26. Day After

Tomorrow was in fact not better, at all. For starters, I felt like committing murder with a side of war crime. Of course I wouldn’t do so, it wouldn’t help anyway. I was just ultra annoyed with everything at the moment. I had known that werewolves would suffer from pain a day up to a week after being infected. The reason? No one knew since no one cared enough to study lycanthropy in depth. 

My best guess would be that the curse needed time to modify the body to allow for the drastic physical changes that occurred during a full moon night. That however is besides the point. The reason I felt like commiting genocide was due to how much in pain I was. My whole body felt sore as hell, as if I had decided to go to a gym for a day straight only to go jogging for another day straight. 

The worst part about this is the fact I shouldn’t be feeling so much pain! My modified nervous system simply shouldn’t be flaring up this much with pain. That is unless my body is in a way worse condition than would be expected. Matter of fact is that it indeed is in a horrible state. Moving is extremely hard, my limbs are almost unresponsive. Thankfully, I am functional enough to walk unaided. 

After taking much longer than usual during my morning ablutions I had to act as if nothing was out of the ordinary during the rest of the day. Classes went by slowly and my magic felt sluggish as all hell. Whatever was going on with my body was also affecting my magic and this further fouled my already abysmal mood. Especially taking into account that theory week was over and we were starting with practicals. 

Now, you may be asking. Why don’t I use my vita magic to heal myself? It isn’t that simple. I tried, I really did but it was like pouring water onto a bucket with a massive hole in it. In other words, it would bring me mild relief at the cost of a metric ton of vitality, simply put, not worth it. 

At lunch after an extremely frustrating transfiguration class I gave Sophia the slip. I was trying my best to save the girl from my horrendous mood. Even so, she had noticed and I simply didn’t feel like keeping up the facade, at least not right now. Instead I ate a few bites and fled to the library. I needed to start my research on the dogos asap. I had very little expectations for what I could find though. 

Lycanthropy is an extremely poorly understood subject for a few simple reasons. Anyone with the necessary resources to study it didn’t care to do so. The stigma on the curse is so bad that its study is pretty much banned if not by law then by social death. Simply put, people treated it as an out of sight, out of mind thing. The only ones interested in lycanthropy were the werewolfs themselves, who due to being werewolves were shunned and therefore lacked the necessary resources to study the condition.

As I read through a few tomes my frustration grew and my mood soured even further. There was absolutely nothing of substance on the damned things. Sure, there were the absolute basics that anyone would know. Full moon, bite and that stuff. No one, and I do mean it, No one had bothered to ask other pertinent questions. 

Most if not all of what I found was mere speculation without any actual data backing it up. To put it simply, some guy had written a book about werewolves as a mind exercise where he wrote a bunch of speculations and theories without any actual confirmations, utterly useless. All the books were like that. I had just wasted so much time on absolutely nothing and my desire to commit genocide grew. 

Really, I would have gone and committed genocide already if it could have helped me somehow. Unfortunately, things weren’t that simple. What I did find however was a bit useful. Although there was no in-depth information on werewolves, some of the superficial info helped to patch A few holes in my own understanding. 

For starters, I did confirm that all werewolves go through pain the first day up to a week after being bitten. There was a bunch of speculation written about it but again, no actual data to confirm or deny. Another interesting tidbit is that silver does hurt werewolves though nothing too exceptional, it's not a do all end on thing. Instead it works more akin to a poison. How does that work? No clue, again there is a bunch of speculation but nothing concise. Finally, and perhaps the only bit of info actually worth a damn is that no, amputation wouldn’t have worked. Again, no much more info than that, none bothered to figure out WHY it doesn’t work content with knowing that it just doesn’t. 

With that done I could say with full confidence that my time in the library had been a waste. Sure, I got confirmation on a few things but none of that would be useful to fix the problem. And what a problem it is, while reading I had time to think as well. I shouldn’t be feeling this level of pain, the fact that I am means that something is definitely wrong with my body. Thinking about it, chances are that my body modifications through the potions are somehow responsible. Either that or the glyphs I have inscribed on myself. 

Feeling inwards for my vitality and magic I could tell that they were in a chaotic state, the flow was all wrong and I had no idea what was going on in there. At least I wasn’t in imminent danger. The flow of energy is chaotic as all hell but it isn’t detrimental, or it doesn’t feel detrimental as of now. 

Shoving those thoughts out of my mind I decided to get to work on something else. Wolf's-bane. I needed to concoct the potion for next month’s full moon. My hope is that my mind will be intact enough for me to conduct the necessary studies on my unwilling test subjects. If not, well, I would need to figure something out. Problems for future Silver. 

Time continued its relentless march and so classes came to an end. I was about ready to head up to the ravenclaw’s common room and crash on my bed bundled in all the blankets. Unfortunately as soon as I got inside said room I came face to face with Sophia who looked worried. 

“Silver, are you alright?” Bless this girl’s soul but damn if her worry is unwanted right now. I could very well lie and say I’m fine but I know better than anyone else it wouldn’t fly. Despite my best efforts I bet everyone could tell I was feeling unwell. With a sigh I went for a different kind of lie. 

“Yeah, I am just going through my period.” That’s right, blame it on the monthly womanly function of getting stabbed in the gut by yourself. If you couldn’t tell already I am not a fan of periods, at all. 

“Period?” I froze. Of course she wouldn’t know! She has been living with that awful family. No way they would have given her or Harry the talk. Fuck, was I going to have to give her the talk? I mean, I would need to if I wanted to explain what a period is. I really don’t want to, but well, no way out of it now. Better me than her making a fool of herself asking around later on. 

“Right so…” It took me the better part of an hour to give her the talk. It took this long since I dove rather in-depth on the biological side of things so that she wouldn’t feel so embarrassed. Yup, it was for her sake, I totally didn’t do it to avoid my own embarrassment. I mean, sure I am almost ninety years of age on the inside but hormones are a bitch and I can still get embarrassed from having to give a girl my physical age the talk. 

At the start she had gone tomato red but by the end although there was still a healthy blush on her cheeks she looked far more interested in the biological side of things than anything else. That is a ravenclaw for you. Anyway by the end of it all I was utterly exhausted, drained of any will to do anything. I wanted nothing more than to go to sleep right away. Unfortunately I still had a few things I needed to take care of. 

After a two hour nap I woke up still tired but good enough to go to my hidey-hole and feed my lab rats. I also got to study them a bit more. Last night I had found out the reason for the whole loss of control Lycanthrope experience. To put it simply, during the turning phase the brain would also change. Different chemistry plus different neural pathways result in a different personality or state of being altogether, who would have thought. 

What the wolf’s-bane does, or at least what I think it does, is suppress this side of the transformation as much as possible resulting in the person using it retaining some modicum of themselves during the transformation. This however, also has a few rather nasty side effects. For starters, wolf’s-bane is poisonous to werewolves. What the potion does is effectively poison the lycanthrope in such a way it suppresses them. I did find trace amounts of the thing in their blood

Although most of the effect is concentrated in the brain that doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect the rest of the body. It’s no wonder Lupin looked like shit in the movies. He was effectively suffering from long term poisoning. It also explained why his transformation looked so wrong. 

It is commonly believed that werewolves looked like shit in general but I have a hunch that that is not their natural state. Abusing the wolf’s-bane potion is what turns them into those shitty looking humanoid wolves. In other words, I am rather reluctant to imbibe the damned potion now. 

For next month I will use it on one of my test subjects and study how it affects them. I hope that it has no long term effects or at least that those can be cleansed somehow through either time or another concoction. Either way, I will be rather busy going forwards. 

Once I was done taking care of my prisoners I got back to the castle. Let me tell you, escaping and infiltrating the castle while suffering from constant muscle cramps and soreness is an exercise in both patience and skill. 

Back on my cozy bed, inside my cocoon of blankets I got to thinking while waiting for sleep to claim me. There were a lot of things I wanted to know about werewolves. Why did the full moon turn them? Was it an internal clock thing on the werewolves side or did the moon radiate something? Was it more of a psychological effect? I need answers to all of these questions and more. 

Afterall, depending on the answers there were a few things that could be done. Tomorrow I will go back to the library. Although the books I found weren’t terribly helpful, some nuggets of information are better than none. For example, I wanted to know if a werewolf would turn during a full moon night despite not looking at the moon. If so, then this could answer a few of the previously stated questions. 

Actually, could a werewolf infect someone while not transforming into a werewolf? What was the transmission method like? Did saliva to saliva work? Saliva to blood worked, then would blood to blood work? Thinking about this I couldn’t help but compare lycanthropy with HIV. With that as my final thought, sleep finally claimed me. Let's hope tomorrow will be better.