Chapter Fourteen of 'An Alchemical Discontent'- Close on the Trail
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Chapter Fourteen-Close on the Trail
Draco scowled at the photos of the young witch that Harry had shown him. If he had to guess, he would say it was Daphne playacting. But she had enough people working for her that it could be someone in her pay.
And he couldn’t express any of that to Harry without taking a chance on choking or losing control of his heart.
He lifted his eyes to Harry’s concerned face and gave a tight little nod, hoping Harry would understand that, maybe by aid of the potion, without his having to speak it aloud. Harry nodded back and said, “I’m glad I didn’t open the door to her.” He gave the photos one more searching look, then tucked them into the pocket of his robes. “I’ll look around, see what I can learn about her.”
How? Draco wanted to ask. She probably doesn’t exist. But his heart gave a little lurch just at thinking the words. Draco sighed and settled back in the chair. “Now, if you could bring me the watercress and the vial of lemon juice,” he said, “I’ll start on brewing the next love potion.”
Harry wrinkled his nose. Draco realized he found the gesture charming, and condemned himself as hopeless. Even wounded and still on mild pain potions, he should not be so Hufflepuff. “What kind of love potion could use watercress and lemon juice?”
“You wouldn’t taste the lemon juice in the final potion, you know,” Draco muttered, “any more than you taste the dragon scale in ours.”
A strange expression crossed Harry’s face at the word ours. Draco wondered why, and then realized he would probably never know if he didn’t ask. Harry was simply too used to keeping things to himself, especially emotions that he assumed would distress another person. “Does it make you uncomfortable to hear the Desire potion called ours?” he asked.
“No,” Harry whispered, and Draco was startled to realize from the huskiness of his voice that he was fighting some powerful feeling. “I-like it. It makes it seem as if I can be part of the brewing process, even though I just saw you don’t need a partner.” He grinned at Draco, ducking his head so his fringe covered his eyes.
Ah. Well, Harry wouldn’t be the first lover he’d impressed with his artistry as he brewed, but it was the first time it had happened without Draco making a conscious effort. He concealed his delight with a faint smile. “I will always need a partner for the Desire potion,” he said. “It’s the kind of thing I just can’t do myself.”
Harry shot him a quick glance, as if to check whether he resented that. Draco kept his face as open as possible. If the pain potions helped with that, well, all right. At least it was something to think about other than whether it had been Daphne herself or a minion at the door.
“Yes, I knew that,” Harry said. His voice had turned uncertain again, his eyes guarded.
Draco narrowed his eyes a little as memory returned to him. As enjoyable as flirting with Harry was, that caution reminded him Harry was still on his potion. And Draco saw no reason to give himself to someone who was less than a whole person.
“See that you remember it,” he said. “And think of the other ways we can be stronger together, rather than apart, no matter what we may think is the source of our strength.” He held Harry’s eyes for long moments, until Harry audibly swallowed and stepped away from him.
“Watercress and the vial of lemon juice,” he muttered. “Got it.” And he fled the room.
Draco leaned back in his chair and shook his head, half-amused, half-rueful. It sure was a lot of work luring a lover who didn’t trust himself, and who trusted Draco’s intentions everywhere but as they related to the one thing keeping them apart.
*
Closing in. Hermione.
Harry crumpled the parchment in his fist and suffered a momentary spasm of irritation. Just why could Hermione take the time to send owls to him, and yet couldn’t take the time to say clearly if she was all right and what had happened?
The irritation drained quickly, of course. In a way, the owls themselves let him know she was all right. And Hermione was sensible enough to stop the chase if she was badly wounded.
Well.
Harry thought so, at least. He was so used to thinking of Hermione as the clever and cautious one that it sometimes startled him to remember she’d been in Gryffindor House.
Draco was brewing again, this time with the third set of ingredients Harry had brought him, which would make the potion that clouded memories and kept war veterans from suffering too much trauma. Harry had been baffled as to how moonstone, scrapings from mooncalf hooves, feathers from a winged serpent, and honey from a hawthorn flower could make such a potion. He’d longed to stay and have it explained to him. But he didn’t think that would be the wisest thing right now, either for him or Draco.
What I want is you. Not some inferior, potion-altered version of you.
He couldn’t stop thinking of those words. It was like the dreams he used to have of aliens taking him away when he lay under the stairs at the Dursleys, Harry thought crossly. He knew the fantasy was stupid even as he had it, but it provided him with so much stolen comfort he kept entertaining it.
He’d been stolen away, all right, but not to a paradise, and not without a price.
The problem was, the only version of him Draco knew was the one on the potion. That was the version that had attracted him. What would happen if he came to know Harry off the potion-the “real” Harry, as Harry was sure he would call it-and he didn’t like that person?
Harry didn’t like that person, and he’d been him. The moments in the last few years when he’d forgotten to take the potion, as had happened in his worry over Hermione, had subjected him to a clashing storm of emotions that he could hardly believe he’d experienced before and survived. How had he got through his fifth year, for example, when he’d been angry at everyone all the time?
It was better, safer, not to go back to that. The man he was now stood a much better chance of wooing and winning Draco.
Except Draco had declared he wouldn’t ever have him.
Harry swore softly. In search of something to distract himself, he pulled the photos of the young witch out of his pocket and stared at them again, using reason to figure out as many particulars as he could.
The witch obviously couldn’t be Draco’s enemy herself. She was too young. But she could be in the pay of someone who was, or even Polyjuiced to look like someone else whilst the enemy spied on Harry’s wards. She could even have been in the pay of Diggory and Nott, though the way Draco’s face had briefly worn an expression of true fear when he looked at the photos made Harry think not. Draco seemed to be more annoyed by Diggory and Nott than afraid of them.
The memory of that fear made Harry surge with the remnants of his rage, just for a moment. He wanted to protect Draco against anyone who could make him look like that. He wanted to banish the people responsible from the face of the earth. He wanted to inflict the broken bones Draco had suffered on her-
No! No, I don’t, damn it!
Harry leaned back and shut his eyes, breathing shallowly, until the rage was gone. Then he opened his eyes and studied the witch carefully once again.
Her face wouldn’t help him track her down; it was too ordinary, and probably not her real face anyway. The robes were likewise too common to be worth remembering. If he went in and asked in Madam Malkin’s or at Gladrags, Harry was sure he would hear stories of two dozen robes like that sold. Her wand-
Harry sat bolt upright. Her wand.
Ollivander had gone into seclusion for a year after the war, probably healing from the injuries he’d sustained in Malfoy Manor, but his shop had opened again, and he still sold wands to hopeful children on their way to Hogwarts and adults looking for a replacement-though from a wheelchair now, Harry had heard. His memory for the wands that passed through his hands was still legendary.
Harry stared hard at the wand in the photo and hoped he would be able to extract enough of a description to beg Ollivander’s help.
*
Draco narrowed his eyes. Harry was a good liar, it seemed, to people who didn’t know him. Witness the way he’d lied about the reason he took his potion to the committee at the Ministry, and done it without batting an eye.
But to Draco, it was now obvious he was hiding something.
He had given Draco a sickly smile when Draco walked into the kitchen for breakfast, even though logically he should have been thrilled to see Draco moving on his own. Then he had jumped when Draco asked him how he was. Then he had scrambled after the bacon beginning to burn on the Muggle oven, muttering that he hadn’t remembered that was there.
Draco put up with enough of that behavior to get his bacon and pumpkin juice in front of him, since he really was hungry. Then he took three bites and laid the fork down. Harry looked at him with a darting sideways little motion of his head no one who was innocent would have used.
“What is it?” Draco asked. “Threats against my life? Someone trying to break through the wards? I think I have a right to know, since I’m sharing the same risks you are.”
Harry paused and closed his eyes. If he had been a religious sort of man, Draco would have said he was praying for strength. Then he sighed, and stood, and fetched a folded paper from the far side of the room.
It was the Daily Prophet. Of course it was, Draco thought as he turned it over so that he could read the lead article; Harry, perhaps in one last effort to prevent Draco from learning what it was, had handed it to him upside down. Good old Prophet, first reporter of calamity.
In this case, the calamity was a picture of Charlemagne Diggory, waving to a crowd who had probably gathered to hear him and looking rather sad and stern. The headline said: MOST POPULAR CANDIDATE CLAIMS DESIRE POTION EXPLOSIVE.
Draco rolled his eyes, then read quickly through the article. Diggory was, of course, claiming that the destruction of Draco’s shop had been caused by the accumulated stocks of Desire potion there. He’d found, or probably bought, a brewer somewhere to give an “alchemical” explanation of how the ingredients in the Desire potion could have reacted with frequent use of powerful magic, like wards, to cause the “explosion.” The brewer as much as hinted that the same thing could happen to the stomachs of wizards taking the potion who used spells above a certain level.
“Never mind that the potion is digested quickly and its magic spent in ameliorating whatever they most loathe about themselves,” Draco muttered as he scanned the article. “Never mind that we couldn’t have finished the brewing at all if the ingredients disagreed with power.”
“You’re all right, then?”
Draco looked up with one brow lifted at Harry. He was startled to find the other man’s eyes wide with worry and fixed on him.
“Strange as it may seem to you, Harry,” he said, folding the paper again and handing it back, “words like this cannot actually jump out of their native article and break my leg and ribs again.”
“I know that,” Harry said, squirming in his seat as though Draco had done something worse than reprove him. Draco firmly squashed the thoughts of what the “something worse” might have been. “It’s just-I thought you might be discouraged from facing Diggory and Nott again right away, and that’s the last thing someone who’s healing needs. You have enough to worry about, with the loss of your shop and the stocks of Desire potion.”
“The cauldron we brewed the other day is ready,” Draco said, deciding the best thing to do was ignore most of the words Harry actually said. The intent behind them was clear. Draco was touched by the concern, but not by the intimation that one new obstacle would send him to bed in a fit of nervous prostration. “We can start sending vials out soon. And already people have contacted me and asked for a second dose.”
Harry licked his lips. “Will selling it from my flat, by owl, fit with the new regulations the Ministry has proposed for us?”
Draco nodded. “All the people who contacted me are those who’ve already bought at least one vial. We’ve tested them, and they fit in under the new guidelines. New customers won’t. We’ll have to dedicate another building to that and sell the Desire from there to satisfy the regulations. But there’s no reason we shouldn’t do what we can right now.”
Harry said, “All right. If you’re sure.”
“I did read the guidelines over carefully,” Draco said, “occupied as I was at the time with my enemy.” And there was his throat closing up again. He sat still and breathed until the tightening stopped. “I’m certain of what they say, and if you don’t trust me, then you can fetch the letter you sent me and have a look for yourself.”
“No,” Harry said, sounding distressed. “Of course I trust you. I just really don’t want to get in trouble with the Ministry again.”
“Harry, what’s wrong with you?” Sometimes bluntness worked, as Draco had learned to his profit in the last few days. He waved his wand to warm his bacon and then leaned forwards. “There’s more to this than just wanting to make sure we don’t run afoul of the laws, or concern about me. Has something else happened? A threatening letter? That young witch returning to the door?” As he had suspected, speaking of the visitor as “the young witch” caused nothing to happen. He was both relieved and disappointed. A reaction by one of the spells on him to those words would have proven once and for it was Daphne who had dropped by to study Harry’s wards.
“Nothing like that.” Harry tore himself out of his seat and began to pace restlessly back and forth. Draco watched him, eating bacon and sipping pumpkin juice. He wondered idly if he could persuade Harry to make him some chicken soup. Or perhaps he could call for Patty from the Manor, though he was not entirely certain he should. She might not approve of the way Harry was caring for Draco at all.
“For some reason,” Harry finally said in a low voice, facing the wall, “things are-changing-inside me. When I wanted that young witch to go away, I knew I had to make her do so without opening the door or attracting attention from my Muggle neighbors. And my magic focused and slid out of me, and attacked her heart. It was enough to make her run. But my magic doesn’t normally respond like that. My control might be fragile, but it’s there. I have to consciously will what I want my magic to do. Except, this time, I didn’t.”
Draco ate a piece of bacon and hummed encouragingly.
“I don’t understand it,” Harry whispered. “In the past day, my emotions have gone mad as well. I’m having thoughts I believed were gone. I went-well, almost into a rage at the thought of someone hurting you, and the rage took longer to subside than normal.” He turned around to watch Draco with frightened eyes. “What do you think this means? Could I be building up a tolerance to the potion?”
Draco laid down the bacon and stared at Harry. What kind of stupid question is that?
Then he remembered that Harry, whilst being able to brew his own potion very well, mostly did it by following a particular recipe. He knew almost nothing about alchemy and brewing in general, so he wouldn’t know why it was a stupid question in this case. Draco shook his head and kept his voice as patient as he could. “Not with a potion that’s attuned to you, Harry. If you had been taking the general Desire potion for six years, then there might be a chance, yes. But even then, the chance is small. A potion that you designed for yourself will always flow with you. If something began to change inside you-your building up a tolerance to it, for example-it would change in concert with you, becoming more powerful, less powerful, more acidic, more magical, as you needed it to.”
“Then I don’t understand.” Harry stared at his hands, looking both relieved and ashamed. “What do you think it is?”
“I really don’t know.” Draco did know that it made him hopeful, not frightened. He might actually get to meet the real Harry, not his shadow-brother. He waited until Harry sat down at the table again and leaned across it to clasp his hand. “But I won’t worry about it until I see your magic doing something harmful to one of us. So far, it’s helped you protect me and probably save my life the night my shop collapsed. Does that sound worrisome?”
“I would have hated it if something had happened to you,” Harry whispered. “Hated it so much. I wanted to save you so badly.”
Damn it, why does he keep saying so many romantic things when he’s still on the potion? Draco was tempted to break his own promise and reach out to comfort Harry with a kiss. But for now, friendship would have to do.
“Thank you,” he said lightly, squeezed once, and dropped Harry’s hand. He nodded to the newspaper when he looked up three minutes later and found Harry still staring at him broodingly. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Things will work out.”
Harry crossed his arms and looked unconvinced.
*
Harry squinted at the wand in the second photo and leaned down, muttering to himself as he scribbled a letter to Ollivander. He thought the wood had to be ebony, to be that dark, but perhaps he was guessing wrong and it was ash or elder or dark polished chestnut.
No. He had to trust both his sight and the wizarding camera he had fastened above the door, since he couldn’t ask Draco about the photos without something bad happening to him.
Draco was in the bedroom, brewing yet another love philter. Harry had had to talk himself out of watching. Whenever he watched Draco, the strange emotions seemed to grow stronger, and so did the impulse to blurt out unwise things he didn’t mean-like a promise to get off the potion. Draco wouldn’t value that promise even if Harry spoke it He would want assurance that Harry would really get rid of the potion and not simply yell the words in the heat of the moment.
Heat of the moment?
Draco’s brewing did seem to constitute a heat of the moment, for him. Harry shook his head in wonder. He had had two girlfriends who were artists in a minor way: Susan painted, Victoria had taken singing lessons since she was ten although she never intended to pursue music professionally. Was it just the unexpected aspect of someone he was interested in living by his art that intrigued him? He couldn’t remember getting excited listening to Victoria’s voice, though, even when it had the power to send shivers up and down his spine.
Harry abruptly sat up. That was the problem! Excitement. Not only had the rage he’d felt earlier slithered out of the potion’s tight grip, but it was raw excitement he felt when watching Draco, a brilliant feeling that shimmered up and down the edge of lust.
He shivered now, but out of cold, not warmth. What would happen if rage and lust got out of control at the same time? He could only pray that jealousy didn’t join them.
But what would happen if it did? Harry knew he could no longer count on the potion to restrain the others; it was foolish to hope that his jealousy would lie quiescent. And despite what Draco had said about the potion responding to his needs and desires, Harry doubted that his most powerful and aggressive emotions would simply lie down and go back to sleep. Otherwise, why had they been disturbed at all? His longing to restrain them hadn’t changed.
No, something different was going on, something magical. Harry very nearly went to fetch his own copy of the potion recipe, so he could look over it and try to decipher how a curse cast by one of their enemies would interact with the brewing process.
Or could Draco have cast a spell of some sort, because he wanted Harry off the potion so badly? It certainly wasn’t the type of thing he’d admit to.
But Harry had a great enough trust in Draco to reject the thought even as he conceived it. No. Draco would want Harry to give the potion up-
Become dangerous and reckless again.
--of his own free will. Otherwise, the prize he won, the “real” Harry, would be worth less to him. And Harry knew by now how much value Draco placed on knowing the exact worth of things around him.
He closed his eyes and sat still, breathing deeply, steadily. Right now, he had a letter to Ollivander to finish. Then he would look at the potions recipe and see if he could learn how a spell might interact with the ingredients. At least he would make a list of ideas and present it to Draco, who knew so much more about brewing than he did.
Perhaps I should tell him how much concentration my potion gives me, Harry mused as he bent over the letter again. That might convince him I should stay on it so I can make him a good, thorough lover. Certainly none of the girls ever complained.
Abruptly, someone pounded on the door. Harry shot to his feet, hand gripping his wand, heart leaping in his throat. His magic lashed up in him like a great serpent, and he had a hard time seizing the reins.
But then Hermione said, “For God’s sake, Harry, let me in!” at the same moment as he recognized her magical signature. Harry hurried to let down the wards and permit her passage inside.
Correction. He had to let her and someone else inside.
When he opened the door, Hermione staggered in. She was splattered with blood literally from head to toe and limping on her left leg, but also grinning like a madwoman. She threw the cloaked, bound figure she was dragging with her on the floor and stood back. “There’s the person who knocked down Malfoy’s shop,” she said. “Now I’m going to go clean myself up.” She vanished into the loo.
Harry tore the cloak away from the slumped man, and stared. He was looking into the face of Theodore Nott.
Chapter 15.