Three's a Charm

She looks up from trying again to find a way to detect the blood plague curse as the thread on her mail pouch starts glowing subtly and draws her attention to the fact she's got a letter from Hei. It's a bit late for him if he's gone back to Japan already, which he honestly should have by now, since he'd undoubtedly already wrapped up with the base he was hitting.

She opens the letter and starts reading. The first part is mostly a report on the base and intel he learned from the Death Eaters there, mostly just increasingly desperate ideas being thrown around to try to circumvent her wards and golems and all of that for more direct attacks then the blood plague curse. Towards the end though, he added a note that a spell hit him in the ankle and he wrote most of that while waiting to see someone at Saint Mungo's to scan him to try to find out what it was before he went back to Japan. The good news was that the very fact something showed up on the slightly-more-advanced but otherwise standard detection spells confirms that it wasn't the plague curse spell as he'd already thought given he felt it land. The bad news was while they could detect some sort of dark magic spreading through his body, they had no clue what it was.

The only other thing he knew was that he started to get a headache and nausea while he was waiting, which the healers had dutifully noted down as they were assumably symptoms given a quick scan for anything else that could be causing them had yielded no results. They had assured him that they would look into it to try to find records of a spell that matches the curse's signature and strictly informed him to come back in if he got worse and to let them know about any non-emergency symptoms that crop up to help narrow in on what it was, but otherwise he'd been released.

She feels a flicker of unease.

Whatever it was, it couldn't be good in any capacity, but there was nothing they could do until something changed. Either additional symptoms showing themselves that reveals what's going on or they manage to track down info on what spell it was. Something that was made a bit more complicated by the fact that the particular Death Eater that fired it wasn't actually from the UK. She was from further east in Europe, and had come over because she had relatives among the purebloods here who promised to make it mean something to be a pureblood unlike in her birth country. But given the inevitability of the fact not all spells and curses are known everywhere, there wasn't even necessarily a record of it here. Furthermore, when she'd been questioned under Veritaserum about what it was and what it did, she didn't even actually know what it was.

Her father had taught it to her and just told her not to use it unless it was against someone she wanted to utterly destroy. Beyond that, the only thing she'd known was the incantation. Interitus Identitatus. Interitus means destruction, death, ruin, removal, annihilation, dissolution, or extinction. So, definitely nothing good in the slightest. Identitatus just means identity, so altogether it means something along the lines of ‘Destruction of Identity’ but what exactly it does, they hadn't been able to track down answers for in the few hours since he got hit with it.

She chews on her bottom lip anxiously, but there was really nothing to be done until they had a better idea of what it does to begin with, since they can't exactly counter an unknown spell.

She can only hope they find answers swiftly.

He struggles to breathe between bouts of his guts rebelling against him, due to just how frequently it was happening as he kneeled at the toilet. Between that and the fever that had set in a few days ago, he almost wants to say it is some sort of illness inducing curse like that blood plague they started, but that makes zero sense with what they told him the incantation means.

What does identity have to do with throwing his guts up? With headaches and fever? The vomiting had escalated from the nausea within a day, but it was made all the harder on him by the general fatigue that had started dragging down his body like chains yesterday.

He hears Misaki's voice call out from the living room, presumably back from work, but he's a bit busy losing the fight to keep anything he's eaten down to call out a greeting to her. He's not sure if it's lucky or unlucky, but Misaki seems to hear him throwing up and comes to the bathroom entirely on her own.

She immediately makes a noise of concern and drops down on her knees next to him, and starts rubbing his back, “I think you need to go back to the hospital.” He tries to make a disagreeing noise, since while he seems to be sick, it's nothing serious, but he's not sure how well it comes out. Regardless, Misaki seems to understand anyway, “I'm serious Hei, you've hardly been able to keep anything down long enough for your body to start digesting it. Hell, even water. If nothing else, you probably need to go in to get an IV so you don't die from dehydration, but I'm starting to get seriously concerned about you starving to death despite the fact you're eating things lighter on the stomach. And that's without the fact your body has higher caloric requirements.”

He's trying to formulate an argument against it, while he may have gone to Saint Mungo's for his initial check up, that was mostly out of the fact there weren't really options for magicals over there, since they had never really shaken cramming everything in as few places as possible from back when they had to limit it due to wanting to mitigate risk against the statute, so the only real options barring private on call healers were Saint Mungo's and the clinic Calanthe had created on Diagon. He actually would've preferred to go there, being much more comfortable with the smaller clinic and with people Calanthe herself or retainers like Remus had vetted than with someplace with so many people, unknown people at that, as a large hospital, but it'd been late enough that the clinic was closed. The checkup to try to figure out what the hell that spell had done was necessary and also an easier pill to swallow since he was likely not to have to be there for long, but if he was admitted to a hospital… Well, as a former assassin, he really doesn't like being vulnerable around so many unknowns. Particularly with the fact he himself has snuck into a hospital to kill someone, so he knows that it's all too easy.

Before he can even attempt to reply, he pukes again, and the option is taken away from him. He knows Misaki sees it as well, considering how the hand that had been soothingly rubbing at his back stills.

There was blood in his vomit.

Misaki's hand clenches at the back of his shirt, “We're going to the hospital.”

It's not a question. It's said in a firm tone leaving no room for argument. And as much as he hates hospitals in general, he can't even really argue even if he wants to, was capable of doing so at the moment, given he was a bit busy continuing to fill the toilet bowl. What was even in his body anymore to expel? He'd think he'd be dry heaving at this point just because there was nothing left, but apparently his body hasn't quite emptied itself just yet.

Misaki pushes herself up, “Let me go get a bucket and call Sirius to try to figure out how we get there with the fact you're currently way too sick for their usual methods of transport. We have no idea how much longer you'll be puking, so it's not like we can just wait for it to pass.”

He makes a weak noise as best he can to let her know he understands, and she disappears.

If nothing else, he really hopes they have something to make it stop for a bit. Preferably not a potion since he's tried that and he can't even keep one of those down.

She gnaws on her bottom lip in worry.

Hei had, with great reluctance, finally gone back to the hospital. She'd done her best when she and Misaki were trying to convince him to go back by having the healers assigned to his case as thoroughly vetted as possible, even with the fact her wards would've kept the particularly dangerous healers and the like out on their own, so there's nothing more she can do on that front.

His newest symptom was worrying enough on its own, and she can't really blame it for pushing him to go back to the hospital for more than an initial scan and presumably a hopefully quick solution, but even as understandable as it is, the very fact it had overridden his paranoia to begin with… That manages to be incredibly concerning by itself.

She looks over at Hermione who had been helping her try to find a way to get the blood plague curse to show up on scans when the letter comes in. Wordlessly, she pushes the letter across the table to her, and as soon as it enters her line of sight, she picks it up and reads it. When she's done, she looks away with furrowed brows, “The blood is definitely new. As terrible as it is, it also helps potentially figure out what the spell is doing to him, seeing as the rest of the symptoms from before… honestly, they're too vague to be much help pinning down the answer.”

She sighs and nods, “Yeah. You don't have any ideas of what it could be though?”

Her friend shakes her head, “No, sorry. There's something vaguely familiar about it, but even adding in the blood, there's still more than one possibility, so…”

She sighs, “Yeah, I thought so as well.”

Hermione gives her an apologetic smile, “Even so, I am so sorry I can't be of more help.”

She shakes her head, “No, it's not your fault at all. While it would've been nice if you could magically know what was wrong, I kinda figured you couldn't and was more just double checking.”

Her friend sighs, “Still…” Then she laughs a little bitterly, “This really is something of a mess isn't it? I mean, I know it's a war, but first this stupid blood plague curse and now whatever the hell this is Hei was hit with?”

She snorts, “No kidding.” Then she lets out a sigh of her own, “But as much as I hate it, there's little I can do until something changes with Hei. Either more symptoms present themselves to try to narrow in on the problem or they track down the details of that curse.”

Hermione makes a vaguely agreeing hum, then smiles a bit tensely, “So, back to trying to figure out how to handle the blood plague then?”

She grins a bit tiredly, “Yup.”

That's all that's said for a while as they both turn back to their books to try to find anything that could help with the blood plague curse, either directly or via letting it pop up on magical scans so they can at least figure out who's infected quickly, so that they can potentially go to the hospital immediately and the healers can work at slowing it down as early as possible so that each infected has a better chance of living until they can work something out for it. Also, if they can figure out how to detect it, it would absolutely open up the possibility of fine tuning the scan to try and figure out how long that person has before the final part of the curse activates, and if they can do that, she can try to tweak the wards to send them to isolation so that they can't spread the curse.

It's a bit mind numbing, looking over passages talking about scanning spell after scanning spell, but if they can work something out, it'll certainly be worth it in the long run.

She's walking towards the Room of Requirements, both because she's getting desperate enough for something to help Hei that she can't help but check again that maybe the Room's memory didn't transfer as perfectly as she'd previously thought to her Trunk of Requirements and that maybe, maybe something it knows will at least spark the powder keg of trying to find some way to help him, and also just for the isolated quiet, as it's been getting harder and harder to deal with the hustle and bustle of Hogwarts over this last month as Hei just got worse and worse practically in defiance of everything the healers are trying.

She's interrupted on her journey there though when Dumbledore steps out of a doorway in front of her, “Miss Potter-Black.”

She narrows her eyes a bit tiredly, “You aren't supposed to contact me unless absolutely necessary, and even then only with my Head of House present.”

He smiles a bit, and at a glance it seems gentle and kind, but she can see how twisted it is beneath the facade. His tone when he speaks is similarly one thing outwardly and another entirely if you're familiar with parting his smoke and mirrors. Seemingly as gentle and kind as his expression, but actually a bit coy and gleeful, “In general yes, but I thought perhaps I ought to offer my assistance in trying to find some way to help your soulmate. Perhaps if we went and spoke in my office…”

And normally? Normally she wouldn't hesitate to go to bat against Dumbledore and play the word games, but not today. Not with Hei's condition continuing to deteriorate, which he was trying to use against her. So she barks out a laugh right in his face, “Don't even pretend you know what's going on with Hei and how to help him. If you did, you wouldn't be trying to use it to get me under your thumb. You'd be trying to use it to undermine me against the masses. You'd be putting on a big show about how even with the way I was taking you to trial and all that, you were still‘kind’ enough to save my soulmate. You don't know jack Dumbledore.”

His face twitches a bit, “It's awfully rude to accuse someone who's offering assistance of being manipulative.”

She grins meanly even as she stamps down on the frustration he's adding to, “Just calling a wand what it is Dumbledore.” She moves around him, continuing down the corridor, “Go scramble back to trying to put out the fires on your reputation. I have more important things to do than deal with you.”

She continues on, heading to the Room and quickly tearing through anything that may be relevant for Hei.

Book after book, her frustration wrackets higher and higher until eventually something inside her snaps after she's torn through practically everything it has again and found nothing, again.

She just barely has enough presence of mind to send a quick note to Lucius telling him he won't wanna be in any of the Death Eater bases in a few moments.

After its sent off, she's not even really thinking as she shifts into the Animagus form she's learned, but not yet shown anyone, the powerful muscles tensing and untensing with her aggravation, her claws digging into the stone repeatedly as her hands partly curl and straighten back out rhythmically. Her wings snap out after a few beats, and the Room easily picks up on her intentions and creates a massive window to outside the castle which she hurls herself out of.

The incredibly keen hearing she has in this form picks up on people gasping, choking, and more than one person's incredulous shout, “Dragon?!”

“Is- Is that a dragon?! Here?!”

“What in the name of Merlin! Where the hell did a freaking Dragon come from?!”

She ignores them all as she flies, destination firmly in mind given that they'd started this. They'd started the war, and it was because of one of them that Hei was currently dying. In moments, she takes advantage of the fact Sirius had taught her how to apparate early as a just in case and twists in midair, disappearing with a ‘CRACK’ more akin to thunder.

She reappears above what initially looks like an empty plot of land, but which she knows are the coordinates for one of the Death Eater bases.

Her lips pull back in a snarl, blue flames licking up the sides. It hadn't been intentional, but that little… trick she'd done against Tommy-boy of breathing in her Patronus fire when she was still in the process of learning her Animagus form… with it still developing, it had permanently altered her Animagus form's abilities.

Her head rears back as she takes a deep breath, snapping down as she exhales a gout of flame. The wards snap into visible existence for a split second before shattering far too easily under the fact they were protecting those who mean her harm, barely halting her fire for more than a split second.

It roars down to the house that had been revealed itself and engulfs it. It doesn't touch said house itself, but she hears more than a couple brief, quickly cut off screams from Death Eaters inside.

Once that's dealt with, she twists again and is gone with another thunderous ‘CRACK’, appearing over yet another hidden base in seconds.

She repeats it, over and over, and by the time she's calmed down, she's torched twelve separate bases.

After she does, she flies away from the last base, flying over to the woods nearby and landing before changing back. She reaches into her mokeskin pouch to slip her Invisibility Cloak out so she can head back to the Shrieking Shack and back to Hogwarts, gazing into the distance rather than actually paying attention to what her hands are doing, “...May have lost my temper there a bit… Well, not like that would've hurt anyone innocent.”

Shaking her head, she's already mentally composing a note to hand to Draco that she gave him because she ‘knows his family is Death Eater scum and can pass her message along’, or at least that will be the story, about how if Hei dies, none of them will escape her fire, fire that they didn't need to know just yet that she's been holding back just to try to squeeze intel out of captured Death Eaters just to try to do a proper job of it this time, unlike last time when so many slipped through the cracks as she slips the Cloak around her and disappears with a whisper soft ‘pop’ this time.

She's tearing through the Potter library almost frantically, having gotten special permission to leave the school given the circumstances.

Hei had started showing more symptoms the longer he was sick, that was for sure. That general tiredness had advanced to fatigue and fainting, he started getting nose bleeds randomly, not to mention the bleeding from his gums, he was getting confused easily, and he was starting to get sores all over, even in his freaking mouth and down his throat. As if all that wasn't terrifying enough, a couple days ago he'd slipped into a coma from what they could tell. He certainly wasn't waking up anyway, no matter what they did.

She throws yet another useless book, shoving her hands through her hair in desperate terror and fighting off the urge to scream. For a moment she just stands there, uncertain what to do.

Then a memory bubbles up, of the mention of the fact the woman who cast the thrice damned curse at Hei was from further east in Europe, and almost immediately her thoughts flick to something, or rather someone else, ‘Bulgaria is pretty far east. Maybe…’

She snaps into motion, yanking out her mail pouch and scurrying over to a table. When she opens Viktor's, two letters are inside, but she roughly yanks them out and tosses them on the table as she quickly writes with her other hand in frantic desperation “Viktor, I'll read them and reply later and I'm really sorry I haven't been replying to letters, more so because this feels terribly like I'm using you, but Durmstrang knows an awful lot about Dark Arts. Do you know anything about the Interitus Identitatus curse? All I can find is it's something that kills someone slowly, and Hei was hit with one and I'm trying to find some sort of treatment.”

She paces in worry, but eventually the thread on her mail pouch for Viktor's compartment starts glowing, and she practically tears it and the thick letter inside open, “Calanthe, don't worry about the previous letters, you have other things on your plate right now. I didn't know if you'd want the summary or everything I knew about it to try to glean something from it, so I included both the summary and the full run-down. I hope it helps, and good luck with Hei. Our healers have never been able to find a way to deal with it, but you're rather good at doing the impossible.”

She skims it as quickly as possible, looking for something, anything to help Hei with. There's a very brief history, just in case she can glean anything from it, but it's mostly about how the one who invented the curse wanted the person he made it for to die, but not physically so as to suffer the consequences. They were apparently aiming for either their death in everyone's memory and all the records that mention them, or if that wasn't doable for their own memory of who they were to be destroyed. The first part of the summary only makes her despair crank higher and higher, but eventually her eyes catch on a certain section, “I don't know how helpful it is, but it's impossible to know what information is useful and what isn't. For reasons no one has ever been able to figure out, various tests to try to identify the problem eventually led to the discovery that for some reason, as the spell progresses, identification potions start struggling more and more to identify the victim.”

Her hands drop a little, from holding the parchment vertically in front of her to more horizontally as her gaze drifts as it niggles at her mind. The potions start struggling to identify them? Up to that moment, for all of her non-magical education, she's been thinking in an entirely magical mindset, but the mention of identification potions, which use blood to identify someone, triggers a change in her thinking, and a split second later it clicks.

Her mouth drops open. Then she whirls away, “Hermione!” Her hip clips on one the tables as she rushes towards the section her friend had been digging through, but she doesn't care. Maybe later she will, if she can work out how to deal with this, but-, “Hermione!”

Her friend hurries out through the bookcases, almost running into her in both their rushing. She catches the girl by the shoulders as she stumbles back in her haste to stop from running into her, almost falling before she catches her, then holds up the parchment, frantically tapping the relevant sentence, “I reached out to Viktor! He said-! And I mean it sounds like-! Read this and tell me if you're thinking the same thing or if I'm crazy!”

Sirius and Remus show up as Hermione snatches it out of her hand and starts quickly reading it over. Sirius is a little out of breath, but he doesn't let that stop him, “Pup? If Viktor knows anything about the spell, wouldn't it have been better to be calling for us? Remus and I know much more about Dark magic after all.”

She shakes her head quickly, “But you don't have a non-magical education, and if I'm right -!”

That's as far as she gets before Hermione quite obviously reaches the relevant section, gaze snapping up, “Oh Merlin.DNA. It's attacking his DNA sequence itself. No wonder magicals have never gotten anywhere with it!”

She shoves her hands through her hair again, “I'm right then!”

Hermione lightly smacks her own forehead, “And that's why the symptoms seemed familiar! It's similar to radiation poisoning! I mean, the time scale is different but other than that it's basically an exact match!” Her head pulls back a bit as her eyes briefly widen, “Which makes sense when you think about it, I mean, at its core, the reason radiation is harmful is because it damages cells and their ability to function, and damaging the DNA would do the exact same freaking thing.”

She sucks in a breath, brain whirling away. She's been looking at it from an entirely magical perspective up until now, and just the thought of DNA had started shifting her thought process, but Hermione's comment shoves it the rest of the way and ideas start sparking and blooming like fireworks in her head, “I think-! Maybe-!”

That's as far as she gets before she turns around and tears back off towards the runes and rituals section of the Potter library she'd been going through. Behind her Remus says in confusion, “DNA? What on earth is that?”

Hermione lets out a sharp breath, the sound of her voice and the footsteps making it clear the three of them were right behind her, “Short version? Essentially the blueprint to a living being. It's what tells the fertilized egg how to make the creature -because it doesn't just apply to humans- that it's supposed to be making. Everything about you is basically written out in your DNA. Your height, your eye color, what organs you have and where they go in the body. All of it. So it being destroyed, unraveling- No wonder Hei's body is failing.”

Remus makes a noise of understanding, and Sirius pipes up, “Okay, so that explains what it's doing to him, but why are you tearing off Prongslette? If that's what it does, I… I mean, I'm sorry to say it, really I am, but doubt there's ever been anything to cure it.”

She glances back, “Definitely not, but if I know what the problem is, I can possibly undo it myself. Clean the blood, clean the body. Yes, there are obviously more cells than what's in the blood in the body as a whole, but given the way it has access to everything, it would start to spread, particularly if done in conjunction with a ritual to reach the other cells. Particularly the stem cells, since those can become anything the body needs. From there, the damage already done just needs to be repaired.”

Then she turns back around to continue on, reaching the area she's aiming for, she briefly stops by a table, summoning her mail pouch which she forgot, and quickly scrawls out another note, taking out the waiting mail as she does, “Fleur, I'm really sorry I've been out of touch, but Hei was hit by a curse and is dying. Viktor managed to tell me something about it that means I think I can craft something to save him, but Veela have unbelievable amounts of knowledge about gems, and I need everything you have in relation to healing and purifying as soon as possible.”

She roughly shoves the letter in the pouch and starts yanking books that she vaguely recalls having relevant information off the shelves, already starting to flip through one as she scans titles, gaze flicking back and forth, as she tosses them at a table.

She has ritual and runic work and ritual crafting to do and a soulmate to save.

She all but bursts unto Hei's hospital room, startling both his healer and Misaki, who's been working sort of remotely in helping put things together and figure things out from the evidence they gather for the cases her team was working on, even if she wasn't physically cuffing the bad guys with them.

The healer knows she's gotten permission repeatedly to visit but her sudden appearance seems to throw him off enough to forget, “Lady Potter-Black? Shouldn't you be in school?”

She ignores him and moves over to Hei as she whips her wand out, “Cellus ostende mihi.”

She'd been a bit hesitant to use ‘cellus’ in the spell since it meant ‘little space or room’, but it wasn't like there was an exact equivalent to ‘cells’ and it was the word it was derived from, so… it seems to work though, as immediately a hazy green glow bursts out of her wand like a mist, swirling around his body before half of it sinks in and the other half gathers above him as a sort of screen, similar to her Patronus Picturam. It initially just shows a double of Hei's body, but it quickly starts zooming in further and further until she's looking at a group of cells. Around each was a glow of magic, and with a flicker of will, it zooms in on one even further until she's looking at the DNA helix in one. That glow of magic was surrounding it. She narrows her eyes briefly, then throws another spell, this one a Patronus Inventiones. She hesitates briefly, then rather than breathing it in, tries sending the wisps through her time turner and at the screen when it comes out of the other side, trying her best to impart the intention and desire of wanting to see the history of it into the magic.

It seems to work, as the screen changes to show perfectly healthy cells with no glow, then the magic attaches to them, and even with it sped up, it's still rather slow as it unravels the DNA and eats away at it like acid. Until the image has returned to the one she was shown when she first cast the spell of his present day condition.

Off to her left and slightly behind her, she hears Misaki suck in a sharp breath. She hisses out in a mixture of rage and satisfaction, “I knew it.”

Misaki's voice is shaking, “That’s-!”

She gives her a grim look over her shoulder, “His DNA. Being destroyed. Luckily, I was only using that spell to make sure what I thought was going on was what was happening, because I already crafted a treatment, but while it wouldn't necessarily do more damage if I was wrong depending on what it was doing, it could've.”

She turns back to the somewhat lost looking Healer, “The ritual can't be performed here, and while it will start the process of repairing the damage and I already crafted a necklace with rune inscribed gems to purge anything it misses as well as continue the repairs to his DNA, he will have to be brought back here for continued care and more general healing. Which is to say, I need to remove him from Saint Mungo's for a while, but I'm not discharging him.”

The Healer blinks rapidly, “That-” Then he shakes his head and seems to gather himself, “That's perfectly fine, such situations are rare of course, but things like that do happen. I'll have to go with you though, to monitor the patient's health as well as be on standby for any immediate healing he'll need after or if something goes wrong.” He smiles a little, “It also simplifies taking him out of the hospital without discharging him considerably.”

She shrugs, “As long as you don't interfere with the ritual, that's fine.”

He barks a laugh, “Merlin no! Rituals may not be my area of expertise when it comes to healing, but I'm not an idiot. I know better than to mess with a ritual in progress.”

She flicks a glance at him, “Good.”

Then she pulls out a length of rope she'd attached the portkey to, a very specific kind of portkey specifically designed for patient transportation that she was already familiar with due to the emergency portkeys her golems have, and after looping part of it around Hei's wrist, she glances back at Misaki, “You coming or staying here? Not sure how much there will be to see, but you can if you want as long as you stay out of the way.”

Misaki practically scrambles to her feet, “I'm coming with.”

She grabs into the rope, and the Healer comes over and grabs on as well. The moment she's sure they're all secure, she activates the portkey with a simple command, “Chamber.”

The type of portkey used for medical transportation was a bit more complicated to make, but understandably given the potentially delicate condition of someone it was transporting, the ride is significantly smoother, and when it's over, they're gently lowered to the ground in the Chamber of Secrets.

She catches Hei with her own levitation spell before the portkey can finish lowering him itself. She unwraps the rope from his wrist quickly and hands it to Misaki before heading over to the center of the ritual circle with Hei to set him in the center.

The white blood cells in magicals were a bit different. Namely, they had an additional function that let's them treat harmful magic such as curses like a virus, even though they weren't usually on such a small scale like this one and had to break it up first. The curse Hei was suffering under was already on a cellular scale, which you'd think would make their job easier, but it was actually practically impossible for them to fight off, since just taking it into themselves gives it access to the DNA they have inside them. Given how slow the curse works against the DNA, she'd go out on a limb and guess that as a defensive mechanism, the curse disables their ability to destroy it somehow first and only after does it turn to actually destroying the DNA, but it's not like she's studied it in such a way, so she couldn't say for sure.

The circle of gems with a tunnel drilled through each of them was meant to help with that. She'd tried using Patronus fire on Hei before, and while it seemed to help a bit, it wasn't as effective as she'd been hoping, but when she'd been crafting all of this, she'd tried it again with a spell she'd made to check for spells that acted on such a small scale, a precursor to the one she used on Hei to double check what exactly it was doing on that level, using it on some blood samples she'd gotten from the hospital from Hei to work out that her Patronus fire didn't work as thoroughly on such a small scale. It would burn some of it out, but not enough.

Hermione, bless her, had suggested something vaguely similar to a dialysis machine. The blood would be pumped out of Hei and travel through the tubing running through the holes drilled in the circle of gems capable of using Patronus fire specifically tuned to Hei, which would each purify the curse from his blood a bit more. From their calculations, it should go through enough cycles from the number of gems she'd set up that it should be either completely or nearly totally purified of the curse by the time it's pumped back in.

At the same time as they're being cleansed, she's worked out a way to essentially make them immune to getting re-infected and also basically teach them how to deal with it. Of course, since it goes after the DNA, there's a lot more than blood cells infected, but getting to the rest was… a bit more complicated. In fairness, teaching his white blood cells how to handle the curse and simultaneously making them immune to the curse themselves means his body could theoretically fight it off the rest of the way itself, but given how far the curse has advanced, she's not entirely sure there's enough time. That's partially where the ritual comes in. It takes the abilities of the gems and focuses them into Hei in the center to reach the less easily accessible cells. Both the gems and the ritual had a secondary effect built in to repair the damaged DNA back to what it was supposed to be.

She's been giving Misaki the run down on all of this as she does some final checks to make sure everything is in place. Misaki chews on her bottom lip, “That's all well and good, absolutely brilliant even, but… but what if his DNA has gotten so damaged that his body doesn't even have any sort of… record, so to speak, of what his DNA is supposed to look like fully left?”

She turns and smiles triumphantly as she pulls the results from Hei's identification potion, specifically the one from after he became a magical, and holds it up, “Thought of that! But! Even if there isn't blood on this, it's all absorbed after all, the magic in it is embedded with his DNA sequence! I, in turn, took that information and embedded it into the gems and ritual so they know what it's supposed to look like!”

Misaki nods, “What about Bai and her results though?”

She shakes her head as she heads back over to her to take her place for the ritual, “Given the way they're fused, she's probably been affected as well, so I just added some extra to all this to keep their results separate and targeted towards each of them specifically.”

Misaki relaxes a bit, then gives her a shaky smile, “Well, considering the magical world doesn't even really know what DNA is, it's probably our only shot of undoing it. Not that it's necessarily a bad idea or that you aren't good at this kind of stuff, Hei's mask is evidence enough of that, but…”

She smiles a bit tensely back, “No, I get it. It's a bit scary when you understand exactly what's happening to him, and there isn't really anything like this in the rest of the magical world. I'm completely pioneering this kind of treatment to my knowledge. It's understandable to be uncertain of how effective it'll be.”

Then she turns to the Healer, “I'm starting now.”

He nods his head, so without another second of hesitation, she starts the ritual. She wasn't sure if all rituals were like it, or if it's just that the ones she's done up until now were pretty… powerful, but she once again gets utterly swept away in the ordered chaos of the magic and immediately loses all sense of time. She's only really aware of Hei lying still in the center, his breathing as rough and wetly rattling as has become normal for him, and vaguely of the visuals from the cellus spell each of the gems starts projecting above them when things start to let her get an idea of how much of the curse was still in his system.

To her relief, even as vague of her awareness of them is, by the time the blood passes through the final one, the curse is practically gone, enough so that she's fairly confident that the necklace she'd made to continue any of the leftover clean up and repairs can handle it.

When it's done, it's not like his breathing problems or the strain his body was undergoing showing on his face are just fixed. All of what she was doing was focused on getting rid of the curse and repairing the damage to his DNA, that wouldn't heal whatever has happened to his body with a snap of the fingers. But now that the curse is at least almost entirely gone and fixing the damage to his DNA was probably mostly finished, and whatever was left over could be taken care of by the necklace, at least now the Healers’ work would stick.

All three of them hurry over to Hei, and with another of the spell that was the precursor to the cellus spell, she confirms that there's either no curse left, or it's such a miniscule amount that it's not even showing up on her scan, which is easily within the capabilities of the necklace and his own newly buffed immune system. And even if his condition starts to decline again or it starts to build up once more, she could always send him through the ritual a second time.

She'd certainly know if it was needed before things started getting serious even with the fact she can't exactly be at the hospital constantly, since she absolutely intends to try to teach the Healers the spells. And both for if they just couldn't get it or just during the time they're learning, she also crafted a detector that used the precursor to the cellus spell and vaguely tracked just how much of a spell was in the system in between free moments while she either needed time to think further about the ritual and gems or was waiting for Hermione to get back to her on some aspect she was handling to try to speed it up by having multiple people working on different parts. So she'll absolutely have a solid idea of what's going on with him.

Finished with her own examination, she slips the necklace onto Hei, then steps back to let the Healer scan him and see if there's anything he needs to do right this second that can't wait until they're back to the hospital.

As she steps back, it brings her more in line with Misaki and she notices she's crying, “All of this was designed to get rid of the curse and repair the damage done to his DNA, it wasn't really meant for healing in general, so there's not going to be a visible improvement. The healers will have to handle the rest, but at least with the curse either totally or nearly gone for the necklace and his immune system to finish off that healing will actually take.”

Misaki shakes her head though, “That's not why I'm crying. It's more... relieved happy tears. They can heal everything else like you said, but they had no idea what to do about the curse. But I saw those screens. The curse is dealt with. It's not killing him anymore.”

She nods slowly, then the healer turns to look over. They hadn't been whispering or anything, just speaking at normal volume, so it doesn't surprise her that it's obvious he heard them from what he says, “And heal him we will. None of the damage done to him is particularly complicated for professional healers, it was the fact the curse kept causing more harm and there was nothing we could do that was the problem. He's stable though, so it's perfectly safe to take him back so we can get started on that.”

She gets the portkey back from Misaki, offering one end to the Healer so he can wrap it around Hei's wrist as well as hold onto it himself. As he does, she and Misaki get quickly situated, and once he looks back and nods, she activates it, “Return.”

They appear back in the hospital room, and the Healer quickly gets Hei situated on the bed, then he flashes them a smile as he starts towards the door, “I'm going to go get another Healer or two and some potions.”

They both nod their understanding, and he's gone in moments. She stares at Hei, unbelievable thankful that it worked, and that Hermione mentioned the dialysis idea to clean the curse from his blood-

She straightens sharply. Gaze drifting to the wall above Hei's bed. Blood. Cleaning a curse from infected blood. Maybe…

Her gaze drops to Hei, and she knows there's no way he'll be conscious by the time she leaves, but she's incredibly reluctant to leave his side, especially since there's a high likelihood of the vague idea in the back of her head taking up the rest of the time she was permitted to leave Hogwarts for.

Realistically though, given that there would still be a good chunk of work needed to heal him and that he wouldn't be conscious by the time she had to leave, she really ought to use her time efficiently. So as reluctant as she is, she turns to Misaki, “There's something I need to look into, and depending on how it plays out, I may not be able to come back before I have to head back to Hogwarts.”

Misaki blinks a little rapidly for a moment, “What do you nee-?” Then she gets a fond smile, “Nevermind. Always busy as a bee aren't you? I'll keep an eye on Hei and send you texts to update you. Go do whatever you need to.”

She nods, then without hesitation, turns and heads towards the area set aside for the people contaminated with the blood plague curse. It doesn't take her long to track down the Healer in charge of everything there, and she quickly convinces them to let her try a new magical scan on them. Not that it's hard. Given everything she's done, they're all too happy to let her, though protocol does necessitate them coming with her. Not that it's a bad thing. Since if the niggling suspicion in the back of her head is right, she'll need them anyway.

And much as she'd suspected, she's very, very glad they're there when the cellus scan shows that the blood plague is, in fact, another spell that exists on a cellular level, rather than something on a larger scale.

The Healer tilts her head in confusion, “What exactly am I looking at?”

She points at a blood cell, “That is blood on a very zoomed in level. We're talking so zoomed in even a single drop of blood is made up of millions of them. Similarly to how a lake has millions of drops of water.” She shifts her pointing finger, “That. Is the blood plague curse attached to the cells.”

The Healer sucks in a sharp breath, then her wide eyes narrow as she steps a bit closer, and she's more murmuring to herself than actually asking Calanthe when she says, “How do we get rid of this then?”

She grins a bit tiredly, “I don't suppose you've heard of what was happening with my soulmate?”

That brings the Healer’s attention back to her and she smiles back a bit wanely, “No disrespect Lady Potter-Black, but the soulmate of such a well known figure, and one that no one knows how to help at that? Between your fame and the Healers over there consulting others, practically everyone knows. Why?”

Her grin gets a bit more energy, “Because he, his Healer, and I just got back from using a ritual I crafted to remove the curse from him. It's similar to this one in the fact it's so small within the body. Actually, makes one wonder if a lot of the things magicals can't deal with work on a cellular level. Illnesses and the like obviously do, but there are other things as well...” She shakes the thought of and gestures vaguely at the screen, “Anyway, I actually invented this spell to confirm it was doing what I thought it was after I got a suspicion from something someone I know said. But while it would need to be reworked and tweaked to work for this specifically, I'm pretty sure the ritual I crafted to help him could remove the blood plague curse as well.”

The Healer sucks in a sharp breath, then almost desperately, “How is it done?”

She digs around in her mokeskin pouch, “I can try to explain it, but I do have a time limit on how long I can be here before I have to go back to Hogwarts. I did, however, also write a paper on it during some down time waiting for some materials I needed and for them to be prepared after I'd finished crafting the ritual and all that.” She holds it out, “You can make a copy and that will definitely explain anything I don't have time to today. I do need the original back, since I intended to send a copy to the person who gave me some info since they're actually from somewhere somewhat familiar with the spell even if they don't have a way to counter it, so I wanted to make sure it got into the hands of the Healers over there. I also intended to publish it for anyone else that may need it.”

The Healer takes it and copies it without hesitation before handing the original back, “That works just fine. If there's ritual magic involved, I'll definitely need to hand another copy off to the healers in charge of that sort of stuff, but it's not a big deal. If you don't have a lot of time today, just give me the basic rundown.”

She nods, “Fair warning, this actually uses a decent chunk of non-magical scientific knowledge as you probably figured out from that stuff I was explaining earlier with the scan, so I may have to spend more time explaining that stuff, but if we run out of time and there's still things you don't quite understand, just keep in mind that you could absolutely ask the non-magical doctors they put you guys in touch with in case you have any questions.”

The Healer tilts her head, “To be honest, it's a good thing you did, since while they ask about cures for things they don't have something for, if we've ever asked them something, I never heard of it, so I honestly forget about them most of the time.”

She smiles a little, “I kinda figured. Just remember to let your ritual guys know that the one I wrote that for was something else, so they aren't just working out logistics and setting it up but need to outright change it for the blood plague curse.”

The Healer nods as she looks down at the parchment, “Redwood indeed…”

She tilts her head, “What?”

The Healer looks up with a smile, “I read in the Prophet during the tournament that your wand was a mixture of Elm, Fir, and Redwood and what that meant. Redwood's biggest preference is for those who are good at snatching advantage from catastrophe, isn't it?” She shakes her head as she glances down at the parchment again, “I'm definitely seeing it now, that's for sure…” Then she shakes herself, “But I'm wasting time. Tell me what you can.”

She shakes off the mention of her wand and launches into discussing how to get rid of the blood plague curse. She honestly feels terrible that she got so focused on Hei that she practically forgot all about it. If there's been anything more about it in the Daily Prophet, she hasn't even been paying enough attention to notice. It seems to have unintentionally been the smart play, since getting rid of Hei's curse had her unintentionally creating the way of getting rid of the blood plague curse, but she still feels horrible for not even noticing anything going on with it or the people getting infected.

She'll have to do better. Something like this isn't tolerable.

His eyes slowly open, feeling stupidly heavy.

He's still in the hospital, which isn't surprising, but it definitely sucks. Before he really has an opportunity to gather himself enough to look around, Misaki's voice pipes up off to the side, “Hei. Oh thank the gods.” He tries to turn his head to look over at her, but his body doesn't want to cooperate. Thankfully, she seems to notice and moves from where she was off to the side to sitting on the side of his bed, “How are you feeling?”

He blinks slowly, his mind feeling like it's taking its sweet time to get into gear, but after a moment he registers what she said and manages to respond, “Like I got run over by a truck.”

Misaki laughs a bit wetly as her eyes tear up, somewhere between strained and relieved, “I'm not surprised!” She looks over as someone starts murmuring something off to the side, then nods when they're done, “That's a good point.” She turns back to him, “The Healer was just pointing out that from your perspective you went to sleep and woke up without issues. You've actually been in a coma for a couple of weeks Hei.”

His brain takes a moment to process that, “I woke up though? Did they figure something out?”

The voice off to the side barks a laugh, and from the sound of a couple footsteps, they approach, which is proven correct when his Healer leans into his line of sight, “As much as I don't like to admit it since we're supposed to be able to help people, we didn't figure anything out. Lady Potter-Black did. Merlin, it wasn't even something like she just figured out what that curse was doing to you which gave us an idea of how to handle it. She did that and got rid of the curse as well as healing everything but the more… simplistic damage that's been done to you.” He reaches down and touches something, making Hei notice something resting against the hollow of his throat, “On that note, you have a necklace she made to make sure none of the curse or damage escaped her ritual, so don't remove it.”

Misaki smiles a bit, “Think of it like an IV. You won't like it anymore than one, but it's there for a good reason.”

He blinks slowly, “Okay.” Then his brain catches up to what the healer had said before, “Wait, Calanthe figured it out?”

Misaki huffs out a laugh, “Yeah. Good thing she did too, because based on what that curse was doing, no offense to the healers, but I don't think they ever would, if only because it required non-magical scientific knowledge.”

The Healer disappears, saying as he does, “None taken Miss Kirihara. We wouldn't have.”

His brows furrow as his brain finally seems to start warming the proverbial engine, “Why?”

Misaki hesitates, a flicker of remembered fear crossing her face, before she takes a shuddering breath, “Because you… You had the symptoms of radiation poisoning, but that wasn't the cause. The curse was attached to your cells and slowly destroying your DNA. Calanthe worked it out, as well as how to get it out of your cells and body and even repair the damage done to your DNA. It was actually rather brilliant in my opinion. Especially since she even thought of the fact there could be sections of your DNA completely destroyed and therefore that your body had no record of anymore and figured out how to take that information from that identification potion parchment you used back when Calanthe was confirming that you were a wizard now.”

He's a bit floored at the understanding of what was happening to him, and while he realized a while ago as he kept getting worse that Misaki was right to drag him back to Saint Mungo's, that more than anything hammers it home. After a few moments to process that, which Misaki seems to realize and understand, something else occurs to him and he tenses up, “Bai. She-”

Misaki nods, “Is fused with you and also popped up on the identification potion results, but Calanthe thought of that. She made sure the ritual would both heal any potential damage to her and was careful to keep your results separate and make sure any repairs to DNA needed would go to whichever one of you it was supposed to.”

He relaxes at the reassurance that if that curse even could affect his sister given she was fused with him with BK-201's molecular manipulation, she would've been taken care of at the same time.

As his gaze roams around, thinking about just how close it sounds like it was if he was already at the point of slipping into a coma, his eyes catch on some mid calf boots set on the bench of a window seat. He blinks rapidly in confusion. Out of the corner of his eye, he see's Misaki's gaze is drawn over to them, “Ahh. Those. Calanthe brought them. She had them made out of black dragonhide with acromantula silk lining the inside with some of that silver she uses so frequently spun out into thread and sewed into runes, like your coat. She crammed as much protection magic as she could into them. And anything she could think of that was useful of course, like silencing spells and even a function you can turn on to pull off her water walking trick. As far as protections go, I sincerely doubt they measure up to your coat, but from her usual level of work, I'm sure she did everything she could for them to close that gap in your defenses that started this whole mess. Even borrowed your coat and added a hood that's enchanted to stay in place unless you yourself push it back down, since while your mask's protections extend to the back of your head, she apparently felt the need to reinforce it just to be safe.”

He feels a wave of fond amusement, as well as exasperation, “Let me guess, she took the gap as a complete and utter failure?”

Misaki's laugh is fondly exasperated, “Of course she did. Not only that, but we were talking when she swung by to visit you earlier and dropped off those boots, and she's being stupidly harsh on herself for being so focused on you, one of her soulmates that was actively dying, that she completely forgot about the blood plague curse and wasn't paying attention to any news on it.” Uncharacteristically, Misaki rolls her eyes, “Even though not even five minutes after she was finished with the ritual to get rid of your curse it occurred to her that the blood plague curse probably operated on a similarly miniscule scale and tore off to go look into it. Turns out it latches onto the blood cells, and since your curse infected all the cells in the body, the method she made to purge it works for that as well and the ritual just needed some small changes. So she kinda unintentionally cured that while figuring out how to dispel your curse. Not that it's good enough for her of course. The fact she forgot in the first place, despite the fact it actually ended up helping and that occurred to her immediately after you were dealt with is entirely unacceptable to her.”

He snorts, “Of course it is. This is the same girl that took it as a personal failure when the Knight Bus was attacked to begin with. How bad is it?”

Misaki shakes her head, “Well, Remus and I have been keeping an eye on her and other than working on teaching the magical AI that manages the golems everything it needs to know to be able to detect things like the blood plague curse and figure out how it works, there's not a whole lot for her to hyper focus on to try to cut off additional methods of attack from Riddle and his Death Eaters.”

He hums, “So basically she's gone back to working herself to the bone in training.”

Misaki's voice turns falsely chipper, “Yup!”

She even pops the ‘p’, and he shakes his head, “Better than risking burning herself out like she was when she was trying to prepare for the war really kicking off in her fifth year I guess, since she knows better than to push herself too hard physically.”

Misaki nods, “Other than making your new boots, the work with the magical AI, and her training, there is apparently something else she's working on, but she's being tight lipped about it. Magic that she says she had already gotten working before the mess with your curse, but that she's still wanting to improve on.”

He shakes his head in fond exasperation. That was definitely Calanthe through and through. He'll need to help them keep an eye on her after he's released, since the moment she's done with one thing she bounces to another. He's never heard her say it, but it surprises him that he's never heard her pop off with ‘I'll rest when I'm dead’ to be honest.