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A Potion Named Desire	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 10877 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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Chapter Two—Troubles and Doubts

            “Always a delight to see you, Madam.” Draco let just the tips of his fingers brush across the hand extended to him. Touching her more firmly than that wasn’t advisable. She might take offense at the slightest thing, or have decided to dust some rare poison—to which she would be immune, of course—on her skin today.

            Besides, Draco made it a personal policy never to be intimate with his creditors.

            “And a delight to see you as well, Draco.” Cordelia Nott’s mouth was a peculiar thing, Draco thought, and the standout feature of her face. Once it shut, it looked like a sweet, small curve, prone to pout, as innocent as the expression of a sleeping girl. It was only when it opened that one was able to see quite how many teeth she had. “I notice you walk unaccompanied.”

            Draco laughed, deliberately misunderstanding the allusion as he sat down in the chair across from her. A server was already approaching them. One never needed to signal the servers in the Antipodean Opaleye; they took their cues from the ways that their clients moved and spoke. “It’s been long years since someone tried to kill me for being the son of a Death Eater, Cordelia.”

            “And even longer since you had extra Galleons to spare, isn’t it?” Cordelia gave him a sympathetic smile.

            The server was upon them, so Draco’s answer was restricted to a short bow of his head and a confident ordering of the most expensive Firewhiskey concoction on the menu. Cordelia ordered a light meal for herself, some fabulously cooked chicken with half-a-dozen different spices. The man bowed and vanished more quickly and expertly than a house-elf. Draco leaned back and matched stares with Cordelia for a moment.

            He had wondered, before he arrived, why she had chosen to meet in the Antipodean Opaleye. He should have remembered how much she enjoyed seeing her victims squirm. He couldn’t respond as he liked, he couldn’t even make the slightest hint of a threat, without the owner appearing next to his table with apologetic politeness and asking him to leave.

            “It’s true,” he said, again misunderstanding the allusion, as he sipped his Firewhiskey and nodded to the hovering man to show it was good enough, “that the Ministry pounced most eagerly upon my father’s fortune when the war was done.”

            “Most eagerly,” Cordelia breathed, as if she had been there to witness it, instead of—Draco strained his memory briefly after what she’d been doing that year—in the Himalayas hunting yetis. “But that needn’t present any obstacle to a young wizard with sufficient determination and sufficient funds of his own.”

            Draco bit the corner of his lip savagely, but for such a short moment he was sure she didn’t notice. Then he sat back and tried to consider her with the cold eyes he needed to have, if he was to come out of this conversation retaining both his self-control and his position relative to Cordelia.

            His companion simply stared back at him, a faint smile haunting her mouth. She resembled Theodore Nott, his old schoolfellow, about as much as a unicorn resembled a draft-horse. Ten years older than Theodore, Mr. Nott’s daughter by his first wife, she had inherited a seemingly inexhaustible sum of money from an aunt when she was seventeen and promptly vanished from England and her father’s entanglements with the Dark Lord. She had the life that Draco always wished he could have had, the life he was entitled to.

            And he had borrowed money from her to start his own apothecary shop, and she was closing the net on him little by little.

            The server brought Cordelia’s meal. She bit into it with a little exclamation of satisfaction. The server actually lingered a moment to watch her, until he caught Draco’s eye and made himself scarce.

            Draco could understand the fascination, though. Cordelia wasn’t pretty in the way a girl like Daphne Greengrass had been, but she had a certain light that came to her features when she was enjoying herself which could trap men, and had. The rumors proclaimed at least ten lovers who had revolved about her, briefly, helplessly, before they finally spun away. The rumors also said that there were three more who had intended to marry her and defraud her of her money, in countries where respect for witches traveling alone was less than it was in Britain. Cordelia had learned to wield her claws and teeth of necessity.

            “Careful, Draco.” Cordelia didn’t look up from her meal, but there was undeniable pleasure in her voice. “Someone might think you’d come here accompanied by jewelry, if not Galleons.” She looked up then, and her dark eyes flashed at him before he could turn away.

            “How much money do you want?” He asked the question quietly, without the stinging humiliation she would have expected of him after being hauled out in public. It was the only way to make the game so distasteful to her that she wouldn’t continue it.

            “I think—“ There came the sound of a finger being tapped against a glass, but the server was already there to refill Cordelia’s glass of water. Cordelia gave him a smile that floated across her face like a cloud. Draco had never known her to drink alcohol. She turned back to face him. “I think it would be my reward simply to see your business and your reputation for creativity prosper, Draco,” she said. “Shall we say, I would like to see a new potion developed by the summer solstice? A truly new potion, mind, not a simple variation on the old ones. And then you could offer me a share in the market value of that potion, and we could call half your debt settled.”

            Draco’s hands clenched under the table, where she couldn’t see them—unless she’d cast spying charms on the table before he arrived, of course. He at once relaxed his fingers and nodded. “That will be acceptable.”

            Inside, of course, he wanted to spit and rage. Developing new potions was a vital part of his business, and one of the reasons that more pure-blood witches and wizards than just Cordelia had invested in his shop, but it took years. He could, perhaps, hurry one of the developing variations he had now along, to differentiate it sufficiently from the parent potion by June—only three months away—but it would be a hasty and a risky thing, and require him to close the shop and concentrate on just that. That would hardly permit him to earn the money he needed to eat and pay his other creditors back.

            On the other hand, he owed Cordelia twenty thousand Galleons. Forgiving ten thousand Galleons would be—well, quite special. He wondered what had brought this offer on, but could only think it was one of her freaks. She was the kind of person to take more pleasure in showing off a unique potion to her friends in other countries than in recovering all the money she’d spent. She always had more vaults where the first one came from.

            “That’s settled, then,” he said.

            “Excellent.” Cordelia bestowed another smile on him. “I always have said that you’re a young man of ambition and drive, Draco. Not at all like my poor, lazy brother. He and his wife have had a second stillborn child, did you hear?” Cordelia clucked her tongue. “And yet Theodore absolutely refuses to go to a Healer about the problem. He insists that the Notts can cure themselves.”

            Draco, who had chosen his own path of intensive labor, work, and borrowing money over his parents’ insistence that he settle down and have a family before he was thirty, bowed coldly to accept the compliment, and then sipped his whiskey again. It was really quite good.

*

            He returned to the shop by a winding route, just in case anybody was watching him and keeping track of his routine. He had creditors, but he also had people whom he’d thwarted more than once in battles over rare potions ingredients and by choosing others as clients over them. It never hurt to be too careful.

            His shop was concealed in a quiet little alcove not far from the place where Knockturn Alley began, but much cleaner than that filth-trap, thank God. The door itself looked as modest and inviting as the door of a cottage in Hogsmeade, but glittered with wards that could steal memories, Apparate intruders into Albania, and do other, less advertised nasty things. Draco laid his hand flat on it; a pointed tongue shot out of the wood and tasted his skin. The wards extended outwards in a shimmering curtain, encompassing him inside them, for the time it took to open the door; then they relapsed back to their previous position as he stepped inside.

            Since he wasn’t at home to clients today, Draco didn’t bother taking the wards down after him. He did take a moment to stand there and look around his shop, just breathing in the scents of saffron and fennel and feathers and dried dragons’ blood. This was his place, his, and no matter what price he had to pay, he would not let anyone take it away from him.

            The shop was brilliantly lit by two enchanted windows, one in the eastern wall and one in the western, that didn’t actually exist; Draco wanted to avoid the dimness apothecaries were notorious for, but saw no reason to leave gaps in his defenses. The shelves held finished potions in neat alphabetical order, sealed and corked in unbreakable vials so that no one could spill one, or “discreetly” extract small amounts, in the shop. Near the door were the barrels of ingredients. They looked like nothing special, but sharp wards coiled around them as well, and they were immune to Summoning Charms, Levitation Charms, and other means of removing their contents from a distance.

            Draco cast a brief glance of regret at the counter near the western window; he’d been tallying up his accounts when Cordelia’s owl arrived. But he wouldn’t get to return to the work now. He slipped across the shop to the door that wasn’t visible except to someone who already expected it to be there, and then climbed the staircase behind it to the second floor.

            Here were his living quarters—drawing room with more enchanted windows, loo, small kitchen, bedroom—and, most important of all, his lab. It had taken Draco more than a year after moving out of the Manor to realize he didn’t miss the expansive spaces of his ancestral home at all.

            But then, it had taken him that long, too, to realize how much he loved brewing. It wasn’t just a job to him, and it wasn’t just the only means he could think of to earn money when he realized how ruined his family really was; it was an art.

            Draco had once been gloomily convinced that everything he touched turned to dust. But potions came alive under his hand. They were the only things he could create. By now, he wouldn’t have returned to the Manor even if the Ministry had apologized, reversed themselves, and returned the Galleons they’d taken for reparations (and compensation for keeping his father free of Azkaban).

            He collapsed into the main chair of the drawing room and stared out the windows for a moment. They showed a sunny spring day, not too far from the reality. Draco closed his eyes and, despite himself, a tingle of excitement rose and brewed in his belly.

            Cordelia had asked the impossible of him.

            The seemingly impossible.

            If any brewer in Britain could create a new potion from scratch in three months, Draco was certain he would be the one to do so.

            Smirking, he was just about to rise from his seat and enter the lab when a loud tap sounded throughout the room. Curious, Draco turned to look at the one window that was real, but, from the outside, visible only to owls. The tap sounded again, and he realized a strange bird was fluttering there, a handsome great horned owl with its message firmly held in its beak. It caught its eye and ruffled the sharp feathers of its body, as much to ask him what he was doing sitting there when it had already reached its destination.

            Draco opened the window and let the owl into the room. It dropped the letter on his head and soared across the drawing room to alight on a perch he kept ready, with bowls of water and owl treats on the sides, and a self-cleaning carpet underneath it. Draco snorted. Evidently a reply was expected. Well, he would have to hope that its master was not as rude as his owl.

            Of course, if it was a request for a specially brewed potion on the morrow, as he thought it probably was—he recognized all his creditors’ owls—he would simply refuse it. He had Cordelia’s demand and the passion that always revived in him when he encountered a potions challenge to occupy him now.

            The handwriting on the envelope was unfamiliar. Draco frowned and cast several spells, but they revealed only a single sheet of paper in the envelope and no hexes. Draco shrugged and tore it open.

            He looked at the signature first.

            Harry Potter.

            And was that a sincerely above it?

            Draco actually staggered, and needed the support of the nearby wall to catch himself. Growling at the moment of weakness—no, no one had been here to see it, but he hadn’t always lived alone, and displaying bad habits in private could lead to displaying them in public—he read the letter from the beginning, determined not to miss a nuance of what it said. If Potter was playing a joke on Draco, after having no contact with him for seven years, he was going to be so sorry he would be crying apologies a decade later.

            Draco Malfoy:

            I believe you may have heard about the death of Ron Weasley ten months ago. Hermione Granger, his fiancée, is still depressed, and no ordinary potions or spells will help settle the grief in her soul. I do take a potion I believe might help her if it were modified—the potion removes the thing a person loathes most about himself—but I can’t modify it without help, and Hermione is in no condition to give me that help. I barely managed to brew the original with all her knowledge at my disposal.

            I would like to hire you to develop the potion, into one that might relieve Hermione of her depression. I can offer you working space and information if you need it, though I imagine you have your own lab. I can also travel and collect ingredients as necessary. My own work is light, done more for fun than necessity, and easily put aside. You can consult with Hermione on the days she’s feeling better, as long as you don’t press.

            In return for your time and effort, I offer you full control of the potion when it’s completed. Sell it as you like; claim credit for it as you like, which you will certainly deserve, as the end product will be more your work than mine. Send me back a reply with Athena, as soon as you reasonably can.

            Sincerely,

            Harry Potter.

            Draco’s first, ecstatic thought was that the fates loved him indeed, and his second that Potter was plotting with Cordelia to ruin him somehow. But then he thought of Potter’s precious purity and noble ideals, and snorted. He couldn’t believe the man would willingly associate himself with a Slytherin, let alone a member of a family he had reason to distrust for being Death Eaters.

            No, this offer was genuine. And the fates loved him.

            And he had no idea what potion Potter was talking about, which meant he would have a genuinely new potion to offer Cordelia.

            And if Potter already had a base to work from, that would make Draco’s task much easier than if he were starting with a collection of ingredients and a plan.

            As he sat down to write his reply, he wondered idly how long Granger had been depressed before Potter had condescended to write to him. Months, likely, or at least weeks. The stubborn git would have refused to come to Draco otherwise, he knew.

            Well. This way, they would both be in his debt. Potter showed no interest in claiming credit for the potion in any way—Gryffindor noblesse oblige again—but he would always know that Draco was the one who had done something he could not, and that Draco was the one who had saved his precious friend’s life.

            Draco would finally have won at something concerning Potter.

            He thought his letter was quite gracious, considering that.

*

            Harry read Malfoy’s letter over one more time, and sighed to himself. The git was rude, arrogant, condescending, self-absorbed, and entirely too delighted that Harry was asking him for help, but he would help. Harry told himself he could hold his temper around Malfoy and accept his direction in the matter of brewing the potion without complaint. It was certainly easier now than it would have been seven years ago, or even five.

            Now he just had to tell Hermione.

            She was feeling a bit better this afternoon, enough to move out of the bedroom and sit huddled in an afghan that had been a favorite of Susan’s on the couch, staring out the window at the gray-green March sky. Harry sat across from her, and waited until her attention came to him on its own. When it did, he swallowed at the look of blank despair in her eyes—better physically wasn’t better mentally—but pressed ahead.

            “I think I might have a way to change the potion I take so it can help you,” he said.

            She blinked, and the familiar look of worry stole over her face. “Harry, I know you’ve got used to brewing that now—“ she eyed him with the same disapproval as always “—but I really wouldn’t trust you to change it into anything else.” Then she flinched as if he’d slapped her and put a hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I should have—I shouldn’t have said that. You’ll think I’m not expressing confidence in you, and—“

            “Hermione.” Harry leaned across the gap between the couch and his chair and caught her hand. “You’re right. I wouldn’t trust myself, either. I still have to watch every step of my own potion-making after five years of doing it every month. But I’ve hired someone to help me.”

            Hermione’s eyes narrowed. “Who?”

            “Draco Malfoy.”

            He had expected an explosion, or maybe a storm of the tears Hermione found it harder and harder to control lately. He didn’t expect her mouth to fall open or for her to sit there in stunned silence.

            “He agreed to help,” Harry rushed into the gap, “because the potion challenges him, I think, and because we can use the potion I already have as a base, and probably because he wants to hold it over our heads whenever we meet in the future, and I know he called you names but that was a long time ago, and everyone says that he’s the best Potions-maker in Britain, more trustworthy than the ones in St. Mungo’s, even, and—“

            Hermione bent double at the waist, laughing. The laughter was a painful hacking sound, which caused Harry to cross over the gap between couch and chair and hold her, but it was amusement.

            “I’ll be all right with this, Harry,” Hermione whispered, when she’d finally recovered from her hilarity. “Just the fact that you went and asked Malfoy, of all people, for help—“ She giggled again, but managed to cut it off this time before it took over her voice. “Just think what Ron would have said!”

            It was the first time she had mentioned Ron without a gasp of soul-deep pain immediately afterwards. Harry closed his eyes and gave Malfoy a silent thanks. He was already doing Hermione good, and he wasn’t even in the same room.

            Not that he would tell Malfoy that, of course.

*

            Draco spent the first five minutes after he’d met Potter at the door of his flat trying to decide exactly how he’d changed.

            He didn’t bother to pay attention to the stiff, stumbling welcome Potter gave him, or the way he showed Draco around the flat, carefully neglecting the bedroom, where Granger probably was. He could predict what the boorish Gryffindor would say a year in advance. It was more important that he be able to tell exactly what kind of person Potter had changed into (Draco refused to use the word “matured”).

            It was the self-possession, Draco decided finally. Potter didn’t move as though the weight of the world was on his shoulders anymore, or as if he were constantly conscious of that stupid scar on his forehead and what the Prophet would say about it next. He gestured and talked like a normal person, like someone who found himself excessively ordinary. He had trouble meeting Draco’s eyes, but that was because of the history they shared, Draco thought, not because he hated the necessity of inviting Draco into his home.

            Harry Potter had made peace with himself.

            Oh, he was a Gryffindor, of course; his eyes still softened when he mentioned the dead friend and the depressed one, and he still found it necessary to assure Draco that he’d keep his word and give him full control of the potion when it was completed. But he carried his head as if he were used to looking the world in the face. His ridiculous hair no longer seemed so ridiculous. His eyes were calm and strikingly green behind glasses that no longer wore the cracks and Spellotape of constant repair.

            Draco could feel the contained energy in Potter. He wished he had an excuse for provoking it, so he could see it come out.

            But he didn’t have an excuse, so he just nodded and said, “Hmm,” in the right places, and then asked if he could see the potion Potter intended him to use as a base.

            Potter nodded and vanished into the loo, reemerging with a vial full of a thick green liquid, which he tossed to Draco. Draco caught and uncorked it, sniffing delicately.

            His senses sharpened. He had thought Potter was exaggerating in his letter, and probably possessed some less common potion Draco would still recognize; those thoughts had come to him after the initial exultant ones, because Potter’s offer was just too spectacular a piece of good luck. But the smell was completely unfamiliar. Magic had been involved in the creation of the potion, he thought, separate spells for each ingredient.

            “Where did you get this?” he demanded, raising his eyes to Potter’s.

            Looking back on it later, that was the moment that really got him involved. That was the moment that pulled him into Potter’s dilemma with the full-blown passion of an artist, and overpowered his reluctance and disdain.

            He was going to duplicate this. What’s more, he was going to make it better.

            He was Draco Malfoy, best Potions-maker in Britain. It was what he did.

*

            Graballz: Yep, I did mean Hermione and Harry in the summary. Thanks for catching the mistake!

            You’ll find out what Harry’s potion does in the last chapter of this story.

            Merry Christmas to you, too!

            Roozette: Hermione helped Harry brew the potion. She’s too distressed to help him modify it right now.

            Paigeey07: Thanks for reviewing!

            Arealdeal: Thank you. I certainly hope to hold interest, seeing as this is the first part of a trilogy.
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A Potion Named Desire

Chapter Two—Troubles and Doubts