Chapter 266: Chapter 266: The Wake-Up Call

July 14th, 2010

Black Castle, Scotland

Arthur stepped through a portal onto the front lawn of Black Castle, Tristan on his shoulders and Elena already three steps ahead of him.

The ancient fortress sat on its hidden island off the Scottish coast, towers reaching into a grey summer sky. It looked the same as it always did. Timeless, impossible, and currently under siege by children.

Arthur had taken a break from his Asgard research for this. The yearly gathering. He felt no loss. For him, family was the first priority. Everything else came second. Always had. Always would.

“ELEANOR!”

“ELENA!”

The two girls crashed into each other at full speed. Nine-year-old Eleanor Black, poised and regal like her mother in every other situation, abandoned all dignity the moment Elena Hayes appeared. They hit the ground in a tangle of limbs and immediately started talking over each other about something that had apparently been urgent since their last meeting.

Behind Arthur, Eileen stepped through the portal, took one look at her daughter rolling in the grass in the dress she’d spent twenty minutes putting on, and chose peace.

Sirius met them at the door, arms crossed like he’d been waiting all day.

“About time you showed up,” he said, feigning annoyance.

Arthur raised an eyebrow. “Already complaining? Careful, Black. You’re starting to sound like an old man.”

Sirius visibly froze. “Old?” He pointed a dramatic finger at Arthur. “You take that back.”

Arthur smirked. “Make me.”

Sirius huffed, muttered something about “ungrateful powerful kid who doesn’t age,” and stepped aside to let them in.

—

The Potters had arrived that morning. Harry and Susan with the full contingent. James, eleven and fresh from a first year at Hogwarts that had apparently been memorable for all the wrong reasons. Regulus Black, twelve, was beside him. The two had become inseparable at school, which thrilled Sirius and mildly concerned everyone else.

Lily Potter, eight, was reading in a corner, ignoring the world with a dedication that reminded Arthur of himself at that age. Three-year-old Edmund quickly joined Tristan, the two of them chattering away about their own little concerns.

Daniel Wang was there with Margaret and twelve-year-old Leo, who was already outside with James and Regulus. The three boys were planning something that Arthur chose not to investigate.

Ariadne and Aurora had arrived with Winky’s help. Ariadne was in the drawing room looking like she’d stepped off a magazine cover. Aurora was beside her, looking older and more distinguished than the last time Arthur had seen her. Time moved differently when you weren’t an enhanced wizard who did not age normally.

Amelia, the most composed person in any room she entered, greeted Eileen with a warm embrace. Susan was beside her, keeping one eye on the window where her eldest was conspiring with his cousins.

“Harry,” Arthur clasped his hand. “Survived the first year with James at Hogwarts?”

Harry’s expression was that of a man who had stared into an abyss and seen his own son staring back.

“He found the secret exit to Hogsmeade. In the first week. With Regulus.”

“That’s not—”

“They’ve been using it to smuggle Weasley prank items into the school. McGonagall sent me a Howler. Me. A Hogwarts professor. In front of my students.”

Arthur bit down on a grin. “What did it say?”

“I refuse to recollect the most embarrassing moment of my professional life.”

Sirius appeared behind them, beaming with pride. “That’s my godson’s boy. And my son. Working together. Brings a tear to my eye.”

“It brought several tears to mine,” Harry said flatly.

Everyone laughed.

The morning settled into its usual rhythm. Adults catching up over tea. Children running feral across the castle grounds. Kreacher, Dobby, and Winky managing the chaos with the practiced coordination of a special ops team.

Arthur sat in the drawing room, watching his family spread through the old castle, with a smile that never left his face.

He absolutely loved this tradition.

—

It happened during the late morning, while the adults were still inside and the children were playing on the lower grounds.

Arthur wasn’t there to see it firsthand. He heard about it from three separate sources within ten minutes, each version slightly more dramatic than the last.

Elena had been showing off.

To be fair, she’d earned it. Two months of dedicated training to reach this point. She’d worked hard. Really hard. Harder than any seven-year-old should have to work at anything. And she’d made a breakthrough.

Wandless magic. Conscious, controlled wandless magic.

Not as dramatic as her stunt in Harlem, but to anyone in the wizarding world, it was just as shocking.

She could levitate small objects. A pebble. A cup. A leaf. For a few seconds before the effort overwhelmed her. Small, brief, and to the untrained eye, unremarkable.

It was also supposed to be impossible.

The other children had been suitably impressed. James, Leo, and Regulus, who had just completed a year of wand-based magical education, had watched a seven-year-old without a wand do something their textbooks said couldn’t be done.

But it was Eleanor who told her mother. And Amelia told Harry. And Harry found Arthur in the study with a look on his face that was equal parts fascination and concern.

“Elena just levitated a rock,” Harry said, closing the door behind him. “Without a wand.”

“She’s been practicing,” Arthur said simply.

“Arthur. She’s seven. She doesn’t have a wand. She shouldn’t be able to do that. No child can do that. Most adults can’t do that.”

“Most adults were given wands at eleven and never learned any other way.” Arthur took a sip of his tea. “The wand becomes a dependency. The magic learns to flow through it and only through it. Take the wand away and most wizards are helpless. Elena’s never had a wand. Her magic doesn’t know it’s supposed to need one.”

Harry stared at him. Arthur could see the wheels turning.

“So at what age could you do wandless magic?”

“Don’t really remember. But it was early.”

Harry opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

“Can my kids…”

“I can give them some guidance. But it depends on their hard work. They’ve only just started getting used to wands, so there’s a window. It should be possible.”

Harry looked out the window at where the children were playing. Arthur saw him file the information away for later, the gears already turning behind those green eyes.

They’d come back to this conversation. Arthur was sure of it.

—

The serious discussion came after lunch.

Children outside with the house-elves. Adults in Sirius’s study. The same room, the same long table, the same tradition of putting the world’s problems on that table and seeing what they could do about them.

Everyone was present. Arthur, Eileen, Harry, Susan, Sirius, Amelia, Daniel, Ariadne, and Aurora.

Aurora opened with her update. The mundane side.

“The Supernatural Division is fully scaled. Forty-one joint operatives across the UK. Scrubbing protocols for magical exposure incidents are running at under three minutes from upload to removal. Internationally, the Americans are cooperating. CIA has a mirror unit. Germany formalised their arrangement. France came on board after the Marseille beach incident in March.” She paused. “The Russians are doing whatever the Russians do.”

Amelia followed with the wizarding side. “The Compact of Cooperation was ratified by the ICW last month. Britain, Germany, and the Nordics are fully signed on. MACUSA is still clinging to Rappaport’s Law. The Asian ministries are observing.”

“And the Statute?” Arthur asked.

“Barely holding. Sixty-one exposure events in the last six months. The trend is accelerating.”

Arthur pulled out a tablet. Before he could speak, Daniel interrupted.

“What is that?” Daniel leaned forward, squinting. “I assume it’s a tablet, but why is it transparent?”

Arthur held it up so the room could see. A razor-thin sheet of glass with a seamless display, the computing components housed in slim bands at the top and bottom edges. Tony had given it to him.

“Prototype from Stark,” Arthur said. “Too expensive to release publicly. Looks good though, doesn’t it?”

“I’m jealous,” Daniel said. “I want one.”

“I’ll ask Tony.”

Daniel pumped his fist. Meanwhile, the wizards in the room, Sirius in particular, stared at the piece of glass with the baffled indifference of people who still didn’t understand why muggles got excited about this sort of thing.

Sirius cleared his throat. “Can we move on? Arthur, you were about to show us something.”

“Right.” Arthur tapped the screen. “Aurora, your scrubbing algorithms aren’t thorough enough. Eve has caught and hidden far more incidents than your protocols have.”

Nobody in the room except Eileen knew Eve was an AI. To them, Eve was some god-level hacker working for Arthur. Arthur liked to keep it that way.

Arthur turned the tablet so the room could see. The screen filled with footage. Wizards walking through walls on security cameras. Broomsticks in the distance caught on dashcams. Wand fights recorded on eight phones simultaneously. And alongside each clip, Eve’s intervention. Deleted videos. Altered CCTV. Corrupted recordings. Thousands of them.

“Eve’s been holding the line,” Arthur said. “But we’re slowing the tide, not stopping it. It’s mainly European wizards. The American and Asian magical communities are disciplined. Your lot has gotten complacent.”

This was familiar ground. They’d had versions of this conversation before. But the numbers kept getting worse. Things that used to pass unnoticed in a world without smartphones now got filmed from six angles, uploaded instantly, and shared across the globe before anyone could react. The old methods of Obliviating witnesses and confiscating cameras were like trying to plug a dam with your fingers while the cracks multiplied.

Both governments had started cooperating. Real cooperation, not the grudging tolerance of decades past. But Arthur didn’t think they were treating it seriously enough. Not yet. The wizarding world still viewed the Statute’s collapse as a theoretical problem. Something to manage, not something to fear.

Arthur knew why. Deep down, most wizards believed they were the powerful side. That it was the muggles who needed to worry.

Since the most powerful people in the British wizarding world were sitting at this table today, Arthur felt it was time to correct that assumption.

“Amelia,” he said. “The progress has been slower than expected.”

“I’m doing the best I can. But you know the Wizengamot. They don’t believe me. Half of them think I’m being alarmist.”

“Then let me give you something to show them.” Arthur’s voice dropped a register. “Something to make the danger very clear.”

He tapped the tablet. The screen changed.

Military footage.

The Jericho missile first. Stark Industries’ finest work, before Tony shut it all down. A single warhead turning a convoy into a crater. The blast wave rippling outward, flattening everything within a quarter mile.

Fighter jets next. Precision strikes erasing building complexes with clinical efficiency.

Naval bombardment. Shells landing from thirty miles offshore. A coastline becoming rubble without a single soldier setting foot on shore.

And then the nuclear test.

The fireball. The mushroom cloud rising like the fist of an angry god. The test city, built specifically to be destroyed, reduced to nothing. Shadow-burns on concrete where structures had stood a second before.

The room was dead silent.

“That was a small one,” Arthur said. “Seventy years old. The modern warheads are a hundred times more powerful. One bomb. One city. Gone. And there are thousands of them.”

Nobody moved.

“Protego doesn’t stop that,” Arthur said. “Wards don’t stop that. Fidelius doesn’t stop that. Nothing in the wizarding arsenal stops that. A wizard is the most dangerous individual on any battlefield. But wars aren’t fought by individuals. They’re fought with industry and scale. Seven billion people. Satellite surveillance that can read a newspaper from orbit. Nuclear arsenals that can end civilisation in an afternoon. If the reveal goes wrong, it’s thousands against billions. The numbers don’t work.”

The silence held for a long moment.

Susan, ever practical, broke it. “What does a ’right’ reveal look like?”

“I don’t have the perfect answer,” Arthur admitted. “But the core principle is simple. Wizards need to be seen as allies, not threats. How you achieve that, whether through separate hidden cities or full integration of magical and mundane governments, is your call. I’d prefer integration, but it’ll be difficult. Neither side sees the other as equals.”

Amelia nodded slowly. “I’ll take the military footage to the next ICW session. Every magical head of state needs to see this.”

“Already prepared copies,” Arthur said.

“Of course you have,” Sirius muttered. “You always come to these things with an agenda.”

“I come with information. You lot make the decisions.”

“Is that what you tell yourself?”

Arthur smiled. He let the moment breathe.

Then he clapped his hands together. “Right. Since the serious topics are finished, what about some fun?”

Sirius narrowed his eyes instantly. “What do you mean by fun, Arthur?”

“Let’s duel. Put on a show for the kids.”

“If you’re joining, count me out.”

“What if it’s all of you versus me?”

“No. Not taking that bait again.”

Arthur grinned. He’d expected that. “Fine. How about something different? Muggle versus Wizard.”

The room went quiet in a different way.

“Ariadne,” Arthur said casually, turning to her. “Up for a bout?”

Ariadne, who had been watching the exchange with quiet amusement, straightened in her chair. A slow, dangerous smile spread across her face. “I’m always ready.”

“Perfect.” Arthur turned back to Sirius. “What do you think? Want to duel Ariadne?”

Sirius looked at Arthur. Then at Ariadne. Both of them were smiling. The kind of smiles that meant someone was about to have a very bad time.

Sirius, to his credit, recognized a trap when he saw one.

“Let Harry fight,” he said quickly, leaning back in his chair. “I’m a little rusty. Too much time sitting in the Wizengamot arguing with stuck-up snobs.”

Aurora frowned. “Ari, you want to fight one-on-one against a wizard? Without weapons?”

Ariadne confirmed. “Without weapons.”

Aurora exchanged a look with Daniel. To them, a mundane human going hand-to-hand against a wizard was an impossible task. And this wasn’t just any wizard. This was Harry Potter. The man who’d dueled Voldemort and walked away. Without guns, without gadgets, without any of the tools that leveled the playing field between the magical and non-magical worlds, the fight should be over before it started.

Arthur turned to Harry. “What do you say?”

Harry looked at Arthur. He knew this wasn’t going to be easy. Anything Arthur arranged came with a lesson attached, and Arthur’s lessons were rarely gentle.

But he also wanted to show that he’d grown. He’d taken down dozens of Dark Wizards over the years. He’d trained with Sirius, with Aurors, with combat instructors who’d fought in two wars. Against a muggle, even one who had trained with Arthur, without firearms?

It should be straightforward.

“Sure,” Harry said, standing up. “Why not?”

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