The Story

[Minerva McGonagall]

The Triwizard Tournament is returning to the wizard world this year, 2018, but at a host school far from the green hills of Scotland. On the shore of Marseilles, Provence, the palace of Beauxbatons is firmly settled among the polished shells and stones and sands of the sea, along miles of uninhabited coast. They are inviting Hogwarts School from Scotland and the Salem Witches’ Academy from the United States to join them in the Ministry’s next installment at their attempt at educational foreign affairs in the form of friendly (and deadly) competition. Since the world of magic has been unified for twenty years, after the defeat of the Dark Lord, Voldemort, it is of the utmost importance to the British Ministry of Magic to retain its amicable atmosphere with the rest of the world. Durmstrang Institute, in a slowly recovering state of turmoil for the past two decades since Voldemort’s and the dark arts’ destruction, was not chosen for a second turn at the Tournament, and thus will not send off a 2018 Triwizard Champion. All seems well.

The Ministry has not yet detected the growing threat in its innermost and most protected of departments. The Department of Mysteries has been uncovering ways to manipulate the most dangerous and previously unpredictable types of magic, and the Unspeakables who work within the department are not reporting their findings to their superiors because of the delicate nature of the subjects they study: death, time, love, space. The Unspeakables are of the belief that these things they see in their department should not be kept under the lock and key of one man, and, working for the greater good of the wizarding world, are trying to take the Ministry down from the inside out, knowing that if their unbreakable vow to never speak of their profession as employees of the Department of Mysteries would be broken, it would cost them their lives, and therefore, their cause.

The Minister of Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt, will be attending the proceedings of the Triwizard Tournament, with other high-ranking Ministry officials at his aid. Unspeakables will undoubtedly be in his wake, tracking his every move, waiting for their opportune moment to send a killing curse his way.

The Ministry may fall again. If it does, where will you stand?