Minister Fudge steps down quietly on a Thursday morning, with little fanfare and not a word to the press. It seems overnight the Wizengamot is swept by supremacists newly branded with their radical ideology. Those who are not Death Eaters are their sympathizers, and those who are not sympathizers are bribed around their reservations.
In a mere week, a blink, Molly Weasley has witnessed her peers abandon humanity, decency, to maintain their paltry, wage-based lives, to close their eyes and shuffle papers, to swear allegiance to a new and cruel king.
Wizarding Britain is transformed in a matter of hours.
She is made unrecognizable to Molly; a stranger, disfigured. Where the scum of Wizarding culture once remained in shadow, it crawls into the light, unmet and unchallenged.
They come for the Muggleborns first.
A simple seizure of properties in alphabetical order. The Ministry has a registry, a list, of Muggleborns, for governmental aid, for resources and liaisons, for Wizarding children and their Muggle parents. For arranging visitations and secrecy. For post-graduate stipends.
How were they to know it would come to serve as a blacklist?
Molly knows it will be only a matter of time for her family to be targeted next. She's made it no secret what she thinks of blood status.
"You're Pureblood!" Great Aunt Muriel exclaims, face red and hawkish. She stands between Molly and her half-packed carpet bag. "Keep your head down, swear an oath of loyalty or two, and nothing has to change. Arthur can keep his Ministry position. Don't uproot your life for nothing!"
"Nothing," Molly parrots, indignant, furious. "Nothing!"
Muriel is unchanged. Molly regrets having agreed to host her for the few days Muriel's house is being treated for gnome infestation.
"There isn't that much a difference in Parliament and Autocracy! Not on a day to day basis," Muriel sniffs, idly adjusting the baubles and springs popping out of a truly alarming chartreuse hat.
Molly gnashes her teeth.
"State sponsored slavery! Torture! Blood supremacy! To name a few, Muriel. They've already seized Ted and Andromeda's estate! Snapped her wand. Her wand!"
"Well it wasn't a very nice estate to begin with, was it?"
Molly forcibly grabs Muriel by the robes and moves her to the side, waving her wand and directing belongings into her bag. The room slowly disappears as it's swallowed up. She's already packed away the attic and kitchen.
"Politics change constantly! In a few years, when this blows over, why, the next Minister may well be a Muggleborn! Think of the children, Molly."
How dare she, Molly rages, hand coming up to hold her just-slightly rounded stomach. Her Ginerva. Such a wondrous gift, a daughter, but unarguably conceived with ill timing.
"I think of them most of all," she tells Muriel softly. "There is evil taking root here, and it is my duty and my desire to fight it. I can't do that here where we are vulnerable. It's already decided. We've got portkeys out of the country. We're going, Muriel!"
To where the Order is establishing themselves, to Ireland, something Molly keeps to herself. Muriel is a renowned gossip.
There's a raucous above their heads, the sound of little feet stomping, the chimes of laughter.
"Give it back, Bill!" they hear Charlie laughing.
They look at one another, mouths tense. Muriel steps close, voice lower so as not to disturb the children.
"You have lost your sense, Molly. There is no fighting this. There is only surviving. If you run now, you'll forever be a fugitive."
"My home has made me a fugitive."
"You would take your children away to some unknown place. They will never know Hogwarts. Bill has only just got his letter, and you would take that from him?"
Molly sighs, rubs at her temples. She paces, whispers just as fervently.
"There's no guarantee that Hogwarts will be safe in the coming months. It is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry, the very same Ministry that is right now reigning terror on innocent people!"
Molly sits on the edge of the bed, exhausted. Muriel sits beside her and takes hold of her hand. She pats it gently.
"Things haven't got so bad, dear," she says. "The Ministry is only securing suspicious persons for our safety. Everything will settle, and your panic will have been for nothing. If anyone knows the goings on around here, it's me!"
Molly shakes her head.
"Oh, don't fuss over it for tonight at least!" Muriel insists. "It's Hallows Eve, for Merlin's sake. Have a butterbeer. Amuse yourself with the children. Commune with the dead! They have so much to say on these nights, you know."
Molly listens to the racing steps on the stairs, the banging of her children rushing in and out of the house, their lighthearted shouts carrying through their knobby home. She stands and walks to the window to watch them. Charlie has Ron lifted on his shoulders as they tumble about the dark yard.
"We've fought evil once before, when Grindelwald tried to rise to power, and the world remembers who folded and who fought. My family will be remembered for fighting."
She turns to Muriel, who appears already to have a scathing rebuttal when the room is suffused in a cool blue. A nimble weasel manifests above their heads in the creaking rafters, and her husband's voice shakes the house whole.
"Godric's Hollow has been attacked, James and Lily are dead. You must leave the Burrow immediately. They are coming."
Molly does not cry. She does not waste time to mourn as she rushes to pack only the essentials now, her belongings left half abandoned and forgotten. She does not try to convince Muriel to join them, leaving the woman to her own choice.
She does not look back as she leads her boys to the edge of the property to apparate away in the night.
She believes firmly that one day she will see this home again, that her family is strong and will persevere in this hour of darkness. That light will triumph.
Fifteen years later, in an Order war room in Ireland and two of her children's deaths behind her, she believes this still.
