The Unwilling Participant - Chapter 4: An Attack, and a Game I Guess by manmadeoflasers

Chapter 4

The Game itself was good, Harry supposed. He wasn't a quidditch fanatic, so like Hermione, one game was much the same as another to him but the company was what he was after. His brothers (Fred and George, and maybe even Bill were no longer just friends) kept up a good commentary that put Bagman's to shame and even made up for the Malfoys being there. Harry wondered if there was anything Malfoy's money couldn't buy, but in the end decided that was society's problem and not his.

The two things that stuck out to Harry were the Veela, and Krum. The Veela happened first, Harry had spent all morning after his breakdown regaining his calm, and when they ran out onto the field he felt a silvery pressure come in at him and his center from all sides. He could feel it effecting him, and it made him... horny? He didn't understand the influence, but he immediately pulsed his magic outward for a moment to break himself free. He held his barrier around himself, and then began to look at the people near him. Ron, the Twins (his brothers, he amended internally), and Draco all seemed to want to go to the edge of the box.

Hermione grabbed Ron before he could do more than leave his chair, Draco's mother grabbed him before he could even do that and his father looked disgusted for some reason. Harry put a hand each on Fred and George's shoulder and moved whatever barrier he had found for himself out to them. They immediately calmed down and looked at him strangely, he just shook his head and mouthed "Later". Bill noticed and smiled, while Charlie seemed indifferent to the whole affair and Molly had simply taken Arthur's hand.

Harry spent a large portion of the match watching the silver influence. It flowed like the tides, in and out, seeming to match the moods of the beautiful women who were the Bulgarian's mascots. He didn't like it, he didn't trust them. It took only a small part of his attention after a while to simply block them out, and he eventually removed his hands from his brothers when he figured out how to extend his shield outside himself.

Krum, on the other hand, was no such troubling influence. His Wronski feint was devastating, and the way the man flew gave Harry the chills. He had no warm and fuzzy feelings for the guy himself, but he seemed to practically not need a broom for the way he glided around looking for the snitch. Harry watched his ease in the air and could feel only jealousy. Here, Harry thought, was a man after his own heart.

Ireland won, Krum got the snitch, and his brothers were looking at Bagman with a predatory gleam in their eyes. He wished them well, but he knew people, and Bagman was as great a snake in the grass as he had ever seen. Harry would have called him a Slytherin if his cunning had seemed to involve any intelligence instead of just instinct.

They moved back to their tent after the match finally ended. Harry wasn't sure if he was glad or not that they were nearer the Irish supporters. They seemed to be in such high spirits (Or drunk, Harry thought privately) that they were likely to riot. But on the other hand if they were nearer the Bulgarian supporters... that whole area was depressed and within sight of the incredibly pleased Irish it was, if anything, more ripe for a riot. Harry really just hoped the Ministry was on its game tonight. Anything less would result in deaths, and dozens probably.

The group retired to the area surrounding their fire and had hot chocolate until Ginny fell asleep in her cup. Arthur moved them all inside the tent and admonished them all to get some sleep. Harry had a bad feeling from somewhere and was too tense, he instead sat cross legged and sunk his awareness inside himself.

Now that he actually had time, he processed all of the events of the day. He looked at his own reactions and feelings, and his new connections to the Twins and to a lesser extent Bill. He wanted to like Bill, but couldn't bring himself to name him a brother like he had the Twins. He knew that after the game Bill would disappear back to Egypt and he couldn't lie to himself at his center. He would be devastated to name a man his brother and then not see him again. He wouldn't do that to himself despite Bill's kindness and solidity. He wanted an older brother like that, he wanted the man to have his back, but he wouldn't let him, not now at least.

Then he examined his tie into Magic. He could feel himself use the capital M to name it. The more he looked at his center the more he was sure that it wasn't a force inside himself, but rather a tie into an elemental force. Magic, he figured, was like gravity or wind or lightning, it was a force of nature that existed entirely outside him. He thought his core was like a bucket he dropped into the well that was magic. It was the vehicle through which he channeled this universal force. He had spent a lot of time over the summer speculating on it, and he wondered if there wasn't a way to induce the tie in a mundane person.

He thought the connection he had to Magic must also have an emotional component. Why else would it expand when he used it as a sink for his negative emotions? He wondered what would happen if he tried sinking positive emotions into it. Harry resolved to try it the next time he went flying, which was really the only thing he had that he could reliably find any joy in.

Harry found he still couldn't sleep. He'd spent maybe half an hour so far meditating on his life and his connection to Magic. He found that meditating could almost always let him find dreamless sleep, but his bad vibe from earlier refused to leave him. Why the hell was he still nervous? Harry sighed out loud, thinking about it wouldn't help him, he gave up on it.

He directed his thoughts now toward the Veela. What was the strange presence he had felt? They had clearly affected the minds of the younger Weasleys, specifically the men. Gender specific magic? He had never heard of it before, as far as he knew magic affected everyone equally, he thought it was why the magicals never seemed to discriminate between race and gender like he had always heard about from the colonies and in history in primaries.

That had to be it though. Why else hadn't the girls been affected? He knew Hermione had a strong will, but he didn't think of Ginny as particularly strong headed. She should have been affected if Ron had been. Hell, even his brothers had seemed to be affected until he ran his barrier through them. Harry resolved to look through the Hogwarts library when he got back.

He looked at the barrier he had formed around his mind to stave off the veela influence. His core was gold and emerald, but the barrier he had formed to keep them out was blood red, it shined in a way he associated with rubies, but was far darker. Harry fixed it in place, tying it with tendrils of power to his center so his magic would keep it in place without his conscious influence. That should keep him safe, at least from Veela. If they could affect his mind like that then maybe anything could. He would have to be much more careful.

With these final thoughts, the changes in his environment that he had been observing passively came to the forefront of his mind. The screaming from the party outside had lost that indefinable aspect that said 'Party! Happy!' and gained something that yelled 'Terror!' far stronger.

Harry stood and moved himself from the bunk bed. He put on his pants and shirt, tied his trainers tightly, and threw on a jumper before leaving the boy's room and heading into the tent proper. Bill, Charlie, and Arthur were out there sharing what looked like glasses of fire whisky. They were having a quiet conversation, but Harry interrupted them.

"Guys, quiet for a second, listen."

The three men started at Harry's presence. Charlie flashed annoyance at being ordered by a boy almost a decade his junior, but they quieted down and listened. Harry spoke again.

"Trouble. Let's take a look outside."

Harry moved around the table and men who still occupied it and stepped silently to the flap, moving it aside and taking a single step outside. The horizon was lit up, which wasn't unexpected, but it was too bright. It spoke of fire, but far more than the dotting of campfires it should have been though. In the distance, from the direction of the groundskeeper's place there were about an even dozen wizard milling around a cabin.

Behind Harry, the men of the Weasley clan came out and stood with him. They had exited in just enough time to see the milling wizards Harry had noticed break in to the groundskeeper's cabin with a butt of splinters and a cry of "Reducto !"

Arthur gasped and Bill visibly tensed as they were all witness to the wizards pulling on white masks and black robes. Shortly after they had dressed, the mundanes (Harry decided then and there that muggle was a slur) floated out and were floated above the small but growing crowd of wizards in masks.

"Death Eaters."

It came out nearly emotionless. Arthur didn't move, it nearly looked like he couldn't. From his face, Harry had a hard time deciding if it was rage or fear on the man's face. Both seemed out of place, Arthur was almost always a very middle of the road man, he didn't seem one to be moved to extremes at all. Harry had heard him though, and Harry too was moved to rage.

He immediately sunk the rage into his core, and it seemed to hum inside him as he stood there.

"We have to go to help the ministry, Harry get back inside, wake the others. All of you go into the woods, I'll summon some aurors."

Arthur hadn't yet moved after speaking. He still seemed paralyzed. Harry watched as the Death Eaters started rotating the groundskeeper's wife around, laughing as her skirt fell when she was inverted and laughing further at the woman's attempts to keep her dignity.

"No," Harry said the one word and the three men looked at him.

"Are we wizards?" Harry said with his rage evident in his voice, "Or are we mice? They'll be walking this way soon. We all have wands, I won't move an inch while this scum walks about in plain view."

The three men took a step back as they could feel Harry's rage and they could almost feel his magic hum inside him.

"I'm going back in there, waking Fred, George and Percy, then I'm going to stun Ron, Hermione, and Ginny. They would panic and be a risk anyway. Bill, you're a curse breaker, can you erect a shield ward around our tent?"

The men could feel the authority in his voice, and they could feel the experience in it as well. Here was the boy... no. Here was the man that had rescued their Ginny from a basilisk and had faced Voldemort himself and come out on top. Arthur may have been involved in the first war, but even he had not seen the same action as this 14 year old.

Bill gave a tight nod, and Harry continued, "Then start now, give us five feet out here in front and three around the edges of the tent, don't bother closing off the ward, hold it yourself, I'll help you when they come. When I wake them, the rest of us will start transfiguring stones into a wall around us. Leave spots for us to look out but make the wall up of individual pieces, if they start throwing unforgivable around, the individual stones will break and can be replaced instead of wall segments. Start now, I'll wake the rest."

Harry started towards the tent flap, and when no one moved he turned and said, "NOW!"

The three sprang into motion, Bill started up a chant in old Gaelic and Arthur and Charlie were summoning pebbles by the score to provide raw material for the transfigurations.

Harry went first to the girl's room in the tent, he opened the door and didn't even bother to look inside, two red bolts flew from his hand and stunned the girls, not even giving them a chance to wake. Harry knew they would be risks and he was stepping toward the boy's room without even waiting to see if his spells hit. He could feel behind him the spells impacting their targets.

As he opened the door to the boy's room, all the boys woke with a start. Harry spent a fraction of a second thinking that he may have opened the door with too much force before addressing the groggy group in front of him.

"Fred, George, Percy, out front now. You're helping your dad and Charlie make us a wall around the tent. Wands out, lads, there is trouble."

They didn't move fast enough for him, so he touched each of their shoulders briefly, shooting a wordless enervate through each of them in the same way he had shared his shield with Fred and George earlier during the match. The energy he shot them full of got them immediately up and at'em, the Twins had their wands out in a second and were moving, Percy gave him a queer look before joining them.

Ron threw a yawn so wide Harry momentarily worried about his head falling apart and managed a "What?" before Harry grabbed his shoulder and sent a stunner through his hand. He took a second to move Ron fully back into his bed, then went back outside.

The guys had the stone blocks put together with sticking charms, and were halfway done by the time Harry got outside. His brothers and Percy were immediately moving to help, and Bill's chanting cut out a moment after Harry exited.

"The shield is ready, you want me to activate it now?", Bill asked as he turned to Harry.

"No, hold it off for now. We have one more thing to do after we finish our defenses."

The two then turned and helped the rest of the guys finish the wall, then they all turned and looked through the gaps they had left to the Death Eaters. While they had been working the group had doubled in size, and at the outskirts of the crowd men were crushing tents in their way with basic blasting curses and the odd cry of "Incendio !"

Harry voice picked up over the roar of fear and spell fire, " Now, Arthur and Charlie, cast your best cushioning charms at the ground behind us, and the rest, summon a different member of the family out there. We can't let them hurt those people, especially the kids, and when we take away their fun they should focus on us instead of running riot through the rest of the crowd. We'll keep'em occupied until the Aurors show up and take them all from behind. Any questions?"

Harry was pissed off and afraid from his toes to the tips of his hair, but he knew how this would play out without him acting. He didn't just pick up transfiguration texts in Diagon over the summer, he had grabbed a pretty broad spread which included a couple histories of the 'Blood War'. Voldemort only had a few score followers, but fear kept every single wizard in all of the UK down while he and his tiny group ran roughshod over the country. All they needed was a backbone and it would have been over, no wizard can fight off fifty others at once.

If Harry had just run away the groundskeeper would have been killed, and his family would have been lucky to just die. The aurors would have had to try and capture rioters one at a time across a wide area and the bastards who started it would just have gotten away. Maybe he did have a saving people thing, but he didn't care. He couldn't stand by here, in the heat of the moment, and just let these pieces of human garbage walk unchallenged.

"No, Good. Arthur and Charlie, get casting. The rest, on three, everyone aim for someone different so we don't miss. Three... Two.. Now..."

With cries of Accio the family being floated about suddenly rushed through the air and over the small wall they had constructed. As soon as they had landed on the cushioning charms, Harry wandlessly stunned them and turned to Bill, "Now, Bill!"

Bill turned to the lines he had drawn in the dirt and spoke an activation phrase, and as soon as it left his mouth a glowing silver-blue shield enveloped them. They were safe for the moment as the crowd they had stolen the two children and husband and wife from was stunned by losing their play things.

Harry turned to the rest of the group, "Stay on your toes, guys. We're not through this yet. We're lucky because most of that crowd is drunken idiots. Arthur, can you put up a small ward so no one can apparate into this area?"

"Don't bother, Harry, they can't see through the wall we made and there isn't space between our shield ward and the wall. They don't have any place to apparate to."

Harry took the moment to thank his lucky stars, apparition was the last thing he could think of that could get them. Now all they needed to do was hope the aurors got there soon. At that moment the first red bolt of light flew across the space between the crowd and their ward. It noticeably dimmed and Bill grunted. Harry didn't know how the rest of their energy reserves were holding up. Even for seven people they had done a lot of spell work, Harry had hoped that Bill could last longer but he wasn't really surprised.

He ran next to Bill and had him crouch next to the wall away from one of the viewing gaps they had left. Harry placed his hand on Bill's shoulder like he had Fred and George earlier that day, and in happier times. He took all of his fear for the family behind them and for the family supporting him, and he took all of his rage and hate for the cowards behind masks outside their wards, and he funneled it all into his core, then he funneled the resulting surge of magical energy through his hand and into Bill.

Bill was very tired when the call came from Harry to raise the ward he had set up. The ward he had made was a variation on an old Celtic ward he had found on his first ever assignment with Gringotts. They had been breaking into a burial mound, a man that owed the goblins a substantial sum of galleons had hidden his reserve cash in the ancient burial mound of his clan. Bill had been assigned to a master ward breaker at the time, and he remembered the ward forever after because of how long it took them to break it.

Normal curse breaking for long established wards, like those on the burial mound and later in his career the ones on some of the nastier tombs in Egypt, required the breakers to place energy sinks into the area around the ward to soak up energy from them and weaken them so the breakers could get in. The ward he used had taken days of waiting until the master he was working with ran out of patience. The ward was immune to passive methods, it turned out, and could only be brute forced, and it took a lot of energy to break for them too.

What he hadn't counted on was the amount of energy it took to maintain. He just didn't have it in him. The summoning charm he used to grab the father (Robert something, he thought, his dad had mentioned it in passing but he forgot) had taken a lot from him, and he had transfigured quite a few of the blocks protecting them too.

As soon as the first blasting curse impacted on the shield he knew he had failed Harry and his family. He was bushed, it had been a long day and the glass and a half of Ogden's finest hadn't helped either. He knew they were done for and he was about to give up all hope, right until he felt Harry's hand on his shoulder drag him down away from the hole in the wall he had been looking through and to a crouching position.

Then he had to close his eyes as he was flooded with energy. He felt his ward soak up all he had to give, and the energy flooding into him from his shoulder just kept coming. Slowly he opened his eyes as he adjusted to the sheer volume of magic pulsing through him. He felt like he was being wrung like a sponge for everything in him, but Harry was giving him just as much as the ward was taking, and even a bit more.

Bill glanced at Harry, who met his eyes and held them. As he adjusted to the flow through him he began to get a tingling sense of another person. He first felt all of the fear Harry had been holding down since he guided them out just a few minutes ago, and it was almost overwhelming him. The more in tune he got with the energy coursing through him, the more he felt though. He got Harry's raw and pressing hate and rage against the people outside the ward. He felt the hate, and he could tell why, he had the sense that Harry despised each and every individual one of them because even if they were real Death Eaters or just some good for nothing rioters, he lost his parents because of all of them. Harry felt as if he had lost his life because of all of them, and every speck of that rage was channeled into the magic protecting them.

Bill raised his gaze from the emerald flames in the eyes next to him to the ward around them which had turned opaque from the energy in it. Bill barely noticed the curses raining down on the ward from the outside. He concentrated for a moment and identified a number of different blasting, piercing, drilling, and flame spells. From the sheer number of signals he was getting the crowd must truly have shifted focus to them, but the signals he was getting were so muted that the shield wasn't affected one iota by them.

Bill looked around for his brothers and his dad, and they were each looking around wide eyed at the ward. They had never seen this kind of thing before, they honestly didn't know that wards could do this. Bill himself was only unsurprised because he had been part of a group that had raided an Egyptian arch-mage's tomb near the edge of the Nile's widest point from the wet season of 1238. That wizard had made his ward stones the living bones of a trio of dragons, binding all of their magic into the wards he had made.

It was one of the cruelest things he had ever seen; he didn't share Charlie's love for the great beasts, but binding the life forces and magics of three living beings into the wards had supercharged them and caused the dragons to waste away. Their bones were found curled into themselves, as thought they were in the greatest of pain.

That ward, powered by the entire life force of three dragons was the only time he had seen something this powerful. Bill had to admit, even with the torrent of energy he was getting from the boy beside him that he considered a good man, he was afraid.

Harry moved a bit closer to him, "Bill, listen to me for a sec," he whispered.

Bill look back to harry, his family was still wide mouthed and uncomprehending, "What?"

"Bill don't tell a soul about this. I have had enough trouble at school. I don't need more attention from Malfoy and Fudge. Tell them this was accidental magic, tell them everything I have done tonight was accidental. I don't have a lot left in me. I can feel you through this link, I know I can trust you. Please have my back on this."

"Harry, you've been casting without a wand all night, did you know that?" It had scared Bill earlier, but he had enough on his mind to let it slide. Harry's comment made it sound like this wasn't accidental magic though.

Bill watched Harry look at his empty hands and quietly say bollocks.

"Bill, please, tell everyone it was accidental, tell them that you felt just barely concealed terror from me. I can cast wandlessly. I can help you to as well if you want, I planned on showing the Twins how. But I need you on this. Folks will trust you."

Bill felt the flow from Harry diminish a little. Then it jumped down a bit more. Harry closed his eyes and the flow stabilized. Bill felt a moment of terror and immediately paid attention to the signals he had been getting from the ward. They had dropped off almost completely a moment ago, and now only got a shot or two, and the shots seemed to be at weird angles now, no longer directed in. It took Bill a full half minute to figure out what that meant, and he brought his focus back to Harry before him.

"I think the aurors came, Harry. We aren't taking shots any more, they dwindled off. I'm going to let it down."

Harry opened his eyes for a second and nodded his assent before tightly closing them again. Bill started muttering the closing phrases he developed for the ward, and the third time me hit the seventh and final syllable in the phrase, the ward dropped.

He and Harry stood and looked outside through the holes in the wall again, red robes were everywhere, and the folks in them were tying up black robed and masked people all over the place. In the distance the mark of Voldemort shimmered in the air over the woods. Harry took that moment to waver, then pass out. He hit the ground without a word and everyone in the space the wall enclosed gave a shout.

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