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“I’m busy,” Harry insisted, reaching for the door of her mindscape’s potions lab. “I just came in to check on things.”
“But I’m bored,” Dom whined, his head tilted slightly to one side and his eyes wide.
“You can’t use the look on me,” Harry said, rolling her eyes. “I’m immune.”
Dom’s eyes widened further.
Harry huffed. “Alright, alright, I’ll play your silly game. What do I get if I win?”
“I’ll have a better handle on your emotions,” Dom said.
Harry’s eyes narrowed. “And why do you need any better of a handle on my mind than you already have?”
The construct tilted his head up just enough that he could look down his nose at her. “You’re not the first teenage host I’ve had. Your emotions are about to intensify, and if you don’t want them to spiral out of control when you’re caught off guard--”
“Fine,” Harry relented. “What do I have to do then?”
Dom beamed and clapped his hands together, and a row of veiled objects appeared along one of the lab’s counters.
“Rule number one: no peeking,” Dom said. “I’ve taken some of your memories and temporarily clouded the specifics, but left the emotions and impressions. Tell me how each vial makes you feel, without looking at it, and then guess what kind of potion it is.”
“They’re all memories of potions?” Harry asked skeptically.
“They are all…related to potions, in some way,” Dom confirmed.
Harry’s eyes narrowed.
“Rule number two: no more questions,” Dom said quickly. “Just tell me how each vial makes you feel.”
Harry sighed and moved closer to the counter, extending her mental senses out towards the first vial.
“That must be Liberespirare,” she said almost at once.
“Why?” Dom asked.
Harry frowned. “It just is,” she said. “When I reach my senses towards it, it just feels light. Like a deep, easy breath of air after a suffocating weight.” She considered for a moment, then added, “there’s something difficult about it too, though. Like it wants more from me than it knows I can give. That makes sense, I suppose, given that it needs two people to make it. Huh.” She nodded, satisfied, then glanced over at the construct. “This is more interesting than I thought it would be.”
Dom only smiled and gestured to the next veiled vial.
Harry reached her senses towards it and instantly recoiled. “Ouch,” she hissed, probing it a little more cautiously this time. “It isn’t intended to be a pain potion, I don’t think. It feels like it was supposed to be something useful, but someone grossly overpowered it until it just became miserable. And aggressive.” She grimaced, mentally running through her compendium for what potions might produce such an effect if overdosed. “Is it over-imbued Pepper-up Potion?” she asked.
Dom chuckled softly. “Perhaps it is,” he said.
“Don’t you know?” Harry demanded.
“I shan't tell until you’ve guessed them all,” he said, smiling widely at her.
Harry sighed and focused her attention on the next vial. “This one has so much uncertainty to it,” she said aloud, letting her senses wash gently over the vial. I feel like it knows more about me than I want it to, and that there’s something unknowable about it. And it feels…upset that I’m uncomfortable with how much it knows about me. Why would a potion be upset?” She asked Dom.
“You’re the potions expert here,” Dom said, shrugging. “You tell me.”
“Is knowing me essential to its purpose?” Harry mused. “I suppose if a potion did have feelings, it might resent someone being resistant to taking it. But what potions know uncomfortable things about people? The Ancestry potion? I’ve never made that, though, and I don’t think my memories of just hearing about it would be strong enough…” She trailed off, sending her senses over the vial again, intrigued by whatever had produced such a complicated impression. “The Potentialis potion,” she said at last. “It has to be the Potentialis, because I chose not to take it, and I’m still a little afraid that it might have accidentally triggered Draco’s and Archie’s abilities.” She looked at Dom, who only raised his eyebrows and smiled maddeningly.
Harry huffed. “I do get to look at them properly when we’re finished, yes?”
Dom smiled. “If you decide you want to,” he said.
Harry’s eyes narrowed again. “Why wouldn’t I want to know?”
“Sometimes a little mystery is good for you,” he said. “But I won’t stop you from looking, once you’ve guessed at them all.”
Harry stared at him for a few moments longer, then shook her head slightly and turned back to the counter, reaching towards the fourth vial. Her senses nearly bounced off of it. Probing more gently, she felt a strong protection emanating from it, not fierce but quiet, almost gentle, and steadier than anything else she had felt in this odd game, for all it felt like there was something unreachable beneath that steadiness. “That must be one of my portable wards,” she said aloud. “Any other protective potion would have a bite to it, and this just feels…there. A shield that doesn’t hurt anyone who bumps into it, but is impenetrable all the same.”
She eyed the last covered vial with a touch of hesitation before stealing a glance at Dom. “This is the last one, and then you’ll let me see if I’ve been right?” She insisted.
“Yes,” Dom said, beaming at her. “Guess this one and then you can uncover each of them as you please.”
She reached her senses out cautiously. She wouldn’t have put it past Dom to have planted something particularly unpleasant for his final test, but she relaxed quickly as her senses came into contact with the last vial. “That’s polyjuice,” she said at once. “It’s transformative, linked to a sense of identity, and it feels like Archie in potion form.” She frowned as that particular impression sank in. “It actually feels more like Archie than polyjuice,” she said slowly, and turned quizzically towards Dom.
He only smirked at her.
The possible implications raced through her mind, and she yanked the cloth off of the last potion to find a vial swirling with images that she recognized as her own memories. She could see herself and Archie taking the modified polyjuice, but also having dinner with their family, playing Quidditch, and skating with the Weasleys.
Her suspicions aroused, she plucked the cloth from the vial next to it, and her eyes widened as she took in the memories it had concealed: Rosier sitting with Pansy by the lake after the fourth task, materializing with Rookwood out of the air after she’d retrieved the Canterberries from the Forbidden Forest, combing braids out of her hair by the common room fire. There was no trace of memories involving the portable ward potion.
She whirled on Dom. “You said these were all related to potions!”
He smirked at her. “Everything you do is related to potions, my dear,” he said. “Even how you think about…certain people in your life, as it turns out. I’ll admit I wasn’t sure if that would be the case, but you managed to confirm my hypothesis quite marvelously--”
Harry hissed and turned her back on him, grabbing for the next cloth before she remembered the discomfort she had associated with it. The vial she had thought was the Potentialis potion held memories of Draco: the way he looked at her when he knew she was lying about her emotions, his look of betrayal when she had failed to trust him in Defense class, the intense gaze he’d worn the night he’d kissed her--
Harry grabbed for the next cloth because anything, even whatever had created the obnoxiousness she had labeled oversaturated Pepper-up, was better than dwelling on that gaze. She snorted as she registered the memories underneath: Caelum Lestrange, sneering at her during the first lecture of their internship, complimenting their waiter on the wine Harry had told him to water down, showing off his potions library as he dangled rare ingredients under her nose.
She reached out towards the first vial and hesitated, remembering how sure she had been that this was Liberespirare. Surely if that feeling of freedom, of unrestricted breath, represented anyone, it had to be Archie, the only person from whom she kept no secrets, could afford to keep no secrets. Her senses washed over it again. It didn’t feel like her cousin though. Could it be actual memories of Liberespirare? Real potions memories, to have tricked her into thinking they would all be so? That seemed the sort of thing Dom might do in a game like this.
“I told you you might decide you didn’t want to know,” Dom taunted, coming to lean against the counter. “And here we are. You’re afraid you might not want to know who makes you feel that way, aren’t you?”
“I’m not afraid of your silly game!” Harry retorted, glaring at him. She whisked off the last cloth, and her heart seemed to flip over as Leo smiled up at her, his eyes twinkling as he caught her off-guard in one of their practiced duels, his earnest face as he kissed her gently, his unwavering trust as he told her that she didn’t need to tell him her secrets until she was ready, and that his offers of help came without strings.
Harry whirled on Dom. “What is this supposed to mean?” she demanded.
“You tell me,” Dom smirked. “They’re your emotions, after all.”
Harry stormed out of her mindscape, launching herself sharply back to consciousness. Taking stock of her physical self, she realized she was shaking. “You’ll pay for that,” she thought darkly at the Jewel.
He sent an image of Leo’s face to the forefront of her mind, and she spat a curse at him and hurried to go find something, anything else to focus on.
Dom watched Harry stomp off to distract herself and smiled, snapping his fingers once to send the memories back to their proper places and again to vanish the vials and cloths he had conjured. The exercise had been more enlightening than he had dared hope. He hadn’t been at all sure if there would be a winner, let alone who it might be, but now? His money was on the Potentialis for her first foray, but for the long-term? No other potion stood a chance against the Liberespirare.