At that, Snape's expressionless face twitched a few times. "Why do you believe it too—"
As he spoke, he suddenly remembered something and frowned slightly. "You suspect that the problem with your Aether ritual some time ago was related to the curse?"
Snape, as Slytherin's Head of House, naturally had the authority to know why Vaughn had suddenly moved out of the castle and gone to Hagrid's hut to recuperate some time ago.
Vaughn nodded. "Although neither Dumbledore nor I found anything wrong with the Aether-traveling ritual I used at the time, that's precisely the biggest problem. If we simply chalk it up to coincidence, it would seem far too much of a 'coincidence.'"
"Could it be that you're overthinking it?"
After pondering for a while, Snape spoke with some hesitation. "I've always opposed you getting too close to Dumbledore. That old man is always suspicious of everything—"
"Sometimes, being suspicious isn't a bad thing, Professor. Take last semester, before the matter with Quirinus Quirrell happened. Only Dumbledore firmly believed Tom was still alive. He had no evidence at all then; it was entirely his suspicion and caution that led him to the correct judgment."
"—"
Snape said nothing more.
Whenever the subject turned to his former master, he always seemed inclined to avoid it. He shifted his gaze away from Vaughn's face and toward the glass bottle in Vaughn's hand instead. "I heard you're planning to develop a universal substrate to carry the properties of medicinal ingredients?"
"Ah, yes. You read my paper, so you should know that I've always been troubled by one issue: the properties of medicinal ingredients extracted through the Magic Extraction Method cannot exist independently. Even after being extracted, they still need a material medium to sustain their activity, just as they did when they