Harry and Sirius were deposited by portkey on a stretch of misty moor near to where the Quidditch World Cup was taking place, both of them sporting identical looks of sullen resignation.
In front of them were two grumpy and tired looking wizards, dressed in what Harry assumed they thought was normal non-magical wear but was in reality fit to be the end result of a weekend drinking binge that nobody could quite remember.
"Potter and Black?" One of them asked, holding out his hand for the portkey.
"Yes." Sirius confirmed, handing over a badly mangled slinky.
"About a quarter of a mile walk that way, first field you come to." The other said, pointing in the correct direction. "Site manager's called Mr. Roberts. He's a muggle so watch what you say, Obliviators are being run ragged keeping him in the dark."
The last was said with some humor, causing Harry to frown with disapproval. He knew that obliviations could cause brain damage if done shoddily and he didn't think that having it done over and over again was too healthy either. It would have been a lot smarter to just let the man in on the secret and then remove the salient details form his mind at the end of it instead of applying repeated memory wipes. Come to think of it, it would have also been a lot smarter to find a spot where the muggle landowner could be paid to go on an extended vacation for however long the World Cup lasted.
Admittedly, his frown had more to do with the newest bit of evidence on the Ministry's ham handed approach than it did with concern for someone he didn't know. He'd never had much of a reason to develop an especially strong sense of empathy for strangers.
"Look at the bright side, at least you don't have to wear robes." Sirius tried to point out the silver lining as they set off, knowing his godson's preference for less bulky muggle wear.
"The bright side would be someone casting Fiendfyre on the damn stadium." Harry refused to be cheered up. The Quidditch World Cup combined sports, crowds and politics. Three things that he disliked in ascending increments of disdain.
"That would be pretty bright." Sirius quipped.
"This might actually be one of the few occasions where puns would improve a situation."
They came upon Mr. Roberts a short while later were directed to their camping site without issue. They also paid without issue and looked perfectly normal, which was apparently abnormal enough for the man to comment.
"Gotta say that you're the most normal ones I've seen all morning." Roberts said. "I had an old man come through here in a woman's night gown just a short while ago that tried to pay me with these great gold coins."
Harry and Sirius exchanged looks that communicated volumes of exasperation with their fellow wizards, who were clearly too lazy to put in the two minutes of effort required to research appropriate muggle attire.
"He probably had Alzheimer's." Harry said blandly, knowing that it was probably a wasted effort to explain the many oddities the man had no doubt seen.
"Might have." Roberts agreed and waved them on.
Harry shook his head, suspecting that the man was going to be obliviated again soon.
"What's Alzheimer's?" Sirius asked.
"Nothing you need to worry about."
Sirius let it go and they soon made it towards the designated camp site. Sirius' mood picked up a bit at the festive mood and good cheer hanging about the place, his extroverted nature coming to the fore despite his reluctance to actually come to the World Cup due to the politics involved. Harry on the other hand, became even more sour. The brightly colored tents, loud conversations and squealing children were more or less the exact opposite of his conception of a good time.
He'd sink into an Occlumency trance later and drown his irritation in Dark, but for now he indulged himself by scowling minutely at everything around him.
Some of the tents were so egregiously magical that it was no wonder the obliviators had their hands full, despite Ministry instructions to appear as muggle as possible. Similarly, the people were dressed in a hodgepodge of clothes ranging from sensibly mundane to sad attempts at such and all the way to those who outright disregarded those instructions and showed up in robes. He was somehow not surprised to see that the obvious foreigners were the ones that would most easily blend in. He'd always gotten the feeling that Britain was among the more backward magical nations, if not the most backward.
He noted that there were quite a few foreigners present. The borders of magical nations were quite a bit more flexible than that of their muggle counterparts and did not always coincide with them, but it was for the most part close enough. He saw flags from all over Europe, some from America despite the reputed bad blood between them and Britain, several that he didn't recognize but guessed must be from Africa or India given the skin tones of the people under them.
His eyes roved over a pair of wizards engaged in casual conversation and then froze there in confusion.
One of the wizards was not a wizard.
He was wearing robes and stood in front of a tent with a chimney of all things, but Harry's magesight saw only the lack of presence distinctive of the non-magical.
"Harry, what's wrong?" Sirius asked, confused by his godson's sudden stop.
Harry snapped out of his confusion and turned towards him, lying on sheer reflex. "Nothing, thought I saw something."
"You sure? You looked pretty stunned." Sirius was clearly skeptical.
"Yes, I'm sure. Let's go set up that damned tent." He didn't know what a muggle masquerading as a wizard was doing here and intended to keep quiet about it until he could get more information.
They arrived at the spot reserved for them soon after and set up the tent with a few waves of a wand, neither one having much desire to bother doing it the normal way.
"I'm going to take a walk around the area." Harry announced once they were done.
Now it was Sirius that looked stunned. "Really? I thought you were going to stay in the tent and sulk until the game started."
"I changed my mind." Harry shrugged.
"Now I know that something's wrong." Sirius said with a frown. "You didn't even bother denying that you would be sulking."
"Don't worry about it Sirius, I just want to take a look around."
"We can go together then, I was planning to do the same thing anyway."
"I'm not helping you pick up women."
XXXXX
Harry did eventually manage to ditch Sirius and set off on his own, once his godfather was convinced that it was nothing to worry about.
The surroundings were still as loud and as annoying as ever, but Harry's thoughts weren't on that any longer. He was hunting for undercover muggles, wanting to know if the one he'd seen so far was an exception or if there were more.
He slipped out of his and Sirius' assigned campsite with as much stealth as he could muster. Several Hogwarts students recognized him and pointed him out to their families, much to his irritation, but that was thankfully as far as it went. At least he managed to avoid being seen by the Weasleys and his estranged friend Ginny, that was one awkward situation that he was happy to have avoided. They seemed to be trying to set up their tent without magic and were failing spectacularly. He remembered Ginny telling him about her father's fascination with muggles. For a man that was supposed to be the Ministry's expert on muggles, he was impressively clueless. If the world was fair, a muggleborn would have had his job.
Having no particular destination, he simply set out towards a random grouping of people, keeping a sharp eye out for any people with no magical aura around them.
Several hours later, he'd found quite a few. Both men and women, always dressed to blend right in with the crowd, always looking as if they belonged there.
Just one muggle sneaking in to a magical event could be the result of a particularly clever and curius person convincing a wizard friend or relative to get them in. As many as he'd seen could not be a coincidence. Observers? Spies? Infiltrators? Why spy on a sporting event though?
All of them had some trinket on their person that was enchanted to negate the effect of the Muggle-Reppeling Wards. That automatically meant that they'd had magical help doing this, but how would they get that kind of help?
The answer came to mind instantly. Had he not spoken to Penny about her being forced to return to the mundane world less than a month ago? He still remembered his internet conversation with the possibly Russian wizard who had reamed him for posting Arithmancy problems online, warning him that the mundane governments were not as blind as wizards would like to think. Even the basest idiot could look at a muggleborn's school records and see that they seemed to drop off the face of the Earth from the ages of ten to eighteen. For someone in the know, it may as well be a flashing neon sign. It would be beyond simple for some government spook to approach a bitter muggleborn and offer them a job where they could make use of their gifts and would be paid handsomely for it after they'd been forced out of the Wizarding World by the bigotry inherent in it.
And they would accept. Not all of them. Some would stubbornly stick around despite the discrimination, others would leave the country and try their luck in a different magical nation and some would be too wary to work for the government, but some would accept out of sheer spite for the world that had made so many grand promises and then rejected them. The Prime Minister and the reigning monarch were ostensibly supposed to be the only muggles aware of the UK's magical population, but it was very likely that large portions of the government knew of it. It figured really.....what government would be content to have another operating within its borders with barely any oversight? They probably had plans to make a hostile takeover at need and were using these spies to keep an eye on things. And the greatest irony was that Hogwarts was training the very people they needed to succeed for them.
But was this limited to Britain or was it happening everywhere? Were France or Germany or Italy or Sweden as bad as Britain? He didn't know how muggleborns were treated there. He was pretty sure that at least some of these muggles were American, if for no other reason than because it seemed that the United States were always involved when there was spying to be done. It was a stereotype yes, but it was a stereotype for a reason.
Harry took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He was getting ahead of himself, making assumptions and conjecture on very limited information. He didn't even know if these muggles were in the employ of any government. The only thing he really knew was that there were muggles present and that they had magical items on their person to counter the wards. A reasonably skilled fifth year should be capable of making an enchantment like that. For all he knew, they could just be family members of magicals sneaking in on an event they wouldn't have been able to see otherwise.
He nearly snorted to himself. Optimism was not something that worked for him. But even if they were spies, there wasn't anything he could do about it. He couldn't even blame the muggle government for spying on them. He wouldn't trust wizards in their place either.
He didn't like it though, didn't like it at all. He abruptly felt exposed and vulnerable and agitated. It took him an effort of will to keep walking normally instead of marching back to his and Sirius' tent as fast as possible. He was now acutely aware of any action on his part that might draw attention.
Which was why he nearly reacted with violence when someone ran up behind him and grabbed his arm.
Harry tore his arm out of the small hand and spun around, half expecting to see a gun pointed at him. Instead of that he saw the luminous blue eyes and blonde hair of a good friend.
"Luna?" He asked, utterly baffled. "What are you doing here?"
"Hello, Harry." Luna said, smiling up at him with that slightly vacant look of hers. "Daddy and I have been here for a week. We're intending to expose the World Cup for what it is."
"And what is it?" Harry asked, feeling morbidly amused by Luna's habitual conspiracy theories in light of his recent discovery.
Luna pulled him down so that she could whisper into his ear conspiratorially. "It's a plot by the Ministry to swindle hard working people out of their gold."
Harry, having never seen the appeal of paying exorbitant prices to watch a boring sports event, was inclined to agree with her on this one.
"It does sound like something the Ministry would do." He conceded with a smile.
"Yes, Fudge has no doubt already stationed his invisible army of heliopaths around the area to keep the foreign Ministries from taking any of the gold for themselves." Luna added.
"I'll keep an eye out for them." Harry promised, though he was a great deal more dubious about this one. Even if heliopaths did exist, which was in no way certain, Fudge wasn't qualified to command an army of baked potatoes, much less one of invisible fire spirits.
"Is that why you're here?" Luna asked with a note of excitement in her tone.
"No, I'm not here to look for heliopaths." He said with a sigh. "I'm here because Fudge invited me and Sirius to sit with him in the top box and we couldn't find a way to refuse."
Bumbling idiot Fudge may be, but he had done them a favor by pushing the DMLE investigation of Pettigrew's death and Sirius' guilt along. Charlus and Dorea had warned them that they couldn't just snub the man afterwards without the risk of making him an enemy. The fact that Dumbledore had also warned him that there would be no simple way to extricate himself from the politics now that he'd dived in annoyed him quite a bit. He never liked it when the old man was right.
"That sounds dreadfully dull." Luna observed.
"I will be shocked if it isn't." Harry said wryly. At least Sirius liked quidditch, he didn't even have that luxury. "Speaking of which, I should probably find Sirius and get to our seats. Will you still be here after the game?"
"Yes, my tent is right over there." Luna said and pointed off to the side. "Unless the game lasts more than a couple of hours. If that happens then daddy and I will leave."
"So will I." Harry said, having no desire to watch a quidditch match that went on forever because the seekers couldn't catch the snitch.
XXXXX
Locating Sirius might have been difficult if not for the handy communication mirrors that the man had made for them. Actually getting him stop talking to the American witch he'd been chatting up and going to meet Fudge had been far more difficult.
"Couldn't you have showed up just a little bit later?" Sirius sulked. "Mindy and I were having a fascinating discussion on the differences between our respective cultures."
"I'm sure you'll be able to 'share your culture' with Mindy after the game." Harry said blandly, knowing exactly what his godfather had been angling for.
"I guess." Sirius conceded grudgingly. "And what did you get up to?"
"I ran into Luna." Harry told him, leaving out his discovery of the hidden muggles. Despite his dire suspicions, he still had very little proof of anything. No point spreading around ineffective paranoia.
"Learn anything interesting?" Sirius asked with a snicker. He'd heard a thing or two about the girl's outlandish stories.
"I learned that the Quidditch World Cup is a scam to separate people from their gold and that Fudge has his heliopaths stationed as guards." Harry answered, just as amused. He'd never mock Luna for her strange beliefs and indeed found them to be part of her charm, but he had to admit that they sounded highly unlikely to be true.
"Maybe we should ask Fudge about that?" Sirius mused, imagining the baffled look on the Minister's face.
"No, let's just smile politely and hope that this is the last time we have to deal with politics." Harry grumbled, mood souring as they approached the top box.
"Will you at least turn someone's hair green?" Sirius asked hopefully.
"We'll see." Harry answered, already sinking into the light Occlumency trance that he suspected he would need in order to get through this without gnashing his teeth in irritation.
They made it to the top box in short order and found a slight surprise waiting for them there.
It was full of redheads. Weasleys to be specific. How they had gotten seats in the top box he had no idea.
"Ah, Harry, Sirius, you're finally here." Fudge said enthusiastically when he caught sight of them. He was rather notably wearing robes instead of the Ministry decreed muggle wear.
"Cornelius." Harry greeted calmly and Sirius simply nodded.
"I'm sure you already know most of the Weasleys." Fudge said next, apparently taking it upon himself to do the introductions.
A bevy of greetings came from the family of redheads, ending with an akward 'hello, Harry' from Ginny that filled the air with the remnants of their collapsed friendship. Amusingly enough, Percy was looking insanely jealous of the attention that Fudge was paying him. He'd have to tell Penny about that one later.
"Next we have Ludo Bagman, the head of the Department for Magical Games and Sports." Fudge went on obliviously, introducing a man in wasp themed robes. "Used to be a star beater for the Wimbourne Wasps you know. He'll be the commentator for the match."
Harry and Sirius exchanged handshakes with the excitable looking man, with Harry for once being thankful that Fudge was too dense to notice the awkwardness between him and Ginny.
"Dolores Umbridge, my Senior Undersecretary but currently the acting head for the Department of International Magical Cooperation until we can appoint someone more permanent to the position." Harry had noticed the toadlike woman in the pink cardigan as soon as they'd entered the top box and had been wondering who she was.
"How do you do?" She said in the most sickeningly sweet tone that Harry had ever heard, extending her hand for him to take.
The painfully fake girlish tone inspired in him the urge to knock her teeth out. Not with magic either, but with his fist. It was a singularly irrational response to a four word sentence, especially in light of the fact that even Draco Malfoy's characteristic whine when something didn't go his way didn't get this much of a rise from him. He had no idea what it was about her, but this near hatred that he felt for someone he'd just met was deeply troubling.
This initial impression was only further reinforced when he shook her hand. It felt as if he'd someone had taken a piss on his own hand and he wiped it on his pants without even thinking about what it would look like.
Harry realized how much he'd just insulted her when he saw her expression tighten and swamped his thoughts with Dark even further to prevent another loss of control like that. There was something very, very wrong with this pink-clad abomination. Her magical presence felt like an open septic tank.
Fudge the Oblivious came to the rescue once again by introducing the Bulgarian Minister of Magic and then announcing that it was time to start the game.
It was to begin with a show put on by each of the teams. Harry didn't expect to be the slightest bit impressed or interested by whatever they had in mind.
That opinion evaporated when the Bulgarians sent out the Veela.
Every single one of them was golden haired and incredibly beautiful, but it was their magic that truly captured his attention. It glowed with Light in a way that no wizard's or witch's magic he'd ever seen did and when they began to dance he could see it billow outwards to inflame the magic of everyone around them.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ron Weasley trying to climb down there with a look of mad adoration on his face, held back only by his father. The twins and Percy were more restrained, but still looked rather out of it. Sirius was on the edge of his seat and fidgeting as if he wanted to try climbing down too. Fudge was very flushed and fiddling with his ugly lime green bowler hat.
Umbridge had the exact opposite reaction. He couldn't see her face too well, but he thought that she was wearing a hateful sneer and the ugly feeling to her magic deepened yet further.
As for Harry himself, he was still fully in control of his faculties, but he felt his runes prickle powerfully, especially Sol.
XXXXX
Had the issue of Sirius' innocence never come to light, it would have been Barty Crouch that would have had a place reserved in the top box, where he would have smuggled his son in a bout of pity after hearing his house elf plead to take him there and which would have had a great many ramifications for the future.
As it was, Barty Crouch was at home, keeping his Death Eater son firmly under the Imperius and scowling angrily at his misfortune. First he lost his position as Head of the DMLE thanks to his son being a Death Eater and now he lost his position as Head of International Magical Cooperation because Sirius Black wasn't a Death Eater. It was enough to drive a man to rage.
The fury of Barty Crouch Sr. wasn't really important though, as the man was far too straight laced and by the book to do anything aside from scowl. It did mean however, that Barty Crouch Jr. would not be going anywhere without outside help. That help would have been received had news of the younger Crouch's situation reached the ears of Lord Voldemort, but it hadn't, so it wasn't.
XXXXX
Harry was dreadfully bored.
The quidditch game had gone on for quite a while now but failed to entertain him and he possessed the typical introvert's disdain for hyped up atmosphere, leaving him not only bored but also exasperated. Sirius was focused so intently on the movements of the players as to make him think that he was using it as an excuse to avoid talking to anyone, leaving Harry to deflect Fudge's bumbling attempts to form some kind of political alliance with them. The bastard.
The Veela were still on the field beneath the game, but he could only stare at them thoughtfully for so long, not to mention that the prickling of his runes was damned distracting. He was almost tempted to pull a prank despite having only told Sirius he'd do that to get the man to stop pouting.
Speaking of the Veela, Umbridge continued sneering at them and had more than once made some very racist comments in that infuritating saccharine tone about 'mongrel creatures' being allowed this close to people without restraints, giving him a good idea of her general personality. No doubt it was people like her who were the driving force behind the bigotry of the Wizarding World.
Well, the British Wizarding World at any rate, as Harry had noted the Bulgarian Minister becoming increasingly agitated around the loathsome toad.
The only part of this game that had been interesting to him so far had been when the Veela had apparently gotten a bit too passionate about their mascot duties and nearly attacked Ireland's leprechauns by transforming into a bird hybrid of sorts. Luna's book had mentioned that ability but seeing it in person was something else.
In his desire to retreat from all this, he'd sunk very deep into his Occlumency trance and was constantly channeling his emotions into the river of Dark in his mind. It made him feel rather disconnected from the physical world, but it was better than feeling his temper constantly surging to the surface by the combination of Bagman's loud commentary, the crowd's yelling, Fudge's stupidity and Umbridge's....everything.
He didn't notice when the runes on his body began to chill or when his breath started misting. He didn't notice when the people around him began to shiver and seemed to lose their fervor for cheering. He didn't notice when Bagman's excited commentary started sounding forced. He didn't notice when the air around him started feeling hopeless and joyless.
He did notice when Sirius took a firm grip of his arm and leaned over to whisper harshly into his ear. "Stop it, Harry."
Harry blinked slowly and came back to himself. What had he been doing?
"You felt like a mini dementor." Sirius explained in a low tone, seeing his confusion. "I don't think anyone else noticed, but you have to stop it."
Harry blinked again. That was new. Then again, he'd never focused on the Dark so heavily before either. That was....interesting. Something to watch out for, but definitely interesting. The fact that that it was after sunset might also have something to do with it. His particular form of Occlumency always seemed easier after dark.
With him no longer unintentionally killing the mood people returned to their cheering, but slowly and more than a bit bewildered by the sudden burst of gloom. Harry was deep in thought and Fudge seemed to have lost interest in talking to him.
XXXXX
The game came to an end shortly afterwards with an Irish victory but Viktor Krum catching the snitch, much to the roaring approval of the crowd. Harry still didn't see the appeal.
"I hope you've enjoyed the game." Fudge was saying, enthusiastically shaking Harry and Sirius' hands.
"It was an experience." Harry allowed. A bad experience that I hope never to repeat.
"I can get you tickets to more professional games if you're interested, just come talk to me." Fudge went on in what he probably thought was a subtle hint that further association with him would have benefits.
"I'm still a Hogwarts student, so i don't see how I would have time for that." Harry evaded.
"Oh." Fudge said, looking rather nonplussed. Apparently he'd forgotten that little detail. "Yes, of course. What about you, Sirius?"
"Wouldn't be any fun without my godson there." Sirius also evaded, shamelessly using Harry as an excuse.
"Well no matter, I'm sure we'll be seeing more of each other in the future." Fudge said brightly and left soon after, taking his ugly pink shadow with him.
"At fucking last." Harry said with feeling once they were far enough away.
"You can say that again." Sirius concurred.
"I'm going to find Luna." Harry announced after a short silence.
"Before you do that, mind telling me what your little dementor impersonation was about earlier?" Sirius asked pointedly.
"Everything around me was pissing me off, so I opened a mental channel to the Dark and started feeding everything into it." Harry explained with a shrug. "I didn't expect it to have any tangible effect on reality, but it's very interesting that it did."
"Don't play around with this, Harry." Sirius warned. "We don't want a repeat of what happened during Christmas."
"Don't worry, Sirius, I'll be careful." Harry assured him, which was really not very reassuring.
"Harry....." Sirius said disapprovingly.
"It'll be fine." Harry waved him off. "It's not like I'm going to do anything especially risky and I actually know what I'm doing now."
Sirius sighed, knowing that his godson wouldn't stop unless he wanted to. He was far too curious and too willful for that.
"Just....be careful." He finished lamely.
"I already said I would be, didn't I?" Harry said back with a raised eyebrow. "Now go find Mindy and show her some more of our culture."
Sirius' mood brightened considerably at the thought of the leggy American witch. That did sound like a good idea.
The two wizards parted ways, each one looking to spend some quality time in female company, albeit very different types of female company.
Neither one noticed that they were being followed.
XXXXX
There were eight of them, all Death Eaters who had avoided Azkaban either through anonymity or by claiming that they were under Imperius. None of them were Lords, but some had friends who were. Most thought that Lucius Malfoy was their friend as he had protected them or otherwise helped them in the past. All of them were convinced that Lucius wanted to return to the days when the Dark Lord was at the height of his power and would gladly don the masks and robes of Death Eaters once again to prove to the mudbloods and muggle lovers that they hadn't won.
Lucius liked them because they were petty minded sadists and laughably easy to manipulate. A few offhand comments and they were all set to cause a scene that he could take credit for if it proved useful or deny all resposibility of if it became a liability. It had been equally simple to point them in the direction of Potter and Black while making them think it was their idea in the first place.
They had been keeping a discreet eye on their targets for a while now and were just about ready to make their move.
Well, it wasn't really a discreet eye since they weren't exactly experienced at stalking people unobtrusively. Any sufficiently observant person would have been able to spot them, but neither Harry nor Sirius had been on the lookout. Even Harry's bout of watchfulness had been focused on the muggles he'd found rather than on any wizards looking to do him harm and he'd gotten a bit desensitized to magicals staring at him by now.
XXXXX
Sirius had discovered several important facts about Mindy since meeting her a few hours before the game.
One, she was here alone because she'd caught her boyfriend cheating on her just a few days before they were set to leave the United States for the World Cup.
Two, she was having trouble enjoying herself because of fact one.
Three, she was a sucker for a British accent, especially if it was attached to a devilishly handsome individual such as himself.
Four, she was using him as the rebound guy to have a quick fling with as a means of getting over her now ex-boyfriend.
Sirius, being the gallant man that he was, had no problem making such a sacrifice to help a woman in need. That was why they had retired to her internally expanded magical tent not long after the quidditch game ended.
As the tent had noise cancelling spells placed on it, the sudden appearance of fire came as a nasty shock.
Almost as soon as he saw it, Sirius pushed Mindy aside from where he'd been mounting her doggystyle(his favorite position, for obvious reasons) and scrambled for his wand.
"Hey, What the....hell?" Mindy started angrily at the sudden rough treatment only to trail off faintly as she saw her tent burning.
"Get your wand, we're under attack." Sirius ordered, hastily pulling on his pants while somehow managing to cover the entrance to the tend with his wand at the same time. Wizard tents did not simply catch fire.
"Under attack? By who?!" Mindy demanded but did as she was told anyway, dressing as hastily as him.
"I don't know, but we're going to have to go out there." Sirius replied grimly.
Staying in a magically expanded space as it was destroyed was a horrible idea all around. Sudden spatial contraction was not healthy, especially if the space wasn't empty. They couldn't apparate either, as wards had been set up against it to prevent people from just setting up tents for free.
"Alright, here's what we're going to do. I'll run out first and get their attention, you follow a few seconds later and run to safety. Ready? GO!" Had he been fresh out of Hogwarts, Sirius would have told her to help him fight, but he'd matured a bit since then. Very few wizards and witches used any kind of battle magic after learning about the basics in school. Most could barely even remember how to cast anything combat related a few years after graduation. Asking a person like that to make a stand against hardened killers wouldn't end well.
"Wait!" Mindy cried, but Sirius had already dashed through the tent flap, leaving her no choice but to do as he'd said.
XXXXX
The four Death Eaters outside were already drunk on their own power and the fear of the fleeing American magicals. This was truly what it meant to be a pureblood wizard! The only thing better than seeing the scum running away was taking your time killing them, but they had an objective aside from telling the world that Voldemort wasn't forgotten and they wouldn't have had time to indulge themselves anyway.
They had lost sight of Black in this area, meaning that he must have gone into one of the tents. Having neither the time or the inclination to find out which one, they'd simply started setting fire to all of them. They knew that their quarry would have to show himself soon, and then he would die.
Or so they thought.
For all his horsing around, Sirius wasn't an idiot. He'd been an active combatant in the last war and knew a thing or two about what to do and what not to do in this situation. He knew that peeking cautiously out of the tent was a stupid idea. For one, it was impossible to say how long he and Mindy had before the space expansion charms collapsed and for another, it would make him a sitting duck.
With this in mind, he bolted through the exit at a sprint and went for the nearest bit of cover that he could see, which was another tent some distance away.
"There he is! Get him!" One of the expected attackers shouted.
Sirius saw Death Eater masks and quickly hurled a few Stunning Spells in their general direction, unsurprised when they were blocked. He saw Mindy come out of the tent and make a run for it while their backs were turned. He'd probably never see her again, which was a damn shame.
Sirius was more powerful than most, but four-on-one odds weren't to his liking. He could only block or dodge so many spells after all. With that in mind, he made a run for it, turning into a dog mid stride. A few spells flew around him, but the Death Eathers seemed to have some trouble aiming low enough to his a dog, especially a black dog at night.
XXXXX
"Well, well, well, what do we have here?" A man in a skull mask sneered mockingly. "Out for a stroll with your girlfriend, Potter?"
Harry looked around himself warily, finding to his dismay that he and Luna were surrounded by four of what could only be Death Eaters.
Luna had suggested that they go for a walk around the grounds while they caught up on their respective summers. They hadn't gone far before a panic of some kind had started over in what Harry had worriedly realized was the American section. The chaos had quickly spread and soon the whole place was in a panic with very few knowing why. Harry had refused to join the mindless stampede and had stayed put until he found out what was going on. Then these four had used the distraction to come up on them without notice and the worry had shifted to more immediate things.
"What's wrong, Potter?" One of the others chimed in with a mocking sneer of his own. "Is the Vanquisher of the Dark Lord too scared to say anything?"
If he was being honest, Harry would admit that this was a fairly accurate assessment of the situation. While he was quite sure that he was more powerful than any of these masked thugs, he had zero combat experience. He was a thinker, not a fighter. He studied magic and practiced spellscasting, but he did it because he was truly fascinated by magic and wanted to learn more. Even the looming threat of a not-fully-deceased Dark Lord hadn't really spurred him to seriously train for magical combat since he was planning to finish the twat off before he could properly resurrect himself. He'd always just sort of assumed that knowing spells would be enough. Now that he was actually faced with the prospect of battle, the stupidity of that assumption was glaringly obvious.
But even if he had been a fighter, this was a deeply unfavorable situation. His wandless magic was still too slow to really be combat viable and any quick movements would undoubtedly be responded to with lethal force. The Death Eaters presences were full of deadly intent.
It was that last point in particular that let him know that he had to do something. The Death Eaters would only be amused by their own taunts for a short while before they acted on that intent.
So Harry closed his eyes and swathed his thoughts in Dark, needing the focus of a clear mind unburdened by fear or adrenaline.
"Look at that, lads! He's giving up!" The apparent leader jeered.
Harry ignored him and began constructing a spell inside of himself. He'd once used his hands as a replacement focus, but had long since realized that it was just another illusion.
"So much for the mighty Boy-Who-Lived." One of the others added.
Harry continued carefully forming the spell. He would only get once chance at this, so it had to be done right.
"Hey, do we have time to have some fun with the girl? She's not bad looking." The only one to have been silent so far asked hopefully.
Harry felt a swell of rage at the question, but it floundered in the tranquil Dark until he grabbed hold of it and pushed it into the spell. Luna trembled and pressed herself closer to him. That worked just fine for him as he included an exemption for her in his spell.
"Afraid not." The leader said with some regret. "Best get on with it and leave before the Aurors show up."
Knowing that he was out of time, Harry released the spell. An omnidirectional wave of force rushed out from his body, throwing all four Death Eaters into the air with all the strength of will and rage he'd poured into it.
"Come on!" He shouted, grabbing the surprised Luna's hand and making a run for it. "Into the forest."
It was fortunate that the entire camping ground hugged the edges of the forest, so they were able to reach the trees before the Death Eaters got their wits about them.
Harry pulled Luna into hug against a tree some distance into the forest and took his Invisibility Cloak out of the Bag of Holding that never left his side.
"Don't make a sound." He said softly as he drew it over them, his voice calm and steady despite the rapid beat of his heart. The Dark kept him calm. On instinct, he reached out to envelop Luna's aura in his own, soothing fear and urging obedience.
Luna looked up at him trustingly and nodded in understanding.
"Where did the little shites go?!" Came an angry demand less than a minute later.
"I saw them running here and they couldn't have gone far, spread out and find them." The leader ordered.
That was the end of that conversation as the Death Eaters focused on finding them. Safely hidden under the Invisibility Cloak, Harry and Luna watched them blunder about with increasing urgency. They tried casting a few spells as well, but none of them seemed to know the Human-Presence Revealing Spell, for which he was grateful. He still didn't know why that spell worked against his special Invisiblity Cloak or how to block it.
The Death Eaters had been slowly moving away from their position when a rustle of another group grabbed all of their attention.
They nearly attacked each other before they realized that all of them were Death Eaters.
"Merlin's saggy bollocks, I thought you were the Ministry." The leader of the first party exhaled in relief.
"Did you get Potter?" The leader of the second group demanded without preamble.
"No, we chased him here along with that Lovegood bint, but they just vanished on us." The scowl in the voice was clearly audible.
"Black got away from us too." The other one admitted grudgingly. "Turned into a dog and ran in here somewhere. We've had no luck finding him."
Harry was relieved to hear that. He'd been worried for his godfather. The rest of it was somewhat more disturbing though. This was sounding less like a group of idiots lashing out at him for Voldemort's demise and more like a planned assassination attempt.
"Shite!" The first swore. "We can't stay here much longer."
Harry allowed himself a small relieved smile. He and Luna were under an invisibility cloak and Padfoot was also as good as invisible in the dark forest with his black fur. Everything was going to be fine and these would-be assassins would be leaving with their objective unfulfilled.
Then a beam of light from a wand became visible from the direction that Harry, Luna and their pursuers had come from.
"Luna!" Came the distant but familiar voice of Xenophilius Lovegood. "Turnip, where are you?"
"Bring that freak over here." The leader of the first group ordered.
Harry felt Luna tense against him and he wanted to curse at concerned parents everywhere. The Death Eaters had been on the verge of giving up and now they had a hostage.
Xeno was even less of a fighter than Harry and was easily captured as a result.
"Potter!" The leader called out once the man was relieved of his wand and dragged to their location. "Show yourself or your little slut's father dies!"
Luna squeezed his arm with all the strength of her fingers and he didn't need to look at her to know that she was looking at him with terrified eyes.
He had no idea what to do. Had it been almost anyone else, he would have felt sorry for the unlucky bastard as he was killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but he would not have even considered showing himself. He was not so noble as to sacrifice himself for the chance of saving a stranger. But it wasn't a stranger, it was Luna's father.
Harry didn't know Xenophilius Lovegood too well. He'd only spoken to the man briefly today and gotten the impression of a loving – if slightly strange – father. A good man for all his eccentricies. He still would have let him die if Luna wasn't his friend.
But she was his friend, so he edged them around the base of the wide tree they'd been hiding against so that they weren't in the Death Eaters direct line of sight.
"Running out of time, Potter!" The Death Eater warned.
"No matter what happens, stay hidden." Harry murmured to his friend softly so that the sound wouldn't carry.
Luna looked torn between wanting to save his father and not wanting her friend to walk into almost certain death. Harry didn't want to go either. He wasn't in any hurry to die and he didn't really believe that the Death Eaters would just let Xeno go if he gave himself up, but he had to try. Luna had already seen one parent die in front of her and he wanted to spare her a repeat of that experience. Sirius was still out there somewhere, so there was still a chance that this could end without anyone dying.
Anyone important at any rate.
"I'm here." Harry said as he stepped out from behind the tree.
"So nice of you to join us." The lead Death Eater said sarcastically and waved his wand. "Accio Potter's wand!"
Harry could have easily resisted the spell, but chose not to. The wand wouldn't have done him any good anyway and it might lull them into a false sense of security since they were probably assuming that his earlier trick had been done with a wand even if they hadn't seen it. Instead, he began to construct another spell. No simple wave of force this time, but something more lethal. There was no room for kiddie gloves when the other side was planning to kill you. The Dark in his mind seemed to approve, insofar as a non-living, non-sentient, primal magical entity could approve of anything.
"I could hardly refuse the invitation you gave me." He said blandly, most of his focus on the spell he was crafting. The base of his intent first, something explosive and flashy. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a black shadow with gleaming eyes and the muted magical presence of his godfather sneaking through the woods.
"Where's your friend?" One of the others asked hungrily, the same one that had been so open with his intentions towards Luna earlier in fact.
"Safe." Harry answered in the same bland tone. Xeno gave him a look of mixed gratitude and apology, but he ignored it. He also decided that that Death Eater would make a fine target. The group of masked wizards had drifted closer together since he'd showed himself and that one was just slightly off center.
"Maybe I'll pay her a visit after we kill you." The same Death Eater leered. "I'm sure she'll be lonely with her boyfriend and father both dead."
"She probably would be." Harry agreed, still in that bland tone. The would-be rapist was helping him more than he knew. All the emotional energy that his words were generating was going into the spell. It was becoming an angry, violent thing. He doubted that he would have been able to aim it at any of the others even if he wanted to.
"I'll be sure to take my time then."
The spell glowed in his mind now like a beacon, still incomplete. The Void knew that he was intending to send at least one more soul its way and Dark seeped into it, turning the Fireball Spell that he was making into something hungry. The Void was always eager to take anything it could; objects, spells, emotions, souls, magic, anything that hastened the heat death of the Universe for even the tiniest fraction of a moment. There was a reason why the Vanishing Spell was so easy to cast. A physicist would have been horrified to learn that wizards could casually destroy matter and baffled as to where all its energy was going without a cataclysmic explosion.
But Harry knew. It had even featured as the riddle to enter Ravenclaw Tower a time or two. The textbook explanation was that Vanished objects go into 'non-being, which is to say, everything'. They went to the Void.
Not that magicals ever seemed to grasp the importance of this bit of information.
"Enough!" One of the others barked. "Lets just kill them and get it over with. We're cutting it close as it is."
"Would you mind telling me who put you up to this first?" Harry asked. The spell wasn't ready yet, it was still too unstable and prone to backfiring. He needed more time.
The leader scoffed at his question. "As if someone needs to put us up to killing the Boy-Who-Lived."
Lucius had been very subtle.
Harry's attention slipped from his spell for a moment in his surprise. He'd been sure that there was someone pulling strings in the background. He had no time to think about it though, as the maintenance of the unstable Fireball Spell took almost the entirety of his attention.
"Now die!" The leader suddenly spat, raising his wand in the air. "Avada-"
Harry's eyes widened in surprise and panic at the sudden lethal turn of events. He hadn't expected to have so little warning. Desperate, he flung out his right arm and hurled the Fireball at its intended target. Sirius jumped out of his hiding spot and let loose with his own spells.
His spell hadn't been ready and his momentary loss of focus had destabilized it further. Harry roared in pain as his arm caught fire from the backlash, the dark crimson orb of flame coming out wild and misshapen. But it still struck the Death Eater and exploded into a hungry, grasping flame that seared flesh far more effectively than any normal fire.
The situation devolved into screaming and spellfire, but Harry registered none of it. He'd been thrown to the ground by the explosion and his full attention was on frantically trying to put out the flames still flickering over his arm. The anger infused into them gave way easily since it was his own and targeted at the Death Eater, but the Dark was less cooperative. It wanted to keep consuming something, anything, even if it was the wizard who had brought it into being. It took long, painful seconds before it finally yielded to his will.
"Harry!" Sirius yelled. "Are you okay?"
Harry nodded with a tighly clenched jaw and sweat streaked face. His arm was a beacon of agony up to his elbow and gave off a nauseating smell of charred meat, but he hadn't been hit with any other spells. He took a quick look around and saw that they were alone. The Death Eaters must have decided that it was time to go despite having superior numbers. There were five bodies on the ground, three of which were still burning, along with some of the surrounding forest. Another had no obvious cause of death in the darkness, but was assuredly dead. And the last....
"Daddy!" Luna wailed and ran towards the only body that wasn't dressed in black robes.
"What happened?" Harry asked his godfather, heart dropping with the weight of his failure as he listened to his friend sobbing over the body of her father.
"He tackled one of them and got cursed for his trouble." Sirius said somberly.