The match was amazing. Ron and the twins had predicted an Irish win but Viktor Krum catching the snitch despite how unlikely that was, because a seeker will almost never catch the snitch if their team is more than 150 points behind. This match had the perfect conditions for it to happen. The Irish side had dominated the Bulgarians, and after a game that was a little over two hours it was clear to see that the Bulgarians weren't going to score enough to get them back in the running. The longer the match went on the more embarrassing the score difference would have gotten, so Krum caught the snitch when he had the chance. That let the Bulgarian team walk away with their heads held high
As they were in the top box, they got to meet all of the players for a few minutes after the match and Ron got all of them to sign his programme. Harry was happy enough with shaking the hands of the players, as he could see just how tired they were after the game, and despite that they were forcing themselves to play nice with the VIPs. Then it was back to the tent for the after-match party; they were too keyed up from the match for anything else. While Ron was giving his blow by blow of the match to no one in particular (as they had all seen the match for themselves), Harry and Hermione snuck off to Hermione's room to snog. Or at least they thought they were sneaking off, but Sirius's quiet warning that the door was to "stay open" told them that at least one person had seen them leaving.
Soon, however, fun gave way to fatigue and Harry was kicked out of Hermione's room by a sleepy Ginny. When Harry got to the room he was sharing with Ron, the redhead jokingly gave him a hard time about all the lipstick on Harry's face, and it was only after Harry had checked himself in the mirror that he remembered that Hermione didn't wear lipstick. She did use a wet look lip balm sometimes when she wanted to play up her feminine side, but it wouldn't leave lipstick marks. Harry looked over at Ron and found him sniggering at Harry for falling for the trick. Harry threw his dirty sock in his mate's face who kept laughing as the went to bed
Harry didn't feel like he had been asleep for five minutes when he was shaken awake by Sirius. "Get up and get dressed quickly." Then he was gone presumably to wake some of the others, leaving a confused Harry and Ron behind. They both quickly got dressed, pulling on the clothes they had just taken off rather than digging out fresh ones. They came out of the room about the same time as the twins and asked them if they knew what was going on, which they didn't. Hermione and Ginny followed, and they were just as clueless as the rest of them.
They all went in search of the adults and found them clustered around the door that led outside the tent. "What's going on?" Harry asked when they got there.
Grandfather Charlus looked over at Harry for a second before turning back to look out of the doorway. "There are explosions on the other side of the campsite. We don't know what it is yet, but they are coming this way. I want you all to be ready to run just in case."
"Do you think it's the Bulgarians being sore losers?" asked Ron as Sirius gave the teens a look over and then transfigured Ginny's nightgown, dressing gown, and fuzzy slippers into robes and a pair of boots.
"I hope that's all it is, Ronald." Charlus said, sounding worried.
"What else could it be?" asked Ginny as she examined the new outfit Sirius had given her. It was cut more like duelling robes that let her move easier, and they were a dark forest green that not only looked good with her ginger hair but also would be harder to see in the dark than the pale pink she had been wearing.
No one answered Ginny, instead all straining to listen to what was going on outside. They could hear the explosions getting louder, but it was the screams of terror that they could now hear that set them on edge the most. Then they heard the sentence that chilled them all to the bone. "It's Death Eaters! The Death Eaters are attacking!"
Instantly Charlus took charge. "Sirius, Arthur, William, the three of you come with me, we will help hold them back until the Aurors arrive. Charles and Percy, the two of you are in charge of the rest of you. Take them through the woods and as soon as you can start side-alonging them to somewhere safe." Percy tried to say that as a Ministry worker he should join everyone fighting the Death Eaters, but Mr. Weasley put his foot down and told his son that he had been given his job to protect the kids.
Less than a minute later, Harry was with Hermione and the Weasley children (minus Bill) as they ran towards the woods, while Sirius and Grandfather Charlus went towards the danger. It felt wrong to Harry. He was the one who was supposed to run towards the danger. Yet his family was running towards it while he ran away. What if they got hurt? What if Harry lost them both and he had to go back to the Dursleys? He turned about to go back to help, to keep his family alive, and plunged his hand into his pocket to draw his wand, only it wasn't there. It must have fallen out of his pocket when he got changed for bed. It was probably sitting in his room back at the tent.
Harry suddenly felt his anxiety rocket up a few notches. He was out in the woods at night while there was an attack by the people who followed the man who had killed Harry's parents, and he didn't have his wand. It was like being completely naked while locked in a room full of bees. He considered going back for his wand, but that would mean that Hermione and Ron at least would follow him and he would be leading them to danger. It was one thing to risk himself for his wand, but risking those two to a crowd of terrorists wasn't worth it. Especially Hermione, as a muggleborn she would be as much of a target as he was.
After they were deep enough in the woods, they stopped so that the girls, Ron, and Percy could catch their breath. The rest of them were physically active in their lives; whether it be Quidditch training or dragon wrangling, both built up stamina more than reading books or office reports or playing chess. They looked back the way they had come from, but the trees kept them from seeing anything directly, too thick to get more than the odd glimpse of the campsite from this deep during the day. In the middle of the night, it was impossible. However, they could see flashes of spell fire coming from the campsite, the pillar of white smoke that was rising from the campsite provided an excellent screen to reflect the light of the cast spells.
"Are we safe here?" Ginny asked nervously as she gripped her wand, peering into the darkness looking for threats.
Charlie, who was doing the same as his sister only showing a lot less nerves, answered. "I think so, for the moment anyway. Everyone catch your breath, we will set off again in a moment." Hermione groaned a little at that. As much as she would push herself for something she felt passionate about, like stopping Quirrell or rescuing Ron and Sirius, Harry knew her muscles must be aching.
After a minute they started off again, this time at a fast hiking pace rather than the run they had been doing before. A few of them lit their wands to provide light so that they could avoid tree roots. Harry thought they were making good time until there was a flash of light directly ahead of them. Maybe the Death Eaters had planted people in the woods, and the ones at the campsite were just there to send people scurrying into the woods, or maybe they had gotten turned around in the trees. Hopefully it was just some random person and the flash was from a regular spell rather than a curse.
Whatever it was, everyone in the group froze. The wand lights went out as the casters ended them, not wanting whoever it was to know there was anyone there, at least until they knew if it was someone friendly. Charlie told them all to spread out and get a tree between them and where the flash of light had come from. Harry felt a stone under his foot as he crouched behind a wide tree with Hermione, and he bent down and picked it up. He felt the weight and it was acceptable; a rock may not be a wand but it was better than nothing.
After a few moments a figure came walking towards them. They were wearing black robes and their face was obscured by a white mask that completely obscured who it was. "I saw the light, you may as well come on out." They said, and even their voice was altered so that it was impossible to make out who was hidden under the mask. Charlie seemed to consider those words for maybe a quarter of a second and replied with a well thought out counterpoint that eloquently said all that needed saying. He shot a stunner at the Death Eater, but it seemed they had expected something like that and a shimmering quarter dome of Magic sprung up between them as Charlie's spell bounced off and into the trees.
At first it looked like the fight should be an easy win for them, as it was one person against seven people with wands and Harry with his stone. However, Charlie was the only one who was regularly using duelling combat magic, and he was used to hitting dragons the size of a bus. Percy was trying, but his stunning spells were too feeble to penetrate the Death Eater's shield charm. The twins and Ron only seemed to know prank jinxes, and they were equally ineffective against the shield. Hermione was frozen trying to work out the best spell to cast, and Ginny was trying to hit the man with her bat bogey spell, but the Death Eater dodged both Charlie's spells and Ginny's as well.
The Death Eater, on the other hand, seemed to be some type of combat veteran or a duelling champion. The only thing that had kept any of them from being hit was that they were half-hidden behind the trees. Harry tried throwing his rock, but it was about as effective as one of the twins jinxed as it also bounced off the quarter dome sheltering the terrorist. Harry knew there had to be something he could do, he wasn't going to just sit there and wait for some follower of the man who had murdered his parents fight through his friends and then kill him. A small voice inside him told him he should run for it, but he crushed that thought as it arose; he wasn't going to leave Hermione or Ron here like this. If only he had a wand.
Harry looked over at Hermione who was still barely casting as she tried to think of the perfect spell. Harry looked around the tree and had an idea. He snatched Hermione's wand from her hand without asking, leaned around the tree, and cast. Not a curse, nor a hex or jinx, but a simple cutting charm. The cutting charm wasn't often used in fights, as for one it was easily blocked by a shield, it was slow, and the cutting hex was way more effective. It did, however, have one advantage right now. Like most charms, the cutting charm was an invisible spell, and it was also on the second year Hogwarts curriculum so Harry could cast it without a problem, even with a wand that wasn't his.
Harry didn't aim for the Death Eater, as that would be pointless. He instead aimed for the tree branches directly over their head. The spell cut through the branches like butter, and a log about half a foot thick came hurtling down towards the robed figure. Unfortunately, the falling log wasn't as silent as Harry had wished, and they jumped back. However, as they were avoiding the log that would have turned their head into something that resembled strawberry jam, they failed to avoid the bat bogey hex that was coming their way from Ginny.
Suddenly the boogers in the person's nose were transfigured into live bats that really didn't want to be in their nose any more. The results were not unlike the slug vomiting jinx that Ron had hit himself with in their second year, only a lot less nauseating and far more painful. The bats pushed off the Death Eater's mask, and Harry had no idea who the revealed man was. He looked to be around the same age as Sirius and Remus, but that's all Harry could tell. The Death Eater responded by shooting an exploding curse at the tree Charlie was hiding behind. The tree exploded and would have easily killed the dragon-obsessed Weasley if he hadn't thrown up his own shield. Even with the shield, though, Charlie was sent flying backwards away from where the tree had been.
Percy, who was closest to Charlie, wasn't so lucky. A chunk of wood came flying at him from his left and embedded itself in his side just below his ribs. Percy screamed, understandably as the injury was probably more painful than anything the man had felt in his life. The Weasleys, Harry, and Hermione all stared at Percy in shock. In those few seconds, the man in Death Eater robes pointed his wand in the air and muttered a spell that Harry couldn't hear. A green mist flowed from his wand and up into the sky where it formed a giant skull about two meters wide (6ft 8inch). The mouth opened wide, and just like the basilisk in the chamber of secrets, a giant snake came slithering out.
Harry spared little thought for the illusion in the sky and instead focused on the man who had just hurt someone Harry had been friendly with for almost three years now. There was nothing he could do about the shield the man still had up (something he was going to have to fix once he got back to school), so Harry used the pile of wood at the man's feet. He cast two more quick cutting charms, forcing the Death Eater to move forward closer to the pile of wood, and then hit the wood with an incendiary charm.
Normally, fresh-cut wood doesn't burn that well, but maybe it was an inherent part of the fire making charm that it didn't care about that, or maybe it was that magic worked at least somewhat on intent and desire, and Harry had no clue that fresh-cut wood was normally too wet to burn. Either way, the wood caught fire and the Death Eater, suddenly surrounded by fire, proved that he was no courageous Gryffindor and turned on the spot, disappearing.
As soon as the man disappeared, Harry felt a relief in his magic as though a slight pressure had been removed. The Weasleys all rushed to their down brother, but before they even got to him the air was suddenly filled with cracking sounds as the woods around them started to fill with red robed aurors and people dressed in random assortment of outfits, from a muggle suit to just boxers and a dressing gown. The new arrivals all started shooting off red stunning spells. Harry grabbed Hermione and pulled the two of them to the floor, covering her from the spells by shielding her with his own body. It was clear after a few seconds that the people Apparating in were firing blind, as most hit nothing but trees. Ron and one of the twins were hit and went down, but that was all. A few seconds later a shout went through the group of aurors. "Cease fire! It's a bunch of kids! I said cease fire!"
The spells stopped, and quickly the aurors rushed in and started asking questions. The saw Percy with the chuck of wood sticking out of his side and quickly slapped magic suppression cuffs on him and Apparated him to St. Mungo's. The not-stunned twin and Ginny both protested the cuffs, but a hard-faced auror told them that it was standard procedure until it was determined who were the aggressors and who were the victims, and that questions could be asked once everyone was unable to keep firing spells at people. They treated everyone as suspicious, taking their wands until they got to Harry. Apparently, accusing the Boy-Who-Lived of dressing up as a Death Eater and attacking people was not something they were prepared to do, probably something about how the Prophet would crucify the Ministry if that story ever got leaked.
After that, they were more prepared to listen to what everyone had to say. They determined that the man they encountered was an anchor for the anti apparition and anti portkey wards that were being held up, which was why he was able to Apparate away and why the aurors could suddenly Apparate to the location of the dark mark. Eventually, the concern of the aurors was shifted from asking immediate questions to finding responsible adults. Ron and apparently Fred were woken up and everyone was given back their wands. Hermione shot Harry a glare when her wand was returned to her, and Harry knew he would have to explain himself to his girlfriend soon. They were side alonged back to the campsite by the aurors. The Death Eaters had apparently all escaped using illegal emergency portkeys as soon as the ward had come down. The children were taken to an administration tent with other minors while the adults responsible for them were located.
Eventually the eldest Weasleys, Sirius, and Grandfather Charlus came into the tent, escorting a bunch of lost pre-Hogwarts age kids that looked like they had gotten separated from their parents in the crowd of panicking people. Ginny ran up to her father and told him what had happened to them. Mr. Weasley looked understandably panicked when he was told Percy had been taken to St Mungo's because of a piece of a tree sticking out of him. He hung around just long enough to sign a form to give Bill the right to sit with his siblings while they answered the DMLE'S questions, and after a reassurance from Grandfather Charlus that he would make sure that the rest of them got home safely, Mr Weasley Disapparated right there in the tent, presumably going either straight to St. Mungo's or to the Burrow to get his wife before continuing on to the hospital.
With them now having a responsible adult (Charlie needed to be questioned himself so wasn't considered suitable), the officers started to take their witness statements as soon as there was a room free for them to do so. They were each taken into a side room by an auror one at a time. Harry didn't know if it was by design or coincidence but they talked to them from youngest to oldest. When it came to Harry, they were very interested in the fact that Harry saw the face of the person under the mask. That Harry didn't recognise the man at all didn't seem to bother them. He expected them to make an appointment for him to sit with a sketch artist or something, but the D.M.L.E had a much more effective way to deal with it, taking a copy of his memory. It was a weird feeling having the memory extracted from his head, then copied before the original was replaced. While the memory was outside of his head, Harry knew what had happened to him but it was like he had read it in a book rather than having experienced it, only for the full reality of the events to return to him once the memory was replaced.
While the aurors bottled the copy of Harry's memory, Grandfather Charlus explained that memories were not able to be used as evidence at a trial. The fact that most witches and wizards were somewhat familiar with memory modification charms, as they are taught in the O.W.L. to preserve the Statute of Secrecy, meant that memories were just not considered reliable. It was also why they didn't rely on truth potions, because they only made you tell the truth as you knew it, and if your memories were modified then what you believe and the truth may be entirely separate. Memories were, however, a great tool for the D.M.L.E. An auror examining a victims memories could get leads on where to look for evidence they could use, or in this case who to investigate once they had seen his face.
As Harry was waiting for Hermione and the Weasleys to finish their interviews, he spoke to others in the administration tent and found out what had started the riot. Apparently it turned out that the muggle owners of the campsite had a daughter who was a muggleborn witch. She had yet to receive her Hogwarts letter yet, so no one had known that the girl was a witch, at least not until the wrong person had seen her perform some accidental magic. The Death Eaters were accusing her and her family of stealing magic. That had quickly devolved into an attack on the family, with them being levitated forty feet in the air by the Death Eaters while they burned down tents and attacked people.
Harry was also cornered by Hermione and made to explain why he had grabbed her wand like he had. Harry explained how he had found that he didn't have his wand and it would have taken too long to explain his plan at the time. He also pointed out that Hermione was so preoccupied trying to work out the perfect spell that she was barely casting at all, so her wand was the logical one for him to grab. Also, as Hermione had shown in their first year when they found Fluffy, Hermione could use his wand well enough and Harry had gambled that it would also work the other way. Hermione wasn't happy, and Grandfather Charlus, who had been listening, gave Harry a lecture about keeping track of his wand. Hermione had forgiven him quickly enough, though.
The sun was coming up by the time they were let go to return to their tent. They were lucky it was still there and that it hadn't been added to the burnt-out and destroyed tents that littered the campsite. The first thing Harry did was check his room for his wand, which was half-under his bed next to where his pile of dirty clothes had been before he put them back on when he had woken up. His wand in hand, Harry felt a lot more comfortable and he retired to the main living space to find most of the Weasleys were arguing with Bill. They all wanted to go to St. Mungo's now and check on their brother, but Bill was refusing to let them, telling them that they needed to get some sleep and how it was too early for the healers to be able to tell them anything.
Harry wanted to go to the hospital to check on Percy as well, as it was his idea to turn the trees into weapons. If he hadn't done that, then perhaps whoever the masked madman was wouldn't have thought to make the tree explode. Maybe if Harry hadn't screwed up so badly, then Percy wouldn't have a lump of wood where his spleen should be. At the same time, though, Harry had listened to Hermione and Ron complain about waiting for hours to hear if Harry was going to be okay after another life or death situation to know that Bill was right, they would just be waiting. And they wouldn't be the only ones waiting for news of their loved ones, St. Mungo's was probably full of the injured and their families right now. The Weasleys would be just one more family out of hundreds trying to find out from busy overworked staff what was happening to someone they cared about. Bill was making the right call, but it didn't feel right.
It didn't matter though, out of the Weasleys only Bill and Charlie could Apparate and Charlie agreed with Bill that it was better to get some sleep. The others grumbled about it, but they eventually gave in and went to bed. Harry and Hermione decided that they forgo their bedrooms and cuddled up on the sofa instead with the blessing of Grandfather Charlus, who could see they just needed a little support from each other and weren't about to take any additional steps in their relationship tonight.
-ϟϟϟ-
Bill popped to St Mungo's as soon as he woke up before even having breakfast and came back after about twenty minutes. Percy was going to be completely fine, though it was going to take a few days. Despite the fact that his injury was caused by a wizard casting a spell, the injury itself was completely mundane. Although the process of healing would be slow because they literally had to regrow his spleen and fix a lot of other damage, the healing would be fully complete and after about six months Percy wouldn't even have a scar.
With the news delivered, Charlie's brothers and sister calmed down and were a lot less frantic about getting to the hospital. Harry also felt a wave of relief wash through him; his mistake hadn't gotten Percy killed. They eventually got the portkey back to Potter Manor that they were scheduled to take, and from there everyone Floo'ed to St Mungo's hospital.