Chapter 8
The Weasleys and Harry were celebrating the victory of the Irish, whom they were supporting despite their admiration (particularly Ron’s) for Viktor Krum’s Seeker skills. But not long after they’d finally gone to sleep, there had been some commotion outside their tent. When they went outside, several of the other tents were on fire, and a Muggle family was being levitated—with the wife being flipped upside down so that her drawers were showing. The Ministry went to rescue the Muggle family, but as Mr Weasley and Percy went to help them do it, a deep voice said, “Morsmordre!” and a skull with a snake coming out of it appeared in the sky, making everyone panic.
Percy’s boss, Mr. Crouch, did the prior incantato charm with Harry’s wand, which Harry had lost and which was now held by Crouch’s house-elf Winky. It turned out that someone had cast the mysterious sign, which it turned out was called the Dark Mark, with Harry’s wand; Amos Diggory, of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, accused Winky of casting the Dark Mark, but she insisted that she didn’t know how. “She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time!” Hermione said in defense. “Be that as it may,” replied Mr. Crouch, “I told her to stay in the tent. And I find that she disobeyed me. This means clothes.” House-elves usually wore filthy rags, and the only way they could be freed was if their master presented them with proper clothes; Harry had tricked his schoolmate Draco Malfoy’s father Lucius into throwing the family’s house-elf Dobby a smelly old sock of Harry’s, which Dobby caught and therefore was free. Lucius would have given anything to be able to keep his house-elf because he threw him a sock by accident, but this was not the way that house-elves’ lives worked. Mr Weasley explained later that the Dark Mark was Voldemort’s sign, but that no followers of Voldemort— Death Eaters—had been caught by the Ministry.
The next day, when everyone came home, Mrs Weasley came running outside. “I’m so glad you’re all alive!” she said to Mr Weasley. “I’m glad too,” said Sirius, “if only because I avoided losing all I have left,” at which he looked at Harry. “Listen, Harry, we’ve got to write to Remus about this.” “Okay,” said Harry, “but we better make sure he doesn’t come here. I’d be separated from you too if he did, and then—since I don’t even have the Dursleys left, and I wouldn’t want to live with them if I did—I’d go to an orphanage.” “Yes, we must make sure that nothing happens to me,” said Sirius.
Harry wrote the following letter to Remus:
Dear Remus,
I’m happy to announce that I got to go to the Quidditch World Cup final with the Weasley family; Mr Weasley was able to get tickets through his connections at work. But something highly stressful happened after the match: the Dark Mark was fired into the sky by an unknown person, and there were clearly Death Eaters present, but none of them were caught by the Ministry. I just wanted to write to you to confirm that my friends and I—and Sirius—are still alive. Sirius was sent to his parents’ old house by Professor McGonagall the Elder at first, but the Weasleys are letting us stay in the yard of the Burrow, in a tent with an Extension Charm on it.
Love,
Harry
Before Remus got Harry’s letter, he had read about the attack at the Quidditch World Cup in the Daily Prophet, in which Anita Skeeter had portrayed the Ministry as being at fault for how severe the situation got.