"The look on your face right now reminds me of those incorrigible Gryffindor students." The Dragon's immediate remark made Ian realize exactly which house was most prone to provoking it.
"Has anyone ever beaten you?"
Ian looked up curiously and asked.
"Unless a bunch of professors teamed up, there's certainly no wizard who could beat me. I died of old age, after all." The Dragon smugly boasted about dying of natural causes.
However.
Morgan the Witch suddenly interjected, "The extinction of their kind had both internal reasons and everything to do with how humans saw them for a long time. Because Dragons symbolized great power, they became, in our era, the whetstone for many heroes to prove themselves."
Her words left the Dragon somewhat resentful but not daring to contradict her. The Witch wasn't lying—in her day, Dragon Slayer Warriors were definitely all the rage.
This is chronicled in detail in "Merlin's Legend" and numerous medieval biographies, not to mention Ian's favorite story, "The Lord of the Rings," in which dragons appear more than once.
"Seems like humans really are more impressive in the end."
Ian sighed with heartfelt admiration.
The Dragon snorted forcefully through its nostrils.
Expressing its discontent.
"For all Fantastic Beasts, maintaining the strength of their bloodlines during reproduction is exceedingly difficult. Only we humans are a unique exception. That was humanity's trump card back in primitive times."
Witch Morgan's words were a direct stomp on the Wizarding World's current pureblood supremacy theory. Ian agreed with her wholeheartedly, not least because her assignment on Amortentia had already revealed the essence of human wizards to him—that every human actually has the potential to become a wizard.
In this way,
there's naturally no such thing as diluted bloodlines.
"Recessive and dominant genes..." These days, since Ian had been researching the Resurrection Stone, he'd put aside his studies on magic potions and wizard bloodlines, but he'd already touched upon the real content Teacher Morgan presented in the Amortentia lesson.
"Can I turn this dragon into my Patronus?" As soon as Ian thought of the Resurrection Stone, he immediately produced his creation—a ring glowing brilliantly with a supernatural light that looked rather impressive.
Originally, his purpose for entering the Misty Illusion Realm this time was to find a small animal on which to experiment, but there's only a single word difference between a big animal and a small one!
"You can pick your Patronus?"
The Dragon didn't seem particularly furious; as an educated Dragon, it just looked like Ian had touched a gap in its knowledge. It stared at the Little Wizard in utter confusion for a long while.
"You're actually alive!"
Turns out that a massive skull might actually disrupt the transmission of nerve signals—brain size doesn't always equal intelligence. The slow-on-the-uptake Dragon let out a shriek of utter shock.
It's hard to imagine that a dragon's facial expressions could be this rich.
"…"
Morgan was thoroughly speechless at the Dragon's stupidity.
"Oh! I get it! You're Merlin reborn! That's gotta be it! I read your story back at Hogwarts! Only you could have that kind of pow—"
The Dragon's exclamation barely lasted a moment. In the midst of its awestruck babbling, the Witch simply tightened the chain around its neck with a raised hand.
This time, she pulled even harder than before—the Dragon's head seemed like it could fall right off at any moment. Not only could it not roar, it didn't even have the strength to writhe around pitifully.
"It's definitely not a Ravenclaw College Dragon." Ian mourned for the poor Dragon who never knew when to keep its mouth shut, and didn't even dare plead for it with Morgan.
"Let me see your creation."
Morgan kept the chain taut around the Dragon's neck as she reached out to take the knock-off Resurrection Stone Ring Ian offered. After studying it a moment, her brow slowly furrowed.
"Once it's put to actual use, it completely disappears from our sight, is that it?" Morgan seemed rather dissatisfied with this particular trait of the Death Magic Rune.
"But I can see it clearly..."
Ian actually had no clue what was going on—whether it was Grindelwald or Morgan, both seemed convinced that the Death Magic Rune couldn't be perceived by ordinary people.
They could see the magic runes Ian had copied, but unlike Ian, they couldn't directly analyze a finished product made with the Death Magic Rune. He'd already confirmed this a few days ago when discussing with Grindelwald.
"You're not the same as us."
Morgan returned the knock-off Resurrection Stone Ring to Ian. She often made offhand remarks like this, yet always maintained her silence whenever Ian pressed for more details.
"I call it the Ring of Patronus."
Though it was just a knock-off, Ian still gave it an official name in good faith. After all, borrowing isn't stealing, and he'd tweaked the design a little. Its glow-pollution effect was way stronger than the original Resurrection Stone Ring; at a glance, it was clearly one of those rare treasures you drop hundreds of dollars trying to pull from a loot box and still fail.
"You can call it whatever you like. All I care about is that slip of paper you said magically appeared in your pocket, the one that resolved your confusion." Witch Morgan's message was clear—last time Ian entered the Misty Illusion Realm, she'd placed an enchantment on his note.