Seven Minutes in Hell

Potions were Pansy’s first love, that was for sure, but having business selling them had one glaring, unfortunate flaw, she couldn’t control who walked through her doors. There were ways, thinking about it, but none legal and none currently in her repertoire.

On the other hand, business had been steady, if not spectacular. Potions were a reliable market—people always needed remedies, enhancements, ways to fix their miserable little problems. And who better to profit from that than Pansy?

It irked her, though, to count the Weasleys among her competitors. Their latest concoction had witches whispering, and she was hearing the name far too often for her liking.

And yet, on this particular rainy, foggy morning, it wasn’t a Weasley standing in her shop. No, it was someone far worse—the savior himself, Harry bloody Potter.

He wore his Auror robes, strolling through the ingredients aisle with a half smile that was somewhere between charming and permanent injury of spell damage. He was obviously waiting for them to remain alone.

Pansy smiled at Mrs Yaxley, wrapping her potions tightly, tapped the package once with her wand as to reinforce it in case the old hag dropped it, and said under her voice, “Only before sleep.”

The old woman nodded and left, chin high, and Pansy sighed, both in relief she was done with Yaxley and in exasperation that she now had Potter to bicker with. But better to get on with it so she creeped around the isle the long way around, and gave him one of her wide smiles, cocking her head at the side.

“How may I help you?”

His eyes seemed to be glued to her shelves, where rat spleens were about a week from losing their color. “Elixiria? Funny name, that.”

So small talk it was, before he mustered the courage. She gave a tiny shrug. “Posh and obvious, I thought.

“With just a hint of the impossible.”

“Doesn’t hurt, does it?” she said. It was all part of the image, really. Half the look of her store she borrowed from her colleagues down the Knockturn alley where it all was just a tad mysterious, and the other, high-end half, was all her.

“Not at all.” He poked at spleens with his wand. “Speaking about impossible, you reckon something akin to eternal youth is within magic?”

How oddly specific. She hesitated for a second. Not that there was much illegal about her business but giving Aurors impressions that it was might be just as bad.

“Some time ago, it was widespread that it was impossible to survive the killing curse,” she said with a shrug. “Who am I to tell?”

“Good potioneer, from what I’m told,” he said with that charming, dropped on head as a baby smile. “I never had any problems with pimples, you know, but recently I’ve found one that nearly turned into a volcano on my back—”

“Potter,” she interrupted him. “What is it that you want?”

It was hardly classy but it was something. He sighed, nodded for himself and straightened up. There was something interesting in the soft movements that made her reconsider him, and almost made her take a step back.

No wizard she had ever met carried an air as oppressive as Voldemort or Dumbledore. They seemed so far above the rest of them, like they never truly saw people at all—except, of course, they saw everything

Potter wasn’t that, nowhere nearly, but there was something about him. Charming smile, sure, and slightly bent stature, but nothing like weakness. Once upon a time she was ready to sell his life for her own, but now, it didn’t come as easily.

“I’m chasing some potions, some ingredients, and your name got thrown around some,” he said, his green eyes heavy on her own, soft at the edges as if tired, but intense as well. “So here I am.”

“Oh,” she said. Beauty products and real nasty stuff had much more in common than an ordinary wizard would think. More than once she thought there was something poetic in that fact, but never as much as then. She smiled. “Ask away.”

“You don’t sell love potions?”

“No.”

He nodded. “And something similar? Lust, attraction, that sort of thing.”

“That's the same thing,” she said, trying and failing not to sound condescending. “No love can be replicated by magic.”

He frowned, and considered her for a moment. “What about lust so fierce it would make some poor bloke hang himself?”

“Too many variables,” she muttered, trying to think of the way she would go about it. “Bloke would need to be near suicidal to start with, antisocial, and then, a nudge towards happiness only to…” she trailed, and raised her eyes. This was precisely the sort of stuff she wasn’t supposed to splurt in front of an Auror. “It may be possible.”

“But?”

“But months of planning, experimenting, and resources.”

He took a deep breath in, his shoulders spreading wide, and she thought there was something akin to frustration flashing over his features. But then he frowned and made his face steady, focused. Impressive, in a way, how quickly he could do that. “Is that all?”

“No,” he said. “I want you to show me.”

She raised a brow.

“The way you’d put something like that together, your thought process, even if it’s all just guesswork.”

“And is the ministry going to compensate me for my time? My ingredients, my expertise? I've got a business to run, after all.”

His eyes slowly trailed over her empty shop, a glint of bleak amusement creeping to them. “Sure. You can owl me the receipt.”

With nothing better to do and no ready excuse, and a fling of curiosity, she made it towards the back room of her shop, where the potions station was. It was nowhere as neat as the rest of Elixiria, but it was organized in its own way. She knew where everything was, and that was enough.

She picked some ingredients laying around and threw them in a cauldron without bothering to weigh or slice. The base was always the same, come to love potions and its cousins.

“That simple?” Potter asked, carefully stepping around the heap of skinned bats.

“Base always is. Chaos of contradictions, highs and lows thrown together to make a person drop their guard and lower their inhibition.”

“Might as well pour in a pint of firewhiskey, then,” he said.

She considered, nodded, fished her bottle from behind the desk and poured a shot into the cauldron. Once happy with everything that was in it, she lit a fire beneath it, swirled her wand to stir it some, and gave a spiraling smoke that rose from it a sniff.

Bit bitter, and a bit musky, but good enough for the public. The color was too green, perhaps, but she was barely able to explain to herself why it was off so she didn’t bother mentioning it.

“Now’s the tricky part,” she said instead. “Lust alone won’t make anyone kill themselves, it is more likely it would make them a rapist.

He grunted, gave it a thought, and then conceded a nod.

“So my guess is start lingering high, and then lower it down, mix something in to turn the feelings bitter. I don’t know. I never wanted to kill myself, and it’s why I said months of planning. Throwing around feelings in someone’s head is dangerous work. It’s a thin line between rope around the neck, and a raging lunatic killing everyone in their sight.”

He slowly nodded. “And both could be considered a suicide, in a way.” His eyes turned darker shade as he narrowed them, and she watched it wondering what sort of magic just that was. “Can it be turned inwards? Don’t bring the lust low, but turn it…impotent?”

She added a couple of drops of rose extract, watching the potion brighten. A pinch of peppermint darkened it back to solid green. Those were the classic ingredients, but sure to keep the attraction at least, or to blossom what was there in the first place.

“You need to tell me what you’re doing for this to be helpful.”

She sighed. “I’m making a love potion, more or less, but an unstable version so far. Give it a sniff, and tell me what you think?”

He leaned over the cauldron carefully and waved some of the smoke his way before carefully breathing in through his nose. He frowned, gave her a side glance, and said, “Why does it smell like… This isn’t amortentia is it?”

“No,” she said with a snort. “But love potions are a bitchy sort, they’ll always give their hand away if you give them a chance.”

The room was getting hazy with smoke and there were no windows, lest something unintended comes in and ruins her potions. She took off her cloak and put it aside.

“So, the big question. How do we make this, something freely made in Hogwarts even though banned, into something deadly?”

She poured into it some of her sweat she had stored. “Our sweat can make it more intimate, more congested. This is basically it, if we were making something to sell to kids, it only lacks some rose petals and thorns, and it will turn your usual pink. A weak sort, sure, but enough for seven minutes in heaven. To turn it into seven minutes in hell, I’d start with…” She looked around, considering odd bits laying around, considering the ingredients she kept out of sight, considering what would happen if she were to curse it, with her sweat in it.

She was so lost in possibilities she didn’t notice Potter hovering over the cauldron, fiercely frowning at it. A bead of sweat had collected over his brow, travelled down the spine of his nose where it hovered for a second.

All Pansy’s thoughts gone, she was in the middle of waving hands and opening her mouth to scream no when the drop fell into the cauldron with a gusto and a silent flop. The potion bubbled up, coughed up smoke enough to engulf the both of them and let them gurgling for air.

Once it cleared, she found herself but a couple of steps away from Potter who was clenching his fists so hard she could see blue veins popping on the top of his hands. His eyes darkened further, green turning almost black as they watched her with what looked like hate, but she knew better.

“Of all magic I have ever encountered,” he said slowly, lowly, as if fighting to let each word out. “There’s none I hate as much as mind meddling ones. What did you do to me?” He took another step forward, a wand suddenly in his hand, and she took one step back, to keep the distance.

“I–nothing,” she said, and coughed. She knew exactly what was happening because she was starting to feel it as well. A weak, sure, but she doubted she had seven minutes. “It’s our sweat mixing up, is all.”

She shook her head, trying to gather her thoughts but it was hard in the smoky, hot room, with Potter slowly gaining on her, his wand hand shaking. “Just breathe, will you? It’ll pass in a bit.”

But looking at him, it occurred to her, the effect passing in a bit seemed the last thing she wanted to happen, and judging by his deepening breaths he was on about the same page. He was but a step away now, and she put her hand to his chest to push him away, only it didn’t happen.

She could feel his heart beating, chest as hot as the furnace that she could feel in her own cheeks. She looked up and saw him looking right back at her. How did this happen? How did she let it happen?

His eyes slipped downwards towards her lips just for a split second, and it was enough. She threw herself at him, mouth slightly open, and damn it, damn it all. And then, then—

Pansy gasped, sweaty, nearly jumped out of her blanket, wondering where she was. She blinked at the coffee table, the empty vial glistening as the moonlight made it to her apartment through the half-raised curtains, and then it slowly dawned at her.

The vial burst into a shower of glittering confetti, a chaotic swirl of reds, golds, and obnoxiously cheerful pinks. Then, just as she was blinking the dust from her eyes, a voice—cheery, smug, and painfully familiar—filled the room.

“Congratulations! You have been matched! For questions, a burning desire to repeat the experience, or urgent feedback I know you’ve been dying to share, please contact the one and only—Matchmaker Ron Weasley!”

“Oh boy,” Pansy said, a deep feeling simmering in her stomach. It might’ve been fear, might’ve been shame, or stress, maybe. It might have been something else entirely.

It should’ve been just an experiment, to try and figure out just exactly what the Weasleys managed to put together that had so many people swooning over it.

“Oh boy,” she muttered, realizing that for the potion to work as advertised, Potter and her must have shared the experience. She collapsed back on her sofa, and dug her head into the heap of pillows in vain effort to escape it all. “Oh boy.”

 

Spoiler: Hello

It's a cute story. On some level, the ending is a bit of a copout, a la "it was all a dream", except here, it's half dream, half real. I would have liked to see the consequences in all their awkward or cute glory myself, but perhaps that was a constraint of the word count?

I will say the half-dream, half-reality effect adds an interesting layer of ambiguity, what part of the emotions and actions are real, and what is artificially induced? Really the (matchmaking) potion itself is a really cool and novel idea.

For a prompt named after Ron, he's in this in name only, which I found a bit disappointing.

But I did enjoy reading this. It's well-written, amusing, and, like any good romantic tryst, leaves you wanting more.

 

Spoiler

Aside of the inconsistency with the line including mind meddling magic, this is well written piece. I'm not completely sold as a love potion being an almost love potion method of matchmaking but it's a coin toss in magical world, really.

Not completely sure about the opening line, as it may come off too heavyhanded, but I think the sort of foreshadowing with mentioning Weasleys "new thing" early is neat. I realise the Auror thing is just a random thing to tie Pansy together but it needs mentioning is 500words that don't tie into anything, except to let the two talk, but it's not too allencompasing so it can pass under the radar.

But then again it's easy to be a critic, overall I liked it, and thought it was a fun read.

 

Spoiler

Hansy, eh? A pairing that never quite caught on in DLP's heyday but somehow managed to "get its shooters", as the youth say. I'm not opposed. Enemies to lovers and all that. Having it happen over a love potion is a good setup for a oneshot, as well.

That said, it's a little blunt here, what with Pansy outright telling the reader that huh actually there might be something to this that wasn't there before. The Weasleys accidentally selling Pansy the wizarding equivalent of housewife erotica as a matchmaking service is pretty funny, but in the context of the story it does feel more than a little wasteful to essentially end on "it was a dream, but..."

Good stuff otherwise, though.