Chapter 26: Blood Curses and the Hopping Pot

"A blood curse is a very profound type of curse. Once someone is afflicted with one, the effects often pass down from generation to generation; all of their descendants will be cursed. As of now, there is no suitable way to break a blood curse.

Blood-cursed beasts are one of the common effects of a blood curse. The victim can freely switch between human and animal forms, but will eventually become permanently fixed in their animal form. This is because the blood curse constantly erodes the victim's sense of identity as a human, which leads them to no longer feel like a human, but rather feel that they were born to be an animal."

Zhang Qiu finished reading the contents of the letter, then frowned and said, "If that's the case, based on your description, Pei Xu's situation is already very serious."

"I saw in another book that blood curses are a manifestation of having too much talent for Transfiguration," Harry said hesitantly. "Which explanation is actually correct?"

"Perhaps both are," Zhang Qiu said. "Perhaps the blood curse wasn't originally called a blood curse, but something like a 'blood blessing.' Wizards with superior talent hope to pass on their gifts like an inheritance, but their children cannot withstand this gift, so the blessing instead becomes a curse."

Harry felt that this logic held up. If there were no side effects, he would certainly be willing to be born with the ability to learn things others couldn't, like becoming an Animagus.

"Poor child, his parents must have been cursed by an evil wizard," Luo En sighed. "Enduring what he shouldn't have had to endure..."

He seemed unable to find the right words for a moment.

"Fate," Harry said, feeling deeply touched by the word. "A fate forced upon him."

The three of them walked a long way in silence. Harry's thoughts drifted inexplicably far away. In truth, isn't everything parents leave to their children a fate forced upon them? Take himself, for example: if he could, he certainly wouldn't want to be a savior whose parents were both dead, but he had no choice.

Even Ma Erfu, whose nostrils were stuck on his forehead, had a father, and the father and son were very similar—similar even in the way their nostrils were stuck on their foreheads.

And what kind of person was his own father? Harry had seen his appearance in the Mirror of Erised, but he didn't know much about his personality. Harry could only imagine him as a combination of Linfred and Ignotus—a potion master who was enthusiastic about helping Muggles, yet humble and low-key.

"Huh?" Harry stopped abruptly. He remembered something, something he had previously overlooked.

"What's wrong?" Luo En asked.

"Nothing. Let's go to the library; I want to look up some information," Harry said.

Hardwin Potter and Iolanthe Peverell were Harry's two direct ancestors. Grandmother Iolanthe inherited the Invisibility Cloak, which was the Deathly Hallow held by the youngest of the three brothers in *The Tales of Beedle the Bard*. Starting from this logic, if Linfred was also the old wizard from *The Wizard and the Hopping Pot*, then he should have passed down that hopping pot.

Harry didn't think for a second that the hopping pot could have been lost, stolen, or destroyed, because the story clearly stated that the son who hated Muggles tried every means possible but could not get rid of the pot. This pot should have been passed down from generation to generation to remind every Potter to treat Muggles kindly.

But it hadn't been.

Harry couldn't help but think: could it be that one of his descendants couldn't bear it, put on the Invisibility Cloak to hide from the pot's pursuit, and finally succeeded in getting rid of it? If one extends this from the perspective of fate, if a legacy item like the hopping pot that forces wizards to help Muggles is also a type of blood curse, does that mean the Invisibility Cloak can evade blood curses? Or rather, was the original intention of the three brothers in creating the Deathly Hallows to solve the problem of blood curses?

Then, if he could further uncover the secrets of the Invisibility Cloak, could he cure Pei Xu?

Harry spent the whole afternoon in the library researching these things, dealt with his homework hastily in the evening, and spent the entire day on Sunday. When Luo En came to the library to find him, he was surprised to discover that Harry seemed to have really achieved some results.

Compared to looking back and forth at others' various speculations about the Deathly Hallows, Harry changed his approach this time; he began to investigate what had actually happened back then.

First, it could be confirmed that Linfred was a person who lived in the 12th century, and his eldest son, Hardwin Potter, married Iolanthe Peverell. This was information left on Ignotus's tombstone in Godric's Hollow, and many articles acknowledged this point. These were pieces of information that Harry, after verifying from multiple sources, believed to be definitively true.

And Ignotus was the prototype for the youngest brother in Beedle's story *The Tale of the Three Brothers*; he possessed a powerful Invisibility Cloak and lived for a very long time. Dumbledore's deduction alone could not prove this was true, but with the real Invisibility Cloak in Harry's hands as evidence, this was highly reliable information.

If Deng Buliduo accurately judged that the Peifulier family was the family of the three brothers, then his speculation about the hopping pot was also true, except for one detail that could be changed: Lin Fuleide was indeed a potion master enthusiastic about helping Muggles, but he did not correspond to the old wizard in the text, but rather to the educated son in the text. Because in the fairy tale of the hopping pot, the old wizard only had one son, but Lin Fuleide had seven children in total.

Starting only from these parts, plus the fact that Professor Binns mentioned that Ignotus Peverell died in 1291 and Linfred lived in the 12th century, Harry could roughly calculate their dates of birth and death. But as the story said, Ignotus lived for a very, very long time, while Dumbledore of the Wizarding World was now over a hundred years old and was still just an "old man," and no one even added a "very" when mentioning his "oldness." Harry boldly guessed that Ignotus might have lived for over two hundred years.

Considering that Linfred's father "lived to a ripe old age and then died," Harry felt Beedle's description of this was very strange. But as he read about those bizarre life-extending magics in the Restricted Section, and even saw that the 600-year-old Nicolas Flamel was still corresponding with Dumbledore, perhaps this sentence should be understood as "Linfred's father chose to die naturally and did not use magic to extend his life."

Then, Lin Fuleide's father should have met the average human lifespan. At the same time, considering the two factors that wizards have stronger physiques and living conditions in the Middle Ages were very harsh, Harry believed it was quite possible he lived to at least around sixty. But looking at the article about the hopping pot, the son in the text was still a reckless young man who hadn't married or had children, so perhaps when Lin Fuleide inherited the hopping pot, he should have been around twenty, and Lin Fuleide's father should have been born forty years earlier than him.

That is to say, calculating from the fact that Linfred lived in the 12th century, with his extreme lifespan being 1100-1200 (in fact, in the Wizarding World, one hundred years is just an ordinary old person), perhaps he married and had children in 1125, and Iolanthe Peverell, the wife of his eldest son Hardwin Potter, was born around 1120-1125.

Further considering that Iolanthe Peverell was the "last remaining" heir of Ignotus Peverell, one must note that in the Middle Ages, people would try every means to have children and pass the main inheritance to the eldest son. Rather than believing the Peverell family had an unspeakable secret, Harry preferred to believe that Ms. Iolanthe was the youngest girl in the family, and the other heirs had died one after another for some reason (Harry even had a certain speculation about this reason).

Then, even calculating her as the eldest daughter, her father's birth year could not be later than 1100. It is even very likely that Iolanthe was the only surviving youngest daughter, so her father was very likely born between 1060-1080. From the perspective of inheritance law, her father should have been Ignotus's eldest son; otherwise, it would have to be that all cousins and nephews had died out before it reached her, which Harry thought was perhaps unlikely. Then Ignotus was born in 1040. But considering Ignotus was still alive when Iolanthe married, Harry believed that as long as there was a choice, this old man would not have agreed to let the Invisibility Cloak flow into another family. So it is very likely that her father was not the eldest son, and the reason Iolanthe got the Invisibility Cloak was truly that all male peers had unfortunately died young. Calculating this way, Ignotus's birth year could hover between 1010-1080, and his true age would hover between 211 and 281 years old, which fits the definition of "very, very old" and does not exceed the limit of a powerful wizard.

Interestingly, while investigating the Resurrection Stone, Harry learned that the descendants of the second brother, Cadmus Peverell, also had no male heirs, and the Resurrection Stone should have flowed into the Gaunt family along with a female heir. The Gaunt family claimed several times that they were the heirs of Slytherin, and their descendants also showed some characteristics similar to Slytherin. Rather than believing they were bragging about their bloodline, Harry tended to believe that Cadmus Peverell's wife was indeed the daughter or granddaughter of Salazar Slytherin.

If one only looks at historical research, this shocking conclusion has no basis. But in *Hogwarts: A History*, it is clearly and plainly recorded that Hogwarts was founded in 990, at which time Slytherin was in his prime, preparing to show his ambition in the field of education.

In 990, Slytherin's age might have been between 25-45, so his daughter could theoretically have been born between 990-1045. Calculating for a granddaughter, it is even more possible she was born between 1015-1110. Cadmus Peverell, as the second older brother of Ignotus Peverell, could have had a birth date floating between 1000-1080. In other words, the powerful Salazar Slytherin and the equally powerful Peverell three brothers were basically people of the same era, and their ages only differed by one to two generations.

Then, as Salazar Slytherin, who supported wizard supremacy and was keen on pure-blood intermarriage, would he rather marry his daughter to a superficial pure-blood family (like the Ma Erfu family), or would he rather marry his daughter to the Peifulier family, which was powerful enough to even fool Death?

The answer is obvious. ===== CHAPTER 27 =====