Chapter 165: Blood

21st November 1995, Hogwarts Earth 2

(Daphne Greengrass POV)

Daphne Greengrass was inwardly excited for today’s Defense lesson which was quickly proving to be her favorite class this year. It was all due to Jasmine Sayre, who was by far, one of the most knowledgeable professors to have ever taken the post.

For some reason, having someone of her expertise teaching them, allowed every student to gain a solid grounding on their magical education and gain a better understanding of their gift. And to someone like Daphne, Professor Sayre was more than just a teacher. She was a role model. The epitome of what a woman can achieve.

Daphne had started the year expecting to spend it in self study, with an incompetent professor sprouting Ministry propaganda during class. The required book didn’t help matters. Calling it a waster of paper would be an understatement to how horrible a read that book was. Daphne didn’t even get past the first chapter before falling asleep.

And then, Sayre appeared. She was a relatively unknown witch with a very distinct family name that traced its lineage back to Salazar Slytherin himself. And from the first lesson, it appeared that the woman knew what she was talking about. Although, she tended to go into tangents every lesson, but they were still interesting enough that no one ever complained about them.

Funny thing about Sayre was the fact that she never gave or took out house points. When someone had the guts to ask her, she just chuckled, ‘In the grand scheme of things, the house cup is absolutely useless. You gain nothing when you’re awarded points and lose nothing when points are taken away. There’s nothing to be gained in winning the house cup, so why should it matter?’

The young Slytherin had somewhat dismissed her political power at the start of the year. She had expected that someone with the surname Sayre would be acting in a much more dignified way than the defense teacher was.

That was until Umbridge decided to remove her from her post as the Defense Professor. Everyone had seen it coming; Fudge had blacklisted any candidate from the post, hoping to extend his influence inside the castle using Umbridge.

But, somehow, Sayre ended up keeping her job, and Umbridge had lost hers. The woman entered a meeting where the toad woman had everyone in her pocket, and somehow, in some way, Sayre still won. And the cascading event that it caused, the destabilization of Fudge’s administration, the various allegations being thrown around about corruption and embezzlement, the man was barely hanging on to his post.

Still, one woman, in a single meeting, a school meeting no less, destabilized the political landscape of the entire country. If that wasn’t a testament to her cunning, nothing would be. Daphne didn’t know how many letters were sent concerning Sayre, but every single Slytherin student had ended up getting one from their parents asking for more information on the mysterious Sayre.

And best of all, this woman was politically neutral. She had refused both Dumbledore’s obvious offers and she didn’t bother to hide her disdain for the Dark Lord. Of course, her family knew that he was back. They didn’t know how it was possible, but the man had come back from the dead somehow, and as usual, Potter was involved. Considering how heavy Fudge’s smear campaign was, he was obviously hiding a lot of information about what happened. And add in how fearless the usual ‘dark’ families were acting, it was pretty much a given that what Potter said was true.

The Greengrass heiress was very nervous about this news, and her parents weren’t any different. There is going to be a lot of pressure to join the Dark Lord’s side and it’s not like you can refuse him without it resulting in your and you family’s painful death. Daphne tried not to think about it much, trusting her parents to handle it on their own. Instead, she continued her pursuit in healing her sister.

Besides, what truly drew Daphne’s attention was the absurd amount of knowledge professor Sayre possesses on very obscure magics. The Greengrass heiress wouldn’t have cared too much, if that list didn’t include blood magic. The moment that those words were uttered, Daphne was hooked.

Sayre could be what she was waiting for, the key to saving her sister and ending centuries of suffering. The Greengrass family was under a blood malediction that killed the youngest daughter of the head of the family. Every single generation, a daughter is born to die from the curse. This went on for centuries. No one knew the origins of the curse, no one had written it down, and if it was, it was lost a long time ago.

As for now, Daphne’s sister Astoria was the one suffering from the curse, she was already weak and so fragile. She barely had two decades left in her. Daphne had sworn to herself that she would save her sister at any cost. But with the ban of blood magic in Britain, it was practically impossible for her to even know where to start.

Until her fifth year at Hogwarts, until Jasmine Sayre took the post of defense professor.

The lesson started as usual, this time professor Sayre kept speaking about battle transfiguration, “The most important element of your transfiguration will not be details like you’re focusing on, in your transfiguration lessons, but it will be on speed and rigidity. The faster you cast, the faster the transformation happens, the better your chances of winning a duel. It’s why you tend to see animals made of stone or wood in dueling matches. In terms of attack power, they would have the same impact as a regularly transfigured animal, but they only take half the speed to cast and a quarter of the magical energy to maintain. The only important aspect of battle transfiguration is the rigidity. Transfiguration tends to attack your opponent physically, which means that your constructs must be strong to be able to deal any kind of damage. Outside of this, transfiguration is a truly limitless field of magic, and you only need to take advantage of this.”

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Granger immediately raised her hand. Oh, how Daphne hated that bitch. It had nothing to do with the fact that she’s a muggleborn; the girl was headstrong with no idea of compromise. She assumes that she’s never wrong and since professor Sayre had proven her wrong, many times, she does her best in trying to get one over the professor.

It was childish, it was a waste of time. It was also very amusing to see Sayre pick apart every argument she had. The professor sighed at the raised hand, “yes, Ms. Granger.”

“Professor Sayre, you said the transfiguration was limitless, but Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration states that…”

“I know exactly what it states, Ms. Granger. You were going to say something about the fact that we can’t transfigure food, or precious materials. And the fact is, that Gamp’s laws are fundamentally flawed.”

Granger actually gasped at the accusation. It was like someone had insulted her mother, “How is that possible? It’s been verified and tested for over a century.”

The professor sighed, “The food thing is regarded to the fact that you have to have a very deep understanding of what you’re changing, and unless you know exactly what every element, and every molecule exists in your food, you cannot transfigure anything to have a nutrimental value, and the correct taste. With that said, all transfigurations eventually revert, which means that if you actually end up eating transfigured food, you will probably die soon after.”

Granger still didn’t look convinced, “What about doubling charms?”

The professor looked exasperated, “doubling charms create magical constructs, not actual physical constructs. They work by scanning an object and conjuring an exact copy next to them. It’s relatively easy to cast because most of the legwork needed for conjuration is already done by the scanning part of the charm. Now, the main difference is that the hypothetical food was conjured not transfigured, meaning that there won’t be any damage when the magic runs out, but there still won’t be any nutrimental value to the meal in the long run. They’re a very good way of losing weight, from what I understand.”

Granger didn’t relent, choosing to fight for her book knowledge, “what about precious stones, and gold. Why can’t anyone transfigure gold, then?”

The professor was starting to lose her cool, and gave Granger the stink eye, “Ms. Granger, this is the last question I will answer you during this lesson. If you have questions about high level magical theory, you can ask me after class, and not waste everyone's time on things that wouldn’t benefit anyone that weren’t planning on being researchers or Unspeakables.”

The bushy haired Gryffindor looked abashed at the criticism and Daphne reveled at her humiliation. Alright, she knew that it was not a nice feeling but the girl was that annoying, spitting over anything that’s not in her precious books. No wonder no one liked her. How in Merlin’s name did Potter deal with her and Weasley at the same time.

The professor nodded and continued, “the answer to Ms. Granger’s question is quite complicated but I will do my best to simplify it. One of the main things that were discovered early on by ancient wizards, was that Magic remembers. Every spell, every act of magic, warps magic in a way. It’s not much usually, but a very large scale ritual could end up affecting magic in a very profound way. It’s how runes were created to channel magic. Through thousands of sacrifices, ancient wizards and witches were able to power rituals to give meanings to symbols, and cast magic. Now if magic was neutral, without any nuances, would it choose that certain metals are harder to create over others? The answer is no, it wouldn’t, and yet it does.

“In terms of precious metals and jewels, it was actually the goblins who created these rules. They sacrificed thousands of their kinds, millennia ago, to make sure that the magical price for conjuring, transfiguring, or transmutating any element that they consider precious, as to avoid scams and their loss of value due to oversaturation. It’s still possible to conjure gold, but it requires so much magic that you’d need a lifetime continuing to store your magic just to transfigure a single ingot of gold. Even then, the transfiguration would still be temporary.”

This time it was Potter who asked the question, “What about Nicholas Flamel, couldn’t he turn lead to gold?”

The woman snorted, “What do you think the Philosopher’s Stone is? It’s just a battery, filled with energy that allows him to compensate for the amount of magical energy that the gold needs. And you might be wondering how he had access to so much power, and the answer is the same, sacrifices. It probably wasn’t as sinister as it sounds, but I theorize that they were able to collect the life force of every early death that happened during a time period and stored it inside the stone. Considering how many people died from plagues back then, it wouldn’t have taken too much time for them to store enough to live for thousands of years. The so called elixir of life, is barely more than liquid life force that replenishes the Flamel’s own which allowed their longevity.”

Daphne was shocked at what was just said. This gave everyone a hard look to what the Flamels used to secure their immortality. Even though, from the rumors, they had died and destroyed the stone a few years prior, they were still a pillar of support to the wizarding community worldwide.

Looking around, pretty much every single student was gaping at the Professor who had resumed her lesson on battle transfiguration. However, this wasn’t the time to ponder on the repercussions of Sayre’s reveal. She had another more important goal in mind.

After the lesson had ended, she gestured to Tracy Davis, her best friend, to leave without her. The girl immediately understood what she would be trying to accomplish, and nodded while giving her a reassuring smile.

The Greengrass Heiress steeled herself and walked to the Professor’s desk.

Sayre looked up, with her eyebrows raised, “Is there anything you need, Ms. Greengrass?”

Damn, she was intimidating up close. Remember Daphne, you’re doing it for Astoria. The girl nodded, “Yes. Professor Sayre, I need your help.”

Again, the professor’s face was expressionless, “With what, Ms. Greengrass?”

“I need your help in saving my sister’s life.”

There, she said it. Hopefully, this wouldn’t be a worthless venture.