The  Ministry of Magic is on high alert: thieves have made off with many of the Pictish artifacts recently recovered outside of Hogsmeade!

The artifacts were being transported by train from Hogsmeade to London Sunday evening. According to reports, persons unknown boarded the train car from above, making off with a number of items before the auror assigned to the car—whose name is being withheld by officials—returned to disrupt them.

This is not the first bout of ill luck to plague those involved with the relics.

The team neared completion on the dig site late in August, and was slated to have all objects uncovered shipped to the Ministry of Magic headquarters and to London's Museum of Magical Miscellany by mid-month. After food poisoning ravished many of the members of the dig team, they were forced to reschedule—though neither the original nor the new date were widely publicized, leading some to speculate that the thieves might have had a man (or woman) on the inside of the operation.

"I cannot comment on the specifics of the case in question, except to acknowledge that it is, indeed, a case," was all auror Maeve Connolly would say on the matter.