18 Astoria Greengrass

"We should get going too," said Kenneth.

"Do you want me to come with you?" asked Nagini.

"It's okay, I'll manage," he replied, then he kissed her on the cheek and took Astoria's hand and started to walk down the Alley. While they were walking down there were few weird looks Kenneth got from his fellow shop owners, almost as if they were looking at first hand juicy gossip. He simply explained to them that he was babysitting her for a while.

Astoria was getting more and more nervous as they walked, so Kenneth bought her a pink, heart shape cotton candy, the little girls nervousness washed away as though it never existed in the first place.

"Uncle Jason, where are we going?" asked Astoria.

"The person who will help you is not in the Diagon Alley, we are going to go meet him," he explained patiently.

"Will it hurt?" she asked.

"You won't feel a__," Kenneth picked up two blue magical signatures following him, he knew it must be two people who were hired by the Greengrass family, "__thing."

He simply ignored them and walked out of the Leakey Cauldron and walked into an empty side alley. The moment they entered the alley, Kenneth's channelled magic into his feet and summoned a spatial rune that covered both of them, and with a silver flash, they were both gone. After the two that was following them came into the alley knew that they had probably apparated. Having lost their target, they both went back to report to their employer.

When they arrived in front of the experimental lab in Albania, Astoria was looking around curiously, so Kenneth explained, "the person who will help you is in there." The little girl tightened her grip in his hand nervously. Once they were inside the lab, and Astoria got comfortable with the homely setting inside the lab, Kenneth handed her two potions and explained, "You must drink both potions Astoria, one potion is a sleeping potion and the other is a numbing potion, it will allow you not to feel pain when you are being cured."

The little girl nodded and asked nervously, "Uncle Jason will be with me after I fall asleep?"

"Of course, I won't leave your side for even for a minute," said Kenneth, when Astoria smiled and nodded at the response, Kenneth asked curiously at the little girl that seems to whole heartedly trusted him, "Are you not afraid that I am a bad person?"

The little girl giggled and said, "Uncle Jason is so silly, you bought me candy! How can you be bad!?"

Kenneth's lip twitched and he made a mental note to himself, "If I ever have kids, the first thing I'll be teaching them is to not trust uncles that give them candy!" Then he watched as Astoria gulp down both potion and said, "Yuck." Kenneth then watched as he slowly falls into sleep.

He carried her in to the middle of the lab and laid her down on the floor, he waited for five minutes for the potions to completely kick in. He monitored her breathing, temperature, heart rate and blood pressure as he waited. Once he made sure the two potions had started working completely. He created a black and white flame from both his hand and placed it on her. The two flames engulfed her, but she did not move an inch, Kenneth sighed as he knew the potions did their work.

He activated his soul eye and completely memorised the entire process of transformation. As he expected the transformation only took 24 hours, at the end of the transformation Astoria started transforming, her hair started to turn white and fur started growing from her, her developed paws as her hand and feet grew longer and a tail behind her. Magic started to get devoured by her for a good hour, then an illusionary rune that represented time manifested in front of her chest. Kenneth felt there was something different in him as well, when he looked inside his mind scape, he found another morning star symbol floating next to Nagini's symbol. When he looked at Astoria again, he found that she had the same silvery symbol on her forehead. At the end of the transformation, what was left was a cute and elegant looking Raiju in the size of a jeep. He knew the size was because Astoria was still 6 years old. When she grew up the Raiju will be in the size of a dragon. After making sure the transformation had completed, he casted the spell to wake her up.

The Raiju woke up, it had blue eyes. She sleepily looked around and got up to her feet. She looked at Kenneth confusedly wondering how and why she was looking down on him. She saw Kenneth smiled at her and conjure a large mirror in front of her. She instantly looked at her Raiju form and freaked out and back away from the mirror fasts.

Kenneth said, "Astoria dear, calm down." Astoria calmed down after hearing his voice and looked at Kenneth, waiting for him to talk.

He explained as simple as possible so the 6-year-old could understand him, "Listen carefully dear, the curse is actually a blessing, it gives a witch stronger magic power, it also allowed the witch to transform into an animal form. In your case it's a wolf. Aunt Nagini actually has a snake form. Do you understand what I said so far?" To which Astoria nodded. He continued, "you can transform back into a human, just close your eyes and focus wanting to be a human."

She immediately closed her eyes and focused. The Raiju slowly shrank and turned back into a little girl. "Oh crap, Daphne is going to kill me" commented Kenneth as his eyebrow switched slightly, the reason he said that was because Astoria's hair had turned snow-white. Her eyes that used to be deep blue was now slightly brighter as though there was starlight reflecting off them. To put it simple, she looked like a small fairy that jumped out of a fantasy book, thankfully she still has the same facial features.

The little girl walked in front of the mirror and touched her hair snow-white hair, Kenneth expected her to cry, but instead she beamed and said, "Uncle Jason! I turned into the princess from a fairy tale!"

Kenneth sighed and said to the little girl, "Astoria dear, there are bad people who wants the power you have, which is the ability to control the magic of time. They might even hurt your family to get answers from you. So, I will seal your memories and your abilities for now, when you are 15 years old, the memories will wake up and your will remember everything. Okay?" Another reason was that for a 6-year-old to control the power of time could turn nasty, when she was 15 years old, she would have experienced enough of the wizarding world to use it responsibly.

Through the connection they had formed, a connection Astoria still did not realise that she had, said "Okay, I will listen to uncle. Will I not be able to transform into the big wolf?" she asked

"I'm not sure, you should be able to, just a smaller version of it," said Kenneth and she replied, "Okay, what should I do?"

"First wear this," he handed an extra set of cloths he prepared for the little girl who seemed to have not noticed that she was completely naked. She got dressed without being shy, while Kenneth said, "Okay, now lay down on the bed and I will seal your memories."

When she was laid in bed, Kenneth used his soul eye and soul body to send his consciousness to access her mind scape. As she never had any Occlumency lessons, there was no soul body inside her mind space, it was just white space, with memories in the form of soup bubble floating about. The Raiju avatar was slumbering in the middle of the mind scape while the morning star symbol was hovering above it. When he gathered all the memories she had since they left their store and the morning star symbol next to raiju avatar, the eyes of Kenneth in the lab started to change into yellow snake eyes. They were basilisk's eyes. This was the method he came up with to deal with the aftermath. He was going to use basilisk eye power and time magic to seal her powers and memory

Basilisk was supposed to kill its victims just by looking at its eyes, but that was wrong. It was not a magical attack, but the spiritual one. A basilisk's consciousness was so strong that one attack from it and the opponent's consciousness would be obliterated. They did not have much control over their consciousness which is why the opponent got an all-out attack every single time, an attack is only partially successful when it hits through a reflection, it did not petrify a victim's body, what it did was freeze the victim's thoughts and brain functions as thought they were stuck in time. Mandrakes are known to send ear splitting noise which seems to shake the victims off of their frozen state.

Kenneth controlled his eye power and only send a tiny bit of it into Astoria's mind scape, then he used his soul eye and body to control the direction of the power and enveloped the area where the raiju, the memories and the morning star symbol was at. The area affected froze, but since he did not freeze whole mind scape, the freezing effect started to dissipate. Kenneth then drew a few time runes around the affected area. What the time runes did was to slow the rate of restoration of the area. He set it up so that it would take 9 years to completely restore the frozen area. Little Astoria would be 15 years old, or in her 5th year at Hogwarts when she recalls everything.

Kenneth took a deep breath tiredly, it would have been easy to freeze the whole brain, but doing it so in a surgical manner was tiring. Not only that, writing time runes that lasts 9 years took nearly all of his magical reserves. In addition, he has been awake for 24 hours, it was no wonder he felt exhausted. He closed his tired eye to adjust his mental state.

"Uncle Jason? Am I cured now? Where is the person who helped me?" asked Astoria, waking up.

Kenneth opens his eyes and looked at her and said, "That person already left, here take a look. The way you looked changed a bit after he cured you." He conjured a mirror again.

Astoria looked at her appearance and said, "Uncle Jason! I turned into the princess from a fairy tale!" Kenneth knew from this sentence that the sealing of memories had succeeded.

He said, "Actually, the curse allows you to turn into a cool animal. You can turn into a cool white wolf! You just need to close your eyes and focus on turning into a wolf and it will happen."

"Really?!! I will try it now!" the little girl said excitedly. Just like Nagini, Astoria also had two forms, one was her raiju form the other is an ordinary wolf form due to the curse. So, soon there was a wolf cub in the size of fox. The wolf cub stood on it back legs and place his front paws on the mirror and looked at itself with excited round eyes.

"You can turn back by doing the same thing, just focus of becoming a human," said Kenneth tiredly.

However, Astoria did not listen. She was too excited, she started running and jumping around the lab. She kept stumbling down as she was not used to being on four legs but soon got used to it.

Kenneth said tiredly, "Astoria dear, uncle is going to take a nap. I'm too tired. Remember not to go out until I wake up." The little girl nodded in the wolf form and continued to play around the room, now she had discovered that her sense of smell had heightened, so she was sniffing everything she came across.

His nap actually took good eight hours, when he woke up, he found Astoria still in her wolf form. However, she had snuggled and curled into a ball of fur next to him. "It seems our connection is still effective to a small extent," he thought.

He telepathically told Nagini that everything went well and that they are on their way, then waited for the little wolf cub to wake up.