Chapter 1 - Hypothesis
Song Suggestion:
This - Ed Sheeran
Everything started with an element.
Months ago, I received a letter in the morning when I was analyzing a sand sample from the Sahara Desert.
"Y/N, I need to know more about the lately-discovered Substance O. I prefer to listen to your explanation in person and I want to hear your professional opinion on my recent research too. Are you free to have dinner together tonight? I'll go to your office to get you if you're okay. Draco"
And I replied "Okay, see you tonight."
Draco came to my office and took me to the restaurant he'd booked. Damn, it's too fancy for what I was wearing at that moment - a chattered shirt, a pair of jeans and trainers. It's better for me to go home and put on some long dress. My worries must have shown on my face as he said I looked fine. At last, he cancelled the booking and suggested to go somewhere else to eat as I'd insisted on going home to change. As he had nothing in mind, he let me choose where to eat.
I took him to a Muggle fast food restaurant. Seeing people queuing in lines in front of the cashier counters, he wrinkled his nose in disgust. Clearly, he hadn't been to any "commoners' restaurant" before.
"So, no one's gonna take us to our seats? And do we need to wait in lines to order and serve ourselves?" he observed and asked, feeling uncomfortable. You couldn't tell whether it's caused by his showing of ignorance or being surrounded by Muggles.
"I'm sorry, but yes. We can go elsewhere if you don't wanna eat here. You look uncomfortable,"
"I let you choose in the first place, so it's fine. Although I'm not quite familiar with the Muggle money currency, I can still tell it's very cheap. I hope the food isn't poisonous," he furrowed his brows at the menu on the wall.
"So, what would you like to eat?"
"Anything. I can't make myself choose any of these. They all seem horrible. It's like people asking you if you wanna eat dog poop or cat poop. They don't really give you any choice," he said sourly with sarcasm.
"Okay, I'll order for both of us, and Draco, would you mind finding us a table?"
He answered with an "Okay" gesture and headed to the dining area. I sighed, slightly regretted about bringing the spoiled rich guy to McDonald's. I only ordered two burgers, a pack of French fries. It's not going to be enough for us, I guessed, but the more I ordered, the more we're going to waste anyway. I could go grab some night snacks later if I still felt hungry.
I found Draco quickly with complete ease. His platinum hair and his expensive black suit stood out in the fast food restaurant. He was the odd man out. His eyes were closed and he's sitting with his arms crossed in front of his chest and his long legs crossed at the ankles, showing no interest to the Muggle restaurant even though it's his first time in there. While heading to the corner of the area where Draco had found us a table, food in my hands, I found people kept staring at him, and most of them were young ladies.
I placed the food tray on the table in front of Draco before he opened his eyes and observed the food with a frown, unaware of the looks the ladies were giving him. He picked up a burger and unwrapped it with elegant moves, and grimaced.
"Is it safe to eat? It looks horrible,"
"Of course!" I unwrapped the other one quickly and started eating.
He raised a brow at me and looked at his burger again for a few seconds.
"I, Draco Malfoy, am willing to dedicate my life to science. If I'm found dead next morning, my family is going to have this place shut up. And this certain Muggle food is going to permanently banned from the UK," he took a deep breath and gave it a small bite. His once furrowed brows were relaxed after his first bite.
"It tastes less horrible than it looks. But it doesn't mean it's good. The bread is wet and too soft for my own taste - minus 10. The beef is unfresh and too dry - minus 20. It's over-cooked and the meat has lost its juiciness - minus 20. Cheapest beef I've ever had in my entire life - minus 40. I hate pickles - minus 10. The sauce is acceptable though - plus 5. Overall, it tastes better than a Vomit flavoured Bertie Botts. I rate this 5 out of 100 and I won't recommend anyone to eat this unless I want them to suffer. I'm going to tell Potter and Weasley about this place," he sneered at the name of Potter. He's probably picturing Harry and Ron eating at McDonald's and vomiting. Despite the harsh criticism he'd given, he kept eating gracefully.
"Honestly, it's not that bad!" I retorted, trying to suppress a smile at the sight of Draco helping himself to another bite of the burger.
Fast food was meant to be fast. We finished the food within very short time. The place was crowded with people and I didn't think it's a good idea to occupy a table for an at-least-an-hour conversation. I suggested to go somewhere else, which Draco willingly obliged. He couldn't wait to leave as soon as possible.
"We can talk at my place. I can show you the O substance that you're interested in,"
He nodded and held my hand before I Side-Along-Apparated the both of us to the living room of my flat.
"Try to feel at home. Tea or Coffee?" I gestured him to sit on the sofa.
"Do you have Firewhisky? It might sound weird, but a little bit of alcohol stimulates my brains and helps me work more efficiently," he sat in the way that his body was leaning forward, while his elbows placed on his thighs and his fingers intertwined.
I went to the kitchen and got a bottle of liquor and two shot glasses from the cupboard. When I got back to the living room, Draco had already placed a few folders of documents on the little coffee table. He's looking around the room in amusement. My flat was decorated in a minimalist way. The wall was painted grey, the pieces of furniture I had selected were all white and black. Some people might enjoy more fancy decorations and found my apartment boring, but I liked my home to be simple and clean at sight.
Draco sensed my return and turned his attention back to the work in front of him. Opening one of the folders, he started telling me about the research he was doing, while I took a seat next to him on the sofa.
"I'm working on something. It may sound ridiculous. I'm trying to find a way to elicit the soul of a human from their own body. I believe, without the flesh, the spirit itself is much more powerful since there will be no restraint, and without the body, your conscious can be able to do things seem like impossible to your common sense. Preliminary guess, the released soul is 7 times more powerful than a combination of soul and flesh,"
"7 times more powerful? The magical number 7. It does sound possible," I contemplated.
"Yes, and the concept is very similar to Muggle meditation, the Buddhist belief. Separating the conscious and body can unblock your natural wisdom and power. If I succeed, this is going to be phenomenal, there are chances of turning Squib magical in the future, curing terminal diseases by increasing the immunity power and freeing us from the time restraint," he took a sip of his Firewhisky and continued.
"To elicit the soul, I believe we generally need to take out the conscious, 7 Emotions and 6 Desires from the body. For 7 Emotions, it consists of Joy, Anger, Grief, Fear, Love, Hate and Longing. For 6 Desires, it means the desires associated with the six sense organs, including eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind. Generally speaking, there are lust, vanity, dignity, pleasant sounds, good life/death and sensual pleasures,"
"Okay, so how's the research going?" I took his words very seriously since the concepts were foreign to me. I wouldn't want to miss a word and misunderstand anything.
"I believe there are different elements representing different Emotions and Desires, which will have a big row in the whole Soul-Eliciting process. That's why I'm here to understand the lately-discovered O substance more. I've managed to find 10 elements for the Emotions and Desires, but apparently, there are 3 I still haven't managed to find. I guess O represents one of the emotions, either Love or Hate, or the remaining Desire - Lust. And I've discovered some interesting fact recently - the purer the substances, the bigger the effects. I once forgot to stopper a test tube, which contained the element representing the desire for sensual pleasures, I sat in my office for an hour, exposed to the contaminated air. You know, laboratories never smell pleasant as there are lots of reactions and sometimes explosions during experiments. My desire for nice odours increased through time, and I then left my office, wanted to order my assistant to buy some air fresheners. But when I smelled her perfume, which I found the smell cheap and tacky all the time..."
"What happened next?" I sipped my glass of liquor.
"I fired her," he shrugged nonchalantly, pouring himself another glass of orange alcohol in the meantime. "but it's no big deal. She's not a very helpful assistant anyway. But what I'm trying to say is, if the O substance indeed represents one certain Emotion or Desire while the sample you have here is very pure, things can go out of control if we're not careful enough. I don't want any of us to do anything we might regret later,"
"I understand. The one I have here is less pure. It's kinda a compound of O and another new element, which still haven't got a name either, and I call it P for now. For your information, O is a magical element I've found in Greece. It's believed to be a common element in Ancient Greece. Indeed, your guess is possible. The element itself has an emotion generating tendency, which means it influences humans more than other animals. Not sure if you have ever heard about this, but there is a rumour about the first Love Potion that it was actually invented by the Greeks, though there are no evidences to convince the society. Some scholars who believe the rumour, think that O was probably one of the active ingredients in the old Ancient Greek version of Love Potions. Besides, Greece is the most sexually active country in the world. I reckon the O substance has a very high chance of representing either Love or Lust," I told him my opinions on the magical element based on what I knew. I finished my glass of whisky swiftly and stood up. "Come on, I'll show you the compound I have here,"
Draco quickly finished his third glass of alcohol and wasted no time to follow my led to the study. I carefully picked up the Petri dish that I'd placed on my desk the night before and handed it to Draco. He held the dish at eye-level and stared at the apricot colour sand-like substance intensely with interest. The sample looked like some Muggle glitter you could easily find in an art supply store.
"This sample is impure. It's a compound of O and P. You can see the colour is a mixed of orange and pink. O glows with bright orange while P with rosy pink when they're in their purest forms. I have the purest samples in my office. You can come and get some tomorrow. Owling is not very reliable when it comes to magical elements,"
"So, this one is just a compound, a very impure sample, which means the effect of O is not as big, right?" he shook the dish gently, watching the magical sand moving from left to right.
"Right,"
"Can I open it? I guess it won't be a big deal if I just open it for a while, besides, if disastrous things do happen, I still have a professional here," he smirked. I couldn't help but think if he'd drunk too much alcohol. He seemed more excited than usual.
I nodded and he removed the lid. He played with the glitter with his index for a bit, and sniffed the residue on his finger.
"It smells citrussy and metallic at the same time. Weird but I don't hate it," he commented with a frown.
"That's strange," I leaned forward to sniff on his finger. "I can smell mint and something like a mixture of 100 types of potions,"
Draco placed the lid back to the dish and stared at me sharply. I felt uncomfortable under his gaze, but met his silver eyes anyway. We stared at each other in silence for a minute and then suddenly, I felt a tight grip around my wrist. I lowered my head to see what'd happened when the strong arm pulled me forcefully. My body bumped into something hard and when I looked up, I saw Draco fixing his eyes on me. He placed his other hand on my cheek and began to whisper weird things in my ear while brushing his lips along the curves of my ear. The sensation sent shivers down my spine and it was too late when I figured out what happened to Draco, because my body felt weird. My brains didn't want to think while my muscles didn't want to contract. All I wanted at that moment was to enjoy what Draco was doing to me.
"I want you," he whispered.
Before I completely lost control of my body, I knew what Element O represents.
Lust.
"I want you too."
A/N: There might be amendments in the future. And I really like the part of Draco eating at McDonald's. His criticisms were so fun to write. I'd try my best to update once a week.