Chapter Text
“It’s been a while.”
“So it has.”
A lull in the conversation. They could hear their heartbeats, their breathing.
“...What’s brought you back around here, then?”
“Memories,” one of them said, looking around. The station was crowded at this time of day, but they could find each other easily, even by happenstance. “To go back to that different time. It’s...bittersweet. You know?”
A mother walked by with her child by the hand.
An owl hooted in its cage atop a rolling cart, pushed by a gaggle of enthusiastic students.
A man, here, who once was lost, has now returned.
“Yeah. I know.”
~HUNGER~
I have been fasting for two days. This is no easy task when you live on a farm.
I have felt lightheaded often, and earlier today I had to rest for a moment in the middle of picking tomatoes. My head aches when I’m not distracted. My stomach roils, but I believe that is because I’ve allowed myself a number of black coffees to keep me focused. I cannot admit that I may be anxious about the outcomes of my research.
Hunger is supposed to increase mental acumen. So far, I have not encountered these effects. I have experienced no much-needed epiphanies and no breakthroughs. My lab remains neat and barren as ever, devoid of solutions.
I must figure out this conundrum.
My subject has discovered and does not approve of my fasting. I have elected to spend the night away from the farm, and have set up tent in the mountain a fair bit away in the hopes that isolation will provide me the answers I need.
The constellations that hang in this sky are different from those back home. The Draco constellation is slightly off compared to where it is in England, dimly lit tonight in the inky blackness. The origins of my name drifts across my consciousness. If only I lived up to it’s legend. I’m not sure which substitute would be more fitting for me. Certainly nothing heroic, and that’s all that seems to be written in the stars. If there was a constellation for bookish, isolative potioneers, perhaps then I could find myself there.
As mother used to say, I worry far too much. I may never get the creases out from the corners of my mouth and beside my eyes at this rate.
My subject’s state has still not ameliorated. I have tried everything I can think of. The creams I’ve produced seem to have no effect: all the tinctures and salves have not changed a thing. I have adjusted the dosages of my ingredients and the quantity as well as quality of certain things, but my work is to no avail. He is as obstinate as ever: maybe it is a psychological issue, as well as a physiological one. If only he had begun as a less bull-headed individual, perhaps then he would be seeing results.
In addition to fasting, I have forced myself to stop looking at my journal. I believe my notes may be biasing my current opinion, and it is obvious that all of my previous trials failed spectacularly. I must clear my head.
My subject, with his continued state, presents my failures to me as proof that my efforts are useless. He persists in his myriad explanations of rationality, but of course, every insane man believes himself to be the sanest of all. I understand that for each person, reality is just slightly skewed: his, however, is so horrendously off-kilter, all helter-skelter with limbs akimbo, awkward angles and strange proclamations, that his vision has obviously been altered.
I must understand how to undo the ways in which I have maligned his life. I owe him a duty: I owe him much more, in fact. I owe him my life, and if I must, I will devote my life to his.
I’m thankful when Orion emerges from the underbrush to curl up beside me. His warmth, albeit small, means the difference between a sleepless night and a restful one.
Much as I adore Shelley, I can at the very least comfort myself in that I am no Victor Frankenstein. I didn’t create my monster out of hubris, or recklessness, or arrogance: my monster, or at least the one I battle presently, exists from no concerted effort on my part. Spontaneous generation, defying the laws of science as we know it.
But then, magic always does.
My monster is not a living being. It is a feeling, a deep sense of knowledge, which my subject experiences and that I have somehow produced in him. My monster is myself and what I can do to others. I must discover a way to restrain it.
And if I am being honest, it haunts me most because, in my weaker moments, I fantasize what it would be like if I simply let the monster be.
I return to the cottage early the next morning. Orion accompanies me to the door, but, as always, refuses to enter. A real Jack London type. No matter--a bowl of chicken is left out for him, whether or not he embraces the ball and chain that is the collar and warm hearth of domestication.
My subject is a late riser: he does not do mornings, not when he can help it. This means I can avoid him and the conflict he will inevitably bring, and instead fix myself a coffee, dark and muddy, before I head downstairs to my lab.
A few more hours and I will have the focus to discover that which has eluded me for so long. I know it.
~*~
My subject still remains ignorant of my more targeted experiments. He believes that my lab exists for the sole purpose of my business. Before he came to live here, that assumption was correct.
Today I am preparing one of my usuals in stock to take my mind off my dilemma. If I can sneak up on the issue, catch it on unawares, maybe my subconscious mind will latch onto the right solution. I’ve been ignoring my profession in lieu of more pressing matters recently besides, and my spending money is running low. I need to restock on some of my rarer items, and I’d like to pay for them as well as my groceries without skimping.
I’m brewing a cream made with rose and honey, both sourced from my farm. I didn’t mean to become a beekeeper in addition to all of my other responsibilities, but when one of my neighbors passed away and his hives were left unattended, I couldn’t resist. Honey and honeycomb has so many properties integral to potioneering that sourcing my own has cut down my shipment costs exponentially. And, from a purely personal standpoint, I love the taste of it in my tea.
What with the reliably unpredictable presence of Orion, the neighbor’s untimely death at the young age of ninety-one, my speaking of foreign tongues (and I’ve taken care not to speak magic in the villagers presence!) and general isolation--I’ve been setting myself up for superstition basically since I arrived.
Well, I do love a good rumor. Especially when it’s true.
I am considering the implications of sporting an Evil Eye ear stud around the village when I hear the creaks in the floorboards upstairs. The man of the hour, the day, the week, the year-- he awakens.
My subject is allowed access to my lab only when I’m in his presence. For all our disagreements, he concedes this to me. I’ve impressed upon him the volatile nature of some of the ingredients I keep in stock, and even he isn’t so foolhardy to mess with them. Not that he would, unless he was looking for something suspicious--he hates potions. He wouldn’t even know where to start.
I know, because a few months ago, while I was focused on raising a brew to boil and wasn’t paying attention, he was poking around lifting glasses and peering myopically into them as he’s wont to do. One jar wasn’t as robust as he’d assumed, the contents more caustic than I imagined in storage. The lid broke off in his hands and startled me from focus by a soft swear from Harry’s lips and the clatter of fallen glass.
A smoky, woodsy aroma from the jar filled the lab, and though it wasn’t an unpleasant smell, it was a frightening one for me. I abandoned my bubbling cauldrons, the fire extinguished with a jerky wave of my hurried hand, and walked as fast as I would allow myself to go to him.
“Over here,” I said urgently, tugging on his shirtsleeve. “Come, come on now. This way. Here, Harry. Right here. Stand there.”
He knew something dangerous had happened, but hadn’t completely understood until I used his first name. I’d been able to corral my emotions and keep them from my manners and movements, but that simple slip of the tongue and the thoughtless use of his first name that I’d never employed before made him move like a jolt of electricity had been shot through him.
Once he stood where I directed, I created a containment spell and pulled a lever. Immediately, his face, hair, and clothes were covered in a torrent of white. It did not stop for a long few moments, and as it worked, I Banished the broken jar and it’s contents.
The shower finished, I removed the containment and dispelled the liquid. I asked him if he thought he’d been cut by the glass shards, and even though he said no, I thoroughly inspected his hands both by magic and my own eyesight and took a diagnostic of him.
“What was that?” he asked me, taking off his glasses and meticulously spelling them cleaner than I had. There was no reluctance in his voice to know, as mine would have, but there was a small kernel of fear. As always, he is and was far braver than I am.
“It was a reduction of casca bark,” I explained. “Usually, casca bark has to be ingested to be deadly, but it’s reactions when comes in contact with the blood stream can vary. You appear to be fine, though, so I’ll simply have to keep an eye on you for the rest of the day,” I reassured him, giving him a wan smile. I refrained from mentioning that in its native habitat of the Congo, casca bark is commonly referred to as “doom bark”.
“Oh…” he said, warily looking at his hands, still holding them away from his body. “What did you pour on me?”
“Milk,” I grinned. He cocked his head and made a face quite like he was trying to ward off a sneeze. I had to laugh.
“Mixed with other ingredients, that is. Honey as one--your skin will be wonderfully soft. But milk is the primary thing. It’s a simple product, but an effective neutralizer,” I explained. “The enzymes in it can break down spice, which I’m sure you’re aware of. But it also has strong qualities in combating magic. Did you know milk with honey is the preferred sustenance of the Aos Sí, the Sidhe?”
“The who?”
I come across as snide and haughty even now, when I no longer mean to. I forget that not everyone has been raised with a pureblood education, and that most magic folk nowadays know quite little about our more-than-humble beginnings.
Harry’s sneeze expression had only deepened, but he knew me well enough by then to read that I hadn’t meant to rub my knowledge and his ignorance in his face.
“The fae.” I waved my hand and shrugged, rather uncomfortable for having brought up the subject now that I found myself explaining it. “They drink honey milk because they need a cleansing substance, as such powerful magical beings. And in turn, it’s said that if milk is used for a similar purpose amongst wizards, we may have their blessing. Best not to talk about them too much, though: if you don’t know them, you’re probably better for it.”
“Why?”
“They can be…wily,” I replied cautiously, shaking out my hair for some way to fidget. Talking about them made me nervous, especially on the farm, so deep in the wilderness. They are so easily offended, and they come when they’re called, or so our legends say. I certainly did not want to welcome any unexpected guests that night. “Sorry, Potter, but that’s all I can give you. Now, if you insist upon staying in my lab, can I ask you to go over to that seat and not get up from it until I’ve finished?”
Unusually cowed, he did as I asked. And that was that--crisis averted.
All in all, he is not as horrible a housemate as I dreaded initially. He keeps things clean and does not make too much of a ruckus, which is surprising. As I took it, havoc and chaos simply seemed to follow him, ever the unwitting victim, everywhere.
Today he has joined me, sitting on the stool I brought down specifically for him after the day of the accident, watching me refine my ingredients. He is picking at the skin by his nails again— I can tell by the noise it makes— so I take a jar of hand cream off the shelf and hand it to him. I have many more that will get shipped off before the week’s end.
He accepts the jar wordlessly, half distracted. He gestures to the table, every surface covered in bubbling cauldrons and chopping boards. “How did you know this was what you wanted to do?” he asks suddenly.
I shrug, walking back to the table. “It wasn’t so much that I knew what I wanted—there are a lot of different things I want, from a lazy perspective. I want to go deep sea diving. I’d like to walk on another planet. I want to be a classic author, an explorer, a political leader…and on and on. But what do I have the motivation to really sit down and do? What works with the resources I have, with the time at my disposal, and with my skill set?” I shrug again. “That narrowed down my options. And then I could make a decision, which lead to another, and yet another.”
“I always pictured you…” he drifts off and fiddles with the label on the jar, peeling it off slowly in thin strips. He still hasn’t opened it.
“Like my father?”
He looks at me, twisting the paper between his fingers. He is always moving. “Yes.”
I huff a soft chuckle and return to the cutting board. “You and me both.”