Five in the morning was way too early to hike through the British suburbs looking for an old boot. "Why didn't they just set these up at the Ministry, and have people floo there?" I asked, as I narrowly avoided stepping in some kind of burrowing animal's hole in the near-dawn.
"Sense of adventure?" Mathilda asked.
"With a hundred thousand travelers, it might have overloaded the floo connections," Arthur Weasley added. Mathilda and I were hiking along with his entire family, except Molly Weasley, as well as Hermione Granger and Penny. If the World Cup wasn't being held in some far off cow pasture in rural England, my roommates, I, and Percy's older brothers would have just apparated there. But with the cracks in the Veil created by the fae over the last couple of years, that kind of distant apparition was still for desperate escapes from Death Eater rituals. Portkey travel was way safer.
Well, I probably could have found a rath nearby, but I wasn't exactly advertising that method of travel, and there was too high of a risk of it stretching the Veil enough for some Nevernever monster to get through anyway. The Quidditch World Cup probably didn't need to start with a manticore attack or something.
"But they could have just brought you the portkey? At your house?" I tried. "Who else even lives out this way? Luna?"
"And us!" a young man's voice I recognized called. The speaker was one of two male silhouettes waiting at the top of the hill. "Quite a crowd!"
"Though I daresay it would have been easier to floo to Arthur's house after the hike we've had," the other silhouette said, resolving into a middle-aged man with a scruffy brown beard and short hair. "Is that Miss Grimblehawk I see?"
"Mr. Diggory!" my girlfriend said. "I didn't know you lived out here!" She said in an aside to me, "He works with my uncle in the creatures department."
"If you call as far as we live 'around here,'" the familiar voice said, and with the last name I recognized Cedric Diggory, one of the Hufflepuffs from Fred and George Weasley's year, who I'd taught once or twice when I subbed for Remus. "We left at two to get here." I was having trouble wrapping my head around why the two of them would possibly have decided to hike for three hours in the dark. Maybe father-son bonding?
"Young Cedric?" Arthur observed. "You're taller than your old man!" The guy had, in fact, shot up another inch or two since I'd had him in class, though he was nowhere near my height.
"He's getting so big he'll have an even harder time beating Ginny to the snitch," Fred observed. They were friendly with the boy, but he was the rival seeker on his house's team.
"Long arms like that, he should play keeper," George added. It was the first either had spoken up since we'd left the house. They were both being petulant about how their mother had confiscated all of the joke items they'd planned to use or try to sell at the match.
"He'll get you this year, I'm sure of it!" the elder Diggory observed. "With you down a keeper yourselves." Cedric's father was a little too intense about that statement. He was probably one of those overly-involved little league parents. More evidence toward ill-advised night rambling as filial bonding.
"Ollie is gone but not forgotten," Fred nodded.
"But Ron is ready to step into the breach," George pulled the smiling Ron into a one-armed hug. The youngest male Weasley was also putting on height like a rocketship, and had been mentored for the position by Oliver for the last few years.
"They couldn't scrape up any cousins for chasers," I joked, "so the boys will have to marry Angelina, Alicia, and Katie to make it an all-Weasley quidditch team."
Fred and George smiled slightly at the idea, since they were dating the two older chasers anyway, but Ron shook his head in negation and glanced at Hermione. Mathilda elbowed me in triumph, since she'd seen it too. She gave the kid an out before he'd put his foot in his mouth with denials and said, "We're modern witches. Ginny can marry Katie." The Weasley daughter just smirked at the assignment.
"None of you are getting married until you're of age," Arthur insisted, with a smile. "And Molly expects her older sons to beat their younger siblings to the altar." He gave a significant look to Bill and Charlie, who, as far as I knew, were basically married to their jobs and hadn't had any serious relationships anyone had mentioned. Percy just smiled and maybe tightened the hand he was holding Penny's in, quietly pleased to have one up on his older brothers.
"Charlie's going to marry a dragon, probably," Ginny piped up, turning her smirk on her second-oldest brother. The stockiest Weasley boy simply shrugged, idly scratching at a burn on his hand that hadn't fully healed.
"I date," Bill, the oldest Weasley boy, said, somewhat lamely. "I just don't bring it up because Mum will make a big deal about it even if it's not serious." He did have the artfully-arranged long hair and bad-boy dragon-tooth earring of a wizard that was looking to attract a partner.
"Cedric here is dating one of the prettiest girls in school," Mr. Diggory clasped his son's shoulder, proudly.
"It's not official yet," Cedric demurred, clearly wanting no part in his father's one-upsmanship.
"Well don't go easy on her, once it is!" his father didn't take the hint. "A rival seeker, if you can believe it!"
"But I thought we just matched Ginny up with Katie?" I joked, then took pity before the twins could lay in and said, "Cho Chang, right?" She was a Ravenclaw I'd had in class a few times, the way my substitute schedule had worked out. "She seems smart. Nice girl." Cedric smiled, nodding, and I added, "So I guess there is going to be quidditch at school this year? I was hearing hints that there might be something else instead."
There were gasps of shock from the younger Weasleys and Cedric at the idea there might not be quidditch. The two fathers shared a look, clearly aware of what the surprise was that was such a big secret, before Arthur said, "I think Minerva convinced Albus that both could be accommodated. Anyway, our time is just about here."
"There are too many of us to all touch the boot at once," Hermione observed, having been quietly taking in the exchange. "Can a portkey be enlarged safely?"
"As long as it's not enlarged too much," Penny allowed, then cast, "Engorgio!" The trashy old boot grew until it would be a little big on Hagrid, Hogwarts' half-giant staff member.
"Everyone, get a finger on it," Arthur ordered as fourteen people, most of them in large hiking packs, crowded around to touch the portkey. I was quite happy that I could fit everything I needed for the trip in my magically expanded bag and pouches, rather than being similarly weighed down, though I had to hold my staff awkwardly to avoid hitting anyone with it.
Then we just sort of stood there for what felt like a minute and a half as if we were playing a demented game of Twister before the magic finally kicked in.
We were flung, spinning through space, the powerful transportation magic yanking at our magical cores like an airhook to the stomach. Despite having taken international portkeys the year before to get to Egypt, the twins and Ron managed to fall when the transportation finally ended, and Hermione hit the ground with them, possibly completely unprepared. Everyone else had managed to catch ourselves and not join the embarrassing sprawl.
"Seven past five from Stoatshead Hill," a man's voice observed, from outside of the designated landing area. He was a tired-looking wizard visible in the morning light, where we'd traveled far enough east to catch the beginnings of the dawn. In addition to his gold watch, he was wearing a tweed suit with hip waders.
"Morning, Basil," Arthur observed to the man's partner, who was wearing a mismatched poncho and kilt ensemble. I blanked on the next few exchanges of pleasantries between the Ministry employees, I was biting my tongue so hard trying not to say anything mean about their clothes.
As we walked toward where we were meant to get our campsites assigned, I somehow managed to let Mathilda wander ahead and fell back, pulling Hermione and Penny with me. They looked as shell shocked as I did by the outfits. "Is it possible," I whispered to the two muggleborn girls, "that the Ministry only mostly hires purebloods because it's a charity outreach for people too inbred to be competent to dress themselves?"
Hermione's eyes widened at my insult, but her lips quivered and finally pulled back into a smirk. Penny still had a thousand-yard stare. She worked with some of these people now. She just said, "I really think you might be onto something."
The entire pureblooded Weasley clan and my own very-purebred girlfriend glanced back to see what we were talking about and we just gave them our most innocent smiles. Then I realized that they weren't looking back because they'd overheard, but because they needed help paying the campsite owner, who seemed to be an actual muggle who owned the land. He was leaning out of the door of the one small, permanent cottage in the area. Arthur was helplessly gesturing at his wallet of paper money.
Seriously, this man was the head of one of the departments that managed muggle affairs.
Penny gave a long-suffering sigh and moved forward to help her potential father-in-law do something as easy as pay for a campsite with paper money. Mr. Roberts, the camp owner, clearly fixated on me as the most normal-looking of the rest of the bunch. "Are they… foreign?" he asked me, quietly.
We'd really, really done our best and the Weasleys were mostly appropriately dressed, but still tended to like to raid thrift-stores for clothes that were a decade out of date and in clashing colors. Several of them were wearing hypercolor shirts. Ron was wearing parachute pants that he'd insisted were cool. We'd done our best. "Foreign?" I asked.
"They aren't the first having trouble with the money," the old man explained. "One man tried to pay me with gold coins. Big as hubcaps!" He started to work things out as he talked it out, "And I've never seen a rally this big out here. Hundreds of pre-bookings! Lots of foreigners. Weirdos. I saw a man in a kilt and a poncho! And they all seem to know each other…"
I saw a Ministry wizard with his wand out and wearing some kind of high-waisted golfing pants step around a corner of the cottage, clearly ready to cast something on the muggle. Probably to obliviate him. Before he could, I said, "You ever heard of live-action roleplaying games?"
"Maybe?" Mr. Roberts allowed, and the wizard gave me a look but slipped back around the corner, willing to give me a moment. "I think my grandson might have mentioned something about that."
I gestured with my staff, which I'd prepared for precisely this kind of explanation. It was covered in thin pipe insulation and duct tape so it looked like a gray pool noodle . "This is the annual international gathering. I play a mighty knight. We're fighting for Camelot! Some of the other people are going to play Mordred's army. They usually go all out for this kind of thing. There might even be special effects for the 'spells.' But, yeah, it's a big draw for a bunch of hippies, you know."
"Huh. Alright," the man nodded. "Takes all types, I guess. Well, enjoy your pretend sword fighting."
Arthur finally managed to pay him for the campsite and we walked off. The Ministry wizard caught up to us and said, "Thanks! I need to find out more about that thing you said. I've basically been having to obliviate him ten times a day."
"Is that safe? Will it give him brain damage?" Hermione asked.
The obliviator shrugged as his only answer to the question and wandered off.
We crested a hill and saw the encampment spread out before us. Thousands upon thousands of tents sprawled into the distance in semi-orderly blocks, with temporary thoroughfares between them, all surrounding an immense golden stadium. I'd felt several aversion wards as we walked, or Mr. Roberts would have really been surprised. "Right! Let's set up the tents!" Arthur suggested, pointing out the plot he'd been directed to.
Wizard tents usually had expanded space inside almost as aggressive as that of the Black Manor dueling room. I did the math, and asked my roommates, "So… did your department approve ten-thousand space-expansion charms in close proximity when the Veil is already damaged?"
What could go wrong?