"The magical humans. There is a spell that lets them edit memories so that accidental exposure isn't a big problem, and secrecy is a matter of international law." Beat. "That is one of the things I'm planning to fix, by the by."

Think think think. "Do you actually need the wand to cast magic?"

"Depends. Only humans use them—in fact, it's also against the law to give nonhuman sapients access to wands. Humans usually need wands to cast most types of magic—my metamorphmagic, that's the changing shapes, is an exception and is innate. Brewing potions doesn't need a wand, drinking them or using them for effect definitely doesn't. Some incredibly skilled humans can do wandless magic, but it's super rare. Centaurs have divination magic but not much more, I think merfolk doesn't have much active magic, goblins do but I don't know much about it, house elves have very active wandless magic but are universally dedicated to serving as chore doers. ...I think that's all."

"So if I hexed someone to have their wand teleport away whenever they tried to change someone's memories, that would probably work. And if I did that to enough of them, and you knew ahead of time that it was going to happen and had a plan for showing the rest of the humans what was going on... it'd be fighting dirty, really, really dirty, to hex people like that, but I can make it temporary, and even if I didn't I don't think that's any worse than what they're doing. I'd want a good idea of what they might do in response, though."

"I have no idea, that was completely outside my hypothesis space, I need to think. Do you hex the person so that the wand does that no matter which wand it is?"

She nods. "I could cast on the wand, but it probably makes more sense to cast on the person."

"Alright, let's see... There's a whole department that does it in the Ministry, but hundreds or maybe thousands of people do it worldwide, and unless you could cast it simultaneously on all of them they'd notice before you were through. But I think the biggest problem is the Muggles' reactions to magic. They did almost eradicate themselves without it."

"I can set up the spell so it doesn't trigger before a certain time, same as I can set it up so it doesn't trigger after one. Thousands of people would take a long time to hex, though, and as soon as I cast the first spell I'd have a deadline for getting them all done if we wanted all the spells to go off at once. Knowing how the Muggles would react is important, too, though, yes - what do you mean about eradicating themselves?"

"About fifty years ago there was a war and they discovered nuclear bombs, which are bombs that can disintegrate an entire city and leave it uninhabitable for many years, even decades or centuries. That technology still exists, and in fact for a long while after the war two of the largest countries started a cold war where they just kept designing better and better weapons without actually ever using them, and there were a few close calls when they almost used them."

"...we should probably fix that before we fix the magic stuff."

"Well you're not wrong, but that was lower priority in my list because there's—well, there was—a much lower chance that I'd be able to do do anything about that, and also we've been pretty peaceful for the past fifteen years and there are international moves towards disposing of nuclear arsenals."

She nods. "I can find an uninhabited world to put the weapons on, that's easy enough. I assume that getting to them to teleport them will be harder, but I can probably figure something out - get the other mage to teach me scrying and see if that works nicely with the teleportation, maybe. And then we'll want to wait for them to calm down about that before we show them the magic, so they don't realize it's connected... this is shaping up to be a pretty long term project, but I can fit it in around my responsibilities to my tribe, I think."

"You're awesome! But also, there's the problem that the bombs aren't exactly a finite resource. I mean, the knowledge to make them exists and is public-ish in the sense that it's possible to get it without being a government. ...getting the resources for that is another story, but still."

The kobold grins at the compliment. "How long would it take them to make more, about? Would they, even, if they've been getting rid of them? If they would, that gets trickier - if they've just made them, they're more likely to use them; it might actually be smarter not to mess with the bombs at all, or to do something else."

"I'm actually not sure about how long they take, but I'd be surprised if nowadays it took longer than, say, a year. And I'm not sure how this bar's translating the different time and season units but I hope that made sense to you. And they might because seeing the bombs disappear might make them think it's some hostile attack or something?"

"I mean, if I'm enspelling the bombs anyway, I could make them teleport at the same time the hexes start working, if that makes more sense. It means you have to be more careful with how you tell them about the magic, but it sounds like taking their weapons away would get their attention in a big way; even if that makes them react in a worse way it probably makes them more predictable, you might be able to do something with that. Or I can probably enspell each one to teleport as soon as someone tries to use it? I'd need to know more about how they work, for that, I'm not familiar with bombs."

"Well, the problem with predicting that is, well, six billion people, a few hundred different countries, about as many possible unofficial and official reactions respectively, and then there's all the interactions, I'm not entirely sure I'd ever use the word 'predictable' to describe human society like that. There'd have to be coordination as well between the bomb hexes and the memory hexes since even if it's not technically their fault wixen would probably want to work overtime to explain that away, somehow. As for how the bombs work, I'm not totally sure of the mechanical details, and—well, I don't actually know whether our physics are the same. Do you guys have atoms? Subatomic particles? Radiation?"

"So enspelling the bombs to be there but just not usable is probably the way to go, then, it keeps everyone safe without adding too many complications - I should probably explain how triggers work with my magic, though, it sounds like you're a little confused about that. Physics, I don't know - none of those concepts are familiar, but that doesn't mean they don't exist, just that I don't know about them - but I only need enough details to be able to set the spell up to activate at the right time, it's probably not as complicated as you're thinking."

"Yeah, maybe. Enspelling them to be not-usable sounds good, yeah. As for activating at the right time, maybe if the bomb starts falling? Although I can't guarantee that they'll continue doing that in the future... Well, basically, in my universe, practically all matter is made up of these tiny, tiny particles called protons, neutrons, and electrons. Then, all basic elements—gold, hydrogen, oxygen, water is made up of two parts hydrogen one part oxygen by the way, et cetera—are made of particles that are themselves combinations of equal numbers of each of those. So, like, one atom of oxygen always has eight neutrons, eight protons, and eight electrons. Except for heavier atoms they have to have more neutrons than the other two to hold it all together otherwise the protons just repel each other, and then some of those are really unstable so if you shoot an extra neutron at them they get divided into lighter elements but then there are more neutrons full of energy that just got released and they hit other atoms and it's a huge chain reaction that releases a lot of energy."

"I can enspell something to teleport as soon as it drops, but that might activate before we'd want it to if they ever move the bombs around besides using them. The other thing sounds like something I might be able to use as a trigger? I'd have to have an example, to see what it looks like to my magic, though."

"Er, yeah, I really don't think you should have an example. I mean, I'm not sure we can ever do that safely, I don't know enough physics for that—wait, actually, there are nuclear energy plants that might be useful, they use the same principle but instead of going boom they harness the energy to get electricity."

"I can spellsense things at a little bit of a distance, if that helps - maybe thirty or forty feet if I know exactly where to aim, but it goes through walls and things no problem - it's a different thing than the magic vision I was talking about earlier. ...actually, the magic vision might be exactly what we want for this; there aren't many situations where I'd want something to teleport as soon as there was magic nearby, but this is one. Would that work, do you think? Enspell the bombs to be able to see magic and teleport if they ever do?"

"I mean, it's probably a thing that's possible if you say it it, but how would it help?"

"It'd just be a safety measure for while you were telling them about the wixen, but it should be a pretty good one - they won't be able to attack any magical people or places, is the idea, and if they don't try, they don't even know that the spell is there, so it doesn't upset them. And there's... not much chance, anyway, I suppose there could be magical people around the bombs for reasons we don't know about, I can add a timer to the trigger just in case... of the spell getting activated when we wouldn't want it to be. It'd be better to get rid of the bombs entirely, but if they can just make more, that's not really an option."

"Well, nuclear weapons aren't the only thing they can bring to bear upon us. Machine guns, napalm, more mundane kinds of bombs. If it came down to it, Muggle culture would be enough because they view powerful artifacts as knowledge that can be distributed freely around. Also there are way more of them than of us. But I don't think they'd want to destroy us, at any rate. Well, some would, like religious nuts who would say we were devil worshippers..."