"Of course," Newt nodded with a smile, "I have long wanted to see the legendary unique magical animals such as vampire bats, ghost blood vines, and bloody crows in Brown Castle."
"I won't let you down, Mr. Scamander." Dracula raised his lips and started the car again. "Greece is not too far from Romania. It won't take long to get there."
Dracula now has a pretty good impression of Newt.
He was not unhappy because Newt discovered his identity as a vampire. Instead, he gained a deeper understanding of the image of this magical zoologist.
From Newt's statement, it can be seen that he had doubts about Dracula's identity as early as the first time he saw him because of the details of his appearance.
After he saw how Dracula and the legendary invincible Andros got along, this suspicion basically turned into certainty.
However, Newt did not easily reveal Dracula's identity as a vampire. Instead, he endured his curiosity.
It was not until Dracula invited him to visit his private castle and was about to reveal his identity to Newt that the Magizoologist finally expressed his guess.
What's more, Newt did not reveal Dracula's identity in front of others.
Instead, it was not until Albert left, when Dracula and Newt were alone together, that Newt was willing to tell Dracula his guess.
This is also meant to remind Dracula to make a more perfect disguise.
From Newt's various behaviors, we can see that this gentle Magizoologist does not have the common prejudice against dark creatures such as vampires among wizards. Instead, he is considerate and takes care of the emotions of other people, whether they are wizards or any other race.
"You seem to be very good at taking care of other people's emotions, Mr. Scamander."
Dracula held the steering wheel in front of him with one hand, and rested his other elbow on the window, leaning his cheek against the side, and said to Newt who was sitting in the passenger seat with a chuckle.
It seemed that Mount Olympus absorbed too much thick fog. After the fog dissipated, the sky in Greece became very clean, like blue velvet. The sunlight was hidden behind the clouds, dyeing the sky layer by layer.
Dracula didn't like this sunny weather.
Fortunately, after Newt guessed his identity, he no longer needed to disguise himself and simply turned the UV protection function on the car window to the maximum.
Now every piece of glass has turned into the same color as Dracula's special sunglasses, blocking all sunlight outside the car windows and not letting a trace of ultraviolet rays hit Dracula.
“No, right?” Newt was still hugging his old-fashioned suitcase, sitting on the luxurious chair a little awkwardly, his expression a little embarrassed. “Few people comment on me like this. I am always slow to perceive other people’s emotions.”
"I remember... Tina, Jacob and the others preferred to say that I was a blockhead."
As he spoke, he laughed at himself.
Dracula looked at Newt with interest and asked curiously, "I know Tina is your wife, so Jacob is...?"
"Jacob Kowalski, a Muggle." Newt smiled. "He was a friend I met in America. He was a very nice person."
"Oh, yes. I remember the story Nico told me about the Global Wizarding War. There was indeed a very important Muggle in it." Dracula nodded knowingly. "Mr. Kowalski is the chosen one, right?"
“The chosen one? You could say that.” Newt smiled knowingly.
"You may not know that before Tina and I were together, Jacob once told me very seriously not to describe her eyes as salamanders."
Newt couldn't help but reminisce about past experiences, and there seemed to be a gleam in his eyes.
"But I couldn't help myself in the end... because I couldn't think of anything more beautiful than a salamander emerging from the water."
"You are indeed a fool, Mr. Scamander," said Dracula cheerfully. "So how did it end? Didn't Ms. Goldstein give you a cold shoulder?"
“No, she didn’t,” Newt said with a shy smile. “I never thought that Tina would actually read my book… I hadn’t even finished the scene before she brought up the salamander herself.”
Dracula's expression, which was originally expecting to see a joke, froze on his face.
'So this Magizoologist is showing off his affection...'
Dracula turned his head and looked at Newt speechlessly. Seeing that he was immersed in the memories of the good old days, he couldn't help but curl his lips.
The car was speeding through the air. The mountains under the blue sky were like continuous waves. The white clouds were left behind one by one, as if they were blown away by the fresh breeze.
Dracula looked along the open and flat plain in front of him and saw a dense forest.
"Wait, I remember there shouldn't be such a big forest on the route to Romania that I planned in advance." He said with some confusion.
Dracula gently stepped on the brakes to slow down the vehicle's speed.
Newt also recovered from his past memories at this time, and looked through the dark car window at the forest in the distance that seemed to have no end.
He thought about it, then took out a compass from his pocket, skillfully placed it in front of his eyes, and observed the direction the car was going.
"You still carry a compass with you, Mr. Scamander?" Dracula looked at him curiously.
"It would be very troublesome for me to search for magical creatures in various places for a long time without bringing some practical things." Newt explained, "Many small things made by Muggles are very useful, such as this small compass."
"As long as we don't come across a place where the magic reaction is particularly strong and can judge the magnetic field normally, this little thing will be quite useful."
He looked at the direction on the compass and saw that the "N" representing north was slightly to the right of the two of them.
"If we were starting from Mount Olympus, we should be heading due north, which is the correct direction to Romania via Bulgaria," Newt said. "Now we are heading a little to the west."
Dracula glanced at the compass and had to admit that he was so engrossed in chatting with Newt that he didn't notice the specific direction of travel.
"I don't know when we started to deviate from the direction. Otherwise, we could use this to determine where we are now." He sighed slightly, "Now I don't know how far to the east I should go to get back on track."
"Are we really going to Apparate directly to Romania?"
Dracula was somewhat unwilling to deviate from the direction.
After all, this was the first time he used the car he modified to carry passengers, and he formally invited the guests to visit Dracula's Castle.
How is this different from the nobles in the past arranging carriages to receive distinguished guests, but the carriage got lost halfway? No host could accept such a thing happening!
If the two of them could only go to Dracula's Castle through wizard methods like Apparition just because they were going in the wrong direction, wouldn't he be very embarrassed
So Dracula thought of a solution.
He quietly transformed into a small bat and threw the small bat directly into the dark moon, teleporting it to his room in Dracula's castle.
Then, Dracula immediately determined the exact location of Dracula's Castle.
"It's just a slight deviation from the direction. It won't bother me." He raised a confident smile, "Mr. Scamander, I have found the right direction. We will go to Romania soon!"
"This should be Albania." Newt suddenly said.
"How do you know for sure?" Dracula was stunned.
Judging from the positioning of the little bat just sent out, Albania is indeed heading in this direction.
"In fact, we can judge the local geography and climate by the species of trees, and then infer which country this place is based on the climate." Newt explained, "If you look closely, you can see that most of the trees in front have hard leaves, and they are mostly distributed near the Mediterranean."
"The climate around the Mediterranean usually has more rainfall in winter and hotter summers. In order to reduce evaporation, the leaves in these climates are usually evergreen and hard, and most of them are even covered with hairs or degenerated into thorns."
"We haven't actually deviated from our direction for too long, so it's impossible for us to reach a country too far from Greece," Newt said. "So it seems that Albania is the most likely candidate."
Dracula looked at Newt in silence, and after a long while he started to complain:
"So Magizoologists have to moonlight as geographers these days?"
"I have just been exploring around the world for a long time, and I have learned a little about the geographical environment of various regions without realizing it." Newt said very modestly, "In fact, I am still far from it."
"There's no need to be modest about this, Mr. Scamander." Dracula shook his head helplessly, "I've lived for so many years, and I've learned a lot of strange knowledge, but I haven't learned this kind of geographical knowledge."
"You just don't bother to learn, Professor Dracula." Newt laughed.
Dracula shrugged, deciding not to bother with the humble magizoologist any further.
"Speaking of Albania, I always feel like I have forgotten something..." He rubbed his brows and looked at the forest below with a vague gaze.
"I really think Dumbledore mentioned that the mysterious man hid in an Albanian forest in the past ten years." Newt also said thoughtfully, "I came here to investigate the phenomenon of strange animal deaths, but I didn't find anything definite."
"So Voldemort was hiding here before?" Dracula pondered.
His eyes flashed with memories of his previous battles with Voldemort—
The last time was in a bunker that a pure-blood family had painstakingly built, and the time before that was on the island of Azkaban... As for the first time he fought Voldemort, it was in the restricted area at Hogwarts that protected the Philosopher's Stone.
Dracula still vaguely remembered that Voldemort was just a weak remnant soul at the time, and could only live in the body of Assistant Professor Quirrell, and even wanted to rely on Salazar Slytherin's basilisk to launch a sneak attack...
Wait, Basilisk!
Dracula finally remembered that he had sent the basilisk raised by Slytherin to the forest of Albania, mainly for the purpose of letting it help Helena find the Ravenclaw crown.
However, the tiara had actually been hidden in the Room of Requirement at Hogwarts. After Tom Riddle's Horcrux diary was captured, Riddle took the tiara out of the Room of Requirement and used it to please himself...
From then on, Dracula gradually forgot about the basilisk he had thrown into the Albanian forest, until today when he happened to pass by Albania and finally remembered it.
"Ahem, Mr. Scamander." Dracula suddenly coughed twice, looked at Newt and said, "I suddenly thought of some other interesting magical animals. I wonder if you are interested?"
…
"So there really is a basilisk in this forest?"
Newt held up his wand and cast an illumination spell, walking with difficulty in the jungle that blocked out the sun, and asked Dracula beside him.
The forest was too dense, and even the modified cars could not drive here, so Dracula and Newt got out of the car and prepared to walk to find the basilisk.
Dracula put the Rolls-Royce into his pocket and secretly decided to find time to add more functions to the car in the future, such as jungle driving, water walking, etc., so as to cope with various terrains, so that he would not have to get out of the car and walk like now.
"As I recall, the basilisk became extinct more than a thousand years ago," Newt said. "No one except Slytherin has ever been able to replicate the despicable Herpo's creation."
He sighed with some regret, "In fact, I have tried to incubate an egg under the body of a toad, but nothing hatched in the end."
"So you actually dare to try to hatch a basilisk..." Dracula glanced at Newt, but was not surprised at all. He even thought it was strange that an avid fan of magical animals like Newt had never tried to hatch a basilisk.
"After Salazar got old, it's true that no one could replicate the Basilisk anymore," he explained to Newt, "but the Basilisk can survive for thousands of years."
“You mean, the basilisk hatched by Slytherin a thousand years ago is still alive?” Newt asked in surprise.
"That's right, the basilisk I want to show you is the one that was born a thousand years ago." Dracula nodded.
Dracula stopped when he reached a relatively open area in the forest.
"It's about here."
Then, he raised his wand and pointed it at the dense tree canopy above—
First, a green snake mark appeared above the forest, and then a blood-red mark made up of demon wings bloomed side by side.
"This is..." Newt asked curiously.
"The green one is Slytherin's mark, and the red one is mine." Dracula explained simply, "If the old and powerful basilisk senses the aura of these two marks, it will come to find us."
Newt nodded slightly, then closed his eyes consciously.
As an excellent magizoologist, he certainly knew that the basilisk had a cruel magical talent - its gaze could kill anyone who touched it!
Dracula also noticed Newt's cautious movements and shook his head with a smile.
"Mr. Scamander, you don't actually need to close your eyes," he said to Newt.
"Is the magical talent of the basilisk recorded in the book wrong?" Newt opened his eyes in surprise and looked at Dracula, and asked, "I remember that the basilisk's eyes can instantly kill any person or animal who makes eye contact with it."
"That's true, but this basilisk will close its eyes by itself." Dracula raised the corners of his mouth happily, "Since it knows it is here to see me, I guess it won't be willing to open its eyes even if someone forces it."
The poor basilisk was tortured so badly by Dracula more than a thousand years ago that it not only evolved eyelids on its own, but also suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder due to Dracula. It can't help but close its eyes when it thinks of Dracula.
Newt: “?”
So what did this vampire lord do to the poor little basilisk cutie
Not long after, a huge green snake crawled out from the depths of the forest. Its body was as thick as an oak tree trunk, and its length reached an astonishing 50 feet. It also had a bright red feather on its head.
As Dracula expected, because it knew it was coming to see the Count, the basilisk had closed its eyes tightly before it arrived, not revealing any of its big yellow eyeballs.
The basilisk came to Dracula with the help of its sense of smell and heat, lowered its big head obediently, and lay in front of Dracula.
"Very good, you came quite quickly." Dracula patted the basilisk's big green forehead with satisfaction.
Newt looked over curiously, especially focusing on the red feathers on the basilisk's head.
"Is this a male basilisk?" He touched the bright red feather tentatively and asked, "Female basilisks should not have this feather."
The basilisk shook its head slightly dissatisfied.
It was not known whether it was because Newt's affinity for magical creatures was so high, or because it felt the pressure from Dracula standing next to it, but the basilisk did not react too much and let Newt grab the feathers on its head to study them.
"It should be a male, right?" Dracula said uncertainly.
Having known the basilisk for such a long time, he really had never cared about the gender of this big guy.
Newt also realized that asking Dracula was not reliable, so he did not ask any other questions. Instead, he took out a notebook and a feather pen with some excitement and began to record the appearance of the basilisk.
Dracula watched as the magic feather pen automatically scribbled on the notebook, and in the blink of an eye a lifelike image of a basilisk was sketched out.
The next moment, the pictures on the notebook began to move.
"Are all the animals in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them drawn like this?" he asked curiously.
…
…