Missed the previous installment? *long-suffering sigh* Here.
Oh, thank God the pumpkinsanity is done! The reign of the orange squash is over! Life can go on, dull as before, filled with attempts to prepare dishes and drinks. Like this one.
Image credit: Mashable, “15 Magical Harry Potter Cocktails to Charm Your Palate”
This tart and sweet drink was virginized by yours truly, replacing the gin, apricot brandy, and sweet vermouth with the decidedly bitter tonic, apricot syrup, and grape juice.
Finding a non-alcoholic replacement for the gin was difficult. Nothing turned up in my online searches, so I figured that since there’s such a thing as a gin and tonic drink I’d just use the tonic. I had to make the apricot syrup myself, and modified this New Orleans Nectar Syrup recipe by substituting apricot nectar for the water, leaving out the extracts and red food coloring, and reducing the amount so I would have about a cup of syrup. Grape juice was easy enough to come by.
I’ve never circled a glass rim with sugar before. Getting it to stick took more water than I’d thought would be needed, which probably contributed to the unpleasantness that I’ll describe in a bit. The cherries sank to the bottom of the glass.
Regarding the taste… well, I can say that this one was just as bad as the virgin Harry Potter drink. The tonic is bitter enough on its own (the quinine is probably the reason), but the addition of other flavors seemed to make it worse. The nectar tries to sweeten the whole fare, but no luck; very faint notes manage to creep alongside the tonic, letting the grape juice ride piggyback. Everything rushes through the lip-cutting, hardened sugar along the glass’s edge, turning the granular barrier into a clumpy sludge. It’s like a broken sandbag losing a fight to a flood.
Never was there a better drink that fit the word bittersweet. But it’ll do well for this next installment. Pick up your own glass and gulp and grimace as we try to get through another installment.
Chapter 10: Epicyclical Elaborations of Sorcery
When we last left Harry, he was plummeting to his doom while staring up Hermione in mortal terror. Shortly thereafter, as we see here, he’s fallen (bu-dum-tish) unconscious. I’d nitpick out of the gate, but this is believable if you consider that Harry might have passed out from sheer terror.
In his dream, Harry is at the Weasley Burrow where a summer shindig is in full swing. Even Draco is there, chatting up a girl who has her back to Harry. Do I need to hint that it’s Hermione?
Well, it is, and she turns in her lovely yellow dress, holding a tennis racket. Do I need to hint at what’s about to happen?
Cripes, even in Harry’s dreams, Hermione is pathetic. So pathetic, in fact, that she calls him an idiot for daring to fall to his death and whales on him with the tennis racket.
The in-dream sensation is enough to startle Harry back to consciousness where he hears voices that don’t belong to Hermione. When he opens his eyes, he sees the wizarding world’s favorite third wheel, Ron.
Harry is lying in the back seat of a flying car with the Weasley twins in the front. “We caught you while you were falling,” George says. “It was the coolest thing ever.” Compared to going up against the greatest dark wizard ever? Pfft, mortal combat with advanced magic is lame.
By catching Harry, did someone hang an arm out and snag him by the collar or is this one of those roofless cars and they expertly positioned the back seat right under Harry? But if Harry is going to fall forever in a Bottomless Pit, was he going to stop at a certain point, hovering and tumbling in place for all eternity, or is it like a Portal deal where he falls through different points in an endless loop… oh, goddamn, never mind.
Harry asks Ron what they’re doing here (besides plot convenience). Ron pulls out a letter.
“It’s the ransom note,” Harry exposits. “The one Wormtail sent to me at school, telling me they had Sirius here.” Would be nice if we learned when Wormtail had written the letter. I guess that scene exists along with Harry’s knife.
Anyway, Ron had intercepted the letter when it was delivered via bird. Rather than go to Dumbledore and get help, well…
Yeah, so they just happened to fly around just as Harry was plummeting to his sure death. Harry proceeds to explain the plot so far to Ron as the twins fly the deus ex machina back up to the cliff. There, they find Sirius comforting a weeping Hermione.
Fucking what?! Since when in this alternate universe?!
Sirius draws Hermione’s attention to the assembled young men. As she looks up, she spots Ron.
HERMIONE: Oh. It’s you.
She throws herself into his chest, sobbing about how Harry is dead and it’s all her fault. Instead of heartening his best friend with some good news, he decides to make a joke of it and drag it on.
“Well, it was bound to happen,” he says, adding that Harry did lead a “risky sort of life.” They should erect a “zonking great monument” in his honor. Finally, he lets up. “Hermione, you great ninny.”
RON: You mouthbreather. You moron.
Once Hermione sees past Ron (something I’m sure she’s practiced in even in the original material), she sees Harry.
HERMIONE: Ron, you great tosser.
Harry pushes Ron aside and takes Hermione into his arms. The Weasleys look on, disappointed in their boy Harry.
Sure, “I’m back from the dead” would set my loins ablaze. I’d be all over the guy in a storm of groping limbs and slobbering lips.
Everyone piles into the car and they drive back up to the top of the cliff. Yes, a flying car driving up to the cliff, which I thought they’d already reached… no, no, I shouldn’t try to make sense of this or go back and reread certain passages. I want this whole thing done.
Back up on the cliff, Sirius announces that he’s going to find Draco. This doesn’t sit well with the Weasley boys.
I needed a chuckle.
Hermione agrees with Sirius. Ron is in full-on bitter mode, saying that of course Hermione would side with Sirius. “You’ve been kissing Malfoy all over the place, after all.” (Just on the mouth, thank God.)
How come the reasonably funny parts always come after the trials of patience in this fanfic?
Sirius informs the kids that he’s getting Draco because he’s innocent. He finally tells Harry and Hermione that Voldemort had used the Veritas Curse on Draco. Both are sufficiently dumbfounded and horrified. Draco had been tortured after all?
The sensation of having claws rip your chest open to spill out the truth from the heart must actually feel like a warm, restorative spa visit.
While Sirius bolts off in dog form to fetch Draco (just humor me, okay, I’m tired), the twins fiddle around with the car engine to check on a suspicious noise. Ron approaches Harry about the prospect of telling Hermione how he feels about her. Apparently declaring one’s love before possibly dying doesn’t count.
Of course. Surviving Voldemort’s attack as an infant on top of all the adventures the kids shared at Hogwarts could never have cemented Harry into Hermione’s memory.
Whiplashing back to Sirius, he draws near a stand of trees. Relying on instinct, he shifts back into human form and carefully inspects around the trunks. He finds Draco hiding in a fetal position. Despite the vulnerable pose, the boy is ready to attack with his wand.
Performing the wizard equivalent of a muggle putting down his gun, Sirius places his wand on the ground. In what is likely a ruse to gain Draco’s trust, he brings up the boy’s position on the Slytherin Quidditch team, commenting that he has excellent reflexes and he should be a Beater instead of a Seeker. I’d make the same crass joke again, but my inner nitpicker wants to state that Draco’s reflexes near the Pit aren’t indicative of his reflexes in a game. After all, he had the Golden Snitch flapping right next to his ear in the big Gryffindor versus Slytherin match in the second book.
Sirius sits down with Draco for a heart-to-heart. The young scourge reminds Sirius of himself as well as the animosity against James Potter in their younger years. There was even a time when the two duked it out to the point of bleeding profusely. But the experience bonded them for life.
I do like Draco’s response: “Are you suggesting I beat the hell out of Harry?”
Sirius goes on to explain that the reason he and James had hated and then respected each other was that they were so alike. “Proud. Stubborn. Determined…”
All this isn’t enough to persuade Draco, but Sirius does manage to convince him to come along. Good thing, because this has gone on long enough.
Speaking of other things that keep dragging out, Harry makes his way over to Hermione.
As much as I’ve griped through this whole story, Clare can be clever in small doses. I just wanted another reminder for myself. Maybe now we’ll have a mature conversation about relationships, friendships, and the merging of the two—
*bites fist and screams*
I’m summarizing this shit. Angst. Despair. Maybe tears, good chance of them. “I love you.” “I don’t want to make this work out with you.” “Draco doesn’t love you like I do.” “He can’t hurt me like you can.” Stomp away all ass-hurt.
Sirius returns with Draco. While George has Sirius look under the car hood since he owns a flying motorcycle (they’re the same thing, right?), Draco and Hermione hash it out over the Veritas Curse. The offer to holiday at Chez Granger is still open. Then they talk about how Draco never kissed Hermione while he was in his own body. Harry has to be within earshot, and these two assholes keep digging at him. Within pages, Hermione is going to be blubbering over Harry giving her the cold shoulder, I know it. God, girl, just ram your tongue down Draco’s throat to really make the point.
The car is ready. With seven people, seating arrangements are kind of limited. Given the choice between Harry and Draco, Hermione chooses to sit in Ron’s lap. How’s that for a twist?
Just when they’re hovering and ready to take off into the air, Harry appears to be flying out of his seat. This isn’t some rogue magic about the car, though. The twins land the car and everyone clambers out to find Harry on the ground, his hands behind his back, and Lucius pointing his wand right at the boy.
Dammit, how many more pages do I have?
AUGH!
Hermione asks the same question you probably have now. If it isn’t “What the hell else could possibly take up fifty-four more pages of this document?” then it’s “How did Lucius find them?” Sirius answers that the Epicyclical Charm acts as a homing device. But of course.
It’s also convenient that Lucius managed to catch up with the group so quickly, too. I guess he was jettisoned right outside the manor and just moseyed after them. Stopping to check on a garden troll, re-arrow a booby trap, have a chat with the other Death Eaters through that skull tattoo, pick up some milk and take it back to the manor…
Harry struggles with the magical ropes around his wrists while the others just goggle at Lucius. Sirius claims that it’s impossible for the elder Malfoy to kill them all.
LUCIUS: Why says you? Salazar blood in me! Blood says I can kill you all!
Harry interjects rather calmly that Dumbledore had told him that no descendants of Slytherin are alive except for Voldemort (unless he fell to his death after being whirlwinded away). Lucius retorts that the Death Eaters’ efforts to kill Harry have come to nothing. Now he’ll just have to kill Harry himself and hope that Voldemort appreciates the effort (instead of throwing a massive tantrum and magically disfiguring Lucius).
Draco intervenes, standing between his father’s wand and Harry. Ah, and we return to the felicide inconsistency that I’ve come to loathe. Lucius tells him to get out of the way, Draco refuses. Lucius says he can kill Draco if he wants to, tells Draco to get out of the way. Lucius adds that Draco is his only son and heir. Draco refuses to move.
You’re awfully confident that you won’t be shooting blanks in your near forties.
Lucius begins crushing the pendant, sending Draco into thrashing pain. The Weasley boys brandish their wands. In a rare moment of gumption, Hermione tells them to hold their fire.
With Draco somewhat taken care of, Lucius turns to the task of eliminating Harry. But lo, the boy hero brandishes his own weapon: the sword taken from the fencing room in Malfoy Manor. I bet you thought that it was going to disappear just like the knife, didn’t you? So did I. I guess it was hidden enough that nobody noticed it sticking out of Harry’s belt.
With a single swing, Harry cuts Lucius’s wand in half. Hermione gives the signal to the Weasleys, who blast Lucius with an insane combination of Stunning spells and send him crumpling against a tree.
Draco himself isn’t in great shape. The pendant getting crushed really did a number of him. He has enough strength to protest that he didn’t faint from the pain, however. Humor, ha ha.
The Weasleys get to the task of stuffing Lucius into the boot/trunk of the car. Harry thinks this is a good time as any to mention a nearly unconscious and pain-tortured Draco that he could be related to the prominent Slytherin. The inscription on the sword handle (I think Clare meant grip) says Salazar Slytherin, after all. That should be enough proof. It’s not like a Malfoy could have gotten the sword through some other means.
*deep breath* Only one more chapter after this.
I feel even lower than that right now.
Prep Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Cleanup
