AFTERSHOCKS !

[hannah]

THE AFTERSHOCKS REMAIN
YOU WONDER WHICH IS WORSE THE SYMPTOM OR THE CURE?

IT IS 2060 AND THE WORLD HAS GONE INSANE. muggles, now alerted to the existence of witches and wizards, have reverted to medieval methods of destroying them. burnings at the stake are frequent. drownings—even more so. it started innocently enough. around 2023, the ministry of magic began a long term plan to merge the wizarding and muggle worlds together, so that they may live in harmony. although many disapproved of the plan, mostly purebloods, the majority of the wizarding world encouraged and strongly supported the plan to tell the muggle world. ministers of magic came and went, and the plan was revised, revisited, and recycled. they had to wait until the muggle world was relatively stable so as to make the transition as simple and as painless as possible. the plans passed from the hands of one minister to the next and eventually, the task landed on reed cadwallader. he was seemingly the perfect minister of magic to do it. coming from one wizard parent and one muggle parent and married to a woman in the same situation, he represented both worlds flawlessly. however, when he, along with the prime minister, merged the two worlds, the only response they received from the muggles was that of anger, fear, and violence. wizards found themselves persecuted by muggles, should they "trespass" into muggle areas. it didn't matter if they were pureblooded, halfblooded, or muggleborn. no one was safe. muggleborns got it the worst. they were exiled from their neighborhoods, their families shamed into disowning their own children. they were equally unwelcome in the wizarding world, who blamed the muggleborns as much as the muggles.

THE ONLY THING THE PUREBLOODS HAD TO SAY WAS I TOLD YOU SO. they were right all along, not trusting the muggles. they knew something like this would happen so they disagreed with the merging. shortly after the attacks on wizards started, muggles were being attacked if they stumbled into a mostly wizarding area. eventually, the name of the people attacking and killing muggles and muggle supporters was leaked. the knights of walpurgis, or just the knights for short. the scariest part of this new group is that they take their name from the early name for death eaters. although, unless you had a grandparent or a great grandparent that was a death eater, you wouldn't know about the name's history. the knights will attack anyone who sympathizes with the muggles or the muggleborns. they consider it a crime against the wizarding world. but, they only got away with this for about half a year. with the order of the pheonix indefinitely disbanded, a new group born of the grandchildren of the order of the pheonix and dumbledore's army formed. they call themselves the alliance. they protect the muggles and the muggleborns, and members of the alliance are instructed to kill or capture anyone part of the knights, and vice versa. but, the ministry stayed neutral, as well as most of the wizarding population. under reed cadwallader, there was hope that this groups would disintegrate and wizards and witches would fade back into obscurity once more.

BUT THEN REED CADWALLADER WAS MURDERED. for weeks no one was sure who was behind it. but, eventually, it was led back to the knights. it's all speculation and, of course, no one has confessed, but everyone knows that the knights were behind it. but, it was a ceaseless movement from minister to minister. when minister cadwallader was killed, almost every single person who refused to pick a side aligned themselves to one or the other. now, the ministry is horribly biased and there is no single person who has gone unaffected by the ongoing war. so, there is no minister. it's absolute chaos while the ministry struggles within itself to find a neutral person capable of leading without bias. meanwhile, with nothing being done to stop them, the knights and the alliance carry on fighting discretely, picking off members one by one. the obituaries take up almost all of the daily prophet and the only articles are biased towards the knights, making the alliance out to be traitors to the wizarding world. this isn't to say that the war isn't being fought in hogwarts as well. in fact, it's almost worse because they are forced to live and interact with each other. while no murders have occurred, the faculty fears that it's not too far away. rules have become tighter, punishments have become harsher. the war is being fought by the young, and there is no end in sight.