Her answer wasn't entirely unexpected, but it lacked the depth he'd been hoping for. Understanding the creatures better was what was implied by the term study, wasn't it? It was far from their only objective in housing them and experimenting with them, however. What would be the point of studying a creature like that, which one would never, ever encounter in the wild, so to speak? There was nothing to be gained for the magical society by better understanding the things themselves. It was what the creatures represented, the concepts that they were tied to, which gave them their empirical value.

"Wrong, Miss Sleptova," he said with a shake of his head. "We don't study them for their own sake; we study them to understand thought. Memory. Emotion. And while that might have bearing on certain types of magic, as you mentioned, their purpose is much grander than that. We don't only study magic in the Department of Mysteries. We study the world itself. We seek to understand all of the things that lesser men ascribe to god or providence. We manipulate the fabric of the universe. We interrogate the assumptions that others take for granted. We go beyond the limitations of comfort of the unliberated mind," he concluded, clasping his hands before him on the table. "Is that what you had in mind, Miss Sleptova, when you applied with our department?"