Chapter 440 The New Gallows (2 in 1)

There was mud all over the high platform.

And Flint, who was restrained in the middle, looked like a mud man.

The mud that had always been under his feet before, that he had never cared about and never paid attention to, was running down the top of his head and across his face, and it humiliated him to the core.

Even after being captured and brought to France, at first Flint and many other purebloods were not worried about their fate.

Their Sir Headmaster had not lost the war, their parents were major pillars in the British Ministry of Magic and even among the Death Eaters, and abusing or killing them would not do any benefit at all to Dumbledore and the others. The smartest move would have been to keep them under house arrest in France as a way of keeping the British purebloods at bay for the rest of the war so that even if they lost the war later, they could be used as a bargain.

Add to this, the irony is that, although the half-bloods and muggle-born students don't know much about Dumbledore other than him being a dark wizard, Dumbledore has always had a high reputation in pureblood circles.

It was a very strange phenomenon, but indeed a reality, just as Lucius would have trusted Dumbledore's promise to protect Draco more than that of his fellow Death Eaters.

As such the pureblood students who considered the heir to their family knew that Dumbledore was in fact not some notorious dark wizard at all, as advertised in the Daily Prophet, but instead a good old man with a saint's heart.

But now that Flint had been treated like this, it had shaken his entire being.

Listening to the shouts of the half-breed bastards below, he was unable to move his body, unable to wipe the mud off his face, and could only stare with resentment at Assia, who was still standing on the stage.

It was all because of this bitch!

And these bastards off the stage!

Did they really think that this would mean victory and liberation for them?

Sir Headmaster hasn't lost yet, and neither the purebloods did!

Sooner or later they'll have to pay for what they are doing today. The purebloods are too lenient with the half-bloods in the end, they deserve to be squeezed as hard as slaves like the mudbloods! They should all be treated like slaves!

Slaves worthy only of serving the noble blood for the rest of their lives!

What Flint was thinking, of course, was unknown to the audience, and if it had been, the anger of the half-blood students would have been multiplied tenfold.

This emotional outburst went on for some time before it was stopped by the faculty who were around to keep order, and then the mud that littered the raised platform was cleaned up with just one cleaning spell from Lupin.

Flint looked a mess, but McGonagall's face didn't show any semblance of pity as she looked over at him.

These students off the stage were just learning about all the things he had done to Assia, but McGonagall and the others had actually known for a long time that neither Flint on stage nor the pureblood students on stage who were awaiting trial were worthy of pity.

At first, when Jon's solution was proposed, McGonagall along with Flitwick and the rest of them were not really in favour of it.

They felt that it would be too radical and insulting to the dignity of the purebloods, who were just a bunch of kids who hadn't even graduated from school, who couldn't be as bad as their parents, right?

Jon didn't say anything about it but suggested that they could finish the individual interrogations of the purebloods first and then decide whether to hold a public trial for them.

Whether there was a public trial or not, the purebloods would still be subjected to a rigorous interrogation, especially as a large proportion of the senior students were already involved in their families' operations, and each of them knew a lot of secret information about the British purebloods, which would be of great value to the Witching Horizons' later operations against Britain.

To ensure the accuracy of the information they received, the Truth Potion was not used sparingly in this private interrogation, and it was after this interrogation that McGonagall and the others were silenced and no longer had any qualms about the public trial that followed.

They even took the initiative to determine the minimum sentences for each of the purebloods participating in the next public trial, and they were all surprisingly consistent.

After bringing the order back to the place, McGonagall picked up another piece of parchment in her hand and read it out in a cold voice in front of everyone in the audience.

"In addition to the crimes committed in Hogwarts Castle, we have learned many crimes committed by Garnos Flint, for which there was no witness or evidence, so we have obtained the approval of the Humanitarian Audit Department of the Wizards' Equality Front to obtain necessary evidence by using a Truth Potion, and the results are as follows."

"In 1994, in Flint Manor, he killed two living beings for the first time, slaves assigned to serve his family. One was a witch named Stacy Angel, who had caught Flint while he was intending to rape her daughter, and in a panic he used a blasting curse that he claimed he had not yet fully mastered, blowing down the family's storage room. Both Angel mother and daughter were killed there, and he fled from the scene in panic, later after calming down, Flint together with the help of his family's steward murdered Angel's husband in his assigned room, and his parents covered up his crime by claiming to the public that the Angel family had been executed by them for their attempted escape."

"In 1995, also at the beginning of this year, after Miss Konrad's affair took place, he had returned home once after Christmas and to vent his anger for not getting Miss Konrad, he cast the Unforgivable Curse indiscriminately on the muggle wizards working in his family's magical products factory, there were no fatalities in this incident, but his Cruciatus Curse made one of the muggle wizards to turn insane, who was subsequently evicted from the Flint household."

The scene became quiet.

The half-bloods, whose hearts had been burning with anger over what had happened to Assia, had become silent at the moment.

Shouldn't the mudblood wizards feel anger at these two incidents just like they did before?

But when they looked at the mudblood students rescued from Hogwarts Castle, they all had numb expressions on their faces, calm at McGonagall's declaration of two crimes that were several times more brutal than the persecution of Assia, like this was the way it was supposed to be?

But there was no way for the wagon students offstage to be numb.

They all clenched their fists, their eyes blazing with rage as if they could eat Flint up on the platform alive!

This one was a pure beast! A beast who simply is not worthy of being treated with dignity!

"And now, the sentence for Garnos Flint..."

Before McGonagall had even finished her words, a shout rang out off the stage like an explosion of thunder.

"Hang him!!!"

Every one of the wagon students rose from their chairs in righteous indignation, their necks even turning crimson from agitation, all their voices converging into one phrase.

"He must be hanged! This damned beast does not deserve to live in the world!!!"

Even the half-bloods were infected, and together they rose from their chairs, shouting with all their strength, demanding that Flint be hanged!

Of all those present, only the muggle-borns from the castle remained seated.

They sat on the edge of their seats, looking around wondering if they too should comply and join the others in standing up and shouting for the hanging of the pureblood lord on the platform.

They were still a bit confused. It was normal for the others to be angry about the half-blood lady, who also had noble blood, but why were they so angry about what had happened to them, the "mudbloods"?

Aren't "mudbloods" born to be inferior? Isn't this what they were born to endure?

At this wave of shouting, at McGonagall's signal, George untied Flint's gag.

"Is there anything else you wish to say for yourself? Garnos Flint."

Flint was so flustered as he had no idea that he had actually been fed a Truth Potion, he just remembered that after lunch the day before all the purebloods had been taken into a room that looked like a nap room, then the men had asked them some questions, and then they had fallen asleep.

When they woke up again it was late afternoon, and everyone thought it was just a normal lunch break, and there were even purebloods who gloated about it, thinking that Dumbledore would treat them well even after bringing them to France.

But Flint now sensed that something was wrong, that the anger of the people off the stage was ignited, that even if the adults didn't want to kill him, the students would drive him to his death.

He shouted.

"You can't! You can't kill me! I am still useful! All the captured purebloods are still useful! My father is the head of the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes at the British Ministry of Magic! My mother is one of the Death Eaters! If you kill me they will surely fight you to the death! If you wish to fight your way back into Britain, you will pay a far more painful price! Leave me alive! You can trade me back! That's what's best and most beneficial for you!"

He tried desperately to explain the pros and cons so that McGonagall, Dumbledore and the others, who truly controlled his life and death, would not listen to the students.

But this is a public trial (Show trial).

Perhaps even now, hardly any wizard in the wizarding world knew what a public trial (Show trial) meant.

The moment he was brought to this high platform, the only people who could really decide whether he lived or died were those students off the stage!

"Garnos Flint, to be hanged!"

McGonagall made her final verdict!

There was a tsunami of cheers and applause as if they had done a great feat at this moment!

Flint's face turned deathly pale as he heard the verdict, his legs trembled, and he fell to the ground, his crotch became wet and smelled fishy at some point.

When the execution by hanging was delivered, there was no delay, no postponement of the execution, no private execution avoiding the others, but in front of everyone, right here on this high platform, McGonagall used a Transfiguration to build up the gallows!

Flitwick added the ropes to this gallows.

Lupin ordered both George and Fred to work together to raise Flint from the ground.

The cheers from all the students off-stage grew louder and louder, and even those muggle students from the castle couldn't help but look inexplicably shocked by the atmosphere and stood up from their seats.

Were they really going to be hung? Is it true that they were going to hang the innately noble purebloods?

Even Slughorn, who was sitting in front of them, turned his head to look at Dumbledore with a shocked expression.

After hearing about Flint's crime, he was not surprised by the crime of the pureblood student; Flint was not a child anymore, he was a seventh-year student in the castle and would have graduated this year, which meant he is actually 18 years old and deserved to pay the price for what he had done.

What he didn't expect was that Dumbledore would actually dare to let such a group of children, the vast majority of whom were not yet adults, watch their enemies hang in front of a crowd of students, the youngest of whom had only just enrolled last year and were not even 12 years old, and the oldest of whom was barely 18!

"Wouldn't this be too cruel for the students?"

Dumbledore just looked calmly at the raised platform as George and Fred jostled and gritted their teeth as they came to put a rope around the neck of Flint, who was already limp as mush.

"Look around you, my old friend, do you see any semblance of intolerance or pity for this man on the stage in the eyes of all these young ones?"

Slughorn didn't bother to look, for he knew full well that if they could kill Flint with their own hands, these students would be scrambling to do it, and right now the Weasley twins who were hooking the rope on the stage were doing the job that everyone envied the most and wanted to do instead, and they were all dying for the scum-beast to die right now!

"I know they all hated and wanted to get rid of that scum on the stage right now, but Albus, I don't think these students need to be involved in this, it's important to cut off the violence and cruelty in this generation right now, isn't that what you and I want most, that these children don't have to step into that bloody battlefield and watch lives die after they graduate from Hogwarts? So why bring such death to school now? Letting the verdict of this public trial be known by the end of the trial is enough, and the procedure for execution can be done entirely in private."

"I was thinking the same thing as you before." Dumbledore said softly, "But that night Jon specifically approached me and stressed to me with immense seriousness that if there would be a public trial (show trial), then, by all means, let the students see this scene, this scene of the enemy being hanged by our own hands."

"Only then, even in ten, twenty, thirty or even a hundred years from now, the students sitting here will not forget this day when they recall this episode. It will make them remember that our battles will never cost only the blood of our own people, but also the necks of our enemies!"

"They themselves will learn, and they will teach their next generation to understand, that if any further injustice happens in the future, then even a street lamp by the road can become the new gallows!"

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