Hogwarts: I am Snape

Chapter 93 Flying All Night
Snape flicked his wand, and several ropes bound the old witch repeatedly, carefully checking for any omissions.

“That should be enough,” he muttered to himself, but then frowned and looked down at those cloudy eyes.

This old witch is far more cunning than we imagined; who knows what other tricks she has up her sleeve?

"Tongue-locking and throat-sealing!" he quickly added with a spell.

A flash of light, and the old witch's lips immediately stuck together.

She glared angrily, her throat making a gurgling sound.

Snape's fingertips unconsciously rubbed his wand as he slowly paced around the bound witch.

“However…” he stroked his chin, a hint of doubt flashing in his eyes, “what if you also know advanced staffless spellcasting and silent incantations?”

With that thought in mind, he raised his wand without hesitation.

“Just to be safe,” he said coldly, pointing his wand at the old witch’s arm.

After two crisp "snap" sounds, the old witch convulsed violently under the ropes, letting out a muffled whimper.

Her arm hung down at an unnatural angle. Now, she couldn't even wave her fingers.

Snape nodded in satisfaction and turned to break the spell on the little girl.

Just then, a faint groan caught his attention.

The werewolf entangled by Nagini is gradually returning to human form: its coarse black fur is fading, its sharp claws are retracting, revealing the pale face of a middle-aged man.

The giant snake opened its blood-red maw, its fangs gleaming coldly, aimed at the man's exposed neck.

"Nagini, don't bite!" Snape shouted at her immediately.

Nagini's vertical pupils turned toward Snape.

With a flicker of her tongue, she slowly loosened her coils around Snape's body, gliding to his feet with a soft hiss.

The little girl was so frightened by Snape's Parseltongue and the bizarre scene that she stumbled and fell to the ground.

Her eyes were wide open, and her small body trembled uncontrollably.

“Thank you,” Snape said gently, putting away his wand. “Don’t be afraid. I’m sorry, I misunderstood you.”

When his wand was pointed at the little girl, the child flinched in fear.

"Relax the strength and release the energy." He recited the incantation as softly as possible.

The moment the ropes were untied, the little girl looked at her hands in disbelief, then lunged at the unconscious man on the ground.

"Daddy!" she cried out in anguish, her little hands shaking the man's shoulders desperately. "Daddy, wake up! Please..."

Snape strode forward and knelt down to examine the man's injuries.

Nagini's fangs left two gruesome holes in the man's shoulder, from which blood gushed out, soaking half of his clothes.

"Step aside, let me see." Snape waved his wand, the tip glowing with a soft blue light. "Help! Heal as before!"

He cast more than a dozen healing spells, but the wound continued to bleed.

Fine beads of sweat appeared on Snape's forehead, and the light from the tip of his wand began to flicker. He frantically searched his mind for all the healing spells he knew, but found none that could cure Nagini's snake venom.

“Nagini,” he turned to the giant snake and asked urgently in a Parsleyan voice, “do you have a way to stop the bleeding?”

Nagini flicked his tongue, seemingly deep in thought.

A moment later, she turned and slid into the depths of the dense forest, the rustling sound of scales rubbing against fallen leaves gradually fading into the distance.

Snape could only continue to maintain the most basic healing spells while keeping a vigilant eye on his surroundings.

The old witch was still wriggling nearby, making indistinct noises.

Time passed second by second, and the afterglow of the setting sun was gradually swallowed by the night, and the temperature in the forest began to drop.

The little girl's crying turned into intermittent sobs, and finally only silent tears remained.

She knelt beside her father, her small hands tightly gripping his increasingly cold fingers, her face deathly pale.

Snape's heart sank. If Nagini didn't come back...

As the last rays of sunlight were about to disappear, the familiar rustling sound finally rose again from the bushes.

A pair of emerald green snake eyes lit up in the darkness, and Nagini returned with a strange plant in his mouth.

Snape took the plant from her mouth—a herb he had never seen before, with oval leaves edged with fine teeth, small yellow-green flowers emitting a faint fragrance, and red and green stems still covered with night dew.

He quickly used magic to crush the herbs and gently applied the paste to the man's wound.

Amidst the refreshing scent of herbs, the blood flow began to slow, and the purplish-black toxins around the wound gradually faded away.

"Thank you." Snape breathed a sigh of relief and patted Nagini's head. The giant snake lay quietly curled up at his feet.

When the man let out a weak groan, the little girl suddenly looked up, her lips trembling but unable to speak, and tears welled up in her eyes again.

Snape lit a campfire and used Transfiguration to make a makeshift stretcher.

He moved the man closer to the fire and carefully examined his wounds—the herbs were working, and the man's breathing had become more even.

Just then, Snape's stomach started rumbling loudly.

He then realized that apart from the little bit of charred fish, he hadn't eaten anything all day.

Nagini heard the sound, looked up at him, and then disappeared back into the bushes...

The little girl hugged her knees and remained quiet for a while, then suddenly got up and ran to the old witch's side, groping for something inside her robe with her little hands.

Seeing this, Snape went to her side and helped turn the old witch over—a move that drew an angry groan from the old witch.

The little girl tore a necklace with a blood-red canine tooth from the old witch's neck and pulled a roll of yellowed parchment from her robe, handing it to Snape.

“This is the paper she used to write things down,” the little girl said, handing it to Snape. “She used this necklace to control the werewolves.”

Snape reached out and took the parchment and necklace.

The unfolded parchment contained strange patterns and mysterious incantations, seemingly a record of the old witch's past experiments.

His eyes quickly scanned the scribbled handwriting, and the more he looked, the more horrified he became. The cruelty of these black magic experiments far exceeded his comprehension.

Looking again at the canine tooth in his hand, he saw that it was still shrouded in a lingering stench of blood, and its surface gleamed with an eerie, ghostly light. Judging from its size, the fang must have belonged to a large werewolf.

“Thank you, little girl,” he said, carefully sealing the two items and putting them into his inner bag. “I’ll put these away for now.”

Snape then considerately flipped the old witch over and laid her face down on the ground.

After a while, Nagini returned with a muntjac that had been crushed to death.

Upon seeing her return, Snape stood up and walked around them in circles.

"Peaceful protection... All protected... Close your ears and ears..." He held up his wand and muttered incantations, "Well, there's no need to expel Muggles, we'd love for them to come now."

Then, Snape clumsily cleaned the muntjac, removing the blood. "Do you know how to grill meat?" he asked the little girl.

The little girl nodded gently, the firelight flickering on her dirty little face.

The flames crackled and popped as the little girl roasted muntjac meat over the campfire with branches, the grease sizzling and dripping into the fire.

“Hey,” Snape suddenly spoke up, “what’s your name? Can you tell me your story?”

"Ah!" The little girl was startled, and almost dropped the wooden stick with the meat skewer in her hand into the fire.

She glanced timidly at Snape, then at the old witch not far away—who was still wriggling gently on the ground, but could not make a sound.

“My name is Anna… In winter…” the little girl whispered, “my mom and dad brought me here on a trip… and then that witch captured me…”

As she recounted her story, Snape learned that the old witch was a dark wizard who had been researching how to control werewolves.

When she ran out of werewolves for experiments, she began capturing ordinary people to create new werewolves.

“Mom died in an experiment after being bitten by her last werewolf,” Anna’s tears dripped to the ground… “Dad can sometimes control his transformation, but he doesn’t always succeed…”

Snape's pupils contracted slightly; this was a remarkable breakthrough. He had never heard of werewolves being able to transform on their own, let alone obey human commands.

The werewolf problem, which the magical world has been unable to solve until now, has actually made progress in this remote forest? He couldn't help but glance a few more times at the unconscious man.

"Do you want to eat?" Anna's frightened voice interrupted his thoughts.

She stood hesitantly in front of Nagini, holding a skewer of grilled venison.

To Snape's surprise, Nagini gently bit the pieces of meat, pulled them off the stick, and swallowed them gracefully.

"You must not like eating fish, right?" Snape asked helplessly in Parsley, earning a dismissive shake of his head from Nagini.

Anna seemed to be frightened by the parsnip again, frozen in place and afraid to move, the wooden stick in her hand falling to the ground with a "thud".

“It’s nothing,” Snape said as gently as possible, bending down to pick up the stick, cleaning it, and handing it back to her. “I was just asking her if it tasted good.”

Anna nodded gently and returned to the fire to continue roasting the meat, glancing worriedly at her father from time to time.

“You can have the next piece,” Snape said. “After you finish, teach me how to grill meat.”

He thought of his terrible cooking skills, and the corner of his mouth twitched involuntarily.

As night deepened, Snape laid Anna down near the fire while he remained on guard. Nagini coiled around his feet.

Just as dawn was breaking, a faint sound startled Snape from his light sleep; the campfire had already burned out.

It seemed like someone was shouting around.

"Nagini, you should hide first."

After a moment's hesitation, Snape had Nagini hide in the bushes behind him, pulled Anna to his side, and carefully removed the protective charm that covered the makeshift camp.

As the spell was lifted, he saw an owl circling above his head, followed closely by a colorful flying carpet.

Snape recognized the figures above: Irene, Lily, and Mr. Weasley.

"I'm here!" he jumped out, waving and shouting.

The owl folded its wings and quickly landed beside him, a small piece of parchment tied to its leg.

Before he could even take the note down, the flying carpet had already come hurtling over.

"Severus!"

Eileen nearly fell off her flying carpet. She staggered over, her hands trembling as she ran over Snape's face and shoulders, checking for any possible injuries.

Her eyes were red-rimmed, as if she hadn't slept all night, and her hair was disheveled and loose on her shoulders.

Lily stood to the side, her green eyes filled with worry, but she remained silent. She also looked much more haggard, with noticeable dark circles under her eyes.

“Merlin’s beard!” Mr. Weasley gasped. “We’ve been looking for you like crazy! Those bureaucrats at the Albanian Ministry of Magic are all talk and no action; after registering us, they just left us waiting…”

It turned out that in their search for Snape, they tried all sorts of methods, even consulting local fortune tellers, but those charlatans only spouted a bunch of cryptic riddles.

In the end, Lily remembered the ancient magic of using owls to deliver letters—because Snape would never refuse their letters.

“Yesterday, an owl circled over a pile of rocks for a long time,” Lily said, her voice still trembling with fear, “and then suddenly turned and flew this way… We followed it all night…”

A warm feeling welled up in Snape's heart, and he felt a tightness in his throat.

“I’m fine,” he said softly, then turned behind him, “but there’s someone here who needs help…”

Upon hearing this, Mr. Weasley walked toward the old witch who had been lying on the cold ground all night.

“Wait,” Snape quickly called out to him, “This is the enemy. Don’t break the spell on her.”

With Mr. Weasley's help, Snape carried Anna's still-comatose father and the old witch onto the flying carpet.

Eileen still looked at him with worry, afraid that he would disappear from her sight.

As they all boarded the flying carpet, Snape stood at the edge of the forest and called out into the woods in Parsleyan, "Come out, Nagini."

The giant snake slowly poked its head out of the bushes.

"Severus!" Erin jumped off the flying carpet again, holding her wand in front of Snape.

“Don’t worry, she saved my life in a way,” Snape said softly, pulling Eileen aside. “Now she’s my friend.”

“Come away from here with me, okay?” He crouched down, looking Nagini straight in the eye. “At least you’ll have someone to talk to then.”

"it is good……"

After a long while, Nagini finally managed to utter a series of barely discernible hissing sounds.

“Then,” Snape said, looking at her, “don’t be afraid, I will cast a spell on you to make you smaller.”

Nagini nodded slightly.

Although they already knew that Snape could speak Parsley, Erin and Lily still stared in astonishment at everything in front of them, while Mr. Weasley kept pushing up his slipping glasses.

"Shrink quickly."

Under the influence of the spell, Nagini's body rapidly shrank from twelve feet to less than two feet.

Then, she slipped inside Snape's robe sleeve, her little head peeking out from his collar and gently nuzzling his cheek.

“Let’s go,” Snape said, stepping onto the flying carpet. “Let’s go back.”

　Thank you to Tofu Original Color, One Side Forbidden Passage, Heart of Zhuji, Book Friend 20240324163441368, and Book Friend 20190501091112160 for the monthly tickets.

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　　The previous chapter was heavily revised after being censored; if you've read it, you can take a look back.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)