Secrets and Masks

68. Wishful thinking

2nd July

June came and went in the blink of an eye.

Hermione's spell had worked perfectly on Astoria. The morning after Hermione had performed it, Astoria had looked much, much better. She'd looked healthier, there had been a spring in her step and even more colour in her cheeks, and she'd only gotten stronger in the days that followed.

The spell's success had sent Blaise into a research spiral. He was thrilled that his wife was on the mend but he needed answers. He needed to know what had worked and why everything else he'd done in the past had failed.

It was down to Astoria's blood, that was what he eventually summarised.

In the years that Blaise had spent trying to cure her, he'd tried to learn from her ancestor's mistakes. He'd tried to fight the curse by giving Astoria potions that would keep her heart beating and her lungs strong, but he'd never thought about her blood being the actual source of the problem.

Heart failure, lung collapse, extreme fatigue, they were the causes of death for all the Greengrass women that'd been afflicted with the family curse, so they'd been what Blaise had focused on. Because Astoria coughed up sickening amounts of blood, he'd given her potions to replace it. Because she was always tired, he'd given her Pepperup Potions. Because her lungs and heart may give out at any moment, hed made her special drinks that he brewed himself - but he'd never considered that her blood was what'd been attacking her.

Hermione had assured Blaise that it wasn't his fault. The idea had come to her out of nowhere and if she and Draco hadn't have been trying the same thing to get the Horcrux out of her, she never would have thought of it. It was pure dumb luck that it'd worked the very first time but still, he beat himself up over it for a few days.

The more they understood Astoria's blood curse, the more Hermione realised that she'd been right, it was the cancer of the Wizarding World. It festered in veins just like cancer festered in the body. The blood curse multiplied and multiplied inside the veins until the host's body couldn't cope with the levels of toxicity in the blood, and then it expelled the poisonous blood the only way it knew how; by vomiting it up. That was why Astoria had always coughed up blood whenever she was ill, it was her body's way of trying to expel the dark magic by itself. That was why a few days a week, she coughed up pints and pints of blood. Blood replenishing potions would replaced what she'd lost and give her some energy, but as soon as it entered her system, the curse would latch onto it.

Hermione's spell worked because it pulled the dark magic out of her blood. Sort of, cleaned her blood, in a strange way. The dark magic of her blood curse would regenerate again over time, there was no getting rid of it completely but when it did, they could perform the spell again.

Siphoning the dark magic out of Astoria wasn't a cure. It was treatment.

The curse was attached to Astoria's blood. They couldn't cut it out of her but they could weaken the curse, dilute the amount of it in her blood so that it wasn't poisoning her any longer.

Three weeks after Hermione had performed the spell, Astoria had started coughing again, and a further three days later, she'd had to spend the afternoon in bed.

Once a month, that was Hermione's theory. If someone could siphon Astoria's curse out of her blood once a month, they could keep the dark magic in her veins down to a manageable level and she could lead a relatively normal life. It was just like any other medical procedure. Some people had chemotherapy to keep cancer cells in their body from multiplying, others had dialysis to clean their blood so that their bodies could function normally and Astoria, she had to have dark magic siphoned out of her blood once a month.