Volume 5: The Burning Golden Flame Chapter 336: Stupid Donkey Hoss
Jon was not in a hurry to find the fire dragon. He just needed to determine the location, and then he would have plenty of time to find a way to deal with it.
After lunch, he leaned on a unicorn for a nap, then got back on the back of the leading unicorn and let it take him to find Hagrid's former friends in the forbidden forest.
The unicorn's goal seemed clear. It galloped all the way, across the grass and bushes, and finally brought Jon to a small earthen slope.
This place is full of weeds, but there are fewer trees than in other places, so you can see the entire slope at a glance.
Jon soon noticed a horse wandering under the dirt slope.
It was a tall horse with gray hair, but what was striking was that there was a noticeable bald spot on the top of its head, revealing its shiny skin.
In addition, there has been no tree cover in this area, so the afternoon sunlight shines directly on its head and actually reflects a bright light.
When Jon saw it, the horse was eating grass. Its upper palate and jaw were distorted to an exaggerated degree when it was chewing. In addition, its eyes were one big and one small, probably due to congenital problems. No matter how you looked at it, you would feel that it was not a good and serious horse.
The unicorn that brought Jon here seemed to dislike the horse very much, so it stopped far away at the edge of the grassland, and then signaled to Jon that if he wanted to touch it, he should get off its back and go over by himself.
Jon also felt its resistance, so he climbed down from the unicorn's back. Then, in order to prevent the bald horse from running away directly after discovering him, he raised the wooden sign given to him by Hagrid from a distance.
"Hey! Hey man, do you recognize this?"
The bald horse that was leisurely eating grass heard Jon's movement. Its already open mouth suddenly paused, its wise eyes blinked, and finally it suddenly turned its head to look at Jon.
The man and the horse stared at each other for two or three seconds.
The next moment, Jon felt a flash before his eyes, and the gray shadow turned into wind passing across the grass!
This is not a metaphor, but the horse disappeared right in front of Jon without even a blink of an eye.
At this moment, Jon also remembered Hagrid's species descriptions of several of his important friends. One of them was one of the existing species of Pegasus in the wizarding world, a magical creature called - Graling.
Although it is also a Pegasus, it does not have wings like the Talisman and the Thestral that allow it to fly, but it is extremely fast on land, as fast as the wind!
The horse's behavior just now, coupled with its gray fur, clearly shows that it is a Graling.
"Hoss!"
After guessing that this horse was one of the magical creatures that Hagrid asked him to focus on contacting, Jon raised his voice and shouted towards the place where the wind disappeared.
His shouting startled a flock of birds in the woods not far away, and soon, the gray wind came back!
It was like a wizard used Apparition to appear directly in front of Jon's face. Jon felt a flash before his eyes, and the bald horse reappeared in his sight.
Jon was a little shocked by its speed and once again looked into its eyes.
This time, the bald horse was no longer as interested in Jon's eyes as before, and its gaze quickly shifted to the wooden sign in his hand.
Obviously, Jon could see a glimmer of surprise in its eyes!
Then a grass-smelling tongue licked Jon's face. The horse named Hoss verified Jon's identity from Hagrid's wooden sign, and then showed great affection to him.
This was enough to show how close the relationship between it and Hagrid was, but Jon always felt that its appearance revealed a greasy and silly feeling.
Barely breaking free from Hoss's tongue, Jon dragged its big bald head and turned to the unicorn who was standing far away watching the scene and said.
"Thank you for your help. I'll trouble Hoss to help with the rest. You still have your tribe to take care of. Go back quickly."
After hearing Jon's words, the unicorn's four hooves seemed to move a lot lighter. After winking at Jon, it turned around and was about to walk back.
However, at this moment, Hoss seemed to have just discovered the existence of the unicorn. He looked at the back of the horse-shaped creature with snow-white fur, and a wonderful light bloomed in his eyes!
Then, without hesitation, he left Jon behind, turned into the wind again, circled around the unicorn that was about to leave, and then stood in front of it.
Hoss pouted and widened his eyes, as if he was showing off his charming smile and trying to... court someone!
But the unicorn obviously knew what it looked like. From the moment it brought Jon here, it had no intention of getting close to Hoss. Now that it encountered such a situation, it had no intention of stopping at all, but raised its horn to speed forward.
Finally, Hoss dodged. He looked at the unicorn's receding back, pouting with a look of regret, as if complaining that this girl had a very bad temper.
After watching the whole scene, Jon felt very confused. Even if his reaction was slow, he could now see how unreliable this Graling horse named Hoss was. He really couldn't understand how Hagrid could become friends with this creature that looked more like a donkey in heat than a horse.
But no matter what, Hoss's racial talent is there, and it is a Pegasus after all. Jon walked up to Hoss, who still had a look of regret on his face, stretched out his hand and barely grabbed its neck, pulling it back to the grass.
"If you can put aside your unnecessary physiological needs for the moment and let's simply get to know each other, I think that's what we should do now."
With Jon's attention attracted again, Hoss excitedly licked Jon's face with his tongue, which was still stained with grass debris, until Jon finally couldn't bear it anymore and pulled out his wand and used the petrification spell, making it temporarily unable to move its body. It could only keep its tongue sticking out and fell straight to its side on the soft grass.
This makes it look even dumber.
"Now you're finally behaving yourself," Jon muttered, using a cleaning spell to clean the saliva and grass debris off his face. "You'd better listen to me now. I know you want to see Hagrid very much. As long as you do what I say, you can be reunited soon."
Hoss moved his eyes around, not knowing whether this was a positive response.
"My name is Jon, and I'm Hagrid's friend. This time, Hagrid specially asked me to help come to the Forbidden Forest to look after you old friends. If you can understand what I'm saying, just blink."
This time Jon was sure that it could understand human language, and its large and small eyes were blinking desperately.
Most magical animals are human-like, but they also have their own set of thinking habits, so sometimes even if they can understand what people mean, they cannot comprehend it, let alone do it accordingly.
But obviously Hoss, who had been with Hagrid day and night, did not lack this.
"Okay, since you can communicate, then our next step will be much easier. Do you know the names of Aragog, Morris, and Parson? If you know even one, please blink."
The pair of eyes blinked twice quickly.
Now Jon felt much more relaxed. Although this bald horse named Hoss looked unreliable, its talent for speed could still be of great help to Jon in the Forbidden Forest.
With that wind-like speed, as long as it could accurately know the locations of the other three magical creatures, Jon felt that he could help Hagrid in one day.
"I'm going to break the spell for you now. Don't lick me anymore, or I'll stick your tongue to the roof of your mouth for the whole day!"
Jon made a final vicious threat, then removed the petrification curse from Hoss.
As soon as the restraints were lifted, Hoss climbed up from the ground happily, turned into a gust of wind, circled around Jon twice, and finally stopped.
It seemed that it instinctively wanted to lick Jon's face, but eventually began to restrain this instinct. It just stuck out its tongue and stared at Jon excitedly with its eyes wide open. If you ignored its tall and strong appearance, you would really think it was a stupid donkey!
Jon couldn't bear to look at its face, so he grabbed its neck and jumped onto its back.
"Go, go quickly, go find that friend of Hagrid's you know. If I look at your silly face again, I'm afraid I'll have a nightmare at night."
Hoss seemed to take Jon's words as a compliment, and he held his neck proudly, which made it easier for Jon to hold on to him to steady his body without the reins.
The next moment, the stupid horse took four steps.
Jon just felt like he was blending into the wind. The surrounding woods passed by him as fast as if the fast-forward button had been pressed. The grass below seemed to have turned into a track that was constantly moving backwards. Every time Jon blinked, he felt like he had arrived at a new place.
Blurred, he saw many magical animals, including a huge monster lying on the ground.
That's a fire dragon.
Jon only took a quick glance at it, and the next moment, they appeared in another place.
Just when Jon felt that only seven or eight seconds had passed in his perception of time, the scenery around him that was constantly receding suddenly stopped.
Just like a videotape that had been restored from fast-forward to normal mode, Hoss and Jon stopped.
There is the sound of flowing water nearby. This is next to a stream and the environment looks full of birdsong and flowers.
Jon looked around in confusion, trying to find the magical creatures that Hagrid mentioned, but he didn't find a single magical animal.
"Why did you stop suddenly..."
Before he could even ask half of the question, Jon swallowed the rest of the sentence back into his stomach as he looked at where Hoss's eyes were fixed.
It was a young doe drinking water by the stream, a most common species, without any magical features.
While drinking water, it was alertly paying attention to its surroundings, but it obviously did not notice Fox, who was hiding behind the bushes and peeking at its butt with shining eyes.
Jon took a deep breath and reminded himself that there was no need to get angry with a horse, especially a horse like this.
But in the end, he couldn't help but clenched his fist and hit Hoss's bald forehead hard!
"That's a deer! You're not even a different species, what the hell are you thinking about, you idiot ass!"
It's not known whether Jon's move woke Hoss up, but it did disturb the little doe , which ran away from the stream in panic, forcing Hoss to reluctantly retract his head and continue running wildly in the Forbidden Forest with Jon.
This time it finally didn't cause any trouble. After running for about a minute, it came to the darkest and most secluded depths of the forbidden forest and stopped in front of a large earth pit.
The trees here are unusually tall and sturdy, with their crowns connected together like a big umbrella, covering the entire sky and preventing sunlight from shining into this land all year round.
Even Hoss became much quieter in such an environment. It sniffed its nose vigilantly, looking like a stupid dog.
Jon climbed down from Hoss's back, and then he stepped on a ball of white, silk-like stuff.
That's spider silk.
Looking at the environment here and the scattered spider silk on the ground, Jon could roughly guess who Hoss was bringing him to find.
Aragog, the giant seven-eyed spider, was Hagrid's closest and oldest friend. Hagrid once kept Aragog as a captive when he was a student at Hogwarts. This gave Voldemort a good excuse to deflect blame and pin the blame on Hagrid for the death of a student after opening the Chamber of Secrets, leading to his expulsion.
And here is the residence of Aragog and his descendants.
After Jon knew where this place was, he acted very carefully.
He knew very well that perhaps the old spider Aragog still respected Hagrid and would not harm him, but his descendants would not do so.
So Jon drew his wand, and with his other hand, grasped the skin on the side of Hoss's neck and pulled it deeper into the pit.
From time to time, some small spiders would emerge and crawl out from under their feet, and as more and more spider webs appeared around them, Jon knew that they were about to reach their destination.
After pushing aside the dark green grass in front of him, the scene in front of Jon became clear.
However, when he saw clearly what was in front of him, his pupils suddenly shrank.
Spiders, spiders the size of cars everywhere.
But they... are all dead!
