Hogwarts: I am Snape

Chapter 91 A way out
Snape sat on the ground, frowning as he tore at the charred fish.

"If only magic could conjure butterbeer and steak," he muttered under his breath, poking the remaining half of the fish in his hand with disgust at the tip of his wand.

“Nagini,” he suddenly turned to the giant snake that was resting with its eyes closed, “how long have you been in Albania?”

The giant serpent's vertical pupils suddenly lit up in the darkness.

Nagini slowly raised its snake head, its tongue flicking out, but only uttering a few hoarse, broken syllables.

Snape put down the fish, cleaned his dusty fingers with his wand, adjusted his posture to face the giant snake, and began to communicate with her.

"Do you... still remember how to speak?" he asked slowly and clearly, deliberately drawing out each syllable while keeping a close eye on Nagini's reaction.

But she still only made some unintelligible hissing sounds.

Snape tried to communicate with Nagini again by gesturing, but found that apart from a few simple syllables, she mostly just looked at him and didn't say anything.

Fortunately, although Nagini cannot express complex sentences, judging from her reactions, she should be able to partially understand her own language.

Perhaps it's because she hasn't communicated with anyone for so long, Snape thought, perhaps Nagini is about to lose her ability to speak.

“I am Severus Snape,” Snape nodded, continuing to guide us patiently. “Do you know how we got here?”

Nagini's tail swayed restlessly, sweeping a small pile of pebbles into the darkness.

Snape sighed, stared into Nagini's eyes, and said, "Take me away from here, okay?"

The giant snake remained silent for a moment, then slapped its tail impatiently against the ground with a dull thud.

A moment later, she slowly slid into a narrow passage deep inside the cave.

Snape quickly scrambled to his feet, a faint glow emanating from the tip of his wand, and followed closely behind her.

The passage narrowed, and several times he had to squeeze through sideways. After turning three corners, he began to hear the rushing sound of water.

When the passage finally came to an end, what appeared before us was a rushing underground river, the black water crashing against the rocks with a thunderous roar.

Nagini stopped on a protruding rock by the river and turned to look at Snape.

From her eyes, Snape strangely understood what she meant.

“Hmm…” Snape frowned, cold water droplets splashing onto his face, forcing him to raise his voice to drown out the sound of the water. “You mean… we have to swim out from here?”

Nagini did not answer, but merely flicked its tongue before its body plunged into the water.

"Alright, alright." Seeing that Nagini was about to go into the water, Snape quickly went to her side.

He quickly cast the Bubble Head Spell, wrapping his head in a transparent bubble.

Snape hesitated for a moment, then tentatively placed his hand on Nagini's cold scales.

The expected resistance did not materialize. She merely turned her head slightly, glanced at him a few times with her vertical pupils, and lightly flicked his wrist with her forked tongue, as if urging him to hurry up.

Snape carefully tucked his wand into his inner pocket, making sure it wouldn't get lost in the rapids, then used both hands and feet to wrap his arms around Nagini's slippery body, pressing himself against her: "I hope you don't leave me behind halfway."

The next second, everything spun around them—Nagini plunged them headfirst into the raging underground river, where the icy waters instantly swallowed them.

Outside the bubble was eternal darkness; he could only feel Nagini's muscles contracting and stretching powerfully in his arms, his serpentine body twisting nimbly in the dark current.

The water pounded against his body, and the rocks brushed against his robe.

Several times, Nagini was nearly swept away by the sudden whirlpools, and Snape could only hold her tighter. The darkness above seemed endless. The air inside the bubble quickly became murky, water droplets condensed on the inner walls, and Snape's lungs began to burn.

Just as he was about to suffocate, a faint ray of light appeared above.

Nagini accelerated suddenly, and they were violently thrown out of the cave by the turbulent current, crashing heavily into a calm pool of water.

"Pooh!"

Snape struggled to the surface, ripped off the deformed bubble, and greedily inhaled the moss-scented air.

He collapsed onto the rocks on the shore and cast a drying spell with trembling hands.

“Nagini?” He coughed and looked at the surface of the pool.

The giant snake was stretching its body not far away, water droplets rolling off its scales.

Snape noticed several scratches on her abdomen, with dark red blood trickling down the water droplets and spreading in the clear pool.

“Come here,” he called, and Nagini swam toward him. “You’re injured.”

He pulled out his wand, and Nagini cautiously took half a yard back, the scales on her neck standing on end slightly. This is how snakes behave when they are nervous.

Snape froze in place, then slowly changed his movement, raising both hands instead.

“Just treatment,” he said softly, “and healed completely!”

Under the influence of the spell, Nagini's wounds healed at a speed visible to the naked eye, leaving only a few light-colored marks.

After a short rest, the sweltering heat of the Albanian forest hit him, and Snape's robes were soaked with sweat.

Looking up, the sky was fragmented by the dense canopy of trees, and sunlight filtered through the gaps in the leaves, casting dappled shadows on the ground.

“Thank you,” Snape said breathlessly, looking at Nagini who was shaking off the water droplets. “But how do we get out of this forest and get to a populated area?”

Upon hearing the word "human," Nagini shifted uncomfortably and even hissed as a warning.

After struggling to communicate with Nagini for a long time, Snape gave up and instead used the most primitive divination technique in the wizarding world—the wand pointing method.

“Alright, looks like I’ll have to rely on myself.” He placed the wand flat in his palm. “Give me the way.”

The wand spun a few times in his palm before finally pointing behind him.

Snape put away his wand and said slowly to Nagini, who was lurking in the shadows of the bushes, "Stay around me, but don't get too close. Be alert, okay?"

The journey through the forest was far more difficult than through the caves. Snape held his wand in one hand and wielded a magically sharpened wooden stick in the other, hacking through the thorns and vines that blocked his path.

He didn't see Nagini again along the way, and could only tell that she was still with him from the familiar rustling sounds around him or the sudden silence of birdsong.

After walking for an unknown amount of time, he finally discovered a faint path—the traces were so ancient that no one had walked on it for centuries.

Just as he parted the vines, the afterglow of the setting sun rippled through the trees, and in the interplay of light and shadow, an eerie scene unfolded before his eyes:

An elderly woman with a hunchback was wiping the sweat from the face of a girl wearing a small red velvet hat.

　Thank you to Yuebing and Reading Without Taking It Seriously for the monthly tickets.

　　I'm working overtime; the other chapter will be later.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)