Chapter 1
Orion and Walburga Black, of number 12 Grimmauld Place were proud to say they were a perfectly respectable pureblood family. They were the last people to associate with the wrong type of wizards, because the noble and ancient house of Black didn't hold with such nonsense.
Orion Black was a member of Wizengamot, which was equivalent to the wizarding version of the Parliament. A fact that he and his wife were very proud of. He was a tall, slender man with an arching neck, slicked black hair and a stern, quiet personality. Walburga Black however was the opposite; she was a big burly woman that stood with immaculate posture. They had two small children, Regulus Arctulus Black and Sirius Black.
Regulus took after his father, even at the age of seven he had a thin sallow sort of face and well-behaved straight black hair. Sirius was different, lacking the thin face that his brother had and a large mop of unruly curls on the top of his head made him look much younger than he actually was. The Blacks were proud of their sons, with their pure blood and the regal look that one could only find in a pair of kids that had been raised to think their blood made them far superior to others.
It was a sunny morning in London and Orion Black was feeling particularly spirited after his early leave from the Wizengamot meeting. The offices had been a flurry all day but he had yet to find out why. There were letters flying throughout the Ministry, charmed pieces of parchment shaped like planes and birds flew all around and he had glimpsed a group of hooded aurors rushing off towards the Floo fireplaces on the bottom floor.
The hearing that he had been attending that morning had been good, it had been an issue of a muggleborn witch selling enchanted clothing to the muggle market. His position in the matter had won out and the witch had been convicted under muggle baiting. Orion was excited to go home and complain to his wife and children about his views and how dangerous including muggleborn scum in their world could be.
As he got on to the lift from the judicial floor to the department of transportation however, his mood dampened by the rush of interns that crowded into the small space with him. The ministry was never this full. He didn't recognize many of these kids, they were all the recent Hogwarts graduates, only the ones that had no proper connections in the Wizarding world worked as basic interns. Meaning most of them were probably mudbloods or the children of blood traitors. The numbers were going up each year and he shook his head disappointedly as they all rushed out at the next stop of the lift. Every year the wizarding world had to tighten its belt and lose some more privileges as the children of the very muggles that restricted all of their resources took space in these halls. It was appalling really that the ministry allowed this free range to all of them. Just a slight increase in selectivity could make all the improvements in their society, he thought to himself. And honestly, forcing respectable witches and wizards to deal with the problems they brought was completely unreasonable.
He had heard just this past year that Hogwarts was hiring more than one set of professors for a few of the classes due to the higher volume of students. He was beginning to consider sending his sons to Durmstrang when time came, they'd be further from home but at least their education wouldn't be mixed with the muggles. Sirius would be starting school in a couple years and he would not want his son to become like one of those blood-traitors always crusading after some "equal rights" movement.
When he got to the floo-fireplace floor however, he saw the inpour of aurors in battered robes looking as though they'd just had the wind knocked out of them.
What was going on today?
He decided to try his luck apparating when he saw his brother-in-law, Cygnus, marching excitedly out of the muggle affairs office. "Orion there you are!" He ran over excitedly, "you must get home to Walburga quick and tell her the news!"
"The news?" Orion asked, curious.
"Yes well…" The man began rambling on about some civil unrest in some country in the east and how all the ministry of magics were working hard to get wizarding families out of harm's way. Orion stood politely tuning him out. He knew what Cygnus was talking about, of course, every pureblood wizard knew the stories of the places in the east that had no Muggles at all. Wizards that lived freely with no muggle intervention, practicing magic with virtually no restrictions. There was one country, a blanketed one from the muggle world, supposedly in the foothills of a mountain range in which the muggle population was close to null.
"Which is why the Armanatis are moving to Britain." He finished, almost out of breath.
"They're real?" Orion asked. He had always thought the Armanatis were some sort of fictional story that all parents told their children.
"Oh yes, they are a quiet bunch but both Calliope Fengari and Dante Armanati are coming"
"How do you know this?" He had seen his wife perusing the pages of the occasional Witch Weekly for a glimpse of the Fengari-Armanati alliance. The royalty of the international pureblood world, they were a sort of legend. Calliope Fengari had gone to Hogwarts, the same time that Walburga had been there. That had been really the only proof of existence of the magical country that she came from. It was so hidden that even most of the wizarding world had trouble getting in, and virtually nobody knew anything about them or their culture.
The obsession with them had begun with Calliope's three-year tenure at Hogwarts, after which she had transferred over to Beauxbaton where she appeared in multiple "Sorciere-Mode" covers. A few years later she had pretty much disappeared, aside from the few "teas" she threw when she visited France or Italy from time to time. Only the most elite pureblood witches and wizards would be invited and the stories from those events would be talked about for the next couple years.
He got back home as quickly has he could. His wife was sitting in the lounge-room, a thick book labeled "History of Blood Purity" in her lap.
"You knew Calliope Fengari during your time at Hogwarts right honey?" Orion asked as he took a seat across from where she sat. Walburga Black barely looked up from her book as she let out a "uhuh".
"I heard something about them today."
"Something what?" She asked, but she didn't sound as interested as Orion had imagined she would have been.
"Oh nothing much, just that her and her family might be returning to Britain."
The woman briefly looked up from her book. "Oh that's just gossip, every few years the rumor goes around that something big is happening with her, its rarely true."
"Does she still send you Christmas cards?" Orion asked, knowing that his wife always showed off her correspondences with the woman to all of their extended family.
"Every year on the dot, and a gift for Regulus and Sirius on their birthdays."
Orion hadn't known of that fact, but his wife didn't seem to show any interest in being distracted from her book so he dropped the series of questions that he had planned on asking his her.
As she continued reading, his mind wandered back to his sights that day. The Aurors with their tattered robes and how sure Cygnus had been of what had been going on.
Almost entirely across the world from where the Blacks sat in their lounge chairs in number 12 Grimmauld Place a woman was running across a large marble lain floor. Her hand wrapped around a small girl's as they both breathed hard and sprinted. The buildings were shaking and the woman pulled the girl's arm as one of the large pillars holding up the roof collapsed in their path.
"Mummy, why can't we just apparate away?" the girl asked, tears welling out of her eyes.
"Magic has been cut off sweetie. There's a portkey coming up, your father and brother are waiting for us there." The woman explained as they continued to run down the large corridor.
There was a large blood-red curtain up ahead and a tall dark man and a boy stood next to it. Looking nervously towards the running woman and girl.
"Calliope hurry! The portal is about to expire!" The woman stretched out her arm, grabbing on to the curtain the same time her husband and son did and suddenly the whole place was empty. Only the shaking pillars were left, and not even a minute later the entire building crashed down.