"Bubble-Head Charm!" The moment he hit the water, Snape struggled to utter the spell. A string of silvery-blue sparks erupted from his wand tip, and a transparent bubble rapidly expanded like blown chewing gum, finally encasing his head perfectly, like an inverted goldfish bowl.
"Cough, cough—" Snape coughed violently.
Sunlight, diffused by the murky water, transformed into wavering bands of light, forming a dark green vortex around him.
He could feel the muscles rippling beneath the great snake's scales; it was pulling him at an astonishing speed towards the depths of the lake bottom.
Perhaps I should have used a Blasting Curse just now. The thought had barely surfaced when a group of green Grindelows with small horns on their heads shot out from the tangled water weeds.
Their fang-filled mouths stretched into greedy grins, surrounding him from all directions, their branch-like long fingers reaching for the hem of Snape's robes.
The great snake suddenly let out a hiss that seemed to vibrate the water itself, and Snape felt his chest loosen—the coiled snake body suddenly relaxed, and he was flung violently aside.
In the dim current, he saw the great snake's thick tail lash out like a whip, smashing a nearby Grindelowe to pieces, green blood blooming in the water.
The impact of the current spun Snape around. His wand slipped from his fingers, spiraling away into the distance. Worse still, his Bubble-Head Charm collided with a protruding rock, and the bubble popped with a crisp "snap."
"Gurgle—my—gurgle—wand!"
Snape expelled a few bubbles, reaching out futilely, trying to grasp something, but only catching cold currents.
He watched helplessly as a small green thief nimbly snatched the floating ebony wand, made a rude gesture, and quickly vanished into the shadows of the deep water.
At this moment, he felt as if he could hear the wails of the Death Eaters who had lost their wands to him.
Water surged in from all directions, cold, murky, and smelling of rotting plants, filling his lungs.
Snape's lungs felt like they were on fire, and the darkness of oxygen deprivation began to consume his vision.
In his last hazy glimpse, he saw the great snake furiously tearing apart several Grindelows, then re-coiling around him with its tail, moving at an astonishing speed through the gloomy waterway.
"Drip, drip, drip."
The sound seemed to come from a great distance, with the peculiar echo of a cave.
When consciousness again emerged from the darkness, the first thing Snape noticed was the continuous dripping of water.
He slowly opened his eyes, and what met his gaze was a faint blue glow. The light came from microbial colonies adhering to the rock walls, pulsing in the darkness like enchanted fireflies.
"I—I'm still alive?" Snape was surprised to find his voice so clear, producing a slight echo in the cavern.
He propped himself up on his elbows, finding himself lying in a shallow, stone-lined pit. A thin layer of water, now almost dry, remained in the pit, leaving only damp pebbles against his back.
Stranger still, he felt no discomfort—no lingering effects of drowning, no headache from impact, and even the pain in his ribs from the great snake's coils had vanished.
Instead, he felt a strange vitality flowing through his veins; he seemed healthier than ever before.
"This isn't right," Snape cautiously sat up, his robes already half-dry.
Using the blue glow from the microbial colonies, he began to survey his surroundings.
This was a vast cavern connected to a wide underground lake. The dome-shaped ceiling soared high, with stalagmites and stalactites extending from above and below, some already forming thick stone columns.
More strikingly, there were clear signs of human activity scattered around: collapsed stone walls, remnants of pillars carved with ancient runes.
Snape fumbled his way down the slope, his boot crushing a few dried plant remains. He knelt down, carefully examining the fragile, weathered stems and leaves.
"Moonpetal?" he whispered in surprise, looking with disbelief at a long-dead silver plant. He had only seen illustrations of it in the oldest of potion texts; even after years of decay, its unique spiral leaf veins were still discernible. "A key ingredient for the Elixir of Life, this plant has been extinct for at least three hundred years—"
The entire cavern seemed to have once been a meticulously designed magical garden. Although most of the plants had long since turned to dust, judging from the remaining traces, countless rare potion ingredients mentioned in ancient texts had once been cultivated here.
But he couldn't dwell on this; the most pressing matter at hand was to get out of here.
"Utterly rotten luck, my wand's gone too." He muttered a low curse, carefully choosing a path that seemed to have artificial traces, groping his way along the edge of the cavern. "That wizard who caused all this is long gone, so I can't even get back at him."
The air in the cavern was damp and cold, with occasional water droplets falling from above onto the back of his neck, sliding icily into his collar, making him shiver involuntarily.
The passage was winding and tortuous, sometimes wide, sometimes narrow.
After two turns, the cavern seemed to get deeper and deeper, and the blue glowing colonies became sparse. Snape even considered turning back.
After the next sharp turn, he suddenly froze—
A pair of emerald vertical pupils was staring motionlessly at him in the darkness.
"Hello," Snape said dryly, the sibilant hiss of Parseltongue echoing between the rock walls. "The scenery around here—it's rather nice, isn't it?"
Those eyes blinked. Accompanied by the sound of scales rubbing against rock, the great snake's full form gradually emerged.
The great snake stared at him for a few seconds, then suddenly opened its gaping maw, revealing sharp fangs.
Snape instinctively recoiled, only to see it merely spit out a few shimmering silver fish, their gills still faintly fluttering.
The great snake nudged the fish towards Snape with its tail, staring at him with cold eyes, and emitted a strange, guttural hiss: "Eat—eat—"
"Raw?" Snape hesitated, looking at the still twitching silver fish, and replied, "I lost my wand, so I can't prepare food."
The great snake tilted its head, seemingly pondering for a moment, then slowly spoke: "Wait—wait—"
With that, it quickly turned and slid back into the darkness, its long body disappearing into the depths of the cavern, the sound of scales rubbing against rock gradually fading.
While waiting, Snape examined the fish—Albanian Silver-scaled Fish, indeed edible, but usually required the removal of toxic glands. He sighed, trying to prepare them with a sharp stone, but with little success.
By now, he already had a guess about the identity of this great snake.
About half an hour later, the sound of scales rubbing against rock echoed from deeper within the passage again; the great snake had returned.
Its movements seemed a bit strained, its tail coiled around something—the corpse of a Grindelowe, and—Snape's heart sank—his wand was still clutched in the Grindelowe's hand, but only half of it remained.
The break in the wand was jagged, the dragon heartstring core exposed like a wounded blood vessel.
"This—" Snape bent down to retrieve the half-wand from the Grindelowe's hand, helplessly looking at the great snake, and asked, "Did you see the other half?"
From the great snake's eyes, he already knew the answer.
The wand was now merely a remnant. Even if he went to Dumbledore, even the Elder Wand likely couldn't repair such damage.
He looked up at the great snake, and from those cold, vertical pupils, he could actually read a hint of something akin to apology.
It gently nudged the Grindelowe's corpse with its head.
"Sigh, it's alright, better than nothing, thank you." Snape let out a long sigh, putting the half-wand into his pocket. "Do you have a name? Can you tell me your name?"
The great snake stared at him for a long time with its emerald vertical pupils before intermittently hissing: "Na—gi—ni—" Upon hearing this name, Snape's pupils slightly widened. This name confirmed his suspicion—the great snake before him was the Maledictus who had befriended Newt Scamander.
The image of the shy, gentle girl heading towards an unfortunate fate flashed through Snape's mind.
At the same time, countless questions flooded his thoughts:
After Nagini and Newt met Dumbledore outside Hogwarts Castle in 1927, where did she go?
When did the Maledictus curse fully trap her in this snake body?
And why was she in Albania?
Before he could ponder further, Nagini suddenly raised her head, hissed, and gestured for Snape to follow.
She glided forward, frequently looking back to make sure Snape was keeping up.
Passing through a winding, narrow passage in the cavern, they arrived before a passage partially blocked by fallen rocks. Nagini pointed her tail tip to a gap just wide enough for one person, motioning for Snape to enter first.
After a brief thought, Snape decided to trust Nagini. From her behavior just now, she shouldn't have been swayed by Voldemort yet, so she wouldn't plot anything against him.
He squeezed sideways through the gap; it was pitch black inside. He had to lean against the slick walls to move forward, the rocks scraping his arms and back.
After advancing about twenty feet, the space suddenly opened up.
Suddenly, his toe hit something hard. The object rolled forward, making a crisp sound of wood hitting stone.
Snape bent down to fumble, his fingers touching a slender object. When he realized what it might be, his heart quickened—a wand?
He eagerly gripped it, trying to cast a spell.
"Lumos!"
The decayed wand vibrated violently in his hand, its tip spewing a shower of messy sparks that almost singed his eyebrows.
Sparks flew everywhere, and in the brief flash, Snape noticed that this seemed to have once been a spacious antechamber.
Using those fleeting lights, he noted a chilling sight: several skeletal remains in rotting robes lay in various postures on the ground, and some skeletons wore rusted armor, still clutching corroded weapons.
Snape cautiously cast several more wand-lighting charms. With the brief illumination, he squatted down, fumbling to collect several other wands from near the other skeletons.
After some attempts, he finally found a relatively "obedient" wand—one made of some dark wood, with blackened silver threads coiled around its handle.
"Lumos," he whispered, and this time, a slightly more stable white light glowed from the wand tip.
Under the continuous Lumos, the entire scene was clearly visible: this was evidently the remains of an expedition, judging by the attire, at least from the medieval period.
Most striking was a wizard's skeleton leaning against the wall; it was more complete than the other remains, and the texture of its rotting robes was finer.
In the skeletal fingers, a rolled-up piece of parchment was still tightly clutched.
Snape carefully cast several Revelio charms, and only then retrieved the parchment.
On the parchment, though its edges were moldy and the writing blurred, parts of the text written in magical ink were still faintly discernible:
"—seek—legend—ancient text—Fountain of Fair Fortune true...friend—two springs—eternal power greatest—rule sole—"
The latter half of the text was illegible, but judging by the grim scene, this story clearly did not have a happy ending.
Snape looked around, noticing the dents in the armor and the postures of several skeletons attacking each other.
A conjecture formed in his mind: this group found the Fountain of Fair Fortune but realized the legendary spring could only be used by one person. Thus, friendship turned into mutual slaughter.
He abruptly looked up in the direction he came from; the dried pit where he had awakened suddenly became incredibly clear in his memory.
Could that be the legendary Fountain of Fair Fortune? He instinctively touched his arm; the skin there was unusually smooth, but there seemed to be nothing else special.
"Hmm—I remember the book saying that the Fountain of Fair Fortune's water actually has no magic at all," he muttered to himself. "Besides, I, Snape, have achieved what I have today purely through my own talent and hard work, never relying on external things—"
"But, what if—" Snape turned to look at the great snake patiently waiting beside him, asking somewhat eagerly, "Nagini, are there any other places like the one you put me in?"
Nagini simply watched him silently, her emerald eyes unfathomable.
Then, she slowly turned and slid back through the entrance.
Snape quickly followed her out, but she stopped moving once she reached the spot where she had dropped the small fish.
"Ah—you're not taking me to another spring then," Snape said with a hint of disappointment.
But he was feeling a bit hungry now, so he sat on the ground, cleaned the fish, and tried to grill them with his newly found wand.
A while later, Snape gloomily looked at the several charred, grayish fish bodies in his hand.
"Want some?" he asked.
Nagini quickly slid back a short distance, her meaning quite clear.
"Wait, give me another chance!"
He quickly walked to the edge of the underground lake and raised his wand: "Accio Silver Fish!"
Two splashing sounds, then the thud of fish hitting stone.
Snape quickly repeated the process he had just done.
Ten minutes later, he held a charred, barely fish-shaped unknown object in his hand.
"Listen, this wand isn't cooperating!" Snape said awkwardly.
Nagini had already closed her eyes, burying her head in the coil of her body.
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