𝐃𝐑𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐘 𝐇/𝐃/𝐒 𝐁𝐄𝐋𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐄 2008

Brewing Light

Title: Brewing Light
Author: graylor
Pairing: H/D
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst, snogging, internalized homophobia, slight AU (Snape lives!), EWE
Word count: 9,500
Summary: Draco Malfoy is about to brew his masterwork: he just needs to pick up a few more esoteric (and occasionally illegal) ingredients. His master Snape thinks there are a few more lessons his apprentice should learn before he goes out on his own. That's where Harry Potter enters and Draco Malfoy's best laid plans depart.

Chapter One:

I closed my eyes as I moved, my magic pounding with my pulse and demanding I surrender to its control.

A sardonic clap made me stumble. "Trying out for the ballet, Mr. Malfoy?" Snape inquired.

I tossed my hair out of my eyes. "No, as you know perfectly well."

Snape grunted. "You think that dance will win her favor? The ballet would be the wiser course—at least ballet connoisseurs won't make your guts garters and wear them while you're still alive."

I glowered, awareness of my own potential vanishing under the very real sneer of my master. I wiped my face and controlled my impulse to lash out. Snape might be an utter bastard, but he was my saving grace. No one else would have accepted a Malfoy as an apprentice after the war. Certainly no one else would stand surety for me until I turned twenty-five.

The only reason the Manor wasn't the Minister's new pleasure palace and that I wasn't in Azkaban was Snape's unwavering support.

I still wasn't certain of Snape's motives—something which, as a Slytherin, galled me—but Snape was a master worthy of no less than a mythical masterwork from his apprentice.

"I will make the Purity Potion and so I must acquire a true Apple of Avalon from the Faerie Court."

Snape stalked across the room. I smirked privately as I noticed that the man looked far more healthy than he had when teaching at Hogwarts. The change of atmosphere is good for him. And having adult food. And, of course, no children and Dark Lords underfoot helps.

As my guardian, in fact if not in name, until my probation ended, Snape could do with my inheritance as he saw fit. Since the Manor was sealed until my birthday—it was going to take some work to cleanse it of its Dark taint—and Snape's cottage was not a suitable place for serious brewing, being as it was in a populated area, Snape had acquired Adelphi Abbey in Manchester. Like Hogwarts, the house was surrounded by forests, but, unlike Hogwarts, the weather was far gentler.

Our only house elf—sent from France by my mother— prepared meals rather more elegant and complicated than shepherd's pie, treacle pudding, and pumpkin juice. Potions Masters had to have sensitive noses—and, hence, sensitive palates. Hogwarts food would have driven me round the twist without my mother's care packages; I couldn't imagine how Snape had borne it all those years.

"Perhaps," Snape sneered, "you might concentrate on acquiring the ingredients which are merely perilous to obtain, rather than the ones which are purely suicidal. That way, after the Good Lady turns you into apple-tree fertilizer, I will have a head-start on the brewing process myself."

I shrugged. "I've got the requisite Portkeys, the money, the provisions, and the virgin's blood, preserved dawn light, and dragon liver and all the other things needed to part the owners from their goods when gold won't do."