i feel like the decision olruggio made to wipe his own memory means so much more when thinking about qifrey's circumstances. it's genuinely a stroke of luck that the one witch who chose to help him was there to offer magic to him when everyone else was ready to just wipe his memories again and kick him out. we never hear mentions of them looking for family related to him, where did they hope to put him? for all we know, they were ready to leave him to die. the manga shows that he was put in what looks like an empty cell or room. he was sitting on the ground covering his face, injuries still healing and with a very numb faraway look. the most they seemed to have done is clean him up, tend to his wounds, gave him a fresh dress and that's it. not even the bare minimum of something like a bed for him to rest in. they were already preparing to send him away when he was in that state
it's even more luck that the witch who took him in is or eventually became one of the wise, which further solidifies that decision and makes it harder for others to argue against his position.
but what if qifrey and olruggio did follow through with wiping the slate on qifrey? when he's back to square one, would beldaruit's position even be enough to keep him in the great hall or would they go back to throwing him out? at the end of the day, qifrey was accepted into witch society, but he wasn't accepted into witch society. it's possible that the people in power were just waiting for any reason to call him a lost cause by virtue of him being an outsider
it's also important to note that olruggio says that this is the ONLY term they have for people who aren't witches. the line drawn between witches and everyone else is so clearly placed and enforced and has such a negative connotation to it. that must be why qifrey, an outsider, calls it an offensive term when coco is referred to as one. he knows what it's like to be alienated, how easy it is to do so, how much people will turn their backs on you if you aren't considered one of them
olruggio's decision may genuinely have saved qifrey's life in every sense. he halted the tree's growth, allowed qifrey to keep his memories instead of repeating the cycle of remembering and hunting the brimmed caps to his death all alone, and possibly prevented qifrey from being thrown out of witch society as a whole before he could even get his footing. qifrey's memory wipe is the fastest way, a tried and true one even, but it well and truly could have killed him