Title: Berry Red
Pairing: H/D
Warnings: Slash pairing, swearing
Summary: An explosion in the Forensic Potions Department of the Ministry of Magic has people wondering who has it in for the Ministry. After Auror Harry Potter does some digging, however, he realises the Ministry is not the target.
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Previously: "Fucking chairs." Harry righted it and sent a Reparo to it before he sat in it again. He ignored the snickering of people passing and picked up a quill and an old report he was supposed to have written up for Hermione last week and busied himself with work. That was the second time he'd fallen over staring at bloody Draco Malfoy.

By lunchtime the Department had gotten over it and so had Harry. Naturally, Fred chose that time to bother him about it. If anything, Harry was glad for Malfoy when it came to Fred. No one thought he'd ever get over George's death but he had and everyone, especially Molly, was happy for him and whatever Draco did. Harry never asked, no one did, and neither Fred nor Draco ever told anyone about it.

"Be careful of the chair, Harry. I hear it's out to get you." Fred leaned against his desk eating a rather large sandwich. Harry was sure he was using magic just to keep it together.

Once he'd swallowed, Harry let his quill drop and sat back. "Where's your partner in crime?"

Fred no longer cringed at that line. "Potions Laboratory. Well, the parts that are still usable until the repairs are done. He's determined to find out what was in that potion." He took another bite and sat properly on Harry's desk to chew.

"Any luck so far?" Harry took the report he'd just finished and put it in the folder Hermione had created for the Aurors so that anything placed in it was sent instantly to her desk. He watched it disappear and then shoved the folder aside.

Fred shook his head once he'd swallowed. "Nah, he was just able to remove the ingredients on his part. Right now he's trying to figure out what potion it was I brought in."

Harry frowned thoughtfully. "Does he think that it's sabotage?" the idea did not sit well with him. He didn't like that people could still get to members of the Ministry staff so easily, especially Draco, who had many enemies since the war.

Fred shrugged. "Dunno. If he does he won't say anything unless he has proof though."

Harry nodded in thought. He understood. Draco had made a name for himself but there were still those who wouldn't believe him as much as they would others if he came out with that accusation. He looked up at Fred and waited for his mouth to empty before he asked, "Do you think he was?"

Fred paused in his eating to stare at the ground in thought. "Honestly? I'm not sure." He dug out something from his tooth with his tongue. "Everyone makes mistakes, right?" Harry nodded but then frowned when Fred shook his head. "Thing is, Draco doesn't. He actually goes out of his way to make sure he does everything right."

Harry tried to make sense of that one. "What do you mean?" he asked.

Fred rolled his eyes. "I mean – have you ever seen him when he works?" Harry nodded. He'd walked in on the blond working before. Fred stopped him. "No, I mean seriously seen him while he works." At Harry's frown he explained. "Everything is planned ahead. His lessons are planned two months in advance so he's prepared for everything. He learns his trainees' names and backgrounds before time so he knows: who they are, what they need to achieve and how they'd likely react to him and what he has in store for them," he said counting off on his fingers. He put the hand back on his sandwich. He shook his head. "The man is a machine, it's a wonder he has any time for himself."

Harry nodded, he understood that being distracted and trying to please everyone would result in little time to oneself. "Hey, do you know where I could get the schedules for the labs?"

Fred laughed. "Sure, but it wouldn't do you any good, Draco's not on them. He goes in only when he needs to. If you're looking for an easy pattern someone could follow, you won't find one there. I don't even know where he'll be on days."

Harry brooded for a second and then his forehead smoothened. "You going to his office after lunch?" he asked.

Fred's eyebrows furrowed. "Yeah, why?" he said, mouth partly full.

"Malfoy seemed very upset by my lack of knowledge in Potions." He shrugged. "I was assigned to the case so I guess I need to brush up a little. Could you get me a book on it? I'm guessing any book with the properties of the potion he was mixing would be in his Laboratory." He grinned.

Fred chuckled. "Yeah, sure, I'll get it to you by the end of the day, okay?" Fred said getting up.

Harry nodded. "Sure." He looked over at Kingsley's office to see the man walking in for his lunch break. He took his chance and went in to see him.

(-)

Draco watched the test in front him praying to Merlin it didn't turn red. It would be a few minutes yet so he set out his ingredients on the newly purchased laboratory table fresh from the manufacturer. His Laboratory had taken the brunt of the damages but the walls had withstood the explosion, having been reset and strengthened just a few weeks ago by the Aurors themselves. His Laboratory, being the first door on the right, had been the first to be refurbished and it felt odd working on a brand new table that had no blemishes or evidence of the hard work or masterpieces that had been created on them. Nevertheless, he chopped and sliced, preparing them for the research potion Hermione had sent him. When he heard the door open, he knew instantly who it was. "I'm doing something, Frederick." Fred snorted and went to browse through his books on the shelf along the far wall. It was as Draco sliced up the ginger roots that he caught sight of something crimson on the glass he'd performed the test on.

"Shit." He dropped the knife and sat down heavily on the stool.

"What?" he heard and recognised the familiar footsteps to his station.

Draco sighed heavily and dropped his head against his folded arms on the table. "Asphodel."

Fred recognised frustration when he saw it. Asphodel was extremely dangerous, and bordering on illegal. Judging from the colour on the test glass from the diagnostic test he could see how much the perpetrator used. "Why on earth…?" he said and sat on the other stool on the other side.

Draco harrumphed, he almost wished he knew. "I'm actually surprised the whole building didn't explode now." He looked up at Fred, who could see his eyes looked glassy. "Look at this. Do you see this amount of Asphodel in the potion? There was too much, that's why it's off colour and I couldn't identify it completely. It looked like this," he said pointing to a page in the Potions book next to him. "But they added too much. I should have tested it before I even said hello to you. This accident, if it was one," he said gesturing to the glass, "either the person is crap at Potions… or they're hell bent on homicide."

Other than frustration, Fred also recognised guilt.

(-)

Harry packed up the things he was going to take home with him at his cubicle and shoved them into a rucksack he'd transfigured from the penholder on his desk. Hefting it onto his shoulder, he walked toward the elevator and pressed the button as he watched the Constructors that had been contracted to rebuild the Potions Laboratories on the sixteenth floor pass by. The elevator did not work from the Harry's floor onward so the Constructors, like everyone else, had to get off on the twelfth and walk the rest of the way like everyone else until they themselves fixed it. Harry shook his head. The Minister told his staff that he had the Constructors' assurance it would be fixed over the weekend, as hidden floors et cetera would have to be factored in.

As Harry stepped into the elevator to go downstairs, Fred caught up to him. "Hey, you're leaving without the book."

Harry couldn't believe he forgot. "Oh Merlin, thanks, Fred." He took the rather large book and settled back against the wall of the elevator yawning. He'd spent his last hour talking to Kingsley. Trying to convince that man of anything was infuriating. "Off home then?" he asked him amicably.

Fred nodded, looking worried. "Yeah."

He turned to Fred in the lift. "What's wrong? Has something happened?"

Fred sighed. "Kind of. Draco found out the main property in the potion I brought in was Asphodel, and whoever it was used too much of it, that's why the potion was off colour and he couldn't figure it out."

Harry's eyebrows rose. Despite his lack of Potions knowledge, he knew what was dangerous. It was his job to. "Wow." I knew the Ministry had enemies but… to blow it up from the foundations like that? "Merlin, he must be killing himself right now." He frowned in thought.

Fred laughed. "Don't even get me started. He's convinced now he's going to lose his job or something. It took me most of this afternoon to get him to ease up on himself a little and not march to Kingsley with his resignation. Merlin only knows what he'll do when he gets home." The lifts opened at the Atrium and Fred stepped out. "You off for the weekend?" Harry nodded. "I'll see you Monday, yeah?" he called and walked toward a flue.

Harry waved under the weight of the book in his hands "Yeah, Monday…" he mumbled in response. "Wait!" he called.

Fred turned. "Yeah?"

"What colour was it?"

Fred smiled tiredly. "Berry red."

(-)

Harry never thought that he would spend the first weekend he'd gotten off in three months studying Potions. But the thought of Draco being so hard on himself for the first mistake he'd made in years had him aching to find a way to help him. The schedules and log books for the Potions Laboratories might as well have been left behind and the files on various people who could have had it in for the Ministry were no help either. Harry couldn't help the feeling that he was missing something.

He even pored over the thick tome Fred had given him, looking up first 'Asphodel' under 'A'. He smiled as he saw all the potion stains and the worn marks from dog-ears on most of the pages. He frowned when he passed a page that opened heavily and recognised the spell. It was one Hermione used often in school when she did research. When she'd needed to find something quickly, she'd made one page open as if it had a lot of weight on it so that when she flicked through the book it would open there almost immediately. It saved dog-earring pages and damaging books as well as all the extra weight bookmarks would cause. This was most helpful as the size of the books Hermione used to carry were heavy already.

Harry skimmed through the page, frowning when he saw the heading was for a headache potion. Making a mental note to think about it later, he continued flipping through until he found the right page.

"Asphodel." He saw ink drawings and definitions and made himself read through them. "Added at the right time will always give the potion a rosy hue. Strictly unwise is to add more than needed, the colour red is not linked to danger for nothing." Harry rolled his eyes. Potions and humour should never be mixed.

Still, it wasn't anything he hadn't read already over and over again since Friday night. Only this time he noticed a small line at the bottom of the page he had mistaken as a decorative page divider above the page numbers. He bypassed the parts that spoke about the reactions Asphodel had with other ingredients and potions and read:

Fume reactions see page 715. .

Harry's mind went back to the hospital room. 'the unknown potion I brought must have had a bad reaction to the fumes of the cold and flu potion Draco was brewing', Fred had said. Harry turned the pages, quickly reading through the uninteresting bits when something made him freeze.

Healing fumes

"Oh, my God."