Harry Potter: The Golden Viper

Hearing the critical words from the Muggle girl who stood bathed in the white daylight streaming through the doorway, observing her pale face that appeared almost translucent in its paleness, Bryan raised his hand to stop the restless Kingsley.

Bryan stepped forward, his expression solemn as he prepared to say something that might soothe her. But before he could utter a single word, Louise at the doorway suddenly shrieked as if struck by an electric current of pure terror.

"Don't move!"

Louise shouted abruptly, her voice cracking with fear as she stumbled backward.

"Don't move—"

She repeated, though her voice was much weaker now, barely audible over the sound of her own ragged breathing. Her frightened eyes stared intently into the dim room, focusing specifically on Bryan Watson who stood at the boundary between darkness and light.

She looked at this handsome, mysterious man who had undoubtedly stirred some feelings in her heart over the past days, but who now seemed terrifyingly unfamiliar—a stranger wearing the face of someone she thought she had begun to know and trust!

"Answer my question—" Her voice remained weak, yet carried a distinctly hysterical edge that revealed her rapidly tattering emotional state.

Bryan was silent for a few heartbeats. He blinked slowly, then opened his arms slightly in a gesture that was simultaneously apologetic and helpless before letting them fall naturally to his sides. When he finally spoke, his deep voice carried a deliberately soothing quality.

"Everything is exactly as you see it, Louise—"

Bryan said simply, his tone gentle yet steady in its honesty, but the deeper meaning contained within these seemingly straightforward words extended far beyond simple superficial apology.

'As I see it?' The thought echoed through Louise's mind.

Louise's gaze, which had been darting nervously around the room, now focused with intensity on the small wooden sticks in Bryan's and Kingsley's hands. Had they just used those sticks to perform all sorts of impossible miracles… magic that defied every law of physics and nature she had ever been taught?

Louise's eyes reddened as tears tried to spill down her cheeks. She smiled faintly, a desolate, heartbreaking smile that contained not a trace of genuine happiness, but rather embodied the bitter recognition of self-deception.

She was laughing at her own foolishness—her brother Fraser had once told her so passionately, so insistently that magic existed in the world, but she had dismissively waved away his claims, attributing them to Fraser's eccentric nature and delusion.

She was laughing at her own naivety—trusting this man of completely unknown background, following him halfway across Europe to another country to investigate the mysterious truth behind Fraser's death, even though Bryan had repeatedly warned her, that this wasn't something she should be involved in.

But none of that seemed to matter anymore.

"Magic—"

Louise murmured the word like someone in a hypnotic trance. Her gaze finally tore itself away from the stick in Bryan's hand and turned upward to meet those rare, striking purple eyes that had captivated her from their first meeting.

"It really exists. It's actually real." Her voice quavered between wonder and horror. "Why don't ordinary people know about it? Is the government actively covering for people like you?"

Louise bit her lower lip so hard that she nearly drew blood, her breathing was growing increasingly heavy and irregular, verging on hyperventilation.

"Bryan Watson, you can choose not to answer my questions if that's your preference, or you can leave my lifeless corpse in this foreign country if that better suits your purposes. You could easily do that, couldn't you? Erase all evidence of my existence with a casual flick of that wooden stick?"

Her voice hardened here with desperate bravery. "But understand this clearly—if you neither answer my questions truthfully nor kill me where I stand, when I return to London, I swear I will expose you all to the world. Every newspaper, every television station—I will tell them everything I've seen. I'm sure you wouldn't want things to end that way, would you?"

This desperate threat, delivered with trembling conviction, was so utterly powerless in reality that Kingsley felt a twinge of genuine pity in his heart. This pure, innocent Muggle girl clearly had absolutely no conception of what wizards were truly capable of.

The light in Bryan's purple eyes, seemingly frozen without even the slightest ripple of surprise or concern, was proof enough that he had already anticipated for something very similar to this confrontational scene.

Facing Louise, who had been playfully flirting with him just last night after getting drunk but now looked at him with a mixture of fear, betrayal, and hatred, Bryan wasn't the least bit surprised by her reaction, nor did he blame her the least bit for it—if Louise had reacted differently, with acceptance or calm understanding, that would have been the truly strange and concerning response to such an earth-shattering revelation.

"Well, let me think about how best to answer your question, Louise—"

Bryan smiled slightly. After a moment's thought, he said calmly,

"The Muggle government... that is, your government and others like it around the world, doesn't cover for us—I mean us wizards and witches—in the way you're suggesting. As far as I know, in the Muggle government, only the Prime Minister knows of the magical world's existence, and even then, only after taking office—"

Muggle. Wizard.

The unfamiliar terms rang in Louise's ears like foreign words from an unknown language.

Bryan Watson didn't give a detailed etymology or complete explanation of these terms, but Louise had already intuitively guessed that "Muggle" probably referred to ordinary people like herself who didn't understand or possess magic, while "wizards" referred to those special individuals who possessed the ability to use magic.

"Some countries you're familiar with... well, not all of them but certainly the major nations, have their own parallel magical civilizations existing alongside the Muggle world. Within these covert magical civilizations, wizards and witches have established their own autonomous government structures, which we generally refer to as the 'Ministry of Magic.'

These various magical governments and civilizations collectively form what we call the 'International Confederation of Wizards,' a global organization that once represented the whole of the world's magical civilization and enacted a law that, even today, despite the Confederation's greatly diminished authority and influence in recent decades, is still revered as an unbreakable golden rule by Ministries of Magic around the world—"

"What is it?" Louise interrupted, her curiosity momentarily overriding her fear.

A gentle breeze wafted through the open doorway, brushing Louise's slightly dull hair across her forehead. Even though her entire worldview had been cruelly shattered in the past few minutes, faced with the sudden revelation of a mysterious and unpredictable magical world existing next to her own, Louise still couldn't entirely suppress her thirst for knowledge and understanding.

Her trembling voice, though still carrying traces of fear, was now filled with an unmistakable desire to understand this new reality.

"The Statute of Wizarding Secrecy,"

Bryan said flatly.

"This foundational law has been controversial since its inception in 1689, following the witch hunts and persecutions of the Middle Ages. Many factions have tried to overturn or significantly modify it over the centuries, but the mainstream voice in magical communities worldwide still strongly supports its strict enforcement.

And all Ministries of Magic across various countries view attempts to challenge or circumvent this law as serious crimes. This law draws an absolutely uncrossable red line for all those with the ability to use magic—the existence of magic must not be revealed to Muggles."

Bryan paused briefly, allowing this information to sink in before adding,

"This law was enacted mainly to protect the safety and security of both the Muggle and wizarding worlds, which historical evidence suggested could not peacefully coexist with full awareness about each other. And it is the answer to your earlier question, Louise. Wizards' actions in the Muggle world are strictly regulated by the Statute of Wizarding Secrecy, not by any government conspiracy or cover-up operation."

The Statute of Wizarding Secrecy, a centuries-old law preventing ordinary people from knowing about magic's existence, supposedly enacted for the protection of both wizards and... Muggles?

'This was utter nonsense,' Louise thought with sudden indignation, and then immediately realized that Bryan Watson's actions in her presence had undoubtedly violated this apparently inviolable absurd wizarding law.

"But you used magic in front of me multiple times, didn't you?" Louise stared intensely at Bryan's blank face, searching for any reaction that might reveal his thoughts. "You broke your own law—"

"A law, no matter how comprehensive or well-crafted cannot possibly regulate all intentional or unintentional actions that might occur in the infinite complexity of human behavior, Louise, but we do have remedial measures—"

Bryan smiled, without revealing what exactly those remedial measures were.

"But why did you do it?"

Louise asked instinctively, her mind attempting to make sense of his seemingly contradictory actions.

"If this law truly holds such a high status in your world as you claim, why would you knowingly risk bringing me along on this investigation? You knew that the people who murdered Fraser were also magic users... wizards. You must have known from the beginning that if you investigated this case further, you would almost certainly be forced to expose magic in my presence. You could have easily avoided such troubles, couldn't you?"

"Wasn't this your request from the very beginning, Louise—"

Bryan's calm smile made Louise's breath catch in her throat, filling her with new indignation at what seemed like casual dismissal of her legitimate concerns.

Bryan sighed softly, his tone gentle as he continued,

"As you said, Louise, the deceased was your brother. You have the right to know the truth about his death, to understand what kind of people killed him and why they felt it necessary to end his life.

Even if this right is temporary, I believe this principle represents the true spirit and intent behind why the Statute of Wizarding Secrecy, despite facing persistent criticism throughout its long history, continues to be accepted and strongly enforced by Ministries of Magic of various countries around the world— to protect Muggles from dangers they could never foresee.

By enforcing secrecy, we shield innocents from magic and from the chaos that would follow if spells and curses were unleashed in the non‑magical world. That protection is a form of respect—respect for their right to safety, dignity, and a life without confronting the forces they cannot understand."

Kingsley couldn't help but glance sideways at Bryan with admiration welling up inside him.

A powerful wizard might relatively easily emerge in any generation, gifted with exceptional magical talent, but a truly great wizard was infinitely rarer and more precious to magical society.

A great wizard must possess not only extraordinary magical ability but also great philosophical thoughts and moral conviction. For many long years, the only wizard universally honored with the uncrowned title "great" had been Albus Dumbledore, with his wisdom and unshakable ethical principles.

But from what he had just heard, Kingsley sincerely believed that Bryan Watson indeed possessed the potential to transition from "powerful" to "great".

'to protect Muggles from dangers—'

As Bryan's solemn voice reached her ears, carrying these unexpected words, Louise was momentarily stunned into silence, and the anger that had been burning intensely in her heart somehow diminished significantly, replaced by confused uncertainty.

Magic and secrecy. These two concepts danced around each other in her mind as she struggled to understand the new reality that had been revealed to her.

It would be all too easy and natural to assume that wizards with the astonishing ability to perform magic were a superior, privileged class, that they believed Muggles weren't intellectually or spiritually worthy of glimpsing that profound and mysterious magical world, and so they had concealed the existence of magic and maintained absolute secrecy from Muggles out of arrogance and contempt.

That had been her initial assumption upon learning of this hidden world—that she and all non-magical people were considered inferior.

But if wizards were human too, despite their extraordinary abilities, then this human group would inevitably contain both good and evil individuals, just like any other human population—Fraser's tragic fate proved this point without the slightest doubt.

It was obviously impossible for everyone in any society to exercise high levels of moral self-restraint spontaneously, to not use their special advantages to harm those more vulnerable than themselves. Binding wizards' actions with strict laws was indeed, when viewed from this perspective, a reasonable form of protection for those who didn't understand or possess magic—

Louise was deeply absorbed in these philosophical considerations when she heard the usually taciturn Kingsley suddenly speak up.

"You probably don't fully realize, Louise—"

Kingsley said in his deep, slightly hoarse voice.

"Mr. Watson himself has an extremely prestigious reputation throughout the entire European magical community. He is widely considered by countless wizards and witches to be perhaps the most powerful and talented wizard currently living in their current modern era of magical civilization, and he also holds the position of Vice President of the International Confederation of Wizards—"

Staring at the now completely dumbfounded Louise, Kingsley continued in an increasingly grave tone,

"His willingness to bring you personally along to investigate the truth behind Fraser's death, even deliberately revealing the existence of magic in your presence despite the risks to himself, was precisely to safeguard and honor your human right to knowledge. So, Louise,"

His voice's tone suddenly shifted here, becoming sharper and interrogative, "given everything you've just learned about our world and Mr. Watson's significant position within it, I must ask you directly—why did you mention the name Angus Aeschylus?"

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