Harry sent his two oldest children to Hogwarts and watched them get on the train with a smile on his face. Though it was a gut punch to watch them leave, he knew they were on their way to an education and an adventure that he had fought so hard to protect. That so many had fought so hard to protect. And it was safe now, under the expert guidance of Headmistress McGonagall and staffed by experienced, qualified, kind, teachers and staff. The house point system was a game, inter-house friendships abounded and flourished, and children were allowed to be themselves without ridicule and with pride.
He felt pride swell up in his chest. He held his wife’s hand as she wiped away the one tear in her eye, his daughters stood on his other side, already missing their brothers and not intent on only having each other to tease for the next several months. Ron and Hermione were just down the platform, sighing as their second child followed their first towards the future. The atmosphere of that moment is never light when the train starts to pull away and kids lean out the windows, waving wildly, and parents chase the train for a few steps before they can let go, but it is beautiful.
They are all alright. Harry reminds himself, everyone is going to be alright. The kids will be fine, learning and growing and becoming themselves over and over again. Hermione and Ron will be alright, finding new ways to fill their time and writing letters to their kiddos every other day. Ginny will be alright, writing just as often, fussing over the girls, writing her column, keeping him in line. And he will be fine, loving his wife, keeping track of his boys, keeping up with his daughters, working and loving and doing what must be done. Everybody is fine. The world is alright. There’s been not a twinge from the scar on his forehead for almost twenty years, he has locked up a lot of dark wizards in his time at the Auror office, and the world is the safest it’s been in decades. All is well.
Or is it?
The next day after the boys have gone to Hogwarts, the day after his second son was sorted into Slytherin house which had been reformed to its true glory and principles, some mass of masked wizards marched on Diagon Alley threatening to kill Hermione if they got the chance.
Neo-Death Eaters. Harry could hardly believe his eyes. This had been brewing for a while, he knew that. He’d seen the very early signs in the reports that crossed his desk. It didn’t make the reality that they were out in public and being vocal any less difficult to accept. They used temporary glamour spells to fake a dark mark on their forearms, they put on masks and hid their identities to march on a Saturday and come back to work unrecognised on Monday morning. Harry felt sick. He wasn’t the only one.
Hermione had trouble breathing while it was happening, her usually controlled anxiety rising up and constricting her breath. The word that Bellatrix had carved into her arm seemed more vibrant, more present, to her at that moment, and she remembered that she was branded. No matter the power she had now, she was marked by this kind of hate and had just barely escaped it before. She pushed the sleeve of her cardigan back down over her arm.
Ginny was almost sick when she peeked out her office window at what was happening, she would have gone out to stop it herself if Harry’s Patronus hadn’t appeared telling her to sit still and breathe steady. She felt sick again when she read it in the paper, her fear and anger and disgust threatening to churn their way up out of her stomach. It seemed impossible, how could this be happening again?
George fumed and paced in the back room, his anger overpowering all of his common sense as he tried to rush out to stop it and Ron had just enough presence of mind to hold him back. He looked into the face of his brother and remembered the one he lost. He couldn’t do that to Ron, couldn’t go out there outnumbered and be killed in vain. It would do no good to fight now. They had to hold for a moment, take the attack, then come together and strategize before they went on the offensive. There needed to be a plan, step by step, like the best of the pranks he had pulled with his twin it had to be timed to perfection.
Ron’s hands shook fiercely as he and the rest of the staff of Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes hid in the back of the shop behind three sets of closed doors waiting to hear the windows break. He worried fiercely. He worried for his wife, his darling Hermione, and shook more when he thought of just how much they hated her. He couldn’t understand how anyone could hate her when she was so marvelous in his eye. He wanted them to see it, and he wanted to force them to see it. If he’d had the chance he would have tied them down and carved it into them like their predecessors had carved that term of hate into her arm.
Neville, Herbology professor at Hogwarts, tried to hide his worry from his students when he found out in the middle of the day, he did not do a very good job. They knew something was happening in the wider world before the evening edition of the Prophet came. The professors were bunching up in the halls and conversing in hushed tones, sounding worried. Neville was among them, hearing news and ideas, plans and strategies, opinions and fears, from his colleagues, and sharing his own. Hogwarts was safe… safest place in the wix world… for now. Neville remembered when it wasn’t safe at all and his stomach flipped. Never again.
His wife Hanna, landlady at the Three Broomsticks, felt sick when she had to kick two patrons out that day for remarks of support for those people’s actions. She would stand no such talk in her pub. Not when she still had the scars from the cutting curses she took as punishment from the Carrow twins, not when she could still feel the memory of the cruciatus curse in her skin when the recollection took her. Not when her family, her husband, her mentors, her friends, were still suffering from the last time this happened.
Molly Weasley’s rage manifested in tears when Arthur told her that afternoon when he came home early, and her grief returned anew, flooding back over her and replacing rage with despair. Wasn’t once enough? Wasn’t twice enough? Did there have to be a third? Who could be lost this time? Her parents were lost in the first war, her brothers and her son in the next. Who would it be this time? Would she be the lost one? One of her children? Their spouses? Their children? Her husband? Friends? No. Not again. She couldn’t bear the thought of it happening again.
Arthur Weasley left work in the middle of the day because his greatest fears were coming true before his very eyes. He ran out of his office, up the stairs, and through the floo in the main ministry atrium, as fast as his seventy-eight-year-old legs would allow. He feared that he was too old to do this again. He worried that his children would have to do this again when they had already given more than should ever have been asked of them. He was terrified he might lose another of them. He was terrified, and shaking as he ran home to his wife. He ran until he had his arms around her because his worst fear was that his wife had gone out to Diagon Alley that day.
The next few days were tense.
Hermione published press releases and gave speeches inside the ministry, hoping that there were no undercover defectors there to end her life. She wrote about the scar on her arm that spelled out her blood status, and she wrote about the terror of the war she helped to win. She reminded them that she did win. When she spoke she demanded answers, condemned the parties concerned in no uncertain terms, banged her fist on the podium, and said that this behaviour will not stand.
Harry too gave speeches and wrote letters to the editors. He wrote dark memories of the real Death Eaters, he told of the horrors of war and warned that it would all come again if this was not condemned now. He wrote that his scar hadn’t hurt for years but these assholes were giving him a headache. He spoke in a hard voice that denoted his rage and swore that he would track down those responsible for this horrible demonstration by any means necessary. He reminded them that he and the other surviving Order of the Pheonix and Dumbledore’s Army members won against them once, and swore he’d do it again.
George and Ron posted signs in the windows that said the shop refused sale to all people involved with that awful movement. They placed notices that said that they, as survivors of hate and terror, were under no obligation to serve those who despise them. They warned that any dissenters to their policy would be unceremoniously kicked out the front door. They followed through when someone came in to complain about their ‘intolerance’. They scoffed and sneered, and even in a joke shop that kind of palpable anger diffuses across the room and stifles any laughter like a hand around the throat. So they kicked them out, pushed them through the doors, and out into the cobblestoned streets. They made it clear just what they were being sent away for, shouting their crimes up and down the street to the other shopkeepers and customers. Then they disappeared to the back room and refrained from punching the walls. Ron installed a punching bag on the second day. They used it almost every day after. Their anger was barely under control and the tone of the shop changed with it. There was a sale on their most vindictive prank kits and they called it a ‘Revenge Special’.
Ginny and Angelina led the Quidditch reporters’ strike. They did not write commentary on the upcoming matches or the scores of the last week’s games. They did not take tips about the games or interview players. They did not do their job. They did their duty. They wrote memoir essays about their experiences of war, despite knowing that their children could read them. They didn’t want them to know what their parents had been through, not the whole story, but the whole story demanded to be told there and then. The whole story was dark and twisted and gutwrenching and grimy, and they wrote it all. It was their warning. They wrote condemnations of hate. They wrote the truth and begged their readers to see this for what it was, a beginning that could be stopped.
Neville carefully guided his students during the day, answering any questions from his Gryffindor charges. And they did have questions. And they were afraid. He tried to treat his seventh years like the budding adults that they were, he tried to tell them most of the truth at least. It was more difficult than he had imagined it would be. Still, he took care of their concerns and tried to reassure them every hour of the day. In the evenings he watched the bar with Hannah, worried that there might be an influx of unwelcome patrons. He almost wanted them to come and say something to his face, he almost wanted to get into a fight.
Headmistress McGonagall gave a speech at Hogwarts to her students the evening after the awful demonstration. She spoke of her regret in needing to tell them such things and asked that they take care of each other, and not allow this to strain friendships or fray ties. She had seen that happen before, more than once, she warned, and it never ended well. She reminded them that it did end, it ended in the very Hall where they stood. She calmly asked that they not let it begin again. They couldn’t see it behind the collected outer appearance, but she was afraid that it had already begun.
The backlash was far more severe than any of them had anticipated.
Hermione was condemned in the papers she was published in. The editors called it equal representation, they called it being free of bias. They claimed that those who were promoting fear and hatred had as much right to be published in their papers as the Minister for Magic who had revolutionised peace. She knew that this was just political backlash, she’d faced it before on lesser issues, all the time. Still, it gnawed at her stomach, the feeling that this was about to blow up. It got worse as the months wore on.
Harry was told by his superiors to keep his mouth shut, to not make promises he couldn’t follow through with. He was told there was no way to identify those people when he knew there was. He was told to keep the peace. He knew that meant he was supposed to keep quiet. He wanted to scream.
George and Ron were sued for unlawful bias in business practices. They had to spend their money in court fighting for their right to refuse service to people who wanted them dead. They were forced to take their signs down. They were forced to cater to people who wanted to hurt them. They made and proudly wore and sold buttons and stickers that said ‘Bloodtraitor’ and ‘Pure heart > Pure blood’. If they were to be silenced in one way they would shout in another.
Ginny and Angelina’s essays went unpublished after the first two. Their own paper, their own people, cut them off and told them to get back to their real job. They insisted that fighting hate and war was their real job. They were silenced and threatened with losing their jobs. Angelina was briefly removed from her position. They complied to keep their careers intact and went back to writing about quidditch for their paper and publishing their essays in the Quibbler. It felt like living a double life. It felt too much like it had the last time.
Headmistress McGonagall watched her students closely in the weeks after and noticed new divides forming. She did everything she could to bridge the gaps. She gave wise counsel to teachers and students alike, spoke against hate at every opportunity, and reminded them gently of the scars that were all around them. It wasn’t as bad as last time, she told herself. But the last time hadn’t been as bad as the time before that… until it was.
Another march smashed the windows of Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes. Ron fired two stunning spells into the crowd; he was charged with assault. He fought the charge and won, but should never have been charged in the first place.
His actions reflected badly on Hermione, she faced censure from the members of the Wizengamot. She reacted poorly to this in a moment of righteous indignation and protective instinct to defend her husband and was removed from the rest of the proceedings that day. She barely hung onto her job. A new opponent stepped up to run against her for Minister. He said in thinly veiled terms that her blood status, race, and gender made her unfit for the role. She was called unreasonable for rebuking him in those terms. The media claimed that he never brought up race or blood or gender, they defended the way he danced around the subject and called her paranoid for stepping right up to it.
Harry was demoted from Head of the Auror department and subsequently quit his job altogether. He wrote non-stop about the injustices and horrors that were coming if this didn’t end. The only place he was guaranteed to be published was in the Quibbler.
Ginny was attacked in the street outside of their home in Godric’s Hollow. She wasn’t permanently injured because she was lucky enough to make it to St. Mungo’s in time. It was reported in the papers and one opinion columnist claimed she had faked the incident. Another said she should stop running her mouth if she didn’t want to be fought over it. Ginny replied that she wasn’t being fought she had been ambushed.
Neville had a student ask him what was so wrong about that group’s views, and ask if they shouldn’t just be tolerant of people’s opinions. Neville couldn’t even answer for a moment. His heart sank into his stomach. He pulled that student into his office, sat them down, and asked if they held those views. The answer was no. Neville explained in a firm but the gentle way that this kind of action and belief could not be tolerated because the last time it was his friends wound up tortured and or dead, and the time before his parents were tortured into insanity. He used his own experiences to inform, he used a teachable moment and received an angry letter and a censure from the board of governors for his efforts.
Angelina quit her job. She never wanted to, but the amount of incivility she faced, the dissent from her colleagues, and the disrespect from her superiors was too much. She tried to keep writing. The words seemed to fail her. She couldn’t see what good they did. Her hope began to fade in the face of this threat and something else rose up in its place, a kind of hate that hates hate so fervently that it begins to forget love.
Professor McGonagall broke up a fight between two seventh years, which was not uncommon in itself, but when she asked what the meaning of this was, her heart sank. There was one among her students. She knew that by sheer numbers there had to be at least one, but she had so hoped that she was wrong. They were both given detention because dueling in the halls is against the rules, the one student was given double because inciting hate is also punishable. She supervised them both, the second one she held a lesson on just what happens when hate drives a person’s actions. She told him about the final battle of the last war and the legend of the fallen fifty. She recited their names. She remembered their names. She remembered them. She knew it wouldn’t be a popular lesson, but she also knew it was imperative. When that news got out, she was censured by the Board of Governors and received angry letters and howlers from parents. She hoped it had done some good anyway.
Hannah hired two new ‘bartenders’ so that no one was working a shift alone. She couldn’t really afford it, but it had to be done. She’d had to throw several men out after they came in with fake dark marks proudly exposed. Someone in the papers claimed that perhaps Hannah was the insensitive bigot for throwing them out. She screamed into a pillow in her living room when she read that. She stifled the emotions too, put the damper down, and got a little meaner. There was a strictly enforced zero-hate policy in The Three Broomsticks, and everyone would do well to remember it.
More and more incidents happened after that. Harry kept his daughters basically under house arrest, though he regretted having to. He kept writing and commenting and spreading the warning. It seemed like some people just refused to see his point.
George kept kicking people out of his store when they came in to ‘protest’. He was losing legitimate business from good people because of them. He was also losing his patience. Hitting inanimate objects wasn’t enough anymore. He was beginning to develop a thirst for blood. He knew it was wrong, but that didn’t stop the violent feelings. Nothing stopped the memories of Fred, the thought of just what he would do if he were still there, George was always the planner, and Fred was much better at the follow through. George set up the jokes and Fred delivered the punchlines. George picked the fight and Fred threw the first punch. Now they were picking a fight and George was determined to hit hard at the first chance he got. Just doing what Fred would do.
Ginny kept on at the paper, trying to keep her head down now, and arguing with Harry in the evening when he asked why she was so quiet. She fought him still when he asked her to quit and stay safe at home. She wanted to stay out in the world, to see and hear what was happening and report back. That’s the way it had been in the last war. That’s how she fights a war, take the punishment for a while, gather information, form a theory, make a plan, wait for the right moment. That was how she knew how to fight until the time came for real action.
Hannah was on a state of high alert whenever she was at work. Three of her employees had quit in the last three months because of the abuse they had faced and were too scared to face again. Hannah was scared too. She found her eyes straying to everyone’s wrists again when they came in, she had shaken that habit years ago, but just like a bad knut, it was back.
Minerva McGonagall, when she was sure she was quite alone, cried in her office. Never much, and never for very long. But these students reminded her too much of other students, years ago, who never made it to their graduation day. She was seeing the cycle start again, she was seeing the hate fester again, she was seeing the divides grow again, and it was becoming too much. She feared she was too old to fight it again. She feared she would have no choice.
Angelina stayed at home, hiding, though she was too ashamed to admit it. She had received threats up until she quit her job, and they started up again when they found out how to get to her at home. She was scared, and George was scared. They moved in with Molly and Arthur.
Hermione tried to keep quiet. Not because she wanted to, but because if she was too outspoken she was in danger of losing everything. She debated respectfully as she could, kept her cool, bit her tongue, fought back tears, she did not explode. She was still condemned in the press. She was being ‘tightlipped and secretive’ now. Her trustworthiness and honesty were being called into question. Her reelection campaign did not look strong.
Ron tried to keep his temper in check. He knew that everything he did reflected on Hermione too, so he reigned himself in. He couldn’t see why everyone seemed to have forgotten what happened last time. He couldn’t see why they were so forgiving of those people inciting hatred but couldn’t forgive him for fighting back. He couldn’t understand how the rage that now lived in the middle of his chest didn’t live in everyone.
Neville kept trying to explain this to his students, but he was running out of answers. He couldn’t understand why it was all happening again. He taught his classes and tried to be kind and tried to lead by example. He worried that it wasn’t working.
Summer came, but not before another large march and half a dozen other small demonstrations. Fear was growing again. Hate was driving people mad again. No one had died yet, but it was hanging in the air.
They all tried to keep things normal for the kids. They tried to have a nice, normal, summer break. They gathered at the Burrow, had dinners in the same tent that had housed Bill and Fleur’s wedding, played games, threw gnomes out of the garden for Granny Molly, and helped Grandpa Arthur with his projects in the garage. They tried not to talk about it. Tried to breathe easy. Tried not to feel the targets on the backs. Tried not to mention the new wards that they had all put around their houses.
But they had to mention them. They had to compare notes and make sure everyone was doing everything they could to be safe and stay that way. Harry and Ginny put their house back under the fidelius charm. Molly and Arthur did the same. George and Angelina tried to move back to their house when the kids came home for summer but found they couldn’t sleep there anymore. There were a lot of sleepovers at the burrow that summer.
The middle of summer saw a new rush of incidents, though they had all limited their interactions with the outside world.
Ginny was verbally accosted outside of the paper and had to run away, retreating was never her style but it was a lot safer than trying to fight and being charged with assault.
Ron was almost goaded into a fight but George held him back and reminded him that their Mum expected them for dinner that night.
Minerva was almost hit with a stunning spell during her one trip to Diagon Alley for the summer and later condemned because she fired back with stunning power and accuracy.
Hermione entered the first debate event of the new race for Minister, her opponent spoke over her, disrespected and mocked her and the press said she lost the debate.
George was caught outside the shop, trying to have ice cream with his teenage kids, and some lunatic started shouting at him from across the street and he had to defend the three of them.
Angelina was becoming a recluse, but the one time she ventured out to the shop someone shot out a lantern above her head, raining glass and fear down on her.
Harry was slammed in the papers for being so outspoken in writing but never appearing in person, his response was to say that it simply wasn’t safe, and a radio host laughed at that.
Neville and Hannah didn’t go anywhere all summer, they didn’t leave Hogsmeade, they barely left the bar, and still managed to barely avoid being hexed on several occasions.
They all tried to hold it back, but their anger was reaching a tipping point.
The next time that someone fired at Harry he did not duck for cover and apparate away. He did not try to keep the peace. He fired back. He matched his assailant spell for spell, like he had been wanting to for months. It was different that time because his kids were there, behind him in their uncles’ shop, trying not to cry.
Angelina held the Potter kids back from the windows after their father shoved them back through the door and started firing curses she hadn’t heard him use in decades. She just grabbed the children and tried to haul them back as far from the glass as she could, though they didn’t want to go. She wanted to join the fray, wanted to feel the magic leave her hands and see it hit the man who was trying to hurt them. But she held the kids back.
George and Ron quickly joined the fight, and between the three of them, they finished the fight in a matter of seconds. The glow of victory did not last long. Aurors were soon dragging away the assailant to St. Mungo’s and trying to drag them to a holding cell in the ministry office.
This did not add positively to Hermione’s image in the press. She couldn’t be mad at any of them, especially Ron, because she knew she would have done the same thing. She longed to send a spell splitting the air until it reached its target. She longed for the shiver of power that came with taking down an enemy that threatened the world and the people she so loved.
Minerva received letters from some of her student’s parents that threatened her life. More concerningly, her career was also under threat. The Board of Governors threatened to remove her from office, and the motion almost passed. During the vote, her breath had hitched thinking of what horrors might befall the school now if she wasn’t there. When it failed by two votes she breathed the most tenuous sigh of relief.
Neville got into a muggle duel with a stranger in the street outside the pub, and he started it too. He had heard enough out of that man’s mouth to know that he was one of the ones who had planned the attack on Ginny and just jumped him. Magic was of no consolation to him anymore, he wanted to draw blood with his own two hands.
Hannah broke them up, but not before she watched from the doorway for a minute or two, and cheered her husband on a bit. She knew it would get him in trouble, but she also knew that the offences had built up too high and she was about to break herself. When the Aurors came for him she defended him until she lost her breath. She lied and said it was defense of self and property, she claimed he’d had no choice, that the other man swung first. She didn’t mind the lying. When they left without taking him she breathed a short sigh of relief and re-steeled herself for the next time.
Ginny used her infamous bat-bogey hex twelve times in three days. She was determined to make them stop bothering her if she had to hex them a hundred times before they learned their lesson. She longed for nothing more than to use something a little stronger on them when they threatened to find her children. She would see those bigots dead before she let them anywhere near her kids, and she told them so. She was finally fired from her job for making threats and causing disruptions and using offensive magic. She went home and checked her wards again, hugged her children, hid in her bedroom, and cried with frustration.
Summer came to an end slowly. The world seemed to calm down a little. There were no demonstrations for a month, and as September arrived they all worried that the Hogwarts Express was the next target.
They weren’t wrong, though they had hoped so very much to be wrong. As eleven drew near and the train was filling up with students who were saying fond goodbyes to relatives and happy hellos to their friends, the wall between platforms nine and ten opened again. A stream of black-robed, masked people appeared, shouting slogans about rising again.
Harry and Ginny leapt in front of their children, never so nervous before as they were then. Their wands were drawn and they flattened the kids against the brick wall of the platform, using their own bodies to shield them. Harry saw his sons draw their wands and immediately felt like crying. He had done everything he did so that they would never have to draw their wands against this enemy. Ginny noticed his slipping focus and grabbed his hand, he snapped out of it.
In the same instant, Ron jumped in front of Hermione. Their kids were already on the train and she yelled for them to get away from the window as she went to cover the nearest door to the train. Ron stayed in front of her the whole time. She might be more powerful than him, she might be smarter than him, and she might be better at everything than he is, but she was also a more compelling target, and his wife. He remembered nothing but his vow to love and protect her. He would not let her stand beside him, though she tried to.
Hermione stopped trying to level their stance when she saw the look he threw her way, a pleading look that begged her to stay behind him. They both scanned the crowd for the rest of their family, spotting several and keeping an eye on their nieces and nephews who hadn’t made it onto the train.
George and Angelina, seeing their daughter off for the seventh time, and their son for the fifth, had been at ease the moment before the portal opened again. Their kids had said goodbye and climbed into the train to find a seat with friends, and they were waiting for them to reappear in a window. When they saw what was happening they stopped watching the windows and moved to cover the nearest entrance to the train, yelling for all the kids leaning out to get inside and down. They scanned the crowds for all of their relatives and friends, Percy and Bill and Fleur were nearby across the platform. George kept an eye on his brothers as he and Angelina drew their wands and stood shoulder to shoulder with their backs to the train, a team, a pair, in sync together, and terrified.
Minerva, who does not usually appear on the platform for obvious reasons, had felt compelled to be present in case of this situation exactly. She had already begun to resurrect the Order of the Pheonix, though it had turned her stomach to have to, and there were several trustworthy chaperones on the train this year. That had not stopped her from taking her cat form and slinking around, unnoticed by most, unrecognised by all, and waiting for the train to leave. When the wall gave way to the masked madmen, Minerva McGonagall appeared in the middle of the platform, looking fiercer than she had in decades. The rest of the adults on the platform were pressed against the walls or protecting the train, so Minerva aimed to stand right in their way. She raised her wand to the sky and cast one spell to call the Order.
Neville and Hannah got word through a tabby-cat patronus that the train was threatened and appeared there in an instant. Their god-kids were on that train, the kids who called them auntie and uncle were on that train, and the kids he spent every day teaching and watching over were on that train. They didn’t think twice. They soon realised they weren’t the only ones who had arrived in a split second. Kingsley Shacklebolt, Molly and Arthur Weasely, Hestia Jones, Poppy Pomfrey, Sturgis Podmore, Filius Flitwick, Deladus Diggle, Septimia Vector, Charlie Weasley, Euphemia Maclain, Pomona Sprout, Reginald Wattleby, Horace Slughorn, all the remaining members of Orders past appeared along the platform in front of the train. All of them much older than they had been the last time they were called, and all of them prepared to fight anyway. All of them declaring their allegiances despite the possible repercussions, it became clear that they were diametrically opposed to the new dark rising and they were not in support of the neutral Ministry. A dangerous stance to take.
The Order’s quick arrival and the presence of such resistance seemed to disrupt any plans they might have had. The masked people stopped their chanting but stood against the Order. They quickly realised they were outnumbered three to one. They continued shouting their slogans and blocking the last of the students from entering the train.
Minerva sent the train off early, the first time in its history that it had not left at eleven exactly. It left at ten fifty-one, taking scared children away from that unsafe and uncertain scene, though it couldn’t take all of them.
Harry began to inch his kids toward the exit back into muggle London, someone passed down the line of people that it had been sealed.
Ginny pressed her kids further behind her and tried to keep breathing, realising they were trapped, forgetting they outnumbered the dark.
Ron, now that the train was gone, begged his wife to apparate away. She was too important to be here.
Hermione refused point blank, their nieces and nephews, the children of their dearest friends on earth, and the children of the country she swore to serve, were still on the platform.
Neville held Hannah’s hand and they wished they could fill in the gaps in front of Harry and Ginny’s kids.
Angelina and George, with the train no longer behind them to protect, slipped around the line of masked creatures to stand between Bill and Percy.
A speaker stepped forward from the dark horde. He spoke in an amplified man’s voice that echoed off the walls. He said they were right to fear them, they were right to have called extra protection, but they were wrong to think they had something worth protecting. He claimed that their peace and their happiness were false and incomplete. He said that the only way to restore the name of wizard to its real glory was to rise up and take back their power. He said that when those people who possessed ‘pure magic’ could make decisions for magical people, and only then could they show their true superiority to the muggles.
No one knew what to do, Harry was about to start throwing spells, but he couldn’t bring himself to make his children a target.
Ginny almost ran away from her kids to start throwing spells but couldn’t leave them so unprotected.
Ron refused to draw attention to Hermione by trying to stop them.
Hermione refused to tarnish her reputation further by being the first one to throw a spell.
Angelina couldn’t stop her hands from shaking long enough to aim her wand.
George couldn’t bring himself to make targets of his wife, sister-in-law, and especially his brothers.
Hannah knew she had to wait, knowing that there was a plan, there had to be a plan.
Neville looked to the Order leader for the word to start hexing people, but it wasn’t coming.
Minerva did not give the firing order, there were too many children left on the platform, and she was done endangering children.
Instead, holding her wand to her throat in a sonorous charm, Minerva spoke over the masked figure. Her words echoed off the platform walls as she firmly ordered all remaining students to put their wands away. She put on a calm, collected tone as she ordered parents and Order Members to cross the platform from where they stood beside the tracks. She completely ignored the dark mass as she ordered a swift and efficient evacuation from the platform via apparition.
At first, no one moved. The masked leader was still speaking, denouncing Minerva’s heritage, calling her a half-breed and no better that mudbloods and muggles. Minerva ignored this with no difficulty, indeed she only smirked and raised an eyebrow in an expression of surprised amusement. Others found it much more difficult to pay no heed.
Hermione’s blood boiled at his words, to think that he could denigrate the headmistress and by extension herself, when they were two of the most powerful women alive. She wanted him to face consequences for his careless words. But Ron’s hand closed around hers and she realised that he would face consequences, and they would be legal, eventually.
Ron, always a fierce protector of those who had loved and protected him, felt the heat in his ears as his anger rose. He took Hermione’s hand to draw on her self-restraint and hold him back.
Harry sneered in disgust. That man’s words didn’t just denigrate Minerva, they denigrated Hermione, and Hannah, and his mother, and himself, and every other person like them. He wanted to defend them, to cast that first spell that these horrible creatures had done so much to draw out of him. He felt his son’s hand on his wand arm and he lowered his weapon again.
Ginny did not raise hers, though it would have given her such joy to see them hurt. She didn’t raise her wand to do it because she realised that if she did she would not be able to stop herself. Her children did not need to see that side of her.
Neville wanted to protect his boss. She was making quite a target of herself, standing in the middle of the platform unprotected, and though she was a brilliant and powerful witch it had been decades since she last dueled for her life. Still, he didn’t fire, he just followed her orders.
Hannah held his hand and they walked straight for the horde of dark-clad wizards. There were more important things than vengeance at that moment, there were children to protect.
George and Angelina followed Percy along the wall, placing themselves between the dark wizards and the children without a second thought. Their children had made it safely away but that didn’t mean they were free to flee.
The line of people who had been protecting the train stepped forward in an unbroken line and walked straight through the dark crowd. Jostling and dispelling them as they went. They were jeered at and called cowards for not using their wands. They knew better than that. There was more than one way to face up to the darkness.
The whispered word was to take the children to Hogsmeade, just outside the gates to Hogwarts. Orders from the top, the Order members whispered to parents as they gestured discreetly to Minerva, who had begun calmly walking along the middle of the platform, she would be the last to leave but would meet them at the gates. She kept her eyes on the dark wizards, growing desperate and angry when they were ignored.
All the Order felt the temperature rising and knew that tempers were about to boil over, they kept their eyes open for the first sign of a spell being fired. Parents began apparating away with their kids.
Harry and Ginny had four children to take, and neither was concentrated enough to take more than one. They weren’t able to leave.
George and Angelina found them. George took little Ruby Minerva, who was putting on a very brave face for being just eight years old. Angelina was right behind them with Lily Luna, who was also far too young to have seen all of this. Harry took James Sirius, holding onto him tighter than was really necessary. Ginny took Albus Arthur wrapping both arms around him like she feared to let go.
As the last of the children left the first spell flashed out from the dark crowd, their leader had taken foolish aim, at Minerva McGonagall. A small, almost wicked, smile came to her face as she blocked the spell with ease, absorbing the magic instead of just deflecting it. She sent him flying back into his compatriots with one swift movement of her wand.
It was well and truly started now. Some of the masked evil-doers left in an instant, running from their own fight like cowards. Others cast curses that most of the Order members hadn’t heard uttered in decades. They defended likewise.
Finally, a group of Aurors broke through the blockade spells on the platform entrance. Stumbling through to find a full-on firefight. Some of them joined the Order right off, taking careful aim and trying to evacuate anyone else. Others fired indiscriminately.
At last, there were so few of the masked horde left standing that they too apparated away in fear. When the last of them were gone, Minerva told the Order Members to disperse and they did so against the protestations of the Aurors.
Thankfully no one was really hurt, though Hannah had been thrown across the floor when she was caught off guard by an indiscriminate Auror. Neville apparated her to the gates and they limped to join the crowd there.
Arthur had taken a hit to the shoulder from a weak blasting charm and though it had irritated him some, it did not keep him from finishing his fight. He and Molly left immediately to check on their grandchildren.
Minerva, and Septimia Vector who was Deputy Head of Hogwarts, took full responsibility for the actions of the Order. They explained the necessity in no uncertain terms, they spoke with manufactured collectedness and when they had finished did not stay to hear the lead Auror’s response.
Minerva apparated inside the gates of Hogwarts, unlocking their many fortified spells and physical barriers with a wave and welcoming her early arrivals into the grounds.
That incident got people’s attention. More and more these Neo-death Eaters were disparaged in the papers, and the resistance against them grew. There was still some tacit acceptance of them under the guise of ‘fairness’ but more often than not the media argued against them. More people refused to accept the small acts of hate that so often reared up in their every day. The ‘poorly chosen’ words in everyday conversation; the small snubs that ‘had nothing to do with blood status’; the small bills that passed what some would call reasonable restrictions on werewolves, half-giants, and other such magical individuals, were noticed and resisted.
The changes were noticeable all over the Wix world.
Neville smiled as old inter-house friendships that had ended in fights began again with apologies and hugs at the beginning of the new school year.
Harry was asked to be a consultant, throughout departments in the Ministry, to advise on appropriate measures to take against those spewing wicked slogans.
Angelina got an editor’s job at a different paper that came with a raise and a promise of respect for her authority and opinions.
Hannah saw a real decrease in troubles at her pub, and the place went back to being the safe and welcoming spot it had been.
George didn’t have to kick nearly as many people out of his shop as he had in the months prior, and the shop started to brighten up again.
Ron saw the shop coming back to its usual cheerful glory and went back to planning another expansion for a shop in Wix Edinburgh.
Ginny was asked to return to her job at the paper and was asked to write a short series of opinion pieces as well.
Minerva relaxed back into her hectic life as a teacher and Headmistress, glad that it seemed she wouldn’t have to go back to being a combatant.
Hermione won reelection, it was close and there were some who demanded recounts and insisted on fraud, but in the end, she was declared to have won by more than she had originally.
Still, the threat was present. Harry was accosted once more on Diagon Alley, but a couple of bystanders stepped to his aid, Draco and Astoria Malfoy.
Another march was stopped before it reached the Weasley’s shop. Those who were caught in the anti-apparation jinx were arrested for disturbing the peace.
There were a few more fights among students, but nothing that couldn’t be dealt with via a swift trip to the Headmistress’s office.
Ginny and Angelina were weakly protested by a few members of their staffs at their respective papers, but no one who couldn’t be easily replaced.
The threat lingered still and demanded what one very astute former Auror had always insisted on, “Constant Vigilance”. They all knew that the fight was still on. The field of battle had changed, their weapons were different, and the enemy had different strategies. Still, with a careful watch, they felt that in time it could be eradicated and the peace they worked so hard to build would be complete.
All would be well.