The Ministry was abuzz with activity. Word was out, the village of Tutshill, in the West Country, was under active attack. Rumors had been building for weeks that this Dark Lord Voldemort was planning an attack. Nobody knew when or where. Therefore, Barty Crouch Senior had sent some sentinels, Aurors on protection missions, to the main settlements. Now that the alarm had been raised, Crouch had ordered various teams to assemble and aid in the defense. This was the first concentrated attack the Dark Lord had made. Finally he had stepped out of the shadows. Crouch was still secretly angry that he still had no idea of the Dark Lord's intentions in the attack. What was he after? It was all still unclear. Not even Albus Dumbledore knew exactly, and that was discouraging.
Crouch insisted that he go to the scene himself. As the teams assembled in the Ministry Hall, for they would all travel by previously assembled port keys to the scene, Crouch was among them. Crouch offered some words of encouragement and then clutched the umbrella that would serve as one of the port keys. He saw several dozen of his Aurors do the same and soon they were off. They passed into a sky of whirling confusion, and in the fading twilight it took almost no time at all before they were touching down all over the city center of Tutshill. The scene they had discovered was sickening. Mathilda Vane stood over the corpse of her fellow Auror, Donald Rathsbone. She was preparing to send another curse hurtling in the direction of one of her fellow Aurors when she was hit by no fewer than seven stunning spells all at once. This was a bad omen. Vane was either a traitor or under the influence of a powerful imperius curse. Either way, they had arrived and it now seemed they had walked right into a prepared trap. "Prepare yourselves!" Crouch ordered as he surveyed the scene. The village was quiet, shuttered, and growing dim. A green light flashed from an alley, and an Auror standing to his right fell dead flat away. Then all at once it happened, a giant plowed through a house and came hurtling at the group, and small bands of wizards and witches dressed in black, some wearing masks, appeared and engaged the group. The forty or so Aurors found themselves under sustained attack from nearly every side.
All characters have been transported to Tutshill to participate in the defense.