Harry Potter : Chapter 85: Beyond III

Based on the principle of allowing the transformation while keeping separate the human mind from the cursed bestiality the victims suffered from. Rubeus' thoughts whirled in thousands of different directions.

"I did try a battery of potions to separate the curse from the human, but I only managed to make the werewolf more violent."

...

With no outward signs of what was going on inside his head, Riddle lifted his empty hand, allowing Marie to smell him and fully relax once she decided that neither of the two newcomers was going to be her next prey. Walking backwards in order to not show his shoulders to the giant wolf, Tom returned his focus to the words of his fellow Slytherin wizard.

"So, my original idea of finding a way for Marie to overcome the transformation somewhat changed into the werewolf-Marie evolving past her cursed nature: on one hand, that would need to satisfy the endless, frantic, bestial hate that the werewolf had for humans, on the other, that couldn't happen as long as Marie remained a victim of the curse." 

Rubeus scratched behind the left ear of the massive beast, who finally closed her eyes fully: "I have no intention of unleashing a werewolf gifted with human cleverness upon the populace, so while the human nature needn't necessarily prevail upon the bestial one, at least it needed to be in balance."

"Which again should be impossible because Lycanthropy is aimed at humans." Riddle pointed out as he forced himself to not show anything of what he was thinking. Even if the final result wasn't quite what Rubeus had been looking for, he had once more accomplished the unthinkable, no the unimaginable.

"Then again, how does a werewolf know to hunt humans specifically?" Hagrid nodded towards the other wizard before turning towards Minerva, as if to seek her input.

"My theory is that the werewolf instinctively seeks to maim and kill the humans that the curse couldn't kill: the bearer of the curse themselves, resorting to others since the first option is of course impossible. 

The solution I planned for was based on a relatively simple principle: the human victim of Lycanthropy would need to stop being seen as a target from the curse's perspective and would need to stop perceiving the curse as something external to their own being."

The Gryffindor witch crossed her arms even as her lips thinned dangerously, still far from mollified, but recognizing that helping the poor woman trapped as a giant wolf had the priority. 

"That should be enough to erase the need for the agonizing transformation, effectively turning any victim of the curse into a non-human being holding a latent hate for humans, and a need to hunt under the full moon. 

Guided by a curse that no longer has a human to base itself upon, the resulting being could hunt anything to satisfy the urge instilled by the full moon."

"Bad for deers and whatnot all around the world," Riddle twirled his wand and extracted a comfortable armchair from the open, leather-bound notebook that he always carried with him: "very good for mankind as a whole. But I bet it isn't so simple as to get the human to appreciate or accept the curse."

Greyback's existence and countless other boogeymen listed in the tomes I had perused could attest to that. Rubeus shook his head while his hands continued his ministrations to Marie, who seemed to be content with remaining still under the wizard's attention.

"A human that would see hunting other humans with the ferocious zeal of a werewolf as an accepted, even cherished, part of themselves, would become less than human. In a sense, the balance would be skewed in the curse's favor.

"And being horrified by the very horrifying curse clearly offsets the balance in the other direction, does it not?" Minerva exhaled gutsly while she began pacing her focus now razor sharp and turned fully upon the current problem.

"This balance would be skewed in the human's nature favor, if we could call it a balance at all, and it would only reinforce the rabid fury of the curse."

"The ritual I planned to allow Marie to reach the undefinable perfect balancing point between human and curse, thusly finding a way for a being that was neither to exist in peace, relied on a few key points." Rubeus' eyes were closed as he recounted his reasoning.

"One: the werewolf would need a successful hunt, to be tinkered with enough to push the feral beast into a state of, if not complacency, at least calm. 

Two: the human victim of the curse would need to be part of hunting process. And finally three: the werewolf had to not-kill, and kill at the same time."

With the premise out of the way, the unpredictable Slytherin wizard began to explain the ritual itself, and despite themselves, both of the other two mages became immediately fascinated by the whole thing.

...

Once I had finished explaining, I stopped running my hands through the coarse fur of the Marie, which took it as a dismissal and quickly vanished through the woods, impossibly fast and quiet for a beast of her size: "So... with my first question."

"Are you just going to let her roam randomly? What if she attacks a muggle village!?" Minerva began once more to lose her composure since Marie was no longer present to enforce some need for a calm environment, and the Gryffindor witch was hardly one to hold bak her natural reactions.

I sighed, but it was a reasonable question, so I sat cross-legged on the ground, beginning to fully feel the night without a second of sleep despite the brew that I had drunk in the morning.

"She seems to have chosen an area deep in the forest as a territory, the same one I had prepared as a stage for her ritual in fact, not somewhere were she's likely to stumble upon humans... besides I've kind of marked the hunt of deers and whatnot as the only acceptable prey.

But you're right, during the winter hols I'll trek with her to the Forbidden Forest, deep enough to stay away from the school, satisfied?"

"Only if we can't manage to heal her first." Riddle was quick to put a challenge in front of Minerva, and I relaxed as the Head Girl immediately jumped on it, finding it an acceptable target for her temporary frustration.

"You think that my being an animagus allows me some greater insight?" Minerva wanted to scoff: "This isn't exactly a transformation gone wrong: you obtained exactly what you wished with your hare-brained ritual, she and the wolf are one now, potions and lightning storms aren't going to cut it."

"But her soul is the same, even if different, so a human body could be her Inner Shape, couldn't it?" I asked from my seated position, my eyes following closely the pacing form of the witch, who'd likely never quite trust me as easily as before. 

Wishing to address the issue immediately I let out a sigh of my own: "Minerva, I was trying to cure her, she's no longer suffering at least, and I'm still going to figure out something to help her with the whole..."

As I gestured helplessly, Tom blankly intervened: "With the whole metamorphosis that you've knowingly engineered? We'll need to see if her situation is better than being a giant murder wolf, as Minerva called it, only with the full moon."

"She's hardly a murder-wolf." I immediately defended her, ignoring how the guilt I felt for her situation was perfectly matched by the disappointment in my own failure.

"You saw how she showed her 'affection' and 'perfectly reasonable, human response' when Minerva happened to raise her voice."

"So? She's protective, it's hardly her fault, is it?" I crossed my arms while frowning at the wizard: "Between her internalizing the Norse seal I've crafted and the hunt we've conducted before and after the dawn, there's an undeniable bond between us."

"Have you considered that she might not wish to return human?" Minerva was staring off to the side as she made her question, her arms limp by her sides.

"What?"

"You just explained it to me: Marie and the other muggle got whisked away in the night in order to stop themselves from being a danger to other muggles, everyone they knew dead in the attack that turned them, the only one that could understand her died not so long ago..." the green eyes of the witch turned towards me as she hugged herself, as if to hold herself together in face of such an existence.

"As she is now, even if she is as aware and intelligent as she was before, what makes you think that she might wish to return to her hollow, painful, lonely life as a hermit?"

"Those without a strong personality can get absorbed by the instincts of the animal they turn into, or have the instincts of the creature they assume the semblance off bleeds over..." Riddle recounted mercilessly before humming thoughtfully.

"And the Animagus transformation is hardly as brutal as this hunt of yours was. Do you have a way to show us the Change itself?"

"I'll bug Slughorn to get a pensieve to show you the transformation with," I nodded immediately, "Maybe it'll give us some ideas. Do you think that Filius could give us a fresh perspective once we have a clearer idea of what we're dealing with?"

"I won't expose a first-year to that beast, Rubeus." Minerva's tone was peremptory, "I don't care how human-like her mind can be, she's a giant, magical wolf of unknown abilities."

"But you want him in the Rùnda." I was almost eager to change topics as I rose to my feet, grinning as the witch nodded stiffly. So I turned towards Tom: "Do your test, will you? I want to see what he can grow into."

"More like you're eager to profit from their innovative ideas." Minerva scoffed, before briefly glancing at Riddle, that did nothing to separate himself from that statement: in his mind, it was obvious that he would never dedicate time and effort to the idea of letting others int he Rùnda without a way to profit from it.

"What are we going to do once we're no longer at school?" eager to push off the inevitable moment in which he'd simply deny their first-year pet access to the results of his work, Riddle looked dispassionately as Minerva walked briskly about the clearing, her thoughts and emotions clearly still swirling.

"I'd rather set up something while Minerva is still a student: after all, we don't want to settle for merely 'least bad'. 

If none that meets our standards appears before this hypothetical initiate of your choice graduates, I don't want him to be forced to pick someone who's not worthy of it only to keep the Rùnda from going empty, it'd defeat the whole point, won't it?"

"Something like automated challenges?" tired by the heavy topic, no matter how interesting, that had been discussed up to that point, Minerva was grateful for the change in subject.

"I don't really know how to tailor them in a way that would underline what each of us seeks in a member of the Rùnda..."

...

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