Aside from the Hit Wizards Lenn had brought with him, the Ministry's Armed Aurors had already moved out without notifying their nominal office chief.
Aside from colleagues assigned to guard duty, even those on leave had been temporarily recalled and divided into several squads. Some of the elite Armed Aurors took the arrest lists their squads were responsible for and Apparated to different parts of the United Kingdom, carrying out planned arrests with methods suited to each target, while most of the others temporarily maintained stability around the edges of the British Wizarding World.
At Slug & Jiggers Apothecary in Diagon Alley, Avery, dressed in peacock-green robes and carrying a packet of Doxy pesticide, turned back to tell his son not to wander around and to go home. When he turned forward again, he discovered in astonishment that he had been surrounded by Aurors, then heard them state their identities and announce that they were arresting him. The slightly hesitant question had barely left his mouth before the Aurors, without the slightest concern for his advanced age, knocked him cleanly to the floor. The young wizard in the shop heard the commotion and came over to check, only to see his old father struck down with his own eyes. Furious beyond reason, he casually dropped the Fwooper he had been carrying, which he used to bite Gnomes to death in the garden, and reached for his wand to counterattack, but before his wand was even pulled out, he was likewise blasted back.
In the bathroom of an ancestral home in Wiltshire, not far from Malfoy Manor, a Pureblood wizard was shaving his beard with his wand in front of the mirror. Then, in the mirror's reflection, he saw Aurors breaking in. He had only just turned his head and barked