Here's the newest chapter for the "Harry Potter: the Serpent Lord", enjoy!

* Review response:
animekingmike, Naginator, Gruffard, Goldrune09, JPElles, McGeezel, Toby860, reven228, Nanashi113, ElementalMaster16, Penny is wise, nopparitari, shugokage, Lord Xantos A. Fowl, thank you for your reviews, folks!
Master Procrastinator, thanks. And to be honest, I'm not sure I've read a story with different monsters for different champions at all. Hopefully, though, such do exist, or at least will appear in the future as I'm sure such a good idea for diversity couldn't have come just to me.
pandora vanity, Wyrtha, Voldemort is Dead, emarald777, skywiseskychan, Zobx, this chapter I tried to remove a bit of a blame from dumb-as-a-door over Harry's scoring: if you remember, the previous chapter I stated that Ronald had been in the judge's booth. Still...
Tommy B 101, Joe Lawyer, not sure how 'full' it will be - actually this depends on how much words I get without that content - but I've planned some citrus for the next (62nd) chapter.
The Sinful, lol. Another interesting way to deal with the beastie.
The Swordslinger, according to wiki and some other sources, Quetzalcoatl is a god wind and (often) sky. And quite often, if it is not separated into an element of its own, lightning is made to be either a part of fire or a part of wind. I went with the later one here.
Kairan1979, in order: 1) what exactly he would want to do with Weasleys? Life debts, if there is one, can't be transferred to other person that easily, and Weasley don't have anything he may need. At least now. 2) Salazar's portrait is stuck in the vault in Gringotts with a permanent sticking charm preventing its removal. And even then it can speak only parseltongue. So, unless there is another parselmouth that ministry/Dumbledore trust, they will have no way to verify Harry's claims about true Salazar. And even then, the society is just too set in their believes right now. The process of changing those will be slow and... 3) no comments here yet. 4) Sirius isn't exactly sane, who knows what goes through his head.

* AN: I hope that runic symbols used in this chapter display correctly for you, my readers.

* Disclaimer: I DO NOT own "Harry Potter" and its characters in any shape or form. Same with "Freezing" anime/manga series.

"human speech"
"wraith speech"
'human thoughts'
"powered speech / true prophecies by the seer"
"spells / parseltongue"
messages

chapter 61: Solving the egg's riddle

Even though the potion that madam Pomfrey gave him worked miracles, it was still almost an hour before Harry felt confident that he would reach the Gryffindor tower on his own and without any accidents – that self-enhancement he had used for the first task really did a number on his muscles. Though, considering what the beasts did to the other champions, should he really complain about merely overworking himself?

Anyway, by the time the green-eyed wizard left the first aid booth, all spectators had already left, save for Rita Skeeter, who was hanging around, looking for some juicy gossip that she could have printed in the 'Daily Prophet'. But she still remembered about not interviewing the lord Potter without his barrister present, so she let Harry be. Not that he minded this...

What was making the young wizard bit sad was the fact that he had to walk back to the castle all alone – no one was waiting for him out there to congratulate him on successfully completing the task... The moment he stepped through the castle's front doors, though, things changed: waiting for him in the antechamber there were Hermione, Neville, the Slytherin girls, almost all members of the Defense Studies group and the whole Gryffindor quidditch team, as well as the majority of the Hufflepuffs. And they all were congratulating Harry... Sure, the young 'badgers' were more interested in what he could tell them about how Cedric was doing, but that didn't make their congratulations less sincere.

Eventually, the people got their curiosity satisfied, and the young Potter, now accompanied by an entourage of his housemates, continued on his way back to the tower. Yet, as they were getting closer to their destination, the green-eyed teen's happiness about completing the first task slowly gave way to an uneasy feeling, like there will be some serious confrontation soon. And no matter how much Harry wished this feeling was wrong, it wasn't: the moment he stepped through the portrait hole, red with anger Ronald Wealsey marched up to him.

"Potter, you cowardly slimy bastard! What was that today?!" The 'chosen one' yelled, spit flying out of his mouth. "Using cheap tricks that only dirty cheating Slytherin bastards find acceptable?! You are a disgrace to the good noble house of Gryffindor!" A tick appeared on Harry's forehead – having being emotionally spent after the first task, he couldn't completely ward off the hate directed at him, and some managed to get under his skin.

"And what did you want me to do, Weasley, charge at a five-x monster with a fucking sword?" The green-eyed teen retorted in an angry voice. "Unlike some people..." He continued, giving Ron a pointed look. "...I'm not suicidal to do something as stupid. I'd rather use cowardly tactics and stay alive and in one piece." Alas, this confession only put the 'chosen one' out of temper.

"Why you!.." Ron's hand wend for his wand, but before he could even take aim at the dark-haired teen, the redhead found himself frozen in place with some mild paralytic curse.

"I'm off to cool down." The young Potter said, maybe harsher than necessary, as he returned his wand to its holster. Then he turned around and marched straight out of the Gryffindor common room. Hermione was the first one to recover her wits and, once she did that, she hurried after Harry, dragging Neville after herself... Their departure seemed to return quite a few other people back to reality, and another couple of moment later Katie too left the common room, intent on finding and comforting the green-eyed boy-wonder...

Even though he knew that he would not be able to do much if anything right now in his current state, Harry still headed to the library, his golden egg in his arms – it was a peaceful and quiet place where he could at very least regain comfort of his mind away from certain annoying red-haired idiots... Getting to his favorite spot in the depths of the library, the green-eyed teen placed the golden egg on the table and contemplated it.

Maybe he hadn't payed as much attention to the details before, but only now he had noticed that the surface of the egg was covered with intricate reliefs: mighty waves of a stormy ocean morphing into roaring flames of inferno, which then became rocky mountains that shifted into fluffy clouds before becoming waves again. It was beautiful...

Suddenly, Harry felt someone approach him from behind, and a moment later a pair of soft hands wrapped themselves loosely around his chest, while his head was now resting against a pair of the most wonderful breasts. Looking upwards, he saw that it indeed was Draconica holding him in her gentle embrace.

"'Nica?" He asked quietly.

"Harry, are you alright?" The gray-eyed witch asked back. "I had a sudden feeling that you needed me, and..." She trailed off, giving way to silence as they gazed into each others eyes... Finally, the young Potter 'gave in' and smiled, which earned him a chaste kiss on his lips from his blond beauty. Giving him a smile of her own, Draconica glided around him, before taking a seat in his lap, her right arm still draped over his shoulders. "So... What did upset you so much?" She asked in a low whisper as she rested herself against his chest.

"Nothing much, just the idiot managed to get under my skin." Harry replied with a sigh, causing the girl in his arms to raise her delicate eyebrow in an unspoken question. There was a moment of silence before he gave her the answer. "He was saying that I dishonored Gryffindor because I didn't attack the hydra directly." The blond girl rolled her eyes: honestly, since when using one's brain was a crime? "Stay with me for a while, please." Harry asked softly as he hugged 'Nica closer, and her small smile was all the answer he needed...

Their little heaven, unfortunately, didn't last long, no matter how much they both wanted it to: not even ten minutes had passed before a certain bushy-haired witch – still dragging the Longbottom heir after her – entered the library.

"Oh, there you're, Harry!.. Oh..." Hermione fell silent as her mind registered the intimacy the two people in front of her shared. And a traitorous thought that she would like to have someone with whom she could be just like that only made a blush creep onto her cheeks. Besides her, Neville too was blushing a bit, though his thoughts were more along the lines of Harry being such a lucky bastard to have such a girl... Seeing that they were not alone anymore, Draconica slid off her love's lap and moved onto the chair next to his, though still not breaking her contact with him completely... There was a rather long silence, before Hermione finally spoke: "U-uh... Harry, are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine now." The green-eyed wizard replied "Sorry for snapping at everyone back in the common room. Our illustrious chosen one just managed to make me angry with his stupid accusations of being a traitor to the house Gryffindor just because I was not acting suicidal when facing the hydra." He made a short pause before adding: "Don't worry, I won't let him get under my skin like that again."

"Alright, since we're all here,.." The soon-to-be lady Slytherin said, trying to change the topic away from the unpleasant acts of the Ronald Weasley. "Why don't we try finding out what is this golden egg all about? I find it is improbable that the champions would be made to collect it from a nesting mother just for the fun of it." She said, gesturing for Hermione and Neville to take seats across the table from Harry and herself.

"Actually, I wouldn't put it past them." The young Potter replied. "But you're right, according to Mr. Bagman, inside this egg there is a clue to the second task." He said, running his hand against the cool salient surface of the golden egg, stopping just above the ring that zoned the thing at its 'equator'. "I suppose, these runes have the answer as to how I am to open it." Indeed, otherwise, why those runes would even be there?

"Let's see them." Hermione said, pulling a piece of parchment and a self-inking quill from within her jacket. Then, the bushy-haired witch proceeded to copy the runes from the egg's ring:

ᚵᛖᛖᚺᛏᚾᛖᛈᛟᛟᛏ_ᛖᚱᛖᚺᛞᚾᚨᚹᚱᚢᛟᚤᛋᛋᛖᚱᛈᛏᛋᚢᛃᚵ

"Hm..." She sighed. "Maybe they are expecting the champions to know a bit about curse-breaking and made a little runic ward that needs to be broken before one can open the egg?" She wondered out aloud.

"Let me see." Draconica said, pulling the piece of parchment closer to herself. "Hmm... It doesn't look like something defining a proper ward. It must be something different..." After spending maybe a minute, staring at the symbols, the blond beauty gave up for the moment.

"Well, I suppose it wouldn't really be a good riddle, if one could find an answer to it in a couple of minuted." Harry remarked then. Still, he continued in his mind, it was not likely that this riddle was too hard either: after all, the champions were expected to still have some time to prepare to the second task after they have gotten the mysterious clue from the egg...

The four teens spent until dinner in the library trying to find what those runes stood for, but the Luck seemed to be not on their side this afternoon, and none of their ideas brought them any closer to opening the egg. In the end, they decided that they probably should stop for now and try brainstorming again in a couple of days with a fresh head...

As they were getting ready to leave the library and head downstairs to the Great hall for some dinner, Draconica reminded everyone that neither Daphne nor Tracey had been with them this afternoon, but should be included into solving the egg's riddle as well. Agreeing with his lady, Harry cast the Geminio charm over Hermione's parchment, causing it to multiply into six. Of course, these copies weren't permanent, but they would last at least for a day – more than enough to copy the runes onto something that won't fade away, the young Potter thought.

~/ *** \~

In the following several days, thanks to the amounts of homework that the professors were giving, Harry didn't have much time to work on a solution to the egg's riddle. And those few ideas that he managed to come up with were quickly rebuffed by Hermione, who kept finding some flaws in them. Alas, the bushy-haired witch herself was having no luck with figuring out the riddle's solution either... And from what the young Potter could see, the Slytherin girls too appeared to have problems with decoding those runes.

Or it was so, until a note from Daphne during the lunch on Thursday informed the green-eyed teen that a probable solution was found. Her asking him to bring the egg with him to their meeting meant that the girls were quite sure about the result of their work...

Maybe because he was just so impatient to see what his Slytherin friends had accomplished, but the double Transfiguration seemed to drag on and on for Harry. And he could say the same about the DADA as well, even if professor Moody's lessons usually were anything but boring... When the bell from the fifth period finally rang, the dark-haired wizard quickly threw all of his things into his bag, before quickly walking up to the Gryffindor tower to fetch the egg... Still, when he finally got to the library, everyone else was already there, sitting at the group's usual table. Actually, the young Potter was a bit surprised to Astoria there as well, and for the moment he decided that she had just followed her sister there.

"So... Daphne?" The green-eyed wizard asked, trying to get straight to the answer of the egg's riddle. The older Greengrass shook her head in response.

"It was actually Tori, who came up with this." She said, while her sister beamed with the mixture of pride over her accomplishment and happiness over being recognized for it. Harry was surprised into silence for a moment: as far as he knew, second-years like Astoria didn't have Ancient Runes yet... Then Daphne decided to help him out of his confusion: "Um... Well... This little firecracker..." Tori sent her sister a glare, but it was totally ignored. "...Decided that she wanted to study runes next year, and so she started borrowing my notes. From what I know, she hadn't gotten further then just the alphabets, but maybe this is why she could solve the riddle when we all failed."

"Mhm?" The young Potter prodded. The younger of the Greengrass sisters blushed a bit, before she finally started speaking:

"Well... All of the runes in this line have a matching letter in the English alphabet." Harry had actually noticed that himself, but he paid it no mind, thinking that it was a mere coincidence – there were only so many runes without corresponding 'common' letters after all. Maybe, he shouldn't have had ignored that... "And well..." Astoria fell silent and placed a piece of parchment on the center of the table. Written on this parchment was the following line:

geehtnepoot_erehdnawruoysserptsujg

"It still doesn't make sense." The dark-haired wizard observed. "Or am I still missing something?" This time it was Daphne, who answered him.

"You should read backwards, starting from the empty space in the center." She said. Raising his eyebrow, Harry still did like she had just instructed:

"Too pen... To open the e... egg, just press you... your wand here?" As his mind finally processed the translated message, he had to resist an urge to face-palm at how those runes had misled both him and his friends into thinking that there was something more complex. Well, Astoria's solution to the riddle still could turn out to be a wrong one, but it did look better than many other ideas...

Deciding that he should test this right away, Harry rotated the golden egg till the empty space on the ring was facing him. Then, drawing his wand, he touched that empty space with it. For a very brief moment nothing happened, and the green-eyed wizard was ready to mark this as another failure at solving the riddle, but then there was a clicking sound and the top part of the egg opened up like flower.

"Be I damned." The young Potter breathed out. Peering inside, he could see a glass cylinder with thick octagonal gold stoppers on both ends and an ornate silver key inside. Around it there was a parchment, which, supposedly, contained some information about the seconds task... Before his mind could wander any further into the possibilities of what the organizers could conjure for the task, Harry was brought back to the reality by the sight of Astoria rocking nervously in her chair. "Mhm?" He 'asked'.

"I solved this riddle for you, don't I deserve a reward?" The youngest of the Greengrass sisters asked with a slight blush on her face as she tried her best at the puppy-eye technique.

"And what does the lady want?" The dark-haired wizard asked, knowing that he did owe her something for her efforts in solving the golden egg's riddle. Tori blushed madly, before mumbling her answer out:

"...A kiss." Now that was one! Sure, Harry wasn't dense enough not to know that the little witch had a crush on him, but... Not really sure how to react, he glanced at Draconica, who seemed to be just as surprised by Astoria's request. Still, the future lady Slytherin nodded slowly, trusting her intended not to take things too far. Getting the message, the green-eyed teen turned his attention back to the waiting Tori.

"A-Alright." Blushing even a deeper shade of red, if that was even possible, the young witch stood up from her chair and, raising herself on her toes and locking her hands behind her back, closed her eyes as she got ready for a deep and searing-hot kiss from her crush... A moment later her fantasy world was crashed as Harry merely brushed his lips against her cheek.

"Hey!" Tori huffed like a child not getting what she wanted. Much to everyone's amusement.

That night, Harry studied in detail the parchment from the egg. From what he could understand, the second task was going to be of an object-retrieve type. And while the supposed 'clue' didn't shed much light on what exactly he will have to face, it let the green-eyed wizard know that to complete the task he needed to collect four items, each affiliated with one of the main elements.

Deducing that the Water-element object will be placed with near or even in the Black lake was pretty easy, but at the moment the young Potter had no idea, where he will have to look for the other three. Still, as he had more than three months before the task, he decided not to worry too much about it right now: he was sure that the some other clues would be unintentionally or not dropped as the day of the task neared.

That's all, folks!
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