Hogwarts: I am Snape

Chapter 90 Nagini (4K)

"Bullarum!" Snape struggled to utter the Bullarum spell the instant he entered the water.

A string of silver-blue sparks burst from the tip of the wand, and a transparent bubble rapidly expanded like a blown-up piece of bubble gum, eventually covering his head completely like an overturned goldfish bowl.

"Cough, cough..." Snape coughed violently.

Sunlight filtered through the murky water, transforming into shimmering bands of light that formed dark green vortices around it.

He could feel the muscles beneath the giant snake's scales writhing, as it carried him at an astonishing speed toward the depths of the lake.

"Perhaps I should have used the Shattering Charm." The thought had barely crossed his mind when a group of green Grindelows with horns burst out from the tangled seaweed.

Their fanged mouths grinned greedily as they surrounded Snape from all sides, their long, withered fingers reaching for the hem of his robes.

The giant snake suddenly let out a hiss that almost shook the water, and Snape felt a release in his chest—the snake's coiled body suddenly loosened, and he was violently thrown to the side.

In the dim water, he saw the giant snake's thick tail lash out like a whip, smashing a nearby Greendylo to pieces, its green blood staining the water.

The force of the water made Snape spin, his wand slipping from his fingers and drifting away. To make matters worse, his Bubble Head Charm struck a protruding rock, and the bubbles burst with a sharp "pop."

"Gurgle...my...gurgle...magic wand!"

Snape spat out a few bubbles, reaching out in vain to grab something, only to grasp at the cold water.

He watched helplessly as a green thief nimbly grabbed the dangling ebony wand, made a rude gesture, and quickly disappeared into the shadows of the deep water.

At that moment, he seemed to hear again the wails of the Death Eaters who had lost their wands in his hands.

Water surged in from all directions, cold, murky, and carrying the smell of rotting plants, filling his lungs.

Snape's lungs felt like they were being burned, and the oxygen-deprived darkness began to engulf his vision.

In his last blurry vision, he saw the giant snake angrily tear several Greendylos apart, then coil around him again with its tail and speed through the dark waterway.

"Tick, tick, tick."

The sound seemed to come from a very far place, carrying the unique echo of a cave.

When consciousness resurfaced in the darkness, the first thing Snape noticed was the continuous dripping sound.

He slowly opened his eyes, and what came into view was a faint, eerie blue light. The light came from the microbial flora clinging to the rock wall, pulsating in the darkness like enchanted fireflies.

"I...I'm still alive?" Snape was surprised to find his voice so clear and echoing slightly in the cave.

He propped himself up on his elbows and found himself lying in a shallow, stone-lined pit. The pit was almost dry, with only a thin layer of water remaining, leaving only damp pebbles against his back.

Even more strangely, he did not feel any discomfort—no aftereffects of drowning, no headache from the impact, and even the pain from the giant snake coiling around his ribs had disappeared.

On the contrary, he felt a strange vitality flowing through his veins, and he seemed healthier than ever before.

“This isn’t right…” Snape carefully sat up, his robes already half-dry.

Using the blue light of the bacterial colony, he began to observe his surroundings.

This is a huge cavern connected to a vast underground lake. The dome is towering, and stalagmites and stalactites extend from top to bottom, some of which have joined together to form thick stone pillars.

Even more striking are the obvious traces of human intervention scattered around: collapsed stone walls and the remains of pillars carved with ancient runes.

Snape groped his way down the slope, his boots crushing several pieces of dry plant debris. He crouched down, carefully examining the fragile, weathered stems and leaves.

"Moonshadow Grass?" he murmured in surprise, staring in disbelief at the long-dead silver plant. He had only seen illustrations of it in the oldest potion tomes, and even though it had been dead for many years, its unique spiral veins were still discernible. "A key ingredient in the elixir of immortality. This plant has been extinct for at least three hundred years..."

The entire cave seems to have once been an elaborately designed magical garden. Although most of the plants have long since turned to dust, the remaining traces suggest that countless rare magical potions recorded in ancient books were once grown here.

But he couldn't care less about any of that; the most important thing right now was to get out of here as soon as possible.

"Damn it, my wand's gone too." He cursed under his breath, carefully choosing a passage that looked man-made, and feeling his way along the edge of the cave. "The wizard who caused all this is long dead, there's no way I can bother with him..."

The air in the cave was damp and cold, and occasionally water droplets would drip from above onto the back of his neck, sliding icy into his collar and making him shiver involuntarily.

The passageway meanders and twists, sometimes wide and sometimes narrow.

After turning two corners, the cave seemed to be getting deeper and deeper, and the blue-light bacteria were becoming sparse. Snape even considered whether he should turn back the way he came.

After the next sharp bend, he suddenly froze—a pair of emerald green vertical pupils were staring at him motionless in the darkness.

“Hello,” Snape said dryly, his Parseltongue hissing through the rock walls, “the scenery around here…is quite nice, isn’t it?”

The eyes blinked. Accompanied by the sound of scales rubbing against the rocks, the giant serpent's full form gradually became visible.

The giant snake stared at him for a few seconds, then suddenly opened its blood-red maw, revealing sharp fangs.

Snape instinctively stepped back, only to see it spit out a few small, shimmering silver fish, their gills still twitching weakly.

The giant snake used its tail to push the fish toward Snape, staring at him with cold eyes and emitting a strange, hoarse hiss: "Eat...eat..."

"Eat them raw?" Snape hesitated for a moment, looking at the still twitching silverfish, before replying, "I've lost my wand, so I can't prepare the food."

The giant snake tilted its head, seemingly pondering for a moment, then slowly said, "Wait...wait..."

After saying that, it quickly turned and slid into the darkness, its long body disappearing into the depths of the cave, the sound of its scales rubbing against the rocks gradually fading away.

While waiting, Snape examined the fish—Albanian silverfin bream, indeed edible, but usually requiring the removal of their venomous glands. He sighed and tried to treat them with a sharp stone, but to no avail.

At this point, he already had a guess about the identity of the giant snake.

About half an hour later, the sound of scales rubbing against rocks came from deep within the passage again; the giant snake had returned.

Its movements seemed somewhat labored, its tail coiled around something—the corpse of Grindelwald, and—Snape's heart sank—his wand was still in the hand of this Grindelwald, but only half remained.

The wand's broken ends were jagged, and the dragon's heart nerve fibers in the core were exposed like injured blood vessels.

“This…” Snape bent down and pulled the broken wand from Grindylow’s hand, then looked helplessly at the giant snake and asked, “Have you seen the other half?”

He had already seen the answer in the giant serpent's eyes.

The wand is now just a broken piece, and even if you go to Dumbledore, the Elder Wand probably can't repair such damage.

He looked up at the giant snake and, surprisingly, read a hint of apology in its cold, vertical pupils. It gently nudged Grindelho's corpse with its head.

"Well, it's alright, better than nothing. Thank you." Snape sighed, putting the broken wand into his pocket. "Do you have a name? Can you tell me your name?"

The giant snake stared at him for a long time with its emerald green vertical pupils before finally hissing intermittently, "Na... Jin... Ni..."

Upon hearing the name, Snape's pupils dilated slightly. The name confirmed his suspicions—the giant serpent before him was the blood cursed orc who knew Newt Scamander.

The image of that shy, gentle girl who was destined for an unfortunate fate flashed through Snape's mind.

At the same time, countless questions arose in my mind:
After Nagini, Newt, and others met Dumbledore outside Hogwarts Castle in 1927, where did she go?

When did the Blood Curse completely trap her in this snake's body?
Why did she end up in Albania?
Before he could think, Nagini suddenly looked up and hissed, signaling Snape to follow.

As she glided forward, she frequently looked back to make sure Snape could keep up.

After passing through a winding and narrow passage in the cave, they arrived at a section of the passage that was partially blocked by fallen rocks.

Nagini pointed with the tip of her tail to a gap just wide enough for one person to pass through, gesturing for Snape to go in first.

After a moment's thought, Snape decided to trust Nagini. Judging from her behavior just now, she shouldn't have been bewitched by Voldemort yet, and wouldn't plot anything against him.

He squeezed through the gap, which was pitch black inside. He had to hold onto the slippery wall to move forward, the rocks scraping against his arms and back.

After advancing about twenty feet, the space suddenly opened up.

Suddenly, his toes hit something hard, which rolled forward, making a crisp sound like wood hitting stone.

Snape bent down and felt around, his fingers touching a thin, elongated object. His heart raced as he realized what it might be—a wand?
He eagerly grasped it and tried to cast a spell.

"Lumos!"

The decaying wand trembled violently in his hand, its tip spitting out a string of chaotic sparks that nearly burned his eyebrows.

Sparks flew everywhere, and in the brief flash, Snape noticed that this place seemed to have once been a spacious foyer.

In those fleeting glimpses of light, he caught a chilling sight: several skeletons in rotting robes lay sprawled on the ground in various poses, while others wore rusty armor and held corroded weapons in their hands.

Snape carefully cast a few more Wand Illumination Charms, and using the brief light, he crouched down and groped around to collect a few more wands from the other skeletons.

After some attempts, he finally found a relatively "obedient" wand—a wand made of some kind of dark wood, with silver threads that had turned black wrapped around the handle.

"Fluorescent blink," he murmured, and this time a slightly more stable white light shone from the tip of his wand.

Under the continuous fluorescent light, the entire scene was clearly visible: it was obviously the remains of an expedition, and judging from the clothing, it was at least medieval.

The most striking is a wizard skeleton leaning against the wall, which is more intact than the other remains, and the texture of its decaying robe is more refined.

A roll of parchment was still tightly clutched in the skull's finger bones.

Snape carefully cast a few Prototype Spells before taking out the parchment scroll.

Although the edges of the parchment were moldy and the writing was blurred, some of the text written with magical ink was still faintly discernible:

"...Searching for...legends...ancient texts...Fountain of Good Fortune...truth...friends...the Twelve Knights...fountain water...eternal power...the greatest...rule...the only..."

The latter part of the text is illegible, but judging from the horrific scene, the story clearly did not have a happy ending.

Snape looked around and noticed the dents in the armor and the postures of several skeletons attacking each other.

A hypothesis came to his mind: the group found the Fountain of Good Fortune, only to realize that the legendary water could only be used by one person at a time. Thus, friendship turned into fratricide.

He suddenly looked up in the direction he had come from, and the dry little pit where he had woken up suddenly became incredibly clear in his memory.

Could that be the legendary Fountain of Good Fortune? He subconsciously touched his arm; the skin there was unusually smooth, but there seemed to be nothing special about it.

"Hmm... I remember the book saying that the water of the Fountain of Good Fortune actually has no magic at all..." he muttered to himself. "Besides, my achievements today are entirely due to my own talent and hard work; I've never needed anything external..."

“But what if…” Snape turned to the giant snake that was waiting for him quietly, and asked somewhat anxiously, “Nagini, the place you put me in… is there anything else?”

Nagini simply gazed at him silently, her emerald eyes unfathomable.

Then, she slowly turned around and slid back through the entrance.

Snape quickly followed her outside, but she swam to the spot where she had thrown the small fish and then stopped moving.

"Ah...you're not taking me to other springs, are you?" Snape said, slightly disappointed.

But now he was a little hungry, so he sat down on the ground, prepared the fish, and tried to grill it with the new magic wand he had found.

After a while, Snape looked sadly at the charred, grayish-brown fish bodies in his hand.

"Would you like some?" he asked.

Nagini quickly slid backward a short distance, the meaning of which couldn't be clearer.

"Wait, give me another chance!"

He strode to the edge of the underground lake, raised his wand, and shouted, "Silverfish, come!"

Two splashing sounds followed by the splattering of fish hitting rocks.

Snape quickly repeated the process he had just gone through.

Ten minutes later, he had a charred, fish-shaped unidentified object in his hand.

"Let me explain, this wand is not handy!" Snape said awkwardly.

Nagini had closed her eyes and buried her head in the circle her body was coiled up in.

　Thank you to Timo under the tower for the 5000 Qidian coins.

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　　Thank you to readers Chen Jinyu, I am not the Sword Saint of Avalon, 20170815190137064, ZAKA, Semisanctu, 96838, 2023070515_dB, and 20230107202035723 for their monthly tickets.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)