A certain Hogwarts professor of runes.

“Of course! I’m not just all talk.” Ron exclaimed happily.

Filch and his Mrs. Lorris huddled in a corner, he fidgeting with his fingers, hesitant to step forward and stop them—but there were too many of them, almost the entire student body. Professor Flitwick, standing nearby, kindly remarked, “Let the students celebrate to their hearts’ content; I’ll remind them to clean up.”

Felix strolled over to Snape, whose expression, much like the gleaming armor beside him, seemed completely out of place in the cheerful atmosphere.

“They did a good job, didn’t they? There are Slytherin students here too.”

“Do you want me to write a letter of commendation, Felix?” Snape said, tucking his arms into his black cloak.

Felix muttered something that sounded like, "I hope so."

"I heard Moody's turned your office upside down?"

“The power our headmaster gave us,” Snape said softly, looking at the 'canaries' that had suddenly appeared in the Great Hall with a look of disgust. “You can’t avoid it either. You’d better hide those shady things well… Mad-Eye Moody not only has good eyesight, but also a keen nose.”

“Oh, I will,” Felix said with a bright smile.

Chapter 400 Hourglass

Felix looked around but didn't see Moody anywhere.

Indeed, this environment is not suitable for him to appear. Perhaps a firecracker would suddenly explode next to him and turn all the little wizards in his line of sight into the animals of their respective academies.

Hmm… Felix imagined the scene: lion cubs, snake cubs, badger cubs, and eagle cubs thrashing about in the auditorium, while house-elves rushed over with baskets of vegetables, collecting them one by one…

"Ha, interesting!"

"Are you talking about that dog? It's really interesting..."

Snape's eyes gleamed with malice. Felix followed his gaze and saw a large black dog that had somehow slipped in, snatched a piece of steak from the table, and lay down in the corner, staring at Harry.

When it noticed their gaze, the big black dog waved its paw in a very human-like manner, with juices dripping from its mouth.

"He's really good at being a dog. I didn't know Azkaban had this kind of training..." Snape said slowly.

……

The celebration lasted until evening, so dinner was skipped. People came and went in the hall, keeping the house-elves in the kitchen exhausted.

The entrance to the Gryffindor common room.

Harry returned yawning, and Violet, the fat lady's friend in the portrait, asked with interest, "I heard you managed to steal a dragon's egg?"

As she spoke, she stared intently at Harry, who had a gleaming golden egg tucked under his arm.

“Yeah…nonsense,” Harry said, giving the command.

“No, that’s not true!” Violet said angrily.

"He was talking about a password... a password that's just nonsense," the fat lady said, pushing her friend out of the picture frame and turning her body forward to reveal the entrance to the lounge.

There weren't many people inside. Harry wandered around the dormitory, but it was empty. He casually placed the golden egg on his bed and lay on his pillow, lost in thought. The events of the afternoon seemed to flash before his eyes. He had been quite worried all day, but he hadn't let himself show it. But after it was all over, he felt that the dragon wasn't such a big deal after all.

Remembering Hagrid's words, he took out the Hungarian wood bee's magic lamp from his robe pocket, pressed it gently, and the little dragon began to flap its wings wildly, emitting soft light.

He's actually kind of cute... Hagrid's words make a lot of sense...

He casually picked up the hourglass from the bedside table. It was the one he had traded with Professor Hyp's Niffler, Valen, and placed it on the table alongside a stack of rune cards. Crookshanks had sneaked in earlier and scattered the cards along with the hourglass. He had only gathered the cards together at the time, and it wasn't until he stepped on it while sleeping that night that he discovered the hourglass had also fallen to the floor.

He was worried that the hourglass would be broken when he pried it out of the crack in the floor, but to his surprise, the hourglass was very sturdy and intact.

Just then, Hermione poked her head out from the doorway. "Harry, are you there?"

"exist--"

"Let's study the golden egg."

Harry jumped out of bed and went to the common room.

"Where's Ron?" Hermione asked casually, her eyes fixed on the golden egg.

“He’s not back yet, he should be with those younger students…you know, he’s been under a lot of pressure lately,” Harry said.

They huddled together, hesitating whether to open it.

Roger Davis had opened the golden egg in front of everyone in the Great Hall to see what it was like, only to find that the heavy golden egg was empty. Immediately afterward, an extremely terrifying, shrill scream came from inside, more terrifying than the sound of the Ghost Band playing Jigsaw that Harry had heard, or the hysterical screams of Moaning Myrtle. His heart almost stopped.

After that, Li Jordan and the twins, who had been very interested in the golden egg, refused to touch it anymore. Harry entrusted it to a big black dog for safekeeping and secretly gave him two sausages.

"Is this your pet?" a clear, ethereal voice asked.

Harry turned around and saw Luna, surrounded by a string of magical lamps that danced around her, with a dragon-shaped ornament perched on her head.

“Oh, uh…yes,” he stammered.

Sirius Black obligingly extended a paw and offered it to Harry, who reluctantly shook it twice. "Look... it can shake hands, oh, I mean... it."

“Many people think black dogs are omens of disaster, and some have even written a book about them…” Luna said softly, noticing that the others were keeping their distance. “But I don’t think so. He is a loyal friend.”

“Oh, uh, thanks,” Harry said.

He wasn't sure if Luna had noticed anything, but she just said hello and left, as if she had appeared out of nowhere.

……

Finally, Hermione reached out and pressed her fingernail along the very inconspicuous groove in the middle of the golden egg, prying it open.

A piercing scream immediately echoed in the lounge, startling Ron who had just entered. He sat down on the steps by the door, prompting the fat lady outside to urge him on.

Hermione slammed the golden egg shut. "No..." she said disappointedly. "It seems everyone's golden egg is the same."

"What do you think?" Ron, having heard the second half of the sentence, sat down next to them.

“I read in the book that in past tournaments, sometimes warriors of different ranks received different clues,” Hermione explained dryly, her face pale; she was quite frightened by the voice.

The screams were absolutely horrible...

Ron shrugged and tapped the golden egg with his hand. "If we chant a spell on it... like, Skach, Skach..."

"Scarpin's Current Curse".

“Yes, that’s it,” Ron said with certainty.

“That’s for analyzing potion ingredients,” Hermione said irritably. Then she thought about it carefully. “It’s not impossible. We can try the analytical methods in alchemy.”

“Does any of us know how to use this?” Ron asked, then he and Harry looked intently at Hermione.

“I don’t know either,” Hermione shrugged, “but I know Professor Hyp knows, well, I can learn from him.”

"So troublesome?"

“No trouble at all. We have three months. If we can tackle the puzzles within a month, we’ll have plenty of time to prepare,” Hermione said confidently. “And we can also learn another skill. Alchemy and runes are inseparable, and you can use that too.”

Harry's lips curled into a bitter smile. Keeping up with the increasingly difficult Rune Club activities was already a challenge, the only good news being that Rune Club never assigned homework. He glanced at Ron, and their expressions were unsurprisingly identical.

"The golden egg is yours, Hermione," Ron said righteously.

Hermione glared at him sternly, and he quickly changed the subject, looking around before exclaiming in surprise, "Oh dear, Harry, why did you take that out?"

Harry paused for a moment before realizing that Ron was referring to the hourglass; in his haste, he had simply grabbed it.

"What is this?" Hermione asked, feeling that the thing looked somewhat familiar.

“Valen and I traded the hourglass, I told you about it,” Harry explained.

Hermione snatched the hourglass from Ron's hand and stared at it thoughtfully. "I'm sure I've seen something like this somewhere before..."

"Is it an antique?" Ron asked with interest. "You've read books like this before?" His last question revealed his true thoughts. He asked expectantly, "How much do you think it's worth?"

Hermione played with the hourglass for a long time, occasionally raising it to wave at the magic lamp above the lounge, making strange noises.

Harry and Ron exchanged glances, but they knew it was best not to interrupt her at this moment, as she had already entered a state of intense research.

“I remember now!” Hermione exclaimed, her eyes sparkling. “I know where I’ve seen this hourglass before. It’s not in the book. I’ve gone astray… It’s in Egypt!”

"Egypt?" the two asked in unison.

“That’s right, Egypt,” she suddenly laughed like a greedy fox, unable to contain her amusement. “No wonder Professor Hyp wanted to teach Valen; it turns out it has a history of this.”

"What is it, Hermione? Stop keeping me in suspense!" Ron said eagerly.

“This hourglass came from a greedy Gringotts goblin,” Hermione whispered, holding her breath. “No, it came from an evil ancient Greek dark wizard, the vile Herpo!”

Chapter 401 The Invincible Andros

"Hairbo?!"

Ron let out a short scream, and everyone in the lounge immediately looked in their direction. He quickly lowered his head, his nose almost touching the table, and waved frantically at Harry and Hermione.

The two drew closer, Ron's eyes darting around as he whispered, "Is it... that Helpo? The creator of the Horcruxes?"

“That’s right,” Hermione said.

Ron glanced hurriedly at the dusty hourglass. Harry had wiped the dust off its surface earlier, but it still looked very old. He said in a trembling voice, "Do you think... there might be a part of Helbo hidden in here?"

"You mean Horcruxes?" Harry asked nervously, glancing at the hourglass held in Hermione's hand.

"will not!"

Hermione said bluntly, "Professor Hyp examined me before..."

She raised her head, sat up straight, and recounted the events inside the Egyptian pyramids, focusing on the statues and altars of Herpo and how the statues decayed.

"That's hard to understand... wait a minute!"

She ran back to the girls' dormitory and soon returned with a shallow chestnut wood plate. Harry and Ron both understood her idea—to use the memory disk to recreate that scene.

So they sat together, watching the silver sand in the memory disk rain down. The dark and gloomy pyramid chamber from the summer vacation reappeared, along with the cursed, narrow corridor, the basilisk corpse that seemed to have been forgotten by time and isolated from the world, and the statue that was only glimpsed briefly but quickly faded.

They were all seeing things from Hermione's perspective. She arrived a step later than Felix and saw him blow a breath, causing the statue to shatter completely, then turn into fine dust and disappear.

Harry and Ron watched in awe, unable to fully describe the scene, no matter how exquisite the language.

“Wait a minute,” Hermione said, her eyes fixed on the memory disk. “There are some gems and small objects inlaid on the reliefs on the side of the altar, which look like antiques by today’s standards… Look!”

Harry and Ron moved closer, and with Hermione's help, they saw the altar rotating, revealing the various wizard figures carved into the side walls.

“Where? I only see gems!” Ron practically pressed his nose against them.

“Don’t focus on the gems, these wizard reliefs are the main attraction. The things they’re holding are all inlaid.” Hermione pointed to each one, saying, “The gems are all on the side; judging from their position, they’re purely decorative. Oh, of course, given Helbo’s cunning, it’s not impossible that they contained a curse, but they’re definitely gone now.”

Harry looked closely and indeed found that the wizard reliefs were holding various small items, small bottles, feathers, small sticks (maybe wands?), and... a dusty hourglass.

“There really is an hourglass, exactly the same!” Ron exclaimed in amazement. “You have a good memory, Hermione.”