"What exactly did you see, Harry?"
After Harry was dragged, tumbling head over heels, out of the raging snowstorm, Hermione finally breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that he was unharmed—or at least that all his body parts were still intact.
Hermione hurriedly dropped the rope, staggered forward, and helped Harry, who had been strangled breathless by it, up from the ground.
Harry had clearly been badly frightened. His face was pale with a bluish tint, and there was a bitter look in his eyes.
"Our guess wasn't wrong, Hermione."
Harry tugged at the rope that had slipped up to his chest so he could breathe more easily.
He did not keep her in suspense and said directly,
"They were two giants."
Seeing Hermione's expression change abruptly, Harry quickly explained,
"Oh, not real giants, Hermione. Professor Breen used Transfiguration to turn stones into giants. They looked rather strange. The giants had no legs, only oval stone bases supporting their bodies. It looked like they could glide across the ice!"
"You didn't wake them, did you, Harry?"
From the vague outlines of the shadows in the snowstorm and Harry's description, Hermione could roughly imagine what the two stone giants looked like. Her voice tightened as she asked.
"No—"
Harry shook his head.
"The stone giants didn't react, but if we attack them, I'd bet they definitely won't just stand there quietly!"
There was no need to think much about it. Their task was surely to destroy these two giants, and then they would probably obtain something that could melt the ice outside.
That was easier said than done. This task was extraordinarily difficult!
Though they did not know exactly what the two stone giants were capable of, their sheer size alone meant they would not be easy to deal