Missed the previous installment? Here it is.
September has fallen upon us, yet the summer heat still hangs around like your buddy who claims he’s still looking for a place but you know he’ll be paying rent for your living room couch for several more months. The heat hasn’t stopped the influx of pumpkin-spiced goods, though, and rather than ignore the madness, I’ll give in to it.
One of the drinks I keep seeing in my journeys through Harry Potter-inspired treats is pumpkin juice. But in every blog post I found, the writer went on and on and on about their love of Harry Potter, which house they represented, or their trip to the Wizarding World where they were inspired to bring more Harry Potter goodness into their lives.
(It also didn’t help that I attempted these searches while on my lunch break, when I’m usually at my surliest and my patience meter has drained to practically zero.)
So in a first for Brainpie, I’m making an original recipe.
(Right-click to save or print)
Some people may prefer a different fruit juice, like pineapple, but let’s stick with an autumn theme and include a couple of apple-based liquids. And as much fun as it was to make homemade apple cider and fill the kitchen with mentholated potpourri, I decided to spare myself the hassle and use store-bought cider.
Flavors here depend on the type of juice and whether you use pumpkin spice. Pumpkin itself doesn’t have much of a flavor, but if you only want to add volume to your apple juice or cider, skip the spices. Texture-wise, two tablespoons of puree is a good start. It’s reminiscent of orange juice cloud, which gives that particular juice its texture, color, and taste. The more puree you include, the pulpier it feels. The puree also adds fiber and diminishes apple juice’s effect as a diuretic, so the drink will stay with you longer.
With spices, the drinks take on different tones. For apple juice, it’s almost like apple cider with subtle pumpkin pie notes. For apple cider, the tartness is tempered but comes on strong during the last stream over the tongue. As for temperatures, I like the apple juice version chilled and the cider version warm; the changes in flavor aren’t that drastic.
I recommend blending the spices with the puree first or you’ll be trying to dissolve clumps floating at the top of your drink. Think of pouring a packet of cocoa mix into room temperature water; it’s not fun, and the time spent smashing the clumps against the glass is time you could have enjoyed sipping a beverage.
Here’s to scathing criticism of my first original recipe attempt. Cheers!
Chapter Seven: Draco Malfoy’s Girlfriend
Hermione is sitting in Lucius’s study, a true bookworm’s wet dream of literature-stuffed bookcases lining the walls. For extra atmosphere, there are stained glass windows featuring more Malfoys and strangely devoid of violent antics.
Lucius, sitting across from Hermione in another chair, is regarding her with not-at-all parental interest. Harry remains standing while the elder Malfoy politely grills “Mandy” about her involvement with his son. Satisfied with her answers—and her looks—he invites her to a function later that afternoon. Well, he doesn’t so much invite her but kind of tells her to attend. Didn’t he just have guests over, or did I miss a mention of the passage of time?
In any case, Hermione admits that she has nothing to wear to this party unless ratty t-shirts and jeans are welcomed. Her hair is such a mess as “it [had] been a while since she’d remembered to use her Hair-Strengthening Potion.” Hair irons and regular conditioner are just too bland for magic folk, I guess.
Lucius creepily says Hermione is small and slender like his wife, so she can fit into one of Narcissa’s dresses. He orders “Draco” to find his mother, adding that “Mandy” would look “lovely in something lavender.”
HERMIONE: Actually, I think I’m more of a summer… heh heh…
Fearful of leaving Hermione alone with the creep, Harry hesitates to leave. She assures him that she’ll be fine. Before leaving, he kisses her on the mouth, and the two share a moment of obligatory eye gazing where Hermoine is certain that she’s “looking into Harry’s green eyes and not Draco’s gray ones…”
That doesn’t sound right.
Alone in the room with Lucius, Hermione finds herself having to think fast when the man asks her how she met her son. Lucius is especially unsettling, “grinning all over his pale, pointy face,” but that’s probably because I’m imagining him with a smile that crisscrosses his entire face, lined with sharp teeth and red gums, gaahhh.
“Mandy” blurts out that she met Draco at Quidditch, congratulating him for beating Harry Potter. That should raise a red flag for Lucius, as he did mention in Chapter Three that Harry is always beating his son at the game.
But instead of grilling her on this obvious fib, he asks, “You know the Potter boy?” Cripes, toads living under rocks in rural swamps know his name.
“Everyone knows Harry Potter,” Hermione answers, neglecting to add a “duh” at the end. But she adds that she’s not friends with Harry, which hurts, “even if it’s a lie.” Good lord, enough with the hypersensitivity.
Lucius shows her a book called the Epicyclical Elaborations of Sorcery and opens it to a page featuring a wizard with his right arm entirely inside a metal glove with “carved, pincer-like extremity.”
This is the Lacertus Curse, a metal arm crafted by Dark Magic and attached, according to Lucius, onto the arm of a living human man (I guess its effectiveness is hampered if the subject is dead). Then he adds that when the arm is grafted onto a human being (of any sex and pretty much anywhere on the body, I guess, since we’re not bothering too much with consistency), it will turn the man into a Muggle-and-Mudblood-killing machine. If you guessed that this is what Voldemort has in mind for Harry Potter, that means you’ve been paying attention.
The idea is to have Harry slaughtering innocents while the metal arm magically drains his life force, which will have people scrambling to Voldemort for protection. I’m sure that will happen without fail and no wizard would ever think to take on the Potterminator.
While explaining all this, Lucius has pinned Hermione to the wall by putting his hands on either side of her torso. I guess talking about diabolical schemes gets him hot.
Yeah, you pack of idiots, why? But that said, I don’t think you should be giving the enemy ideas on how to kill your friend, Hermione.
But she has other matters to worry about as Lucius is aiming for her lips. Readers must have been scandalized when they first read this scene, but this comes off as ridiculous for me. Rowling made Lucius sufficiently loathsome the first time around. It feels like Clare made him a nymphomaniac and pedophile* because she felt that the servant abuse, arrogance, and the goal of ethnically cleansing Muggles didn’t make him deplorable enough. That, and we have the damsel in distress factor to uphold.
Don’t worry, a male comes to rescue her. Invisible Draco throws a number of items at his father, getting him once in the temple with a brass candlestick. When he chucks the Epicyclical tome at Lucius, the gross Lothario pulls Hermione in front of him as a shield, and she takes the book in the shoulder.
HERMIONE: How ignoble!
Seriously, girl, he just tried to assault you and then used you as a human shield, and you’re treating this as an inconvenience? It gets better when she realizes that Draco has stopped and “probably gotten it out of his system at this point.” Because coming close to witnessing a friend getting assaulted by your own father is only mildly angering.
Harry and Narcissa are standing in the doorway. Harry looks understandably worried, but Narcissa looks blank, holding the dress Lucius requested.
As her aggressor thanks his wife, Hermione spots a piece of fine jewelry hanging from his neck. Well, if you call a tooth encased in a glass pendant to be fine. Hermione thinks of this as “weird,” which is it, but I find her mood whiplashes and emotional priorities even weirder. Nearly being lip-assaulted by an older man does nothing but the mere thought of Harry never returning her affections turns her into a crumbling mess.
Harry is about to show Hermione to Draco’s room but stops short when he realizes that would sound wrong to the uptight Malfoys. Lucius says that Narcissa can escort their guest to her room. Not Narcissa’s room, Mandy’s room. Who had just arrived not too long ago. Do guests at Malfoy Manor instantly get assigned a room as soon as they enter the building? Do they get a choice of bed sheets and pajamas? Is room service provided by house-elves and is there a spell to help the poor creatures abscond?
Narcissa does as she’s ordered and leads Hermione to her room. Before leaving Hermoine alone, she hands over a pair of silver shoes and a box filled with cosmetics.”Odd,” thinks Hermoine, since “most witches just [use] Lip-Reddening Charms and the like.” I’m surprised wizards and witches deal with the mundanity of walking.
Hermoine needs to get dressed, but there’s a “guilty sort of presence” in the room with her.
It’s different when it’s a fairly attractive guy about your age, right?
In typical fanfic love interest tradition, Draco is astounded by the suddenly beautiful Hermione. Man, if she had prescription glasses and took them off right about now, she’d be drop-dead gorgeous. He can’t stop watching her as she brushes her hair in the vanity mirror.
After seeing you in that dress, I’m sure he will be a beater once he gets some alone time.
*sigh* I’ll do the rest of the chapter in the corner.
Hermione’s line wasn’t a cue for a crude joke, but rather a reference to his attack against his father in the study. Draco laughs at the memory, once again becoming the envy of millions of repressed adults who wish they could have a row with their fathers. Then the conversation turns over to the likelihood of the two staying friends after the adventure’s resolution. Then Draco brings up the idea of visiting Hermione over summer break. Needless to say, it horrifies her.
Hermoine relents and offers Draco to come over if he feels like it, even if “her whole family would likely be hopping around on lily pads.” I have to admit, this is a clever and cute motif.
Draco asks if Harry has ever gone over to Hermione’s home. When she reveals that he has, she tries to get Draco to stop bringing up Harry. Ever the self-entitled brat, he pretty much gives her an ultimatum.
One: You don’t tell her to make up her mind about whom she loves, dickcheese. Two: You guys are too young to be thinking about marriage. Three: Would Draco even know about Mormonism?
The two spit words at each other. Hermoine snaps back with a threat to run off with Neville Longbottom. Draco is more amused than anything, saying that “Hermione Longbottom is a terrible name.” I agree, and not just because I want Choville to live.
Gosh darn it, Hermione just can’t stay mad at him. But who should come along but Harry with shadows under his eyes as if he’d crammed for three different finals. Cue the ogling when he spots Hermione in the pretty getup. That’s pretty much all the incentive Hermione needs to decide on keeping the dress. “Lucius Malfoy will have to pry my cold dead fingers off it before I agree to give it up,” she thinks. Honey, the way he had his hands on you in his study, you’d have to pry his hot fingers off the dress.
Harry isn’t in the best of spirits since Lucius had made him clean up the study. “Which you wrecked,” he says to Draco.
Draco is a little more than miffed at Harry’s ignorance of what had transpired. “I guess I should have sat back and let him TAKE HERMIONE’S CLOTHES OFF AND SNOG HER ON THE DESK!” Yes, in caps.
White-hot fury consumes Harry. He wants to kill Lucius. “If I can’t do Avada Kedavra on him, I’ll chop [off] his head with one of his damn fencing swords.” Would that even be possible with those blades?
Draco calmly points out how rude it is to talk about killing his father right in front of him. And we’re right back to flare-up mode. How many more pages of this chapter are left?…
Oh, it’s on now. The two hotheads whip out their wands, ready to magic each other to death. Hermione uses an expelliarmus to take both the boys’ wands. She’s had enough and she’s finally putting her foot down like the Hermione she needs to be.
Wait, doesn’t Dark Magic takes years of practice… damn, this is going to be another switched scents confusion. Never mind. Moving on.
Harry leaves to get ready for the evening. While he’s gone, Hermoine and Draco share another moment where, I kid you not, she assures Draco that Harry doesn’t hate him. Then she joins him on the bed (settle down, they’re sitting on it) and rests her head on his shoulder while he caresses her hair.
HERMIONE: Want to make out again? I don’t like you or anything, I just want to work out my abs while you lie on top of me and limit the airflow to only my nostrils. I hear it’s good for stabilizing one’s core.
Finally, we jump to the party. Odd how the heroes are going to attend the dinner party with the opportunistic perv, but Clare wants her fancy soiree and she’s getting it, dammit. What I like is that this is from Hermione’s point of view, and she spots Eleftheria Parpis, “a huge woman in black satin whose laugh sounded like a cement mixer grinding.” She was described earlier as having generous female assets, but is she also a Big Beautiful Woman? Lucius must be a secret chubby chaser. (Nothing wrong with that, big people need love, too.)
Harry is pulling off his Draco act quite well sine none of the Death Eaters are catching on. Hermoine is enjoying Harry’s adopted good looks.
Harry doesn’t always resemble an old paint stick topped with matted hair pulled out of a shower drain, but he’s nothing compared to the carefully bred genetic masterpiece that is Draco.
Harry notices that Hermione has picked out Eleftheria from the crowd. He helpfully mentions that he witnessed her and Lucius “having a go at it.” Hermione responds correctly with a “yech.”
HARRY: You could have been raped! Ha ha!
Despite all the near assault and love triangle-y crap, the plan to rescue Sirius is still on. The kids just have to find the opportunity to sneak away into the dungeon. A shindig is the perfect cover, as Hermione and Harry surmise that the grownups will just assume that they’ve “skulked off” to make out.
A Google search for “skulk” gives us the definition of “keeping out of sight, typically with a sinister or cowardly motive.” That’s an odd word to use in this instance. I mean, of all the times I ran off to sate my raging hormones, I never once skulked.
(Okay, I can count all the times I sneaked away to make out on one hand… finger… but I wasn’t skulking.)
But, whoops! Lucius and Eleftheria overheard their plans to sneak away! After the usual introductions between Lucius’s squeeze and “Mandy,” Lucius informs them that the innkeeper at the Cold Christmas Inn had spotted Harry and a girl walking through Malfoy Park. Perfect timing, as there’s a party literally waiting for the foretold defeater of Voldemort.
Thinking she can throw him off, Hermione mentions that “Harry’s got loads of girlfriends, it could be any of them.” I don’t believe it matters to Lucius what companion Harry has on his trip. The boy could be traveling with a marionette possessed by an angel eating holes in the fabric of time and space and Lucius would still be dead set on getting Potter.
With time running out, the trio hurries to the drawing-room. Harry and Draco follow up on Hermione’s “loads of girlfriends” comment and take the time to bicker about Cho because that fucking matters now. In the drawing-room, they notice the new guard portrait hanging on the wall. This one features a man wearing a toupee named Octavius Malfoy. I bet he bellows like a walrus during the mating season when he sounds the alarm.
We don’t get a chance to hear Octavius’s alarm, however. Right behind the trio is a pack of livid Death Eaters. The ruse is up.
Kind of. Going by the innkeeper’s news and Eleftheria’s familiarity with the Brocklehursts, the Death Eaters assume that “Mandy” is a spy working for the Enemy. Harry steps in front of Hermione to protect her from the angry mob. Cue villainous speech from Lucius.
Oh, now you just provoked him.
Harry whips out his wand and hits a Death Eater with an Impediment charm. Although I don’t know what good it would do to make your enemies stutter unless it messes up their spellcasting (yeah, I know the Imediment Jinx slows down the target, shut up). He isn’t so fast with another Death Eater, as this one throws Harry to the ground and begins kicking him in the head. Lucius is nonchalant about all this.
Yes, be careful with my only heir. What, he’s close to death? Fair enough. I can understand trying to make a villain abhorrent, but this is overblown.
Sickened by the sight of Draco’s bleeding form, a despondent Hermione calls Lucius “a name she had never known she knew. She must have picked it up from Draco.”
I have several problems here. One: I don’t know if this is supposed to be a bit of comedy wrapped up in drama (or all comedy or all drama) but this utterly fails. Two: You’re a teenager who goes to school with other teenagers; you’ve picked up a few words here and there. Three: Refer to my second point, because Draco is not the source of all foul language in the wizarding world. The worst you probably picked up from him was a cold sore virus.
Lucius claims that Draco will be fine. Sure, the body routinely sucks up its own blood after losing it. All it takes is willpower, and the blood loss victim just has to reeeaaally want their blood back.
He threatens Hermione if she doesn’t say where Harry Potter is. Once more showing the rare hint of a spine, she remains quiet. Lucius takes out his wand and gives her a crucio.
Lucius lets up enough to give Hermione a breather. It won’t last long, though. Morals, scruples, concern for a child, none of these exist for this version of Lucius Malfoy. He’s poised to kill. This is a nail-biter for sure.
And you killed it, Clare. Not in the”killing is an odd synonym for being successful” way, but in the “Lennie Small loves petting little animals a whole lot” way.
Just as Lucius is about to deliver the final crucio, Draco speaks up. He whips off the cloak, standing before the Death Eaters who all gape at him. In traditional villain fashion, Lucius just grins evilly at him. He’s so pleased with this turn of events that he refuses to take advantage of this moment and off the little bugger.
So many villains’ problems would be nixed if they just acted instead of diabolically smiling, reciting evil schemes, monologuing about their Rube Goldberg death machines… Forget writing, my true career needs to be villain remedial education.
It’s on now, witches.
Here we have another admission to borrowing from a published source. Keep in mind that these notes weren’t made until after someone had pointed out the “references.”
Talk about a flashback. I’d read Patricia Wrede’s Dealing with Dragons back in middle school and thoroughly enjoyed it. I may have to pick up Sorcery and Cecilia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot… if I can get past the fact that it’s an epistolary novel. I never cared for the format.
We’re at the end of the chapter, so that means I can leave the self-punishing corner. Only four more chapters to go. I hope I can make it.
* Yeah, I know it’s really ephebophilia (sexual interest in adolescents aged 15-19), but someone would tell me that “there’s no difference,” despite the fact that pedophilia is the sexual interest in prepubescent children. I know lumping all ages in a tidy bracket makes it easier for laypeople to remember children-fetishizing psychiatric disorders, but there are times when you have to be a little more specific.
Prep Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Cleanup
