Missed the previous installment? Here it is.
In the search for Harry Potter-themed drinks, I invariably came across a variety of boozed-up treats that, while appetizing, aren’t required this early in my Draco Trilogy adventure. But that’s what cooking substitute guides are for, and I sure used the hell out of the one featured on What’s Cooking America.
Image credit: Mashable, “15 Magical Harry Potter Cocktails to Charm Your Palate”
My foray into making virgin versions began with Mashable’s 15 Magical Harry Potter Cocktails to Charm Your Palate (“charm,” oh, that’s precious), which came to us through ingredient magicians Ashley Bryce and Liana Cole and for word wizard Sasha Muradali’s Little Pink Blog (I can be precious, too).
You can read the original Harry Potter Mixology posts here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here (whew). Your creations are appreciated, ladies, and I hope you don’t mind my playing around with them. Trust me when I say that I’ll be returning to your original creations for the third installment in the Draco Trilogy. I’ll really be needing them then.
The first experiment was the Harry Potter. The half and half cream and wafer cookie were easy enough to get. For the brandy, Kahlua, and butterscotch schnapps, I substituted them with apple juice, a horrible concoction, and butterscotch ice cream topping.
Fill martini glass with cold water and place in freezer for 2 minutes to chill. My freezer is stuffed to its ceiling with frozen meals and meats, so there was no way I was standing a martini glass in there. I filled the glass with ice cubes and tap water and set it on the counter while I prepared the other ingredients.
Add brandy, Kahlua, butterscotch schnapps, and cream to shaker. Instead, I added the same amount of apple juice and butterscotch ice cream topping. Would you believe that I couldn’t find butterscotch extract in any store? I figured that the ice cream topping—the only butterscotch flavoring in the entire region, it seems—would add some sweetness to the drink. It would have needed half the bottle to accomplish this…
… because to replace the Kahlua, I needed to make fake coffee liqueur, or a horrible concoction. According to What’s Cooking America’s substitution guide, I’d need 1 / 2 to 1 teaspoon of chocolate extract mixed with 1 teaspoon of instant coffee mixed in 2 tablespoons of water. I had cocoa extract and Folgers instant coffee… and the resulting scent was overpowering.
Have you ever walked by a pot of extra strong coffee and felt instantly wired? An entire pot of coffee? This was just two tablespoons of this stuff. And I was going to feed it to my body.
Anyway… Add [this crap] to shaker. I don’t yet have one, so I used my favorite glass. (Yes, it has cats on it, shut up. I’ll be a bonafide amateur mixologist yet.)
So… everything was mixed. I dumped the chilling water from the martini glass and replaced it with the mixture.
Garnish with wafer stick. Sure thing. Looks pretty.
As for the taste, the fake Kahlua overpowered everything. Barely anything else made an impression on my taste buds, not even the butterscotch. It’s probably more impressive with the alcohol, but we’ll find out when I tackle the last book in the trilogy. Makes a great dipping liquid for the cookie, though.
By the way, don’t do what I did and drink the fake Kahlua in one go. I was gagging for several minutes. This is one of those times when nursing a drink would have been the smart choice rather than trying to quickly dispose of it.
Chapter Five: Reunion
*deep announcer voice* Last time on Draco…
After that quick recap, we whiplash back to the drawing-room where Harry is scrambling to find a hiding place. The lady in the portrait is still screaming for Lucius, and it sounds like an entire army is stampeding down the hallway to answer the call.
Harry hears a voice tell him to hide in the fireplace. Never considering that it’s his second mortal enemy saving his bony butt, Harry obliges. Let’s hope he doesn’t take to obeying voices telling him to stab animals.
HARRY: AAAAAUUUGGH!
In the flue, he finds a convenient ledge where he precariously perches and waits for the danger to pass. Through an also convenient crack in the bricks, he watches as Lucius and the Voldemort Fan Club observe the disturbed rug and trap door.
Lucius interrogates the portrait lady. Mona, as it turns out, can’t see and can only sense things; she couldn’t sense any Malfoy blood in the intruder, nor could she sense where he fled when she screamed. I guess her talents work on a microscopic and genetic level.
“[Y]ou have failed in your guardianship,” Lucius tells her and burns her. Literally. Burns her out of the portrait and watches her ashes fall to the floor. Good lord, man. How did you respond when Draco was being toilet trained?
Narcissa is about to speak when her husband glares at her. Either disturbed or emotionally defeated, she leaves the room. Other Death Eaters Disapparate from the room, all of them horrified by the savage display. A fictional woman in a painting being burned freaks them out, but plotting to kill an actual living child like Harry Potter is just business as usual? Get some real problems, people.
The only other Death Eater remaining is Eleftheria Parpis, who quickly engages in a makeout session with Lucius. (I wonder what the real-life Parpis thinks about this scene now.) Harry, much like myself, is grossed out. But at least they’re not doing something worse, like singing a romantic duet. In any case, Lucius has probably postponed the Draco lashing, which means that Harry is safe for now.
Anton the butler ghost helpfully appears to suggest to Harry that he crawl further up the flue where he’ll find safety in another room. Why Anton isn’t questioning “Master Malfoy” being in the flue is anyone’s guess. Harry just needs to move the plot along.
On the train, Hermione witnesses Draco directing Harry to hide in the fireplace. This prompts Draco to explain that he only gets “little flashes” of Harry’s actions.
“So it’s not like watching a movie?” asks Hermione, to which Draco replies, “I wouldn’t know, would I? […] I’ve never seen a movie.”
Such a shame, Draco would have loved the traumatizing kiddie flicks the Muggles from the 90s.
As they pull into the train station, Hermione spots a group of teenagers, and among them is a tall boy with “dark, untidy hair and glasses.” She manages to work in a brief tear-welling session even though the boy doesn’t “resemble Harry all that much.” A mound of wet rat fur would send her into hysterics at this point.
Back at Malfoy Manor, Harry returns from a shower, dressing in a pair of Draco’s pajamas, which comically have little fire trucks on them. (What, no water-breathing dragons or whatever the wizard equivalent of fire trucks would be?) Just when things can’t get more uncomfortable, he returns to Draco’s room to find the parents waiting for him, and Lucius is fuming.
He demands answers. Why is Draco acting weird, insubordinate, and forgetful about the family customs? Oh, man, this is it. Harry’s in for it now. He better have his best spells lined up if he’s going to survive the wrath of Malfoy Senior.
Bwuh-huh? Do wizards… have a drug abuse problem in the community? Considering the use of special herbs and the like, I’d think such psychoactive drugs would be a welcome aid for magic. In some cases. I don’t think meth would produce favorable results; they certainly don’t in the real world.
Harry plays it cool. “Nope […] Not on drugs. Sorry!”
Lucius sternly informs the reader—I mean, the boy taking the place of his son that Narcissa fears that hereditary madness may have reared its daffy head in young Draco. It’s a very real threat, as the Malfoys are descended from Uric the Oddball. At least in this fanfic. Nothing wrong with that, just pointing it out.
But Harry snaps back!
Does the concept of karma exist in the wizarding world or is it called something like fortuna reditusia?
Anyway, Lucius is surprisingly pleased with the backtalk, as it seems his boy never shows a spine. Still, he’s not off the hook, and Lucius delivers the threat of throwing his son into St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries where he can join Neville Longbottom’s parents.
Just as Harry’s own anger is about to boil over, who should drop in but Macnair and Wormtail. Seriously, they just barge into a boy’s room as if they have run of the whole manor. But Anton the helpful, privacy-invading ghost did tell them where the Malfoys were.
Here’s some background more for my benefit so I can recall it later on. Wormtail is the nickname of Peter Pettigrew, derived from his Animagus form of a rat. He’d spent twelve years as Ron’s familiar, Scabbers, until his cover was blown; subsequently, he ran off to rejoin Voldemort. Back in his Hogwarts days, he was one of the four Marauders (James Potter, Sirius, and Lupin were the other three) and helped create the legendary map. There’s something else about being part of the Order of the Phoenix… damn, I’m going to need a dumbed-down searchable database to remember all this stuff. How do Potterheads keep this all straight?
Wormtail magics Sirius in dog form out of his silver hand. While Sirius lies stunned on the floor, Wormtail admires his hand. Not only does it produce magic, but it’s also a pocket dimension. “My Master has given me a hand of great power,” he says.
WORMTAIL: Such unrivaled power! Maybe I’ll get another part of my body amputated… The wonders a metal nose must behold!
Sirius is changed back to his human form, and he appears to have been roughed up pretty badly. Lucius proceeds to rough him up even more, which prompts Harry to run to Sirius’s aid. In full big damn hero mode, Harry suffers an additional humiliation with his fire truck pajamas by having the garment trip him. Apparently, that’s all the trigger Narcissa needs to faint dead away.
Whiplash back to Hermione and Draco who have arrived at a town called Chipping Sodbury, which sounds more like a British swear or a quirky snack with cheese and curry.
Hermione takes a moment to observe their new surroundings.
For all we know, the vultures could be very polite as they come swooping down from quaint cottages. “So terribly sorry to inconvenience you, but instinct and all that. Well, here we go. Hiss, hiss.”
Draco leads Hermione through a concrete wall at the end of the platform, and they teleport a la Platform 9 3/4 to Malfoy Park. Yes, the Malfoys have a village named after them.
Okay, that was kind of clever.
They sneak through the egocentric village, eventually reaching the road that will lead them to Malfoy Manor. Before Hermione can run forward, Draco stops her and shows her one of the seventeen hexes that guard the property. The one on the gate, the Jigsaw Hex, slices intruders into pieces. Draco illustrates by sending a pen toward the gate, which is immediately cut in half through a flash of green light.
Hey, Clare’s on a roll.
As they enter the grounds, Draco expertly guides them past hexes, which can be avoided by simply “skirting them,” which is kind of lazy on Lucius’s part. But it does save the effort of having to make up more fun, torturous punishments. They reach a glowing path that winds along the manor. Draco points out the tower where his bedroom, along with Harry, is located. Exercising all of her intelligence and careful planning, Hermione leaps into the direct path of danger. Smart move, especially after they just crossed a property riddled with hexes designed to rend living beings. Being the smartest student at Hogwarts doesn’t mean possessing a lot of common sense, I suppose, at least in this alternate universe.
Draco pushes her out of harm’s way, getting an arrow in the thigh. He seems more surprised than horrified. But to be fair, I guess I’d be pissed if my own attack mechanism set off against me.
Hermoine reacts the way I expected her to by this point.
She wonders aloud if she should make a tourniquet out of Harry’s bag (the precious bag that brought back so many precious, tear-inducing memories), and also if Draco should take off his pants so she can treat him.
Draco, being the sensible male, talks some sense into the blubbering female.
DRACO: Who’s had that all stripped away so she can be an overwrought love interest for two hormonal teenage boys?
Hermione apologizes (“Oh. Of course. Sorry!”) and gets to work with her wand. After the arrow is magically removed, she asks Draco if he’s okay.
Hey, this is kind of fun to read. I hope there’s more clever dialogue.
But we do need to check up on Harry and see the fallout from the Sirius beat ‘im up.
Oh, dear God, no.
Don’t fret just yet, this isn’t underage bondage, though I’m sure the thought did cross Clare’s mind at one point. In the ensuing chaos following Narcissa’s fainting, a frustrated Harry socked Lucius, who knee-jerkingly cast a Binding Hex on the boy. Leaving him bound, Lucius had then left with his wife while his cohorts delivered Sirius to the dungeons.
On top of being bound, Harry has somehow wriggled out of the pajama top. I’m sure the image of him with his bare, wiry chest and wearing nothing pajama bottoms with little fire trucks on them just delighted fanfic readers back in the day.
He thinks to himself that this possibly can’t get any worse, which prompts a window to explode.
That was from Draco and Hermione executing their grand rescue. Moments before, they had decided to use Lifting Spells to reach Draco’s bedroom room. Hermione lifted Draco effortlessly, but Draco… well, let’s just say that they should have discussed the possibility of both parties knowing how to perform the spell.
Draco ends up launching Hermione straight into himself, and the two grapple with each other while spinning wildly and defying death. “[S]he had her hands where no girl had handled him before, but he was in no mood to enjoy it.” Trust me, Draco, having your clavicle touched isn’t that big a deal.
After some more frantic air stunts, the helpless duo crash through the bedroom window. (Thank convenience it was one without Lucius in it, or this story might have ended sooner. No, wait, that would have been a good thing.)
Lying around the shattered glass with her face against Draco’s neck, Hermione hears another voice. “What—? How—?”
She surprisingly doesn’t burst into tears or otherwise becomes emotional at the sight of Harry-as-Draco. She sits up and plainly says, “Harry!”
Although she’s just dazed, she’s elated to see her friend. But to Harry, “she [sounds] rather guilty.” I guess we need to hurry up the third act misunderstanding. Harry also wants to hit Draco, who has an arm around Hermione and is wearing a punchable expression. I guess now Harry understands how Uncle Vernon felt on most days.
Realizing that she’s slacking off on her distressed female duties, Hermione bursts into tears and wails happily about Harry being alive. She releases the hex holding him down and throws herself on him, crying into his hair, arms around him, blah blah blah.
Harry isn’t touched by the overwrought display. “For nor [sic] reason that he could understand, he was feeling extremely angry with her.” Other than fanfic rules demanding drama and tension, of course.
But the answer becomes clear in the next few paragraphs: Harry is pissed because Ron isn’t on the rescue team. Hermione, devastated that Harry isn’t the least bit happy to see her, sobbingly explains that Ron wouldn’t have come along anyway because of his hatred for Draco.
Draco has just about had enough of this back and forth between them.
Despite that verbal smackdown, Harry still isn’t going with them. He explains that Sirius is being held captive in the dungeons. Draco waves off the inevitable rescue mission. In order for one to enter the dungeons, one needs Malfoy blood, which makes me wonder how Macnair and Wormtail got Sirius down there if Lucius was tending to Narcissa.
What follows is possibly one of the most bizarre exchanges I’ve read in a fanfic:
I think I’m stupider for having read all that. Note to self: Never include any dialogue similar to this, especially “I’ve learned that blondes do not have more fun.”
Anyway, the boys fit in a few more digs at each other’s noodley physiques when Hermione finally shuts them up and reminds them that they need to rescue Sirius. Before they can act, there’s a knock on the door. When the teens don’t answer, the door begins shaking. Harry orders Hermione and Draco into the wardrobe where I’m sure they’ll engage in suggestive banter or more misunderstanding and tearful explanations. But we won’t know until next chapter.
Hey, what’s this at the bottom of the page?
Oh, goddammit, Clare.
Prep Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Cleanup
