Of course, Kettleburn had little interest in politics. He had disliked the man-eating beast since he was young.
His probing of Vaughn's thoughts at the moment was only because he was worried about the rumors circulating around the castle lately: that some Pure-blood families were trying to make overtures to Vaughn and Weasley.
Thinking about it, Kettleburn felt conflicted.
Even though he disliked politics, he knew that some rumors were just rumors, while others were actually indicators of the way the wind was blowing.
They were bait released deliberately by people with an agenda, meant to test how the subjects of the rumors—and the public—would react.
Kettleburn wasn't worried about the former. After all, Vaughn had spent the past few days here recording experiments and building up a database.
What worried him was how the young wizards would react.
About five days ago, when the rumors first appeared, students from every House except Slytherin had been skeptical of the claim that the "Pure-blood families were making overtures to Vaughn."
Everyone knew that the Weasley Family were "blood traitors," and that Vaughn, like Dumbledore, was sympathetic to Muggles.
But as the Hogwarts Board of Governors meeting dragged on in a deadlock over restoring the club's full functions, things began to change.
Especially the day before yesterday, when a bit of gossip suddenly surfaced: of the four committee members from Pure-blood families on the Board of Governors, only the Carrow Family had consistently voted against the proposal. The other three had abstained in several rounds of voting.
And so the mood had quietly shifted.
Nobody knew who besides the Carrows had voted against it. But since the vote was deadlocked and three Pure-blood families had abstained, perhaps it was worth cooperating with the Pure-bloods for the time being to get the proposal