Hogwarts: Dumbledore reigned over the wizarding world.

Chapter 352 Vaughn: Voldemort is a clown!

"You should know that I hate secrecy laws."

Upon hearing this, Snape, who was listening attentively, nodded slightly.

He had heard Dumbledore mention it, and moreover, ever since C spread overseas, any wizard with even a modicum of political awareness could learn about C...

From his platform, one can see Vaughn's aversion to the secrecy laws, and even his "provocation" of the International Confederation of Wizards.

Of course, this is at most a bit rebellious, not too outrageous.

After all, many people dislike secrecy laws, and for various reasons.

Some people believe that the Law of Secrets restricts wizards, making them only dare to tolerate the bullying of Muggles and not retaliate. If a wizard crosses the line even slightly, the Ministry of Magic and the International Wizarding Federation will intervene and impose severe punishment.

This view is mostly held by right-wing conservatives, who are usually supporters of the "wizard first" stance.

However, some people believe that the Law of Secrets isolates magic from the communication between magic and ordinary Muggles, and is a product of pure-blood and wizarding families' attempt to monopolize magic.

This viewpoint is primarily represented by Maligne wizards. While this trend is not yet evident in the British Isles, it has been developing rapidly in recent years in continental Europe.

There is a final group of people who dislike the Secrecy Law. This group is more complex. They are neither left nor right, but rather composed of ambitious individuals and a loose group of dissidents. They simply feel that the Secrecy Law is hindering their ambitions and paths.

Nothing in the world can gain the approval and support of everyone.

It's perfectly normal to have different opinions on a matter.

So, including Snape, no one was surprised that Vaughn disliked the Law of Secrecy; it's just that no one ever really knew why Vaughn disliked it.

"My reason for disliking it is simple: the secrecy law—it's so outdated!"

"—What?"

Snape was taken aback, and Hermione looked surprised as well.

Despite the strange behavior from the two, Vaughn remained calm. He had never dared to reveal these words that had been brewing in his heart for so long.

If you lack strength, achievements, and fame, not only will no one listen to your voice, but people will also think you're crazy.

But now, he can speak.

Vaughn smiled slightly: "There are a few philosophers among the Muggles who have summarized all the contradictions in the development of human society into a very simple yet very complex sentence—the contradiction between productive forces and relations of production!"

"Although this theory is mainly used to explain Muggle society, it can actually be applied to all forms of society, including the magical world, as long as the subject is human—humans are social, gregarious creatures, but before socialization, they are first and foremost independent individuals, and as individuals, it is difficult for them to have unified thoughts and understanding."

"Returning to the topic of productivity and relations of production, these concepts are rather complex, so I won't go into detail. If the professor is interested, he can buy books from Muggles to read later. I'll just give a simple analogy: what do you consider to be the productivity of the magical world?"

Snape listened intently and instinctively replied, "Magic!"

"Heh, that's right, magic." Vaughn chuckled. "In the magical world, whoever masters magic controls productivity. Generally speaking, the productivity of the magical world doesn't seem to be enough to cause any conflicts. Any senior wizard, as long as he passes his studies and masters the knowledge taught in school, will hardly starve to death in the future."

In the magical world, starvation is indeed rare. Any wizard can use spells like the Growth Charm, making planting or raising animals very simple.

It may not be able to grow big, but it's enough to support myself.

Snape was somewhat confused.

Yes, wizards can all support themselves, so where does the contradiction come from?

Seemingly sensing his question, Vaughn said, "That's the amazing thing about human social structures. The earliest social structures were actually relatively counterintuitive and anti-human. For example, in ancient times, when productivity was scarce, humans implemented a relatively fair distribution system to ensure that everyone in the tribe could survive. Does this mean that ancient humans had a higher level of awareness?"

"No!" He slowly shook his head. "That kind of fairness is forced, because if the tribe is unfair, more people will die, which will lead to a decrease in the number of people hunting and gathering, a decline in production capacity, and the tribe will decline or even perish as a result."

"In contrast, the birth of private ownership is in line with human nature. Individuals will naturally pursue the privatization of excess production capacity and give it corresponding honor and meaning, which will make them stand out. Thus, when social productivity is no longer forced to be fair for survival, slavery and feudalism emerge, and the social division of labor is divided into managers and the managed."

"What's interesting is that before the division of labor and class differentiation, everyone was actually on the same starting line. So who decided who was the manager and who was the managed? Who was the slave owner and who was the slave?"

Upon hearing this, Snape's usually stagnant eyes finally showed a flicker of emotion.

Noticing his unusual behavior, Vaughn looked over and said with interest, "In the wizarding world, the situation is much more complicated. While the rulers of Muggle society can monopolize productivity through the inheritance of power—that is, through the self-reproduction of the ruling class itself—how can productivity be monopolized in the wizarding world?"

"Wizardry cannot be absolutely inherited; pure-blood families may produce Squibs, and Muggles may be born. The essence of magic as a productive force is meritocracy, looking only at aptitude and not birth. This inherently dictates that the roles of managers and those being managed must change dynamically."

"Simply put, when the wizarding world began to attempt to sever ties with Muggle society through the Act of Secrecy, the wizarding world's rulers were destined to perish, either through internal collapse—the various families were unable to produce enough fresh blood, and once the older generation died out, they naturally perished."

"Either you eliminate those you govern, or you can't even control their productivity, how can you suppress changes in production relations? Are you asking the geniuses among the Ma's wizards to continue to acknowledge the privileges of the governs and accept being enslaved by those privileges?"

Then, Vaughn looked at Hermione and asked, "Hermione, if one day you joined the Ministry of Magic and Goyle or Crabbe were your superiors, what would you think?"

Hermione's mouth opened slightly as she looked at Vaughn, then at Snape's sinister gaze, and dared not speak.

But she couldn't help thinking that she would definitely be very dissatisfied!

This has nothing to do with character, but is based on a very simple logic: why should those two idiots who can't even cast a spell properly sit on her head?

The little girl was still young, and it was hard for her to hide her thoughts. Both Vaughn and Snape could tell what she was thinking just by looking at her expression.

Seeing this, Vaughn smiled slightly, turned to Snape whose expression was gloomy, and slowly said, "So, Professor, I'm including Muggles in the new Potions system not because I favor Muggles, but because objective laws favor them. I'm simply trying to further unleash productivity by taking advantage of this trend of changing production relations."

"I've wanted to say this for a long time. The magical world is isolated in one corner of the world. England, with tens of millions of people, has only tens of thousands of wizards. This is a huge waste of magical productivity. More importantly, the small market prevents magic from unleashing its true potential."

"This untapped potential has also greatly hindered innovation. Before me, potion-making had not seen any new influential formulas for decades, the development of the modern spell system had stagnated, and alchemy had been removed from the curriculum of magic schools, becoming a specialty of a few wizards."

Snape eventually left.

They came with great fanfare, but left in a daze.

Vaughn's words seemed to have greatly impacted his beliefs, and by the end, he looked somewhat desperate.

Because Vaughn analyzed it very clearly.

There is no inherent distinction between the status of managers and those being managed, and this is especially true in the magical world; the rise of Muggles and even Muggles is an inevitable process.

Because under the current system, productivity and relations of production are mismatched. This contradiction is not only a class contradiction between purebloods and Muggle, but also a contradiction inherent in the immense productivity represented by magic itself.

That's why there are so many factions in the magical world today that oppose the Law of Secrecy. Their existence itself means that the Law of Secrecy has become a force that inhibits the dynamic changes in production relations.

Even his former master, Voldemort.

The reign of terror he instigated was essentially a transformation of production relations driven by the forces of production. He successfully persuaded many Mongrel and Half-Blood wizards to abandon their illusions of coexisting with pure-bloods!

At the same time, he has gathered almost the last remaining power of the traditional privileged class. If he fails, the upper echelons of the entire magical world will face a complete purge and a redistribution of power.

So in a sense, Voldemort was a catalyst for change, even though he appeared in a reactionary form.

This contradicts Snape's long-held belief.

The master he once worshipped, the master who was to create great achievements, was, in Vaughn's eyes, just a powerless clown under the so-called objective laws.

Shocked, Snape was unable to judge who was right and who was wrong, and he almost staggered away.

Watching the professor's figure disappear into the distance, Hermione bit her lip and looked at Vaughn: "Weren't you being too harsh on him?"

He'll figure it out.

Vaughn shrugged: "The professor is just blinded by the shadows of his childhood. He's actually a very intelligent person. He even called himself a half-blood prince when he was in school."

"----ah?"

Hearing about Snape's embarrassing and shameful past suddenly gave Hermione goosebumps.

What she was really curious about was why Vaughn knew so much about the professor.

However, Vaughn clearly didn't want to dwell on this topic. He stretched and said, "Let's continue with the research on the universal group. Professor Snape is easy to deal with, but those guys outside who oppose me won't be so easy to talk to."

"I dare say that tomorrow or the day after, once those guys understand my paper, the Daily Prophet will be flooded with articles criticizing me—we need to get the finished product out as soon as possible, minimizing our enemies and maximizing our friends!"

Snape's excuses for opposing the new potion-making method weren't entirely nitpicking; he was right about one thing.

The new potion-making method is not yet fully perfected.

While protein robots are useful, their drawbacks are also obvious. Because they are formed by folding raw proteins through low-energy traps, these protein robots have the ability to "infect" each other, which means that their binding will continue until they are tightly locked together, forming a huge, fibrous mass. The protein molecules lose their freedom and function.

This would result in a very short "shelf life" for the medicine.

Vaughn's next research focus was on finding a solution to this problem.

"Have you decided on which route to use to intervene from the outside?"

Hermione flipped through the notebook, which contained some of the ideas Vaughn had shared during the experiments over the past few days, including Muggle technological approaches and magical ones.

Upon hearing this, Vaughn, who was observing the bottle of glowing potion nearby, thought for a moment and said, "Let's stick to the magic route for now. It's simpler. I'm planning to develop a variant spell based on the Vanishing Charm to specifically break the non-covalent bonds of protein robots. As for a complete solution—I have a new idea."

"What are your thoughts?" Hermione looked up, her golden-brown eyes seeming to light up.

"Do you remember the amino acid factory I mentioned when I first introduced the project to you?"

"Of course I remember."

When Vaughn mentioned it last time, she was very interested—who wouldn't be curious about an extremely tiny and extremely precise "factory" that could synthesize five elements into a life matrix?

"That factory is essentially a protein, or more precisely, a catalytic network composed of many kinds of enzyme proteins. It's very complex to Muggles, but you know, Felix Ferulic's interference with probability makes it easy for us to obtain the protein mutants we want."

Vaughn explained his ideas, and Hermione listened with rapt attention.

There is nothing more joyful in the world than swimming in the ocean of knowledge!

She buried herself in her notebook, writing furiously, just as she had done in the past few days, recording Vaughn's "precious inspirations".

"Once the 'factory' network is built, it will not only be able to freely assemble protein robots, but also synthesize their matching molecular chaperones as needed. These are also proteins; you can think of it as 'dressing up' the protein robots, thus preventing them from aggregating."

Dressing up robots—what a clever idea!

Hermione felt her brain starting to burn.

Suddenly, as if struck by a thought, she looked up: "To mutate such a sophisticated factory network, we'd need a lot of Felix Felicis, right? But we're almost out of Felix Felicis. Shouldn't we brew a new batch?"

Vaughn had clearly considered the problem, and without looking up, said, "That stuff takes a lot of time to make, the steps and rituals are complicated, and it's definitely too late to make it right now, but I know someone who has some, I'll go ask them for some later."

"Huh? Who should I ask for it from?"

"Professor Snape, of course!"

Vaughn said matter-of-factly.

"Uh—" Hermione suddenly didn't know what to say. Not long ago, Professor Snape's stumbling and hurried departure was still in her mind, but she immediately had her eye on his Felix Felicis.

Is this...is this okay?