It starts when a Gryffindor Muggleborn named Sally decides to order pizza.

Well, actually, it starts nine months before that, when a Ravenclaw Halfblood named Madison who misses Doctor Who and a Slytherin Muggleborn named Alex who has no respect for rules patch wifi into Hogwarts, using routers and servers and solar-powered portable chargers from the Room of Requirement.

- except that really, it starts three and a half years before that, when a Hufflepuff Muggleborn named Jamie proves definitively that technology works just fine around Hogwarts, and any professors or books that say otherwise are either wrong or flat-out lying -

- only really, it starts four years before that, when Jamie asks the professor who's bringing her to Diagon Alley if she can bring her Nintendo DS to Hogwarts with her and he says no, because it's Muggle technology and so it won't work at Hogwarts, and she thinks that can't be right but puts the idea on the back burner -

- unless you want to get technical, in which case it starts in 2002 when it becomes nearly universal for Muggles to carry cameras around in their pockets -

- unless you want to get really technical, in which case it starts in 1689 when the Wizarding world collectively agrees to distance itself from the Muggle world and go into hiding. All things must come to an end, after all.

That being said, the pizza boy's name is Cam.

Cam does not question being asked to bring three boxes of pizza - one cheese, one pepperoni, one with bacon and pineapple, if you're curious - to a half-ruined old house. He works in customer service. People are weird, you get used to it, he has better things to do with his time.

There's a strong sense of no, turn back, GO AWAY, but Cam ignores it. He gets that vibe from half his deliveries nowadays. He never should have taken this job. Never would have if he weren't a twenty-something fresh out of college with no work experience and not a lot of job prospects.

Cam does question why, when he opens the creaky, half-crumbled door, it's a castle on the inside.

Like any Millennial, he pulls out his cell phone and takes a shaky but definitely recognizable video as he walks through the halls. He gets some odd looks from people who are dressed very strangely, but when he gets to the third room on the left of the second hallway to the right a girl in a blue shirt takes the pizza and tips him extremely generously, so it's fine.

When Cam gets home, he emails his best friend Lance the video, posts it on his tumblr, and watches the notes roll in.

No way that's real.

i mean i believe it? freaky shit goes down in customer service man

guys I know OP he doesn't have the photoshop skills to pull this off

I can't believe you all believe this. Tumblr is so gullible it's ridiculous.

i mean it's video evidence my dude how much do you want it can't be staged they would have gotten a decent camera man for anything with a production value that high

Holy shit did anyone notice how it's like a haunted house on the outside?!

Two days later, Cam wakes up and he does not remember.

Lance does, however, and he hadn't believed the video, but when Cam suddenly doesn't remember the story he kept insisting really was true? Yeah, something's up with that.

He reblogs the video and says as much, then screenshots the chats and shows them to Cam, who has no recollection of this, but it's on his own computer too so Lance clearly didn't make it up.

Cam posts that on tumblr too.

A week later a teenager named Casey sees the post and shows it to their friend Hayley, who they're expecting to laugh but instead nods. "My sister goes there. Got an acceptance letter from an owl when she was eleven."

"You cannot be serious," Casey says, so Hayley gets up and finds the letter and shows them. It's real, actual, bona fideparchment. When that still doesn't do it Hayley pulls her parents aside, and when they back her up, Casey kind of has to believe it. Hayley's parents aren't the type to play along with this. Casey takes a picture and puts it on their tumblr, in a separate post with a link to Cam's.

That post gets popular too. Casey and Hayley keep quiet about it offline, so wizards never show up at their houses to quietly erase their memories, so they keep on cataloguing new information as it comes.

And come it does.

Within a month there's a thriving tumblr tag, #magicaltruth. Within two months it's spread to instagram. Those who are smart enough to keep their stories online keep their memories intact. Those who talk about it in meatspace don't, but the record is still there - and the more people mysteriously forget their experiences with magic, the more convinced others are that something really is going on.

Casey combs through tags, finding pictures that match up oddly well with the video they found; they and Hayley make an entire blog based around it. The two of them gain twenty followers in the first four hours.

Midway through June when Hogwarts gets out, dozens of Muggleborn, Halfblood, and Muggle-raised students come home. Some have been online all year (where did you think Casey was finding those pictures?) but most have not. Some find the #magicaltruth tag, but most do not.

Some is enough, as it turns out. One of those few, a boy named Lucy (don't ask) tells his Wizarding father, who laughs at him and says there's nothing to worry about, it's just a few kids on the world-wide-net, nobody important will take them seriously (Lucy isn't so sure, but he keeps that to himself). Another, a girl named Maria, uploads every picture she took at Hogwarts onto her tumblr at once, all with the same caption: don't talk about this irl, you hear?

All the pictures are all clearly of the same set of buildings, most of them even the same few rooms. They're posted by dozens of different blogs, with radically different writing styles and other interests.

Most people have never heard of the magical truth theory. Many more don't believe it.

But as the evidence stacks up, it starts looking really, really convincing.

By the time Buzzfeed writes a clickbait article - These teens have discovered a whole new world, and what they found will shock you! - the game is up. The Wizarding world just doesn't know it yet.

Hermione Granger, in between a shift at the Ministry and picking Rose up from Quidditch practice, visits a Muggle library and logs onto the internet. Most wizards don't, but she's always believed that it's good to stay up with the times.

In her inbox is an email from her mother, which she expected, with the subject lineSaw pictures of your school on pinterest! which she most definitely didn't.

Hermione Granger tells Harry and Ginny and Ron, tells her coworkers, tells the Obliviators. Unlike Lucy, people actually listen to her. She's Hermione Granger, after all.

Felix Saluja, Obliviator, takes one look at the scope of the thing and says, "This assignment just isn't possible."

Belladonna Grey, Head Obliviator, sends him a look that could kill a Dementor. "Of course it is. It's exactly the same as what we've been doing for years."

Belladonna Grey is Wizarding-raised, no contact with the Muggle world in her life except for assignments. Felix doesn't know his blood status but he was adopted and raised in Muggle Delhi. She can be forgiven for not knowing how impossible this is, but Felix cannot.

He says nothing. He's a junior employee, and a Muggle-raised immigrant besides. They wouldn't listen.

But he does his job halfheartedly at best, and goes home knowing that the Wizarding world cannot pretend forever.

At the start of the school year Minerva McGonagall bans all Muggle technology at Hogwarts, to very little effect. Muggleborn and Muggle-raised students do not put down their mechanical pencils and absolutely nobody stops paying Alex and Maddy for internet.

Nobody stops taking pictures either, which is the important part.

All prohibitions ever do - as anybody who has read a book about the American 1920s could tell you - is drive it underground.

Inevitably, with prohibition comes protest, first from the Hufflepuffs who maintain that the new rule is discriminatory against Muggleborns, then from the Gryffindors who flock to causes like a horde of red and gold moths to particularly bright candlelight, then from the Ravenclaws who are absolutely still studying how electricity and magic interact but would like to be able to do so openly, then finally from the Slytherins who value traditionalism but do see the advantages of the mixing of talents.

The faculty shuts these protests down wherever they're found, but that has never stopped teenagers - magical or Muggle - and it never will. So the protests go on.

Kingsley Shacklebolt, Minister of Magic, is having a very bad day.

The American Secretary of Magic won't stop crowing about how clearly the Statute of Secrecy was destined to fail and the much more lax American method must simply be better, no qualifiers necessary, the entirety of Hogwarts is apparently in chaos, Muggle Britain's economy is in shambles due to the utter stupidity that was Brexit, the Wizarding European Union is looking at Wizarding Britain with a very suspicious eye, and his job looks more impossible than it has in a long, long time.

An intern (Ned Stevenson, Muggleborn, 23, Ravenclaw, NEWTs in Potions, Arithmancy, and Astronomy) walks in just as he's rubbing his temples. Ned is carrying two parchments, which he places on Kingsley's desk, and a book by someone called Steven Hawking.

Kingsley eyes him for a moment, then makes a split-second decision. "Sit down, Stevenson," he says, and just for a moment he enjoys the boy's look of surprise. "Don't worry, you aren't in any trouble, but you've got a background in the Muggle world and I was wondering what you thought of the current state of affairs…"

If the Daily Prophet discovered that the Minister of Magic was consulting a Muggleborn intern, the Wizengamot would collectively have kittens. Kingsley finds that he doesn't care.

There is no scenario in which Kat thought this sentence would be necessary, but special times call for special circumstances.

"Mom," she says, careful not to take her eyes off the girl. "There's a witch in our living room and she wants to ask me about programming languages, is that okay?"

Her mom doesn't seem to care, so Kat offers the girl her sofa. The girl pulls out a notepad and a quill (which is a little weird, but then again there's a witch in Kat's living room) and smiles reassuringly. She can't be too much older than Kat. "I'm Gemini, but call me Jem," she says. "Can you teach me how to make a wiki?"

Jem proves to be a fast learner. A week and a half later, there's a sprawling wiki and two forums for the magical truth theory - although it might need a new name, since many people believe that it's barely even a theory at this point thanks to the American Magical Congress's press release five days ago.

(Apparently the British Ministry, which had previously been attempting "damage control," whatever that means, is pissed. The Canadian and Japanese Magical governments have released their own statements, as has France. Russia is staying carefully neutral, which Jem had said was because they didn't want to look like they were siding with the US. Kat is learning about magical geopolitics almost as quickly as Jem is learning about computers.)

(Kat's mom hasn't complained yet. Jem comes over every afternoon at 3:10 when Kat's school gets out. Kat might be a little in love.)

The first Wizarding school to let down its Muggle-repellent wards is the one in Jerusalem. It keeps the protective boundaries (Israel is not exactly the safest place to be, even for wizards) but can be seen by anybody who looks.

Slowly but surely, other schools follow its lead.

The next crop of students at Wizarding schools worldwide enters an entirely different world and keeps right on changing it.

(Meanwhile, the Chinese Wizarding government - which has never tried to hide magic at all - is collectively laughing its ass off.)