During their first meeting, Dumbledore dropped all pretense of levity and looked intently at Eliana, who sat directly across from him.

The silver-haired little girl was currently embarrassed by her slip of the tongue, her small face filled with apologetic expressions. Her clumsy, awkward demeanor was enough to make anyone chuckle.

However...

Dumbledore's gaze lingered on the girl's beautiful, lake-blue eyes. Beyond a hint of annoyance and nervousness, he saw an unadulterated purity, as clear as autumn water.

Whether it was the phoenix Fawkes, the portraits on the walls, or the interior furnishings slowly being repaired by magic, none of it seemed to elicit any particular attention in her eyes. Her emotional responses seemed to stem more from the events themselves than the world she was in.

Dumbledore finally understood the subtle sense of incongruity that both McGonagall and he himself felt when interacting with Eliana. She was too calm.

As a child who grew up in the Muggle world, Eliana showed almost no awe or fear in the face of the unknown magical world. Even if she had prior knowledge of the magical world, seeing it with her own eyes was fundamentally different from merely hearing about it.

"I am curious..."

Dumbledore pushed his half-moon spectacles up his nose and spoke slowly.

"If I am not mistaken, this is your first time seeing a phoenix. Are you not afraid of its flames or the magic that allows it to disappear and reappear suddenly?"

"Afraid? Why would I be afraid?"

The silver-haired little girl glanced at the phoenix Fawkes, tilted her head in confusion, and replied, "Flame is just a basic natural phenomenon that emits light and heat. To be precise, combustion is simply an exothermic reaction caused by the interaction of combustibles and oxidants. As for spatial transportation..."

She paused, carefully recalling the scene of Fawkes' sudden disappearance and reappearance, and said hesitantly, "The sound it makes when that happens is similar to the sound of air being suddenly compressed together due to a vacuum and then bursting. I guess it's more like short-range curved-space translocation, right? Besides, it's really beautiful."

Oxidants? Exothermic reaction? Vacuum? Curved-space translocation?

Hearing Eliana's answer, Dumbledore became even more puzzled. If it weren't for the girl's earnest expression, he might have thought she was speaking in some incomprehensible, obscure language.

"So, is this how Muggles view magic now?"

After a moment of silence, Dumbledore rubbed his brow again and rephrased his question.

Eliana shrugged, somewhat speechless. She couldn't understand why wizards, even in the late twentieth century, still thought magic would frighten Muggles.

"Professor Dumbledore, you might be mistaken. It's not about the way of viewing magic; it's just the basic operation of perceiving the world. Unlike wizards' understanding of the world through stories and traditions, the non-magical world understands the origins of the world piece by piece through detailed fields such as chemistry, physics, biology, mathematics, and so on..."

People in the Middle Ages might have been surprised and shocked by flames appearing out of thin air, and they would have regarded turning water into wine as a miracle, because their perceptions and thinking limited their understanding of the world.

Superstition and religion clouded their vision, so they would have seen incomprehensible wizards as devils or messengers of gods, rather than human beings equal to them.

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear. The oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.

Magic, an inexplicable unknown that is beyond the common sense of mankind, was undoubtedly the most solid barrier between the non-magical and magical worlds.

But, times have changed.

Modern science has endowed humanity with not just knowledge, but a way of thinking about the unknown.

As human science has progressed, the scope covered by "common sense" has become increasingly broad, even to the point where it can make self-consistent and reasonable guesses and explanations for most unknowns.

For example, when a modern person sees someone on the street making flames appear in their hand, they will most likely think of it as performance art, applauding and cheering enviously while wondering how they achieved this effect.

In Eliana's view, magic was just an undiscovered form of energy. Although she couldn't completely understand it according to the knowledge she had learned in her previous life, she only needed to temporarily add a few black box theories—without involving the essential internal structure and interrelationships of magic—and analyze it solely from its input-output characteristics to summarize regular patterns of knowledge.

Looking at the silver-haired little girl speaking eloquently, Dumbledore suddenly realized that the extent of Eliana's understanding of the magical world didn't prevent her from recognizing and observing the magical phenomena in front of her.

More accurately, she was using a Muggle way of thinking to explain magical phenomena in her mind to a certain extent. Even if it might not be correct, it was enough to eliminate her fear and awe of the unknown magic.

In a daze, Dumbledore seemed to see the shadow of an equally confident white-haired man in Eliana.

He seemed to return to decades ago, when he imprisoned Gellert Grindelwald in the highest tower of Nurmengard, and had a conversation that only he knew about—or rather, Grindelwald's "prophecy."

…………

1945, the top floor of Nurmengard Tower.

Grindelwald, who had lost in the duel, was not as hysterical and downcast as people imagined.

He still maintained his methodical elegance, looking calmly at Dumbledore standing in front of him, as if it were just a chat between friends, not a farewell before permanent imprisonment.

"You can imprison me, Albus, but you cannot imprison the spread of ideas."

"I admit that I underestimated the abilities of Muggles, but this precisely shows that they will be more terrifying than the prophecies I have seen."

"Wizards have already missed the best opportunity to take the stage. I would rather see Muggles, driven by fear and the unknown, raise their weapons against us irrationally, like angry little animals."

"Rather than waiting for them to launch an equal war after careful consideration, just as we treat all intelligent magical races."

"My transformation has failed, and you are not someone who can change the magical world. But I believe that your strength is enough to protect the entire magical world."

"However, one day, there will surely appear a young person who again deeply sees the drawbacks of both worlds."

"A young person who can recognize the advantages and disadvantages of both worlds from a more complete perspective, is not keen on power, and has potential comparable to yours and mine, who may guide the right to speak in the magical and non-magical worlds."

"When he appears, make sure he is on our side, and then use your own way to influence and teach him as much as possible, so that he can help the wizarding civilization continue to exist proudly in this world when the two worlds merge and collide."

"We all know that I am not succumbing to your power, but voluntarily imprisoned in this tower."

"But it’s for… the greater good!"

"Promise me! Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore!"

"..."

Dumbledore raised his head, his pupils reflecting Grindelwald's shadow.

"I will."

"If everything is really as you say."

…………

——————

(Mysterious Journey is begging for food, asking for recommendation tickets to support the new book!)

(After watching *Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald*, I increasingly feel that Voldemort is just a younger brother! Compared to Voldemort, Grindelwald not only has hair, a nose, and a face, has international followers, has a complete worldview and a lofty goal, has magical abilities that are both handsome and strong, whose lethality goes from point to surface, and has Dumbledore's love. It is a complete victory.)

(Let Jack Sparrow play Grindelwald, and Watson play Dumbledore. The comparison in terms of appearance and temperament is really too cruel for the noseless monster. There is no harm without comparison. As expected, the gap between the world of adult wizards and the world of children wizards is too big.)