Regulus of Hogwarts: Lord of the Stars

Chapter 352 The Stake at the Fire and the Wizard

On the second day of school, Avery was kicked awake.

Hermes kicked his bedpost, and with a loud bang, the entire four-poster bed shook.

Avery sprang out of bed, his hair a mess, his left eye still limp, and mumbled a curse.

He tossed and turned until the wee hours of the morning last night before finally falling asleep.

Avery rubbed his eyes. "What time is it?"

No one ignored him.

Regulus stood by the desk buttoning his cloak, while Baruch circled around on the table.

The fire in the fireplace was still burning, dark red flames licking the walls, and occasionally a piece of charcoal would collapse, sending sparks flying out.

Baruch's eight eyes looked at Regulus, then turned to look at the fireplace, then back at Regulus, and his chelicerae opened and closed with a click.

Regulus looked down at it: "Go."

Baruch launched himself off the table with a powerful leap, arcing through the air before landing directly in the fireplace.

The impact was precise, hitting the pile of glowing red-hot charcoal blocks squarely, sending sparks flying.

Avery had just gotten out of bed, one leg still dangling outside the covers, when he turned around and saw this scene, and he froze.

Flames licked across Baruch's body, his dark red carapace gleaming in the fire. His eight legs slowly spread out, bracing themselves on the charcoal, and then he lay down.

It lay sprawled in the center of the fire, its eight legs fully extended, its belly pressed against the red-hot coals, and its chelicerae made a soft clicking sound.

"It..." Avery pointed to the fireplace, his voice trembling.

Alex had just come out of the chapel, a towel draped over his shoulder, when he saw Baruch lying in the fire, and his voice rose in shock.

"Regulus, it's in the fire!"

Regulus fastened the last button and turned to glance at Baruch in the fireplace.

Flames danced around it as it lay there comfortably.

"I saw it."

Avery jumped out of bed and ran over without even putting on his shoes. He squatted down in front of the fireplace, his face very close to the heat, making him squint, but he couldn't bear to back away and stared at Baruch.

Then he turned around, his voice full of surprise: "What happened?"

Regulus ignored him and picked up his small schoolbag, hanging it on his shoulder.

"What did you do to it?" Avery's eyes lit up, he suddenly became alert, his eyes wide open. "It's not afraid of fire? How can it not be afraid of fire? Aren't giant spiders afraid of fire?"

"Class is starting." Regulus lifted his foot and walked towards the door.

"At least say one thing."

Regulus has already left the dormitory.

Avery opened his mouth, a bellyful of questions stuck in his throat, unable to swallow or spit them out. He stomped his foot and hurriedly put on his shoes.

Alex walked to the fireplace and took one last look at Baruch.

Baruch raised his head in the fire, and eight amber eyes looked at him. His chelicerae lazily opened and closed once, then lay back down.

Alex shook his head and followed him out.

The eight-eyed giant spider that Regulus kept was not afraid of fire, which was strange, but not that strange.

Hermes walked behind, passing the fireplace. His gaze lingered on Baruch for a moment, his brow furrowed, lost in thought.

The first class of the new semester: History of Magic.

In the middle of the third floor, there is a narrow stone room with high and narrow windows that let in very faint, hazy light.

The window faces the forbidden forest, where a thin layer of snow has accumulated on the treetops, forming dark silhouettes against the gray-white sky.

Professor Binns floated in directly from the blackboard, his pearly white, translucent body passing through the edge of the podium, then he opened his mouth and began to read.

Just like before, it was dry and lifeless, lacking any intonation. The sound bounced back and forth between the stone walls, like a phonograph with worn-out wiring.

"Today we'll talk about the conflict between medieval wizards and Muggles."

On Ravenclaw's side, the scratching of quills began almost simultaneously with Professor Binns speaking.

On the Slytherin side, several had already rested their faces on their arms, their eyelids drooping, their voices echoing Professor Binns's.

"In the early Middle Ages, the relationship between wizards and Muggles was not adversarial. Most wizards lived in Muggle communities and existed as healers, prophets, or advisors."

The midwife in the village may also be a witch doctor, and the lord's astrological advisor may also be a wizard with prophetic abilities.

Muggles will actively seek help from wizards when they need it, and ignore or report them when they don't.

He continued speaking.

"This symbiotic relationship was fragile. In the fourteenth century, the Black Death swept across the European continent, and the order of Muggle society collapsed amidst the widespread death. They began to look for scapegoats."

"The first large-scale witch hunt broke out in Switzerland and southern Germany."

The Muggle Church, a faith-based Muggle organization, incorporates witchcraft into the framework of the trial of heresy.

"The Witch's Hammer" became the legal handbook for witch hunts, and thereafter, witch hunts transformed from vigilante justice into legitimate public trials.

The classroom quieted down a bit, and several Slytherin students who had been lying down looked up.

Professor Binns continued reading.

"Bamberg, between 1623 and 1633, saw the execution of over nine hundred people; Würzburg, during the same period, also saw the execution of over nine hundred people."

Trier, even earlier, from the late sixteenth to the early seventeenth century, saw over a thousand executions.

"A common feature of these regions is that the bishop also serves as a secular lord, combining religious and secular judicial powers, which makes witch hunts extremely efficient."

Avery held the quill pen tightly in his hand, the tip resting motionless on the parchment, his lips pressed together, his jaw muscles twitching.

A purebred boy behind him also looked up, his face full of disbelief, his mouth slightly open, his chin jutting forward, as if he hadn't heard clearly, or as if he couldn't believe it.

A few rows back, another purebred girl stared at Bins with an expression as if she were listening to something completely illogical.

In their minds, Muggles are inferior species, not worth mentioning, and not even as good as goblins.

How could a race without magic possibly harm a wizard?

The wizard stands on the earth, and the Muggles are the mud beneath his feet, something he finds disgusting to step on.

Now Professor Binns tells them, in an accountant-reading tone, that thousands of Muggles have been burned at the stake.

They knew it couldn't all be wizards; there probably weren't that many wizards back then, but there must have been some among them.

For a pure-blooded Slytherin, being harmed by a Muggle is unacceptable.

They all sat up straight, frowning, some confused, some disdainful, but no one spoke, unusually alert.

The reaction from Ravenclaw was different.

The rustling of notes intensified as several quill pens flew across the parchment, marking place names, years, and numbers.

One girl raised her hand, then put it down, probably realizing that asking wouldn't make a difference.

They are concerned with the knowledge itself, whether the data is accurate, whether the causal chain is complete, and whether there are other sources that can be cross-verified.

The evil deeds of Muggles are seen as historical events by them, materials that need to be recorded and analyzed.

Regulus glanced at the several contorted faces of the Slytherins, then at the lowered heads and flying pens of the Ravenclaws, before looking away.

Professor Binns is still reading.

"The vast majority of the victims were women, widows, midwives, herb gatherers, and elderly people living alone."

Their social connections are weak, their property is poorly protected, and the cost of defending themselves after being accused is the highest.

But the Muggle church's goal was not to purge true wizards.

"The essence of the witch hunt was a large-scale social control movement by the church in response to the impact of the Protestant Reformation."

The church consolidates its moral authority through fear, maintains ideological unity within the diocese through trials, and accusations of witchcraft are the tools, with victims as the price to pay.

Professor Binns finished reading the last paragraph: "The witch hunts caused immense harm to the wizarding community."

That's it.

He didn't elaborate on what kind of damage it was, why it caused the damage, or why the wizard didn't retaliate.

He just kept reading, reading things that Slytherin was no longer listening to.

"In 1689, the International Federation of Wizards was established..."

Regulus stopped listening.

He sat in the back row by the window, his right hand on the table and his left hand supporting his chin, his gaze shifting from Professor Binns to the view outside the window.

The treetops of the forbidden forest stood motionless under the gray sky, a thin layer of snow covering the bare branches, with the occasional piece sliding down from above and crumbling into fine powder among the canopy.

After reading the passage about the witch hunt, Professor Binns jumped to the secrecy law in a single summary.

The deaths of thousands of people are justified by the statement that the damage was immense. Binns didn't mention how many of those burned alive were actually wizards.

There is a widely circulated version of this history in the magical world.

The witch Wendyline was captured forty-seven times. Each time she was tied to the stake, she used the Freeze-Flame spell to feign pain and then disappeared.

The story was passed down with a smug and sarcastic tone, saying, "Look at these stupid Muggles, they can't even tell the difference between real and fake flames."

But the story doesn't say that Wendyline was an adult wizard with a wand, she knew the Ice and Fire spells, and she was prepared for being captured forty-seven times.

What about those who weren't prepared?

This is a statistical disaster.

The vast majority of those who were burned to death were Muggles.

Neighbors denounce each other, jealous people point fingers at their enemies, and a son fighting over an inheritance accuses his widowed stepmother.

Witch hunts operate within the Muggle community; they are a form of self-purification within the community and have little to do with magic.

The church is not targeting real wizards.

The church certainly knew that magic existed, but they attributed this ability to Satan. What they wanted to burn were witches, Satan's brides, and had nothing to do with magical abilities.

Their target was something else entirely: those who made pacts with the devil, women who had turned their backs on God.

The bullets were aimed at heretics, but it just so happened that a few real wizards were standing in the path of the bullets.

The random violence of history will not spare those on the trajectory just because the target is off track.

Professor Binns' voice was buzzing as he read out the details of the signing of the 1689 Secrecy Act: which countries' representatives were present, in which building they signed, and what kind of ink they used.

Regulus wasn't listening to those; he was thinking about the second question.

The real wizards, indeed, have died.

Why?

How could a person with magic, a wand, the ability to Apparate, and the Ironclad Charm be burned to death by a group of Muggles with torches and pitchforks?

The answer is not in strength.

A medieval witch lives in a Muggle village.

Her thatched hut was doused with kerosene in the middle of the night. She was awakened from her sleep with her baby in her arms. Her husband was at the door, being held down by five farmers with pitchforks.

She can cast spells, can apparite, and can burn everyone to ashes with a single fire spell.

But she first needs to find the wand, recite the spell, and hold the baby in her arms; all of this takes time.

Muggles don't need to duel with her; they just need to throw torches onto the thatched roof in those few seconds.

The probability of a wizard being killed by a Muggle depends on one thing: whether he is blocked in an unsuspecting window.

As long as they are not killed on the spot, wizards can recover. A blow to the head with an iron rod will cause bleeding and unconsciousness, but potions and spells can heal fractures in a very short time.

The premise is that they didn't die on the spot.

The damage that Muggles inflict on wizards is temporary, not permanent.

The real issue has nothing to do with whether you can fight, but whether you can survive the moment you are attacked.

Muggles use sheer numbers, chance, and unpredictability to cover the gaps in the wizards' defenses.

A wizard's individual strength can overwhelm any lone Muggle, but it can't stop fifty farmers from simultaneously dousing oil in the middle of the night.

There is a third problem: witch hunts are organized group violence.

Muggle churches have parish networks, judicial processes, and dedicated judges and execution squads.

From indictment to arrest to trial to execution, the entire process is highly efficient.

What about the wizards?

There was no Ministry of Magic, no Aurors, and no unified laws.

Wizards live in Muggle society as family units, scattered throughout the community. They are isolated households with no mutual support network or information sharing among themselves.

A witch was burned at the stake in Bamberg, and another wizard in the next valley only shut his door tighter.

Expecting them to unite and resist?

Perhaps the feud between the two pure-blood families is more direct than the conflict with Muggles. They are both wizards who have been fighting for a hundred years. When the Church came, they did not join forces.

One wizard's power can crush a hundred Muggles, but a hundred scattered wizards cannot stop ten thousand organized Muggles.

Individual power and group organization were examined separately in this period of history.

No matter how strong an individual is, scattered sand is still scattered sand.

The sky outside the window seemed to have darkened a bit more, with gray clouds slowly pressing down, and the treetops of the Forbidden Forest being swallowed up by the mist.

Professor Binns' voice continued mechanically, already reading out the implementation details after the secrecy law was signed.

Regulus continued to think.

But the witch hunt did something the church itself hadn't anticipated.

It forced the wizard to realize a thought that had never existed before: we are the same kind of people.

Before the witch hunts, witches didn't need this idea.

They lived among the Muggles, were neighbors with them, did business with them, and intermarried with them.

Magical abilities are a private matter, a personal talent, much like eye color, and do not constitute a label for a group.

A wizarding family living in the English countryside and a wizarding family living in southern Ireland have no connection whatsoever, and they may never even meet each other in their lifetime.

The witch hunt changed that.

When a witch is burned at the stake in Trier, an old wizard in the Wales Valley might, for the first time, have a thought—

The person who was burned at the stake was the same kind of person as him, and the person who burned her was the same kind of person as his Muggle neighbor who couldn't use magic.

This idea did not exist before the witch hunts; fear branded it onto the skin of every surviving witch.

Fear breeds identity, identity breeds organization, and organization breeds rules.

In 1689, the International Law of Secrecy for Wizards was signed.

But the secrecy law is not the starting point; it is the result.

Before that, a group of wizards had to sit down at the same table and reach a consensus that we needed to hide ourselves.

The real change is when people can sit down together.

This is the first time that the wizarding civilization has made a decision based on our perspective.

We will no longer be scattered throughout Muggle society, waiting for the next witch hunter to knock on our door in the middle of the night. We will establish our own government, our own laws, our own armed forces, and our own communities.

The expansion of Hogwarts Castle, the formation of Diagon Alley, the establishment of the Ministry of Magic, and the refinement of the Auror system all occurred after the Act of Secrecy.

The wizards spent two hundred years transforming scattered sands into a civilization.

Professor Binns was already reading the reading list, Ravenclaw was tidying up their notes, and Slytherin was stretching.

Regulus folded the parchment and tucked it into his textbook.

The paper had a line of text written on it: 1689, the Secrecy Law, the beginning of cohesion.

He fastened his backpack, not rushing to stand up, his mind still racing.

This civilization, which has only been formed for less than three hundred years, is being torn apart from within.

How long has the Ministry of Magic been established? How long has the Auror system been operating? When did the four houses of Hogwarts become four different political labels, rather than just four dormitories?

The Law of Secrecy binds the wizarding world together, but its source is fear.

They were afraid of Muggles, afraid of being burned at the stake, and afraid of witch hunters knocking on their doors in the middle of the night.

Once this fear disappears, Muggles forget the existence of magic, and cohesion begins to weaken.

With no enemies outside, cracks began to appear inside.

Purebloods and half-bloods, Slytherins and Gryffindors, Death Eaters and the Order of the Phoenix.

The Law of Secrecy taught wizards how to unite, but it didn't teach them how to maintain unity when there were no external enemies.

Voldemort is doing what the witch hunts did: using fear to bind purebloods together, and using fear to tear apart half-bloods and Muggle-borns.

The tools that once bound wizards together are now cutting them apart from the inside.

It took wizards two hundred years to build a civilization from scattered sands, but Voldemort was able to dismantle it from within in less than two years.

It's slow to unite, but quick to break apart.

History is not repeating itself; it is accelerating.

This time, the witch hunters grew out of the wizards themselves.

Regulus stood up and slung his backpack strap over his shoulder.

He recalled the ultimate form of the Disintegration Curse: a wizard, a spell, and the destruction of a city.

That was the path he was walking, pushing the power of the individual to its limit.

But today's lesson showed him another side: the ultimate power of an individual may not be enough on a historical scale.

Before the Law of Secrecy, wizards never lacked powerful individuals; what they lacked was a consensus that could bind those individuals together, enabling the entire group to act and defend as a whole.

It was once burned out by fear, and now it is being torn down by fear.

Regulus stepped out of the History of Magic classroom. The light in the stone corridor was brighter than in the classroom, with torches burning on both sides.

Avery caught up with him and walked alongside him, his mouth starting to move again, probably because he hadn't spoken for a whole class and was making up for it now.

"Professor Binns talked about witch hunts, and whether Muggles really burned wizards at the stake?"

Regulus glanced at him.

Avery then asked, "Why didn't the wizard fight back?"

Regulus didn't stop walking, only replying, "Think for yourself."

Avery paused for a moment, then stopped asking questions. His expression became serious, and his brows furrowed.

Alex followed behind without saying a word.

Hermes walked at the very back, his hands in his pockets, his expression as usual—gloomy, impatient, and indifferent to the rest of the world.

The footsteps of the four people mingled in the corridor as they walked towards the auditorium restaurant.

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