A/N: A twist on conventional love potions that was supposed to be a fun little backbench muse but decided it wanted centre stage. I really must find a way to stop them, but in the meantime…another new fic. :D
You Can't Brew Love
Prologue
Albus didn't know if he had done the right thing, however he believed he'd done the best he could with the cards offered to him. Minerva had been quite convincing in her arguments – and for her to sit on a brick wall all day to confirm the environment of Number 4 Privet Drive meant that her arguments were not to be taken lightly.
However, there was no way around the blood protection. Even Fidelius was not infallible; James and Lily and trusted to that, and they were dead. And for a child to grow up in such a contained environment…
Albus shook his head. As Minerva had pointed out, quite reasonably, it was no better in letting him grow up in in a family without love. He had listened to her account, how Petunia relied on bribery to quell her son – something Albus knew would spiral out of control. Ten years from now, perhaps fifteen – and Albus could only imagine how the child would be. A delinquent at best. A juvenile criminal at the worst. And he could only imagine how such people would treat a nephew, if this is how they treated their direct blood.
That had left him torn: to abandon a child to such conditions, or to a world in which his safety would be constantly compromised – except maybe Hogwarts, but for any child to grow in such a magically dense environment was inconceivable. A child of four or five would most likely combust from the overload, let alone not even two years of age. And he – despite Minerva's confidence in him – did not think he could raise a child or truly defeat a man like Tom Riddle.
He put a lot of thought into it – explored every door open to him – but there was simply no other choice. It wasn't an issue of trust – or it was, because he did not trust himself with additional power any more than he trusted a majority of his acquaintances with it. And amongst those he did trust – well, the tragedy of James and Lily Potter was still burning fresh in his mind. Betrayed by their closest friend – for who else could it have been? The one weakness of the Fidelius Charm so unexpectedly exploited.
But to condemn a child to growing in less than appropriate conditions? It was…simply unacceptable. And yet, to do what he had done was perhaps no better, because he was fiddling with human nature of the deepest level – what no spell or potion could truly change. A person's heart, a person's feelings, could not be manipulated by a spell or a concoction – not truly. But when he looked deeper, he saw two people whose hearts had been shielded by magic, and he saw little else to be done.
Time was the changer he sought; in the meantime, he hoped his little…intervention would lead them on the right path. Those ensnared by a love potion could eventually learn to love after all – although, as he left the shadow of Number Four Privet Drive, he was reminded of a couple with which that had turned out not to be the case at all.
Post A/N: Just to clarify, Minerva and, by extension Albus, really had no concrete way of knowing how deep Vernon and Petunia's hatred for magic went. Minerva only observed how spoilt Dudley was and amounted that to inadequate parenting. Albus does comment on that in the sixth book, albeit somewhat obscurely – but the superficiality of Petunia's and Vernon's parental treatment (they did seem to rather buy Dudley's love with presents and sweets and stuff, if that makes any sense) is a case of concern even without considering Petunia's relationship with Lily and her approach to magic. Anyway, this is why Albus' little introspect above does not mention potential mistreatment of the other extreme.