Eventually she would eclipse her husband in London's society, but this did not happen immediately. A young witch of her age wielding her considerable intellect without shame has, to this day, been seen by too many men as a threat. Within those first months some people even shunned the couple because of her. To his credit, Golpalott advocated for her, and even refused to sell his wares to people who treated her disrespectfully. But his age and experience also made him feel he was owed more respect than her anyway, and at that point in time, Nian didn't disagree. So very often he got the attention and the prominence, and she stood by in loyal support.
On the heels of the final marriage came another momenteous occasion for the Weyard family. Joachim Hudd, the first of the sisters' children, was born on February 2, 1044. Initially the birth was not paid much attention to by anyone outside the family, but when he was a few months old, his parents were rather surprised by the high number of visitors they had, most of whom claimed to have an interest in Cian, but also showed great interest in her son. This would continue until he was nearly ten, by which time it was looking unlikely that he had inherited his mother's ability.
To a lesser extent, this would repeat itself for his siblings and cousins as well. None of them would show any divinatory abilities either, and nor is there any record of in their descendents. Or even the girls' ancestry, though there are far fewer records available there. It seems their talents were completely unique to the four of them.
Fian was also expressing a hope of pregnancy, one that would be disappointed for four long years. Neither of her other two sisters would get pregnant for even longer. Nian, as a potioneer's wife, certainly never lacked for birth control, and she seemed to have kept Dian in supply as well whenever the two of them lived in the same area.
Meanwhile, word had begun to get out of the dream Cian had had the night before her wedding. There is no record of exactly where or when. Most likely it simply started with Nian mentioning it to her new friends, as it was one of the most lengthy and intense visions any of the sisters had experienced. What is more apparent is that by the middle of 1044, it was common knowledge throughout wizarding London that Cian Hudd, known seer, had had a vision of something involving some sort of battle that would have an impact that might reverberate for centuries.
It was at this time that wizarding Britain found themselves facing their own invasion threat. Over in Scandanavia, Wulfhild the Fierce had spent the first fifty years of her life quietly building up both her raw power and a good deal of clout over those who were in charge by various methods, both coercive and otherwise. Late in 1043, she managed to gain complete control over a small army of warlocks who had already developed a reputation as very violent and all too good at laying waste to small magical communities, though unusually they showed no interest in Muggle ones, and they managed to take over the small port of Vestfjord and its small fleet.
By 1044, that fleet was increasing in size, as it seized ships that strayed into the wrong area of the North Sea, an area that remained minimal during the winter, but starting to grow in the spring, during which much of the Council started to raise the alarm. "Mayhap they wille not invade out shores this year," wrote Helenus Odoner, who was still serving his final years on the Council, "but it shall notte be five before they do."
Unsurprisingly, when they considered the story of a seer having a premonition of an invasion, they assumed said invasion was Wulfhild's. They decided to summon her for questioning, and on April 26, her sisters insisted on coming with her and having all four of them stand before the Council.
As noted earlier, the time that had passed since she'd had the dream had taken its toll on Cian's memory of it. But she did remember enough to describe a force led by a man and that spoke in French. This was enough to make most of the Council realize this was not an invasion led by a Norwegian witch, though several people on it, unwilling to either give up on the hope of getting valuable information or believe they might have two invasions to worry about, positively grilled her on her certainty.
Yet in time they were all convinced, and so nothing might have come of that day, had not Nian, as they were preparing to depart, mentioned to one of the younger members of the Council, the eventually infamous Pallas de Malfoy, that he would soon meet the person who would give him, "what you want, except it's going to cost you much." As is all too common when men like him want power, he gave no thought towards her warning, but instead demanded further details, and, on hearing she had none, declared he would like to see her again in the future.
True to his word, de Malfoy shortly after found a way to strike up a friendship with Golpalott. When he heard from his wife why, the two of them agreed, "at leaste then" she would later write, that they could gain many benefits from their association with him, especially after she foresaw he would become head of the Council more than once. Nor did she mind, at that point in her life, if such a man was only acting as their friend for his own ends.
Sure enough, de Malfoy gave the couple regular access to the richest and most powerful members of London's society, people they had perhaps had been introduced to in the past, but hadn't really known before then. Golpalott was soon brewing and selling much more expensive potions on commission for customers who could often provide him with the rarer ingredients. And Nian was meeting with and prophesizing for society's elite on a daily basis, giving her the position and image of herself she had wanted by the time she had left Hogwarts.
She apparently at this point in time swiftly acquired the flare for the dramatic that she would become known for, some of which may have even influenced the Muggles' portrayal of the sisters. In a letter to her sister, written late in 1044, Lady Molle of Goblin's Grove described her behavior at a banquet she and her husband held, where Nian and Golpalott had been two of nearly twenty guests:
I knowe notte which talk led to her vision, for all the table was awash with everyone speaking and few listening. Yet they alle fell quiet when she spake to Lord Tawn of whom he woulde meet before the year ended, and what they woulde saye to each other, and even that the snow woulde fall for parte of the time they woulde walk together, and she spake poetry about that. When she had spake all that she had seen, she looked about us and betrayed her eagerness for our questions. She gotte them, for they asked her for all the things she had seen, and with each answer she grew more alighte, her voice and even her hands more wilde. She did tell me I woulde be with childe before the next yeare ends, so mayhap we may soon rejoyce.
Dian, when she saw her sister rising to prominence now somewhat apart of the rest of them, soon decided to do the same, and she, too, had a husband who wanted to have success and access to London's upper magical society, though he might not have had as clear an idea as Golpalott did of what he would do with it. Unfortunately, they had not managed to find the in that Nian and Golpalott had in the form of de Malfoy. And each had only one way they tended to attract attention when they wanted it. Brom even more so than his wife.
It apparently embarrassed Dian enough that she wrote only in the most general terms about how he tried to challenge some of the most renowned warlocks of the age to see if they were better than him on the dueling floor. Nian, after the first few became known, started writing down the names and dates, and she ultimately recorded nine of them, though there were almost certainly at least a handful more.
Four of those challenges were accepted. The first of the resulting duels, between Brom and one Ficus Feather, happened just outside London on January 26, 1045. The two young wizards were strikingly similar men. Like Brom, Ficus was born in London, grown up in the shadow of powerful relations, and was mostly known for being a hothead. Nian noted they even used the same spells on each other, though we know little else of exactly how that duel went.
Both of them even had their wives act as seconds. As they agreed beforehand they would not attempt to kill each other, their jobs were mostly done when the duel actually started, by which time the two women had developed an enmity that far outlasted that of their husbands, which was over by the time the duel was.
Indeed, for months afterwards, they would be fast friends, and Ficus would be Brom's second for his next three duels, two of which would take place in March, and the last in April. This proved the cause of the first falling out between Brom and Dian that lasted for more than a few hours. Dian herself never wrote about it, but according to Nian, she came into Fian and Gecudus' home early in the evening of April 2, declaring she could not bear to live with a man who so painfully preferred friends he had only known two months over her.
She would end up staying with them for eight days, during which they continually urged her to return to her husband. Then, on April 10th, he dueled his final opponent, one Donner Selwyn, a much older wizard who was hopelessly his superior. This duel ended with Donner making a point of sparing Brom's life and telling Ficus he would have easily killed him as well.
Somehow, about an hour or so later, an account of the duel reached Dian that instead claimed her husband had been killed. Nian happened to be present, and she described her sister as loudly expressing her anguish, then racing through London, "her skirte getting so muche filthe it turnt black, stille loud as she grievede," until she reached her home. There she found Brom very much alive, at which point her screams turned to angry ones at him. Nian, Fian, and Gecundus, who has all followed her, chose to leave, after a brief debate about locking the two of them in the house. The next day, Dian sent Fian and Gecundus a note thanking them for taking her in, and assuring them all was well between her and Brom again.
Nian would note the great relief of all three of Dian's sisters, theirs husbands, and their parents, that such a trying storm had been weathered. No doubt if she ever looked back at those words later in life, she was bound to reflect on how little they had known of some of the storms to come.
Dian actually does admit in her own writings to the part of having run mad down the streets of London, though she wrote vague words on the details; had her sister not recorded them, we might have been left with the impression that she had experienced some powerful vision that she had somehow failed to record. That certainly was a conclusion formed by many witnesses who were on her route, and those they told about it afterwards. Dian and Brom would have little time to restablish their domestic harmony before it was disturbed by a plethora of visitors knocking on their door to ask her about this new great vision of hers.
None too pleased by being so hounded, Dian rapidly went from denying she had a vision to making up a different story for each newcomer, until ten different stories had seemingly reached every wizarding ear in London, with possibly some others reaching quite a few of them as well. One of them proved particularly important. It wasn't long before Dian remembered the Council's interest in Wulfhild the Fierce, and she herself records three different visions she made up about her, but the only one which properly caught on seems to have been the one where she sailed in triumph up the Thames with possibly lightning, possibly fire in her wake.
Not everyone on the Council believed this story when they heard it, with Odoner outright calling it, "What she believed woulde take our imaginings if she did spake it, rather than any thing thatte she saw." A couple other members of the Council had even heard gossip about her fight with her husband and the subsequent duel, and correctly guessed what had actually happened.
But three members of the Council believed in it. Everard Moon, Haldus Brack, and Ophelia Stone, who may not have been the brightest people to ever sit on that august body, all urged their colleagues to take the vision seriously. A fourth member, one Quentin Beckett, a relation of the future Council head Horatius Beckett, did not believe in it, but was willing to say he did to further his own complicated schemes. The four of them got their way; on May 15, Dian was again summoned before the Council.
Dian admits in her writings that her vanity had been hoping for such a summons from the start. However, when it actually came, she found herself dismayed and frightened at the prospect of having to face the Council with no true insight or information to offer these powerful people. She realized most of them would not believe her, possibly regardless of what she said.
Perhaps this even played a role in what happened that day. Of it, we have four differing accounts of events, and two of them are from Helenus Odoner and a young Amata Corner, both of whom have shown themselves to be trustworthy narrators in general. Even Dian, though her accounts of events are almost always biased, rarely tells deliberate lies in them. Only Beckett's fanciful claims of saving the day can be more or less disregarded.
There are a numbers of things that all accounts agree on. For the first ten minutes or so after Dian first came before the Council, nothing much seemed to happen besides them asking her about any visions she might have had relating to Wulfhild the Fierce, and her attempting to avoid having to answer them directly, and having little response when one of them accused her of having had none. Much of the Council was ready to just dismiss her then, but she, not ready to go just yet, started to hint that she might have had a vision involving one of the Council members. Accounts conflict on whether she named Beckett, Odoner, or one Lark Aberlide, who at the time was the oldest member of the Council.
It seems that Brack was either violently offended by Dian doing this, or may have merely lost his patience with her. The accounts agree he rose from his chair to approach her, though they differ in how close he got, how threatening he seemed, or if and when he drew his wand. They also agree that Dian drew hers, though they disagree on when. In her own, she denies intending to use it, and thought her former guardian had given her a bad one, but that may be what she tried to convince herself of afterwards. Whatever spell was cast, and noone seems sure which it was exactly, it left Brack thrown back against his chair without his wand, though despite Corner's fears otherwise it seems unlikely he was injured further.
Dian accuses the rest of the Council of aggressively attacking her then. Odoner and Corner describe it more as them subdueing her, and Odoner suggested she might have partly stood down on her own accord. She was then placed under arrest. Brack may have immediately threatened to make sure she was executed, though Odoner and Corner disagree on this.
Certainly Dian was in very real danger of execution. Medieval justice was very harsh, and the Council did not take well to assaults on its people. They had executed one man for a similar assault on Odoner the previously year, although he was one who had also broken in upon their meeting with the specific purpose of attacking him. Dian could argue that she had felt threatened, and her and her sister still had their value as seers, but neither of those things was sure to save her.
Her sisters and husband took the threat to her life very seriously. The latter was initially of less practical use; indeed, Nian had to talk him out of attempting to free his wife by force. But his money then hired one Elric Rod, an accomplished advocate. When the girls also appealed to the Ollivanders for help, and Gecundus also appealed to his father on his wife's behalf, Gaius-Claudius said he would speak to the Council. It is unclear exactly how and when he did, though Odoner does briefly mention his doing so in his writings.
Dian stood trial about two weeks later, on May 30th. The modern Wizengamot was not yet in existence; her fate was instead in the hands of the normal Coucil. Rod emphasized her young age, and how strong a powerful a wizard Brack was, how it was unlikely she could have done him any kind of long-term harm. When Dian spoke in her own defense, she outright accused Brack of lording his power over her, even claimed to fear for her safety even should he be acquitted.
What may have decided the day's outcome, more than anything else, was Brack's response to this. He had likely heard remarks from the rest of the Council expressing their reluctance to put a young seer to death, and believed the odds to be against things going his way. And so he accused Dian of bewitching the others, and threatened to deal with her, "the only way it can be done, clearly."
It is impossible to know whether he would have made good on that threat, had she indeed been acquitted, or even been imprisoned in London. Beckett outright says in his memoirs that the others didn't want to take that chance. The sisters were now high-profile enough in London that one of them being murdered by the member of the Council would have caused a difficult scandal. They may have even worried that it might cause the others to lose their powers, and the loss of four seers and their gifts, because one member of the Council had a grudge, would likely have provoked even more outrage.
And so, when they discussed the verdict and the sentence, it was quickly agreed that Dian would be convicted, but that the penalty would be exile. She was ordered to remove herself from England, and to stay away for five years. This, they persumably hoped, would be time enough for Brack to let go his anger, and would be sufficient warning against any future would-be assailants without permanently costing them the asset that were the Weyard sisters.
It was better than death, but it was a devastating verdict for all four sisters nonetheless. Their marriages might have taken them to live under different roofs for the first time, but they had still remained very close, making efforts to see each other whenever they could. This was a separation beyond anything they had ever imagined.
During the week Dian was given to make her departure, they even talked of all leaving together. Had the exile period been shorter, they might have even tried it. But the other three sisters found five years too long a period to manage. Golpalott declared outright from the start he would not leave London that long, and it would've taken too large a toll on Arthur and Sinead's health, so Nian felt she could not leave. Philus, too, was reluctant to leave his parents, nor did he or Cian wish to raise their child in exile. Gecundus and Fian had now both been drawn into the Ollivander family business, and were apparently under pressure not to desert it.
Her sisters did, however, accompany Dian and Brom on the initial journey back up to Scotland. Although the exile was from England only, and in theory, they could've stayed in Hogsmeade, the village had indicated they did not truly want them there. The couple instead chose to settle in Edinburgh, where there was a small magical population, but noone who cared who they were. With MacBeth still king, Dian even openly hoped that if he heard of the arrival of one of the sisters whose battlefield intelligence had no doubt helped him defeat Duncan, he would behave kindly to her.
The four sisters spent a week together in Edinburgh, helping Dian and Brom get settled. Then, "with all reluctance and grief," according to Dian, her three sisters made their way back to London, leaving her and her husband alone.