In the afternoon, the meeting continued.
The names Vaughn had levitated into the air with a spell that morning still hovered in the solemn Great Courtroom. The magical lettering shone with splendid brilliance, a stark contrast to what it represented.
Beneath those absurd magical words, the scene remained as noisy as it had been that morning, like a Muggle marketplace.
Of the nearly fifty Wizengamot members attending the meeting, around a dozen had been implicated by the list. Most were pure-bloods, with a handful from powerful wizarding families and "social elites."
The charges of conspiring to split C and incite racial conflict between werewolves and wizards were far too serious.
Although public opinion had yet to show any clear signs, anyone in their right mind knew that the public would never tolerate such evil.
It stemmed both from the instinctive urge for justice born of basic morality and from the fact that, over the past month or so, conservative forces had risen, sweeping many people along with an equally simplistic populism and driving them to resist werewolves openly and in secret.
And now C had exposed it: they had been fooled all along, manipulated like puppets by a pack of petty villains lurking in the gutters—no one dared bear such a charge, much less the obvious pressure of public opinion!
The Wizengamot members named on the list desperately denied its validity, trying to prove their innocence.
Vaughn was not fighting alone either. Some of his allies, those already inclined to support him, and even people who simply enjoyed watching the chaos unfold were all passionately arguing against them.
"I am not accusing Mr. Weasley of fabricating a list and framing his colleagues. Perhaps he, too, was deceived by that werewolf named John Mir."
A wizard from a wizarding family cried