After the teams all went away (Viktor shooting Hermione a crooked grin as he left), the Malfoys led the way slowly down the purple-carpeted stairs. There was raucous singing and cheering all around them as they exited the stadium, and Hermione wondered how anyone was expected to sleep with all the fuss.

"Were you talking to Krum?" Draco demanded, as soon as they were far enough from the loudest parts of the crowd to be heard. "I was watching the Irish come in, and next thing I know, you're talking to Krum."

He sounded astounded and amazed, Hermione catalogued. Good; she'd been concerned she might have to deal with jealousy.

"I met him before and didn't realize it," she admitted, still embarrassed. "He was at the Chocolate Frog photoshoot. He said he was there for setting the record for fastest dive in Quidditch; I didn't know he was a professional player."

"You didn't know—" Draco gaped at her, then started laughing. "Good job, Hermione. Good job."

Hermione's face flooded with red. She opted to not mention the second time she'd met up with Viktor and their impromptu 'date', where they had traipsed through the same forest they were walking through now.

There were parties raging on the other side of the forest, complete with fireworks, raucous fans, and periodic chants of players' names or countries. Hermione joined Draco, Theo, and Blaise around a fire for a while, laughing at their enthusiastic reenactments of various plays or the insults they were throwing back and forth. Draco and Theo were remarkably cheerful despite Bulgaria's loss, enjoying their good-natured ribbing from Blaise. Hermione wondered why. Draco made sense – he'd predicted the outcome ahead of time via Arithmancy – but Theo was more of a question. Maybe it was because he'd inherited his Quidditch team from his father and didn't really care.

Or maybe it was because they hadn't been cheering for Bulgaria so much as they'd both been cheering for Viktor Krum, who'd acquitted himself marvelously during the game.

Her face pinkened at the thought of Viktor Krum again. She couldn't believe she hadn't known or put the clues together – of course the fastest dive on record would be from a professional player.

Still. Despite her obvious embarrassment, Viktor had made conversation with her that avoided the direct cause of her embarrassment, and Hermione had liked learning more about the team mascots. Which was incredibly classy and thoughtful of him, really – any of the three boys she was with now would have teased her mercilessly.

She wondered how old a person had to be to try out for professional Quidditch. If Krum had been there for the youth photo shoot for chocolate frogs, did that mean he was under 17? Or just that he'd been under 17 when he'd made the record?

Possibly some part of it depended on the country you were playing for. Hermione imagined Bulgaria was much less strict about age restrictions than the UK would be.

After an hour or so of the boys partying, Hermione declared she was going to bed, and Draco reluctantly got up to join her. As they retired to the tent, Hermione was surprise to see Narcissa and Lucius arguing in fierce whispers outside the opening of the tent. Hermione shot Draco a look once they were inside, but he shook his head and shrugged, wordless, clearly as much in the dark as she was.

As she got ready for bed, she replayed the moment in her head, dwelling on Narcissa's anger and Lucius' cold defiance. Lucius had been wearing robes again, too – long black ones that he must have changed into after the game. Hermione remembered Draco's warning from before – that his father was planning something – and it was with a sinking feeling that Hermione bundled herself into the covers and tried to fall asleep.


"Up! Up up up!"

Hermione awoke suddenly to Narcissa's insistent bustling about the tent. Draco groaned out a complaint from across the tent, and Narcissa snapped at him to get up anyway. Her manner was tense, and a feeling of dread and sudden adrenaline woke Hermione up quicker than she'd imagined possible. She yanked on her jeans and jumper, tense.

"You're going for a quick jaunt in the forest," Narcissa informed them, "so get dressed. Quickly."

"Why?" Draco complained. "We just got to sleep—"

"Don't ask stupid questions," Narcissa snapped. "Theo will be joining you. Quickly now, Draco. Oh, Hermione – you're dressed already."

Hermione scanned Narcissa's face. Was it paler than usual? It was hard to tell in the darkness.

"Will you be joining us?" Hermione asked. "Or… will you be joining Lucius?"

Narcissa's eyes widened. She looked at Hermione with slow respect.

"Neither," she said firmly. "I intend to stay and make sure the tent doesn't get trampled."

That answered one question – whatever Lucius was off doing, it could result in things getting trampled. By people, Hermione presumed – none of the teams had brought griffins or similar animal mascots that could be loosed to stampede the campground.

"Good," Narcissa said, as Draco finally emerged from the men's quarters, still yawning. "Come."

She led them outside the tent. The campground was darker and mostly still around where they were, though there were still parties and celebrations going on deeper into the campground.

"Narcissa?" a voice came out of the darkness nearby.

"Here," Narcissa said, quiet. "Lumos."

Her wand lit up, and Hermione turned to see Thoros Nott in long black robes, standing with Theo and Blaise, both of whom looked far more awake than Draco. Their eyes were wide, with either alarm or anxiety, Hermione thought, and they were both silent.

"You've got it from here?" Thoros asked Narcissa. She nodded.

"I'll get them to the forest," she replied. There was a note of resignation in her voice.

"Good." Thoros turned to his son. "Theodore."

Reluctantly, Theo handed something over to his father, and Hermione watched as Thoros put on a mask. A slow dread filled her as he strapped it to his head.

Masks were used to hide identities.

And if identities were needing concealed…

Well. Nothing good was going on.

"I've no idea when it'll end." Thoros' voice was altered, anonymized from behind the mask. "These things tend to take on a life of their own. People get carried away. You know how it goes."

"Indeed." Narcissa's tone was dry. "You'd better get going, then."

With a sharp nod, Thoros strode off into the darkness, pulling up the hood of his robes as he went. Narcissa gave them all a sharp look.

"Follow me."

They followed her the short distance into the woods. They didn't have far to go, and Hermione began wondering if the Malfoys had camped where they had not just because they had good seats in the stadium, or if there had been a more nefarious motive involved too. Narcissa led them to a copse of alder trees that were close together, ushering them to hide in the middle.

"Go," Narcissa told them quietly. "Stay in the forest. Stay here. And stay together. Whatever you hear, don't come out. I will come and get you when it's safe."

They all nodded wordlessly, and Hermione bit back the urge to ask Narcissa if they shouldn't just flee. Narcissa went back the way she had come, leaving the four of them in the woods not far from the entrance.

"Should we climb a tree?" Blaise suggested, after Narcissa had gone. "So we can see what's going on?"

"I don't think we'll have to climb a tree in order to see," Theo said, his tone dark and forbidding.

Hermione shivered.

"Nott," Draco said, uneasy. "That mask… was that…"

"Yes," Theo said shortly.

Draco whistled lowly.

"Damn," he said. "That he still has that – even now—"

"Lucius came to wake us." Theo's voice was hard as he cut Draco off, and he turned to give Draco a look. "Your father was in one too."

Draco fell silent at that.

"So what now?" Hermione asked. "We just wait?"

"Yeah," Theo said, with a sigh. "We wait."

They didn't have long to wait.

The sounds of the campsite changed to screams and the sounds of people running. Hermione could hear people crashing through the forest further down from her, while loud jeering and roars of laughter built up at the campsite, growing. As they waited, apprehensive, a burst of strong green light illuminated the nearby tents, and Hermione's heart froze.

"Did they—"

"No," Theo cut her off, though he looked sickened. "That's not the right color. It's fine."

"What are they doing?" Blaise wondered, anxiety in his tone. "I can't see from here."

"Muggle-baiting," Theo said grimly.

Exchanging a look with Blaise, Hermione and Blaise both glanced around before using their air elementals to fly up to the top of the trees to get a better look at what was going on, ignoring Theo's squawk of protest.

A group of tightly-packed wizards was marching through the campsite, all hooded. They had their wands in the air, and other wizards around joined them as they went, drunken yells and jeers joining the parade. The emerald-green light was from them blasting tents out of their way. The spell made a noise not unlike gunfire and provoked more screaming each time, which set off new laughter from the marchers.

As the crowd approached one of the larger bonfires, Hermione suddenly saw four struggling figures floating high above the group, being contorted into grotesque shapes. It was as though the masked wizards on the ground were puppeteers, and the people above them were marionettes operated by invisible strings that rose from the wands into the air. Another blast of green light illuminated them more clearly, and Hermione got a closer look.

Two of the figures were very small.

Hermione's heart stopped.

The top half of her vision turned red.

She started to shake, her body quaking from the effort of containing her fury.

Hermione was so upset she couldn't even see, and her body trembled with the force of her anger. Hermione had always presumed the phrase "seeing red" was figurative; she'd never thought it was literal. But she'd never been so angry before. But now, with the sight of those evil, evil people, cruelly torturing children for their sick amusement—

Preparing herself, Hermione took a deep breath and withdrew her wand.

"No!"

Blaise suddenly tackled her out of the air, and they fell to the ground in a scuffle of limbs. Their air elementals managed to keep them from braining themselves, but the landing was still rough. Hermione fought against Blaise, vicious, but Blaise held on, trying to pin Hermione to the ground while Theo and Draco watched on in horror.

"Let go of me! They have children, Blaise! Let go!"

"You can't, Hermione!"

"I can, and I will—I can take them all out—"

"You can't, Hermione – the Ministry is already here, chasing after them and trying to stop it—"

"Bully for the Ministry!"

Hermione managed to get a good elbow into Blaise's midsection, sending him wheezing and making him loosen his grasp, and she made a mad dash away from him, only to be caught by Theo and Draco, who wrestled her back.

"What, you're going to Fiendfyre a group of people for muggle-baiting?" Theo challenged her. "Is that a crime really deserving of death?"

"I don't have to kill them," Hermione snapped. "I can use the air to save the muggles and levitate them instead, I can make the very earth below their feet come alive and consume them up to their knees so they can't move—"

"You can't, Hermione—" Blaise was hobbling closer to them, holding his stomach.

"I can and you know it!" Hermione shouted, furious. "I can stop them! Just let me go!"

With Theo and Draco holding her back, Blaise was able to approach her from the front, his eyes serious.

"Hermione, take a deep breath. Listen to me," he said. "You're not going to like hearing this, but you must."

Angry, Hermione took a deep breath and held it before letting it out, holding Blaise's eyes challengingly as she did. Blaise's gaze didn't waver.

"The Death Eaters there aren't going to do anything to hurt the muggles beyond what they're already doing," Blaise told her. "There's too much of a Ministry presence around, and there's too many people. They're all just going to Disapparate as soon as the Ministry gets close enough to them, and that'll be the end."

"And they'll all just get away?" Hermione was sickened. "Blaise, that's repugnant. I can stop them, I can catch them—"

"Yes, and then what will people think?" Blaise said impatiently. "A teenage girl, single-handedly stopping a dozen full-grown wizards?"

Hermione faltered. "I—I can do it hidden, so nobody sees me—"

"Too high of a risk," Blaise shot back. "Try again."

"I could do it as the Valkyrie," Hermione said desperately. "I—I could turn back, get dressed and prepared, and then be ready—"

"You'd want to reveal the Valkyrie here?" Blaise demanded, incredulous. "Hermione—"

"That would be incredibly, incredibly stupid," Theo informed her. "You currently have ten people in your little cabal, Hermione. You do not want to come out publicly as a force with ten people."

"Besides," Draco drawled, adjusting his grip on her struggling limb, "aren't the Shadows supposed to, y'know, remain in the shadows?"

Hermione let out a noise of frustration, yanking hard on her arms to try and escape, resuming her struggling against the others.

"Hermione, I know you don't want to hear this," Blaise said, his voice calm. "You're not a person who likes to sit still. You're a person of action. But sometimes, Hermione, inaction is the best thing to do."

Hermione despised that he had a point.

"But Blaise—morally, ethically—I can't just do nothing—" Hermione was furious to discover there were tears clustering in her eyes, angry tears of frustration she hadn't given permission to be there. "There's children—I have to—"

"That's why we're here," Blaise told her, his voice soft. "When you can't make the hard decision – the immoral, bad one that's strategically advantageous – we will."

It was as if the wind had been taken out of her sails. Hermione slowly sank to the forest floor, pulling Draco and Theo down with her, and Blaise knelt in front of her as she did, keeping eye level. A noise came out of her, a wail of despair, and Blaise nodded to Theo and Draco, both of whom let her go. He opened his arms, and, now freed, Hermione threw herself at Blaise, crying into his chest as he cradled her in his arms.

"Blaise, they're children! They're just kids – how can they be so cruel—"

Blaise held her tight, allowing her to scream out her emotions into his jumper, her own screams blending with the increased screaming around them.

"They're Death Eaters," Theo said heavily. "They don't see kids – they see muggles."

"They're still people! How can they—?"

"Breathe, Hermione," Blaise advised her. "Breathe."

"Yeah, your hair is sparking," Draco said, uneasy. "You might want to do something about that before you set the forest on fire."

Taking a few deep breaths, Hermione became aware that her core was spinning faster, wobbling. There was a panicked moment as she felt for her coven ring, but it was snug on her finger, unmoved. The adrenaline, then, she figured; the panic and anger had caused a magic surge—

Taking a deep breath, Hermione pulled back from Blaise and tried to get ahold of her magic, only for it to be too much. She didn't have the diary on her – it had seemed a poor idea to risk taking it around Lucius Malfoy – so her usual drain wasn't available.

"I need to cast something," Hermione told them, her voice strained. "I have too much magic – I need to use it up—"

Draco looked confused, but Theo and Blaise immediately grasped her point.

"Try the Disillusionment Charm," Theo told her. "It's very difficult. The incantation's 'Talpa' – that's TAWL-puh – and you need to visualize the target as appearing as their surroundings. Tap one of us on the head—"

Hermione imagined Theo melting away into the forest around them and rapped him hard on the head with her wand.

"Talpa."

There was a sudden drain on her magic, and Hermione watched as invisibility dripped down over Theo, as if she'd poured magic invisibility water on his head. He vanished from view, only slightly visible against the trees when he moved.

"Merlin's beard, I didn't think you'd actually do it," Theo said, his voice coming out of nowhere. "On your first try, too – that's a NEWT-level spell—"

"Do a Patronus," Blaise told her. "It'll use up as much of your magic as you feed it. Can you?"

It was a struggle for Hermione, her mind grasping for a happy memory while the cold knowledge that people were torturing children less than half a mile away loomed in the back of her thoughts. Thoughts of Fleur, Blaise, and her coven all seemed to slip from her mind, too nice of thoughts for her mind and magic to grasp when she was so angry and upset.

The memory of the dementors fleeing before her wand floated up, offering itself to her, and Hermione seized upon it.

"Expecto Patronum!"

A giant beast made of silver light burst from her wand, galloping around the forest before coming back to her, and Hermione's eyes went wide. It was a horrifying Patronus – some kind of horrible, skeletal horse with a giant bat's wings.

"Your Patronus is a thestral?" Theo's voice was incredulous. "That's dark."

Hermione held onto the spell, her magic fueling the silvery beast, which was now circling their small group in the woods, guarding them. She could breathe a little easier, now – she didn't feel as wound up, like she was about to explode.

"I thought your Patronus was a Komodo dragon," Blaise said, quizzical.

"A dragon?" Draco perked up.

"It was," Blaise shot at him. "But now it's changed—"

"Your Patronus can vary based on the memory you use when you cast it," Hermione told them. "That's what led to the legend that they change when you fall in love, I imagine – people using a memory different than they usually do. I've gotten a Komodo dragon, a fox, a phoenix, and now this—this thestral."

"Be glad you've never seen them in person," Theo said, his voice sour. His voice came from a different place, now – he'd moved without anyone noticing.

Blaise looked thoughtful.

"I get a panther normally," he said. "You think if I use a different memory, I might get something different?"

"Possibly," Hermione said, shrugging. "Only one way to tell."

Blaise considered, and Hermione thought he was going to go for it when the woods suddenly erupted into loud screaming. She whirled around, looking for the cause, but it only took a moment to find.

The Dark Mark hung in the air above the woods, a glittering green skull and snake in the sky.

"Oh, fuck," Theo swore. "This is not good—"

"Does that mean they killed someone?" Draco asked, worried.

"No," Theo snapped. "The Death Eaters are out there muggle-baiting. This came from someone in the woods—"

Feeling more stable, Hermione dismissed her Patronus and took aim at the general area Theo's voice was coming from.

"Finite Incantatem."

A pale, spooked Theo gradually faded back into view.

"—only taught his followers, so this means that there's a Death Eater in the woods. What's more, it's someone who's not with the group that was muggle-baiting—"

Hermione wondered if it was really a bad thing. There had been loud cracks of Disapparition at the skull's appearance, and she couldn't see floating people anymore. If the mystery Death Eater had stopped the muggle-baiting, she was glad, stupid mark in the sky be damned.

"The Ministry is going to be looking for whoever cast that," Theo said, his voice dark. "They are not going to be happy."

"Should we flee?" Draco looked excited. "We could jump a line—"

"There isn't a ley line here," Hermione said, suddenly tired. "We'd have to make one. And with all of us tired and drained, that's not a good idea."

"Agreed." Blaise shuddered. "I'd really rather never have to do that again."

Narcissa came to get them a little while later, maybe half an hour.

"I'm pleasantly surprised you stayed put," she told them, raising an eyebrow at the sight of them all. "I half expected you to be gone."

"It was a near thing," Hermione admitted.

Back at the campsite, Blaise and Theo split off, going back to their tent while Draco and Hermione entered theirs. In the light of the tent, it was easy to see dark circles under Narcissa's eyes.

"Mum," Draco began. "Is Dad—?"

"I have no idea where your father is." Narcissa's voice was tired and resigned. "He can take care of himself."

Draco looked troubled as he went into his part of the tent, and Narcissa joined Hermione in the women's part of the tent to undress and retire.

"Narcissa," Hermione said quietly.

Narcissa glanced over at her, and Hermione bit her lip, hesitating.

"Thank you," Hermione said finally. "For taking us to the woods so we would be safe."

Narcissa's gaze softened.

"Regardless of my husband's opinion on his son's potential involvement with his activities, you are still children," she told Hermione. "I was happy to keep you all safe and out of the way."

"Are you okay?" Hermione asked her. "You stayed here. You weren't—"

Narcissa sighed.

"I am very tired," she said. "That is all I'll say on the matter."