Heath’s mind was going a million miles an hour, trying to come up with a strategy even before Headmaster Trent uttered the word. His thoughts were so loud, they all but drowned out the headmaster. It took all the resolve he had to quiet them long enough to pay attention. Right, venom, size, intelligence, inability to be reasoned with… got it. A sudden pang of guilt gripped him as the headmaster brought up the kelpie lesson from four terms ago. No, he definitely wouldn’t be trying that strategy again! As of now, his only plan was to protect the girlfriend at all costs. The question was how?

He was still lost in thought as he joined Claudine, Jordyn, Charlie, and Gracelyn. Maybe if they disillusioned themselves, they could take the spiders by surprise. Then if they all cast Arania Exumai at the same time, maybe the combined force would take out more spiders than if they cast separately… or a distraction could work too. He blinked, jerked out of his thoughts by the conversation taking place around him, “That could work,” he said, thinking out loud as he spoke. “How would we produce an imitation of one of those things? Illusion charm?” Now that would be interesting… one illusion against another! Though he doubted any of them could cast an illusion charm strong enough to hold its own to the headmaster’s. “Maybe we could transfigure something to look like a human or dead spider…”

Then an idea suddenly occurred to him! “Wait, I just thought of something!” he said. “I remember reading that acromantulas are afraid of the basilisk, so what if we did an imitation of that? We could conjure a snake, make it look as much like a basilisk as possible, and put an engorgement charm on it. Then while the spiders are frightened, we hit them with everything we’ve got…” He nervously ran a hand through his hair as his voice trailed off. That idea made sense in his head, but it sounded completely mad when he said it out loud!