The first signs were quiet, almost polite—the kind of things you could dismiss if you wanted to.
A centuries-old shop in Diagon Alley vanished overnight, its windows sealed and its name scraped from the door.
At Gringotts, the goblins no longer sneered or smirked—only watched as families withdrew everything they owned, their silence heavy with the knowledge of what was coming.
Even Knockturn Alley, always a haven for secrets, felt different—cloaked figures huddled too close, their whispers too sharp, and none of them stayed long enough to be followed.
By the summer of 1980, there was no pretending anymore. Wizarding Britain was at war with itself—and losing.
The underground resistance had taken many forms, but the most desperate measure was exodus. Parents sent their children abroad, stuffing trunks with every last heirloom, every protective amulet, every family secret they could carry. At King's Cross, owls hooted restlessly in crates as a group of Muggle-born families clustered on Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, saying their final goodbyes before vanishing into the Muggle world, never to return. At the docks in Dover, wizarding smugglers chartered ships to France, carrying desperate passengers under the guise of mundane cargo, their names erased from the British Citizen Registry the moment the ships departed.
Warding companies thrived in the mounting paranoia, their ledgers filled with names of old families and even older houses suddenly desperate for the strongest protections money could buy. Entire estates were wrapped in layers of defensive enchantments, layered so thick that even the owls struggled to navigate them. A fortune was spent on blood magic protections, some so potent they rejected their own inhabitants if the wards deemed them compromised. Wardmakers, who had once worked at a leisurely pace, now toiled day and night, their hands raw from inscribing runes, their vaults brimming with galleons.
Diagon Alley, once bustling with life, had become a ghost town. Slug and Jiggers was shuttered, its door marked with a sign in spidery writing: 'Closed Until Further Notice.' Madam Malkin's remained open, but her stock dwindled, and she had taken to selling simple black robes in bulk—funeral attire in all but name. Flourish and Blotts still had customers, but they no longer lingered; they came in search of tomes on Dark magic resistance, vanishing spells, and dueling techniques, leaving as quickly as they arrived. The Leaky Cauldron was quieter than it had ever been, its usual lively chatter replaced with murmurs and darting eyes. Tom, the barkeep, reinforced his protective charms twice a day, but even he knew it was only a matter of time before Death Eaters came knocking.
No one spoke openly anymore. Even among friends, even in trusted circles, words were carefully chosen, voices lowered, conversations laced with hidden meanings. The fear of informants was ever-present—neighbors who might have been trustworthy last year were now questioned in wary glances. The Daily Prophet had long since become unreliable, but its special editions only confirmed what people already knew: bodies were turning up daily. Families were vanishing. Some people weren't even given the dignity of an obituary, their disappearances unmarked except in whispered rumors.
But at night, the sky was thick with owls. Messages of desperation, warnings of impending attacks, coded letters meant for the underground network. There were safe houses scattered across Britain, manned by those willing to risk everything to shelter the hunted. The old man who ran the used bookshop in York had repurposed his cellar into a hiding place. A midwife in Cardiff took in Muggle-born families, disguising them with glamours before smuggling them across the Welsh border. A fisherman in Aberdeen had repurposed his boat to ferry fugitives to Ireland under the cover of darkness.
Some, however, did not run. Some chose to fight. In old, abandoned homes and forgotten tunnels beneath the streets of London, witches and wizards trained in secret. Duels erupted in empty alleyways at night, leaving scorch marks on cobblestones and shattered glass in their wake. Members of the resistance met in candlelit rooms, bent over maps of Britain marked with red ink, plotting evacuations, tracking enemy movements, marking locations where Death Eaters had struck last.
But for every act of defiance, the darkness retaliated. A bookstore in Hogsmeade, known for its ties to the underground, burned to the ground one night. The owner was never seen again. A Hogwarts professor who had been smuggling recently graduate students out of the country was found in Knockturn Alley, his wand broken, his body left as a message.
And still, life continued in a strange, fractured way. The Ministry of Magic, unwilling or unable to admit defeat, pressed on with business as usual. Parents still brought their children to Diagon Alley to buy school supplies, their hands gripping their wands tighter than before. Hogwarts letters still arrived, their wax seals bearing the weight of tradition, as if the castle itself could remain untouched by war. The Knight Bus still rattled through the streets, picking up those who dared travel at night. And beneath it all, the resistance kept moving, kept fighting, kept hoping that someday, the tide would turn.
But for now, Britain was at war. And it was losing.
The world outside crumbled in on itself, but at Lovelace Manor, it was summer.
The lake shimmered, the lavender garden swayed in the breeze, and the peacocks shrieked their usual nonsense. It felt almost absurd, as though the estate had wrapped itself in its own memory of peace. But Artemis knew better. Beneath every perfect ward and polished floor lay the awareness that the war was only waiting to break through.
Perched on the edge of the Lake District, the estate had stood for centuries, its ancient wards stronger than ever under the diligent care of Lady Aurelia Lovelace. The grand library hummed with the quiet rustling of turning pages, the scent of old parchment mingling with the faint lavender breeze drifting in from the gardens. The peacocks still strutted lazily across the grounds, the lake still shimmered under the summer sun, and the illusion of peace was almost convincing. Almost.
Henry Bell , barely eleven, was beside himself with excitement. His Hogwarts letter had arrived in early January, a gleaming beacon of joy in a world darkened by war. He had spent the past weeks alternating between practicing simple charms under Artemis' supervision and poring over every book he could find on Hogwarts.
"You do realize," Artemis remarked one afternoon as she flipped through a tome on advanced Transfiguration, "that reading about Hogwarts is no substitute for actually experiencing it?"
Henry huffed. "But I want to be prepared! What if I get Sorted into hufflepuff? Away from you. What if I—"
"Then you'll be a hufflepuff," Artemis said simply. "And you'll be brilliant regardless. We will still be your friends. But you won't know until you set foot in the Great Hall."
Henry seemed to consider this for a moment before he frowned. "And what about the war?"
That was the real question, wasn't it? Artemis had no answer, and neither did Aunt Aurelia, who was locked away in her study, writing yet another pamphlet to be secretly distributed on Dark magic resistance and evasion techniques. The war was all-consuming. It was here, pressing against the edges of their safety like a tide waiting to break through.
Meanwhile, Lavania Dawson's summer had been entirely consumed by work. Her days were spent in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, her nights filled with emergency Floo calls and damage reports from the attacks that grew more frequent by the day. Magical Britain was coming undone at the seams, and she was expected to help stitch it back together, even as more lives unraveled.
Lavania stepped from the Floo, her hair pinned back too tightly, her robes still bearing the faint scent of smoke and disinfectant.
"It's getting worse," she said, her voice hoarse from too many late-night reports. "They burned down an entire street in Kent—children, Aurelia. They want us to be afraid."
Aurelia's aged hands curled into fists, the knuckles white with the tension she no longer bothered to hide. The Death Eaters were hunting children — that much was clear. But why? No one knew. That was what made it so much worse. There was a pattern somewhere beneath the blood and ash, a reason buried in the wreckage, but the Ministry's frantic investigations were no closer to untangling it.
"Are you safe?" Lavania's voice dipped to a whisper, as though speaking the question too loudly would unravel whatever fragile protections still held.
"For now," Aurelia said, though even she knew how thin that assurance was. Safety was an illusion, stretched tight across the bones of ancient wards and old magic that had held for generations — but the war was learning new ways to break old things. "You should come here when you can."
Lavania nodded, her smile tight and unconvincing. "I will. And I might bring someone with me."
True to her word, Lavania arrived at Lovelace Manor in the waning days of June, stepping through the Floo with Rosaline and Eliza at her side — but they weren't alone. Two more figures followed, stepping tentatively onto the polished floors, their shoes too worn for the grand hall.
Hestia Jones was only seven, her dark curls wild from the journey, her small hand clutching Rosaline's sleeve like a lifeline. Beside her stood her older sister, Gwenog Jones, a sturdy second-year with sharp eyes and an almost defiant grip on her broomstick. Their mother, Loretta Jones — a Welsh witch who had formed a fast friendship with Lavania in the early days of Ministry work — had asked only one thing: keep them safe. No matter what.
They were the first, but they wouldn't be the last.
The arrivals came in trickles, like the first warning drops before a storm. Henry Bell and his baby cousin Katie appeared two days later, their parents clinging to the hope that sending them away would somehow keep them safe — even as they tried to pretend the world hadn't changed. Henry carried Katie on his hip, her fingers curled around his shirt, her wide eyes full of confusion. He grinned for her sake, but Artemis could see the fear behind it — the weight of responsibility too heavy for a boy who hadn't even turned Twelve.
Iris Lawrence came soon after, her six-year-old sister clinging to her like a shadow, her small fingers permanently hooked around the hem of Iris' robes. Vivian Delacroix arrived with her fifteen-year-old brother, Christophe, who stood too stiffly in the entry hall, as though bracing for something they couldn't yet see. Sol Moonfall came with his two older sisters — all three of them silent, their usual easy banter worn away by grief and the heavy knowledge of what had been taken from them.
Magnus Kane arrived last, flanked by two younger cousins who looked around the manor with wide, awestruck eyes, as though they had stepped into a storybook. Their wonder lasted until the first hushed conversation drifted past them — talk of wards, of watch rotations, of coded messages arriving by owl at all hours of the night.
None of them arrived with just trunks and travel cloaks. They came with too-heavy bags, some filled with books and clothes, but others with heirlooms and hastily scrawled family records, crammed into every available space like talismans against the dark. There was no pretending anymore — they were not visiting for a carefree summer. This was refuge. A house becoming a haven, a place to gather the young and the vulnerable while the adults stood at the edges, wands drawn, waiting for the storm to breach the walls.
Inside the manor, childhood found a way to persist — fragile, but determined.
Mornings rang with laughter as the children claimed every corner of the sprawling house. Gobstones clattered across the tiled floors, chess pieces shouted insults from their boards, and whole wings became elaborate fortresses in imaginary battles far removed from the real one raging beyond the wards. The Quidditch pitch saw near-daily use, with Magnus, Eliza, and Gwenog taking it upon themselves to train a new generation of flyers. Even Henry, with great reluctance and only after much cajoling, was coaxed onto a broom.
"You fly like a Flobberworm with vertigo," Gwenog declared, tossing him a Quaffle with more force than necessary. "But don't worry — we'll fix that."
Henry laughed, though his grip on the broom remained white-knuckled.
Inside, the library offered a quieter kind of refuge. Artemis, Rosaline, Iris, and Sol gathered around the long oak table, parchment and ink scattered between half-eaten sweets and stacks of books pilfered from Aurelia's shelves. They debated spell theory, argued over Hogwarts house rivalries, and speculated which professors would favor or torment them next year. Even Henry — often trailing after his now-walking baby cousin Katie, who had made a game of toddling just out of his reach — found a small corner to claim, curling up with books on Hogwarts, tracing the illustrations of floating candles and enchanted staircases as though they were treasure maps to another world.
But for all the make-believe, reality was never far away.
At night, the house quieted, the lightness dimming to something heavier. Behind closed doors, the adults spoke in low, urgent tones — words like 'disappearances' and 'raids' punctuating the hushed conversations. Each morning, fresh letters arrived from the Ministry, bearing more grim news: whole families gone, another safehouse breached, names they knew slipping off the map one by one.
Still, the wards held.
Until, one night in late July, they flickered. A pulse of magic rippled across the estate, a signal that someone was at the boundary — not an attack, not yet, but a plea for sanctuary.
Artemis stood at the window, her fingertips resting against the cold glass as the lanterns lining the garden paths flared to life, sending pools of gold light spilling across the darkened lawn.
Childhood was slipping through their fingers, piece by piece.
Soon, they would all have to decide — not if they would join the war, but how.