Later that evening, Harry and Hermione climbed the long circular staircase to the top of the Owlery Tower.
After she had returned Harry's pet miniature Hungarian Horntail to him, Hermione had pulled a piece of parchment and a self-inking quill out from inside her robes, to write Sirius a letter to let him know that Harry had safely made it through the first task, along with everything else that had happened regarding the tournament. When Harry had seen what she was doing, he had wanted to wait until at least after supper to write it, but Hermione had insisted they do it then. She promised that she would write the whole thing herself, and all he had to do was help her on any details she didn't already know and throw in any extra bits he wanted her to include that she hadn't thought of already, and then sign his name at the end next to hers so Sirius would know it really was from him as well — and she would do everything else.
She really wanted the letter to reach Sirius before Rita could publish any article of lies, deceit, and misinformation in the Daily Prophet, and Sirius find out what had happened in the tournament that way first when he indubitably nicked a copy to read. And she knew if they didn't write it until that night that they wouldn't get it sent off until the morning, which might be too late depending on when Rita's story came out.
And true to her word, Hermione had written the entire thing herself, reading it out loud as she had written it so Harry could hear everything she was writing, while Harry had remained an exhausted heap next to her, doing his best impersonation of a couch cushion. He had wanted to give a blow-by-blow account of exactly how he had swerved, circled, and dodged the Horntail, but Hermione had vetoed that, keeping the letter on task with more important things like how Mad-Eye had been the one to suggest the Summoning Charm and Firebolt that Harry had used for the task, exactly what it was they'd had to do in the first task as all Harry had been able to tell Sirius before was that it was going to involve dragons, that the golden egg he'd had to steal was somehow crucial to the second task, and that they hadn't seen anyone looking particularly suspicious around the task, like they might have been the one to enter Harry and were watching to see if he was fatally wounded, be it Karkaroff or anyone else. Once she had finished, and reread the letter out loud for both herself and Harry to make sure it sounded good, she sealed it up and stuck it back in her robes with the quill, before dragging Harry up off the couch so they could head down to the Great Hall for supper, now that it had been long enough for the crowds to have had time to thin out some from the onslaught immediately after the first task finished.
But they had since finished eating, and were now climbing up to the owlery to send the letter off. Arriving at the very top, Hermione selected one of the school owls so as not to continuously be sending Hedwig to the same location should anyone be watching, and tied the letter to its leg. Then she carried it to the window, where it took off into the dark sky to find the elusive fugitive.
Harry and Hermione stared out the window at the stars for a while enjoying the beautiful late-November evening, before Hermione finally said, "I heard the twins mention something about a surprise party for you in the common room for completing the first task so magnificently. We should probably head back down there, and not keep them waiting."
"For completing it so magnificently, or for not dying and making it too awkward to have a party?" smirked Harry as he pushed himself off the wall and towards the stairs.
"To-may-to, to-mah-to," Hermione smirked back as she followed him. "But who are we to deny them the opportunity to celebrate?"
~HP~
When they stepped through the portrait hole ten minutes later, the Gryffindor common room erupted in the same explosion the entire stands had when Harry had successfully robbed the nesting mother dragon of her adopted egg earlier that afternoon.
Everyone crowded around Harry to congratulate him yet again on his performance, but eventually he was able to make his way back to Hermione as everyone moved on to enjoying the mountains of food and drinks the twins had provided. Despite having just had supper not long before, Harry and Hermione filled up plates with all the desserts and snacks the twins had provided, and enjoyed themselves as they watched everyone celebrate Harry's success.
After a while, the twins circled around to Harry and Hermione and asked, "So where's the egg, and what's the clue inside you have to work out for the second task?"
Hermione had no idea how they knew that there was a clue for the second task inside the egg, as only the champions, Harry, and she herself had been told that by Bagman in the tent after the first task was over, but somehow they clearly did. Harry reached under the couch he and Hermione had settled on, the same one they'd collapsed on after returning from the first task, and pulled the egg out from under it where he'd stowed it for safe keeping when they'd headed down to supper.
Everyone in the room turned to look at them, and Lee Jordan said, "Open it, Harry, go on! Let's just see what's inside it!"
As several more people in the room echoed, "Yeah, go on, Harry, open it!", Harry glanced over at Hermione, who nodded back. After all, while the rules Mr. Crouch had given them at the beginning of the tournament hadn't said they couldn't ask other students for help, only that they couldn't ask for or accept help from teachers, it had kind of been implied. But if Hermione thought it was okay, he was okay with it too. So at her permission, he prised open the egg.
The most horrible wail Harry had ever heard came out, and he slammed it back shut.
But to his great disappointment, in the echoing silence that followed, nobody was able to give him any clue as to what on earth that sound might be. Many theories, ranging from reasonable to completely outlandish, were tossed about, but none of them seemed like the actual answer to the second task, and so Harry was left with even more questions than he'd had before he'd opened the egg to find out the clue. Speculating on the egg could only hold everyone's attention for so long, though, and soon everyone began milling around again just enjoying the party and company.
After a while, one of Hermione's curiosities from the past three years got the best of her, and she approached the twins.
"So how do you get all this food?" she asked curiously. "You throw parties all the time, and practically have more food than the Great Hall, but where does it all come from?"
"The food and normal drinks we get from the house elves down in the kitchens," answered Fred.
"And the butterbeers and anything stronger we keep a secret stash of that we replenish from time to time through the secret passageway to Hogsmeade," continued George.
"That takes some effort, but the house elves are happy to give us anything we ask for that they have in the kitchens," added Fred.
"Even give it to us in a bag that's smaller on the outside and has a lightening charm on it so we can easily bring it back up here without any of the teachers noticing," finished George.
"How do you get down there?" asked Hermione. "And do they give out food at any time, or only during specific hours, like meal times?"
"There's a concealed door behind a painting of a bowl of fruit on the basement corridor before you get to the Hufflepuff common room," answered George. "Just tickle the pear, and it giggles and turns into a large green door handle."
"And we've never actually tried during meal times, but I assume they'd give you food then, too," added Fred. "But they've always just given us as much as we could want every time we've gone down there, whenever it is."
"But why do you want to know?" asked George suspiciously.
"Cause we've heard rumors you're trying to free house elves," added Fred.
Fred and George had a point, and Hermione knew it. She'd reacted a little hastily when she'd first found out that Hogwarts had house elves, without having done any research first to find out whether her preconceived notions were actually true or not. The only house elves she'd ever known of before then were Dobby and Winky, and everything Harry had told her about Dobby had sounded terrible and Mr Crouch had treated Winky badly the one day she'd seen Winky, and so she had automatically assumed all house elves must be treated like that without any proof that that was actually true.
But then she'd taken a minute, and did what she always did any time she was faced with a problem or something she didn't know — she went to the library. Unfortunately, the library hadn't exactly been as helpful as she'd hoped, it being rather hard to find anything in there at all on house elves, and what she had found had been rather contradictory. But she'd eventually come to the conclusion that not all house elves were treated like Dobby and Wink had been, and that her assumption that the Hogwarts house elves, and house elves in general, were treated that poorly, had been a rather hasty judgment on her part. And now having learned as much as the library could offer her, the only way she could really find out what a house elf's life was like was to actually find and talk to some.
So this was her chance, her chance to actually go talk to the Hogwarts house elves, and see how they felt about their position and treatment. After all, she wanted to really see what it was like being a house elf before she judged Hogwarts for having them — she wasn't a bigot after all.
"I just want to go talk to them," Hermione replied to the twins. "I'm only interested in freeing the ones mistreated like Dobby was by the Malfoys and Winky was by Mr Crouch. So as long as Hogwarts doesn't treat theirs like slaves, then we should get along just fine."
The twins seemed satisfied by her answer, as they didn't say anything more, and went off to offer a Canary Cream to an unsuspecting Neville.
It wasn't until one in the morning that Harry and Hermione finally left the party and parted ways at the staircases up to the guys and girls dorms with one last hug for the day. As Harry climbed the staircase to the very top of the tower and his warm, awaiting bed, he realized that he hadn't seen Ron all party, or even since the redhead had knocked into him leaving the common room as he and Hermione had entered following the first task. But when Harry pushed open the door to his dorm room, he had a sudden feeling of déjà vu from the night his name had come out of the goblet.
Ron was lying on his bed fully dressed, clearly having been waiting for Harry to arrive from the party below.
"Congratulations. Enjoying yourself, I see," said the redhead as soon as he saw Harry.
Like before, his tone was the complete opposite of his words.
Not interested in a fight at the moment, and really just wanting to go to bed, Harry said firmly, "Like I told you the night my name came out, I didn't enter myself, nor did I have anyone enter me. And I'm just trying to survive now that I have been entered." Then after a pause, he couldn't help himself and added, "And by the way, just how exactly was the invisibility cloak supposed to help me get past an age line? That doesn't even make any bloody sense — it was an age line, not some guard I would have had to sneak past."
Then he turned his back on the redhead and headed into the bathroom to get ready for bed, really wishing he had his invisibility cloak with him at the moment to get back from the bathroom to his bed without having to face Ron again. Fortunately, however, Ron had apparently decided Harry was still too thick-skulled to talk with and had wrenched closed the hangings of his bed while Harry was in the bathroom, enabling Harry to make it to bed without any further confrontations, for which he was very thankful.