Stars in Her Eyes {Wolfstar's Daughter}

Chapter 48: Barty Crouch

"Harry!"

"Mr Crouch? Mr Crouch can you hear me?"

"Harry- Harry I can't feel his pulse"

"Harry!"

"Shit- Nell get away from him"

"What?! We can't just leave him!"

"Nell he's dead! ..... I'm sorry- I'm sorry- but we don't know what happened here or- or who..."

"We need to find someone."

And there stood Harry and Nell, waiting outside of the headmaster's office a mere hour after finding Barty Crouch Sr's lifeless body in the middle of the forbidden forest. They had been walking back from the second task when they found him.

By chance they had chosen a longer route through the forest to burn off their remaining adrenaline from the task. By chance they had passed the very tree where he lay, his crazed eyes now glassy and staring blankly into the sky. By chance they had stumbled across a dead man, a murdered man on Hogwarts grounds.

After finding help, the two, along with the rest of the students, had been sent back to their house towers whilst an investigation was carried out. Of course none of the other students were told the reason of this sudden lockdown, but Harry and Nell (and by default Ron and Hermione) knew all the same.

The pair had managed to sit around for all of fifteen minutes before they couldn't bear it any longer. They had just found a dead person in the middle of the woods and no one was telling them anything. Hence why they found themselves heading to Dumbledore's office for some much needed answers.

Harry had been about to raise his hand to knock on the large oak door before they heard slightly raised voices from the other side, clearly in some sort of heated discussion.

"A man had been killed Cornelius! The competition must be cancelled!" Nell recognised Dumbledore's muffled voice.

"Perhaps we ought to continue this conversation elsewhere seeing as we are no longer alone" Moody's gruff words were the last thing the pair managed to make out before the door swung open, making them recoil back slightly in shock.

Through the now open door, Professor Dumbledore, Moody and much to the teens' surprise the Minister for Magic, were revealed staring back at them.

"Ah, Harry, Nell do come in. I'll just see the minister out, won't be long. Do help yourselves to a liquorice snap whilst I'm gone" Dumbledore smiled, his previously tense demeanour immediately switching calm and kind at the sight of his students, as if nothing was wrong at all.

The two were ushered into the office as the three men left behind them, restarting their muffled conversation outside the room.

Their voices soon disappeared down the staircase, leaving Harry and Nell alone in the magnificent office. Harry paced further into the space, his eyes darting around the varying shelves and the series of unique antiquities which inhabited them. Whereas Nell remained lingering by the door.

"Harry?" She said in small voice, making the boy turn round from his inspection of the room to face her.

"Do you- do you think someone killed him?" She continued in the same quiet tone, both of them knowing the answer but neither wanting to say it aloud.

"I don't know." He sighed, walking back over to her. "But I mean this is Hogwarts Nells, we're safe here yeah?"

"Are we?" She proposed, looking up to him as he cocked his head in confusion.

"What?"

"Harry in our first year we came face to face with.... him in a third floor classroom of all places, and then the competition? And now this? I wouldn't exactly say I feel safe." She admitted with a small shrug as his face immediately softened.