It Was Because of Them
It was because of them.
The moment we stepped out of the Pensieve, the sound of retching rose from every direction.
Percy was sprawled flat on his back, looking thoroughly seasick, and Penelope seemed to have already bolted for the bathroom. Cedric clutched his stomach, cold sweat beading on his face, while Karina had wrapped herself in a padded jacket even though it was the middle of summer.
"Hah… hah… Cedric, you okay?"
"Fuck, do I look okay? My body got sliced clean in half by a blade. Making a mana blade the size of a building with just his fingers? Unbelievable. What about you, Eugene?"
"I got killed by Lucius Malfoy's spell. Some silver threads flying around like crazy."
"Karina, you alright?"
"I froze to death. Once it starts getting cold, you need to evacuate the whole area within ten minutes. Otherwise your blood vessels freeze from the inside out and there's no surviving it."
"Hey. This… can we even pass this thing?"
"Eugene, there's also the option of just completing the course."
Other team members walking past glanced at me and Karina and started muttering among themselves.
"Looks like Hogwarts has really gone downhill these days. Why the hell is this damn PC culture even being reflected in the admissions for advanced magic schools? Why do they accept those Asian bastards while rejecting us London natives?"
"Probably some rich nouveau riche donated a bunch of money. No skill, so they must've paid their way in."
"Fuck. That's why they're sucking up to the Diggory family, right? I hear the gold just pours out endlessly from the vaults under Gringotts headquarters."
"Did Cedric Diggory buy that pretty Asian with money?"
"Other way around. The Conqueror's daughter bought Cedric with her looks."
"Is that a skill too, then?"
"Hey, what if they hear you? Those are Amos Diggory and Conqueror Yoo Seong-heon's kids."
"Let them hear. They're nothing compared to the Malfoy family anyway. My mom was classmates with Lady Narcissa at Cambridge, you know? Hey, you there, Cho Chang! How much did you pay to get in?"
"Those fucking bastards…!"
"Cedric, hold it. You know how much this costs per hour? Those idiots aren't important right now. We need to clear this quick so we can have our drinking party."
Cedric flared up, but I held him back.
"Yeah, guys. Let's just figure this out. How ants like us can survive without getting stepped on by those dinosaurs. Them calling every Asian girl Cho Chang isn't new, is it? Don't mind them."
Karina smiled prettily and patted our backs.
I stared at her for a moment.
She used to cry all the time. Whenever she heard things like that, she'd cry and get upset every single day. I got angry, but I never felt sad about it.
But she never once gave up. She'd scold me when I said those bastards who talked like that were hopeless from the start and not worth fixing, and she always tried to prove herself through skill or reputation.
While I just spat out cynicism and sat there paralyzed by rage and despair, Jihyun was always moving forward even as she cried.
"Yeah, Karina's right. Those guys all died later anyway. Let's talk about us for now. I can't arrest Sirius. I'm just going to focus on surviving."
Penelope agreed, shaking her head and wrapping an arm around Karina's shoulders.
Cedric, Percy, and I all empathized with how she felt.
Still. Still, if we couldn't even manage this much, there was no way we could save Cedric and Harry in front of Voldemort.
"I'm going to see it through to the end. Not just complete the course—I'm going to pass."
The words came out more solemnly than I intended.
Cedric burst out laughing, and Penelope and Percy were stifling giggles.
"Did you see that guy's face? Like he was giving a prime ministerial inauguration speech. Fucking hilarious."
Karina patted my shoulder encouragingly.
"Yeah, Eugene. Let's do it again. In each of our memories. No matter where we are, we'll be together."
"Because of bastards like that, every time I see those pretentious pure-blood noble pieces of shit, my fists just—"
As Karina and Cedric tried to calm me down while I cursed, I gestured that I'd cooled off—then suddenly felt something drop into my heart with a heavy clunk.
Resistance. The resistance I feel toward pure-blood supremacist nobles because of those idiots.
Marcus Weybridge, preparing in front of the computer, was glancing over at these kids. And the difficulty had clearly gone up.
It was them.
It was because of them.
Karina and Cedric.
The black-haired girl who was always soft and kind but couldn't stand Percy's nonsense, and the handsome blond guy who snored next to me every night.
My friends who, right in front of me, were complaining that while they understood the MPs' intentions, the methods were far too cruel, wondering why the Order of the Phoenix never deployed to the end, why the Ministry and the Cabinet couldn't even properly control a single Prime Minister's Guard Battalion, why Mad-Eye never arrived until so many people had already died.
"Hey! Percy! Give me the notebook already!"
"Ah, shit. What's with you! I'm reading it too!"
"Come on, hurry!"
I snatched the notebook of Bill and Charlie that Percy was holding and read through it carefully once more.
Still nothing. No matter how hard I stared and flipped through the pages, there was absolutely nothing about the Abraxas Scholarship or MP Malfoy.
That sense of dissonance I'd felt when I first skimmed Percy's notebook and listened to Marcus's initial briefing—this was it.
There was mention of friendly fire, but it focused more on how to reduce the damage than who did it?
Same with the three MPs. It was all about how to survive in that mess rather than why did they come?
The content was clearly a little different from the briefing we'd heard.
Back then I'd just figured I'd skimmed it while eating Aunt Molly's chocolate and hadn't read it properly, but the more I died and came back, the stronger that sense of wrongness grew.
This wasn't a stage designed to be cleared—it was a trap stage deliberately made so you'd curse the developers.
The kind that makes you hate someone specific…
Ignoring Percy's whining to give it back, I looked back and forth between Karina and Cedric. Their bodies were still trembling from dying in all sorts of ways at the hands of the MPs.
After apologizing and returning Bill's notebook to Percy, I looked at Marcus Weybridge as he tidied up the Pensieve.
The purpose of a stage designed to make you curse someone is exactly that—to make you curse them. So the most important thing is that the gamers know precisely who the target of that hatred is.
Even now, I could hear my friends venting their complaints and regrets about the MPs, the Order of the Phoenix, and the Cabinet.
Marcus had changed the information value of the briefing the moment these kids enrolled in the academy.
Retired Auror Marcus Weybridge wanted these kids to develop resistance toward the great noble houses through this briefing and simulation.
The fog in my head was slowly clearing, growing sharper.
This simulation wasn't a stage designed to be cleared.
It was like an unbeatable first boss fight.
No matter how many times we died and woke up, we couldn't beat them head-on.
We couldn't beat the MPs. We couldn't beat Sirius Black.
It had been designed from the start so that we'd lose, die, get blown apart, and curse them for it.
This was it. This was exactly it. Finally, one of the two whys had been solved.
I now understood perfectly why the information value of the briefing had changed. To plant resistance in us. Nothing else explained it.
It might be a logical leap, but my gut was pointing right at this. It would've been nice if I could use Legilimency, but that was sixth-year material—nowhere near my level yet.
And the remaining why. Why Marcus had to do this remained unsolved.
It wasn't Sirius Black himself. Marcus Weybridge was a former government Auror who had fought on the opposite side from Sirius. And the great nobles were on the government's side.
So why would Marcus Weybridge…?
To resolve this question, I had to go back to the past twelve years ago once more.
Sirius Black, repeatedly dyeing himself black.
Lucius Malfoy, raining down silver threads.
Theodore Seamus, spitting frozen snowflakes from a blue dragon.
Leo Romulus, who with a single snap of his fingers sliced the entire area with invisible blades.
Forget the Prime Minister, the Ministers, the Vice-Ministers. Forget the special task forces, the Order of the Phoenix, the Prime Minister's Guard Battalion—I had to forget all of it.
The real truth of this incident was hidden with those four.
And Tobias, who died before my eyes every time, hit by the airstrikes.
I took a step forward once more to face death.