Insert all standard whatever you think is important here, including but not limited to: disclaimers regarding not owning the copyright, disclaimers regarding mental health, disclaimers regarding excessive dihydrogen monoxide use, and so on.
Seriously, you've been warned. Also, that's the only warning being given, so strap in, lay back, and hopefully, enjoy the show!
When the Warlocks march.
The judges all stood around in shock, looking at the dead champion and the boy holding his body. They stood and stared as the boy turned to face Dumbledore and gasped "He's back, sir. He killed Cedric. He's back." Dumbledore suddenly moved like a man much younger as he moved over, grasped Harry's head and commanded "Show me. Show me all that happened. Now." For half minute they stood frozen as bright lights and dark shadows seemed to distort around the old mage leaning down to the child on the grass.
Abruptly, Albus released the boy's face and stood, calling out "Pomfrey! Attend to the boy, now! He is in your care for the next two days, none but his friends are to be able approach him." The other judges jumped back in shock as he brought a patronus into being with a wave and whispered to it, then strode off towards the castle as the patronus took off like a rocket. 'So... Once again we are here. On the brink of destruction. I won't make the same mistake again. We go to war immediately this time, and I pray that what I have done these past years will let me be victorious.'
Arthur Weasley was sitting at his desk looking at yet another full inbox of utterly useless and incredibly irritating inter-office memos, when a phoenix patronus swept through his closed door and spoke one word in Dumbledore's voice. "Excelsior." Arthur's jaw dropped and he stammered back "E-excelsior acknowledged." As the patronus turned and flew off along its mission Arthur moved to a tall wardrobe in the back of his office and opened it, feeling a cut as he set his hand upon the handle. As he opened the doors wide, he began stripping off.
Once he was down to underwear he withdrew the thick, heavy clothing covered in embroidered and appliqued runes and symbols and hastily dressed. As he was pulling on his last over-robe, he heard his office door open and his secretary call, "Mister Weasley, what's going o..." Arthur turned half way as he reached into the wardrobe for one last item. As his hand grasped the eye height tall staff standing in the back of the closet, he turned his face to his opened mouth secretary, and said calmly "Ah, Miss Perks! Thanks so much for checking up on me so quickly, you've always been very efficient that way! Much appreciated, really! Unfortunately, some rather important things have come up, and I am unlikely to be be back in the office for a while! So, could you help whoever gets sent down here to hold the fort down while I'm away?"
Arthur stepped away from the wardrobe, clapped the stunned secretary on the shoulder and walked out the door into the madhouse that was the Ministry. As he walked towards the lifts at the end of the hall, quiet seemed to ripple out as people saw him walking in his grim blood red robe with silver and black runes forming elaborate patterns all over, and his staff, deep red, with metallic silver runes hammered into the surface striking the floor in sync with his left heel.
He stopped in front of the lift, and felt the eyes of everyone one the floor on him as he reached out to press the button. As he waited he stretched his neck and felt the detached calm that came from having his staff back in his hands. The door dinged, and he stepped forward into the small area that rapidly grew larger as the other workers pressed back against the walls, one even dropping his cup of tea. Arthur reached out and hit the button for the DMLE floor and smiled vaguely at the young man who shrunk back from his outstretched arm.
"Tremendous day, isn't it? Fascinating what can happen in the Ministry! Never know just what you'll see next, isn't that right young man?!" Arthur clapped the now white faced and shaking man on the shoulder just as the door dinged again and opened and he strode out.
The instant he stepped out the floor started to go quiet as they saw him, with his staff tapping the floor as he strode along. Arthur walked to the nearest Aurour.
"Ah, Dawlish, old chap! Would you know which way Kingsley's office is? There's a spot of bother we need to sort out!"
Dawlish just pointed with a shaking hand, and Arthur strode to the indicated office and thumped on the door with his staff before walking in.
Inside, Kingsley Shacklebolt was just closing up some toggles on his own blood red robe with one hand as he ran his other up and down his own stave, bone white with black metal spiraling around it, forming runes that sat more uneasily on the mind the longer they were looked at. Kingsley turned his face towards Arthur and spoke in his deep, resonant voice, "So, it begins once again. And this time we shall fight properly. Come, my brother in arms, let us go to war..."
Arthur reached out and clasped Kingsley's arm, and the portkey that Kingsley was clutching and felt the yank as it activated.
As Dumbledore ran through the castle to his office, he mentally prepared for what was coming, feeling the years almost slide off him, as the layer that showed the slightly daft schoolteacher slid away. As he opened his own heavily warded wardrobe and dressed in heavy robes, he felt the wards alert him to incoming portkeys, and he hurried out to the main hall.
Meanwhile, Minister Fudge was having a particularly bad day. It had started off bad when there was a fantastic balls-up in paperwork in the morning, and had gotten steadily worse all day. By now he had a spectacular headache and no end was in sight. Then it got even worse, when one of his aides came running in, very flustered, and blurted "Minister! We are getting reports from all over the Ministry! The warlocks are armouring up and portkeying somewhere, we suspect to Hogwarts! The Redstaff and Bonestave were also reported to have gone active! What's happening, sir? What should we do?!"
Xenophilius Lovegood was standing on the kitchen table, balanced on his left foot, with his arms spread wide and glass sphere sitting on his right foot which was stuck out in front of him. He was staring at the colours rippling along the ceiling, reflected off the sphere and his face had a delighted and more than slightly vacant look as he did so. Suddenly, a silver patronus zoomed in through his window and said in the Chief Warlock's voice "Excelsior". Xeno's head whipped around and his face suddenly looked haggard, all delight falling away in the blink of an eye. Xeno shut his eyes for a second as heart wrenching grief rippled across his features and he responded in a dead, flat voice "Excelsior acknowledged."
He didn't watch the patronus fly off as he climbed down from the kitchen table. He walked like an old, old man as he took the stairs to the highest floor of the Rookery, to a set of doors that he had not stepped through in nearly eight years. He set his hands on the twin knobs and pushed open the doors to the master bedroom. He stepped through into a room nearly perfectly preserved, and he sobbed once.
"Oh, Selene... I swore that it would never come to this. I swore I'd look after our daughter. But I couldn't, my love, I'm broken. You know what I am. All I can say is that I tried. I tried from the day you left us. From the day we lowered your coffin into the cold ground, it all went wrong. I tried, but I'm broken."
He sobbed again, and walked over to the farthest wall, to a great ebony wardrobe and placed his palm on a flat hand print. "I tried. But we both fell apart. I'm broken and your daughter saw you die and it broke her too... I tried, Selene, oh, how I tried. And now I will become a warlock in truth. I will break an oath. I know I swore I would always do my best to keep her safe, but I swore other oaths long ago, oaths that bind my very soul. All I can do , my Selene, is now beg your forgiveness, and hope that you don't judge me too harshly."
The wardrobe door swung open on its own and Xeno stripped. He reached in and pulled out a thigh length tunic with small spider-like runes around the neckline and wrists and pulled it over his head. The runes seemed to flash, for just a second before beginning to crawl along their paths, moving over the fabric in a slightly eerie fashion. Next a pair of trousers was pulled out, nearly as wide as Xeno was tall, tapering sharply to the ankles, with inch thick runes running in strips around the waist and down the length of both legs. Xeno sat on the long undisturbed bed and pulled on the trousers, before summoning two bands of cloth from the wardrobe, which he carefully wrapped over the trousers, starting at each ankle and up to his knees, touching the symbols woven into the fabric every 3 inches. As he tied off the bands at each knee, his face became more and more drawn.
Xeno stood, and grabbed the drawstrings running through the immensely wide waistband of his trousers, and pulled them tight, until the trousers were gathered around the waist. He wrapped the the strings around his waist and tied them tight. A thick scarlet over-tunic came next, this one with four inch tall runes stitched around the base, wrist and neckline. Finally a dragonhide belt was looped twice around his wast, cinching in the tunic, before his blood red robe was pulled over his head.
Xeno turned and looked into the mirror across the room and saw his reflection, with tears streaming down his cheeks. He reached back, and took out a cloak, draped it over his shoulder and attached a heavy bronze clasp. He glanced again at the mirror before turning his back on it, and reaching both hands more deeply into the wardrobe than seemed possible. He closed his eyes and felt around for a moment, before feeling the heavy warm wood of his staff.
"And so it comes to this. Selene, if this is the last that I ever say to you, know that I have loved and will love you always, from the day we met, through all we did, even as your body went to its final resting place, until I end up in the hell in which I will most surely reside." Xeno's voice changed as he took the staff from the wardrobe, becoming deeper, almost sounding like boulders colliding. "For now I am become death, and destruction shall I carry forth. Tens shall die by my word, and hundreds by my voice. Forgive me, Selene, I beg that of you..."
Xeno raised his staff high, and brought it crashing down, and had disappeared before the noise had finished echoing around the Rookery.
On the Hogwart's grounds, outside what was usually the quidditch pitch, there was chaos. Everybody had seen the famous Potter boy arrive holding a body in his arms and Dumbledore do something, and then storm off to the castle, although no-one was exactly sure what he had done. People watched as the Boy-Who-Lived and the body of the Hogwarts champion were quickly taken inside by Madam Pomfrey and an assistant. The Minister's representative struggled to push through the crowd, to try to find out just what was happening, when there was a earsplitting crack, and two men appeared halfway between the pitch and the castle. They were dressed in red robes, far darker than the crimson robes of the aurors, and they carried staffs. They hurried into the castle, moving so fast they were nearly sprinting.
Seconds later, with another thunderous noise, another man appeared, also in the deep red robes with a matching cloak and also carrying a staff. He turned and walked with a dreadful solemnity towards the dark walls of the castle.
