Amidst a cluster of tall, emerald-velvet-topped, mahogany stools and small round tables Slughorn reclined across a deep jade armchair, several thick, cream blankets bundled about his legs and over his lap as he sipped from a steaming white mug of spiced, hot chocolate. Around him, upon the small circular tables, little gleaming gold cauldrons simmered, full of shimmering, opaline liquid that sent pale vapour spiralling up toward the ceiling.
'Welcome, welcome!' Slughorn cried, toasting them all with his mug. 'I'm very pleased to welcome you all to NEWT level potions!' He sipped his drink and winked at them. 'Now, the course!'
Harry picked his ladle up, eyeing the potion.
'No.' Hermione confiscated it. 'Don't you dare.'
'The aims of the course are, boiled right down, to be able to analyse, concoct and create your own potions based upon your own understanding of how ingredients interact.' Slughorn pointed his mug at the potions. 'Some professors, I know, prefer to have a regimented series of lessons to walk you through all the different combinations, but I find such approaches very wearisome, so there'll be none of that.' He sat up, tugging his plum-coloured jacket straight. 'This does mean you need to be diligent and independent about how you work. You will need to come up with your own organisation and structure, because I won't be doing it for you now that you are NEWT students.'
Hermione raised Harry's ladle into the air with her hand.
Slughorn chortled. 'Anxious to taste something from one of those cauldrons, Miss…?'
'Granger,' Hermione replied, turning ever so slightly red. 'And no, I had a question about the course.'
'Ask away, my dear.' He took a sip from his mug. 'Better now than later.'
'What exactly are we going to be studying?'
'An excellent question!' Slughorn pushed himself out of his chair and trundled around the edge of the room to his desk, picking a piece of sugared fruit from a box as he topped up his mug. 'First, I want to give you all a little nudge toward setting your own goals and being independent and proactive. This lesson, after taking a little sip from one of these cauldrons, I want you to pick something you think you can brew, but will be a challenge; later in the year, after we have done some work on analysing recipes and how we can alter them to change their properties, we will brew the same potion again, but customised, and see how greatly we have all improved.'
'So… we just brew something?' Malfoy's upper lip curled. 'Anything we want? I could just pick a Babbling Beverage from First Year.'
'I would hope you have more ambition than that,' Slughorn replied. 'This is not just a test of whether you can successfully brew what you choose.'
Harry retrieved his ladle. 'See, I can take a sip.'
Hermione huffed at him.
'Let's begin!' Slughorn clapped his hands together. 'Potions is, at OWL level, a much unloved subject. You memorise dull, simple recipes and write long essays about them and the history of key potions and inventions. Terrible stuff; we won't be doing anything of the sort.' He plucked a shining golden ladle off the desk and dipped it into the nearest cauldron, filling a series of small vials. 'This is amortentia, a most enchanting potion. Its name, rather aptly, is derived from Latin, meaning love-held , and that is, I find, a very good way to remember what it exactly does; it cannot create love, ladies and gentleman, but it can deceive you into thinking the love you already feel you now feel for something else.'
Hermione waved her hand in the air. 'So what we can smell is…?'
'What you can smell, Miss Granger, is what attracts you.' Slughorn passed the small vials out. 'I want each of these back; this potion does not leave this room. You can, if any of you remain somehow unaware, do tremendous damage to someone's life with this potion. Misplaced love is a terrible terrible thing in the wrong hands.' He tapped the last few drops off the ladle back into the golden cauldron and set it down. 'Take a sniff, take a sip; I have not added the final ingredient to this potion, so it will have no effect.'
Harry took a deep breath, inhaling a rush of sharp, sweet redcurrants, raspberries, and a breathtakingly familiar fragrance of many red flowers; and after it came a faint wash of spearmint and the sweet, fevered scent of Daphne's hungry kisses; it all set his heart aflutter with the trembling wings of treacherous butterflies. 'Smell anything good?' he asked Ron.
Ron turned rather red and shrugged.
'Chicken,' Harry accused, sneaking a glance at Daphne.
A spark of hunger burnt in her blue eyes as she stared back at him, crunching on a crimson blood pop and clutching her empty vial tight in her hand.
Hermione snorted. 'What did you smell, Harry? Genocide? Eau de Fascisme?'
'That's… not a real perfume,' he retorted. 'But no, actually; I smelt redcurrants and raspberries and roses and red flowers.'
She rolled her eyes. 'What do short skirts smell like?'
'Lavender,' Harry whispered to Ron. 'Say it, Ronald. Do it. It'll be hilarious and she might kill you quickly.'
Hermione wrestled with her smile and lost. 'Just drink it, you idiots.' She poured hers into her mouth holding it there for a moment, then swallowing. 'Oh…' A little shiver ran through her. 'It tastes like… like… coffee and chai and the smell of autumn leaves.'
Harry chuckled. 'I think that implies you're romantically attracted to plants. Good thing Neville isn't here, I don't need to know what the venomous tentacula tastes like.'
Ron spluttered his potion down his front.
'Ronald's potion tastes like being bottom of the league every season and bitter defeat.'
'We'll finish second bottom one year, mate, just you wait.' Ron patted the amortentia into his robes. 'Guess I won't know what mine tastes like.'
'Probably food,' Harry said.
A snort of laughter escaped Hermione.
Harry drank his, still chuckling. The sharp flavour of red fruits filled his mouth, cold on his tongue, as if he'd spooned a huge scoop of sorbet into his mouth and held it there until almost the point of numbness.
'Well now,' Slughorn said. 'Who wants to share what they can taste? Mr Potter, perhaps you'd be so brave; I've heard you faced down a dragon, so surely you can tell us all what you taste?'
'Redcurrants.' Harry grinned, savouring the sweet taste as he watched the tips of Daphne's ears turn pink in the corner of his eye. 'Raspberries. Strawberries, but not after you bite them, how they taste after you've cut them in half.'
'Now who loves food?' Ron demanded.
'Fruit's good for you,' Harry retorted.
Slughorn chortled. 'I'm sure Mr Potter knows exactly who that reminds him of. Now, does anyone else feel like they could share…?'
An anxious silence fell over the class.
'Go on, Malfoy,' Harry urged. 'What does your father's aftershave smell like?'
Laughter rang off the ceiling.
Malfoy scoffed. 'I'd say ask Weasley what his father's smells like if you're so desperate to know what it's like to have parents, Potter. But we all know Weasley's family can't afford to wash, let alone buy aftershave.'
'Bugger off, Malfoy,' Ron growled.
'Well?' Slughorn took a long sip from his mug. 'Mr Malfoy?'
'Daffodils,' he said. 'It smelt like daffodils and fresh cut grass, and it tasted like pears.'
Slughorn nodded. 'Well done. Amortentia, in this unfinished form, can only remind you of all the things you are attracted to. That does not, necessarily, mean romantic attraction either. Were you to finish this potion with romantic inclinations, you would find that perhaps the scent of it would change. The taste would certainly change, for it would taste of things you associate with the person who prepared it to deceive you.'
Malfoy twisted his stool around to stare at the rows of empty jars against the wall.
'Right!' Slughorn clapped his hands together. 'Pick a potion. Don't use the pewter stuff you used at OWL level; it's simply not high enough grade for our purposes. Make sure you're using either your own silver cauldron or, if you prefer—' he pulled his wand out of the inside pocket of his plum-hued waistcoat and flicked it at the cupboard '—borrow one of my gold ones; I have no other use for them, these days, and they were far from cheap, so let's not waste them.'
Harry leapt from his chair, weaving through the throng of students to swipe a golden cauldron and ladle; he detoured past the back of Daphne as he returned, brushing his fingers across the back of her hand as he went.
A small shudder swept through her and, for a moment in a blur, he felt the tip of her finger trace a little heart across his palm.
The butterflies burst into life and a huge smile spread across Harry's face. 'Right.' he glanced between Slughorn and his golden cauldron. 'I have an important thing to do, so… with a bit of luck, let's see if I can do it today.'
Slughorn threw open the potions cupboard. 'Anything in here, you can use, but read the warnings before you mix things. And if you're not sure, ask me or check what's in your textbook. Let's not have anyone sent to the infirmary with melted arms during our first lesson.'
'Harry,' Hermione hissed, slapping a rather battered textbook down on the desk beside them as he lit his cauldron. 'You need one of these.'
A light tug came at his sleeve.
'Greengrass.' Harry grinned as he filled his cauldron with spring water bottled beneath the new moon. 'Why are you over here? Shouldn't you be over there on the mildly evil side of the room?'
Hermione groaned. 'Oh, please kill me.'
Daphne stepped in between them, the corner of her mouth twitching. 'There are not enough cauldrons left, so I will have to work with someone.'
'But—' Ron blinked '—there are loads of cauldrons right over—'
Harry stood on Ron's foot. 'Seems very reasonable,' he said. 'I'm brewing Felix Felicis.'
Hermione scoffed. 'Harry, Felix Felicis is almost impossible to brew.'
'Yes.' He stacked the empty flasks up in the middle of the desk. 'It must take a lot of luck to brew; therefore, the only sensible approach is to put the unluckiest, least likely to work things together and see what happens.'
She released a long sigh. 'Have you even looked at the textbook I just got for you?'
Harry drew his wand from the sheathe on his spine and vanished the battered tome, letting it disappear like the last light of a star into the hungry dark beyond. 'What textbook?'
Hermione puffed her cheeks out. 'Greengrass, would you please tell him how stupid he is?'
Daphne's fingers slipped through Harry's beneath the edge of the desk. 'If you think it will work, Harry, you should try it.'
'This is how I know you're going dark, Hermione,' Harry said. 'If Greengrass, who as we all know must be mildly evil because a hat said so, is being more supportive than you are, then that's not a good sign…'
'You've filled your cauldron with springwater from under a new moon!' Hermione cried. 'It has almost no magic to it!'
'Exactly.' Harry stroked his long and completely imaginary beard. 'I see you are starting to realise my genius. Come, Daph — I mean, Greengrass — to the potions cupboard. We must choose ingredients.'
Hermione buried her face in her hands.
'Yes, despair, Hermione.' Harry cackled as he strolled around her. 'For it is I who will be top of this class and you will have to cope with the crushing blow of being bettered by someone with a Muggle-born mother.'
'Go away before I hit you with this ladle,' she said.
Harry fled to the potions cupboard, surveying the towering shelves of gleaming glass jars. 'Right, now we must ask ourselves two questions. Firstly, what are the least likely things to make Felix Felicis if we mix them all together? And, secondly and most importantly, what will Snape be most upset about me using?'
A quiet chuckle escaped Daphne. And just the sound of it was enough to send the butterflies swirling all about inside his stomach.
Harry plucked a jar of something red and squishy off the side. 'What is this?'
Daphne cocked her head, peering at the bottle like a curious crow as her earring, a pair of crimson maple leaves, swayed beneath her ear. 'It says tomato soup.'
He squinted at the label. 'Oh yes. Why is that even in here?' Harry put it back. 'Just like Snape to keep his lunch in here, really. No wonder he's always so grouchy, he's probably been having dragon's blood for lunch every day instead of this.'
'You are ridiculous,' Daphne whispered. 'Please stay.'
He patted her hand. 'Silly. Who else would show me amazing things?'
'Granger?'
Harry shuddered. 'She's more likely to finally make me read Pride and Prejudice. ' He picked up another jar. 'Four-leafed clovers?'
'They are meant to be lucky.'
Harry put them back. 'What things are meant to be unlucky? '
'Whitethorn flowers.' Daphne picked a small jar of pale blossom from the bottom shelf. 'Bluebells.' She grabbed another jar of blue blooms from a little further along. 'Laurel. The golden feathers of a wren. Hawthorn blossom. A single magpie feather.'
Harry gathered up the jars one by one, swiping the tomato soup in the process, and staggered across to stack them up beside his cauldron.
'What are you doing?' Hermione demanded.
'Brewing Felix Felicis.'
Slughorn chortled, trundling through the stools to stand beside him. 'That might be a little too ambitious, my boy, but it's not the place of a professor to stifle such flair.'
'Professor Snape never appreciated my genius, sir.' Harry tossed things out of the jar into the cauldron as he talked, watching as they melted into the violent bubbling within.
'We shall see.' Slughorn's smile was horribly sad. 'You remind me most terribly of your mother, Mr Potter. Let's find out if any of her gift has been passed down to you.'
'Maybe it's in the eyes,' Harry mused, throwing in a few more flowers and a single magpie's feather. 'Then I should have it.'
Slughorn drifted away, perusing the other cauldrons.
'Er…' Ron shot Harry's ink-black bubbling, frothing potion a wary look. 'That's about to do a Neville, mate. Maybe take it off the fire?'
'No.' Harry shook his head. 'The further away it gets, the closer it will be.'
'Harry, that's nonsense,' Hermione said. 'You don't need magic luck to watch over Malfoy; he isn't going to be trusted to do anything by Voldemort anyway.'
'You shouldn't underestimate him,' Harry murmured. 'Voldemort, I mean, not Malfoy; Malfoy's useless. But it's not for him. Voldemort's plans always fall apart when I get involved, so I just have to keep an eye on Malfoy and wait. This is for something else,' he lowered his voice to a whisper. 'Professor Dumbledore gave me a task to do. It's very important.'
Hermione relaxed. 'So you can take things seriously.' She huffed. 'Have you been winding me up all this time? I was really starting to worry, Harry!'
'Tonks said I had to and the more I learn, the less funny things seem. But also, in my defence; it was funny?'
She glowered at him. 'Greengrass can have you.'
'I already do.' Daphne's eyes were all cold and sharp as she cleared the empty springwater bottles away, like the little icicles that hung off Harry's dorm window ledge in the winter.
Hermione rolled her eyes. 'Only until Harry realises how horrible your religious extremism really is, Greengrass.'
'Moving on,' Harry said, pouring the entire jar of tomato soup into his cauldron. 'I hope Snape packed a backup lunch today.'
The corner of Daphne's mouth crooked.
'Harry…' Hermione pinched the bridge of her nose. 'What are you even doing?'
Harry watched the pitch black potion roil and churn, swirling like the shadow beyond the stars, dark and hungry, and waiting with a sharp and patient smile. 'I'm either about to make Felix Felicis, or this is going to explode.'
The class stilled.
'Er… Professor?' Susan Bones pointed at Harry's cauldron, nibbling at the end of a lock of her auburn hair. 'Is that safe?'
Slughorn peered at it and took a swift step back.
The class retreated to the edge of the room, hiding behind textbooks. Daphne went with them, offering Harry a short, apologetic glance.
He cheerfully stirred it with his ladle, watching the end melt off into the cauldron. 'Well, that's not a good sign...'
Hermione grabbed his arm. 'Harry, get away!'
'You get away.' He tossed the rest of the ladle in as she retreated. 'Might as well; it's pretty useless without the end anyway.'
Small amber sparks burst within the bubbling black, shining there for a few instants like stars in the night.
Harry smiled, stealing Ron's gold ladle and stirring it into the potion; he waited with a huge grin on his face as the rest of the class cowered against the walls.
He held Daphne's gaze with a smile.
A flash of gold filled the room.
Someone screamed.
'Chickens,' Harry accused. 'I'm on the precipice of greatness here.'
Gold shone through the darkness, gold as bright and brilliant as the summer sun; it poured from the cauldron like beams of morning light bursting through a gap in the curtains into the gloom of his bedroom.
'Marvellous!' Professor Slughorn cried. 'Truly marvellous!'
Harry stole Hermione's ladle and scooped a bit out. 'Let's see what it tastes like!'
'Harry!' Hermione snapped. 'Don't drink it! You don't have any idea what it does.'
'Everyone knows what Felix Felicis does, Her-My-Ow-Knee,' he retorted, gulping down the whole shining spoonful of gold. 'It makes you lucky.'
The potion poured down his throat like liquid sunshine, filling him with a warm and glowing light so strong Harry almost felt he must be shining himself.
Slughorn peered into the cauldron. 'Don't panic, Miss Granger. Felix Felicis is quite distinctive to the discerning eye of a master; there is no mistaking it for another potion. Only the brewer can really drink it and benefit from it to the fullest, you know; to them, it will offer a piece of life-changing luck, to anyone else, it offers good luck for a little while, but rarely much more.' He smiled, a terribly sad smile, one that stopped somewhere just above his lips and drowned far before it reached his eyes. 'They used to say it could only be brewed when a witch or wizard had been given a… gift.'
'Prof y Sidhe ,' Harry said.
A tense silence fell over the class.
Slughorn pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. 'Let's end the lesson here, shall we? I don't think anyone is going to top this effort. Even I have only managed to brew Felix Felicis once before, and while we were all taking cover, our own potions have rather been ruined.' He waved a hand at the door. 'Off you go, off you go. Don't worry about tidying up, I'll have the house elves do it; when it comes to making sure things are clean enough to avoid contamination, house elf expertise is a must.'
The rest of the class filed out, but Harry lingered, waving Hermione and Ron goodbye as they glanced back.
'Professor?' he asked.
'Ah, Harry.' Slughorn set his mug down. 'Hoping to hear about your mother?'
'Not exactly, sir,' Harry replied.
Slughorn frowned and pushed his handkerchief back into his pocket with one finger. 'I fear, in my astonishment at your accomplishment, I said a little too much. I am aware of the Old Ways, Harry, yes, but fear not, I am no follower of Voldemort; I would wager a good number of your classmates quietly follow them as well.'
'Not that, either, sir.'
'What is it then, my boy?' Slughorn chortled. 'A question about potions?'
'Professor Dumbledore asked me to ask you to share a memory with me,' Harry murmured. 'A very important one.'
Slughorn clammed up. 'He did? Well—' he fiddled with the silver buttons of his jacket '—I don't know what he meant by that, Harry.'
'Really? I was hoping, with a little luck, you might feel up to sharing it.'
'Felix Felicis is a powerful thing; luck and destiny are twins.' Slughorn nodded. 'But, I confess, Harry, I do know of what you speak, but the shame… you cannot imagine , Harry. And to have carried it with me all this time, letting it grow greater and greater; I fear that if I ever say it, I will never be able to look you or anyone else in the eye ever again.'
'It's that bad?'
'You're young,' Slughorn said, his pale green eyes haunted and sad. 'You've made mistakes, I'm sure, Harry, but… none like mine. I… let me at least tell you this, so you don't think too ill of me. After Grindelwald's first war and with the second one brewing. After spending many years learning about the world we are all a part of and those who hold the most power over it… Well, anything seemed better than how things are. I so desperately hoped for change that I never really thought about death, even knowing all the words those who still believe whisper to themselves in quiet moments and what they truly must mean.'
'Aren't they the same thing, sir? Death. And change.'
'You are already wiser at sixteen than I was at sixty,' he whispered. 'I saw signs, Harry. I believed. But I saw only what I hoped to see, not what was truly there. Too much death has come of what I did; and the world has not changed, only grown… darker.' Slughorn drew himself up. 'I hope, Harry, you can forgive me for being so naïve as I was, but please—' he pointed at the door '—don't pick at my shame; it eats away at me night and day now I have no faith left to shield me. And I deserve it. I do. But I would rather it devoured me without an audience; could you grant me that much, Harry?'
Harry frowned. 'We need to know what you know, sir. To stop him.'
'How would it help?' Slughorn shook his head. 'It cannot, Harry. It cannot.' He trudged back into his office and shut the door.
A little spark of frustration flared up in Harry and he poured the rest of the Felix Felicis away, watching the glowing golden liquid stream down the sink. 'Well, that didn't exactly go to plan.' He wandered out.
A firm grip seized his sleeve, dragging him down the corridor.
' Fís y fygrwen ,' Daphne whispered, wrenching him into the gloom of a secret passage.
'Daph?'
She clapped a hand across his mouth. 'You drank it!
'Well, yes,' Harry mumbled into her warm fingers as the passage closed, plunging them into the dark. 'It doesn't work unless you drink it; it's a potion.'
She hauled him along with an iron grip, until light filtered through the passage's gloom from the narrow, worn set of steps; it shone on the thin threads of white tree roots snaking across the walls and hanging in little clusters from the ceiling.
'You drank it,' she breathed, her blue eyes were cold and sharp as ice, and her lips smeared with bright, crimson blood pop fizz. 'And then you poured all the rest away!' A fierce and desperate spark burnt in her eyes. 'It was a gift from the Veiled Realm. A drop of destiny and you poured it away!'
Harry laughed. 'Proph y—'
Daphne's hand cut him off. 'Harry.'
'Sorry?' he mumbled into her fingers.
'You are not!' she snapped, dropping her hand. 'You are not .'
'Well, the potion worked, but the plan didn't and I was annoyed. It's just luck; really,' he mused, 'I should have known better, because I have terrible luck almost all the time except for a couple of really key moments at the last second.'
'There is no such thing as luck, Harry. You heard Professor Slughorn. Luck and destiny are twins; it was not just a little luck but a gift of destiny. And you… you…' Daphne clammed up, but a hint of that desperate, blazing hope lingered beneath the ice in her blue eyes. 'You have to accept it. You cannot defy destiny.'
Harry measured the sharpness of the cold anger in her eyes and tiptoed across the thin ice to kiss her on the tip of her nose. 'What do I say to make you not mad at me?'
She turned her pretty nose up at him, hooking the rogue lock of golden hair back behind her ear with her little finger.
Harry leant in and kissed her. 'I love you?'
Daphne let his lips linger on hers for a moment, then turned away.
'Wow, this Felix Felicis is really not doing its job,' he said. 'Forget destiny, what happened to lucky? The only person who's come off worse after drinking something golden was Umbridge.'
' Harry.' She buried her face in the crook of his neck. 'You have to stay. You must. You can only die once. '
'I'm staying, silly; and I think I'll probably only die once, too; that's generally how it works.' Harry kissed her on the forehead. 'But I usually come close to dying on a fairly regular basis, Daph, so… sorry?'
'You are not,' Daphne murmured. 'You are never really sorry.'
'I still have you.' He kissed her again. 'How could I be sorry?'
A little pink crept up her cheeks. 'Do not say things like that to me, Harry.'
'Should I just kiss you, then?' He did so, pulling her into his arms.
Daphne melted against him with a small content noise, clutching him close by the front of his robes.
'Don't rip them,' Harry joked between lingering kisses that left a tang of redcurrant every time they part for breath. 'You already owe me a t-shirt.'
'Hush, Harry.' She stole another kiss, a longer one, crushing her lips against his.
'Hush?' He smiled into her hungry kisses; the little spark of craving that swelled in her blue eyes sent all the butterflies fluttering about inside him. 'Less talking more kissing, Daph?'
'Yes.'
'I really do love you so much,' he whispered. 'You're amazing .'
A hint of pink blossomed on her cheeks. 'Stop saying sweet things. They… you should stop.'
Harry captured her lips, seized by sudden whimsy, ensnared by it like motes of golden dust caught in a beam of bright sunlight; his hands slipped to her waist, resting on her hips as she clutched him close to her, his thumbs drifted down to where he felt the hem of her underwear beneath her skirt.
'Harry,' Daphne murmured. 'If you do not stop now…'
'Will it… come back to bite me like Hermione said?'
Her dimples danced on her cheeks; her bright impish grin sent a storm of trembling butterflies fluttering all around his stomach and racing away through his veins.
Harry led her up the worn steps into the sun, stepping out of the dead, bleached roots and stump of the huge, ancient oak surrounding the exit. 'Here.'
Daphne's slender blonde braids glowed almost golden in the brilliant beams of light bursting through the pines and the scarlet dahlia woven into her hair shone bright as blood.
'You look so beautiful in the sun,' Harry whispered. 'Are you sure you're not a dream?'
'In the sun…' Daphne let it play across her face for a moment, then pushed him down atop one of the broad, arching roots, stealing a kiss as he found his balance and she sat across his knees. 'I love you—' the little spark of hunger smouldered in her eyes '—I love you so much.'
Harry pressed his lips to hers. 'I know; I love you too.'
'More,' she whispered.
'More kisses?' He left a long, lingering one on her lips.
'More kisses and—' the soft pink blush on her cheeks brightened a bit '—more things my boyfriend should do.'
'Well.' The butterflies threatened absolute and immediate rebellion at any hint of refusal. 'I am your boyfriend, so I should probably help with that.