Harry Potter and the Fortunate Queen - Chapter 383

Fergus pushed a bunch of people aside as he ran towards the hospital wing looking hysterical. He crashed on the door and the door opened making a loud bang. Inside, everyone fell silent and looked up at him. He froze looking at the small crowd in the Hospital wing, Madam Josephine, Genevieve, Salazar Slytherin, and a few very familiar students.

Suddenly a girl broke into sobs and Fergus slowly stepped into the room. Genevieve came closer to Fergus, but he shrugged her off and kept walking to the bed everyone was surrounding. Finally, he saw the figure on the bed.

Emory was as pale as the hospital bedsheets and her lips blue.

“Fergus,” Madam Josephine called softly, trying to stop him. But he ignored her and kneeled beside the bed. He clutched Emory’s stone-cold hand.

“Emory?”

“She is dead, Fergus,” Genevieve said quietly.

Fergus didn’t move, it was as if he didn’t hear Genevieve. He kept looking at Emory’s closed eyes. Her usual soft smile still etched upon her frozen blue lips.

Helga, Rowena, and Godric marched through the open doors.

“Salazar, we got your message,” Helga said walking briskly and looked shocked when she saw Emory. “Emory? My god, my sweet girl. How?”

Helga started to look at Emory, and Godric Gryffindor stopped short when he saw Malgino.

“Emory Astralo was your student, Helga. I thought you should be the one to investigate this,” Salazar told Helga Hufflepuff then turned to Madam Josephine. “What did you find, Josephine? How did this happen?”

“It’s him. He did this,” Emory’s sobbing friend burst out and it took everyone a while to understand who she saw talking about.

She was pointing at Fergus, who was still staring at Emory. Gryffindor looked livid and Helga sighed.

“Hold your accusations, Elizabeth,” Helga warned. “Till we find out what had caused this, no one should —”

“It’s not impossible, Madam Helga,” said a Slytherin student patting Elizabeth’s head as she broke into another set of sobs. “He already killed one student, killing another shouldn’t be shocking and Emory always stayed with him. We advised her not to do it but she didn’t listen. It was as if he had bewitched her.”

“That is enough, Malcolm,” Helga ordered. “We are all sad about Emory but that doesn’t mean I would listen to any of this nonsense without any proof.”

“Are you sure there is no proof, Helga?” Salazar said in defense of his student.

“Do you have any proof?” Godric exclaimed, glaring at Salazar.

“This is the hospital wing and we are surrounded by our students,” Rowena said calmly. “I would advise both of you to behave accordingly.”

Gryffindor and Slytherin fell silent at once. Rowena turned to the students.

“We are deeply wounded by this unfortunate event as much as you all, but to understand what happened, we need time. You all may go and take the day off if you want to. Classes are canceled for the day. Also, if any of you have anything to inform us regarding this incident or anything unusual meet me in my office —”

“Rowena?” Helga raised her eyes at Rowena and she corrected herself a little reluctantly, “Inform Madam Hufflepuff in her office. Now leave.”

A little surprised and startled the students started to leave, throwing dirty looks at Fergus.

“Fergus, you too,” Rowena said a little harshly.

Fergus still didn’t move.

“Genevieve,” Godric called. “Take him away.”

“Get up Fergus,” Genevieve said soothingly. Fergus didn’t protest either. He let her pull him up and lead him out of the wing.

.

.

.

Was that Emory’s death or something else, nobody knew. Yet, one thing was sure, Hogwarts wasn’t the same anymore. The investigation of Emory’s death created a conflict between the founders, no one found anything concrete about how it could have happened. But everyone had theories.

Emory had no enemies, neither did her Muggle parents, who didn’t know where their Daughter lived after a lady in golden robes took ten years old Emory with her. Everyone in school loved her because of her sweet and caring nature, and the fact that Emory was so close with Fergus made Fergus the only suspect. The Slytherin student wasn’t the only one who thought if Fergus could kill once, he could easily kill twice, almost everyone in school agreed with him, including Salazar Slytherin. Godric Gryffindor was furious when Salazar brought that up and in return accused Salazar of hating Muggles indicating that it could be him as well. Things escalated very quickly after that and Rowena, who didn’t want to be involved at first, thought Gryffindor was being unreasonable and she needed to take matters into her own hands, which made everything worse. Other teachers started to take over classes as the founders bȧrėly taught anymore. They fought regularly among themselves while Helga tried to find what had happened to Emory. Her only clue was that someone had used poisonous herb on Emory and she was smiling when she drunk or ate it without any suspicion, which meant she was with someone she knew. Helga knew Fergus wouldn’t harm anyone without any reason, especially not a friend.

And Fergus. Nobody saw him after Emory’s death, he had locked himself up in his room, only Malgino visited from time to time with food and news about what was going on in school. Fergus half-listened half zoned out. Everything felt useless to him after Emory was gone. However, Malgino didn’t leave him alone, he supported him and tried to get him back to normal. Fergus only went out twice, both of the time he talked to Helga to know if she found out anything about Emory’s death. But both of the times he was disappointed. Fergus felt there was nothing left for him in Hogwarts, except for Malgino and his father, of course. Fergus was still torn about his father but something happened that gave him the courage to do something he always wanted to do. Runaway to Titian.

One day almost two months after Emory’s death, Malgino came running, looking a little weird.

“Mal?” Fergus was surprised to see Malgino so early in the morning.

“Helena ran away,” Malgino ran his hand through his hair.

Fergus stared at him, not really understanding.

“Ran away?”

“Yes, she ran away with – I don’t know where she went,” Malgino sat down on the floor, looking devastated.

“Why? What happened?” Fergus asked feeling terribly bad for him.

“We fought and she ran away.”

“Where would she go? Madam Rowena is here, she will eventually come back. Give it some time.” Fergus advised.

“She would not. I don’t think so.”

“Why?”

“I just know, Gus,” Malgino ġrȯȧnėd. He glared at the mirror in the room. “And she definitely wouldn’t like to face her mother after what she did.”

“What did she do?”

“She stole her mother’s diadem.”

“What? Why?” Fergus asked shocked.

“She was jealous.” Malgino’s tone was almost mocking, Fergus didn’t understand why. After a moment, Malgino stared at Fergus. “Do you want to run away too, Gus?”

Fergus looked away without replying.

Two days later, Malgino and Fergus had left Hogwarts, without telling anyone they had sneaked out and were on their way to Titian.

⟦To be continued⟧