The week after the Halloween Ball was a strange sort of liminal space. Hogwarts was always like that after a big event—students buzzing with leftover energy, gossip swirling at every corner, and professors sighing with relief that no one had been permanently transfigured into a pumpkin this time.
But for The WIX, things felt… off.
It wasn't one thing; it was everything, all at once.
For starters, there was Iris and Gwenog.
They weren't exactly subtle. Gwenog had never done anything subtly in her life, and Iris—despite her natural tendency toward quiet observation—was so out of her depth that subtlety wasn't even an option. The day after the ball, Gwenog had slung an arm around Iris's shoulders at breakfast, leaned in, and murmured loud enough for the entire table to hear, "So, we're dating now, right?"
Iris had nearly choked on her pumpkin juice. "Wh—I mean—yes? I think so?"
"Good." Gwenog pressed a quick kiss to her temple, grinned wickedly at the stunned looks from a nearby group of fourth-years, and went right back to demolishing her toast like nothing had happened.
Iris had blushed so hard she looked seconds from spontaneous combustion.
The WIX were all supportive—obviously. Rosaline had leaned over and squeezed Iris's hand under the table, Artemis gave her a soft smile, and even Magnus, who had no real experience with dating, offered a gruff, "That's good. You deserve someone who makes you happy."
But Hogwarts was still Hogwarts.
It started small—a hexed note slipped into Iris's bag during Charms, ink blooming across the parchment in spidery letters: Freak. Iris burned it before anyone else could see, brushing it off when Gwenog asked what was wrong.
Then there were the whispers in the corridors, the lingering stares when they held hands walking to Herbology. Gwenog, ever brash, met every glare with one of her own—a silent threat she had the muscle and the bat to back up. But Iris wasn't Gwenog.
She felt it. Every stare. Every whisper.
And one afternoon, when they walked past a pair of Slytherin fifth-years who muttered something under their breath—something cruel enough that Iris turned pale—Gwenog turned on her heel, wand halfway out of her pocket before Iris grabbed her arm.
"Don't," Iris whispered, voice thin. "It's not worth it."
But The WIX weren't the sort to let things lie.
It was Sol, of all people, who found out first. A few well-placed conversations, a little time spent lurking in the library when he should have been doing homework, and the names started to come together.
The next edition of The Wixen Chronicles included an anonymous editorial titled Cowards in the Corridors, calling out students who thought their backwards opinions made them brave.
It didn't name names—but everyone knew.
And The WIX made their position clear.
"People can either accept it," Vivian said, twirling her quill between her fingers, "or they can learn to fear us."
"'Us' being the paper, or the nine of us?" Eliza asked, grinning.
Vivian smiled. "Yes."
The hateful whispers didn't vanish entirely, but they lessened, and Gwenog and Iris—rocky, awkward, tender, and stubborn—found their footing in the storm.
Then there was Magnus.
He wasn't proud of it, but somewhere between Artemis in her starry robes at the Ball and watching her scribble furiously in her notebook, a quill tucked behind her ear and her hair falling into her eyes, Magnus Kane had become painfully aware of the existence of girls.
Not girls in the abstract—girls like Artemis, Rosaline, Eliza, Vivian, and Iris. His friends. The people he'd built a newspaper with. The girls he'd fought side-by-side with during minor revolutions against Lockhart and disapproving prefects.
It was horrifying.
And worse—he wasn't alone.
One afternoon in the Ravenclaw common room, after a particularly unsuccessful attempt at studying, Magnus slammed his book shut and hissed, "Is it just me, or have the girls… changed?"
Henry, who was sprawled upside down in an armchair, groaned. "Thank Merlin someone said it."
Sol, cross-legged on the floor flipping through The Wixen Chronicles' latest issue, barely looked up. "They've always been girls, Kane."
"No," Magnus said, exasperated. "Not like—like that."
Henry righted himself, face red. "It's like… they used to be annoying and now they're still annoying, but also kind of… pretty? Is that normal? Is that a thing?"
Sol finally lowered the paper. "Congratulations, you've both hit puberty. Welcome to the nightmare."
Magnus ran a hand through his hair. "It's not just us though, right? Everyone's acting weird."
Sol smirked. "That's because they are weird. They're all trying to figure themselves out too. Girls just do it faster—and better."
"That's not reassuring," Henry muttered.
"It wasn't meant to be," Sol replied, far too pleased with himself.
Magnus sighed. "It's just weird. One day they're our friends, and the next, I'm wondering if Artemis always smelled like old books and that lemon soap."
Henry's eyes widened. "You sniffed Artemis?"
Magnus turned red. "I did NOT sniff Artemis."
"You totally sniffed Artemis," Sol said, grinning like Christmas had come early.
Magnus groaned and buried his face in his hands. "This is my nightmare."
"Oh, it gets worse," Sol said cheerfully. "Just wait until Gwenog tries to give you dating advice."
Henry paled. "No thanks."
Magnus looked up, scowling. "You're oddly calm about all this."
Sol shrugged. "I grew up with two older sisters. This is nothing."
The other two stared at him.
"You have sisters?" Henry asked, mock aghast. "You've never mentioned them."
Sol's smile sharpened and he threw a pillow at them. "Because you have met them, don't act ignorant now!"
That was the end of that conversation.
But the real earthquake came when the Dawson twins declared war on their identical-ness.
It started small—Eliza cutting her hair shorter, practical for Quidditch, less so for confusing professors. Rosaline's hair, in contrast, grew longer, with the ends charmed into soft curls.
The first day they showed up looking different, Artemis had actually dropped her quill.
"Am I hallucinating," she said flatly, "or are you two not matching?"
"We're experimenting," Eliza said, grinning as she twisted her short hair into a messy bun.
"We're individuals, you know," Rosaline added, smoothing down her carefully styled waves.
"You're hurting my brain," Henry mumbled, staring at them like they'd just casually shapeshifted into Hippogriffs.
"We're just evolving," Eliza said, flexing her arms with exaggerated pride. "Quidditch is giving me muscles."
"And I've decided I actually enjoy looking… put together," Rosaline said, examining her painted nails with mock nonchalance.
Magnus leaned toward Sol. "Do we have to tell them apart now?"
"I'm not learning new names," Sol deadpanned. "They'll always be The Dawson Twins to me."
The twins, naturally, overheard.
"We will hex you, Moonfall," Rosaline said sweetly, even as Eliza gave him a sharp elbow to the ribs.
The visual contrast between them became clearer every day.
Eliza in her Quidditch gear, hair constantly windswept, scuffed boots and a perpetual streak of mud across her cheek. Rosaline, in contrast, mastering magical eyeliner, trying out new robe styles, and experimenting with subtle glamours—adding a bit of shimmer to her hair or tinting her lips a darker shade.
It was messing with everyone's heads.
At breakfast, Magnus kept subtly glancing between them, trying to recalibrate his brain to tell them apart without relying on who was holding a broomstick or who was scolding him about ink stains on the common room couch.
"You're giving yourself away," Sol muttered over his toast.
Magnus blinked. "What?"
"The staring," Sol said, flipping to the crossword section of The Wixen Chronicles. "If you keep looking at them like they're unsolvable riddles, they're going to notice."
"They already noticed," Artemis said dryly, not even looking up from her notebook.
Magnus turned to see the twins both watching him with matching grins—one hair shorter and spiked with leftover potion fumes from practice, the other longer and perfectly curled. It was unsettling.
"I hate this," Magnus muttered.
"No you don't," Artemis said, flipping a page.
He didn't, not really. But it was disorienting, watching his friends—the people he'd known for years—suddenly transform into… people. Not just friends or fellow troublemakers, but full people with layers and complexities and personalities that were suddenly too big to fit into the boxes his thirteen-year-old brain had assigned them.
It wasn't just him either.
Eliza had caught Henry staring at her during Transfiguration and, after spending an entire lesson smirking about it, had cornered him afterward.
"If you have something to say, Bell," she'd said, leaning casually against the wall, "you can just say it."
Henry, to his credit, had tried. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and then—somehow—muttered, "Nice hair."
Eliza had blinked. "That's it?"
"It's very… symmetrical," he added, because his brain was unhelpful at the best of times.
Eliza had snorted so hard she'd nearly fallen over. "Symmetrical?"
"I panicked!" Henry had yelped.
She hadn't let him live it down since.
Meanwhile, Rosaline had taken a quieter approach to self-discovery. She wasn't exactly reinventing herself, but there was something softer about her now—a deliberate choice to carve out space for herself that wasn't just 'Eliza's twin' or 'the responsible one.'
She started taking her tea with honey instead of lemon. She signed up for an art elective, where she mostly drew constellations and plants, but once—or so the rumour went—she'd sketched Gwenog half-asleep in the common room, head resting on Iris's shoulder.
Rosaline still organized The WIX's schedules with military precision, still made sure Magnus ate vegetables at least once a week, but there was a shift. A quiet one.
Artemis noticed.
"You're different lately," Artemis said one afternoon, the two of them sitting under the beech tree by the lake, papers spread between them.
Rosaline smiled without looking up from her notes. "I'm trying to be."
"Different isn't bad," Artemis said, after a moment. "Just… different."
Rosaline's smile widened. "That's the idea."
They didn't need to say more.
Then there was Artemis herself.
Artemis was the hardest to pin down.
She drifted between them all — sometimes fully present, sometimes half-ghost, her mind lost to whatever secret project had consumed her lately. She'd murmur soft praise at Rosaline's new hair or frown in faint confusion when Magnus stared too long, but even then, she was always half-distracted. Always half-somewhere else.
And Magnus? Magnus was stuck somewhere between best friend and hopeless disaster, unable to reconcile the Artemis he'd grown up with and the Artemis who had — without anyone's permission — become the most fascinating girl at Hogwarts.
Which was why he was the first to notice when something changed.
Artemis had always been focused. That was just how she was built — restless hands, relentless mind. But after the ball, it shifted. She wasn't just studying anymore. She was obsessed.
Her research notes grew into precarious towers on her desk, half-scribbled diagrams tucked between their Transfiguration texts and study schedules. Her meals were eaten absently, her fork hovering mid-air as her mind drifted elsewhere. Shadowed eyes, fingers ink-stained, her attention constantly pulled back toward some invisible string none of them could see.
And worst of all — she wasn't telling anyone what she was working on.
At first, Magnus thought it was just Artemis being Artemis. Some new theory, some impossible spellwork puzzle she was determined to crack. But then Rosaline noticed. And Iris noticed. And even Vivian — who had the self-preservation instincts of a concussed pixie and rarely noticed anything outside her own immediate circle — raised an eyebrow over dinner and said, "If she starts glowing ominously, someone should intervene."
So Magnus tried.
Sort of.
He caught her outside the library one evening, where the lantern light made her hair glow.
"Artemis," Magnus said, shoving his hands in his pockets to keep from fidgeting. "Are you — okay?"
"I'm fine," she said, too quickly, her gaze flickering toward her bag as though the very thought of leaving her notes unattended made her skin itch.
"Busy with what?" he asked.
She hesitated, and that — more than anything — set off every internal alarm Magnus had.
"I can't talk about it yet," she said finally.
"Why not?"
"Because it's not ready," she said, voice tight. "And because it's mine."
That one hit harder than it should have. Artemis had always shared her projects — with them, with him. Even when they were ridiculous, even when they were half-baked ideas scrawled on the back of ancient detentions slips.
"Artemis," Magnus tried again, softer this time, "we're not going to steal your work. We just — we care."
Her shoulders eased, but only by inches.
"I know," she said quietly. "But I need to do this on my own."
And Magnus — who had spent enough time orbiting Artemis to know when to push and when to retreat — stepped back.
But he didn't keep it to himself.
Two nights later, they gathered in the study room. Artemis was absent, her seat conspicuously empty, her absence settling like a ghost in the room.
"She's been shutting us out for weeks," Magnus said, arms crossed tight across his chest. "This isn't just a project. It's something bigger."
"She's hiding something," Sol agreed, expression grim. "And I don't like it."
"She's always had secrets," Rosaline said, though her voice was gentler than usual. "We all do."
"But we share the important ones," Iris added quietly, her fingers tracing an idle pattern into the tabletop. "Eventually."
A long silence stretched between them, heavy with unsaid things.
Then Eliza leaned back in her chair, balancing on two legs with effortless grace. "So what's the plan?"
Magnus exhaled sharply, like he was bracing for something. "We get her out of her own head. Even if we have to drag her kicking and screaming."
Vivian smirked, a flash of teeth and mischief. "Finally. A challenge."
It was the way they were learning—slowly, clumsily, painfully—to be themselves, to be happy, even when it felt like the whole world was against them.
Even when it felt like they were growing into something bigger than The WIX, bigger than Hogwarts.
Magnus didn't understand all of it. Probably never would.
But sitting there, surrounded by his friends—their laughter, their plans, their futures spreading out ahead of them like a map he couldn't quite read—he felt something settle in his chest.
They were changing.
But they were still them.
And maybe that was enough.