Before the Dawn | George Weasley

16

The summer crawled by.

I hadn't been able to see any of my friends, resigned to writing them and hoping they'd find the time to write back.

Jamie wrote me from her family's summer home in Florence, going into great depths about her trips into the Italian countryside, as well as asking me if I'd heard from Lucian, who had only written her once all summer and had hurt her feelings in doing so. I wrote back that I'd heard Lucian's owl had recently died, rendering him incapable of sending mail and thereby assuaging her fears that he was no longer in love with her.

Miles sent me a couple of letters, mostly concerning the upcoming Quidditch season and who he thought would be the new Captain. He seemed convinced it'd be me, but I wrote back arguing that it'd be Peregrine, who would be one of the two seventh-years on the team, and, in my opinion, was the obvious choice.

Annie wrote me twice, the first letter asking about my summer and informing me that she'd accidentally turned her brother's pillow into a pot-bellied pig, and neither of them could get it to hold still long enough to turn it back. If he wasn't mad at me before, she wrote, he certainly is now. The second letter asked for advice on second-year classes, and I responded with an in-depth list of which classes I'd taken as well as tips for each of them. It was more than she'd asked for, but I had plenty of time on my hands and didn't mind helping her.

Draco wrote me once, to my great surprise. At first I'd wondered if he'd misspelled the address, intending the letter to be delivered to someone else, but it was in fact my name on the envelope. It was a vague and rather unexciting letter that he'd written, but I suspected it was an effort to be friendly, which I very much appreciated, and I'd written back with a heartfelt response.

Most of my mail throughout the three months of summer, however, had been from George.

I looked forward to reading his letters more than anyone else's. He always had a funny story to tell about some adventure he and Fred had stumbled upon, or a complaint about his older brother Percy. I responded each time, but seeing as nothing ever happened around here, I rarely had anything fun to write back. This week he and his family were at the Quidditch World Cup, the match between Bulgaria and Ireland, and I was beside myself with jealousy.

Instead of being at the match, I was resigned to listening to it over my dad's old radio, my ear pressed to the speaker as I followed the announcer's voice. It sounded like a fairly one-sided match, the Irish absolutely routing the Bulgarians, until Krum, the Seeker for Bulgaria, caught the Snitch to end the match and put his team out of their misery.

I had to admit I was a little disappointed by the results, had been hoping the Bulgarians would pull it off; the Irish had beaten the Scots to make it to the Cup, and I was a little bitter that my favourite team had been put out of the running so close to the championship.

The morning after the Cup, Thea arrived with the daily edition of the Daily Prophet, and I tore it open to read the highlights of the game. The headline, however, was something entirely unexpected, and I felt a tremour of horror as I took it in.

TERROR AT THE WORLD CUP: CAMPGROUNDS OVERRUN BY SUSPECTED DEATH EATERS

The front-page image was a shot of the Dark Mark glowing in the night sky. My eyes traced its outline, my skin prickling with fear. Death Eaters? I had only ever heard about them as a thing of the past, something that'd been eradicated, like a disease.

But that, apparently, wasn't the case.

I snatched a piece of parchment from my desk and quickly scribbled a note: 

Are you safe? -Doylie

I tied the note to Thea's foot, looking her sternly in the eyes and instructing her to fly as quickly as she could to the Weasley residence. She took off without hesitation, and as I watched her go, I wondered if I should've sent a note to Draco, who I knew had also been at the match.