The second healing of a Longbottom mind took its toll, but as Ariana had calculated, the effect was less debilitating than the first. Her magical core, having undergone its first maturation, now had a greater capacity and a faster rate of recovery. The exhaustion was still profound, a deep, cellular weariness that clung to her for days, but it was a manageable state, not the near-collapse she had experienced before. The ambient, ancient magic of Hogwarts itself seemed to aid her, a gentle, nourishing presence that soothed her frayed magical nerves and helped to refill the deep well of her power.
She continued to attend classes, her movements a little slower, her usual serene expression touched with a faint shadow of fatigue. But her mind remained as sharp as ever.
Her two closest friends immediately formed a protective, fiercely loyal cordon around her. Hermione and Daphne, their former rivalry now completely sublimated into a shared purpose, became what Ron privately dubbed "the she-dragons."
Hermione took charge of her academic needs, summarizing lengthy reading assignments, taking meticulous notes for her in class, and ensuring a constant supply of nutrient-rich snacks and restorative teas were on hand. She would read aloud to Ariana in the common room, her voice a soothing, intelligent murmur, allowing Ariana to absorb knowledge without the physical strain of focusing on a page.
Daphne, on the other hand, managed her social and physical environment. She used her Slytherin cunning and pure-blood authority to ensure no one bothered Ariana. A single, icy glare from Daphne Greengrass was enough to silence the whispers of curious students. She would ensure Ariana's path through the crowded corridors was always clear, and deal with any logistical issues with a quiet, ruthless efficiency.
Together, they were a formidable team, a shield of Gryffindor loyalty and Slytherin pragmatism dedicated to protecting their queen while she recovered her strength.
It was during this period of forced rest and quiet contemplation that Ariana made her breakthrough.
In the sanctuary of the Room of Requirement, with Hermione and Daphne standing as silent, supportive sentinels, she once again projected the enlarged, shimmering image of Astoria's blood. She had spent weeks studying the "dark threads" of the curse, observing their behavior, their slow, patient replication. But she had been looking at them as a foreign invader.
Now, with her own magical senses heightened by their recent depletion and recovery, she looked again, but with a different perspective. She looked not for the curse, but for the absence of something. She remembered Nicolas Flamel's teachings: alchemy was not just about changing things, but about understanding their true, essential nature, their prima materia.
What, she asked herself, was the prima materia of a witch or wizard's magic? It was their will, their life force, their soul's unique signature.
She focused on a single, corrupted blood cell. She ignored the writhing dark thread and looked deeper, at the cell's own magical essence. And then she saw it. It was a flaw so subtle it was almost invisible. The cell's own magical aura, which should have been a complete, whole circuit of energy, had a tiny, almost infinitesimal break in it. A fracture.
And the dark thread of the curse was not just a parasite; it was a patch. A crude, magical "scab" that had latched onto that fracture, feeding on the leaking magical energy while simultaneously preventing the cell from healing itself. It was a symbiotic relationship of the most malignant kind.
"That's it," Ariana whispered, her voice filled with a sudden, breathless excitement. The exhaustion fell away, replaced by the fierce, energizing thrill of discovery.
"What is it?" Hermione asked, rushing to her side.
"I've been looking at it all wrong," Ariana explained, her mind racing. "We've been treating the curse as the disease. But it's not. It's something else. It's like an opportunistic infection."
She pointed a slender finger at the projected image. "The true problem is here. A congenital, hereditary weakness in the very structure of the magical core as it manifests on a cellular level. It's a genetic flaw. A tiny crack in the spiritual DNA. The Maledictus curse isn't the flaw itself; it's a magical parasite that is attracted to this specific weakness. It latches on, feeds on the leaking magic, and over time, it rewrites the host's physical and magical blueprint to match its own—that of the beast."
Daphne stared, her hand pressed to her mouth. "So… it's not that we're cursed to become a beast… it's that we have a weakness that attracts the curse?"
"Precisely," Ariana affirmed. "This is why magic cannot cure it. Magic is the source of the problem. You cannot use a faulty power source to fix its own flaw." She looked at them, her eyes blazing with a brilliant, revolutionary idea. "Think of it like a cancer. A magical one. The curse is the tumor latching to the Greengrass blood magic itself, perhaps some kind of a specific magical signature that is not in other people. That is why it appears in some people and not in others. We can't just cut it out, because it's woven into the very fabric of the host's magic. But what if we could stop it from growing? What if we could introduce something that reinforces the host's own magical walls, that starves the parasite of the energy it feeds on?"
She was no longer just a witch. She was a magical geneticist, a cellular biologist of the soul.
"The key isn't a counter-curse," she murmured, thinking aloud. "It's an alchemical solution. A potion, perhaps. Something that works on a physical, molecular level to seal the 'cracks'. If we can cut off the curse's food source, we can suppress its growth. We might even be able to force it into a permanent state of dormancy." She looked at Daphne, her expression now one of fierce, determined hope. "We might not be able to remove it, Daphne. But we might be able to stop it. We can give Astoria a full, normal life."
The room was silent for a moment, the three girls standing on the precipice of a medical discovery that could change the wizarding world. They had found the root cause of an incurable curse. The "how" was still a vast, unknown territory, a lifetime of research and experimentation stretching before them.
But for the first time, they had a map. They had a direction. And they had hope.
Ariana felt her own magical core give a quiet, contented hum. It was not the explosive expansion of her maturation, but a deep, resonant thrum of purpose. This was her Great Work. Not just defeating a Dark Lord, but healing the very fabric of magic itself. And with her friends by her side, she felt, for the first time, that it might just be possible.