Heart-Less

Chapter 26

Title: Post-Banishment Analysis of the Pendragon Case

Filed under: Top secret, Treason, History, forbidden books.

The Pendragon case has been a fascinating study in the dangers of unlimited access to the Central Library Archives.

Background

Pendragon was born to a perfectly ordinary wizarding family. As a child, he displayed a talent for magic that helped him get ahead of classes and earned him a scholarship to our Academy of Magic. He progressed quickly with his studies, and if he had only graduated after his undergraduate studies, the disaster might have been averted. But, buoyed by the encouragement of his teachers, Pendragon entered postgraduate studies, to focus on the area of historical magic.

As part of his research, Pendragon was granted almost unlimited access to the Central Library archives. It must be stressed that at this point in time, Pendragon had passed all the required background checks, and there was nothing in them that suggested he was prone to traitorous thoughts.

However, as the months passed, Pendragon's standard of work began to decline. Although the decline was gradual, we must assign some blame to his supervisory teacher for not noticing that increasing absences and his new inability to hand in assignments on time was a sign of something more dangerous. In fact, the failure of his supervisory teacher to notice anything out of the ordinary shows a serious lapse in judgement and we recommend measures be taken.

Tip-off and Arrest

In the end, Pendragon's activities came to light only when his classmates approached the office, worried about their once-promising friend. They mentioned his absences, his slip-shod work, but what caught our eye was his radical speech. According to one of them:

"Pendragon, he's been talking crazy. He keeps talking about how our magic sucks, how it's totally not powerful anymore, and that he knows a way to help us regain our abilities. Lots of us believed him, but when he started talking about making contact with Kaiguo and Sakoku, we realised how crazy he was. We did pay some attention during basic world politics after all.

We totally think that Pendragon is a good dude at heart, and we don't want him to be in trouble, but something has to be done. You have to make him unlearn all that stuff. And uh, we didn't say anything about this."

We believe that this eyewitness account holds a lot of clues. For one thing, we were lucky that Pendragon was surrounded by decently brought up students, who brought all this to our attention. It goes to show that the education in the lower years are of vital importance.

Secondly, it showed that we were lucky that Pendragon did not come into contact with any subversive elements, despite his naive attempts at spreading those treasonous ideas. We must continue to be vigilant and reduce the amount of contact between the fringe groups.

Before confronting Pendragon, we did a preliminary check of all the materials he had taken out and discovered that Pendragon had substituted several dummy books for the banned books. Because the books have been banned, all we know of them are their titles. We do not know what content is in that book, and the only one who knows what's in there has refused to talk.

Trial and Banishment

Throughout his trial, Pendragon refused to speak, except to proclaim, repeatedly, that he is not a traitor. It goes to show that when traitorous thoughts lodge themselves in the head of a wizard, it completely warps their thinking.

For his closing statement, this is what Pendragon had to say. The speech had to be suppressed due to traitorous thoughts expressed in this excerpt.

"I am no traitor. All I want is to make this nation great. I love this country, and no matter what you do to me, there is nothing that will change my love for the country. One day, you will all see the errors of the ways. There will be one day when all our people are reunited as one, and we will relearn the ancient ways of our ancestors. Mark my words, history will prove me to be the saviour of our country."

Despite our best attempts, we have been unable to find the forbidden books. We have even searched the chest that Pendragon was allowed to bring out of the country, but nothing. We do not, however, rule out the possibility that he enchanted the books to make us overlook them.

Recommendation

Although Pendragon has been safely banished from the country, we recommend a close eye be kept on his future activities. There should be a magic watch kept on him, though it should only be done unobtrusively. At his current level of magic, we do not recommend anything more than a light watch, in public. Anything more and he could potentially have a human-rights violation case against us.

Currently, Pendragon is adrift towards Sakoku. We do not imagine that the famously reclusive country will take him in, but if they did, we must be on our guard. Any future communication from the traitor Pendragon must be dissected for all possible meaning then ignored.  

Thank you for reading! Hope you enjoyed this chapter and do let me know what you think of it!