"Of course I understand."
Bellows was not particularly surprised. This had been within his expectations all along.
It was not impossible for a Ravenclaw to lose his head, but the odds of him staying that way for years were infinitesimally close to zero.
Manus had offered his help because there was something he wanted in return, especially when that help was so precious.
No one would help someone else wholeheartedly for no reason. If that really happened, it would be terrifying, because it meant you had no idea what the other person wanted from you.
Or perhaps you simply could not tell what they had already gained from you.
If you could not tell, you naturally had no way of weighing the gains and losses. Getting the short end of the stick or paying some money was a minor matter by comparison. At least his family really did have some money.
And over the past few years, Bellows had come to understand Manus's character fairly well. He could be described as a man of remarkably single-minded interests.
Whenever he did something that seemed incomprehensible, looking at it in terms of study and research would almost always provide an answer.
That made it obvious what his family had to offer that would attract Manus: an extremely rare case confirmed by St. Mungo's, a survivor of an Obscurus attack who still bore traces of the attack but had not died.
This case could rightly be called unique worldwide. His mother was currently the only living example.
Bellows looked calm, and he genuinely felt that way too. It was just as he had said when he first chose to trust the potion Manus had produced—young though Manus was, he was already quite an authority in the field of potion-making.
Without Manus's healing potion,