After spending two consecutive days immersed in lengthy, complicated medical records, Vincent had gained a fairly thorough understanding of St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries' injury classification system and medical record-writing standards.
He repeatedly compared several cases from five to eight years ago. The patients' injuries had been extremely complex, and he noticed one detail: whenever the most critical stage of treatment was reached, the detailed records abruptly became brief and formulaic, lacking the usual daily or weekly entries.
That was highly unusual. For injuries whose diagnoses were themselves vague, the treatment process should have involved constant trial and error. Without prolonged observation, how could the patients possibly have been cured?
This absence of records resembled a summary written up afterward, or a deliberate simplification of the process.
More importantly, the attending healer in all these cases without detailed treatment records was the same person.
"Intern," Scrimgeour asked without looking up at the young healer helping sort the medical files beside him, "for cases like unknown curse corrosion, is it normal for the records to become this brief in the middle to later stages of treatment?"
The intern leaned over for a look and frowned. "Um... it really isn't common."
Vincent pointed at the signature at the bottom of the file, where the attending healer's name was written. "Where is this Aiden Selwyn? I need to speak with him."
The intern looked troubled. "Director Scrimgeour, Healer Selwyn seems to have resigned two or three years ago. I'm not entirely sure about the details."
He was only an intern, after all. Further questioning would yield no useful leads.
Still, the surname Selwyn sounded familiar. It seemed to be one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight Pure-blood families that had always kept a low profile.
Scrimgeour forcefully tapped the signature on the