Harry Potter: A Certain Ancient Rune Professor of Hogwarts (TL)

Chapter 652: Solutions (2 in 1)

On the outskirts of the village of Hogsmeade, a group of people bathed in the silvery moonlight shed by the full moon.

Felix looked at the werewolves, with a piece of parchment in his hand, and scribbled on it. Two of the fourteen had already completed their full werewolf transformation and currently had collapsed on the ground breathing heavily. Although two of them had turned into werewolves at the moment, their eyes remained lucid, as they had been taking wolfsbane potions consistently for the past few days.

The other nine werewolves are undergoing a transformation – first, their bodies trembling unnaturally, then with a snarl from agony, every part of their torsos forcibly widened and elongated, their shoulders towering high and bursting through their clothes, the fat on their black fur-covered arms hidden in the violent transformation, their hands, and feet curled into the shape of wolf claws, their sharp nails glistened in the moonlight.

‘So there is a subtle difference in the timing of each of their transformations.’ Felix marked this on the parchment and watched as the werewolves kept opening and closing their jaws, saliva dripping from the corners of their mouths from a brief moment of loss of control and pain.

To a normal person, this saliva would be nothing less than a potent poison.

The three remaining werewolves that remained in human form flinched back, trying to stay away from their own kind. They looked at Felix Hap, who looked as if he had been recording all this with interest, and a strange emotion welled up in their hearts.

The effects of the war were felt in every way.

In the early days, many of their kind had been tempted by men who had been sent by the Dark Lord to recruit them with the promise of vastly improving the treatment of werewolves after the war. The words were nice, but not very credible, because the Dark Lord would not even regard wizards of muggle origin as a people, and promoted the doctrine of bloodlines, let alone the werewolves with a tainted bloodline like theirs, many wizards – a significant number of whom are pureblood wizards or Death Eaters, or both – still call them beasts with disgust.

The only thing that had a little credibility was the justification given by Fenrir Greyback when he roped them in: once the Dark Lord had won, the werewolves could attack muggles and expand their packs with no fear, a fate that the Dark Lord had intended for the young wizards from muggle families.

But these words could only attract the consent of the group of fanatical werewolves who, as far as they knew, were being threatened and roped in by the Ministry of Magic before the war, and those who remained stubborn were now basically imprisoned.

At that moment, Felix picked a werewolf at random and stood in front of him. The transformed werewolf stood a good foot taller than him as if he could crush a normal human’s skull with one low bite, but as Felix poured his magic into him, the werewolf kept his claws as far away from Hap’s head as possible.

This was purely for Galleon’s sake.

The werewolf thought indignantly as he obediently straightened his body. He tilted his long jaw to the side listlessly as the rest of his kind lay on the ground, gasping for breath and staring at them. It was all the effect of the wolfsbane potion, which kept the werewolves sane even during the full moon, while suppressing the wildness and exuberance in their bodies, leaving them so exhausted that they didn’t have the strength to go out for a walk even if they wanted to.

“Hold still.” Felix said.

“I’m not moving!” The werewolf let out a low growl of discontent.

“Ah, I was talking to the magic inside you – you can interpret that as talking to myself.” Felix said.

The werewolf moved his eyes back unhappily and lowered his head to stare at the top of Felix’s head, with his thoughts dumbly wondering. He quickly moved his head away again, though, not wanting to make any moves that would spark a misunderstanding; if he did hurt the man in front of him – though even the werewolf himself thought his idea was whimsical – the werewolf pack would surely be out of luck.

And werewolves didn’t hate Felix Hap.

Everyone in this place thought so, or they wouldn’t have accepted the invitation, only after meeting him a few times, they realized that the real Hap is slightly different from their fantasy image – in short, it created a sense of disillusionment. “Keep your hands straight.” Felix said. The werewolf grunted twice and did as he was told, then went back to thinking about himself.

Suddenly, he felt a sharp pain in his spine, as if an invisible hand had reached in and grabbed it, trying to rip it out of his body.

The werewolf let out a low “ho-ho” grunt and lowered his head with difficulty to see Hap pulling wisps of magic out of him, and although he wasn’t sure why he was doing it, he gritted his teeth and held on until Felix Hap dragged a fuzzy cloud of magic out of him.

He finally collapsed to the ground unable to hold on and asked in a hoarse voice, “What is it?”

“I’d like to know too.” Felix said.

He let the magic hover in the air and then walked towards the other werewolves one by one, during which time the other three transformed as well. As the full moon rose high in the sky, fourteen clouds of magic remained frozen in the air in front of Felix.

He stretched them out, and they resembled an irregular piece of cloth, densely flickering with dots of light, in a pattern far more complex than the mandrake, and Felix had to be careful enough not to damage the really important magical structures.

Gradually, even the most sluggish in the scene reacted to the fact that the magic, although drawn from different werewolves, is more or less the same in shape. If one ignored the edges and corners, one could see a three-dimensional tower-like structure, or more precisely –

“Is that – a werewolf’s spine?” The werewolf asked with difficulty.

Felix paced between the fallen werewolves, lost in thought. His face was reflected in a pale bluish hue, and he seemed to be talking to himself, and to be delivering a speech in the moonlight.

“Magic … in the body of a wizard and the body of magical creatures are distinctly different from each other.”

“Magic in magical creatures tends to operate along specific patterns, related to their own constitution, and operate through virtual circuits carrying magic, that is, their magic-like innate talents … A wizard’s magic is, however, free, flexible, and unrestrained. When werewolf saliva fuses with a wizard’s blood, it magically alters them, making the wizard irreversibly lycanthropic, hence some say it’s an incurable magic toxin known as werewolf poison …”

“In my opinion, werewolf transformation is an uncontrolled, transformation of a wizard towards a magical creature, oh … again not the same as Animagus, which can only turn you into a normal animal. Though they actually both have one thing in common and that is that the transformation process is not controlled by the wizard himself.”

“The principle … is not important!”

“Animagus is an application of an extremely advanced knowledge of human transfiguration, and if the wizard can experience the process many times, even if he is not clear about the principle, he will be able to perform higher level transfiguration like a fish in water in the future.”

“Werewolf transformation, however, does not offer similar benefits.”

“Perhaps it is because the bodies of … ordinary wizards are too fragile, and it is not related to whether they are physically strong or not, it is the magic that matters. They cannot withstand the ‘magical creature’ transformation of themselves, so instead of gaining any benefit, they suffer the consequences …”

In the moonlight, Felix took out the Book of Runes, one hand resting on the spine of the book, the other over the surface of it, the pages flipping rapidly, the ‘clatter’ muffled the sound of the wind in the wilderness at night, the slender hand raising a little bit, slowly pulling out a ‘spine’ made of runes from the book’.

The werewolves’ mouths dropped open.

Felix gazed at his creation for a moment and pressed it down towards his body.

His heart began to pound, and he raised his head to stare at the full moon as his body stretched a little bit and a mane cloaked him – he became a werewolf. A crowd of werewolves on the ground watched in amazement.

“You- you-”

“One more form to transform.” The werewolf, bathing in the moonlight, grinned as if he was smiling, but the other werewolves looked at him in reverence, and when Felix changed back and got himself a new set of clothes, he began to make adjustments to the spine-shaped magic rune sequence.

“To be more efficient and find the key within it.”

But even then, Felix could only adjust the sequence and reduce some unnecessary magic runes for the time being, and he could not reduce the complexity of the overall structure. So in theory, Felix had actually harvested an incredibly complex piece of ancient magic tonight – the werewolf transformation.

It is important to note: Felix’s own transformation into a magical creature, and the transformation of magical creatures’ innate talent into ancient magic are actually two different things – the former, is the result of Felix advancing the realm of ancient runes to an entirely unknown level and becoming a ‘magical creature’ himself. Just like the four founders of Hogwarts, and Dumbledore … if he had to subdivide it, even more, Felix considers himself to be ‘magic-rune’.

He is able to transform parts of his or all of his body from flesh and blood to magic runes.

It is because of this reason that Felix can transform himself into magical creatures. He thought that Dumbledore could do the same, but not by relying on ‘magic runes’, but by using transfiguration. As for whether Rowena Ravenclaw, who had told him the term ‘magical being’ herself, could do the same thing, Felix put a question mark in his mind, thinking that Lady Ravenclaw was rather describing a realm, after all, that was not her field of study.

Take the Thunderbirds, for example.

Felix himself could turn into a thunderbird without any difficulty, using principles very different from those of Transfiguration, but he could not teach anyone else the way to turn into a thunderbird – there is no shortcut, other than an in-depth study of ancient runes.

But he could convert the Thunderbirds’ innate talent into ancient magic – such as creating storms – and then teach it to others, who could learn it perfectly well.

There is a fundamental difference between turning into a thunderbird, and wielding a storm. The former involves a change in the nature of the wizard’s very being, while the latter simply involves learning a simple piece of ancient magic.

…

The weather remained cold in late February, but it was nothing to the werewolves, who lay on the ground and gawked at Felix Hap working diligently in the moonlight and whispered in hushed tones with each other.

“What’s he doing?”

“Not sure, but it looks complicated!”

“What are you going to do with that money?”

“Haven’t thought about it yet, I’ve counted it, there’s enough to buy two years’ worth of knock-off wolfsbane potions.”

“I heard that ‘Future World’ company has recruited a group of humanoid employees, including werewolves as well!”

“You want to try?”

“It might be too late by now …”

“It’s hard to say, it was still advertised in the papers a while back.”

“I remember it was for trolls, right?”

“Trolls with literacy?”

“Ahem-” Felix looked back down from the heavy morning mist and cleared his throat, “Almost there, let’s try it.”

“Try what?” One of the werewolves on the ground asked.

“Let’s see if I can turn you guys back into human form.” Felix said with a smile as he flipped open the Book of Runes, and a variety of rune symbols in different colours flew out of it like butterflies, gathering and shaping in mid-air. Felix reached out and the magic rune sequence turned into a cloud of magic in his hand and he flung it at a werewolf.

Felix looked at him expectantly.

After a few moments, the werewolf’s body returned to human form and Felix threw him a garment to put on in case any villagers pass by and saw him early in the morning.

The wizard stopped himself from dancing around, his face still held a look of shock as he looked at his hands incredulously.

“I … I’ve changed back?” He tilted his head up in disbelief as the sky slightly dawned, but a full moon still hung in the sky, and he looked again at his werewolf peers who are lying on the ground as if they would soon faint.

“Mr. Hap, am I … not a werewolf from now on?”

The men on the ground quieted down as well, holding their breath as they waited for Felix’s answer.

Felix shook his head.

” It is an effect of magic, and if …” he hesitated for a rare instant, nevertheless he shook his head, “No, I am not a healer and cannot do a complete root cure with my current knowledge-

“But I’m completely changed back now!” The wizard exclaimed.

“I used a clever technique. I was looking at the problem from the perspective of ancient runes.” Felix, seeing the wizard about to speak, held up a hand to stop him and continued, “Through research – not my research – werewolf saliva is highly poisonous, at least for muggles, and wizards, once bitten by a werewolf, they are also irreversibly lycanthropized.”

“The so-called lycanthropy is actually the werewolf poison modifying part of the wizard’s body structure, which you can simply understand as: you are like a magical creature with an extra spellcasting organ, but of course, I am just using a metaphor, the actual situation is more complicated …”

“This spellcasting organ is affected by the changes in the moon’s light and darkness, and spontaneously absorbs the magic in the wizard’s body on the day of the full moon, and you are forced to perform a complex series of werewolf transformations.”

“We have an extra spell-casting organ?” The werewolf asked blankly, “Can it be removed?”

“No,” Felix spat, “at least I can’t do it at the moment, as I said – the term spellcasting organ is only metaphorical, in fact, your bodies have been completely altered by the werewolf poison, from saliva to blood, to body organs, to bones … which is not my field of study.”

“Then what have you done to me?”

“Reversed the transformation process. If you think the werewolf transformation as a spell, then what I did was to find a way to break the spell, albeit only temporarily.”

“Can we learn it?” The werewolf asked eagerly.

“I could publish it, but it would be too difficult to learn, the spell uses thousands of ancient magic runes…” Felix said, “I will spend the next week perfecting it as best I can, and I will need your cooperation for that. ”

All the way back to the castle Felix thought about it, his biggest discovery of the night was actually obtaining a structural blueprint of the werewolf’s magic from a magic perspective. And on top of that, he actually had two other vague lines of thought.

In addition to the ancient magic ‘reversing the werewolf transformation’ he had demonstrated –

One could also try to use an advanced human transfiguration. Normal human transfiguration is simply changing the appearance and physique (although this is already part of the advanced course), but Felix’s idea is to take this a step further and change the magic structure in the body along with it.

This approach would be similar to that of the Animagus. Only that its transfiguration form is human.

It was not that no wizards had tried this idea before, but the internal body structure of the werewolf remained the same even after the transformation, so naturally, nothing worked. Now with the werewolf rune structure pattern, that Felix had discovered, the situation might be very different.

As he walked along the road, a thought occurred to Felix: how did it resemble the bloodline magic that Salazar Slytherin had studied?

He mulled it over for a while and smiled. Can he already be able to do this, deciphering other people’s magic paths with ancient runes? It feels soooo good …

The first two methods both treated the symptoms but not the root cause.

The first – the ancient magic known as ‘ Reversal of Werewolf Transformation’ – actually restores the werewolf state of the wizard to human form and allows him to spend the full moon peacefully in human form throughout the duration of the magic. In general, it is a sort of substitute for the wolfsbane potion, with the advantage of maintaining human form and the disadvantage is that it is very difficult to learn.

Without Felix’s help, he reckoned that Lupin would not have been able to do it. But learning it would allow them to say goodbye to the wolfsbane potion, which seemed to confirm another view in the magic world that potions and spells are substitutes for each other.

The second method – human transfiguration, which involved an internal structural change in the body – is also incredibly difficult, and Felix believes that no one but Dumbledore could do it, but now with the blueprint of the werewolf’s runic structure that he has obtained, the difficulty may plummet.

The advantage is that during the transformation period the wizard will be in a purely human form.

As for one last line of thought – Felix frowned – it was to completely destroy all those rune patterns that had been infected by the werewolf poison, once and for all. The werewolves wouldn’t be werewolves anymore then. But this method involved the very essence of magic, and one mistake may even cause a wizard to become unable to use any magic, they would simply end up as a Squib.

Dumbledore’s caution about magic is still ringing in his ears.

In fact, there is a fourth line of thought, Felix mused. That would consist of sharing the magical structure of the werewolf, and perhaps Snape, or Belby, or Slughorn, the Potions Masters, could come up with a solution from a Potions perspective.

Felix intended to ask Lupin about it in due time and see what he would decide. It just so happened that March 10th is his birthday.

The next morning.

Harry knocked on the door of the Defence Against the Dark Arts class professor’s office.

He had come over to avoid the endless stream of questions from Ron and Hermione; he had now been forced to spill the details of the Dumbledore family dinner he had seen in the Pensieve, and he really didn’t want to talk about what happened afterward, so he found an excuse to come out for some fresh air.

As a result, he found himself being greeted warmly by Professor Bagshot, which somewhat flattered Harry.

“Have a seat, Harry.” Grindelwald said cordially, casually placing a book on the table at the edge.

“Professor Bagshot, you’re studying ancient runes?” Harry asked, with considerable astonishment.

“What, I can’t learn anything new at my age?” Grindelwald asked, his eyes darting to Harry’s hands, “You were a big attraction yesterday, Harry.”

“Oh, well – I guess so.” Harry mumbled.

“I have heard that you want to be an Auror in the future, good idea,” Grindelwald said softly, “I happen to know a few spells that are pretty powerful and should help you. Not a dark magic.” He saw the look on Harry’s face and added a comment.

Harry murmured his thanks. He did worry that Professor Bagshot might be planning to teach him dark magic; after all, the professor had admitted personally that he had followed the dark wizard Grindelwald in the past.

Only then did Grindelwald casually bring up the main topic.

“I saw a black jewelled ring on your hand yesterday, why aren’t you wearing it today?”

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