"It's--I--oh, take it, I don't want it anyway, I hate it!" She grabs the black book from her schoolbag, shudders, and flings it at McGonagall, then turns to the nearest wall and collapses against it.

McGonagall levitates the book before it hits her, plucks it from the air--

And tosses it onto the conference table, shaking her hand as though bitten. "This is some extremely Dark magic," she murmurs. "Why Albus had to be at the Confederation this week of all weeks . . ." She starts moving her wand in complex patterns over the book and incanting something which, if Cam understands Latin, is gibberish that resembles a lot of words related to perception and detection.

Ginny turns slowly away from the wall, muscles twitching and clenching against each other, face slack and expressionless. She hisses like a snake and lunges for the book.

WOW okay how about her ankles and wrists are all tied together now, he doesn't know if drugs work on wizards. She can crash into a pillow here.

WHUMP. Facefull of pillow. Incoherent noises.

"That was Parseltongue--she said 'Come to me' and then 'Kill!'"

McGonagall opens the door to the common room and says, "Everyone into your dormitories immediately! Stay there until I say otherwise!" Students grab their things and start dashing up the stairs.

"Is there no plumbing in the dorms?"

"There is, but the wards are especially strong there. I hope it will be forced to come through the portrait. Mister Potter, go upstairs!"

"I think it is headed for the portrait--Professor, maybe I can talk to it, tell it to stop--"

He's cut off by McGonagall levitating him up the stairs and shutting the door behind him. She looks at Cam, seems about to say something, then thinks better of it and turns back to the entrance, wand out and face stony below the mirror shades.

Cam makes little dioramas of the basilisk's location. "Should Ginny also be upstairs, or...?"

"It shouldn't target her while she's controlling it, but it's not worth the risk." Ginny gets silencio'd and sent up the other staircase.

The basilisk has exited the plumbing and is heading up a familiar set of stairs and hallways. Very quickly.

"Here it comes."

CRUNCH.

There's a dent in the wall around the portrait hole.

CRUNCH.

The wall is a web of cracks.

CRUNCH.

A massive coil of scaly muscle busts through into the common room.

The thing is supposed to be able to talk, more or less, and Cam doesn't know how to go pharmacologically nonlethal. He settles for standing in front of Lockhart and being ready to interpolate it if McGonagall doesn't have an idea.

McGonagall has lots of ideas! She's casting multiple spells a second, beams of light and detonations and spikes shooting up from the flagstones to form a barrier of needles. 

None of it works. The wall of scales shrugs off the spellfire and crushes the spikes like so much rock candy. 

The King of Serpents draws back for a moment, but only to reposition itself. Here comes the head!

The head is going to separate from the body now.

The scales actually sort of manage to hang together around the interruption, but apparently it never occurred to evolution and/or dark wizards to armor the insides separately from the outsides. Now there is a dead snake pouring gore from its neck. 

(Lockhart uncurls a bit from where he had been curled up in the corner of the room.)

McGonagall takes a moment to breathe, then starts vanishing the blood and looks over at Cam. "That was you, I take it? One hundred points to--excuse me. Thank you for your prompt intervention."

"It wasn't that prompt, I was hoping you had a way not to kill it, since it talks."

"I'm not sure it could actually use language in the way humans can. Regardless, I fear I didn't have a way to subdue it fatally or otherwise. You saved a lot of students today."

"Incidentally, you have the right to the corpse. It's quite valuable; practically every part of a creature this magical has its uses in potionmaking."

"I do not know how to make potions. I suppose I could find a use for currency."