The Snake Catcher's Tale (I)

"Nal, let's get ready to go." That evening, Nelson's door was pushed open again. He leaned tiredly against his chair. An open magazine lay before him, while books, Broomstick models, magazines, crystal balls, and other little knickknacks sat on the desk alongside a pile of opened boxes. He had spent the entire afternoon preparing for the battle that might take place that night, taking the chance to unwrap the Christmas presents his classmates had sent him.

Hearing the sound, Nelson looked toward Tom standing in the doorway.

"Tom? You're going out dressed like that?" Nelson rubbed his forehead speechlessly. Tom wore a set of Wizard robes and carried his Wand in his hand. "Are you afraid people won't notice you're a Wizard?"

"What's wrong with that?" Tom shrugged noncommittally. "There's no Trace on my Wand anyway. So what if we use magic right in front of those Muggles?"

"Have you not even looked at the books you bought?" Nelson pointed at the comics spread across the table. "Even aliens know to put on glasses to hide their faces. If too many Muggles see Wizards casting spells, the Ministry of Magic will eventually trace it back to you. You should dress like me. That way, if you get beaten up, you can run faster."

"All right." Tom glanced at Nelson, who wore work pants and a gray linen smock, nodded, and turned toward the door. "I'll change. We'll leave when I get back."

"Mm," Nelson replied, then called out just as Tom was about to leave. "Wait, Tom."

"Hmm?" Tom turned around and listened.

"Do you think I should bring this?" Nelson picked up the cane leaning against the desk and swung it a few times. "If there's ever a situation where I need a blunt object to hit someone in the back of the head, I think this would be perfect."

"..." Tom rolled his eyes. "I feel like using it to hit you in the back of the head right now."

"All right, just kidding." Nelson propped it back against the desk, then stopped Tom again as he turned to leave. "Wait a second."

Tom stopped where he was and cocked an ear, but did not turn around.

"Thank you for the comics. I really like this gift." Nelson picked up several issues of Action Comics from the desk and waved them with a smile. "Dress warmly. It's a little cold tonight."

"Oh, I really don't know why you like that stuff." Tom spoke dryly, then hurried out without looking back and shut the door. A barely audible sentence drifted through the corridor. "As long as you like it."

"So your method of finding prey is standing in the street and relying on luck?" Nelson complained as he stood in the middle of an intersection two blocks from home. The place seemed to have once been a military camp; all he could see along the roadside were stretches of wire fencing riddled with holes of all sizes. He had put on a black trench coat over his smock and wrapped it tighter around himself, shuffling and stamping his feet on the ground. "If I'd known it would be this cold tonight, I would've worn padded clothes."

"Don't rush. It'll be here soon." Tom stood beside him in a matching trench coat—their builds were similar, so Bella always bought two identical sets of clothes and embroidered an "N" and a "T" on the cuffs to tell them apart. (Nelson: An N.T. combo? That sounds so stupid!) December nights came especially early in London, and there were few streetlights, neon signs, or brightly lit office buildings full of programmers working overtime, so it was especially dark. The two of them were nearly one with the night beneath their coats. Unfortunately, Tom's pale face and Nelson's light golden hair still stood out somewhat. Tom glanced at Nelson's hair trembling along with his body. "To be fair, Black people do have an environmental advantage in this situation. Besides, weren't you the one who told me to wear more? Why are you the one getting cold?"

"That's called survival of the fittest..." Nelson's voice gradually faded. He pulled his hands from the warmth of his trench coat pockets, gripped his Wand tightly, and assumed a fighting stance. He heard a rustling sound from the street, as though countless chaotic noises had piled together. It came not from a single direction, but from all around them; not from a single distance, either, but both near and far. Nelson stopped speaking and strained to identify the sound in the night wind, a sound that made him irritated, even frantic, the moment he heard it. It was the sound of countless scales scraping over hard ground!

"Tom!" Nelson shouted. "Careful, it called for backup!"

"Don't worry." Tom stood nearby with an easy expression, spreading his hands like a little bear. "I called them."

That teeth-grating scraping grew louder. The nearby ground had begun to writhe as though it had come alive, flashing with dark gleams. As the sound intensified, the four streets connected to the intersection twisted like tides!

"Lumos!" Unable to stop himself, Nelson lit his Wand and pointed it at the ground. He saw snakes of all sizes crawling in from every direction, tangled together.

"Parseltongue isn't just the ability to speak with snakes... It's an inborn magic, not a foreign language." Tom smugly raised his chin at Nelson. Then he withdrew his gaze and finally drew his Wand, holding it level at his side. A blackness deeper than the night gathered around him—darker than any black Nelson had ever seen. Not a trace of light caught by it reflected or escaped. It gathered into roiling black smoke around Tom's legs. Maintaining the pose of a savior in a church mural, he slowly rose into the air.

Tom floated about a meter above the ground, looking down upon the snakes already layered around them as a king might look down upon his subjects. The snakes kept their distance from the two boys, leaving a neat oval space centered on them. They raised their heads high, flicked their tongues, and gazed up at Tom.

Tom swept his gaze around without a trace of emotion. The red glow in his eyes stood out sharply in the night. The snakes suddenly fell silent, leaving only the sound of the wind. Tom's lips barely moved, yet he let out a harsh, low hiss like something squeezed from his throat, snake-like and guttural. The strange hissing was soft, but it carried far.

The moment Tom finished speaking, the snakes seemed to receive an order. Like an army that obeyed every command, they scattered at an astonishing speed into the nooks, crannies, and shadows of the nighttime streets, creating the sight of a receding tide.

Nelson relaxed, lowered the arm clutching his Wand, stretched his shoulders sore from tension, and looked toward Tom, who had already landed.

"Where did you find so many snakes?" Nelson shuddered. From afar, he could occasionally still hear scales scraping and tongues hissing. "There must have been hundreds, maybe thousands of them, right? Does London have that many snakes?"

"Snakes are very widely distributed animals." Tom unbuttoned his trench coat, shoved his hands into the pockets of work pants matching Nelson's, and paced back and forth in the middle of the road. "Why would we need London's snakes? There are already this many snakes in the West End, especially in a city like London, which is damp, produces huge amounts of household waste every day, and has a labyrinthine sewer system."

"Do snakes eat household waste?" Nelson was a little curious. He knew lions, eagles, and badgers did not seem to have a habit of eating garbage.

A huge Question Mark appeared over Tom's head. He suppressed the urge to hit Nelson in the back of the head with a cane and explained, "Rats eat household waste, so London has lots of rats. Snakes eat rats, so London has lots of snakes."

"I understand. So how are they going to find that snake?"

"Snakes can differ greatly from one another." The smugness on Tom's face deepened. "Mr. Encyclopedia, it is my greatest honor to add another entry to your knowledge—a Giant Python that huge entering the West End is no different from a three-meter Giant coming to London. It's more conspicuous than the moon at night!"

"Did you notice that a large portion of those snakes were heading in the same direction?" Tom stepped onto one of the streets connected to the intersection and looked up at the sky. "Though the moon in London isn't very conspicuous at night."

"I didn't notice. Honestly, I didn't look at all." Nelson wrapped his trench coat tighter and followed Tom. "Even though I'm a Slytherin student, I really don't like snakes. I already dislike those slimy, wriggling, long creatures. Not to mention hundreds or thousands of them swarming in front of me and tangling together..."

"Oh, Nal, I think you have a stereotype about snakes." Tom bent down, scooped up a little green snake from the ground, wound it around his index finger, and held it out before Nelson. "You can't lump them in with caterpillars. Look at it. Isn't it cute?"

"You're practically in some evil cult!" Nelson leaped back as if he had teleported. "Get that thing away from me!"

"Haha." Tom played with the Little Snake in his hand, brought it near his mouth, and muttered a few words in Parseltongue. He bent over and set it in the grass behind the roadside wire fence, then turned around and teasingly threatened Nelson. "I hope you can gradually get used to waking up every morning and finding a snake lying on your pillow."

"Tom!" Nelson pulled out his Wand and pointed it at him fiercely.

"Hey, hey, no need to get so worked up..." Tom casually slipped his hands into his trench coat pockets. "At worst, I won't put snakes in your bed..."

"Reducto!"

"Impedimenta!"

The instant Tom flicked his Wand behind him and fired a Reducto, Nelson's Impediment Jinx had already grazed past Tom's face and flown toward the black snake lunging at him through the night.

"It really isn't an ordinary beast. Lumos." Tom quickly ran to Nelson's side, turned around, raised his lit Wand, and stood beside him. "It even knows how to ambush us."

"Our spells don't seem to have injured it." Nelson frowned. Tom's Reducto had struck the ground, kicking up a considerable cloud of dust. Within the dust, the light from Tom's Wand seemed to illuminate a huge, oppressive figure.

More than two meters above the ground, a pair of glowing green eyes watched them from the darkness. The green vertical pupils slowly widened into alarming circles. The dust gradually cleared, and the enormous figure that had been impossible to see clearly became increasingly distinct. Its coiled, ready-to-strike posture also slowly entered their view.

The typos, awkward sentences, and logical errors in the previous twenty-eight chapters have been corrected.

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