alittlemirror | wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure

wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure

To say Jade is displeased would be an understatement. It's not that he cares about this detention tarnishing his record, no. He doesn't really care about his record. What he does care about is how it cuts into his studying time. He had just come across a particularly fascinating snippet on the nature of death and the soul...

(And besides, those Hufflepuffs had started it with their incessant chattering. They're like a less annoying version of Saphir, and nobody had ever really objected when he hexed Saphir. And it's not like he used a serious hex; he just sealed and removed their mouths. Easily reversible, if they knew what they were doing - and knew how to use nonverbal spells.

After all, what kind of first-year doesn't know how to use nonverbal spells?)

But someone had taken offense to his hex, and now he finds himself trudging to Professor Rammsteiner's office, growing increasingly irritated at the loss of his study time. From what he's heard of detentions, they usually entail doing useless, mundane tasks easily accomplished with a little creative wandwork. He's thought about ignoring Professor Rammsteiner's orders more than once, but he's also been told that it would just lead to more detentions and thus a bigger waste of time.

Oh well. He's here now. With one last irritated sigh, he raises his hand to the door and knocks.

"Professor Rammsteiner? This is Jade Curtiss."

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It hurts.

He's in a daze as he passes through the halls of Durmstrang, clutching his robes tight against his body. Every step sends pain throbbing through him, through his body, through his mind. His head is a mess of splintered thoughts and shards of memories, all jagged edges, whispers of you're mine, I want you to remember that looping over and over again in his ears.

He doesn't remember everything. Professor Eichel had seen to that. He remembers only enough to know that he had fought and lost; Professor Eichel's power over him is absolute, and his teacher had made sure that particular lesson had been firmly imprinted into his mind.

It hurts. He hates coming out on the losing end. And while there's an urge to curl up somewhere out of the way to lick his wounds, the greater part of him would much rather find a way to gain the upper hand over Professor Eichel.

But to do that, he needs help. Or, more accurately, he needs a test subject.

He turns the last corner, coming to a stop in front of Professor Rammsteiner's chambers. (It hurts.) His hand is shaking slightly when he raises it to knock on the door. He takes a breath, forcing himself under control. Control - that's what it's all about, isn't it?

Over the past few days, Heine has been finding himself abruptly awake in the middle of the night more and more often. He'll come to with his eyes already open, focused on something in the dark, but there's never anything there.

It's weird. Not much weirder than usual, however, so he comes to answer the door without much more than the usual trepidation when he hears the knock. Jade is there as he expected. What he doesn't expect is the sudden rush of unidentifiable emotion that subsumes him for a moment, so strong that he feels his stomach drop.

"What is it?" At least his voice is level. What on earth was that, though, that he'd respond in such a way? Heine shakes the thought off after a moment. He'll deal with it later.

It's not until he's here, face-to-face with Professor Rammsteiner, that Jade realizes just how long it's been since the last time they've spoken properly for any length of time. Maybe that's not so surprising; he's all but cut off what relationship they had when Professor Eichel first took him under his wing. He had been irritated with Professor Rammsteiner then, hadn't he? At some level, he still is, but Jade has always been good at ignoring his emotions.

He's been staring for a little longer than strictly necessary when he finally speaks. "Can I come in?"

He'd rather not talk about this in the open.

Heine doesn't move or change expression, but he's beginning to feel uncomfortable by the time Jade speaks up.

"Yeah." Despite himself, he's curious. Heine steps away from the door and shuts it behind Jade when he enters. Once inside, he just waits for Jade to continue.

There's a stiffness in Jade's movements, obvious even from the short few steps he has to take to enter Professor Rammsteiner's room. It's not until the door closes firmly behind him that he speaks.

"It's about Professor Eichel," he says, his voice as blank as his expression is. He doesn't quite look at Professor Rammsteiner's face. "We've talked about him once. Do you remember? You didn't seem to have a favourable impression of him. I'd like to know why."

He wonders if Professor Eichel is listening in on their every word right now. He wouldn't be surprised if he had that ability. There was that moment before - it's a hazy memory, clouded by lust and pleasure, like all the others - but Professor Eichel had let slip something he shouldn't have, something that implied he had been spying on him.

Was it really a slip, though? Jade has to wonder. He doesn't think Professor Eichel can be so careless. Most likely, it was just another of his games.

So it's not impossible (nor improbable) for Professor Eichel to be spying on them right now. Well, there's not much that can be done about that, Jade supposes.

Professor Eichel. A memory returns to Heine, or a fragment of one; when he'd been a student he'd taken one class under him. It was an interesting course, keeping even Heine's attention... but no, he hadn't liked the man even then. After Jade said that he would be studying with him (instead), Heine had liked him even less.

There were rumors about him. Heine isn't sure if they're the same now, and he takes a long moment before answering, eyeing Jade's feet in the meantime. Is he injured? Was it the tournament, or—?

"Why are you asking now?" He lifts his chin to look Jade in the eye this time. He'll answer, but he wants to know why first.

It takes a second, but finally he meets Professor Rammsteiner's gaze and doesn't look away despite the strange sense of unease that hangs over him. What he's done to Professor Rammsteiner... Isn't that the same as what Professor Eichel had done to him?

"We had a disagreement." An understatement, but Jade is good at those. "I'd like to know more about him."

"What did he do?" 'Disagreement', to Heine, means a fight, and he wants to know more about it before he answers any other questions.

"It doesn't matter." He pulls his robes tighter against his body. He doesn't want to talk about it, doesn't want to talk about the pain and the humiliation, the knowledge that Eichel's power threads through his mind even now. "Are you going to tell me what you know or not?"

Not that there's much he can do if Professor Rammsteiner refuses to speak. Well, he supposes he could force it out of him with magic, but... He finds he's strangely reluctant to do that.

Heine would argue that it does matter, but, whatever. He can ask again later.

"I didn't talk to him much while I went here." Tried not to, in fact. "People said he liked the Dark Arts more than teaching. Dark Arts and students."

Jade's lips thinned. He knew that much already, although he'd contest the implication there that Professor Eichel isn't a good teacher. He is. Too good of one, in fact.

"There must be more," he presses. Professor Eichel had been involved with other students before him. They may have committed the same crimes. This is the sort of thing people talk about, Jade knows, the sort of gossip that students thrive on.

There had been students, more than a few, who had been too close to Professor Eichel. Heine pauses for a moment, gathering the details in his memory and filing out the facts that he doesn't want to give away.

"Kids going to his rooms, that kind of thing." He shrugs sharply, crosses his arms. "He'd ask about students he was interested in."

There's obvious discomfort in Heine's expression then, even more than usual. Professor Eichel had asked after him from the other students, he'd heard as much through the grapevine, and he knows why.

"He's interested in you," Jade says. It's not a question. He knows for a fact that Professor Eichel is still interested in Professor Rammsteiner, and from the way Professor Rammsteiner is acting, that interest is something that had begun a long time ago.

Professor Rammsteiner still isn't being particularly helpful, but his information gives Jade a starting point to make his own inquiries, at least.

"What sort of information does he ask for?" It might be helpful to have an idea of what Eichel knows about him — although it might be too late for that. He had always been forthcoming with information whenever he and Professor Eichel speak.

Heine makes a face without meaning to. He would've thought enough time had passed for Professor Eichel to forget about him. But, given that he hasn't forgotten about Eichel, maybe that had been too optimistic.

"He'd ask about schedules. What they liked, what they wanted to learn about." Heine pauses, and finally tries to ask again. "Why do you want to know?"

"I told you already," he says, voice sharp with annoyance once more — but there's a defensive edge to it too, one Jade himself isn't even aware of. "We had a disagreement. I want to learn whatever I can about him. What happened to those students, the ones he used?"

"So you want to know this stuff to—to what, report him?" There's no one who would take action. Heine is sure of that. He'd never told anyone, after all, about... how nothing had happened, in the end.

"They left. Graduated." Heine shrugs. "Nothing happened."

He makes a dismissive noise. Professor Rammsteiner doesn't know him all that well, does he? Jade has no reason to report Professor Eichel, not when the man is still an asset to him, despite their...disagreements.

"I just want to know what he'll do to me." What to be prepared for. He doesn't believe that those students have simply left, just like that. "There must be more. What happened to those students after their graduation?"

Or does Professor Rammsteiner not know? Is there a single person in Durmstrang who does?

Edited (WOW GRAMMAR) 2016-05-10 16:14 (UTC)

"He doesn't kill people." He would've at least heard about that.

"They just leave. I don't know, I didn't try and keep in contact." In the first place, Heine hadn't been friends with the people that were said to have... relations with Professor Eichel. "He didn't—"

A thought strikes Heine, then, a brief fragment of he took something but not knowing what that something is. Professor Eichel had asked about him, had talked to him after class. He'd offered tea. Heine can't imagine why he's remembering now, of all times, the fragrant scent rising in clouds of steam.

He doesn't remember taking him up on the offer, but he remembers the heat of the porcelain teapot in his hands.

"No one's died because of him," he continues after the pause. "Just don't go to him."

"Too late for that," he mutters. His eyes are still fixed on Professor Rammsteiner's, but there's a slightly unfocused quality to them as he mulls over the odd way Professor Rammsteiner had interrupted himself and paused for too long to be normal.

More complications. Secrets upon secrets. All this only serves to remind him of why he prefers solitude. His self-assigned task may not be an easy one, but at least he doesn't have to deal with this sort of complexity.

His whole body aches. He wants to rest, but he still has work to do.

"He's interested in you," he says, repeating his words from earlier, slower this time. He feels as if he has the pieces of a puzzle in hand, but... "He wants to study your curse."

Jade swallows, feeling a phantom pressure against his throat, remembering the crushing force Professor Rammsteiner had exerted on his windpipe. Is it safe to speak frankly to him? He doesn't know.

Heine's frown sharpens; he's taken aback by the apparent fact that Professor Eichel knows about it. "How does he know about it?" Had they told all the professors when he'd enrolled?

...he wouldn't be surprised.

"I don't want to talk to him."

He shrugs a little at the first question. "He is a Dark Arts teacher, you know."

For a moment, he considers adding something along the lines of And you've spoken with him already, you just don't remember, but he hesitates, wary of the effects of the curse.

"...What sort of curse are you under?" He finally asks.

That's... fair enough, Heine has to admit, so he doesn't ask any more questions in that vein. Instead he responds, "It changes my mood."

It's a prepared answer. There are people who are simply sensitive to Dark Magic, and Heine doesn't like to explain further than he has to. The curse does change his mood. Technically.

He nods, accepting that, although he's sure there's more to it. Still, a change in mood could definitely describe what happened to Professor Rammsteiner that night.

Even if it felt less like a change in mood and more like there had been someone else speaking through Professor Rammsteiner, using his body for its own purposes.

"What prompts that change?"

"I don't know. Whenever it's too much." When threatened, or he's too angry, he can't usually stop it. The dog takes him over.

Even talking about it now, Heine can feel a prickle on the back of his neck.

He shakes his head and changes the subject.

"What else do you want to know?"

That matches up with what little Jade has seen of his curse so far, so he nods, allowing the subject to be changed.

"What do you know about breaking curses?" He asks, then quickly clarifies: "Not your curse, I don't care about that. But I think Professor Eichel placed some sort of binding spell on me."

He did the same thing to you, he says mentally, but decides not to say it out loud just yet.

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