After the Top 100 Tournament, the Muggle world had gone mad.
It wasn't because of all the talk about the tournament among Muggles who knew about the wizarding world. The competition certainly featured plenty of magic that shocked them, such as the Mending Charm and Object-Animating Charm Ron had cast on the damaged helicopter.
But none of it could compare with that unforgettable battle between Anton and Voldemort in New York.
That had been a fight between two walking nuclear warheads in human form, capable of flying freely and casting spells comparable to nuclear explosions. It had already raised the Muggles' expectations of wizards to infinity.
So when they watched the Top 100 Tournament, shocked though they were, most secretly breathed a sigh of relief—thank goodness. The very best young wizards didn't seem capable of magic on the scale Anton had displayed in New York.
After that—oh, no, on that very same day—the Muggle elite had begun holding meeting after meeting, discussing and analyzing just what sort of world the wizarding world was.
And according to their intelligence, some of their fellow Muggles had even been taken away by wizards to be transformed into wizards themselves, gaining the ability to cast spells!
For a time, that had been the central topic of their discussions.
Until...
Several similar photographs spread widely across the still relatively primitive internet forums. Eventually, someone attentive noticed them and placed them on the conference table.
—A figure in wizarding robes standing on the moon!
At first, only people online who believed in aliens or mysterious forces made a great show of using the photograph to argue that some mysterious existence must lie beyond the world of ordinary people.
Most people assumed it was some sort of photo manipulation or double exposure.
Until more and more people