The Death Eater [HARRY POTTER]

15

"He's dead!" Harry's voice breaks through the cheering crowd as the stands stirred. This task, more than all of them, had been particularly boring as no one could see what was happening in the maze. And then someone had appeared, and before anyone could even process who it had been to appear everyone was on their feet cheering the end of their wait.

And then Harry's agonized sobs had broken through the shouts, and almost as one everyone fell silent.

"Cedric Diggory is dead!"

And in the silence that followed Harry's loud proclamation, Calla was able to hear Amos Diggory realizing that his only son was not moving, that he and Harry had escaped the third task, but that only Harry had come back alive.

"My boy!" Amos sobbed loudly, trying to struggle past the ministry officials that were trying to keep him in his seat. "That's my son! Let me go see my boy!"

*******

Calla had left Draco and his friend behind as she went down to where the professors were all gathered around the body of Cedric Diggory. The professors had closed rank around the corpse while madame Pomfrey checked him over for any signs of life. But Calla had known as soon as she saw Harry sobbing over Cedric's body that there was no chance of that. Cedric's eyes were wide and lifeless. And he hadn't had anyone to sacrifice himself to repel the unforgivable curse like Harry had all those years before.

She walked up to stand beside her father' just in time to see Madame Pomfrey looking up at Dumbledore with her eyes swimming, only to shake her head. There was no way to save the boy. He was dead, and he had died under the protection of Hogwarts.

Calla remebered the last words Harry had been able to cry out before he had been shepherded away by Alistair Moody.

"The dark lord is back!"

She looked down at the dead boy, a boy almost a year older than Calla herself, and then over to her father who was grimacing minutely. Severus' hand twitched toward his right arm, and Calla knew then and there that harry Potter hadn't been lying. And then Calla remembered the strange way Alistair Moody had been acting all year, and the strange feeling he had been giving her. When she thought about it, she recognized the feeling. It was the same feeling she got when Igor Karkaroff was lingering around. The same feeling she got, in much less potency, when her father was standing beside her.

And then and there Calla put her bias again the boy aside, and grabbed her father's arm.

"Where is Harry?" she demanded quietly. "Where did Moody take Harry potter?"

And then there was a whole new issue at hand.

*******

The door to Alistair Moody's classroom burst open as Calla stalked toward it, and it was with some surprise that the rest of the Hogwarts staff followed the youngest professor. None of them had seen the exact extent of the girl's powers, especially not when she was enraged as she was right then. Calla might be the youngest professor on staff, she might be the newest professor, but she cared about her students. And she hated that there was nothing she could have stopped Cedric Diggory from dying. He was still a child, and he had been cut down.

"He told him to hill the spare," Harry had sobbed before Alistair had dragged him away. Calla was disgusted.

Alistair, who was standing over Harry with his wand waved, and an unforgivable curse on his lips, flew away from the boy and slammed back against the wall. Except no one had touched him. Calla's green eyes were as hard as jade as she stared at the man in front of her. There was a rage there, her finders twitching every now and then, that would put fear in even the most fearsome death eater. As Harry gasped in surprise and looked to see what had torn the madman away from him, he was scared as well.