The Snake Catcher's Tale (3)

"Hiss—"

"It really stinks."

Nelson and Tom stood before the enormous pit left by the battle between the two giant snakes, leaning forward to peer inside. The pit connected to London's sprawling underground sewers. A foul-smelling stream of wastewater ran through the drainage channel beneath the underground works, with splashes staining the walls on either side.

"Looks like he slithered away through there," Tom said, covering his mouth and nose, his voice muffled.

"Should we chase him?" Nelson pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and tied it over his face. After thinking for a moment, he took out a sheet of paper, tapped it with his wand, and handed Tom a white cotton mask.

"Thanks." Tom hurriedly took the mask and put it on. "It smells awful..."

"It's not like we can't go down there and chase him, but I don't think there's any need." Nelson took two steps back from the edge of the pit. "He's already crawled into the sewage. Never chase a cornered enemy... I think we have a more pressing problem."

"What?"

"What are we supposed to do about this pit?"

The two fell silent, staring at the ground, which looked as though it had been plowed by mortars after the battle, and at the enormous pit before them, too wide to clear even with a running start.

"Nal."

"Hmm?"

"I remember the Ministry of Magic has a department called the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, right? This sort of thing should fall under their jurisdiction, shouldn't it?"

"Yes. They're mainly responsible for major accidents and disasters caused by magic. Under normal circumstances, the Magical Accident Reversal Squad arrives at the scene within an hour of an incident."

"I see."

Tom crouched down and carefully examined the pit at his feet. He waved a hand to the side, and a long snake patterned in interwoven red and black slithered up from beside Nelson's foot onto his hand. Ignoring Nelson, who had jumped in fright and nearly fallen into the pit, Tom brought the snake's head close to his mouth and muttered a few words in Parseltongue before tossing it aside. Before long, snakes large and small crawled out of the darkness on both sides of the street and, one after another, plunged into the stinking ditch with plops, like dumplings dropping into a pot.

"What did you tell them?" Nelson balanced on one leg to avoid the sticky, slippery, long creatures around his feet as he asked curiously. "Did you tell them to perform diving tricks? Look, that grass snake didn't even make a splash when it went in. If I were the judge, I'd give it a ten."

"We can't let that guy get away, even if he jumped into a sewer." Tom stood, patted Nelson on the shoulder, and caught him as he jolted and nearly fell in again. "Will the Magical Accident Reversal Squad fix the road?"

"They will. They specialize in this. One person could handle something this minor in a second."

"Then why do they send an entire squad?" Tom and Nelson both started toward the roadside at the same time, as naturally as though they were simply taking a late-night stroll.

"I don't know. But if you keep walking that slowly, they might send another team of Aurors."

"They're coming, they're coming!" Tom bent down to tighten his shoelaces, then jogged after him.

After turning the corner, the two slowed down and took a winding route home. Just after they had passed through two blocks, several figures in black robes appeared out of thin air on the street where the battle had taken place. The Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes had arrived.

"A person? That snake was a person?" Nelson looked confused. Sitting atop an overturned mailbox three hundred meters from home, he looked up at Tom, who was pacing back and forth. "That definitely couldn't have been a person."

"Yes! He really was a person. He told me so himself!"

"Can't snakes lie to win your sympathy? If I were Jewish, I'd wake up every day and shout in German thirty times, 'I am a noble and pure Aryan, long live great Germany!'—it was obviously a snake." Nelson stared into Tom's eyes, feeling that the boy had been duped. "Maybe it was a smarter-than-average snake, but think about it. Its fighting style, its food—they were just like an ordinary snake's! Think about your Collared Owlet."

"It's a Collared Owlet..." Tom protested weakly. "He used to be a person. Now he's become a snake."

"Was he an Animagus? An Animagus whose transformation failed, so he couldn't change back?" Nelson recalled cases he had read about in books. As an exceptionally precise branch of magic, Transfiguration could lead to unimaginable and unacceptable consequences from even the slightest error. In fact, in every book on Transfiguration, the first chapter was not an introduction or overview, but one bloody case study after another of failed transformations—meant to warn those who treated their studies carelessly.

The harm caused by Transfiguration mistakes also ranked among the worst of all spells, and was even mentioned in myths and legends: unfortunate people transformed only halfway into minotaurs, dog-headed men, and the like. Without the help of a great wizard deeply skilled in Transfiguration, they could only be sent to St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries for treatment. And St Mungo's usual treatment for victims of failed Transfiguration Spells was often the simplest and crudest one—lay them in a bed, feed them something nice every day, and pray their magic was not powerful enough for the transformation to become permanent...

"No, that shouldn't be it." Tom was about to speak when Nelson refuted his own theory. "If it were Transfiguration, he should have retained human habits. He shouldn't truly behave exactly like a snake. That snake was clearly a snake inside and out, from flesh to soul."

"Nal, it might not necessarily have been Transfiguration..."

"Then what could it have been?" Nelson considered the matter with a serious expression. "Though I still insist it was just a snake, I have to admit you've sparked my thirst for knowledge. I think this could help deepen my understanding of Transfiguration. If I can transform better, Minerva won't mock me so intensely after school starts..."

"Fine." Tom shrugged helplessly. "Are you going home to look through books?"

"No, we're going back to that pit." Nelson rose from the mailbox, and a letter whose paper had yellowed and become brittle slid out of the dented mailbox with peeling green paint. "We can talk on the way."

"Sorry." He picked up the letter, looked at its address and postmark, and said, "This is ridiculous. Sent during World War One, delivered during World War Two." Then he stuffed it into the intact mailbox across the street.

"What? Are you insane?" Tom looked utterly incredulous. "I heard that some criminals return to the crime scene after committing a crime, to relive it for psychological satisfaction..."

"What are you thinking?" Nelson shot him a look. "I'm not like you, rushing into a fight with a wand in hand. This afternoon, I even read through the Ministry of Magic's white paper."

Tom said, "You have a book like that?"

"The Ministry gives them out. They're sitting on the bar counter at the Leaky Cauldron by the entrance to Diagon Alley, free for anyone to take." Nelson walked back to the mailbox he had been sitting on and continued, "If a magical disaster or a secondary magical disaster occurs, they have the authority to question registered wizards living nearby, and local wizards have an obligation to cooperate. I don't think there's a third wizard in the West End besides us... Christian might be one next year, but they'll definitely come to ask us what happened."

"So..."

"So we might as well take the initiative and ask them for information. That way, we won't have to hire a defense lawyer to represent us before the Wizengamot." Nelson wagged a finger and held out his hand to Tom. "Give me your wand."

Tom handed over his wand with a look of sudden understanding. Nelson took it and stuffed it, along with his own fir wood wand, into the broken mailbox at his feet.

"Don't worry." Seeing Tom's concerned expression, Nelson slipped a hand inside the collar of his trench coat and pulled another wand from an inner pocket—his own wand, black walnut wood, Dragon heartstring, fourteen inches, slender and straight.

"No, didn't you bring your own wand?" Nelson stared in surprise at Tom, who looked as though he had seen a ghost. "Didn't you give me your wand so I could carry two backups?"

Tom shook his head, looking at Nelson as though he had only just met him. "I always thought you were an upright gentleman, Nal."

"Am I not?" Nelson shrugged and pointed toward Nicklaus House in the distance. "Accio Wand, Tom!"

Crack— That was the sound of glass shattering.

"I had just broken my bad habit of opening windows whenever I pleased..."

"Sir, two young men have arrived. They say they live nearby!" On the street where the snake had been caught, a lean, dark-skinned man in wizard robes reported to a red-nosed, overweight man in a suit standing in the middle of the road. He pointed toward Nelson and Tom, who stood at the roadside with curious expressions, watching several wizards from the Accident Reversal Squad casting spells in the street.

"Oh, cough cough, cough cough cough..." The fat man was going bald rather prematurely. The few stubborn brown strands above his right ear were combed over to the left, covering the bald patch atop his head like the Emperor's new clothes. He had done a decent job dressing like a Muggle, but a Muggle wearing a summer suit jacket directly over a silk shirt in such cold weather was a rare sight indeed—perhaps that was why he could not stop coughing. "Bring them over."

"Are you Hogwarts students?" Looking at their youthful faces, the fat man recalled his own student days, when he still had a full head of hair. "Do you live nearby?"

"Yes, sir," Tom answered obediently, pointing behind him. "My name is Tom Riddle, and he is Nelson Williams. We are first-year Slytherin students. We live over in the French Quarter, number 189, Nicklaus House."

"All right, all right, no need to be so detailed..." The fat man shuddered and called over a subordinate to strip off his wizard robes.

"What happened, sir?" Nelson watched the busy wizards in the middle of the street with concern and curiosity. "We were playing Wizard's Chess when we suddenly heard something over here. What happened? Is it serious?"