Chapter 83: Harry Potter : Chapter 82: Full Moon III
The Body rooted us in the here and now: through our body, we perceived the surroundings, and through our bodies, the intent was turned into action.
Sure, connected as it was with both Magic and Mind, the Body of a mage could do more than a muggle's, but the idea was that the Body was both the tangible facet of Mind and Magic, and just another piece of flesh strolling in the world.
...
With another deep breath, I firmly pushed aside the memory of Hagrid's father being turned into a tree, his soul dedicated to 'helping me' even as its magic was turned into what I had designed the ritual for, and his mind forever warped to only understand rain and sun.
I need to try the homenum revelio on Minerva when she's a cat, and ask Tom to try the same. If it showed her as a human, then it would mean that the spell detected something more than the Body, if it did not, it would indicate that the spell used as a base a 'like knows like'-principle.
The battery of potions that I had Marie on was meant to push forward the transformation, to unify the common traits between werewolf and human, while smoothing over the glaring differences.
The effect of the curse on the body was obvious, as they were on the mind. I was stumped as far as considering where the impact on her Magic went, mostly because she was a muggle before being bitten, and the only magic she could aspire to feel was the one cast upon her by others.
Still, Tom's studies on inferi, while somewhat troubling in the way everything related even tangentially to death was in the hands of the boy with the potential of becoming Voldemort, had given me a hint, and possibly a way to trick the werewolf into tying up its own noose.
An inferius was traditionally a human body reanimated: the existence of mummies capable of somewhat cursing their surroundings meant that there was a magic to a dead human body that wasn't limited at stitching it back together.
The existence of ghosts meant that the mind could exist without a soul, as they had never been devoured by dementors, who apparently didn't impact them at all, at least given the tomes that I had perused from the Restricted Section.
That is to say, an inferius had everything a human did, sans the soul: that giant, impossible-to-fill hole in the center of their being, pushed the inferi towards mindless hungering fury. They tore apart and bit every living thing on their path with ridiculous ease because that lack of a soul arrayed everything they were in a single direction. At least, that was the theory.
That was why I had found and killed a deer with one of the fangs I had kept from Paul's body, only to immediately, if with some difficulty, bring the thing back as an inferius.
Some of the blood of the deer had been used in the process of securing the quicksilver, rune-engraved collar around Marie's neck. Even if the once-alive animal had been an herbivore, its existence as an undead thing without a soul turned its existence into a raging mess of hunger for warm, living flesh.
The sun finished dropping beneath the horizon, and the full moon, even if hidden by the clouds, sang its song to all who had the ears to hear.
I backed away from my position and cloaked myself in that combination of charms that I had perfected to keep myself hidden from hunting werewolves, witnessing for what I hoped would be the last time Marie's fell to the transformation.
Bones broke, skin tore, ligaments warped even as the failing human body was taken over by the inner beast.
Far off into the woods that I had carefully scoured from anything bigger than a rat, my deer-inferus jerked at hearing the howling of the werewolf, its dead heart thrumming as the potion I had poured into it, realized as a distillation of a complex compound that used the same fang I had plunged into the deer to kill it, resonated with the calling for the hunt.
Maybe I should have used a human body. I cast aside the thought as Marie finished her howl and set off into the woods. If I can't find out a cure that doesn't require the killing of a human being, then it's not a cure at all.
In the pitch dark of the leaden clouds that covered the full moon from sight, the Supersensor Charm was the only thing that allowed me to move, even if only the potions that I had taken allowed me to not succumb to the too-loud, too-piercing howls of the snarling Marie.
I ducked under branches, ran across streams of muddy water created by the rain, and jumped across veritable streams that crisscrossed the Forest of Dean. Silent and fast as a shadow, I tallied the hunting werewolf, knowing that my deer-inferus was hardly as powerless as its original form had been.
In the dark, the two creatures circled widely, not quite managing to immediately find each other across the great distances that they had to cross, until it happened, and for the first time, Marie wasn't the one doing the pouncing.
Maybe a couple of hours after the transformation, the two cursed creatures met.
As soon as the inferus realized that there was something living for it to devour, it moved: limbs not meant to exercise that kind of strength snapped as it jumped, only for the yellowish trails of magic animating it to knit them back together.
It crossed the distance in a blur only matched by the werewolf, who hardly needed to stop to think when prey jumped towards its maw.
Foregoing the antlers in its entirety, the impossibly enchanted deer met the werewolf tooth to fang, and even as the magic implicit in the cursed Marie rendered the inferus, the magic that I had used to animate it repaired it, allowing it to close its teeth around some skin on the werewolf's snout.
As I quietly moved to observe from the branches of a close-by tree, magic the only thing that allowed me to distinguish anything in the pitch black, stormy night, the inferus shook its head violently, easily ripping the flesh from the werewolf that clawed its way through the flank of the beast, the pain only making Marie more furious.
The cursed wounds inflicted by the werewolf failed utterly to impose themselves on something that wasn't alive, and so, even as it fell apart, the deer was forcefully repaired, smacking its antlers across Marie's torso only for the two creatures to roll one over another in a flurry of limbs made lucid by the rain.
The two created divots in the ground where the antlers or claws dug into the muddy soil, and while the deer kept healing, its undead nature simply untouched by the nature of Marie's curse, the werewolf, eventually slowed down.
I palmed my wand with a grimace. If I intervene everything goes tits-up.
Before I could truly choose, the werewolf's instinct drove Marie to the umpteenth attack: her snout dove after a deep wound that was already in the process of being repaired, and her maw closed mercilessly upon the heart that was the target of the hunt guided by the seal engraved on her quicksilver collar.
The reanimation of the inferus unraveled as the fulcrum I used for the enchantments, modified extensively by my potions, was devoured.
More importantly, Paul's werewolf fang which had been used both to kill the deer and as a primal component of the distilled brew, realized its promised purpose, and mirrored the werewolf that was Marie.
By destroying the heart, the werewolf had, as far as magic was concerned, effectively devoured itself. The curse snapped upon itself with the ferocity of a rabid beast, with the same inexorable might of a steel trap, as the truest nature of both the werewolf and the hunt were matched one against the other.
There was no visible effect besides the breaking apart of the deer, and Marie remained perfectly still. I knew what was going on because I had planned it, but until the moon was erased by the dawn, there would be no certainty.
Under the full moon, hidden as it was by the stormy sky, I remained quiet and unseen among the branches of a sturdy tree, while immobile, the woman I had promised to help had the curse forcefully eating itself.
The human and the werewolf were in flux now, both existing at the same time even as the curse aimed at the first could no longer target her, while Marie's essence, her very soul, wavered at the center of an effective ouroboros.
Unaware of it, the curse had hunted itself, and once the night painstakingly slowly dragged itself to an end, the sun rose almost unnoticed, still hidden by the dark, stormy sky.
And with the dawn, the curse that had been devouring itself fell apart, while Marie began to change.
...
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