Poison Tentacle and Avada Kedavra

Thursday afternoon, Herbology Class, Greenhouse No. 3.

In January, the Scottish Highlands rarely have such a beautiful sunny day. There are no clouds, a gentle breeze, and sunlight streams in through the glass roof, making the entire Greenhouse warm and cozy.

The copper watering can on the stone wall reflected patches of light, and in the corner, several pots of glowing Luminescent Mushroom were slowly turning their caps.

On a long Stone Platform sat six pots of Poison Tentacle. The vines were dark green with purple tinges, their bark covered with a layer of fine, sharp thorns that gleamed with a waxy sheen in the sunlight. The vines emerged from the soil, their tips swaying slightly, the arc small and the movement slow, an rhythmic contraction and extension. Professor Sprout stood before the Stone Platform, his greyish-brown hair tied in a bun at the back of his head, a few stray strands falling from behind his ears, clinging to his cheeks, glistening with dew.

She wore a thick, coarse cloth robe, over which was an old apron covered in mud. Her pockets were bulging, revealing half a small shovel and a ball of Hemp Rope. Her fingers were thick, with prominent knuckles, and her fingernails were stuck with dirt that couldn't be washed off.

The second-year Slytherin and Gryffindor students stood on either side of the Stone Platform, facing each other across six pots of Poison Tentacle, with a passageway between them. The Slytherin side was quieter, Gryffindor was less crowded and more noisy, with some whispering among themselves and others craning their necks to Poison Tentacle.

Professor Sprout clapped his hands twice, and the Greenhouse fell silent.

"Today's task is simple," Sprout said gently. "Prune the dead tips of the vines."

She picked up a long-handled pair of scissors from the Stone Platform and held up a basin of Poison Tentacle for the students to see clearly.

The tips of several vines had turned gray and withered, contrasting sharply with the dark green and purple of the Living Vine.

"The dead vine tip no longer secretes venom, but it's still connected to the Living Vine and will continue to drain the plant's nutrients, so it needs to be cleaned regularly." She switched the scissors to her right hand, raised her wand in her left, and her lips moved. "HerbaProtego."

A pale green light shone from the tip of the staff, thinly covering her hands and forearms. The light film clung to her skin, appearing as thin as a sheet of paper.

"Plant Shield Charm, Herba Protego," she said, swinging her arm. "It's Protective Charm specifically designed to deal with Magical Plant. It's much lighter than the Shield Charm, so it doesn't affect the feel, but it can block most plant toxins from directly penetrating. The Dragon-hide Gloves provide physical protection, this is Magic protection; both layers together are enough."

Then she reached out with her right hand and scissors, flicked her wrist, and snapped the withered tip off. The Living Vine reflexively twitched, but didn't touch anything. The withered tip fell onto the Stone Platform, dry and crumbly, ready to crumble at the slightest touch.

"Have you remembered all the steps? First cast Protective Charm, then start. Wear gloves up to your elbows, and only use the scissors on the dead parts. The dead tips are grayish and brittle, making them very easy to distinguish from Living Vine."

Make sure you choose the correct color when cutting, and don't cut carelessly.

She put the scissors back on the Stone Platform and glanced at the whole class. "If the vines get tangled up, don't pull on them, because the more you pull, the tighter they will become. Use Freezing Charm to immobilize them, and then slowly peel them off."

In the wild, Poison Tentacle like to cling to rock crevices and dead tree trunks. Wild Poison Tentacle much more ferocious than those in Greenhouse, with longer, thicker vines and a higher concentration of venom.

The varieties grown in Greenhouse have undergone several generations of selection, and their aggressiveness has been reduced considerably, but you shouldn't be careless.

Even the most docile Poison Tentacle are still carnivorous plants; they can't tell if you're there to prune them or to deliver lunch to their doorstep.

A Gryffindor boy raised his hand, Sprout nodded for him to speak.

He pointed to the fine thorns on the vine and asked, "Will I get poisoned if I get pricked?"

"The tips of the vines are the most poisonous, while the thorns on the sides are mainly used to cling to and secure prey. They are less poisonous, but can still cause paralysis."

Diluted venom is one of the ingredients in anti-inflammatory ointments. St Mungo's's tried using a higher concentration of venom as a local anesthetic decades ago—" She shook her head, her tone reminiscent of a recollection: "The dosage was too difficult to control. We stopped using it after a few years; if you overdid it, you'd never wake up again." She cut the scissors, giving a final instruction: "Wear the Dragon-hide Gloves up to your elbows. Don't think it's too much trouble. One of your seniors thought he had thick skin and didn't wear gloves; his fingers were numb for three days, and he couldn't even hold his wand properly."

The young Wizards laughed, with the Gryffindor laughing the loudest.

The grouping began, with Slytherin and Gryffindor standing on one side, one pot for each pair.

The Slytherin area was relatively quiet and orderly, with only the snip of scissors and occasional hushed conversations.

Regulus and Avery in the same group.

Avery pulled the Dragon-hide Gloves onto his arms, muttering, "They're way too big. My fingers are dangling in there; I can't even hold the scissors properly." He held his hand up to his eyes to compare; the glove's fingertips were longer than his own fingers, with the five fingertips hanging loosely. Regulus ignored him, his gaze fixed on the pot of Poison Tentacle in front of him, his Magic Perception automatically spreading over them.

The Magic Circuit of the Poison Tentacle and the Whomping Willow are completely different systems.

The Whomping Willow is linear; its Magic Power flows upwards from the root along the main stem at a fast speed and in a clear direction. It branches at the forking points and then narrows, compresses, and releases at the end, making the whole process extremely fast.

This Poison Tentacle was different; its Magic Power seeped from the roots to the tips of the vines, but it didn't follow a fixed path. Instead, it diffused everywhere, flowing wherever it ended up, only converging at the poison glands at the tips.

He also remembered Professor Sprout saying that the Magic Power property of the Poison Tentacle was paralysis.

He hadn't seen what effect this thing had on living creatures, so he couldn't determine how the paralysis attribute worked.

In terms of the distribution of Magic Power, it has a completely different structure from the oscillation of the Whomping Willow. The oscillation is directional, superimposed, and progresses layer by layer along the physical path.

This is diffuse, uniform, more like a general coverage.

He can only observe the characteristics at the Magic Power level for now. As for how it works on living things, he will have to see the actual situation to make a judgment. But if it is consistent with its Magic Power distribution, its attack method is probably a single trigger, taking effect as soon as it touches, and hitting the target in one go.

A vague idea flashed through his mind.

If that's the case, then the attack logic of the Poison Tentacle and the shockwave complement each other perfectly: one is a pinpoint crusher, and the other is a global coverage.

However, he only thought about it briefly; he didn't intend to create a new spell for every plant he observed.

The Severing Charm and Disintegration Charm are core achievements, one operating on the level of existence and the other on the level of physical structure, already covering most application scenarios. Some Magic Power properties seem interesting, but their practical applications are limited, or they overlap with the functions of existing spells, making the input and output disproportionate. Developing spells isn't like picking mushrooms; you can't just pick them every time you see them.

But the observations themselves are worth accumulating.

Avery fiddled around for a while, finally managing to tighten his gloves and cuffs. He picked up the scissors, brought them close to the Poison Tentacle, identified a gray, withered tip, and reached out to cut it.

With a snap, the withered tip broke off and fell onto the Stone Platform, shattering into several pieces.

A Living Vine vine reached out towards his wrist, and he quickly pulled it back, nearly throwing the scissors.

"Shift!"

He muttered a curse in a low voice, then turned to look at Regulus, only to find that Regulus wasn't even looking at him, staring blankly at the Poison Tentacle.

He shrugged and continued cutting.

The sounds of scissors snipping intermittently echoed in the Greenhouse, along with the rustling of Dragon-hide Gloves and occasional gasps of surprise.

Something happened in Gryffindor.

Colin Macmillan's gloves weren't on properly, and while he was pruning, a Living Vine suddenly wrapped around his side, its tip scraping into the inside of his wrist through the gap between the glove and cuff.

He hissed; a shallow cut appeared on his wrist, no blood, but his fingers immediately went numb, and the scissors clattered to the Stone Platform. Gareth Diggory, sitting opposite him, reacted quickly, grabbing him and pulling him back, turning to call out, "Professor!"

Sprout walked over in a few steps. She first used Freezing Charm to freeze the still writhing Living Vine. The vine froze in mid-air, and a thin layer of frost formed on the barbs at the end.

Then she took a thumb-sized glass bottle from her apron pocket, unscrewed the cap, and poured a few drops of clear liquid onto the scratch. She pressed her fingers against two points on Macmillan's wrist and whispered, "It doesn't hurt, it'll be fine in a bit."

"The paralysis caused by the Poison Tentacle travels slowly upwards along the body from the point of contact, numbing wherever they go."

She glanced at Macmillan's wrist, her tone still gentle and unhurried. "It was just a scratch, not much venom, the numbness in my finger returned after a while."

"Once entangled, the venom continues to seep in; within a minute, the entire arm will lose sensation, and if it's entangled around the neck..."

She glanced at the whole class and said, "It's not a matter of numbness anymore."

The Greenhouse was quiet for a while.

"Therefore, tighten the gloves."

She walked back to Slytherin's side, checking on the progress of several groups along the way. She glanced at Alex's basin, nodded, and left. While Regulus was tending to Sprout's wound, his Magic Perception swept across Macmillan's wrist.

He detected the diffusion path of the paralyzing effect under the skin.

Just as he had predicted, the Magic Power of the Poison Tentacle, once inside the human body, permeates, diffuses, and spreads evenly along the neural network, not following a fixed path, but touching wherever it touches.

A clearer idea flashed through my mind.

This diffusion logic is very similar to his own Magic Perception.

When his Magic Perception covers a target, he penetrates along the target's Magic Circuit, going through any available channels and detouring around those that aren't.

The paralyzing Magic Power of the Poison Tentacle does the same thing, except it doesn't use Magic Circuit; it uses neural networks.

The two diffusion methods share the same underlying logic; the difference lies in that his perception is merely observation, while the paralysis caused by the Poison Tentacle is the actual effect.

Almost all the attack spells he had seen operated in the opposite way: after the spell hit the target, the Magic Power was forced inward from the point of impact, covering the entire target regardless of the path.

The contrast between finding its own way to spread and overall suppression reminded him of an extreme example: the Killing Curse.

The green light is fatal upon contact with a living being; there is no intermediate state. It kills instantly upon contact, requiring no precision, only a direct hit.

However, the Killing Curse is not based on a murder curse.

Its root word, Avada Kedavra, comes from Old Aramaic and means "to destroy this thing."

Originally a healing spell, it was used by ancient healers to precisely kill lesions, plagues, gangrene, and tumors.

Only kill what deserves to die, and leave nothing to the rest. Let the disease die, but the people will not.

But perhaps because it's so difficult, it requires extremely high precision, accurate delivery, and the ability to distinguish between target and non-target in order to kill the damned thing.

Or perhaps because it's too simple, all of that is omitted. A beam of green light shoots out, and disease and patient, those who deserve to die and those who shouldn't, die together. In short, it has become what it is today: a single shot, a deadly attack, a total massacre; anyone who touches it dies.

But what if we could solve the accuracy problem?

If a way could be found to allow Magic Power to paralyze like Poison Tentacle, following the neural network to find its own destination, then this spell might be able to return to its original purpose when it was invented.

Kill the diseased tissue, kill the invading Magic Power parasites, kill the cursed and corrupted Magic Power nodes, and preserve all the healthy parts. However, this idea is far from being realized; the precision threshold is too high, and the slightest mistake could result in everyone dying.

Moreover, even if it were theoretically feasible, there are currently no practical applications.

Thinking of this, Regulus's lips twitched slightly.

But he has a warm and kind heart and can't bear to see people suffer. Maybe we can give it a try later.

He withdrew his Magic Perception, picked up the scissors, and continued pruning the withered vines.

Nothing else happened for the rest of the time.

Sprout paced back and forth between the Stone Platform, stopping every now and then to check on the progress of each group. He squatted down in front of a Gryffindor student's basin and helped him straighten the section that had been cut off to the side.

After the pruning was completed, the professor checked the results of each group one by one.

The Slytherin groups all met the standards, while the Gryffindor were a bit worse. Two or three pots were cut unevenly, with dead tips not being cleaned up, and some Living Vine tips being accidentally cut off.

Sprout shook his head, not getting angry, but simply reminding them to make sure their gloves were tightened next time, and then pointing out the correct trimming positions to the other groups. Colin Macmillan's scratched finger had already healed, and he was shaking it off, while Diggory laughed at him for almost being disarmed by a plant. After class, the students packed up their tools, took off their gloves, and headed towards the Greenhouse entrance.

Avery placed the gloves on the Stone Platform and glanced at Regulus.

Regulus was slowly wiping the scissors clean and placing them back on the Stone Platform, showing no sign of leaving.

Avery shrugged, took his gloves, and went out, with Alex and Hermes following behind.

The Greenhouse fell silent, with only the two of them remaining.

Sprout was cleaning up the remaining withered vine tips on the Stone Platform, his fingers covered in mud and sap, which he casually wiped on his apron.

She bent down to pick up the few vine tips that had fallen to the ground and threw them into the compost bin, then hung the scattered shears back on the hooks on the wall. After doing this, she straightened up, glanced around the Greenhouse, as if thinking about what to do next.

Then her gaze fell on Regulus, her tone gentle yet knowing. "Mr. Black, you were looking at the Magic Power of the Poison Tentacle during class, what did you see?"

Regulus walked to the opposite side of the Stone Platform, not at all surprised.

He used Magic Perception; he didn't even use Natural Magic Power, yet the professor was still able to detect it.

Indeed, Professor Sprout was a powerful witch.