Unicorn blood, Wormtail, and Nagini (Was: ESE!Lupin condensed)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 147040

Pippin wrote: 
> <snip> What can kill unicorns is also an "official" mystery. 
> Wormtail is  able to prepare a potion "concocted from unicorn blood" 
> with no explanation of how a "poor wizard" like Peter would obtain
it. Quirrell was able to kill unicorns, supposedly, but Quirrell is
now dead, so who is helping Voldemort kill unicorns in GoF? Hagrid
said a werewolf couldn't do it, but the unicorns in PS/SS were
attacked previous to the night of Harry's detention. "Second time in a
week." Hagrid says, "I found one dead last Wednesday." Hagrid knows
that a non-wizard werewolf couldn't catch one, and the attacks are too
spaced out to have been done at full moon. But he's not thinking about
someone casting a spell -- and now we know that there's a spell that
causes terrible slashing cuts, and the Marauders knew it. <snip>

Carol responds:
We also know that there's a spell called Avada Kedavra, which can kill
a fox, so why not a unicorn? Since Quirrell drank the unicorn blood to
keep LV alive, there's (IMO) no reason not to suspect him of killing
the unicorns in SS/PS, especially with LV in his head giving him the
necessary power and will to do it if he lacked it himself. Lupin is
nowhere around. I don't see any unsolved mystery here.

As for PP, he, too, can evidently cast an AK, "screeching it into the
night," resulting in the death of Cedric Diggory. But since you don't
believe that he did so, let's look at other evidence. PP can certainly
concoct a complex potion involving TR Sr.'s bone, Harry's blood, and
his own cut-off hand. Harry witnesses him doing so, and we later see
him lovingly caressing his silver hand. Lupin has no part in making
the restorative potion; it's all Pettigrew's doing. That being the
case, why would PP be unable to concoct a potion involving Nagini's
venom (which he obtains by "milking" her) and unicorn blood, which he
could obtain by killing a single unicorn (with a spell revealed to him
by LV if an ordinary AK won't work)?

He needs the unicorn blood only once, for the potion to create LV's
fetal body. IIRC, LV's life (or half-life) is sustained after that by
Nagini's venom alone, not by additional doses of unicorn blood, so PP
would need to kill or injure only a single unicorn, not repeatedly go
unicorn hunting (or depend on ESE!Lupin to do so for him).

No need for ESE!Lupin anywhere in this scenario--only for a Wormtail
who, motivated by fear and self-preservation, is more competent than
LV and others normally give him credit for being, who under duress can
overcome his laziness to concoct restorative potions, repeatedly milk
a highly poisonous magical viper, and kill a single unicorn for its blood.

Carol, who thinks that Nagini's relationship with LV, not Wormtail's
half-hearted and self-debasing servitude, is the unresolved mystery here