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Chapter 73: Double moon

Dracula chuckled and shook his head.

"Salazar has been dead for so many years; there\'s no need to be polite," he said bluntly. "Now, his property is my property, and I even intend to use his property to deal with his descendants!"

Saying this, he rubbed the Basilisk\'s green forehead and said to it:

"How about building a new home in the forests of Albania? While you\'re there, could you help me find something? Look for the Ravenclaw diadem in one of the hollow trees in that forest—the one that Rowena Ravenclaw used to wear. You should recognize it."

The Basilisk, having been nurtured by Slytherin and evolved over a millennium, was now quite intelligent and could understand human speech.

Upon hearing Dracula\'s instructions, it closed its eyes and nodded its green, scaly head obediently.

"Professor Dracula, didn\'t you get the news about the diadem from Voldemort himself?" Dumbledore asked curiously.

Dracula\'s face darkened immediately.

One could only say that Voldemort\'s ploy to trade the secret of immortality for a chance to escape had indeed stirred his emotions significantly.

After dealing with Voldemort\'s bizarre maneuvers, all Dracula could think about was how to kill this insensible, irritating person who had pricked his sore spot, and he even forgot to inquire about the Ravenclaw diadem for Helena...

Fortunately, while contemplating how to place the Basilisk, Dracula remembered his promise to Helena and decided to send the Basilisk to the forests of Albania.

"Professor Dracula, since you\'ve decided to send the Basilisk to Albania, I have something else to tell you," Dumbledore said after a moment of thought. "Over the past few years, my friend Newt Scamander discovered some strange phenomena in one of Albania\'s forests—"

"A few years ago, Newt, as an invited magical zoologist, was asked by the Albanian Ministry of Magic to investigate. In a forest there, many animals suddenly lost their vitality without any visible wounds, and they became shriveled..."

Dracula showed a look of surprise.

"Isn\'t that the condition that appeared in the Forbidden Forest some time ago?" he said with interest. "Such dark magic drains the life force from living creatures to replenish its own missing life force."

"Are you suggesting... that the strange occurrences in that forest were also caused by Voldemort?" he asked Dumbledore.

"Very likely!" Dumbledore nodded. "After Voldemort arrived at Hogwarts through Quirrell, Newt sent me a letter. In it, he told me that the strange deaths of animals in the forest suddenly ceased."

"In other words, after Voldemort failed to steal the Philosopher\'s Stone and I annihilated the power he had just accumulated, it\'s highly likely he would return to the Albanian forest he is most familiar with and where he spent eleven years!" Dracula\'s lips curled into an eerie smile.

"Given this, I\'ll ask you to take on one more task," he turned to the Basilisk and said gently. "I need you to help me find Voldemort, the Slytherin descendant who controlled you before. I will periodically come to you for clues about his whereabouts."

The Basilisk, tame and without hesitation, agreed to abandon its former master\'s descendant.

"Professor Dracula, I remember you mentioned in that abandoned bathroom that you don\'t speak Parseltongue, correct?" Dumbledore suddenly asked. "So how do you plan to get information from the Basilisk?"

"Headmaster, don\'t we wizards have methods of obtaining information beyond just language? Such methods are quite inefficient," Dracula turned to him, giving him a deep look, and said with a smile, "Don\'t you think that Legilimency might be a quicker way to get the information?"

Dumbledore\'s eyes twitched.

Legilimency, which requires eye contact to obtain accurate information, theoretically offers high efficiency in information retrieval when one has sufficient energy.

However, using Legilimency to gain information from a Basilisk would require eye contact with the creature. Perhaps only someone like Professor Dracula would dare to do that...

Dumbledore privately sighed.

Meanwhile, Dracula had finished giving the Basilisk its task and patted its head.

Then, he took a couple of steps back and thoughtfully looked at it.

"Professor Dracula, if you need, Fawkes can teleport the Basilisk outside of Hogwarts."

Dumbledore, thinking that Dracula was concerned about how to transport the Basilisk to Albania, smiled and said, "I can arrange a team that specializes in transporting large magical creatures, using four skilled broomstick riders. They can deliver it to the forests of Albania tomorrow."

"Or we could use Newt\'s method and create a large, unmarked extension space to put the Basilisk into, then use a Portkey to go to Albania. I happen to be very good at making Portkeys."

Dracula glanced at him and shook his head.

"There\'s no need to go through so much trouble," he said with a light laugh. "I was just wondering how big a moon would be needed to fit this big fellow inside."

Under Dumbledore\'s puzzled gaze, Dracula grabbed the Basilisk\'s tail and Disapparated from the room in the Forbidden Section.

The next moment, Dracula and the Basilisk appeared hundreds of meters above the castle.

After a brief shock at being so high, the Basilisk began to squirm and struggle uneasily.

"Stay still, or I might drop you," Dracula said indifferently.

The Basilisk immediately calmed down, allowing Dracula\'s magic to keep it suspended in the air.

"Very good," Dracula nodded in satisfaction. "The room was too small to maneuver, so I brought you here."

With that, he raised a hand.

A massive dark moon quietly appeared in the sky, emitting a cold light.

The Basilisk\'s enormous body was completely enveloped by the dark moon. It then saw a dense forest, smelled the scent of rain-soaked leaves and old wood, and the fragrance of freshly washed, dust-covered grass...

Tonight, there were two moons in the Hogwarts sky, casting two kinds of moonlight.