HD CB 1.7 Mint
Mint
"Harry, what did you do? Add mint?"
"Some. But I think this fire needs to be a bit higher—and hotter. Shift back, will you? I'm going to give it a boost."
"No—you, Potter. Remove yourself from the work space, git. Let the expert do it. And it was far too soon for the mint—can you not read? It's right here, just as Severus noted it."
"It was not too soon for the mint, dickweed. Hermione went over this part of the Potion with me just the five thousand times. I know what I'm doing. Likely more than you do, prick."
"Hah! I'm not so certain of that, Harry!" Draco snorted; under his breath he added, "I have doubts, pinhead. This was never your best subject."
He tossed a handful of something spark-creating into the Beltane fire. Harry glared across it as it shot up high and higher, flaming a delicate violet.
"I heard that, git."
"Piss off, Potter," Draco replied fondly. "Here, hand me that. I'll do it."
"Fine."
Harry rocked back on his heels, pulling his offensive hand (which clutched a huge handful of shredded catmint) away from the newborn flames and offering them up to his partner in all things. He heaved a terribly put-upon sigh. He'd not much sleep the night before and his temper was string-tight and wicked thin at the edges. Draco was only adding to it, really, and Harry truly wasn't in the mood for another tiff. Especially over something as negligible as who was permitted to add what ingredients when.
"You know, sometimes I wish we'd offed your arrogance too, Draco dearest, along with old Riddle," he remarked, scowling (mostly) fondly at his companion. "Maybe that would explain my deep and continual urge to pummel you rotten."
"Maybe…"
Malfoy shrugged a shoulder and stirred the burgeoning embers. The first log had caught; it was only a matter of time before their small bonfire would be waist-high and capable of burning for hours.
Only a matter of time…
"But I wouldn't go there, Potter, not if I were you. You want me just as I am; told me so often enough."
"I do, yes." Harry grinned, dipping his chin, pondering time—and Snape—and the methods used to obtain happiness. "More fool I."
"Sod off. And allow me, Master Auror Potter, to add the remaining ingredients, if you please. I'm faster at this sort of work and far more accurate. And I'll need that blasted wand of yours in a minute, to stir. Two-fisted job, wracking reality this way and that to fit one's requirements. I wish there was some other way."
"How poetic, git. There isn't, sorry. Time Turners don't cut it—we've Snape's way or no way. Oi! Not too much persimmon, there! And don't overdo the thyme. We want to flavour this, not swamp it!"
Draco huffed, wrinkles gathering on his brow, his face pinkening as the heat rose off the gathered logs that constituted the base of their Beltane Bonfire. Sparks popped and hissed as green wood was consumed noisily, laid as it was in criss-cross and runic shapes above the aged oak and willow, rowan and hawthorn.
"Harry, Harry, I'm on it—never doubt me. It's exactly as it should be—golden-brown and at a low boil. How many times now have we done this?"
"Er, four? Three?" Harry cocked his head, considering. "Three. That first few didn't really count. I've never counted them, at least."
"Three officially then, and this last should be the very Charm, if Janus smiles. The fourth fire we burn is the truly crucial one, despite what the gobs think. Four's just as magical as three ever was; ask your damned Muggles about that. Even they know, Potter."
Harry shrugged. They weren't his Muggles, though Draco always claimed they were for argument's sake.
"Nnn. If Persephone smiles, you mean," he replied. "She's the bloody one we need, Draco. Fertility, regrowth, all that guff. Ugh, we'll have to drink this horrendous concoction one last time, you realize? Add more mint."
"No more mint, Potter. Plenty of mint already, believe me. And it's Demeter, actually. Mother goddess, just as the Muggle's Mary. Or Isis. Now, she was a rare contrary bitch, that one. Pieced together an entire god, Isis did. And don't think to debate the Muggle or the Wizarding mythos with me, Harry; you're not sufficiently competent for all your reading National Geographic, and…erm, if you would?" He thrust a set of fluttering fingers out, gesturing. "I need the next one, please. Clear vial, marked 'thyma, verbena'."
Harry tossed in the contents of a vial with flair. He also flung kindling—carefully pruned to exact matching lengths—with the other. Their Beltane fire hissed satisfactorily and gave off the distinct odour of lavender. Mixed, strangely enough, with cider.
"There!" he announced. "Powdered thyme, lemon, one dram. Counterclockwise stir once, then reverse, then again—and what d'you mean, 'I'm not competent'? I wasn't arguing it, prat. If you want this thankless task so badly, you may have it, with all my good will. Fire away, have at it. Stir your grumpy little heart out."
Draco scowled at him, fond again contrarily, the firelight flickering kindly over the frown he kept up for habit's sake. Frowns, real ones, weren't the currency of their exchange…not now, this now. Not for a long time. Point was to keep it that way.
"Snape was my Head of House, Potter, remember? 'Stopper death', yeah? Old git taught me everything I know about brewing and what he didn't is all in his notebooks. Or Granger's fat head, nowadays. Bloody swot."
"Old bastard," Harry grumbled, "you know, he could've left me something other than his own sodding portraits. That silver cauldron Nev's got is an awfully nice keepsake and you've those lovely bookends, the gryphon ones that speak in riddles—now that's a decent set, rather. Go well in my study, they would. Wish he'd left me those in place of that damned locket."
"Grabby!" Draco scolded. "And you've no need to be so. I use the bookends in the lab at home; help your damned self, Harry. You'd be welcome. I've plenty of others, for Merlin's sake."
Harry merely shook his head, passing off the bookends as truly unimportant.
"No…I don't care that much." He shrugged. "Still…would've been pleasant to be remembered kindly by the old git as Lily's boy or maybe even as the stupid Saviour of the bloody world, eh? Anything other than as his worst-ever student—and Dad's son. I cringe, Draco, you realize? He could've gone without the blasted portraits of himself if he wanted my attentions so much. Left a letter, maybe a photo. Could've willed me nearly anything else he'd stashed away at Spinners—at least anything other than his bloody sneering face framed in giltwood peering at me every time I look up from my book. Two sneering faces, actually, if I open this." Harry swung the locket he wore always, dangling it over the fire's edge on its blackened chain. "Bloody pocket Snape. Huh!"
"Oi, Potter!" came a faint querulous voice. "You will rue the day you drop me, you little monster! You. Will. Rue!"
"Oh, so sorry, Professor." Harry drew the locket back to him and regarded it with eyebrows raised and a look of great satisfaction. He smirked at the rendering of the dark-haired sallow Wizard within. "Didn't realize you could feel that. My sincere apologies."
"Little git," the interior of the locket snarled. "Put me away now, Potter; you've no need of me if you are preparing my brew properly in the first place. Let me sleep. I'm exhausted, thanks to you."
"Of course we're preparing it properly, Professor. Or rather, Draco is. Your golden boy. That's better than good enough, isn't it?"
"Hah!"
The locket only issued a faint, die-away snort, and Harry tucked it away back down his shirt front, smiling.
"Git, isn't he? See what I mean, love? No relief."
Draco matched the grin from his accustomed place stationed almost atop the small cauldron, his face perspiring lightly as he continued his endless stirring.
"I know, I know, believe me—I do know. He is a wanker, Harry; always was, and a stingy bastard. For all his, ahem, good points—and don't mention I've said any of that, Harry, not to him. He's in my bloody lab, you know. I've got him all day long sometimes, on weekends, over my shoulder. A trial, that."
"Agreed."
Harry chuckled, sharing a speaking glance. After but a moment, though, Draco's face fell and he was abruptly once more the serious, sincere man Harry had come to know and love over the years.
"Alright there, Draco?" Harry's stare went from amused to quizzical in an instant. "Draco...?"
"Yes, I suppose…" Draco nodded absentmindedly. "Oh, but remember, Harry; don't pay any mind to those damned old Greeks, alright? Or any of that folderol over Isis. Granger and I only use them for touch points when we modify the Potion, the histories. Not important now, though; all that's over and sorted. Now we stir and add, stir and drink, stir and wait—and bloody hope to hell we've tweaked it properly. This time, at least. We'll know in the morning, I'd guess."
Harry quirked his lips; in the gloaming, it may've been a smile that settled upon them. Or not.
"I certainly hope so, Draco. And I hope it's all to the good. I don't like this, you know? The bloom's gone off, rather." He poked at the fire's base, gloomily.
"We will, don't worry. We will." Draco bent to his task with a tiny huff of puffed breath and a gathering frown of intense concentration, reversing his perpetual, even-gaited stirring counterclockwise. Another handful of something minced was added. The cauldron bubbled nastily, sending up a lingering curl of black, acrid soot. "Can't go too wrong, can we? Done it enough times, now."
"Well…get it right, then, love," Harry urged, rising to bustle about, gathering more ingredients and laying them out for the designated Stirrer. "I want to sleep at home again, where I should be. I've missed you," he chided.
Draco blushed a brighter, more brilliant hue, his cheeks burning not only from the heat of the fire, but made no discernible reply, only ducked his chin stubbornly, nibbling his lower lip. A pinch of something else was sprinkled in precise quantity. The fire sizzled before its patient tenders, hissing vague Parseltongue-like 'esses' and emitting showers of magenta sparks now and again.
"Draco?" Harry broke the peaceable silence at last, shivering a bit as the lightest of zephyr's sprung up from the lake's edge, but a few meters distant.
"Same goes."
T'was a barely audible mutter, but Draco's unoccupied hand crept surreptitiously down his shirt front, finally alighting in an uneasy rest atop his buckle and flies. Harry, peering from the corner of one eye, watched with satisfaction as his lover gave his bits a fast, rough rub, even as he spun on heel to pluck up the next ingredient ready for adding.
Hiss, pop, and more quiet...till Draco snapped his white teeth. Like a dog, worrying a bone.
"Same goes."
He snarled the words a second time directly at the heart of their tiny Beltane blaze. Harry's tentative quirk of lips morphed into a full, happy grin. It was as good as sodding magic, wasn't it? As good as done. Janus would be sure to smile.
