chapter twenty five / mosmorde

                     They didn't exactly find their friends in the most desirable position. Around twenty panic-filled minutes later, they stumbled across Harry, Hermione, and Ron at the center of a circle of Ministry men, all with their wands pointed at the teenagers.

"Stop!" yelled Mr. Weasley, who stumbled out of the wood from the opposite direction. "STOP! That's my son!"

The three teenagers in the center of the Ministry men looked up warily as the stream of red light slowed to a stop. Cassie stumbled in after Mr. Weasley, throwing her arms around her three friends, only pulling away when a sharp hand tugged her shoulder back. She let out a strangled sound of confusion and fell back, rubbing her injury as Barty Crouch stared her down.

   "What did you do?" the man accused to her – not the other three, directly to her. She gaped at him, experiencing an extreme loss for words.

   "What are you talking about, Crouch?" Mr. Weasley demanded, stepping in between the girl and Crouch.

   "It was her – I know it!" Crouch said fiercely, glaring at Cassie. "You know who her father is, Arthur, you can't–"

   "My father is Remus Lupin!" Cassie exclaimed, scrambling to a stand. "Are you implying that I.. I cast that!?"

   "Of course not, Cassie," Mr. Weasley said kindly, but Barty Crouch's loud sound of disagreement said otherwise. He lowered his voice and leaned in, speaking to Mr. Weasley in a hushed (yet still completely coherent to the rest of the group) voice.

   "You know I didn't mean that father, Weasley," he hissed, glancing over his shoulder at Cassie. He continued back to his whispered conversation with Mr. Weasley while Harry, Ron, and Hermione walked slowly towards Cassie.

She immediately took them into her arms and they all exhaled a collective sigh of relief.

"When we turned around and you were gone, and then Winky was acting all strange and wonky – and then we still couldn't find Harry's wand—" Hermione rambled, breathing heavily, until Cassie stopped her.

"It's alright, Hermione; I found Cedric," she explained, gesturing to the boy conversing with his father. Her eyes flickered to the figure in the sky, and she immediately knew it had something to do with Dark Magic. "Do—do any of you guys know what that thing is?"

But before any of them could answer, Amos Diggory shouted at them from where he had moved to with his wand drawn. "We got them! There's someone here! Unconscious – oh, it's – blimey!"

"You've got someone?" Crouch shouted, sounding very much like he didn't believe the man. "Who? Who is it?"

Amos Diggory re-emerged from the tree line where  Cassie and Cedric had just exited from. He was carrying a tiny, limp figure in his arms.

"Winky?" Cassie muttered to Harry, who nodded his head, unable to form a sentence.

"This.. cannot be," Crouch said jerkily as he stared down at Winky. "No!" He stalked off in the direction Amos had come from angrily.

"No point, Mr. Crouch," said Mr. Diggory. "There's no one else there."

But Mr. Crouch continued through the woods, rustling around branches and leaves.

"Bit embarrassing, don't you think?" Mr. Diggory said grimly, looking down at Winky's unconscious form. "Barty's house elf... I mean to say..."

"Come off it, Amos," said Mr. Weasley quietly, "you don't think it was the elf... The Dark Mark is a wizard's sign. It requires a wand."

"Well, she had one!" exclaimed Mr. Diggory.

"What?"

Amos held up a wand and showed it to Mr. Weasley.

   "Hey – that's mine!" Harry's voice broke the silence that followed, and everyone in the clearing turned to face him. "I.. dropped it."

"Is that a confession?" Mr. Diggory said quickly. "You threw it aside after you conjured the Mark?"

"Dad, you really think Harry would conjure the... Dark Mark?" Cedric muttered to his dad, looking at the shorter man warily.

"Oh.. of course not," mumbled Mr. Diggory. "Sorry.. carried away.."

"I didn't drop it there anyway," said Harry, looking towards the trees beneath the skull. "I missed it right after we got into the woods."

"So," said Mr. Diggory, his eyes hardening as he turned to look at Winky again. "You found this wand, elf? And you picked it up and thought you'd have some fun with it, did you?"

"He doesn't really believe a house elf did that?" Cassie whispered to Hermione, who shrugged her shoulders mutely and stared at the ordeal with wide and glossy brown eyes.

"I is not doing magic with it, sir!" squealed Winky. She looked very nervous to speak in front of all these Ministry wizards, but determined just the same.

"Winky's voice is too squeaky to have said it," Cassie pointed out tentatively, looking to her friends for support. "Didn't you lot hear it?"

   Ron nodded. "Yeah, it was a human voice," he added.

"There's a basic way to discover the last spell a wand performed, elf, did you know that?" Mr. Diggory narrowed his eyes at Winky. She trembled and shook her head frantically.

Mr. Diggory raised his own wand and touched the tip to Harry's. "Prior Incantato."

A smaller version of the green figure in the sky erupted from Harry's wand and hovered above the clearing. Mr. Diggory's face twisted in some sort of triumph. He waved his wand again and the smaller skull dispersed. "That proves it!"

"I is not doing it!" Winky shrieked. "I is not knowing how! I is a good elf, I isn't using wands!"

"Amos," said Mr. Weasley loudly, and Cassie already knew he was about to put an end to Mr. Diggory's incessant blaming, "think about it.. very few wizards know that spell! Where would she have learned it?"

"Perhaps Amos is suggesting," Mr. Crouch finally spoke, cold anger in every syllable, "that I routinely teach my servants to conjure the Dark Mark?"

Amos paled in terror. He swallowed and shook his head. "Mr. Crouch.. not at all..."

"You may rest assured that my elf will be punished," said Crouch. "Winky has behaved in a manner I would not have believe possible. I told her to remain in the tent.. I told her to stay while I sorted out trouble. And I find that she disobeyed me. This means clothes."

"No!" shrieked Winky, throwing herself to Mr. Crouch's feet. "No, master! Not clothes!"

"Clothes can't be that bad of a punishment," Ron leaned in as Cassie whispered to him, and Harry and Hermione shared a glance before following Ron's lead.

   "For a house elf, they sure are," Ron replied, his breathy whisper barely audible over the loud argument still at hand between Winky, who was sobbing hysterically, and Barty, who was eyeing the house elf sternly. "C'mon, Cass, even Harry knew that."

    "I didn't grow up with a house elf," Cassie hmphed, crossing her arms. "Anyway – he's not really going to exile his house elf, is he? I mean, it's obvious Winky didn't cast that—that thing."

   "For us, sure," Hermione bit her lip, "but nobody else was here when this was cast. And I doubt they're likely to believe a bunch of teenagers – especially because I get the feeling Crouch knows exactly who your father is, Cassie. By the way.. how many people do know?"

   "I.. I'm not sure," Cassie admitted, glancing over her shoulder quickly. "Apparently the whole Ministry's got an idea of who I am. And they don't know my father's innocent – they still think he's a murderous escapee that's high in the ranks of You-Know-Who, so wouldn't his daughter be a prime candidate for sticking the blame on? You all saw the way Crouch turned on me so quickly."

"Lupin and Dumbledore should be able to prove Sirius's innocence," Hermione reasoned, biting her thumbnail. Cassie noticed she did that a lot while brainstorming. "Maybe... Veritaserum, or they can pull his memories–"

"They say Veritaserum is unreliable, and memories can be tainted," Cassie quoted, skimming through The Ministry of Magic's guidebook in her mind. She'd read the entire thing too many times to count, searching every line for a way to prove her father's innocence. Nothing. Wizards were too strict in their writing – there was no loopholes.

   "Anyway, I don't get whatever... that.... is," Ron said, his eyebrows furrowed as he stared at the symbol in the sky. The three other teenagers looked up at it with similar expressions on their faces.

   "You-Know-Who and his followers sent the Dark Mark into the air whenever they killed," said Mr. Weasley, who had just walked over. "The terror inspired.. you have no idea, you're all too young. Everyone's worst fear, is coming home to find the Dark Mark hovering over your house. Just imagine.."

  There was a heavy silence for a moment, in which Cassie's exhaustion finally hit her in a wave. It was well past three a.m. and she hadn't yet slept a wink. She yawned; Mr. Weasley noticed this.

   "Come on, it's late and all the Death Eaters Disapparated," he said kindly, putting an arm around Ginny's shoulders. "Mr. Crouch, if I may excuse myself and my children–"

   "Oh, but not her," Crouch pointed to Cassie. "We need her for questioning."

   "Bugger off!" Cedric said, exasperated. "I was with Cassie the whole time, I'd've known if she cast that– that thing!"

   "Cedric!" Mr. Amos hissed, absolutely appalled. "Mr. Crouch, I apologize for my son's behavior–"

   "No, no," Mr. Crouch seemed to finally give in. "I suppose it is late, and school does start tomorrow... very well then, goodnight, Weasleys."

Back at the tent, it took a few minutes of convincing the boys that the girls would be fine in their own tent. Eventually, they gave in and reluctantly retired to their beds, the thin walls of the tents not doing much for the loud snoring that was most likely from Mr. Weasley.

Hermione and Ginny fell asleep rather quickly, but Cassie's exhaustion had seeped into restlessness. She tossed and turned for a quarter of an hour then, realizing she was fighting a losing battle, sat up.

She had not written her father all summer. This proved to be a harder task than she expected. How was one supposed to start off a letter to their ex-convict of a father? She knew it had to be done, despite her nerves. Besides, she had too many questions to ask. Questions that she knew Mr. Weasley, bless his soul, would skillfully ignore.

She repressed the butterflies in her stomach as she pulled a bit of parchment from her backpack. Her quill hovered over the blank sheet for a moment. She bit her lip – this shouldn't have been so difficult.

'Hi, dad.'

No. That sounded like something someone who actually knew their father would say.

'Dear Father.'

Eventually, she settled on 'Dad.' as a heading. There – the easy part was done with.

I'm at the Quidditch World Cup with friends; I assume Harry has told you about it already, so I'll spare you the details. If you haven't heard by the time you get this, Death Eaters attacked the campsite tonight. There was a green symbol in the sky that the Ministry workers were calling the 'Dark Mark' and they accused me of casting it. Rubbish, of course – but they're all suspicious of me. I do sort of blame you, of course, it is almost your fault–

What the hell? No, she couldn't say that. She trashed the letter and started again.

'We should talk.'

But she fell asleep before she could finish it.

                     Mrs. Weasley was beyond relieved when their party arrived back at the Burrow. She nearly cried with happiness at the sight of them; clutching her husband and trying desperately to hold on to every single one of her children (including Harry and Cassie).

Cassie smiled fondly as she was crushed against the rest of the redheads, her heart skipping a beat at the muffled sound of Mrs. Weasley's relieved cries. She wondered, if only for a moment, what it was like to have someone care so much that they bawled in your arms when you returned safely from danger. Though she supposed she should have been grateful for being raised by Moony – Moony, and his dad jokes, oversized cardigans, awkward hugs – she knew deep down that she'd missed out on the chance of being raised by a mother. It hurt, sometimes, to think about it. So she didn't.

Over the rest of their summer break, Cassie didn't see very much of Mr. Weasley – or Percy, though she wasn't worried too much about him. Mr. Weasley was overworking himself, as Mrs. Weasley said, and usually left early and came home late.

Harry was on edge as well, though for a completely different reason. He'd written to Sirius about his scar aching and a nightmare he'd had only a few days prior.

"It's weird, isn't it? My scar hurts, and three days later the Death Eaters are on the march and Voldemort's sign is up in the sky," he reasoned one quiet night in Ron's room.

"Don't. Say. His. Name." Ron grit his teeth.

"And remember what Professor Trelawney said?" Harry continued. "At the end of last year.."

Hermione snorted. "Oh Harry, you aren't going to pay attention to anything that old fraud says?"

Cassie felt an unfamiliar pang of protectiveness over Trelawney. After all, most of her 'prophecies' had come true, so who's Hermione to say that she was a fraud?

"Anyway," Cassie said pointedly, clearing her throat and trying to change the subject, "why were you asking if Hedwig's come, Harry? Waiting on a letter?"

"Told Sirius about my scar," he replied, shrugging. "I'm waiting for his reply."

"Good thinking," Ron nodded wisely, "I bet he'll know what to do."

"But we don't even know where Sirius is," Hermione reasoned, "he could be in Africa or something. Hedwig's not going to manage that journey in only a few days.."

After a comfortable moment of silence, Ron piped up something of a Quidditch game. Him and Harry darted for the pitch, brooms in hand, followed closely by the rest of the Weasley children. Cassie sighed, resting her chin in her palm.

"Y'know, I've been thinking," she said suddenly. "I want to audition for the Quidditch team this year."

"Try-out," Hermione corrected, then giggled. "And why is that? Someone you're willing to impress?"

"No clue what you're on about," Cassie replied defensively over Hermione's giggles, crossing her arms. "I looked into Quidditch over the summer, and it sounds like lots of fun. I know Harry enjoys it, and Cedric and Atticus–"

"Oh, there it is!" Hermione laughed, pointing accusingly at Cassie. "You fancy one of them!"

"I have no idea what you're on about," Cassie replied through grit teeth, her cheeks stained a betraying blush. "First of all – ew! Atticus is my cousin–"

"Cedric isn't," Hermione wiggled her eyebrows. Cassie broke into a fit of laughter and Ginny soon walked in on a very competitive pillow fight.