The Death Knell

After pushing the door open, the three girls only used the weak fluorescent light from their wands for illumination. There were heavy breathing sounds in the darkness, and there was also the smell of animal excrement, which covered up the smell of garlic.

This was a hall with a traceless stretching spell attached to it. As they went deeper into the hall, they saw a big dog lying on the ground.

The three of them were shocked and recognized that this was a three-headed dog, a very ferocious magical animal. Even if it couldn't bite a few people, as long as it barked, it would definitely attract other professors.

But the next second, they realized that something was not right about the dog. Logically speaking, it should have discovered the three of them long ago, but it was still lying on the ground, panting.

"Don't go there, Hermione, it will bite your neck off." As Hufflepuffs, Susan and Hannah knew much better about magical animals than Hermione, and the fat girl immediately stopped him. The wand is near the big dog friend.

Hermione squatted down and reached out to touch the liquid on the ground. Under the blue fluorescence emitted from the tip of the wand, they looked black, and the thick liquid had already covered the soles of the three people's shoes.

"It's blood." Hermione waved her hand. Among the three people, there were two chefs and a new killer who had broken the pot after last night. They didn't feel anything about blood: "The three-headed dog was injured, and it was very serious. .”

Hannah moved closer, but the big dog didn't even have the strength to raise his head to look at the three of them, and just wheezed and panted.

There were several very terrifying huge wounds on its body. Even for such a large dog, it was undoubtedly a serious injury, and even one of its heads was about to fall off.

"Hagrid or the Care of Magical Creatures professor should have placed it here to guard it." Hannah reached out to touch the depth of the wound: "It's so pitiful, we have to help it."

"Its fur still has dried scabs of 'rat juice'. Someone took away all the rat tumors in the Potions preparation room to treat its injuries." Hermione sighed and started to take it out of her bag. Bring out bottles and cans.

She usually saved many potions as prizes, but this time she brought them all. She randomly distributed several bottles of blood-replenishing potions to the girls. Each of them unscrewed a bottle and poured it into a dog's head.

Although I don’t know if the magic potion that people drink is useful for magical animals, but it shouldn’t kill them if they drink it, right? It is always right to stop the bleeding first.

She probably guessed what happened. The dog must have been blown up by the professor's detonator yesterday, so someone smeared it with rat juice as a treatment. As a result, I encountered a more terrifying black magic today. It was no match at all, and the result was like this.

Maybe Professor Snape stood in front of the potion table all night yesterday to make potion for the dog, so he was limping in class in the morning. The bad professor also said that he might have hemorrhoids, which was really bad.

Thinking of her professor's dishonorable appearance, Hermione looked like a dead fish again.

The potion also seemed to be effective on the three-headed dog. Its bleeding slowed down or even stopped, but the blood loss made it comatose.

"Okay, we can't do any further treatment, and we don't have time." Only then did the three girls notice that there was a trap door leading down next to it, which seemed like the right way: "Situation It’s stabilized, let’s move on.”

Hermione pulled the handle on the trapdoor, and it opened with a creak, revealing nothing in the darkness below.

So she took out a few portable lighting sticks from her bag, broke them in her hand a few times, made them glow green, and then threw them away.

Looking again at this time, it turns out that there are dense plants underneath, like some kind of tentacles.

"It's a devil's net." Hannah recognized it. She was much calmer now: "There are these things in the forest behind my house. Once a living animal falls into it, the more it struggles, the tighter it will become until it kills Dead animals.”

"We just need to jump down and don't move. They will disperse in a few minutes." Susan also gave a solution. Magical animals and plants are not a problem for Hufflepuff.

But Hermione took out a few more torches from her pocket, lit them skillfully with a grinding wheel lighter and gasoline, and handed out one to each person: "We don't have that much time, the devil's net is afraid of flames, we just need to hold the torch steady." can drive them away.”

"...Why do you have everything in your bag?"

The two little badgers were stunned, and Hermione took out various props from her bag as if she had been prepared.

Hermione shook the torch in her hand to make it burn more vigorously and replied:

"Professor Wilson once told me that you have to be prepared beforehand to avoid panic, so for this operation, I prepared all the countermeasures for unexpected situations in the wild that he mentioned in the physical education class... ..The reason for not using a wand to light the fire is to prevent them from being accidentally broken during the descent. After all, the wand is still too fragile compared to the torch, and the devil's vine is very strong."

"You're great! Chew." Hannah kissed Hermione on the cheek in admiration: "He did say how to drive away animals that are afraid of fire if the wand is not around."

Susan also wanted to kiss Hermione, but the latter avoided it very warily. She had to cough: "Let's go down then and try not to hurt these plants. I think they may have been placed by our dean." Means of defense here.”

"I'll go down first, then Hannah, and finally Susan." The passage behind the trap door was not loose. She arranged the order, and at the same time said: "It's best to leave a mark on the ground. If there is anything below, Change, or something happens to us and someone can find us.”

"This is simple." Susan drew a strawberry-shaped mark on the ground next to the trap door with the cream cake she brought with her.

"Let's go." Hermione jumped down first.

Although this passage was nearly vertical, the dense devil's net acted as a buffer when they landed. The three people held torches, which just kept the plants at a distance that would not entangle them, but seemed unwilling to do so. This made them Landed safely.

After walking out of the deep well covered with plants, there was only a stone corridor, which seemed to be the only way.

In addition to their own footsteps, there was also the sound of water dripping slowly down the wall. This corridor went down a slope, which reminded Hermione of the bathroom where the water pipe burst last night, and at the same time, her adrenaline was pumping. It is secreted at an extremely fast speed, and the field of vision becomes narrower and narrower.

She forced herself to calm down and told herself that her mind could not be blank like last night. She had to think. Wisdom is power.

The three of them slowed down a little. On the way, one of them ate a piece of chocolate frog and adjusted his condition.

"Can you hear anything?"

Hannah asked the other two girls in a low voice. Her ears were very good, and she heard gentle rustling and tinkling sounds in the darkness ahead.

Susan tilted her head and listened, but she couldn't hear it and could only guess: "Could it be a ghost?"

"I don't know, but it feels like a winged creature, maybe a large group of bats." Hannah said that she didn't like this kind of animal very much, and probably the physical education teacher didn't like them either. She even emphasized not to eat them in physical education class. bat.

"There was a light ahead and I saw something moving."

Hermione said this, and the three of them arrived at the end of the corridor. In front of them was a brightly lit room with a high vaulted ceiling.

Countless little birds, as dazzling as gems, flapped their wings and flew around the room. There was a heavy wooden door opposite the room.

"It's the key to growing wings." The fat girl pushed up her glasses: "I didn't know that such magical animals existed in nature. They are either illusions or have been cast under a levitating spell."

Hermione thought for a moment, then tentatively stretched out her hand and waved it in the hall, only to find that she only alerted the keys and ran away, and had no intention of attacking any of them:

"Let's first see what the lock on the opposite side looks like, and then we can find the correct one among the thousands of keys."