Harry Potter and the Great Old Ones

Chapter 287 Research on the Modification of the Bomb-tailed Snail

On the second morning of the new semester, the storm subsided, but the ceiling of the auditorium remained shrouded in gloom.

As Tyrell, Harry, Ron, and Hermione ate breakfast and studied their course schedules for the semester, large, thick, bluish-gray clouds rolled overhead.

At the same table, Fred, George, and Lee Jordan, a few seats away, were discussing what kind of magical spell they could use to age themselves and then slip through the cracks to participate in the Triwizard Tournament.

“Not bad today…outdoors all morning,” Ron said, his finger slid across the Monday section of the timetable. “Herbalism class, with the Hufflepuff students, Conservation of Magical Creatures…unlucky, with Slytherins again…”

“I have two Divination classes this afternoon,” Harry said with a sigh, his head down.

Divination was his least favorite subject, second only to Potions.

Professor Trelawney's constant predictions that Harry was going to die particularly bothered him.

Fortunately, Tyrell did not give up on the course, which at least allowed Harry to hear some less discouraging prophecies.

“Why don’t you all give up this course like I did?” Hermione said cheerfully as she spread butter on her bread. “Then you can take a more academic course, like arithmetic divination.”

“I don’t want to give up,” Tierra said, taking a bite of her baguette. “This is the only class where I can get a perfect score just by sleeping through the class.”

Although Sybil Trelawney was a rookie most of the time, she was a responsible rookie.

Professor Sybil Trelawney believes that Tierra's "severe setback" at the end of last semester is the responsibility of her inaccurate predictions.

Sibyl Trelawney believed she should have foreseen this terrible accident, but she received no revelation from her third eye.

So, out of guilt, and with a hint from Dumbledore, although Tyella didn't take any exams, he became the only junior wizard in the entire school to get a perfect score in Divination—

In any case, Tyella deserved it; he fulfilled two prophecies, and regardless of their truthfulness, Tyella certainly made quite a show of himself.

The first two classes of this semester—

Herbalism and Magical Creatures Conservation classes, though both outdoors, weren't particularly enjoyable.

Because the herbalists class required them to process the bapau tubers, they had to wear dragon skin gloves to squeeze out the pus from the bapau tubers.

It's a precious ingredient that can be used to make medicine to treat acne.

The afternoon's magical animal protection class was equally disgusting.

Hagrid led them to the door of his hut and showed them the newly cultivated Blasttail snails—

They were a group of monstrous, shelled lobsters, white-gray, slimy, and terrifying creatures.

Many of their legs were sticking out haphazardly, obscuring their heads.

These tadpoles were placed in several wooden crates outside Hagrid's door. Each crate contained about a hundred tadpoles, each about six inches long, which crawled around on top of each other, dazedly bumping against the sides of the crates.

They also emit a very strong smell of rotten fish and shrimp. Every now and then, a blasting snail will shoot some sparks from its tail, and then with a soft pop, the snail will move forward a few inches.

Everyone, every student, felt utterly disgusted, except for one—

"My goodness, Hagrid!" Tierra exclaimed excitedly, and picked one up directly from the wooden box, looking at it from left to right.

"You actually succeeded!" Tiera exclaimed excitedly, pinching the tentacles of the Blasttail Snails and then their shells. "You're a genius!"

Tiera exclaimed in genuine admiration.

Tierra has also begun conducting hybridization experiments. Before the end of last semester, she moved the rats from the Chamber of Secrets at Hogwarts and their hybrid offspring (Peter Pettigrew) to her uninhabited planet, designating a specific area for breeding and genetic experiments. Before the start of the semester, Tierra had just begun the second round of breeding of the rats; creating truly magical creatures was still a long way off.

"Hehe..." Hagrid scratched his head a little embarrassedly, seemingly not used to Tiera's praise, and smiled憨厚ly, "No, not really... I... I haven't... I haven't successfully bred them yet... It's just... I don't know what they should eat yet."

“Let me see,” Tierra said, carefully examining the blast-tailed snail—

“A mollusc, hmm… Gastropoda… Let me examine its mouthparts…” Tiera judged based on her zoological knowledge from her previous life, then drew her wand—

The "Mad Walker" transformed into a magic wand, inserted it into the mouthparts of the blast-tailed snails, and then forcefully pried them open—

"Hey! Watch out!" Hagrid shouted anxiously, "It's just a baby!"

Hearing Hagrid shout that, the other students couldn't help but shudder.

It seems extremely sacrilegious to associate such a group of creatures with babies.

“Aha,” Tiera exclaimed. “Chewing mouthparts, judging from the shape of the mouthparts… it should be carnivorous… but it doesn’t seem to be fully developed… once it’s fully grown, it should be able to bite through an ordinary person’s bones with one bite, but for now it can probably only eat soft meat… huh?”

Tiera flipped the bomb-tailed snails over again and looked at the tips of their abdominal tentacles—

Each tentacle has a suction cup at its tip.

Tier stretched out his hand and touched the inside of the suction cups—

The blasting snail tensed up and contracted slightly. Tiera felt something like a ring of sharp teeth clinging to her skin, as if it wanted to bite through her skin and suck something out.

"It's sucking my blood! Hagrid!" Tierra exclaimed excitedly.

"What? Really?" Hagrid ran over excitedly.

Tierra plucked her finger from the suckers beneath the blast-tailed snail's tentacles and then showed it to Hagrid—

On Tiera's hand, there was a ring of shallow, discontinuous circular teeth marks, from which fresh blood was constantly seeping out.

“And its mucus should also contain an anticoagulant… um… cough cough… a substance that prevents blood from clotting…” Tiera suddenly realized that the people present probably didn’t know what anticoagulant was, so she had to change her words, “This will make the wound difficult to heal on its own… I just don’t know how effective it is, but if they were a little bigger, once they bite you, the person being attacked could very likely bleed to death.”

Upon hearing Tiera's words, the other students took another step back.

"No! They won't!" Hagrid said nervously. "My little darlings won't hurt anyone."

If only their mucus could be made a little more toxic...

Tierra, holding the Blast-tailed Conch, suddenly had a guess—

“Hey Hagrid, can I have this Blasttail?” Tiera asked. “Could you also give me one… one of the other gender?”

The Tierra mouse-Peter dwarf hybridization experiment was only for the purpose of genetic accumulation of magical traits.

In Tom Riddle's words, it was purely academic research.

But science is not just academic research; it also needs to take into account practical applications.

Tiera plans to brew two more jars of Hydra potion to feed to two Blasttail Snails, transforming them into Blasttail Serpent Snails. Then, by utilizing the Blasttail Snails' powerful reproductive capabilities, she will see if she can build an army of Blasttail Serpent Snails.

Requesting monthly votes and recommendation votes.



(End of this chapter)