Backdated!
WHO: James Potter and Andre Jordan
WHAT: A healer lesson goes wrong when Andre gets the shakes!
WHERE: Order House
WHEN: Er! Last week or so?
James, through all of his detentions and shenanigans at Hogwarts, was a good student. He wouldn't have gotten the O.W.L.s he did, or the N.E.W.T.s if he wasn't good at studying or retaining information; it was just easy for him to remember what he needed to know. He supposed that was a good lesson for life, and as he took on the sessions with Andre Jordan to help somewhat complete his healer training, James was glad he was able to naturally swing back into the learning business. After living nearly like a hostage in his own home for the past few months, he was glad to restart the lessons to get breaths of fresh air, even if the fresh air was just that of the Order house.
"At this point I could probably sneak into Mungo's and lend a hand," James said as he finished brewing a new potion they were working on. He'd loved the hustle and bustle of the hospital, and missed constantly having to think and jump into action. With Voldemort so invested in finding Harry, it was hard to do anything for himself, his family, or the Order. James felt slightly guilty for being bored, but he was just naturally a person who could not sit still.
"How are the latest batch of interns?" he asked, looking across the table at Healer Jordan.
"Probably even more annoying than the last batch. I swear it increases exponentially each year." Andre said clenching his fist under the table trying to get the last bout of shakes under control. Its not like he was
hiding it or anything, they just had more important things to discuss. Although he was surprised that he hadn't mentioned anything about him having time to meet three times this week this far opposed the usual just one time.
Andre stood up to inspect the finished product and nodded his head in approval. He really couldn't believe he had almost dismissed the boy due to his school record. He had outstanding talent and would have gone far if he stayed with the program, and Andre didn't hand out complements easily. "At this rate, I'll be sneaking you in myself so you can take care of all my grunt work that I don't trust my interns with. This should be cooled enough to bottle in a few moments." he said getting up from his chair to grab some vials from his bag.
There was the distinctive sound of shattering glass, followed by a very agitated 'Damnit' only a few minutes later. The intervals between his shakes were decreasing dramatically and now he couldn't even hold on to a damn vial when it happened.
James jumped up at the sound and made his way over to where Healer Jordan was standing. He stared down at the mess of a potion with a frown, silently agitated that they'd have to go through all of that again. But--he couldn't, and wouldn't complain about it to Andre, because that was just
rude and obnoxious.
"Practice makes perfect, yeah?" he said, pulling out his wands and remembering the proper procedures in cleaning up a mess of this type of potion. Certain types of spells would cause it to react in a not-so-positive way if he remembered correctly. James figured that Dumbledore wouldn't be too pleased if there was a nice big hole in the floor of the headquarters because of some slip of the mind.
He finished the mess and finally allowed himself to look over to Healer Jordan. James eyes widened at the sight o the man's feverishly shaking hands. "Whoa---hey, Healer Jordan---are you okay? You look like you've had one too many fizzy drinks or something."
James leaned forward and put a hand on the man's shoulder, looking gravely concerned. He'd never a healer's hand shake like that, especially one of Jordan's caliber.
"Its--Andre." he corrected him ducking away from the hand on his shoulder. He was going to say 'It's nothing." but that was such a blatantly outlandish lie and James didn't deserve that. So instead he corrected him on his name, being as he wasn't feeling much of a healer lately as he'd been on a leave of absence for the past week, and if this didn't clear up soon, he'd be stuck doing paperwork and admin stuff for the rest of his career and that was worse than not going back at all.
He clenched his fists as he felt another bout of shakes come, this time trying to at least hide just how bad they really were, knowing James was watching. It did a number to his pride, but he could man up about it. "It's just this
thing that started a few weeks ago. I'm working on it," read 'I have no idea what the hell is going on and I'm really really hoping that it will just pass.'
"Sorry about the potion, I have some at home I can bring in so we don't have to make it again. We can move on to the next thing."
A thing? That shaking hand looked like more than a
thing. James' brow furrowed in thought, trying to remember where he had seen someone's hand,
body move like that, and when he shut his eyes it immediately struck him. More than three years ago he had been stuck in a dark room, convulsing and panic stricken because of some
drink that the death eaters holding him captive had made him drink. It was painful and torturous, and it only went away with Lord Voldemort came back to fix him...
"It's not nothing," James said, going with his gut. Maybe it
was just an allergic reaction, but with all his years in the Order, paranoia had taken over and jumping to the worst possible conclusions had saved his ass numerous times. "I've seen that before---that's happened to
me before."
James paused for a second, feeling surprisingly uncomfortable for talking about this. If he thought about it, he'd realize that he'd only actually divulged details about his capture in Paris with three people, and one of them had been there with him. James didn't like the
looks he got when the situation was brought up, and he didn't like to think about the terror his and Frank's disappearance had put his family and friends through. But if Andre really
was poisoned, he couldn't say
nothing, could he?
"When I was in Paris," he hoped that was enough for Andre to understand what he was talking about, "They gave me--they
forced me to drink this...clear, odorless drink that immediately made me convulse and---" James grimaced at the memory, involuntarily taking a step back from Andre, "Until Voldemort healed me." His eyes ducked, but landed on Andre's hands, "I think you're being poisoned, Andre."
Andre listened carefully to what James was saying because he wouldn't be bringing it up unless he thought it was true. He really didn't know what happened in Paris but he knew enough that no one ever talked about it, and things avoided like that were never good. Andre knew better than to ask questions.
James had to be right about him being poisoned, nothing else fit. He certainly didn't missed the part where he said it didn't stop until Voldemort healed him, which really didn't bode well for Andre at all. "Do you know how he healed you?" Andre asked, ignoring the fact that he had backed away from him. He was never one that was good at sympathetic commentary so he went right on with the matter at hand. "Do you remember what he did? Because I nor anyone else I know at Mungo's has any idea whats going on and nothings working and I'm starting to think that I'm pretty much screwed here."
James tried to think, but it was difficult. For so long he had forced himself not to let his mind drift back to those few weeks of his life because of the anxiety and depression that always haunted him afterward. He was so good at avoiding the real issues and the real troubles, but Andre was his friend, he was a mentor and a fellow Order member. James had to suck it up to help him.
He leaned back onto the counter and covered his hand with his face, trying to force the images of his suppressed memories to become clearer. When had that been? Had it been early on? Yes, Frank's fingers hadn't been broken yet, and--and James remembered that the scars on his wrists from the wire they'd been tied with weren't there---
"It was another potion," James muttered, his eyes shutting tighter to try and remember every detail, "It hurt even more than the first one, but the Dark Lord said it would fix me and it did," he nodded, "He'd promised to and he did---"
His eyes shot open and suddenly James felt very hot. It had taken him a long time to get rid of the feelings of gratitude toward Voldemort after he had healed himself and Frank so many times, and to have it rush back so quickly...was he never going to be rid of these thoughts? Did Voldemort still have some sort of control on him?
James turned to Andre, looking serious, "Instead of looking for the poison, we've got to look for the characteristics of this cure---I know the symptoms of its healing process, we can work from there."
