Chapter Three of 'An Alchemical Discontent'- Getting to Know Draco and Hermione

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Chapter Three-Getting to Know Draco and Hermione

“And done.”

Harry smiled wearily. Draco was holding up the latest vial of blue-green potion. They’d applied a few of Hermione’s modifications to the brewing process, and ended up with more of the potion produced in a shorter time, but it was also more magically exhausting. Harry hid a yawn behind his hand and pulled his sweat-soaked shirt over his head. He wanted to cast a drying charm on it, but it was easier to do that when he could hold the shirt in front of him and see the largest wet patches.

He heard Draco’s breath catch. Harry kept his eyes on his hands and hoped that, if he flushed with embarrassment, it was hidden by the red already present in his cheeks.

So, all right, he could have performed a drying spell with his shirt on; the power of his magic meant few tricky charms were beyond him. But he had wanted to see what Draco would do when he saw Harry half-naked.

Harry cast the spell in a mumble, then looked up casually. Draco averted his eyes at once, but he had been staring. Harry felt a little quiver of satisfaction as he slid the shirt over his head. It wasn’t as though he spent his time chasing down Dark wizards through obstacle courses, but he knew he was fit.

And if he was attracted to Draco, then lust would be part of the equation for the other man, at least. Harry had no objection to someone admiring his body. It was the other way around that was most dangerous.

Which reminds me.

“I wanted to talk to you,” he said, folding his arms across his chest and noticing, with a small smirk, that Draco’s eyes followed the way the shirt stretched on Harry’s shoulders before he blinked and stared at his face.

“What about?” Draco had set the vial of potion down on the table beside him, as if he suspected a screaming argument coming, which of course would break the glass and spill the potion everywhere.

Harry had no intention of getting into one. Draco’s flat was much nicer than his own, with delicate furniture and knickknacks everywhere. No room for a fight, but a nice place to entertain a guest. He smiled a little. “It occurs to me that one reason we were so disorganized when our marketing campaign for the Desire potion began is that we don’t know very much about each other,” he said. “So I want to know. Can I ask you some questions? I’ll avoid all discussion of the war, I promise.”

Draco’s jaw dropped slightly open. Then he cleared his throat and said, “Does that include asking questions about Hogwarts?”

Harry lifted his eyebrows, and nodded. It had not occurred to him to leave that out, as otherwise they would have only their lives since the war to talk about-and whilst Harry was willing to do that, he wasn’t sure Draco was. It was important to him not to pressure the other man, not to coerce him into revealing anything he didn’t want to reveal. He liked Draco too much to do that.

In oh, so many ways.

“I-all right.” Draco ran a hand through his hair and glanced away. Harry thought it was the first time he had seen him off-guard, or flustered (mistakes made whilst creating the potion didn’t count, since that had been new territory for both of them). It was cute. “What do you want to know?”

Harry thought for a moment, carefully, then said, “Do you think we would have been such enemies if we had simply met for the first time in school, instead of before?”

*

Draco winced. The memory of the little snot he had been was not pleasant, mostly because he could see now how that little snot’s actions had led straight into most of his misfortunes and crimes during his sixth and seventh years.

“Go right for the heart, don’t you?” he muttered.

“If you’d rather not answer it, of course you don’t have to,” Harry said gently.

Draco stared hard at him, but Harry didn’t glance away or back down, and Draco had every reason to believe that his words were sincere. That was one thing his potion did for him: detached him from the normal impatience and irritation most people would feel and rendered him endlessly understanding.

Draco was grateful for it at the moment, yet even so he felt a deep coil of anger ignite in his belly. How can you really like someone who maintains such a moral superiority over you? It would be like cherishing a bloody Muggle priest as your best friend.

“I don’t think things would have been different,” he said reluctantly, the words sticking to the roof of his mouth as he spoke. He had never said them in front of an audience, but he’d thought them enough times, and he wouldn’t lie, if he was going to answer the stupid question at all. “I still wanted Harry Potter as my best friend, just because he was Harry Potter. I would probably have been even more arrogant because you were in Gryffindor, and I wanted to impress you with how wonderful Slytherin House was.”

Harry nodded, and his face was perfectly soft, his eyes shining, as if he found the information about Draco valuable enough to ignore what he was actually saying. Draco frowned and peered at him. Useful as it was to have someone who wouldn’t snap at him for his youthful misdeeds, it did make Harry seem, well, not human sometimes.

“Thank you,” he said. “Now. What would you like to know about me?”

Draco paused, his anger still boiling. Perhaps this was too touchy a subject to ask about, given Weasley’s recent death, but, damn it, he wanted to know. And he wanted to push Harry’s tolerance, too, get a hasty motion or a word he didn’t mean out of him. “Why did you choose Weasley over me?”

Harry ducked his head and hissed out a breath, like someone absorbing a blow, but answered calmly. “I liked his attitude better than yours,” he said. “When we met for the first time in Madam Malkin’s, you made fun of Hagrid, who was the first friend I’d ever had-“

“Oh, come on, Potter.” Draco folded his arms. He understood when he was being lied to. “Your first wizarding friend, you mean.”

Harry shook his head. His face had gone blank. “My first friend,” he said. “My cousin Dudley kept all the kids in our primary school away from me. And you reminded me of him. Spoiled. Arrogant. Wanting to impress someone else, even though you didn’t know his name, just to assert your superiority.”

Draco gritted his teeth to keep from snapping. Yes, all right, he deserved that. But he still couldn’t believe what Harry was saying.

“Your cousin was like that?”

“Yes.” Harry shrugged, and only long experience in reading people who didn’t want to admit that they wanted a certain embarrassing potion let Draco see the shadows in his eyes. “You can see why I wasn’t all that eager to continue the tradition of that being my only companionship when I went to Hogwarts.”

“But your Muggle family-“

“I think it’s my turn to ask a question now,” Harry interrupted. Pleasantly, of course. He did everything pleasantly. But Draco had hit a nerve for the first time. He cocked his head and nodded, suppressing a smile. Harry might take it the wrong way.

“Go ahead,” he said.

“Why won’t your parents support your shop?” Harry made a gesture around the room where they stood, following it with a look of such genuine admiration that Draco felt absurdly flattered. “You’re doing well, you’ll be famous soon for the Desire potion if you aren’t already-“

“There were two articles in the Daily Prophet this morning,” Draco muttered, to gain time. How does he keep picking the questions that I would refuse to answer if this was anyone but him? Some malicious genius? “You may have noticed.”

“I don’t read the papers that much.” Harry glanced at him apologetically. “That’s a hard one, isn’t it? If you don’t want to answer-“

“I know, I know,” Draco snapped. “I don’t have to. For God’s sake, Potter, I’m not a restless child in a Potions class anymore, and you don’t have to repeat the same words six dozen times.”

Harry smiled. Draco grumbled under his breath and sought for an answer for a moment before he found it.

Unlike his answer to Harry’s earlier question, he only could have expected full understanding on this point from a Malfoy. “Not working is-important,” he said. “Not really to the family, but to the vision that others have of us as a family. We’re aristocrats. No royal blood, but we’re free-freer than other people. We don’t have to do anything we don’t want to. And labor is something that most people do because they have no choice.”

Harry stepped towards him, caught his hand, and gently squeezed it. “And so because you’re supporting yourself,” he said, “even though you want to brew potions, even though it’s your art, your parents don’t like you appearing less than free.”

Draco stared openly at Harry for a moment before he remembered that Malfoys didn’t gape like buffoons, either, and he could keep up that impression. “Yes, exactly,” he said. “I could have brewed exotic potions in the Manor and sold them for very high prices or traded them for political favors. My parents would have approved of that. But not selling them to the public, and not dabbling in potions that anyone could brew. Malfoys should be-important. Unique. Special.”

Harry laughed. “Then your parents must not have bothered to pay you much attention in the past few years,” he said, and squeezed Draco’s hand again. “Because I definitely think you’re those last few things, whether you’re working or not.”

Draco felt dizzy. If this weren’t Harry, he would have said the words were flirtatious, but surely that couldn’t be, coming from Harry, could it? He licked his lips and tried hard to think of another question.

Oddly enough, the buzzing of the clock in the corner, which he had set to warn him when it was time to go to Daphne’s, saved him. Draco felt dizzy again, this time with a surge of gratitude, and nodded to Harry. “Excuse me, but I have a prior appointment.”

“Oh, really? With whom?” Harry dropped Draco’s hand and moved back to balance on the balls of his feet, staring intently.

I wish I could understand his gestures. Is he jealous or not? The thought caused a rush of warmth to move through Draco, but considering Harry had brewed his potion to repress exactly that emotion, he knew it was unlikely. “With the investor who’s bailing me out of trouble, given the debts I owe Cordelia,” he murmured.

Harry at once relaxed. Does that mean he doesn’t see this friend as a threat to his interest in me, or does he trust me that much? “All right, then,” he said, with a small nod. “Remember that I’ll come by the shop tomorrow morning to sign some autographs and move business along.”

“And keep me company, of course,” Draco said, deciding to push the boundaries a little.

Harry caught his gaze and gave him a dazzling smile. “Of course. I could never forget that.”

And then he was out of the room, taking his confusion along with him. Draco folded his arms and scowled at the floor a moment, then turned away.

Daphne was waiting, and she didn’t take impatience well. No matter how early Draco arrived, it would never be enough to content her.

*

“This place is nice,” Hermione said, staring in several directions as Harry escorted her into the Garden of the Hesperides.

Harry smiled. Hermione taking an interest in things outside her research was a sign that she had recovered almost fully.

Of course, Diagon Alley’s newest restaurant was meant to be stared at, at least by people who had never been inside it before. The walls were covered with glamours of leaves-and maybe real ones, too-stirring constantly in soft breezes. The tables were round, apparently formed of tree stumps, and golden apples hung from the rafters. The centerpiece of the restaurant was the enormous, living tree supporting the ceiling, more golden apples peering from between its branches, and a sleeping jade-green snake as large as Nagini encircling the roots. Now and then the snake lifted its head, blinked, and yawned theatrically to expose long, dagger-edged teeth.

Curious, Harry hissed at the snake in Parseltongue, a simple greeting. The serpent’s head swung towards him, and the brilliant yellow eyes studied him a moment. Then the snake replied, “Too tired to talk,” and stretched its neck along one of the roots.

Hermione’s hand clenched on his arm. “That thing is real, isn’t it?” she muttered.

“Um. Yes?” Harry wondered if Hermione would announce the fact to the restaurant and start a panic.

But if Hermione was a law-abiding, justice-loving woman who really should have been in Ravenclaw, she also had a strong strain of the Gryffindor. After a tense moment staring at the serpent, she frowned and turned her head away. “So long as it doesn’t actually attack anyone,” she said stiffly. “And of course, you’re here now, so you can talk it down if it goes into a rage.” She arrowed towards a stump-table on the other side of the room from the tree.

“I don’t think it will go into a rage,” Harry said, grinning at her back as he followed. “It was very tired, which is usually a sign that a snake’s eaten a good meal-“

“I don’t want to talk about snakes eating.” Hermione slid into her seat and touched her wand to the crystal in the center of the table, which lit up at once. A woman’s pleasant voice bid them welcome to the Garden of the Hesperides, and two menus slid out of the crystal’s base a moment later. Hermione glared at Harry as she picked one of them up. “I’ll be trying to eat.”

“It’s so interesting how they unhinge their jaws-“

“Be quiet.”

Still unable to stifle his grin, Harry took the other chair and peered in interest at the menu. Most of the dishes had exotic names-Nymphs’ Delight, the Garden Gates, Golden Apple Marvel-but the descriptions sounded normal enough. The really unusual things on the menu were the glamours of dancing nymphs in gauzy togas, which must have cost a fortune to cast and maintain, and the fact that nearly every dessert and some of the drinks, too, were made of apples.

“I’m having the Serpent’s Choice,” Hermione said at last, referring to a chicken stuffed and covered with baked apples. She glanced at him. “How about you?”

“Hm.” Harry studied the menu once more, then shut it and nodded decisively. “Definitely the Nymphs’ Delight.” That was a fish enchanted to offer a different flavor with every bite, though the menu promised all of them were tasty, unlike Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans.

They leaned in and spoke their choices to the crystal, which flared once with brilliant light like a diamond and then swallowed their menus. Glasses of water slid out of the base in the next moment, enlarging amusingly and landing with a spinning motion that made Harry hasten to catch his before it could spill. He tilted it back and swallowed gratefully, then glanced around the restaurant; Hermione was frowning at the crystal, apparently in an effort to figure out how its magic worked, and looked as if she didn’t want to talk.

Most of the tables were filled with young men and women, who paid as much attention to the decorations as the food. Harry suspected that was probably because this was the restaurant’s first week; the Garden of the Hesperides would need to establish a reputation for food eventually, as well as pretty walls. A few older wizards sat near the tree, casting spells at it, which a discreet Shield Charm deflected. Harry wondered if any of them had figured out the serpent was real yet.

A shadow fell over him. Harry leaned back and found himself staring straight into Charlemagne Diggory’s face.

“Harry Potter,” Diggory said, just loudly enough to catch the attention of a few other people. He was smiling, that welcoming, sympathetic smile that had so fooled Harry the first time he visited his flat.

Harry’s hand tightened on his glass, but he managed to incline his head. Damn. Most of the patrons hadn’t glanced twice at him when he walked in; his hair covered his scar, and after he had chosen to lay low for the past eight years, people no longer thought they saw Harry Potter around every street corner.

But this, and the new publicity that Harry had hoped to build up for Draco’s shop, made sure he couldn’t run away. From the way Diggory smiled, he had probably counted on that. Harry narrowed his eyes and smiled at the same time. If Diggory wanted a fight based on political power and public recognition, he would get one.

“And the lovely Hermione Granger.” Diggory turned to Hermione and lifted her hand to be kissed. Hermione, warned by Harry of the things Diggory had done and said, studied him as if he were a spot on her best silver cauldron. “You might as well know that one reason I want to pass new laws to support Muggleborn Wizengamot members is to have your expertise on my side.”

Hermione smiled blandly. “Why do you assume it would be on your side?” she asked.

Diggory’s smile flickered, for just a moment. He didn’t expect us to be ready for him, Harry thought smugly. Or he thought being in public would require us to act polite. Ha.

“Well, of course, you are welcome to choose any side you like, Miss Granger,” Diggory said, and swept another bow. “I simply assumed that we would have interests in common, in ensuring that pure-bloods do not keep all the highest offices of wizarding government to themselves, and therefore we would be allies. I may have made a mistake?” He pitched his voice at the end of the question gently, wonderingly, as though to say he couldn’t believe his benevolence had been rejected.

“I have other concerns,” said Hermione. “More pressing ones. For example, even if more Muggleborns entered the government, whom would they serve? What positions would they hold? Could we be certain they had the expertise needed to enact laws?” She ticked the points off on her fingers and then folded her hands in her lap, staring evenly at Diggory. “I dislike the official and effective control of pure-bloods as much as you do, but some of them are good politicians, and many of them understand issues in the wizarding world that most Muggleborns haven’t done enough research on.”

“You are proof that anyone can learn to do the research,” Diggory said quickly. “What I want to defeat is the sort of attitude that claims Muggleborns are inherently inferior, that they actually can’t learn our laws or understand our social customs.”

“Oh, yes, in that case, we would be allies.” Hermione smiled sweetly at him, and Harry felt a moment’s pang of sympathy for Diggory. That smile was Hermione’s “about to launch missiles of logic” warning. “But integration works more wonders than simply yelling the truth at people and then marching over them. When people like me come into the Ministry, I want to be sure they stay there, not serve one term and then become swept away in the next election or because a pure-blood supervisor discovers they’re actually incompetent. That would be a strike against any further hiring or elections. And we have prejudices of our own, after all. Some people like me don’t want to do the research. Others left the wizarding world for good after the horrors they were subjected to during the war. Why should they serve the Ministry, when said Ministry hasn’t even apologized for housing people who believed Muggleborns stole wands from other wizards?”

“Such apologies can become a political issue, of course,” Diggory said. “As for whom I will hire-surely, someone like yourself would be a good choice! And you can probably recognize people with the prejudices and limitations you talk about.”

“But I already have a job with the Ministry,” Hermione drawled. “And what set of criteria should I use to select those who would fill the posts? My own?” She paused delicately, as though inviting Diggory to answer.

Diggory opened his mouth, and Hermione cut in. Harry, sitting back and grinning with his hands folded behind his head, knew it would look to the others in the restaurant as though Diggory had rudely interrupted when Hermione hadn’t finished talking. “You would probably say yours, assuming that we were allies and I worked for your campaign to become Minister. But I can’t agree to that.” Hermione shook her head briskly. “When Muggleborns are brought into the Ministry, and when house-elves are freed-a proposition you might have some trouble with, as I understand the Diggory family still owns house-elves-I want them to be the efforts of many people, not just one. If a politician is thrown out of office, or, worse, not elected at all, his collapse shouldn’t mean the collapse of my goals.” And she turned to the crystal, which had flared again and deposited steaming plates of food on the table. Harry inhaled the scent of apples greedily and almost wished he had ordered the Serpent’s Choice instead.

Diggory stood in silence for a few moments more. Then he bowed, so stiffly Harry thought he must be badly thrown off-balance. He’d probably expected instant agreement from Hermione, underestimating her loyalty to principle instead of blood. “Thank you for sharing with me your opinion, Miss Granger,” he said. “You have given me much to think about.”

He turned to Harry, though his feathers were so ruffled by now Harry was amazed he was still trying. “And may I ask whom you’re voting for, Mr. Potter?”

“Oh,” Harry said, lifting a forkful of fish to his mouth and sighing in delight as it tasted of baked salmon, “a gentleman never tells his choice beforehand.” He smiled straight at Diggory. “Though I do value friendship, and people who cooperate with me,” he added, musingly.

Let everyone assume that means I’m voting for Shacklebolt if they want to. Diggory ought to know it means I’m supporting Draco against any of his machinations.

Diggory clenched his hands briefly on the folds of his robe, then smoothed out the wrinkles in both the cloth and his forehead. “Indeed,” he said. “You have always been famous for your principles. Thank you for your time.” And he turned and walked away as easily as if he’d won the concessions he came for.

Conversation at the tables around them gradually turned back to private affairs, though Harry could still feel people watching. He ate ten bites of fish steadily before he asked Hermione in an undertone, “Are you all right? You’re pale.”

“The nerve of the bastard,” Hermione hissed, and Harry realized he’d mistaken her lack of color as faintness. It meant fury instead. “To just assume I’d go along with him if he came after me in public, in order not to make a scene!”

“Well, he may genuinely have hoped you’d join him, too.” Harry swallowed a piece of fish that tasted like a lemon, made a face, and reached for his glass of water. “He obviously knows you’re smart and passionate about people who aren’t pure-bloods rising higher in the Ministry.”

“He should have done more bloody research of his own,” Hermione said, and cut an apple in half savagely.

Harry nodded. He had to restrain the exultation rising in his heart, he thought, and be as cautious as he could.

We won this time, but sooner or later, if Diggory keeps coming after us separately, he’ll get what he wants. Draco and I need to plan together and spend more time in each other’s company, and I think we should include Hermione as well.

Harry found himself smiling foolishly, helplessly, at the idea that he might be able to be around Draco more. And Hermione, of course.

No, that will be no hardship at all.

Chapter Four.