"Cissy! In or out?"

Her eyes narrowed, glaring at the spectators erupting into violence. "Bugger all. I'm in, of course. Meda?"

Andromeda's face twisted in confusion, which quickly turned to resignation. She hesitated, but after a moment, sighed. "I'm a bit out of practice, but I expect I can still hold a defensive line." Not terribly confident, there — Meda had never been a great fighter, anyway — but they could put her on whichever side of their defensive circle was drawing the least fire, it would be fine. "Nymphadora, this might be a good time for you to make your way over to the Irish delegation."

'David' had the nerve to look surprised to be addressed thusly by his mother, as well as confused. Sirius snorted. He may have his badge, but he was still a rookie, senses not yet honed to pick up on the mood of the crowd and the state of an event quickly devolving into a situation. "Who is this Nymphadora of whom you speak?"

"Cut the dragonshite, Dora," Meda said, entirely unamused. "And for fuck's sake, lose the accent! The Irish delegation has already been attacked once today. Get over there and be diplomatic!" she demanded, pointing toward Michael and his people. "Before people start throwing fireballs at them again, if you please!"

That was about the point the rest of the group finally started to take note of the fighting making its way toward them. Flitwick let loose with a positively filthy slew of goblin curses. "I'll go too, if you have this under control?"

Sirius caught Cissy's eye. She nodded. In meant she was willing to work with him here, and her willingness to dismiss Flitwick meant she was confident the two of them could cover the rest of the group, if necessary. More so than Sirius, honestly, since he had no idea how out of practice she might be, but he wasn't going to second-guess her. He nodded at the duelist. "Go."

Flitwick was bounding away over the heads of the increasingly anxious crowd with what had to be some sort of featherweight adaptation almost before the word left Sirius's lips.

"Fuck!" Meda's kid shook off his disguise as he realised his mother wasn't playing. For half a second, Sirius thought the metamorph might ask how Meda had recognised them, but after the briefest pause she wilted under a very serious glare, pulling her badge out of a pocket and shrugging off the plain, all-concealing robes that would definitely only get in the way to stick it to the blouse of what was clearly a fetish outfit. (Not that Sirius was judging, or anything. It was a very becoming fetish outfit.) "Yes, Mum..."

"Weasley, you may want to go help your siblings," Sirius suggested. Gin and the couple of Gryffindors who had joined her to form a tiny perimeter around the twin who was still (apparently) doing his job, keeping his eyes on the screens, were getting completely swamped down there, and if they could spare Flitwick and Dora they could spare him. He'd be of more use with the kids.

Cissy, meanwhile, was ordering everyone else to their feet, vanishing chairs as Schmidt melded the tiered stands into more level footing. (Good on her, one more he could count on to at least have some common sense...) "Draco, what the fuck do you think you're doing?"

Draco's eyes went very large as he heard his mother swear at him for what might be the first time in his life. (Cissy could be as savage a little hell-cat as any other Black, but she very rarely lost her composure enough to use such coarse language as fuck.) He had his wand in his hand, and looked bloody terrified, but he clearly had every intention of trying to help protect the women and little Maëlie, which was just fucking adorable.

"Get in the middle and keep your head down!" Cissy snapped, barely looking at him as she tanked the first bludgeoner to fly in their direction, redirecting it at what had to be a conjured grounding-rod — impressive, since they were about fifty metres off the ground. Schmidt's work? He hadn't noticed it appear.

The boy knelt, sandwiched between Emma and Tienne. Sirius sniggered. Lucy would be appalled, seeing his son cowering beside a muggle — he'd have to try to find some way to bring it up, next time he ran into the fop...

But this was hardly the time to consider ways to shock and horrify Lucius Malfoy.

"Same goes for you, Doriane," he added. "Anyone who's not a trained battlemage, get down — and stop fucking panicking Polly, we've got this!" he added, pushing back against the veela's influence.

"But, Gabrielle!"

"And Isabèu and Laïa!" Chloé added.

Right. Fuck.

"If you flame to them, can you get them out?" Schmidt asked.

"Gabbie, yes!"

"But she will not leave her cousins and her friends, Appoline, you know that," Lise said soothingly. Sirius would bet anything she was projecting calm at her wife and their cousin as heavily as she could. He would help, but he was a little too keyed up at the moment. "The girls are with their professors, they will be safe."

"But still, I should go to her! She will be so scared!"

Probably not as scared as you are... Sirius thought. He kept his mouth shut, though, focusing on casting a shield to disperse a handful of giant, conjured wasps. Morrigan knew he wasn't about to tell her not to go, if she wanted to hunker down with the Beauxbatonnais instead. One less panicking veela was one less distraction to worry about.

Cissy, it seemed, agreed. "If you want to go to them, go! You'll be safer over there, anyway."

"If you don't go, I'm going to have to sedate you," Meda added, batting away something that felt vaguely transfiguring, followed by a string of light cutting curses and piercing hexes, probably aimed at Cissy. "My daughter is in danger too, and your panicking is not. helping. me. focus!" she snapped, punctuating each word with another spell reflected into the grounding rod. (Good, "out of practice" or not, she'd be fine...)

Sirius caught a tongue of dark magic flickering into existence behind him, shooting off toward a knot of wizards several rows away. "Defence only, Cissy! Escalating is only going to draw more fire!"

"You're no fun, Siri!"

He let out a derisive bark of laughter. "You're a terrible liar, Cissy!"

Her response was lost in the flare of wild, hot magic that washed over him as the veela fire-walked to the opposite side of the stands — Cissy was right, they would be safer there. The knots of professors and students from the foreign schools (or at least the students who hadn't started this shite-show, attempting to take out the Weasley boy), were trapped, with fighting between them and every viable exit from the stands, but they weren't actually under attack, whereas their group was, unfortunately (or possibly very fortunately, from a certain point of view), situated between the vast majority of the chaos and the muggle delegations. And a bunch of Ministry pricks who probably didn't know their wands from their dicks, but they weren't really important — it wasn't like they were going to turn around and attack the muggles in broad bloody daylight. Not if they wanted to continue to have any political careers to speak of.

("Mama!" Maëlie cried, bursting into terrified tears, despite Lise and Doriane's attempts to calm her.)

"How are you two both still eight years old?"

"Oh, shut up, Meda!"

"We're not hexing each other! That's maturity!"

"Fireball, incoming!" Schmidt cut over them, conjuring a block of ice in mid-air as a physical shield. It exploded into steam when the curse made contact. Sirius condensed it before it could sear any of them, redirecting the near-boiling spray back in the direction the fireball had come from.

"Defence only, Siri," Cissy sang out in that teasing, mocking, aren't you having fun? I'm having fun... tone that all of them had picked up from Bella, over the shrieks of the scalded mages who hadn't managed to block it.

"Children! Focus!"

"Yeah, okay, Dru," Sirius threw over his shoulder.

"I resent that comparison, Sirius!"

"Much as I hate to agree with him, that did actually sound a bit like Mother..."