The Admiral of Hogwarts

After receiving Venetto's permission, many interested students stepped forward and picked up the golden egg, tossing it in their hands. To the surprise of many, the golden egg was not much lighter than a real dragon egg.

"Ha, this thing is quite heavy," Marietta said, holding the dragon egg with both hands, then looked at the circle of grooves on the golden egg. "It seems this egg can be opened—Venetto, do you know what's inside this egg?"

"I haven't had time to open it yet," Venetto said, eating a piece of chocolate. "Whoever wants to open it can open it, but it's best to take some precautions before opening it."

"Don't worry, we're not those impulsive lions." Michael Corner placed the golden egg passed to him on the mantelpiece, and then several older students stepped forward and cast several defensive spells on the golden egg.

Then, the new Ravenclaw Quidditch team captain, Davis, put on dragon-hide gloves, stepped forward, put his fingers into the circle of grooves, and pried it open with force.

The golden egg was much easier to open than expected, so with a gentle pry, the golden egg was opened, revealing its contents to everyone present.

The golden egg was empty—there was nothing inside, but at the moment it was opened, an extremely terrifying, shrill scream filled the entire room.

"Close it quickly!" several Ravenclaw students shouted simultaneously, covering their ears with their hands.

Fortunately, Davis was relatively good at dealing with such situations, so he quickly closed the golden egg as soon as it screamed, silencing the room again.

"It's just an ordinary sound," Penelope, who had become the Head Girl this year, said. "Because the magic we set up around the golden egg hasn't changed at all."

"So I think these sounds should be clues, containing information about the next task. It's just that the contestants must solve the mysteries within to obtain the information the sound wants to convey."

"You're right," Venetto said, wiping the chocolate marks on his hands with a handkerchief. "We can even narrow down the scope a bit, for example, this scream is actually a language."

After determining the direction, solving the problem next would require a slow and steady effort, and it wouldn't be possible to figure out the result in a short time.

So everyone quickly relaxed completely and began to celebrate Venetto's victory in the first task in the common room, until 12:30 AM when the celebration finally ended.

December brought gales and sleet to Hogwarts. Although there were always drafts in the castle in winter, compared to those living in the Durmstrang ship moored on the lake, the castle's warm fireplaces and thick walls obviously seemed safer.

The large ship swayed and rocked in the gale, its black sails fluttering in the dark night sky. Considering that the huge Hogwarts hadn't even managed to heat all areas, the Durmstrang's dwelling, like a mobile home, obviously had a worse living environment.

Hagrid had been busy providing Madam Maxime's steeds with their favorite single malt whiskey, keeping them spirited even on snowy days.

Therefore, a scent of alcohol wafted from the corner of the temporary stable, making the Care of Magical Creatures students a little dizzy.

Despite this, everyone still needed to perk up and take care of those Blast-Ended Skrewts that didn't look like good news. Even though Hagrid had separated them in advance, the Blast-Ended Skrewts' cannibalistic nature meant that only 15 remained.

Now these terrifying creatures were each nearly six feet long, with thick gray armor, wildly flailing powerful legs, constantly exploding and spitting fire tails, and their stingers and suckers.

All of this combined to make the Blast-Ended Skrewts the most disgusting thing this group of wizards had ever seen since birth, without exception.

The reason everyone gathered on the training grounds today was because Hagrid thought these Blast-Ended Skrewts might need to hibernate, so he wanted everyone to study how this creature should hibernate.

"Didn't the Gryffindor students try it this morning? They said that this creature not only doesn't hibernate, but also hates being stuffed into some sealed space by others," a Ravenclaw student suddenly said.

"Ah—you're right," Hagrid nodded and said, "But after studying it, I thought that maybe my method was wrong, so I plan to try another method."

Hagrid's new method was to have everyone dig pits in the open space around his house, then put the Blast-Ended Skrewts at the bottom of the pits and loosely cover them with a layer of soil.

For most people, this task was obviously much easier than stuffing the Blast-Ended Skrewts into boxes covered with blankets and pillows, especially with the help of magic, digging pits was a very easy task.

So in just ten minutes, everyone dug a large pile of pits as big as wells, deeper than people, then threw the Blast-Ended Skrewts in and desperately covered them with soil.

The Blast-Ended Skrewts didn't seem to like being treated this way either, but after entering the earthen pits, the Blast-Ended Skrewts were completely restricted, and neither the flames nor the stingers on their bodies could hurt the wizards who came to class.

"Wait, everyone stop," Seeing a group of students happily patting flat the mounds of dirt arched up by the Blast-Ended Skrewts with shovels, Hagrid quickly waved his hand to stop everyone, then dug out the Blast-Ended Skrewts.

It must be said that the Blast-Ended Skrewts were thick-skinned enough, and even after being buried for more than ten minutes, most of them were still hopping around. As long as they stopped patting with shovels, they could climb out by themselves after lifting the soil on their bodies.

The only exceptions were the two earthen pits that Venetto had patted earlier. The two Blast-Ended Skrewts inside seemed a little listless, but there was no visible problem on the outside.

So in the rest of the class, Hagrid admitted that his plan to hibernate the Blast-Ended Skrewts didn't work, then put away these little monsters and took out several Fire Crabs that he had used when cultivating Blast-Ended Skrewts for everyone to explain.

Compared to the ugly, smelly, and very fond of attacking people Blast-Ended Skrewts, the Fire Crabs, although their butts also spit fire, were much better-tempered than the Blast-Ended Skrewts.

At least compared to those Blast-Ended Skrewts that would inexplicably spit out flames, everything about the Fire Crabs had a precursor, and there would be no problem of being burned without warning.

What's more, although Fire Crabs are actually called crabs, they look like sea turtles, and their shells are inlaid with jewels. Their appearance is several levels higher than that of Blast-Ended Skrewts.

While everyone was surrounding the Fire Crabs to observe, Hagrid approached Hugo and the others and talked about Rita Skeeter's interview in the Gryffindor and Slytherin classes this morning.

"Hagrid, you shouldn't have treated Rita like that." After listening to Hagrid's description of the whole process, Hermione frowned and said nervously, "After all, she has no moral bottom line, and there are many people willing to read what she writes."

"So she is very likely to dig up some secrets from you, and then embellish them. At that time, I am worried that you may encounter the situation that has recently happened to Harry."