Summary: A series of oneshots in the universe of 'The Rebel Snakes', exploring magic in other cultures, the intersection of magic and Muggle worlds, and the dichotomy of magic and faith. Mostly Gold-centric, with frequent appearances by the trio, the Slytherins and various others. Features linguistically brilliant Harry, morally confused Malfoy, flirty Myrtle, social justice Hermione, chessmaster Ron and BAMF Neville.
This is in response to a desire for more of the other brothers. Sorry for the long, long wait - exam season bit me in the butt.
Part 10: Set in February of year seven. David Gold thinks he's the different and damaged one, but the situation is rather more complicated than that. Collaborative science is complicated, and owls are not really a very good way to get information around.
The ink was honestly the most annoying part. It had to be made from scratch, the black pigments mixed with floo powder, finely crushed albatross tooth, and seawater taken from the ocean of passage. Made properly (by Avi), it had a brilliant blue hue and a silky texture. Gold's always came out navy blue and gritty, but it worked well enough.
He lit a candle - not one of his ordinary taper candles, but a dark blue beeswax candle, thicker than his thick wrists and older than he was, mottled with streams of hardened wax from use after use - and began to write.
Ben,
I saw your latest paper in Jn. Med. Mag. Getting a first author paper in a good journal this early in your career is impressive. Keep doing us proud and don't go developing an American accent.
The situation here is unfortunate. Hogwarts is a joke, at best, and a prison at worst. That Snape murdered Professor Dumbledore in cold blood is now an open secret; the teachers obviously know, and stay only to protect us from Snape's pair of bloodhounds, the Carrows, who barely even pretend not to be Death Eaters.
I used to like Snape. Obviously my sense of betrayal is not important compared to that of the people he's killed, but it has left me conflicted. Something doesn't add up. He knows things, about Dumbledore's Army, and my condition, and more than he should about our magic, mia maxima culpa. I was careless - I taught people the spells to protect them and they spread too fast. Yet he's said nothing and done nothing with the information, insofar as I can tell. Maybe he's told You-Know-Who Potter has some new spells up his sleeves, but if so, why not at least tell the Carrows as well? Whatever he's playing at, it will not end well.
Every day is a battle. Nobody's died yet, but some of the gryffs are not in good shape. Several Muggleborns and near-Muggleborns have had to be evacuated say what the Carrows will do to you is nothing to what the Ministry will do to you if they find out your blood status isn't pure. One of my snakes snuck into the library and burned the entire blood registry book over a month ago. I thought Pince would murder him, but she set a small fire in the references section to cover it up for him. The other teachers try to give us whatever help they can, but everyone has to appear to toe the line. It's guerrilla warfare.
In the midst of all this, I am happier than I have ever been. I seem, as one of my recent friends put it, to be constructed for calamity.
Symptoms: transient loss of coordination, transient loss of movement (restricted to right hand), extreme headaches, nausea, light sensitivity, irritability, occasional outbursts of recklessness or rage.
-David
He waited until his watch read precisely midnight, then touched the parchment to the candle flame and held it aloft. The blue ink burned brightly, illuminating each word just before it faded into ashes.
An ocean away, Benjamin Gold waited in a small apartment, illuminated only by the light of the setting sun and a large, brilliant blue beeswax candle. The hands of his pocket watch ticked restlessly closer to 7.00PM.
The second hand met its mark. Instants later, the candle flame spat out a sheaf of paper bearing his brother's familiar hand in dark blue ink. Ben snatched at it.
"S'that?" asked the wizard who shared the apartment with him - a bantam-sized American herbologist who insisted on calling him Benjy.
"Letter from my brother."
"Bad news?"
"I don't know if I'd call it news at all," said Ben, whose eyes had fallen immediately to the bottom of the letter.
"Oh! That reminds me. This came for you." His flatmate shuffled to the desk and dropped an envelope down. "By owl, if you can believe that. Who the hell uses owls any more?"
"We still do in England."
"Oh my god, really? Like is instant ink not a thing there?"
"Mitch, no offence meant, but ..."
"Sorry. I'm not even here."
Ben read David's letter twice through. The first read-through, he saw only the calamity at Hogwarts, the growing list of symptoms. It wasn't until the second time that he caught the words 'recent friends' and the hint of pride behind them.
Normally, David was so obnoxiously intelligent, so sharp and so proud of his skills, that it became easy to forget the child he'd been. But suddenly Ben was acutely reminded of the pride his once-frail little specter of a brother had shown at doing things like other children did. Look, I can make friends. I'm a real boy. Not some broken thing that can never work right again. The thought made his chest ache, so he put aside the letter from David and picked up the other.
It was parchment, with bright emerald ink, marked unmistakeably with the Hogwarts seal.
Ben cast a nervous glance at Mitch, worried his flatmate had recognized the seal. Mitch, bless his heart, was unassumingly shoving milky cereal into his face, his nose inches from his textbook.
Nobody much wanted to be associated with Hogwarts, these days. He'd heard horror stories of researchers getting burned for collabs with Hogwarts alumni, especially the ones who wore the green tie. Ben already got sideways looks, even though he'd graduated before You-Know-Who's return. The wizards of America wanted nothing to do with Britain's war. Mitch never had, but then, Mitch was wonderfully oblivious to anything that didn't photosynthesize.
Ben broke the seal and unfolded the parchment, wondering faintly whether it had really been delivered cross-Atlantic by owl - whether Hogwarts had some spell for that - or whether they had simply booked an owl once the letter arrived in America out of that strange English traditionalism that filled so many wizards' heads. The neat, precise hand of the letter was neither McGonagall's, nor that of his head of house.
Dear Mr. Gold,
Forgive me for contacting you in this unorthodox manner, but I felt it was my moral obligation. I recently read your paper in the Journal of Medical Magic, 'Applications of wyrm venoms in targeting of aberrant cell metabolism' and while most of it went straight over my head (the field moves so fast these days, especially in America, and my background training isn't as fresh as it used to be), but it seemed as though if anyone was in a position to help me find a solution, it would be you. I'm at my wits' end.
I must assume you already know about your brother David. What he hid from the entire staff at Hogwarts (!) he cannot have hidden from his own family as well?
I've been treating him with a mood-altering headache draught derived from St. John's Wort. When Headmaster Snape informed me of it, he seemed to think nothing could be done, but I cannot accept that without trying. Surely a strong chemotherapeutic regimen could at least slow the process? He is young, and relatively healthy if only he'd stop getting himself attacked, and could afford the associated malnutrition. Why has such a course of treatment never been undertaken before?
My practical expertise is at your command.
Yours,
Poppy Pomfrey.
He would hate himself for it later, but it gave him a glimmer of hope.
Ben picked up a pen, found a sheet of fresh paper - he had not used a quill in years - and scribbled a reply. It was not in his nature to be formal, and even if it had been, he could not have stood it under these circumstances.
Poppy,
I'm sorry you and the rest of the staff were never told. The reason for it was also one of the reasons why we never attempted chemo: David forbade it. This isn't his first struggle with cancer and I think he would honestly rather die than relive what he went through the first time.
I don't like the secrecy either, of course. There comes a point when 'choosing a normal life' is not so different from 'walling yourself off from anyone who could help you' and with David, G-D knows where that line lies. As for the decision not to undergo treatment - I think he may have been right. We exhausted so many possibilities the first time around that every line of treatment we looked into had only a miniscule chance of success, and at the cost of his quality of life. Even so, I still would have liked to try.
But if you got him to willingly take a tricyclic antidepressant, even for pain (actually, how did you do that?) then David's viewpoint might be shifting as it becomes more real to him.
The problem with treatment is the blood-brain barrier. Every cytotoxic substance, mundane or magical, has simply been exported by p-glycoprotein in culture - meaning it would never get to the tumour in the first place, just get shunted to the hepatic system, and possibly do all kinds of damage there. My work with wyrm venom is promising, but it seems to have very strong off-target effects that need to be reduced before anything can be done. The venom binds p-glycoprotein and inhibits it, which would be enough to get a potion into the brain, but it seems to have the same effect on all the ABC-family transporters because of their similar structure.
Ben
That evening he paid a visit to SIMT's fairly defunct owlery and found out the process for trans-Atlantic owl post. It was just as he was returning that he received a hail from the thick blue Oceancrosser candle, still burning brightly on his kitchen table.
He'd never seen the handwriting before. That in and of itself was strange. Oceancrosser candles were expensive and rare. The Golds had two, old heirlooms from when their great-grandparents had first arrived in Israel after the Grindelwaldian War. The only other Oceancrossers he'd ever encountered belonged to Filius Flitwick and Albus Dumbledore, and he knew their hands - Flitwick, his owl head of house, with his tiny rounded letters, Dumbledore with his slanting, ornate cursive. This hand was sharp and spiky.
Mr. Gold,
It has recently reached my attention (How recently, thought Ben, within the last twenty minutes?) that you intend to attempt a course of treatment upon a student of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, for a limbic system carcinoma.
I wish to offer up my expertise. I am a researcher in potions, located in Great Britain. The venom of wyrms and fell snakes has been an area of particular interest for me in past years, and, if the severe flaws in your recent publication on the subject of wyrm venom and its interaction with the cell membrane is any grounds for judgement, I think you shall need my assistance. Are you not aware that storage of wyrm venom under anything but pure white light leads to the alteration of its binding kinetics? Or of its interaction with kelpie milk, which I note you used as a blocking agent in your Western blots?
I shall expect your reply by Oceancrosser at the stroke of 10.00pm, your time. For the moment, I wish to remain anonymous, but you may address me as Prince.
"Avi!"
An ocean away, Avi Gold shrieked and fell from his bed in a tangle of blankets. A moment letter he had righted himself, his brown curls a wild tangle over dark, tired eyes, and was staring into the fire. "Ben, you arse - it's two in the morning- "
"It's important," said Ben, whose knees already ached from kneeling on the hard cement floor. He hated flooing. The SIMT graduate residences, more bound up in industrial and technical magic than the so-called 'elemental schools' of the old world, did not come with a fire in each room, so he was stuck using the community fireplace in the horrible unfinished basement. It was enough to make him miss England, with its stone and oak and roaring hearths, quite acutely.
"What if I'd had a girl in here?"
Ben rolled his eyes. "Grow up. It's about David."
That got Avi's attention. He shuffled closer to the fire, his blanket wrapped around his shoulders like a cloak. The look on his face was pained. "News?"
Ben softened. Avi - only a few years David's senior - had always been closest, not just to David but to the calamity of his illness. Often ignored, undervalued, forced to make sacrifices so that David could have more - as if giving up trips and treats and attention would ever make fair the massive unfairness of nature. Sometimes Ben thought the rhetoric of sacrifice had sunk into Avi's bones. There was not a thing he wouldn't have done for David. Or for anyone else.
"Pomfrey wants to try and treat him. She got in touch with me tonight - and so did an anonymous collaborator. Calling himself 'Prince'."
"Is he a Strange Animal?" Avi's penchant for jokes had taken on a slightly hysterical air.
Ben gave him a warning look. "He says he's a potions researcher located in Britain with a specialization in wyrm venom. Does that sound like anyone at Dunsinane?"
Avi shook his head. "No Princes in my department. The only person I know of who's working on wyrm venom is Bill Cawdor in the Thane Lab, and he's on leave with a new baby."
Ben read him all three letters, ending with David's.
"Happier than he's ever been?" asked Avi, weakly. "Was he unhappy?"
"Are you stupid?" Ben would have reached through the fireplace and slapped his brother if he could. "You were the one at Hogwarts with him."
"He said he..." Avi trailed off. "He was popular in his house, he did well in class..."
Classic Avi, for whom happiness could come with simple success. Ben shook his head. "Our brother wasn't 'popular in Slytherin house', Avriel. He was part of a counter-movement against all the horrible shit that happened there. Didn't you ever talk to him about it?"
"Yes... maybe? I don't know - I was so busy with schoolwork, and then the volunteering at St. Mungo's, and he said he was fine, so-"
"Never ever believe David when he says he is fine."
Avi looked like he'd been struck. "Well what could I have done, Benjamin? I've tried and failed, I can't fix him!"
"It wasn't your job to fix him, just -" Ben scrunched his eyes closed, cutting himself off. He understood, he did, and it would be a hypocrisy to chew Avi out over this. Avi didn't need chewing out. David was his one great failure. Fixing the Problem that was David had been most of their lives' work, all three of them. "Look, are you with me on this?"
He'd known Avi wouldn't hesitate. Avi never did. "I'll do what I can. Whatever potions you need, I'll brew them. Should I get in touch with Samson?"
Ben thought about it. "Better not. He's in love, let him be in love."
"Actually," said Avi, with a guilty wince, "He's not in love. He's in Nunavut."
Samson Gold was freezing his arse off.
The Kluane Lake Magical Hospital could not have been more remote, or, in his opinion, more primitive. But it suited him. It took a lot of work just to live here, where the winter winds gusted to -50 Celsius and the permafrost never melted. Which was good. Work took his mind off things. He'd chosen Northern Canada for his Healer residency because it was the remotest place he could think of. Someplace he could feel he was doing good work, helping people who really needed it. Somewhere far away from the darkness that was creeping in on his family.
The whole hospital was on an angle. When the permafrost melted with the residual heat of the foundations, not long after it was first built, the southernmost half, closest to the heating system, had sunk into the earth. Now the interior was only held to rights with magic, so that things didn't slide off tables, but the spell was tricksy, starting to get old. Sometimes gravity wobbled. Samson had become a very good sailor. Doing his rounds to their three wards and thirty-seven beds, he noticed several of them starting to slide down to the south end, and had to push them back into place.
In the first bed, a wizened old walnut of a man looked at him through ancient eyes.
"Morning, Siluk," said Sam, crouching. "How are we feeling today?"
"Tuurgacs in my spine," said the old man, with a humoured look, "Bad spirits. This morning they're having a party."
Sam opened his mouth, to patiently explain that it wasn't demons, it was Lundyfarian hobbling arthritis, the same reason for which many old wizards had a terrible stoop. But he'd learned early on that with the Inuvialuit, you could never tell what was a spiritual explanation for a scientific phenomenon and what was them just pulling your leg, and they knew it, and wanted it to be that way.
Samson offereded him a thin vial of blue potion. The old man peered at it. "Not the way the Shamans used to treat it. Caribou bone, ground into a fine powder, and willowbark and sweetgrass, and moon mushroom, and whale-fat, and a hair from a Qalupilak, boiled over a flame in the freezing air. Then wrap the vial in sealskin. Seal, not caribou. Important. That was how they used to do it."
"This has been prepared and tested under controlled, sterile conditions to be sure it works every time. It's a lot of the components you mentioned - calcium phosphate, which is in bone, and an emulsifying agent that's derived from fats-"
But Siluk had already snatched it from his hand. "I don't need convincing. Either it works or it doesn't."
"But you were saying, the Shamanic way of brewing-"
"Didn't work half the time. They would have made it like this if they could but the caribou had parasites that made it bad and who can say when you're going to catch a Qalupilak? No, the Shamans are mostly gone anyway."
Samson found that made him strangely sad.
"I like to look back because someone has to honour the past." Siluk laughed a rusted old laugh and knocked back the potion, wincing. "Maybe you scientists in your white coats, you're the closest thing the modern world has to Shamans. To know what magic does, that's nothing. To know why - that's what the Shamans knew."
"Healer Gold?"
One of the nurses had just ducked her head into the room. Samson beamed at her. Flirting with the female nurses was off-limits, but in a small town people seemed to understand - especially, thought Samson, rather proudly, when you were a young and dazzlingly handsome Englishman from a wealthy family of purebloods with a good career already in hand. Here, he would never pale in comparison. Without three brilliant brothers no-one would ever mind that he was merely clever. "Yes, Atiq?"
"I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were with a patient-"
"It's fine, just bringing Mr. Okpik his potion dose. What is it?"
"The chasse-galerie's arrived."
Samson rushed upstairs, threw on his hat and parka and inner gloves, stuffed his feet into boots. Then he rushed outside - the cold stabbing into him like a driven nail - just in time to see it descend. Hull-first, a great canoe, easily thirty feet in length, its birchbark surface painted in red and yellow and black. Kluane was too remote for owl, and too cold. Only a lunatic would change the winds on a broom.
The figures within were balls of winter clothing, everything but their wind-chapped faces uncovered, and they spoke to each other in rapid Quebec French. Sam's French was alright, by the standards of England, and he caught about 20% of it.
"Voyons, pas cette package, celui-là, crisse de tabarnac de- okay delivery for the 'ospital, six boxes, potions from Montreal. Sign."
Samson signed the form, running over every item in those six boxes, all the new treatment possibilities. He'd been waiting for delivery a long time. The chasse-galerie driver stared at his signature. "Gold?"
"That's me."
"This was sent for you too." A letter was pressed into his hand. He recognized Avi's writing on the envelope.
Avi, the only brother he'd told about this highly unorthodox residency - because Ben was a blabbermouth and David was out of the question. Avi would not have contacted him about just anything.
Damn it all. He'd hoped it wouldn't follow him here. He'd hoped they had a little more time than that. It wasn't David's fault, G-D knew that. And it wasn't that he didn't love his little brother, either, whatever people thought. David made it hard to love him and impossible not to. But years and years of inevitability, of grim news and probabilities and prognoses and David David David... it was agonizing. Suffocating. Ben had been farthest away from it, no wonder he was the most normal... and Avi, underneath that enthusiastic charm, seemed to Samson constantly on the verge of exploding under pressure. Sam wasn't willing to live that way.
Some Hufflepuff you are, said his conscious.
No, he reminded it, shoving the letter into his coat pocket. I'm not disloyal, I'm not abandoning my family. I just... can't help the way Ben and Avi can and they don't understand that.
But here at Kluane? He saw the difference he made, every day. The town needed resources and education and he could help.
Even so, he kept the letter, putting it aside to read as soon as the chasse-galerie departed.
So I have no idea why I decided to take a dalliance into the Canadian North, but I enjoyed doing it, and will be continuing this segment soon - though something else may come in between.
This chapter contains many bits of truth from my father's experiences doing archeological work on Canada's Inuit, and a little French-Canadian culture thrown in for flavour. The Chasse-galerie is probably my favourite Christmas story. The line 'the cold stabbing into him like a driven nail' is a reference to a distant relative of mine, Robert Service, and his poem 'The Cremation of Sam McGee':
"...talk of your cold! Through parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail. ..."
On the note of St. John's Wort - it actually does contain compounds structurally similar to tricyclic SSRIs such as amitriptyline, which are used in treatment of headaches induced by brain cancers, since these usually don't respond to normal headache/migraine treatments. P-glycoprotein is actually the first point of testing for cancer drugs because even non-brain cancers tend to develop multidrug resistance by overexpressing it.
Still taking suggestions, please R&R! I'm hoping to get back to my usual posting schedule now that exams are up.