Now see? Those were interesting questions, and Mo wriggled around in his seat as he considered them. All of them. Together at the same time. History of Magic was dead interesting, wasn't it?

Horrible, though, and Mo watched his classmates carefully to be sure no one else was going to have a meltdown. Good thing it was a Gryffindor (too bad it wasn't a Hufflepuff).

"As far as that second question, sir, about why Muggles wouldn't just confess to being witches... Muggles think about being a witch or wizard differently than we do. It wasn't just a free pass to getting out of jail. They wouldn't have just gone home and picked up their lives like nothing had ever happened. I think the community would have ostracized them for a confession, if not outright persecuted and harmed them. That confession would have followed them. And if they weren't magical, and there was this belief that the system worked and only the truly guilty were being punished, many of them may have thought they had a chance to be acquitted."

But that point sort of confused him. "One thing I don't get professor... if the community was so frightened of witches and wizards that they would arrest and imprison them on trumped up charges, why was a confession sufficient to let them be released? I would think that proof positive in the form of a confession would be even more dangerous. It's almost like... the confession and subsequent social stigmatization were the point all along."