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Chapter 181: Search for relics

Although it was ultimately proven that Harry was indeed not related to Slytherin, it still left a lasting impression on him.

All this time, the little alchemical bat that had been used to draw his blood was still sitting in his luggage pile!

"So ... is there any necessary connection between the old snake cavity and this whole rescuing Luna thing?" Harry asked, "Could it be that Luna fell into the snakes?"

He winced.

If she had fallen into the snakes, after a long day, Luna would have had a hard time keeping herself alive, I'm afraid.

"It's actually a bit easier if you do fall into the snakes, I can find some of the andrographis powder from inside Hagrid's things, it's still quite handy for expelling a few snakes." Rolf said, "But that's not what happened, I searched along the footprints left by Luna and found a relic!"

"A relic?!"

Harry and Ginny exclaimed at the same time.

Even Ginny, who had already learned part of the situation from Rolf, only knew that Luna was trapped inside some trap, or animal colony in the Forbidden Forest, and didn't know that her disappearance was also connected to a certain relic that had disappeared from the magical world for a long time.

Harry was even more shocked.

He had never known that there were ancient ruins in the Forbidden Forest, and he didn't know if it was Luna's good or bad luck that she had stepped into one that had never been known.

"It's still uncertain exactly how Luna's situation is, so let's just walk and talk." Rolf grabbed his snake-fork pliers and led the way out of the Hagrid Shack.

Harry and Ginny naturally approved of his decision and followed out of the room.

"Won't you help Hagrid lock the door?" Harry asked in a hurry as he watched Rolf walk straight towards the Forbidden Forest.

He now knew that Hagrid's shed was full of precious goodies, and completely retracted his earlier judgment that Hagrid's hut didn't need to lock the door.

Rolf stopped in his tracks and shot a snickering glance at Harry, with a look in his eyes that clearly said:

'I thought you were just saying that Hagrid's Hut didn't have to lock its doors, why did you change your mind so quickly?'

Harry lowered his head, practically wanting to find a crack in the ground to burrow into.

After locking the door, the three of them walked into the deep forbidden forest together.

...

As time passed, the sky gradually darkened, and a bright evening sunset lit up the sky.

The trees of the Forbidden Forest were towering and dense, blocking the sunlight that was already dimming, casting dense shadows and appearing incomparably eerie.

The entire large forest was shrouded in a mist, and the huge and dense trees were linked together like a giant beast that wanted to choose people to devour, swallowing the three little wizards in one gulp.

"Rolf, have you seen how that relic looks like?" Walking in the deep forbidden forest, Harry couldn't help but ask Rolf.

After this short period of time together, the three had become quite close, no longer calling each other by their surnames, but affectionately calling the others by their first names.

"I didn't see the full extent of the ruins even when I was there this morning." Rolf said with a soft shake of his head, "There seemed to be some magical creatures in charge of protection around there, and even after bypassing the gatekeepers, there seemed to be other animals in charge of patrolling."

"I had wanted to do some good poking around the neighborhood to find a way into the ruins, but before I could circle around the ruins enough for a third of a circle, I was driven out by a large python."

Saying that, Rolf also gnashed his teeth indignantly.

"Those snakes were obviously enchanted, or else where would they have been willing to chase me away with the animal affinity of a future Pokémonologist like me?"

Harry and Ginny both twitched at the corners of their mouths, automatically ignoring Rolf's last comment.

"But how can you be sure there aren't any guardian animals other than snakes, Rolf?" Ginny asked with a somewhat worried look at Harry, "Harry's old snake cavity can only manipulate snake-like animals, wouldn't we become dangerous if we encountered any other kind of animal?"

"If my judgment is not wrong, we shouldn't encounter other kinds of animals." Rolf pondered slightly and said to the two of them, "The building of that relic has a lot of apocryphal images of snakes withered on it, the owner of the relic should have a paranoid fondness for animals like snakes, and it's unlikely that he would fill such a space of snakes with other animals."

"A love of snakes?" Harry couldn't help but laugh out loud, "Who else would want to use a not-so-nice animal like a snake as an apothecary image except for that group of people at Slytherin Academy?"

Ginny covered her mouth and laughed quite cooperatively as well.

"Wait, Harry, did you just say ... that only Slytherin would be willing to use a snake as a withering image?" Rolf suddenly stopped dead in his tracks.

"Yeah, that's kind of a consensus at Hogwarts, isn't it? Very few students other than Slytherin like snakes." Harry said to Rolf, a budding student who hadn't been at Hogwarts for very long, "After all, snakes have cold, hard bodies that don't feel good in the owner's hands."

"Also, venomous snakes have fangs that can harm human lives, plus many of them can grow so large that the average snake keeper often ends up not being able to find the right space to keep them because they've grown too big."

"No, I'm not talking about the disadvantages of snakes." Rolf shook his head, "I just suddenly thought of a question, who exactly did you guys say ... built this relic?"

"If according to you guys, only a Slytherin sorcerer would like an animal like a snake, then the probability is that this relic was built by a Slytherin, and his talent and family fortune should be very powerful, which would give him the opportunity to build a relic of that size."

"That's true ...," Harry nodded, lost in thought.

He suddenly remembered what Professor Dracula had said to him when he had approached him for a blood test:

The founder of the Slytherin Academy, Salazar Slytherin was a Serpent's Old Cavity, he was able to use it to control untold numbers of snakes to fight for him, and the Serpent's Old Cavity was like a soul-stealing spell for snakes.

Harry's eyes suddenly widened, "You guys, could this relic have been built by the founder of the Slytherin Academy?"

"No way ...," Ginny opened her mouth wide, "If Slytherin built the relic, why would a Ravenclaw witch like Luna be able to get in?"

"I'm not sure, but the more I think about it, the more likely it seems." Harry said excitedly, "Ginny, Rolf, can you remember anything else that's told in Hogwarts: A School History? Hermione has a copy there and I've borrowed it to read."

"Saracha Slytherin ended up leaving Hogwarts later in life after breaking with the other three founders over enrollment rules. There have been legends that believe that in order to maintain the purity of Hogwarts, Slytherin left behind a secret chamber at Hogwarts from which monsters would emerge every certain amount of time, tasked with removing Muggle-born students."

"Could that relic be the Chamber of Secrets that Slytherin left behind?" Harry asked excitedly.

"Harry, legends are legends after all, and there wasn't much we could have borrowed from this in the first place." Rolf shook his head gently, "And I don't see how a large relic could be described as a Chamber of Secrets."

"But there's no smoke without fire, and the fact that there have been such legends at least proves that there's a high probability that Slytherin actually left something behind." Ginny said optimistically, "And instead of discussing it aimlessly here, we should just go to the site and take a look."

Harry and Rolf nodded in approval of Ginny's statement, and Rolf led the two onward into the depths of the Forbidden Forest.

Gradually, as the sky darkened, a layer of mist shrouded the Forbidden Forest everywhere, obstructing the vision of those in its midst.

As Harry's trio continued to walk deeper and deeper, the surrounding area became darker and darker, and not a single ray of sunlight could seep down from the cracks of the trees, providing enough light to illuminate the path ahead.

"Luminescent Flicker (Lumos)."

Harry and Rolf raised their wands at the same time and lit the tips of their wands with the Wand Lighting spell, dispersing some of the darkness around them.

The three were then able to see what was around them -

Trees so thick that it would take two people to hug them stood all around, the tops of which could not be seen at all from the ground upwards, with only a cascade of branches and leaves obscuring the sky.

In addition to those dense bushes, there were also some dark-colored tree trunks in the distance, even in the middle of summer, but there were not many leaves, and many bare, oddly shaped branches overlapped together, giving people a slightly eerie feeling.

The soil on the ground was an overall grayish color, and these soils did not appear to be wet, but strangely stayed dry in the diffuse fog. You could feel the firm, hard texture as you stepped on it, and your shoes wouldn't get dirt on them as a result.

Rolf stopped in front of a bare tree trunk

"Why have you stopped?" Harry looked over at Rolf, who had stopped halfway across the road and not continued, "Is something wrong?"

"Well ... nothing's wrong." Rolf turned back with an embarrassed expression, "Only that the fog is getting a little thicker now, and I can't discern the exact path to that ruin."

"What did you say?!" Harry instantly widened his eyes, "Right now, among the three of us, only you have been to that relic where Luna is ... If even you can't find the path, then how are we supposed to free Luna?"

Ginny also revealed a very worried expression beside her, "Rolf, think of something!"

"It's fine, the problem isn't too big." Rolf's eyes circled around a few times and said with a confident expression, "If I can find that relic once, I can find it a second time!"

After saying that, he told Harry and Ginny to stay where they were, and took a few steps by himself towards a small open area nearby.

He then pulled his wand out of his pocket and recited the incantation-

"Trace Manifestation (Appare Vestigium)."

Rolf bent down to bring his body close to the ground and spun around in the middle of the forbidden forest, his wand spraying a golden spot of light that illuminated all traces of magical activity in the vicinity.

"Whew, I have to say this magic does work." After the magic casting was over, he looked at the area in front of him enveloped in golden light with satisfaction and said, "You guys might have heard of it, this magic spell is called a tracking spell."

"My grandfather was quite good at this magic spell, and often used it to find the traces of magical animals and rescue the little ones that were hidden in places that were hard for people to find.... Not only that, but during the time of the Global Wizarding War, it was by virtue of this magic that he was able to find my grandmother in Paris. "

Rolf stood in the very center of this golden glow, looking at the various golden lines and shapes that gradually appeared around him, and introduced himself very pleasantly.

"It's quite fortunate to say that I thought this spell looked very cool when I was working as a young assistant under my grandfather, so I pestered him and asked him to teach me to learn this spell."

"And it sure came in handy today!"

Harry and Ginny stood beyond the golden glow at a certain distance from Rolf, eyeing the trajectories of the various animals illuminated by the golden light and unconsciously frowning.

"Rolf, how is this magic spell going to work?" Ginny curiously reached out her hand to touch towards a golden line, but her hand passed right through it and touched nothing.

"It's actually quite simple to use," Rolf said, "Each golden shape represents a creature's trail of activity, and according to the amount of magic output and the proficiency in using the spell, it's able to see a timeframe ranging from an hour all the way up to several years."

"But there are so many lines and shapes here, how are we going to find the trail that belongs to Luna?" Harry felt a little guilty as he looked at the dizzying array of golden lines.

"Not to mention that you found Luna's trail in the morning, and now that an afternoon has passed, the animals that have passed through this area should become more numerous and make a greater interference in our judgment."

In the face of Harry and Ginny's less than optimistic moods, Rolf instead held his head up with a confident expression.

"If we were looking for other magical creatures it might indeed be a bit of a challenge, but since we're looking for wizards, and Luna at that, the task becomes a lot easier." He said, pointing to the patch of golden trails in front of him.

"This is already the depths of the Forbidden Forest, it's supposed to be a place where very few sorcerers will arrive, usually even if someone comes here it's those more powerful professors who might enter the Forbidden Forest to collect some materials."

"But don't you guys forget!" Rolf suddenly focused and emphasized.

"Today, Professor Dracula brought all the faculty members to his house, even Professor McGonagall didn't stay at the castle, so it's conceivable that none of the other professors must have stayed here, so it's only necessary to look for the trajectories of the little wizards."

"On top of that, even if there really is another little wizard who has to violate the school rules to appear in the depths of this forest at a time like this before the exams, we don't have to worry too much."

"I've already found out during the morning, and if you guys see Luna's footprints, you'll most likely be surprised ... Anyway, her footprints are very unique."

Rolf led both Harry and Ginny into the area covered by the golden glow, eliminating one by one the tracks and movement trails that were obviously left by animals, eliminating the golden shapes that represented those things.

Soon the area covered by the golden glow became empty, leaving only a pair of very specific tracks still lingering in it.

"This is ..."

"Huh?"

Looking at the trail, both Harry and Ginny's eyes widened in dismay.

Only to see that the footprints representing Luna stretched out along a path forward, with varying spacing of her feet, as if she had traveled the distance with a bounce in her step, and appeared to be in a good mood.

And the more startling point was by no means Luna's cheerful mood, but the picture left by the footprints of her two feet--

The two footprints left by Luna were different from each other, the one representing the left foot was a round, shoe print with a cute rabbit's head, while the one representing the right foot was a bare foot print, the direct of the toes very clearly illuminated by the golden light, left on the ground in front of the trio.

"I didn't lie to you guys, did I?" Rolf gave Harry and Ginny a smug look, "I told you that Luna's footprints were definitely easy to find, and you guys just didn't believe me!"

Harry and Ginny glanced at each other, both thinking that walking barefoot on the dirt paths of the Forbidden Forest was a strange thing to do; and it was even stranger to have one foot in a shoe while the other was bare!

The two of them then thought that since the person who did such a thing was Luna, it was quite normal to think of it this way ...

"This shoe print is indeed Luna's." Ginny pointed at the round shoe print with a cute rabbit head on it and said, "I've seen her wearing those slippers, which have a pair of fluffy rabbit heads of the same style on them, super cute ..."

Ginny then sighed a little regretfully, "If it wasn't for the lack of pocket money, I'd actually want to buy a pair for myself."

"But why is she only wearing one shoe?" Harry was still a little puzzled, "Was she wearing just one shoe when she was at Hogwarts Castle and then came straight inside the Forbidden Forest to feed Night Ti?"

"I don't think so?" Ginny shook her head, "When I met up with her last night, she had both slippers on her feet in perfect condition."

"I guess according to Luna's character, she should have accidentally dumped the slipper on her right foot after entering the forbidden forest." Rolf pondered for a moment and quickly analyzed what happened.

"It was like this when the two of us came together to explore the Forbidden Forest before, walking along the road, her attention was easily hooked by other small animals or something interesting, so it's not too unusual for her to have thrown off her slippers while chasing after those small things!"

He covered his forehead with some heartburn, feeling that Luna's fluttering personality was really not something that ordinary people could handle.

"Then let's hurry over there, now that Luna is even missing a shoe, I really don't know what kind of danger she's enduring!" Ginny interrupted Rolf's thoughts and grabbed Harry's arm and headed in the direction of the footprints.

"Hey Rolf, can you extend this tracking spell of yours a bit?" She walked over to where the edge of the golden glow was and noticed that Luna's footprints disappeared along with it, "Does that mean you need to use this spell again every few steps?"

"The tracking spell isn't that low end, or my grandfather wouldn't have loved it so much." Rolf smiled and propped his own wand in the palm of his hand, "This spell often has to be used in conjunction with a directional spell for maximum effect."

"Point Me." He recited the spell.

The golden glow slowly disappeared, while at the same time, Rolf's wand spun in the palm of his hand, pointing straight in the direction where Luna's footprints had disappeared.