Harry Potter : Chapter 27: Committed to Change I

The clouds roamed unsteadily under the full moon, the cool if calm wind made the leafless branches rustle with a clattering sound, and my self imposed task was quickly going to hell with the soundrack born of my charges' pained moaning.

As fast as I could, I had made use of gouging and levitation charms to prepare a firepit, over which I immediately unshrunk my pewter pot. Silver would have probably been better.

I summoned to me a bucket that I left near a small creek that ran just besides my shack, pouring cristalline water in the cauldron while I started to think furiously, trying to ignore the muggles' trashing motions.

"Water as a base... lycanthropy is a temporary metamorphosis, not a simple change of Shape, it is a curse, so it is malignant somehow... tied to the moon... the hunt..."

I used my wand to stoke the brilliant flames under the small cauldron before I raised my eyes, staring unblinkingly the the celestial body that offered some faint light.

"The moon... everchanging, mercurial, I could twist it to indicate the Hunt, but lycanthropy already twists that part, making humans the only target of the werewolf... Okay, this is better than nothing..."

I started to rummage in my pockets placing the contents on a near slab of stone. Useless, useless, useless... I needed something that could be tweaked into assuming the properties of silver: purity, innocence. 

If gold is for royalty, silver stands for Nobilty, to be detatched and above the rest of the world, unaffected by lesser things. A memory of crystalline innocence.

I had no knowledge of Alchemy of any sorts, so actually transmuting something into silver was out... the moon triggered the change, and if... and if...

Silver used to be necessary to make mirrors, and calm water could act as a mirror of sorts, I already had the water, now I only had to turn it into a sort of mirror capable of opposing the moon's influence, and hoping that it would be enough to halt the curse.

Just like I was trying to imbue 'Luck' into the Felix Felicis under the lead of Slughorn, I needed to imbue 'reflection' into my concociton.

It was vastly different from your common potion, the story of which contained an 'effect', instead I was trying to give it a 'propiety'. Symbols and Meanings. I reminded myself.

"Dried Pine Nettles to fortify, to infuse the potion with the tenacity of those that withstood the winter, Dogroot, and Tentacula Velenosa Shavings to bind..."

I started muttering to myself while I carefully prepared the ingredients before delicately placing them in the pewter pot.

"Snowdrop Petals to counteract the toxicity and issue both the calm of a stretch of fresh snow and hope when it's crust is broken, stirring with a willow branch, because it can keep living when planted in fertile soil."

My eyes darted towards my charges, who were slowly but surely slowing down in their pained trashing: my time was running out.

"Three counterclockwise turns, to stabilize and oppose the natural progression of the wound, Seven clockwise, to grant potency and meld together the mixture."

I repeated the stirring sequence three times, forcing myself to keep a steady rythm, grinning despite everything when I witnessed the potion turning from murky brown to steely grey.

"And to breath life into the little hope of the snowdrop, without blatantly opposing the course of nature."

I told to myself while I slipped the vial of sunlight from my neck, relishing in its warmth, "a drop of a summer's afternoon, of warmth and acceptance of the costant turning of time. In particular, to hold back the preparation, and to offer a focus in order to mirror the full moon, granting its opposite effects."

Once the warm light dropped into the steely greyness of the cauldron, the liquid inside went from steely grey to perfectly blank, only for the mixture's surface to turn into a mirror an istant later. I leaned back from the cauldron, looking at the full moon that was temporarly covered by a wisp of clouds.

"C'mon, c'mon..."

When the wind finally unveiled the moon, my potion mirrored it, turning into a water like substance that had a silvery sheen to it.

Let's hope it actually makes sense. Without waiting furhter, I poured from the cauldron over the cursed wounds of the muggles, sighing in relief when I saw the bleeding drop to a trickle and then completely stop.

The night stretched itself without mercy, each minute feeling as long as an hour, each shiver and twitch of the two muggles almost sending me in a panicked frenzy.

Yet, as the moon made its course in the sky, the wounds of the muggles stopped bleeding, and the dittany slowly started to close.

I sighed in relief, only then noticing the dull itch on my back. Frowning, I brought a hand over the interested area, lifting it only to find it wet with blood. There wasn't much of it, but I immediately remembered of the werewolf that for an istant had landed on my back.

With a grimace, I took off my patchy overcoat, woolen sweater and shirt, shivering briefly in the cold air of December until I stoked the flames in the firepit, and I blindly dripped what was left of my concociton on my back.

Apparently, cursed wounds didn't translate to cursed scratches in clothes, because I was able to repair them easily enough, even if I suspected they would remain frailer than what they were before.

Now what? I asked myself. I had no idea whatsoever about how the government treated random werewolves beyond a general suspect born of my metaknowledge, but even then, was I willing to just drop the recently cursed muggles to their own devices in the middle of ht ehalf conquered France in WWII? Was I going to simply pop them back to the attacked rural village and then forget about it?

Sitting on a tree stump near the firepit, surrounded by the slowly quieting muggles, I didn't even stop to be overjoyed by my successfully improvised potion, even if I was... relieved, that I had managed to save those two from being mauled completely, there was still the rather big problem of what to do now.

At the very least, I'd need to explain their condition, and I could only hope that they spoke English, because I sure as hell didn't speak French. Then I would need to set them up in living conditions where they couldn't by mistake maul an innocent.

All of that considering that the world was at war and that we were at the end of December. Just to be sure, I'd have to sneak out of Hogwarts during the rest of the year, if only to check up on them after the full moon.

Since I was already taking on myself a werewolf sized headache, I might as well research their conditions and try to come up with Wolfsbane, if not an outright cure. If nobody ever managed it though, I suspected that I would meet failure on that front.

Without even realizing it, it came the dawn, and I made yet another decision.

These will be fucking tyring months.

...

( 17th of May 1942 )

Albus moved quickly up a ramp of stairs and across the corridors, his long strides carrying him with ease across the known, if ever-changing, layouts of the castle, that he could feel in his own bones. And as he moved, he thought.

The world had always appeared in precise lines to his mind. Since he had memory, events, people and magic moved in a majestic and elegant dance that was reasonable and accurate, thusly relatively easy to predict.

It was even easier now that he was teaching at Hogwarts, its microcosm easy to predict: in September, teachers wouldn't be yet exasperated with their charges, while the students would be trying to find a rythm.

By november there would already be heads looking forwards to the Winter Hols, while January was characterized by a sharp increase in the partecipation during lessons, which would stabilize only to be balanced by a furious study in sight of the end of year examinations, condition that was only exasperated for O.W.L. and N.E.W.T. students.

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