Jumat, 27 Maret 2009

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Cuplikan Novel

HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE

CHAPTER ONE - THE RIDDLE HOUSE

The villagers of Little Hangleron still called it "the Riddle House," even though it

had been many years since the Riddle family had lived there. It stood on a hill

overlooking the village, some of its windows boarded, tiles missing from its roof,

and ivy spreading unchecked over its face. Once a fine-looking manor, and easily

the largest and grandest building for miles around, the Riddle House was now

damp, derelict, and unoccupied.

The Little Hagletons all agreed that the old house was "creepy." Half a century

ago, something strange and horrible had happened there, something that the older

inhabitants of the village still liked to discuss when topics for gossip were scarce.

The story had been picked over so many times, and had been embroidered in so

many places, that nobody was quite sure what the truth was anymore. Every

version of the tale, however, started in the same place: Fifty years before, at

daybreak on a fine summer's morning when the Riddle House had still been well

kept and impressive, a maid had entered the drawing room to find all three Riddles

dead.

The maid had run screaming down the hill into the village and roused as many

people as she could.

"Lying there with their eyes wide open! Cold as ice! Still in their dinner things!"

The police were summoned, and the whole of Little Hangleton had seethed with

shocked curiosity and ill-disguised excitement. Nobody wasted their breath

pretending to feel very sad about the Riddles, for they had been most unpopular.

Elderly Mr. and Mrs. Riddle had been rich, snobbish, and rude, and their grown-up

son, Tom, had been, if anything, worse. All the villagers cared about was the

identity of their murderer -- for plainly, three apparently healthy people did not all

drop dead of natural causes on the same night.

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