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An Alchemical Discontent	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 10910 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- 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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Title: An Alchemical Discontent

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

Rating: PG-13, mostly for innuendo and some light sexual content.

Pairings: Harry/Draco preslash turning into slash, Draco/Daphne Greengrass.

Warnings: DH SPOILERS, ignores epilogue. Past character death.Profanity, violence, mentions of sex, WiP.

Summary: Sequel to APotion Named Desire. Draco and Harry start marketing the Desire potion—only to encounter opposition from Draco’s debtors, seductive Slytherin women, and politicians running for Minister. Then there are the personal issues between them to make things even more exciting.

Author’s Notes: This won’t make much sense without your having read the previous story. This is also the second story in a trilogy, so the whole story won’t be completed here. This is mostly about transitions—among other things, the transition from a private context into a wider political one, and the transition from an uneasy friendship between Harry and Draco into a potential romantic relationship. I expect An Alchemical Discontent to run about 18 or 20 chapters. Thanks to Silver_ariel on LJ for the title.

An Alchemical Discontent

Chapter One—Hello, Draco

            “And that’s everything?” Harry called. He was panting, leaning heavily against the door of the bedroom; he’d spent hours Levitating Hermione’s things from his flat to hers, and then rearranging them again and again as Hermione fussily decided that she had to have them just so. Because she wanted them in configurations that wouldn’t remind her too much of the home she’d shared with Ron, Harry was more than wiling to oblige, and it was certainly easier than carrying them about by hand would have been. But that much sustained magic took its toll. His throat ached.

            Hermione rapped the door behind him. Harry moved out of the way, and smiled when he saw the glass of water she was carrying. He gulped half of it, ignoring Hermione’s disgusted glance.

            “That’s it.” Hermione put her hands on her hips and stared around the bedroom once, then nodded. They’d bought a new bed, one that resembled the one in Harry’s flat she’d spent so many months resting in, but which was covered with much finer blankets in a delicate shade of blue. Hermione claimed to have been uncomfortable on Harry’s rough sheets. Harry didn’t see what difference it made. Beds were for collapsing and sleeping in.



            “It seems like so little,” Harry muttered, taking another drink of water. And it did, even after the hours of effort. Hermione’s presence in his flat had gathered a weight and significance he didn’t think she was even aware of. She would stay here now, and he’d go home to silent rooms where no one spoke, where no one cried, where Hermione didn’t need his help to struggle through the good and bad days of her depression since they’d lost Ron.

            It would be strange.

            Harry gave himself a little shake. He should be happier than this that Hermione had recovered so effectively, that the Desire potion—the potion he and Malfoy had brewed that would take away the thing the drinkers most loathed about themselves—had worked for her. He had suffered losses before, including Ron’s death and the loss of five girlfriends to other people, and he’d always got over them. In a few days, when he flung himself back into his business, the silence would probably come to seem the normal state of things, and he’d forget to return Hermione’s Floo calls, just like usual.

            “It’s not so little,” Hermione said ruefully. “Believe me, I’ve counted the total of the Galleons I spent.”



            “I would have been glad—“

            Hermione held up a stern hand, and Harry fell obediently silent. Among the things the Desire potion had returned to Hermione by removing her depression was a commanding presence that served her well in her Ministry job. If one was going to fight for changes in laws, one needed the ability to make other people listen.

            “I know that you don’t have that much left, Harry,” Hermione said quietly. “Your parents’ fortune was meant to get you through school, and the Black fortune—“

            Harry rolled his eyes and snorted. Sirius’s ancestors hadn’t been the most provident of people. The Firebolt Sirius had bought in Harry’s third year must have made a considerable dent in his savings. Harry could still live comfortably by selling the film he made for wizarding cameras and the various tricks and new spells he built into it, and he had a share in the profits of Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes if he wanted it, but the visions of a “Literally Golden Hero” that the Prophet conjured up remained that, visions.

            “Yes, well.” Hermione abruptly gave him a strained smile, and Harry realized she must be feeling the same strangeness between them that he was, now that they wouldn’t be constantly under each other’s feet. At the same time, she was probably eager to be alone. “I’ll see you soon, I’m certain.”



            “I’m going to Floo every day,” Harry said, and looked hard at her.

            Hermione didn’t even flush in embarrassment, much less stammer in anger the way he’d expected her to. She nodded solemnly. “That might be for the best,” she said. “I might have—“ And then she cut herself off again, with a little shrug. They both knew she might have died if Harry hadn’t come in to find her starving and too depressed to take care of herself last December. It was yet another time one of them had saved the other. The bond was deep enough, and the debts so numerous, that talking about it wasn’t necessary.

            Harry winced as he remembered that Hermione was the only person he shared that kind of bond with now. Ron was—gone.

            Well. All the more reason to take care of her.

            “Dinner in Diagon Alley in a few days?” he asked. “There’s a new restaurant that’s opened. I forget the name—“

            “Of course,” Hermione said in a stage whisper.

            “But I’ll look it up and Floo you.” Harry kissed her on the forehead and loped towards the door of the flat, waving over his shoulder.

            Hermione waved back, and then turned to readjust the blankets on her bed. It seemed Harry hadn’t managed to put them perfectly in place after all.

            Harry was on the street before the loneliness struck him again. He blinked hard and shook his head, telling himself that this was ridiculous. The only constant in his life since the war was change. He had come to accept that. His breakup with Ginny had been—bad, and she was the first person, other than Ron and Hermione, he had been sure he might spend forever with. Other women he dated he had fun with for a time, and then they fell in love with one of his friends and moved on. Harry found it better to accept everything philosophically, with a touch of humor, and much easier to do so than most people would have, because he was taking the potion they’d based the Desire potion on.

            He’d stop feeling lonely for Hermione and Malfoy—

            Malfoy?

            Harry clucked his tongue at himself and began to walk faster. That was when he knew he was nutters: when he started missing the man who was his brewing and business partner, but was also a temperamental artist, a sneaky and underhanded Slytherin, and the person who had forced a confession of why Harry had left Ginny out of him not a week ago.

            He’d stop in Diagon Alley and have a look at the name of that restaurant. Now that he had practice in keeping a low profile, he usually had ten or so minutes of freedom before people started to mob him.

            He Apparated to the wall by the Leaky Cauldron and was halfway down the main street when a touch of unease prickled the back of his mind and raised the hair on the nape of his neck. He kept his eyes fixed ahead and his stride easy and loose. Someone was watching him, perhaps? A celebrity had to be used to that. Perhaps the mob would arrive earlier than he’d thought.

            No, he thought as he cast a spell that sharpened his hearing and made out a set of footsteps timed to echo his. Someone was following him.

            That was a bit more serious. Harry’s mind went back to Charlemagne Diggory, the candidate for Minister in the upcoming election who had thought it worth his while to visit Harry personally.

            And he remembered, too, what Malfoy had said of Diggory’s connection to Cordelia Nott, one of Malfoy’s creditors.

            Such careful, skilled tailing in the wake of that was too much to be a coincidence. But the idea that the pursuer knew his destination was unlikely. Harry darted his eyes ahead, and made out the name of the restaurant he’d been aiming for with some satisfaction: the Garden of the Hesperides. He’d planned to ask about a reservation for a few nights hence, but that could wait.

            Instead, he turned abruptly and entered the Apothecary. He could hear the footsteps behind him falter for a moment. Either the man hadn’t expected that, or he felt some surge of excitement. Perhaps he thought Harry was buying ingredients for the Desire potion.

            Harry didn’t intend to. He was quite happy to leave all that up to Malfoy, who would carefully procure the highest quality flowers and scales and unicorn hoof shavings and whatever else they needed. He looked about for a moment, then made straight for a barrel of mixed snake skins.

            A red-haired witch had already appeared beside him, with such a friendly smile that it reminded Harry of Ginny’s. He felt a bit bad about the trick he was going to play on her, but throwing off his pursuer was important.

            “Yes, can I help you, Mr. Potter?” She might not mean to emphasize his name so much, but it made people turn around and stare anyway. Harry had already accepted that there was apparently no one else named Potter in the whole of wizarding Britain.

            “I want to know where you got these,” said Harry, and stuck his hand into the barrel of skins, pulling one, gray and black, out at random. Let his pursuer take notes. Let Nott and Diggory believe that he was interested in the welfare of snakes. It would make them chase shadows, and that was the best tactic Harry could come up with on the spur of the moment. “Were the snakes that provided them humanely treated?”

            The witch blinked and flicked her eyes to his forehead for a moment, as if she wanted to make sure this really was Harry Potter lecturing her on snakes. “Er,” she said. “We pride ourselves on the highest quality—“

            “Ingredients, yes, I know,” Harry said impatiently, and raised his voice. Let the Daily Prophet report the Savior of the Wizarding World having an unusual outburst in a shop. The more attention it received, the less the chance that Diggory and Nott would reckon his purpose rightly. “But that doesn’t mean you treat the creatures that provide them well. What is your record on the procurement of Demiguise hairs? When you provide bits of ground unicorn horn, did you take them kindly?”

            There. Most people knew he had a connection to Hermione Granger, and about Hermione’s passion for the fair treatment of magical creatures. Yet another shadow for Diggory and Nott to jump at.

            Harry was sorry to involve his friend in a political mess like this—she had never approved of the brewing of the Desire potion in the first place—but Diggory had already involved her; she was the excuse he had used to visit Harry. Better to steal a march now than just assume Diggory would leave her out of things.

            The witch fell back, flustered. “I’ll have to ask the shopkeeper,” she said. “I’m sure I never heard of any irregularities, Mr. Potter—“

            Harry sneered at her, and another twist in this scheme came to mind. “You haven’t heard,” he said. “And of course that means they haven’t happened. I’d much rather shop with a Potions maker I can be sure attends to every aspect of his business personally, instead of employing unknowledgeable assistants. I buy my potions with Draco Malfoy, I’ll have you know.” There. That should draw some positive attention to Draco’s shop; there would be new customers who came there simply because they wanted to buy Potions ingredients at the same place Harry Potter did, and now they would have a chance to hear about the Desire potion.

            The witch found courage from somewhere. Perhaps she had been a Gryffindor in Hogwarts, Harry thought approvingly. “I’m sure that he employs only the best, sir,” she said stiffly. “But his shop has been closed for the last several months.”

            “I happen to know it will be opening on Friday,” Harry said, which was indeed the day Malfoy had told him about, though they hadn’t planned on such a dramatic announcement of the fact. Malfoy had talked about taking out an ad in the Daily Prophet. But this would be cheaper and more effective. “I don’t know where you’ve been, not keeping track of the competition—“ And then he looked around the Apothecary, and snorted. “I’m answered.”

            As he spun on his heel and marched towards the door, he caught a glimpse of a young man who looked halfway familiar, with a pale face, dark eyes, and a physique like a string bean. Harry also noted a strange clasp on his cloak, a copper one in the shape of a rearing dragon. He was ducking out of the way, scrambling with too much haste, and his footsteps matched the cadence still playing in Harry’s ears.

            I’ll ask Malfoy about him, Harry decided. And inform him about Diggory and Nott’s probable response to my little diversion here.

            He Disapparated from the front stoop of the Apothecary with great dignity.

*

            Draco answered the door of his shop to Cordelia Nott and Charlemagne Diggory early on Thursday morning. He had known who it was the moment his wards woke him up, buzzing at him.

            His last conversation with Cordelia had seemed to go well at the time, but the more Draco thought about it, the more he was convinced that the Desire potion he’d taken just before it had compromised him. He’d moved too fast, spoken too decisively, and doubtless insulted her. The potion still wasn’t completely gone on this, her second visit, but he could be more cautious; what seemed to be an added speed and clarity to his thoughts—in reality, simply a lack of his usual hesitation—was no longer a compulsion.

            He had a vial of the Desire potion with him, but he held it back; if Cordelia had come about that, let her speak the words first. He bowed as he opened the door, to Cordelia, and then gave a slight nod to Charlemagne Diggory.

            He hadn’t seen Diggory close up yet, only seen him in the newspaper photos and heard of him secondhand from Harry. As he stepped into the shop, Draco gathered his own impressions of the man, the confidence in his poise, the way he smiled and shook Draco’s hand as if it were the most natural gesture in the world, and privately agreed with Harry’s assessment—this was a very dangerous man.

            “Hello, Draco.” Cordelia gave him a restrained smile he distrusted at once. She was usually bold and strong. Why not? She could afford to be, in all senses of the word. Deference was a trap. “I know I gave you an original deadline of the summer solstice for the new potion you were developing, but I really would like to see it now.”

            So she wanted to pretend their last conversation, in which Draco had offered her a vial of Desire, hadn’t happened? That was fine with Draco. “Yes, of course, my lady,” he said. He Summoned another vial down the stairs, just so that he wouldn’t seem too prepared. He wanted to flatter Cordelia now, and make it seem as if her request had taken him a bit off-guard—whilst not seeming so weak as to look like easy prey, of course.

            Cordelia held the vial of blue-green liquid up to the light of the shop and murmured a few complimentary words. Diggory took it from her then and rolled it over in his fingers, peering at the glass as if that would tell him all he needed to know about its contents.

            “This Desire potion really works?” Diggory asked.

            Draco looked into his face, and saw all sorts of traps lurking in the question. On the other hand, he planned to go public with Desire tomorrow. And he would not lie when he had so much pride in his work.

            “It does,” Draco said. “I’ve confirmed it with tests on both myself and Hermione Granger. And of course it was developed from a base that was confirmed to work in other circumstances.” He wouldn’t betray that Harry was taking a variant of the potion unless his partner gave him permission to do so, even though he thought the reason Harry was taking it was absolutely ridiculous. That was the major difference between them, Draco thought. Harry pulled insane stunts in rival apothecaries and owled him about the results afterwards. Draco was thoughtful enough to gauge the consequences of such actions in advance.

            Diggory sighed. “Truly a remarkable piece of work. It would change the future of the wizarding world.” He laid the vial down on a table beside him. “If it were allowed to enter the wizarding world, of course.”

            Time for the threats, Draco thought. He widened his eyes innocently. “What do you mean, if? I think the changes will be enormous. And they start tomorrow, the day of the potion’s release.”

            Diggory and Cordelia exchanged sympathetic glances. They were very good, Draco thought critically. If he hadn’t had a lifetime’s experience of false innocence himself, he might have been taken in.

            He felt the first touch, then, of real fear. He could handle Cordelia; he’d been doing it for years. And Diggory couldn’t move too openly without wrecking his political reputation. Even the association with a former Death Eater’s daughter was risky for him. But together…

            The perception of the challenge he and Harry were facing shifted in Draco’s mind then. He had imagined them an indestructible pair against scattered opponents. But this was a contest of two against two. And the pair against them understood each other, played off one another, and had the same goals. So said that shared glance.

            When Diggory turned to look at him again, Draco could only hope his expression wasn’t too defensive.

            “I’m running for Minister, as you may know,” Diggory murmured.

            “It’s sort of impossible to escape it,” Draco said, with a helpless gesture at the latest edition of the Daily Prophet to mitigate what could have been seen as an insult.

            “Indeed.” Diggory raised his eyebrows. His eyes were warm. His smile was inviting. Draco hated him violently and was grudgingly impressed. “And because I’m trying to become the protector of the wizarding world—“

            Is that what the Minister does? Draco thought, but it would have been beyond the pale for him to voice the words aloud. He simply nodded.

            “—I have to think about what affects its future. I have to weigh the possible benefits of any change like the Desire potion against our traditions and the harm it might cause.” Diggory coughed apologetically. “And in this case, I think it’s just too soon for something this wondrous. If it was made for a few people only, people in dire need, as Hermione Granger was said to be? I could understand that. But you plan to market it to the general public?”

“I do,” Draco answered, more and more impressed with Diggory’s phrasing. He had been trained well by Cordelia, or perhaps had simply realized on his own that open threats wouldn’t look good in a Pensieve memory. So he got around the problem by choosing words that sounded, or could sound, eminently reasonable. “Well, I should say we. I’m in charge of the general marketing, but Harry Potter has contributed to the brewing of the potion and offered some remarkably efficacious ideas of his own.”

It was just a flash in Diggory’s eyes. But Draco was used to reading his father, who was the most inscrutable man on the planet when he wanted to be.

That’s the reason they’re pressing this so hard, he thought. Not because they’re afraid of the potion. Much less because they’re afraid of me; God forbid they should be. But because they’re afraid of Harry, and the political power he could swing behind this if he wanted to.

It made sense. And it let Draco know what footing he stood on with his enemies, which relaxed him.

“I can’t allow that,” Diggory said sadly. “I truly wish I could, because it’s a feat of artistry I can only marvel at. But with the danger it might cause?” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Malfoy. I must ask you to give up your plans, for the good of the wizarding world and the good of the many.”

That’s always the excuse cowards hide behind. Draco allowed a touch of defiance into his voice. “I’m afraid that I can’t do that,” he said. “I’ve developed this potion—Harry and I have developed this potion—and though I respect your desire to protect the wizarding world, you don’t actually have the power to make laws yet. And there are certainly no laws against the Desire potion. It’s too new.”

“There is, however,” Diggory said, “a law saying a debtor may call in debts. Particularly debts organized through a verbal contract, and not a written one.”

Draco shot his eyes to Cordelia, and surprised a faint smile on her face. Yes, he had underestimated her badly during their last conversation, and now she had outflanked him.

“You would now be my sole debtor, I assume,” Draco said. “Since you would have bought up my other debts.”

Cordelia looked genuinely delighted. “Yes!” she said. “And I’m afraid that I’ll have to collect all the debts you owe me, Draco. All forty thousand Galleons of them.” She coughed delicately. “You have until the end of next week to pay.”

“And you’re only doing this because you’re concerned about the future of the wizarding world, too?” Draco murmured.

“Of course!”

From there, the conversation turned into meaningless pleasantries, with Cordelia and Diggory not staying too long to gloat in their victory. Draco shut the door of his shop behind him and leaned against it for a moment, breathing hard.

He had owed debts to other people for years, and he’d grown used to it. But he been careful never to owe too much money to any one person, which was why he hadn’t borrowed all the Galleons Cordelia had assured him he could have from her.

            And now, here he was. Trapped.

            But not. Because if he had underestimated Cordelia and was now paying the price for it, she had also badly underestimated him.

            He couldn’t approach this through endless misdirection and ploys the way he would have liked to; he only had a week. It was time for direct action, charging ahead, like a Gryffindor. Harry had provided him with an example after all.

            It was time to do what Draco had once sworn he would never do again, and contact Daphne Greengrass.
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An Alchemical Discontent