He felt… Something. A little lethargy, perhaps, a small ache radiating from his sinuses. The house elves clattered about every morning asking after his well-being and every morning he said the same. That he was fine, that their focus should be on his brother who he had not seen much of- whether down to schedule clashes or Rabastan choosing to keep him at arms length he wasn’t sure. But he’d heard his sniveling and the smashing plates of magic gone awry. No, Rodolphus was not sick, he was in fact hyper focused on trying to find a way to end all this. In his research he’d stumbled upon the journal of an ancestor who wrote of this soul stealer spell, and the magic his family had used to counter it.
Now all he had to do was find that counter spell again, centuries later, when it had originally been hidden with the intention of never being found. Easy.
After fruitlessly searching all day, he’d gone for a walk to clear his head. Perhaps his brothers’ intentions had been similar, perhaps by this point he was blindly stumbling towards whatever part of the world might feel less painful. Rod caught him by the shoulders, steadying Rab until he wrenched himself away to lean against the wall.
“The fuck am I staring at?” He repeated with a startled laugh, “my sick brother, that’s the fuck what.” Rod shook his head, fond and fearful all at once- they were in public, someone could’ve tried to hurt him, weak and wandering as he was. “We should get you home.” Rod insisted, “I’ll call in a private healer if you don’t want Mungos- don’t blame you, probably full of whiny pricks at this point. Just… Come on, you’ll do yourself no good ambling about like this.”
If he could have kept the breath in his lungs, he might have laughed bitterly.. A private healer, mungos.. He was out of his mind, clearly. Word had already spread of the fact they lacked any sort of cure, the curse already claiming a small handful of those that attended the gala. The means to make people more comfortable. Rabastan wasn’t interested in living his last days, if that’s what this was, being pandered to by medi-witches and healers that already knew there was nothing they could do. He shook his head adamantly, though the movement looked little more than a weak attempt, “Don’t bother.” Was it defeatist? Without a doubt. Rabastan was one of the best in his field --- a curse breaker, and fucking good at what he did. His extensive knowledge of them ran an expanse that has bewildered people even at a young age; and he’d barely made twenty yet. Still, even he had no idea what this was -- how to reverse it, every moment he felt his body give in, the slip of magic that no longer did as it was meant to, an assortment of simple tasks he’d set out to do as always gone wrong as spells backfired or twisted themselves into something they weren’t, misfiring --- he’d almost taken his own foot off two days ago.
“I sa..-- said..” Lips rolled together as he coughed roughly, the wheeze more effort than was ever really necessary to draw air to his lungs, the movement along forced his eyes into the back of his head as vertigo rocked him, every worth intended to be heard lost to the scatter of his brain. Just a kid --- he was just a kid. Ironic, he thought, that his brother would metaphorically come back from the dead, and Rab would find it’s doorstep. Another fit of coughing tore through his chest that left him reaching for his brother, doubled over almost heaving as fingers curled weakly into Rodolphus’ shirt, “I’m ..-- this thing..” The smile that split features rather gently void of anything but bitterness, acidic on his tongue, “it’s bad,.. isn’t it?” A lot of things in this world were bad --- but fewer still were considered bad by the men of the Lestrange name.. Dragged through hell by his father, nothing could really seem so bad after that.
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