(HP) Because Potter Is Allergic to Poppies

Visions and Voices

"Malfoy," a voice whispered to the side of him as Draco was leaving one of the few classes he was still allowed to attend, Advanced Curse Detection. "I found something out."

Draco turned at once and went down another corridor without looking around. He knew the voice, and he trusted the boy enough to think he didn't need instructions to follow.

Sure enough, when he reached an empty room and turned around, Sabian was right behind him.

He grinned at Draco and shut the door carefully behind them. "I found something out," he repeated.

"What is it?" Draco deliberately made his voice authoritative. He wanted to encourage Sabian, but not in disrespect. It was fine for Sabian to address him without title—too many people had made a mockery of "Apprentice Healer Malfoy" for Draco to value the words—but the level of familiarity between them should be limited. Draco thought it would redound to Sabian's benefit in the end, if he could think of himself as part of something greater and larger than a pair of conspiring Apprentice Healers.

His theory seemed correct, because Sabian's chest puffed out and he took a deep breath before he said, "I found this near Healer Mallow's Potions cupboard when I went to tidy up." He held out a piece of parchment.

Draco took it and scanned it. It was a list of potion names, with the Stone Response potion among them. And then his heart leaped, because near the end of the list was the name of the Wilder's Growth potion, the one that had almost poisoned Potter.

"Do you recognize the handwriting?" he asked, turning the list around so that Sabian could see it.

"I don't."

Sabian shook his head. 

"I know it isn't Healer Mallow's, but that's all. I don't think it belongs to Healer Okono-Jones, either," he added, with a certain ruefulness that probably indicated OkonoJones had written copious comments on his essays. 

"And—is it evidence? Maybe it was just a list of potions that someone ordered for Healer Mallow or something."

"Of course it's important," Draco said. "If nothing else, it proves that the potion you were supposed to get and the one that someone switched around on you were part of the same order.

We might find someone who knows who had access to the potions."

Sabian brightened up. "Yes, we might!"

Draco added a few more words of pleasure and praise, and then sent Sabian on his way. He
floated out of the empty room as if he were walking on air, and Draco, watching from behind the
half-shut door, was pleased to see Sabian glare at a few journeymagi who passed through the
corridor at that moment and tried to force him out of the way with the usual absent-minded
contempt that journeymagi showed Apprentice Healers. They looked offended, but Sabian just kept floating.

Draco chuckled. His smile faded when he glanced at the list of potions, though.

He had been assigned to Healer Mallow when he first entered the program, and he had cleaned
the Healer's office and around the Potions cupboard more than once. He'd practically had to
the Healer's office and around the Potions cupboard more than once. He'd practically had to
create chores for himself, because Mallow was so scrupulously clean. There was no way that a
piece of parchment like this would have been left lying about long enough for an Apprentice

Healer to find, unless Mallow had left a few minutes before and dropped it on the way, and Draco knew he would have missed it soon and sent another apprentice to fetch it.

Draco was suspicious of clues that had a tendency to appear on their own.

But it would do no harm to find out whose handwriting it was, and who had ordered the Wilder's Growth potion, which was less common than the Stone Response. Draco tucked the parchment into his pocket.