Having finally gotten rid of his beard, Malachi put the towel aside and stared deep into the mirror, into the grey–green eyes of his reflection until he could discern another reflection in the pupils. Abigail had seen him do this bizarre meditation multiple times, but now he seemed particularly caught up in it.

Now was her chance to scare him. He had scared her like this multiple times when she would do the exact same thing in the bathroom he was doing now. It was her chance for revenge. Crouching slightly she stepped into the bathroom, eyes locked on him–

And then he turned to look at her.

She gave up with a huff. „You read my mind, didn't you?"

„No, I felt you looking at me." He walked past her and into the bedroom to get dressed. „In their... academies and boot camps and whatever, snipers are taught never to look directly at their target through the scope, precisely because the target–"

His head snapped to the left as if he had suddenly heard something, though there was nothing to break the silence. But he heard it with his mind, and so did Abigail.

Es ist fertig, professor Christian Jäger had thought just now. Dafür komme ich in die Hölle.

Malachi and Abigail looked at each other. Words were unnecessary. Abigail went to her own side of the bedroom to dress. Malachi did the same, with far more urgency now. A short time later they were ready. They went out, ascended their thrones together, and a command rang out.

Of course Malachi could've brought the entire force under his command to aid him while they were driving away to find master Irion. There wouldn't have been any need for him to let himself be caught where he could kidnap the Minister for Magic. She, Jeremy and those seven Aurors would not have stood a chance against his men. But he needed them to be rested, sober, their minds and bodies prepared for this moment. He could not waste them. There had been some losses and his force now counted 293 men, but it was a loss they could overlook for the moment. He hoped.

At present, all 293 of those pairs of legs snapped together and all 293 of those backs straightened, ready to receive their Lord.

The Dark Lord Malachi Greymist began to transmit a message. One of his men telepathically received the message and amplified it twofold, aided by the machinery they had built throughot the facility for this purpose. The man next to him picked up the message from his comrade and amplified it fourfold. The next man amplified it eightfold. The next man amplified it sixteenfold. And so it went, one signal picked up and broadcast, picked up and broadcast, growing so absurdly powerful that by the time the message reached the last of Malachi's men, in accordance with the wheat and chessboard principle it was sent out into the world magnified approximately seven hundred novemvigintillion times.

This broadcast was a single pulse, less than a femtosecond. And yet the sheer force of it would be enough. Malachi had no resources to broadcast his message in any other way. Brute force would have to do.

It was 13 o'clock GMT, and the date was Saturday, 28th of December. That was when the psychic burst occured, and that was when the world learned of wizards. That was when the Statute of Secrecy was so utterly broken as to be rendered null and void forever and evermore.

The burst of psychic energy was brief but powerful, incomprehensibly so, and however brief its aftereffects would continue to reverberate throughout the populace, wizard or muggle. Everywhere the people felt suddenly uneasy. Fights erupted over the slightest offense, or for no reason at all. On the other side of the world, where it was still dark, children clutched their teddy bears a little tighter in their sleep, and everyone began to suffer terrible nightmares. Nightmares of a church bursting open. Of a city smothered in darkness.

And what of wizards? Somewhere in London, the Minister for Magic was bleeding from her eyes. Somewhere in London, Mulligan and Jeremy simultaneously clutched their heads and screamed. Though brief, the signal was powerful enough to overwhelm all technology on planet Earth and force it to do its bidding. The entire communications network was now hijacked, turned into a vessel for Malachi's message.