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lomonaaerenTitle: A Potion Named Desire
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco preslash, Ron/Hermione, past Harry/other women.
Summary: When Ron dies, Hermione falls into a deep depression. Desperate to relieve her symptoms, Harry reluctantly approaches “independent apothecary” (read: black market brewer) Draco Malfoy for help. Draco, agreeing to help for his own reasons, finds himself falling into a surprisingly intellectual companionship with both Hermione and Harry. But as they work together, two questions become paramount for Draco: How powerful will the Desire potion be when they’ve finished it? And what exactly is the mysterious potion that Harry takes every two weeks?
Warnings: Post-DH, ignores epilogue. Profanity, character death (obviously), clinical depression, lots and lots of Potions shop talk.
Rating: PG/K+ (mostly for language).
Author’s Notes: Welcome to the first story in a series of three. The series title will be ‘An Intellectual Love Affair.’ This first part is preslash, moving strongly in the direction of slash, and will be about twelve chapters long. The story is focused mainly on a companionship of the mind being the first thing that attaches Draco and Harry, rather than shared danger or physical attraction. As such, it will be probably be more cerebral and not as action-oriented as my other stories, though the second story does get into Ministry politics.
Enjoy!
A Potion Named Desire
Chapter One—Out She Goes
“You have everything?” Harry glanced one more time around the flat he and Susan had shared, though he was certain they had already cleared out her belongings. It was a way to cling, for just one moment, to the warmth that had been between them.
“Yes. Thank you for everything, Harry.”
The words were warm in and of themselves, and enabled him to look at her with a faint smile. “Well,” he said, “if I weren’t used to my girlfriends falling in love with my friends by the fifth time it happened, I’d have to stop having girlfriends.” He paused reflectively. “Or having friends, I’m not sure which.”
Susan Bones laughed and leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. “I didn’t mean just for not making a fuss when I met Zacharias,” she said. “I meant for everything. For being a perfect gentleman when we were together, and understanding that love is stronger than liking, and—“
Harry clasped both hands above his heart and grave a dramatic gasp. “Stop, stop, I’m having more than my recommended portion of praise!”
Susan squeezed his arm with one hand. “You have been really great, though,” she whispered. “I hope someday you’ll find a girl who does fall completely and madly in love with you and stays that way.”
“Or a man,” Harry added helpfully. “At least in theory.”
“Yes, you and your theoretic bisexuality.” Susan rolled her eyes, then jumped when Zacharias yelled impatiently from below. “Oh, dear, he will think we’re consorting up here together,” she muttered, and waved her wand so that her trunk bobbed up neatly behind her.
“Remind me why you’re together with him again?”
“Git,” Susan said, which Harry told himself could have been directed at Zacharias, and then turned and hurried down the corridor. Harry lingered for a moment, watching her. Her face had lit up at the thought of Zacharias. He experienced a moment’s wistful regret that he had no one in his life whose face would light up for him like that. The closest he had ever come was with Ginny, in the few months they had before their relationship went straight to hell.
Then Harry laughed at himself and closed the door. After five girlfriends lost to other people, he’d resigned himself to spending the rest of his life partially alone, if necessary. He still had his friends, and none of his relationships, of which all but one had ended amicably, prevented him from going out and trying again.
The silver clock on the wall of his flat chirped urgently, and Harry jumped. In the excitement of bidding Susan goodbye, he’d nearly forgotten to take his potion, and that would have been disastrous. He hurried across the open front room of the flat and through the door to the loo on the far side. A swift flick of his wand unlocked the enchanted cabinet that none of the visitors to his flat—except Hermione, who knew already and strenuously disapproved—ever noticed, and he took out a vial of the thick green potion and downed it.
No change was immediately visible, of course, but he could draw a breath of relief now. As long as he took the potion, no more bad things would happen.
Harry really didn’t like it when those particular bad things happened.
That done, he wandered towards his film room. Making film for wizarding cameras was not what he had expected to do with his life when he left Hogwarts, but then, he hadn’t expected an awful lot about his life.
He flicked his wand to enchant his eyes so he could see in the dark of the film room, and smiled a little. One of the few regular and long-expected events in his life was about to happen next week. Ron and Hermione would get married, after a year of dancing around each other and six years of engagement. Harry was allowed to be excited about that.
He went to work enchanting the paper and glass that would, hopefully, become a new variety of film which could capture ghosts better than the existing stuff did, and soon happily lost himself to anything but considerations of incantation, color, and wand movement speed.
*
“Harry? Harry!”
Blinking and stretching his arms, Harry turned around. The voice had called his name God knew how many times before he heard it, and then, though he wanted to move quickly, he had to scuttle from the room like a crab because of the way his back had bent during his hours hovering over the table.
He was walking like a human by the time he reached the fireplace, at least. He blinked in surprise when he saw Ginny’s head hovering there. Since their parting, they had rarely seen each other except in the context of full Weasley family gatherings. But now she was staring at him desperately, as if only he could do something to aid her. It didn’t help, Harry saw with slowly growing alarm, that tears were streaking down her face.
“Ginny,” he whispered, kneeling to be on her level. “What’s wrong?”
“Ron,” she whispered.
Harry clenched his fists. Ron had got pissed with him a few nights ago and had fallen into maudlin lamentations about how he wasn’t good enough for Hermione, but surely the prat hadn’t broken the engagement or run away to the Continent, as he’d threatened to do. “What about Ron?” he said.
“Oh, God, Harry.” Ginny’s face tilted forwards, almost concealing her expression from him, and the nature of Harry’s alarm shifted.
“What is it? Is he in St. Mungo’s?”
“He’s dead, Harry.”
Harry had thought he was done with his world falling apart around him after what had happened with Ginny. But it had just smashed like an egg again, and he stared at her, unable to say a single word.
*
As Harry came to understand them later, from a sobbing Ginny and Mrs. Weasley, a miserably tight-lipped Percy, and a Hermione who was so hard-faced she frightened him, what had happened was this:
Ron had become Keeper for the Chudley Cannons two years ago, a position so much his dream job he had accepted immediately, despite a few offers from more prominent Quidditch teams in the league. He’d been playing in a practice game today, his last one before his wedding.
One of the Beaters had hit a Bludger slightly too hard. It’d spun away from the team’s Seeker and Chasers and slammed into the side of Ron’s skull. The bone fragments collapsed inwards and pierced his brain. By the time his racing team members reached him, it had already been too late to save him, though they’d valiantly Apparated him to St. Mungo’s anyway. The Healers confirmed that even a faster journey would have done nothing; he was dead when they brought him upstairs.
The Beater had already quit the team in self-loathing. Harry had seen him in the background when the rest of the Weasley family converged on St. Mungo’s, crying, face so miserable that Harry had gone to comfort him. That proved more than the boy could take—he thought for certain the Savior of the Wizarding World was going to destroy him for killing his best friend—and he fainted dead away.
Harry had stayed by his side until he woke up and finally persuaded him, as best as he could, that it was not his fault and that no one blamed him. Harry didn’t add that he, personally, would have found it easier to have someone to blame, would actually have liked for Ron’s death to be murder. Then he could hunt down and punish the person responsible.
But this young Beater, Warren Erikson, had looked up to Ron, joked with him, and joined him for consolatory drinks every time the Cannons lost. There was no possible reason he’d have to kill him, and the sight of his extreme distress and the words of the rest of the team convinced Harry. It had been an accident.
An accident that had simply marched into the middle of a normal, sunny May day, and taken Ron away from them.
After talking with Erikson, Harry went to the Weasleys. There was so little he could do, but what he could do, he did. He offered a literal shoulder for Molly and Ginny to cry on; it was the first time Ginny had willingly touched him since the Incident. Harry gently stroked her hair and wished Ron could have been alive to witness his best friend and his sister slowly coming back together.
Ron should have been alive to witness everything.
Percy arrived, busy and officious and likely to drive everyone mad if he weren’t given something to do. Harry placed him outside the room in St. Mungo’s where Ron lay to fend off everyone who might possibly look like a reporter. The Daily Prophet’s people had already learned that Harry Potter had rushed into hospital in great distress, and Harry was determined not to have the Weasleys bothered with insensitive questions.
Bill and Fleur arrived, leading their solemn-eyed daughter Victoire by the hand. Harry stepped aside so Bill and Fleur could enter the room, but, after a swift and quiet discussion with Fleur, kept Victoire out of the room. She asked a lot of questions about death. Harry evaded some of them, but admitted that she wouldn’t see Uncle Ron anymore. The little girl clung to him and cried. Ron had been her favorite of her uncles.
Charlie had sent word he was coming from Romania. Harry wrote the owl back to him; Molly was still weeping too hard to hold a quill, and Arthur had just showed up, so pale and wan Harry hated to dump the duty on him.
George, of course, was the one who lingered outside the room, his hands in his robe pockets and his stare fixed and desolate. Harry, after one look at him, Transfigured some water that the mediwitches had deposited on the Weasleys into Firewhiskey and offered it to him. George nodded his thanks and went into the corridor to be quietly drunk in peace.
And Harry shed his own tears and took his own turn sitting beside Ron’s body feeling as if a dragon had kicked him in the chest and he wouldn’t ever be able to breathe again.
That left Hermione.
*
When Hermione remained stoic throughout the funeral, Harry didn’t worry. He knew she wasn’t much for public displays of emotion; she had hated to be caught crying, hated for people to stare at her, ever since the war. He sat beside her and held her hand, which lay in his like marble, and watched her watching the coffin as it was lowered into the ground. And why not? The man she loved was in there.
When Hermione quit her job working in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures the next day, Harry wasn’t surprised. She would probably come back, he assured the worried Ministry official who contacted him. But she needed some time and distance right now, and they would give it to her. He added what he privately called his “Savior Stare” to those words, and the man facing him turned white and spluttered out that, certainly, they would give Miss Granger all the time she needed, and her old job would be waiting for her the moment she wanted it back.
Miss Granger. She would be that for a long time now. She and Ron had quarreled vociferously about how they should hyphenate their names, or if they should; Hermione thought it would be modern and progressive of Ron to take her last name. She was not going to be plain Hermione Weasley, at least. But she would change her name to Mrs., she had graciously conceded.
The recollections made Harry smile for a bit, the closest he’d come to a smile in a week. He took a deep breath and resumed his work on the ghost-capturing film, though several hours a day were spent in contact with the Weasleys and Hermione, checking up on them to make sure they didn’t need anything. Slowly, the edges of the wound in his soul began to pull and knit together. If he hadn’t had experience recovering from his grief after the war, he doubted he would have been able to do this. But he did, and he deliberately remembered as much of the life in Ron as he did the death.
Ron had got pissed and moaned about not being good enough for Hermione and how he should leave her free to marry some brilliant Muggle scientist or pure-blood Potions brewer, but Harry knew he never would have. Ron loved Hermione with the breath in him.
Ron had been so pleased with the Firebolt Harry bought him when he joined the Cannons. Harry knew he would never have persuaded his friend to accept the gift if he hadn’t argued for an hour beforehand, pointing out that a professional Quidditch player needed a much better broom, and that Harry only wanted the Cannons to be actually competitive. Ron had hit him for the last statement, but the look of delight in his eyes when he opened the package had stayed with Harry.
Ron had come over and yelled at Harry after the Incident. Harry had expected that. What he hadn’t expected was the way Ron had insisted that Harry stay in contact with the Weasley family, that Harry was still his best friend, and that he did not have Ron’s permission to lie on his couch and sulk himself into oblivion. The yelling had led to an awkward dinner at the Burrow that night, whilst Ron glared fiercely in every direction with an expression that challenged someone to say something, go ahead and say it.
The edges of Harry’s wound pulled together. He assumed they were doing the same for Hermione. She always told him she was feeling fine, getting better, when he asked her. Harry didn’t always believe her, and he did worry when she didn’t go back to the Ministry by the time seven months had passed since Ron’s death, but he had to respect her decision. Thanks to her careful spending, she wasn’t hurting for money.
Then she stopped answering his Floo calls.
Harry finally Apparated to her flat and found it warded so strongly that he was trembling and exhausted by the time he broke through the last piece of magic. And then he found her asleep on the couch in her drawing room, covered with glamours that melted when he touched her. It must have been a week since she had eaten, and longer than that since she’d showered.
Harry had thought, once, that he would tire of acting the hero, of playing the savior, of dredging up strength when people needed something of him.
As he gathered up his one remaining best friend in his arms and frantically Apparated to St. Mungo’s, he discovered he was a very long way indeed from that point.
*
“Why?”
Harry asked Hermione the question the moment he sat down by her bed in St. Mungo’s, which was the moment the Healers had stopped spelling water and food into her stomach and decided she was fit to have visitors.
Hermione didn’t answer for long moments, staring out the window instead. Then she turned around. Harry let out a hard breath. There were tears in her eyes, the first time she’d shed since Ron’s death. He took her hand and held it tightly, trying not to notice that her skin wasn’t much different in color from the sheets she rested on.
“I want to stop,” she whispered. “I want to wake up, and stand up, and get ready for the day. I even want to go back to the Ministry and start arguing down the ridiculous laws about house-elves again. But I can’t, Harry. There’s a mountain in my mind. I can’t move it. Whenever I think too much about doing something other than lying on the couch and sleeping, the mountain falls on me. I always close my eyes and tell myself I’ll get up tomorrow. After all, what do I have but empty days since I lost him?”
Harry licked his lips. What she described sounded similar to what he’d experienced in their fifth year, but his mountain had been anger, not grief, and his solution to the problem was hardly something he would advise for Hermione.
“Do you think you should talk to someone?” he asked.
“A therapist?” Hermione took the suggestion more calmly than he had expected. But she also shook her head. “I thought of that. There’s a problem with both sides of the question. In the Muggle world, I’d have to leave out so much about what happened to us and how Ron died and what I want to get back to in my daily life that it’s not worth it. And in the wizarding world—“ She hissed under her breath. “Frankly, Harry, the therapy here is primitive. And there’s the further problem of the fact that they probably wouldn’t be able to forget I’m ‘Hermione the Heroine.’” She pitched her voice high, in imitation of Rita Skeeter, who had tagged the title on her after the war, as she said the last words. “And that would prejudice the treatment.”
Harry nodded. “Would talking to me help?”
Hermione smiled tiredly at him. “It’ll help. You’re a wonderful friend, Harry. Thank you.” She squeezed his hand. “But I don’t think that’ll do enough. I’ve talked to you every day for the past seven months—“ she glanced out the window as if to check that the blank slate of the December skies was actually present “—and when I realized how badly I was failing, the first step I took was to hide the signs of my failure from you.”
“You’ll never be a failure, not to me.” Harry kissed the back of her hand.
“Talking to you isn’t enough,” Hermione repeated, her eyes bright. “But that’s what I want to do, in combination with something else. There must be something, a spell or a potion, that can help relieve this. And please, Harry—“ She closed her eyes and swallowed. “I want to do this in private, with you. No reporters. No therapists. Limited contact even with the Weasleys and my parents. I know they care about me. I do. But—but you’re the only person who brings back my memories of Ron but doesn’t hurt me with them. Please?”
Harry nodded at once. He felt the same way around Hermione. The times they’d acted together, just the three of them and no one else, had woven an enchanted circle about them that no one else could step inside, even Ginny or the other members of Ron’s family. Now that Ron was gone, the circle had just contracted tighter.
“Thank you.” Hermione closed her eyes and then opened them again. This time, she didn’t let the tears fall. “I do want to beat this. I do.”
Harry nodded again, and laid his cheek against hers.
*
It was March, and Harry was at his wits’ end.
He’d done the most thorough and comprehensive research he could. Hermione had helped him when she’d felt up to it. And still, everything he could find didn’t last.
Cheering Charms were only meant to cure temporary sadness or make someone giggle. The variations on Pepper-Up Potion and the Patronus Charm that Harry had thought promising at first turned out to last less than an hour, barely enough for Hermione to summon any will to do anything. Entire books of spells had to be rejected because wizards of the past hadn’t recognized depression as an illness; they’d simply assumed people who grieved too long were mad and shut them up. Harry had researched chocolate, even, remembering the way Remus had used it to cure the effects of Dementors, but that, too, had no properties with any lasting effects.
Harry put his hand over his eyes and rubbed his forehead in small circles. Hermione was asleep in his bedroom, her cheeks still damp. Harry felt like crying himself at the sight of the despair in her eyes each time some new approach failed.
His clock chimed. Harry hurried into the loo. The potion tasted thick and sludgy going down, but it was imperative. He forced himself to swallow and wait a few minutes, staring fixedly at his own reflection in the mirror.
The vial that had held the potion sparkled at him.
Harry furrowed his brow and stared at the vial for long moments. Then he swallowed, slowly, and not because of the stickiness in his throat.
His potion might work. His potion had been designed from a common base, with Hermione’s simultaneous help and disapproval, to remove what he loathed most about himself. Hermione was just as frantic to have the depression gone as Harry was, or at least to have the worst symptoms removed so she could accept her grief and move on. If she could use the potion, it might relieve her.
The problem was, the potion had been specifically designed for Harry alone. Giving it to Hermione might hurt her, or, at best, do nothing. Harry would have to modify the base again and cast new spells to transform the ingredients into their needed state, and he didn’t trust his own Potions brewing skills enough to do that. Nor, at the moment, could he trust Hermione’s.
He would have to have help.
Harry closed his eyes and leaned back against the tiled wall. At the moment, he would not have been above asking Snape for help, if only the git were still alive.
He ran over, in his head, the list of people he knew who were Potions brewers of sufficient skill, who would be attracted by the project, and who knew him well enough that they wouldn’t accept the job just because of who he was.
The list was, well, short. In fact, it was one name long.
Harry grimaced and opened his eyes. He didn’t want to ask Draco Malfoy for help, but it was true that the git had created an awfully bustling apothecary business for himself, and that even the Weasleys had gone to buy his products and hadn’t been poisoned. Malfoy seemed to disdain poisoning as beneath him, unless it was a complex, subtle thing, the effects of which lasted for years and were not immediately traceable to him. Harry had heard rumors from the Ministry…
Harry shrugged impatiently. At least Malfoy was unlikely to be overawed by him, and Harry could offer him something he knew would attract the bastard: the chance to profit from the potion once it was modified for a general market. If Harry was right, this thing could be enormously powerful and much in demand. And he didn’t care about the money. What he cared about was Hermione getting better.
He sat down to write the letter. He made sure to keep it polite, strictly within terms of business, and offered Malfoy the money even before the knowledge.
As he watched his owl Athena wing away with the letter, he hoped fervently that Malfoy had changed into enough of a coldly practical man to agree to treat a Muggleborn.
Part 2.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco preslash, Ron/Hermione, past Harry/other women.
Summary: When Ron dies, Hermione falls into a deep depression. Desperate to relieve her symptoms, Harry reluctantly approaches “independent apothecary” (read: black market brewer) Draco Malfoy for help. Draco, agreeing to help for his own reasons, finds himself falling into a surprisingly intellectual companionship with both Hermione and Harry. But as they work together, two questions become paramount for Draco: How powerful will the Desire potion be when they’ve finished it? And what exactly is the mysterious potion that Harry takes every two weeks?
Warnings: Post-DH, ignores epilogue. Profanity, character death (obviously), clinical depression, lots and lots of Potions shop talk.
Rating: PG/K+ (mostly for language).
Author’s Notes: Welcome to the first story in a series of three. The series title will be ‘An Intellectual Love Affair.’ This first part is preslash, moving strongly in the direction of slash, and will be about twelve chapters long. The story is focused mainly on a companionship of the mind being the first thing that attaches Draco and Harry, rather than shared danger or physical attraction. As such, it will be probably be more cerebral and not as action-oriented as my other stories, though the second story does get into Ministry politics.
Enjoy!
A Potion Named Desire
Chapter One—Out She Goes
“You have everything?” Harry glanced one more time around the flat he and Susan had shared, though he was certain they had already cleared out her belongings. It was a way to cling, for just one moment, to the warmth that had been between them.
“Yes. Thank you for everything, Harry.”
The words were warm in and of themselves, and enabled him to look at her with a faint smile. “Well,” he said, “if I weren’t used to my girlfriends falling in love with my friends by the fifth time it happened, I’d have to stop having girlfriends.” He paused reflectively. “Or having friends, I’m not sure which.”
Susan Bones laughed and leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. “I didn’t mean just for not making a fuss when I met Zacharias,” she said. “I meant for everything. For being a perfect gentleman when we were together, and understanding that love is stronger than liking, and—“
Harry clasped both hands above his heart and grave a dramatic gasp. “Stop, stop, I’m having more than my recommended portion of praise!”
Susan squeezed his arm with one hand. “You have been really great, though,” she whispered. “I hope someday you’ll find a girl who does fall completely and madly in love with you and stays that way.”
“Or a man,” Harry added helpfully. “At least in theory.”
“Yes, you and your theoretic bisexuality.” Susan rolled her eyes, then jumped when Zacharias yelled impatiently from below. “Oh, dear, he will think we’re consorting up here together,” she muttered, and waved her wand so that her trunk bobbed up neatly behind her.
“Remind me why you’re together with him again?”
“Git,” Susan said, which Harry told himself could have been directed at Zacharias, and then turned and hurried down the corridor. Harry lingered for a moment, watching her. Her face had lit up at the thought of Zacharias. He experienced a moment’s wistful regret that he had no one in his life whose face would light up for him like that. The closest he had ever come was with Ginny, in the few months they had before their relationship went straight to hell.
Then Harry laughed at himself and closed the door. After five girlfriends lost to other people, he’d resigned himself to spending the rest of his life partially alone, if necessary. He still had his friends, and none of his relationships, of which all but one had ended amicably, prevented him from going out and trying again.
The silver clock on the wall of his flat chirped urgently, and Harry jumped. In the excitement of bidding Susan goodbye, he’d nearly forgotten to take his potion, and that would have been disastrous. He hurried across the open front room of the flat and through the door to the loo on the far side. A swift flick of his wand unlocked the enchanted cabinet that none of the visitors to his flat—except Hermione, who knew already and strenuously disapproved—ever noticed, and he took out a vial of the thick green potion and downed it.
No change was immediately visible, of course, but he could draw a breath of relief now. As long as he took the potion, no more bad things would happen.
Harry really didn’t like it when those particular bad things happened.
That done, he wandered towards his film room. Making film for wizarding cameras was not what he had expected to do with his life when he left Hogwarts, but then, he hadn’t expected an awful lot about his life.
He flicked his wand to enchant his eyes so he could see in the dark of the film room, and smiled a little. One of the few regular and long-expected events in his life was about to happen next week. Ron and Hermione would get married, after a year of dancing around each other and six years of engagement. Harry was allowed to be excited about that.
He went to work enchanting the paper and glass that would, hopefully, become a new variety of film which could capture ghosts better than the existing stuff did, and soon happily lost himself to anything but considerations of incantation, color, and wand movement speed.
*
“Harry? Harry!”
Blinking and stretching his arms, Harry turned around. The voice had called his name God knew how many times before he heard it, and then, though he wanted to move quickly, he had to scuttle from the room like a crab because of the way his back had bent during his hours hovering over the table.
He was walking like a human by the time he reached the fireplace, at least. He blinked in surprise when he saw Ginny’s head hovering there. Since their parting, they had rarely seen each other except in the context of full Weasley family gatherings. But now she was staring at him desperately, as if only he could do something to aid her. It didn’t help, Harry saw with slowly growing alarm, that tears were streaking down her face.
“Ginny,” he whispered, kneeling to be on her level. “What’s wrong?”
“Ron,” she whispered.
Harry clenched his fists. Ron had got pissed with him a few nights ago and had fallen into maudlin lamentations about how he wasn’t good enough for Hermione, but surely the prat hadn’t broken the engagement or run away to the Continent, as he’d threatened to do. “What about Ron?” he said.
“Oh, God, Harry.” Ginny’s face tilted forwards, almost concealing her expression from him, and the nature of Harry’s alarm shifted.
“What is it? Is he in St. Mungo’s?”
“He’s dead, Harry.”
Harry had thought he was done with his world falling apart around him after what had happened with Ginny. But it had just smashed like an egg again, and he stared at her, unable to say a single word.
*
As Harry came to understand them later, from a sobbing Ginny and Mrs. Weasley, a miserably tight-lipped Percy, and a Hermione who was so hard-faced she frightened him, what had happened was this:
Ron had become Keeper for the Chudley Cannons two years ago, a position so much his dream job he had accepted immediately, despite a few offers from more prominent Quidditch teams in the league. He’d been playing in a practice game today, his last one before his wedding.
One of the Beaters had hit a Bludger slightly too hard. It’d spun away from the team’s Seeker and Chasers and slammed into the side of Ron’s skull. The bone fragments collapsed inwards and pierced his brain. By the time his racing team members reached him, it had already been too late to save him, though they’d valiantly Apparated him to St. Mungo’s anyway. The Healers confirmed that even a faster journey would have done nothing; he was dead when they brought him upstairs.
The Beater had already quit the team in self-loathing. Harry had seen him in the background when the rest of the Weasley family converged on St. Mungo’s, crying, face so miserable that Harry had gone to comfort him. That proved more than the boy could take—he thought for certain the Savior of the Wizarding World was going to destroy him for killing his best friend—and he fainted dead away.
Harry had stayed by his side until he woke up and finally persuaded him, as best as he could, that it was not his fault and that no one blamed him. Harry didn’t add that he, personally, would have found it easier to have someone to blame, would actually have liked for Ron’s death to be murder. Then he could hunt down and punish the person responsible.
But this young Beater, Warren Erikson, had looked up to Ron, joked with him, and joined him for consolatory drinks every time the Cannons lost. There was no possible reason he’d have to kill him, and the sight of his extreme distress and the words of the rest of the team convinced Harry. It had been an accident.
An accident that had simply marched into the middle of a normal, sunny May day, and taken Ron away from them.
After talking with Erikson, Harry went to the Weasleys. There was so little he could do, but what he could do, he did. He offered a literal shoulder for Molly and Ginny to cry on; it was the first time Ginny had willingly touched him since the Incident. Harry gently stroked her hair and wished Ron could have been alive to witness his best friend and his sister slowly coming back together.
Ron should have been alive to witness everything.
Percy arrived, busy and officious and likely to drive everyone mad if he weren’t given something to do. Harry placed him outside the room in St. Mungo’s where Ron lay to fend off everyone who might possibly look like a reporter. The Daily Prophet’s people had already learned that Harry Potter had rushed into hospital in great distress, and Harry was determined not to have the Weasleys bothered with insensitive questions.
Bill and Fleur arrived, leading their solemn-eyed daughter Victoire by the hand. Harry stepped aside so Bill and Fleur could enter the room, but, after a swift and quiet discussion with Fleur, kept Victoire out of the room. She asked a lot of questions about death. Harry evaded some of them, but admitted that she wouldn’t see Uncle Ron anymore. The little girl clung to him and cried. Ron had been her favorite of her uncles.
Charlie had sent word he was coming from Romania. Harry wrote the owl back to him; Molly was still weeping too hard to hold a quill, and Arthur had just showed up, so pale and wan Harry hated to dump the duty on him.
George, of course, was the one who lingered outside the room, his hands in his robe pockets and his stare fixed and desolate. Harry, after one look at him, Transfigured some water that the mediwitches had deposited on the Weasleys into Firewhiskey and offered it to him. George nodded his thanks and went into the corridor to be quietly drunk in peace.
And Harry shed his own tears and took his own turn sitting beside Ron’s body feeling as if a dragon had kicked him in the chest and he wouldn’t ever be able to breathe again.
That left Hermione.
*
When Hermione remained stoic throughout the funeral, Harry didn’t worry. He knew she wasn’t much for public displays of emotion; she had hated to be caught crying, hated for people to stare at her, ever since the war. He sat beside her and held her hand, which lay in his like marble, and watched her watching the coffin as it was lowered into the ground. And why not? The man she loved was in there.
When Hermione quit her job working in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures the next day, Harry wasn’t surprised. She would probably come back, he assured the worried Ministry official who contacted him. But she needed some time and distance right now, and they would give it to her. He added what he privately called his “Savior Stare” to those words, and the man facing him turned white and spluttered out that, certainly, they would give Miss Granger all the time she needed, and her old job would be waiting for her the moment she wanted it back.
Miss Granger. She would be that for a long time now. She and Ron had quarreled vociferously about how they should hyphenate their names, or if they should; Hermione thought it would be modern and progressive of Ron to take her last name. She was not going to be plain Hermione Weasley, at least. But she would change her name to Mrs., she had graciously conceded.
The recollections made Harry smile for a bit, the closest he’d come to a smile in a week. He took a deep breath and resumed his work on the ghost-capturing film, though several hours a day were spent in contact with the Weasleys and Hermione, checking up on them to make sure they didn’t need anything. Slowly, the edges of the wound in his soul began to pull and knit together. If he hadn’t had experience recovering from his grief after the war, he doubted he would have been able to do this. But he did, and he deliberately remembered as much of the life in Ron as he did the death.
Ron had got pissed and moaned about not being good enough for Hermione and how he should leave her free to marry some brilliant Muggle scientist or pure-blood Potions brewer, but Harry knew he never would have. Ron loved Hermione with the breath in him.
Ron had been so pleased with the Firebolt Harry bought him when he joined the Cannons. Harry knew he would never have persuaded his friend to accept the gift if he hadn’t argued for an hour beforehand, pointing out that a professional Quidditch player needed a much better broom, and that Harry only wanted the Cannons to be actually competitive. Ron had hit him for the last statement, but the look of delight in his eyes when he opened the package had stayed with Harry.
Ron had come over and yelled at Harry after the Incident. Harry had expected that. What he hadn’t expected was the way Ron had insisted that Harry stay in contact with the Weasley family, that Harry was still his best friend, and that he did not have Ron’s permission to lie on his couch and sulk himself into oblivion. The yelling had led to an awkward dinner at the Burrow that night, whilst Ron glared fiercely in every direction with an expression that challenged someone to say something, go ahead and say it.
The edges of Harry’s wound pulled together. He assumed they were doing the same for Hermione. She always told him she was feeling fine, getting better, when he asked her. Harry didn’t always believe her, and he did worry when she didn’t go back to the Ministry by the time seven months had passed since Ron’s death, but he had to respect her decision. Thanks to her careful spending, she wasn’t hurting for money.
Then she stopped answering his Floo calls.
Harry finally Apparated to her flat and found it warded so strongly that he was trembling and exhausted by the time he broke through the last piece of magic. And then he found her asleep on the couch in her drawing room, covered with glamours that melted when he touched her. It must have been a week since she had eaten, and longer than that since she’d showered.
Harry had thought, once, that he would tire of acting the hero, of playing the savior, of dredging up strength when people needed something of him.
As he gathered up his one remaining best friend in his arms and frantically Apparated to St. Mungo’s, he discovered he was a very long way indeed from that point.
*
“Why?”
Harry asked Hermione the question the moment he sat down by her bed in St. Mungo’s, which was the moment the Healers had stopped spelling water and food into her stomach and decided she was fit to have visitors.
Hermione didn’t answer for long moments, staring out the window instead. Then she turned around. Harry let out a hard breath. There were tears in her eyes, the first time she’d shed since Ron’s death. He took her hand and held it tightly, trying not to notice that her skin wasn’t much different in color from the sheets she rested on.
“I want to stop,” she whispered. “I want to wake up, and stand up, and get ready for the day. I even want to go back to the Ministry and start arguing down the ridiculous laws about house-elves again. But I can’t, Harry. There’s a mountain in my mind. I can’t move it. Whenever I think too much about doing something other than lying on the couch and sleeping, the mountain falls on me. I always close my eyes and tell myself I’ll get up tomorrow. After all, what do I have but empty days since I lost him?”
Harry licked his lips. What she described sounded similar to what he’d experienced in their fifth year, but his mountain had been anger, not grief, and his solution to the problem was hardly something he would advise for Hermione.
“Do you think you should talk to someone?” he asked.
“A therapist?” Hermione took the suggestion more calmly than he had expected. But she also shook her head. “I thought of that. There’s a problem with both sides of the question. In the Muggle world, I’d have to leave out so much about what happened to us and how Ron died and what I want to get back to in my daily life that it’s not worth it. And in the wizarding world—“ She hissed under her breath. “Frankly, Harry, the therapy here is primitive. And there’s the further problem of the fact that they probably wouldn’t be able to forget I’m ‘Hermione the Heroine.’” She pitched her voice high, in imitation of Rita Skeeter, who had tagged the title on her after the war, as she said the last words. “And that would prejudice the treatment.”
Harry nodded. “Would talking to me help?”
Hermione smiled tiredly at him. “It’ll help. You’re a wonderful friend, Harry. Thank you.” She squeezed his hand. “But I don’t think that’ll do enough. I’ve talked to you every day for the past seven months—“ she glanced out the window as if to check that the blank slate of the December skies was actually present “—and when I realized how badly I was failing, the first step I took was to hide the signs of my failure from you.”
“You’ll never be a failure, not to me.” Harry kissed the back of her hand.
“Talking to you isn’t enough,” Hermione repeated, her eyes bright. “But that’s what I want to do, in combination with something else. There must be something, a spell or a potion, that can help relieve this. And please, Harry—“ She closed her eyes and swallowed. “I want to do this in private, with you. No reporters. No therapists. Limited contact even with the Weasleys and my parents. I know they care about me. I do. But—but you’re the only person who brings back my memories of Ron but doesn’t hurt me with them. Please?”
Harry nodded at once. He felt the same way around Hermione. The times they’d acted together, just the three of them and no one else, had woven an enchanted circle about them that no one else could step inside, even Ginny or the other members of Ron’s family. Now that Ron was gone, the circle had just contracted tighter.
“Thank you.” Hermione closed her eyes and then opened them again. This time, she didn’t let the tears fall. “I do want to beat this. I do.”
Harry nodded again, and laid his cheek against hers.
*
It was March, and Harry was at his wits’ end.
He’d done the most thorough and comprehensive research he could. Hermione had helped him when she’d felt up to it. And still, everything he could find didn’t last.
Cheering Charms were only meant to cure temporary sadness or make someone giggle. The variations on Pepper-Up Potion and the Patronus Charm that Harry had thought promising at first turned out to last less than an hour, barely enough for Hermione to summon any will to do anything. Entire books of spells had to be rejected because wizards of the past hadn’t recognized depression as an illness; they’d simply assumed people who grieved too long were mad and shut them up. Harry had researched chocolate, even, remembering the way Remus had used it to cure the effects of Dementors, but that, too, had no properties with any lasting effects.
Harry put his hand over his eyes and rubbed his forehead in small circles. Hermione was asleep in his bedroom, her cheeks still damp. Harry felt like crying himself at the sight of the despair in her eyes each time some new approach failed.
His clock chimed. Harry hurried into the loo. The potion tasted thick and sludgy going down, but it was imperative. He forced himself to swallow and wait a few minutes, staring fixedly at his own reflection in the mirror.
The vial that had held the potion sparkled at him.
Harry furrowed his brow and stared at the vial for long moments. Then he swallowed, slowly, and not because of the stickiness in his throat.
His potion might work. His potion had been designed from a common base, with Hermione’s simultaneous help and disapproval, to remove what he loathed most about himself. Hermione was just as frantic to have the depression gone as Harry was, or at least to have the worst symptoms removed so she could accept her grief and move on. If she could use the potion, it might relieve her.
The problem was, the potion had been specifically designed for Harry alone. Giving it to Hermione might hurt her, or, at best, do nothing. Harry would have to modify the base again and cast new spells to transform the ingredients into their needed state, and he didn’t trust his own Potions brewing skills enough to do that. Nor, at the moment, could he trust Hermione’s.
He would have to have help.
Harry closed his eyes and leaned back against the tiled wall. At the moment, he would not have been above asking Snape for help, if only the git were still alive.
He ran over, in his head, the list of people he knew who were Potions brewers of sufficient skill, who would be attracted by the project, and who knew him well enough that they wouldn’t accept the job just because of who he was.
The list was, well, short. In fact, it was one name long.
Harry grimaced and opened his eyes. He didn’t want to ask Draco Malfoy for help, but it was true that the git had created an awfully bustling apothecary business for himself, and that even the Weasleys had gone to buy his products and hadn’t been poisoned. Malfoy seemed to disdain poisoning as beneath him, unless it was a complex, subtle thing, the effects of which lasted for years and were not immediately traceable to him. Harry had heard rumors from the Ministry…
Harry shrugged impatiently. At least Malfoy was unlikely to be overawed by him, and Harry could offer him something he knew would attract the bastard: the chance to profit from the potion once it was modified for a general market. If Harry was right, this thing could be enormously powerful and much in demand. And he didn’t care about the money. What he cared about was Hermione getting better.
He sat down to write the letter. He made sure to keep it polite, strictly within terms of business, and offered Malfoy the money even before the knowledge.
As he watched his owl Athena wing away with the letter, he hoped fervently that Malfoy had changed into enough of a coldly practical man to agree to treat a Muggleborn.
Part 2.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 04:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 11:51 pm (UTC)Ron's death was a Quidditch accident from the first germ of the story. I really didn't want him murdered.
The Incident is revealed in full at the end of this story.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 05:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 11:52 pm (UTC)Draco will be stunned at the reason Harry contacts him, but also secretly gleeful, for more than one reason.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 05:59 pm (UTC)Aside: It's interesting; I just started plotting a new story a few days ago where Draco is a filmmaker, but I haven't thought through the details yet. Will you be describing more about what Harry does, or is that more peripheral to the plot of this series (it seems that it is, at least so far)?
Can't wait for the next installment! :)
no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 11:48 pm (UTC)The article you linked to is interesting; thanks. I think a lot of H/D stories I've read and written are based more on passion than anything else.
Harry's career will be described more in the second story than the first, when he starts to return to it. But he doesn't actually make movies, if that's what you're asking; he only makes the actual film for wizarding cameras.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 06:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 11:43 pm (UTC)I've felt sort of tired and apathetic these last few days, which is why I haven't been posting/commenting as much.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-26 02:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 06:59 pm (UTC)A wonderful start!
no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 11:45 pm (UTC)The Incident will be clarified at the end of this story, as well the nature of Harry's potion.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 07:00 pm (UTC)This chapter was heartbreaking, even if I knew Ron was gonna die. He's one of my favourite characters. I feel bad for Hermione and the Weasleys... and for Harry. While he was going from person to person comforting them, I kept thinking 'who's going to comfort you?' For some reason, that was what got to me the most.
I like the idea of Harry in the film industry, it's not something you associate him with. I wonder about the Incident, it must have been something pretty bad. Ron being all supportive and not letting Harry lie on his couch and sulk himself into oblivion (which btw, was so something Ron would say) made his death even worse for me: he was a very good friend. I'm glad Hermione is aware that she has a problem and wants to do something about it. That Harry would have gone to Snape for help show how much he cares for her :)
I can't wait for Draco and Harry to meet! Of course, I want to know what Harry's potion but I guess I'll have to contain my curiosity until the end :P
no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 11:50 pm (UTC)Thank you. It was meant to be sad, given how many lives Ron was tied into.
Harry's comforting of the Weasleys and Hermione in this case is his way of soothing his grief. If he can keep busy enough, he thinks about it less.
Harry isn't making movies, just the film itself, and mostly for cameras.
The Incident is pretty bad, enough that I hope Ron's behavior doesn't seem inconsistent when it's revealed.
Hermione is tough and determined, but depression isn't something she can beat on her own. She'll contribute as much as she can to the cure, though.
Harry's potion will eventually be identified.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 07:54 pm (UTC)Amazing start btw
no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 11:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 11:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 10:35 pm (UTC)I'm definitely looking forward to how this story will turn out! :D
no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 11:53 pm (UTC)The story will follow a fairly predictable course once the first chapters are past, I think. What's going to be unusual are the side-plots running alongside the romance and the reasons that Harry and Draco get together.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 10:41 pm (UTC)You've laid down so many mysteries already in the first chapter, the 'Incident' and the sludge potion. I liked how Harry first went to confront and console Erikson before the Weasleys. It was very mature of him.
Great opener. I'm looking forward to the rest!
no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 11:45 pm (UTC)And thank you!
I hadn't thought about Harry's comfort of Erikson being interpreted in that light, but it certainly could be.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 10:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 11:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 11:17 pm (UTC)I would like to guess that the potion is to get rid of his scar.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 11:42 pm (UTC)In this case, no. He still has the scar, which is part of the reason that the reporters recognized him when he went to St. Mungo's.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 11:18 pm (UTC)I do have my ideas what the Incident could be, but seeing the tune of the story, my ideas might just be a little too happily smuty...ahem.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 11:44 pm (UTC)This isn't a story that has much to do with gore or violence, at least at first. There might be some more intimidation and politics in the next story.
The Incident! It will be brought up often, and eventually clarified at the end of the story. There are hints here, though.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-21 02:23 am (UTC)I've just finished reading all your other stories and I've really liked them. ^___^ They are all so well-written and the plots are just plain addictive. :D I definitely look forward to whatever else you write.
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Date: 2007-12-21 05:06 pm (UTC)I'm glad you enjoyed the others. I definitely intend to keep writing the two TiP's I've got now, as well as future one-shots.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-21 02:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-21 05:06 pm (UTC)Well, this Harry is more settled and mature, and does call himself bisexual, though he's never been with a man.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-21 02:46 am (UTC)Where did you get all this awesomeness? It's really quite unfair to the rest of us poor relatively untalented mortals. Neil Gaiman and Samuel L. Jackson must be missing some..thief! :)
no subject
Date: 2007-12-21 05:06 pm (UTC)And I'm very flattered by the compliment. :)
no subject
Date: 2007-12-21 04:56 am (UTC)I do really like how you can hook people by just reading the first chapter.
Ron's death is so sad, but well its all for the plot.
Harry making film...I never thought about that kind of work, so it hink its a change for the common ones.
and well just like everyone else whats the incident?! hahaha i want to now!
will be waiting for more :D
no subject
Date: 2007-12-21 05:07 pm (UTC)I suspect Ron's death may put some people off, but there's really no way I could have a plot without it.
The Incident is coming up! There are some hints in this chapter.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-22 05:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-24 03:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-22 07:33 am (UTC)I like how you're building it up; having a preslash beginning. The whole 'An Intellectual Love Affair' sounds intriguing. Thank you for this. XD
no subject
Date: 2007-12-24 03:23 am (UTC)The preslash and the title of the series are related. Harry and Draco will be physically attracted to one another, definitely, but the mental connection comes first; they learn to appreciate others' minds before each others' bodies.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-15 06:05 pm (UTC)I was fighting the urge to cry with all i had at one point ( i hate crying) You captured that desolate, empty feeling that occurs when someone you love dies so well. Traumatic but beautiful at the same tim,e your choice of language weaved together was again beautiful.
I could not walk away from this story now if i tried and i am really not going to try in fact i will be running to the next chapter with gusto.
I am so curious over all those hints you have left i need to know...
damn you're good!
no subject
Date: 2008-02-16 06:43 pm (UTC)I got all teary-eyed over Ron's death, too. I know exactly how much losing the a relative hurts, so I took that and applied it to the loss of a close friend.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 08:59 pm (UTC)Now... I'm so curious what Harry loathes in himself and wants gone... especially since he doesn't seem changed much, so it must be either a thing that happened since Voldemort's death, or I'm just dense. :D Anyhow, guessing is fun! So: is it in connection with his 'theoretic bisexuality'? I know, I know: he is madly in love with Draco and wants that feeling gone. How's that? LOL Yeah, yeah, I know neither is a Veela or something in this story. :P
*off to read more*
no subject
Date: 2008-07-18 06:32 am (UTC)What a heartbreaking line. That's a line for the books.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-19 03:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-18 07:35 pm (UTC)I had tears in my eyes reading about Ron's death. I'm sad that he died - I think I would've liked this Ron a lot, because his reaction about the Incident was so great. But I see that his death was somehow necessary for the plotline you decided to write, so that's okay. I'm very much interested in how everything will develop.
Aspects and details I especially liked in this chapter:
•the relationship between Harry and Hermione
•the one between Harry and Ginny
•how you wrote the paragraph with Ginny telling Harry about Ron's death
•that Ron had been Victoire's favourite uncle
•how you described Hermione's depression (the mountain in her mind)
Thank you for sharing this.
Off to read the next chapter <3
no subject
Date: 2008-07-19 04:00 am (UTC)Ron is sometimes mentioned in the next few stories- not as much as he could have been, because this chapter covered so much time and Harry managed to get over some of his mourning. But his loss left a hole in Harry and Hermione's lives that will never go away.
And thank you for noticing those details! The ones about Ron's relationship with the rest of his family and Hermione's depression, I'm particularly proud of.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-18 11:33 pm (UTC)