InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Put it on me..."

James Sirius Potter (jamie_sirius) wrote in lockewood,
@ 2010-04-07 23:51:00

Entry tags:

albus dumbledore

Who: Jamie Potter and Albus Dumbledore
When: April 7
Where: The Hospital
What: A medicated discussion
Rating: Who knows?
Status: Incomplete

Jamie wasn't having a good day. He had decided that it was time to drink something. It was just water. He had figured that ice water would help, plus it just sounded good. His temperature had sat at 103, a little higher than normal, and he alternated between cold and hot. Going through a hot phase, he lay in bed with the blankets around his waist. He drank some of the water and then a bit more. It did taste good, soothing his throat on the way down.

It wasn't long before it came back with full force in a stream that he couldn't control. He hit the blankets, and cursed loudly. He tossed the soaked blanket on the floor and took the anti-nausea potion. It helped a little bit. Now he had to wait for someone to come in and change the bed. He slowly got up, having to wait a minute while the head rush subsided. He hated this illness, everything about it. He looked at Gellert, quite glad that he was asleep.

He picked up one of the extra blankets in the room and went to the chair by Albus' bed. His head felt foggy. He slouched into the chair and wrapped himself in the blanket. As he nestled down, he felt eyes on him. "Wat're you doin awake? Aren you spose'ta be sleeping?" His words were slurring, a bit like he was drunk, but it was worse.

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albus_ablaze
2010-04-08 07:53 am UTC (link)

It would be such a simple, such a little bit of magic, one side of Albus's mind insisted. Just a little, experimental, completely inconsequential bit of magic. It would make him feel better, both to vent some of that eager, waiting energy and to completely overhaul his own anatomy. He craved reinvention. He wanted to shed this overheated mortal coil- well, not exactly. Well, he did, but not entirely. And Gellert wasn't wrong. As he was, Albus was likely prone to impact more than just himself. And it wasn't quite right, altering other people's thermodynamic structures without their consent- even if they wouldn't have minded. A lazy smile tugged at his lips over the idea of Gellert keeping him restrained.

The normal suppression of his aura was entirely neglected and it seeped out into the air around him, tendrils of magic snatching at nothing. But Albus really couldn't attempt to contain both himself and his fever at the same time. He might actually explode. And what a mess that would be.

"I'm always awake," Albus murmured, both meaning it and not. "Why're you out of bed?" Albus had a knack for annunciation, the words distinct, but breathy. Dreamy in their almost lyrical quality. Or maybe his voice always sounded like that? Surely not.

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jamie_sirius
2010-04-08 10:45 pm UTC (link)

Jamie didn't really notice the look. He really didn't care at the moment, in his medicated haze. "Iss messy," he answered. He had half a thought to clean it up, but the medication made for less than effective spell work. "R'you feeling ok?" It really was a stupid question since none of them felt okay.

He cracked an eye open when Albus said he was always awake. Jamie was probably up more than most of them, only because he had been fighting his bodies urge to sleep. It didn't make him feel better, although he liked the moments of lucidity before he took his potions. "You sleep alot," he said, wondering about the statement. "How'cn you always be awake. You'don see evrything." Not that there was anything to see while they were locked away here.

"Do you know how'ta cure this?" He was grasping for straws there, but he had to have some hope. "Mmmmm so tired of it."

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albus_ablaze
2010-04-08 10:59 pm UTC (link)

"There are too many different kinds of awake," Albus refuted. "And I'm always at least one of them. But lately if I'm too awake, I feel as if I'm about to comburst- which I am trying to avoid. Messy, as you say."

Albus's eyes opened properly and he was a little surprised to find himself in the middle of what appeared to be a conversation. It struck him as particularly curious, because he couldn't quite tell how long they'd been having it. Or what on earth they were talking about. Oh, his words made sense, the back of his mind told him, though it refused to tell him how or why. He didn't even think comburst was a word. Though the more it repeated in his head, the more he felt it ought to be.

"Probably," Albus guessed. He probably had sorted it- maybe he had, despite the dearth of his familiarity with disease, but they'd never know, would they? No, because Albus's thoughts kept shifting and changing and redirecting, his awareness relentlessly hopping from on theme to the next. "Just haven't figured out where to find it, is all."

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jamie_sirius
2010-04-09 04:29 am UTC (link)

"Whass com-burst?" he asked, enunciating the word. He wasn't sure if it was a word either. It sounded strange and yet his brain couldn't process it. His brain wandered over it again and it seemed close to a word actually. This was a time when he really should sleep.

Jamie shifted uncomfortably in the chair, feeling hot again. His stomach was in control now, but the heat was horrible. He squeezed his eyes shut then, tried to clear them again. "I feel like shiiiit." He was tired of being sick. That feeling was depressing, and it was winning.

"What're you looking to find?" he slurred out. "I don'think I'm getting better. Even if M'not spewing fluid all the time." The frustration had been building for days. Jamie didn't let things get to him like this and it was wrong, but he couldn't seem to help it. It was wearing on them all. "How'd you get it?"

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albus_ablaze
2010-04-09 05:10 am UTC (link)

In answer to Jamie's vocabulary inquiry, Albus lazily lifted one of his hands. A flick of his fingers produced a crystalline bubble the size of an orange. It floated in the air for a moment before Albus punctured it with his index finger. The bubble burst into a small, softly crackling firework display, sending harmless ruby sparks raining down across Albus's bed. Demonstrations were really far more effective than words sometimes, especially when releasing magic felt far easier than forming words.

And Albus really was fond of bubbles.

By this point, Albus really wasn't quite sure how he'd gotten it. It just seemed ridiculous to have been around Gellert for long before showing symptoms. However it was spread, Albus was beginning to suspect that his immune system had rebuffed infection from Gellert, but as it passed on to other people, mutating with the host. Modern germ theory was remarkably difficult to absorb when Albus was just barely capable of reading more than a few sentences before vomiting.

"How?" Albus repeated, though saying the word aloud immediately derailed Albus's thoughts into a locative fixation. "Here, I think." Although he knew otherwise, it felt as if it had been months since he'd been well. How long had Jamie been ill? "When did- how did you get it?" he amended, defaulting to Jamie's syntax. Only polite, when Albus's own words sometimes seem rather antiquated.

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jamie_sirius
2010-04-09 06:05 am UTC (link)

Jamie watched the bubble and grinned when it burst. "Brill," he mumbled, "Like that one. I guess you'cn com-burst s'more if you like, yeah?" The liked the color and it gave him something to focus attention on, other than how he felt. It was also entertaining.

His brain, being as it was, really was not functioning quite right. He couldn't resist a laugh though. He had gotten it, and he knew who gave it to him. "Kiwi," he said, using Roxie's nickname for Gellert. He didn't know if Albus knew it or not, or thought it was a food. "Fucking Kiwi." His hand rubbed over his face, knowing how literal that actually was, although it didn't sound literal.

He chuckled a little bit, letting his mind drift off for a few minutes. He was almost asleep, but then he seemed to come out of the daze. "Was here a couple days before you? I need to get out of here. What do you think it is?" He definitely respected Albus' intelligence. If only he could help instead of being in bed.

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albus_ablaze
2010-04-09 06:33 am UTC (link)

Or perhaps, not so much, with regard to the efficacy of his visual aid. It was, however, something of a relief, releasing such thin threads of magic. The force of it, waiting, pining to be unleashed- Albus was half-sure that it was the cause of his fever: unreleased magic thrumming and boiling in his veins. So Albus released a smattering of similar bubbles, wondering if Gellert would wake if Albus let slip too much magic at once. The mere idea had the corners of Albus's lips drowsily skirting upward.

Though when Jamie spoke again, Albus's expression voided entirely with sedate surprise.

It was not a verb Albus used. It was, in fact, not a verb that held any other use besides reference to a carnal act. And it was, most certainly, not the sort of word one used in casual conversation. "Language, Mr. Potter," Albus chided idly, more from habit than offense. After all, his sister was somewhere in the hospital. Hardly the sort of language for someone so young to- "But that does sound terribly unhygienic," he simply could not help pointing out. And not to mention difficult. His mind withdrew rather quickly from attempting to contemplate the schematics.

"You were," Albus affirmed, remembered, and agreed all at once. Suddenly that seemed strange. Or significant. Though he could scarcely say why. Just as quickly, Albus's attention was shifting. "Something... mutative," he supposed. "Devious little... beast of a sickness. If I could loose about a pint of blood, I'm really quite certain I could sort it out."

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jamie_sirius
2010-04-09 08:34 am UTC (link)

Jamie sat and watched the bubbles bursting. If he would have been more coherent, he would have noted that both seemed to radiate magic. Jamie didn't feel he did, but his wandless magic wasn't so good. Secretly, he was working on it now. It wasn't great. He didn't need to show off that lack of skill.

He chuckled again when Albus reminded him of language. "You did ask. Hygeine had nothin'ta do with it. M'sick, righ?" Of course he could have been eating a Kiwi that was touched by an infected person.

He was still snickering over the whole Kiwi matter, not that he would remember it later. The medication would put him to sleep, then he would be somewhat lucid when he woke. "MMM, he had it firs, then me. S'a beast alrigh. Could you do it? Cure it?" He wanted to be hopeful that someone could.

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albus_ablaze
2010-04-10 03:15 am UTC (link)

He? Albus hadn't ever thought it necessary to gender fruits beyond the most basic requirements of metaphor. His mind tilted almost violently and something pulsed through him, both hot and cold all at once. With the way that feeling thrashed inside him, craving an outlet, Albus thought it to be the magic coiled within him, enticed into craving greater release by such trivial teasing. He instantly curbed the thin streams of magic that had been conjuring a steady crop of softly pyrotechnic bubbles, though that thrumming insistence failed to diminish.

Albus paused a moment, his every thought halting to coalesce around the question. Could he do it? If he knew what he was doing- yes. It was that knowing part that was the trouble at the moment. Under normal circumstances, Albus could navigate the swift currents of his mind quite easil, but as it was, he felt as if he had very little control over which paths of thought received his most conscious attention.

"Experimental human transmutation... it's dangerous, at the best of times," he said. It was captivating, though, the idea of breaking a human being into its basest forms, its little building blocks, and sifting through that matter. Of course, it was possible that such experimentation would kill the subject. Or at the very least, irrevocably sever the soul from the body. "Have to be careful- in wanting to do good, the human animal is so... terribly prone to destruction." And something still felt unsettled. Heavy and barbed. "I don't want to destroy anything," he said, perhaps a little too insistently, almost defensively, but not a little bewildered.

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jamie_sirius
2010-04-10 07:26 am UTC (link)

"You're one big firrworks show," Jamie said, not really noticing the tension. His eyes were hardly open, and the slits were focused on the colors. "M'bubbles r'nice." He hadn't really been referring to his and Gellert's activities, only that Gellert had the virus first and he came shortly after. It was more than likely as he figured, Gellert had been carrying the bloody bug when they were together last.

"Human transmu - ," he began, losing the word quickly. It was familiar though, even when it refused to come off of his lips. "Alchemy?" That was it. "How?" Alchemy wasn't something he really understood. In his haze, he really couldn't begin to process it. It was a very foreign science to him, and he wasn't sure that life could be broken down into mathematical equations. He wondered if his father was aware of this side of Dumbledore. Wizardry and alchemy were very different arts, related in a way, and opposing in others.

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albus_ablaze
2010-04-10 08:00 am UTC (link)

"I find it soothing," Albus all but murmured, meaning fire, in any capacity. It was the balance he craved- he hot to his innate cool, the volatility to his calculated precision. In his own way, he made sacred the impulsive, the compulsory, when so much of himself was measured and meticulously careful. "The physical with the metaphysical." Duality was the refuge of Albus's sanity.

Albus raised his palm to face Jamie, his forearm parallel with his body. First his skin vanished, leaving the fabric of muscle exposed. When the muscle disappeared, only his bones, veins, and tendons remained. The bones of his fingers fluttered in something of a wave as he said, "To separate." And then muscle reappeared, and then was covered with the sheath of his pale skin. "And to join together- alchemy is the perfect marriage of magic and physics. There is no mystery that an understanding of alchemy cannot reveal- not even this abominable sickness. But the risks.... it's a far easier thing, to break something apart, than to put it back together." A body. A person. The rules that governed the cosmos themselves. In a certain fashion, it terrified Albus, that he was capable of such things. Surely mortals weren't meant to possess such power- unless it was to be used. But how to use it now? That odd aggression persisted, as some blurry part of his mind seethed over something. His thoughts balked from it, not wishing to add compound the distress of his body with whatever troubled his mind.

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jamie_sirius
2010-04-11 04:45 am UTC (link)

"Isss soothing," Jamie nodded, keeping what attention he was able to keep on Albus and his bubbles.

He watched his arm vanish in parts and then reappear. "So, could'ya seprate a body...an'then re - rejoin it." His hands were moving, putting themselves together, acting the words that kept getting stuck in his medicated haze. "Can'ya get ridff the virus like tha."

Yes the words were mumbled and he wasn't really sure he was making sense. He had been sick for so long and there was no real outlet, or at least not one that soothed him like the bubbles for Albus. "Do'you think tha'this could kill us?" It was a question he hadn't asked at all but it weighed on his mind more often now.

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albus_ablaze
2010-04-11 05:19 am UTC (link)

Albus laughed, the sound light and more in his throat than in his chest. "Oh, most certainly," he answered, his tone perhaps a bit too cheerful, but he couldn't help enjoying the fact that Jamie appreciated the risks. "And worse- I could do far, far worse than kill us."

Oh, but wait- had Jamie meant this illness? Oh. Well. Oh, well. It was a natural fear, he supposed. Jamie's question did make a sort of sense. Perhaps it was practical to wonder first if the ailment was fatal when the treatment might be far more dangerous.

"Oh, this illness?" he corrected himself. "Quite possibly, though I doubt it. The universe hardly seems to be vibrating in that particular direction."

What an utterly ridiculous sounding thing they called it- 'string theory.' It was, however, a bit vindicating to find that someone else, perhaps wholly independent of Albus's influence, had articulated such a notion. Independent conclusions cultivated an air of verification. Even if 'string' sounded absurd when compared to 'thread.' Either way, when Albus's muddled sense opened to the harmonics of existence, he could discern no looming realization of mortality. That, he supposed, would have stood out.

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jamie_sirius
2010-04-12 02:43 am UTC (link)

"Hmmmmm." Jamie was trying to piece together words. He could kill us? This was Dumbledore, right? It was his father's Dumbledore. Jamie was figuring out that his father's Dumbledore was a very incomplete picture. "Ow'could you do worse, than killing us? Thasss kinda the end, lik'on tha muggle movie 'Hasta la vis-ta ba-by.'" He snickered, not really aware that his man would probably not get the reference but the potion was really kicking in.

The rest was a little foreign as well. "Ummm, 'Ow does the universe vibrate?" There was little doubt that Jamie would remember any of the discussion. Bits and pieces might come back, but there wouldn't be a complete picture.

"How're you doing all those bubbles? Hmmmm. I can't evn think magic." It was true, not that he would admit it when he was well, but his mouth was a lot looser than it should have been. Magic, for him, was weak when he couldn't focus his mind.

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albus_ablaze
2010-04-12 03:40 am UTC (link)

The wisps of Spanish in the middle of Jamie's words turned much of it into an unintelligible jumble to Albus. The question, however, he could isolate.

"Even if I meant to put us back together again, free of this... sickness- it might be a bad idea to go around breaking humans out of the..." the what? how did he mean to discuss breaking humans into a formless haze of atoms? "the conventional parameters of their existence. Blurry bit of math, that. How the spirit from the body does unwind... In some areas of human experimentation, knowledge is sacrificed on the altar of ethical practice."

A necessary sacrifice, of course. One not to be begrudged- though not one to be yielded in a compulsory, thoughtless, unconsidered fashion. There would have been benefit, after all, to concrete knowledge on how much the body could be pulled apart before the soul was irrevocably shredded. Quite a deal of benefit, especially at the moment.

"The universe is made entirely of vibrating thread," Albus said, sounding as if he felt that explained everything quite adequately.

For Albus, magic was something that was constantly coiled, even when at rest. Its excesses within him had to be vented in trivial, inconsequential ways, otherwise he was quite certain that it would build into something that howled for release- would be like the suffocating press of carbon dioxide in his lungs: natural but utterly vital to expunge. Under more coherent circumstances, he usually recalled that this was hardly the common condition. "For some, magic is less a matter of summoning something than it is a matter of letting something go."

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