"First, the king of the grasslands let out a roar, furious that it had never set foot in a forest. The first question it thought of was where it should go to find one."
"After it worked out the other things, one last question remained in its mind: what could it do once it reached the forest? Now put them together and tell me: what is the thing that will trouble you, and that you will need to work hard for?"
After hearing the riddle spoken by the Sphinx, many spectators, including Ludo Bagman, had blank looks in their eyes.
Seamus Finnigan looked at the students around him. "The 'king of the grasslands' in the riddle has to mean a 'lion,' right?"
The Gryffindor students all nodded. Their house crest was a lion, so it was easy for them to connect the riddle to the lion on their crest.
"Can we get the Sphinx to give another hint?" Dean Thomas scratched his head. "Otherwise it's way too hard to guess... Why does it feel like a fairy tale to me?"
Ron looked at Hermione in confusion. "Hermione, what do you think the answer is?"
"I'm thinking too..." Hermione's brows knitted together. "What if this is a riddle story? The lion's predicament... then making a change..."
"Maybe we have to guess some famous wizard? For example, Bowman Wright... or Bridget Wenlock?"
"Could it be Carlotta Pinkstone? No, that's not right either! What if it's just wordplay? Maybe it isn't as complicated as I thought at first..."
"Maybe everything else is a trap, and the key is only the phrase 'king of the grasslands'! After all, the whole story revolves around the 'king of the grasslands'..."
Just as Dean Thomas had said, there were quite a lot of ways to interpret this