In Saint Petersburg, Russia, there was an oil painting by Rembrandt, The Return of the Prodigal Son. It was his final work; he died a year after completing it.
Georgiana gazed out through the castle window at the sea not far away.
After Newton, the authority of reason replaced the authority of religion. Just as Bonaparte had told Laplace, people were driving God out of this world.
If that prodigal son who had spent his days eating, drinking, and making merry, squandering all his wealth, returned home, and instead of opening his arms to welcome him back with forgiveness, his father drove him away, what kind of story would that become?
Religious tolerance was the breeding ground for reason. The earliest religious tolerance appeared in Germany, at first between Catholicism and the Lutherans, then soon between Catholicism and the various Protestant denominations, before expanding further to include theists and atheists.
That was also why Georgiana's purpose in designing the maze had changed from imprisonment at the very beginning.
At Hogwarts, all you had to do when you needed help was ask for it. But once you left Hogwarts, you had to distinguish who was worth helping and help those who deserved it.
That was difficult. Before the misunderstanding had been cleared up, when Harry Potter saw Severus Snape lying in a pool of blood, he had not thought of saving him. If he had truly wanted to, he would have remembered that Ron's father had also been bitten by Nagini.
He had not done his utmost. He had not even considered trying. He watched Snape die bit by bit, like the son of an enemy witnessing the death of his family's foe, yet also as though he did not want Snape to feel alone before he died.
The Jiyin People