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+----- Thread: Mad Scientist | Fiona (/showthread.php?tid=1307)
Mad Scientist | Fiona - Avery Hale - 09-22-2026
Sunday, November 4, 1923
10:31 AM
A Fairly Unused Supply Closet
10:31 AM
A Fairly Unused Supply Closet
"Fiona Blackwood, it is imperative," the boy's scold came not a second after she'd closed the door behind her, "that you adhere to the time agreed upon for meeting. We said ten-thirty, and it is now ten-thirty wuh -" he glanced at the pocket watch his father had given him over the summer. The gift was meant to be a wristwatch, but Avery had insisted that a pocket watch would be taken much more seriously, "two. Ten-thirty two." The boy studied her with a look of disapproval, one that said he wouldn't be kept waiting in the future. "As much as I appreciate your willingness to assist in this case study, timeliness cannot be overlooked."
Now that that was out of the way, Avery offered a cordial smile and beckoned to the makeshift lab he had put together in the nearly-empty supply closet. The Hospital Wing didn't have many of them, but Avery had kept an eye on this one all last term. When he'd finally come to the conclusion that no one would likely notice his comings and goings from it, or its general use, he'd claimed it for himself, slowly moving unused equipment from the apothecary and potions supply room to this little space.
It was organized. Tidy. Avery appreciated a clean lab, as it allowed him the best possible results from whatever it was he was testing.
In this case, today, he'd be testing Fiona. Or using her as a dummy of sorts to see how various concoctions worked on a tuberculosis patient. Seeing as he refused to experiment on animals or creatures - and frankly he was a little afraid of Professor Barlowe, the man one - that left humans, and Fiona seemed to be ready and willing where many others weren't.
She didn't have tuberculosis of course, and Avery would never give her a live strain of the bacteria. That would be unethical, dangerous and, perhaps more importantly, likely to get him permanently banned from the Hospital Wing if anyone discovered what he was doing. He had considered acquiring a dead sample for comparative purposes, but there were several problems with that plan, beginning with the fact that Avery was twelve and ending with the fact that no respectable doctor seemed inclined to hand tuberculosis cultures to children.
It was a pity, not to mention frustrating.
So, he had improvised.
"What I need," Avery explained, gesturing toward the neatly arranged collection on his table, "is to reproduce certain effects of tuberculosis without actually giving you tuberculosis." Simple. In theory. Complicated in application.
He'd spent the better part of two weeks developing a potion meant to imitate some of its symptoms temporarily.
Most of what he'd used had come from the Hospital Wing's own stores. Small amounts of ingredients left over from other preparations, half-empty bottles destined to sit untouched for months, and a few expired remedies Avery had quietly decided were more useful to him than gathering dust. Nothing particularly dangerous on its own. To him, throwing away perfectly good research material simply because it had served its original purpose seemed terribly wasteful.
Combined, however, they had produced something rather interesting.
The first mixture had only made him cough. The second had made his chest ache for nearly twenty minutes. By the fourth, Avery had managed to produce a predictable tightening in the lungs, mild fatigue, and a persistent dry cough
He picked up a pale blue vial between two fingers.
"This should make breathing slightly more difficult for a short period. Takes about ten minutes for the symptoms to settle in. After you're properly congested, we'll start on a few different treatments I've been playing with." He noticed a fleck of something in the blue liquid, but gave it no real mind.
He held it out to his test subject. "Bottoms up, as they say!"
RE: Mad Scientist | Fiona - Fiona Blackwood - 09-22-2026
Fiona had been two minutes late because she had to stop and fix her ribbon because even though her destination was really important, she had to look her best. Because she was going to see Avery, the older boy she’d run into with her family over summer, of course she had to look her best.
And not all mirrors in Hogwarts were the same. A lot of them lied. Or laughed. Sometimes both.
The second she entered the room and the door shut behind her, Avery began mentioning time. She looked at him with her brow raised, as if she was thoroughly unimpressed with his dedication to time.
She wanted to remind him that she was doing this out of the kindness of her heart; mainly because she knew her own father was the best ever and the fact that Avery’s father was really, really sick, well… she’d do anything to help fathers everywhere.
Fiona looked around the supply closet with genuine interest. It was organized, which she appreciated. There were a lot of vials. She had agreed to this knowing there would be vials, but seeing them all arranged neatly in a row made them more real than they had been when she originally agreed.
She listened carefully while Avery explained.
"This should make breathing slightly more difficult for a short period. Takes about ten minutes for the symptoms to settle in. After you're properly congested, we'll start on a few different treatments I've been playing with."
That didn’t sound very pleasant. She felt the smallest bit of hesitance when he held up the vial.
"Bottoms up, as they say!"
Fiona looked at Avery, and then the vial in his hand. She took it from him and held it up, spotting the fleck that was floating around inside. Blind trust? Yeah. He should have seen it, but he didn’t say anything about it. Which meant it had to be fine. Right?
So she decided the fleck was fine.
“Okay,” she said, mostly to herself, and uncapped it and drank it.
It tasted like old medicine. There was something almost sweet underneath that was somehow worse than if it had just been entirely unpleasant. She lowered the vial and pressed her lips together and said nothing for a moment, despite her eye twitching the disgustingness.
“That,” she said finally, handing it back to him, “was disgusting.”
Fiona straightened up and looked around until she spotted a chair. She sat and folded her hands over her lap, looking around. “How long… ten minutes… do you have… water?” she asked, her thoughts back on the fleck she’d seen. She could swear she could feel it in her throat.
RE: Mad Scientist | Fiona - Avery Hale - 10-03-2026
“That was disgusting.”
"Sorry," he offered genuinely, taking the vial from Fiona and depositing it carefully into the basket reserved for contaminated equipment. Taste hadn't factored particularly high into his considerations when developing the potion. In retrospect, perhaps it should have. He could add something to improve the flavor next time, provided it didn't alter the chemical composition or interfere with absorption.
He made a mental note.
He would probably forget it.
Not because he was indifferent to Fiona's gustatory cells, but because palatability ranked considerably below accuracy, stability, and efficacy. There was very little point in producing pleasant-tasting medicine if the medicine didn't actually work. Still, he'd make an effort. Repeated exposure to something revolting could create anticipatory nausea, which would make Fiona a considerably less cooperative test subject.
“How long… ten minutes… do you have… water?”
"Ten minutes," he confirmed, crossing his arms and sitting on his stool to face her. He studied her face intimately, watching for any sign of paleness - or the opposite. Any lethargy. Any eye dilation. The boy was no healer or doctor, but even he knew the basics to watch out for in a bad reaction. Any sort of pox would be a bad sign. There should only be coughing, pulmonary congestion and perhaps some mild perspiration. If her eyes rolled backward, however, he suspected the experiment could reasonably be classified as unsuccessful.
"No water," he said, giving a small shake of his head. "It could dilute the potion or affect its absorption rate, and we need the initial dose operating at full potency. Otherwise, when I administer the treatment, we won't know whether it actually worked or whether the infection simply failed to establish itself properly."
He paused.
"That would invalidate the entire experiment." Laymen's terms for the girl who was nice enough, but certainly hadn't been selected for her mind. Hufflepuffs weren't known exactly for their intellectual capability, but he didn't need a smart subject. Just a willing one.
Ten minutes had passed, and sure enough, Fiona's throat had begun burning, signaled by the way she coughed intermittently. "How do your lungs feel?" He leaned in, placing two fingers against her left ribcage to feel the way her abdomen expanded when she breathed. "Deep breath in for me?" His eyes traveled up to meet the girl's and he offered a polite smile.
"Does it hurt? Do you feel any fullness or almost..." he searched his brain for the word that might make sense to the girl, "bubbly I guess? Do you feel any rattling around?"
RE: Mad Scientist | Fiona - Fiona Blackwood - 10-03-2026
Water. He wouldn’t let her have water. Fiona’s face said exactly what she was thinking – that it was ridiculous and that he shouldn’t let her get dehydrated. Perhaps water would affect the test, but without water she could shrivel up and die.
Still, she kept her mouth shut and looked around the room, occasionally picking at her fingernails.
Ten minutes felt like a very long time. Fiona wished she’d brought something to occupy herself while she waited, at least at the beginning before the symptoms began.
The burning started first somewhere in the back of her throat, and worked its way down, which was not a sensation Fiona had any previous experience with and was not enjoying.
She coughed once, then again, pressing her lips together afterward like she could keep the next one in. Some water would help. Maybe.
She was fine. She was absolutely fine. She had agreed to this and she was going to be scientific about it. For dads.
“How do your lungs feel?”
Avery leaned in and placed two fingers on her ribcage. She watched.
“Fine,” she said, which was her automatic answer to most things and also a small lie. She felt the pressure of his fingers against her ribs and tried not to hold her breath, which was counterproductive.
“Deep breath in for me?”
Fiona breathed in. It felt strange – not painful exactly, but more like something was sitting on her chest that hadn’t been there before. She let the breath out and looked at Avery with the expression of someone who was being very brave and wanted credit for it without having to ask for it.
“Does it hurt? Do you feel any fullness or almost… bubbly? Do you feel any rattling around?”
“It’s…” she started, and then coughed again, which was annoying. “It’s heavy… like something’s sitting on it.” She paused and tilted her head slightly. “I don’t feel rattling. Is rattling bad?”
She asked the last part very calmly, as though the answer didn’t matter at all to her. But it mattered. A lot.
RE: Mad Scientist | Fiona - Avery Hale - 10-09-2026
“Fine."
"Hmm mmm," Avery shook his head, fixing the girl with a stare that said her response wasn't acceptable. "Can't very well analyze results with 'fine', Fiona Blackwood." He needed more. Details. Sensations. All the things that would tell him if his concoction had worked to bring about the symptoms he'd been eager to replicate.
“It’s…”
There she went coughing. Excellent. His first attempt at artificially producing the symptoms had worked.
Avery's eyes lit immediately, and he leaned forward in his chair, quill already scratching across the parchment before Fiona had even recovered enough to speak. "Cough," he murmured to himself as he wrote, then glanced back up at her expectantly. "Dry or productive? Does your throat hurt? Chest? Any tightness when you breathe?"
“It’s heavy… like something’s sitting on it. I don’t feel rattling. Is rattling bad?”
"If this were the actual tubercular infection, yes. Very bad." His eyes were on his parchment, his scratchy writing carrying the boy away, notating that he only needed to up the potency in the faux malady for the next experiment. For now, this was good enough. He certainly didn't want her coughing blood on the very first round, but that symptom would need to present itself eventually.
He could mention that to her later.
"Alright," he said, with a smile completely unfit for what they were doing. "Next up is the tincture - or remedy - for the potion I gave you. It won't...taste good. Likely worse than the first. Similar to white vinegar." A warning was in order, considering he didn't want her surprised and spitting his carefully brewed oral inoculation all over the closet floor. He reached behind him and plucked a vial from its stand, full of milky-blue contents.
"Here you go," he said, leaning back slightly when her cough came a little harder. "Drink, and let's see what happens."
His eyes sparkled with anticipation.
RE: Mad Scientist | Fiona - Fiona Blackwood - 10-13-2026
Fiona watched Avery, the way that he was watching her like she was some experiment.
"Here you go. Drink, and let's see what happens."
She looked at the vial.
It was milky blue this time, which was different from the pale blue with the speck of the first one. Did the color make much difference in the flavor? There was no telling. Avery said white vinegar. She had tasted white vinegar once by accident when she was seven and had not forgotten it.
Fiona looked at Avery.
He looked back at her with the expression of someone who was very excited about what was about to happen, which was not particularly reassuring.
She hesitated for another moment, and then drank it.
It was worse than the first. Considerably. The vinegar had not been an exaggeration; it hit the back of her throat sharp and wrong, and then settled into something deeper and drier than the burning that was already there. She swallowed hard and pressed her lips together.
“That,” she said, which was all she managed before the cough came back, deeper than before. She held up one finger at Avery in the universal gesture for ‘give me a moment’.
The moment passed, but the burning hadn’t.
“That was also disgusting,” she said, when she could. “Is it… is it supposed to feel worse?”
Fiona asked it very carefully, in the tone of someone who already suspected the answer was no. Her eyes widened right before another deep cough shook her entire body.
RE: Mad Scientist | Fiona - Avery Hale - 10-17-2026
“Is it… is it supposed to feel worse?”
Worse?! No....noooo. It wasn't supposed to feel worse. This was the remedy. It was supposed to heal. Worse was bad. Worse meant a failed experiment. Worse meant he hadn't gotten the remedy correct. Was it the wormwood to dittany ratio? Was it the temperature?
Avery's shoulders slumped as he stared at Fiona, his expression falling into one of grave disappointment. "No," he answered with an annoyed sigh. "It's not supposed to feel worse." He dropped his gaze to his notes, scribbling angrily "Worse how?" He needed specifics when he went back to the drawing board and started from scratch. It would be a minimum of another two weeks before his tincture would be ready, and that wasn't taking into account the amount of time it would take him to actually gather up the ingredients he needed without being caught.
Another deep cough shook Fiona and he glanced up, his quill never stopping its furious scratching. "The symptoms will eventually dissipate on their own," he said, "Maybe six to seven days. Eight if you're really unlucky." It wasn't the end of the world for Fiona, like it was for his father. A short spurt of faux-tuberculosis was nothing compared to the real thing.
"Anyway," he said, digging into his pocket and producing a handful of candied cough drops. He held them out for her to take, "Thanks for stopping by. I'll let you know when I have a new remedy for testing." He needed to get to work right away and didn't have the time for socializing.
RE: Mad Scientist | Fiona - Fiona Blackwood - 10-17-2026
Fiona watched Avery’s shoulders slump, his expression full of disappointment. As she coughed. And the cough was almost in the range of hurting the more she did it.
"No. It's not supposed to feel worse. Worse how?"
“It’s… deeper,” she said, pressing a hand to her sternum. “And drier. Like the burning went further down.” She paused to cough. “And it’s harder to breathe all the way in.”
Avery looked up and she frowned, coughing deeply again.
"The symptoms will eventually dissipate on their own. Maybe six to seven days. Eight if you're really unlucky."
She took the cough drops he held out to her as he dismissed her. Fiona didn’t move to leave. She couldn’t leave like this.
“I can’t go back like this,” she said, her hands shaking as she coughed again, trying to unwrap one of the cough drops. She popped it in her mouth and sucked momentarily. “My mum will know something’s wrong. And my dad. They’ll ask questions and I’ll have to answer them and then you’ll be in trouble and I’ll be in trouble –”
Fiona was spiraling and she coughed again. The drop did little to soften its harshness. She took a breath.
“I don’t want us to get in trouble. Is there anything that can make it go away faster?”
RE: Mad Scientist | Fiona - Avery Hale - 10-27-2026
“It’s… deeper. And drier. Like the burning went further down.” She paused to cough. “And it’s harder to breathe all the way in.”
Hmm. The remedy had only resulted in exacerbating the symptoms, rather than alleviating them. It had to have something to do with the temperature, Avery mused to himself, forgetting altogether that Fiona was sitting in front of him as he continued his rapid writing.
“I can’t go back like this."
Somewhere, in the back of his ears, Avery thought he heard a little humming sound, but he dismissed it with a light wave. How a fly got in here, he didn't know but he had work to do. The boy crouched further over his notes, popping his tongue out the side of his mouth as he concentrated. Maybe not the temperature after all. Maybe it was the brewing method. Some tinctures were more sensitive than others and...yes....yes....good....getting there.
“I don’t want us to get in trouble. Is there anything that can make it go away faster?”
What? Who was getting in trouble? Avery suddenly looked up, an eyebrow casting higher than the other as he suddenly realized Fiona was still sitting there. Hadn't he discharged her already? She was free to go!
"What do you mean we'll get in trouble?" He studied her for a moment, his quill slowing as he tried to make his face as pleasant as possible. The last thing he needed was a tattletale ruining his experiments. Perhaps Fiona was the wrong subject. "You caught something, Fiona. You don't have to tell your parents anything." He leaned forward a bit, ensuring she understood.
"Something's going around. A bad cough. Probably strep. It'll be gone in a week." His voice was low and slow so she'd really understand what he was saying. He sat up again, his expression taking on a strained smile. "Nothing to worry about."