"...The British aristocracy?" he asks, supposing that Watson would have been about as ready to publish a story like that as Shakespeare to suggest that Katherine of Aragon had been treated appallingly. "Perhaps, in the food chain, but I'm not at all convinced she cares about intelligence."
"It's not something invented by mankind for convenience," Severus tells him, with a hint of loathing for the very idea of thinking of magic so cavalierly. "Magic is a force--several forces, in fact. It's part of the makeup of the world, like chemistry. We use it practically because we are a curious, tool-using species, and that's what we do with forces when we've once developed the ability to perceive and tap into interact with them. Our use of magic is defined by humanity's nature, not magic's."
Although Severus barely follows a word of this, his eyes are fixed on Holmes's hands, and he repeats his motions precisely.
Fortunately it's still vacation, so I have a few more days to fix this stupidity.