In Courtroom Ten on the tenth underground level of the Ministry of Magic stood a chair.
If the accused faced serious charges, the moment they sat down, chains would spring to life and bind them tightly.
Lucius Malfoy had once been bound by it. To avoid being sent to Azkaban, he had named many people who had appeared at his home, just like Karkaroff.
After Voldemort returned, Karkaroff died. Luckily for him, he had no family.
If Voldemort returned again, would Narcissa and Draco be implicated because of him?
That chair had once been borrowed by the Muggle-Born Registration Commission. It might not have been the Inquisition, but it was no less terrible than one. Or perhaps it was like Robespierre during the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, using Rousseau's ideas as the standard of judgment.
Had you committed extravagance or embezzlement? Had you shirked your duty when you ought to have served the nation? Had you taken part in driving up prices?
Rousseau was someone who spoke for ordinary people. He spoke for himself, and he spoke for the people.
The National Convention passed the Maximum Price Law for Grain, but the Girondins turned a blind eye to speculators wildly inflating grain prices. They became the perfect stepping stones.
Because of those people's corpses, Robespierre nearly became a dictator. The capitalists who had made fortunes from the French Revolution would not wait for the guillotine to fall upon their own heads, so they launched the Thermidorian Reaction.
Between starving to death and being beheaded by the guillotine, any normal person knew which to choose. If there was no grain, one could still eat acorns and other foods. Once one's head was gone, there was no replacement. Louis Saint-Just was one of the leaders during the Jacobin dictatorship