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“What if you have a hidden gift?” Archie argued, folding his arms in front of him. “You know, something that could help us?”
Harry frowned at his words. She didn’t think she needed to take the potion, mainly because she knew where her strengths lay: in potions. But ever since Archie discovered his gift as a metamorphmagus, he hadn’t stopped harassing Harry about it. It was rare that the potion would reveal the same gift, even if she was distantly related to the Blacks, but she couldn’t help the twinge of temptation that followed. The ruse would practically be indestructible if both of them turned out to be metamorphmagi.
“Maybe you’ll find out you have a natural aptitude for legilimency!” Archie grinned at her. “Wouldn’t it be helpful to find out what people think?”
“Archie,” Harry scolded, grateful that her mother was busy tending to the garden (Addy was probably rolling around in the mud beside her) and her father was on duty. “You should be more careful talking about the mind arts.”
Archie lost his smile for a fraction of second, “I know, cuz, I know. It’s just that it isn’t so taboo in the healing community. Mind healers exist for a reason.”
Even so, Harry didn’t want to risk coming under suspicion. Rigel was already under scrutiny by Tom Riddle—she refused to call him Lord—and his SOW party.
“All right,” Harry decided, standing. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to see what the Potentialis Potion reveals.”
Except it could, an unwitting voice in the back of her mind reminded her. Draco’s empathy had been incredibly taxing when the potion revealed it. She took comfort in the fact that she was already experienced in occlumency. Plus, she had Dom to help. A vague sense of annoyed affection drifted to the forefront of her mind, and she smiled. It might not have been her first choice for Dom to inhabit her mind, but she was glad they were getting along now. She wasn’t sure she would be able to endure a lifetime of splitting headaches from underwater orchestras.
Harry was familiar with the process, though it had been over a year since she last brewed it, and it took her a little over two hours to brew the potion. The only harrowing part was when she had to open her potions kit to find a strand of her un-polyjuiced hair. Archie seemed to get more and more judgmental concerning the items she collected. It wasn’t her fault that people left their hairs around! Though, in all fairness, he might have been staring at the vials of blood and spit. Especially because they weren’t all his. Either way, a snide voice chimed in, Harry had no idea when and if she would need them.
“Well?” Archie had been sitting on the uncomfortable stone steps leading down into the potions lab, reading a book. He closed his book with a snap, a glowing grin spreading across his face, “When are we going to take it?”
Without her permission, Harry’s face mirrored her cousin’s. She liked the thrill—the mystery. But she knew she had to be careful when she took it. With how powerful and unpredictable her magic could be, she had to take it under supervision. She carefully stored the potion into her kit, “We should let the adults know at dinner.”
“We should just ask Aunt Lily now,” Archie argued. “I can’t wait a whole day!”
“I’m taking the potion,” Harry reminded him, snorting. “And it’s not a whole day.”
She wandlessly cast a tempus, “Look, we only have three hours until dinner.”
“Three hours too long,” Archie grumbled, then turned wide, glistening eyes on Harry. It wasn’t anything as good as her look, but she amused him with raised brows. “Please, Harry? Asking can’t hurt.”
Harry acquiesced with a sigh, “Fine, but since you’re so excited, you can ask her.”
Archie all but bounded up the stairs like an excited puppy.
As Harry expected, Lily planted her hands on her hips and firmly told the two to help her prepare the table. It would have to wait until after dinner, she said, and they would have to take proper precautions like using her Portable Protection Potion. Archie would have to spend part of the night with her, and he was to get Uncle Sirius if anything went wrong. Harry privately thought that her mother was overreacting a bit. Her magic was strong, yes, but they had come to an agreement.
Her magic thrummed happily in her veins at the notion.
Harry couldn’t help but notice the suppressor, glinting, on her mother’s wrist. She supposed her mother did have a valid reason to worry.
“Fire call me if anything happens,” Lily called after her as Sirius disappeared in green flames. She held Addy on her hip, worried concern written all over her face. “Maybe I should—”
“I’ll be fine, Mum,” Harry gave her a small, reassuring smile. Theoretically, nothing should happen if her mother stayed, but Harry didn’t want to risk it. There would be a lot of questions if something happened and her modified Polyjuice wore off. Unlikely, Harry reminded herself sternly.
Harry’s back seared with the intensity of her mother’s gaze as she stepped through the Floo.
-x-
Harry sat in the center of her small bubble, holding nothing but the neatly labeled Potentialis Potion. She felt naked without her emergency potions kit, but she had no idea how her magic would manifest. It would be a tedious job to restock her kit again. Instead, it was tucked under Archie’s arm.
“Ready?” Archie asked cheerfully from his seat by the stairs. Harry eyed the comfortable loveseat enviously. The ground was cold and hard. She wished she had thought about bringing a cushion in with her.
“You have the ward disruptor potion?” Harry triple checked, uncorking her potion.
Archie rolled his eyes, “Yes, mother. Do you need me to go over Plan B too?”
“As long as you remember,” Harry grumbled mostly to herself. She brought the potion to her lips and drank.
It tasted better than she had anticipated, which wasn’t saying much. The cool liquid slid down her throat, leaving behind the aftertaste of smelly socks. It would take a few minutes before it would tug at her magic, and Harry recorked the vial and set it aside.
“Feeling okay?” Archie called, a grin splitting his face in two.
Harry looked down at her hands. Would she feel the potion working? Or was it something more passive? She looked back to Archie, “Nothing’s happening ye—”
She spoke too soon.
She doubled over, gasping. It felt like someone had sucker-punched her directly in the abdomen. But no—her physical body was fine. She could still breathe, and she could feel that none of her tissues had been affected. It wasn’t her body, but her magic that was under attack.
As if realizing this, her magic reeled. The outer coils flailed, striking at an invisible enemy. The walls of the Protection Potion clashed with her magic, producing a thunderous clap. For a single moment, Harry thought she could see cracks in the barrier. And then her magic bucked again, striking at the barrier. She felt the barrier shudder, crack, and fall to pieces.
She was free again. Her magic was free. And Archie was screaming over the dull roar of her magic, waving his arms as wind, magic, and debris swirled in the room.
It felt good.
But Archie’s blanched face grounded Harry. With a sharp rebuke, her magic pulled away from his seat by the stairway. A shield blossomed between the two, fortified by her will to keep her cousin safe. But she couldn’t control her magic any more than that.
Panic rose inside of her as she slouched over, wrestling with her wayward magic. She could feel the outer coils stretching, some invisible force tugging.
The thought gave her pause. The Potentialis Potion was meant to tug at her magic and reveal her potentials. Though, no one had ever said anything about how free and wild their magic was during the process.
An invisible force pulled at a coil of her magic. One way, then the other. Something deeper inside her core shifted, swirling hotter and faster than it had been before. It was making Harry nauseous.
She squeezed her eyes shut as her magic shifted again. There was a sharp pain in her abdomen (was something rupturing?), and she knew no more.
When Harry regained consciousness, she was no longer in the Black Potions Lab, but rather, in her own bed. Her hands flew to her face, and after realizing that her Rigel features, were in fact, intact, she relaxed.
Sunlight filtered in from the window. Harry climbed out of bed, aware of how late it was. Noon, perhaps? She didn’t remember the last time she had awoken so late.
The house was quiet—almost unnaturally so—but a moment later, Harry heard Addy’s cheerful babbling and her mum’s quiet humming. Archie and Uncle Sirius weren’t over, then.
She took a moment to recall last night’s events. The Potentialis Potion. Her magic. The tugging. Yet, she didn’t feel one bit more enlightened. She didn’t know any more about her potentials than she did before taking the potion. Was there simply nothing more to reveal about herself? But no: she had felt her magic shifting. She’d felt something inside her, stirring.
Harry’s stomach grumbled loudly. This could wait. Food first.
She felt it first when she faced her closet. A small tugging in her gut as she passed her hands over her brewing robes. Her hand jerked to the side when she tried grabbing it, pushed to the side by a small whip of magic.
No.
The word wasn’t said aloud, but Harry understood it all the same. No to her brewing robes. Harry just couldn’t understand why.
She moved on to the next outfit, and again, she felt the small tendril of her magic’s disapproval. On and on she went until she reached a new set of robes: plain, yet cut well to accentuate her features. She hadn’t worn it before, but her mother had insisted on buying it.
Sighing, Harry dressed, sullen.
She reached for her beautiful boots—
“Ouch!” Harry’s hand all but flew to the side, as if something had knocked her hand away. A small welt was forming on the inside of her wrist. She gaped incredulously at the tendril of magic. “I need to wear these boots!”
She tried reaching for them again, but she wasn’t even close to them when her magic stung her again. No. When her magic bit her.
“I’m going to brew!” Harry argued. This was absolutely ridiculous.
She reached for the boots again—her beautiful, fireproof, acid-resistant, comfortable boots—but her magical fashion advisor was too quick. She lunged for the boots, a fraction of a second after her magic pushed it to the side. She grabbed air, nearly face-planting into the floor with her eagerness.
Harry growled in frustration, attempting to grab her boots once more.
They flew across the room, settling innocently by her bed.
That was how Archie found her, twenty minutes later: shouting angrily at her magic as her boots skittered across the floor.
-x-
Predictably, Archie collapsed onto the floor, howling in laughter as Harry pouted, feet clad with a “nicer” pair of shoes. She didn’t even recall that she owned this particular pair.
“I can’t believe it!” Archie gasped, attempting to catch his breath. He devolved into laughter once more, spluttering, “The potion revealed your potential for—what? Fashion?”
And it seemed like it had. In the full length mirror her rebellious coil of magic conjured, she looked taller—more commanding. The fitting of her robes and her shoes gave the impression that she belonged on the cover of Witch Weekly.
Harry peered at herself, but her magic still wasn’t satisfied. With a gentle touch, her magic caressed her face, forcing her to close her eyes. When she opened them again, she gaped. Even Archie had stopped chortling long enough to gasp.
Her hair was longer now: down past her chin. Her magic had done something to tame her hair, though she still retained some of her curls. Her facial features hadn’t changed (though her magic grumbled at that), but it had added a soft, rosy color to her cheeks. Her lips looked fuller and softer. Even her eyelashes suddenly looked darker and longer.
But the most captivating part of her face were her eyes.
Harry’s eyes were luminous. They were glowing emeralds—greener than Harry remembered they ever were. Her magic thrummed in satisfaction and smacked her cheek lightly. Her magic was very cross with changing her eye color, it seemed.
“This is problematic,” Harry frowned at her reflection. Her eyes were memorable. She turned to Archie, who had followed her train of thought, and was now attempting to replicate the emerald color and luminosity. It didn’t take them long to figure out that it was impossible. At least, with Archie’s metamorphic abilities. There was just some sort of untamed gleam that Archie couldn’t replicate.
“Do you think—?” Archie started, his eyes bleeding back to gray.
But Harry didn’t hear any of that as her magic bucked wildly again, forcing her to stand and spin on her heel.
She felt the narrow tube of apparition close on her sides. Panic clawed at the edges of her mind as she disapparated. She didn’t know where she was going, only relying on her exuberant magic to guide her. Yet Harry knew the consequences of disapparating without the three D’s: destination, determination, and deliberation.
Her feet hit the ground, and she was pushed, rather roughly, into someone’s arms.
It took her a fraction of a second to realize she hadn’t splinched herself. It took her another second to realize she was in the middle of Diagon Alley. It took her one more second to realize who was holding her. Then, a long moment for her to gather the courage to look up.
Caelum Lestrange glowered down at her—eyes blazing with anger, scathing words already forming on his lips.
Harry felt him freeze.
They were so close.
Instinctively, she tried pulling away, but Caelum held on, impeding her efforts. His blue eyes were clouded with confusion, and his beautiful face held uncertainty as he searched for something within her eyes.
“Harriet?”
It was her name, falling from his lips for the first time, that shook realization into her body.
Somehow, in a world of magical potentials, Caelum Lestrange was hers.
Her magic purred, satisfied at the statement.
Harry hadn’t ever heard of a person being another person’s potential. She fixed Caelum with a stern frown.
She had research to do.