CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I do not own Harry Potter, sadly.
All that I did to try to undo it, all of my pain and all your excuses, I was a kid but I wasn't clueless
-o0o0o0o-
The match was set to begin. Harry's friends and family had piled into their private and luxurious box. Oliver Wood, Katie Bell, Angelina Johnson, Adrian Pucey, Lucian Bole, Graham Montague, Miles Bletchley, Alicia Spinnett, Fred and George, Draco, Neville, Daphne, Hermione, Theo, and Blaise were all excited and itching with anticipation as the match was set to begin any moment.
The roaring of the crowd was deafening. Ted, Andromeda, Narcissa, Sirius, Remus, Dora, and Lucius were all grinning at the childlike excitement of the kids.
Ludo Bagman's voice began echoing throughout the stadium. "Ladies and Gentleman!" He boomed jovially. "Welcome to the final of the four hundred and twenty second Quidditch World Cup!" Hundreds and thousands of witches and wizards began cheering, even those in Harry's own box.
The screams were deafening, those supporting the Irish and those supporting the Bulgarians were all cheering, waving thousands of flags in the chaotic cheering.
"And without further ado..allow me to introduce the Bulgarian mascots!"
"Oh shit!" Sirius muttered, watching dozens of the most beautiful women Harry had ever seen elegantly glide to the field. They were beautiful, ethereally beautiful, almost as if they weren't women at all.
"Veela!" Blaise said, averting his gaze so he wouldn't turn into a slobbering imbecile.
The men turned their gazes, but the boys began to go foggy headed as the women began to dance.
It was elegant, and fluid. The movements almost seemed to hypnotise the boys. But Harry and Neville regained a firm grasp on their occlumency shields, as they avoided the pull and the allure of the Veela in favour of stopping their friends from jumping off the ledge to join the women.
Oliver was simply salivating as he had one leg over the podium, ready to jump, only to be pulled away by Alicia Spinnett.
Miles Bletchley had his eyes slammed shut and hands over his ears, pressing so hard his hands had gone stark white against his normally tan skin.
And then the music stopped. Groans and yells filled the stadium as everyone in the box let out a sigh of relief. The people obviously did not want the Veela to go, but Harry was just glad he was able to keep his bearings about him and did not get caught in an embarrassing position, like some of his other friends did.
Then, it was time for Ireland's mascots to make an appearance.
For a moment, what seemed to be a green and gold clad comet was zooming towards them at an inhumane speed. It did one entire lap around the stadium, then split into two, each hurtling toward the goal posts. Then, across the field, connecting the two, a rainbow arched throughout the centre. The crowd was in awe, watching the beautiful fireworks display being done by the Irish.
The rainbow began to fade, and balls of light floated up and united together, each glittering and shining like stars, and it merged to show a beautiful shamrock. It soared above the stands, and it seemed to be raining gold.
Leprechaun gold, everyone was reaching out to grab heaps of what seemed like galleons, but Harry laughed.
"Why are you laughing?" Katie asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Because it's Leprechaun gold. It will disappear in a few hours." Harry answered, his eyes sparkling with amusement as he watched everyone try to reach out and catch the gold that just seemed to be free falling.
"And now!" Ludo announced. "Ladies and Gentleman, may I introduce the Bulgarian National Team!" The Bulgarian fans went wild. "Dimitrov! Ivanova! Zograf! Levski! Vulachanov! Volkov! Aaaaand – KRUM!"
Everyone began cheering for the youngest and most talented seeker to make a national team. Krum had not even graduated from Durmstrang yet, and he was a household name as one of the best seekers and Quidditch players internationally.
Harry was in awe of him. He himself was a major fan of Krum, and had followed him throughout his career thus far and the boy was promising indeed.
"And now! Please greet the Irish national team! Introducing– Connolly! Ryan! Troy! Muller! Moran! Quigley! Aaaaand – LYNCH!"
The players were blurs. They were moving incredibly fast, manoeuvring expertly, weaving between the other players. Harry noticed Ireland's chasers had better teamwork than Bulgaria's, but he tried hard to keep up with the game.
It all sped by so fast, he was watching the chasers and the next moment, Viktor Krum dove down in one of the steepest dives Harry had ever seen. The crowd was going wild, everyone was on their feet trying to spot the snitch as Lynch followed after Krum.
Krum moved with a speed and agility Harry had scarcely seen in many players, and he was in awe as at the very last moment, he pulled up.
Everyone gasped as he pulled off the incredibly difficult and risky Wronski Feint, and Harry grimaced as Lynch collided face first with the ground.
The medics immediately rushed to him. Ludo Bagman's commentary began to drown out as Harry's thoughts focused on the bustling and screaming crowd.
He smiled. He couldn't help himself, really. Despite growing up in the magical world, he had never seen such a diverse and large collection of magic users in his entire life. Everyone, people from different countries, background, people who spoke different languages, all together to watch a universally loved sport.
This is what community is, this is what the magical community should always be.
But a sick feeling settled in the pit of his stomach as his eyes narrowed in on a specific area in the audience. He could have sworn that he saw…no, his eyes were playing tricks on him.
He tried to focus his mind back to the game, tried to cheer as Ireland won even though Krum caught the snitch, but he could not get rid of the sinking feeling in his gut.
Something was very, very wrong.
-o0o0o0o-
Sirius was the one who woke him that night. Harry could immediately hear the screams and smell the burning flesh.
"What is it?" He asked as he immediately holstered his wand, Draco and Neville falling into step behind him on either side as Sirius rushed about, trying to get everyone to safety.
"Death eaters." Sirius answered grimly. "All of you, grab on to this portkey, we will meet you shortly after we help the aurors get this under control."
Immediately everyone began to protest. Harry's inner circle and their friends began to fight and argue with Sirius, but Sirius had already activated the portkey and now only Harry's inner circle was left.
"Daphne, Hermione," Sirius said. "I want you both to take this, it will take you to Potter Manor, just say sanctuary." He urged them, the desperation and fear in his eyes as the girls began to protest.
"No!" Daphne snapped. "I'm staying. I'm helping."
"There's no way you're going to get me to leave, Sirius." Hermione said back, defiance in her gaze and her jaw set in a stubborn clench.
"Your safety is my top priority." Sirius responded, and Harry could tell he was itching to get the children out of there so he could jump into the fray. "I am responsible for you, all of you." He snapped, and with an only slightly apologetic look, forcefully put the portkey in their hands and activated it.
The last thing he saw were the very angry glares of two fourteen year old girls. He winced.
He looked at the rest of them. "I sent them away because I don't want them to have to see what we are about to see. You have no qualms with what we're about to do, and they may hate me for it, but I will not have their hands tainted with blood. We have discussed this eventuality."
And indeed they have. Harry remembered, the day before they were set to leave and before the girls and everyone else arrived, Sirius, Remus, Frank, and Lucius sat the boys down.
"The quidditch world cup is going to be a very public and poorly secured place for the amount of people that will be there," Lucius began, his face deadly serious.
The boys knew this was not a time where they could freely laugh with the older men. They've seen their battle hardened gazes before. This was going to be war talk.
"It will be a perfect opportunity for Voldemort's followers to make a statement. We must prepare for that eventuality. You will have emergency portkeys on your person at all times. Should you need to, you will go to Potter Manor. Everyone not in this room with us will be taken home." Sirius said, his gaze reluctant. He did not like the plan at all, but he knew it was the only one the boys would allow.
"Should you choose to fight in this eventuality, you may do so. We would prefer it if you go home, but we know that's unlikely. However," he stressed the word incredibly. "If you feel you're in danger, you are out of your depth, or cannot land the killing blow, you will go home, is that understood?" He asked firmly, his voice steely and eyes unreadable.
"Yessir." The boys echoed, their faces all carefully blank and occlumency shields in place.
"Please," Frank murmured. "Just go home, and be safe. If not, we will watch your backs the whole time my boys."
Harry was pulled from his reverie as he watched his friends already themselves and grab their wands. He did the same, and they stormed from the tent, quickly undoing it and shrinking it down to fit in Sirius' pocket.
It was absolute mayhem. Pandemonium. People in bone white masks and black cloaks torturing people and killing people for their own amusement. Trees, tents, stands, and people were burning as the screams filled the air.
They each dove out into the fray, Harry going towards the screaming of what sounded to be a teenage girl.
A death eater was standing over her writhing body, agony painted along every inch of her face. Her white-blond hair dishevelled, her face red and her voice hoarse and raw from screaming so much.
Harry immediately fired a high powered cutting curse at the black figures jugular. The wizard must have felt the magic, for he whirled around and dodge the curse last minute. Thus, began the duel.
Silently they exchanged spells, becoming deadlier and deadlier. If the girl was not in so much pain, she may have marvelled at the beauty and lethality of which her saviour moved.
He was fast as lightning, a look of pure, murderous rage on his face, and his eyes appeared to be glowing eerily with power. She shivered as she watched the younger boy get the better of the man who was torturing her, the man that was about to do unspeakable things to her.
He dodged every attack with a practised grace, and it seemed he grew tired of the cat and mouse game he had been playing.
Harry decided it was time to switch gears and tire the man until he could deal the killing blow. And so Harry's onslaught of spells only became faster and deadlier, the man had no time to dodge and was forced to shield.
Perfect, Harry snarled in his head. He's beginning to tire.
The man was panting, his shield buckling underneath Harry's ferocious barrage of spells. And finally, the shield broke.
Harry killed the man with a gouging curse straight to the neck, leaving a clear through and through hole in the man's carotid artery. He watched the death eater choke on his own blood, and die in front of his very eyes.
Harry strode over to the man and unmasked him. He paled and grimaced in recognition.
It was Theo's father. His heart stuttered for a moment. He had left his friend and orphan. Theo. Theo. Theo, I'm so fucking sorry, I'm so sorr-
He shook himself from his stupor and walked over to the trembling girl, who flinched in fear from him.
"I'm so sorry," he whispered. "Are you okay? I promise I won't hurt you, let me take you to your family."
The girl began speaking in rapid french, her words all blurring together so fast Harry could not understand her.
"I'm so sorry, can you please speak slower?" Harry asked in perfect french, thanking every god known to man that Arcturus tutored him in French and Latin since he could speak.
"The man just came from nowhere, I don't know where maman and papa are, I lost them!" The girl cried. She hugged Harry, thanking him over and over again for saving her as she sobbed. Harry tensed, but cradled her gently, knowing the after effects from the cruciatus would be excruciating still.
"Miss, my name is Harry Potter, I will take you to my home and contact your parents. What is your name?"
The girl looked up at him with ice blue eyes brimmed with tears. "Fleur Delacour."
-o0o0o0o-
Theo and Blaise were together as they came across three masked people torturing the muggles that worked there to let everyone in. Blaise and Theo looked at one another, and nodded tersely.
They had no time to be honourable in this fight. Theo fired a blood boiler at one of them as their back was turned, and the wizard was felled quickly.
The other two immediately turned around, and though they were surprised such small children were using such lethal spells, they held no mercy as killing curses were used quite liberally.
Theo and Blaise soon began to overwhelm them with their speed, however, because as younger and fit wizards, they were faster, their reflexes more sharp, and with a much greater stamina than the aged wizards they were fighting.
But it seemed what they lacked in speed, they made up for in experience as one of them clipped Blaise's shoulder with a cutting curse.
Blaise cried out, the blood gushing from his shoulder. Theo shouted a cry of rage and fought with a newfound vigour and hatred, almost as if he was imagining his fathers face on these men.
The man who hit Blaise now had shattered legs, and the other's wand arm was nothing but lame meat.
Both death eaters immediately activated their portkeys and left, but not before Blaise fired a cutting hex at the man that got him.
Theo immediately ran to Blaise.
"Are you okay?" He asked, shouting over the sounds of mayhem.
"I'm alright! I'm-I'm.." He began slurring his words as his eye started to roll into the back of his head from blood loss.
"Shit. Shit shit shit!" Theo cursed, grabbing his friend by the shoulders, and with one, last, sad look towards the muggles who had been horribly beaten, he whisked his friend away to Potter Manor.
-o0o0o0o-
Neville and Draco were duelling five death eaters standing back to back with one another. The spells exchanged between the seven people were nothing short of majestic.
Spells of different hues whisked by, some landing, some not.
Draco batted away the spells most of them were sending as though it was nothing but an irritant.
He narrowed his eyes as he spotted someone casting a killing curse towards Neville, who was too busy to notice. Draco conjured a thick stone slab before banishing the pieces of the debris back to the death eater that cast it, effectively knocking the bugger flat out.
"Draco!" Neville called warningly, and Draco barely ducked in time to avoid an organ liquefier.
"You want to play dirty, huh?" Draco taunted, his platinum hair already dirty and now looking unkempt, but his eyes had them unnerved. The eyes of the Blacks. The piercing grey that now held a pinch of madness in them as his onslaught of spells only began to get fiercer.
And for a moment, they remembered that though his surname was Malfoy, Draco was Narcissa Black's son through and through.
On the other end, Neville was just as worrisome of an opponent for a different reason. Frank and Alice Longbottom, the most fearsome of the aurors in the first war outside of Mad Eye Moody, and it seems they taught their son well.
Neville was militaristic in his fighting, where as Draco was fluid, Neville was grounded. He moved with speed and accuracy that should be impossible for one their age.
But the boys were being overpowered. The men thought they had the teenagers, until Neville called out to a boy in the distance.
"Nice of you to join us!"
Harry Potter jumped into the fray, twirling his wand with a sickeningly twisted smirk on his face as he began casting spells with even more speed and accuracy than they could comprehend.
"Wouldn't miss it for the world!" He called as he felled a death eater about to attack Draco from behind.
-o0o0o0o-
The Weasley twins were putting out fires left and right and weaving through stray and flying spells with an agility they didn't even know they possessed.
George bumped into a standing figure, who was chanting in some language they couldn't bother to identify.
"What the bloody hell are you doing standing around?!" Fred demanded, pulling up George.
The man turned around and looked at them in shock, the same shock mirrored on the twins' faces.
"Bill?!" They chorused in shock.
"George? Fred?!" Bill echoed, eyes wide and manic.
"What the bloody hell are you doing here?" The three demanded at each other, before George's eyes widened and he pushed Bill to the ground and batted a spell aside, back to its caster.
"Fight now, talk later." Fred grumped, picking up Bill from the ground as they all began to run.
"I was undoing the anti-apparition wards!" Bill grouched.
Fred, George, and Bill were absentmindedly ducking spells and shooting spells at any death eaters they could see.
"Well, undo the wards later. Or you will die just standing there you idiot!" George grouched.
The three redheaded brothers now found themselves in a large group of death eaters. Bill cracked his neck as Fred twirled his wand with a smirk and George gathered himself into a fighting stance.
"You take the ones on the left and right, I'll take the ones in the middle." Bill mumbled as the twins agreed, and they began exchanging spells.
-o0o0o0o-
"I cannot believe Sirius just sent us away!" Hermione grouched as she and Daphne began helping the others set up first aid around the living area of Potter Manor.
"And they let the boys stay!" Daphne harrumphed, ignoring the worry in the pit of her stomach.
"It's sexist is what it is!" Hermione snapped, trying to stay angry in order to avoid the concern, worry, fear, anxiety all whirling around in her head making her feel sick to her stomach.
Those were their boys out there. She and Daphne exchanged a look, both thinking the same thing.
Their boys. How could they possibly be okay when the boys aren't with them?
All of a sudden, a flash of blue appeared and Daphne's heart soared for a moment, thinking it was one of them when a strange, blond, and dishevelled girl appeared, with Harry's jacket wrapped around her shoulders.
And before anyone could question who she was and why the bloody hell she had Harry's jacket, another flash of blue appeared.
Theo and Blaise appeared, Theo caked in blood that was not his own and Blaise pale, on the verge of completely passing out from blood loss, and Theo was screaming for help.
Daphne and Hermione froze.
No. No no no. This was their worst, fucking, nightmare.
a/n: hi! IM SO SORRY OMG i have not updated in such a long time. My writers block is still completely horrible and I'm trying sooo hard to work through it im so sorry. I urge you not to be mad at sirius and the others for allowing the boys to fight and not the girls, daphne greengrass cannot lose her life as her parents are very prominent members of society and FRIENDS with sirius, as are hermione's parents. They trusted Sirius to take care of their girls and keep them out of harms way. He knew he couldn't get the boys not to fight, not when he knew Harry would definitely find a way to fight. Please don't be mad at me for glossing over the quidditch world cup scene, i'm sorry but i just knew i wouldn't be able to do it justice. What do we think of the fights? Any plottwists in this chap that y'all didn't see coming? also i am not going to use google translate and completely butcher french and other languages, so french will be in quotation marks and italics, and bulgarian or any other language will be in "bold or bold italics". Please reviewww thank you sm for your support. thoughts will simply be italics, i hope it doesn't get confusing. I will specify when they speak another languge. anywaysss, yes please tell me your thoughts on this chapter, until next time, xoxo