the growing, oppressive hush.
Professor Snape started to stand, fell back with his mouth moving but no sound coming out. Had any of the students chanced to look that way, they would have seen all three Heads of the schools struggling to rise from their respective seats. With one of said Heads being the redoubtable part-Giant Madame Maxime who had presumably inherited at least some of the magical resistance of her ancestors, this was beyond shocking and verging on impossible.
If Harry Potter noticed, he didn’t show it.
At the Head Table, he turned, removed something from his pocket, and hissed.
The thing in his hand began to expand as he continued hissing and floated to lie on the floor between the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw tables. In the space of a dozen heartbeats it grew to a positively gargantuan serpent, its dark green skin smeared with black mud, its body taller than most of the first years, and its eyes a bloody ruin. The thing’s head was taller than Potter, and none who saw it could doubt that it could have swallowed the Gryffindor boy whole.
It was so long its body curled around the Ravenclaw and Slytherin tables before stretching almost the whole bay back to the High Table.
By then, the silence had been shattered by the screams of almost every person in the Great Hall.
Harry Potter smiled, a small, ironic twist of his lips, then let off a cannon blast charm.
“Thank you.” His voice sounded oddly loud in the silence. “She’s dead. She’s not going to hurt anyone unless you make the mistake of getting too close to her fangs.”
The more curious students who had been leaning towards the many-fanged mouth jerked back as if they had been scalded.
“Now, I killed this wee beastie in May of 1993 – nearly eighteen months ago.” Potter’s calm seemed at odds with his words. “How many of you have heard me boast about it, hm?” There was venom in that comment. “Slytherins, Ravenclaws, those of you who are near the head table can see she’s got a fang broken in two. I’ve got a nice matching scar nearly the width of my arm where it went in and hit bone.”
More than a few girls looked rather green at that notion.
“Lucky for me, the Headmaster’s phoenix cried into the wound and healed me, or I’d be dead.” He paused for a moment. “Of course, the question of how the phoenix knew to come to help me and why he didn’t bring the Headmaster is one I doubt you’ll ever get answered. He’ll twinkle at you, offer a lemon lolly, and change the subject with something that sounds profound but doesn’t actually mean anything.”
Those who thought the Boy Who Lived was the ultimate Gryffindor and had no idea what sarcasm was found themselves having to revise that idea. They got even more evidence they didn't know Potter when he said, “Speaking of which, how many of you lot who accused me of being responsible for the petrifications bothered to apologize when you learned I wasn’t the culprit?”
Impossibly, his magic grew even heavier, freezing everyone in the hall. They could blink and move their eyes, but nothing more.
Potter chuckled darkly. “Yeah.” He sneered. “If I really was the attention-seeking braggart you’re trying to paint me as, wouldn’t I have told the entire world about this?” He gestured towards the massive serpent carcass. “It would have made headlines. ‘Boy-Who-Must-Be-Hyphenated Slays Biggest Basilisk Ever Recorded’.” He glared in the direction of the Gryffindor table, where his (former) best friend Ron Weasley was slowly turning very nearly as red as his hair. “For that matter, if I’m turning Dark and on my way to being the next Dark Lord, why are the lot of you doing everything you can to put yourself on my personal shit list?”
Apart from a choked sound from Professor McGonagall, even that comment wasn’t enough to break the stillness.
The boy shook his head. “You disgust me. All of you. And make no mistake, there will be a reckoning.” There wasn’t anything remotely friendly about his smile. “After all, thanks to our esteemed Headmaster –“ The level of sarcasm in that comment was something previously thought to be achievable only by Professor Snape. “- I was raised by the muggle equivalent of Death Eaters. And treated as their house elf. That means, for those of you who can’t manage an independent thought, that as far as I’m concerned, anyone who reminds me of them is vermin to be exterminated.”
He hissed again, and the massive snake shrank and floated to his hand. He slipped it into his pocket. “Have a good evening.” He gave a short bow to the Head Table, and another to the students. Then, with a hiss, he disappeared.
As soon as his magic was out of the Great Hall, people were on their feet, shouting, screaming – and in Professor Snape’s case, taking a positively obscene number of points from Gryffindor, none of which were reflected in the House hourglass. No-one knew how Potter had disappeared from Hogwarts. Nor did anyone have any idea where he went.
Everyone who was in the Great Hall that night was certain of one thing, though.
Harry Potter was terrifying.