As for the doctor's reaction, Iain did not think too deeply about it. He had known since childhood that not everyone possessed a super-brain as flawless as his own.
"No, no..." Healer Stello had clearly discovered something, though what exactly it was remained uncertain. Her whole demeanor looked unsettled, alarmed, almost shaken.
The kindly old scholar kept glancing at Dumbledore.
The old headmaster merely smiled and said nothing.
"Doctor, I want to see my brain. I can pay extra."
What Iain cared about most was whether he could get a picture of his brain to hang in his bedroom.
He repeated his request.
"Of course you may."
Healer Stello lifted her head from behind the lens and collected herself. She tapped the magnifying glass twice against a blank sheet of paper. At once, an image began to appear across the page. Not a photograph. Not a sketch. Rather, a kind of magically projected cross-sectional image of a brain that seemed to pulse and tremble on the paper itself.
The equipment in this hospital really was advanced.
Iain's brain rose and fell on the page like a breathing sea. Its folds shifted under the light in shades of pink and grey, some deep, some pale.
"Ah. Just as perfect as I imagined."
Iain took the sheet and held it in both hands, looking down at his brain as it gently throbbed on the page.
"It's extremely beautiful."
The young wizard was genuinely entranced, as though admiring a masterpiece of his own making.
"Child..."
Healer Stello gave Iain a long, deep look.
Then she opened a drawer and took out a small bottle of potion. It was dark purple, with a dim, heavy sheen beneath the lamp. She poured a little into a cup and handed it to him.
"Drink this and tell me what it tastes like."
This was clearly another round of testing. Iain accepted the cup and tipped it back in one gulp. He smacked his lips, frowned once, and then relaxed.
"Orange."
Iain answered honestly.
Healer Stello's pen paused above the paper.
She looked at him again. There was something in that look, some kind of surprise, though no one could have said exactly what it meant.
"I see. The room next door is the waiting room. You may sit there for a while. There are sweets."
Healer Stello pointed toward the door, clearly intending to send Iain out.
Naturally, the young wizard had no intention of refusing.
"Maybe I've got some terminal illness and you don't want me to know."
That was, after all, the standard Muggle-hospital procedure. Still, Iain said it only as a joke.
"Rest assured, your body is in excellent health. I have never seen a healthier one."
Healer Stello's praise sounded utterly sincere.
"Mm."
Iain jumped down from the chair, still holding the picture of his pulsating brain. He made it to the door, then paused and turned back.
"Doctor, you have a lovely way of speaking. Next time I need my brain examined, I'll come to you again."
Iain was always happy to pay for compliments. The whole point of money, in the end, was to buy happiness.
Whatever form that happiness happened to take.
Healer Stello's mouth twitched.
"Let us hope there won't be a next time."
She sighed, then looked toward Dumbledore.
Iain left the room.
The office fell quiet again. Only the faint hum of the magical instruments remained, along with Dumbledore's steady breathing.
Healer Stello sat in her chair with both hands folded on the desk, looking straight at Dumbledore. Her expression had changed from kindliness to gravity.
"Headmaster Dumbledore, there is nothing wrong with that child's physical health. There is nothing wrong with him psychologically either. His soul is also complete."
She paused.
"However, there is something abnormal in his mind."
Her finger tapped the desk lightly.
"That sort of abnormality... I have seen it only in one kind of person before. Very reclusive old wizards. The kind who have not left their homes for decades."
"Any information from the outside world that does not align with their understanding is either ignored by them or twisted until it fits."
Healer Stello did, indeed, sound highly professional.
At this, Dumbledore nodded slightly.
"What might cause such a thing?"
He asked with perfect humility.
But Healer Stello stared hard at the old headmaster instead of answering immediately. They held one another's gaze for a long moment before she finally spoke.
"The cause may be something only you would know. In the field of biological alchemy, even Nicolas Flamel does not rival you."
Her voice dropped so low it sounded like she was speaking a secret that should never be voiced aloud.
"Hm?"
For a brief instant, Dumbledore's surprise looked entirely genuine.
Healer Stello flipped the report to its final page and handed it to him as he rose and crossed to her desk.
"I sincerely hope you learned this only today, just as I did."
She could not tell whether the man before her was lying.
Dumbledore took the report.
His gaze moved across the page from the first line to the last, then from the last back to the first. His expression did not change in the slightest. No frown. No movement of the mouth. No tightening of the pupils.
He simply looked.
No one could have guessed what thoughts were passing through the mind of that great wizard.
The office remained quiet for a very long time.
"This... is unexpected."
Dumbledore set the report down and lifted his eyes to Healer Stello. Behind the half-moon spectacles, those pale blue eyes curved slightly.
Not in a smile.
Rather, with the depth of someone thinking very, very hard.
"I am sorry, Maylene. This differs too greatly from what I anticipated."
His voice was soft.
"Drawing you into this was never part of some design on my part."
Healer Stello looked at the Headmaster of Hogwarts and did not answer at once. Her lips moved several times, as though she was trying to decide how best to say what came next.
"You must take responsibility for this, whatever the reason may be for that child having a brain that does not belong to any human being."
Her tone was heavy now, and not without a trace of panic.
Dumbledore said nothing.
His eyes lowered. Half-hidden beneath his lids, they seemed to hold some deep, submerged light rising up from a very dark place.
"I understand."
Dumbledore let out a sigh as he answered.
His face held traces of hesitation and conflict.
"Then do what you must do for me."
Healer Stello pressed him urgently, almost forcing the issue.
At that, Dumbledore's eyes flickered. He raised a hand and drew the wand concealed up his sleeve.
Elder.
Fifteen inches.
The tip of the Elder Wand pointed toward Healer Stello.
The old headmaster moved very slowly. So slowly that the motion seemed like frames of a film advancing one by one.
"Obliviate."
A silver-white spell flowed from the wand-tip without a sound.
It was like moonlight.
Like mist.
Like the first pale sunlight touching snow in the morning.
Gentle.
And impossible to resist.
Ten minutes later, Dumbledore had sealed away the examination results so that only he himself knew them. Then he opened the door and stepped out of the doctor's office, visibly weighed down.
"Thank you, thank you."
"May Merlin, my ancestor, always walk at your side."
"Yes. That's exactly the one I wanted."
The young wizard's voice drifted up from the end of the corridor. He had not waited in the waiting room after all, but seemed instead to be conducting some sort of transaction with other hospital staff.
A bag of Galleons in exchange for a stack of medical certificates.
At that moment, Iain had several dozen such notes in his hands, apparently covering nearly every excuse-worthy or leave-worthy ailment one could imagine.
"?????"
Dumbledore froze on the spot yet again.
"What are you doing?"
He hurried over, frightening off one healer who had apparently been willing to sell off professional ethics by the piece.
"If I've already come all the way here, then if I don't pick up a few certificates on the way, wouldn't that make the whole trip a waste?"
The young wizard's voice rang out full of righteous energy, as though he had developed some entirely new collector's hobby.
He proudly displayed the medical notes to Dumbledore.
And at the sight of one page after another, Dumbledore stood stiff as if struck by lightning.
Soul-loss syndrome.
Partial soul deficiency.
Dragon pox.
Aftereffects of the Cruciatus Curse...
And then even lycanthropy.
No, really.
Why did he want that one too?
If one was collecting illnesses,
did one really not care what kind?