As they spoke, the three walked into a bedroom. There were three oil lamps around, each with a small Lumos Charm, illuminating the entire room.
On the floor of the cage, a woman lay unconscious. She was covered in dirt, her loose hair matted, and her frail body was covered in scars.
"This is Nagini?" Harry was a bit at a loss. "I thought…"
"Yes, at least from the surface, she's quite young," Howl nodded, patting his shoulder. "She's not a person yet."
With that, he extended his hand forward, holding it slightly cupped. A misty, silver-glowing vapor rose from his hand, drifted into the cage, and settled on Nagini.
In just a moment, the woman lying in the large cage slowly woke up.
Aberforth took the opportunity to bring a plate of roasted pork ribs, tentatively reaching into the cage.
Nagini lunged forward, clearly ravenous.
Clang—
The girl's head suddenly hit the iron cage.
Aberforth shook his hand and sighed, "Clearly, she was targeting my arm.
Only when she's extremely hungry and there are no living people around will she possibly eat normal food.
I didn't take enough precautions before, which led to her catching several Flobberworms and mice."
Nagini kicked the plate away and lunged fiercely towards the cage.
"Kill, kill all of you… food! You are all my food!!"
"Quiet her down," Howl gestured to Harry.
Harry nodded, then focused his gaze on Nagini. Her mouth stretched to her ears, snake scales shimmered faintly, finger-length fangs were fully exposed, and her menacing forked tongue danced in the air.
He composed himself, then slowly raised his hand.
"Hiss, hiss, hiss."
Upon hearing this sound, Nagini's expression instantly became blank. She then turned around, sat down in the center of the cage, and obediently followed Harry's command.
"Excellent!" Howl nodded with satisfaction. "The threshold for being controlled by Parseltongue is indeed low enough. This makes everything much simpler."
Then, without waiting for Harry to speak, he explained:
"Right now, physically, the snake and human aspects are constantly intertwining and merging within her. And mentally, she is a chaotic individual with human memories, yet controlled by bestial instincts."
"No! More than that!" Aberforth quickly interjected. "Besides the memories Dumbledore forcibly instilled in her, she can't even effectively remember things. A week has passed, and she still hasn't remembered me. It's as if she can't use her own brain at all…"
"Hmm," Howl nodded thoughtfully.
"Then it seems we'll have to contact Dumbledore."
"I've already sent my Patronus to find him, just a moment before you arrived, because I wasn't sure when you would be here."
"Then let's wait until he arrives," Howl said no more, then used Transfiguration to conjure a chair and sat down on it.
"Uncle Howl," Harry began, "I don't quite understand. Why is this 'new soul' still like this? Why can't she regain her sanity, and why is she still controlled by my Parseltongue?"
"Good question," Howl nodded. Then he looked around and raised his hand, summoning a pewter teapot.
Once the teapot reached his hand, it quickly twisted and transformed into a long snake.
"If this is Nagini's soul," Howl gestured to the long snake.
Harry nodded seriously.
Then, the long snake suddenly exploded before his eyes, turning into a pile of flesh.
"Now, this soul has been churned into fragments by me."
Then, the pile of flesh in Howl's hand began to rapidly change, forming a human body, complete with limbs and a head.
"This is the current state of Nagini's soul."
With that, Howl extended his other hand, pulled a translucent ball of light from the fleshy human puppet, and tossed it into the air.
Then, he injected a new ball of light into it.
"Dumbledore changed her memories!"
Howl then looked at Harry.
"Now… what is her problem?"
Harry stared at the puppet, looking it over and over, combining it with Nagini's previous behavior.
Soon, he gave a somewhat strange answer.
"This flesh isn't human flesh! No… essentially, Nagini's current soul is still a snake's soul that has been transformed," Harry said.
"So… well, the snake's instincts are still influencing and dominating it."
"Yes, and no," Howl nodded.
"If we use this puppet as an example, she is currently missing her 'skin'."
"That is, something to fix her own state."
With that, Howl put the puppet down and cut a gruesome wound on each of his palms: "Let me tell you a little biological knowledge: if you stick two different wounds together, they can grow normally."
As he spoke, Howl overlapped the two wounds on his palms.
The scene that followed indeed kept Harry from sleeping well for a while.
It wasn't a bloody scene; he had seen blood before.
It was an extremely counter-intuitive, distorted image—
"Don't look so glum. If you want to learn human Alchemy, this is still child's play." Howl tore apart his palms that had already grown together.
"Souls are the same. But those souls I just put together, they lack a 'soul state restrainer,' which is like the 'skin' of a soul. This causes its growth not to be a normal increase in height and strength.
Instead, it's a deformed growth towards the 'snake' direction, and this snake's soul is contrary to the human state of the soul."
As he spoke, another arm suddenly grew rapidly from the wound on Howl's hand, and it abruptly grabbed his own neck.
"If left uncontrolled, it will be like this—being killed by another self."
With that, he cooperatively tilted his head.
After demonstrating all this, Howl waved his palm, cutting off the overgrown arm and throwing it onto the floor, where it turned into dust.
"Logically, I should have waited until Dumbledore finished transferring the memories before I started building her 'skin,' but now it seems Dumbledore's memory work has hit a snag as well."
After understanding this, Harry looked at Nagini, feeling a strange sense of oppression in his heart.
"That's how it is," Howl smiled.
"This Dark Arts has been used for decades, implanting a snake's soul into a human soul, devouring her completely. And this snake has lived like this for decades.
So, what we have now is the only method we can think of."
Yes, to eat.
One could even say that Nagini's own soul had long been "digested" for who knows how many years.
"I know, Uncle Howl. I'm just a little emotional," Harry said softly.
Seeing a frail girl in her early twenties confined in a cage like an animal, the visual impact was undeniably significant.
Harry didn't know what price was required to cast the Blood Curse.
However, saving her required two of the most outstanding and powerful Wizards in this world.
One was responsible for the soul, and the other for memories.
Both were at the cutting edge of magic.
Yet, it was still fraught with difficulties, and there was no guarantee they could fully cure her.
Howl saw what Harry was thinking and calmly said:
"Killing a person only takes one knife; humans mastered this thousands of years ago in the barbaric era.
However, to save someone who has been stabbed in a vital spot, even with thousands of years of medical development today, it cannot be done without the necessary conditions."
As he spoke, his ears twitched slightly. He had already caught the sound of Dumbledore's approaching footsteps. He stood up and patted Harry's shoulder.
"Evil deeds are always easy to commit—it has been so for thousands of years."
Howl didn't know what thoughts and feelings Harry's act of personally ending Quirrell's life last year had brought him.
But he sincerely hoped this child wouldn't make the same mistakes he had.
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