said Ron, and Harry saw him glance edgily at
Hermione. Perhaps there was truth in what Malfoy had said; perhaps Hermione
was in more danger than they were. They set off again, Harry still searching his
pockets, even though he knew his wand wasn't there.
They followed the dark path deeper into the wood, still keeping an eye out for
Fred, George, and Ginny. They passed a group of goblins who were cackling over
a sack of gold that they had undoubtedly won betting on the match, and who
seemed quite unperturbed by the trouble at the campsite. Farther still along the
path, they walked into a patch of silvery light, and when they looked through the
trees, they saw three tall and beautiful veela standing in a clearing, surrounded by
a gaggle of young wizards, all of whom were talking very loudly.
"I pull down about a hundred sacks of Galleons a year!" one of them shouted. "I'm
a dragon killer for the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures."
"No, you're not!" yelled his friend. "You're a dishwasher at the Leaky Cauldron. . .
. but I'm a vampire hunter, I've killed about ninety so far -"
A third young wizard, whose pimples were visible even by the dim, silvery light of
the veela, now cut in, "I'm about to become the youngest ever Minister of Magic, I
am."
Harry snorted with laughter. He recognized the pimply wizard: His name was Stan
Shunpike, and he was in fact a conductor on the triple-decker Knight Bus. He
turned to tell Ron this, but Ron's face had gone oddly slack, and next second Ron
was yelling, "Did I tell you I've invented a broomstick that'll reach Jupiter?"
"Honestly!" said Hermione, and she and Harry grabbed Ron firmly by the arms,
wheeled him around, and marched him away. By the time the sounds of the veela
and their admirers had faded completely, they were in the very heart of the wood.
They seemed to be alone now; everything was much quieter.
Harry looked around. "I reckon we can just wait here, you know. We'll hear
anyone coming a mile off."
The words were hardly out of his mouth, when Ludo Bagman emerged from
behind a tree right ahead of them.
Even by the feeble light of the two wands, Harry could see that a great change had
come over Bagman. He no longer looked buoyant and rosy-faced; there was no
more spring in his step. He looked very white and strained.
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"Who's that?" he said, blinking down at them, trying to make out their faces.
"What are you doing in here, all alone?"
They looked at one another, surprised.
"Well - there's a sort of riot going on," said Ron.
Bagman stared at him.
"What?"
"At the campsite. . . some people have got hold of a family of Muggles. . .
Bagman swore loudly.
"Damn them!" he said, looking quite distracted, and without another word, he
Disapparated with a small pop!
"Not exactly on top of things, Mr. Bagman, is he?" said Hermione, frowning.
"He was a great Beater, though," said Ron, leading the way off the path into a
small clearing, and sitting down on a patch of dry grass at the foot of a tree. "The
Wimbourne Wasps won the league three times in a row while he was with them."
He took his small figure of Krum out of his pocket, set it down on the ground, and
watched it walk around. Like the real Krum, the model was slightly duck-footed
and round-shouldered, much less impressive on his splayed feet than on his
broomstick. Harry was listening for noise from the campsite. Everything seemed
much quieter; perhaps the riot was over.
"I hope the others are okay," said Hermione after a while.
"They'll be fine," said Ron.
"Imagine if your dad catches Lucius Malfoy," said Harry, sitting down next to Ron
and watching the small figure of Krum slouching over the fallen leaves. "He's
always said he'd like to get something on him."
"That'd wipe the smirk off old Draco's face, all right," said Ron.
"Those poor Muggles, though," said Hermione nervously. "What if they can't get
them down?"
"They will," said Ron reassuringly. "They'll find a way."
"Mad, though, to do something like that when the whole Ministry of Magic's out
here tonight!" said Hermione. "I mean, how do they expect to get away with it? Do
you think they've been drinking, or are they just -"
But she broke off abruptly and looked over her shoulder. Harry and Ron looked
quickly around too. It sounded as though someone was staggering toward their
clearing. They waited, listening to the sounds of the uneven steps behind the dark
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trees. But the footsteps came to a sudden halt.
"Hello?" called Harry.
There was silence. Harry got to his feet and peered around the tree. It was too dark
to see very far, but he could sense somebody standing just beyond the range of his
vision.
"Who's there?" he said.
And then, without warning, the silence was rent by a voice unlike any they had
heard in the wood; and it uttered, not a panicked shout, but what sounded like a
spell.
"MORSMORDRE!"
And something vast, green, and glittering erupted from the patch of darkness
Harry's eyes had been struggling to penetrate; it flew up over the treetops and into
the sky.
"What the - ?" gasped Ron as he sprang to his feet again, staring up at the thing
that had appeared.
For a split second, Harry thought it was another leprechaun formation. Then he
realized that it was a colossal skull, comprised of what looked like emerald stars,
with a serpent protruding from its mouth like a tongue. As they watched, it rose
higher and higher, blazing in a haze of greenish smoke, etched against the black
sky like a new constellation.
Suddenly, the wood all around them erupted with screams. Harry didn't understand
why, but the only possible cause was the sudden appearance of the skull, which
had now risen high enough to illuminate the entire wood like some grisly neon
sign. He scanned the darkness for the person who had conjured the skull, but he
couldn't see anyone.
"Who's there?" he called again.
"Harry, come on, move!" Hermione had seized the collar of his jacket and was
tugging him backward.
"What's the matter?" Harry said, startled to see her face so white and terrified.
"It's the Dark Mark, Harry!" Hermione moaned, pulling him as hard as she could.
"You-Know-Who's sign!"
"Voldemort's - "Harry, come on!"
Harry turned - Ron was hurriedly scooping up his miniature Krum - the three of
them started across the clearing - but before they had taken a few hurried steps, a
series of popping noises announced the arrival of twenty wizards, appearing from
thin air, surrounding them.
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Harry whirled around, and in an instant, he registered one fact: Each of these
wizards had his wand out, and every wand was pointing right at himself, Ron, and
Hermione.
Without pausing to think, he yelled, "DUCK!"
He seized the other two and pulled them down onto the ground.
"STUPEFY!" roared twenty voices - there was a blinding series of flashes and
Harry felt the hair on his head ripple as though a powerful wind had swept the
clearing. Raising his head a fraction of an inch he saw jets of fiery red light flying
over them from the wizards' wands, crossing one another, bouncing off tree trunks,
rebounding into the darkness--
"Stop!" yelled a voice he recognized. "STOP! That's my son!"
Harry's hair stopped blowing about. He raised his head a little higher. The wizard
in front of him had lowered his wand. He rolled over and saw Mr. Weasley
striding toward them, looking terrified.
"Ron - Harry" - his voice sounded shaky - "Hermione - are you all right?"
"Out of the way, Arthur," said a cold, curt voice.
It was Mr. Crouch. He and the other Ministry wizards were closing in on them.
Harry got to his feet to face them. Mr. Crouch's face was taut with rage.
"Which of you did it?" he snapped, his sharp eyes darting between them. "Which
of you conjured the Dark Mark?"
"We didn't do that!" said Harry, gesturing up at the skull.
"We didn't do anything!" said Ron, who was rubbing his elbow and looking
indignantly at his father. "What did you want to attack us for?"
"Do not lie, sir!" shouted Mr. Crouch. His wand was still pointing directly at Ron,
and his eyes were popping - he looked slightly mad. "You have been discovered at
the scene of the crime!"
"Barty," whispered a witch in a long woolen dressing gown, "they're kids, Barty,
they'd never have been able to
"Where did the Mark come from, you three?" said Mr. Weasley quickly.
"Over there," said Hermione shakily, pointing at the place where they had heard
the voice. "There was someone behind the trees. . . they shouted words - an
incantation -"
"Oh, stood over there, did they?" said Mr. Crouch, turning his popping eyes on
Hermione now, disbelief etched all over his face. "Said an incantation, did they?
You seem very well informed about how that Mark is summoned, missy -"
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But none of the Ministry wizards apart from Mr. Crouch seemed to think it
remotely likely that Harry, Ron, or Hermione had conjured the skull; on the
contrary, at Hermione's words, they had all raised their wands again and were
pointing in the direction she had indicated, squinting through the dark trees.
"We're too late," said the witch in the woolen dressing gown, shaking her head.
"They'll have Disapparated."
"I don't think so," said a wizard with a scrubby brown beard. It was Amos
Diggory, Cedric's father. "Our Stunners went right through those trees. . . . There's
a good chance we got them. . .
"Amos, be careful!" said a few of the wizards warningly as Mr. Diggory squared
his shoulders, raised his wand, marched across the clearing, and disappeared into
the darkness. Hermione watched him vanish with her hands over her mouth.
A few seconds later, they heard Mr. Diggory shout.
"Yes! We got them! There's someone here! Unconscious! It's - but - blimey. .
"You've got someone?" shouted Mr. Crouch, sounding highly disbelieving. "Who?
Who is it?"
They heard snapping twigs, the rustling of leaves, and then crunching footsteps as