: How can a portal be hidden for 5 years but found by children? I am writing a story in which two children, ages 12-14 years old, discover a portal to another dimension. The portal is roughly

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Alternate entrance to a locked room.

The lolly shop has a back room, either the owner "lost the key years ago" (perhaps it was taken by the very person who created the portal) or the owner knows what is there and keeps it locked.

It has a tiny window onto a back-alley; one day during a storm the glass is cracked by hailstones, or there are bars but the kids bring a crowbar, stack some crates at night, and climb in. What 12 year old wouldn't want to break into a candy store?

You can vary anything. Maybe there is a chimney, coal chute, some animal dug under the wall.

Or...

The old man (store owner/postman/library keeper/lighthouse keeper) disappeared and the kids went to find/rescue him.

In this case the kids are trying to do good rather than mischief. Depends how you want their characters to be developed.

Maybe his disappearance had nothing to do with the portal but they find it anyway.

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The children could find be the first to find the portal for a number of years for many reasons:

It is only accessible by kids (like @Mary 's answer) and has not been found by others because it is hidden/in a dangerous place, but these rebellious kids went there anyway.
It is only accessible by climbing behind a washing machine (or another appliance) and looking around but before now the way behind was blocked by something.
It was in a scary park, behind a scary house... and the kids only want in there now because the scary woman who lived there died and they were on a dare

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Accessible through a crawl space that only the children can fit through. Possibly because it was used for storage for things that never got touched. Virtually every public building has some storage space.

Why other children have not reached it will need some explanation, but perhaps it's unpleasant and the children are the first ones desperate enough, or they are playing hide and seek against an unusually good opponent, or there aren't usually children in a situation to move about freely (it's in the back of the town hall, where the public isn't supposed to go, or a store where the owner has no children of his own).

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