𝐂𝐔𝐑𝐒𝐄𝐃 | harry potter

⏤ 26. the quidditch world cup

Something began poking at her arm. Ria stirred, hissing in irritation since she had had just an hour or two of sleep. The boy rolled his eyes. "Ria.." he whispered. She didn't react.

Her dream had kept her up; not the one where the Muggle man died though that she had a day ago, this one was different and all she could see was black smoke. She had stayed up for hours, trying to figure out what it was. But when nothing made sense, she had gone back to sleep.

"Asteria!" He yelled, and she swung her hand in the air in surprise, hitting him across the face. "Ow!"

She looked at her cousin's face, eyes still half-lidded with sleep. "Oh.. it's just you."

"What's with you resorting to violence all the time?" He asked grimly.

"Should've stopped disturbing me, then. It's annoying." She grumbled, pulling her blanket over her head, but Cedric began pulling it away. "Ced! Go away!" She whined, struggling to take it back.

But he had already bunched it up in his hands and flickered the lights on. She clicked her tongue in annoyance. "Don't want to miss the World Cup, do you?"

At this, Ria's eyes opened wide and she shot him a smile, sitting up readily. Cedric laughed, shaking his head as he backed away towards the door. "Get ready quickly and come down for breakfast."

One grand breakfast and a luggage check later, the three were on their way to the Quidditch World Cup. A while later, they were walking up a hill, where they were supposed to meet the Weasleys, Harry and Hermione.

"So, where is the match taking place? Of course, I don't think we have a big enough place to conceal all the tents and the stadium at the same time." Cedric kept asking his father about how these things worked as he tried to ignore his urge to sleep. How Ria was managing to stay wide awake with her crappy sleep schedule was a wonder to him.

"Ah, this was a massive problem," Amos answered. "Now, hundreds of thousands of wizards show up at the tournament. And as you said, we don't have a big enough place to accommodate all of them. There are places where the Muggles can't penetrate, like Diagon Alley or Platform nine and three quarters, but transporting hundreds of thousands of wizards through is not possible. So we had to find a nice deserted moor, and had set up as many anti-Muggle precautions as possible. The whole Ministry's been working on it for months." He explained, and Cedric nodded.

"First, of course, we have to stagger the arrivals. People with cheaper tickets have to arrive two weeks beforehand. A limited number use Muggle transport, but we can't have too many clogging up their buses and trains— because wizards are coming from all over the world. Some Apparate, of course, but we have to set up safe points for them to appear, well away from Muggles. I believe there's a handy wood they're using as the Apparition point. For those who don't want to Apparate, or can't, we use Portkeys." Amos added.