Chapter 232 231. Decision.

A few minutes later, the nurse waiting outside, the same one who had led Severus to the Head Healer, heard a click. A young man emerged from the room, calmly shut the door behind him, and offered a smile to the puzzled woman.

She was somewhat surprised that they had finished so quickly. Barnett had seemed ready to lecture him at length, judging by the dissatisfied grumbling and the frown on his face as he read the work. The fact that they had wrapped up their conversation in just five minutes left her slightly bewildered.

As if reading her thoughts, Severus said, "I gave him the revised work, so he asked not to be disturbed for the next three hours."

"I see. Thank you for passing that along. I won't distract him, then." The woman nodded slightly, turned calmly, and simply walked away. That surprised Severus a little. He had expected at least a few questions. Wasn't that suspicious?

But after reading her surface thoughts, his smile grew strained. She simply didn't care about him. She asked nothing because he had already annoyed her with his advances and crude innuendos.

*I'll have to think about recruiting her to my side… such a good asset going to waste…*

"Listen, wasn't that a bit too… cruel, what you did to him?" Nagini asked from beneath his cloak, glancing back at the door they had just left with something like pity. She hadn't seen the entire "punishment," but the moaning alone had been enough to tell her how painful it was.

"I was still too soft." Severus chuckled to himself as he headed toward the counter by the fireplaces. "It's precisely because of people like him that the mortality rate among wizards doesn't drop—it rises instead."

"What do you mean?"

"Diseases, viruses, dark spells… they all constantly mutate and evolve. But healing magic hasn't seen a significant advance in a hundred and fifty years. There's a vast repository of knowledge sitting right in front of their eyes: just reach out and take it. But no. Those damned old fogeys, with their attitudes and arrogance, simply write it off and forbid its use. That's what angered me, so I didn't hold back." He spoke with irritation, remembering Barnett's arrogant face.

"And he's unlikely to go to the Ministry of Magic either…," Nagini added with a hint of embarrassment, drawing a gloating smirk from Severus.

"That's for sure. And I even used Sticking Charms…"

"Monster…," she hissed with feigned horror, barely holding back laughter.

"I am what I am, and you'll have to accept it." As she flicked her snout through the cloak, he gave a slight nod to the pretty girl at the counter, who responded with a tired smile and a weak nod as she continued explaining something to a very old wizard.

"By the way, what will you do about the human trials?"

"We're not going home yet; we're heading straight to the Ministry of Magic. I need to talk to Harold about this. He also promised in his letter to grant any request of mine in exchange for updating the equipment in the Research Department. Let's see if that's enough to solve our problem."

The words "just reach out" weren't empty rhetoric; they were the literal truth. Verifying his work required improved Muggle equipment, whose name and the necessary rune patterns were included in the final pages of his submission.

The criticism aimed at his work had angered Severus even more. He had poured time and effort into it, and in return he'd received nothing but baseless criticism from a senile old man obsessed with wizarding superiority over Muggles.

If Muggle developments were used in certain areas, casualties in magical Britain could be reduced several times over. But because of people like Barnett, and because people like him filled the entire upper hierarchy, those casualties only climbed.

Severus had hoped and believed things weren't so bad, that Madam Pomfrey was merely exaggerating when she told stories about her "senior colleagues." But the reality was far worse. The Chief Healer was proof of it: a fish always rots from the head.

He understood, of course, that changing everything overnight was impossible. But gradually removing such wizards from power would resolve a great deal, not immediately, but eventually.

He still had a long life ahead of him in this world, and he had no desire to foul his own nest, nor to let these old experiments gather dust on the shelves.

That was why Severus helped the wizards of this world. He didn't want to end up, five hundred years from now, as the only wizard left standing. Life would grow very boring indeed.

As he approached the burning fireplace, a pouch appeared in his hand. He took a pinch of Floo powder, the substance that allowed travel through the Floo Network, which connected nearly all wizarding homes in Britain.

He threw it into the fire. The flames instantly flared bright green and doubled in size. "Ministry of Magic." Naming his destination, he stepped into the fire, which swallowed him as if alive. It didn't feel hot; rather, it felt like a gentle breeze, and the next moment he was gone.

---

The conversation with Harold was surprisingly calm. He promised to sort everything out and not to worry about "trifles." Replacing the Chief Healer, however, was still beyond his power. He didn't explain why, but the answer was obvious.

It was precisely people like Barnett who made up the bulk of magical Britain's upper hierarchy. Most department heads were cut from the same cloth, and they simply wouldn't allow the old man to be replaced. Each of them feared setting a precedent and becoming the next to be thrown out.

One didn't need to look far for examples: Ottaline Gambol, famous for proposing a Muggle train instead of Apparition to transport children to Hogwarts. The proposal provoked endless complaints from the upper hierarchy and aristocratic families: how could they transport their beloved children in such disgusting, unsanitary, unsafe, and, most importantly, humiliating Muggle transport? It was a slap in the face, an admission that Muggles were more clever than they were.

But no matter how fiercely they resisted, the train was introduced. And a few days after leaving her post, the woman was found murdered in her own home.

So Minchum wanted to avoid a similar fate and not risk his life, trying to have it both ways.

For that same reason, the Research Department was staffed only by people free of such foolish prejudices. There were even a few quite respected elderly wizards among them, but for the most part the department consisted of young people under forty.

They did their jobs properly, often using Muggle inventions and knowledge. In some areas, Muggles had advanced very far, and ignoring ready-made solutions would have been foolish and irrational, after verifying them, of course.

Harold's reasoning still appealed to Severus.

The man himself understood that those old bags of bones were dragging the country down. That was why, during his time as Minister, the number of such wizards in leadership had been falling each year. Of course, more of "the same kind" came to replace them.

But the vicious circle wasn't hard to break; you simply had to appoint your own people, or those not burdened by these prejudices, to high positions. More often than not, they were the very people already holding those positions, receiving council votes and supporting both the previous Minister, who had started all this, and the current one, who continued his work.

This surprised Severus a little, but he was more than satisfied with such a solution to a deeply rooted problem, so he didn't raise the question again.

He was also slightly embarrassed that he had considered the wizards of this world so stupid and shortsighted, when in fact they understood a great deal, even more than he did.

Just a few days later, he received another letter from that same Head Healer of St. Mungo's, asking him to come and talk. Naturally, no one had heard about that incident, which was hardly surprising, since it would have completely destroyed Barnett's reputation.

The second conversation was calmer. Barnett even asked for help with the equipment, more specifically with applying the runes needed to verify Severus's work, and Severus agreed.

So Severus ended up staying at the hospital until evening.

The artifacts required lengthy debugging, but he still found ways to amuse himself, driving Barnett into a fury by constantly reminding him of the incident and asking after his health, including whether the prostate massage had helped.

Of course, Barnett had neither forgotten nor forgiven Severus anything. On the contrary, he hated the young man more than ever. But after being summoned to the Minister's office the day before yesterday and having everything explained to him, he nearly died on the spot upon learning who stood behind this "young prodigy." He didn't even dare think about open revenge. But he would never forget the humiliation.

Severus himself didn't care.

He had already marked Barnett the moment he carried out the punishment. He wasn't worried about the old aristocrat's revenge at all; he could read his thoughts at any moment, or simply kill him, and it would be impossible to prove his guilt. Deprived of sustenance after the bearer's death, the mark would dissolve without a trace.

That was how the day ended.

Severus didn't explain how the equipment worked; everything was in his research, described in great detail.

As for the first results, Barnett promised to send them within a week, though he intended to stretch it to a month. But when reminded of a certain something, he abandoned that scheme and swore to finish the work as quickly as possible.

He had absolutely no desire to experience that pain a second time. He wasn't stupid; he understood that if a choice had to be made between them, the half-blood would be chosen, and his own lifeless body would be found in some alley.

So he decided to change his plan: finish faster, get rid of the boy, and then think about revenge. With these thoughts, he began studying the instructions in the company of three more Senior Healers, who were somewhat embarrassed to learn they would be working with Muggle equipment. They even thought Barnett had lost his mind, but they decided to keep their suspicions to themselves, not wanting to face the wrath of a clearly furious Head Healer.

Severus returned home and went on with his affairs, simultaneously working through the seventh-year material and preparing for the upcoming N.E.W.T.s.

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