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The room went dead silent.
None of them had heard the name Gellert Grindelwald before, but it wasn't hard to piece together from Hermione's words that he was something extraordinary. Extraordinarily dangerous. Almost certainly beyond Hermione herself.
After two alien invasions, they'd all gotten a clear picture of what a wizard could do. So "swept through half the Wizarding World" landed less like a boast and more like a warning.
Suddenly, clairvoyance wasn't the most pressing thing in the room.
"Gellert Grindelwald?" Skye asked. "Who is that?"
She was asking for everyone.
"The most powerful Dark wizard of the past century," Hermione said. "Bar none."
"He believed wizards were born to rule over people like you — people without magic. So he decided to tear down the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy and launched the First Wizarding War."
She paused, then added:
"If Albus Dumbledore hadn't stepped in at the last moment to stop him (he's Hogwarts' current headmaster), "
She let her gaze sweep the room, taking in the expressions that had gone from unease to something closer to horror. The corner of her mouth lifted, just barely.
"...there probably wouldn't be much left for any of you to do."
Someone swallowed. Loud enough to hear.
Ruling Muggles. A magical war.
The S.H.I.E.L.D. agents looked like they were running hot. They'd dealt with alien invasions. They'd seen enhanced individuals do things that defied explanation. But a figure who'd set out to overturn the entire world order, that was something else entirely.
Coulson worked through it carefully, trying to fit Grindelwald into his existing threat framework.
"So this Grindelwald — compared to your three professors..."
He measured each word, searching for the right way to ask.
Hermione looked at him with an odd expression.
"You really don't understand how wide that gap can be."
"Wizards have an extremely high ceiling and an extremely low floor," she continued. "At the low end, one of your well-trained agents could handle them with a gun if they were careful."
She held up a finger.
"But at the high end..."
"A single person. On a whim. Could level an entire city."
The sound that followed was involuntary, a collective intake of breath sharp enough to fill the room.
Everyone looked shaken. Tripp's face had gone noticeably pale.
Hermione watched their reactions with quiet satisfaction and kept going, unhurried.
"Let me put it plainly. Forget Professor McGonagall, Professor Flitwick, and Professor Snape as a group. Add me. Add every other professor at Hogwarts. All of us, together, at once."
She spread her hands. Perfectly casual.
"Still not a match for Grindelwald at his peak."
Silence.
Even Ward's face cracked.
Hermione and her three professors had already demonstrated things that could only be described as miraculous, enough for S.H.I.E.L.D. to classify them as the highest-tier threats in existence. And now Hermione was sitting there telling them that every single one of those people combined couldn't touch this one wizard?
What did that make Grindelwald?
And more to the point, what did it make Dumbledore, the man who'd beaten him? The man they'd only heard mentioned in passing, never once seen?
"The First Wizarding War," Skye said carefully. "What exactly was that?"
Everyone leaned in. The name alone sounded catastrophic.
Hermione's tone stayed flat.
"The short version: Grindelwald and his followers waged war against every wizard who opposed them. It swept across the entire world. Massive scale, enormous reach, it touched nearly every wizarding society that existed at the time."
"At its core, it was a civil war. Our civil war."
She paused.
"If you need something to compare it to... it might be closest to what you Muggles call a world war."
"A world war?!"
The room erupted.
Skye opened her mouth, and the word formed slowly. "So Grindelwald was the Wizarding World's..."
It sat right there on the tip of her tongue.
"The mustache man?" Tripp finished.
If Hermione alone could produce something indistinguishable from a natural disaster, then a magical war with thousands of wizards, what did that look like? What did that leave behind?
Coulson was frowning, pulling at something in his memory.
"But a conflict that size, how is there no trace of it in ordinary human history?"
Hermione glanced at him.
"There are traces. Most of the fighting stayed within the Wizarding World, but the real world got caught in it more than once."
"At one point, Grindelwald nearly destroyed all of Paris with Fiendfyre. It took over a dozen of the best wizards alive at the time, working in concert, to barely contain it."
"Even so, the damage was too visible. In the end, there was only one option." She met Coulson's eyes. "They wiped the memory of every person in the city."
His eyes went wide. "Mass memory erasure. On an entire city."
"How do you think the Wizarding World has stayed hidden for centuries without Muggles catching on?" Hermione said. "Wizard honor code?"
She seemed to remember something and kept going. "The same thing happened in New York. An Obscurial lost control, tore through several city blocks in front of a crowd. The Magical Congress of the United States conjured a rainstorm over the entire city. The rain was laced with a powerful Forgetfulness Potion. Anyone it touched forgot everything they'd seen that night."
"Afterward, they sent people to repair every damaged building. Restored everything. By morning, it looked like nothing had happened."
The understanding that settled over the room came with a cold edge.
In the face of wizards, state power meant nothing. Technology meant nothing. Individual will meant nothing. Even memory wasn't safe. Wizards could start wars, obliterate cities, and then reach into people's heads and erase the evidence, as cleanly as wiping a chalkboard. It didn't matter whether you were a head of state or a person on the street. To them, there was no difference.
Hermione watched them all staring into the middle distance, and found the whole thing quietly delightful.
"Honestly, I may have leaked enough by now that the Ministry has simply given up correcting it. They haven't sent anyone to wipe your memories, which is the only reason you know as much as you do."
She tilted her head. "Or maybe someone over there actually thinks the world knowing about wizards isn't the worst outcome."
She shook her head. "I genuinely can't tell what the Ministry is thinking half the time."
Skye caught something and straightened.
"Wait — the First Wizarding War." She looked at Hermione. "Does that mean..."
➤ Next: Espionage Is So Last Patch, Bro!
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