HP: For a better world

"Winster?"

The translucent ghost's voice recited in a rhythmic manner, and a drowsy atmosphere filled the classroom. Harry's head had already fallen completely on the textbook with a bang, but he hadn't woken up yet.

"In the Middle Ages, non-magical people (Muggles) were particularly afraid of magic, but they did not have enough knowledge about it..."

Professor Binns dragged his long, disembodied voice as he talked about the magical history of witch burning in the Middle Ages.

"…Occasionally, they catch a real witch or wizard, but burning is useless against wizards…"

Harry's good brother Ron leaned half of his body on his back, snoring in the same tone as Professor Binns's voice.

Winster, who was sitting next to her, also drooped his eyelids, as if he was about to evolve into a chicken-like Animagus in advance, and nodded his head, agreeing with the witch who was enjoying the numbing and tingling feeling of the fire-condensing spell.

"The wizard only needs to cast a basic fire-condensing spell, pretend to scream in pain, and enjoy the tingling pleasure."

Hermione poked Winster, but there was no response.

"Wake up, Winster." Hermione twisted Winster's exposed arm, but Winster just hissed, raised his head, and then leaned back weakly, with his nostrils facing the sky, as if he could wake up by facing the ceiling.

The warm sunlight shone through the glass. The heavy snow that had lasted for several days had finally stopped. The students began to look forward to the good weather on the day of the Quidditch game.

Professor Binns was still speaking slowly.

"... Wendelin, the most famous weirdo in the Middle Ages, was caught forty-seven times by deliberately disguising herself in various forms..."

Hermione's expression turned hostile, and she pulled out a small ginger-colored bottle from her bag and shook it under his nose.

Winster's nostrils moved slightly, and a chilling feeling instantly penetrated his whole body from the tip of his nose.

“Ah, ah, achoo!!”

Winster suddenly jumped forward and sneezed loudly. He instantly felt awake and his brain started working again.

Winster opened his eyes wide, covered his nose which seemed to be filled with wind oil, and said with disgust: "Hey, what did you put under my nose?" He sniffed the remaining smell of medicine under his nose.

"-Billywig stings, venomous snake fangs... You made a sobering potion for yourself?" Winster counted out several common ingredients in the potion he had just smelled, and combined with the effect of the potion, he guessed what Hermione used.

Hermione rolled her eyes and quickly ticked off a few names on a page in the History of Magic with a quill.

"You still have the nerve to dislike the smell? You've slept for half the class, Winster!" She lowered her voice and reproached, "What were you doing last night? You know it's dangerous to go out at night recently!"

She puffed out her cheeks and anger danced in her eyes.

"?"

"You went out for a night out last night too?" Winston asked in shock. Otherwise, how did Hermione know that it was easy to be caught and deducted points for going out at night recently?

Hermione's eyes widened at first, then narrowed, and she slowed down her voice and spoke threateningly: "…what did you say?"

Winster rubbed his forehead and knew that Hermione thought he ran out in the middle of the night to go out for a night walk like Harry and the others, and thought that he would meet Black, the murderer who sneaked into the school, the demon who brutally killed 13 people.

"You don't think you can catch Black! You're crazy, Winster. Even if you think Black's case is suspicious, he is still a vicious person who was able to escape from Azkaban!"

Professor Binns was still slowly reading the story of another witch who was obsessed with being burned, but in fact, all of it was in the book he was reading. When he copied and pasted it onto parchment and compared it with the textbook, the duplication rate was 100%.

"You think too much, Hermione." Winston explained with a smile, "I went to make potions last night. I set up the cauldron in the club's activity room."

Ever since Winster found out about the myths and legends about spider webs symbolizing deception, he has been trying to rebalance his potion, but many times the spider silk melts as soon as it enters the crucible, ruining the whole potion. He can only try little by little to find a temperature suitable for the spider silk and then try to mix the potion.

Such meticulous and complicated work was not suitable for Snape, who had been sharpening his knife recently because of Black and overtime night patrol. Dumbledore had withdrawn his job of replenishing potions in the school infirmary and instead purchased medical potions continuously through the owl channel.

Snape himself was assigned to patrol the castle. Winster saw last night that the ruby ​​on the Gryffindor score hourglass in the Great Hall was missing 50 points. Such a large score means that Snape caught two Gryffindor "warriors" and one of them was deducted points.

As for Hermione, she didn't know that Black was innocent. Now wandering in the invaded castle at night was like playing hide-and-seek with the murderer in the dark. It was too frightening. It was simply a horror game that you should not play if you are afraid of death. The murderer would not argue with a child about innocence.

Hermione was worried that Winster might bump into Black during his night outing.

But Winster actually knew that Sirius Black was innocent, but he had no way to explain how he knew the truth. Simply capturing the real murderer, Scabbers, incarnated as a rat, and forcing him to restore his human form and drink the truth serum, such testimony would not be accepted by the wizard court.

Winster had no proof of law enforcement, and lynching could not be used as evidence.

Wormtail must be sober and tell the story voluntarily, and there must be evidence and witnesses to prove that he is the criminal who deceived the public.

"…But the further development of the witch burning incident, the increasing number of witch burnings, including the increasing number of Muggles being mistakenly burned as witches, all became the catalyst for the introduction of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy." Professor Binns did not notice that the students below were already sleeping all over the place, and he was busy with his own business as if he was chanting a sutra.

Winster saw from the corner of his eye where the Slytherins were sitting.

That was the other half of the classroom, with green and red clearly dividing the two sides, only meeting at Hermione and Winston.

Malfoy was not asleep yet. The two bodyguards beside him, Crabbe and Goyle, were already fast asleep with their heads resting against each other, but he was still taking notes seriously with a quill.

Winster looked at him in surprise. He didn't expect that he didn't fall asleep with the other students. Usually, Hermione and Winster were the only ones awake during the History of Magic class.

Winster leaned over to see where Professor Binns was talking about. Although Hermione rolled her eyes at him angrily, she still cooperated and raised her hand, showing him a corner of the page of History of Magic.

"…but the persecution of wizarding children by Muggles became more common, more and more Muggles forced wizards to use magic for them, and the burning of witches increased day by day. This did not end with the end of the Dark Ages."

Winster lowered his head and flipped through the book. Based on his experience, he compared the text in the book with the knowledge points he wanted to memorize, but he was confused.

[Did he skip around?] Winston looked at Hermione silently.

[I don't know.] Hermione was also flipping through her book in confusion.

There is no such passage of Professor Binns in the history book of magic. It seems that he did not give a lecture rote this time, but instead talked about a famous witch trial - the Salem Witch Trials.

Winster turned back and continued to listen to Professor Binns talk about everything from burning witches to the establishment of the Statute of Secrecy.

Professor Binns slowly recounted the history, saying that the Salem Witch Case was the most direct trigger for the birth of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy.

In January 1692, the daughter of a pastor in Salem, Massachusetts, suddenly fell ill with a strange disease, and then seven girls who were inseparable from her developed the same symptoms one after another.

They were screaming, having convulsions, and going into trances.”

The famous Salem witch trials were a tragedy in the wizarding community. After the Salem witch trials, the number of wizards in America was lower than in other regions, and the cultural atmosphere was also very different from that in Europe.

"The Muggle government at the time formed a seven-judge High Criminal Court to try wizard cases. Magical historians agree that among these seven so-called Puritan judges there were at least two known Scourers, who were there to avenge grievances that had developed in their country of America."

The Scourers were a group of wizard mercenaries who came to America at that time. They made a living by selling wizards and even capturing innocent No-Maj people as wizards and handing them over to the Puritans who hunted witches in exchange for rewards.

"In the Salem witch case, the number of victims eventually reached more than 200, and 20 people died, of which 19 were executed, and the remaining one was crushed to death by a stone.

Some of the dead were indeed witches, and the others were all Muggles. But the charges they were arrested on were so innocent and ridiculous that the wizards felt deeply sympathetic and feared that they would also end up in the same fate.

Especially wizards from pure-blood families are far away from the barbaric American continent, which also leads to the fact that the pure-blood theory has almost no market in the United States.

"The Salem witch trials greatly damaged relations between wizards and No-Maj Americans, and many witches and wizards fled America.

The native magical population of North America began to undergo subtle changes at this time, compared to the populations of Europe, Asia, and Africa. As late as the early 20th century, the proportion of witches and wizards in the American population was still smaller than that of the other four continents."[1]

"So the International Confederation of Wizards decided to promulgate the International Statute of Secrecy in 1689, and the magical governments of various countries jointly implemented the law in 1692. After that, wizards completely went into hiding.

It was not until 1992, the 300th anniversary of the Salem witch trials, that the Massachusetts Legislature passed a resolution to restore the reputation of all victims of the Salem witch trials three hundred years ago.

Professor Binns paused and seemed to glance at the class, then he closed his book and said in a flat voice, "We'll stop here for today. The topic of the assignment paper is the burning of witches in the Middle Ages."

He left the book on the podium, turned around, and floated away through the wall.

The classroom suddenly became lively again, and all the students seemed to have woken up on time.

As soon as the get out of class was over, everyone raised their heads, yawned, stretched, packed up their things and prepared to rush to the next Defense Against the Dark Arts class.

Winster was also packing his books, preparing to rush to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom with Hermione.

But Malfoy came through the crowd and called out to Winston.

"Are you looking for me?"

Winster was puzzled, and waved to Luo and the others who had been paying attention to Winster, signaling them to go first.

But Malfoy hesitated and looked at Hermione, not speaking immediately.

Winster had no choice but to turn around and send Hermione away and said, "You go first, Hermione, I'll see what he wants to say."

"Okay." Hermione snorted, but still said.

"Come on, Harry." She walked to the classroom door where Harry and Ron were waiting for her.

Hermione also left with Harry and the others.

Everyone was looking forward to the next Defense Against the Dark Arts class, but after a while, the classroom was empty.

Crabbe and Goyle, who were inseparable from Malfoy, were also sent away by Malfoy.

Draco cleared his throat, "The first Quidditch match is Gryffindor vs. Slytherin, will you come?"

"Of course." Winston said, quietly examining Malfoy's purpose.

Is this another show of goodwill after the one on the Hogwarts train?

"You'll come to watch me, my game, - right?" Draco raised his chin slightly, but his eyes were fixed on Winston's every move.

"No," said Winster.

Winster was not interested in Quidditch.

Draco's expression flashed with displeasure.

"Are you mad about Buckbeak? That monster shouldn't be in class in the first place."

Winster said calmly, "No, of course I don't think so. That is your right, Malfoy."

Draco closed his mouth again, and after a pause, he said, "I thought... no." He changed his words, "Then why don't you want to come? Isn't it enough to express my friendship by letting one of these monsters go?"

Winster said calmly, "I don't support it, and you can't deal with another hippogriff."

Buckbeak's sentencing required witnesses, and Draco testified before the school board, but Winster did not.

Draco's pale face flushed slightly.

"Then you know that you are too close to Gryffindor, making the half-bloods that Rowe Cliffe recruited hesitate to join you!"

Luo is recruiting other people? Winster was puzzled, but he remained calm.

"So that's how it is. I'll pay attention to that."

Winster said.

Draco glared at him.

Winster was unmoved.

"…Except for the time you caught me in the second year, I never called that pockmarked man a mudblood again—" Draco suddenly spoke quickly and in a low voice, his face flushed completely, and he didn't know whether he was ashamed or angry for saying such a submissive thing.

Winster glanced at him in surprise.

"…You shouldn't say this to me, Draco, it's not me who needs to apologize," Winston also said slowly, "-I will go to watch Quidditch," he added.

"Then you should come and support Slytherin. We will definitely win this time." Draco then resumed the Malfoy family's usual attitude, his tone arrogant and complacent.

"I'll come and see you beat Potter," Winston said perfunctorily.

"——I wish you good luck in martial arts."

Draco walked away satisfied.