Bill didn't mention Charlie's and Draco's ruckus to anyone. He took Charlie ahead from all of them to ask him why he had jumped on Draco. But none of the others noticed this. When they finally reached the tents, nobody felt like sleeping at all, and given the level of noise around them, Mr Weasley agreed that they could all have one last cup of cocoa together before turning in. They were soon arguing enjoyably about the match; Mr Weasley got drawn into a disagreement about cobbing with Charlie, and it was only when Ginny fell asleep right at the tiny table and spilt hot chocolate all over the floor that Mr Weasley called a halt to the verbal replays and insisted that everyone go to bed. Heroneka, Hermione and Ginny went into the next tent, changed into their nightdresses and clambered into their beds, which were very close to each other. From the other side of the campsite, they could still hear much singing and the odd echoing bang.
"Dad is so lucky that he isn't on Duty," muttered Ginny sleepily. "He wouldn't fancy having to go and tell the Irish they've got to stop celebrating."
Heroneka, who was closest to the entrance of the tent, lay staring up at the canvas ceiling of the tent, watching the glow of an occasional leprechaun lantern flying overhead. Her mind kept buzzing with what Draco had said -- leave now! Go back to the Weasleys. Why had he said that? And then, there was Charlie. What was going through his mind? Why was he getting so close to Heroneka? They had only met a day ago and there was a fire between them already. And then, the fight between Draco and Charlie.
Heroneka never knew whether or not she had actually dropped off to sleep - she could tell that something was wrong. The noises in the campsite had changed. The singing had stopped. She could hear screams and the sound of people running.
Heroneka got up from her bed and looked over at Hermione and Ginny. They were in a deep slumber. Heroneka's heart began to race against her chest. She heard people screaming outside.
"Snitchy!" Bill came running into their tent. "Ginny! Wake up!"
"Get Hermione!" Charlie was right behind him.
Hermione and Ginny had barely woken up.
"What is happening?" Heroneka panicked as Charlie grabbed her hand.
"Get up! Ginny - Hermione - come on now, get up, this is urgent!" Bill shook them up and Hermione woke up looking startled.
Ginny sat up quickly and looked at them sleepily.
"'S' matter?" She said.
Charlie almost dragged Heroneka towards the only entrance of the tent."No time, Ginny - just grab a coat and get outside - quickly! You have to hide!" He looked at Heroneka.
"Hide?" Heroneka shuddered. "What --" she grabbed her coat and pulled it over her nightdress.
Bill beckoned Hermione and Ginny out after Heroneka.
By the light of the few fires that were still burning, she could see people running away into the woods, fleeing something that was moving across the field toward them, something that was emitting odd flashes of light and noises like gunfire. Loud jeering, roars of laughter, and drunken yells were drifting toward them; then came a burst of strong green light, which illuminated the scene.
A crowd of wizards, tightly packed and moving together with wands pointing straight upward, was marching slowly across the field. Heroneka squinted at them...They didn't seem to have faced...Then she realized that their heads were hooded and their faces masked. High above them, floating along in midair, four struggling figures were 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. Two of the figures were very small.
More wizards were joining the marching group, laughing and pointing up at the floating bodies. Tents crumpled and fell as the marching crowd swelled. Once or twice Heroneka saw one of the marchers blast a tent out of his way with his wand. Several caught fire. The screaming grew louder.
The floating people were suddenly illuminated as they passed over a burning tent and Heroneka recognized one of them: Mr Roberts, the campsite manager. The other three looked as though they might be his wife and children. One of the marchers below flipped Mrs Roberts upside down with his wand; her nightdress fell to reveal voluminous drawers and she struggled to cover herself up as the crowd below her screeched and hooted with glee.
"That's sick," Charlie muttered, watching the smallest Muggle child, who had begun to spin like a top, sixty feet above the ground, his head flopping limply from side to side. "That is really sick...."
He didn't let go of Heroneka's hand as Hermione, Bill and Ginny stood close to them.
Harry, Ron, Fred, Geroge and Percy came out of their tents with Mr Weasley right behind them. At the same moment, Bill, Charlie, and Percy pulled over their wands, rolling up their sleeves.
"What are you doing?" Heroneka asked Charlie, although she knew what they were about to do.
"Geroge!" Charlie eyed him. "Keep her hidden. They will come for her!" He nodded at Heroneka.
"Yes!" George nodded as if he had been ordered by some Army Major.
"We're going to help the Ministry!" Mr Weasley shouted over all the noise, rolling up his own sleeves. "You lot - get into the woods, and stick together. I'll come and fetch you when we've sorted this out!"
Bill, Charlie, and Percy were already sprinting away toward the oncoming marchers; Mr Weasley tore after them. Ministry wizards were dashing from every direction toward the source of the trouble. The crowd beneath the Roberts family was coming ever closer.
"Let's get out of here!" George had held Heroneka's hand tightly. "Before they see her!"
Heroneka knew that all of them fearing that she was about to be sacrificed or something.
"C'mon," said Fred, grabbing Ginny's hand and starting to pull her toward the wood. Heroneka, George, Harry, Ron, and Hermione followed. They all looked back as they reached the trees. The crowd beneath the Roberts family was larger than ever; they could see the Ministry wizards trying to get through it to the hooded wizards in the centre, but they were having great difficulty. It looked as though they were scared to perform any spell that might make the Roberts family fall.
The coloured lanterns that had lit the path to the stadium had been extinguished. Dark figures were blundering through the trees; children were crying; anxious shouts and panicked voices were reverberating around them in the cold night air. Herkneka felt herself being pushed hither and thither by people whose faces she could not see.
"Move, Fred!" Geroge asked him to keep running.
Fred ran forward with Ginny into the woods, followed by George who was dragging Heroneka after him.
Suddenly, she fell. "Ahhh"
"What happened?" said Fred anxiously, stopping so abruptly that Ginny walked into him. "Snitchy, where are you? Oh, this is stupid - Lumos!"
"Get up, Snitchy!" Geroge was trying to help her up.
Fred illuminated his wand and directed its narrow beam across the path, where Geroge was pulling Heroneka back to her feet.
"Tripped over a tree root," she said angrily, getting to her feet again.
There came a bang from the other side of the trees that was louder than anything they had heard. Several people nearby screamed.
"C'mon!!" Fred yelled at George and Heroneka. He was dragging Ginny into the woods already. She was crying loudly.
"Where did Harry, Ron and Hermione go?" Heroneka looked around.
Geroge looked around through the running crowd. "I don't see them --"
There was another loud bang that was closer.
Harry, Ron and Hermione were nowhere to be seen, though the path was packed with plenty of other people, all looking nervously over their shoulders toward the commotion back at the campsite.
"They can't have gone that far," said George, pulling out his wand, lighting it like Fred's, and squinting up the path. Heroneka pulled out her wand and illuminated it as well.
"GEORGE!!"
They heard a yell from the forest that sounded like Fred's voice. George didn't wait anymore. He pulled Heroneka after him and they both sprinted deeper into the woods. They spotted a source of light that looked like a wand's illuminated tip and ran towards it.
"What took you so long?" Fred snapped at them. "She could have been sacrificed if they saw her." He glanced at Heroneka.
"Harry, Ron and Hermione," Geroge knelt on the ground, catching his breath. "They are... They went some other way."
Fred walked a few steps towards the path from where they all had arrived. "We can't go back." He said helplessly.
"Let's just sit here." Ginny was curled up into a ball under a tree, looking extremely scared and lost.
They sat there, in the quiet, dark forest. All four of them hugging each other. Heroneka had activated her Invisibility shield around them. It glowed blue from within. For some reason, the shield made Ginny feel safer and she fell asleep in Fred's lap.
"Are you alright?" Fred asked Heroneka.
George had wrapped his arm around her shoulder as she tried to rest on his chest.
"Yes," she mumbled. "I hope the others are okay."
"They'll be fine," said Geroge.
"Imagine if dad catches Lucius Malfoy among those hooded ones," said Fred, watching Ginny sleeping peacefully, clutched in his arms. "He's always said he'd like to get something on him."
"That'd wipe the smirk off old Draco's face, all right," said George.
"Those poor Muggles, though," said Heroneka nervously. "What if they can't get them down?"
"They will," said Fred reassuringly. "They'll find a way."
"Mad, though, to do something like that when the whole Ministry of Magic's out here tonight!" said Heroneka. "I mean, how do they expect to get away with it? Do you think they've been drinking, or are they just -"
But she broke off abruptly and looked over her shoulder. Fred and George looked quickly around too. It sounded as though someone was staggering toward their clearing. Although they were inside Heroneka's Invisibility Shield, they could be heard. If someone was close to them, the person might have heard Fred, George and Heroneka talking. They waited, listening to the sounds of the uneven steps behind the dark trees. But the footsteps came to a sudden halt.
"Hello?" called Fred, still clutching Ginny tightly in his arms.
There was silence. Geroge got to his feet and peered around the tree. Heroneka shifted towards Fred. She felt like this was the moment when she would be sacrificed. It was too dark to see very far, but George could sense somebody standing just beyond the range of his vision.
"Who's there?" he said.
There were fast and heavy footsteps, crushing dried leaves from the other side.
"Ginny!!"
Charlie was yelling at a distance. His voice was coming from the same pathway from where they all had come.
"Charlie!!" Ginny had woken up and yelled back and Heroneka blinked off her Invisibility shield so Charlie could find them.
Within moments, Charlie had arrived at their spot.
"Thank goodness, you all are safe!" He sat on the ground next to Fred. "Where are Harry, Ron and Hermione?" He looked around.
"They got away from us!" Heroneka told him. "They got left behind --"
"Shhhh"
George was still lost, staring at the dark trees from where the uneven footsteps had come earlier.
"We heard someone there!" Fred told Charlie.
They all waited for a few minutes while George tried to figure out what it was.
"I sense something --" he said. "Something very familiar."
"I feel it too." Said Fred. "Who is it?" He called out loud but there was no response.
Charlie and Heroneka looked at each other. Why couldn't they sense it?
And then, without warning, the silence was rent by a voice unlike any they had heard in the wood; and it uttered, not a panicked shout, but what sounded like a spell.
"MORSMORDRE!"
The voice was far away from them, but the impact of that spell could be seen from where they were hiding.
Something vast, green, and glittering flew up over the treetops and into the sky.
"What the -?" gasped Charlie, as he sprang to his feet again, staring up at the thing that had appeared.
For a split second, Heroneka thought it was another leprechaun formation. Then she realized that it was a colossal skull, comprised of what looked like emerald stars, with a serpent protruding from its mouth like a tongue. As they watched, it rose higher and higher, blazing in a haze of greenish smoke, etched against the black sky like a new constellation.
Suddenly, the wood all around them erupted with screams. Heroneka didn't understand why, but the only possible cause was the sudden appearance of the skull, which had now risen high enough to illuminate the entire wood like some grisly neon sign.
"What's that?" She asked the boys.
"Snitchy, come on, move!" Charlie had seized her hand and was tugging her backwards.
"What's the matter?" Heroneka said, startled to see Charlie's face so white and terrified.
"It's the Dark Mark, Snitchy!" Fred moaned, pulling Ginny as hard as he could. "You-Know-Who's sign!"
Heroneka frowned. "Voldemort's - ?"
"Snitchy, come on!" Charlie pulled her as George ran towards the pathway, illuminating it with his wand.
They sprinted as fast as they could.
"Where the hell do we go now?" Geroge yelled back at them, running faster. "We're all going to die."
"The tent!!" Charlie yelled at him. "Bill is there! It's safe!"
Heroneka's chest was aching with the running. Her cursed heart burnt again. The scar above her heart felt like it had been slit open. Her legs began to give up.
"What happened?" Charlie slowed down.
"She can't run too much!" Fred was far ahead of them but stopped running.
George had run ahead dragging Ginny after him and they were eventually out of the sight. Fred ran back and knelt next to Heroneka as she coughed hard, clutching her chest and trying to breathe.
Fred reached for her tiny bottle locket and undid it quickly. "Just a few more minutes of running, Snitchy." He encouraged her, making her drink the purest water from it. "Then we will be back at the tent."
Charlie was observing how Fred had fed Heroneka the contents from her bottle locket and she was beginning to calm down.
"Should we stay?" Charlie looked at Fred. "She can't run... But this place isn't safe. If they see her --"
"I will carry her!" Fred instantly picked up Heroneka in his arms. "You keep your wand at ready."
Charlie led Fred and Heroneka through the wood and back into the campsite. All was quiet now; there was no sign of the masked wizards, though several ruined tents were still smoking.
Geroge's head was poking out of the boys' tent.
"Where were you guys?" He moved aside letting them in.
"Snitchy's scar got heated up again." Fred walked in carrying her and dropped her gently on his bed.
Bill was sitting at the small kitchen table, holding a bedsheet to his arm, which was bleeding profusely and Percy was sporting a bloody nose. Ginny looked unhurt, though shaken.
"How do you feel now?" Bill asked Heroneka. "Do you need any kind of medicine --"
"I had my medicine with me." She assured him.
"Did you see the Dark Mark?" Bill asked Charlie. "That's not a good sign."
"I know!" Charlie exhaled.
Charlie went to the entrance of the tent, poking his head out. And a few minutes later, he moved aside. Mr Weasley, Harry, Hermione and Ron entered.
"Did you get them, Dad?" said Bill sharply. "The person who conjured the Mark?"
"No," said Mr Weasley. "We found Barry Crouch's elf holding Harry's wand, but we're none the wiser about who actually conjured the Mark."
"What?" said Bill, Charlie, and Percy together.
"Harry's wand?" said Fred.
"That doesn't make any sense." Heroneka sat up and looked at Harry as Charlie sat next to her.
"Mr Crouch's elf?" said Percy, sounding thunderstruck.
With some assistance from Harry, Ron, and Hermione, Mr Weasley explained what had happened in the woods. How they had hidden and heard the spell being cast. How it had been Winky who was holding the wand. But the voice of the spell caster was a man's voice. Anyway, Mr Crouch had set Winky free for bringing shame to him. When they had finished their story, Percy swelled indignantly.
"Well, Mr Crouch is quite right to get rid of an elf-like that!" he said. "Running away when he'd expressly told her not to...embarrassing him in front of the whole Ministry...how would that have looked, if she'd been brought up in front of the Department for the Regulation and Control -"
"She didn't do anything - she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time!" Hermione snapped at Percy, who looked very taken aback. Hermione had always got on fairly well with Percy - better, indeed, than any of the others.
"Hermione, a wizard in Mr Crouch's position can't afford a house-elf who's going to run amok with a wand!" said Percy pompously, recovering himself.
"She didn't run amok!" shouted Hermione. "She just picked it up off the ground!"
"Alright!" Heroneka snapped at Hermione and Percy. "Just shut up, the two of you."
And there was an awkward silence for a minute.
"Look, can someone just explain what that skull thing was?" said Ron impatiently. "It wasn't hurting anyone...Why's it such a big deal?"
"I told you, it's You-Know-Who's symbol, Ron," said Hermione, before anyone else could answer. "I read about it in The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts."
"And it hasn't been seen for thirteen years," said Mr Weasley quietly. "Of course people panicked...it was almost like seeing You-Know-Who back again."
"I don't get it," said Ron, frowning. "I mean...it's still only a shape in the sky..."
"Ron, You-Know-Who and his followers sent the Dark Mark into the air whenever they killed," said Mr Weasley. "The terror it inspired...you have no idea, you're too young. Just picture coming home and finding the Dark Mark hovering over your house, and knowing what you're about to find inside...." Mr Weasley winced. "Everyone's worst fear...the very worst..."
There was silence for a moment. Then Bill, removing the sheet from his arm to check on his cut, said, "Well, it didn't help us tonight, whoever conjured it. It scared the Death Eaters away the moment they saw it. They all Disapparated before we'd got near enough to unmask any of them. We caught the Robertses before they hit the ground, though. They're having their memories modified right now."
"Death Eaters?" said Harry. "What are Death Eaters?"
"It's what You-Know-Who's supporters called themselves," said Bill. "I think we saw what's left of them tonight - the ones who managed to keep themselves out of Azkaban, anyway."
"We can't prove it was them, Bill," said Mr Weasley. "Though it probably was," he added hopelessly.
"Yeah, I bet it was!" said Ron suddenly. "Dad, we met Draco Malfoy in the woods, and he as good as told us his dad was one of those nutters in masks! And we all know the Malfoys were right in with You-Know-Who!"
Heroneka felt Charlie's head turning to look at her, but she didn't look at him.
"But what were Voldemort's supporters -" Harry began. Everybody flinched - like most of the wizarding world, the Weasleys always avoided saying Voldemort's name. "Sorry," said Harry quickly. "What were You-Know-Who's supporters up to, levitating Muggles? I mean, what was the point?"
"The point?" said Mr Weasley with a hollow laugh. "Harry, that's their idea of fun. Half the Muggle killings back when You-Know-Who was in power were done for fun. I suppose they had a few drinks tonight and couldn't resist reminding us all that lots of them are still at large. A nice little reunion for them," he finished disgustedly.
"But if they were the Death Eaters, why did they Disapparate when they saw the Dark Mark?" said Heroneka.
"Right!" Added Ron. "They'd have been pleased to see it, wouldn't they?"
"Use your brains, Ron," said Bill. "If they really were Death Eaters, they worked very hard to keep out of Azkaban when You-Know-Who lost power and told all sorts of lies about him forcing them to kill and torture people. I bet they'd be even more frightened than the rest of us to see him come back. They denied they'd ever been involved with him when he lost his powers and went back to their daily lives...I don't reckon he'd be over-pleased with them, do you?"
"So...whoever conjured the Dark Mark..." said Hermione slowly, "were they doing it to show support for the Death Eaters, or to scare them away?"
"Your guess is as good as ours, Hermione," said Mr Weasley. "But I'll tell you this...it was only the Death Eaters who ever knew how to conjure it. I'd be very surprised if the person who did it hadn't been a Death Eater once, even if they're not now...Listen, it's very late, and if your mother hears what's happened she'll be worried sick. We'll get a few more hours sleep and then try and get an early Portkey out of here."
The girls slept in the same tent as the boys that night. Charlie, Fred and Geroge had gotten the girls' beds and belongings from the other tent, just in case, something went wrong again. Heroneka's bed was right next to Charlie. She knew he feared that something might happen again. Her head kept buzzing with questions.
Draco knew all this was going to happen. He had asked Heroneka to leave. Harry, Hermione and Ron had met him in the trees and he had told them something terrible that might happen with Hermione. Just like the Roberts! It disgusted Heroneka.
Ten days ago - it felt like much longer, but it had only been ten days - she had awoken with a usual memory flashback of Gemma's past life. And tonight, for the first time in thirteen years, Lord Voldemort's mark had appeared in the sky. What did these things mean? It made her feel like -- Gemma, even though not alive anymore, was deep down in Heroneka, in her subconscious. She was warning Heroneka about something terrible that was going to happen.
She thought of the letter she had written to Lupin before going to spend a week with the Malfoys. Would Lupin have gotten it yet? When would he reply? Heroneka lay looking up at the canvas, thinking about why all this was happening, and it was a long time after Charlie's snores, who was asleep right next to her, filled the tent that Heroneka finally dozed off.