In Horace Slughorn's defence, he couldn't have known that all this would happen. All he had wanted to do was play match-maker between his two favourite students, Tom Riddle and Artemis Potter.
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----------------------> LIFE, IT TURNED OUT, GOES ON. There was no cosmic rule that granted a person immunity from the details just because they had come face-to-face with a catastrophe. They still had to get up from bed, letters to home needed to be written and dinner needed to be eaten.
However, there was a notable change in three people in particular. Gen, Artemis and Bilius were a mess.
Gen had mascara-stained tears on her cheeks as an occasional hiccup escaped her lips every now and then, sitting on one of the chairs beside Roman's bed while Bilius had cried himself to sleep the previous night, blaming himself for the entire thing.
Bilius had left Roman alone for barely thirty seconds to use the toilet and by that time, Roman had already been attacked, lying motionless on the cold, shiny floors of the Ravenclaw locker room.
Roman's attack had proved three things. The first was that the Heir of Slytherin, as suspected, wouldn't harm purebloods, as seen by the way he waited patiently for Bilius to step out of view before attacking Roman. The second was that Salazar's pet monster was capable of either disguising itself or hiding in plain sight since neither Roman nor Bilius had seen anything suspicious when they entered and the third was that the Heir of Slytherin was a stone-cold bastard who deserved to rot in the fields of punishments at hell.
While Gen and Bilius showed their emotions freely; Artemis, on the other hand, although she had initially cried, evolved to just stare vacantly at Roman's still form, her mind refusing to comprehend the fact that he had been petrified.
Petrified, not dead, like Walburga had cruelly led her to initially believe. Thank Merlin he was only petrified because that could be reversed. Death, however, couldn't.
Mandrakes had been planted earlier in the academic year so now, they were nearly fully grown. Professor Slughorn assured them that the mandrakes would be ready to harvest in another week's time and he would make the potions to revive their petrified state soon after.
Bilius refused to leave Roman alone in the hospital wing, forgoing to eat, while Artemis and Gen had to slowly be guided out of the infirmary and be reminded to eat food by their respective boyfriends.
Everybody was worried. At first, they had hailed the idea of standing together but now, considering all it took was less than thirty seconds for someone to be petrified, everybody was weary and more cautious than ever before.
A second attack meant that the Heir of Slytherin wasn't done with them yet and that he had no intentions of stopping, as seen by the way a Grace Givens, a Gryffindor prefect and muggleborn, was levitated to an empty hospital bed the very next morning after Roman was petrified.
At the same time, feelings of hostility reached a new high. Fights between Slytherin and the other three houses had broken out and accusatory remarks had been exchanged. After all, the other three houses had lost one of their members each while Slytherin had lost none and had been parading the hallways of Hogwarts without fear, confident that they wouldn't be harmed, unlike the rest. Also, after the revelation of the Heir of Slytherin coming from another house, members were distrusting of each other.
