Shawn held the Philosopher's Stone before his eyes and studied it again for a while before putting it away helplessly.
Unless he used it directly to make the Elixir of Life or turn stone into gold, his current knowledge of alchemy was not enough to decipher how the Philosopher's Stone worked.
He had been far too simplistic in his thinking.
It was like giving an ordinary person a plane to study. Without fairly advanced mechanical knowledge, they would never figure out its inner workings.
It seemed he could only pin his hopes on Old Percy's still-unfinished second-stage experiment. Only after squeezing more theoretical knowledge out of him could Shawn truly begin studying this pinnacle of alchemical creation.
The night passed uneventfully. Over the next few days, aside from continuing his usual research, Shawn spent a few hours each day handling Pentagram business.
He placed this year's graduates in various positions, further tightening his control over the Ministry of Magic and the Pentagram while injecting fresh, energetic blood into both.
For Hermione's summer arrangements in particular, Shawn gave the young witch the same treatment as Alice, letting her get involved with the Pentagram ahead of time.
Although both entered the Department of Government Affairs, their work differed.
Alice took over a small portion of Lucius's authority, both lulling Old Fawley into complacency and providing a measure of checks and balances.
Hermione, meanwhile, was put in full charge of investigating young witches and wizards who had gone missing across various regions over the years.
It was a vast, tedious undertaking involving mountains of paperwork. Hermione led the ten people assigned to her and threw herself into it from her very first day on the job.
When Shawn explained the most likely tragic fate of those missing children, the kindhearted young witch had