Title: Veritable
Author: lethalogica
Characters: Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy
Ships: Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy
Rating: PG-13 sounds good
Warning(s): nothing, really, unless you don't like slash- in which case, this is not the place for you.
Additional warning: Author is not responsible for underage readers. Mind the rating and warning(s).
Word count: 3,660
Disclaimer: Characters are the property of JK Rowling, et al. This fic was written for fun, not for profit.
Neville Longbottom was a notoriously horrid student at Potions. So notorious, in fact, that George Weasley of Weasley Wizard Wheezes wondered why he never thought of recruiting him for a part-time job.
It was a brilliant idea, after all; get him to make botched batches- not telling him to purposely mess them up, of course, because who knows what Neville meaning to make bad potions would do to the balance of the world?- and sell them off in sticks of plain, unflavoured candy, soaked in the concoctions overnight. Do a few tests before selling, of course, quick charms would sort out the potentially malicious ones from the perfectly safe ones (wouldn't want to get sued for reckless endangerment), but it was bound to be a best-seller.
Candies that didn't taste or look very special, but would have rather humourous effects on whoever ingested them, effects that would remain a surprise to both the victim and the perpetrator (and even the creators, AKA George Weasley and Neville Longbottom) until they appeared. Call them Curiously Chalky Confections, maybe.
Yes. It was an absolutely brilliant idea. Now, he just needed a guinea pig...
Harry sniffed at the tomato soup suspiciously. "What are these white things?" He lifted up a spoonful of the sanguine goop and tilted it to the side slowly, letting small, pasty chunks and the soup dribble down with a plop.
"Some flavour enhancers I found in the pantry," Hermione waved away dismissively, "but Merlin's sweet butt cheeks, are you ever going to start eating?"
He raised an eyebrow at her language and didn't bother trying to hide his amusement. "Merlin's sweet butt cheeks? You have been around George and Draco far too much for your own good, 'Mione," he waved his spoon mock-threateningly at his friend.
"Oh, shush, you. Eat. If you know what's good for you," she admonished, pursing her rose lips.
With a shake of his head, Harry started eating the soup, the first spoonful accompanied by a cringe in wary anticipation, and the following spoonful an impressed simper. "This is actually pretty good," he said in between swallows. Then Harry spotted the silver ring with a single ruby on her right middle finger and asked, "Where's that from? Ron?" pointing to it with his spoon.
"Hm? Oh, this little thing? Yeah," she nodded, studying it with a smile.
A deceptive smile, a smile that hid more than she was saying. Harry didn't know how or why he was thinking that, but something was nagging at him, telling him to call her out, take a chance, a leap, so he frowned, "You're lying."
She flinched- imperceptibly, she probably thought- and sighed, "Okay. You're right. I made it for myself."
Harry kept his eyes on her. "Hermione?"
"Yes?"
"Who are you?" He saw no point in pretending when he knew, there was a tugging clasp on his instincts, that this person was not Hermione when she affirmed she was. But how this person could've gotten through his wards at all was a total mystery, because it was spelled to allow access only for Hermione and Ron, Teddy and Andromeda, Neville and Luna, any other of the Weasleys, and-
Putting his hands up as he slipped off the ring, Hermione disappeared to reveal a very familiar blond. "Alright," he surrendered, "you caught me. Wait, I still have her voice, hang on a second- Finite Incantatem."
"Draco?"
"Yes?"
Harry sighed in relief. Then he sighed in exasperation and glared sharply at him. "Draco, what are you doing impersonating a world-famous figure of the wizarding world in the home of an Auror?"
"It was more like pretending to be my partner in crime's sister-in-law while I visit her best friend because he's exhausted himself from work so much that even Mother Weasley and the Healers agreed that you need rest, and said sister-in-law asked me to deliver to you her homemade soup because she couldn't, due to some very unspeakable Unspeakable business. But, you know. Potato, potahto."
Harry looked disbelievingly at him, not even needing the pulling sensation to know he was lying, which prompted Draco to add, "Fine, maybe she didn't so much as ask me to as I emancipated a tub of it- that she probably filched from Mother Weasley in turn!- from the clutches of their cold, box-like, Muggle-made, death contraption-"
"Their fridge?"
"-still tried to sever my hand no matter what you call it, and brought it here, to nurse you back to full health with- but everything else is true."
"So why the image-manipulating ring?" he brought up, sternly crossing his sleeved arms but not letting on the fact that Draco telling the truth when he said he wanted to help Harry made him smile inwardly.
Draco immediately beamed, thrusting the ring into Harry's face for his closer inspection and almost singing, "It's one of my personal projects! The stones are interchangeable, and the ones I've been crafting are imbued with a magic that can recreate the illusion of anyone! Granted, you have to have something, you know, with a direct presence of their unique signature- like the usual suspects: hair, skin, blood- but it's ingenious! The sample is mixed into this flammable solution- blue agave makes for great tequila, but that's not all it's good for- which I send into flames with a quick Incendio, and then I just drop the preferred stone into it and wait a couple of hours. The ring amplifies the illusionary effects and, ta-da! Just add a vocal imitation spell and you're that person! Not like Polyjuice, though, since it's only an illusion; it's kind of like draping an Invisibility Cloak over yourself- except that you see somebody else instead of nothing at all."
His infectious energy caught onto Harry, and the brunet smiled, "That is pretty damned clever," then asked, "Do you have a stone with my signature?"
Draco turned away, but not before Harry could see a blush creeping up on his face, and muttered, "No?"
"Draco."
"Fine, yes. I replicated one of your brushes when you had that close get-together
at the start of April here," he admitted, scratching at the nape of his neck with a manicured hand. "Not like you needed one in the first place, though; nothing will ever successfully tame all that messy hair of yours."
Harry pulled a petulant pout. "Don't bring my hair into this. It was just an innocent bystander. But, why Hermione? Molly would've at least been the tiniest bit more convincing."
"I don't know if you can see it, Potter- if not, I suggest you give up on glasses and go for one of those experimental eye treatments they're testing at St. Mungo's, since your eyesight literally cannot get any worse- but Molly Weasley isn't exactly my body type, and remember what I said about it being like an Invisibility Cloak? Granger's is infinitely more similar to mine than hers is, and you know anyone else you've made exceptions for in your wards couldn't come as close," he explained, Draco's right arm crossed to cradle his other elbow as his left arm flourished the last few words with a slow, patronising arc.
He smirked, "All but for her breasts. Or do you have those too?" He looked intently at Draco's pectorals.
"No! I am not a hermaphrodite! But she isn't that endowed, so it still works, whether I am one or not," he murmured, instinctively covering his chest with his arms, which caused a twitch to play upon the corner of Harry's lips.
The brunet relented and chuckled, only a little bit at first, then the blond started as well, which quickly escalated to the two doubling over the table in laughter, rich and full and blissfully careless. When they finally got to simmering down and looked up, an unshielded grey of mercurial shades was taken surprise by a coaxing forest of capturing greens. Harry didn't actually think of it like that, though, because a description like that is absolutely cheesy and not full of masculinity at all, which was how he heard Draco fancied his lovers, evidence from his past being Millicent Bulstrode and Viktor Krum- not that he cared what Draco's preferences were.
He cleared his throat, saving face before he got pulled into the eyes of infinite yet ethereal paradox more commonly known as Draco Malfoy- and dammit, those American Muggle paperback romances, that have been fascinating Ginny from their remarkable adoration of overused clichés and prompted her to send Harry copies via owl, were starting to seep into his everyday thoughts. Especially since dawdling, oblivious, completely unperceptive Gin was only sending him ones where the heroines were slender, riches-to-rags, pretty little things of very faire hair. Of course, he read them for her sake, so the red-head could have someone else to weep with over how corny they were since Dean was indifferent to the whole matter, but was Harry truly that obvious regarding his crush? And how out of ideas were these authors to have such a large quantity of "unique" characters with those same features?
"'Ahem' yes?" Draco asked, snapping the wizard out of his exasperation-induced tangent of thought.
"Oh, uh, yes. I believe everything you've said so far, except for when you were lying, but it feels a bit like there's something more to your visit than just showing off your ring and bringing me soup because you fancy me-"
"I do not fancy you! Who told you that? George? I am going to mutilate that lanky, little-"
"Draco," he put a hand on the blond's shoulder, "he didn't say anything like that. Over-reactive, aren't you?" He gave a shaky laugh full of hurt that he tried to hide the instant he heard it come out of his mouth. If Draco was that horrified by the thought of liking him, maybe it would be best to just bury this infatuation and carry on. "I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted by you, that you fancy me enough to keep me alive. Now. What else is there to this?"
Draco seemed to have noticed, though, when a wave of- regret spilled over his eyes and he opened his mouth to speak, but stopped and thought, eventually electing to shake his head and argue, "Not so. Those were my only reasons."
He smiled. "Your reasons, perhaps. But George's?" Harry couldn't be sure if that particular Weasley brother was involved in this or not, but it was his best guess, since the two were almost just as close as Ron and Harry were since they joined forces to make Weasley's Wizard Wheezes an even bigger-than-life force to be reckoned with.
Draco swept a tuft of hair behind an ear then shifted his hand to cradle his jaw, and Harry smiled
wider. His tell. He may have thought it perfectly innocuous, especially with his calculated expression leaving nothing to be interpreted, but with Harry's trained eyes, it was anything but. "I'll take that as a yes. So George wanted..." he left off as an invitation for Draco to finish.
"You to test a new product he wants to sell," he grumbled out after a few moments of quiet, pulling his bottom lip up and over his cupid's bow childishly, and glaring at the floor.
"Which would be?" The silence he received in response caused Harry to frown and his dark brows to slant up towards the middle of his forehead, an index finger aimlessly tracing the bags under his eyes.
Draco groaned, exaggerating the forced cooperation that was as clear on his face as it was in his tone. "I hate you, Potter. Guilting me with the unspoken Gryffindor morality of lying to an ill moron. Oh, how being surrounded by all you pity-mongers makes a Slytherin have embarrassingly courteous changes in behavior.
"The white pieces from your meal. They are a new product, the effects of which I, neither George, have no idea, just that they do have effects. But he assures me they are totally safe and that the mysterious aspect of its capricious nature is its whole novelty."
Harry looked pensive. He surprised Draco when he commanded, "Lie to me."
"Excuse me?"
"Lie to me- or shall I suggest one of the experimental auditory implements they're testing at St. Mungo's?" He smirked in challenge.
Draco's pale brows burrowed into the gap of hair between them in frustrated recognition of those words. "You know, I dislike you greatly."
"Lie," he sang idly.
"That is not a lie! It is very much the truth! You are the most stupendously idiotic man I've ever met!"
"L-I-E."
"How could you be sure?" Draco tried to sound threatening, but only pulled off whingy when he tried. "That's another part of you I hate. So incredibly arrogant and sure of yourself one minute, completely bared and doubtful of yourself the next!"
"That sounds more like you than me," Harry snorted. "It's a lie, by the way."
The blond growled like a lion cub not getting what it wanted- of which he truly sounded the part- though, the thought of sounding like the Gryffindor mascot would've been absolutely sickening to him, and thus, necessary for Harry to call attention upon.
"You sound like one of the little lion cubs from the London Zoo. They're adorable in that can-maul-you-to-death-when-all-grown-up sort of way. Which you are as well, of course. But I know you wouldn't maul me when you're all grown up- at least not to death."
Draco was almost yanking at his perfect hairs and tearing them out of his scalp, but, instead, inhaled and looked to be counting to five in his head before exhaling, probably one of those insipid temper control techniques Draco's Mind Healer advised him to use. Harry didn't have much faith in them, though. After all, past experience was a good judge of quality.
"Fine. You want me to put some actual false statements out into the open for you? I want to go on a date and be boyfriends with you! Ha!" He grinned triumphantly, competitiveness winning over privacy of emotion.
The brunet blinked so slowly, blankly, Draco almost thought George messed up one of his safety spells and let a dangerous defect pass through and end up in Harry's soup. Then the Auror opened his mouth, no sound escaping, before closing it again. That process happened about three or four times, with each instance Harry's brows arching higher and higher in disbelief and confusion. Finally, he breathed: "You told the truth."
"No, I didn't!" came the almost immediate response.
Harry shook his head. He sighed, "Lie. Draco, think. Suddenly, I can tell when you're lying. George's new product. You don't the effects. He doesn't know the effects. I can tell when you're lying." Draco's pallor swiftly faded to that of his crisp, white Oxford. "I wasn't guessing. And you weren't lying."
The blanched blond turned redder than the soup he brought within a matter of seconds. His pale lips were wound tightly into a straight line and his eyes were shining with an unbridled emotion that was probably embarrassment, but still made Harry want to set those eyes back on him when Draco forced them to the floor. "I see," he croaked out.
"Draco-"
"Harry-"
They both stopped abruptly when they heard each other speak, one part due to etiquette, the other on realizing how informal the former enemies had gotten since Hogwarts. Harry cleared his throat and began again, "Draco. Before you leave out of a fit of pride, you need to hear me out."
"Who said I would do that!" the Slytherin snapped. He softened significantly, however, when he saw Harry's deadpanned expression. "Right. I apologize. Continue."
"Thanks. Draco, would you want to go out on a date with me?"
That wasn't what he was expecting at all, though, he should've with such a anticlimactic but somehow cliché-riddled set up like that. And yet, he looked at Harry like the brunet had grown a second head made of purple pineapple.
"Lie!" he screeched with a pointed look of hurt.
Harry covered his ears instinctively and said, "Damn, you could certainly give a banshee a run for his money. And I'm not lying! I'm the human equivalent of Veritaserum right now, remember? Not you?"
"No," he replied, unfazed. "You've got to be fucking with me."
"I'd love to be, but you don't seem up for it." Harry's flirting was rewarded with a strangled gasp he decidedly recognised as the is this idiot being fucking serious? choke. "I'll take that as an 'I am'!" the Auror chirped.
Draco squinted at him like he was a volatile piece of weaponry and fished out one of the remaining chunks of experimental candy out of the abandoned bowl. He popped it inside of his mouth, ate, and braced himself. "Okay. Say that again."
Harry rolled his eyes, to which Draco said behind closed lids, "Stop rolling your eyes and get on with it," causing the brunet to scoff, "Impatient prick.
"I," he drew out, "would abhor the thought of a date with you. It's an absolutely mental notion. First of all, you're too pale for me. Second, you're much too slender for me; I like my men with more muscle. Third, your eyes remind me of concrete, a feature that I do not find attractive at all. Fourth, now that you know how it is when I lie, I take it all back, and would really, really love it if you said yes to a date. A single, measly date would make me happy for a time."
It was as he spoke that George's partner lost his tight resolve on staying stoic, wincing ever so slightly at the conflict between the effects of the confection and Harry's cutting words as Harry went on. He stared at him unbelievingly. "Are you sure?"
"Sure?" he asked indignantly. "I was somewhat sure when I encouraged George to talk to you for closure. I was sure when I set out to find the remaining Horcruxes with Ron and Hermione. I was very sure when I fought through training to become more than my name. And right now, I am absolutely, most definitely, very, very, sure as hell that I want you."
Swiftly yet cautiously, a sincere, small smile took place on Draco's mouth. "You are a terribly sure man, aren't you, Potter?" he chuckled.
"Learned only from the best in determination," Harry winked. "So, is that a yes?"
The blond perched himself on the slightly-less-than-rickety plastic table and cupped Harry's jaw, kissing him tenderly on the forehead. "How's that for an answer, you shameless
coquette?"
He hummed in thoughtful reply then grabbed the back of Draco's neck, reining in the wizard's lips to meet his own. He may have been aiming for a chaste peck, but the blond reciprocated, and he laughed into Draco's mouth, "Keep that up, and I think I'll eventually understand your answer."
Draco shook his head gently (and still being held, Harry's as well), responding, "You should stop talking, you silly man. You're going to exhaust your mouth before we get to do anything more than teenage snogging with it. And the whole point of Kingsley threatening to move your desk next to that absolute gossip, Brown, was so you would take a week off for rest and relaxation, not tire yourself out even mo- Oh!"
As luck would have it, the very moment he began that last, forsaken word, every leg of the kitchen table decided they'd had enough of this fruitless berating and gave way, making the blond gasp as he felt nothing but air under his bottom and hard plastic promptly after. The back of his head was pillowed, however, by a set of hands, the rest of whom it belonged to was practically laying on top of him, one denim covered knee in-between two slack clad ones, charcoal pullover pressed to white Oxford, and puffs of heat ghosting over a pale, slender neck.
Harry repositioned his head to line up with Draco's, and gave him a goofy grin. "Oops. My magic gets restless when someone's scolding me."
With playfully suspicious eyes, Draco pulled a corner of his mouth up, creating a sort of unimpressed-but-thoroughly-charmed-because-of-thos e-idiotic-antics-of-yours smile*grimace. Flipping some fringe out of his eyes with a jerk of his head, he smirked, "Are you just going to lay there like a heavy brick or kiss me?"
"Ah, just remember after, you asked for a good snogging, not me. I would've been fine with a having a nice, classic soul-searching session," Harry murmured before closing the gap between their open lips, and making a mental note of the goal of leaving Draco breathless at least twice that afternoon. And, hopefully, many more afternoons, and days and nights and years, after.
The end.
Epilogue:
George rolled his shoulders and set his hands upon his hips, taking a long, proud look at the masses of children and teenagers- and adults alike- shopping and laughing on the floor below him. Ginny strode up next to him from the spiral staircase, leaning over the iron-wrought railings.
"You won the bet, then," she groused pathetically. "And here I thought subtle encouragement with those stupid books was the way to go."
Her brother, ever the professional, guffawed, "Like those two are ever subtle! No, my little sister, with those two, one must be forceful."
"Whatever, what do you want me to do?"
"Nothing yet. Still thinking of a suitable counter. But feel free to go inside my office and wait. Just don't touch the candy on my desk, Charlie sent them to me from Moldova."
With a slight arch of a ginger brow, she turned and walked in, shutting the door soundly behind her. He'd counted to four, a new record, when the red-head heard his youngest sibling exclaim from inside, "Ugh! Whatever these candies are, Porgie, they're not worth it, anyways! They just taste bland and chalky!"
George smiled.