London was, indeed, a very grim and gloomy place. One of the gloomiest places of all was Hatmaker House.

The day after the disaster in Parliament, Sir Piers had arrived in Wimpole Street, bringing a small army of soldiers with him.

‘Take everything magical,’ he instructed. ‘By order of the king.’

He watched as soldiers threw hats into sacks, swept magical ingredients off the shelves and smashed the special instruments used to spool starlight. Great-aunt Petronella fought ferociously over her Astroscope, Aunt Ariadne pleaded with the soldiers to leave the library books, and Uncle Tiberius refused to relinquish his silver stitching needles. But the soldiers were merciless. They took Cook’s spurtle, saying it looked too much like a magic wand to be an innocent porridge-stirrer, and tore off Len’s jacket because it was patched with moonlight. Even the rooftop glasshouse was emptied, the plants rustling their leaves longingly back towards home as they were piled on a cart.

‘You brutes!’ Aunt Ariadne exclaimed, chasing the last soldier on to the pavement, where Uncle Tiberius was wrestling over some ribbons as Great-aunt Petronella jabbed a soldier with her old wooden hatpin. Defeated, Uncle Tiberius fell heavily to the ground, ribbons torn from his fingers, and Sir Piers smiled the triumphant smile of a man with the law on his side.

‘If you dare to even stitch a single spell into a handkerchief, you’ll be taken away too!’ he warned, stomping on a Storm Nautilus Conch attempting to scuttle back inside. ‘These magical ingredients are illegal; they are going to be dealt with.’

The cart piled high with the Hatmakers’ precious magical ingredients and tools rumbled away down the street. Great-aunt Petronella turned her hatpin on Sir Piers instead, but he prised it out of her hand and snapped it in half.

Then he leaned down, pushing his face horribly close to the ancient lady’s, and hissed, ‘You will be dealt with too, soon enough.’

He dropped the broken pieces of the hatpin on the ground and left.

The Hatmakers stood on the pavement, staring in shock at the window of their once-beautiful shop. All the hatstands had been robbed of their hats. Some bald hatstands rolled on the floor, like heads that had recently been chopped off.

They crept inside to find every magical ingredient gone. It was as though a magic-eating beast had come and devoured its way greedily through Hatmaker House, leaving nothing but silent shadows behind.

Uncle Tiberius discovered Len Lightfinger hiding under the stairs, clutching a bottle of Sam’s Sunset Nectar, and could only coax him out with Cook’s last sunlight pie and the solemn promise that the soldiers were gone.

The Hatmakers soon realized that, although the house seemed empty of magic, there were several tiny magical objects remaining. The Turbidus seeds that had escaped from Cook’s pudding, to slip into cracks between floorboards and nestle into the ashes of the magical fireplace in the workshop, had also escaped the soldiers’ notice. But all the chaos and hullabaloo had stirred the seeds awake. Silently they sprouted and began to grow …

Vines curled round the bannisters and snaked across doorways. They crept down corridors and invited themselves into rooms, spiralling round door handles, surging across the floors and up the walls.

The Hatmakers snipped, pruned, hacked, yelped and yelled, but nothing stopped the vines growing. They watched in horror as the vines ran riot, terrified that Sir Piers would return and accuse them of making illegal magic.

When Mrs Bootmaker came tramping into Hatmaker House the next day, cursing Sir Piers like he was mud on her boots, she ran into a jungle.

‘What on earth is going on here?’ Nigella Bootmaker shrieked.

Uncle Tiberius hushed her.

‘The more noise we make, the faster they grow!’ he explained in a whisper.

He ushered her into the shop, which was the only room left that the vines had not invaded, and where everyone was sheltering.

‘It’s the only place we can be in peace,’ Tiberius told her, wrestling the door closed as a vine tried to barge in. ‘I can’t even sleep in my bedroom – a vine tried to pick my nose at two o’clock in the morning!’

‘We’ve tried everything, but we don’t know how to stop them growing!’ Aunt Ariadne added under her breath.

Hatmaker House groaned as a vine surged across the landing above them. A root appeared, thrusting its way down through the ceiling, crumbling the plaster.

‘They’re destroying our home!’ Uncle Tiberius wailed, then clapped a hand over his mouth as the root wiggled excitedly towards the noise.

‘Why have you got mittens sewn to your sleeves?’ Mrs Bootmaker asked Uncle Tiberius curiously. Tiberius Hatmaker did, indeed, have a pair of woollen mittens stitched clumsily to his cuffs, covering his hands entirely.

‘To stop myself Making,’ Tiberius admitted miserably. ‘I find myself Making without even thinking about it. These muffle the magic in my hands a bit – though I did set fire to them earlier.’

He held up his hands, like two large paws, to show Nigella the scorch marks at the fingertips.

‘I make my bed every morning, you see,’ he explained. ‘I suppose I make it a bit magically. The mittens caught fire while I was plumping the pillows.’

Mrs Bootmaker shook her head, observing Cook attempting to roast sausages over a candle flame and Great-aunt Petronella crooning softly to a frazzled-looking Quest Pigeon she had saved from the soldiers, which was nesting in a hat on her lap. Len was curled up on an empty shelf, blowing motes of dust through a shaft of sunlight.

‘You’ll all come and live at Bootmaker Mansion,’ Mrs Bootmaker said decisively. ‘Sir Piers has taken all our ingredients away too, so there’s plenty of room for everyone, and no blasted vines! Come along – I won’t take no for an answer!’

She almost clapped her hands briskly, then thought better of it, and instead opened the shop door quietly.

But there was a person framed in the doorway, his fist raised, about to pummel on the door.

It was Sir Hugo Gushforth.

‘I am forced to perform The Sorrowful Tale of St Enoch over and over again!’ the actor wailed. ‘It’s the worst play I’ve ever done. My costume is a brown cassock, and the dialogue doesn’t even rhyme, because Prime Minister Oglethorne considers rhyming too frivolous!’

Everyone hushed him, as they bustled out on to the pavement, with Len and Uncle Tiberius carrying Great-aunt Petronella in her chair.

‘I’m so sorry, Sir Hugo,’ Aunt Ariadne whispered. ‘I hear they’ve shut all the chocolate houses too. The Sensible Party are determined to make everybody miserable.’

‘I know Making’s banned, but can’t you make me just the smallest little hat?’ the actor wheedled. ‘A hatlet, perhaps? To go under my awful monk’s hood?’

‘We cannot,’ Aunt Ariadne told him. ‘All our magical ingredients have been confiscated. And even if we had any left, we couldn’t Make – it’s far too risky!’

‘Alas!’ the actor wailed. ‘Cordelia would have done it!’

Aunt Ariadne’s eyebrows betrayed worry, hurt and grief in one frown.

‘Cordelia has done several things of which I cannot entirely approve,’ she said heavily.

They shut the door on the empty Hatmakers’ shop and hurried off down Wimpole Street, past closed chocolate houses and dark shops, through a terribly glum London.