1never, ever allow yourself to feel. feelings kill.
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[Camera turns on. The video is grainy. The background appears to be a hospital. Nearby someone is talking.]
Person 1: The injection might not even work, Doctor, I don't see how-
Person 2: Shush. The camera is on.
[A person is pushed in front of the camera, in a wheelchair. The woman in the wheelchair is Dr. Lavender Brown, and her assistant has been identified as escaped fugitive Dr. Parvati Patil.]
Dr. Lavender Brown: Parvati, dear, please shut the door on your way out.
[Dr. Patil nods and leaves. The hospital room appears to be empty aside from Dr. Brown.]
Dr. Brown: This whole mess is a nightmare. Honestly, I never thought that Gabrielle would take the implant as far as she did. We managed to get it stable through a miracle. Giving it out to the public- never mind the fact that the public having it was our original goal- is a disaster waiting to happen.
[Dr. Brown sighs. She pushes a button on her wheelchair and a screen comes down behind her. The BionicSpell implant is seen behind, at various stages.]
Dr. Brown: Revealing this information will have me killed. Gabrielle will never be able to recover from this leak of what is truly the BionicSpell. If the public doesn't revolt before the implant gets to them, then she'll certainly have a lawsuit on her hands.
[Dr. Brown clasps her hands together. She looks exhausted.]
Dr. Brown: I suppose I should start with how the implant was created. Why it was created, and by who.
The BionicSpell was first imagined up by Gabrielle Delacour, a brilliant young woman at my rival university, Beauxbatons. She didn't know exactly how she wanted it to be created, how it could fight infections whilst inside the body, but she knew what she wanted. She designed a implant that could be used to fight any infection inside the body, without needing any external medicines or annual shots. She came to me for help.
I was a graduate student studying human biology with a minor in nanotechnology at Hogwarts University. An ambitious study, I was told, but exactly what Gabrielle needed. She told me the bare bars of what would later become BionicSpell, and we started brainstorming over how it would be implemented.
About two weeks into our first meeting, she came up with the idea of using a tapeworm, a small one, to be digested in pill form. One would simply take the pill, swallow it, and as soon as the shell of the pill was dissolved, the stomach enzymes would effectively 'rouse' the tapeworm, and it would begin to fight the infections- whether those infections were colds, cancer, or any other type of illness. The worm would travel through your bloodstream and kill off whatever infection it was before it could do the host body any harm.
[Dr. Brown pauses and takes a deep breath. Somewhere outside the room, an alarm goes off, but she pays it no attention.]
Dr. Brown: Around this time Gabrielle and I started seeing each other. An abrupt input into my tale, yes, but a necessary one. Gabrielle was six years my younger. I was earlier scarred from a lab experiment blowing up in my face.
[Dr. Brown motions to the scars on her face, one of which is a burn, and the others seem to be scratches.]
Dr. Brown: Honest to say, I was simply very flattered. I had no worries that I was taken advantage of her. She was smart, about twenty one around this point, and we clicked together very well. This made the planning for the BionicSpell very simple, as we grew to understand each other and the way the other thought.
[Dr. Brown sighs once more. She continues.]
Dr. Brown: The idea of a tapeworm inside the body was not an easy one. Who would accept a parasite inside their body? How would it destroy the viruses without killing off the host? How would it know to kill of the viruses and not kill the host instead? This was the part Gabrielle and I had the most problems with.
We had to find a parasite that was not toxic or dangerous enough to kill off its host. We had to find a worm that could live inside a human body at the inside temperatures, and be easily injected.
This took us several years. We tried many worms; land worms, sea worms, other different types of parasites, before we found one that suited our needs. Acanthocephala finally solved our problem. Gabrielle and I tried it both several times, we injected it with certain amounts of human DNA to identify which parts of the cells and body were supposed to be there, and which weren't. Then, after I injected it with too much DNA- 5.6 percent human genome- it began to recognize to attack the viruses.
Gabrielle and I were ecstatic. She was so excited, she got down on one knee and proposed.
[Dr. Brown holds up her hands. There are no rings on them.]
Dr. Brown: I accepted.
It was around this time that people had started taking interest in this project. A biological implant to destroy viruses? If this succeeded, we could change the whole world. People could get the implants and never have to worry about colds or flus- or even cancer- ever again.
We finetuned it for another year. We got married. Life was great. Gabrielle and I opened up our own company together, called BionicWand, where people could come and get their BionicSpell implanted.
We effectively ran most medicine companies into the ground. There were still hospitals. There were still people who didn't trust our implants, they stuck with their old medicine and that was that. I didn't blame them. Having a parasite inside your body would no doubt be terrifying for anybody.
[There is a knock on the door. Dr. Brown looks up, and Dr. Patil is shown in the corner of the video.]
Dr. Patil: Lavender, your surgery will begin in an hour.
Dr. Brown: Thank you, Parvati.
[Dr. Patil nods and leaves. Dr. Brown takes in a deep breath and continues.]
Dr. Brown: Gabrielle began to experiment, the more successful the implants were. We were practically handing them out for free at this point, but we could afford our own laboratory and equipment, much better than at Hogwarts or Beauxbatons-
[Dr. Brown stops.]
Dr. Brown: I was careless. I didn't realize how far she had gotten in experimenting before I looked at her notes. She wasn't giving the implants the 5.6 percent anymore, she was giving them higher doses. She started out with 6, then 7.4, and then her last experiment I saw, was 8.5.
I was livid. The more the implant had human genome in it, the less parasitic it was. It was still a parasite, you could still get rid of it by injesting a couple of pills if you tried, but the danger of having a parasite with more intelligence and cells in it, was that it started going against its instincts. To be more specific, it starting making decisions.
Also around this point Gabrielle and I had a bit of a falling out over her experiments. I wanted her to discontinue them immediately. They were too dangerous. The more we dabbled in creating this parasite, the more it moved away from her original idea, and more towards 'How far can we push this?'. It was a danger to have such a thing, where it could intentionally danger its host.
She refused.
[Dr. Brown pushes another button on her wheelchair. The image behind her switches. A newspaper with the words 'DIVORCE BETWEEN DR. GABRIELLE DELACOUR AND DR. LAVENDER BROWN- WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO BIONICWAND?' can be seen.]
Dr. Brown: Most people have heard about our divorce, some two years ago. Most people didn't understand what it was about.
When Gabrielle refused to stop her experiments, she didn't tell me she was actually implanting them into cadavers. Before this point, I thought it was purely theoretical- but it would work, I knew, which was why it was so dangerous.
With the implants making decisions, they didn't fight whatever disease was left in the cadavers. They went up through the stopped bloodstream, and into the brain.
They ate whatever they could, losing important parts of the brain, such as motor functions and memory, but Gabrielle wasn't satisfied with just her studies on the corpses. She wanted to see what would happen on a live person.
[Dr. Brown looks very ill. She runs a hand through her hair.]
Dr. Brown: Some people sold their comatose family members to BionicWand, for study purposes. I didn't know this until I saw the checks going out to them. Gabrielle was buying humans even if they weren't comatose- whether they were brain dead, or-
[Dr. Brown is pale. She swallows.]
Dr. Brown: It was disgusting. I hated her for that. She let her love of science and of the BionicSpell destroy her.
Gabrielle continued her research. She implanted the parasites into the bodies, with differing levels of human genome, and watched.
The ones with less genome didn't work. They ate all parts of the brain, destroying it, and ruining all chances of survival of the implants taking over the brain.
The ones with more- two worked.
Specimen A and Specimen B. Codenames: Roxy and Fred, who had the highest levels of genome- 10.1 percent.
Gabrielle was thrilled. The implants had taken over the bodies, destroying and living inside the memory portion of the brain where the previous hosts' memories once were, and effectively if one did not know, humans.
They learned to talk. They learned to walk. They knew and were everything a human was, except for the fact that they were only tapeworms inside the bodies.
[Dr. Brown leans back in her seat.]
Dr. Brown: I was horrified.
This wasn't what I wanted. This wasn't who I married. The fact that there were two tapeworms out there, who killed their hosts and took over their bodies, terrified me.
But there was a reason I married Gabrielle. I'm just as much as a scientist as she is.
With my divorce to Gabrielle, I left the company. It was a stupid decision, leaving her with all the implants and the money, but I took my savings and I hid off the radar. I started experimenting on my own.
When I got to the implants taking over the bodies, I created my first specimen.
I named her Victoire. And then, as I began teaching her, I realized something Gabrielle did.
They were abominations by human standards. They weren't supposed to exist. They were dangerous, frightening- but Victoire became my child, and I loved her.
I created two more after my success with Victoire. One of them, my darling boy, I named Louis. The other daughter, I called her Dominique.
[Dr. Brown smiles slightly.]
Dr. Brown: I named them in honor of Gabrielle.
I raised them, these three children, and they're different from what I saw with Fred and Roxy. They were not treated only as lab experiments. I sung them to sleep. I allowed them to eat sugar even though it was potentially dangerous to their implants. I cherished them. I still do.
The problem with creating experiments such as these, is that where others see monsters, you start to see them as your own children. You get protective of them. You defend them. You know that it's wrong but you just don't care.
Gabrielle and I both see that.
[Dr. Patil knocks on the door once more. Her voice is heard.]
Dr. Patil: Fifteen minutes before preparation, Doctor.
Dr. Brown: Alright.
[Dr. Patil leaves, the door shuts behind her.]
Dr. Brown: The problem with creating things such as Victoire, Dominique, and Louis, is that you can't kill them. You can't kill them and burn all the evidence that they existed. You can't burn down my lab or destroy my notes, because they will always have existed and people will know that.
I can't say that I know what Gabrielle is aiming for. Creating a new human species? Destroying the planet? The more people she implants with those dangerously high percentages, the more people who are gone forever. It's forced, as well. Those people can't fight for their rights. They can't fight for themselves to not be used simply as a body to the tapeworms.
[Dr. Brown scratches her arm. She glances at the door.]
Dr. Brown: Even with the bodies, it doesn't matter to the tapeworms. Unless you destroy their real body, inside of the brain, they're essentially immortal. As soon as their body declines they can just be implanted into a new one.
[Dr. Brown sighs. She stares directly at the camera.]
Dr. Brown: In about five minutes, I'm going in for surgery. I have allowed myself to become the new host for my new experiment.
[Dr. Brown pats her stomach almost fondly.]
Dr. Brown: As holding of my DNA, with over ten feet in length, my newest experiment will be able to implant himself into multiple bodies at once. He will be essentially my real son.
[Dr. Brown looks down at her stomach.]
Dr. Brown: I have decided to call him Adam.
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and then the apocalypse happens and they're fucking doomed
using prompts: quote up there by malorie blackman, careless, free, relationship from rival schools (emma said that it could be after school as well and beauxbatons and hogwarts were included)
i dont own hp or the idea which this came from, the lovely parasite by mira grant. check it out. its great.