Chapter Two of 'Because Potter Is Allergic to Poppies'- Mystery and Merlin's Tears

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter One.

Title: Because Potter Is Allergic to Poppies (2/6)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco
Rating: R
Warnings: Profanity, a bit of violence, some sex, even more flangst, and tons of Hapless!Draco. Ignores the epilogue.
Summary: Auror Harry Potter is in hospital being treated for a curse when someone tries to kill him. Obviously it is up to bored, trapped Apprentice Healer Draco, who was only admitted to the Healer Program in the first place to do the menial work, to find out who did it. Because then they will promote him. No, it’s for no other reason, thanks.
Author’s Notes: This is a fairly light story, despite the murder attempt part, and will likely have five or six chapters.

Thank you for all the reviews!

Chapter Two—Mystery and Merlin’s Tears

“How is our hero today, Apprentice Healer Malfoy?”

Draco tried to stand a little taller in front of Mallow, who never looked up at him, but continued to sort through the parchments that occupied his desk. He frowned at one and cast it into the air, incinerating it nonverbally. Draco winced and hoped that Mallow was in a better temper with people right now than he was with paper.

“Recovering, sir, but not as well as I’d like,” he said, with a prepared frown. This was the first part of the plan he had worked out with Potter, and he was going to show Potter that he was a good actor and liar as well as Healer. “The curse seems to have token a heavier toll on him than it should. He still has trouble walking, and he’s short of breath. If we got all the magic out of his lungs, it ought not to be like that.”

Mallow gave Draco his full attention for the first time, and Draco had to fight not to wince away from the sheer pressure. “You need not recite symptoms of his condition to me, Apprentice Healer,” he said sternly. “I am familiar with them from more cases than you could count in a single afternoon.”

“Sorry, sir,” Draco said, and scowled at the floor. This was one of the reasons he and Mallow didn’t get along. Draco would innocently try to show off his knowledge, and Mallow would react as though showing off his knowledge was a bad thing. Sometimes, Draco thought Healers honestly preferred stupid Apprentices.

Mallow watched him for a moment more, then grunted. “I will give you potions from my own store to carry to Potter, Apprentice Healer Malfoy.”

Draco opened his mouth to say that he didn’t need them. Potter had told Draco that Draco could make him sound as paranoid as he wanted. If it served the plan and helped them capture his enemy, or prove the murder attempt in the first place—and Draco had to admit that he didn’t think it was a murder attempt all the time—then Potter would approve it.

But Draco’s brain was sometimes quicker than his mouth. He thought of all the ways he could use properly brewed potions and free access to Mallow’s cupboard, and managed to say, “I’d be most grateful, sir.”

Mallow waved his hand in dismissal, and Draco moved off, wincing when he heard a minor explosion from behind him. Well, he wasn’t the one who had to clean the char and ash off Mallow’s floor. The Healers preferred to reserve Draco for the more disgusting menial tasks.

Draco had a definite goal in mind, and it helped him fly through his morning chores of changing beddings and bedpans and charming a young girl who vomited everything she was given into stasis until a team of multiple Healers could figure out what was wrong with her. Again, like the other day when he’d had time to study the potion, he was finished early, and made his way towards the classrooms on the ground floor with a confident stride. He carried a bucket full of yellow goop—the remains of Apprentice Healer Varden’s last attempt to brew the Draught of Peace—in one hand. The smell as well as the usualness of the task should keep people away from him.

When he got into the corridors between the classrooms, wide and full of light, Draco cast a Disillusionment Charm. There were wards elsewhere in hospital to detect such magic, notably on Janus Thickey, but it would pass unnoticed down here.

Then he sneaked up to the nearest door and pushed it gently open. The Apprentice Healers ignored the door’s movement, and so did the Healer, Okono-Jones, rapt in the sound of his own voice.

Apprentice Healer Laurence Sabian was sitting in the back row of the class, eyes big as he listened. Everything about him was big, Draco noted, from his floppy head of blond hair to his clothes, which dangled over his ankles and wrists. In fact, he reminded Draco of the way Potter had looked when he first started attending Hogwarts, wearing large Muggle clothes he must have really liked for some reason.

Draco shook his head. Memories of Potter would intrude into whatever he was regarding at the moment, and while it could be helpful to keep his mind on his task, it interfered with doing that task.

Several people had talked to Sabian already, he knew, including Healer Mallow. The poor boy was probably terrified. Draco had no reason to approach him the same way and make him hide anything he might know about the switching of the potions.

Sabian shifted in place. Immediately the two apprentices in front of him turned around to hiss a warning. Sabian blushed and started at his hands, which were knotting his sleeves in agitation.

Draco decided in an instant on his course. With any luck, it should work, because Sabian wouldn’t have been here long enough to feel himself superior to Draco.

*

“Could I speak with you for a minute?”

Sabian looked up in an instant, brown eyes as wide as they had been when he was listening to Okono-Jones. “I was just leaving,” he muttered, scooping up the can he’d been filling with water at the tiny sink jammed into an alcove near the Dai Llewellyn ward. “You can have the sink.”

Draco shook his head. “If you have to leave, I understand, but I’m not one of those ignoramuses who want to persecute you. I was going to say that I knew what you were going through.” He turned to wash the dirty sheets he held under the steady spray of warm water. Though a Cleaning Charm would scour them in an instant, most of the Healers insisted that water was more effective at reaching and removing all the tiny fragments of scab and blood and sweat that a patient could leave behind on the sheets. In practice, Draco waited until the water reached the point that steam was rising out of it and then used a much more powerful Cleaning Charm, one that he didn’t think anyone else in hospital knew.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Sabian hesitate and look around suspiciously, as if he assumed that the walls would leap at him for listening to sympathetic talk. But the walls must have stood upright enough for him, because he turned back around and asked, “What do you mean? You’ve never displeased Healer Mallow the way I have.”

Draco chuckled dryly. “You mean no one’s ever told you about the time that I got sent a Howler in the middle of his class? You are new.”

Sabian’s mouth flew open, and he mopped at a few strands of hair. That didn’t do anything but send them flopping back into place, Draco noted. “I can’t believe that! Who would send you a Howler?”

Draco paused to study him. “You know my last name, right?”

“Well, yes, that’s obvious from looking at you,” Sabian said, immediately raising Draco’s opinion of him by several notches. Being able to recognize rare breeding at a glance was a sign of rare breeding in and of itself. “But still. If they let you into the Healer Program at all, they can’t be that prejudiced against you.”

Draco sighed and sneaked his wand out to perform his powerful charm. He could do it nonverbally now, so many times had he cast it. “It’s one thing for them to let me into the program. It’s another thing for them to let me actually advance and have care of patients.”

Sabian tilted his head. “But you’re still here?”

“I make it a point not to let anyone drive me away from what I set out to accomplish,” Draco said haughtily, and with perfect truth. “I would have walked away from the program long since, but I decided on this. Let them choke on it.”

Sabian stared at him with eyes like stars, and Draco realized abruptly that he had acquired a hero-worshiper of his own, of the kind that Potter used to trail around behind him all the time in Hogwarts. He blinked, then decided that he might as well keep the boy around. Sabian could go into the apprentice classes where Draco was no longer welcome. On the unlikely chance that the murderer would be hiding there, he could act as an extra pair of eyes.

“I have to remember that,” Sabian breathed. “No one can drive you away except yourself, right?”

“That’s right,” Draco said, feeling a thrill of intense enjoyment. If this was what it was like to have disciples all the time, then he could see why Potter put up with his own entourage. He drew the sheets out of the sink with an extra little shake that would free them of most of the water, and saw Sabian stare with his mouth open when he realized that they were clean already. Draco winked at him, then gave him a direct look. “You remind me a lot of myself when I first came in. And that’s why I know that you didn’t snatch the wrong potion from Healer Mallow’s cupboard, did you? I never would have made that mistake.”

“I didn’t,” Sabian said, his face bright with indignation. Draco found that preferable to fear. “He said it was the Stone Response potion, and when I said that I didn’t know what that one looked like, he said it was dark red with blue flecks. You can’t really mistake a potion like that, can you?” He turned appealingly to Draco.

Draco shook his head.

“I didn’t think so,” Sabian said. “I know I snatched the right one. And it was even in the right place, too, where Healer Mallow said it would be, on the highest shelf in the left-hand corner—the one farthest from the door of the cupboard.”

Draco nodded. That would be like Healer Mallow, to know his potions cupboard that well, and it would be another reason why he might believably trust someone as young as Sabian to get it, if he could give such precise instructions. “Then I believe you. You got the right one. Someone must have switched it along the way.”

“But I carried it all the time, and ran as fast as I could!” Sabian clasped his hands together in frustration. “How could they have done it?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Draco said carefully. “But were you looking at it again when you handed it to Healer Mallow? Do you remember what it looked like the moment he closed his hand over it?”

Sabian frowned. “I don’t.”

“Then it might have happened along the way. There are spells that could do that. Or maybe Healer Mallow switched it himself, as a test,” Draco added quickly, because Sabian’s face was turning pale. He didn’t want to inspire the boy to think too much of a murder attempt and thus possibly stumble on the reason that Draco was asking questions.

“Would he do that?” Sabian now looked appalled for a different reason.

“He has before,” Draco said darkly, looking up and down the corridor. “Though he tends to deny it.”

Sabian brightened as he realized that he was being fed insider knowledge. That should take care of his belief should anyone tell him that Healer Mallow had never done anything of the sort, Draco thought.

“I understand,” Sabian said. “I’ll remember.” He hesitated, then put out a hand. “You’ve been pleasant, and you’re the only one who’s talked to me like a person since I came here. Thanks.”

Draco clasped his wrist, wondering why he remembered so strongly a pair of eleven-year-old boys at that moment, and a handshake that hadn’t happened. “Don’t you know? Apprentice Healers aren’t people. Not to the rest of them, anyway.”

Sabian laughed, nodded to Draco, and left. Draco went to take the sheets back to their destined bed, gnawing his lip. It did seem like Sabian was innocent, unless he was a much better actor than he looked—good enough to fool Draco as well as Healer Mallow and everyone else who had spoken to him.

Well. That didn’t matter. There were other possibilities.

And Draco might as well go back to Potter with the evidence he’d collected so far and see what that fine Auror brain of his made of it.

*

“So the boy is convinced that he brought the right potion.” Potter swallowed the mouthful of porridge that had made his words disgusting to listen to with a deep frown. “That’s interesting.”

“But not necessarily conclusive evidence,” Draco pointed out, leaning against the wall. He was watching the waxy sheen to Potter’s skin and wondering how much of his continuing weakness was really an act. “After all, he could sincerely believe that and still be wrong. You can’t trust the perceptions of someone who wants to excuse himself from blame when he was under a lot of stress.”

Potter gave him a stern glance. “Who’s the Auror here?”

Draco bowed his head and swept out one hand in an apologetic wave. “Excuse me, O Great One. My pitiful attempt to offer a hypothesis is only that, a pitiful attempt. I will leave you to your contemplations.” He started to move towards the door.

“Stop, Malfoy.” Potter waved a weary hand at him. “You know that you still have more sense and brains than anyone else in this fuckhole of a hospital.” Draco choked at the language, but Potter didn’t seem to notice. “I just wish there was a way to know for sure what Sabian saw.”

“Well, there’s a Pensieve,” Draco said. “But I don’t know how we would get hold of one and convince him to give us the memory quietly.”

Potter paused, then smiled, a rather mean smile that made Draco wish someone else could see it. He wanted to show them that the Ultimate Hero of the Wizarding World wasn’t so perfect and spotless after all. “There’s a possible way. But it would involve bringing someone else into this, someone who might be rather hostile to you.”

“I live with hostility on a daily basis, Potter,” Draco said, rolling his eyes as he thought of the anonymous letter of hate that someone had delivered that morning. It was the usual drivel, about how his parents had done horrid things and he had done horrid things and how they would all pay someday. Draco had crumpled it up and tossed it into the bin where he kept such letters, which he would put on the wall someday when he was a full Healer, to remind himself of how far he had come. “How bad could it be?”

“It’s my partner,” Potter said. “Ron.”

Draco stiffened. “There’s hostility, and then there’s the very real chance that I might not walk away with my bones intact.”

“Ron isn’t like that anymore,” Potter reassured him hastily. He started to sit up and then slumped back with a little gasp of pain. Draco stared at him with narrowed eyes. Potter didn’t seem to notice; he was much too busy ignoring the signals his body was sending him. “He knows that your parents didn’t do half of what they were accused of, and he believes in your right to be free and work.”

“How confidence-inspiring,” Draco said.

Potter sighed. “He really has changed. You don’t find me the same, do you?” He looked up at Draco as if he hoped to hear a negative answer to that more than he had ever hoped to hear anything in his life.

Draco had to look away. He could see why Potter made a good Auror, and an even better hero. Let him look at you with those eyes, and you would either back away or do everything for another look from them.

Draco couldn’t afford to fall too far under the spell, though. He was a Healer, or would be when certain people got their heads out of their arses, and he was interested in finding out who had tried to poison Potter and how, not Potter’s little interpersonal dramas. He forced himself to look back and speak sternly. “No. In particular, I think you’re paler and shorter of breath than you were yesterday. Have you been out of bed at all?”

“Huh?” Potter touched his chest after he had gasped, frowning. “No, except to go to the loo twice. Why?”

“Because something is wrong,” Draco said. “After you had the Stone Response potion and that cut on your face got healed, the Marble Walking Curse shouldn’t linger like this.” He took a step forwards and bent over so that he could listen to Potter’s heart, casting a spell that would enhance his hearing on the way.

Yes, Potter’s heartbeat was too fast, even considering he had just heaved himself nearly upright. And his fingernails had a bluish cast to them that made Draco hiss.

“What is it?” Potter twisted his head around to look at Draco, frowning. “So I’m still recovering from the curse. You were the one who told me that it would take a while and I wasn’t to expect miracles.”

“Not that,” Draco said. He jerked Potter’s hand up towards their faces. Potter flinched, and Draco rolled his eyes. “It’s your hand, you prat. See that blue around your fingernails? That’s a sign of a slow-acting poison, called Merlin’s Tears. It affects your heart and your lungs, making them labor more than they should to do the same amount of work. It’s very hard to detect when someone is already suffering from a condition that might legitimately give them reason to feel weak, the way you were.”

“But how—” Potter began.

Draco led his gaze to the food tray.

Potter stared at him. “Don’t you prepare the food?”

Draco shook his head. “I pick it up outside the same cafeteria where all the patients’ trays are distributed. The food is specially attuned to you to help you recover, but that’s all. Lots of people would have the chance to put something in it, and I didn’t cast any spells to check.” He felt sick over that failure now. Not to use the most elementary charms when he suspected someone of trying to murder Potter was foolish.

“How is the food prepared?” Potter’s mind was already ticking along in the direction of how to solve this, that was clear. Draco was glad for the sharp, thoughtful tone. It allowed him to pull himself together and answer clearly.

“By the Healers and Apprentice Healers on attendance in the cafeteria that day,” Draco said.

Potter cast him a quick, curious glance. “From the way you talk about Healers, I would have assumed that they’d never condescend to do work like that. Think it was beneath them or something.”

Draco blinked. He wasn’t aware that he had said all that much about Healers in Potter’s presence. Then again, Aurors were trained to investigate slight hints and pick up traces of a person’s real preoccupations from silence as much as sound. “They do,” he said. “Usually when they have patients under their care who have to have special diets. They don’t trust house-elves or Apprentice Healers to do that delicate work.” He didn’t care if the bitterness showed in his voice.

“Bad experience?” Potter asked quietly.

Draco shrugged. “You could say that.” It had been with Healer Edwhistle, who had moved to the Continent last year. In his own way, he had been even worse than Healer Mallow, who seemed to have a modicum of trust in Draco’s abilities, since he had given him the duty of caring for Potter. Edwhistle had simply thought Draco had no abilities, and had taunted him constantly on the score.

Potter seemed to use those finely trained Auror senses to figure out further probing would be unwelcome, and simply nodded. “All right, then. Anyone who works in the cafeteria could have come by and put something in the food that would ensure it got to me.”

“Yes,” Draco said. “Not to mention that they put all the trays outside the cafeteria on common tables. Someone could have added the poison there. The amount of poison can be small and still have an effect—in fact, giving too much at once is undesirable, because it would cause the victim to die right away in a highly noticeable fashion—and it doesn’t smell. An experienced Healer could put in the right amount in under three seconds.”

Potter closed his eyes. “Fuck,” he said with feeling. “I didn’t realize how hard solving a case in hospital would be.”

Draco nodded gloomily. “There’s a test that I can perform to ensure that no more Merlin’s Tears enter your food. But I’ll have to do for every dish. It can mix with just about everything.”

“That’s fine,” Potter said, waving a hand. “I’ve had food tasters before.” He said it casually, and didn’t seem to notice the way Draco stared at him; his mind was already pursuing something else. “What about having access to the poison? Is it expensive? Would only certain Healers here have it, and others be required to prove a need for it if they wanted it?”

“It’s expensive,” Draco said, “in the fully-made form. But the ingredients aren’t, and you forget how many Healers are good brewers.”

“Fuck,” Potter said again, and drummed his fingers on his leg. “I’m glad that you’re around, Malfoy. It would be hard for me to figure this out from my hospital bed.”

Draco was glad that Weasley had shown no sign of himself yet. He didn’t want the git to witness Draco trying to pick up his jaw from the floor.

Of course, he thought a moment later, this was the way his life worked. It figured that when someone finally thought he was competent and began to praise him for his abilities, it would be Potter.

“The best course for now,” Potter said, “is to pretend that I’m weakening from the Merlin’s Tears, so they don’t try something else.” He rolled his head across the pillow to look at Draco. “I can just keep what I’m doing and it’ll fool them?”

Draco nodded. “I’d think so. With maybe a spell to create the blue patches on your fingernails, to fool anyone who might come looking.”

“If someone comes looking obviously, we’ll catch them,” Potter said. “But they could have spies, or they could come looking when I’m asleep. Cast the blue patches, will you? They won’t let me have my wand in here.” He grimaced, as if this was a special problem for him instead of a general, common-sense hospital rule.

Draco nodded slowly. “I might be able to fetch your wand for you.”

Potter stared at him with bright eyes. “You would? That would be fantastic! Someone who works here won’t expect me to have my wand, and I can cast the blue patches myself when your duties take you elsewhere.”

Draco cocked his head. There was something he had to ask in the face of Potter’s apparently infinite capacity for surprising him. “Why didn’t you ask right away about the long-term effects of the poison, Potter? Why aren’t you more worried about them? God knows I would be, in your place.”

“You would have told me if there was any long-term, dangerous effect,” Potter said simply. “You’re a Healer, and you’re the one familiar with the poison. If you didn’t react with screaming and hysterics, it was reasonable to assume they weren’t necessary.”

Draco bowed his head. The weight of Potter’s trust was exhilarating—and humbling. “I’m surprised you trust me that much,” he mumbled.

Potter was silent. Draco had to look up before he spoke. “I know that people can change,” Potter said. “I had that pounded home to me a few years ago. Yeah, I wasn’t thrilled about working with you, but I know you want to succeed at your job, and you’re making intelligent suggestions and trusting me, too. That’s enough to recommend you.”

“Who wouldn’t trust the Chosen One?” Draco scoffed, to hide his relief.

“Don’t call me that.”

Apparently he had unwittingly stumbled onto a sensitive issue. Draco noted that Potter’s forehead had become lined with more creases, and his eyes for the first time in the conversation looked off to the side rather than directly at Draco.

“All right,” Draco said, though he was burning with curiosity why that particular name should be so much worse than any other name that the press and the people around him had stuck on Potter. “So I’ll get your wand, and you focus on lying here and looking as sick as the person who poisoned you would want you to look.” He scooped up the tray and made for the door.

“Malfoy.”

Draco paused just inside the doorway and turned back, balancing the tray expertly. The first thing that Apprentice Healers learned in hospital was the importance of not dropping anything they were carrying, which could be food or delicate potions. “Yes?”

Potter looked as if he were struggling with the next words, and then finally came out with, “I know that you don’t understand why I trust you. I know that you don’t understand why I dislike certain of my nicknames. And I know that you’re really dubious about involving Ron in this case.”

Draco didn’t think of it as a “case,” but he reckoned that Potter’s need for Auror terminology should be indulged. It would comfort him, and he was under enough stress at the moment without adding more. So he nodded and said, “All of those. So?”

“Just be sure that I have a good reason for all those reactions,” Potter said, and then turned his head away to stare at the wall like some kind of mysterious martyr. “Even if I can’t explain them to you.”

Well, at least part of the brooding hero stereotype is true, Draco thought, and nodded at his back before he let himself out. He hesitated in the corridor, then drew his wand and added a quick spell to the door.

It was nothing that anyone else would recognize, a highly personalized spell that Father had left behind in a note explaining what Draco should do after they fled the country. Father had described the spell’s incantation and effects, and said that it “might help.”

Draco agreed that it would. It was a tiny, passive charm that would do nothing but record the images of the people who passed it. Spells meant to detect wards wouldn’t detect it, since by definition wards were active defenses. Draco had used it several times to keep other Apprentice Healers from playing pranks on him or Healers from surprising him unpleasantly.

It probably wouldn’t be needed here, Draco thought as he turned away. After all, he doubted that a murderer as clever and skillful as this one seemed to be would come to Potter’s room personally after so many efforts to remain at a distance. But it could still tell him interesting things, perhaps, if he left it.

After three years in a place where he was more unwelcome than he could ever have been at Hogwarts or pure-blood gatherings after the war, Draco had learned the value of caution, and even of impulsive decisions—as long as those impulsive decisions served him and no one else.