Who Killed Chloe Beaudelaire?

“And so, we must lay to rest the lovely and charming, Chloe Beaudelaire.”

A loud sob rang through the completely silent great hall. It was Chloe’s mother, who could no longer contain her quiet cries of agony within her any longer. She wanted all the students of Hogwarts to hear her pain; she wanted all the students, from first years to seventh years to know that her daughter had died without a cause. Lord Voldemort had taken her daughter, the ‘lovely and charming’ Chloe Beaudelaire.

Halfway across the great hall, sitting with the rest of the Hufflepuff’s, sat Anna McNulty, Chloe’s best friend. A single tear rolled her cheek, joining the hundreds of tears she had shed over the past week, in memory of Chloe. Not even ten minutes before Chloe was killed, she was laughing away in the Hufflepuff common room with Anna, playing an intense game of wizard chess. Chloe’s last words to Anna still rang in her head every night as she lay awake in her bed, processing the day’s events..and the emotions that she could not bear to put to rest.

“When I come back, I’m going to beat you so badly you’ll never want to play wizard chess again,” Chloe had said with a parting laugh, closing the door to the common room behind her.

Anna still wished that she had let Chloe win that last wizard chess match.

Standing between Chloe Beaudelaire’s mother and best friend, stood the person most guilty about her death. Harry Potter. In his six years at Hogwarts, he had only talked to Chloe Beaudelaire maybe five times. The only distinct conversation he remembered ever having with her was one rainy day in Herbology during their second year, during which he had asked her how she managed to get her Mandrake to stop screaming maniacally. Yet, he couldn’t help but feel that he was completely responsible for her death. Lord Voldemort had no interest in Chloe, all he wanted was Harry. Chloe was just a pawn in his game for world domination. Poor Chloe was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Professor McGonagall’s words at roughly midnight were still fresh in Harry’s mind.

“Potter, a girl was just killed by Lord Voldemort, he was after you. She died protecting you.”

She didn’t deserve to die the way she did, Harry thought. No one deserved to die the way she did.