Harry Potter 04 - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

seemed to take his silence for assent. He raised his own wand, pointed it at Winky and said, ‘Rennervate!’
    Winky stirred feebly. Her great brown eyes opened and she blinked several times in a bemused sort of way. Watched by the silent wizards, she raised herself shakily into a sitting position. She caught sight of Mr Diggory’s feet, and slowly, tremulously, raised her eyes to stare up into his face; then, more slowly still, she looked up into the sky. Harry could see the floating skull reflected twice in her enormous, glassy eyes. She gave a gasp, looked wildly around the crowded clearing and burst into terrified sobs.
    ‘Elf!’ said Mr Diggory sternly. ‘Do you know who I am? I’m a member of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures!’
    Winky began to rock backwards and forwards on the ground, her breath coming in sharp bursts. Harry was reminded forcibly of Dobby in his moments of terrified disobedience.
    ‘As you see, elf, the Dark Mark was conjured here a short while ago,’ said Mr Diggory. ‘And you were discovered moments later, right beneath it! An explanation, if you please!’
    ‘I – I – I is not doing it, sir!’ Winky gasped. ‘I is not knowing how, sir!’
    ‘You were found with a wand in your hand!’ barked Mr Diggory, brandishing it in front of her. And as the wand caught the green light that was filling the clearing from the skull above, Harry recognised it.
    ‘Hey – that’s mine!’ he said.
    Everyone in the clearing looked at him.
    ‘Excuse me?’ said Mr Diggory, incredulously.
    ‘That’s my wand!’ said Harry. ‘I dropped it!’
    ‘You dropped it?’ repeated Mr Diggory in disbelief. ‘Is this a confession? You threw it aside after you conjured the Mark?’
    ‘Amos, think who you’re talking to!’ said Mr Weasley, very angrily. ‘Is Harry Potter likely to conjure the Dark Mark?’
    ‘Er – of course not,’ mumbled Mr Diggory. ‘Sorry … carried away …’
    ‘I didn’t drop it there, anyway,’ said Harry, jerking his thumb towards the trees beneath the skull. ‘I missed it right after we got into the wood.’
    ‘So,’ said Mr Diggory, his eyes hardening as he turned to look at Winky again, cowering at his feet. ‘You found this wand, eh, elf? And you picked it up and thought you’d have some fun with it, did you?’
    ‘I is not doing magic with it, sir!’ squealed Winky, tears streaming down the sides of her squashed and bulbous nose. ‘I is … I is … I is just picking it up, sir! I is not making the Dark Mark, sir, I is not knowing how!’
    ‘It wasn’t her!’ said Hermione. She looked very nervous, speaking up in front of all these Ministry wizards, yet determined all the same. ‘Winky’s got a squeaky little voice and the voice we heard doing the incantation was much deeper!’ She looked round at Harry and Ron, appealing for their support. ‘It didn’t sound anything like Winky, did it?’
    ‘No,’ said Harry, shaking his head. ‘It definitely didn’t sound like an elf.’
    ‘Yeah, it was a human voice,’ said Ron.
    ‘Well, we’ll soon see,’ growled Mr Diggory, looking unimpressed. ‘There’s a simple way of discovering the last spell a wand performed, elf, did you know that?’
    Winky trembled and shook her head frantically, her ears flapping, as Mr Diggory raised his own wand again, and placed it tip to tip with Harry’s.
    ‘Prior Incantato!’ roared Mr Diggory.
    Harry heard Hermione gasp, horrified, as a gigantic serpent-tongued skull erupted from the point where the two wands met, but it was a mere shadow of the green skull high above them, it looked as though it was made of thick grey smoke: the ghost of a spell.
    ‘Deletrius!’ Mr Diggory shouted, and the smoky skull vanished in a wisp of smoke.
    ‘So,’ said Mr Diggory with a kind of savage triumph, looking down upon Winky, who was still shaking convulsively.
    ‘I is not doing it!’ she squealed, her eyes rolling in terror. ‘I is not, I is not, I is not knowing how! I is a good elf, I isn’t using wands, I isn’t knowing how!’
    ‘You’ve been caught red-handed, elf!’ Mr Diggory roared. ‘Caught with the guilty wand in your hand!’
    ‘Amos,’ said Mr Weasley loudly, ‘think about it … precious few wizards know how to do that spell … where would she have learnt it?’
    ‘Perhaps Amos is suggesting,’ said Mr Crouch, cold anger in every syllable, ‘that I routinely teach my servants to conjure the Dark