Verifying a medicinal potion required a professional—at the very least, a healer with the appropriate license.
Normally, this was a rather cumbersome process, involving applications, appointments, and so on. Healers were all busy; even when they had some free time, they could not simply leave their posts, but neither could you encroach on their time off.
However, Manus had not yet graduated, and Hogwarts happened to have a healer who met every requirement: Madam Pomfrey.
After hearing what Madam Pomfrey said, Manus's first thought was:
Slughorn worked that fast?
How long had it even been since he handed his paper to Slughorn?
Even if Slughorn had done nothing else after receiving the paper and submitted it straightaway, it should not have cleared all the mandatory steps by now.
And given Slughorn's personality, there was no way he would submit Manus's paper without doing anything else.
Expecting this professor to throw himself fearlessly into battle in the name of justice might be a bit of a stretch, but when it came to smoothing things over through his connections while enhancing his own standing in the process...
You could always count on Slughorn.
Manus made no effort to conceal his curiosity about the unusually rapid progress. Perhaps there was something going on that he knew nothing about; he could not just let it slide without understanding it.
"Hmm? You didn't know? Oh... I suppose that's possible."
Madam Pomfrey was surprised at first, but after taking a closer look at Manus, she remembered that, despite his rising fame, he was indeed still a fourth-year student at Hogwarts.
Merlin...
After a silent exclamation, Madam Pomfrey began explaining things to Manus.
As it turned out, medicinal potions followed a separate procedure within the field of potions. Traditional Potions Masters generally looked down on frivolous concoctions