This fic was written for the Spring 2011 takingitinturns fic exchange on Livejournal. Thank you to sherylyn, my wonderful and patient beta. The prompts for this story were: sexy, dark, potions, Harry being a tease, and dialogue. I feel certain that I included them all. This story is in four parts, all of which are already written. Reviews would be greatly appreciated.
PART ONE: NYX
Evening in Ashworth Square was always a little darker than the rest of London. Most of the witches and wizards that lived in the slightly dodgy magical neighborhood guarded their residences with Notice Me Not spells, making the whole of the community a rather muted place to look at. The streets and sidewalks were not well kept; there were bits of litter, garbage, and broken glass in most of the alleyways, and along Ash Street proper Ginny caught the sound of several nearby dogs barking threateningly and a couple having a row in a nearby townhouse.
She walked past the grey stoop that preceded the brick street front of her own flat, removing the key she'd clutched the whole way home in her left hand. Tottering old Mrs. Blanchford, the owner of Number 7 Ash Street, had left the gas lamps burning in the hallway, mindful of the time that Ginny usually got off of work. A deep brown cat peered at her from the stairs, loping towards her when she kneeled down to stroke underneath its chin.
"Hello Lanolin," Ginny cooed. Mrs. Blanchford proudly owned three or four cats that wandered around the apartment house, and she had taken a liking to the sveltely Havana Brown.
Harry had been probing her for months now about how she would feel if they got a dog, but she didn't have the heart to tell him that she'd wanted a cat ever since she'd been a little girl at The Burrow. Her mother had warned that having a pet cat in the same house as Fred and George would be unfairly traumatizing (to the animal, not her brothers), so they had never got one, despite her frequent begging.
Lanolin blinked her large, yellow eyes at Ginny and purred.
"Well, come on then," she said, climbing the stairs while the cat prowled beside her. The flat that she shared with Harry was on the third floor, with a soft bed and a hot cup of tea within its capabilities. Although they lived together he was often called out on long assignments, leaving Ginny to look after things by herself, which she didn't mind. Living with six brothers had taught her how to keep house well enough, and the upkeep for the two of them was usually minimal.
The brown cat slipped through the door after her as she toed out of her black winter boots and closed the door. Ginny tapped her wand against the hall lamp, causing it to glow cheerfully. The mirror next to the coat rack gave a low whistle.
"My, you're looking knackered this evening," it wheezed.
She ran her fingers tiredly over her impossibly long red hair. "Thanks."
"I'm sure it's been a long day," the mirror dryly assuaged.
In truth, her day had been quite long and tedious. Ginny worked for the Illegal and Illicit Potions Maintenance Team, a sublevel organization of the Department for Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. She enjoyed her job as a brew analyzer and poison expert; the potions she got to work with were usually interesting and challenging, but sometimes there were slow days in the office where she didn't get to actually work with brews. Today had been one of them. She'd spent the majority of her time in the office getting caught up on writing reports and finalizing paperwork for one of her recent projects, and after staring at rolls of parchment inked in Gaspar's dreadful handwriting her head was starting to hurt.
Lanolin happily curled up in a wingback armchair while Ginny put the kettle on for tea, shaking her waist-length hair out of the loose plait she'd pulled it into while she'd been at work. She sat at the kitchen table in her black dress and nylon stockings, sorting through the post that had been delivered while she was away. A letter from her Aunt Muriel that she was putting off reading, the latest issue of Quidditch International, and the newest catalogue of merchandise from Weasley Wizard Wheezes, courtesy of her brother George.
Just as the kettle began to issue the tell tale jet of steam from its spout, a roaring that she associated with Floo travel sounded from the sitting room. Ginny swished her wand, sending the kettle to a hot mat she'd placed on the counter, and walked into the living room, only to find Gaspar's head sticking out of the emerald-flamed fire.
"Weasley!" he sputtered. "You better come quick—to St. Mungo's. It's Potter, he's in a bad way, had a nasty poison encounter—"
"Harry?" she asked, already dashing for her shoes and coat. "What happened?"
"Neurotoxic snake venom."
"I'll meet you there," she said determinedly, her hand clutched around her wand.
Ginny Apparated into the waiting room of St. Mungo's with a sharp pop, dashing to the staircase where Gaspar was waiting.
"He's on the second floor," the middle-aged wizard explained, rushing Ginny to the same ward where her father had been bedridden many Christmases before. "Very dark magic, apparently. Only the worst kind of magic requires poisonous snake venom," he said conspiratorially.
"Inferious transformations, your normal magical snakes," she said, her mind flying through any spell, potion, or transformation that required venom. "Have they brought in anyone from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures?"
"It wasn't a live snake," Gaspar explained. "Some kind of location-specific guarding spell ..."
Her chest aching from the exertion, she let Gaspar steer her into a functional medical room without any other patients. Three healers, Head Auror Rodger Drummond, her brother Ron, two trainee aurors, and Ron and Harry's coworker Ross Tatton were crowded around Harry's recumbent form. His eyes were barely open, and a thin sheen of sweat covered his entire body.
"Harry!" she said, breathless from running but still wide-eyed. "Is he all right? When did this happen?"
Drummand cocked his head in Ron's direction while leaning on his blackthorn walking stick. "Weasley—you were there. Explain the magic around the oubliette."
Ron swallowed and took a breath, clenching and unclenching his fists. "We'd gone to check out this abandoned ruin that some of the locals had called in, a place to do with the Ethelind murders, and when we were searching around the basement area we found the trap door and it was just full of magic—Ross did an identification spell and it showed something sort of . . . slithering, you know, like a snake, but we didn't realize it was a spell. I, well, Harry and I both thought that it would be a good idea for him to check it out, him being a parstlemouth and all, so he did a few spells to detect any obvious dark magic . . . nothing came up!" He ran his hands through his hair, his face completely white. "None of us realized it was being protected with bloody venom wards!"
Drummond was keeping himself together much more effectively than Ron, who seemed to be feeling guiltier by the minute. "But how was Potter actually cursed, Weasley? How were the wards activated? Did he actually speak in parstletongue?"
Ginny began to work her hair into a tight French pla, pulling it away from her face while her heart pounded out a steady thump, thump, thumpin her tight chest. Ron opened his mouth and waited a second before speaking.
"He...he spoke to it. I don't know what he said, it comes out like hissing, but he said that it seemed alright. The trap door opened—with magic, mind you, none of us touched it—and we did a lumos to see down in it, and there is definitely something down in that oubliette, even if we didn't get to it, but as soon as his hand came in contact with the wood around the mouth of the opening... "
No one spoke for a moment. The semi-circle of Harry's watchers and coworkers were formed around him like sentinels.
"Well," Drummond barked, looking to the three healers who had been listening to Ron's account, "have you got any idea of what to do? This is the savior of the Wizarding world, not some ruddy underling—"
One of the Healers stepped forward, a clipboard clutched in her tense hands. "We've taken a blood sample, but the toxins in Mr. Potter's system don't match any of the antidotes we have on stock—Ms. Weasley—"
"Will be needing that blood sample, a cauldron, some glass test plates, and your strongest gloves," Ginny finished, moving toward Harry, who now had his eyes closed. His breathing was much shallower than when she had first arrived, which frightened her more than she would ever admit. "And if you have any literature on snake venom please pull it," she added.
The other two Healers nearly jumped at her request, hurrying to fetch the required materials.
As if her voice were being spoken by a separate entity—and she, Ginny, were sitting to the side and listening—she heard rather than felt herself explain the usual course of action for contact with neurotoxic venom. "His breathing will continue to decrease unless we find an antidote, and quickly, he's already been exposed for far too much time, but there's still a lot we can do. Set up a monitoring spell for his respiratory system and perform an obligatory Breathing Charm if necessary."
She stood the closest to Harry, her shoulders tensely hunched while she thought as hard as she possibly could, trying to remember any scrap of useful information she had ever heard during the two years she'd been in training for her job after Hogwarts, or any of the outside material she'd read on venom since that time.
Freezing her movements, Ginny said, "Harry was exposed to Basalisk venom when he was twelve. Have you written that down?" she asked, making eye contact with the younger female Healer who, coincidentally, had pale green eyes. She nodded, surprised at being addressed directly, her blonde ponytail swinging.
"He was cured with phoenix tears," Ginny continued, "but he may have some immunity to whatever venom was used in that curse, or it could make him more vulnerable, there's no way to tell just yet."
One of the younger Healers handed her the blood sample and she strode purposefully to the worktable that had been set up, already casting spells to analyze the venom configuration while the same Healer, a man that looked to be around her age, set up the cauldron for her.
Ginny pulled on the gloves that had been laid out on the table and cracked the seal of the sample vial with a satisfying pop.
"We'll let you work, Ms. Weasley," Drummond said, rising with the aid of his blackthorn stick and roughly steering a frightened-looking Ron out of the room. "Come on you lot, get out of her dammed way," he called to the rest of the aurors, jolting them to attention.
Ross Tatton and the trainees followed suit, casting a few last worried looks towards Harry's form on the hospital bed.
Before the door closed, just as Ginny's sample was glowing a highly acidic green, she could hear Drumond assuring one of the trainees that, "Potter will be just fine with his girl here to put him right."
