Inside the bedroom of the Waldorf Hotel.
When Harvey stepped into the portal and disappeared, only a bewildered Wanda was left, lying at a loss on the soft, sunken bed.
"Have I... been abandoned?"
Feeling wronged, Wanda whimpered softly, her heart filled with nothing but deep regret.
"Sob... I knew a big shot like him would never actually fall for me. Even the house he promised to give us is gone. I was way too naive..."
Harvey knew absolutely nothing about Wanda's misunderstanding.
After he rushed back to his own villa.
He immediately met Hermione's extremely resentful, bitter gaze.
"Mr. Harvey Ferguson, where were you last night? You promised to take me out for good food. Don't tell me you forgot?"
"How could I!" Harvey put on an exaggerated expression.
"I discovered a massive problem last night. This world is about to suffer an alien invasion! I was busy all night long preparing for it."
"Can't you see I still have dark circles under my eyes?"
Harvey skillfully fabricated a highly plausible "fact" within 0.3 seconds.
However, judging by Hermione's skeptical look, it was hard to say how much trust he actually earned.
"An alien invasion? Are you sure this isn't an April Fool's joke? Then tell me, what kind of preparations did you spend the whole night doing?"
Hermione insisted on getting to the bottom of it. She had long since figured out Harvey's personality; she had stopped believing these kinds of lies when she was thirteen.
Harvey's thoughts spun wildly as he tried hard to figure out how to cover up the "story" he had just told.
Just then, a low, rumbling sound echoed from the distant horizon.
And suddenly, a massive shadow appeared, engulfing the entire villa.
"What's going on outside?"
Feeling a bit strange, Hermione got up from the sofa and walked to the windowsill to look up at the sky.
Then, she witnessed a scene she would never forget for the rest of her life.
A continuously expanding blue vortex had appeared in the sky.
Furthermore, a dense swarm of tiny black dots was rushing out from within the blue vortex.
"That... seems to be a spatial portal?" Hermione couldn't see clearly and muttered to herself.
Harvey also walked up beside Hermione and looked up.
Whoa.
A beam of eerie blue light shot straight into the heavens.
Those tiny black dots rushing out of the blue vortex were clearly Chitauri riding their flying hovercraft chariots!
"This is the alien invasion I was talking about. How could I ever lie to you, my dear Miss Know-It-All?"
Harvey said with a teasing tone.
The Chitauri pouring out of the spatial vortex began launching indiscriminate attacks on the entire metropolis of New York.
A sky full of laser blasts rained down like a storm.
"Boom, boom, boom~~"
The deep roar of explosions echoed in all directions.
Fortunately, Harvey's villa was located quite far from Stark Tower in Upper Manhattan.
The attacks launched by the Chitauri wouldn't reach them for the time being.
Hermione stared nervously at the distant sky. She could already imagine the people in that area struggling desperately amidst the brutal fires of war.
Her expression was deadly serious as she asked, "The Muggle government should be mobilizing the military, right? Let's go help. As long as we hold out until the army arrives, we should be able to save a lot of people."
"Hahaha~" Hermione's naive assumptions made Harvey laugh so hard he couldn't close his mouth.
"You're too naive! The high-ranking officials of the American government are probably trying to figure out how to drop a nuclear bomb on New York as we speak!"
"By the time their slow-moving army arrives, I'm afraid New York will have long been leveled to the ground by a nuke!"
As a Muggle-born witch, Hermione knew exactly how powerful nuclear weapons were. Her face was written with pure disbelief.
"How is that possible? Would the Muggle government really disregard the lives of tens of millions of people in New York and drop a nuclear weapon just to mutually destroy the aliens?"
"Mutually destroy?" Harvey scoffed dismissively. "How could you possibly guess the bizarre thoughts inside the heads of those fat-bellied American officials?"
"To them, the most fatal thing isn't an alien invasion. It's that, amidst this sudden attack, they've realized someone is threatening their status."
"Therefore, to eliminate the people threatening their status, dropping a nuclear weapon is not an incomprehensible decision."
Hermione furrowed her delicate brows deeply; she still struggled to understand the logic behind this.
"Who could possibly threaten the status of the high-ranking Muggle officials?"
Harvey smiled without saying a word and pointed at the sky where thunderclouds were surging.
"See the Prince of Asgard over there, channeling lightning to fend off the Chitauri? That's Thor, the God of Thunder."
"He is one of the prime examples of who those Muggle officials want to eliminate the most!"
"Thor?" Hermione looked in the direction Harvey pointed and saw a Thunder God enveloped in lightning, wielding Mjolnir in the air and slaughtering enemies left and right.
Briefly jogging her memory, she recalled the introductions to the realm of Asgard she had read in the archives at Kamar-Taj.
"Just because a god has appeared, the Muggle officials are worried their status is threatened, so they'll do whatever it takes to kill Thor?"
Hermione, having figured out the core of the issue, muttered to herself.
Harvey nodded with a 'you are teachable' look, then comforted her:
"Don't worry. This world has many superheroes. They'll step in to wipe the asses of those officials for their bizarre decisions."
Hermione's expression froze.
"Are you saying the Muggle government has already made the decision to drop a nuclear weapon?"
Harvey didn't explain, but instead squinted his eyes toward downtown New York.
If one had a telescope at this moment.
They would discover.
In the direction Harvey was looking, a tactical nuclear missile was flying at Mach 2 straight toward Stark Tower in the center of New York.
Hermione also sensed a fatal, impending sense of crisis drawing closer and closer.
"Wait, danger!"
She immediately drew her wand and cast spells at the surroundings.
"Protego Totalum!"
"Protego!"
"Salvio—Hexia!"
After doing all this, the terrifying sense of danger subsided significantly, and Hermione finally breathed a sigh of relief.
"Good thing my reflexes are fast. Was that the threat brought on by the nuclear weapon?"
When no one answered for a long moment, Hermione turned around and found Harvey staring fixedly at the distant sky.
"What is it?"
Harvey cast a spell on Hermione.
"Visum Extendo!"
Then, pointing towards eleven o'clock, he explained, "Look over there. Iron Man is riding a nuclear missile!"
Hermione was stunned. "Why is it that whenever you combine two nouns that I know, I suddenly don't understand what they mean together?"
Thanks to the Far-Sight Charm, her vision was greatly expanded. She looked in the direction Harvey was pointing.
"Merlin's beard!"
"Someone is actually riding a missile!?"
"Is that Iron Man crazy?"
Harvey was momentarily speechless.
"He is a household name in this world. Do you never follow the news about superheroes?"
Hermione's gaze remained locked on the Iron Man riding the nuclear missile. Regarding Harvey's question, she replied without looking back:
"I barely even have enough time every day to study magical knowledge. How could I possibly pay attention to the boring news of Muggle society?"
Harvey wasn't surprised by this answer in the least.