Harry jolted awake amid the uproar.
He'd barely fumbled his glasses onto his face when his godfather seized him by the arm.
"Move! Harry! Now!"
Sirius's voice was a low, urgent growl.
The man's usual roguish grin had vanished, replaced by a grim tightness that Harry had rarely seen.
"What's going on?" Harry mumbled, still half-dazed.
Outside the tent came a cacophony of shrieks and running feet.
Sirius: "Dark wizards—they're here. They might be after you!"
The words snapped Harry fully awake. He shouted, voice cracking with worry:
"And Ethan! He's on their list too!"
Sirius: "Ethan will be fine, trust me—you don't need to—"
Harry wrenched free, snatched his wand, and bolted.
Acrid smoke stung his nostrils.
Thick plumes billowed skyward.
At the campsite's edge, flames twisted into grotesque tiger-snakes, jaws gaping as they devoured tents and gear.
By sheer luck the fire hadn't reached the crowded center.
The attack before the Quidditch World Cup had put the Aurors on high alert; now they traded curses with the intruders.
It wasn't the carnage of the Goblin Rebellion, but the panic was its own beast.
An invisible fist squeezed the throats of thousands. Spectators stampeded, a living river that swallowed the fallen without mercy.
Where was Ethan? In this bedlam, with Ethan's flair for spectacle, he ought to be perched somewhere impossible to miss—
"—Harry!"
Ron latched onto him from behind, yelling over the din:
"Are you mad? Run!"
Harry: "Ethan and the Lovegoods aren't in our tent—I have to make sure they're safe—"
Ron cut across him: "Please! If anyone's strolling through this unscathed, it's them!"
Harry's eyes widened, stunned.
Then he roared, righteous fire in his chest:
"As a member of the Enlightenment Society, I will never abandon my friends!"
The words still hung in the air when Harry thrust his wand skyward and bellowed the first spell that came to mind:
"Expecto Patronum!"
A blaze of silver-white light erupted.
Like a blade slicing night and flame, a magnificent stag burst forth, antlers gleaming.
Heads turned; the tide of terror faltered.
The stampede slowed, then steadied.
"...Bloody hell, you actually did it."
Ron gaped, mouth slack.
Something dark flickered behind his eyes.
His fingers tightened unconsciously around the black umbrella Ethan had pressed on him earlier.
Harry missed the shadow on his best friend's face.
He scanned the chaos, brow knotted.
"Where are the Ministry officials...?"
Ethan's influence had started to rub off; Harry was noticing things he once ignored.
Dark wizards strike—shouldn't the Department of Magical Games and Sports be here? Shouldn't Mr. Crouch, Percy's hero, be barking orders, shepherding people to safety?
Yet the platforms were empty.
As if the wizards in charge considered the crowd expendable.
Harry's thoughts spun—then his scar seared like molten iron.
"Ugh!"
He staggered, sweat icing his spine.
Through watering eyes he saw a lone figure atop a sagging tent, wand leveled at him.
"Crucio—"
"Expelliarmus—" Three voices collided in the same breath.
Sirius barreled into Harry, flinging him aside.
A lance of ghostly blue magic—thick as a rhino's charge—slammed the tent from the flank.
The would-be torturer flew like a rag doll.
The red curse veered harmlessly into the dark.
Harry rolled, glasses askew, and looked back.
Luna Lovegood stood ringed by fire.
Her pale hair floated as though underwater.
Ghost-blue light spiraled around her wand like living mist.
She looked less like a scatterbrained Ravenclaw and more like an elf queen descended into hell—serene, terrible, untouchable.
Even Harry, burning with fury a moment before, felt the urge to step back.
"It's not finished, Harry," Luna said, her voice drifting like moonlight on water.
The masked attacker was already rising from the wreckage.
"Until Ethan returns, the Enlightenment Society keeps everyone safe."
At the campsite's rim:
Connie Rosier twisted aside from a jet of green, Apparated with a sharp crack behind her attacker, and flicked her wand.
Thorned vines erupted, coiling the man like iron cables.
Spikes pierced flesh, drank magic, and opened into blood-red roses.
Nearby Aurors eyed her warily; Connie flashed a feral grin, eyes alight.
Rosier family magic—old, hungry, and hers by right.
It was the reason a girl her age sat at the grown-ups' table.
And if Ethan's Great Purge hadn't pruned the deadwood from the Ministry, she'd still be fetching tea.
The thought of the handsome devil somewhere in this mess, counting on her, sent a thrill down her spine.
Her wand morphed into a barbed whip; she cracked it wide, scattering the invaders.
One Dark wizard spat through clenched teeth:
"Damn it!"
Most of them were pinned at the perimeter, unable to push through.
Only the best Apparitors slipped the net.
Connie laughed. "Just rabble. Your puppet-master must be embarrassed."
A cold voice drifted down from above:
"You truly disappoint me."
Connie's head snapped up.
Against the star-drunk sky floated a man in a bone-white mask.
Behind him drifted something that hurt to look at—limbs and faces and hair knotted into a single blasphemous throne.
The thing knelt willingly, a carpet of corpses for its master.
Connie's stomach lurched. "It's... it's Mr. Lamp!"
Gasps rippled through the Aurors.
"Mr. Lamp's here—we've won!"
The Dark wizards whooped like children.
Connie's knuckles whitened around her wand.
She knew the stories: the pub in Knockturn Alley reduced to red paste; the explosion that cracked Hogwarts open last term.
A phantom who left no fingerprints, only nightmares.
Was this masked butcher behind both attacks?
She burned to rip the porcelain from his face.
Across the field, Ethan regarded the leaping ants below with lazy contempt.
From this height he almost understood the gods—how small everything became.
"Ignorant little vermin," he murmured, lifting one pale hand.
Gold light pooled in his palm.
[Use the painting "The Guide · Telescope"]
Bronze unfolded, cool and heavy, a relic older than sin.
Ethan smiled—handsome, terrible, already rehearsing the punchline.
"Let your wretched lives, so proud of petty cruelty, finally taste real art."
He raised the telescope to the yawning wardrobe in the sky.
"Whoosh!"
A cobalt eye the size of a house blinked open in mid-air.
Its pupil dilated into a tunnel straight to the jeweled dark beyond the wardrobe door.
??
An aura older than language rolled out like frost.
Every soul on the field froze mid-scream.
Connie's head tilted back, mouth open.
Iridescence—impossible colors—spilled across the night.
Then—
"Whoosh!"
A segmented limb the width of a tree trunk hooked over the wardrobe's rim and hauled.
--
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