Charlie and Bill both had enough outdoor experience that they quickly erected the two small tents that Arthur had rented while the rest of us city folk stood back and nodded as if we had any idea how to manage. The tent assigned to the guys seemed like it had been borrowed from Mrs. Figg, Dumbledore's friend who collected magical cats: there was a significant old lady vibe and smell of ammonia throughout.

The tents each had about a ten by ten foot plot of designated real space for each of them, but from within the tent the far walls felt kind of soft in a way that led me to believe that each was just fully squashed against each other in the Nevernever. "If anything goes wrong magically, get out of these," I warned everyone. I had been extremely cautious introducing my belt into the tent, since I was already toward the limit of the number of expanded pockets it could support. I was going to try not to use the pockets whenever I was in a tent.

Arcanos had rules about the danger of putting a bag of holding into a portable hole, and while those didn't seem to be as accurate as the game's discussions about basilisks, it was a good word of caution anyway.

Fortunately, Arthur was obsessed with the idea of doing everything the muggle way, and wanted to cook breakfast on the fire outside the tent, which seemed safer than using the kitchen inside. Again, the older Weasley boys were a lot of help, between Bill's experience in Egyptian camps and Charlie working with dragons in the forest, so we quickly had an egg-heavy campsite breakfast going. As it became fully light across the grounds, the noises of a genuine tent city started up, and everyone started to talk about exploring.

Knowing that I probably didn't want to spend all day looking at quidditch souvenirs, Mathilda offered, "I'll chaperone Ron and Ginny? Stay out of trouble." She gave me a kiss and then headed off to see what she could see.

Turned out, she knew me so well.

"Harry! Thank Merlin!" a young woman's voice insisted a half an hour later, spotting me where I loomed above the nearby tents while I was standing around talking to Arthur about the purpose of various muggle camping gadgets. Hermione and Penny had both somehow escaped at some point, leaving me to be the only one to explain things to him. I turned and saw Alexis walking down the avenue between tents, confusion resolving into determination as she saw me. "I need some help with a political problem."

"And you're coming to me?" I asked the dark-haired former prefect. I'd barely seen her so far that summer, except for a few quick visits and the time she'd helped us capture the Death Eaters at the jewelry shop. It was the summer to be busy as a new member of the Ministry's department of international relations. She was dressed in a fairly preppy-looking button-down blouse and khakis; as a half-blood, she had a much better eye for appropriate muggle attire than the purebloods, and had nailed campsite business casual.

"The werewolves will listen to you," she nodded. "C'mon." Fully expecting me to follow, she began striding back off the way she'd come, toward one of the outer boundaries of the tent city.

I shrugged at the remaining Weasleys and gamely followed along. With that many tents, each with their own reasonably-sized plot of space, the temporary village sprawled across a couple dozen acres, so it took a few minutes to walk where we were going. Alexis explained as we went, "There's a French contingent of veela that got placed next to some local werewolves, and they are not getting along. I can handle the veela, but the werewolves respect, well…"

I filled in, "They're more likely to listen to a tall dude than a small lady?" She nodded. The skinny brunette wasn't the shortest girl I knew by any stretch, but she wasn't particularly imposing, even after three years of corralling Gryffindors as one of the prefects. "Remind me what a veela is?"

"Magical race mostly out of Bulgaria," she summed up. "Supernaturally pretty, turn into harpies, literally, when they get pissed off. Careful, they throw fire."

"You're trying to get me in trouble with Mathilda, right?"

"You can deal with Maeve, and you said you held up against a vampire succubus. You'll be fine," she assured me, as we entered what had to be the campground for the Ministry's undesirables.

I looked around and saw that, in addition to the werewolves and veela she'd warned me about, there were some hags set up outside of a tent, a fortified wall of tents that I could see over and watch goblins behind, and a large number of people dressed correctly enough that they were probably muggleborn. "Umbridge set this up, didn't she?" I guessed.

Alexis just rolled her eyes and nodded. "You probably missed her at least. Last I saw she was promenading down the main stretch with Ludo Bagman." We'd been warned that the racist undersecretary to the Minister might be more involved in international relations this year, with the World Cup and the surprise at the school. "Everyone keeps trying to put Barty Crouch Sr. in charge. He at least speaks a ton of languages. But with his son still being on the loose…" Crouch Jr. was the Death Eater who'd successfully abducted Mathilda and me to resurrect Voldemort.

"Weird that having a crazy son keeps him from promotions when there are actual Death Eaters doing okay for themselves," I noted.

"Well… also he's kind of a dick, and nobody likes him much better than Umbridge," she admitted, quietly. "We're here."

We'd come upon a block of tents where a pair of relatively fancy pavilions with shiny, colorful silk were erected right next to a collection of weatherbeaten green and brown canvas tents that had high ceilings but seemed to just be mundane tents, without any internal space expansion.

In front of the nicer tents was a short, somewhat portly dark-haired wizard with a goatee trying to hold back over a dozen beautiful blond women of a range of ages. Even the ones that seemed to be elderly had that refined look of some of the better-maintained actresses, still thin and poised, with wrinkles showing character rather than deeply lined on their faces.

Conversely, the other tents had a similar number of men and women that had the look that I'd come to associate with Remus: suspicious facial scars, hunched posture, and animalistic twitches as they kept their anger in check. We were only a few days out from the full moon, and if it was any closer this probably would have already ended in violence.

"Finally! You just missed what zis mongrel said about my muzzer!" a veela girl that looked to be about our age shouted at us in heavily-accented English, before the rest of the crowd started adding in their input in rapid-fire French that I couldn't hope to follow. Alexis had been right: if I hadn't had all the practice dealing with Maeve the sidhe mean girl and Lara the White Court succubus, I would have been having a lot of trouble focusing. Put a jaunty bathrobe on the man trying to keep the peace, and it could have been a scene from a fight at the Playboy mansion.

Before the wolves could own up to exactly what they'd said, and it looked like they were about to, I stepped over to them and asked, "Can you explain this from your perspective?" while Alexis started answering the veela in French.

"Who the hell are you?" one of the men in the group half-snarled, though he did seem a little cowed by my height and staff (now freed of its boffer camouflage).

"Harry Dresden," I offered. "Alexis thought you'd like someone to hear your side."

"I know that name!" one of the werewolves said. "You supported Umbridge's bill last year!"

"And did it pass?" I asked, warily watching as they tried to casually spread out to circle me. "Do any of you know Remus Lupin?"

A couple of them nodded, and one said, "Yeah, he's an okay bloke. What about him?"

"He's my friend and I substitute teach for him at Hogwarts when he has his monthlies," I explained, keeping it down as much as I could with possible listening ears around the camp, as this drama was free entertainment for the other campers. "I only supported the bill so she'd let me be a witness and I could screw it up." There were a few sniffs and head-tilts, as if they were using their enhanced senses to decide if I was lying. Apparently I passed. "So what's up with you and the veela?" I asked, once they no longer seemed likely to go for my hamstrings. (Or try to rip my skin off with a fur gnarl, if they had enough actions.)

"Them fancy bints have been going on about how we're going to give them our 'disease,'" the apparent leader said, a sandy-haired man with a week's worth of stubble.

"And they're using their seduction magic on my Patrick!" one of the women offered, clinging to the man in question.

"It's true!" he argued. "I have an unnatural lust!"

I didn't press the point. They did have a hell of an aura, but it just caught your attention, as far as I could tell. I wasn't having to fight off nearly the feelings of lust that I'd gotten when Maeve was trying to mess with me, or Lara Raith put out just by breathing. Maybe they could amp it up if they wanted to? "If they agreed to try to rein that in, and you didn't have to look at them, could you try to ignore them?" I asked. I was more asking the girlfriends of the group than the guys.

"If they aren't awful to us, I guess so," Patrick's girlfriend allowed.

Seeing that Alexis had calmed her group down, I asked the veela, "Are you all informed on how the werewolf curse gets spread?"

"It takes more zan a scratch, I believe," the teen girl acknowledged.

I nodded. "You have to allow the curse to take hold. Usually because you'll die if it doesn't. And these folks don't even have claws or fangs right now. You're not going to catch it being near them, or even if they accidentally bump into you and scratch you."

"Zey won't stop staring at us, zough," the girl argued.

"Right. If you'll give me a minute?" I dragged a line in the ground between their campsites with the end of my staff, making a couple of runes to the side to anchor my focus as I summoned up my magic and intent. I drew it a couple of feet into the alley so it would fully separate their sightlines, and incanted, "Ligneus Murus!"

I wasn't fast with conjuration or transfiguration, but I could do a lot of it if you gave me a minute to prepare. As I released the spell, roots under the ground shot into the air to form rough wooden supports for the conjured boards that sat between them, leaving a seven-foot-high wall that looked like it was made of local weathered wood hastily slotted together. It wasn't pretty, but it was sturdy, and hopefully wouldn't be any worse than all the other Statute of Secrecy violations going on around the camp.

The large conjuration took a bit out of me, but I was able to lean on my staff and probably made it look pretty nonchalant. "If you can rein in your auras and you both stay on your sides of the wall, will that make everyone happy?" I asked. I got grudging nods all around, and said, "It was great to meet all of you," before turning to leave.

Alexis had a brief conversation in French and then in English before she stepped to walk away with me. "Thanks for being my big stick, Harry," she grinned.

"Good fences make good neighbors," I shrugged.

I heard a quick conversation behind me, and then the veela our age jogged to catch up to us, a much-younger girl who was equally blond with her. Both of them wore pretty sun dresses that were more wizarding style than muggle, but would probably pass as French coture to Mr. Roberts. "Zank you for 'elping," the older veela told us both. "My fazzer was doing all 'e could to keep my aunts from incinerating zose lustful dogs."

I explained, "I think their girlfriends were making it worse, because they were jealous of the attention you were getting."

She nodded, "Zat, I am used to. 'ow is it zat you are not affected?"

Alexis chortled, "Harry has a lot of experience keeping it in his pants."

"You're not the only woman I've met with a supernatural allure," I elaborated, then added, "And none of them compare to my girlfriend." Alexis nodded, so that was likely to earn me some points when this conversation got recounted back to Mathilda.

The girl asked, "'ow long will ze wall last?"

"At least until tomorrow," I answered. I'd put a fair amount of power into it. "You might want to counterspell it if it's still up when you head home."

"Très puissant," she mused. "I could 'ave made it faster, but I don't zink I could 'ave maintained it for zat long. 'arry Dresden, you said? I am Fleur Delacour and zis is my sister Gabrielle." The little veela rattled off a string of French. "She is very impressed by your staff."

"Don't," I pointed at Alexis, who had clearly opened her mouth to make another joke at my expense. "Pleased to meet you both. If you don't mind, I should probably go figure out what everyone else is up to," I excused myself. The fewer rumors about me wandering the camp with a French supermodel, the better.

And I still needed to find the Malfoy tent and figure out how I was going to interrogate some Death Eaters under the guise of a wizarding tailgate party.