Title: Ardor Animorum
Author: AristideCauquemaire
Pairing: Scorpius Malfoy/James Sirius Potter
Rating: M for grown-up language and sexual situations and themes.
Warnings: original characters; slash, non-consensual situations
Thanks to SongoftheShadows for favving and to Virabelle for following this story!
Now to chapter 9, in which all the quarrelling and the drudgery finally pays off... or does it? Please enjoy!
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Chapter 9
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Winter came to Hogwarts, bringing pre-Christmas cheer, castle fever and preliminary examinations, and sucking all the joy out of getting out of the warm bed in the morning.
Nine days went by without owls or summons of any kind – not that anyone was counting, of course. More than that, James Potter failed to appear in Potions class or in the Great Hall for mealtimes. Alverdine Sullivan had taken to sitting next to Professor Finnigan instead, leaning towards him and brushing her hair behind her ear when he talked.
"You should go visit him," Mariella said casually, and added, "Some pumpkin juice?"
He blinked at her offering the jug, then nodded to answer her question. She filled up his glass to the brim and he thanked her.
"It's like you're in an on-off-relationship, and you both take turns with the commitment phobia," she went on as casually as she had started which kept the others' attentions away very effectively. "Frankly, it's getting a bit pathetic." She paused. "Actually, it's always been pathetic, but it's getting patheticker and patheticker by the second and I just can't bear it. So go visit him."
He lifted his now filled glass of pumpkin juice to his lips. "If only it were that easy." He drank.
Only when he put down the glass again did he notice Mariella's pointed look. "What?"
"It is that easy," she said. "Moron."
"Wh-"
"Did he order you to only come see him when he calls you?" she shot at him.
"Uh," he uttered, overwhelmed. "N-No?"
"Or to stay the fuck away from him forever?"
"No." Not technically, anyway.
"And even if he had, you're not a bloody house-elf and he's not your bloody lord and master. You can do whatever the hell you want. So if you want to see him... " She touched a hand to his cheek, then slapped it not too lightly. In the end, she grinned. "Just go see him! Hopefully it'll stop your piteous sighing and...," she gestured at him in general as the grin melted into a grimace, "all that. The others are already thinking you're having a crush on Sullivan, what with all the looking in her direction."
"Wow, thanks," he bit out through a very fake smile.
"You're welcome," she said cheerfully. "Now let's go survive History and DADA and after that you'll go and act like a man for once, eh?"
Once upon a time, long ago, he had desperately waited for a Potions class to be over so he could meet with his kind-of girlfriend. He had experienced the relativity of time, how it felt endless because he was looking forward to something.
During the History lesson, the same thing happened. He was looking forward to seeing James Potter and so the hour stretched mercilessly.
Curiously enough, during DADA, the situation reversed itself. Mostly, he assumed, because at the beginning of the DADA lesson, he wondered whether James even wanted to see him – especially after last time – and came to the conclusion that he probably didn't. That he would send him away – politely as always but thinking disdainful thoughts by himself.
From then on, the end of the lesson practically raced towards him.
Two blinks of an eye later, he stood on the landing of the hellish staircase, panting heavily, and tried to get the muscles in his calves to untangle themselves.
The door opened. He went rigid like a deer in headlights. James looked at him – looked down at him. He was, after all, at least ten centimetres taller, Scorpius remembered now. How could I have forgotten that?
"What are you doing here?" Potter asked rather gruffly. "I didn't send a note."
"I know." He tried not to sound wheezy. "I... hah, came anyway." What an ingenious thing to say, Mariella's voice drawled in his head. Moron.
He looked past Potter to see that he had pushed tables together, with only one kettle brewing on top, surrounded by books and parchments. "What are you doing?"
"My job," Potter replied. "Is there a reason why you're here?" he rephrased his still-unanswered question.
Go and act like a man for once.
"I wanted to see you," someone said.
Judging by the way Potter's face went carefully blank, it had been him. Out loud.
No one said anything for a few seconds.
"Can I-" Scorpius cleared his throat and nodded into the general direction of the brewing room with his chin. "Can I help?"
Potter hesitated. Scorpius could see the cogwheels turning rapidly behind his forehead even though his expression was still closed. Eventually, he asked, "Why?"
"Because I just want to," he replied honestly. "I liked to help."
"No. Why do you want to see me?"
"Because I... just... want to," he said again, the sentence slightly curling upwards at the end as if it were a question. He honestly didn't have a better answer to offer.
Potter frowned for a second, before his face went blank again. "Okay," he said. "Okay, then." He stepped back from the door, letting Scorpius enter.
Unsurprisingly, the centre of his attention was still his second attempt at the wolfsbane potion, simmering away in the small copper kettle as always. Instead of six or seven, there were now only two other cauldrons, one a huge, bulbous beast of thick iron holding a dose of Dragon Tonic which stood in the corner, the other a shiny, medium-sized steel kettle of Chelidonium Miniscula.
"You can tend that one," Potter gestured at the smaller cauldron on its throne made of two tables amidst books and rolls of vellum. "The horclump juice will soon have to be thinned to a tincture. You've done that before, haven't you?"
"Last year, yes," he nodded. "But never by actual boiling like it's normally done. We added watered foxglove. Had the same effect."
"Yes, but that will not do for this recipe. It'll have to be done by hand. Properly."
Scorpius touched his fingertips to the paper before him. Chelidonium Miniscula wasn't a very complicated recipe but a fairly dangerous one. Half the ingredients were marked as deadly or poisonous or venomous or all three, the other as unpleasant. "Will you show me how?" he asked.
Potter looked over at him, frowning again, visibly thinking again. "Yes," he said eventually. "Sure."
Scorpius smiled in response. Potter turned away.
"I owe you an apology," he said as he got to work, preparing the steps that were detailed in the open pages before him. "What I said was out of line."
No response. As expected.
"I guess I owe you a boatload of apologies, really, but I believe we have already established that there's really no way for me to atone or really make amends, so..."
Half a litre of distilled spirits, heated to exactly seventy-nine degrees. Some freshwater pearls into the kettle, to better control the temperature, a metal strip of tempered cobalt into the flames, to see if it got too hot. Scorpius went through the steps with steady hands.
"I just want you to know that if there were a way, I'd-"
"Did you finish the preparation?" Potter cut in bluntly.
Scorpius nodded before he realised that he couldn't see him, occupied with the wolfsbane as he was. "Yes, I did. Not too complicated. Just above seventy degrees now."
"Wait until it's at least seventy-five before you stop heating it more." It sounded like the last word.
Scorpius sighed and didn't speak up again until, at least ten minutes later, the cobalt got a greenish hue, marking the seventy-fifth degree.
Wordlessly, Potter came over to his table, took a thimble between thumb and index of his left hand and curled the three other fingers around a stirring spoon. With almost artistic ease, he tilted the silver decanter full of horclump juice and filled the thimble to the brim without spilling a single drop. He then emptied the thimble into the almost boiling hot alcohol, commenced stirring immediately - "Twice sunwise, three times withershins," he instructed – and checked the metal indicator over and over again with each revolution. "If this gets hotter than seventy-nine, the potion will be useless. Hotter than eighty, it'll dissolve your cauldron, and it'll start splattering like hot grease." He handed over the thimble and the spoon.
"Twice sunwise, thrice withershins, never hotter than seventy-nine," Scorpius repeated as he took the instruments delicately from Potter's hands. Without touching. "Got it."
"Just don't get in contact with any of it. It'll eat through to your bones." He was already back on his way to his own kettle.
"Thanks," he said, and to himself, Don't fuck this up.
For the first few thimbles, he kept repeating the instructions under his breath. Soon, however, he realised that, while the potential for destruction was great, the brewing process was a deal less complex and busy than many others. The ingredients were few, and already prepared. The potion itself didn't even give off smoke.
By the tenth thimble of horclump juice, the motion pattern had started to sink into muscle memory.
"Won't this get you bad points on your apprentice schedule?" he asked once he felt confident that talking and doing the hand movements simultaneously wouldn't throw him off.
"Some," Potter admitted after another long pause. "I prepared the alcohol and the juice and put in the first thimble. That's sufficient."
"How does it work, exactly? Does that green book of yours have a list-"
"Malfoy, please," Potter interrupted with an irritated huff that actually silenced him.
Several minutes passed. Carafe, thimble, temperature, stir, temperature, stir, temperature. Lather, rinse, repeat.
"I'm sorry," he said meekly, and nothing more.
He suddenly realised that it had been a really stupid idea to come here, and he wanted very much to leave.
"You need to understand," Potter said all of a sudden, giving Scorpius a start.
"Understand what?" he asked when Potter didn't elaborate.
Carafe, thimble, temperature.
"Understand that this... is pointless, and a waste of time." He leafed through the book before him. The pages turned with a whip cracks. "For both of us."
Stir, temperature, stir, temperature. Scorpius frowned to himself.
It took him another thimble to catch on. 'This', the pointless waste of time – Potter meant what he was doing. The questions. The meagre attempt at small talk. Even his presence, unwanted as it was, his offering assistance. His being here because he wanted to see him.
A pang went through his chest.
As if he had heard it and taken it for the fire of a starting pistol, Potter continued, "I could never-" He audibly drew breath. "Stop acting like that."
"Like what?" Scorpius asked. Say it, coward.
"Like," he began, but then didn't continue for a long time.
"Like I care about you," Scorpius finished for him. I'm not acting. "You dislike it?"
"You might as well stop it," Potter said with an air of finality. "It won't- You won't get anywhere with it."
Scorpius bit his tongue for a long minute, diligently filling the thimble with concentrated horclump juice from the carafe and adding it to the cauldron, stirring twice clockwise, thrice counter-clockwise, checking the glowing metal again to make sure the concoction wasn't too hot.
Only when that was done did he allow his breath to escape, in a little huffing laugh that could not be helped.
"Is this funny to you somehow?" Potter asked tightly, looking over his shoulder with narrowed eyes.
"Ironic, maybe," he answered with a slight shrug.
"How so?" His voice had a cutting edge.
"Because," he drew out the word, "I got there before."
Potter flinched, then became motionless. Scorpius observed how his hands hovered over the cutting board, and how his shoulders tensed and wandered upwards.
"That," he said as if pressing the words forth from between locked jaws, "is not what happened."
"Yes, it is," he contradicted quietly. I had your cock in my mouth. That's exactly what happened.
And you liked it and you're frightened it will happen again.
And I'm not acting. Damn you. Damn you.
"It wasn't-" His fingers tightened around the hilt of the cutting knife. "That wasn't you."
Just this time you won't be able to deceive yourself.
"Yes, it was." He wondered where the calmness came from.
"Not for me, it wasn't," James shot back, suddenly jolted back into motion, resuming the dicing of the bloodroot, twice as fast as before.
Scorpius understood, nodded and went "ah" softly. "In your head, I was Sarah." Or someone else, anyhow. Someone female, in any case.
Someone acceptable.
James gave no answer, which was an answer in its own right.
"After what I said in the hospital wing..." Scorpius recalled the day, and his own words. "I told you she wasn't good for me, and you somehow got from that that she was- deviant like that, that she would do something like that. And after all, she would have a reason. She never stopped wanting you."
He could picture it perfectly. All Potter had ever, desperately wanted was to be normal, especially after he had continuously not felt anything when being with someone. He'd probably already had a suspicion, an underlying, silent dread, well-hidden inside, that it might have to do with girls. In general. In principle.
And then he, Scorpius, had managed to awaken him, an invisible stranger. The kinky stuff was bad enough already, therefore, the stranger could simply not have been anything but female. It would have been unbearable. At least one part of the equation had to be... proper.
"Mind the tincture," Potter said as if he hadn't spoken.
"You wanted to believe it, that it was her, and from that point on, you didn't hold back any more. You felt it." He remembered that, too. He remembered the excitement, feeling him... stir under his hand. Now he understood that it was mostly relief. Kinky – but not impotent, and not perverted. Not a... faggot.
"Mind the tincture," James repeated with an unsteady sigh.
"You told yourself it was Sarah, but who you felt was me." He enunciated each word clearly, gave each of it an emphasis. "You reacted to me."
Enough with the hiding.
"If it had been Sarah," he continued, "you would have felt nothing. It would have been as before, when you were together. Therefore you only reacted that way because it was me."
"Nonsense!" Potter slammed the book before him shut. There it was again, that restrained anger Scorpius had grown to hate so much. He turned towards him. "Had I known it was you all along, I'd never-" He swallowed down the words. "And anyway, none of it was me, either."
Scorpius narrowed his eyes.
"It was all just that disgusting spell of yours," James answered the unasked question. "I researched it. 'Heat of Passion', wasn't it? How quaint," he spat.
Scorpius set down the thimble he had just filled with the horclump extract, looked him in the eye and said, as clearly as he could, "I didn't use it."
"What?" James' expression went dark.
"I didn't use it," he repeated. "From the day at the hospital wing on, I never used the spell on you. Not even once."
He gritted his teeth. "You're lying."
"The author of the book I got the spell from wrote me a letter. I actually inquired about it because I feared that the spell was giving me feelings, too. But he explained to me that this spell does not have any side effects or after-effects on either the caster or the recipient-"
"Liar!" He had gone pale. "You're lying!"
"-and that it really just brings out the instincts and responses that are already there anyway. Inside."
"Shut up!"
He took a step toward Scorpius, then another.
"And in the end there, that was all you," he finished, heart pounding almost loudly enough to drown out his own voice. "The real you." And the real me. And you wanted me. And neither of us was acting.
The real James Sirius Potter. The one who would hand himself over to an invisible stranger. The one who would moan and beg so beautifully. The one who would grab his hair and order him to lick and suck and swallow.
The same one who was now coming at him, his eyes piercing, reminding him once more of the fact that he was older, taller, and stronger. And that, technically, he still had leverage, technically, he was still the apprentice while he, Scorpius, was merely an assistant. Scorpius took a hesitant half-step back from his table, suddenly unsure.
"Potter-" he began without knowing what he really wanted to say, but got cut off.
"Take it off."
"What?" Scorpius voice was suddenly thin.
"Your robe," James said, coming toward him with determination. "Take it off."
/TBC
Mwahaha. See you tomorrow evening for the second-to-last chapter, hopefully!
Be a darling, leave me a review :)
