Author Unknown, Seized in a Ministry Raid on a Knockturn Alley Printshop, 1946
- Set out on the Long March: Institutions do not crumble in a single hex. Embed yourself, climb the ranks, and hollow them out from within. Frame your reforms as small adjustments. Patience is the most powerful spell.
- Befriend the Gatekeepers: Power lies not with the lords and lawmakers but with their unelected bureaucrats. Turn them, and the doors unlock themselves.
- Reframe the Debate: Control the language, and you control the future. What is order but oppression? What is tradition but stagnation? Twist their words until they fight themselves.
- Corrupt Their Symbols: Salazar Slytherin was a proto-Grindelwald. Godric Gryffindor, a fascist. Rowena Ravenclaw, an eugenicist. Kentigern Mungo, a tool of the Vatican. Merlin, a rapist. Turn their legacy into shame. Make them light the funeral pyres of their own past.
- Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste: Chaos is kindling. Upheaval is opportunity. When the old order tips, be the finger that makes it fall. Then step forward with the solution.
- Fracture Reality, Centralize Power: Tell them truth is a myth, perception is all that matters. Beauty is a racist and chauvinistic construct. Goodness is weakness. Dismantle sex, blood status, family, and nation — they are oppressive relics. Replace them with endless fluidity. Tell them they can be anything, then strip them of what they were. Sever them from history, unmoor them from meaning. Let them redefine themselves until words collapse into nothing.
You decide what is real.
The boys were having a deep dinner conversation about future careers, the housing market, and investments when the Gryffindor girls arrived en masse.
Mina slipped onto the bench next to Henry, who promptly knocked over his water glass with his elbow. She bit back a smile as she helped mop it up with her wand and a napkin.
Lavinia claimed the empty seat beside Jack with a nudge on his arm and a warm, "Budge up, would you?"
Arabella dropped onto the bench directly between Oliver and Teddy and tweaked Teddy’s ear like an older sister with an annoying little brother.
"Ow!" Teddy swatted her hand away. "I need that ear!"
"Then stop talking out of it," Arabella said sweetly, stretching across him for the breadbasket.
The girls wove themselves into the conversation so smoothly it was like they’d been there all along, effortless in the way that girls always seemed to be.
Jack had no idea how they did that.
"Could you pass the coffee please, Ollie?" he asked across the table. "Figure we're gonna need it tonight for Astronomy."
The house elves only ever brewed one pot at meals, and only for him. It appeared in the middle of the Gryffindor table like clockwork.
Jack suspected this particular one had been reheated half a dozen times already.
"What's cawfee?" Arabella giggled as Oliver obligingly passed the silver pot over to Jack.
Jack poured some into a mug, "It's the stuff in this pot." He added some cream and sugar.
For a second, he considered drinking it black. Might make him look cooler.
Then he remembered what day-old coffee at Hogwarts tasted like and thought better of it.
"He means coffee!" Mina said with genuine astonishment. "I thought it was a special American term!"
"No, it's how I talk," Jack replied, ears getting warm.
"Cawfee tawk!" Arabella exclaimed in delight, clapping. Lavinia hid her laughter behind her hand.
Jack grimaced and focused on stirring his cawfee.
It was fine when Teddy and the boys made fun of his accent.
This felt a lot more threatening to his precarious masculinity.
Without caring a knut for Jack's internal crisis, Arabella and Lavinia launched into a campaign to convince the boys that the Caerphilly Catapults and the Holyhead Harpies were, in fact, vastly superior to any other team in the league.
A campaign, Jack realized from his friends’ expressions, that had been performed many times before.
Teddy, predictably, took the bait and started arguing anyway.
"Still on about Puddlemere United, Marshy?" Henry interjected, decidedly not looking at Mina. "The Arrows tore them apart last week."
"Isn't Appleby only one loss away from relegation this season?" Mina asked ingenuously, twirling a curl around her finger.
That set Henry off, and the conversation spiraled into a rapid-fire back-and-forth, complete with arm-waving, finger-pointing, and loud accusations of referee bribery.
Jack was completely lost the moment they started throwing around made-up sounding words like: “golazo,” “clean sheet,” "scrummage," and “Sheffielder flick.”
"What's a scrummage?" he asked. "It sounds like a type of sandwich."
"It's the same as a clibirt!" Mina said brightly.
That did not help.
"I’m pretty sure ‘clean sheet’ has nothing to do with laundry," Jack muttered. "But what the heck is a ‘Sheffielder flick’ supposed to be?"
"An illegal move if you're not from Yorkshire," Arabella provided.
"Completely legal if you’re fast enough," Henry countered.
"Says the Yorkshireman," Lavinia teased.
Teddy decided to drag Jack in. "Semmes, enough Yank neutrality. Pick a side."
"C'mon, you can’t make me pick!" Jack protested. "That’s a violation of the Monroe Doctrine!"
"Just root for Holyhead," Arabella put her chin on her hand and flashed him a dazzling smile, dimples deepening in her cheeks.
"I don’t know anything about your Brit teams," Jack protested. "I’d just be choosing based on which uniforms look better!"
Lavinia’s blue eyes sparkled with mischief, "Caerphilly has lovely green and red pinstripes."
"Look like Santa's elves," Teddy snickered, ignoring her outrage. "Puddlemere’s blue and gold. Proper complementary colors, none of that Taffy clashing business."
"Appleby wears sky blue," Henry interposed before Lavinia could hex Teddy. "Camouflage."
Jack gave him a skeptical look, "Pretty sure gray is the best camouflage against a British sky."
"The Harpies wear green and gold," Arabella said. "Witch Weekly voted their new uniforms the 'Best of British.'"
"Shouldn't you be a Tutshill fan?" Oliver asked. "Considering, you know, their stadium is actually next to Bristol?"
"Tutshill is rubbish!" Arabella protested.
"They are rubbish," Mina agreed sagely. "Even Kenmare is better."
The argument threatened to reignite, but before it could, Teddy—who had been watching the girls suspiciously through narrowed eyes—suddenly blurted out:
"Hang on. What do you lot talk about when we’re not around?"
There was a moment of silence as Mina, Lavinia, and Arabella all glanced at each other.
Jack leaned in, curiosity piqued. He half-expected some kind of deep, mysterious, secret-world answer.
Then, they answered in unison:
"Boys."
Jack felt heat rise up the back of his neck. Henry coughed. Oliver examined the ceiling.
Teddy reached for his shoelace and cracked his forehead on the table edge.
Six hours after dinner and several hundred feet higher, Jack tried catching Cassandra's eye as the Ravenclaws filed up to the observation deck.
No dice. She kept her gaze firmly fixed on unpacking her telescope.
Back to square zero with her, he thought, but found he didn't care.
It’s better this way. Don’t get her in trouble. Don’t get Dad in trouble.
He yawned and stretched. The coffee had worn off hours ago.
Maybe he was just too tired to care.
The Astronomy Tower at midnight felt like an island in the sky. The highlands stretched out below in a tapestry of purply darkness under the blazing starry sky.
The Milky Way was clearly visible, thanks to the new moon.
Jack took a deep breath of the cool air. The weight in his chest and the knot in his stomach all felt smaller here. The sharp breeze soothed his exhaustion and carried away the long day’s tension, whipping around the tower’s open top and making their robes snap like flags.
"Take care setting up your equipment," Professor Starling moved through the class. She was slim, dark haired, mid-forties, and good-looking. "We're tracking the movement of Jupiter's Galilean moons tonight.”
The professor tapped her wand against the massive revolving orrery in the middle of the observation platform.
The model Jupiter glowed and fired a thin beam of white light into the sky at the direct location of its planetary counterpart.
“With Jupiter ascending in Leo, the moons’ influence is particularly potent. Note how Io's position affects the strength of fire charms, while Europa's phases can enhance or diminish water-working spells. Remember to record your observations every fifteen minutes."
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
They arranged themselves around the tower's edge, telescopes pointed at the bright dot of Jupiter.
The Ravenclaws immediately began bickering about optimal viewing angles, atmospheric refraction, and Flamsteed versus Bayer stellar designations.
"Look at them," Teddy whispered, gesturing with his chin toward the cluster of blue-trimmed robes. "One of them is using a bloody astrolabe. Merlin's breath."
"They can't help it," Henry adjusted his eyepiece, grinning. "It's a condition."
“Nerdiness is a condition?” Jack chuckled, quickly turning it into a cough when Professor Starling glanced their way.
Jack adjusted the brass knobs on his telescope, enchanted lenses humming as they focused on the gas giant.
Jupiter blazed gold-orange against the velvet black of the sky, its cloud bands rotating slowly like cream stirred into tomato sauce. The Great Red Spot pulsed, a superstorm raging for centuries, its edges flickering with bursts of magical lightning. Professor Starling had mentioned something in her introductory lecture about it storing millennia of accumulated energy.
He nudged the focus ring and shifted left. Io swung into view, a molten world pockmarked with volcanic plumes. Jack could see the magical currents above its surface, thin smoky tendrils arcing from peak to peak, flaring brighter as they connected. He made a quick sketch of the network they formed, which could assist in conjuring flames hotter than normal.
Henry had warned him that Starling liked to give stellar map pop quizzes.
Europa was next, a ghostly silver sphere. Its icy surface was webbed with cracks, glowing faintly blue. Jack traced the patterns with his quill. A bright spark caught his eye. An aurora drifting along its horizon. He scribbled down a note, recalling how Starling had explained if you cast a focused Aguamenti under Europa’s full phase, the water conjured would never freeze, even in the coldest conditions.
Ganymede loomed largest, its cratered terrain marked with faint silver veins. Those were ley lines, Professor Starling had explained, ancient magical pathways locked into the rock. Some wizarding historians hypothesized the Romans had tapped into its energy, using it to fuel their battle magic. For now, Starling had told them, Ganymede only had a mild impact on geomancy, as if it had been drained dry.
Callisto was the last, a dark, cratered giant. It had an eerie presence, a distant sentinel hovering in the dark. His telescope picked up silverite particles drifting through the moon’s thin atmosphere, remnants of meteor impacts. Presumably they had a minor influence on aeromancy.
With a grunt of approval, he finished his preliminary sketches, tapping his quill against the parchment. All four moons corresponded to a respective classical element.
Nice.
Over on the far side of the tower the Ravenclaws were heatedly debating something inconsequential with Professor Starling. Teddy was trying (and failing) to be subtle about watching the Hufflepuffs. Oliver was doodling little constellations in the margins of his star chart. Henry had finished his observations and was trying to find the Crab Nebula in Taurus.
They decided to entertain themselves towards the end of class by trying to deduce which Hufflepuff girls had caught Teddy's eye. There were seven of them present, huddled together on the tower's north side.
“Lay off me,” Teddy said, jabbing a thumb toward Henry. "Why don’t you ask him about the Mick he fancies?"
"Don’t call her that," Henry said, his eye in his scope and his voice dangerously light.
“Then let’s talk about the Yank!” Teddy compromised.
“You got nothing, Marsh,” Jack said defiantly. "Hightower's played out."
Teddy's eyes twinkled. “You called Ludd a nag then called yourself her husband."
"So what?" Jack asked, his skin prickling defensively.
Oliver let out a strangled giggle. “Declaring your undying affection and asking for a divorce in the same breath?”
“It's a figure of speech,” Jack replied tartly.
“Love blooms in detention,” Teddy sighed. "Mrs. Semmes have dinner ready for you?"
“Knock it off.”
"Talk to her father yet?" Henry piled on. "When's the ceremony?"
"Large and modern or small and old-fashioned wedding?" Oliver pretended to be taking notes.
“She hates me!" Jack spouted.
“What is it with Semmes and girls who hate him or don’t want him?” Teddy mused.
“Must be an American thing,” Oliver rubbed his chin. “Too many Muggle motion pictures. He thinks abuse is foreplay.”
“Ja, zis is textbook behavior,” Henry declared, slipping into a thick German accent. “Ze unresolved trauma from Ilvermorny… all zat dominance und submission." He made a whipping motion with his quill. "Somevhere deep in ze subconscious, jung Semmes cannot feel ze attraction untless ze girl ist spankung him."
He mimed lighting a cigar, puffed out imaginary smoke.
“He does not vant love. He vant discipline!”
“Shut up,” Jack said flatly. “Stop trying to psychoanalyze me."
“Freud’s spinning like a bloody top right now.” Teddy snickered.
“Vat vould Lavinia think?” Henry prodded.
“Lloyd’s just nice!” Jack sputtered, trying to keep his voice down as Professor Starling passed by.
“Exactly,” Teddy whispered. “You don’t know what to do with that.”
Oliver leaned forward and came to the rescue, “I think I know the girl Teddy fancies.”
Jack blinked. “Who?”
“Jane Clark,” Oliver tilted his head toward the north side of the tower. “He always partners with her in Herbology.”
"No, it's because she's really bloody good at it," Teddy hissed back. "Unlike a certain Northerner who killed our potted Baby’s Breath first year."
"What about Sarah Bones?" Henry suggested. "She's quite pretty."
“She the one with the pink bow?” Jack asked, glad to have the attention off him.
Henry nodded.
"I’m not saying any more," Teddy muttered, making a minute aperture adjustment.
Jack glanced back over at the cluster of Hufflepuffs, then at Teddy, who was now absorbed in cleaning his telescope lens.
Hmm.
If Marshwiggle was being difficult, then the process of elimination should work.
Just like in a detective movie.
Seven dames in goldenrod. One of them had the look.
"Who's the broad on the left?" he asked Henry, pitched just loud enough for Teddy to hear.
"Hannah Abbott," Henry replied, catching on immediately.
Teddy didn't react, keeping his eyes on his scope.
Hm… no, didn’t flinch. She was in the clear.
"And that skinny one?" Jack nodded toward another yellow-trimmed figure.
"Margaret Pickering."
"Shut it." Teddy whispered, still not looking up.
Jack considered the response. Too defensive for casual disinterest, but not the reaction he was fishing for.
Of the seven Hufflepuffs, four had been removed from consideration. One stood slightly apart from the remaining two, petite with a round face, her large spectacles flashing in the starlight as she copied something in her journal.
"Who's the mousy one with the glasses?"
"Briseis Pevensey," Henry answered.
Teddy fumbled the cleaning cloth. Swore under his breath. Dropped it. Picked it up again. Started aggressively polishing his telescope as if it had personally offended him.
Jack smiled like Sam Spade when the dame walks in with a purse full of sawbucks and a story that doesn't add up.
Struck the lure. Time to reel him in.
"Cute, ain’t she?" he mused, watching Teddy from the corner of his eye. "In a dorky sort of way."
"Clever too," Henry added. "Top of our class in Arithmancy. The only non-Ravenclaw in the Hightower study group, back when she ran it."
“Why’d she stop running it?” Jack asked curiously.
“The girls in it all fled the country during the war,” Henry felt around his robes for a ruler to draw a straight line on his chart. "By fourth year, only Pevensey was left."
Jack peered openly at Briseis. She looked up, caught his gaze and jumped slightly. "Not bad at all," he judged approvingly. "Margaret Sullavan from The Shop Around the Corner."
"Never read it," Henry replied.
“It’s a movie, Henry,” Jack shot a sly look at Teddy. “Those dolls are always dark horses. Bookish on the surface, but get ‘em out of the library and they’ll surprise you. Or maybe even in the library.”
"Quite right," Henry agreed. "Marshy did say that he prefers witches who - quote - ‘know things a bloke doesn't know.’"
“Think she’s tutoring him privately?” Jack snickered.
"Not a chance," Henry tossed his head. "His grades would be better."
"I will murder you," Teddy growled through clenched teeth. "Toss you right off this tower, feed your remains to the squid and erase all records of your existence. See if I don’t."
"Mr. Marshwiggle." Professor Starling's voice made them all jump. "Less chatter, more observation. Venus in Pisces may rule hearts, but she won’t excuse a poor star chart."
They bent over their telescopes with exaggerated attention.
When Starling moved on, Jack risked one more poke:
“Bet she knows all the quietest spots..."
"Gentlemen." Starling snapped from the other side of the tower. "The heavens. Now. Next time will be house points."
Case closed.
They continued working, marking down the coordinates of the Galilean moons and sketching orbital paths.
The night was clear and cold.
A strange beast called somewhere in the dark below — long and hollow, like a loon.
Jack leaned back from his chart and looked up, his gaze tracing Scorpio and Sagittarius, letting his eyes drift past them into the pale, dim sweep of the Milky Way. Somewhere behind that band of stardust and ancient light lay the center of the galaxy — a place astronomers said must be impossibly dense, though no one could yet explain what it was.
A gravitational mystery, Professor Starling had called it. Something vast and invisible, pulling everything toward it.
A great silent force, steering the motions of stars with unseen hands.
It made his own situation feel absurdly small: the fights, the teasing, the girls who liked him and the ones who didn’t, the dumb things he said when he didn’t know what else to say. Up here, above all of it, even the Ravenclaws’ endless politicking felt harmless. Tiny.
He let out a long breath, watching the steam curl upward, then vanish into the cosmos.
He idly reviewed his class notes: numbers, symbols, planetary positions. The zodiac told their tales whether anyone listened or not. His gaze flicked over a sentence he had scrawled at the bottom of the page:
"Mars in Gemini opposes Neptune in Sagittarius... The hand you trust will slip the knife."
Starling had rattled it off earlier during one of the Ravenclaws' arguments, and he’d written it down out of habit.
He adjusted his telescope and swung it toward Mars. There it was, a sharp coal of red, sitting right on the joined hands of the Gemini twins. He shifted the lens again, tracking to the near side of the sky. Neptune, cold and distant, squatted in the teapot of Sagittarius.
Huh.
Jack tapped his finger against the scope housing.
So the alignment was current. Big deal.
If he believed every grim astrological fortune cookie Starling spouted, he'd have expected five tragic deaths and a marriage proposal by now.
Jupiter was in Leo, and nobody was running around crowning new kings and creating new empires.
He checked his watch and packed up his notes.
Far below, the strange beast let out another keening cry.
Class ended a few minutes later.
Henry nudged Jack and pointed south across the moonlit valley. The tiny lights of Lower Hogsfield and Keenbridge twinkled in the distance.
"Hopefully we'll get some decent flying weather once your gating's done. Take you properly ‘round the valley."
Jack grinned, remembering his friends’ tales of puffskein adventure from the previous weekend. "Looking for more goblin ruins to raid?”
"I prefer to call it treasure hunting." Henry checked his watch and looked around. "Where the devil has Teddy got to?"
They searched the observation deck, but their friend had vanished while they were talking.
Along with the Hufflepuffs.
Oliver snorted, "Gone to the kitchens for a snack."
“At this hour?” Jack asked in surprise.
"He's hungry from all that intense focusing on heavenly bodies," Henry proposed waggishly.
They made their way down the tower's spiral staircase, footsteps echoing. The halls were deserted - even the portraits were sleeping.
Their after-hours pass from Astronomy gave them a legitimate reason to be out after curfew, but they didn't dawdle.
No sense pushing their luck when there was a Ludd around.
The common room was deserted when they returned, the fireplace offering up its last dull heat.
They climbed the stairs to their dormitory. Teddy's bed was empty.
"Should we wait up for him?" Jack asked.
“No,” Oliver was already changing into his nightgown. "He'll be fine."
Teddy was snoring in bed when they woke up early for practice the next morning, with a story about going to get cream cakes that none of them believed.
Jack sat on his bed, pulling on his socks, the cold floor biting his feet. The rest of the castle was still sleeping.
A month ago, he’d been a brand new student, just trying to find his footing. Now, he was lots of things.
The Yank.
A threat. A teammate. A friend.
And in the middle of a hurricane brewing between the Ministry, MaChK, and MACUSA.
He snorted into the early morning gloom.
Could be worse.
THE END OF VOLUME I: New Friends and Enemies
You made it to the end of Volume I!
thank you for sticking with this story. Whether you’ve been here since the first chapter released back in November 2024 or only just got here and read it all in one go, I truly appreciate each and every one of you who has taken the time to dive into this little shared world.
Most of the slow-burn exposition is out of the way. Volume II launches the adventure and romance in full force.
please comment with what you like or dislike, I read each and every one of them.
MissionManga and Paddywack for the incredibly thoughtful reviews. Seriously, I read them five times each. It made my entire month. Knowing that you enjoyed my writing means the world!
Volume II: The Rise and Fall of Jack Semmes, Aged 16 — coming soon!
-PR
Who are your top characters? Pick your top 3 please and let me know your favorite/least favorite things about them in the comments!