The shockwave swept past the TV station's cameras, and the live feed flipped into chaos. The lens tumbled down a hillside. The vicious flames of napalm ignited the crowd—people ran helplessly across the frame, mouths open in silent screams. Explosions kept coming. The ground trembled. The camera rolled and rolled… and the screen finally went black.
In a stunned silence, the broadcast cut back to the studio. The female anchor was deathly pale, nearly incoherent. The shot held on the poor woman for a long time—she had no idea what to say, and under the crushing pressure she was on the verge of breaking down. Nearly thirty seconds later, someone handed her a prepared statement, and she read the bulletin to the nation about the bombing at Hogwarts.
"Today at 10:31 a.m., Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, located in northern England, was suddenly attacked by an unidentified armed aerial force. Our on-site reporter has lost contact. Casualties are currently unknown. At present, no country or organization has claimed responsibility for this attack…"
The inn's lobby fell into a dead hush. The few Muggles who'd just come over looking for trouble dispersed. Then, outside on the street, a woman started screaming obscenities as two cars collided at the intersection. The town's residents poured out into the road. A few punk kids on a balcony plugged in their instruments and started playing, spitting down at the people below and flipping them off.
A little later, police cars rolled onto the street. A detective with a bullhorn ordered everyone to go home and not linger outside.
People shouted over one another, and then—slowly—voices converged into a single chant, all of them cursing together:
"Death to the Human Union Department!"
Lockhart stared at the TV for a long while, then suddenly asked Skyl, "Is it possible my mother is there?"
"It's possible," Skyl said, nodding.
"I'm going back." Lockhart sprang up in a panic, knocked his chair over, and managed to spill himself onto the floor as well.
"Hogwarts is very safe," Skyl told him. "You don't need to rush."
"But you saw those people burning!"
"It's just fire. Have a little faith in magic."
Before the words had even fully landed, the northern sky brightened. The light pouring in through the windows became blinding—cold, hard illumination that carved everyone's features into sharp, black shadows.
When the glare finally dimmed, a distant tremor arrived. The city's roads and buildings shuddered faintly. Houses became a huge, whining beast, letting out a low, muffled groan.
After a long while more, the deep, grand boom of an explosion finally reached them.
Boom—people swore they'd never heard a sound so hollow and vast.
And then they saw it: on the northern horizon, the top of a mushroom cloud rising like a lid. Only then did it hit them—a hydrogen bomb had detonated somewhere over there.
The TV station reported the follow-up nuclear strike as well. The anchor broke completely, sobbing. She tossed the prepared statement aside and fled the studio.
"Skyl!" Lockhart panicked again. "It blew up again!"
Skyl took a sip of coffee, calm as ever. "It's just a nuke. I've used more nukes than you've eaten loaves of bread."
…
April 1st was April Fools' Day.
Grindelwald stood on the soft spring grass before Hogwarts Castle. The gentle wind brushed his cheeks as he gazed out at the welcoming crowd. He didn't see Dumbledore.
He waited a long time. Dumbledore still didn't appear. Grindelwald didn't ask—he simply remained where he was, letting the wind move his long, lean coat in a slow sway.
Gilderoy—his face dark—emerged from the castle surrounded by Ministry Aurors. The moment he stepped into view, cheers erupted across the hillsides like they were greeting the king of the world. And at once, his smile bloomed into something bright and effortless.
Gilderoy and Grindelwald faced each other: on one side, vain and flamboyant "justice"; on the other, solemn and elegant evil. Yet their eyes were strangely alike.
Grindelwald looked mildly surprised. He hadn't expected that clown, Gilderoy, to stand so openly in front of him.
So Dumbledore had prepared a little surprise for him, huh.
The two duelists had met.
But the official witness was still absent. The spectators began to stir, and the ground filled with doubt and noise. Everyone started shouting:
"Dumbledore, come out! Dumbledore, come out!"
Dumbledore did not show himself. He stood north of Hogwarts' main castle, inside a white tower perched on the cliff.
The tower's main structure had been topped off this February. The interior finishing hadn't involved any construction crews—house-elves handled it all.
Dumbledore stood at the summit. The rooftop was a single slab of marble, carved with a complex, abyss-deep magic circle. The grooves of the array had been filled with molten gold and silver—three hundred kilograms of gold, half a ton of silver. Of the wealth the old educator had taken from the Lonely Mountain, half had gone into this tower… and it still wasn't finished.
Cradling Azura's Star, he stepped into the center of the array. A hollow had been left there, shaped exactly to the gem—slot it in, and it would draw forth the vast divine power of Sauron.
He looked toward the southern sky, tracking colors that didn't belong to birds or clouds.
In Skyrim, people watched the heavens like that all the time, because dragons could strike at any moment.
Dumbledore was waiting for a dragon too—one made of metal, driven by the flames of ambition, belching black smoke, its belly carrying a child of hell and ruin.
He hoped he would never find those steel birds.
But they came anyway.
At eight in the morning, they took off from a battle carrier group in the Strait of Gibraltar, flying north—through Portuguese and Spanish airspace, over the Atlantic and southern England—straight toward Hogwarts.
The pilots' orders were simple: destroy the castle. Inflict casualties.
They knew that in the crowd below, many were ordinary people just like them. But the command from above was unambiguous. This was war. There was no room for mercy.
The people on the ground noticed the aircraft too. They weren't here for a celebratory flyover.
"Bombers!"
"Damn it—they're going to bomb this place!"
"God! Oh God—bombs!"
Grindelwald narrowed his eyes and said to Gilderoy, "Muggles can't see the future. They only destroy blindly—like cattle and sheep grazing a plain bare until famine comes. Muggles should be ruled by a higher race, like wizards, so humanity can avoid extinction."
Gilderoy nodded fervently. "Exactly. We're the same, really. There's no need to fight to the death. We can rule the world together."
Grindelwald's gaze turned disappointed. "No. You and I are not the same. You're just a weak man who happens to have power." His followers all wore matching expressions of contempt—when it came to villain pecking orders, Grindelwald sat higher than Voldemort.
Gilderoy flushed with shame and rage. He let out a strange, cold laugh. Ignoring the air raid overhead, he raised his wand and attacked Grindelwald.
[Reducto]!
Grindelwald raised his wand.
[Protego]!
Their fight erupted.
And then, bombs began dropping from the sky in clusters, and the crowd started fleeing in despair.
At that hair's-breadth moment, an orange-red flame ignited at the peak of the white tower. The fire condensed into a colossal, magic-bright eye, staring into the sky. Then a vast [Condensed Flame Charm] surged outward from the pupil—sweeping a hundred miles in an instant.
The bombs detonated among the crowd.
A weak, sagging blast wave knocked people off their feet. Burning, gel-like fuel clung to clothing and skin.
They screamed and scattered, crushing into one another. Children began to wail.
And then, after a little while… everyone went quiet.
Those who'd been set alight patted their clothes and skin—perfectly intact—wearing baffled expressions inside the flames.
"Y-you're on fire," someone nearby asked, trembling. "Doesn't it hurt?"
"No," the burning person said. "It's kind of cool, actually. Feels… weirdly nice."
The people who were on fire realized, in shock, that they weren't harmed at all. A collective breath released from the crowd as they looked up at the enormous eyeball atop the white tower, voices rising in frantic amazement.
Then a missile carrying a nuclear warhead streaked in from the north.
A nuclear weapon that had never been used in combat throughout the Cold War was now falling onto human heads. This was the third nuclear weapon in history deployed for the purpose of killing.
The magic eye at the tower's peak erupted again with boundless power. A gigantic shield blossomed open, enveloping Hogwarts and the Forbidden Forest.
The nuke struck the shield. Its glare was filtered. Its radiation was blocked. Its shockwave was weakened to almost nothing—people only felt a light breeze brush their faces.
"Pretty," an old woman with burning hair offered, giving her review.
All the fire-spitting people around her nodded in agreement, breaking into goofy smiles.
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