FIC: Desperate Measures [The Dresden Files]
TITLE: Desperate Measures
DISCLAIMER: The Dresden Files doesn't belong to me - the TV series belongs to Lionsgate, and the characters themselves were created by Jim Butcher. Written for entertainment purposes, no money made, please don't sue, yadda.
FANDOM: The Dresden Files
PAIRING: Harry/Bob UST
WORD COUNT: 7,433
RATING: R for nakedness?
WARNINGS: Harry is 15 years old in this fic. While this isn't a big thing, there are sexual themes involved.
SUMMARY: It's not that far from looking at Bob's hands to wanting something more.
PRAISE BE: A warm thank you goes out to shiplizard, beachkid, and kirsteena for their beta-reading, encouragement, and questions. I don't think this fic would've been finished if not for you guys. Thank you!
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is the first fic the Forged series.
***
I knew I was in trouble when I couldn't stop staring at his hands.
Bob has slender hands. Nimble fingers, sort of rectangular palms, short nails, knuckles, pale skin. And since he couldn't write on the blackboard due to being a ghost, he literally scribbled in mid-air with orange, fizzing flames. What was weird about the whole thing, I guess, was how quickly I'd gotten used to it, and yet, I still watched his hands.
The first time I saw him writing out a formula, I'd been really impressed. If I wanted to be honest, my hand-watching habit had probably started around then. I mean, how many teachers do you know can write with fire? Sure, I couldn't feel any heat emanating from the words whenever he wrote something for me to copy, but that didn't make it any less cool.
The trouble was, at the ripe old age of fifteen, you'd think I'd've outgrown the habit by now. I mean, I'd been seeing Bob write for four years now. Shouldn't it be just an everyday thing by now? What made his hands that great in the first place?
"Harry?"
I jumped where I stood. "Yes, Bob?" I asked, trying to sound casual.
The look on Bob's face told me the casual act needed work. "What was I just saying about the asp in the second asset?"
"That it shouldn't be there?" I guessed. Turned out it was a really bad guess.
"Harry, there isn't an asp in the second asset," Bob told me, pointing at the formula, and sure enough, no asp.
"Well, if there's no asp in the second asset, it doesn't need to be there, right?" I asked, using superior logic and a grin.
"I sincerely hope that your talent for magic will soon surpass your penchant for comedy," Bob snorted. "The asp is in the third asset, and I was about to ask you why it belongs there when I discovered that you'd started daydreaming." He started to bristle. "If my lessons are starting to become tiresome, I'm sure I can find some other work for you to do."
"No, that's okay," I said quickly. "Really, I'm paying attention, honest."
"Harry, this is the third time this week you've been distracted in the middle of a lesson," Bob said firmly. "Is there something you wish to talk about?"
If getting caught not paying attention was embarrassing, Bob asking if there was something I 'wished to talk about' was worse. "Nope. I'm good."
Bob narrowed his eyes at me, folding his arms across his chest. "Harry."
"No, Bob, really," I said quickly, feeling a lecture looming on the horizon. "I'm fine. I just need to think about some stuff that's been happening with a girl at school--" As soon as I said it, I felt like a heel. "It's nothing, really."
Bob looked ready to press the issue, but then he changed his mind. "Very well. While affairs of the heart can be troublesome at best, I'll leave you to figure it out. If you change your mind, however--"
"--You'll be the first to know," I said, still feeling like something that needed to be scraped off somebody's shoe. "Promise."
Bob nodded, and then turned back to the formula. "Now, as I was asking before you decided to wander off within your own mind, what gives this ward its main source of power?"
The rest of the lesson was fairly run of the mill after that, and the rest of the day after that. That night, as I closed my eyes and tried to fall asleep, I found myself thinking about Bob's hands again.
Slender, nimble, pale...
How would they feel against my skin?
That made my eyes shoot wide open, forcing me to sit up.
Where had that come from?
I could feel my dick twitch in my pajama pants, and I glared at it accusingly. That wasn't supposed to happen when I thought about Bob, let alone his hands. Girls, I reminded myself. I liked girls. They were pretty, soft, mysterious as hell, and they had breasts.
I needed a distraction.
Besides being a fifteen-year-old wizard, you could say that I'm a bit strange. I brew potions in my spare time for fun, and when I jerk off, I don't like thinking about an actual woman. Not only was I completely unable to look Melanie Parker in the eye the next day the first time I did it, it just feels... wrong to do it.
So, in the face of my budding sense of chivalry and the lack of carefully-hidden Playboys around the Morningway estate, my old standby had become The History of Magical Rituals, a fairly boring tome that looked like it'd seen better decades, but had exactly one full-page picture of a beautiful, sky-clad witch. The picture was probably somebody's idea of spicing up an otherwise dull chapter about the Celts and druidism, but it was also very... stimulating. And since neither Uncle Justin nor Bob had any use for the book, I could keep it in my room for just such emergencies as this.
Getting out of bed, I lifted up the mattress and slid the book out carefully. I got back in bed, eased my pants down enough to free my dick, and settled into a comfortable position before opening the book to page 225.
The sky-clad witch, whoever she was or might have been, had her head thrown back under a moonlit sky, pale skin lovingly outlined. Full lips turned up to the moon, her eyes closed in something like rapture. Long, raven hair that blew gently in a breeze, her nipples standing out. Shadows hid the area between her legs, but it was more than enough for me. Keeping my eyes on the picture, I imagined her, her wildness, her passion...
I gave myself a long, slow pull, imagining myself approaching her in the clearing where she stood, magic tingling along my skin. She opened her eyes, brown in the moonlight, and when her chant was finished, she motioned for me to approach. My clothes were gone, and when I closed the distance between us, felt her lips press against mine, I groaned, stroking myself more firmly.
When she pulled back from the kiss, brown eyes brightened to blue-green, and the lush lips pulled back into a secret smile, just between the two of us.
"Oh, the things I could teach you," my fantasy said in a not-feminine voice. A long, slender finger reached out and brushed my cheek, ticklish and warm.
There was no air, no escape. Those eyes had me spellbound.
"Let me see you, Harry. Let me show you..." my fantasy purred, and stars exploded behind my eyes as I came hard, covering my hand.
As I stripped out of my pajamas and ripped the sheets off the bed, red-faced and gasping in panic, I realized I wasn't in trouble.
I was in big trouble.
***
Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep that night. The day at school passed in one long haze of teachers, assignments, homework turned in, classmates, and so on, and before I could think of a way to conveniently avoid seeing Bob when I got home, the car that usually gave me a lift to school was pulling up to driveway of the estate.
I got out reluctantly, and the car pulled away, heading for the garage, taking with it any chance of escape I had unless I felt adventurous enough to try to lose myself somewhere on the grounds. With a sigh, I trudged up the steps, and headed upstairs. I made it up to my room without seeing anyone, so I dropped the backpack on the floor and laid back on my bed, staring up at the ceiling.
I needed to think about something other than what had happened last night. Nothing had happened. I'd jerked off like any other teenager, changed the sheets, and went to sleep. Nothing. Happened.
Who the hell did I think I was kidding? If I kept this up, Bob was going to see right through me, and figure out what was going on pretty quick. The best thing to do was to go downstairs, get a sandwich, and report to Bob for the magic lesson of the day. Despite the lesson yesterday, Bob had been making noises about my progress, and how we might start with some alarm-wards and work our way up from there. I knew I had the stuff down cold, so today would be interesting.
Provided I could summon up the courage to head downstairs, that is. I needed to be able to talk to him without stuttering, look him in the eye without blinking. And the longer I stayed cooped up in my own room, the more likely he was going to think that something was seriously wrong. Sure, he seemed to have believed my excuse about my non-existent love life, but he also knew from four years of experience that I didn't distract too easily. He'd be on the lookout for whatever might be "real" reason I was bothered, and if he found out what was really bothering me, it was going to be incredibly embarrassing. Even more than it already was, I mean.
I sighed and sat up, leaving my backpack where it lay as I went downstairs. It's not like those textbooks helped much anyway, except for being convenient, brightly-colored paperweights. When I made it to the study that had been Bob's classroom for the past four years, I saw that Bob was already out of his skull and waiting for me, a raised eyebrow the only indication that I'd gone off the script.
"Hi, Bob," I said.
"You're late," Bob said mildly, eying the clock.
"We haven't had a set schedule since last summer," I said, frowning.
"That's because as soon as you return from school, you come straight here," Bob pointed out, still mild, and not moving from where he stood. "Have you made any progress with the young lady that so occupied your thoughts yesterday?"
I felt like a heel and tried to stop myself from blushing, but it didn't work on both counts. I mumbled a negative, and Bob's eyes narrowed.
"So," I said brightly, "what are we working on today? More wards?"
"Among other things," Bob said ominously. "What did we cover yesterday?"
"Formulas for alarm-wards, and we got into protective wards before we stopped for the night," I answered, familiar with the routine, though not with the verbal omen of doom preceding it.
"And what are the differences between the two?" Bob asked, falling into a slow, thinking pace that I'd come to think of as 'lecture mode'.
"Alarm wards are an early warning system," I answered, "not really for defense. They can be combined with protective wards to warn the caster that someone has tried to breach the protective wards, or that someone has entered the room of the person, area, or thing that the ward's been placed on. It depends on how the energy's infused into the circle."
"Which is laid first, the protective ward, or the alarm?" Bob turned on his heel, providing me with the clean line of his back, the cut of his suit emphasizing his long legs and showing off his waist without even trying. When I had started noticing girls, I'd also started noticing legs that go on forever. The trouble was, I hadn't anticipated being so... equal-opportunity in my appreciation.
The legs stopped, and then I remembered that Bob had asked a question. "The protective ward," I said, making sure to look Bob in the eye. "Alarm wards are dependent spells -- they have to have something to hang on to, or else it's just... hanging, and it doesn't do anything useful."
"'Hang on to'?" Bob asked, a gray eyebrow lifting.
"It works, doesn't it?" I asked defensively.
"We have had the discussion concerning language precision before," Bob said, starting to sound a bit impatient.
"Sorry," I apologized, and kept my eyes right on his. His very nice eyes that weren't really blue or green, but were like a combination of both, and it really did look nice and... dammit.
"Harry," Bob said slowly, "what do you think you're doing?"
"I'm looking you in the eye when I'm talking to you?" I answered, annoyed that it sounded more like a question than a statement of fact.
Bob looked skeptical. "Are you sure you'd rather not discuss what seems to be troubling--"
A polite knock on the door to the classroom cut Bob off, and when I looked over, Uncle Justin was standing in the doorway, looking like he was ready to head off to another meeting with the High Council.
A bit surprised, I glanced up at the clock and noticed it was 3:30.
"I hope I'm not interrupting anything?" Justin said, stepping inside.
"Actually, we're in the middle of a lesson," Bob began, but Justin smiled and waved a negligent hand.
"Come, Bob, it's Thursday. I'm sure the lesson can wait, right?" Justin shot me a little smile. "Harry's probably had his fill of lessons already, what with attending school on top of the tutoring."
"Yeah," I blurted out, surprising myself a little. "You haven't been home all week."
It didn't fool Bob, but Justin couldn't have looked more pleased. "See? I'm sure a short break won't hurt."
Bob shot me a curious frown, but I could see his jaw tighten as he nodded once. "Very well."
Justin nodded, and turned his smile on me. "Come, Harry. Let's take a walk."
Every Thursday at 3:30 sharp, Justin would 'spend quality time with me' in the form of walking around the grounds with me, and lecturing me about things I'd either never done or wasn't planning on doing. Most of the time, I never really paid attention. I mean, I loved my uncle -- he was the only relative I had left in the world, and that made me want to humor him when he got like this -- but at the same time, there were times when he would talk, and it would be like the two of us were walking next to each other, but were so far apart that nothing could bridge the gap between us.
It wasn't anybody's fault, really. Justin had never had kids before taking me in, and he'd already missed most of my childhood when I came to live with him. And he was always having dinner with the governor, or at meetings with the High Council. I'd gotten so used to having Dad around that, at first, I'd really hated that I never got to see my uncle, but then the Thursdays started happening, and it wasn't so bad. The only trouble was, over the past couple of years, the lectures had gotten repetitive, and it was less like he was having a conversation with me, and more like he was trying to... I don't know. Drill something into my head, maybe, or make sure I remember something.
I glanced back to see that Bob was watching me, and even though I knew that I'd already started drifting apart from my uncle, he was a better alternative to Bob at that moment, and that felt... wrong, somehow.
The walk itself was pretty uneventful. Through the indoor garden, out into the open air, then along the cobblestone path that had been laid years ago by some Morningway ancestor that Justin had told me about, but I never remembered their name. Justin was able to keep pace with me, even though I'd grown a bit taller, and he carried the cane around. Bob had once mentioned that wizards weren't restricted to wands and staves for their magic -- as long as the tool they used was dedicated to them, it could be anything at all, as long as it channeled energies the way it should. When I'd suggested a drumstick, Bob had rolled his eyes, but now that I was older, I could see that Justin's cane was probably more than what it appeared. A lot of things were like that with magic.
"You're in a position now," Justin was saying, "where new possibilities have become apparent to you. You're attending high school, which exposes you to new ideas, new avenues of thinking that you might not have considered before. At the same time, you're maturing into an adult, you're interacting with people your age, and... things have a way of happening that you may be unprepared for."
"Um, Uncle Justin?" I interrupted quickly. "This isn't going to be the sex talk, is it? Because I've already had it in health class."
Justin blinked before he started chuckling. "No, Harry. This isn't the sex talk, though I am curious as to what they teach in public school these days." He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye before he continued. "I just want to remind you that you're in a precarious position right now. At school, you're surrounded by people who don't believe that magic exists, and as a result, they may try to influence you in a way that causes you to lose sight of who you truly are."
He cleared his throat and continued, "You're a wizard, Harry, with all of the wonder and danger that implies. As a wizard, you have a wealth of opportunity your classmates won't, power such that they could never dream of, let alone comprehend. And part of being a wizard, Harry, is to hold yourself to a higher standard than most."
That part wasn't going to be hard, I thought to myself. I wasn't that popular with the boys my age because I liked doing chivalrous things for girls, and the girls didn't like me because they thought I was being chauvinistic when I tried to do something nice for them. Damned if I did, damned if I didn't, but I couldn't help the way I am. So, I just nodded and let him keep going.
"At this point in your life, you are maturing into the adult you will become, but you shouldn't allow yourself to be distracted by transient things. There are larger, loftier goals in life than finding an attractive girl and not looking awkward in front of her."
Spoken like the voice of experience, I thought snidely to myself.
"As wizards, we live in the world, but we're not entirely of it, if you take my meaning," Justin said, and then shook his head. "There are things that, as wizards, could weaken us, and leave us vulnerable to attack. So, in order to protect ourselves, we should be above certain things."
I frowned.
"Attachments are a dangerous thing, Harry," Justin said, finally coming to the whole point of the walk. When he got to that, it usually meant that things were going to be wrapping up soon. I noticed that we were already turning and heading back in the direction of the house.
"It's all well and good to care for someone. I loved your mother, my sister, very much. I admired her in many ways -- she was intelligent, talented, and stood her ground for what she believed in. But in the end..." His voice trailed off, and he shook his head with a sigh. "Your mother loved your father very much, and I wonder if that proved to be her undoing."
Justin looked at me steadily, sunlight glinting off of his glasses. "You have to look out for yourself, Harry. You have to make sure that you're safe, and depending on others for your happiness means that you're relinquishing control over your life. A man is strong, solid, and self-sufficient. Look all around you, Harry," he said, waving a hand at the grounds of the estate. From where we were standing, the view was pretty impressive. "Generations of our family have lived here, protected and safe. From here, our forefathers brought forth new ideas, questioned tradition, and because of their self-reliance, this estate has withstood the test of time, as has our family."
He turned and looked back at me. "One day, this will be yours, Harry. You're a strong soul. The Morningway bloodline runs through your veins, and with it comes the power and responsibility to honor our ancestors and change the status quo for the better. You are a wizard, and my nephew. That alone makes you unlike anyone else. And as such, you must safeguard yourself from anything that could make you into something that is less than what you are."
I think that was the moment when I'd really heard Justin for the first time. It wasn't all that stuff about being the last of a noble bloodline or whatever -- I'd been hearing that for the past four years.
It was about being above things. About being a wizard, and understanding that we weren't like everybody else.
I nodded, and Justin smiled, looking pleased that he'd somehow managed to bridge the gap between us, when really, it was more like two ships passing in the night. It was a bit sad, watching him smile like that, and realizing that he didn't get it. That we hadn't connected at all, and maybe we never would. But maybe it was better to let him feel like we had. He didn't have anybody except me and Bob, and he treated Bob like a servant, so that really only left me.
"Thanks, Uncle Justin," I said. Thanks for trying.
Justin smiled. "You're welcome, Harry."
***
That conversation I'd had with Uncle Justin was what had decided it for me, really.
Something had to be done about this... whatever it was I was feeling about Bob, and telling Bob was not an option. He would've told me something like how he was flattered, but he wasn't interested, or he'd mention that he was my teacher, and that kind of thing wasn't appropriate. If the redhead in algebra class wasn't interested, there was no way that Bob would be, and who could blame either of them?
I was growing too fast, and my arms and legs always felt too long or too big or just too clumsy to be any good. Not only that, but I was still shorter than Bob, and that was kind of embarrassing. I mean, stars and stones, I was fifteen. Shouldn't I have looked more grown up by now?
No, it was better to do something about it. Be above this, get rid of this... thing so that I wasn't constantly tripping over my tongue, or blushing, or staring at Bob's hands. But what could I do?
Black magic was out. Even if I knew what to do, Bob told me that using the black was dangerous, and that I could do more harm than good, no matter what I'd intended in the first place. There was nothing to attack or affect physically, so evocation was out. I wasn't trying to protect anything, or keep anyone or anything out of someplace, so wards would be useless... but a potion?
At first I dismissed it, because potions didn't last that long, but after a minute, I started nodding. I knew that one of the books in the lab had a recipe for a love potion. Since I didn't want to fall in love with someone, all I had to do was reverse the ingredients somehow -- or come up with my own recipe -- and it could work. Figuring out how long it would last would be a problem, but if I used stuff I could easily get, I could brew as much as I needed whenever I needed it.
The more I thought about it, the more it sounded like a really good idea. And who knew? If I showed it to Bob after it was all said and done, he might even have been impressed.
I made my way to the lab that Bob and I used for our potions lessons late one Saturday, taking a notebook with me and a pen. It took a little while to find the book again -- it'd been moved from the last place I'd remembered seeing it -- but I flipped to the page readily enough and wrote down the template I'd come up with for making potions.
Potions, Bob had taught me, used eight ingredients, all of which were different with each potion you made. Five ingredients for the five senses, one for the mind, one for the spirit, and one base liquid to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them.
Okay, I was lying about that last one, but it sounded cool. The base liquid's just there to give the rest of the ingredients a way to blend and mix together.
Now, a love potion used ingredients that enticed the drinker to fall in love with whoever they saw first, or whoever said a specific word, or maybe smelled a certain way. Bob hadn't gotten around to conditional triggers with potions yet, but I was fairly sure I could time it so that I saw him first whenever I needed to drink it.
Looking over the recipe, I copied the list over into my template, and then found myself staring at the list as if it were Greek, which Bob hadn't started teaching me yet. What was the reverse of rose petals?
Shaking my head, I flipped the page over and listed out the template again. Base... base... vinegar sounded good. It was sharp, strong, and tasted pretty foul by itself. Readily accessible, no one would notice if some went missing, but it also worked for taste, so I listed it off to one side. If rose petals were included in a love potion, rose thorns worked for the touch element for an anti-love potion.
Satisfied, I listed that one right away.
I was tempted to write dog poop for smell, but there was no way I would willingly eat that, let alone drink something I knew that had that in it. It had to be something edible, but still really foul.... The best I could think of were rotten eggs, which I wrote in with a few question marks and a wince.
Starting to run out of ideas, I flipped to the ingredients index in the book, and then noticed nutmeg. It was poisonous to babies, even in small amounts, but still not that harmful to full-grown (or growing) people, so I wrote that in for mind. I needed to make sure that the crush couldn't come back, and that sounded as good an idea as any. I flipped a few pages, glancing at more ingredients, and noticed tears.
Tears, according to the index, "salted the earth of the spirit" in small quantities, and worked for taste in larger amounts. A quick search of the jars in the cabinets yielded no bottled tears, which meant I was going to make my own. And since I don't cry at the drop of a hat, and I wasn't going to force myself to, I wasn't going to have much on-hand. A guy had to have some limits after all. So, tears for the spirit it was.
For sight and sound, I was stuck, but then I remembered finding a bottled thunderstorm in one cabinet while I had been looking for the bottled tears. Finding it again, I saw a tiny thunderbolt lash out from the storm to ping harmlessly against the glass. I didn't like thunderstorms that much, since things tended to get dark and a bit scary, so it would work just fine. Perfect. Now all I needed was the base liquid and taste.
Out of ideas, I went back to the index, and flipped to "rotten", not really expecting to find anything.
I didn't, but I did notice the word "sour". Flipping back to it, I saw both lemons and sour milk. Lemon worked for an immediate negative reaction, and while I wanted to stop the crush from continuing, I didn't want to be too obvious, and the lemon was more like an hard shove, whereas sour milk -- while more disgusting -- was more subtle and would work for longer-term potions, like the one I wanted, which made it work for the base liquid. Wincing, I checked to make sure there was some in the lab, and then filled it in for the base liquid. The vinegar would work for the taste, since it wasn't as sharp a reaction as the lemon, but would still help keep the distaste in the recipe.
Looking over my list, I nodded slowly, and then with more conviction. There were eight ingredients I needed, though it would take some time to get some rotten eggs and sour milk together. Finding a place to keep it all secret while it went bad was going to be a challenge, what with the cleaning staff keeping the house spotless and more like a museum than a place people actually lived in.
I managed somehow, and after three weeks of sleepless nights, guilty jerk-off sessions that were growing more and more detailed no matter how long I stared at page 225, and feeling like a heel whenever Bob so much as looked at me, I gathered the ingredients together late one night and headed for the lab. I started up the burner with a muttered spell to ignite the gas, and then I started measuring out the sour milk, nearly gagging from the smell. Well, if nothing else, I knew the potion was going to be effective, if the smell was anything to go by.
After the ingredients were measured out and boiled together, I waved a hand over the mouth of the small pot and coughed a few times, the smoke turning a greenish-gray color that didn't look appetizing.
"Potion's too strong."
I jumped, nearly upsetting the boiling pot, and wheeled around, my arm blurring through Bob as I looked up. Bob, however, kept a calm, blue-green gaze on the boiling potion, his eyebrows lifted.
After taking a second to bring my heartbeat back to a normal pace, I cleared my throat and resisted the urge to snap at him. "What was that, Bob?"
"I said the potion's too strong," Bob said, his eyes cutting to mine. "I had a feeling I would find you down here."
"Oh?" I asked, trying to sound casual. "How come?"
"You've been running around the house in something approaching a state of frenzy for the past month and a half, looking like a young man being hunted by something very large and with a great number of teeth."
"I have not been in a state of frenzy," I protested.
"Compared to your usual devil-may-care attitude towards life in general, you have been," Bob stated, an eyebrow lifting before he looked back down at the potion. "And what, may I ask, is this supposed to be?"
"A potion," I answered.
Bob snorted. "The best that this so-called 'potion' could be used for would be to kill the vegetation in your uncle's garden."
I looked at him suspiciously before looking at the still-smoking potion. "What makes you say that?"
"Potions don't usually smoke, Harry," Bob said patiently. "Nor do they have bits of... is that an egg yolk?"
"Yes, it is," I snapped, annoyed at the shock in his voice. "I needed rotten eggs for the smell."
"Rotten eggs," Bob repeated slowly, turning away from the potion to look at me.
I nodded. "It's a new potion I'm working on."
"And what, pray tell, is it for?" Bob asked, looking back at the lab table and cocking his head, looking at the jars of ingredients. "I see you've decided to use the bottled thunderstorm. I do hope you plan on refilling it sometime soon."
"Yes, Bob," I said patiently. "It's an... anti-love potion."
"Anti-love?" Bob frowned, looking confused.
I nodded. "I don't want to fall in love with someone. I want the opposite to happen."
Bob's lips pursed, and man, I really needed to down the still-smoking potion before I got distracted.
"The opposite."
"Uh-huh, so if you don't mind?" I said, indicating the potion.
Bob looked from me to the potion, and back. "You aren't seriously thinking of drinking this, are you?"
I don't know how I did, but I managed to keep eye contact with him. Maybe it was because the situation was just that serious. "I don't have a choice, Bob."
Blue-green eyes narrowed at me. "There's always a choice, Harry. What exactly is the result you want after drinking this potion?"
I felt my cheeks get hot, pretty quick. "Well, I... uh, I need to kill a crush."
If Bob had been expecting for me to say something, that hadn't been it. Both of his eyebrows rose. "A crush?"
I nodded quickly, and then ducked my head so I didn't have to look him in the eye. "Yeah."
"You felt the need to sneak out of your room at one o'clock in the morning to brew a lethal combination of ingredients together, at least one of which should never have been used in the first place, because you have a crush on a girl?"
"Well, when you say it like that..." I muttered.
"Harry, I said that I would leave you to figure out this situation, but this isn't an acceptable answer," Bob said firmly, shaking his head.
"Bob, I can't keep doing this," I said in a rush. "I keep thinking about--" I stopped myself before I said anything else, and just shook my head. "I mean, you've noticed it."
Bob nodded. "Yes, I have. But is the situation really so dire that you felt the need to resort to brewing your own potion? Can't you tell her how you feel?"
I shook my head quickly, deliberately taking the pot off the fire and setting it down on a bare patch of the lab table to let it cool down. Maybe the smoke would start to clear in a little while. "It's... complicated."
"It's only as complicated as you make it," Bob said, sounding firm. "I assume she's in one of your classes?"
I gritted my teeth, feeling my face flush again. "Bob, it's not a girl."
There was a long, agonizing silence, and then a quiet, "Oh."
"Yeah," I gritted out, not turning around to see his face. "'Oh'."
I heard him clear his throat, and then he stood beside me. "Well... these are more enlightened times. You could... test the waters, perhaps?"
Okay, if I thought that Bob thinking it was a girl made me feel like a jerk, this was torture. "Bob, I like girls."
I could see his lips part, about to say something, and then he pursed them again as he thought. I felt my dick twitch a little, but I gave it a stern reprimand by way of accidentally inhaling some of the smoke that had drifted my way and coughing at the stench. Resting a hand on the table, I turned my head away to breathe in some good air before staring at the pot again.
"I can see why you'd have a problem," Bob said slowly. "But I must advise against using a potion to banish these unwanted feelings."
"And why's that, Bob?" I snapped. "What's the point of being able to use magic at all if I can't use it to stop feeling like this?"
"Harry, you're fifteen," Bob said firmly. "If you drink that, it would do more harm than good."
"It gets rid of the crush," I said, standing my ground. "That's what I want."
"And if your feelings of unrequited love turn to hatred?" Bob asked, a gray eyebrow lifting.
I frowned. "What do you mean?"
"There are no opposites when you're dealing with emotion, Harry," Bob said gently. "Emotions don't exist in a vacuum, especially when you're still undergoing adolescence. In order to create an 'anti-anything' potion, you have to replace the emotion you're targeting with another emotion, ideally something equally as strong. You can't banish feelings and leave only the absence of feeling."
I stared at the potion again. "So, if I drank this, I wouldn't be seeing him and not feeling the crush."
"Depending on how strongly you feel about this young man, you would see him and feel either mild distaste..." He eyed the potion, and now we could both see the floating bits of egg yolk more clearly. "... or perhaps bitter dislike, and that's if you were using adequate ingredients in the first place. I mean, really, Harry, rotten eggs?"
"I said I needed it for the smell component," I muttered.
"What did you use for the base?" He asked, frowning at the ingredients still on the table.
"Sour milk," I admitted, bracing myself.
Bob didn't disappoint. "Sour--!" He visibly stopped himself, closed his eyes, and inhaled slowly. "I shudder to think what else you decided to use."
I consulted the list in my notebook and read them off. "See? The rest of the ingredients were fresh."
Bob didn't answer immediately, and when I looked up at him, he was staring at me openly. "Harry, did you even think about what you were using?"
I knew the potion was crappy from the smoke, but he didn't have to be that harsh about it. "Yeah, I did, and that's why I used sour milk instead of lemon juice, since the sour milk would have a longer-lasting effect."
"As much as I would like to berate you over the use of a decayed ingredient over something fresh in the interests of longer duration, you've managed to stumble on a combination that wouldn't have evoked just one emotion but three, and that's if the potion weren't absolutely lethal in the first place."
I blinked.
Bob sighed. "Rose thorns evoke bitterness. The thunderstorm would have evoked the typical reactions to a thunderstorm -- instinctive fear being chief among them. The vinegar would have added an element of intense dislike. And last but not least, the nutmeg and the tears would have worked in conjunction to poison your soul and allow these emotions to ferment deep inside you. If you drank this, it would very well have damaged you in such a way that you'd never recover from."
If this had been a regular lesson, Bob would have made me research what each ingredient did instead of just giving me the answers like he just did, but then again, this wasn't a regular lesson. It was after one in the morning, and Bob's voice was sharp.
"What makes the combination lethal?" I knew I didn't want to ask, but it was a habit for me to poke at scabs. See just how bad it really was.
"Well, using two spoiled ingredients would have immediately led to disaster," Bob said, "and had you used fresh ingredients, the amount of nutmeg you used in conjunction with the vinegar and the lightning from the bottled storm would have created a dangerous spike in your magical energies. The first time you had attempted to use evocation, you would have exploded along with whatever task you were attempting."
I pulled out the stool from under the table and sank down into it, resting my elbows on the tabletop and resting my forehead in my hands. "So... I screwed up."
"I believe the term you like to use is 'royally', yes." Despite what he said, Bob found a way to say it gently.
I lifted my head out of my hands and eyed the pot again. Most of the smoke had cleared by now, but it still managed to look a sinister green-gray color. "Is there a way to brew something that would have the effect I'm going for, but not be lethal?"
Bob shook his head. "Magic isn't a cure-all, Harry. As I've said before, you're still maturing, and that means your emotions and your hormones are in a state of flux. Think of yourself as a clay tablet. At this stage in your life, any magic that you use to affect your emotions could cut so deeply into the clay that when you're fully-grown--"
"--my emotions will be messed up permanently." I finished. "I get it."
Bob nodded. "Good." He eyed the pot significantly. "You might want to wash that out before the potion sets. I imagine the milk and eggs acting together would make it very difficult to clean if it were left to harden."
I got up with a sigh, picked up the pot and dumped it down the sink that was kept in the lab for those occasions when a potion had to get pitched in a hurry. "I wasn't going to drink it, Bob."
"I know, but better to eliminate temptation altogether," he said, moving to stand next to me and cocking his head. "No matter how unappetizing it may appear."
I nodded, getting a Brillo pad and scrubbing the inside of the pot.
"So... now that you're unable to use magic to effect a solution," Bob said slowly, "do you have any other ideas for how to deal with this young man?"
"Could we... not talk about this?" I asked.
"Harry, you nearly drank a lethal potion in order to emotionally lobotomize yourself," Bob said, folding his arms across his chest. "While you didn't realize the full extent of what you were doing, you were about to take very drastic measures to be rid of these feelings. Personally, I'd feel better knowing that you had another idea before leaving you to your own devices again."
I set my teeth firmly, trying not to blush, and kept scrubbing.
"Now, I ask again, do you have any other ideas, or would you be open to suggestions?"
I sighed slowly through my nose. "I've got nothing. So, if you've got suggestions, fire away."
"Get to know him," he said simply.
I looked up at him, frowning. "What?"
"Get to know him," he repeated. "Part of having romantic feelings for someone is the lure of the unknown. If you come to learn that he's distasteful, that will be more effective than any potion you could brew."
"But I already know him," I said before I could stop myself. At Bob's curious look, I went back to scrubbing the pot vigorously. "We... talk a lot."
It wasn't a lie, really, even if I felt like my stomach was flipping over and rolling inside out.
"What is he like?" Bob asked.
This was going too far. Even if I could talk while my stomach was doing somersaults, I wouldn't have been able to look Bob in the eye. "Bob... I really don't want to talk about this."
Bob looked at me for a long moment, blue-green eyes steady on my face before he spoke. "Very well, but promise me you won't take such drastic measures again without consulting me first."
I nodded, my stomach now deciding to drop like a rock in my gut because Bob was still worried I'd pull something like this again. "I won't," I said softly. "I promise."
Bob nodded, and for a moment, it looked like he was going to turn into a mote of light and fizz back into his skull, but he stopped. "Love, in whatever form it comes in, is something that should be cherished. Tuck away your feelings close to your heart, if you must, but perhaps in time, things won't seem so hopeless."
I breathed in slowly, trying to remember that my throat really wasn't closing up on me. "Yeah, maybe."
Bob watched me for another moment, and then nodded. "Good night, Harry."
"Night, Bob," I managed.
And just like that, he disappeared in a puff of black smoke, the orange mote flying in a graceful arc before depositing itself in one of the skull's eye sockets.
As I turned back to the pot, I thought over what Bob had said, about cherishing love no matter what; tucking it away close to the heart instead of trying to use magic to make it go away. There wasn't so much love in my life, I thought to myself as I kept scrubbing, that I could really afford to throw it away.
So, there I stayed in the lab, concentrating on tucking my feelings for Bob into a tiny box, and placing it carefully on a mental shelf, ready to bring down and look at if I ever wanted to.
I scrubbed that pot until my fingers were red.
END
Did you like what you just read? Read the sequel, Vignette - The First Departure.
DISCLAIMER: The Dresden Files doesn't belong to me - the TV series belongs to Lionsgate, and the characters themselves were created by Jim Butcher. Written for entertainment purposes, no money made, please don't sue, yadda.
FANDOM: The Dresden Files
PAIRING: Harry/Bob UST
WORD COUNT: 7,433
RATING: R for nakedness?
WARNINGS: Harry is 15 years old in this fic. While this isn't a big thing, there are sexual themes involved.
SUMMARY: It's not that far from looking at Bob's hands to wanting something more.
PRAISE BE: A warm thank you goes out to shiplizard, beachkid, and kirsteena for their beta-reading, encouragement, and questions. I don't think this fic would've been finished if not for you guys. Thank you!
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is the first fic the Forged series.
***
I knew I was in trouble when I couldn't stop staring at his hands.
Bob has slender hands. Nimble fingers, sort of rectangular palms, short nails, knuckles, pale skin. And since he couldn't write on the blackboard due to being a ghost, he literally scribbled in mid-air with orange, fizzing flames. What was weird about the whole thing, I guess, was how quickly I'd gotten used to it, and yet, I still watched his hands.
The first time I saw him writing out a formula, I'd been really impressed. If I wanted to be honest, my hand-watching habit had probably started around then. I mean, how many teachers do you know can write with fire? Sure, I couldn't feel any heat emanating from the words whenever he wrote something for me to copy, but that didn't make it any less cool.
The trouble was, at the ripe old age of fifteen, you'd think I'd've outgrown the habit by now. I mean, I'd been seeing Bob write for four years now. Shouldn't it be just an everyday thing by now? What made his hands that great in the first place?
"Harry?"
I jumped where I stood. "Yes, Bob?" I asked, trying to sound casual.
The look on Bob's face told me the casual act needed work. "What was I just saying about the asp in the second asset?"
"That it shouldn't be there?" I guessed. Turned out it was a really bad guess.
"Harry, there isn't an asp in the second asset," Bob told me, pointing at the formula, and sure enough, no asp.
"Well, if there's no asp in the second asset, it doesn't need to be there, right?" I asked, using superior logic and a grin.
"I sincerely hope that your talent for magic will soon surpass your penchant for comedy," Bob snorted. "The asp is in the third asset, and I was about to ask you why it belongs there when I discovered that you'd started daydreaming." He started to bristle. "If my lessons are starting to become tiresome, I'm sure I can find some other work for you to do."
"No, that's okay," I said quickly. "Really, I'm paying attention, honest."
"Harry, this is the third time this week you've been distracted in the middle of a lesson," Bob said firmly. "Is there something you wish to talk about?"
If getting caught not paying attention was embarrassing, Bob asking if there was something I 'wished to talk about' was worse. "Nope. I'm good."
Bob narrowed his eyes at me, folding his arms across his chest. "Harry."
"No, Bob, really," I said quickly, feeling a lecture looming on the horizon. "I'm fine. I just need to think about some stuff that's been happening with a girl at school--" As soon as I said it, I felt like a heel. "It's nothing, really."
Bob looked ready to press the issue, but then he changed his mind. "Very well. While affairs of the heart can be troublesome at best, I'll leave you to figure it out. If you change your mind, however--"
"--You'll be the first to know," I said, still feeling like something that needed to be scraped off somebody's shoe. "Promise."
Bob nodded, and then turned back to the formula. "Now, as I was asking before you decided to wander off within your own mind, what gives this ward its main source of power?"
The rest of the lesson was fairly run of the mill after that, and the rest of the day after that. That night, as I closed my eyes and tried to fall asleep, I found myself thinking about Bob's hands again.
Slender, nimble, pale...
How would they feel against my skin?
That made my eyes shoot wide open, forcing me to sit up.
Where had that come from?
I could feel my dick twitch in my pajama pants, and I glared at it accusingly. That wasn't supposed to happen when I thought about Bob, let alone his hands. Girls, I reminded myself. I liked girls. They were pretty, soft, mysterious as hell, and they had breasts.
I needed a distraction.
Besides being a fifteen-year-old wizard, you could say that I'm a bit strange. I brew potions in my spare time for fun, and when I jerk off, I don't like thinking about an actual woman. Not only was I completely unable to look Melanie Parker in the eye the next day the first time I did it, it just feels... wrong to do it.
So, in the face of my budding sense of chivalry and the lack of carefully-hidden Playboys around the Morningway estate, my old standby had become The History of Magical Rituals, a fairly boring tome that looked like it'd seen better decades, but had exactly one full-page picture of a beautiful, sky-clad witch. The picture was probably somebody's idea of spicing up an otherwise dull chapter about the Celts and druidism, but it was also very... stimulating. And since neither Uncle Justin nor Bob had any use for the book, I could keep it in my room for just such emergencies as this.
Getting out of bed, I lifted up the mattress and slid the book out carefully. I got back in bed, eased my pants down enough to free my dick, and settled into a comfortable position before opening the book to page 225.
The sky-clad witch, whoever she was or might have been, had her head thrown back under a moonlit sky, pale skin lovingly outlined. Full lips turned up to the moon, her eyes closed in something like rapture. Long, raven hair that blew gently in a breeze, her nipples standing out. Shadows hid the area between her legs, but it was more than enough for me. Keeping my eyes on the picture, I imagined her, her wildness, her passion...
I gave myself a long, slow pull, imagining myself approaching her in the clearing where she stood, magic tingling along my skin. She opened her eyes, brown in the moonlight, and when her chant was finished, she motioned for me to approach. My clothes were gone, and when I closed the distance between us, felt her lips press against mine, I groaned, stroking myself more firmly.
When she pulled back from the kiss, brown eyes brightened to blue-green, and the lush lips pulled back into a secret smile, just between the two of us.
"Oh, the things I could teach you," my fantasy said in a not-feminine voice. A long, slender finger reached out and brushed my cheek, ticklish and warm.
There was no air, no escape. Those eyes had me spellbound.
"Let me see you, Harry. Let me show you..." my fantasy purred, and stars exploded behind my eyes as I came hard, covering my hand.
As I stripped out of my pajamas and ripped the sheets off the bed, red-faced and gasping in panic, I realized I wasn't in trouble.
I was in big trouble.
***
Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep that night. The day at school passed in one long haze of teachers, assignments, homework turned in, classmates, and so on, and before I could think of a way to conveniently avoid seeing Bob when I got home, the car that usually gave me a lift to school was pulling up to driveway of the estate.
I got out reluctantly, and the car pulled away, heading for the garage, taking with it any chance of escape I had unless I felt adventurous enough to try to lose myself somewhere on the grounds. With a sigh, I trudged up the steps, and headed upstairs. I made it up to my room without seeing anyone, so I dropped the backpack on the floor and laid back on my bed, staring up at the ceiling.
I needed to think about something other than what had happened last night. Nothing had happened. I'd jerked off like any other teenager, changed the sheets, and went to sleep. Nothing. Happened.
Who the hell did I think I was kidding? If I kept this up, Bob was going to see right through me, and figure out what was going on pretty quick. The best thing to do was to go downstairs, get a sandwich, and report to Bob for the magic lesson of the day. Despite the lesson yesterday, Bob had been making noises about my progress, and how we might start with some alarm-wards and work our way up from there. I knew I had the stuff down cold, so today would be interesting.
Provided I could summon up the courage to head downstairs, that is. I needed to be able to talk to him without stuttering, look him in the eye without blinking. And the longer I stayed cooped up in my own room, the more likely he was going to think that something was seriously wrong. Sure, he seemed to have believed my excuse about my non-existent love life, but he also knew from four years of experience that I didn't distract too easily. He'd be on the lookout for whatever might be "real" reason I was bothered, and if he found out what was really bothering me, it was going to be incredibly embarrassing. Even more than it already was, I mean.
I sighed and sat up, leaving my backpack where it lay as I went downstairs. It's not like those textbooks helped much anyway, except for being convenient, brightly-colored paperweights. When I made it to the study that had been Bob's classroom for the past four years, I saw that Bob was already out of his skull and waiting for me, a raised eyebrow the only indication that I'd gone off the script.
"Hi, Bob," I said.
"You're late," Bob said mildly, eying the clock.
"We haven't had a set schedule since last summer," I said, frowning.
"That's because as soon as you return from school, you come straight here," Bob pointed out, still mild, and not moving from where he stood. "Have you made any progress with the young lady that so occupied your thoughts yesterday?"
I felt like a heel and tried to stop myself from blushing, but it didn't work on both counts. I mumbled a negative, and Bob's eyes narrowed.
"So," I said brightly, "what are we working on today? More wards?"
"Among other things," Bob said ominously. "What did we cover yesterday?"
"Formulas for alarm-wards, and we got into protective wards before we stopped for the night," I answered, familiar with the routine, though not with the verbal omen of doom preceding it.
"And what are the differences between the two?" Bob asked, falling into a slow, thinking pace that I'd come to think of as 'lecture mode'.
"Alarm wards are an early warning system," I answered, "not really for defense. They can be combined with protective wards to warn the caster that someone has tried to breach the protective wards, or that someone has entered the room of the person, area, or thing that the ward's been placed on. It depends on how the energy's infused into the circle."
"Which is laid first, the protective ward, or the alarm?" Bob turned on his heel, providing me with the clean line of his back, the cut of his suit emphasizing his long legs and showing off his waist without even trying. When I had started noticing girls, I'd also started noticing legs that go on forever. The trouble was, I hadn't anticipated being so... equal-opportunity in my appreciation.
The legs stopped, and then I remembered that Bob had asked a question. "The protective ward," I said, making sure to look Bob in the eye. "Alarm wards are dependent spells -- they have to have something to hang on to, or else it's just... hanging, and it doesn't do anything useful."
"'Hang on to'?" Bob asked, a gray eyebrow lifting.
"It works, doesn't it?" I asked defensively.
"We have had the discussion concerning language precision before," Bob said, starting to sound a bit impatient.
"Sorry," I apologized, and kept my eyes right on his. His very nice eyes that weren't really blue or green, but were like a combination of both, and it really did look nice and... dammit.
"Harry," Bob said slowly, "what do you think you're doing?"
"I'm looking you in the eye when I'm talking to you?" I answered, annoyed that it sounded more like a question than a statement of fact.
Bob looked skeptical. "Are you sure you'd rather not discuss what seems to be troubling--"
A polite knock on the door to the classroom cut Bob off, and when I looked over, Uncle Justin was standing in the doorway, looking like he was ready to head off to another meeting with the High Council.
A bit surprised, I glanced up at the clock and noticed it was 3:30.
"I hope I'm not interrupting anything?" Justin said, stepping inside.
"Actually, we're in the middle of a lesson," Bob began, but Justin smiled and waved a negligent hand.
"Come, Bob, it's Thursday. I'm sure the lesson can wait, right?" Justin shot me a little smile. "Harry's probably had his fill of lessons already, what with attending school on top of the tutoring."
"Yeah," I blurted out, surprising myself a little. "You haven't been home all week."
It didn't fool Bob, but Justin couldn't have looked more pleased. "See? I'm sure a short break won't hurt."
Bob shot me a curious frown, but I could see his jaw tighten as he nodded once. "Very well."
Justin nodded, and turned his smile on me. "Come, Harry. Let's take a walk."
Every Thursday at 3:30 sharp, Justin would 'spend quality time with me' in the form of walking around the grounds with me, and lecturing me about things I'd either never done or wasn't planning on doing. Most of the time, I never really paid attention. I mean, I loved my uncle -- he was the only relative I had left in the world, and that made me want to humor him when he got like this -- but at the same time, there were times when he would talk, and it would be like the two of us were walking next to each other, but were so far apart that nothing could bridge the gap between us.
It wasn't anybody's fault, really. Justin had never had kids before taking me in, and he'd already missed most of my childhood when I came to live with him. And he was always having dinner with the governor, or at meetings with the High Council. I'd gotten so used to having Dad around that, at first, I'd really hated that I never got to see my uncle, but then the Thursdays started happening, and it wasn't so bad. The only trouble was, over the past couple of years, the lectures had gotten repetitive, and it was less like he was having a conversation with me, and more like he was trying to... I don't know. Drill something into my head, maybe, or make sure I remember something.
I glanced back to see that Bob was watching me, and even though I knew that I'd already started drifting apart from my uncle, he was a better alternative to Bob at that moment, and that felt... wrong, somehow.
The walk itself was pretty uneventful. Through the indoor garden, out into the open air, then along the cobblestone path that had been laid years ago by some Morningway ancestor that Justin had told me about, but I never remembered their name. Justin was able to keep pace with me, even though I'd grown a bit taller, and he carried the cane around. Bob had once mentioned that wizards weren't restricted to wands and staves for their magic -- as long as the tool they used was dedicated to them, it could be anything at all, as long as it channeled energies the way it should. When I'd suggested a drumstick, Bob had rolled his eyes, but now that I was older, I could see that Justin's cane was probably more than what it appeared. A lot of things were like that with magic.
"You're in a position now," Justin was saying, "where new possibilities have become apparent to you. You're attending high school, which exposes you to new ideas, new avenues of thinking that you might not have considered before. At the same time, you're maturing into an adult, you're interacting with people your age, and... things have a way of happening that you may be unprepared for."
"Um, Uncle Justin?" I interrupted quickly. "This isn't going to be the sex talk, is it? Because I've already had it in health class."
Justin blinked before he started chuckling. "No, Harry. This isn't the sex talk, though I am curious as to what they teach in public school these days." He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye before he continued. "I just want to remind you that you're in a precarious position right now. At school, you're surrounded by people who don't believe that magic exists, and as a result, they may try to influence you in a way that causes you to lose sight of who you truly are."
He cleared his throat and continued, "You're a wizard, Harry, with all of the wonder and danger that implies. As a wizard, you have a wealth of opportunity your classmates won't, power such that they could never dream of, let alone comprehend. And part of being a wizard, Harry, is to hold yourself to a higher standard than most."
That part wasn't going to be hard, I thought to myself. I wasn't that popular with the boys my age because I liked doing chivalrous things for girls, and the girls didn't like me because they thought I was being chauvinistic when I tried to do something nice for them. Damned if I did, damned if I didn't, but I couldn't help the way I am. So, I just nodded and let him keep going.
"At this point in your life, you are maturing into the adult you will become, but you shouldn't allow yourself to be distracted by transient things. There are larger, loftier goals in life than finding an attractive girl and not looking awkward in front of her."
Spoken like the voice of experience, I thought snidely to myself.
"As wizards, we live in the world, but we're not entirely of it, if you take my meaning," Justin said, and then shook his head. "There are things that, as wizards, could weaken us, and leave us vulnerable to attack. So, in order to protect ourselves, we should be above certain things."
I frowned.
"Attachments are a dangerous thing, Harry," Justin said, finally coming to the whole point of the walk. When he got to that, it usually meant that things were going to be wrapping up soon. I noticed that we were already turning and heading back in the direction of the house.
"It's all well and good to care for someone. I loved your mother, my sister, very much. I admired her in many ways -- she was intelligent, talented, and stood her ground for what she believed in. But in the end..." His voice trailed off, and he shook his head with a sigh. "Your mother loved your father very much, and I wonder if that proved to be her undoing."
Justin looked at me steadily, sunlight glinting off of his glasses. "You have to look out for yourself, Harry. You have to make sure that you're safe, and depending on others for your happiness means that you're relinquishing control over your life. A man is strong, solid, and self-sufficient. Look all around you, Harry," he said, waving a hand at the grounds of the estate. From where we were standing, the view was pretty impressive. "Generations of our family have lived here, protected and safe. From here, our forefathers brought forth new ideas, questioned tradition, and because of their self-reliance, this estate has withstood the test of time, as has our family."
He turned and looked back at me. "One day, this will be yours, Harry. You're a strong soul. The Morningway bloodline runs through your veins, and with it comes the power and responsibility to honor our ancestors and change the status quo for the better. You are a wizard, and my nephew. That alone makes you unlike anyone else. And as such, you must safeguard yourself from anything that could make you into something that is less than what you are."
I think that was the moment when I'd really heard Justin for the first time. It wasn't all that stuff about being the last of a noble bloodline or whatever -- I'd been hearing that for the past four years.
It was about being above things. About being a wizard, and understanding that we weren't like everybody else.
I nodded, and Justin smiled, looking pleased that he'd somehow managed to bridge the gap between us, when really, it was more like two ships passing in the night. It was a bit sad, watching him smile like that, and realizing that he didn't get it. That we hadn't connected at all, and maybe we never would. But maybe it was better to let him feel like we had. He didn't have anybody except me and Bob, and he treated Bob like a servant, so that really only left me.
"Thanks, Uncle Justin," I said. Thanks for trying.
Justin smiled. "You're welcome, Harry."
***
That conversation I'd had with Uncle Justin was what had decided it for me, really.
Something had to be done about this... whatever it was I was feeling about Bob, and telling Bob was not an option. He would've told me something like how he was flattered, but he wasn't interested, or he'd mention that he was my teacher, and that kind of thing wasn't appropriate. If the redhead in algebra class wasn't interested, there was no way that Bob would be, and who could blame either of them?
I was growing too fast, and my arms and legs always felt too long or too big or just too clumsy to be any good. Not only that, but I was still shorter than Bob, and that was kind of embarrassing. I mean, stars and stones, I was fifteen. Shouldn't I have looked more grown up by now?
No, it was better to do something about it. Be above this, get rid of this... thing so that I wasn't constantly tripping over my tongue, or blushing, or staring at Bob's hands. But what could I do?
Black magic was out. Even if I knew what to do, Bob told me that using the black was dangerous, and that I could do more harm than good, no matter what I'd intended in the first place. There was nothing to attack or affect physically, so evocation was out. I wasn't trying to protect anything, or keep anyone or anything out of someplace, so wards would be useless... but a potion?
At first I dismissed it, because potions didn't last that long, but after a minute, I started nodding. I knew that one of the books in the lab had a recipe for a love potion. Since I didn't want to fall in love with someone, all I had to do was reverse the ingredients somehow -- or come up with my own recipe -- and it could work. Figuring out how long it would last would be a problem, but if I used stuff I could easily get, I could brew as much as I needed whenever I needed it.
The more I thought about it, the more it sounded like a really good idea. And who knew? If I showed it to Bob after it was all said and done, he might even have been impressed.
I made my way to the lab that Bob and I used for our potions lessons late one Saturday, taking a notebook with me and a pen. It took a little while to find the book again -- it'd been moved from the last place I'd remembered seeing it -- but I flipped to the page readily enough and wrote down the template I'd come up with for making potions.
Potions, Bob had taught me, used eight ingredients, all of which were different with each potion you made. Five ingredients for the five senses, one for the mind, one for the spirit, and one base liquid to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them.
Okay, I was lying about that last one, but it sounded cool. The base liquid's just there to give the rest of the ingredients a way to blend and mix together.
Now, a love potion used ingredients that enticed the drinker to fall in love with whoever they saw first, or whoever said a specific word, or maybe smelled a certain way. Bob hadn't gotten around to conditional triggers with potions yet, but I was fairly sure I could time it so that I saw him first whenever I needed to drink it.
Looking over the recipe, I copied the list over into my template, and then found myself staring at the list as if it were Greek, which Bob hadn't started teaching me yet. What was the reverse of rose petals?
Shaking my head, I flipped the page over and listed out the template again. Base... base... vinegar sounded good. It was sharp, strong, and tasted pretty foul by itself. Readily accessible, no one would notice if some went missing, but it also worked for taste, so I listed it off to one side. If rose petals were included in a love potion, rose thorns worked for the touch element for an anti-love potion.
Satisfied, I listed that one right away.
I was tempted to write dog poop for smell, but there was no way I would willingly eat that, let alone drink something I knew that had that in it. It had to be something edible, but still really foul.... The best I could think of were rotten eggs, which I wrote in with a few question marks and a wince.
Starting to run out of ideas, I flipped to the ingredients index in the book, and then noticed nutmeg. It was poisonous to babies, even in small amounts, but still not that harmful to full-grown (or growing) people, so I wrote that in for mind. I needed to make sure that the crush couldn't come back, and that sounded as good an idea as any. I flipped a few pages, glancing at more ingredients, and noticed tears.
Tears, according to the index, "salted the earth of the spirit" in small quantities, and worked for taste in larger amounts. A quick search of the jars in the cabinets yielded no bottled tears, which meant I was going to make my own. And since I don't cry at the drop of a hat, and I wasn't going to force myself to, I wasn't going to have much on-hand. A guy had to have some limits after all. So, tears for the spirit it was.
For sight and sound, I was stuck, but then I remembered finding a bottled thunderstorm in one cabinet while I had been looking for the bottled tears. Finding it again, I saw a tiny thunderbolt lash out from the storm to ping harmlessly against the glass. I didn't like thunderstorms that much, since things tended to get dark and a bit scary, so it would work just fine. Perfect. Now all I needed was the base liquid and taste.
Out of ideas, I went back to the index, and flipped to "rotten", not really expecting to find anything.
I didn't, but I did notice the word "sour". Flipping back to it, I saw both lemons and sour milk. Lemon worked for an immediate negative reaction, and while I wanted to stop the crush from continuing, I didn't want to be too obvious, and the lemon was more like an hard shove, whereas sour milk -- while more disgusting -- was more subtle and would work for longer-term potions, like the one I wanted, which made it work for the base liquid. Wincing, I checked to make sure there was some in the lab, and then filled it in for the base liquid. The vinegar would work for the taste, since it wasn't as sharp a reaction as the lemon, but would still help keep the distaste in the recipe.
Looking over my list, I nodded slowly, and then with more conviction. There were eight ingredients I needed, though it would take some time to get some rotten eggs and sour milk together. Finding a place to keep it all secret while it went bad was going to be a challenge, what with the cleaning staff keeping the house spotless and more like a museum than a place people actually lived in.
I managed somehow, and after three weeks of sleepless nights, guilty jerk-off sessions that were growing more and more detailed no matter how long I stared at page 225, and feeling like a heel whenever Bob so much as looked at me, I gathered the ingredients together late one night and headed for the lab. I started up the burner with a muttered spell to ignite the gas, and then I started measuring out the sour milk, nearly gagging from the smell. Well, if nothing else, I knew the potion was going to be effective, if the smell was anything to go by.
After the ingredients were measured out and boiled together, I waved a hand over the mouth of the small pot and coughed a few times, the smoke turning a greenish-gray color that didn't look appetizing.
"Potion's too strong."
I jumped, nearly upsetting the boiling pot, and wheeled around, my arm blurring through Bob as I looked up. Bob, however, kept a calm, blue-green gaze on the boiling potion, his eyebrows lifted.
After taking a second to bring my heartbeat back to a normal pace, I cleared my throat and resisted the urge to snap at him. "What was that, Bob?"
"I said the potion's too strong," Bob said, his eyes cutting to mine. "I had a feeling I would find you down here."
"Oh?" I asked, trying to sound casual. "How come?"
"You've been running around the house in something approaching a state of frenzy for the past month and a half, looking like a young man being hunted by something very large and with a great number of teeth."
"I have not been in a state of frenzy," I protested.
"Compared to your usual devil-may-care attitude towards life in general, you have been," Bob stated, an eyebrow lifting before he looked back down at the potion. "And what, may I ask, is this supposed to be?"
"A potion," I answered.
Bob snorted. "The best that this so-called 'potion' could be used for would be to kill the vegetation in your uncle's garden."
I looked at him suspiciously before looking at the still-smoking potion. "What makes you say that?"
"Potions don't usually smoke, Harry," Bob said patiently. "Nor do they have bits of... is that an egg yolk?"
"Yes, it is," I snapped, annoyed at the shock in his voice. "I needed rotten eggs for the smell."
"Rotten eggs," Bob repeated slowly, turning away from the potion to look at me.
I nodded. "It's a new potion I'm working on."
"And what, pray tell, is it for?" Bob asked, looking back at the lab table and cocking his head, looking at the jars of ingredients. "I see you've decided to use the bottled thunderstorm. I do hope you plan on refilling it sometime soon."
"Yes, Bob," I said patiently. "It's an... anti-love potion."
"Anti-love?" Bob frowned, looking confused.
I nodded. "I don't want to fall in love with someone. I want the opposite to happen."
Bob's lips pursed, and man, I really needed to down the still-smoking potion before I got distracted.
"The opposite."
"Uh-huh, so if you don't mind?" I said, indicating the potion.
Bob looked from me to the potion, and back. "You aren't seriously thinking of drinking this, are you?"
I don't know how I did, but I managed to keep eye contact with him. Maybe it was because the situation was just that serious. "I don't have a choice, Bob."
Blue-green eyes narrowed at me. "There's always a choice, Harry. What exactly is the result you want after drinking this potion?"
I felt my cheeks get hot, pretty quick. "Well, I... uh, I need to kill a crush."
If Bob had been expecting for me to say something, that hadn't been it. Both of his eyebrows rose. "A crush?"
I nodded quickly, and then ducked my head so I didn't have to look him in the eye. "Yeah."
"You felt the need to sneak out of your room at one o'clock in the morning to brew a lethal combination of ingredients together, at least one of which should never have been used in the first place, because you have a crush on a girl?"
"Well, when you say it like that..." I muttered.
"Harry, I said that I would leave you to figure out this situation, but this isn't an acceptable answer," Bob said firmly, shaking his head.
"Bob, I can't keep doing this," I said in a rush. "I keep thinking about--" I stopped myself before I said anything else, and just shook my head. "I mean, you've noticed it."
Bob nodded. "Yes, I have. But is the situation really so dire that you felt the need to resort to brewing your own potion? Can't you tell her how you feel?"
I shook my head quickly, deliberately taking the pot off the fire and setting it down on a bare patch of the lab table to let it cool down. Maybe the smoke would start to clear in a little while. "It's... complicated."
"It's only as complicated as you make it," Bob said, sounding firm. "I assume she's in one of your classes?"
I gritted my teeth, feeling my face flush again. "Bob, it's not a girl."
There was a long, agonizing silence, and then a quiet, "Oh."
"Yeah," I gritted out, not turning around to see his face. "'Oh'."
I heard him clear his throat, and then he stood beside me. "Well... these are more enlightened times. You could... test the waters, perhaps?"
Okay, if I thought that Bob thinking it was a girl made me feel like a jerk, this was torture. "Bob, I like girls."
I could see his lips part, about to say something, and then he pursed them again as he thought. I felt my dick twitch a little, but I gave it a stern reprimand by way of accidentally inhaling some of the smoke that had drifted my way and coughing at the stench. Resting a hand on the table, I turned my head away to breathe in some good air before staring at the pot again.
"I can see why you'd have a problem," Bob said slowly. "But I must advise against using a potion to banish these unwanted feelings."
"And why's that, Bob?" I snapped. "What's the point of being able to use magic at all if I can't use it to stop feeling like this?"
"Harry, you're fifteen," Bob said firmly. "If you drink that, it would do more harm than good."
"It gets rid of the crush," I said, standing my ground. "That's what I want."
"And if your feelings of unrequited love turn to hatred?" Bob asked, a gray eyebrow lifting.
I frowned. "What do you mean?"
"There are no opposites when you're dealing with emotion, Harry," Bob said gently. "Emotions don't exist in a vacuum, especially when you're still undergoing adolescence. In order to create an 'anti-anything' potion, you have to replace the emotion you're targeting with another emotion, ideally something equally as strong. You can't banish feelings and leave only the absence of feeling."
I stared at the potion again. "So, if I drank this, I wouldn't be seeing him and not feeling the crush."
"Depending on how strongly you feel about this young man, you would see him and feel either mild distaste..." He eyed the potion, and now we could both see the floating bits of egg yolk more clearly. "... or perhaps bitter dislike, and that's if you were using adequate ingredients in the first place. I mean, really, Harry, rotten eggs?"
"I said I needed it for the smell component," I muttered.
"What did you use for the base?" He asked, frowning at the ingredients still on the table.
"Sour milk," I admitted, bracing myself.
Bob didn't disappoint. "Sour--!" He visibly stopped himself, closed his eyes, and inhaled slowly. "I shudder to think what else you decided to use."
I consulted the list in my notebook and read them off. "See? The rest of the ingredients were fresh."
Bob didn't answer immediately, and when I looked up at him, he was staring at me openly. "Harry, did you even think about what you were using?"
I knew the potion was crappy from the smoke, but he didn't have to be that harsh about it. "Yeah, I did, and that's why I used sour milk instead of lemon juice, since the sour milk would have a longer-lasting effect."
"As much as I would like to berate you over the use of a decayed ingredient over something fresh in the interests of longer duration, you've managed to stumble on a combination that wouldn't have evoked just one emotion but three, and that's if the potion weren't absolutely lethal in the first place."
I blinked.
Bob sighed. "Rose thorns evoke bitterness. The thunderstorm would have evoked the typical reactions to a thunderstorm -- instinctive fear being chief among them. The vinegar would have added an element of intense dislike. And last but not least, the nutmeg and the tears would have worked in conjunction to poison your soul and allow these emotions to ferment deep inside you. If you drank this, it would very well have damaged you in such a way that you'd never recover from."
If this had been a regular lesson, Bob would have made me research what each ingredient did instead of just giving me the answers like he just did, but then again, this wasn't a regular lesson. It was after one in the morning, and Bob's voice was sharp.
"What makes the combination lethal?" I knew I didn't want to ask, but it was a habit for me to poke at scabs. See just how bad it really was.
"Well, using two spoiled ingredients would have immediately led to disaster," Bob said, "and had you used fresh ingredients, the amount of nutmeg you used in conjunction with the vinegar and the lightning from the bottled storm would have created a dangerous spike in your magical energies. The first time you had attempted to use evocation, you would have exploded along with whatever task you were attempting."
I pulled out the stool from under the table and sank down into it, resting my elbows on the tabletop and resting my forehead in my hands. "So... I screwed up."
"I believe the term you like to use is 'royally', yes." Despite what he said, Bob found a way to say it gently.
I lifted my head out of my hands and eyed the pot again. Most of the smoke had cleared by now, but it still managed to look a sinister green-gray color. "Is there a way to brew something that would have the effect I'm going for, but not be lethal?"
Bob shook his head. "Magic isn't a cure-all, Harry. As I've said before, you're still maturing, and that means your emotions and your hormones are in a state of flux. Think of yourself as a clay tablet. At this stage in your life, any magic that you use to affect your emotions could cut so deeply into the clay that when you're fully-grown--"
"--my emotions will be messed up permanently." I finished. "I get it."
Bob nodded. "Good." He eyed the pot significantly. "You might want to wash that out before the potion sets. I imagine the milk and eggs acting together would make it very difficult to clean if it were left to harden."
I got up with a sigh, picked up the pot and dumped it down the sink that was kept in the lab for those occasions when a potion had to get pitched in a hurry. "I wasn't going to drink it, Bob."
"I know, but better to eliminate temptation altogether," he said, moving to stand next to me and cocking his head. "No matter how unappetizing it may appear."
I nodded, getting a Brillo pad and scrubbing the inside of the pot.
"So... now that you're unable to use magic to effect a solution," Bob said slowly, "do you have any other ideas for how to deal with this young man?"
"Could we... not talk about this?" I asked.
"Harry, you nearly drank a lethal potion in order to emotionally lobotomize yourself," Bob said, folding his arms across his chest. "While you didn't realize the full extent of what you were doing, you were about to take very drastic measures to be rid of these feelings. Personally, I'd feel better knowing that you had another idea before leaving you to your own devices again."
I set my teeth firmly, trying not to blush, and kept scrubbing.
"Now, I ask again, do you have any other ideas, or would you be open to suggestions?"
I sighed slowly through my nose. "I've got nothing. So, if you've got suggestions, fire away."
"Get to know him," he said simply.
I looked up at him, frowning. "What?"
"Get to know him," he repeated. "Part of having romantic feelings for someone is the lure of the unknown. If you come to learn that he's distasteful, that will be more effective than any potion you could brew."
"But I already know him," I said before I could stop myself. At Bob's curious look, I went back to scrubbing the pot vigorously. "We... talk a lot."
It wasn't a lie, really, even if I felt like my stomach was flipping over and rolling inside out.
"What is he like?" Bob asked.
This was going too far. Even if I could talk while my stomach was doing somersaults, I wouldn't have been able to look Bob in the eye. "Bob... I really don't want to talk about this."
Bob looked at me for a long moment, blue-green eyes steady on my face before he spoke. "Very well, but promise me you won't take such drastic measures again without consulting me first."
I nodded, my stomach now deciding to drop like a rock in my gut because Bob was still worried I'd pull something like this again. "I won't," I said softly. "I promise."
Bob nodded, and for a moment, it looked like he was going to turn into a mote of light and fizz back into his skull, but he stopped. "Love, in whatever form it comes in, is something that should be cherished. Tuck away your feelings close to your heart, if you must, but perhaps in time, things won't seem so hopeless."
I breathed in slowly, trying to remember that my throat really wasn't closing up on me. "Yeah, maybe."
Bob watched me for another moment, and then nodded. "Good night, Harry."
"Night, Bob," I managed.
And just like that, he disappeared in a puff of black smoke, the orange mote flying in a graceful arc before depositing itself in one of the skull's eye sockets.
As I turned back to the pot, I thought over what Bob had said, about cherishing love no matter what; tucking it away close to the heart instead of trying to use magic to make it go away. There wasn't so much love in my life, I thought to myself as I kept scrubbing, that I could really afford to throw it away.
So, there I stayed in the lab, concentrating on tucking my feelings for Bob into a tiny box, and placing it carefully on a mental shelf, ready to bring down and look at if I ever wanted to.
I scrubbed that pot until my fingers were red.
END
Did you like what you just read? Read the sequel, Vignette - The First Departure.