Emily Potter- Book 4 - Goblet Of Fire

Barty Crouch Jr.

The door of the office opened.

"Hello, Potters," said Moody. "Come in, then." Harry walked with Emily close by him. They had been inside Dumbledore's office once before; it was a very beautiful, circular room, lined with pictures of previous headmasters and headmistresses of Hogwarts, all of whom were fast asleep, their chests rising and falling gently.

Cornelius Fudge was standing beside Dumbledore's desk, wearing his usual pinstriped cloak and holding his lime-green bowler hat. "Harry! Emily!" said Fudge jovially, moving forward. "How are you?"

"Fine," They lied in unison. "We were just talking about the night when Mr. Crouch turned up on the grounds," said Fudge. "It was you who found him, was it not?" He said, looking at them meticulously.

"Yes, Viktor Krum was also with us," said Harry. Then, feeling it was pointless to pretend that they hadn't overheard what they had been saying, she then added to his sentence, "We didn't see Madame Maxim anywhere, though, but if you’re really determined to push through your theory she'd have a job hiding, wouldn't she?"

Dumbledore smiled at Emily behind Fudge's back, his eyes twinkling. "Yes, well," said Fudge, looking embarrassed, "we're about to go for a short walk on the grounds, if you'll excuse us ... perhaps if you two just go back to your classes -"

"We wanted to talk to you. Professor," Harry said quickly, looking at Dumbledore, who gave him a swift, searching look. "Wait here for me, Harry, Emily," he said. "Our examination of the grounds will not take long."

They trooped out in silence past them and closed the door. After a minute or so, Harry and Emily heard the clunks of Moody's leg growing fainter in the corridor below. They looked around.

"Hello, Fawkes," he said as Emily stroked the beautifully gold and scarlet feathered head of the bird. Fawkes, Professor Dumbledore's phoenix, was standing on his golden perch beside the door. The size of a swan, with magnificent scarlet-and-gold plumage, he swished his long tail and blinked benignly at Harry and Emily. Emily sat down in a chair in front of Dumbledore's desk, and Harry sat opposite her. For several minutes, they sat and watched the old headmasters and headmistresses snoozing in their frames, thinking about what they had just heard, and running their fingers over their own scars. It had stopped hurting now.

Emily and Harry felt much calmer, somehow, now that they were in Dumbledore's office. Harry looked up at the walls behind the desk. The patched and ragged Sorting Hat was standing on a shelf, the same sorting hat that Emily had blasted when she was a mere first year. A glass case next to it held a magnificent silver sword with large rubies set into the hilt, which Harry recognized as the one he himself had pulled out of the Sorting Hat in his second year.

The sword had once belonged to Godric Gryffindor, founder of Harry's House/Emily’s former house. He was gazing at it, remembering how it had come to his aid when he had thought all hope was lost, when he noticed a patch of silvery light, dancing and shimmering on the glass case. He looked around for the source of the light and saw a sliver of silver-white shining brightly from within a black cabinet behind him, whose door had not been closed properly. Harry hesitated, glanced at Fawkes, then got up, walked across the office, and pulled open the cabinet door.

A shallow stone basin lay there, with odd carvings around the edge: runes and symbols that Harry did not recognize but was sure that his sister would be familiar with. The silvery light was coming from the basin's contents, which were like nothing Harry had ever seen before. He could not tell whether the substance was liquid or gas. It was bright, whitish silver, and it was moving ceaselessly; the surface of it became ruffled like water beneath wind, and then, like clouds, separated and swirled smoothly. It looked like light made liquid - or like wind made solid - Harry couldn't make up his mind.