Book 1 in the Screams Trilogy
Calliope Doge doesn't speak. This is a fact that the entirety of Hogwarts knows full well.
She doesn't answer the questions that teachers ask in lessons, she doesn't speak to people over dinner in the great hall and sh...
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Calliope knew that she should be anticipating danger around every corner of the school, but as the weeks passed, nothing else happened. It seemed as though she was going to be able to put the whole thing behind her, as the gossip about the incident seemed to die down.
She approached the Halloween feast with the memory of the whispers at the very back of her mind.
The usual wonderful feast was set out before the students, piles of sweets- all of which Calliope was sure her grandfather would never have allowed her to eat. Carved pumpkins sat on each and every table, with invisible candles flickering inside of them and the hall was full of the happy chatter of a group of well-fed students.
Calliope had hardly made a dent in her second plate of food when she suddenly sat up very straight. Despite the noise of the hall, she could still identify those voices. The whispers had returned to her head, she looked towards the large double doors, getting the distinct impression that something was calling her from out there.
The whispers began to gain in volume, and Calliope scrambled to her feet, hurrying from the hall. She followed the whispers up several flights of stairs, and through most of the second floor. She stopped abruptly when she saw what was ahead, almost forgetting for a moment the voices that were almost shouting inside her head now. Straight ahead of her, stood a small red-headed girl, who Calliope recognised as a Gryffindor first year (although she did not know her name). The girl's hands were covered in something that looked like red paint, and she faced away from Calliope, looking at the wall in front of her, which bore the message 'THE CHAMBER HAS BEEN OPENED. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE' in shining red ink. The girl was stood in a puddle of water, that was coming from underneath the door to a bathroom (which Calliope had always avoided due to it being the home of a ghost by the name of Moaning Myrtle).
Calliope felt something brush against her leg and saw the Caretaker's cat, Mrs Norris. The cat was making her way towards the young Gryffindor, who had now turned to look at Calliope.
Calliope followed the cat, wondering if the girl needed help. As she stepped into the puddle of water, she glanced down to the floor, being careful not to slip over. It was that moment that the whispers reached an all-time high and that moment that Calliope saw the massive snake reflected in the puddle.
Her body went stiff, and she fell into the puddle. Her hair was the only thing to move when she fell, spreading out on the waterlogged floor, creating a dark halo around her head, as her dark eyes stared up at the ceiling, unseeing and unknowing.
She didn't notice as the young Gryffindor girl hurried away (after hanging the now paralysed cat from its tail beneath the message on the wall), she didn't notice when Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger arrived on the scene, and she most certainly did not notice as she was carried from the corridor in which she had been petrified to the hospital wing, and lain on a bed, where Albus Dumbledore declared that she was not in fact, dead. But instead, she and Mrs Norris had been petrified by an unknown source.
If only she had been able to tell them, then the school may have avoided much suffering over the coming months.
