Hermione thought for a moment, then said, "It's the Runic Snake, isn't it? According to the Serpent Tongue records, the Runic Snake's three heads each have a different function. The left head is a planner, it decides where the Runic Snake should go and what it should do next; the middle head is a dreamer, and the right head is a critic."
"Exactly," Pabi said with a broad grin. "I really can't imagine anyone more entertaining than Newt."
"I can imagine someone…" Cassandra looked at Harry with obvious disgust. "Like that idiot little Potter—once, when he was complimenting me, he said I was as nimble as a Golden Snitch…"
Everyone froze for a second, then burst into even louder laughter.
"Like a Golden Snitch… Merlin…" Ron said, clutching his stomach. "I never realized you had such a witty, amusing side, mate… never thought it, hahaha…"
Harry's face went as dark as the bottom of a cauldron, but Cassandra was dragging out his embarrassing past…
Forget it, just endure it.
"Whoa!" Seamus stepped forward a couple of paces. "There's even a Poison Horned Beast? That's a real rarity…"
Everyone turned their gaze to the Magical Creature ahead of Seamus, which looked like a rhino, except its horn was far longer than a rhino's, and its body was several times larger.
"This should be a female Poison Horned Beast," Pabi said, looking up. "Female Poison Horned Beasts are slightly bigger than males—their size is about five times that of a hippo."
"It looks really docile." Ron's eyes lit up. "Is it a herbivore? Like a rhino?"
"Yes," Hermione answered. "Poison Horned Beasts really aren't the kind of Magical Creature that's naturally irritable and aggressive. Generally they only attack when provoked—but when they do, it's usually lethal."
She paused for a moment, then continued, "Don't be fooled by the 'Poison' in its name. Its horn can pierce skin and metal, and the deadly fluid inside can make anything it's injected into explode—that's one of the reasons Poison Horned Beasts are so rare, because in mating season, the males often end up blowing each other up."
"That's insane," Ron said, clicking his tongue.
"How else would it count as a Magical Creature?" Seamus said with a cheeky grin at the side. "Just tell me, is it fantasy or is it fantasy?"
Definitely fantasy, and still fantasy.
They continued wandering around the zoo and bought some materials harvested from the Magical Creatures that the zoo sold to the public.
Surprisingly, the prices for materials here at the zoo were much cheaper than in Diagon Alley.
That's the price advantage of buying straight from the source…
Australia is in the Southern Hemisphere, so its seasons are opposite to those in the Northern Hemisphere.
But Australia is in the subtropics, so the temperature isn't really that low—in fact it's about the same as the Scottish Highlands right now.
What can you do, the Scottish Highlands are at a higher latitude.
They had lunch at a Muggle restaurant, then spent the whole afternoon messing around at the Sydney Opera House.
The Muggle World is actually pretty fun—Draco even developed a bit of interest in it.
After a few more days of sightseeing in Sydney, they finally set out, boarding a ship bound for Antarctica.
"Excited?"
On deck, Ron twisted his head around to ask Seamus and Neville.
"Of course I'm excited." Seamus's eyes were clearly sparkling. "This is the first time I've ever gone really far from home—and I never imagined my first 'far from home' trip would be this far… I still can't believe I'm actually going to Antarctica."
"Yeah, Gran never lets me go too far," Neville said, shaking his head.
"If only Lavender could come with me." Seamus was still smacking his lips. "Shame her dad would never allow her to come out and have fun."
Every time Lavender was mentioned, Seamus's expression turned a bit wistful.
But under the buffeting sea breeze, that wistfulness was quickly blown away and turned into pure anticipation.
"Being at sea is so fun."
Seamus spread his arms wide and stood on the deck catching the wind like the lead in Titanic.
"Yeah!" Neville copied Seamus, spreading his arms and yelling at the top of his lungs.
On the other side of the deck, Vivi, wearing sunglasses, turned to Harry and said, "I hope that in a couple of days, when we enter the West Wind Zone, they'll still be this happy."
"West Wind Zone?" Harry asked, puzzled.
You couldn't really blame him—he'd gone off to Hogwarts to study Magic at eleven, basically half-raised and half-educated.
Not knowing what the West Wind Zone is is perfectly normal.
But Harry soon found out exactly what the West Wind Zone was.
After drifting at sea for just over a day, Harry finally felt the environment on the water start to change.
At the same time, the ship's broadcast came on, reminding passengers that they had now entered the West Wind Drift Zone.
Once they entered the West Wind Zone, the sea wind outside on deck began to howl.
The wind made it hard to stand upright, and the color of the sea changed from bright blue to a deep, almost blackish blue.
As the westerlies swept over the sea surface, the friction of the wind on the water and the pressure the wind exerted on the windward faces of the waves forced the water to move forward, forming the West Wind Drift.
At first, Seamus and Neville clearly didn't take it seriously; they even thought it was kind of exciting.
After all, such strong winds and towering waves more than twenty meters high aren't something you see every day.
Every time a huge wave crashed against the bow, the two of them would let out Tarzan-like roars.
Inside the cabin, the sound of bottles and jars hitting the floor echoed from different rooms.
They soon tidied up and stowed things properly, though, so the bottles and jars wouldn't keep smashing.
As the wind and waves picked up, the ship began to rock.
"Bloody hell!" Seamus grabbed the rail; he felt top-heavy and light-footed, completely unable to find his balance. "What on earth is going on?"
"West Wind Drift, kid!" Harry shouted, parroting what he'd just learned—Vivi had explained it to him yesterday.
Study, study—no end to it; it's deep stuff.
"I'm getting a bit seasick," Neville said, his face pale. He really did feel like throwing up.
With the ship lurching back and forth like that, Neville felt like he was reliving first-year Flying Broom lessons.
That out-of-control Flying Broom had nearly GG'd him that time.
But this was only the beginning—the big stuff was still to come.
Because the wind direction in the West Wind Zone and the direction of the swell kept changing, the ship's motion became more and more erratic—sometimes it rolled side to side, sometimes it was head-down pitching, and the maximum roll angle reached 18–19 degrees.
It sounded a bit exaggerated, but Seamus said he could actually feel moments of weightlessness.
As a Quidditch player, this level of pitching and rolling was completely nothing to Harry—Ron was the same, sitting in the cabin with a perfectly calm face, and even playing Wizard Chess with an equally unruffled Draco.
The others didn't have such good constitutions. Pabi was doing reasonably well, but Cassandra and Annie were in bad shape—they sat there looking sickly, unable to muster any energy.
Vivi's complexion was starting to go a bit pale too; her small hands gripped the armrests of her chair tightly.
"What's wrong?" Harry asked, concerned. "Feeling ill?"
"I'm fine," Vivi insisted stubbornly.
But Cassandra clearly couldn't hold out any longer; she staggered to her feet and fell into Harry's arms.
"Take me back to lie down for a bit," she said, clutching Harry's arm tightly.
Cassandra wasn't the only one being tormented by the West Wind Drift.
At first, when they'd just entered the West Wind Zone, their standard greeting to each other was "Have you eaten yet?"
Very quickly, that greeting changed from "Have you eaten yet?" to "Have you thrown up yet?"
After enduring for a day and a half, Draco was starting to falter as well, and Ron followed close behind.
On the entire ship, Harry was the only one whose physical constitution was freakishly gifted enough that he could still sit there with no trace of green or white in his face.