Hogwarts: This professor is too Muggle.

Chapter 260 A Den of Snakes and Dogs

The autumn sun gradually rises.

The morning sun shone on the vegetable patches at the edge of the forbidden forest, painting the ripe pumpkins with a bright golden hue. Melvin and Hagrid chatted idly across the fence, while a young snake coiled around the hound's neck and darted around in the vegetable patch, causing the vegetable leaves to rustle.

"...Luckily you told me to keep the number to two, otherwise there would have been serious injuries." Hagrid still felt lingering fear when talking about last week's lesson on protecting magical creatures.

"What? Don't you want to show off all twelve of your hippogriffs at the same time?" Melvin asked jokingly.

"hey-hey……"

Hagrid could only respond with an awkward laugh.

Just like Murphy's Law, which we discussed in the last Muggle Studies class, if there are two choices for a situation, one of which leads to bad consequences, a normal person knows which choice is correct. However, when many different people do the same thing, someone will inevitably make the worst choice.

These hippogriffs were all gentle animals he had carefully selected. As long as they bowed properly and did not make any provocative gestures or insults, each student could ride a hippogriff around the school. However, Slytherin's Parkinson directly angered Barbie Buck.

Less than a month into the new semester, the newly appointed professor of the Fantastic Beasts Protection class narrowly escaped being fired.

Hagrid picked a handful of berries from the edge of the vegetable patch and gratefully handed them to his kind colleague.

Melvin just smiled, took the berry, picked one and put it in his mouth. It was sweet and sour, but the sourness was stronger than the sweetness, and it numbed his tongue. He only tasted one and didn't touch any more. His gaze was fixed on the dog and the baby snake in the vegetable garden.

They are making a difficult journey.

In the corner of the fence, there was a thick, lush clump of plants, with pumpkin vines twining around hydrangeas and what appeared to be dodder-like branches. It was probably something Hagrid had casually scattered in the corner and hadn't really looked after, so it grew naturally.

The pumpkins that grew were smaller than the ones around them, the hydrangeas hadn't bloomed, and several other plants whose names I didn't know were mixed together tightly.

They usually avoided that area when spraying pesticides or weeding, and the slugs made their home in that natural sanctuary. Yulm and Tooth followed their sniffs and successfully found the slugs' nest, wagging their tails excitedly.

At first, it circled around to investigate, but once it found no threat, it began to charge recklessly and was immediately ensnared. The vines were more tightly intertwined than expected, and some stems even had small barbs. Dog hair stuck to it and started to get tangled.

The two animals were submerged in leaves and vines, and after struggling, they were entangled even more tightly.

It used its teeth and limbs to dig a shallow pit, just big enough for itself to escape. It shook off the grass juice and dew that covered it, and it was covered in mud, looking filthy.

Hagrid didn't care that there was a splash of water on his trousers; he just watched them fuss around with a smile.

Yulm is quite troublesome. Breaking free from the vines without damaging them is much harder than darting around in a vegetable garden. Fortunately, snake scales can be moved. He carefully freed half of his body from the vines, curled his tail, and with a little effort, the whole snake sprang out.

It was just a little disheveled, panting with its tongue lolling out, looking like an exhausted dog.

After resting for less than three minutes, Ya Ya went over again and nudged the baby snake with its nose.

Yulm immediately became lively again, curling its tail around Yaya's neck and resting its chin on its head. There was a flat spot on the top of the dog's head, and its short fur was warm and cozy, making it look especially comfortable.

After playing around in the vegetable garden, we squeezed through the gaps in the fence and went out. Not far from the hut was the enclosure, where the winged harpies were tethered.

It barked and introduced itself, occasionally pointing with its front paws at the winged beast's body parts: its robust and muscular body, thick and wide wings, and the thick feather collar on its neck, which looked warm and soft. Yulm's eyes lit up as he looked at it.

"Wang Wang..."

Hagrid stared blankly at Ya Ya's movements, feeling a strange sense of familiarity for some reason. It wasn't until Ya Ya demonstrated bowing that he realized, "Isn't that what I do in class?"

Yulm watched it silently twice, hissing and moving his tongue, his eyes revealing a human-like contemplation, clearly learning how to bow with his snake body.

After circling around, Yhorm carefully selected the most docile of the twelve winged beasts and began his work.

The young snake released the hound's neck and landed on the grass in front of the winged beast. It coiled its body like a mosquito coil, propped up its front half, stopped sticking out its tongue, and bowed down in a serious manner, looking quite professional.

Barbibak also stood there stunned, blinking his orange eyes, clearly seeing a young snake greet him for the first time.

Meeting those dark, bright eyes, it didn't know why, but it lowered its guard, stopped eating, bent its front knees, and bowed in greeting. The young snake was immediately delighted, swaying its tail as it approached, climbing up the scales and all the way to the feathered collar of its neck, wrapping itself around Barbibak's neck just like it had wrapped around Fang Fang.

The snake's body wasn't long enough to barely encircle a circle of feathers, and Yulm happily stuck out his tongue.

The winged beast's neck was at least as thick as a hundred-year-old tree, and its body was round and plump, with both warm and handsome fur and cool, large scales. Yulm was very satisfied with the physical structure of his new friend and barked twice near its head.

Barbibak was a little uncomfortable at first, but Yulm's movements were very gentle, and she felt no discomfort. The sling around her neck felt a little cool, and the touch seemed quite nice.

It inexplicably understood the baby snake's language and shook its head to indicate that it couldn't take off now.

"Wang?"

"..."

Barbibak tapped the chain attached to the post with his beak.

Yulm looked thoughtful, then wriggled his snake body and crawled over, trying to open his mouth wide to the chain. With a snap, the chain broke.

Before Barbibak could react, Tooth let out an excited cry. Before it could get close, the winged beast had already spread its twelve-foot wings and, with a sudden burst, soared into the sky with the baby snake.

Melvin couldn't help but look up.

The air outside the Forbidden Forest was thick with moisture. The morning fog of autumn was dissipating, and the sunlight fell on the fog, creating a beautiful and magnificent gradient of colors, from orange-red to golden yellow. This color stained the scales of the winged beasts and young snakes. The fog condensed into dewdrops, reflecting a rainbow of light.

The winged beast let out a joyful cry, and Yorm joined in.

Yaya followed foolishly below, running after their shadows and barking. Barbie Buck deliberately slowed down to wait, and occasionally lowered his altitude, deliberately blowing the wind from his flapping wings towards the hounds.

"What do you plan to do with these hippogriffs?" Melvin withdrew his gaze.

"We'll show them to students in other grades for another two weeks, then send them back to their original habitat. There are Dementors and students near the school, and the Forbidden Forest behind it is the territory of other birds. Barbibak and the others don't fly comfortably here."

Hagrid still tilted his head back, a bright smile on his face, as if he were also playing and running around with the three animals. "Actually, the artificial snake nest is not suitable for Yulm. It should play more in the forest and see more of the animals there."

He suddenly had an idea, and the more he talked, the more enthusiastic he became: "How about we keep it in the Forbidden Forest? It can come to me when it's thirsty or hungry, and it can play with Ya Ya anytime."

Melvin did not reply immediately: "I'll ask Yulm what he thinks later."

As the sun gradually rose directly overhead, the fog dissipated, the forest leaves were tinged with color, and the dewdrops hanging on the treetops sparkled and shone.

Time seems to slow down because of these animals.

Hagrid picked up the shovel and continued turning the soil. Although magic could do the same thing, and there was no one else around, no one would care if he took out the little pink umbrella and waved it, but he still preferred to do it himself. The smell of the soil mixed with the moisture from the morning mist and dew made him feel at ease.

Melvin gazed at the sky, searching for the winged beasts and the young snakes. He waited until the babbling sounds completely disappeared, then reappeared half an hour later, gradually growing louder, before finally seeing them return to land.

The three animals had a great time and seemed to have become friends.

Right now, Yaya is clinging to Barbibak's neck, seemingly wanting to experience the feeling of flying too. Barbibak doesn't seem to mind, but its short, stubby paws can't hold onto the horse's thick neck, and its attempt ends in failure.

Yulm said goodbye to Barbibak, slid down and crawled toward Melvin. When it heard that it could stay in the Forbidden Forest, it was stunned for a moment, then quickly shook its head in agreement, and affectionately rubbed against Melvin's ring.

Melvin stroked the scales on its head, about to tell it to behave in the Forbidden Forest, when he suddenly noticed something and turned to look at the corner of the Forbidden Forest path.

The trio is approaching.

Hagrid waved and greeted them with a smile, until he saw the bottle of red wine Hermione was holding, at which point he frowned.

(End of this chapter)