Snape sat at the dining table, reading the Daily Prophet as he ate breakfast.
"Any interesting news?" Pomona asked curiously, though she did not think his smile was because he had read anything amusing.
"Do you think a Welsh Dragon and a chicken could breed offspring?" Snape asked, setting the newspaper in front of Pomona.
The photograph showed a chicken that could breathe fire. Its long neck made it look somewhat like a dragon.
"I'd sooner believe it was an Archaeopteryx," Pomona said. "They evolved from dinosaurs."
"Do you really think so?" Snape asked.
"What do you think, then?" she asked the great "headmaster."
His gaze shifted to the fried eggs on the table.
"Do you know how a Basilisk egg is hatched?"
Pomona began counting on her fingers as she tried to recall. Aristotle believed the world was composed of dryness, moisture, heat, and cold, so...
"How hard could it be?" Snape said with a frown, sounding as though he were speaking to a student in class. "Are you planning to start from the origin of the universe?"
"I'm recalling the rules!" Pomona said righteously. "Do you know why a rooster's egg hatched by a snake produces a cockatrice rather than a Basilisk?"
"Yes, that's right," Snape said with a smile. "You're not completely beyond help after all."
She glared at him.
"That's my guess," Snape said, picking up his coffee and taking a sip.
Pomona shook her head as she ate her sandwich, wondering whether that fire-breathing chicken could understand Parseltongue like a Basilisk.
From another angle, if one left Sforza Castle rather than entering from outside, one could see rows of holes along the "embankment" of the moat. They were the windows of the secret passageways.
They were nearly level with the surface of the moat.