Chapter 271: Chapter 271: Movie Night Part – 3

Black Castle, Scotland

They surfaced.

The room was quiet in a way that had physical weight, pressing down on every chest in the study.

“Thor,” Lily whispered, her eyes wide. “The actual God of Thunder. From the stories.”

“Yes,” Arthur said gently. “And he’s an ally. A friend.”

Sirius was the first of the adults to find words. His voice had lost every trace of its usual lightness, replaced by a cold, sobering reality.

“Arthur. Those warriors. The best fighters in the universe, you said. They couldn’t even scratch that thing. And Thor destroyed it alone. In seconds.” He looked straight at Arthur, his grey eyes searching. “If someone like that decided Earth was his enemy… what could we possibly do?”

“Nothing,” Arthur said flatly. “And that wasn’t Thor at full power. Not even close. Wizards and Muggles combined wouldn’t slow him down.”

The bluntness hit hard. Nobody argued. The evidence was still burning behind their eyelids.

“Then how safe are we?” Sirius pressed, leaning forward. “Where does that leave us?”

“It leaves you with a very clear picture of reality,” Arthur said. “Which is the point of tonight.”

“That’s not an answer, Arthur.”

“I showed you Thor not because I expect you to fight someone like him. I wanted you to see what exists. The scale of what’s out there. If beings at that level ever threaten Earth, it won’t fall to wizards to stop them.”

Amelia’s eyes narrowed. “Then who does it fall to?”

“Earth has its protectors,” Arthur said. “People who operate at that level.”

The room processed that. Amelia, ever sharp, got there first.

“People,” she repeated. “As in, more than one.”

“A few.”

“And you’re one of them.”

Arthur held her gaze. He didn’t nod. Didn’t make a show of it. He just didn’t deny it.

The silence stretched, thick and heavy.

James broke it, because James was eleven and the rules of adult silence didn’t apply to him. “Uncle Arthur… can you really fight someone like Thor?”

“Yes.”

The word landed simply. No flourish. No qualifier. The same tone he’d use to confirm the time of day.

“Can we see?” James asked, his voice hushed.

“I fought someone on Thor’s level recently,” Arthur said. “On Asgard. I’ll show you that.”

He poured the last memory into the silver basin.

—

Memory: Arthur vs. Laufey

Asgard. The golden city. But now the gleaming bridges were cracked. Frost crept across the walls like a disease. Battle sounds echoed in the distance.

And walking through the shattered gates of the palace was Laufey.

The King of the Frost Giants. Fifteen feet tall. Blue-skinned. Eyes like frozen rubies. Ice formed and reformed around his body like living armor, responding to his will, extending from his hands as weapons and shields.

“In the Norse myths,” Arthur narrated softly, “Laufey was written as Odin’s equal. An ancient king who commanded an army that nearly conquered the Nine Realms. The myths got that part right.”

Arthur faced him alone.

Something shifted in the room. This wasn’t a stranger in a metal suit or a god from mythology. This was Uncle Arthur. The man who played pranks and lost at chess and flew broomsticks with them at every gathering. The man who’d carried Tristan on his shoulders that morning and argued with Sirius about Quidditch over lunch.

He was walking toward a fifteen-foot god-king of ice.

The first phase was testing. Apparition and illusions. Striking and vanishing. Chi-enhanced fists hitting with vibranium-amplified force. Each blow cracked ice. Each strike made the Frost Giant flinch.

But Laufey had fought wars longer than civilizations had existed. He found Arthur’s rhythm. Caught his fist in reformed ice. Punched him through a stone pillar with enough force to liquidate a normal human.

Sirius stepped forward instinctively. Harry’s hand went to his wand.

Arthur pulled himself from the rubble.

And stopped testing.

Three layers blazed around his fists. Chi burning gold. Vibranium humming purple. Eldritch constructs spiraling orange. Three different systems of power layered together into something that shouldn’t have been possible.

He became a blur. Portals redirecting Laufey’s attacks into the void. Strikes landing from impossible angles. The Frost Giant staggered, cracked, bled—but kept fighting.

Then the Power Stone.

Purple light erupted from Arthur’s suit. Cosmic energy flooding his body. His eyes blazed violet. One punch.

Laufey’s arm ceased to exist from the elbow down.

Susan’s hand went to her mouth. The children were silent. James’s fists were clenched white. Eleanor had gone pale.

Fiendfyre erupted from one hand. A massive dragon of cursed flame. From the other, a dragon of living lightning. Two elemental leviathans merging, screaming toward the one-armed king.

Laufey’s glacier dome, three thousand years of mastery in a single desperate shield, shattered from the inside out.

The memory shifted to the Mirror Dimension. Arthur compressed the merged dragon into a miniature sun. Laufey raised his last hand. A shield of absolute zero frost.

It evaporated before the sun even touched it.

The supernova consumed the King of the Frost Giants. Not burning. Erasing.

Arthur stood alone in the silence. He snapped his fingers. The compressed sun burst into thousands of spheres – red, gold, violet – streaking outward in a silent firework display, fading into the infinite grey.

The memory ended.

—

They surfaced for the last time.

Nobody spoke.

The study felt impossibly small. The fireplace crackled softly. The leather chairs. The tea going cold. Everything looked fragile.

Sirius lowered himself into a chair slowly, staring at Arthur with an expression that was trying to reconcile the man who argued about Pranks with the man who had just atomized a god-king.

Amelia’s hands were trembling. She clasped them together to stop it.

Daniel sat down without checking for a chair first. Margaret’s hand found his shoulder, gripping tight.

The children were quiet in a way that children rarely are. James and Regulus sat close together. Eleanor and Lily had their hands intertwined. Leo hadn’t moved.

Elena stood apart. Eyes on her father. Sparkling.

Harry broke the silence.

“Arthur.” His voice was steady, but it cost him. “Is that your full power?”

Arthur looked at his oldest friend.

“No,” he said. “But that’s enough for tonight.”

The implication settled over the room like snowfall. What they had just seen – the layered magic, the cosmic energy, the miniature sun that had erased a being out of legend – was not the limit.

Arthur decided there was no need to show his battle with Mephisto. That was on another level entirely. Too much for tonight. Too much for any night.

Amelia’s hands had stopped trembling. Her eyes were sharp. The Minister’s mind, always working, always finding the thread that others missed.

“You’re still training,” she said. Not a question. “Studying in Asgard. Training with their warriors. Pushing yourself every year.” She paused, and when she spoke again, each word was deliberate. “A man at your level doesn’t keep training unless there are things out there stronger than him.”

Arthur met her gaze. “Yes.”

“How much stronger?”

Arthur considered how much to say. He thought about the Celestials. About entities that existed on a scale that made everything in this room, including himself, look like insects on a windshield.

“There are beings in the universe,” he said carefully, “that I am not confident I could touch. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. You could call them beyond gods. Forces of nature given will. If they decided to act against Earth, nothing I showed you tonight would matter.”

The silence was absolute.

“But,” Arthur continued, and his voice shifted. Warmer. Firmer. “Those beings are not coming for us. They exist on a scale where Earth doesn’t register. I train against the possibility, not the probability. So don’t lose sleep over them.”

He let that settle. Then he leaned forward.

“What I showed you tonight – the enhanced humans, the technology, the alien civilisations – those are real threats on a real timeline. Things you can prepare for. Things you can face. The greater things, the things beyond gods… leave those to me. That’s my weight to carry.”

He looked at Amelia. At Sirius. At Harry.

“What I want from you is simpler and harder. I want you to find a way to avoid a war between wizards and Muggles. And if the war happens anyway, I want you to be ready. I want you to look at Asgard – warriors and mages living in harmony, fighting together, building something stronger than either could alone – and ask why Earth can’t do the same.”

Sirius rubbed his face with both hands, exhaling a long breath. “You know, I thought this year’s gathering was going to be like every other. I thought we’d drink too much, play Quidditch, and argue about nothing. Instead, you’ve shown me gods and monsters and told me wizards aren’t as great as we used to believe.”

Arthur looked at him.

“Who said wizards aren’t great?” He smiled. “I am one.”

Sirius stared at him. Then, despite everything – the gods and the monsters and the alien armies and the weight of a universe that had just gotten very, very large – he laughed. A real laugh. The kind that came from the gut and shook loose the tension that had been building all evening.

Harry smiled. Amelia exhaled. Even Aurora, who had barely moved for an hour, allowed herself to relax.

“You impossible bastard,” Sirius said, shaking his head. “You show us the end of the world and then crack a joke.”

“The world isn’t ending,” Arthur said, standing up. “It’s changing. And I’d rather face that change with people who are laughing than people who are terrified.”

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