Chapter 156 — The People Missing

Ron climbed down from the chair while Arthur looked round the room. He told Bill and Charlie to bring us out together, then stopped Ginny as she turned towards the stairs.

‘Leave the bags. There’s an attack.’ He opened the entrance wider and looked along the path, leaving none of us much room to misunderstand the instruction.

I thought of the notebook on the writing table. Then Luna came beside me, and I took her hand while telling the others to have their wands where they could reach them.

‘Percy?’ Bill asked. Harry had stopped moving behind him, staring at Arthur as Hermione drew her wand.

‘With the officials. Their section is being cleared.’ Arthur beckoned us through. ‘I’ll find him. Come on.’

Outside, people were moving too quickly in different directions. A man ran past carrying a child against his chest, followed by someone calling a name again and again. Beyond the accommodation, light flickered where we had put no stage, and a flame rose above the tents.

Arthur led us towards the main path. A woman with a torn sleeve came the other way, trying to turn people back from the stadium.

‘Death Eaters!’ she shouted. ‘Get away from there!’

Harry stopped. His eyes went towards the fire and then back to the woman, who had already passed, until Bill touched his shoulder and made him look at him.

‘Stay with us, Harry.’ Bill kept his hand there while Harry drew a breath. He nodded and began walking again, close enough for Bill to guide him round a fallen bag.

I searched the people beyond us for masks. There was too much between the path and the flames to distinguish faces, and no way to know whether Voldemort had gathered his followers or some had decided to act without him. Either possibility left the same urgent problem in front of us.

At the junction, Arthur pointed towards the departure signs. He told Bill to take Ginny and Charlie to keep everyone together, then turned towards a steward calling for help beside an overturned barrier. Two people were trying to lift it off somebody on the ground.

‘Dad!’ Ginny started after him, but Fred caught her arm. Arthur looked back long enough to tell her to go with her brothers, then raised his wand and called for the people beside the barrier to move clear.

Bill took Ginny’s hand. Charlie moved to the rear, urging us forward without letting us hurry past one another, and for a little while we stayed close enough to hear them both.

The wider lane gave the people around us a clear way towards the departure field. It also gave them something to rush for, and those coming from the sides pushed into gaps too narrow to hold them.

‘Shouldn’t we help?’ Harry asked, falling into step beside me. He looked back towards the screams before I answered.

‘We need to get everyone out.’ I tightened my hold on Luna as someone brushed between us and the next group. ‘We don’t know how many there are, or where they are.’

‘But those people—’ Harry began. A burst of light above the stalls turned the faces around us white, and he ducked before looking towards it again.

‘I don’t like leaving either,’ I said. ‘That doesn’t tell us who we could reach before someone reached us. Keep with Bill.’

The crowd stopped, then surged sideways as another group ran from a crossing path. Luna’s hand jerked in mine. I caught her upper arm with my free hand and braced myself when a shoulder struck mine, while Hermione struggled to keep her feet beside us.

Bill called from ahead. A man carrying a trunk forced himself between us and the people we were following; others came after him, filling the gap before I could get through. I saw Charlie’s head beyond them, lost it and tried to step onto the edge of a low barrier.

‘Oswald!’ Luna was being pushed away from it. I came down and moved with her, letting Hermione catch the back of my sleeve as we worked towards a post at the lane’s edge.

Harry was gone when I looked back. I called for him and Ron, but neither answer reached us above the crowd, and we could no longer see Bill or Charlie.

‘The departure field,’ Hermione said. ‘That’s where they’ll be going.’

It was the only direction we could take without fighting everyone moving past. I told them to stay close and followed the signs, keeping Luna’s hand firmly in mine.

The field was packed with people trying to reach marked circles. A witch on a box shouted times and numbers while stewards separated those assigned a departure from those still waiting. I could see where we needed to go, but reaching it meant crossing another press of bodies.

We stayed near a line of posts where there was more space. I raised my free hand towards a steward just as Hermione spotted Ron coming through a gap in the crowd.

I caught his shoulder when he reached us. ‘Where are the others?’ I asked, looking behind him for another familiar face.

‘Bill got Ginny and the twins through. Charlie too.’ He bent for a breath. ‘I couldn’t see you. I went back at the barrier, before I reached their Portkey.’

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‘Does Charlie know?’ Hermione asked. Ron nodded quickly, still searching past my shoulder.

‘I called that I couldn’t see you. He shouted for a steward, but their departure had started. Then they were gone.’ He straightened, meeting my eyes. ‘Where’s Harry?’

My hand tightened on his shoulder. I asked whether Harry had been with Bill, and Ron shook his head; he had thought Harry stayed beside me.

The witch called another departure. People vanished from the nearest circle, and the next family moved forward while I went to the steward and told him we were missing someone.

‘Harry Potter. He was with us in the lane.’ The name brought his eyes sharply up from the list. I described the crossing where I last saw him while the steward wrote, then called a colleague to ask whether an injured boy had been brought from that part of the site.

Nobody there had seen him. The steward told us to wait by the post while they checked the other groups, and we stayed through two more departures, looking at every person coming into the field.

Ministry staff began forming proper lines at the entrances and directing injured people to an aid tent. The rush eased, making it easier to see how many of the arrivals were hurt. Harry appeared in none of them.

The steward returned without news from the other departure points or the aid tent. I looked towards the service lane, remembering the screen beyond the crossing, the low wall and the turning hidden from the main path.

‘Someone needs to look there,’ I said. I described it while pointing, trying to give him something more useful than the missing boy’s name again.

‘I’ve sent the location through. Search teams are working across from the far side.’ When I asked how long that would take, he did not pretend to know.

Luna stood beside me, looking back towards the lane. ‘If he could come here, he would,’ she said quietly. I knew she was right, and had no answer which made waiting feel safer for him.

I told the steward which way I intended to go. He told me to remain where we were, but I asked him to keep Harry there if he arrived and tell him we were looking by the service entrance.

‘We go together,’ Hermione said. She checked the small bag still slung across her body. ‘And if it’s blocked, we come back.’

Ron agreed, drawing his wand. I looked at Luna, and she told me she could walk, provided I kept hold of her hand where people were crowding.

I did not want any of them on that route. I did not want Harry lying somewhere beside it either, and the decision I made left the steward calling after us as we went against the thinning stream of arrivals.

The main path was easier to cross now. Beyond it, a stall had collapsed over its counter, with little patches of cloth still burning above. A witch held a light over someone kneeling beside an injured man, while further along Aurors restrained two masked figures and took their wands.

It was my first clear sight of the attackers. I wanted to ask what they had thought they were doing, but the nearest Auror was already answering a call from the burning row. We kept moving towards the screen.

Ron stared at the frame of a ruined tent. Hermione had gone pale, and a fragment of older memory caught me: feet on broken glass, a voice through a radio, the wait to discover whether somebody behind a wall could answer.

Burned canvas brought me back to this place. I told them to watch the route and keep their wands ready; we did not need to enter the fire. Luna’s fingers trembled in mine, and I squeezed them once before leading her round a fallen sign.

The screen was dark. A trolley lay on its side across the service entrance, beyond the flattened barrier beneath the display. Someone lay against the low wall behind it, and I recognised his clothes before I could see his face.

‘Harry.’ I went round the trolley and knelt beside him. He was breathing, his glasses crooked and dust caught in his hair, but he did not answer until I touched his shoulder and called again.

Hermione knelt on the other side. She warned Ron not to pull him up as his eyelids moved, and I stayed where he could see me while he struggled to focus.

‘Oswald?’ His voice sounded dry. He swallowed, then winced when he tried to turn his head.

‘We’re here. What happened?’ I kept my hand against his shoulder while Ron crouched near his feet.

‘Something hit the wall. There was a flash, and I think I fell.’ He could not tell Hermione whether a curse had struck him, and finding no obvious wound gave us no reason to decide he was unhurt.

He tried sitting with Ron supporting him. We waited to see whether the movement worsened the pain, then helped when he insisted he could stand. I told him a healer was waiting at the departure field and that we were taking him there.

His feet had just found the ground when a step sounded beyond the wall. I raised my hand, and the others fell quiet before a voice came from the dark.

‘Morsmordre!’ Green light climbed above the ruined stalls. A skull opened in the sky, a bright snake unwinding from its mouth while Harry made a sharp sound beside me.

His hand went to his forehead. Ron caught him as he bent, and Luna stayed on his other side while Hermione named the Dark Mark. I knew its shape from print; nothing on those pages had prepared me for what its light did to the ground around us.

Harry lifted his head and pointed. Beyond the wall stood a man with his wand still raised, turning towards the sound of us. For a moment I could see a way to the departure field through the lane behind us; then he began walking closer.

‘Back. Take Harry.’ I moved between them and the man, reaching into my pouch while Hermione guided Ron round the trolley. Luna helped Harry over a fallen timber, their wands already out as they retreated.

The man raised his wand and sent fire towards us. I threw the shield strip into its path, speaking Protego as it left my fingers.

Flame spread across the barrier. Heat washed over my face, but the shield held long enough to turn the rush away from the lane before its edge buckled and the paper exhausted its charge. I stepped back, keeping clear of the fire which spilled beyond it.

The light revealed a pale face, a strong jaw and a smile directed past me. He looked somewhere in his thirties, and his eyes had found Harry.

‘Harry Potter.’ He said the name almost tenderly. Harry looked round as the wand turned towards him.

‘Down!’ I shouted. The man began the Killing Curse while Harry was still moving, and green light crossed the place where his head had been.

It struck the stone behind him, bursting chips from the wall. Ron ducked over Harry, Luna pulled herself behind the overturned trolley, and I knew there was no ordinary shield I could put between them and the next one.

Ken’s question came back to me: a defence against something a shield could not stop. I had read it at a table, with time to think; now the man was raising his wand again.

‘Harry, go!’ I shouted. He had aimed his own wand from the ground, but Hermione caught his sleeve and drew him towards the gap behind the trolley.

I took three fire strips from the marked section of the pouch. The first went low towards the ground in front of the attacker, and I spoke Incendio as it flew. Flame opened across his intended step, forcing him to check it.

The second piece went to his right. ‘Incendio!’ His eyes followed the pale paper as he swung his wand towards it, and I sent the third to the other side before he could finish turning.

‘Incendio!’ The brief releases narrowed his space with heat. Fire caught his hem, making him twist to keep it off his legs while he tried to bring the wand back towards me.

I reached into my pouch again. He was still upright, still armed, and the people behind me had not yet reached the clear lane.