Beauxbatons [Charlie Weasley]

Morsmordre

"Isabelle, love — I need you to get up for me — something's not right—"

Charlie's urgent voice causes Isabelle to snap awake, blinking back her sleepiness as she comes face to face with her boyfriend's fearful eyes.

Dimly, she can tell that something's wrong. The noises at the campsite have changed. The singing's stopped. She can hear screams, and the sound of people running.

She slips down from her bunk and reaches for her clothes, Charlie already halfway through putting his on. The two of them change in record speed and hurry out of the tent.

By the light of the few fires that are still burning, Isabelle can see people running away into the woods, fleeing something that's moving across the field towards them, something that's emitting odd flashes of light, and noises like gunfire. Loud jeering, roars of laughter and drunken yells drift towards them; then comes a burst of strong green light, which illuminates the scene.

A crowd of wizards, tightly packed and moving together with wands pointing straight upwards, is marching slowly across the field. Isabelle squints at them... they don't seem to have faces... then she realises that their heads are hooded and their faces masked. High above them, floating along in mid-air, four struggling figures are being contorted into grotesque shapes. It's as though the masked wizards on the ground are puppeteers, and the people above them are marionettes operated by invisible strings that rise from the wands into the air. Two of the figures are very small.

More wizards are joining the marching group, laughing and pointing up at the floating bodies. Tents crumple and fall as the marching crowd swells. Once or twice Isabelle sees one of the marchers blast a tent out of his way with his wand. Several catch fire. The screaming grows louder.

The floating people are suddenly illuminated as they pass over a burning tent, and Isabelle immediately knows that they're a family of Muggles. One of the marchers below flips the wife upside-down with his wand; her nightdress falls down to reveal voluminous drawers; she struggles to cover herself up as the crowd below her screech and hoot with glee.

"That's sick," Charlie mutters, watching the smallest Muggle child, who's begun to spin like a top, sixty feet above the ground, his head flopping limply from side to side. "That's really sick..."

Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny come hurrying towards them, pulling coats over their nightclothes, with Arthur right behind them. At the same moment, Bill and Percy emerge fully dressed, with their sleeves rolled up and their wands out. Charlie has his rolled up, too.

"We're going to help the Ministry," Arthur shouts 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, Isabelle and Percy have already started sprinting away towards the oncoming marchers by the time Arthur finishes talking to the others, and he tears after them. Ministry wizards are dashing from every direction towards the source of the trouble. The crowd beneath the Muggle family is coming ever closer.

Isabelle shoots a Stunning spell at a hooded figure who runs out from his tent, attempting to join in with the marchers. It hits him square in the chest and he falls to the ground.

"Be careful!" Isabelle warns the others around her, "we do not want to make the Muggles fall!"

The Weasleys and the Ministry officials seem to take her words to heart — a bit too much. They're now having extreme difficulty getting through the crowd, which just seems to be getting larger and larger by the second, for fear of letting the Muggle family drop.

Isabelle ducks as jets of green light shoot out from the growing crowd in every direction, desperate not to get hit. She's not entirely planning on dying tonight.