It turned out that Harry's worries were absolutely necessary.
Because when their group passed through the dense forest and arrived at the clearing where Grawp lived, they just happened to see Grawp, bound tightly by iron chains, gripping a goblin's leg and spinning around in circles, cheering happily.
As for where the goblin's body had gone... only heaven knew.
Harry and the other two couldn't help but look toward Hagrid, which made Hagrid's face flush bright red with embarrassment. For a moment, he couldn't even force out a single word.
Not far away, when Grawp noticed them, he immediately tossed aside the leg in his hand and charged over, shouting loudly as he came.
Harry and the other two jumped in fright. Luckily, the chains were still holding him back. When the chains were pulled taut, Grawp was stopped right in front of them, waving his hands nonstop, hands covered in dark red blood and grime.
"Roar! Grawp! Good boy, my good little brother, come take a look at what I brought you!"
Seeing this, Hagrid finally snapped out of his embarrassment.
He spoke happily, and as he did, he pulled a huge slab of meat out of the large pack on his back, meat from some unknown creature.
The meat was extremely fresh and still carried a bit of warmth. Even in this freezing weather, drops of fresh blood dripped down from it, and a strong stench of blood spread through the air.
The sight made Hermione and the others behind Hagrid frown deeply, but Hagrid and Grawp were clearly having a great time.
Especially Grawp. This small giant, whose intelligence wasn't very impressive, danced around excitedly, drool pouring from his mouth and adding even more foulness to the air.
"Do you want to eat it, Grawp?"
Hagrid stretched the meat forward as he spoke. Grawp reached out to grab it, but Hagrid quickly pulled it back again, making Grawp miss and start yelling anxiously.
"That's not right, Grawp. Do you remember what I taught you before?" Hagrid said deliberately in a slow, coaxing tone, like he was talking to a baby.
"If someone gives you food, what do you need to say? Come on, say thank you. That's right, follow me…"
Under the double temptation of Hagrid and the meat, Grawp finally managed to say, slurring his words, "Tha… thank you…"
As he spoke, he even pressed his hands together in a praying gesture.
"Wow! You did amazing! Here, this meat is yours!" Hagrid laughed and tossed the meat out.
Seeing this, Grawp leapt into the air and caught the meat mid-air with his mouth.
He then began greedily tearing at the meat with his hands and teeth, eating in a bloody, savage mess.
Faced with such a brutal scene, Hagrid stood to the side laughing heartily.
This wasn't mockery, it was genuine happiness for Grawp.
He even turned around and said proudly and emotionally to Harry and the others, "Look at that, would you! Grawp can say thank you now! Merlin! He's making better and better progress. At this rate, I think it won't be long before he can live normally with us!"
Hearing this, Hermione's expression was almost completely out of control.
Her body trembled slightly as she said, "Hagrid, is this how you usually train him? I mean..."
She pointed at Grawp, who was eating like a wild beast, "... do you really think he looks like he's making progress?"
Ron poked his head out from behind Harry and said nervously, "Yeah, Hagrid, I think you should at least give your brother some cooked food! The way he is right now is terrifying!"
Hagrid sighed and shook his head.
"Of course I know cooked meat tastes better than raw meat, but what I just gave Grawp was Ukrainian Ironbelly meat. The nutrients in dragon meat like this get lost if you cook it!"
"Sigh… right now, I just hope Grawp can get more nutrition. If he can grow a bit taller, maybe I'll be able to send him back to the tribe."
Halfway through his sentence, Hagrid's eyes turned red. He pulled out a dirty handkerchief, wiped at the corners of his eyes, then blew his nose hard.
Under normal circumstances, Hermione and Harry would have gone over to comfort him already.
But after witnessing the entire interaction between Hagrid and Grawp just now, Hermione truly couldn't bring herself to do that. She could only watch him from afar with an oddly complicated expression.
She had long known that Hagrid's way of thinking was different from normal people's, you could tell just from the kinds of creatures he liked.
But after seeing today's scene, she suddenly realized that Hagrid's way of thinking could no longer be described with something as simple as "not normal."
Nearby, Harry, who had been silent the whole time, also looked at Hagrid, hesitating as if he wanted to say something.
He really wanted to tell Hagrid that, given Grawp's current state, it would probably take another hundred years before he could ever integrate into normal life at Hogwarts.
But when he imagined how heartbroken Hagrid would be, the words just wouldn't come out.
After struggling for a long time, Harry finally found a more indirect way to put it. He took a deep breath and said, "Hagrid… have you ever thought about sending Grawp to Link?"
"Sending him to Link?" Hagrid instinctively repeated it, his face full of shock.
Harry nodded, unaware, and continued, "Yeah, sending him to Link. Think about it, Link's family specializes in magical creatures."
"I've heard they have several advanced breeding farms and semi-primitive nature reserves. If Grawp could go there, he'd definitely get better care."
"He wouldn't need to be chained up like this anymore. Don't you want to see him running freely across open land? Just imagine it, how wonderful that would be…"
Ron elbowed Harry hard, cutting off his excited speech.
Only then did Harry notice that Hagrid's expression had already turned terrifyingly dark. His small eyes, normally hidden behind thick hair, were now wide open, and deep within them there even seemed to be a faint red glow.
"Do you really understand what kind of business Link's family is in?" Hagrid asked in a heavy voice.
Harry and the others were just about to answer when Hagrid continued on his own, "Yes, that's right, magical creature business. If you insist on putting it that way, it's not wrong."
"But there are huge differences between businesses. Take the Flamel family, for example. You probably don't know this, but they made their fortune through poaching rare magical creatures."
"In just the past ten-plus years, the number of rare magical creatures killed by their hunters could practically fill the entire Hogwarts castle."
Harry and Ron were left speechless in shock. Hermione even cried out in disbelief, she found this especially hard to accept.
Ignoring their stunned expressions, Hagrid smiled and continued, "These past few years, since Link took control of the family, they've stopped poaching and instead opened breeding farms and bought land to build protected reserves."
"Link told me back then, what was that word again? Oh right! 'Cleaning up their image.' He said the Flamel family had reached the point where they needed to clean themselves up."
"But don't think for a second that the magical creatures in those farms and reserves live comfortable lives. The people managing those places are the very same hunters from before. And Link runs those places with economic efficiency in mind."
"When Link talks about cleaning up their image, he doesn't mean atonement. All they've done is change from illegal poaching to legal breeding and slaughter. If you really compare numbers and efficiency, the Flamel family kills even more creatures now than they did before!"
"Especially in some of the lower-end breeding farms, those herds of bred invisibility tapirs and silencing birds live lives that are downright horrifying."
"Now tell me, do you still want to send Grawp to Link?"
By the end, Hagrid was practically roaring.
Harry and the other two were deathly pale. After a long while, Hermione finally gritted her teeth and said, "Hagrid, since you've known all this for so long, why didn't you try to persuade Link to stop? You're a magical creature conservationist, you should have stopped him!"
"Stop him? Why would I stop Link?"
Hagrid said, completely baffled. "What he's doing is reasonable, legal, and very much in line with the principles of magical creature protection. If I remember right, Link even received the Scamander Award last year."
"How is that possible?" Hermione cried out instinctively.
Hearing this, Harry and Ron both asked in confusion, "What's the Scamander Award?"
"That's a foundation established by Mr. Newt Scamander together with the Ministry of Magic and the International Magical Creature Protection Organization," Hermione explained.
"Every year, it awards witches and wizards around the world who've made outstanding contributions to protecting magical creatures. And the Scamander Award is the highest honor among them!"
This left Harry and Ron speechless as well.
Even though they didn't dislike Link's actions as strongly as Hermione did, the idea that someone who had slaughtered so many magical creatures could receive the highest honor in magical creature protection was absurd beyond belief.
It was so outrageous that it made people think of words like "inside deals" and "corruption."
Hagrid's thinking could indeed be strange in other areas, sometimes even to the point of seeming foolish.
But right now, he displayed a kind of wisdom that surprised them.
He seemed to see through their thoughts and smacked his lips.
"I know what you're thinking, but after Link's farms and reserves were established, the prices of magical creature materials on the market dropped sharply."
"At the same time, it forced poachers to abandon high-risk hunting activities. That's a very real, very meaningful contribution to protecting magical creatures."
"Sure, the number of magical creatures dying because of Link hasn't gone down, it's even gone up. But they're all economic livestock."
"In a sense, they're no different from the chickens, ducks, cattle, and sheep you eat every day. You can't just treat them differently because they look cuter or have special abilities, can you?"
Although Hagrid was speaking to all three of them, his eyes never left Hermione.
He had long been irritated by her saint-like mindset.
This was the perfect moment to educate her.
Hermione clearly noticed his gaze. Her face burned red as she tried to say something in rebuttal, but no words came out.
After all, Hagrid's logic was sound. Someone who had just eaten two grilled beef sausages and a roasted duck leg at lunch really didn't have much ground to criticize Link.
Thankfully, Hagrid also knew when to stop.
Seeing Hermione like this, he cleared his throat and said, "Alright, that's enough on this topic. Anyway, I'm not sending Grawp to Link."
Harry and Ron didn't say anything either.
If Link's reserves and breeding farms were really like Hagrid described, then they truly weren't suitable for Grawp.
But just then, a sickly sweet, familiar voice suddenly sounded from nearby, "Then why don't you hand this giant over to me?"
"Who's there?!"
Harry and the others jumped in shock. Hagrid's expression changed as he shouted toward the source of the voice.
With a rustling of bushes, Umbridge, dressed in a pink cloak, slowly stepped out, escorted by three teenagers holding their wands high.
"See? Just like I said before, recruiting werewolves and half-giants to work at Hogwarts was always going to cause disaster. And now, here's the proof!"
Umbridge pointed at Grawp and roared, "You actually brought a giant into Hogwarts?! Do you have any idea what kind of damage he'd cause if he went berserk? You, and all of you, will be sent straight to Azkaban!"
A boy in tight-fitting clothes beside her hurriedly chimed in, "Good thing Professor Umbridge discovered this in time. Otherwise, we students staying at Hogwarts for Christmas would've been in serious danger. If you ask me, just for this achievement alone, Professor Umbridge deserves a Second-Class Order of Merlin!"
The boy's words clearly hit Umbridge right where it pleased her.
She gave him an approving look, like a teacher praising a promising student, and a smug smile spread across her face.
But watching their back-and-forth performance, Hagrid and Harry's faces had already turned completely pale.
They couldn't understand how Umbridge knew about Grawp, nor how she managed to find them so precisely in the vast forest.
But at this point, none of that mattered anymore.
Hagrid slowly turned his stiff neck. Seeing that Grawp had finished eating the dragon meat and was now smiling at him with a blood-soaked mouth, Hagrid's eyes instantly turned red.
His massive body suddenly moved.
He grabbed the machete he used to clear paths and slashed it fiercely at the chain on the ground.
Clang!
Sparks flew, and the chain snapped.
Hagrid moved with incredible speed. Without the slightest pause after breaking the chain, he raised the machete again and waved it threateningly in front of Grawp, his face twisted and savage.
"Run, Grawp! Run!"
Grawp naturally couldn't understand what was happening. He even thought Hagrid was playing with him and began laughing and flailing his arms.
Seeing this, pain flashed through Hagrid's eyes. Amid Harry's shouts of alarm, he brought the blade down hard onto Grawp's chest.
The blade that had just severed iron chains only cut a shallow wound into Grawp's body.
But it was enough.
In pain, Grawp's expression finally turned fearful.
He seemed to remember the time when he had been bullied by other giants in the giant army.
And so, he followed his most instinctive reaction, run.
"Roaaah!"
Grawp let out a miserable cry and fled as fast as he could.
At the same time, accompanied by Umbridge's furious shouting, several scarlet spells shot out from the teenagers' wands.
But Hagrid seemed completely unaware.
He stood there with his back to the incoming attacks, staring at Grawp, tears already filling his eyes.
"Run away, little brother. You're meant to be free. It's your brother who failed you."