Harry Potter

and the

Rise of the Lord of the End Times

'He said let's get out of this town'

"Harry." a muffled voice. He knows it's a girl's voice, but he can't make out who the voice belongs to.

"HARRY!"

Harry sits bolt upright, he's in bed, at Ron's house. Hermione is stood over him, pointing an enlightened wand at his face, it's almost blinding.

"Wake up! Mrs Weasley has made breakfast, it's ready!" Hermione says sternly.

"Oh, oh right, okay, I'll be down in a second." Harry replies, still shaken up at the abrupt awakening.

"And you too Ron!" Hermione snaps as she picks up one of Ron's t-shirts from the floor and flings it at him before heading back downstairs.

Ron however, would need a lot more than a t-shirt hitting him in the face to be woken up from his slumber.

Harry leant over to the other side of the small, single bed, which had been squeezed into Ron's room, originally the attic of the house, picking up his glasses and putting his book back in his rucksack, Harry shook Ron awake and then headed down the three flights of make-shift stairs to the kitchen.

"Morning Harry" Arthur said with a smile, gesturing to Harry for him to sit next to him.

"After breakfast, I could do with getting your thoughts on what I'm going to be working on in the shed" Arthur leaned in a little closer to Harry, "don't tell Molly, but I've been working on a better version of the car you drove a couple of years ago." Arthur was practically beaming from ear to ear. It was clear he could barely hide his excitement about his current project.

"Of course" replied Harry, who was always genuinely interested in Mr Weasley's magical recreations of muggle mechanics.

It really was very interesting. Arthur had told Harry that, the reason why the wizarding world relies on seemingly outdated technology, like wall-torches and can not make use of anything powered by electricity, is because the very essence of magic will short circuit or otherwise malfunction any machine or mechanism.

Which is why wooden torches can be set alight using a spell and enchanted with pretty much whatever magic the user wishes, however, when casting a spell on a muggle light switch, the whole circuit will malfunction and will need to be totally replaced. This occurrence is exasperated when the area has a high concentration of magical presence, such as the village of Hogsmead, where any muggle technology will instantly fail to work at all.

However, as Arthur explained, the way around this, is to manually fashion the objects required by hand, in the same way that blacksmiths did in the past. This of course, cannot be done for everything, however that's where magic comes in to it. Wire can be replaced with magical 'strings', which are then layered with enchantments, in a very specific order, much like writing code for a computer program, one false instruction could have an innumerable amount of unwanted effects and could completely break the objects that the magical strings are connected to. A common occurrence with Arthur's contraptions.

Breakfast was finished and as was always the way, there was too much food for Harry and too little for Ron, who was left at the table by himself while he ate every ounce of food provided.

In the shed, which was lined with shelves harbouring all kinds of instruments and mechanisms from both the muggle and magical worlds.

There was a stone furnace in the far corner, one of Arthur's first creations, and possibly his greatest so far. Pointing your wand at the furnace, the flame could be strengthened or weakened depending on the needs of the user and never went out, the best part however, was that the heat was contained within the furnace itself, so the shed remained at a cool temperature.

Instead of the hand-made replica of a Ford Anglia that Arthur had spent over a decade making, learning as he went, which was subsequently stolen by the twins, Fred and George, flown to Hogwarts by Ron and Harry, lost in the Forbidden Forest and finally confiscated and destroyed by the Ministry of Magic due to the car being an unregistered, illegal muggle-to-magical conversion, was a large wooden table, covered in old blueprints of a car and it's various mechanical aspects, including the gear box and engine.

"It's a Ford Mustang. A 1967 302 Fastback. What a beauty!" Arthur exclaimed, his arms widely gesturing across the whole table.

At this point, the large wooden sliding door of the shed slid open, for just a second, Arthur's face went completely white and a look of both horror and panic spread across his face.

"Oh, it's you Hermione." Arthur breathed, "Merlin's beard, for a second I thought you were Molly."

Hermione smirked, she knew just as well as anyone else how much Molly hated Arthur's projects, especially after finding out about the car debacle. Arthur was swiftly banned from tinkering from that moment onwards.

"Is this another one of your conversions, Mr Weasley?" Hermione questioned.

Hermione was just as interested as Harry in muggle-to-magical conversions. Although, where Harry saw how much fun could be had with the creations and saw it as another skill to learn. Hermione fell instantly in love with the complex theory of the enchantments used. Hermione always loved theory, she thought it more important to learn why something worked the way it did before learning how to actually do it. Harry, he just wanted to wing it and figure it out as he went.

"It is indeed Hermione, it'll be my best yet. A new, faster, more finely crafted car." Arthur replied, "I've sourced a rusted shell of this car, I've had to call in quite a number of favours to get it though. It's in the process of being transported from a muggle scrapyard in California! It'll need a lot of work to restore it and I'm hoping that the age combined with the poor condition of the metal will negate any effects that the muggle technology of the production line will have on the magic that'll be imbued within it."

"Arthur! Arthur, where are you? You'll be late!" Molly's voice could be heard shouting from the house.

"Oh, for!- In my excitement to show this off, I completely forgot what we had planned for today. We better get inside." Arthur said, pulling an old sheet over the blueprints, which were held down to the table using stones from the garden.

Immediately upon entering the house, Molly had ushered them back upstairs to get washed and changed. With the amount of people in the house, this in itself took a while, everyone had to queue up outside the only bathroom, fresh clothes and towels in hand, while one by one the shower was used.

"Can you tell us where we're going yet, dad?" Fred and George, said in unison.

The group, consisting of Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Fred and George had been following Arthur through the nearby wood for coming up to two hours now. Arthur had refused to give any details of their destination but the look on his face clearly indicated that whatever was happening, would be good.

"Not far now boys, we're meeting a couple of friends at the top of this slope and then we'll be almost there." Arthur replied from the front of the pack.

Hermione and Ginny were in front of Fred and George, while Harry had hung back with Ron, who had a slice of buttered toast in each hand, that he had quickly grabbed from the kitchen before they set off.

"I wander where we're going." Harry said to Ron.

"Mate," Ron said between mouthfuls, "I have no idea, but I'm bloody knackered."

They hiked through the wood for another fifteen minutes, before cresting the hill. Arthur was stood next to two people, one of which Harry recognised from Hogwarts as Cedric Diggory, who was in his final year at school.

"Everyone! This is Amos Diggory, a colleague of mine at the Ministry, and his son, Cedric."

Amos was a fairly short man, balding on top with bushy patches of hair on either side of his head. He was wearing a brown, tweed suit and made use of a wooden walking stick.

In contrast, cedric was probably just over six foot tall, short dark hair and was wearing smart-looking blue jeans with a white shirt, the top two buttons undone and sported a slightly lighter blue, casual blazer.

There was no denying it, Cedric was handsome, a fact that neither Hermione or Ginny hadn't noticed.

Cedric was one of the most popular students at Hogwarts, he always moved around school with a large group of friends from all four of the houses, not just his own house, Hufflepuff and got on with almost everyone. All in all, cedric seemed to be a decent person.

After the usual greetings and small talk, they all walked for no more than a few hundred yards before Amos stopped in front of an old boot.

"What's so fascinating about an old boot?" voiced Ron.

"This isn't any old boot, Ronald. This...is a Portkey." replied Amos Diggory.

"Now everyone, place at least one finger on the Portkey and away we go."

The group huddled close together, all kneeling down to touch a small area of the Portkey. Ginny was the last to touch it and the moment she did, Harry, for only a split second, felt like the ground beneath him had simply disappeared and he was falling straight down.

Before his mind could process that thought any further, the feeling left him and he immediately heard the sound of hundreds, if not thousands of voices all shouting and cheering, varying genres of music could be heard coming from different locations around the camp.

Standing up, Harry realised that they had arrived on the outskirts of an enormous camping field, a sea of varying styles and sizes of tents were spread out as far as the eye could see.

There were two predominant colours, a crimson red or a bright green. These were displayed on giant flags, kites and pretty much anything else that could be dyed, painted or made out of those colours.

"We're not..." Ron breathed. His wide eyes taking in the sea of colour.

"Yes Ron, yes we are" beamed Arthur, turning to face the group of kids.

"Welcome, to the Quidditch World Cup, Final!" Shouted Arthur, arms outstretched.

"Come on, let's get to the tents." Amos Diggory said, heading towards the crowds.

The group pushed through the crowd of raucous fans. Hermione occasionally grabbing hold of Harry's hand when they had to squeeze through a particularly tightly packed group of, mostly drunken, revelers.

Finally, they reached a couple of tents, displayed in both red and green patterns and a flag of each colour pushed into the ground at either side of the tent entrance.

Amos handed a number of his tickets to Arthur, before he and Cedric entered into the tent on the left.

Leaving the remaining seven people to have the tent to the right. This in itself confused Harry. Neither tent looked big enough to fit more than four people.

Amos and Cedric, two people, had just claimed the tent to the left. Leaving the remainder of them to cram into the other tent.

"Right then, in we go." Ushered Arthur.

Without hesitation, everyone but Harry, who was still trying to figure the whole situation out, entered the tent, excitedly chatting to each other.

It didn't take long for Harry to give up thinking about it. He thought he'd just wing it, walk in, and see what happened.

Upon doing so, he was definitely not disappointed.

The tent was at least ten times the size it portrayed itself to be on the outside. There were enough compartments for each of them to have their own 'room'. The tent contained a kitchen, with all the usual kitchen appliances installed within and a large dining room containing a big wooden table in the middle.

"Magic..." harry said out loud to himself. "I bloody love magic." He finished and headed off to join the others investigating the tent.