Chapter 121
*So, why did Nathaniel conduct this series of experiments, and why did he go mad?*
With this question in mind, Ethan began his reading for the day.
Today, Ethan started reading from the beginning. According to Nathaniel's writing in the book, the potioneer who had gone mad in the courtroom was still a rational person when he first began writing.
Even when describing his experimental process, which served as evidence of his crimes, his accounts were lucid, with no sign of chaos.
Before the reading period ended, eager for an answer, Ethan skipped ahead to later sections. He discovered that not long after completing the experiment, Nathaniel had slowly begun to lose his mind.
*So, what exactly did he do?* Ethan decided to skim through the book the next day to find the answer and satisfy his curiosity.
Early the next morning, he had no first period class. After finishing breakfast, he returned to the dormitory and opened the book.
He spent over an hour skimming the unread sections, searching for the answer to this question.
*He injected that young wizard's blood into his own body?* Ethan asked himself, finding that sentence in a section describing the experimental applications for the pool of blood.
*Could it be bloodline conflict? Was that the reason?* Ethan was not certain.
As someone born in the Muggle world, he knew that ordinary people had no concept of bloodlines.
Blood transfusions are standard medical procedures, particularly for patients recovering from surgery who require donated blood to replace what they've lost.
But in the wizarding world, despite the fact that Muggles had developed sophisticated blood transfusion techniques nearly a century ago, wizards had never adopted them.
*Is it because wizards have blood-replenishing potions for blood loss, or because bloodline incompatibilities make foreign blood unusable?* Ethan wondered.
In this week's Defense Against the Dark Arts class, Lockhart was reading from his books and planning to have Ethan assist him with a demonstration.
But when he looked toward Ethan, he saw a hand raised just above the desk.
"You there, go be a Tibetan Yeti." Lockhart quickly switched targets, settling on the burly Crabbe.
"Me?" Crabbe stood up, pointing at himself.
"Yes, you. Perfect." Lockhart's satisfaction grew as Crabbe rose. With his build, if he were a bit taller, he'd look just like a yeti.
"What is your name?" Lockhart asked, sensing untapped potential in the boy before him.
"Vincent Crabbe."
"Very good, Mr. Crabbe. You ought to have read my book, Break with a Banshee... wait, no, Year with the Yeti. You should be familiar with the Tibetan Yeti described in it."
Lockhart patted Crabbe on the shoulder. "You'll play the Yeti and reenact the scene with me."
"Professor, what should I do?" Crabbe hadn't actually finished the book, and he looked guilty, like a student about to be caught neglecting his homework.
"You'll play the Yeti, and we'll act out the scene I just read." Lockhart smiled cheerfully.
"But Professor, I've never seen a Tibetan Yeti. I don't know how to act." Crabbe tried desperately to refuse, hoping to hide his ignorance.
"It's fine. This mysterious creature from the Himalayas is rarely seen, but just follow my instructions." Lockhart brought over a stool for Crabbe to stand on.
Lockhart looked up at Crabbe. "The Yeti is fifteen feet tall. Even on a stool, Mr. Crabbe, you couldn't reach that height, but that doesn't matter. We're merely reconstructing the scene. Use your imagination. Picture it for a moment, and you'll grasp the sheer thrill of the encounter."
Lockhart gestured for Crabbe to act out the movements. "When I first saw the yeti, he was constantly rubbing his enormous nose and stroking his forehead."
"Excellent, just like that. He didn't know how to treat his illness, so he was incredibly irritable. Tormented by the sickness, he kept waving his hands wildly, striking at everything in sight."
"He kept waving them, flailing wildly. Yes, just like that."
"The other wizards didn't dare approach him, because yetis are dangerous creatures. They will devour any lone creature they encounter. However, they are terrified of fire, so you can rely on that to drive them back."
Lockhart straightened his clothes. "It was then that the upright, kind, and very powerful Lockhart stepped forward. With a single glance, I diagnosed the yeti's condition."
"What did I say then? I'd like a student to answer. You there, the gentleman laughing heartily."
The sudden question left Draco unable to continue his hearty laughter at Crabbe and Lockhart's performance.
He quickly flipped through his book to find the section. "He just has a head cold, everyone. Don't be afraid. Let me handle it!"
"Not bad. That's exactly what I said about this gentleman right here. If you had recited it from memory rather than flipping through the book, it would have been even better."
"Still, not bad. Five points to Slytherin!" Lockhart was quite pleased.
To demonstrate his heroic fearlessness, Lockhart cast several boys, including Goyle, Zabini, and Draco, as terrified wizards.
By the end of the first period, Slytherin had earned fifteen points, much to the delight of the students who had participated in the performance.
Lockhart wasn't nearly as generous during the second period. After another round of performances, Slytherin earned only five points. The little snakes, who had been striving to outdo Gryffindor and claim the House Cup for themselves, shot him resentful glances.
Throughout the week, aside from attending classes and visiting the library to finish his homework, Ethan devoted all his remaining time and energy to reading the book titled *Blood*.
Whenever he had a free moment, he sat in the dormitory clutching the dried blood, now essentially indistinguishable from waste, and frequently opened the book.
*Have the blood lake and the snake grown larger?* On Friday night, after dripping more blood onto it, Ethan noticed that the red area on the cover seemed to have expanded slightly since the book first arrived.
Doubting his own eyes, Ethan scrutinized the cover and committed the image to memory, planning to compare it when he returned the book.
After reading for five days, he finished the book, but he still had a lot of questions.
Before Friday's Potions class, Ethan set his questions aside and gave the book a quick reread. While it cleared up some of his doubts, he found others even more perplexing.
After Friday afternoon's Potions class, Ethan followed Snape to his office.
"What questions do you have?" Having just finished berating Harry Potter in class, Snape was in an unusually good mood, with the corners of his mouth turned up slightly.
"Professor, I finished that book, but I still have some questions."
Snape drawled, "What, exactly, was Nathaniel trying to achieve?"
"Yes, that's one of them." Ethan wasn't surprised. Anyone who read the book would inevitably ask that.
Snape seemed to follow Ethan's train of thought. "Are wizards unable to perform blood transfusions on one another?"
"Yes, Professor."
"First, I will answer your initial question."
"You know Nathaniel was the last of the Ravenclaws, but his aptitude was mediocre. He was far from matching Lady Ravenclaw's intelligence and fell far short of his ancestors."
"Unwilling to accept this, he dedicated himself to researching his own bloodline, attempting to unlock more potential within it and restore his family's glory."
"That covers what you read in the first half."
Ethan nodded. This part was relatively normal. These were merely bloodline activation experiments he had performed on himself.
"Later, he discovered that this method offered limited potential for unlocking his bloodline's power, or rather, he considered it hopeless. Thus, he turned his attention to another path: bloodline fusion."
"Bloodline fusion?" This was a new term. Ethan had never heard of it before.
"Yes, this line of thinking was not uncommon back then. Many wizards with weak bloodlines who sought greater power considered such ideas. Nathaniel was merely one of them."
"But unlike others who researched in secret, Nathaniel was very high-profile."
The Ravenclaw family had once been a prominent, prestigious lineage in the British wizarding world. Their slow decline began just before his generation, and the line died out completely with his.
As a fairly well-known potioneer, he announced his intention early on to research bloodline fusion, drawing considerable attention.
That was also why, after the Hogwarts student disappeared, he was quickly targeted.
"Ah?" Ethan was speechless.
The missing student was a distant relative of the Ravenclaw family. That was precisely why Nathaniel had kidnapped him.
Snape shook his head. "Nathaniel failed in the end. After injecting what he believed to be the pure essence of wizarding bloodlines into himself, he became something entirely unnatural."
After Nathaniel was captured, bloodline researchers around the world were terrified. They quickly halted their experiments, afraid of ending up like Nathaniel.
"So that path was considered a dead end? They never tried to fuse the blood of living magical creatures?" Ethan thought of the Fire Lizard blood he had extracted.
"Hmph. Abandoned? Of course not."
"They secretly used Muggles for their experiments, but those experiments also failed. After decades of futile efforts, they finally gave up." Snape sounded utterly disdainful.
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4.Harry Potter: Reborn as Draco Black = CHAPTER 119
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