A/N: My works are plenty, yet my attention span is weak. And reading Anthony Beevor makes me think of something nobody's ever really done before: write 'The Blood War-a History'. Hope you enjoy this. I sure did.
England, 1970-1981
Foreword-the fate of Builth Wells
If a stable method of time travel were ever invented and the intrepid adventurer traveled all the way back to 1969, they would not have recognised Magical Britain at first glance. In 1969, the Magical community celebrated the one and a half millenial of the magical community of Builth Wells. Originally founded by a contemporary of Merlin to serve as a waypoint for messengers traveling from Aberystwyth to what is now Hereford (owl post was still in its infancy and apparition had been a skill a rare few had managed to master by that stage), it flourished in the wake of the founding of Hogwarts. Stage coaches and barges traveling the river Wye would, from the twelfth century onwards, use it as the main assembly point for students traveling from southern Wales to the far reaches of Northern Scotland for study purposes.
From there, the coaches would travel to Shrewsbury before joining their southern English brethren at Nottingham. Then the parade became more of a convoy-reports from the fourteenth century stated that hundreds of coaches, packed with three to four students or one or two teachers apiece, would set out from the outskirts of Bolsover keep to start their inexorable march north into the Scottish highlands. They would stop for rest at inns that have more in common with muggle apartment blocks than the stout old inns and pubs favoured by the less magically inclined before leaving at dawn the next day.
Every day for close to three weeks the convoy would stop at a modestly sized magical settlement where the local guesthouse, sponsored by the school, catered to children's needs while the teachers enforced discipline.
Finally, with the advent of September, they would reach Hogsmeade, dismount from the coaches and get on with their education.
When the railway line running from London to Hogwarts was installed near the middle of the 19th century, Builth Wells was kept as the main waypoint for southern Wales. In fact, the only thing that really changed was that the majority of the stage coaches from north of London were now pointed south, with the Scottish coaches still going straight to Hogsmeade rather than having to cart their students down south over the course of weeks.
As muggle transportation methods grew faster and more varied, the stage coaches were gradually retired with only a few die-hard traditionalists insisting on making the long tiring voyage in a carriage when a steam locomotive or a bus in later years could have them at their destination within the day. Builth Wells, one of several waypoints, had to transit from being a transportation-based village to something else. Consequently, space that had been reserved for servicing the stage coaches running through the village twice a year were put up for sale, a portion of which was bought by Arthur Nimbus, the founder of the first 'Nimbus Broom Company'.
Arthur Nimbus was a muggleborn who, in an effort to fit in more with potential investors, had adopted a wizard-sounding name at some time during his school years. Afterwards, he and a few acquaintances in house Slytherin pooled their money and finished working on a project they'd started in a runes class one day. The result was the Nimbus-x, the first broom ever designed specifically for use by a Seeker in an international Quidditch match. The broom was quickly adopted by the British National team and, though horrendously expensive for its time, the cost was worth it as they won three world cups in quick succession due to the Nimbus's exceptional performance.
When the Nimbus-1, a more general-purpose version of the 'zoom-broom' for the public was launched, the tiny shop in Builth Wells was quickly overwhelmed with demand. Nimbus, rather than consolidating into one factory, decided to expand the shop and open up other 'Nimbus ateliers' in former stage-coach waypoints that were offering cheap property for sale.
And as more businesses and shops moved closer to one of the most prestigious clients in Wizarding Britain, their workers followed.
By 1910, the community housed around a hundred wizards and witches.
By 1920, that number had almost doubled with 180 permanent residents calling the little village home.
The 1930's saw the unassuming community become one of the 'boom towns' famed for the period as magical businesses flocked to Britain to benefit from the stability the island was famous for.
By 1960, there were five hundred wizards and witches living there.
1969 was the golden year for the magical side of Builth on Wells. It had gone from a simple staging post in the fifth century AD to one of the top five towns in Wizarding Britain. It boasted a magical semaphore system, a potions laboratory, two daycare centres for magical children, a magical prep school for Hogwarts & beyond, three pubs, a magical supermarket, an owl post distribution centre, a replica of the Ministry floo system and a vanishing cabinet for direct transfers to the back of a boutique shop near Piccadilly Circus in London.
That's not even mentioning the five extremely large factories that supplied magical goods to markets in western Europe, North & South America and select parts of the middle east still held under colonial rule by Magical Britain.
During the year-long celebration, there was a show every day at 7 in the evening, followed by a live musical performance by a touring band from the colonies looking to cash in on the large number of muggleborn willing to buy vinyl copies of their records. Every weekend, a select number of films would be played in the magical town centre, all filmed by wizards for wizards in Magical Britain. In the shopping Alley square, you could spend a knut and write your name down in a ledger. Come Sunday night, three people would be drawn and walk away with some of the most expensive items for sale anywhere in the world.
Halfway through the year, there was a celebration held that included all the other waypoint towns, where the local mayors with a large enough population would turn up and deliver speeches congratulating the town on making it this far. Predictably, it turned violent. The crowd loved it.
On December 31st, 1969, the 624 residents-all workers, bureaucrats, shop owners, industrialists, tradesmen, teachers etc…-toasted the end of the decade with fervor. At the start of the new year, the assembled townsfolk and their fellow revellers wished each other a happy new year and a thousand more years thereof.
By January 1st, 1975, all but 12 of these people were dead.
Of those twelve, 3 were incarcerated in Azkaban for belonging to the Death Eaters, a further five were abducted & executed by various sides later in the war and another three were permanent residents of St. Mungoes'.
Only one of them survived the war and managed to live a normal life afterwards. Abigail Abbot was a half-blood raised in the magical world. As such, while she wasn't put to death, she was kidnapped and incarcerated at an undisclosed location by a Death Eater raiding party some time in 1973, at the age of 14. She was saved in 1974 and transferred to St Mungoes' for 'trauma and possible mental instability'. She was treated for Dark Magic exposure, physical torture, mental torture, brainwashing, botched enslavement spells and damaged internal organs. Finally discharged in 1982, she was put on a pension when it was discovered that the mere sight of a cloaked man holding a wand was enough to send her into screaming fits.
She died April 18th, 1990, having taken her own life after hearing a prophecy detailing the possible return of the Dark Lord-a prophecy later proven to be false.
When a survey team arrived in December 1980, they found the magical section of Builth Wells in ruins. The houses were little more than rubble. The shops were gutted and burned to the ground. The factories bore the scars of the months-long battle for control over the production assets that raged from May 1974 to November 1974, culminating in the explosion of a potions mixer that took the life of three Auror squads & an unknown number of werewolf raiders and lit up the sky like a second sun. The damage on the muggle side was thankfully minimal. Scorched stone from spells, pockmarks from shrapnel, even the occasional man-sized hole made by a stray shot from a magical weapon were easy to fix. The fact that none of the muggles were harmed was, frankly, miraculous.
Today, there are only the bones of the old factories that remain, providing a fleeting reminder that, while it had prospered for 1500 years, the magical town had been destroyed in what seemed like an eyeblink.
It, and dozens of other towns that met a similar fate during that ten year period, now lies forgotten. And the thousands of wizards & witches that once made Magical Britain a political & economic powerhouse lie underneath the rubble of their makeshift graves, withering away in a shallow grave while the survivors struggle to pull together the manpower & resources to confront the past that lies buried in these once thriving towns.
This is the tale of the downfall of a nation. This is the tale of how, in the space of ten years, magical Britain went from the dominant economic force in the western magical world to a wasteland barely able to hold itself together. This is the tale of a civil war whose sordid history will haunt the magical world for centuries to come, the warning of just how quickly everything a community has built up can be wrecked by the rage and determination of one man to rule all.
This is the tale of Magical Britain, starting on January the first, 1970 and ending on December 31st, 1981.
This is the history of the Blood War.