Who let this Dementor into Hogwarts!

Chapter 374 Cohen that day, Cohen got up

"Speaking like a nutshell, are you preparing for graduate school?"

"Cohen!" Harry quickly tugged at Cohen and whispered, "Don't provoke it—"

But the Sphinx seemed completely unperturbed, smiling at them as it awaited an answer.

"Can you solve riddles?" Cohen asked Harry.

"Isn't this usually Hermione's job?" Harry asked, puzzled.

“I can’t exactly kidnap Hermione right now…” Cohen said. “But there are other ways. I could actually brute force it—but that would make me look like a brainless Dementor…”

“Let’s try something a little more peaceful… What is it that people are afraid to face…” Harry sighed, starting to try to understand the riddle, muttering, “What else was it—can I hear it again?”

The Sphinx read the riddle aloud again.

“A liar in hell…” Harry said.

“A demon,” Cohen said. “Or a ghost, but it’s not me.”

“Demon… Ah, we didn’t mean this is the answer—” Harry saw the Sphinx move after hearing the word and thought it was about to attack them, so he quickly said to the Sphinx.

“Then there’s what’s in your head,” Cohen said. “If it’s an earl, then it’s all about sex…”

"Would there really be riddles with sex in the answers...?" Harry's lips twitched.

“Think about it, the front of a turtle and the back of an alligator,” Cohen said logically. “Both parts look a lot like **.”

“Stop feeding me weird stuff!” Harry said, rubbing his head. “Turtle…tur…alligator is also 'tor'—what else is in the riddle?”

“Everyone has to make distinctions every day,” Cohen recalled. “The biggest difference between people…”

"Gender or...sex (sex is biological sex, gender is a social concept)? Aaaaaaahhhhhh!" Harry felt like his brain was being contaminated when he thought of this sentence, which overlapped with the strange things Cohen had said.

“A closed loop has formed in a strange place…” Cohen said, stroking his chin, “but it sounds like… holy crap, man!”

“What?” Harry looked up and asked.

“Man! And woman—read together, demon, man, and that tortoise and alligator tortoise—” Cohen paused.

“De...man...tor...read together is Dementor?!” Harry’s eyes widened.

"Wouldn't it make me seem a bit racist if we took this long to figure it out?" Cohen clicked his tongue.

“Correct answer,” Sphinx said with a smile. “No wonder you’re a goat’s child.”

"You know that Chimera?!" Harry exclaimed in surprise.

"Don't tell me you're some relative of mine..." Cohen sensed something was wrong.

“No,” said the Sphinx. “I just often discuss riddles with the goat, and he always solves them, but he has been away from Greece for eighty-two years.”

“He’s staying with me now. Do you want to go see them after the competition?” Cohen thought it wanted to find the Kemera Beast.

Kind-hearted Dementors take in all sorts of heartbroken, escaped magical creatures from Greece.

"No, thank you," Sphinx said with a smile. "I don't really like his lion's head; it always leaves me smelling of sulfur... Please give them my regards."

“Yes, yes,” Cohen said.

"So we... shall we go over there?" Harry asked tentatively.

“Of course,” said the Sphinx, moving to the side of the road to make way for them. Harry thanked him quietly, then was pulled away by Cohen—who noticed that Cedric had already arrived at a similar point in the road via another fork in the road.

After making several turns, they encountered a thick, golden fog blocking their path.

Cohen passed right through, but something unexpected happened when it was Harry's turn.

From Cohen's perspective, Harry seemed to freeze the moment he entered, his limbs tense and unable to move.

Cohen reached out and pulled him out.

"I felt like the whole world had turned upside down!" Harry said, still shaken. "Like if I took one more step forward I would fall into the sky..."

"It should be modified hallucinogenic potion vapor?" Cohen guessed, looking at the cloud of golden smoke behind him. "One look at Snape—speaking of which, this looks a lot like those levels from Philosopher's Stone..."

"...Which way do we go from here?" Harry looked at the two parallel paths in front of him. The orientation charm was useless here because both paths were going in the same direction.

Cohen glanced at it using a "stand-in".

“The good news is that both roads lead to the same place,” Cohen said.

"How did you know—never mind—so does that mean we can reach the end by taking any path?" Harry said excitedly, but then he immediately remembered that Cohen usually followed good news with bad news, and his expression became a little tense. "There shouldn't be any bad news, right..."

"Not exactly bad news, one road has Dementors, the other has Giant Eight-Eyed Spiders," Cohen said. "Either would be troublesome for most people..."

"..." Harry didn't speak, but the tense expression on his face had completely disappeared.

"..."

The two stood at the intersection for a while.

"Why aren't you saying anything?" Harry asked Cohen awkwardly.

“Let’s go this way with the eight-eyed giant spider,” Cohen said.

“I thought you’d choose the Dementors’ side—can’t you talk to them?” Harry asked.

"That's why we didn't choose that road, precisely because we could hear it," Cohen said helplessly.

From afar, they could hear a Dementor muttering about bringing its pups home at the end of the road to the left. Cohen didn't really want to argue with it—because Cedric and Krum were less than three walls away from where they were, and he and Harry had better save their time.

So they chose the road on the right.

“I remember last time Hagrid let us ride on an eight-eyed spider…” Harry recalled the day Hagrid took them to see the eight-eyed spider for the first time. “It shouldn’t be too difficult to deal with.”

“That’s Aragog, old so it doesn’t seem aggressive.” Cohen shook his head. “I don’t think it’ll want to leave the forest again—it’s an old spider, it can’t handle any more stimulation…”

That spider's soul strength was only at the level of a young man; it definitely wasn't Aragog.

Finally, after rounding two hedges, they came face to face with the eight-eyed giant spider.

The giant eight-eyed spider was crouching in the shadow of the hedge, its two large pincers clicking.

Harry gripped his wand tightly, like a challenger facing a boss.

Cohen didn't even pull out his wand—

Because Cohen isn't the challenger, this spider is.

(End of this chapter)