Year 4 Chapter 2

There were three children and one adult in the body of a child hanging around the stadium after the final had just gone down, and we were all unsupervised. This was either demonstration of the paranoia of Italian mothers, or the British idea of motherhood revolved around letting the children do foolish things and survive to grow stronger. Or perhaps it was the Wizard way to let the children bounce through dangers and emerge either unscathed or still breathing?

Whatever the reason, as Megan and Amanda had some girls' time for themselves, I walked by Wayne's side with a content smile on my face. Wayne was a boy after my own mind, since he was calmly munching on a large candied apple and walking at a slow and sedated pace.

"Had a nice summer?" I asked.

"Not really," he grimaced. "Dentists are evil."

"Yeah, really evil," I nodded in turn. "The kind of evil that you need to still have a bright smile at the end."

Wayne sighed, "You speak like my mum, Shade."

I smiled back. "We'll be all having dinner together then!" Amanda said cheerfully, a bit ahead of everyone else. "To celebrate Ireland's victory!"

It turned out that Amanda's family tent was big enough to welcome us all inside. There was a large tent set up, and as Megan's mother arrived shortly thereafter, and Wayne with his father, I realized that Amanda had instead come with her aunt, Madam Hooch.

Her hawkish gaze stared at the depths of my soul, and I looked back at her with the look of a man ready for his execution. "Good evening, professor," I said amiably. Madam Hooch did not know the definition of smiling. She knew the definition of Sharkly-Smiling.

"Mister Umbrus, we're not at school, and right now I'm just Amanda's aunt. You can call me Rolanda," she continued, trying to sound pleasant but coming off as a shark trying to convince the bleeding lamb to step into the sea to play a nice game of tag.

I smiled back, trying to contemporary shrink back and hide behind someone else willing to die for my name, but finding an utter lack of acceptable meat shields, I had no choice but to brave the unknown territory of being friendly with a shark.

"Then, you can call me Shade?" I hazarded back, "Miss Rolanda?"

Rolanda laughed ever so slightly. "Ma'am will do."

Wayne's father was a bespectacled wizard with a portly and jovial visage, and had all the looks of someone who'd die if given to run half a mile. His breathing was hard, probably a respiratory problem of sorts, but barring that he didn't look with a foot in the proverbial tomb. He just had a bit of a wheezing and a breathing problem.

"An accident with acid pops," he said as I looked worriedly in his direction. "Swallowed a couple and they didn't fix my lungs well afterwards," he wheezed out. "Won't be dying anytime soon," he winked.

I sighed in relief, giving a slight nod. As long as Wayne's father wouldn't die at dinner, the only other thing to watch out for would be the drunken Death Eaters that would make their appearance known a short while after the match. I doubted we'd have the time to taste dinner, and even if we did, it wouldn't last for long. I reckoned that everyone had, at the very least, someone to bring them out in case of the Death Eater attack.

Megan's mother could apparate, and while I didn't know about Madam Hooch and Wayne's father, it was reasonable to expect them to at the very least manage.

Megan's mother would probably then come back for me in a matter of minutes, and that would be that. It would be the end of the Death Eaters' experience at the World Cup for the likes of me.

At least, unless I somehow managed to hunt down Bartemius Crouch Junior during the chaos and bring him to justice, thus utterly preventing any further shenanigan, potential or otherwise, from the very start of the year.

My thoughts mulled it over. There'd be little way to top solving a crucial problem even before the start of the academic year, but I wasn't following the schemes of the conventional narrative. I just wanted the troubles to go away, and everything to be smooth sailing till the end of my school years.

Indeed, perhaps-

"A knut for your thoughts?" Amanda asked, as I blinked myself back to the pleasantness of the dinner.

"Oh, just thinking about this year," I said. "Professor Flitwick said I should prepare myself to apologize, even if he didn't tell me why."

Amanda's eyes half-narrowed, "Shade, if it's about the Quidditch cup-" she threatened, but then turned to look at her aunt. "Hey auntie!" she chirped, a bright smile on her face, "Why can't we have the Quidditch Cup this year at Hogwarts?"

Silence settled into the tent as Madam Hooch took the briefest of seconds to look at her niece, and then at me, and then at the rest of the table thus assembled. "Well, if you will keep it a secret, then I suppose there's no harm," she opened her mouth to say the rest, and as if on cue, loud noises blared nearby.

Leave it to the Death Eaters to interrupt my information gathering. It was starting to get annoying.

Yet, as with all carefully constructed plans, it turned out that the Death Eaters ripping through the tents actually ripped through Amanda's own too. As the larger-on-the-inside tent broke, the size-altering charm came less and we ended up ejected out, squeezed and pushed and tangled in a mass of tearing cloth and splayed limbs. I pushed my way out on all fours, watching the night and a few hooded figures wearing masks throwing spells right and left, tearing up tents and making muggles float while they screamed.

I began to run as an explosion echoed by my side, a tent going up in flames as the occupants ran out, some rolling on the ground to try to snuff out the flames, other disappearing behind tents in a matter of seconds.

The first thought in my mind wasn't to stick close to the others. It was to find cover. Whenever one was under attack, finding cover came first, because without cover, you were just as likely to end up dead.

I rolled into the safety of the back of a thick wooden tree by the edge of the campsite, catching my breath as I hesitantly moved my hand to my wand holster, and to my wand. The important thing, right there and then, was to keep calm and stay safe. Eventually the Aurors would deal with the problem, and nobody would get hurt. The entire thing was a literal fraternity-drunken-thing, with Death Eater apparatus, but nothing more.

Nobody would get hurt. Nobody would die.

My eyes moved to the direction I had come from. Amanda's broken tent laid in tatters, but rather than having disapparated, they all were huddled down trying to make sense of what was going on.

Seriously? Why weren't they disapparating-

If they could apparate and disapparate at leisure, there wouldn't have been a need for tents to sleep in. The vague thought crossed my mind, and just as it did, I groaned. Perhaps there were wards in place to prevent wizards from Apparating straight on the grounds, or Disapparating thereof. What was the need for tickets, if you could just grab a broomstick and float over the stadium?

I rushed back in their direction, staying low. "Oi, get to the forest edge! This way's clear," I hissed from behind the crumpled remains of a tent, catching their attention.

"Stay down!" Emily snapped at her daughter, who had meanwhile tried to get up. "It's dangerous-"

I swished my wand, and then I tugged.

The end result was that my spell had captured, and pulled along for the ride, the remains of Amanda's tent as well as those still hiding near it.

"Over there!" a Death Eater exclaimed, but I had already swung my wand to bring the whole package into the general safety of the forest's border. "Come on out, little Mudblood!" someone else yelled. "Or is it a blood traitor? Filthy blood traitor!? Can't you see we're hurting your precious muggles?" of the floating muggles, the woman began to scream at being sharply jerked right and left. "Come on out, come on out!"

Tends were going up in flames around us. I glanced in the direction of the forest, but a sudden explosion closed off that direction, a wall of fire looming up twice as tall as me. They were nearing me. They were going to near me, and then do unspeakable things to me.

"All right," I mouthed to myself. My heart was drumming in my ears. "It's just some drunk frat boys. You faced a basilisk. You had a phoenix, but you faced a basilisk."

Screams rose in pitch across the tent camps. It wasn't some drunk frat boys. It was more than two dozens of drunken frat boys, moving and swishing their wands across the whole place.

I swallowed my fear to the bottom of my stomach, stood up from my hiding place, and extended my wand in front of me. Drunken frat boys versus one peculiarly able student of Hogwarts.

Identify. Counter. Expelliarmus.

A bolt of sizzling green came for my sides. It was a Levicorpus. I swung my wand in its direction like a batter would a bludger, and then finished the motion with an Exosso curse. The pale blue jet slammed into the chest, removing the bones from the Wizard's arms and legs, sending it to crumble on the ground like a puppet, and scream like a headless chicken while at it. This was a spell I had learned for removing bones from chickens, and the warning was to not point it at people due to the unfortunate nature of the curse itself.

Wizard cooks were bad-asses, and that was all I had to say on the matter.

Another bolt, another color, a Protego needed to counter the unknown. The spell flickered against the shield, and I sent a bolt of lightning to impact against the would-be attacker, sending him to spin in mid-air from the rebound of the spell, and hit the ground like a bag of potatoes. He'd probably live. Knowing my luck, he'd even remember my face.

That caught everyone's attention.

I brought my left hand behind my back, and deftly began to advance in a straight line towards one of the Death Eaters still on his feet. There were many more, admittedly, but a sizzling bolt of red struck a wand out of a Death Eater's hand, coming from somewhere near the border of the tents. Aurors were popping in, the cavalry was there.

I swished my wand a bit, pulling up a few nails meant to keep the tents down, and wordlessly sent them with an Oppugno against a foe. He swung his wand, melting and avoiding a few as purplish flames pulsed in my direction, but I clenched my left hand, and a small column of stone rose in front of me to intercept and bathe in the flames themselves.

The column melted, but I was already to its left, swinging another Expelliarmus and sending more nails at the enemies. I was being an annoyance, rather than an actual terminator, since the moment I concentrated on one, I needed to hastily bring up a Protego or lose my functionality to a curse from a blind spot.

The Death Eaters began to disapparate, the sudden pressure of multiple fronts cowardly turning them away from the fight itself, perhaps having realized that the anti-apparition wards had gone down.

And as the last Death Eater departed, I took a deep breath and holstered my wand.

I kept my charming smile up even as the first of the Aurors neared me.

"Alastor Moody's our Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor, sir," I said even before the Auror could open his mouth to ask what the hell I had been thinking. He closed it, gave me another look, and then a small nod.

"You're Dumbledore's protege, Umbrus-something right?" as he said that, I awkwardly pulled out from inside my robes my Order of Merlin. It was a medal; medals were meant to be worn. At least, that was my humble opinion. I'd be a flawless Russian General if I ever grew up; countless medals, all on my neck or pinned to my chest.

"That I am, sir," I said with still the most amiable smile. "There should be a Death Eater without a few bones that way, unless he managed to get away," I continued, pointing in the direction of the Deboned Death Eater.

The Auror ruffled my head with a cheeky grin, and then moved in that direction.

I sighed as I looked at the crystal clear sky overhead.

Any moment now, Dark Mark.

Any moment now.

Dark Mark, please respond.

Dark Mark? Where the hell are you, Dark Mark?