Chapter 214. The Sword.
From the alley, they Apparated to an "unknown" location deep underground: a near-empty room with bare stone walls, less than a kilometer from the hotel where he had previously stayed.
At the center of the room stood a large wooden trunk with steel trim along the edges and patterns in the same metal. At the keyhole sat a slightly protruding dragon's head, from whose open jaws hung a large iron ring.
The Asian man walked up to it, gripped the ring, and pulled upward. The lid followed.
"With us, you'll find everything: from specific body parts to live dragons." The lid clunked open, and the "dealer" turned to face him. "May I ask what you are looking to acquire?"
"A dragon egg, and if possible, ten liters of blood, a femur without fractures, two hearts, and five kilograms of dragon meat from the back or belly," he answered without hesitation, his gaze on the open trunk, which showed nothing but pure darkness. The wizard had no need to look further: the dealer's thoughts gave him the full inventory. And the man hadn't lied about the live dragon. There truly was one. In reserve.
\"Our largest order yet.\" The man's voice carried a trace of surprise, but he nodded all the same. \"All of it is in stock.\" He turned back toward the trunk with noticeably brighter eyes. Excellent! How wonderful! A big catch! These two days were worth every minute. But steady now, close the deal first, and then we can take him in. He won't be going anywhere.
Severus, reading those thoughts with perfect composure, couldn't quite suppress an amused smile.
How naïve. I almost feel sorry for them. He could sense roughly three dozen wizards encircling the room as the \"dealer,\" humming a cheerful tune in his head, plunged waist-deep into the trunk.
This was the strangest situation of his life. Too absurd, too surreal: as though someone had decided to play a cosmic joke on him.
Snape barely held back a laugh as he \"listened\" to the man shouting at the wizards at the bottom of the trunk, who were straining and heaving to extract an enormous dragon femur, having somehow entirely forgotten about Levitation Charms. He had never found himself in a situation quite like this one: the sort of thing he'd have thought possible only in Muggle comedies, never in reality.
After a minute of fruitless effort, however, one of the wizards at the bottom of the trunk remembered they were not ordinary people, produced a wand, and reduced the bone's weight.
Finally, the "dealer" hauled it out and set it on the floor, wiping sweat from his forehead. Then, with an embarrassed smile, he ducked back down. The bone measured two meters in length, and as specified, it was nearly pristine: only a couple of surface scratches.
The remaining items were considerably lighter, and within the next minute he retrieved and laid out the rest of the order: a glass jar of blood under an Undetectable Extension Charm; meat wrapped in paper; two wooden boxes under Stasis Charms containing the hearts; and last, a large egg whose shell was a deep, saturated crimson scattered with gold flecks.
"In total, that comes to forty-three thousand three hundred and ninety Qian. I'll round it to forty-three thousand." He exhaled with weary relief, making a small concession.
"Of course." Severus swept a hand forward, drawing all the ingredients into his coin pouch under the dealer's wary eye, then aimed his palm at the floor, and a bag of gold materialized beneath the man's feet. At the same instant, he felt an Anti-Apparition barrier snap into place above the building, and the "undercover wizard's" lips stretched into an anticipatory grin. "My thanks. You may not be a genuine dealer, but I am entirely satisfied with the goods. I'll be sure to visit again sometime."
The meaning of those words took a beat to register. The man froze for a fraction of a second, and by the time he came back to himself and opened his mouth to respond, the person in front of him had already vanished. He stood there, eyes wide, as though he'd just seen Laozi walking among the living.
"H-how? This place is surrounded by an Anti-Apparition barrier. What the devil?!" He shouted in fury, and in the same instant the walls disappeared. Wizards in suits poured into the room with wands drawn and stared blankly at the empty space, simply unable to comprehend how he had Apparated.
Beijing. Tiananmen Square.
Having Apparated again to the familiar square, still full of Muggles even at this early hour, he cast a Repelling Charm and set off from memory toward a hotel to the right of the Forbidden City, changing his face and height along the way.
Well. Now I'm more than satisfied with this trip. All that remains are a few museums and collectors, and we can head back to Britain. He glanced at a stone statue of Muggles as he walked, breathing in the morning air with quiet ease, already accustomed to it. Even though they are fools, I'll admit, any ordinary wizard in my place certainly wouldn't have made it out of there.
With the exception of the egg and the meat, which he had taken to avoid a later trip to the breeding reserve, all the other ingredients were intended for potions and one ritual for Nagini.
Severus had not abandoned the idea of grafting a draconic bloodline onto her, not a pure one, but it would give her considerably better odds of surviving the ritual, owing to the dominant properties of the dragon race, which stood head and shoulders above both serpents and Basilisks.
When the two curses collided, they should cancel each other out. But if something went wrong, if one proved stronger, the bloodline would destroy whatever remained, assuming the dominant role in the body. And because of its "flexibility," Nagini would be able to shift between forms with ease, without potions or spells, without losing any of her former strength, in fact, gaining more.
That was Severus's plan. It still required refinement. There were many "buts" that could ruin everything, and identifying and eliminating them was precisely what the wizard was occupied with at the moment.
Three minutes after Severus left the square, a group of wizards in CMC uniforms appeared in it, led by a man Severus would have recognized immediately as the 'dealer of dragons and dragon ingredients.'
"Spread out and search a ten-kilometer radius. He couldn't have gone far!" The man was practically blazing with fury after that humiliation.
"Yes!" They scattered in every direction, quietly relieved: not one of them wanted to be within arm's reach of the officer right now.
Left entirely alone, he scorched every passing Muggle with his gaze; people gave him a wide berth. When I get back, I'm going to destroy the idiots who couldn't cast a proper barrier! He clenched his fist, seething. And that bastard Li... He thought of his 'friend,' always scheming to undermine him and take his position, and he was sure Li wouldn't let this disaster go for at least a month. And why in the devil's name am I always the lucky one?!
Over the following two days, Severus and Li Er—as the old man had introduced himself—visited museums across the country. Nagini, on the second day, declared the whole business boring beyond endurance, stayed behind in the hotel room, and settled in with a serial drama about a love affair between a Muggle and a witch, a romantic comedy also recommended by the vendor at the cassette shop.
In that short time, Severus learned a great deal about the country: from the origins of its people all the way to the current People's Republic of China, while the spirit narrated the wizarding world's parallel history along the way.
Both histories surprised even him with the sheer density of events compressed into just over three thousand years—brief, by the standards of his own world. But they didn't particularly interest him. Mostly Severus listened to the old man with half an ear, his real attention on the objects on display. Among them were quite a few artifacts, though most, like those in Britain, had long since lost their properties. A couple, however, still worked.
One was in the National Museum of China: a necklace that emitted barely any magic, thanks to concealment charms. It possessed the same property as Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem, but to a greater degree, though it was still inferior to the badge Severus had once received from her directly, in exchange for a promise to defend Hogwarts if her killers ever returned to finish what they had started and destroy the castle.
The second was a long, rust-coated iron hairpin in the possession of a private collector. Without Li Er's suggestion that he take a closer look, he might simply have walked past it and lost yet another extremely interesting and dangerous object. The hairpin had once belonged to an acquaintance of the old man's, and it carried a curse for anyone who pricked themselves on it.
The curse was a severe one: it didn't target the body or the magical core, but the soul itself, eating through it like a living parasite and causing extraordinary pain. Because it emitted almost no magic, many people in the old man's era had lost their lives to it, having fatally underestimated this terrible weapon.
Beyond those two, there were several other artifacts of lesser significance, which Severus also replaced with replicas and took with him: they were not things that could be left in other hands, given the problems some could cause.
But the most astonishing find of all was a straight bronze sword in the Hubei Provincial Museum, over two thousand years old.
Like the other objects, it emitted almost no magic: it looked, to all appearances, like an ordinary Muggle blade. But its history, its appearance, and its edge were impossible for Severus to ignore. He took it in hand, pushed a small current of magic into it, and the sword absorbed it with ease: there was no visible change, except that one of the eight characters carved into the fuller briefly flashed.
When he pressed the tip to a display stand, it passed through as though the stand were an illusion. When he drew the magic back out and repeated the test, all he left was a faint scratch. The sword's property was immediately clear.
What genuinely shocked him was this: to make all eight characters light up at once, he had to pour the entire reserve of his magical core into it twice. The result shook him. He nearly cut off his own fingers testing it: he had wrapped his palm in a moderately thick barrier, and the blade passed through it as though it didn't exist.
And at that moment, his power stood at the peak of the Master rank: thanks to his core, his barrier matched that of a Grand Master.
Without a moment's hesitation, he conjured a complete bronze replica and swapped it for the real blade. He couldn't leave something like this here. It was considerably more dangerous than the hairpin.
That was the last magical object he found. After discovering it, he briefly considered going back over everything he had found before, then dismissed the idea as foolish. The existence of one sword like this in this world was already a miracle. Two, in the same country: no.
So the Slytherin decided to focus on studying the artifact itself—understanding how it had even been made. But no matter how many times he scanned it, the only thing he could determine was its composition: copper, tin, and iron. That couldn't possibly be the whole answer. More advanced enchantments had to be involved, ones he couldn't detect at his current level. But Severus had no intention of giving up. Upon returning to London, he would continue the investigation and solve the riddle eventually.
------------------------------------------
Chapters on Patreon progress: Currently at;
1. Harry Potter: Satan? Nah, Just My Family Crest = CHAPTER 384
2.Harry Potter: Beyond Good and Evil in the Wizarding World = CHAPTER 399
3.Harry Potter: Reborn as Draco Black = CHAPTER 202
support me on Patreon for instant access to the 120+ advance chapters: patreon.com/redofic