The last time he had lingered in that world, Severus had considered what the people of France meant by the Third Estate.
Stripped of all the florid rhetoric and impassioned emotion, the so-called Third Estate referred to those without exemptions.
In the feudal age, nobles and clergy possessed certain exemptions, but not all nobles and clergy did. Impoverished nobles unqualified to become the king's vassals had no exemptions. Together with the bourgeoisie, writers, farmers, Sans-culottes, and others, they made up the Third Estate in the Estates-General.
On Judge Denning's robe epaulets was written the motto of his legal career: fiat justicia et pereat mudus. It meant, "Let justice be done, though the world perish."
The people of France said the Anglo-Saxons were committing political suicide. To most people living within the system—people who did not profit as much as those at the top but still generally obeyed the law—that was unimaginable. In fact, such people would not notice anything abnormal until major upheaval erupted.
Like Hermione Granger's dentist parents: when more and more people vanished after the pure-blood supremacists took control of the Ministry of Magic, and the weather became increasingly strange, they too realized something was happening.
That was understandable. Put yourself in their place: if you sat in the ruler's seat, would you be willing to surrender your power to rule?
If property and lawyers allowed one to enjoy privilege, then someone would spare no effort to protect that privilege. A game could continue only because everyone accepted its rules. Once more and more people stopped accepting those rules, the game became difficult to keep playing.
Severus donated the draft of the "Declaration of Independence" to the Richelieu Library in exchange for certain privileges, such as holding dinner parties in the library. Otherwise, why would the curator have