Chapter Thirteen of 'An Alchemical Discontent'- Artistry and Permanent Decisions
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Chapter Thirteen-Artistry and Permanent Decisions
Harry peered in worry at the note that Hermione had assigned an inconspicuous barn owl to deliver to him. It had only seven words on it.
On trail. Don’t worry. Very close. Hermione.
But Harry did worry, because the man-or woman-who had brought down Draco’s shop with a Local Earthquake Spell hadn’t worried about murder once. Maybe things would be different in the broad daylight, but on the other hand, maybe Hermione would pursue him into a dark corner where he thought he could get away with another attempt. And Hermione mostly dealt with people who didn’t want house-elves to be freed. She was fine in a legal argument, not so much in a duel.
“Harry! I need your help to brew the Desire potion!”
Harry sighed and laid down the note. At the moment, he had no idea where Hermione was, anyway. And he had to trust her to handle herself, since he couldn’t help.
He went to do what he could do, which had been the tone of most of his actions within the past year.
*
Draco blinked and wiped a hand across his eyes, shifting in the chair he sat in to spare his weak leg. As usual, once they had finished brewing a cauldron of the Desire potion, a strong magical connection existed between them, caused by the tradeoff of power as they worked together. A few modifications to the brewing process had lessened that connection, so Draco no longer wanted to turn and pounce Harry, but nothing could make it cease to exist.
And, at the moment, it seemed stronger than normal.
Draco cast a sideways glance at Harry, who was frowning into the cauldron and counting the ingredients as if he thought they had forgotten something. Draco knew they hadn’t. This was a perfect brew, better than any they’d ever achieved. Trusting each other in the wake of the destruction of the apothecary had been a wise decision, Draco thought. He could rely on Harry’s calm strength.
He’d just like to be able to rely on all of Harry.
As if he’d heard Draco’s thoughts, Harry looked up. He gave something that might have been meant as a smile, but looked more like a grimace to Draco. “Something’s off,” he said quietly. “Do you feel it?”
“Yeah.” Draco clasped his hands together. He didn’t want to kiss Harry. He did want to run a hand up and down his arm, just to make sure he was there. It wouldn’t take much to satisfy the magical bond, but they really shouldn’t have been feeling this at all. “Are you sure that you cast the spells with a normal level of strength?” Harry had a tendency to fling himself headlong into the brewing process and use more magic than he really needed, especially because his estimation of his control over his power was usually bad.
“Yes.” Harry gave him a mildly offended glance, then frowned and sucked in his breath through his nostrils.
“What?” Draco demanded.
“It’s like-it’s like something I felt, briefly, the night your shop fell down.” Harry examined his fingernails as if that would speed along his recovery of the memory. “I-didn’t notice it at the time, but I went through the wards on your stairs way too easily. And I really shouldn’t have been able to stop the Local Earthquake Spell that much.” He met Draco’s eyes, his own flickering with several emotions, none of which lasted long. Of course not, Draco thought. “I should at least have bruises from falling blocks with as long as it took me to wake you. I don’t.”
Draco shrugged. “You’re a powerful wizard. I’ve always known-“
“It’s more than that,” Harry actually interrupted, causing Draco to blink and fall silent. Harry let people finish saying their piece most of the time, as if he didn’t really think his words were that important. “It’s like my magic came to my call faster. Or I found the strength I really needed to help you, even though I shouldn’t have had it.” He glanced at Draco. “I’ve never had the power to alter the laws of magic around me, no matter how much I wanted to.”
“Could your control over your magic be thinning further?” Draco shifted a bit in his chair, trying not to show his own discomfort. Harry would become impossible to brew with if he really couldn’t use his magic.
“I don’t think so. It didn’t feel like that. In fact, I think I had better control of it than I usually do.” Harry cocked his head. “Didn’t you notice that about the brewing?”
Draco nodded reluctantly. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, Harry had seemed to have a finer touch with Draco’s magic this time, and he had handed his own magic off to Draco more firmly.
“It’s not coming more fiercely,” Harry muttered. “It’s coming faster. I wish I understood what the fuck that was all about.”
Draco reached out to touch his shoulder, but likely they were too distant for Harry to notice the gesture, and it was probably only the magical bond making him reach out anyway. He coughed and used the hand to scratch the side of his face instead. “If you think it’s dangerous, a spell Diggory and Nott used, maybe-“
“I don’t know any spell that does anything like this.” Harry gnawed his lip. “But I can ask Hermione-no, wait, I can look myself.” He chuckled grimly. “Hermione has enough to do right now, I think.”
“I didn’t force her to track down the person who destroyed my shop.”
“I know that.” Harry shook his head quickly and smoothed his fingers in a running motion down the side of his face, which told Draco how worried he was about the change in his magic. “But I still should get used to acting on my own.” He gave Draco a wan smile and offered a hand. “Do you need help to get back to my bed?”
“I’ll try staying out of bed for a few more hours.” Draco needed to rest before he brewed the next potion, the first of the love philters he hoped would get his shop back on its feet, but he wanted to rest sitting up. “I think we should talk about something else.”
“The architectural spells?” Harry looked embarrassed. “I’m still willing to help you rebuild your shop if I can, but with my magic changing, I don’t know-“
Luckily for them both, Draco had never had any problem interrupting people. “Not that. What I said about wanting you off the potion before I started dating you.” He raised an eyebrow when Harry blanched. “Yes, I might never have said it if not for the pain potions, but I’m not sorry I did. Have you thought about this at all?”
*
Harry had tried to avoid thinking about it, really.
It was just-nothing would change any time soon. He couldn’t stop taking the potion, partially because he still didn’t trust himself without it and partially because it would make Ginny more afraid of him. That meant Draco wouldn’t date him.
And he couldn’t allow the fact that Draco wasn’t afraid of him to change his life. Lots of people weren’t afraid of him. Hermione, for example.
Being confronted with something he’d effectively pushed out of his head meant he flushed and stammered like a schoolboy. But he did his best to overcome that. He was a mature adult now, thanks in part to the potion. He lifted his head and met Draco eye to eye. “I don’t see what there is to talk about,” he said. “You’ve made your decision. I’ve made mine.”
“I don’t think yours is permanent,” Draco said.
Harry suffered a serious spasm of irritation. How did Draco do that? Just by countering someone else’s opinion, he managed to make it seem as if that person’s opinion was the height of self-deluding stupidity.
Funny, said an acid voice in the back of his head that he hadn’t heard in a very long time. It was the voice of temptation that had sometimes plagued him when he was first developing his own potion, telling him that his actions were too extreme and unneeded. Hermione doesn’t take his counterarguments that way.
“And why not?” Harry forced himself to lean casually on the table next to the cauldron of Desire potion. Then he had to move as the cauldron wobbled, and, all right, maybe that hadn’t been the best decision. But that didn’t mean all his choices were wrong. “I’ve been taking this potion for six years now. You’re a relatively recent addition to my life. What makes you sure you’ll stay?”
Draco froze, eyes glittering, and only then did Harry realize how hurtful his words were. He winced. “Damn,” he said. “I just-I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” His emotions sometimes seemed to go through brief periods when they made him feel like a child being bounced in the middle of a blanket. “Of course you’ll stay as a friend, even if we never date.”
Draco eyed him for a few moments more, then nodded and continued in a bland voice. “I don’t think it’s permanent because you want me. You were the one moving towards a romance whilst I still resisted it.”
“And now that I know you don’t want it, I won’t move in that direction again,” Harry said quickly.
“You can stop desiring me.” Draco didn’t even make it a question, just a flat, impossible statement.
“I can stop making you uncomfortable,” Harry said. “I can stop demanding more of you than you’re willing to give. I have a lot of practice at controlling myself, incredible though that might appear.” He grinned sheepishly, hoping Draco would pick up on that tone in the conversation.
Draco didn’t. “And if you do just one thing that I want, you can have something else you long for.” His words were soft, like the slide of scales along Harry’s body. “Is it such a great sacrifice, Harry? Or do you really value your potion-induced calm more than you value me?”
Harry narrowed his eyes. He hadn’t become this age, with his fame, without being able to recognize when someone tried to manipulate him. “That’s an unfair question.”
“I don’t see why.” Draco shifted around to brace his weight more comfortably on his elbow. He looked elegant when he leaned on something, of course, Harry thought in envy. “You prize yourself as the person you’ve become. That’s obvious. I just wonder if you could value yourself even more if you won me.”
“Without the potion, you know what I’d become,” Harry said, drawn into the discussion despite himself. “You can claim that you like dangerous, jealous lovers, but I’d be too much even for you.”
Draco closed his eyes and hummed. “I think you underestimate my experience.”
“Maybe.” Harry folded his arms, and tried not to shake as the memory of the Incident reared over him like a dragon’s shadow once more. “I’m still not doing it.”
“Hmm. For now, no, you’re not.” Draco smiled at him, and then began to count ingredients off on his fingers. “I need to brew a love philter next. Please bring me the small white pebble with a hole in the middle, the white rose petals, the red rose petals, and that vial of green liquid that smells like honey.”
Harry blinked, thrown off by the rapid change of subject, and then reflected that Draco had probably meant him to be thrown off. He would show he was better than that. He rose and retreated into the next room to fetch the ingredients, making sure Draco could see how stiff with dignity his back was.
He won’t win. He might think he will, but he won’t.
He paused when he reached the drawing room. Someone stood just outside his wards, not pressing against them but hovering there. Anxiously? Fearfully? Harry couldn’t read that much from this distance. He did know the magical signature was unfamiliar.
Quietly, he cast one of the spells that activated the tiny wizarding camera planted in the corner where his doorway joined the wall of the corridor. It used a kind of film Harry had invented but never tried to market, because the pictures always returned to the inventor of the film. The camera snapped without a flash, and a moment later, the photograph materialized in front of him.
Harry frowned as he scanned the picture. The witch revealed was very young, and wore flowery pink robes that no one over sixteen would be caught dead in. That was probably her age, in fact. She had brilliant blue eyes, scraggly brown hair, and a face flushed with giggling. She kept edging up to his wards, peering at them, and then edging away again, one hand clapped over his mouth.
Harry sighed. A fan. Probably figured out where I live from all the reporting the Prophet’s been doing about the Desire situation. Or maybe one of Diggory’s people at the Ministry “accidentally” leaked the location.
Luckily, it probably wouldn’t take much to shoo her away. Perhaps a sight of his face would be enough to make her run screaming with delight and terror; that had happened several times before Harry took this relatively unobtrusive flat in a Muggle area. Or he could offer her an autograph, or a smile, or a photo-
But then his caution caught up with him. He hadn’t read a newspaper article that revealed the location of his home. And launching fans after him would be a relatively pathetic angle even for Diggory. Irritating Harry wouldn’t be enough to make him change his goal of supporting Draco, after all, no matter how satisfactory it might be for Diggory personally.
They did have enemies, including enemies who might use a seemingly harmless disguise to creep up on them.
The giggling witch was coming back again; Harry could feel her just at the edges of his wards. He shook his head and decided he didn’t like her remaining there. She could study the strength of his wards if he let her stay too long, and if this was, say, Draco’s Legilimens enemy, or the person who had knocked his shop down, she might find a way through his defenses.
Harry waved his wand and poured magical strength into his wards. The normally invisible lines grew brilliant and flashed; the normally silent weight of his power coagulated and dripped like cold blood onto the witch’s face. She fell back a step, the sound of her giggles suddenly ceasing. And then Harry felt the minute shiver of difference in her magic that meant she’d drawn her wand.
Harry used the wizarding camera to snap another photo of her, and then growled under his breath. He would have to hurt her soon, or at least do something that the Muggles living around him would find it hard to dismiss. He hated feeling helpless like this, as if he could barely protect Draco, as if his choices for helping his friends were restricted by things outside himself.
His magic suddenly poured into him, a flood and a whirlwind. Harry gasped aloud and reached out, acting as he must, using that magic instead of allowing it to build up inside him. He briefly imagined the witch discouraged into leaving, and the magic answered, seeming to choose its own form as it went.
An incredibly targeted beam of power seized the witch’s heart and made it labor faster than normal. She wouldn’t be able to tell anything was unnaturally wrong with her-though she might suspect it-but Harry heard her gasp and felt her stagger in an uneven pattern away from the wards.
A moment later, she laughed, and then ran away lightly, though her heart was probably still laboring.
Harry leaned on the door and shut his eyes. The more powerful magic still jumped around inside him, exulting, as pleased with itself as a Muggle child who’d won one of those pathetic contests that had been popular in Harry’s primary school. Then it lay down again when Harry felt a burst of irritation.
It obeyed him, he thought in wonder and dread. But he didn’t understand why it obeyed him, or exactly why he was digging up pieces of his magical strength that seemed to have been buried until then.
He glanced down at the second photograph of the witch that had materialized in front of him, picked it up, and stuffed it into his back pocket. Draco was calling, and Harry needed to bring him the ingredients for his love philter. Then he needed to go off by himself and think for a while.
It seemed that his life was once again altering, whether or not he wanted it to.
*
Draco didn’t miss Harry’s jumpiness when he brought the ingredients to him, but he ignored it for the nonce. He had to concentrate on brewing this potion; though he remembered the ingredients and the procedure perfectly, it had been years since he made it, and there was always the possibility of something going wrong.
Cauldron up, fire blazing beneath it, white rose petals tossed in first. A thin layer of conjured water, then the white stone. He had no stirring rod near at hand and had forgotten to send Harry for one, but he could cast a spell that would stir the water counterclockwise seven times, as every apothecary worth the title could, and the properties of a stirring rod were not essential to this potion. He chanted the spell quietly, letting the words fall in between pauses in his breath, and smiled when the water began to bubble and boil as the spell finished.
The symbols of purity and virginity were used first in this potion because it would be used mostly on people who were virgins. The water between the petals and the stone, and the hole in the stone, symbolized the passage from one state to another-from true innocence to reluctant sexual awareness. Draco conjured another layer of water above the stone and stirred it again, five times clockwise, twice counter.
Then the red rose petals followed, to symbolize the passion and lust the potion would awaken. Draco’s wrist curved in a perfect arch to toss the petals in; he could have used his wand, but he preferred doing this part by hand, for the sheer joy in the gestures. Then came a third layer of water, this one not allowed to slop down into the cauldron and blend with the others but suspended a few inches above the petals, revolving like a flat liquid disk. Three times counterclockwise, four times clockwise, and the potion turned red with a strong puff of smoke and began to smell like a rose garden. Draco experienced a moment’s wistfulness that his parents never visited his shop. They would have loved the smell of some of the potions. Narcissa had always complained that her rose gardens never smelled quite right again after the war and the occupation of the manor house by the Death Eaters.
Draco cast a spell that would stabilize the third layer of water and make it continue to rotate, then waved his wand in an imperious motion. The vial of honey-smelling green liquid came to him. Draco placed it against his nose and inhaled with a sigh. This was water from a mountain pool in which a phoenix had dipped its tail feathers. The hardest ingredient to get, it was also the only one Draco had not dared to substitute anything for. This one was not a symbol like the stone and the flower petals; this was powerfully magical, inheriting some of the wondrous nature of the phoenix and mixing it with the purity of the high waters.
He opened the vial and waved his wand, because he couldn’t rise from the chair yet and he didn’t want to tug the cauldron towards him and risk upsetting the thing. A spray of green liquid rose from the vial and settled comfortably into the cauldron. This hovered above the spinning layer of water and began to spin itself, in the opposite direction. And once again Draco stirred it seven revolutions with his spell, this time clockwise.
He felt the moment when the separate strands of magic throbbing through the potion joined together in one great knot. He gasped and threw his head back; it was like a sexual punch in the stomach, worlds away from the horrid things Daphne had done to him. The potion sent up another puff of smoke, this one small and clear, turning to red, turning to green. The final ingredient induced a mild jealousy so that the drinker of the love philter would try to hold on to the person who had given it to them.
And the potion was done. Draco settled back triumphantly in his chair. Yes, he still had the delicate touch of artistry in his hands and wand.
*
Harry exhaled hard and wiped at his eyes. It had been some time since he’d seen Draco brewing a potion Harry didn’t know every step of-and, come to think of it, Harry didn’t think he’d ever seen him brewing alone.
The consummate mastery of the movements, how he obviously knew just how the steps fit together, how he chanted that one spell as if it were a prayer…
Harry felt a surge of admiration. Joining it a moment later was a surge of envy so strong that he had to catch himself with his hand on the table.
No, no, the potion is supposed to take care of my jealousy!
The emotion was ebbing already, which made him swallow in relief, but he didn’t know why he’d felt the envy in the first place-until his eyes went back to Draco and the way he turned his face slowly upwards, the relaxed glow of cooling happiness on his cheeks, and how satisfied he seemed to be with himself.
I wish I could have that passion.
Harry shifted uneasily. This was the last thing he needed to be worrying about, with his magic changing and Hermione in danger and a visit from one of their enemies. And yet, it was the thing he worried about. He could barely keep himself from reaching out and touching Draco’s cheek just to be close to the remains of that passion.
I want it back. I want to act like that. I want to share something like that with him, because he looks so happy with it and because I want to be close to him-
But it was impossible. He had already told Draco that his decision to take the potion was permanent.
He swallowed and went back to solving problems, which he was good at. Tugging the photos out, he prepared to show them to Draco.
And to try to forget what he had seen, because, really, what else could he do?
Chapter Fourteen.