Curse Breaking

Having dropped off her charges, Rowan climbed all the way up to the sixth-floor classroom A only to find a note that read, "We'll be on the first floor in classroom 13A for Ancient Studies."

Letting out a slew of curses, Rowan climbs all the way back down to the first floor of the castle and to said classroom 13A. She was rather late at this point as she entered the classroom to only find everyone standing up against the wall and staring at her.

Professor Salah is dressed in her traditional dark blue robes with golden intricate designs on the upper bodice and sleeves. Professor Salah was a curved witch with olive-skinned and kohl-lined eyes. Her honey-colored eyes popped out that much more as her plump lips frowned. Her dark hair had tiny woven golden beaded tassels that swayed unhappily as they musically tinkled with her every movement.

"You are late, Miss Prince," Professor Salah flatly said. "Please go stand by the wall with the rest of the students and do not touch anything."

Rowan briefly glances at the various objects spread throughout the room on the stone floor but went to stand next to Severus. She ignored Barrett Boone and his two friends. Theoretically, she was still supposed to be angry at the breakup. Which to be honest she really should be mad. She had been the one to be made out into the villain, while everyone had sided on Barrett's side. When he was the one who cheated on her first! (And yes, they had never been in an actual relationship, but the correct thing would have been to warn her rather than suddenly dropping the bomb off on her.)

Professor Salah clears her throat and in a husky accented voice says, "As I was saying before, you've all learned ancient basic scripts the year before. These are low-level cursed objects. To be curse breakers or even Auror's, you will need to learn how to break curses on various objects. As such, I will allow you all to touch said objects and attempt to break the curse using the skills we have been learning during the previous year.

I do not expect any of you to succeed but to merely attempt the said feat. For homework, I expect all the ancient scripts used along with spells to be written down and explain why said functions could have worked and why they did not break the curse. Also, write a proposal on how to break the said curse on the item for the next class. You shall all be attempting said written proposal."

Severus who had been giving Barrett the stink eye whispers the moment Professor Salah gestures for them to move. "So, why were you so late?"

Rowan glares at Severus that screams, "Idiot, no one told me, I had to climb the tower and then back down again."

Severus sheepishly grins as they all kneel on the floor with objects and chalk. Chalk to write potential ideas on the floor as they had their wands at their side ready to attempt to break the curse. Once everyone was seated next to an item, Professor Salah kept a close eye on them. Despite the objects being cursed with low-level spells, they could still potentially seriously harm any one of her students.

Rowan just studied the object rather thoughtfully. As promised by Sir Knight Prince the use of the spell, Oculus Specula, had protected her left eye, but caused the rest of her senses to become that much more sensitive. Despite not being able to see the magic in front of her, she could clearly feel it. A mental image gradually formed in her mind of the curses' true form.

The three other Ravenclaw seventh years could much more easily sense the magic inside the objects as their magic had already fully awakened as they were already sixteen years of age. They quickly got work leaving Rowan and Severus still observing the cursed artifacts. However, not long after Severus began to work leaving Rowan still carefully studying the artifact before her.

Most fifth-year students are not capable of sensing such delicate magic. Unlike Rowan, Severus's talent for potion making came partially from their Prince lineage. Just like Sir Knight Prince had explained the magic veins founding within the Prince males allowed Severus to control a vast amount of power with great delicacy. And the other portion came from sheer talent and experience.

The art of Potion making was difficult because a single error could potentially destroy the potion in the process of being brewed. The art of being patient and attentive were the skills of great potioneers. Talent could be found anywhere but these two characteristics were what defined a mediocre potioneer from a potions master. It was not something that could be taught but could only be gained through hard work. And Severus had acquired said skill early on.

With a loud sigh, Rowan finally got to work. After failing to find a single knot in the curse, she decided to visualize the curse as a puzzle. She was rather good at solving puzzles.

With this new frame of mind, Rowan began to make some progress. Trying out various types of puzzles to attempt to solve the curse, she finally settled on one that showed promise, a sliding block puzzle. Parts of the curse had to be moved around until everything lined up neatly much like a sliding puzzle and the curse could be broken. With that idea in mind, she slowly began to prod the cursed object before her with her magic using an ancient script. It took her more a few tries and several failures to finally figure out what worked best to cause the magic found within the curse to move like a sliding block puzzle.

Once, Rowan grasped the correct technique everything fell into place. A sliding block puzzle was solved rather easily, one just had to start with the first row and column and then work from there. With a pleased expression, she works her way through the puzzle until finally the sliding block puzzle neatly lines up and the curse breaks with a faint flash.

Feeling that her legs are sore, Rowan unsteadily climbs to her feet to rub her sore knees. She realizes everyone is staring at her including Professor Salah, since the class was close to ending, and the others had begun to take notes of their attempts to show Professor Salah.

"Miss Prince, would you care to explain to the classroom, what you just did?" Professor Salah said with disbelief.

"I just solved a sliding block puzzle," Rowan explained as the lightbulb went on in Severus's face.

Instantly Severus got to work, while Professor Salah and everyone else remained in obvious confusion. "May I use the board to explain?" Rowan asked.

Professor Salah gestures to Rowan to go ahead as Rowan draws a 5x5 puzzle with a total of twenty blocks. She numbers all the blocks in random order and says, "How would one go about solving this type of puzzle, where one can only slide the boxes into place to rearrange the blocks into numerical order?"

Seeing their blank glances, Rowan proceeds to explain how to go about solving a slide blocking puzzle via a methodical method. No matter how complex the sliding puzzle is if one started in the right place the sliding block puzzle could be solved. She begins to show them examples before putting the chalk down.

"That's all I did," Rowan finally said. "I just started breaking the curse from a fixed point and worked my way from there until the curse broke."

"Utterly genius!" Professor Salah murmured. "This is a revolutionary technique that will surely change the very foundation of curse breaking!"

Rowan makes a wry face and says, "Professor Salah, I didn't come up with this technique. This is a type of mental, mathematical muggle puzzle. The credit properly goes to Noyes Chapman, the American puzzle maker."

Professor Salah suddenly recalls that Rowan and Severus had been raised as half-bloods for their early life. Naturally, neither of them thought quite the same as wizards. And it would seem especially in Rowan's case.

"In that case, I shall credit the muggle puzzle maker," Professor Salah. "I hope you don't mind if I publish a paper on my findings, Miss Prince."

"Not at all Professor," Rowan firmly replied. "Curse breaking though interesting and useful as it relates to Spell Crafting, but I shall not be specializing in said branch for a career."

A flash of light causes them all to turn around to see Severus proudly climbing onto his feet. "Well, that was quite simple once I got the hang of it," Severus smugly explained as he brushed the dust off his trousers.

Professor Salah makes a wry face and says, "It would seem that we have just witnessed the second proof that the method works. I shall expect the two of you to write an essay on the subject. For the next class period, the two of you will be tested on several low-level curses for the next class period while the rest of the class practices this new method on a single artifact."

The bell thankfully rings, before Professor Salah can say anything more. Rowan scurries away fast as she can as she had to pick up the first years and take them to History of Magic, before rushing to Charms. And Professor Flitwick better not pull the same trick that Professor Salah did on her!

Still, as Rowan and Severus made their way up to Charms, a small thought came to mind, Riddle's curse on the DADA. Such a curse should be physically present somewhere, but despite having explored most of Hogwarts including Dumbledore's office, she had never sensed any such lingering curses. However, the curse was very much real. So exactly, how was the curse was sustaining itself, or was there something more to the curse than initially met the eye?

Either way that meant only more research, which Rowan simply did not have time for., when in doubt, cheat. She would just have to be clever about it but Aunt Georgine ought to have a better idea as Aunt Georgine was in Egypt for a time and knew more about wards than even Dumbledore. And curses were rather similar to curses in their own way, but instead of building a shield to defend, a curse was exactly the opposite, a sword to attack.

It was an idea that bore merit, and with that thought in mind, Rowan and Severus made their way into their Charms classroom. Hopefully, Charms would not be too bad. But then again, that may be nigh improbable to hope for considering that their O.W.L.'s were this year.