The new term has begun, and with it comes news about Nicolas Flamel.
"You mean... the black gas left by Herpo is almost exactly the same as the composition of the Obscurus?" Dracula said in surprise, looking at the bronze mirror with a phoenix relief engraved on it in front of him.
Flamel's old and thin face appeared in the bronze mirror. At this moment, his usually amiable and smiling expression seemed extremely solemn.
"That's true," he said. "Whether we look at the amount of magic power stored in them or the characteristics of the two energies, we can find that the two energies have very similar characteristics."
"I don't know if anyone has ever thought of comparing these two energies before, but at least in the past six hundred years, I have never seen the energy generated by dark magic items such as Horcruxes. They are too rare."
"Obscuriated may be more widely known than Horcruxes, but they are still not very common, and wizards who have the opportunity to observe the energy properties of Obscurus are even rarer..."
Flamel looked through the bronze mirror into Dracula's eyes, "So I guess Newt might be the first wizard to discover the similarities between these two energies!"
Dracula frowned slightly.
He held the phoenix-embossed mirror in one hand and pushed open the front door of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom with the other, looking at the young wizards who were sitting upright as the melodious school bell rang.
"This class is for self-study. You can read the book and review what you have learned before. There will be a class test in the next class." He said to the young wizards.
Then, Dracula slammed the classroom door and returned to the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor's office along the stairs connected to the classroom, leaving the little wizards in the classroom looking at each other in bewilderment.
"Hey, Potter, here comes Wes. Does Professor Dracula often let us study on our own?"
Rolf Scamander, who had been moved back to the second year from the first year by Dumbledore, was sitting in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom and asked a pair of Gryffindor classmates next to him.
"Just be thankful, Scamander." Ron quietly looked towards the front of the classroom and made sure the door was completely closed. Then he said to Rolf with confidence, "Professor Dracula rarely lets us study on our own. If we do, it must be because something else has piqued his interest and made him too lazy to attend class."
"You just arrived, so you may not realize how cruel Professor Dracula's class is. You are really lucky to have a study session on the first day of the new semester!"
"Is Professor Dracula's class so cruel?" Looking at Ron's cautious expression, Rolf was a little confused. "Are you guys overreacting? I heard from my grandfather that Professor Dracula is very powerful?"
So far at Hogwarts, Rolf had only attended Riddle's Defense Against the Dark Arts class, and had not yet attended Dracula's class.
Not only the classroom, but also after Dracula capriciously gave himself a vacation, even the duel club he hosted was in a state of suspension. Rolf had never seen the "grand occasion" of the club, so he didn't quite understand Ron's caution.
"That's because you haven't participated in Professor Dracula's physical training!" Harry also turned his head to look at Rolf and whispered to him, "Now that Professor Dracula is back, the Dueling Club should be reopened. You can come and see it for yourself."
"Believe me, once you participate in the devilish training of the Dueling Club, you will never forget the horror of Professor Dracula!" He patted his chest and assured Rove.
"Harry, Ron, it's class time now!" At this moment, Hermione, who was sitting in the front row with messy hair, turned around and whispered in a serious tone.
Harry hastily picked up his quill and pretended to study.
Ron was even more irritating. He responded in a drawn-out tone:
"Got it, Hermione!"
After Hermione turned away, Harry and Ron came together again and whispered again in a lower voice...
…
After returning to the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor's office, Dracula thought about it and felt that it was difficult to explain through a mirror, so he simply teleported directly to Paris.
51 rue Montmorency, Maison Flamel.
As a dark moon quietly emerged, Dracula's figure appeared in the living room of this house that had experienced more than 500 years of vicissitudes.
As soon as Dracula walked out of the dark moon, he walked to the left wall of the living room as if he knew the way and pushed open an old and simple door.
Behind this door is a studio with a lot of things in it. It looks a bit messy, but if you look closely you can find a special order in which things are arranged.
There was a cupboard in the studio, filled with glass bottles and tubes of various sizes. An open padlocked book with a phoenix relief carved on it stood upright against the edge of the cupboard.
The opened pages of the book are connected to the phoenix-embossed bronze mirror in Dracula's hand. An elegant picture frame on the page is connected to the mirror, showing Dracula's figure and the scene inside the studio.
"Nico, how did you come to that conclusion?"
Dracula put away the bronze mirror and walked quickly to Nicolas Flamel's side.
At this time, Flamel was sitting in a chair next to a workbench, looking solemnly at the table filled with complex alchemical items.
"Brad, come and look here." He glanced at Dracula and pointed to an alchemical balance on the workbench that exuded a metallic luster. "You should know the use of this balance. It can analyze the difference between two different types of substances."
"Yes, I know." Dracula nodded. "As long as the volumes of the two substances are the same, this scale will be able to distinguish the differences in their magic power, quality, and content."
"It seems that you haven't forgotten all the alchemy even after sleeping for a hundred years." Even though Flamel's expression was still a little solemn, he couldn't help but joked with his old friend.
"Don't bother, my memory is very good." Dracula shrugged, "Hurry up and show me your results. I should be in class now!"
"You came here during class?" Flamel looked at Dracula in surprise, but nodded in understanding the next second. "Oh, if it's you, that's normal?"
He picked up a glass bottle from next to the scale, picked up a wisp of black mist from the bottle with his wand, and placed it on the left end of the scale.
After the black gas entered the range of the scale, it seemed to be immediately shrouded by a magical force and was unable to escape from the scale tray which had only a flat surface.
At the same time, the left tray of the scale slowly sank.
"This is what you sent over, the black gas produced during Herbo's resurrection that was collected from Mount Olympus," Flamel said.
Then he closed the lid of the glass bottle and picked up another test tube, which also contained a black mist-like object.
"This is the Obscurus sample I asked Newt for," Flamel introduced to Dracula. "Although the Obscurus has lost its host, it still retains a shallow consciousness and may still riot."
"To prevent the Obscurus from rioting, I had to ask Newt to calm it down, and then carefully collected a very small number of samples. That's all the samples here."
In order to prevent waste, he very carefully used his wand to pick up a wisp of misty substance from which he had taken a sample from Obscurus, and immediately asked Dracula to help him put the stopper on the test tube, and then placed the sample on the tray on the right side of the balance.
Then Flamel gave the top knob of the scale a slight turn.
There were several different letters engraved on the knob, and he turned the letter "W", which stood for "weight", to face him.
The tray high up on the right side of the scale gradually descended, while the tray on the left side slowly rose.
In the end, the two pallets stopped at almost the same height.
“The quality of the two samples was virtually identical,” Lemay said.
Dracula nodded and reached out to help Flamel change the direction of the knob on the scale.
Now, the "M" representing "mana" is facing forward.
The trays on the left and right sides floated up and down slightly for a moment, but finally maintained almost the same height.
"The magic content of these two samples of the same volume is basically the same, right?" Dracula asked in a deep voice.
"Yes, and more than that." Flamel nodded slightly and turned the knob to the other direction...
In the end, Dracula saw on this alchemical scale that the samples on both sides were almost the same in terms of quality, density, toughness, magic content, etc.
This can fully prove that the black gas produced by Helbo and the mist-like object in Obscurus' body are exactly the same energy component.
"Have you discovered the reason?" Dracula asked in confusion, "Except that they both belong to the category of black magic, I don't see any similarities between the two."
"It's not clear yet." Flamel shook his head and said, "It's a pity that there are no more samples of other energies, otherwise we might be able to analyze the connection between them."
Dracula supported his chin with two fingers, looking at the samples on both sides of the scale with a frown.
Although these two different energies are both black, and both are gaseous or mist-like objects floating in the air, their shapes and appearances are quite different.
The black gas produced during Halper's repeated resurrection is a kind of gas. If we have to use other substances to describe it, we can only say that it is roughly similar to the black smoke emitted from the chimneys of Muggle factories.
But the silent black mist is different.
The black fog in the body of Mo Mo Ran is often wrapped by a layer of transparent oily substance. After cutting open the outer shell, you can find that the black fog inside is not just fog-like. The black particles in it sometimes condense together to form floc-like objects.
Therefore, judging by the naked eye alone, the difference between the two substances is quite easy to identify.
However, with Newt's keen observation, its deeper energy form was discovered. After weighing it on Flamel's alchemical balance, it was discovered that the two substances that were originally unrelated were actually the same!
Seeing that Dracula was lost in thought and remained silent for a long time, Flamel took action first and prepared to put the two hard-earned energy samples into corresponding glass bottles and test tubes.
"Wait, don't collect it yet."
Dracula suddenly spoke up.
The wand that had already raised the black air stopped in the air. Flamel paused for a moment and turned to look at Dracula.
"Any new discoveries?" he asked.
"I want to make another comparison." Dracula said softly, looking at the alchemical scale in front of him.
He removed his left hand from his chin and extended his slender white index finger towards the tray on the left that had been emptied by Flamel.
A ball of blood-red energy gathered at Dracula's fingertips and poured out onto the tray on the left.
Without the support of the sample, the left tray, which had been raised high, slowly descended as the blood-red energy expanded until it was on the same level as the right tray.
Dracula withdrew his index finger from the left side of the tray, his expression unusually dazed.
Flamel looked at the alchemical balance in astonishment, only to find that the volume of energy on the trays on both sides was exactly the same!
"This is… "
"This is the purest dark energy in my body." Dracula said softly.
He stared blankly at the two ends of the scale, then raised his hand to look at his fingertips, and slowly stated his conclusion.
"So that's how it is... Are all the energies that belong to darkness the same substance?" Dracula murmured.
Flamel hesitated, then reached for the right tray of the scale.
"We haven't finished all the comparison cases yet, so we can't draw conclusions just yet." He said, "Replace the Obscurus with Helpo's Black Qi and try it."
The black gas floating around the tip of the wand, which had not yet been put into the glass bottle, was placed on the tray on the right. Then, the black mist extracted from Obscurus' body was picked up from the tray by Flamel's wand.
The balance shook slightly for a moment due to the energy changes on both sides.
As time passed, the shaking became smaller and smaller.
Eventually, both ends of the scale stop at the same level.
"That's right, Brad. The dark energy in your body is almost the same as Helbo's black energy." Flamel took a deep breath and said slowly.
"So... all the different types of dark energy are actually the same substance, is that what you mean?" Dracula asked with a frown.
"Maybe." Flamel chuckled. "If that's the reason, then this experiment we conducted doesn't seem to have any practical significance other than adding a paper definition to the theory of black magic."
"Maybe." Dracula curled his lips noncommittally, "Now I want to know more about why the dark energy has the same source?"
"It's a difficult question to answer, Brad," Flamel said. "But it doesn't seem to be a difficult question for you. You have almost unlimited time, and one day you will be able to figure it out."
"Similarly, if you really want to figure this out, then your life, which has always been boring to you, seems to have some other meaning." Flamel chuckled.
Dracula shook his head slightly.
His eyes were particularly deep, and I didn't know what he was thinking.
…
The night scene in the Scottish Highlands is like being dyed with ink by a brush, painting the sky and earth stroke by stroke.
A cold winter moon slowly emerges from the sky.
On the east side of Hogwarts Castle, there is a Whomping Willow that was damaged by two naughty little wizards last semester. It has recovered under the careful care of Professor Sprout, and its branches are swaying in the cold wind, as if dancing to some trendy dance.
The cold wind hit the castle windows, causing the glass to shake and make rattling sounds.
Two little wizards with fiery red hair and identical looks passed by the shaking window, chatting with the dark-skinned roommate with a grin on their faces about various interesting things that happened today.
"Lee, have you heard that Professor Dracula has made his students study on their own for a day today!" George put his arm around Lee Jordan's shoulders with a mysterious look on his face.
"Really?" Lee Jordan had a black question mark on his face, with an expression of disbelief on his face, "Professor Dracula disappeared for so long, and he just came back to teach the students?"
"Of course it's true." Seeing Lee Jordan's skeptical expression, Fred said unhappily, "You still don't trust our sources?"
"That's not what I meant..." Lee Jordan quickly waved his hand and explained, "I just didn't expect Professor Dracula to do this. Is he impatient with teaching and starting to give up?"
Even though he had never dealt with Dracula as shamelessly as the Wesley twins, Lee Jordan still had his own understanding of his Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.
In fact, after more than a year of getting along, almost every student at Hogwarts has a certain understanding of their Professor Dracula. They all know several characteristics of Dracula -
First, Professor Dracula is very strong, very strong, and even at his weakest he is not much weaker than Headmaster Dumbledore, because the old headmaster seems to have no way to deal with the professor's willful behavior;
Second, Professor Dracula is very lazy. He will never stand if he can lean against the wall, and will definitely conjure up a bed for himself if he can lie down.
Third, and most importantly, Professor Dracula is boring and is only interested in interesting things.
According to what the young wizards have discovered over the past year, they have realized that Professor Dracula's coming to Hogwarts to teach is probably just a hobby. When the day comes when the job of teaching is not attractive enough for him, he will probably abandon his students and leave Hogwarts capriciously...
This is also why Lee Jordan thinks Dracula has begun to get impatient with teaching.
"By the way, do you think the duel club will be held on time tonight?" Lee Jordan asked, "I haven't participated in Professor Dracula's devilish training for two months. It should be a good thing, but why do I feel like I miss him for some reason?"
"I guess you're just itching for a beating." Fred said with a sly smile, "I can help."
Lee Jordan's already dark face became even darker. He kicked Fred on the butt, and after Fred easily dodged it, his expression looked a little depressed.
"We think that Professor Dracula won't leave so easily." George was a little more reliable than Fred and answered Lee Jordan's other question, "We made a bet with Professor Dracula at the beginning of last school year!"
"Professor Dracula bets that he can teach us until graduation. If he leaves like this, won't those Galleons belong to us completely?"
George beamed at this.
"Forget it. I knew I wouldn't get anything out of you two." Lee Jordan raised his middle finger to the twins and continued walking forward. "Let's go. We'll know when we get to the auditorium whether the duel club is still open."
The three of them walked into the tall door of the auditorium together.
The dueling stage in the middle of the auditorium was stood up after a long absence, and Dracula's tall figure was standing in the center of the stage.
…
…