"Who else could be a judge? It should be me!" Greta Karkaroff shouted indignantly. "Why do I have to be like 'everyone else' and only be allowed to come to the school on the final day?"
Pomona kept her sweet smile.
"This is for security reasons. Anyone uninvolved..."
"Uninvolved?" Greta shrieked in her operatic soprano voice. "I'm uninvolved? Do you know how much I donated?"
"I'll check the account books," Pomona said, beginning to lose patience.
But Greta did not notice the change in her tone and continued complaining to herself.
What Greta wanted was nothing more than a small convenience: to bring a few friends who had come from afar to tour the school and pay a visit to Albus Dumbledore.
Greta was not unreasonable. To ensure the fairness of the competition, she would not go to the Quidditch Pitch, where the third task was being held. Yet they would not even accommodate such a minor request.
Pomona should not have been the one handling this matter, but Minerva had a little "disagreement" with Greta, so it fell to Pomona instead.
Greta rambled on for another half hour before finally leaving. Pomona let out a deep breath and immediately felt that the whole world had become quieter.
"How does it feel?"
She looked up and found Severus standing in the doorway of her office.
"Still alive," she said tiredly, secretly sympathizing with Sirius Black, because he was Greta's "target."
"I meant, how does it feel having someone cover your classes?" he said slickly. "That cheese didn't notice you were supposed to be teaching right now."
"How could someone as self-centered as her notice? If I made her wait in vain because I was teaching, that would have been even harder to deal with," Pomona said wearily.
He walked in