A Cauldron Full of Hot Strong Love
i
The first time she tries to brew it is when she's seven, and it's only because she's curious.
(It fails miserably, and all she manages to do before they catch her is boil the water.)
ii
The second time she tries to brew it is when she's ten, and it's because she's seen Harry Potter for the very first time and she's smitten. She borrows Fred's cauldron when he's home for the Christmas holidays, and she borrows George's wand to stir it, and she borrows Charlie's Potions textbook so at least this time she knows what she's doing, and she nicks the ingredients from Percy's room.
She gives up when she realizes Percy only has half of what she needs.
iii
The third time she tries to brew it is when she's eleven, and this time she gets much closer because she's under the instruction of someone much older and wiser.
Add the Moonstone, writes the mysterious man in the diary, and Ginny scoops up a powdery heap of the glowing gemstone and drops it into her cauldron.
Snape will notice this stuff is missing, she scribbles, blinking tiredness from her eyes. It had been two in the morning when she'd snuck in here, and at least an hour must have passed since then.
Don't worry about your Professor, Tom writes back. Add the rose thorns.
Ginny scoops them up in her hands and lets them fall.
Done, she writes, and a few drops of blood smear the parchment.
Did you prick yourself, Ginevra?
Her face burns in embarrassment. Only a little.
Did you get your blood in the potion?
Ginny leans over the cauldron to check. It's turned from a delightful golden color to a deep brown, and it's giving off smoke. I might have.
A long silence from the diary.
Is it ruined? she asks.
Nothing.
Will it still make Harry fall in love with me? The quicker she writes, the less legible her handwriting becomes, and she wonders whether the man in her diary will even be able to read it.
We'll try again tomorrow, Tom says finally, and Ginny tips over her cauldron and pours the failed potion out on the slanted floor of the dungeon. As it creeps toward the drain that connects to the Black Lake, she feels tears prick her eyes.
I'm sorry, Tom.
I forgive you, Ginevra. A pause, and then: You know, I don't need a potion to care for you.
And Ginny manages a watery smile as she closes the diary and heads back to the Gryffindor Common Room.
I care for you, too, Tom, she tells him from beneath her covers.
iv
The fourth time she tries to brew it is when she's fourteen, and it's under the guise of helping Fred and George with joke shop products, but that's a lie, she's lying, she hasn't told the truth about anything since she was eleven years old and she's never told the truth about why she wants so badly to create liquid love.
"Did you add peppermint?" Fred asks as Ginny leans away from the flames under the cauldron, fanning at her face.
"I will in a second." Her pores glisten with sweat. "It's bloody hot up here."
"Well what d'you want us to do, brew it somewhere else?" George gestures at the walls of the room the twins share. "This is the only room in the house we've got soundproofed. D'you want Mum barging in on us making this stuff?"
Ginny exhales through pursed lips, trying to blow cool air against her own face. "Can't we crack a window, at least? It's the middle of July. It's hot."
Fred reaches across her lap and plucks the peppermint sprigs from her hand. "Haven't you ever heard, Ginny, that you've got to suffer for what you love?"
(The cauldron explodes, and Ginny isn't sure whether it's because of a bad batch of peppermint or just fate trying to prevent her from ending up happy.)
v
The fifth time she tries to brew it is when she's sixteen and it's assigned to them in class, but somehow hearing Slughorn talk for hours about Amortentia makes it all less appealing, and Ginny skives off with Neville and practices her patronuses in the Room of Requirement instead.
Harry's gone anyway, after all.
vi
The sixth time she tries to brew it is when she's seventeen and feisty and eager to be done with school already, because spring has come and Quidditch is calling, but Slughorn has assured her that Amortentia will come up on her NEWTS, and if she wants to pass Potions she'll need to know how to make liquid love.
She sits in the dungeons with Hermione at her side and pours in rose thorns and Moonstone and peppermint, and when the potion starts to give off an odor of extremely ripe cheese she loudly announces that this is overrated and she doesn't see the bloody use for Amortentia anyway.
"You're close, Ginny," Hermione says, looking down at her own perfectly-brewed love potion. "You're very close."
"I followed every instruction exactly," Ginny snaps. "What the hell is going wrong?"
"It's your attitude, I suppose," Hermione says. "Stay calmer. More in control."
Ginny throws back her head and laughs. "I am always in control."
(She isn't. She never has been.)
vii
The seventh time she tries to brew it is later on, when she'd rather not admit her age, thank you very much.
She's sitting in her office at Hogwarts (her old Quidditch trophies glint on the shelf above her desk) with a travel-sized cauldron under a travel-sized flame, and she doesn't expect anything to come of it.
She doesn't even know why she's doing it, really, because she has everything she's ever wanted. She has Harry. She has three beautiful children, and she's done her damnedest to make sure she loves them all vocally and equally so the youngest doesn't fall through the cracks. She's bloody famous, as an athlete and as a Hogwarts Professor (they say she's the best Potions Master they've seen since Snape), and even though she's taken Amortentia out of the curriculum, she can't get over the fact that it's the one potion she's never been able to make.
So she sits in her office, five days before she officially retires, and she pulls out the list of ingredients for Amortentia, and she watches them simmer in her cauldron and laughs quietly at the thought of her seven-year-old self trying to do the same thing.
For a moment, she thinks she catches a whiff of Harry's aftershave—
But then the liquid turns bright blue and begins to hum, and Ginny rolls her eyes and Vanishes the entire thing, cauldron and all.
She's never needed a bloody potion to be loved.
Quidditch League Round 7: Potions
Holyhead Harpies, Seeker
Prompt: Amortentia
Word Count: 1,124