Professor Vampire.

Chapter 171: Chapter 171 All black magic comes from the same source?

A new semester had begun, and with it came news of Nicole LeMay.

"Are you saying ... that the black aura left behind by Helbo is almost identical in composition to that of Murmur?" Dracula looked at the copper mirror in front of him that was witheringly engraved with the phoenix floating withering, and said in surprise.

Le Mei's pale and thin face appeared in the copper mirror, and at this time, his original perennial amiable and smiling expression looked extremely grave.

"Indeed." He said, "Whether we look at the amount of magic power stored in it or observe the characteristics of the two energies, we can find that these two energies have extremely similar qualities in them."

"I don't know if anyone else has ever had the idea of comparing these two energies before, but it is true that in at least these six hundred years, I have never seen the energy produced by a black magic item such as a Horcrux, it is far too rare."

"Mimeographs may be a little more widely known than Horcruxes, but they are likewise not considered common, and wizards who have had the opportunity to observe the energetic properties of mimeographs are even rarer ..."

LeMay's gaze looked through the bronze mirror and into Dracula's eyes, "So I'm guessing that Newt may have been the first sorcerer to discover the similarities between the two energies!"

Dracula frowned slightly.

Holding this Phoenix Floating Mirror in one hand, he pushed open the front door of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom with the other and looked over to the small group of wizards who were sitting upright amidst the mellifluous sound of the class bell.

"This class will be a self-study period, so you will read your own books to review what you have learned before, and next class will be a class test." He said to the young wizards.

Dracula then slammed the classroom door shut with a snap and headed back down the stairs connected to the classroom to the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor's office, leaving the young wizards in the classroom staring at each other in disbelief.

"Hey Potter, Wes come on, does Professor Dracula make us study on a regular basis?"

Rolf Scamander, who had been moved back from first year to second year by Dumbledore, asked a pair of Gryffindor desks next door as he sat in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom.

"Just be glad you did, Scamander." Ron quietly probed the front of the classroom to make sure that the door was completely closed, before reassuring Rolf, "Professor Dracula rarely lets us study on our own, so if we're having a study session it must be something else that's tickled his fancy enough to make him too lazy to go to class."

"You're new here, you probably haven't realized how brutal Professor Dracula's classroom is, and having a study hall on the first period of a new semester is a real stroke of luck!"

"Is Professor Dracula's classroom that cruel?" Looking at Ron's careful expression, Rolf was a bit bewildered, "Isn't it possible that you guys are overreacting, I heard my grandpa say that Professor Dracula is very powerful ah?"

Rolf had only taken the Defense Against Black Magic class taught by Riddle at Hogwarts so far, and had yet to listen to Dracula's class.

Not only the classroom, after Dracula gave himself a vacation, even the dueling club that he hosted was in a state of shutdown, Rolf also had not seen the club's "grandeur", so he didn't quite understand Ron's prudence.

"That's because you haven't been involved in Professor Dracula's physical training!" Harry also turned his head to Rolf and whispered to him, "Now that Professor Dracula is back, the Dueling Club should reopen, so you can come and see for yourself."

"Trust me, once you've participated in one of the Duel Club's devilish training sessions, you won't be able to forget the awesomeness of Professor Dracula!" He assured Rolf with a pat on the back.

"Harry, Ron, it's class time!" Just then, Hermione, who was sitting in the front row with her hair in disarray, turned around and whispered a serious rebuke.

Harry hurriedly picked up his quill and pretended to study.

Ron, on the other hand, was a little more exasperated, drawing out his tone and responding in a drawn-out manner:

"Got it, herm-min-!"

Once Hermione had turned her body away, Harry and Ron came back together and whispered again in lower voices ...

...

After returning to the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor's office, Dracula thought about it and decided that he couldn't speak clearly through a mirror, so he teleported directly to Paris.

51 rue Montmorency, Maison Lemay.

As a dark moon quietly emerged, Dracula's figure appeared in the living room of this house that had experienced the vicissitudes of more than five hundred years.

As soon as Dracula stepped out from the dark moon, he walked towards the left wall of the living room in a familiar manner, and pushed open an old and rustic doorway.

Inside this door was a studio, which was full of things and looked a bit cluttered, yet a closer look revealed a particular order of placement.

There was a cupboard in the workshop, inside which were stored small and large glass vials and tubes, and an open padlocked book with a phoenix engraved on it stood close to the edge of the cupboard.

The pages of the open book were connected to a bronze mirror of the Phoenix Floating Apotheosis in Dracula's hand, and an elegant frame on the page was connected to the mirror, displaying Dracula's figure and the interior of the studio.

"Nicole, how did you come to that conclusion?"

Dracula casually put the bronze mirror away and walked quickly over to Nicole LeMay.

At this moment, LeMay was sitting on a chair next to a workbench, looking at the countertop filled with complex alchemy items with a grave expression.

"Brad, come see here." He glanced at Dracula and pointed at an alchemy balance emitting a metallic luster placed on the workbench, "You should know the use of this balance, it is able to analyze the difference between two different kinds of substances."

"Uh-huh." Dracula nodded, "As long as the prerequisite of ensuring that the volume of the two substances is the same, this balance will be able to recognize the difference in their magical power, quality, and ingredient content."

"It seems that you haven't forgotten all the alchemy even after sleeping for these hundred years." LeMay's expression, even though it was still a bit grave, still didn't hold back from snickering with his old friend.

"Don't bother, I have a good memory." Dracula shrugged, "Hurry up and show me what you've accomplished, by all rights I should be in class right now!"

"Still in class and you're coming over?" LeMay gave Dracula a surprised look, but nodded knowingly in the next second, "Oh, that's normal if it's you?"

He picked up a glass vial from beside the scales and used his wand to pick a wisp of black mist from the vial, placing it on the left end of the scales.

Once the black mist entered the confines of the balance, it seemed to be immediately enveloped by a magical power, unable to escape the balance's tray, which was only one flat surface.

At the same time, the left tray of the balance slowly sank.

"This is what you sent over, the black gas produced during Helbo's resurrection collected from Mount Olympus there." LeMay said.

He then capped the glass bottle and picked up another test tube, which also contained a black misty object.

"This is a sample of the Merman I asked Newt for." LeMay introduced it to Dracula, "However, despite losing its host, the Silent Ran still retains a shallow consciousness of its own, and still has the potential to riot."

"In order to prevent a riot from occurring in Silmeran, I could only have Newt calm it down, and then very carefully collected a very small sample. The sample here is all there is."

He very carefully picked up a wisp of the misty object he had sampled from the Silmarillion with his wand to prevent waste, and immediately had Dracula help to cork the test tube, before placing the sample on the right-hand tray of the balance.

LeMay then gave one of the topmost knobs of the balance a slight turn.

Several different letters were engraved on the knob, and he turned one letter "W", for "weight", to face him.

The tray on the right side of the balance, which was high up, gradually fell, while the tray on the left side, in contrast, slowly rose.

Eventually, the two trays stop at nearly the same height.

"The masses of the two samples are essentially indistinguishable." LeMay said.

Dracula nodded and reached out his hand to change the direction of the knob above the balance for LeMay.

The "M" for "mana" now faced the front.

The left and right side trays floated up and down slightly for a few moments, but in the end they remained at nearly the same height.

"Among these two samples of the same volume, the magic content is basically the same, right?" Dracula asked in a deep voice.

"That's right, and more than that." LeMay nodded gently and switched the knob to the other direction ...

Eventually, Dracula saw on this alchemy balance that the samples on both sides were comparable in every aspect such as mass, density, toughness, and magic content.

This completely proved that the black gas produced by Helbo and the foggy object inside Murmuran's body were exactly the same energy component.

"Did you find out what this is all about?" Dracula asked a bit puzzled, "Other than the fact that they both fall under the category of black magic, I can't see any similarities between the two."

"It's unclear at the moment." LeMay shook his head, "It's a pity that there aren't more samples of other energies, or else they might even be able to analyze the connection between them."

Dracula propped his jaw with two fingers and looked at the samples on both sides of the scale with a slight frown.

These two different energies were both black, and although they were both gaseous or foggy objects floating in the middle of the air, the difference in shape and mold was still quite large -

The black gas produced during Helbo's repeated resurrections was a gas that, if it had to be described as anything else, could only be described as roughly similar to the black smoke emitted from the chimneys of a Muggle factory.

The black mist in Murmuran's body was different.

The black mist in Mimiran's body is often wrapped in a transparent oily substance, and when this shell is cut open, it can be found that the black mist inside is not just a mist, but the black particles in it will sometimes condense together to form a flocculent object.

Therefore, the difference between these two substances was quite easy to recognize when judged by the naked eye alone.

However, under Newt's keen observation, its deeper forms of energy were unearthed. After LeMay's Alchemical Balance weighed them, it was found that the two substances that were originally unrelated were actually different from each other!

Seeing that Dracula was deep in thought and didn't say a word for a long time, LeMay went ahead and prepared to receive the two hard-earned energy samples into the corresponding glass bottles and test tubes.

"Wait, don't receive them yet."

Dracula suddenly spoke up.

The wand that had already picked the black energy up stalled in the air, and LeMay's movements paused for a moment as she turned her head to look at Dracula.

"Anything new?" He asked.

"I'd like to do another set of comparisons." Dracula said softly as he looked at the alchemical scales in front of him.

He removed his left hand, which was supported on his jaw, and extended his long, white index finger to the left tray, which had been emptied by LeMay.

A cloud of blood-red energy coalesced at Dracula's fingertip and poured out as much as it could onto the left tray.

Originally, without the support of the samples, the left tray that had been raised high slowly dropped with the expansion and growth of the blood red energy, until it remained at the same level as the right tray.

Dracula withdrew his index finger that was pointing at the edge of the left tray, his expression was rarely a bit stunned.

LeMay looked at the alchemy balance in shock, only to find that the volume of energy on both side trays 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 scales, then raised his hand to look at his fingertips, and slowly stated his conclusion.

"Is it actually the case that ... all the energy attributed to darkness is the same substance?" Dracula murmured.

LeMay hesitated, probing the wand in her hand into the right tray of the scale.

"We haven't done all the comparative eucalyptus examples yet, we can't just jump to conclusions." He said, "Try replacing the Silence with Hellebore's Black Breath."

The black gas that was floating around the tip of his wand and hadn't had a chance to be put into a glass vial was placed on the right tray, and with that, the black mist extracted from Mer Merjan's body was picked up off the tray by LeMay's wand.

The scales swayed slightly for a moment due to the shifting energy on both sides.

As time passed, the wobble became smaller and smaller.

Eventually, both ends of the scale stopped at the same level.

"Indeed, Brad, the dark energy in your body is also nearly identical to Helbo's black aura." LeMay took a deep breath and said slowly.

"So ... all the different kinds of dark energy are actually the same substance, is that what you mean?" Dracula asked with a frown.

"Probably." LeMay laughed softly, "If that's really the reason, then there doesn't seem to be any other practical significance to this experiment we've made other than adding a paper definition to the theory of black magic."

"Perhaps." Dracula bristled noncommittally, "I'm now more interested in knowing what is the reason for the dark energies coming from the same source?"

"That's an overly broad question that's not easy to answer, Brad." LeMay lamented, "But that doesn't seem to be much of a problem for you. You have a near infinite amount of time to figure this out someday."

"All the same, if you really want to figure this out, then it would seem that life, which has been boring you, would have to add some other meaning to it." LeMay laughed softly.

Dracula shook his head gently.

His eyes were extraordinarily deep, and he didn't know exactly what he was thinking.

...

The night in the Scottish Highlands was as if it had been inked by a brush, a single stroke painting the sky and the earth.

A cold winter moon slowly sketched floating shadows from the sky.

On the east side of Hogwarts Castle, a battering willow that had been knocked down by two naughty little wizards last semester had already recovered under Professor Sprout's careful care, swaying its branches in the cold wind as if it were doing some kind of trendy dance.

The cold wind hammered against the castle's windows, causing the panes to rattle and bang.

Two small, fiery red-haired, identical-looking wizards passed by the swaying window, playfully chatting with their darker-skinned roommate about various interesting events of the day.

"Lee, did you hear that Professor Dracula made students take study hall all day today!" George put his arm around Lee Jordan's shoulder with an air of superiority.

"Really?" Lee Jordan had a black question mark on his face, a look of disbelief on his face, "Professor Dracula disappeared for so long and just came back to give the students a study hall?"

"Of course it's true." Seeing Lee Jordan's skeptical expression, Fred said with some displeasure, "You still don't believe in both of our sources?"

"That's not what I meant ...," Lee Jordan hurriedly waved his hand and explained, "I just simply couldn't imagine that Professor Dracula would do this, is he getting impatient with the lectures and starting to swing for the fences? "

Even though he hadn't dealt with Dracula in a deadpan manner like the Weasley twins, Lee Jordan still had his own perception of his Black Magic Defense Arts professor.

In fact, after more than a year together, almost every student at Hogwarts had gotten to know their Professor Dracula in some way, and they had all learned a few things about Dracula -

Firstly, Professor Dracula was strong, very strong, very strong, and at the weakest, he was no weaker than Headmaster Dumbledore, as the old principal didn't seem to be able to do much at all about all of the professor's capricious behavior;

Secondly, Professor Dracula was lazy, never standing when he could lean against a wall, and always making himself a bed when he could lie down;

Third, and most importantly, Professor Dracula was boring and never interested in anything but interesting things.

Based on what the young wizards had discovered over the course of a year or so, they realized that Professor Dracula's coming to Hogwarts to give lectures was most likely just a playful act, and by the time the day came when the job of a professor didn't give him enough attraction, he would most likely abandon his own students and leave Hogwarts in a very capricious manner ...

This was also the reason why Lee Jordan thought that Dracula had begun to feel impatient with the lectures.

"Say, do you guys guess that the dueling club will be on time tonight?" Lee Jordan asked, "It's been two months since I've participated in Professor Dracula's devilish training, which is supposedly a good thing, but why do I feel like I'm inexplicably missing it a bit?"

"I'm guessing you probably just have itchy skin and would be fine with getting your ass kicked." Fred said with a wicked grin, "I can be of service."

Lee Jordan's already dark face became even darker as he kicked Fred in the ass, his expression looking a little depressed after Fred easily dodged it.

"Let's think, Professor Dracula shouldn't have walked away so easily." George was slightly more reliable than Fred and answered Lee Jordan's other question, "We made a bet with Professor Dracula when the last school year just started!"

"Professor Dracula bet that he could teach until we graduated. If he just left, wouldn't those Garlons be completely ours?"

Speaking of this, George raised his eyebrows.

"Never mind, I knew I couldn't ask you two anything." Lee Jordan gave the twins the middle finger and continued on, "Come on, we'll see if the dueling club is still open when we get to the auditorium."

The three walked together into the tall doors of the auditorium.

Only to see the dueling stage in the middle of the auditorium standing up for the first time in a long time, and Dracula's upright figure was standing in the very center of the stage.