Love Is In The Air: The Angelic Witch And Draco Malfoy (Book 4)

The Triwizard Tournament

The Great Hall looked its usual splendid self, decorated for the start-of-term feast. Golden plates and goblets gleamed by the light of hundreds and hundreds of candles, floating over the tables in midair. The four long House tables were packed with chattering students; at the top of the Hall, the staff sat along one side of a fifth table, facing their pupils. It was much warmer in here. Heroneka, Harry, Ron, and Hermione walked past the Slytherins, the Ravenclaws, and the Hufflepuffs, and sat down with the rest of the Gryffindors at the far side of the Hall, next to Nearly Headless Nick, the Gryffindor ghost. Pearly white and semitransparent, Nick was dressed tonight in his usual doublet, but with a particularly large ruff, which served the dual purpose of looking extra-festive, and ensuring that his head didn't wobble too much on his partially severed neck.

"Good evening," he said, beaming at them.

"Says who?" said Harry, taking off his sneakers and emptying them of water. "Hope they hurry up with the Sorting. I'm starving."

"Peeves dropped a water balloon on Harry!" Heroneka informed Nearly headless Nick as he watched Harry's watery sneakers.

"Where's the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher?" said Hermione, who was also looking up at the teachers.

Heroneka looked up at the staff table. There seemed to be rather more empty seats there than usual. Hagrid, of course, was still fighting his way across the lake with the first years; Professor McGonagall was presumably supervising the drying of the entrance hall floor, but there was another empty chair too, and Heroneka couldn't think who else was missing apart from the new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor.

They had never yet had a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher who had lasted more than three terms. Their favourite by far had been Professor Lupin, who had resigned last year. Heroneka looked up and down the staff table. There was definitely no new face there.

"Maybe they couldn't get anyone!" said Heroneka, looking anxious.

Tiny little Professor Flitwick was sitting on a large pile of cushions beside Professor Sprout. She was talking to Professor Sinistra of the Astronomy department. On Professor Sinistra's other side was the sallow-faced, hook-nosed, greasy-haired Potions master, Snape. Heroneka had found out from Lupin and Sirius that Snape respected Gemma a lot. She had always been very kind and supportive of him, which is why he treated Heroneka nicely.

On Snape's other side was an empty seat, which Heroneka guessed was Professor McGonagall's. Next to it, and in the very centre of the table, sat Professor Dumbledore, the headmaster, his sweeping silver hair and beard shining in the candlelight, his magnificent deep green robes embroidered with many stars and moons. The tips of Dumbledore's long, thin fingers were together and he was resting his chin upon them, staring up at the ceiling through his half-moon spectacles as though lost in thought. Heroneka glanced up at the ceiling too. It was enchanted to look like the sky outside, and she had never seen it look this stormy. Black and purple clouds were swirling across it, and as another thunderclap sounded outside, a fork of lightning flashed across it.

"Oh hurry up," Ron moaned, beside Harry, "I could eat a hippogriff."

The words were no sooner out of his mouth than the doors of the Great Hall opened and silence fell. Professor McGonagall was leading a long line of first years up to the top of the Hall. If Heroneka, Harry, Ron, and Hermione were wet, it was nothing to how these first years looked. They appeared to have swum across the lake rather than sailed. All of them were shivering with a combination of cold and nerves as they filed along with the staff table and came to a halt in a line facing the rest of the school - all of them except the smallest of the lot, a boy with mousy hair, who was wrapped in what Heroneka recognized as Hagrid's moleskin overcoat. The coat was so big for him that it looked as though he were draped in a furry black circus tent. His small face protruded from over the collar, looking almost painfully excited. When he had lined up with his terrified-looking peers, he caught Colin Creevey's eye, gave a double thumbs-up, and mouthed, I fell in the lake! He looked positively delighted about it. That was Colin's younger brother for sure.