Pink in the Night.

Chapter Thirteen.

Harry looked around. "I reckon we can just wait here, you know. We'll hear anyone coming a mile off."
The words were hardly out of his mouth, when Ludo Bagman emerged from behind a tree right ahead of them.
Even by the feeble light of the two wands, Harry could see that a great change had come over bagman. He no longer looked buoyant and rosy-faced; there was no more spring in his step. He looked very white and strained.

"What's that?" he said, blinking down at them, trying to make out their faces. "What are you doing in here, all alone?"

They looked at one another surprised.
"Well— there's a sort of riot going on," said Ron.

Bagman stared at him.
"What?

"At the campsite... some people have got hold of a family of Muggles..."

Bagman swore loudly.
"Damn them!" he said, looking quite distracted, and without another word, he Disapparated with a small pop!

"Not exactly on top of things, Mr. Bagman, is he?" said Hermione, frowning.

"He was a great Beater, though," said Ron, leading the way off the path into a small clearing and sitting down on a patch of dry grass at the foot of the tree. "The Wimbourne Wasps won the league three times in a row while he was with them."
He took his small figure of Krum out of his pocket, set it down on the ground, and watched it walk around. Like the real Krum, the model was slightly duck-footed and round-shouldered, much less impressive on his splayed feet than on his broomstick, Harry was listening for noise from the campsite. Everything seemed much quieter; perhaps the riot was over.

"I hope the others are okay," said Hermione after a while.

"They'll be fine," said Ron.

"Imagine if your dad catches Lucius Malfoy," said Harry, sitting down next to Ron and watching the small figure of Krum slouching over the fallen leaves. "He's always said he'd like to get something on him."

"That'd wipe the smirk off old Draco's face, all right," said Ron.

"Those poor Muggles, though," said Hermione nervously. "What if they can't get them down?"

"They will," said Ron reassuringly. "They'll find a way."

"Mad, though, to do something like that when the whole Ministry of Magic's out here tonight!" said Hermione. "I mean how do they expect to get away with it? Do you think they've been drinking, or are they just—"
But she broke off abruptly and looked over her shoulder. Harry and Ron quickly looked around too. It sounded as though someone was staggering toward their clearing. They waited, listening to the sounds of the uneven steps behind the dark trees. But the footsteps came to a sudden halt."

"Hello?" called Harry.
There was silence. Harry got to his feet and peered around the tree. It was dark to see very far, but he could sense somebody standing just beyond the range of his vision.
"Who's there?" he said.
And then, without warning, the silence was rent by a voice unlike any they had heard in the wood; and it uttered, not a panicked shout, but what sounded more like a spell.

"MORSMORDRE!"
And something vast, green, and glittering erupted from the patch of darkness Harry's eyes had been struggling to penetrate; it flew up over the treetops and into the sky.

"What the—?" Ron gasped as he sprang to his feet again, staring up at the thing that had appeared.
For a split second, Harry thought it was another leprechaun formation. Then he realized that it was a colossal skull, comprised of what looked like emerald stars, with a serpent protruding from its mouth like a tongue. As they watched, it rose higher and higher, blazing in a haze of greenish smoke, etched against the black sky like a new constellation.
Suddenly, the wood all around them erupted with screams. Harry didn't understand why, but the only possible cause was the sudden appearance of the skull, which had now risen high enough to illuminate the entire wood like some grisly neon sign. He scanned the darkness for the person who had conjured the skull, but he couldn't see anyone.