The buzz throughout the hall died instantly, as though the whole chamber had been silenced by a single spell.
The forest of raised hands lowered along with it, every eye turning toward the movement at the long table. Until now, everyone seated there had remained nothing more than silent observers, and the sight of one of them finally rising to speak was enough to seize the attention of the entire chamber at once.
Even the Archmages stirred, some adjusting in their seats, others turning outright to watch Maverick with open interest.
Master Weiguo, on the other hand, first showed a slight frown on his face before it settled back into its usual calm. By standing without so much as raising his hand, he felt like his authority had been overlooked.
Still, he made nothing of it, and let the moment pass without comment. If anything, he found himself curious, every bit as curious as the rest of the chamber, to hear what argument the young prodigy meant to make.
Maverick, meanwhile, did not begin at once. Rising from his chair, he walked, unhurried, into the open space at the centre of the chamber, and there he let his gaze travel slowly across the assembled delegates before he spoke a single word.
"Gentlemen... and ladies." He paused, then let out a long sigh, tired in the way of a man who had simply had enough.
The hall was so silent that one could hear a pin drop, not even the cameras flashed from the gallery above, everyone watching with undisguised anticipation.
"For over an hour I have listened to your arguments, and listened patiently. I had hoped, somewhere in all of it, to hear reason." He paused. "Instead, I find myself disappointed."
He began to pace, slow and unhurried, his gaze moving from face to face as he went.
"Some of you cling to the past, determined to restore it by whatever means necessary. Others hide from it, as though a thing might be undone simply by refusing to look at it."
"But not one of you, not a single one, has addressed the reality as it actually is."
He stopped. Looked around the chamber. Slowly, he spread his hands.
"Why is that?" he asked, quietly now. "Is it easier to argue for the impossible than to sit with an uncomfortable truth?"
His eyes moved from one side of the chamber to the other.
"What is so difficult about saying aloud the one thing every person in this room has already thought, and not one of you is willing to say?"
He let the silence stretch a moment longer.
"Surely it isn't because you fail to see it. You are, after all, counted among the wisest witches and wizards alive. Are you not?"
"Or perhaps." A faint smile touched the corner of his mouth, more weary than amused. "This was never about ignorance at all. Perhaps it is fear. Fear that to say the obvious aloud is to be condemned for having said it."
The atmosphere thickened almost instantly, countless expressions flickering across the chamber, disbelief, anger, unwillingness, some barely keeping themselves from standing up.
If it had been anyone else, Maverick was certain they would have been drowned out by interruptions.
Even the Archmages, for all their stillness, betrayed themselves. A small movement from their table caught his eye, Dumbledore's hand, resting briefly on Master Weiguo's arm, as though to hold him in his seat.
Fair enough, Maverick thought. He had, after all, just called the entire Assembly cowards, more or less. But the truth had to wound sometimes before it could heal. Bitter medicine before the cure. Or was that not how the saying went?
Setting aside the stray thought, he continued, "but I understand where you're coming from."
His stern expression eased, just slightly, into something almost like a smile.
"Which is why I intend to say the one thing I have no doubt many of you have already thought, and have not dared to say, for reasons we might politely call... circumstances."
Slowly, he turned around, letting his gaze sweep across the rows upon rows of witches and wizards before it came to rest on the six people.
He held their gaze. "Coexistence!"
It was only one word, but it sent the chamber into an instant uproar. The tightly held silence vanished at once, replaced by a loud buzz of voices, and here and there someone even gasped aloud, as though he had spoken something forbidden.
Maverick kept his focus on the six of them, Master Weiguo and Matheus Guimarães above all, while the commotion carried on around him, unheeded.
Guimarães arched a brow, watching him as though he'd found something rather fascinating. The old Archmage from the East, by contrast, wore a tight frown, and Maverick did not fail to notice the faint clench of his hand upon the table.
Neither, however, seemed in any hurry to interrupt him. A moment later Master Weiguo raised the small hammer and brought it down once, and the chamber fell silent again.
"Pray tell, then, young man. Why should we forsake all that our ancestors worked so hard to build, and listen instead to... you?"
Maverick paid no mind to the challenge in the old wizard's tone and turned to face the representatives once more.
Some wore frowns, some looked at him expectantly, some admiringly, and some as though they were looking at a madman.
But he could see the contrast.
Surprisingly, despite having already secured the support of a great number of the assembled Great Magi, among the rest he saw only a fraction showing outright unwillingness.
"I believe the question before us is not whether the Statute of Secrecy has been compromised," he said, speaking plainly this time. "That much is beyond dispute."
His gaze traveled across the chamber.
"Last night, magic was not witnessed by a handful of non-magicals in some remote village. It was not a localized breach that could be contained with Memory Charms or explained away with carefully crafted excuses."
"It was... witnessed, unfiltered, by billions across the globe."
His words echoed through the chamber.
"Evidence has already spread beyond the reach of any Ministry, any Confederation, or any single government. They saw witches and wizards fly through the skies. They bore witness to what magic was capable of... its power to destroy, and equally, its power to create."
He shook his head.
"On top of that, let us not overlook the evolution of non-magical technology. This is no longer the 1940s, when information travelled at the speed of newspapers... Today, information circles the globe in seconds. To think we are confronting a breach confined to a single location will be our first mistake."
A thoughtful silence settled over the hall. Before making his point, he laid the situation bare for everyone.
"For centuries, the Statute of Secrecy has protected us. I do not deny that. Nor do I deny that it has preserved our way of life and spared both magical and non-magical societies from conflicts neither side was prepared to face."
"I am not questioning the wisdom of those who established it... but... our world has changed so profoundly since then that it is almost unrecognizable now from the one the founders of the Statute sought to protect."
He walked at an unhurried pace, turning from one row to another.
"Especially in the last century, the non-magical world has evolved at a pace without precedent." As he spoke, he raised his hand, and a thread of white mist rose rapidly from his palm, drawing gasps across the chamber.
Not that it was shocking, exactly. The people gathered here were no children, to be dazzled by any passing display of magic. It was the suddenness of it that caught them off guard. Without express permission, the casting of spells inside this chamber was, strictly speaking, against protocol.
Dumbledore had to hold Master Weiguo back for the second time tonight from rising from his seat. In fact, Maverick didn't originally have any plans to give a presentation, but as the saying goes, extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary measures.
The magic he was using wasn't his go-to illusion spell this time, but straightforward Transfiguration. With his proficiency already beyond the Advanced level, conjuring lifelike scenes from his own mind was hardly difficult. More importantly, because it was Transfiguration, what he created could also be captured by the cameras.
Out of the mist, images began to take shape: people holding small rectangular devices, pointing them at their own faces. Fingers moving rapidly over glowing screens. On the far side of the world, another figure raised a similar device and read whatever had just appeared on it.
The mist seemed to dissolve along with the image, changing into another. This time, a man sat before a glowing box, greeting someone whose face had appeared beside his own before the scene changed again, the same small miracle repeating itself in another part of the world.
"We may have magic that lets us tear through the fabric of space and time itself, crossing vast distances in the space of a heartbeat. But they, too, with their evolving technology, have found their own way of tearing through distance, of meeting one another across half a world in an instant."
The images changed once more, it was a street this time. The view focused on something mounted high on a wall, a small rectangular box, and on its front was a tiny black eye-like lens, watching.
Then came more, street after street, hundreds of them, before the scene cut to a man seated before a bank of screens, watching those very same streets and everything happening there unfold before him all at once.
"For those unfamiliar, the non-magicals call these CCTV, closed-circuit television. Tens of thousands of them are already installed across the world, and by the day, more go up. And they have but one simple purpose: to watch and record."
"You are all familiar with moving pictures." His voice rang out, calm and even. "Now imagine moving pictures without end, never stopping, capturing whatever happens the moment it happens, in every corner of the world. By my own estimate, within a decade there will scarcely be a settlement left on Earth without them."
He paused, letting his eyes travel across the assembled faces, watching the scenes unfold with expressions no longer quite so certain.
His voice carried to every corner of the chamber. "If not today, then soon, and sooner than any of us would like, the exposure of magic will become unavoidable."
Once again, the scenes began to change, but then suddenly the churning mist came to a halt. Maverick had half a mind to show the weapons of the non-magical world next, but on second thought, he decided against it. Practically the entire magical world was watching, and besides, he didn't want fear to overshadow the point he was trying to make.
"None of those technologies are classified, nor are they secrets reserved for non-magical governments alone. They are accessible to everyone."
Snap!
A single, sharp click of his fingers, and the mist dissolved entirely, the chamber returning to itself.
That should be enough, thought Maverick, observing as the countless gazes filling the chamber settled on him once again.
"We must, at the very least, accept that the non-magical world is changing, and changing at a pace our ancestors throughout history could never have imagined..."
He let out a weary breath, then steered the matter gently elsewhere. "And... if history has taught us anything, it's that it has a habit of handing us moments from which there is no turning back."
Looking at the faces that now seemed much more willing to listen, he continued, "Just like half a century ago, when we established a form of cooperation with the governments of the world, I believe this is once again one of those moments."
"Because we stand at a crossroads once again. We can commit all that we have to preserving a world that may no longer exist."
"Or." His gaze moved slowly from one Councillor to the next. "We can begin building the one that stands in front of us."
His voice did not waver as he came, at last, to the heart of it. "Therefore, I propose this Confederation open formal talks with the governments of the non-magical world, toward a controlled, orderly, and internationally coordinated acknowledgment of magic."
His hands spread slightly, his voice carrying now to every corner of the chamber, and, through the microphones, to every corner of the world beyond it.
"...A transition that protects our culture, shields our children, preserves our institutions, and sets the terms of our coexistence ourselves, before anyone else attempts to set them for us."
"If we act, we shape what comes after."
"If we don't."
His eyes swept once more across the chamber.
"Then someone else will shape it for us."
"So rather than spend ourselves chasing a secrecy that may already be lost beyond recovery, I believe we should begin, instead, laying the foundation for a lasting peace between our two worlds."
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