Harry Potter : Chapter 84: Beyond II

As he spoke, Rubeus raised his wand fully, pointing it at the sky and unleashing a silvery, soft light that had nothing to do with a Patronus, it was far more ethereal and distant, almost as if he was calling forth some memory of a moonlit night.

...

Before either Minerva or Tom could react, it was there: it slid between the trunks with the kind of grace the cat animagus could only hope to emulate in her animal Shape, impossibly quiet, and with the kind of sleek power that Riddle didn't confess to himself that he lusted after. 

The silvery grey wolf had golden eyes that glinted as if the sun was shining on them despite the covered sky, it reached maybe two meters of height at the shoulder, and from snout to the tip of the tail, it could easily measure double that.

The knowing, golden eyes of the creature landed curiously on the light cast by Rubeus wand, which was quickly turned off as he spoke soflty, walking forward as he placed his hands in front of the massive creature.

"Marie, I'm sure you remember Tom, and maybe Minerva, even if you only saw her once..."

The giant wolf chuffed after hearing the words of the unnaturally tall Slytherin, but remained still, and didn't seem to dislike the big hands of Rubeus running through her coarse fur: "Tom, Minerva, if you walk slowly forward she'll get your scent: it's like a handshake, really."

The two students in question seemed willing to do anything but to get closer to the massive, clearly magical creature: "Rubeus what did you do?"

"I'm glad you asked, Minerva." the wizard replied as Marie's eyes became slightly more heavy-lidded and she shifted her weight in order to push a bit against what her human mind wielded by the instincts of a predator recognized as a friend capable of guiding a successful hunt.

"Given the parasitic nature of the curse, and the fact that Marie had been a 100% muggle before being bitten, I couldn't really bank on any of my rituals or potions to engineer some sort of reaction from her against the curse, which was the only thing magical she had going on."

"Do you mean to tell me that you got a werewolf permanently stuck as a giant murder wolf!?" 

Minerva's hand found her wand as the instinctive fear of the giant cursed creature in front of her fought over the fiery hot rage summoned by Rubeus' blatantly playing god with the life of another human being.

"Give me a single reason not to..."

A hand clamped down on her wand arm before she could lift her length of fir with a dragon heartstring core, and she immediately whipped her head towards the responsible one: "Unhand me this instant, or..."

"Calm." Tom wasn't looking at her as he spoke, his eyes were instead very fixed upon the wolf, calling the Gryffindor witch's attention back to it.

Silent and still beside a Rubeus that was murmuring calmly by her heart, Marie's golden eyes were fixed upon Minerva, and the lips of the creature were peeled back, revealing the gleaming fangs underneath.

Fighting against all the instincts that told him to kill the giant wolf and be done with it, knowing that the enmity of Rubeus would be the last of his problems if he approached the creature with anything to give off the wrong vibe.

Tom found himself hungry for the explanation that his usually cagey companion seemed eager to provide, and so he spoke quietly by Minerva's hear.

"I hardly think he did anything with the purpose to harm, Minerva.

But he did succeed in affecting a transformation beyond the duration of the full moon, the fact that he called us both to see is proof enough that he wants to fix whatever went wrong, for the muggle's sake, if not for our friendship, maybe we could listen to what he has to say before judging, and maybe, we might just try to understand the magic involved, and help Marie in the process, don't you think?"

Riddle spoke softly while leveraging every drop of charisma he could, and not only because he was uncertain whether he could kill the giant wolf unscathed, but because he hadn't missed Rubeus's hand still closed around his own wand, ready to defend his last pet.

"If somehow pitting yourself against the curse could achieve something, I can't help but think that it would have happened already." Riddle spoke calmly, using the same tone he'd have adopted if they were calmly sitting in the Rùnda.

"Lycanthropy has been around for a long time, the thought that not a single wizard-turned-werewolf ever successfully devising a way to oppose the curse is a bit..."

Mastering her own thoughts and instinctive reactions, the Gryffindor witch pushed aside her wish to curse Rubeus, instead bringing to bear all of her considerable brilliance, compartmentalizing what was immediately wished in favor of what was needed, and after a deep breath, she shot one last, scathing glare at Hagrid, who nodded in acceptance of that promise of a future confrontation.

"Thinking of yourself as the only one willing and able to do something about the curse is a bit too much." 

Minerva sniped as she mastered herself before taking hesitant steps forward and extending a hand as she had seen Rubeus do, stilling as Marie took a deep breath that made the cat animagus shiver as her unique blend of instincts and Ocllumency registered something too soft and ethereal to be named.

"Yeah, I did think about that." Rubeus nodded to Minerva, who stepped back even as her hand went to her wand, feeling reassured by the metaphysical warmth that rushed through her.

"Ultimately, besides the need for the victim to overcome the curse, the only solution that promised to be actually sensate, as far as the blurry lines of magical rules and principles go, was to have the werewolf, as in the entirety of the being before and after the curse, resolve itself into a single, complete being."

"Nothing quite as foolish as becoming an animagus with a werewolf form, or any such nonsense as being a partial wolf then." the animagus picked up immediately on the details that went unsaid observing with less caution and more open curiosity as she tried to make head or tails of what she was thinking and feeling about the whole situation.

Tom stopped several steps away from the giant, possibly dangerous wolf, the yew and phoenix feather wand ready in his off hand as he smoothed over everything he felt and thought with the most basic exercise of Occlumency that he knew.

"No, the change needs to go deeper, doesn't it?" he wondered out loud.

"Werewolves go into a frenzy whenever there's a human around, and the victims of the curse are almost literally torn apart from within every time the full moon arises, because they are human in the first place. You wrote that in one of your random pieces of parchment Hagrid."

The impossibly tall Slytherin student smiled as the two companions confirmed once more that their brilliance was as absurd as his own, and that associating with them could only uplift him to loftier heights.

"If it was possible, werewolf-giants, werewolf-elves, werewolf-goblins, or even werewolf-veela, would have been mentioned at least once in one of the countless works I studied since I first decided I'd find a cure. 

Given the uncountable years of co-existence of both the curse and other humanoid creatures, the lack of non-human werewolves is enough of a proof of the fact that the curse is entirely based on an antagonistic dichotomy between human and beast."

So, the curse is inherently intertwined with a human's nature. Minerva momentarily stopped thinking about the implications on all that she knew about magic in order to truly admire the massively powerful hunter in front of her.

And even as she shut it down, the distant thought of how her cat shape could turn out if she was to apparently internalize the curse like Rubeus had done for Marie briefly flashed in the depths of her mind.

"Werewolves do recognize when to back off," Rubeus spoke again, As exemplified by Remus Lupin when fought off by Buckbeak, he thought quietly: "That is proof that whatever the cursed being becomes under the full moon, there is a genuine desire of not-dying despite the primal urge of hunting humans."

There is be no separating the two: it had been tried endless times, and eventually a certain Belby would figure out the Wolfsbane Potion.

Which was 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."

...

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