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The air in the corridor became eerily quiet. It wasn't the silence of peace; it was the silence of a predator entering a room.
Hermione's dismissal of the Clairvoyant—"He's reading your files"—had sucked the air out of the conversation. But the name she dropped next hung heavy, like smoke.
Gellert Grindelwald.
Although none of the agents had ever heard the syllables before, it was easy to deduce from Hermione's tone that this was not just another "gifted" individual. This was a titan.
After surviving the Chitauri and witnessing the Convergence, the S.H.I.E.L.D. team thought they understood power. They thought they knew the scale of the board.
But Hermione's casual mention of a man who "swept across half the world" made them realize they were playing checkers while the wizards were playing 4D chess.
Suddenly, the "Clairvoyant" and his petty spy games seemed insignificant.
"Gellert Grindelwald?" Skye broke the silence, voicing the question on everyone's mind. "Who is that?"
Hermione leaned against the wall, inspecting her fingernails.
"He was the most powerful Dark Wizard of the last century," she said softly. "Without exception."
She looked up, her eyes hard. "He was a visionary. A revolutionary. He believed that wizards—beings of superior power—were born to rule over Muggles. He believed we were wasting our potential hiding in the shadows. So, he wanted to overthrow the International Statute of Secrecy."
Hermione paused, letting the implication sink in.
"To do that, he launched the First Wizarding War."
"If it wasn't for Albus Dumbledore—my Headmaster—stepping forward at the last moment to defeat him in 1945..."
She glanced at the increasingly horrified expressions on the agents' faces. A barely perceptible, chilling smile played on her lips.
"I guess you guys wouldn't be standing here. You'd be livestock. Or pets."
Gulp.
Someone swallowed hard. It sounded like a gunshot in the quiet hallway.
Dominate Muggles? A global war?
The information was overloading their brains. S.H.I.E.L.D. dealt with terrorists and rogue scientists. They dealt with Loki, who wanted to rule for a weekend. But a magical ideology of racial supremacy backed by god-like power? That was a nightmare scenario.
Coulson struggled to process this, trying to classify Grindelwald into a threat level he understood.
"This... Grindelwald," Coulson asked cautiously. " compared to your three professors we saw in London... or compared to you..."
He was trying to find a baseline. Is he Malekith level? Is he Thor level?
Hermione laughed. It was a dry, humorless sound.
"Phil, it seems you really don't understand the gap in strength between wizards."
She held up one finger. "The wizarding race has an extremely high ceiling and an extremely low floor."
"The floor is low. A novice wizard, or a mediocre one, is just a person with a stick. Your well-trained agents could take them out with a sniper rifle from a mile away. Easy."
She raised a second finger.
"But the ceiling..."
Her voice dropped to a whisper. "The tall ones... the masters... one person can turn a city to ashes with a single flick of the wrist. They don't fight armies; they erase them."
Hiss.
A collective gasp filled the corridor. Trip's face turned an ashy grey.
Hermione, observing their fear, decided to twist the knife.
"Let's put it this way. You saw Professor McGonagall, Professor Flitwick, and Professor Snape holding back an Infinity Stone today, right?"
Everyone nodded numbly.
"Add me to that group," Hermione said casually. "Take the four of us. Add every other professor currently at Hogwarts. If we all attacked together, with prep time, intent to kill..."
She shrugged.
"We wouldn't last five minutes against Grindelwald at his peak."
!!
Everyone was completely petrified.
A crack appeared on Grant Ward's usually expressionless face. Even Garrett, the veteran cynic, looked disturbed.
Hermione and her professors were already classified by S.H.I.E.L.D. as Omega-Level threats. They had reversed reality. They had commanded dragons.
And now Hermione was claiming that a dozen of them combined couldn't beat one man?
How terrifying must Grindelwald be?
And by extension... how terrifying was Dumbledore, the man who defeated him?
"The First Magical War?" Skye asked, her voice trembling. "What was that? Was it... here?"
Hermione's tone was flat, reciting history like a textbook.
"Simply put, it was Grindelwald and his fanatical followers—the Acolytes—waging a war across Europe and America. They fought against every Ministry of Magic that opposed them."
"It was a large-scale operation. Assassinations. Terrorism. Mass destruction. It covered almost all wizarding societies at the time."
"Essentially," Hermione mused, "it was a World War."
She paused, looking at the date.
"If we really have to find a point of reference... it ran parallel to your history. 1939 to 1945."
"A World War?!" everyone exclaimed in unison.
Skye opened her mouth, her hacker brain making the connection. "So, Grindelwald... he was a wizard..."
The taboo name was stuck in her throat.
"The Little Mustache?" Trip whispered, his eyes wide.
"They were contemporaries," Hermione corrected smoothly. "Some say Grindelwald manipulated the Muggle war to weaken humanity. Some say he just took advantage of the chaos. But while your soldiers were storming beaches... wizards were burning cities with blue fire."
Coulson frowned, his historian brain trying to reject this.
"But how?" Coulson asked. "How is there no trace? A war that size? Magic fire? Dragons? How does history not record this?"
Hermione glanced at him with pity.
"That's right. Most battles were in the shadows. But sometimes... magic spills over."
"On one occasion," Hermione said, her voice distant, "Grindelwald unleashed a spell called Protego Diabolica in Paris. It's a blue fire that consumes everything it touches. It nearly destroyed the entire city. Paris would have been a crater."
"It was only through the combined efforts of the Alchemist Nicolas Flamel and a dozen Aurors that the fire was contained."
"But the commotion was too great. Thousands of Muggles saw it."
She smiled. "So, we erased it."
Coulson's eyes widened. "Collective memory erasure? For an entire city? Paris?"
Hermione nodded. "Otherwise, how do you think we stayed hidden? Reliance on self-discipline? Please."
"A similar thing happened in New York in the 1920s," she added casually. "An Obscurial—a dark magical force—lost control. It demolished streets, threw cars, destroyed buildings in front of thousands of witnesses."
"The Magical Congress of the United States—MACUSA—released the venom of a Swooping Evil into a rainstorm."
"The rain covered the city. Anyone it touched forgot the magic. Then, a squad of Aurors repaired every building, every window, every street lamp. In the morning, the New Yorkers woke up thinking it was a gas leak or a freak storm."
As the agents understood, a chill ran down their spines that was colder than any winter.
It wasn't just the destructive power. It was the control.
It turned out that in the face of the Wizarding Community, the so-called state apparatus, technological power, and even the will and memory of individuals were fragile.
Wizards could start wars, destroy cities, and then edit the history books by editing the minds of the survivors. They could rewrite reality, and humanity wouldn't even know they had been conquered.
Ordinary people—whether President or pauper—were no different than NPCs in a video game to them.
Hermione found it amusing to watch them freeze in place, grappling with their existential insignificance.
"To be honest," she broke the tension, "it's probably because I've leaked too many secrets over the years that the Ministry has become lazy. They haven't sent anyone to Obliviate you yet."
"Or perhaps," she mused, "Dumbledore thinks the Statute of Secrecy is outdated. Maybe we want you to know."
She shook her head. "I don't quite understand the Ministry's thinking these days. They are bureaucratic idiots."
The room remained silent. Garrett was rethinking his entire life plan. Why bother with the Centipede serum when magic existed?
Skye, however, seized on the key linguistic point.
"Wait..."
Skye stepped forward, her face pale.
"Hermione... you said the First Magical War."
Skye swallowed hard.
"If there was a First War... that implies there was a Second."