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Because Potter Is Allergic to Poppies	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 9586 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I am not making any money from this story.

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Chapter Three—Visions and Voices

            “Malfoy,” a voice whispered to the side of him as Draco was leaving one of the few classes he was still allowed to attend, Advanced Curse Detection. “I found something out.”

            Draco turned at once and went down another corridor without looking around. He knew the voice, and he trusted the boy enough to think he didn’t need instructions to follow.

            Sure enough, when he reached an empty room and turned around, Sabian was right behind him. He grinned at Draco and shut the door carefully behind them. “I found something out,” he repeated.

            “What is it?” Draco deliberately made his voice authoritative. He wanted to encourage Sabian, but not in disrespect. It was fine for Sabian to address him without title—too many people had made a mockery of “Apprentice Healer Malfoy” for Draco to value the words—but the level of familiarity between them should be limited. Draco thought it would redound to Sabian’s benefit in the end, if he could think of himself as part of something greater and larger than a pair of conspiring Apprentice Healers.

            His theory seemed correct, because Sabian’s chest puffed out and he took a deep breath before he said, “I found this near Healer Mallow’s Potions cupboard when I went to tidy up.” He held out a piece of parchment.

            Draco took it and scanned it. It was a list of potion names, with the Stone Response potion among them. And then his heart leaped, because near the end of the list was the name of the Wilder’s Growth potion, the one that had almost poisoned Potter.

            “Do you recognize the handwriting?” he asked, turning the list around so that Sabian could see it. “I don’t.”

            Sabian shook his head. “I know it isn’t Healer Mallow’s, but that’s all. I don’t think it belongs to Healer Okono-Jones, either,” he added, with a certain ruefulness that probably indicated Okono-Jones had written copious comments on his essays. “And—is it evidence? Maybe it was just a list of potions that someone ordered for Healer Mallow or something.”

            “Of course it’s important,” Draco said. “If nothing else, it proves that the potion you were supposed to get and the one that someone switched around on you were part of the same order. We might find someone who knows who had access to the potions.”

            Sabian brightened up. “Yes, we might!”

            Draco added a few more words of pleasure and praise, and then sent Sabian on his way. He floated out of the empty room as if he were walking on air, and Draco, watching from behind the half-shut door, was pleased to see Sabian glare at a few journeymagi who passed through the corridor at that moment and tried to force him out of the way with the usual absent-minded contempt that journeymagi showed Apprentice Healers. They looked offended, but Sabian just kept floating.

            Draco chuckled. His smile faded when he glanced at the list of potions, though.

            He had been assigned to Healer Mallow when he first entered the program, and he had cleaned the Healer’s office and around the Potions cupboard more than once. He’d practically had to create chores for himself, because Mallow was so scrupulously clean. There was no way that a piece of parchment like this would have been left lying about long enough for an Apprentice Healer to find, unless Mallow had left a few minutes before and dropped it on the way, and Draco knew he would have missed it soon and sent another apprentice to fetch it.

            Draco was suspicious of clues that had a tendency to appear on their own.

            But it would do no harm to find out whose handwriting it was, and who had ordered the Wilder’s Growth potion, which was less common than the Stone Response. Draco tucked the parchment into his pocket.

*

            “You’ve got Malfoy helping you, mate? Are you bloody mental?”

            Draco paused inside the door to Potter’s room and rolled his eyes. He ought to have known this would happen the moment Potter suggested bringing Weasley into the case. He schooled himself to keep his temper—if Potter had changed and Draco could speak with him civilly, he should be able to do it with Weasley, too—and pushed inside.

            “Good morning, Weasley, Potter,” he said evenly, and ignored the way Weasley swung around and stared at him. At least the prat couldn’t have a wand at this point in hospital; wands were taken off visitors as a matter of course. “I have your wand, Potter.” He held it up and tossed it to him across the room when Potter reached eagerly for it.

            “You helped him get that?” Weasley asked, while Potter turned the wand around in his hands. Draco realized that he was watching Potter do that too intently and looked away, flushing. Why should the sight of Potter’s hands on the smooth dark wood bother him? He knew Potter wouldn’t cast a curse at him. “What are you playing at, Malfoy?”

            “I’m playing at nothing,” Draco said, with dignity that would have done Mallow proud. “I’m being a Healer.” He turned to Potter. “How much does he know?”

            Potter glanced up from the wand. “You can speak in front of Ron the way you would in front of me, Malfoy,” he said formally. “I’d trust him with my life.”

            Weasley gave Potter a pleased, foolish grin. Draco ignored the sudden stab of jealousy that felt like a needle entering his heart. “I simply wanted to know so that I wouldn’t repeat things,” he said. “But when I tested this morning, the Merlin’s Tears were still in your food, Potter. I’ve removed every trace of the poison.”

            “Poison?” Weasley shot out from around the bed. “Why the bleeding hell didn’t you take the food away and give him another meal, Malfoy?”

            Draco sighed. “For a number of obvious practical reasons, Weasley,” he said. “If I took the food back, they’d want to know what’s wrong with it, and we’d alert our would-be murderer. I can’t simply exchange it for someone else’s because the shortage of food for another patient would be noticed. The Healers keep track of such things. None of this has been easy, and finding the solution to the mystery won’t be, either,” He stared at Weasley. “Do you need that explained in smaller words?”

            Potter reached out and laid his hand on Draco’s, though he could only keep it there for a minute before his weakness knocked it off. But he immediately replaced it, shaking his head. “Please try not to insult him.”

            “Of course,” Draco said, maintaining a properly sarcastic tone even though he was struggling against his shock that Potter would touch him and use the word “please.” “The minute he stops threatening me.”

            Potter turned his head. Draco couldn’t make out the expression in his eyes, but he said, “Ron,” in a voice that made Draco lick his lips.

            Weasley glared at Draco for a moment more, then sighed heavily and turned away to kick the bed. Draco hissed at him, because that meant Potter shook and his breath whistled through his lungs. But Weasley didn’t notice. Draco was rapidly becoming of the opinion that Weasley wasn’t going to notice anything smaller than an eclipse. “Fine. I’m sorry.” Then he slanted a look at Potter. “But remember what happened the last time you trusted too readily.”

            “I was thinking of what happened the last time I tried to give too much information to you, actually,” Potter said.

            Weasley flushed, for some reason. Draco could feel his curiosity to know what they were talking about aching in him, but he would have to subdue it for the moment. He turned to Potter instead. “What else can you tell me about this murderer, his goals and methods? Anything we can figure out might help me to eliminate certain clues.” He remembered the parchment Sabian had found then, and took it out of his pocket. “Like this one.”

            Weasley snatched it before Potter could, stared at it, and then frowned. “This just looks like a list of potions names.” Once again, he gifted Draco with a suspicious look. “Where did you get this, Malfoy? Why did you think it’s important?”

            “Let me see,” Potter said imperiously, and took it from Weasley’s hand. He narrowed his eyes as he scanned it, and then glanced up at Draco. “Where did you find this?”

            “My assistant found it,” Draco said, glad that Potter knew what he was talking about. He didn’t want to mention Sabian’s name in front of Weasley unless he absolutely had to. “In Healer Mallow’s room, near the Potions cupboard.”

            Potter closed his eyes. “And it proves that someone did order the potions.” He tapped his fingers against the line that marked the Wilder’s Growth potion. “Does that mean we could trace this one after all, instead of assuming that my murderer brewed it?”

            Draco shrugged helplessly. “Not really. This list doesn’t tell us who brewed it, after all, or where the order came from. And if Mallow or another Healer commissioned it from someone in-hospital, that still doesn’t tell us a lot. It could have been ordered for a totally legitimate reason. What I think we should focus on is Sabian’s journey from Healer Mallow’s office to your room, and how he started out with one potion but ended up with the other.”

            “Sabian’s the boy you told me about?” Weasley asked, pointedly addressing his remark only to Potter.

            “Talk to Malfoy, too, Ron,” Potter said without opening his eyes. “He’s helped me a lot on this case.”

            Weasley turned the color of a brick. “The boy’s testimony doesn’t seem that reliable,” he said stubbornly. “He was under a lot of stress. He could have mistaken one potion for another under the stress.”

            “Healer Mallow doesn’t retain apprentices who do that,” Draco said. He was smug to watch Weasley open his mouth to try to refute that, and then close it again in frustration, realizing belatedly that it was a matter he knew nothing about. “No, I trust Sabian. The potions look too different, among other things.”

            “Maybe he’s the murderer,” Weasley said hopefully.

            “Not possible.” Potter opened his eyes and sat up. He was speaking to Draco for the most part, Draco saw, with a shiver of pleasure that he didn’t try to hide. He was the only one who would know for certain what he was feeling. “My murderer is someone who knows enough magic that he could easily get a job anywhere; he wouldn’t have to go undercover as an Apprentice Healer. And Sabian has been here for some time, hasn’t he, Malfoy? He didn’t suddenly show up the day after I came here.”

            Draco nodded. “Yes, he’s been an apprentice for at least three months.”

            “The first murder attempt was six months ago.” Potter began to count it off on his fingers. “First, double Cruciatus Curses thrown at me during a raid, and it turned out later that none of the Dark wizards we captured had used that curse when we cast Priori Incantatem on their wands. Then, two poisons—one of them meant to weaken my heart, the other actually stop it—slipped into my soup at a restaurant. The servers had been Confunded and couldn’t remember anything. Then two different kinds of poisonous snakes were slid under my wards, which aren’t meant to stop snakes.”

            “Why not?” Draco demanded, appalled. It sounded as though Potter was seriously in danger of dying every moment he breathed. “I would have wards against animals around my house.”

            Potter glanced at him and smiled for the first time in this discussion. “I don’t bother having those wards because I retain my Parseltongue, and I can speak to snakes. I’m sure my murderer didn’t know that, which eliminates him from being among the people close to me.

            “But two is his mark, two of everything doubled so that there’s a second line of defense. The two curses cast on me during the battle fit that, and so does the potion, which would have poisoned me because of my allergy even if it hadn’t interacted negatively with the curse.” Potter shook his head. “I have to admire him. He’s clever, he’s skilled, and he’s ruthless. And I still don’t have any idea why, in particular, he’d want to kill me.”

            Draco swallowed. He’d thought he was pretty courageous staying in hospital and resisting the taunts of the people who wanted to drive him away. It sounded as though an entirely different kind of courage—one Potter didn’t even call by that name—was needed merely to live Potter’s life.

            Then he frowned and started to speak, but Weasley was already talking, and of course one had to defer to the Almighty Possessor of Red Hair, Draco thought. “What about that evidence we discovered at the scene where you were cursed, mate?”

            Potter snorted. “We have no evidence that that’s evidence, Ron. One chip of wood that might have come from a wand, or from a chair, or from a table. It’s more than we had before, but no one has managed to trace any magical signature to it, have they?”

            Looking dejected, Weasley shook his head.

            “Excuse me,” Draco said, a little gratified at the way Weasley promptly snapped his head around and scowled at him. “But if your enemy strikes in twos, then where’s the second component in your food? You’ve received Merlin’s Tears, but that’s only one poison. Where’s his second line of attack?”

            Potter’s face contorted, and he swept his wand from side to side in a swift series of jagged motions that Draco’s eyes couldn’t keep up with. Two small, red embers of light blazed to life in his stomach and his chest. Potter looked up at Draco. “Can you tell me what this means?”

            “If you can tell me what spell you used,” Draco said, moving closer to Potter. His heart was pounding furiously; he had a sick headache. This was obviously going to be one of his first real tests as a Healer, but he could have wished that it was easier.

            “A spell that would detect any sleeper substances in my body,” Potter said. His voice was tight, but he must have caught Draco’s eye and understood his confusion, because he smiled and managed to make it look natural. “Sleeper substance is the term we use for anything that’s innocent until you introduce a catalyst. A base that won’t become poisonous until another ingredient is swallowed, for example.”

            Draco nodded in recognition. “We call them latecomers in potions theory.” He poised his wand above Potter’s chest and the nearest dot of light, while thinking furiously. The latecomer would have to be something that passed unnoticed in Potter’s food so far, and yet didn’t interact with the Merlin’s Tears. The killer would probably have wanted to keep his poisons separate.

            Luckily for Draco, there were a limited number of substances like that, and when he murmured the charm that would delve into Potter’s body and give him an image of the other man’s internal organs, he already knew what he was looking for.

            The images bounced back to him, bright, irradiated pictures of Potter’s stomach lining and lungs that glowed on the backs of his eyelids. Draco smiled grimly. The learning of this spell always resulted in a few apprentices leaving the Healer program. If they couldn’t stand to see what their patients looked like inside, they couldn’t stay.

            Yes. Draco exhaled. The stomach and the lungs were both full of large, black grains like tumbled pieces of coal. They weren’t rough or irritating, so Potter had swallowed them without trouble, but the minute they came into contact with fresh fruit, they would flare and transmute into a poison called Peleus’s Revenge.

Draco lowered his wand and glanced at Potter. To his surprise, Potter was looking at him intently but without fear, as if he thought that Draco would hand him some answer to the problem that would make it possible to solve this crime.

“He gave you the base of Peleus’s Revenge,” Draco said. “Nasty stuff. It turns the organs it lands in, usually the lungs and the stomach, into mincemeat.”

Potter accepted that with no more than a blink, although Weasley blanched. “In my food?” Potter asked quietly.

            Draco nodded, and then glanced at the tray he’d brought in for Potter. There were apples on it, though he didn’t think the murderer had counted on that. The hospital liked to serve its patients fruit regularly, and sooner or later, the right catalyst for the poison would have come along and Potter would have died in screaming agony.

            “When you ate the apples,” he said, “then you would have died.”

            “It seems I owe you for saving my life yet again,” Potter said, and extended his hand. Draco clasped it, not sure what Potter was looking for, thanks or reassurance, and found out as Potter’s hand clamped down on his, shaking like dandelion fluff in the wind. Potter was fighting it as hard as he could, probably because he didn’t want to show it in front of Weasley, but he was frightened.

            “Perhaps you do,” Draco said, and summoned his most arrogant smile. “You should be thinking about how you’ll fulfill my life-debts, when I claim them.”

            Potter laughed at that, and released his hand. “What do I have to do to get rid of this poison, or the base of the poison, or whatever it is that’s actually inside me?”

            “Drink a lot of water today,” Draco said, “and eat only meat and bread. That’ll help to flush it out. And believe it or not, your murderer has made a mistake.” He felt flushed and breathless, as though he had spent the amount of time chasing the murderer around that Potter and Weasley had.

            Well, it’s understandable, he decided, after a moment of confusion. I managed to outwit him, and he probably never anticipated that. He wouldn’t have used something so easy to trace if he thought there was a chance anyone would spot it.

            “What’s that?” Weasley looked something other than nauseated for the first time. Draco gave him a scornful glance and wondered how he’d dealt with threats to his best friend’s life in the past, if he could barely stand this.

            “The base for Peleus’s Revenge is rare and difficult to get,” Draco said. “You can only make it from the roasted cores of flowers that have been touched by a phoenix’s tail feathers. We’ll be able to track it down more easily than we can the Wilder’s Growth potion.”

            “It could still have come from almost anywhere in hospital,” Potter murmured—not to be difficult, Draco thought, but because he wanted to point out all the obstacles so that they would understand the extent of the problem.

            Draco nodded to him. “Yes, but in this case, I have contacts among the suppliers themselves.” He was grinning like a shark, he realized, and he didn’t care. “You’re lucky you came to me, Potter.”

            “I know.”

            Potter’s voice was soft, and his eyes waiting for Draco when Draco glanced towards him. Draco turned away swiftly. There was a depth of emotion in Potter’s face that he wasn’t ready to confront or think about yet.

            And might not ever be.

*

            The letter that Draco sent to his parents described the situation in enough detail that he didn’t think he’d need to send a second. His contacts among brewers and apothecaries were, technically, Lucius’s contacts, but that had never mattered before.

            His father sent an owl back to him, however, who arrived, weary and bedraggled and with ice on its wings, the evening after Draco let him know what he needed. Draco permitted the owl to stand on a perch near the fire and stroked its head while he read the letter through.

            My son,

            Are you sure that you know what you’re doing? Whenever the Potter boy has been involved, things have gone very poorly for our family. I understand that he might have promised you his favor since you saved his life, but Potter has a limited amount of influence with those outside the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and his status fades with every year that passes since the war. I would see you consider your own advantage first, before you give in to romantic fantasies about what might happen if you manage to aid the Chosen One.

            Draco sat there for a few minutes, quite still, his fingers resting on the crease of the paper. Was his father right? It was true that Draco couldn’t really explain his deep urge to help Potter. He might get advancement out of this, but Potter wouldn’t be able to force the whole hospital hierarchy into liking Draco.

            On the other hand, a bit of manipulation, or simply asking Potter baldly to fulfill one of the life-debts, would ensure that Potter would do all he could do. Draco had heard of Healers attached to Auror Departments. It might be possible for him to become one of those.

            He wrote back to his father on the last of his best parchment, trying to keep his writing steady and neat so that Lucius wouldn’t suspect his hand to be shaking with emotion or anything of the kind. His father had a tendency to diagnose his feelings more from the ink blots and stains on the paper rather than the actual words.

            Dear Father,

            I’m keeping the limitation of Potter’s position in mind. It’s true that he might not be able to coerce Healer Mallow or the rest into respecting me.

            But if no one will give me what I want even after I save the Chosen One’s life and increase the reputation of St. Mungo’s—which would be severely affected if Potter had died—then I’m inclined to ask Potter to find me a position with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and take my chances. Yes, I’ve fought long and hard not to leave St. Mungo’s and the Healers’ program. But there’s a difference between facing one’s enemies and butting one’s head against a brick wall. Going with Potter, no matter how it makes me look to the outside world, will ultimately be more productive than running against the wall many times.

            Draco read his words carefully and was satisfied. When he looked at the owl, though, it practically cowered and looked at him with big eyes more suited to a dog.

            Draco sighed. “Fine, you can wait until the morning to carry it,” he said graciously, and wondered what Potter would think of that. Would he be surprised by the sight of such compassion in a former Slytherin and a former enemy? Or would he laugh because Draco had given in to the wordless plea of an animal that had to do as he told it?

            Then Draco rolled his eyes. Why am I thinking of what Potter would think, anyway? It would be much more to the point if I started making a list of the clues that we have so far and trying to narrow down the murderer’s name from that.

            He sealed his letter, laid it aside, and then found ink and a new piece of parchment. He determined that he would put down only facts first, and then information he was almost certain was factual, followed by speculation. Everything Weasley said would fit into that last category, he thought with a smile.

            Facts.

One. The murderer has been trying to kill Potter for some time. This isn’t the result of a sudden grudge or an impulsive decision.

Two. The murderer has good knowledge of Potter’s allergies, assuming that the use of the Wilder’s Growth potion was indeed a murder attempt and not a mistake. It seems to be, since it fits the murderer’s pattern so well, which is:

Three. He always uses two lines of attack, both meant to reinforce the other. One may be slightly more obvious than the rest, since the effect of Merlin’s Tears was visible while the Peleus’s Revenge was unnoticeable, but we can’t count on that (should go under “Speculation”).

Four. The murderer can take advantage of sudden chances and new opportunities, although he isn’t someone who chose to persecute Potter out of the blue. Otherwise, there’s no way to explain how he chose to substitute the Wilder’s Growth potion for the Stone Response potion.

Five. The murderer has a good sense of the hospital’s routine and what can and can’t be altered, what will and will not be noticed.

Six. The murderer must have powerful and versatile magic if he’s cast all these spells, including whatever spells put the Wilder’s Growth potion in Mallow’s hand, himself. Among the spells that we know he’s cast: the Marble Walking curse, the curse that scarred Potter’s face, the Cruciatus Curse, the spells that either conjured or tamed the serpents. He may have an accomplice or accomplices, but put that under “Speculation.”

            Seven. He tries again when one method fails, and probably counts on killing Potter by sheer persistence.

            Draco paused and thought, but that was all he could definitely say. He had no idea what the murderer’s motive would be, and no idea how he had managed to get into hospital if he didn’t actually work there himself.

            But one thing he thought he could say, Draco decided, looking down the list with slow, clear eyes. This was no Apprentice Healer, although he might have apprentices working for him. This was someone who had years of capable magic and Healer’s experience behind him. They should look for him among the Healers—

            And there Draco’s certainty faltered. The hospital did have wards on it, mostly to detect the kind of dangerous magic patients might use, but the wards would also flicker into life and sound the alarm if any Healer was using it. How could someone who’d cast Unforgivables have come back to St. Mungo’s and slipped noiselessly, unremarked, into the routine? The wards should have detected the spells on his wand.

            There’s so much that we don’t know.

            Draco gnawed on his lip some more, then shook his head and began his list of speculative facts. He would have to hope that Weasley and Potter could add more to it, or they would continue working blindly.

*

            Draco cast a Finite over the small, passive spell that he’d left on Potter’s doorframe, and stood silently for a moment while the visions it had trapped flooded his head. He was looking for someone he could blame for the murder—ideally, someone who had come in carrying a bloody knife and given Potter a look of insane hatred.

            Of course there was nothing like that. There were the ordinary Healers and Apprentice Healers who had passed Potter’s room during the day, including Sabian, Varden, Mallow, and Okono-Jones. There were a few people who earned their keep in hospital doing tasks, such as mopping the floors, that the Healers hadn’t got around to assigning Draco yet. There had been visitors who went to the rooms down the corridor with no more than a few curious glances at the door behind which the famous Harry Potter lay. And there was Weasley, of course.

            Draco sighed. No one except Weasley and he himself had actually gone into the room. Of course, the murderer had favored methods that would let him kill from a distance so far, except the curses cast on Potter during scenes of confusion when no one could say for certain who he was. Draco didn’t know why he had expected him to suddenly change his mind.

            He opened the door, and then paused as something occurred to him. He would have to ask Potter about it.

            Potter looked up at him from the pillow and nodded. His wand was in his hand, Draco could tell by the slight ridge under the blankets, but no one would notice that if they didn’t already know what they were looking for. “Hullo, Malfoy.”

            Draco made sure the door was shut all the way behind him before he spoke. “Potter,” he said quietly. “Did Weasley come in here twice yesterday?”

            Potter narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

            “Answer the question, first,” Draco said, and slanted a glance at the door, wondering what would happen if he raised a privacy ward around it. There were spells in hospital that would react to most wards unless they were cast by a licensed Healer, or so he’d been told. But he’d seen other Apprentice Healers get away with this kind of thing in the past. Cautiously, he cast. The ward shimmered into place around the door with no problems.

            “No,” Potter said. “Only once. Why?”

            Very insistent, Draco thought wryly. I wonder if he doesn’t trust me as much as he says he does, or whether he has to know everything, now, the instant it happens, so that he can make his own decision. “I saw him passing the door twice,” he said.

            Potter stared at him blankly, so of course Draco had to explain about the spell’s nature. He was doubly glad that he had raised the privacy ward now, since he wouldn’t want anything getting out about that spell.

            Potter had a grim look by the time he finished. “No,” he said. “Someone could have cast a glamour to make himself look like Ron, or brewed Polyjuice, but I’ll swear that Ron himself didn’t come back, even during the times that I slept yesterday. I left spells that would have alerted me.”

            Draco nodded, thinking he understood now why Potter had been awake every time he walked in. “Perhaps he thought he couldn’t fool you well enough.”

            “I’m surprised that he didn’t take the risk anyway.” Potter’s hand clenched into a fist next to his hip. “He’s been daring enough for everything else.”

            “Try to think, then,” Draco said quietly, and handed over the list of certain facts he’d made. “Do you know anyone who might fit this profile? Anyone who might have a grudge against you that would correlate with everything else? Anyone you arrested or nearly arrested in the past who could have the wits to carry out a plan like this?”

            “We can eliminate most of the people in Azkaban,” Potter murmured, his eyes distant. “We can also eliminate the ones being held by the Ministry now. They could coordinate something like this, sure, or some of them could, but I find it hard to imagine that they would hire equally skilled proxies.”

            Draco sighed. “I was hoping that you could chop it down further than that. Any rivals in the Auror Department? Anyone who publically swore revenge? Anyone who escaped your clutches and might be behind several crimes?”

            Potter shook his head, frowning. “Ron and I tried to make a list like that. We ended up with nothing. Every single name belongs to someone who was pathetic and stupid, not someone who could actually make plans like this.”

            “Or someone who wanted you to think that he was pathetic and stupid,” Draco said, ever anxious to help.

            Potter shot him an annoyed glance. “If we have to start thinking like that, then the list of suspects is never going to end.”

            “Well, our other choice is someone so clever and careful that you never would have suspected him at all, because you’ve never heard of him,” Draco said. “Someone whose motive you don’t know. I can hardly imagine that that would be more inspiring to work with.”

            Potter barked a laugh. “You sound like Kingsley.”

            “In what way?” Draco demanded. He wasn’t sure whether he should be flattered or not to be compared to the man who had been Minister of Magic for one year and was now Head Auror. It might mean that he wasn’t strong and ambitious enough to keep his job.

            Potter rolled his eyes. “Come off it, Malfoy. I only meant that Kingsley points out the limitations of my thinking with undue harshness, and you do the same thing.” He paused and glanced at Draco speculatively. “Not that I should really expect you to be much different, with our pasts.”

            Draco shook his head. “We’re more than our pasts, or you would never have trusted me in the first place. What does make you trust me, by the way? Weasley seemed to be referring to some specific incident yesterday.”

            Potter looked thoughtful, and drummed his hand on the blanket in what Draco thought was merely a repetitive motion to fill up his thoughts, rather than a signal of something important. He wondered what Healer Mallow would say to the news that Draco was learning to read his patients so well.

            Then Potter murmured, in an undertone that seemed to suggest he didn’t trust Draco’s protective spells or his own, “Something happened last year that convinced me not to take my first impressions at face value. In this case, those impressions would be the ones that told me you hadn’t changed and were still the sneering little schoolboy I knew.”

            Draco tried to decide whether he was more offended by “sneering little schoolboy” or more interested in hearing Potter’s story. The interest won out, if barely. He gave a nod and a brittle smile and settled in to listen.

            Potter shot him a quick look from under frowning brows, seemed to decide that he wasn’t going to get out of telling the tale, and sighed himself into compliance. “We had a man come to us and tell us that his wife had vanished and he didn’t know where she’d gone. But he was getting taunting letters, ones with weird, dark hints about how and why his wife might have been taken. It was—a hard case. I read the letters. They were more than odd, they were horrifying.” Potter wiped his mouth as if he was wiping off remembered vomit. Draco had seen other patients use that gesture when they were fresh off the cure for a Mucus-Vomiting Curse.

            “We worked ourselves to death trying to figure out who had sent them, and how they’d arrived. They didn’t come by owl, you know. They would simply appear on the table or the chair he was sitting at or a convenient other piece of furniture. I saw one materialize into being when I was guarding the husband in my office. No known magic could do that, and we investigated house-elves and unicorns and other magical creatures, too. It seemed hopeless. The man was being driven mad by the letters, and we didn’t want to think of what the wife was going through.”

            Potter looked at Draco and sighed. “I identified with him, you see. I haven’t—haven’t really lost someone I loved like that, but I could imagine it. And the terror every time a new letter arrived, and trying to work out what the person sending them might have meant by this convoluted phrase or that, was impossible to live through.”

            “I’m impressed that you know a word like ‘convoluted,’” Draco murmured, trying in vain to lighten the atmosphere.

            Potter only shook his head, refusing the admixture of comedy. “We were searching his house one more time, trying to figure out how someone could have kidnapped his wife, and we found a body. It was her.

            “But even with his knowledge of that, the letter still kept coming. They didn’t stop until we called in a necromancer on the case, mainly to try and contact the wife’s ghost, so that she could tell us who had killed her and where the letters were coming from.”

            Potter took a deep breath. “Her husband committed the murder. He wasn’t crazy. He thought he was justified because she hadn’t obeyed him. And then he thought the letters were coming from someone who had seen the murder and wanted to blackmail him. His ‘terror’ was guilt and rage. And I got fooled completely.”

            He pushed his fringe out of his eyes and stared at Draco. “Since then, I’ve tried not to judge by my first impressions.”

            He lapsed into silence. Draco cleared his throat. “Where were the letters coming from?”

            Potter smiled grimly. “His wife’s spirit was sending them. She wasn’t an ordinary ghost, like the ones that haunt Hogwarts, but a revenant, someone who comes back from the dead to avenge injustice. Of course nothing we could do would stop her. We tried her husband and put him in Azkaban for his crime, but he was mad inside the year. Ron disagrees with me, but it’s my personal opinion that she won’t let him die until he’s suffered as much as she did while she was still alive.”

            Draco grunted. “I hope that you’ve also had experiences which tell you that you can trust people.”

            Potter blinked and came back from whatever dark wasteland his mind was wandering. “Of course,” he said mildly. “I would let you know if I thought it was impossible to trust you. And I haven’t said that, have I?”

            Draco shook his head. “No, but the way you respond makes me wonder why you do trust me. You’ve said you have. I believe that you do. I just wish I knew why,” he added with a wistful tone in his voice that he didn’t think he would be completely able to hide or avoid. “The same way I wish I knew an answer to this mystery.”

            Potter didn’t ridicule him for comparing the identity of a murderer and the reason that he’d leaned on Draco. He studied him instead, until Draco cleared his throat and shuffled his feet, thinking there might be good things about the ways that the Healers tended to ignore him.

            “Do you have anyone who works in hospital that would know you?” he asked. “Anyone who might be hired by or working with your murderer? Who knows about your poppies allergy, for example?”

            “I’d like to tell you,” Potter murmured. “But I’m afraid the evidence is scanty. It was a matter of convenience, because you were the Healer tending me, and I knew you well enough that I didn’t think you hated me any longer. You probably would have refused to be my Healer if you hated me, and instead you were almost pathetically eager for it.”

            “Allright,” Draco snapped. “Feel free not to reveal any more details.”

            But Potter went on murmuring, paying no attention to him. “There was something else, though. You had a sense of familiarity about you. I felt comfortable with you in a way that I usually only am with Ron, Hermione, Neville, or someone else I’ve known since we were children. That must be it. I knew you at Hogwarts, and that combined with the convenience factor to make me reach out.”

            Draco coughed. Well. He had an answer, if not the one he’d expected. Of course, he had no idea what answer he’d expected anyway, so he had no reason for his vague disappointment. “Fine. Then—”

            “But there’s more still,” Potter continued. “I told you that I no longer trusted my first impressions, but I’ve had the chance for second, and third, and fourth impressions of you since I’ve been in hospital. You’re honestly concerned for me. You don’t flinch from tasks that I’d think you would find disgusting, like taking me to the loo or changing the sheets on a regular basis.”

            “All the Healers are trained to be unflinching about things like that,” Draco snapped. He was on the defensive and had no idea why. “You might as well trust anyone, including the person who’s probably trying to kill you.” He refused to give up his idea of Potter’s would-be killer being someone who was familiar with the routines of St. Mungo’s until he had to.

            Potter went on dreamily. “You’re fighting some kind of interior battle—that’s obvious from the way that your shoulders are always tense and your smiles always bitter—but you don’t let it spill out on me. You identified the poisons and gave up your own time to talk to me about them and what I could do to avoid them.”

            Draco rolled his eyes. “Just consider how it would look if the great Harry Potter died on my watch, and I’m sure that you’ll see why I was so insistent about that.”

            “I’ve considered that,” Potter said cheerfully. “I decided it’s an insufficient motive for your kindness.” He spread his hands. “I can’t give you satisfactory answers to all your questions, but the one that I can give? I trust you because you seem trustworthy.”

            There was a tone in his voice as he spoke, a deepness and a passion, that went, inconveniently, straight to Draco’s groin. He bit his lip and turned his head, taking deep breaths so that he could subdue his desire. He couldn’t react like this. It was just a tone in a voice, for God’s sake.

            “I’ll take that for now,” he said shortly. “In the meantime, try to think of anyone with Healing skills or Healer relatives who you might have angered. What is Weasley doing?”

            “Looking at the evidence from the outside,” Potter said. “In the Auror Department and at the scenes where I was cursed. Even near my house, though the snakes were sent through my wards weeks ago and I don’t think he’ll find anything.” He smiled at Draco. “I’ll consider your lists, thanks. You keep working on the apothecaries and on keeping me safe.”

            Draco nodded and then left the room. He was rattled and had to spend a few minutes wandering up and down the corridors before he could relax.

            Potter had given him honest answers to his questions. Draco found them inadequate and threatening at the same time.

            Potter ought to trust less if he wants to save his own life, he thought, and told himself that was why he was dissatisfied.

            It wasn’t. But he couldn’t explain the source of his dissatisfaction any more than Potter could explain the source of his trust.

*

            paigeey07: Well, I hope I haven’t overwhelmed you!

            pittwitch: Thanks! I’m afraid this chapter has not provided much more information.

            nn: If Sabian was from a Dark family, Draco would actually be more likely to know him.
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Because Potter Is Allergic to Poppies