The Basket Case
by Stray
August 15, 2005
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or its characters and make no money of it. I'm not sure I would even if I owned them.
Warnings: This is my first HP fanfic which you got to see. I'm not a native English speaker, but I try. And this is going to contain SLASH! If you don't like it, you can still read it if you harbour masochistic tendencies. Flames are used to warm my cold little heart.
Beta-ed by: Kathleen and Scarlett
8 ·m 8 ·m 8 ·m 8 ·m 8 ·m 8 ·m 8
Chapter Two
One week later, while he was reading about ancient potions in the Manor's library, the book dropped out of his hand as the realisation hit him.
Why hadn't he thought about that earlier?
He didn't understand, but he wasn't about to dwell on such ridiculous assumption such as thinking he was losing his touch. No, he just hadn't had to resort to such an activity as brewing a potion himself anymore. In fact he hadn't done that for years. Not because he wasn't interested in it or – as certain individuals he knew –wasn't skilled enough to practice the art of brewing; it was simply the matter of not needing it anymore, as he had all the money he needed to purchase the best brewed potions from all over the world for everything he may have needed.
This, though, wasn't something he was about to buy openly from another wizard. Even if he paid for the information to remain secret, he was aware that the destiny of such secrets was to be traded for something of value.
But why worry if he could do it himself? Not that he had believed that Muggle fraud even for one second, but it couldn't hurt if he tried, even if it wasn't of much use. The fact that he could do it warranted the action that he would do it, simply because he was Draco Malfoy, and as such perfectly capable of dealing with the risks and hindrances of the task. What was he thinking? There were no hindrances that he, as a Malfoy, couldn't deal with; even less if it was about a certain Draco Malfoy and potion brewing.
He had left the book lying on the ground – the house-elves were sure to put it onto its place – and headed towards his private potions laboratory. He was very proud of the equipment and the ingredients stock that the elves always kept in order and fresh. There was a half-finished potions project, still in stasis from six years ago that he had forbidden the house-elves to touch, but he wasn't ever in the mood to finish it so he had left it there. Not that he had ruined it – well, the colour wasn't exactly what it was supposed to be at this stage, but that could be just the stasis bubble's diffusion of light – Draco Malfoy had never ruined a potion in his life.
One wall of the laboratory was lined and completely covered by bookshelves of rare potions books. Nine-tenths of them he had never touched, but he had used the rest of them on a regular basis while he has still been interested in brewing.
He stood before the line of shelves, engaged in his thought as he tried to remember if he had ever seen a male fertility potion in one of them. After five seconds of useless contemplating he pulled out his wand and cast a keyword searching spell that he had learnt in Hogwarts at a time he had been spying, as usual, on Potter – Granger had been particularly fond of this one, and Draco had deemed it worthy of learning – he could surely make a better use of it than a Mudblood.
The spell caused approximately fifteen books to light up with an eerie purple glow. One of them was his sixth year Potions book from Hogwarts and he thought he couldn't lose anything if he checked it out first.
To his disappointment the potion was one that would be only useful for women, when their period wouldn't normally make possible the conception, but they would have to be in perfect health. Then he looked at the second book, an improved potions book he was quite fond of and had used frequently in the two years following his graduation. That potion was able to cure infertility, but was designed for women only, too. He put it back and went through systematically every highlighted book.
To his frustration he found that most fertility potions were made for women. There were only two that both genders would be able to use and one intended for male recipients. He celebrated his luck, because the last one The Draught of Bestowed Life, was the easiest to make and the one to which he had all ingredients at hand, he didn't think that the universal ones would be too effective anyway. The only thing that slightly troubled him that the potion he decided to brew was that it was in a book full of Dark Magic.
But, what the hell? He was a Malfoy and wasn't about to get scared by that fact. He had been surrounded by the Dark Arts his whole life and knew that not all of them were as dark as most people thought. The darkest thing about it was that it would require a drop of his semen and blood - so what? It was understandable that the most effective way for a potion to work was to be brewed from individualised ingredients. It just made the potion easier to make and require less of the more rare ingredients and tedious pampering that their light-magic counterparts did. He just would have to be careful to dispose of everything that could be used as a proof to verify his involvement in any Dark Arts spell; and avoid certain people and places, which could detect the residue on his body for a few years, as to not to be caught by the Aurors.
The potion was very simple and the description was barely one and a half pages long. No need for incomprehensible words or long quotes from ancient history books. Whoever had written that book had Draco Malfoy's full appreciation and gratitude for leaving off the unnecessary lengthy explanations and limiting themselves to the subject matter.
After reading through the description twice and checking that he definitely had all of the necessary components he left the book on the table with a signature charm that told the house-elves that they weren't required to put it away. He decided to start the potion the next morning – right after getting the last two components. After a bit of contemplation he had changed his mind to draw the blood freshly at the time it was required in the brewing process, then he took a little vial with him to collect the result of his occasional morning activity the next day, since he could hardly produce that while he was in the middle of making the potion. It was just his naturally elegant way of combining business with pleasure.
After waking up the next day he promptly realised that he had nearly forgotten to get it. And after he remembered and slipped down his hand into his pyjama pants, he realised with horror that his morning erection was about to wane, despite his nimble fingers' tending, at the thought of why exactly he was doing it. He didn't understand why he was so nervous about a potion. Sure he was going to make it, but that didn't mean that he actually had problems with his… his… potency! Two nights ago was proof enough, damn it! He was just doing it because… he wanted to; that was the only reason. And it wouldn't harm him. Even if he didn't need anything to be cured…
That aside, he needed the spunk and he wasn't about to get it soon if he thought about such things for much longer. Potions were hardly an exciting topic – that is exciting in the sexual way. Well, certain things about Potions were, or rather certain individuals… he opened his eyes and stilled his hand before he could continue that thought. He reminded himself that he had grown out of that, just like he had grown out of wetting his bed at night when he was eight. Erm, bad thought. Bad thought! That hadn't actually happened, that had been only a nightmare, a recurring nightmare when he had been a child. But his mother had told him that it had been only a dream, hadn't she? Of course it had been!
He jumped up from the bed and started to pace in the room. On his turn back he found himself opposite the full length mirror of his suite and took a moment to look at his reflection. He was wearing white silk pyjamas (his hand was still down his pants, holding onto the remainder of his morning wood) and his blonde tresses were just a bit rumpled from sleep, but not too severely. His hair was thin and he didn't neglect his hair care, so it didn't get too knotty. He would run his fingers through it a few times and it looked as if he had combed it – not perfectly, of course, but still better than most people's hair after having been actually combed. Of course he was a Malfoy, so looking perfect was just natural for him – and not just his hair. He had perfect features and a perfect, well proportioned body. It was nearly a shame to cover it with clothes, but as a result most of them fit him as a second skin.
Speaking of clothes – he would want to remove his pyjamas before submitting to the act of self-gratification. Usually he didn't care about them; the house-elves brought fresh night clothes every day and cleaned the used ones. But now he would need the outcome (he winced slightly at that choice of wording) in a jar, not everywhere in his pants.
He started to open the buttons on his shirt and as he did so, he noticed himself starting to harden again. He remembered his games when he was younger – not in school, because there he had had hardly any privacy, but in the summers at home in his room – this same room. He used to undress before this same mirror and observe his body while he stroked himself into attention, and the sight had always increased his excitement to a great extent.
If he didn't look at the face of his reflection (he tried to avoid doing so, because the expression of rapture on his features used to disturb him greatly) he could imagine that it was somebody else he was looking at, without that person's knowledge or consent. That had always worked for him in the past. Of course it could have been simply that his body was perfect and was able to attract everyone, even himself.
In the beginning he used to get off on actually observing himself with the knowledge that it was his own body. The feeling had been so much more intense than just lying in a bed and wanking with his eyes closed or staring at the canopy, but that always left him with a sense of wrongness afterwards – a feeling that he had done something that was unnatural in a way – so he had tried to force himself to stop. When that hadn't worked, he used to imagine that the reflection of his body belonged to someone else, and the mirror was actually an enchanted window.
He had always known that he was an exceptional beauty – in the masculine sense of the word, of course. He had seen other boys in the Quidditch showers and they simply couldn't measure up to him. Except one, but later he realised with a feeling of relief, that that must have been just the play of lights and shadows. It had been dark, and he hadn't seen him properly at the time, as he had been hiding between the cleaning supplies, and most of the blood had vacated his brains towards his nether regions. He had gotten off watching him, but that was just because he was intrigued and excited by the idea that the other one didn't know he was there, observing him during his most intimate ministrations to his own body.
While his thoughts had drifted randomly, he was already at the bursting point. He quickly grabbed the vial standing on his night table. The small distraction served to slow down the end, but he got what he wanted only a few minutes later, when he envisioned what he had seen that night – something very similar to what he had currently seen in the mirror, except that the curls nesting the hard length, which had been massaged and tugged by strong fingers had been the colour of the night. He was almost able to see it as clearly as if he had been transferred back in time right to that moment again.
After his body had stopped trembling he opened his eyes and looked down at his hands – one holding the vial that had white-ish gooey gobs smeared on the inside and outside alike, the other still absently stroking his softening member. The carpet before him was a mess, as were his hands. Even the mirror got some. He grunted disgustedly, but didn't really care; the vial's contents would be enough for the potion, and the elves would clean the room after he left for the day.
He brought the vial with him into the bathroom and cleared the outside with a wet towel, then corked it and deposited it onto the bathroom shelf, after having cast the signature charm on it for the house-elves, while he used the toilet and took a quick shower to refresh himself.
He tried to eat breakfast before he ventured down into his laboratory, but found himself unable to ingest more than a few bites of his favourite pastry and some tea. He was just excited about having the opportunity of taking up his favourite hobby again, he thought. Maybe he should look for the potion he was about to make in other sources too, to see if the book was correct? No, that was only a waste of time. He wasn't nervous and trying to stall, was he? He would get down and start the brewing right away, he decided, and stood up from the breakfast table.
He spent his whole day down in the long unused room of the manor, taking his time and double-checking every measurement, the right time for adding the components, the right temperature of the cauldron, and had reread the formula many times. By doing so, the brewing lasted nearly twice as long as it should have, and he was compelled to acknowledge that he had got a bit rusty during the years he hadn't touched the cauldron, but he was still a Malfoy and he could do everything he made up his mind to.
After he had bottled and corked the potion, he sat at the table, eyeing it for nearly two hours. The book said that the time at which the potion was imbibed was irrelevant, as it worked instantaneously and had a lasting effect. The author recommended drinking it with an empty stomach, so it wouldn't unsettle his guts. Seeing as he practically hadn't eaten anything the whole day, he thought now would be a fitting time, rather than going without meals for another day and taking the potion at a later time.
He reached for the bottle with slightly trembling fingers that he resolutely tried to ignore, then grabbed it quickly and in the next second it was sliding down his throat. He had time to growl at the foul aftertaste before he promptly dropped the vial and pressed his hands to his abdomen where a sharp, stinging pain had started to develop with lightning speed. He felt bile creeping up his oesophagus – so much for not getting sick, thankyouveryfuckingmuch, but before he could take a step toward the lavatory built next to the lab for emergency cases, he felt his head lightening and the world before his vision went black.
