"It's Death Eaters! There are about thirty of them…"
Sirius's voice was very low, but the anger and chill in it were unmistakable.
He quickly assessed the situation: the enemy was numerous and ruthless, and they could not resist them with just a handful of people.
Mr. Weasley's face also turned pale, but he quickly made a decision.
"Percy, take the children to the woods to the west, where the fires are smaller. Everyone, keep low and move along the shadows of the tents!"
He urged in a hurried voice, "Bill, Charlie, come with me! We must try to stop them—at least buy time for evacuation until the Ministry of Magic arrives!"
"But, Dad, let me go too! I can help!"
Percy adjusted his crooked glasses. His face was filled with terror, yet he still requested to stay in a slightly trembling voice.
"Your current mission is more important than fighting them, Percy!"
Sirius interrupted sharply, speaking unequivocally. "You must ensure they get safely into the woods."
At the same time, he quickly glanced at Harry. "Harry, you follow Percy. No matter what you hear or see, never stop and never look back."
His gaze held both command and concern. After speaking, he turned and left.
Mr. Weasley gripped his wand tightly. With his two elder sons, he moved against the panicked, scattering crowd, following Sirius to confront the frenzied evil procession.
However, the cruelty of reality far exceeded imagination.
Dozens of Death Eaters had unleashed all their malice, while they were only a handful of people.
As the crowd fled toward the Death Eaters, Mr. Weasley and the others' figures—moving against the flow—stood out prominently. They immediately caught the Death Eaters' attention and were attacked at once.
The next second, spell lights shot out like venomous snakes. Jets of colored light rained down densely, weaving a deadly net in the air.
Explosions were deafening. Tents were constantly struck by spells, turning into burning fragments that scattered everywhere.
The fleeing people around them screamed in even greater terror. Some experienced adult wizards managed to Apparate away in panic, while more young wizards could only run desperately, tripping from time to time.
Mr. Weasley, Sirius, and the others could only struggle to wave their wands, conjuring flickering Protego barriers as they desperately shielded the innocent people fleeing behind them.
But under the storm-like assault, they were forced to retreat again and again, in ever more perilous situations.
A Death Eater sneered and blasted a giant burning tent toward them. The towering wave of flames instantly engulfed the spot where Charlie had just been.
"This way! Quick!"
Percy's face was pale, but he remembered his father's instructions and called to Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and the twins to run toward the western woods.
Thick smoke made their eyes water and the heat scorched their skin.
They had not run far when a huge, crackling wall of fire suddenly shot up from a row of connected tents, completely blocking their path. The scorching airflow forced them to retreat again and again.
They were not the only ones surrounded by flames.
A group of young American wizards wearing Ilvermorny robes huddled together in panic, trying to spray water from their wands, but the effect was minimal.
In the chaos, an unusually tall figure waved her wand in the firelight, trying to clear burning obstacles for the students behind her.
"Hagrid?" Harry and Ron coughed in the thick smoke, calling out in surprise.
"That's not Hagrid!"
Hermione said without looking up as she doused the flames in front of her with "Aguamenti." "That's Madame Maxime! She has Beauxbatons students behind her too!"
She tried to tear a gap in the wall of fire with a powerful stream of water, but the spell's water instantly evaporated into white mist.
Just then, a sinister spell light grazed Hermione's cheek and struck a tent beside them, blasting it into a shower of sparks and flying fragments.
"Reducto!"
Ron screamed in terror, raising his wand and firing a Reducto haphazardly in the direction the spell had come from.
"We can't stay here! We're sitting ducks!" George roared, his usual playful grin gone for the first time.
"Follow me! We'll go another way!"
Percy made an immediate decision, pointing toward an area where the fire was relatively weaker. "Stay close to me!"
However, just as they were about to move again, a tall Death Eater wearing a grotesque mask broke through the weak front line and spotted the trapped youngsters.
He let out a hoarse laugh. The tip of his wand glowed with an ominous light as he aimed directly at Percy, who stood at the front.
Percy quickly raised his wand. "Protego!"
At the same time,
"Expelliarmus!"
"Diffindo!"
Two voices rang out almost simultaneously.
Percy's Protego barely deflected the spell aimed at him; it struck an overturned butterbeer barrel nearby with a loud bang.
Harry's precise Expelliarmus shot straight for the Death Eater's wrist.
The Death Eater clearly hadn't expected these "children" to react so quickly. He hastily dodged sideways, and Hermione's spell grazed his shoulder, making him break out in a cold sweat.
This brief interval gave everyone time to react.
"Stupefy!"
Ron's voice followed close behind.
A searing red light struck the Death Eater squarely in the back. He fell forward without a sound, his mask flying off and revealing a bewildered, ordinary face.
Bill and Charlie, fighting as they retreated, had already fallen back near them. Their faces were smudged with soot and their robes scorched in several places.
Sirius and Mr. Weasley were still struggling farther away, where spell lights flashed intensely, clearly under immense pressure.
"There are too many of them! Where is the Ministry of Magic? Why aren't they here yet!" Bill roared, waving his wand to deflect a spell aimed at Charlie.
"They must be held up!" Charlie parried a dark curse, his arm numb from the impact.
"East of the woods! There's a small gap—you can break through that way!"
Bill fired an Obstacle Curse at another approaching Death Eater while shouting at the trapped crowd, "Hurry! We can't hold on much longer!"
"Go!"
Percy snapped out of his daze, no longer hesitating, and led everyone toward the east.
Madame Maxime also saw hope. She shouted in her booming voice to her students, "Follow the Hogwarts students! Quick!"
Her large frame actively covered the rear, deflecting an incoming curse with her thick wand.
The American wizards gathered after hearing the call as well, and the enlarged group stumbled through the sea of fire and ruins, spells whistling over their heads from time to time.
In the distance, they saw the masked Death Eaters tormenting a Muggle family even more frantically, their laughter piercing the night.
Despair began to spread.
Without hesitation, Bill suddenly pulled the Bronze Feather badge from his pocket and quickly channeled a trace of magic into it. The badge glowed faintly.
He whispered urgently into the badge, his voice filled with unprecedented urgency: "World Cup campsite under attack by a large number of Death Eaters—urgent need for support!"
___
o(*≧▽≦)ツ💫 Read up to 12+ chapters in advance on Patreon/DarkDevil1