章 143: Chapter 140

It was a while before he found the Rust brown colored tome that he'd initially mistaken for an anatomy book.

The name read, Exploranthus Viscera by Ralzinys el Sathar

Harry restrained himself from grabbing the book straight off the shelf, and he activated mage sight.

For a second it was all almost blindingly white, and Harry had to squint really hard to look for what he was searching. And sure enough, after his eyes adjusted to the brightness, he saw small magenta orbs around each of the books.

The books were warded. Harry quickly activated Runic Burnout.

Runic Burnout Lv-6 (21%)

A precise sucking of magic from a ward by using it to refill one's own core. It starts causing damage to HP when magic continues to be sucked after the MP is full. A common way to get around it is to use up mana as fast as it comes in.

Do you wish to use it on: Common Alarm Ward?

YES/NO

Harry burned a small flame in his hand to keep the mana flowing and pressed yes. The ward quickly disappeared, and Harry pulled the book out of the shelf before promptly dropping into an ID, where he started going through what had happened in the memory and matching it up with what he was reading.

When Morgana had arrived, Ravenclaw had already had the ritual to convert the babies into house elves ready. But she hadn't known that Morgana was going to suggest the Pain Curse to control the house elves.

That meant that the ritual to make the house elves, the 'Ritual of Sacrifice' that Morgana had mentioned, was separate from the Pain Curse itself, which seemed to be the root of the so-called 'slave bond' that house elves had.

So all Harry had to do was find how and what that Pain Curse was, and he'd have made considerable progress towards his eventual goal of freeing the house elves from slavery.

He found the spell somewhere along the middle of the book.

Curse #397

Dynastic Permanent Pain Curse**

Popular amongst nomads and feuding families, this curse causes pain of medium degree in the head region. The pain is reminiscent to a constant blinding headache.

The reason for this spell's uniqueness is the ease with which one can make it travel along to the future generation of the target. With a simple ritual and a potion, the entire bloodline will be infected.

This spell has fallen out of use due to the fact that the constant flow of magic in a wizard's body eliminates the effects of the curse very soon. But despite the effects being eliminated, it passes on to the child from parent and makes it feel pain for a few weeks after birth before its own body's magic eliminates the effects. And thus the cycle continues.

Symptoms:

Blinding pain (Doesn't last long unless cast on animals without constant flow of magic in the body, in which case the pain is permanent)

Children born with this curse often have a deformed and abnormal head and may have mental retardation, poor motor function, poor speech and some abnormal facial features unless the curse is not fought off.

**Incantation & Counter-curse unknown

Of course! House elves had no constant flow of magic in their body, which was why their pain never went away!

This curse fit all the symptoms of house elves perfectly. Everything from the pain, to the poor speech to the motor functions!

Everything fit!

And what was even more, was that he was pretty sure that even Muggles had found something pretty similar to this curse!

He opened his inventory and pulled out one of the few Biology books he had, an encyclopedia of human diseases and ailments he'd nicked from the Surrey Library.

Flipping over to the Genetic Diseases section he flipped through the pages until he found what he was looking for.

Autosomal Dominant Microcephaly

It is a medical condition in which the brain does not develop properly resulting in a smaller than normal head. Microcephaly may be present at birth or it may develop in the first few years of life. Often people with the disorder have an intellectual disability, poor motor function, poor speech, near constant headache, abnormal facial features, seizures, and dwarfism.

It was almost a word for word match! Almost as if the curse was created as a way to give someone the disease. Or maybe the disease had inspired the curse. They were too similar to not be related.

Which was quite possible, now that Harry thought about it.

His earlier hypothesis, which he'd made only moments after emerging from that horrifying memory, was being proven right. His healing ability couldn't heal some Ancient magic Ritual thingy's effects, but it could definitely heal a disease.

Ping!

Quest Success!

Sneak into the Ministry library and find out more about the House Elf curse!

Rewards,

10,000 Exp

5 stat points

Harry waved the window away and closed the book and leaned against a wall as he considered his next move.

He could just get a bunch of house elves together and heal them one by one with his own healing capabilities, assuming he even could heal them, but that somehow just didn't seem practical or functional. He knew enough genetics to know that if even one house elf didn't get the treatment and then went on to reproduce, the entire elf population would be back under the curse in a few generations.