Vengeance| Harry Potter

eight. a strange turn of events

"Y-yeah, it should be, er, interesting."

"I wonder how Beauxbatons and Durmstrang are getting here," she said, taking her eyes off of him and joining in looking around the grounds. She tried her best to not let the fact that Neville was nervous affect her. Even though he had landed himself in what was known as the brave house, he could be a little jumpy sometimes. She knew he probably had some hidden bravery buried deep down, but it was sort of unsettling knowing that she was intimidating to him.

"Maybe— maybe brooms or something," Neville suggested, standing up on his toes to try and see over all the students.

"I was thinking more something along the lines of—"

"Aha! Unless I am very much mistaken, the delegation from Beauxbatons approaches!" Dumbledore announced from the back of the crowd of students.

"Where?" Viola said, aloud, craning her neck to look all around.

"Over there, by the forest!" shouted a nearby third year. Viola squinted, trying to see past the shadows casted by the trees, but there was nothing.

"IS THAT A DRAGON-SIZED UNICORN!?" a sixth year with curly hair just behind Viola screamed and she jumped, wincing as she brought a hand to her ear.

But, as she looked up above the towering trees, she saw it: a giant, powder-blue shape was soaring over the trees, pulled by about a dozen huge horses, each adorned with wings that looked as though they would be about the same size as a car up close.

"Holy shit, that carriage is huge!" a brown-haired slytherin down the line said loudly.

Viola agreed with her: the carriage was massive. It steadily made its way towards the ground and the students at the front of the crowd stepped hastily back to avoid being crushed—but they moved back too quickly and a fourth year Hufflepuff, who had been in the middle of saying how beautiful the carriage was, stepped on her toe.

The girl whipped around—as Viola grit her teeth to stop from crying out; wow, that hurt—and immediately exclaimed, "I'm so sorry! Are you okay?"

"Brilliant," Viola said, keeping the pain out of her voice.

After assuring the Hufflepuff for several minutes that she was, in fact, okay, the girl—Maya, Viola thought her name was—left her alone, by which time the door of the carriage had opened and the students and Headmistress—a woman who Viola could only describe as big—had all come out to the grass.

The Headmistress made her way through the crowd, beckoning her students to follow her and they disappeared into the castle after greeting Dumbledore.

"Are Durmstrang arriving like that, too?" Viola asked to no one in particular. She felt embarrassed as soon as the words left her mouth, but the Hufflepuff girl turned around again.

"If they are, I hope they have a pretty carriage aswell!"

The next few minutes were mostly silent apart from the noise of the large horses and the wind rustling the trees of the forest. The cold was beginning to get to Viola, despite the fact that she was wearing her robes, but the chilly wind was getting stronger the longer they remained outside.

The silence was broken by Lee Jordan: "The lake!" he yelled. "Look at the lake!"

The surface of the lake, which was usually smooth, was beginning to bubble and a sound like a bath tub draining started up once the water in the centre began to swirl. From the midst of the whirlpool rose a ghostly ship, looking more like a wreck than an actual working ship.