It took a few moments and it drained a considerable amount of power but the rain stopped and the clouds slowly thinned. Tapping his wand on his robes he drew out the water in them before letting it fall to the ground with a splash. He repeated this for the rest of his friends since wet clothes made it easier to get sick. "Think the git will get a life sentence?" Ron asked breaking the silence. "Seems like the sort of thing that would land you a sentence like that." Tracy said seriously.-

"My father told me once about how ruthless the ministry is with things like this , making an example is what he says." Ron said seriously. "Muggles do it too you know." Nick said quietly. "Zero tolerance policy they call it , punishing folk regardless of the crime severely. It's supposed to keep the regular people in line with the law but it simply doesn't work very well." He added with shake of his head. "What do you mean?" Hermione asked with a frown. "Circumstances is what I am talking about. There are four types of criminals from what I can tell lifestyle , malicious , career and accidental."-

"See lifestyle criminals are those who grew up in it and simply don't know any different. Malicious criminals are those that actively choose to commit crimes because they enjoy it. Career criminals are those who turned to crime out of nothing more than simple greed. The accidental criminals are those that commit a crime accidentally or in a fit of passion and regret it deeply afterwards. In a case involving the exact same crime each of these criminals gets the exact same punishment regardless of intent or circumstances and they call it justice. In truth it simply doesn't work because it doesn't target the crux of the issue for the individual criminal." He explained with a scowl.-

"Does the ministry or government know all this?" Ron asked with a worried expression. "They do , my father once mentioned how unjust some of the punishments were after reading the papers in the morning but I didn't know what he meant until now." Daphne said with a bothered expression. "Why don't they just change the system if it doesn't work?" Hermione asked genuinely confused. "They can't , our entire civilization is propped up on this flawed system and while they might spend years at a time tweaking each individual law to try and get as close as possible to true justice but it's simply not possible."

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"There is no one size fits all justice that they can implement hence it's all circumstantial." Nick said honestly. Everyone got quiet at this as none of them could find a good way to deny what he said as it made perfect sense. "As for Lockhart he'll probably be driven mad in no time at all in Azkaban." Nick said with more than a little pleasure at the idea. Weak willed people would definitely not maintain their sanity for very long in an environment that constantly saps the happiness out of them.-

This was very literal in this case as the dementors literally ate happiness so getting sent to Azkaban was a very bad experience. Back to the interrogation of Lockhart Both Dumbledore and Snape had become numb to the anger after listening to Lockhart narrate his long list of crimes. "Then there was the old wizard in Romania that was dealing with that coven of vampires. I posed as a reporter for that one before catching him off guard once I had the full story." The blonde spoke almost passionately about his various "conquests" while under the effects of veritaserum.-

By the end of the two hour long interrogation both Dumbledore and Snape were totally disgusted by Lockhart. "I will contact the ministry about the official arrest of his while you seek out the boy about the curse. We will also need to find a replacement for the Defense against the dark arts position with haste. I believe the boy had some Idea on that matter and thus should be able to assist." Dumbledore said and Snape nodded before turning to walk out of the room.-

"And Severus , be understanding with the boy. He may not be in the best state of mind." The old man called out and besides a small flick of his wrist Snape made no motion that he heard him. Dumbledore turned to look at the dosed Lockhart with a sigh before knocking him out with a simple stunning charm. 'Lets hope this is the last issue we have to deal with for a while.' he thought before leaving the man tied up in the room to write the letters he needed in his office.