Artemis Hexley and the Mystery at Hogwarts

Prologue: November, 1981

It started with the fireworks. They'd been set off up and down the length of the country for four nights now, and they showed no sign of stopping just yet. What with that, and the number of owls everywhere, even in the daytime, it was a wonder that the Muggles hadn't noticed that something was going on.

Of course, there was good reason to celebrate. Unbeknownst to the Muggles, the wizarding community had been fighting a bitter war for eleven years, and it was finally over. Everyone deserved to breathe this collective, if ostentatious, sigh of relief.

But, in one tall, narrow house, nestled within a terrace of others which were identical to it, was one wizard who couldn't have been less relieved.

Jacob Hexley had been just six years old when the war began, and he could barely remember a time where the Daily Prophet hadn't printed whole lists of deaths and disappearances, where adults didn't talk in hushed tones about the Dark Mark and the Death Eaters, where his classmates wouldn't occasionally be pulled out of lessons only to be seen later in the day, puffy-faced and red-eyed from crying. Jacob was glad that the war was over, no doubt about that, but it just didn't seem real yet. Besides, he had bigger problems of his own. Problems that he could put off facing no longer.

He stood in the kitchen of his mother's house in Lovelace Crescent, rummaging through his bag, making sure he had everything he would need for the journey he'd be making. He patted down his pockets, instinctively checking for his wand, but it wasn't there. Of course not, he thought bitterly. That was another thing that he still had to get used to.

It was nearly midnight now, and outside the fireworks were still going. He'd have to leave soon. He closed his bag and slung it over one shoulder, stepping silently through the house towards the front door.

"Where are you going?"

A small voice called out through the darkness. Jacob turned around, and saw the outline of a small girl sitting on the windowsill, her face illuminated by the flashes that still came from the sky outside.

"Missy, you scared me," he whispered, and moved towards the window where his sister was seated. He should have known that Artemis would still be awake. She loved fireworks.

"Where are you going?" Artemis said again, her eyebrows furrowing deeply.

"I'm just going out for a bit," Jacob said, half-truthfully. He knew better than to tell an outright lie to his sister. Since the day she had been born the two of them had been so close that they could tell what the other was thinking.

"Can I come?"

Jacob laughed and shook his head. His sister frowned even deeper, and he looked away, not wanting her to look him in the eye.

"You're hiding things again. Like you did before you had to leave school," said Artemis. Jacob sighed.

"I just have something that I need to do," he told her. "Something secret, okay? I'll come straight back once it's done."

"How long will that take?"

"Not long."

"That's a lie," Artemis said, and another firework flashed outside. The little girl wasn't watching the fireworks anymore, she was watching Jacob. "You can't leave yet. You promised to take me up to the heath to watch the fireworks tomorrow."

"You've had days worth of fireworks to watch, Artemis. Magic ones, too. You don't need me to take you to some Muggle display."

"But you promised."

"Look," Jacob sat on the windowsill next to his sister and wrapped one arm around her shoulders. Her hazel eyes - so like his own, with the cat-like ring of green around the pupils - were filling with tears. "Look, Missy. I promise that there will be plenty more fireworks to see when I get back. Okay?"

"No, it's not okay," the girl shook her head. "I don't want you to leave."

"I have to."

"Why do you have to?" Artemis was crying now, and her cheeks were wet with tears. She sniffed and looked Jacob directly in the eye. He tried his hardest to clear his mind, but he didn't need to. Artemis was too upset to know what he was thinking. She spoke again, her voice little more than a whisper. "Please don't go."

Jacob's resolve almost broke, but he steeled himself.

"Missy, I don't want to go," he whispered, "but I really do have to. I'll tell you all about it one day. It will be a good story, like one of Uncle Newt's. You'll love it."

This seemed to soothe Artemis a little. Jacob had guessed it might.

"Will there be a Niffler in the story, or a dragon?"

"Maybe," Jacob laughed, and he wiped Artemis' tears away from her cheeks with one thumb, feeling the small scar on her right cheek from where his Uncle's Kneazle had scratched her a couple of years previously. "You'll have to wait and see. In the meantime -" he undid his watch, the one his mother bought him for his seventeenth birthday the year before, and pressed it into Artemis' tiny palm, "- you can have this. Make sure you take good care of it, and of mum, too. I'll be back before you know it."

He stood up, and picked up his bag once more, ruffling Artemis' dark hair with his free hand.

"Liar," said the little girl. Her eyes were welling up again.

"Please don't cry, Missy, you're making this harder than it already is," said Jacob, and he walked out of the house before his sister could start to cry or scream. He couldn't change his mind now.

The front door clicked shut behind him, and he walked down the pale grey steps to the pavement outside the house. Turning back, he saw that Artemis' little damp face was pressed against the windowpane, her breath fogging up the glass. Jacob pressed his fingers to his lips, and raised his hand to her, before he turned away and walked down Lovelace Crescent, past the terraced houses and paused at the corner of the road.

There was a bang of a firework, and a flash of light in the sky. Jacob looked both ways to make sure that no one could see him, other than his sister, still watching him from the window. He took a deep breath, and with a loud crack, he vanished.

By the time the flare of the next firework lit up the corner of the street, there was no sign that Jacob Hexley had ever been stood there at all.