Zhang Xiao studied the chain around his wrist. Ancient did not necessarily mean powerful, but age usually came with a rich legacy. The long passage of time always left something behind.
Although extreme pure-blood ideology was ridiculous, every pure-blood family that had survived to the present had its own distinctive skills or principles.
The Malfoy family, for instance, believed in shrewdness and knowing which way the wind was blowing.
The Weasley family valued openness and acceptance.
The Ollivander Family had its wandcraft.
And the Longbottom family was just as Bellatrix had described it-if you wanted a friend who would never betray you and would stand by you until death, then look to the Longbottom family.
But Zhang Xiao had genuinely never imagined that the Longbottom family possessed an oath like this, passed down to the present day.
There were roughly four common forms of binding oath in the Wizarding World: the Unbreakable Vow, the Fidelius Charm, life debts, and blood pacts.
Of these four, a life debt differed from the other three. Its binding force was far weaker, making it more like an unwritten rule widely observed in the Wizarding World.
In other words, when one wizard saved another wizard's life, the person saved owed their rescuer a life debt. They needed to do something that benefited their rescuer to repay it.
A blood pact was what Dumbledore and Grindelwald had entered into, preventing either party from harming the other.
But the Longbottom Oath belonged to none of these categories.
It was an oath Madam Augusta had sworn as the head of the Longbottom family, a contract between the family and him personally-a one-sided contract.
It bound only the Longbottom family.
And Madam Augusta had just said that the oath would take effect whenever Zhang Xiao's life was in danger.