Delectable Decisions

Caelum first finds madness in the bottom of a cauldron.  He’s eight, and his private tutors are finally convinced he has enough of a magical core and enough motor control to make teaching him real magic useful.  His mother is thrilled; she’s been trying to get him to hold a wand since five.  His father…less so.

“He is of an age where beginning his studies is essential, Rodolphus.  My sisters and I began our magical schooling at seven! Sirius and Reggie even younger.  Caelum must be trained.”

“He is a child, Bella.  I agreed to beginning his fundamentals early.  The lad has better penmanship than some adults I know!  Be satisfied.”

“No.”

“Bella—"

“No! I will not be ‘satisfied’ when it comes to my son.  He will thrive, he will become the best at anything I can train him in, and he will rise above his Merlin-forsaken father, who apparently lacks any ambition.  More than that—who lacks any spine.”  Caelum curls himself closer to the wall near the top of the stairs where he’s crouched to listen.  His father breathes, once, twice, and then sighs.  His mother says nothing at all.

“Bellatrix, I am willing to let him learn the basics of brewing, and how to hold a wand.  I refuse to let him cast until he is closer to 11.”

“My family—”

“Your family is insane! Clinically, certifiably, unhinged and unstable.  Do you want that for our son?” Caelum has never heard his father this angry before.  He actually can’t remember the last time his father argued with his mother at all.

“Fine.” His mother’s voice is silky, soft in a way more reminiscent of a cat stalking than real submission. “Brewing with unconscious imbuing only.  Wand movements with no casting.  But on his tenth birthday we will begin training him properly.”

“That’s all I ask,” his father replies, and Caelum hurries back to his room to await the good news.  He’s finally learning magic!

__

“…I’d rather have dinner with someone who understands what I’ve spent all summer doing, rather than someone who’s proud of the idea of what I’ve been doing” she’d said, her eyes blazing, a tone of dawning realization in her voice.  He’d half wondered if the brat realized she was going to ask him to dinner until she did.

He’d spent the summer hating her.  He’d known himself to be superior in all aspects.  Blood, potions talent, even looks (he found himself especially derisive on that note).  And yet, she’d helped his research, and even now reached out to him.  Why—

“So? Was it as bad as you thought?” his head snaps up to her.

“Huh?” Immediately he chastises himself for such an unrefined response.  “Rather, was what as bad as I thought?”

“The uncouth establishment I took to you to.  Did it disgust you, or was I right?”  There’s a mocking lilt in her voice, a challenge in the jut of her chin.  He manages his most convincing mocking scoff.

“It was…adequate.  Your better half clearly seeks culture even amongst the lowest of people.”

The halfblood scowls.  It’s interesting, the way her emotions play across her face.  Most purebloods he knows are perfectly in control, never expressing even the slightest bit of dissatisfaction.  Another way in which she in clearly inferior.  Even her lowly cousin had better control over his emotions.  And then, her face smooths, becomes free from all thought.

“Oh really? Well, I suppose there’s no accounting for taste.” Her voice is sickly sweet, cajoling.  He’s heard it a million times before, from people who want something from his parents.  Which again brings him to Why she reached out—

“Truly.   I never rely on others’ taste—my own is generally sufficient.”  Her lips twitch ever so slightly in response.  Caelum cannot understand what it is about her that makes him want to continue speaking.  That makes him want to understand her.  Maybe it is the look in her eyes when she discusses potions.  The passion, the all-consuming love for an art mostly disparaged as less worthy, less magical.  Within her passion, he thinks he might just spot madness.

He knows a thing or two about insanity.

___

It’s dark when his mother rouses him from his bed.  She presses a warm roll to his lips and a finger to her own.  Silence, her eyes say, eat quickly.

Caelum munches on the roll as his mother places shoes on his feet and a cloak around his shoulders.  She ushers him out of bed, closing the door behind him.  The portraits in the hall have been covered for the night, no witnesses to the evening subterfuge.

Down the halls, down the stairs, down, down, down his mother leads him, until the roll is gone, and Caelum cannot recognize his own home.  Bellatrix leads him to a single uncovered portrait of a young woman.  Her hair is dark and wild, her eyes hooded, her lips vibrant and wildly smiling.  She duels some opponent none but she can see, until she catches sight of him.  And then she nods to Caelum’s mother, and allows the pair inside.

Inside is a small room, barely bigger than the smallest guestroom in the mansion.  Clearly a place meant to be forgotten.  There are no windows, and the floor is oddly spongy beneath his feet.  Caelum grins as his gazes upon bare walls and empty corners.  Here is a secret place, a place for just him and Mother.

“Can you guess why I’ve brought you here?”

“To learn magic.” His voice is a breathless whisper, excitement catching him up again.  His mother smiles at him.

“Correct.”  She waves her wand, and a countertop against one wall is disillusioned. “Here you will learn what it means to be a Black, a master of magic and power, purest of pureblood families.  Here I will teach you how to brew deceit and trickery, spell power out of weakness, and cast your enemies to their knees.  Here you will learn the wonders of true power, and how to harness it to your will.”  Caelum is leaning forward almost against his will, breath faster than normal.  To know all that…

“But,” and Caelum’s head snaps to his mother, desperation clawing at his throat.  She can’t tell him no, she can’t promise all that and then take it away again. “But only if you can keep a secret.”

Caelum would do anything for his mother.  He would do anything to be a proper Black.  He would—

“Caelum? Do I have your word?”  He nods eagerly.  “Say it.”

“I swear, Mother.  I can keep a secret.”

“Good.”  His mother smiles beatifically.  “Then let us begin.”

___

“So,” She begins every conversation abruptly, skipping past the social niceties he’s had trained into him from birth.  It’s…pleasant, even as it’s irritating, to always cut to the meat of the issue. “How has your reading been going?”

He scowls, almost against his will.  His reading has been nigh-on nonexistent.  Trust Potter to come up with the most hare-brained, poorly researched field of magic to base her entire new field of potions on.

Wandless magic verges on something superstitious in the Wizarding World.  Nearly every text he can find in something approximating modern English treats the power as something only the most powerful and skilled witches and wizards can do.  Even though wandless magic is mostly elemental in nature, the concentration and control necessary to accomplish anything meaningful wandlessly requires a level of refinement that most people just don’t have.  That Caelum suspects he might not have himself.

“Not well,” he finally admits.  Potter snorts.

“If you were willing to admit that the ‘stupid old book’ I gave you is useful, you’d already be performing wandless magic.”

“Oh I’m sure your archaic little books hold all the answers to how to accidentally do what you managed.  I’m planning on finding sound methodology based on recent research and using that as the basis of my recreation of your little experiment.  This isn’t a full collaboration.”

“Oh!” Somehow Potter’s voice brightens again.  “So it’s a peer review!”

“We’d have to be peers for a peer review.  Let’s call it…an evaluation.”  Potter goes to reply, but suddenly draws to a stop in front of a rundown building.  It’s front is covered in smoke damage, and the windows, while clean, are terribly small.  The stoop looks like it was swept, then scrubbed, then swept again, and there are flower boxes in every bit of open space.    Like everything in the lower alleys, the building is rundown despite the best efforts of the owners.

A sign above the door gleams in the low light of dusk, reading Beatrice’s Bakery.

“We’re here!” Potter offers this declaration cheerfully, if unnecessarily, and opens the door, bowing him through in a ridiculous manner.  Caelum rightfully turns his nose up at the display, and struts into the store.

The first thing that hits Caelum is the wall of noise.  The room is packed with people, all there for an evening meal of pie.  He spots quite the assortment of characters, some of the patrons proper witches in robes and going-out hats, while others sport Muggle clothes in obnoxiously bright shades.  The lowlight of the bakery makes the place seem seedier than Caelum suspects it actually is.  Instead of the room being lit by lighting charms or brightening charms of any kind, there are torches on each wall, and odd lamps on each table.

“Harry!”  A tall young man waves aggressively from a table near the fireplace.  The best lit table in the room, and clearly the most desirable, the fellow’s exuberance draws attention from the surrounding tables of people.  Caelum sees patron look about to complain, before glancing at this oddball’s face and promptly turning away.

“There he is!”  Potter exclaims, grabbing Caelum roughly and dragging him to the table.  When he arrives, Caelum gets his first good look at the other boy his age.  Tall, brown hair, deeply tanned skin.  Muscular, and (it pains Caelum to admit), handsome.  So this is the fellow who takes so much of Potter’s time.  The infamous—

“Leo, meet Lestrange.  Lestrange, Leo.”

“How do you do?” Leo holds out a hand to shake, in the Muggle fashion.  This was the person Caelum needed to earn the right to meet?  He looks dubiously at the outstretched hand, and lightly nods in response.

“A pleasure.”  Caelum sits.  After a heartbeat of uncertainty and an odd glance at Potter, Leo does the same.

“So…” This Leo is clearly a person who cannot stand awkwardness, nor awkward silences. “Harry tells me you’ve been formally apprenticed?”

“Yes.  For a while now.”

“Oh.”  The smile that Leo’d been tenuously holding fades, and Caelum won’t admit to feeling pleased, but he will openly admit to a certain satisfaction.  Caelum turns towards Potter and smiles in the insincere way he knows she really hates.

“Where were we again?  The wonders of modern potions research?”  Potter’s eyes darts between him and Leo a few times, before she gives an exasperated sign through her nose.

“Leo, I think I’m going to have to do it.”

“Don’t you dare lass.”  Leo actually seems concerned.  “We’ll both regret it in the end.”

“This conversation won’t go anywhere unless we tell him.”

I don’t—”

“Tell me what?” Caelum interrupts shrilly, feeling something like an irritated whine building in his throat.  “Must you always be so damned secretive?”

The pair across from his share a long glance.

“What research are you working on?” Leo inquires, completely changing the subject. “Is it with your Master, or independent?”

Caelum glances at Leo suspiciously.  He’s been raised to never share information lightly.  But then again, what harm can be done by light conversation, particularly about topics Leo most likely wouldn’t understand.

“I’m attempting to independently recreate Heiress Potter’s—”

“Harry” Potter hisses aggressively.

“—Harry’s shaped imbuing method.  I plan to take full advantage of this field to develop new potions that others cannot replicate.”  Leo raises an unimpressed eyebrow.

“This is who you spend your time with?”

“Oh, he can get much worse, don’t worry.  He’s consistently less irritating than he used to be.”

Caelum sniffs at their exchange.  “Oh, don’t let my presence at the table prevent you from openly insulting me.  Do, continue.”

“Don’t worry,” Leo replies, sending a challenging smirk Caelum’s way, “We will.”

And Potter and Leo continue.  For hours they mock Caelum’s dress, his way of speaking, his apparently overblown sense of superiority.  And yet…

Caelum could stand up at any point.  He could leave the building and force Potter to pay his bill.  Instead, he sits there, eating minced meat pies and firing back in vitriolic fashion.

At the end of the night Caelum tells Leo he was glad to meet him.  And Caelum thinks he might just mean it.

___

“Brewing,” His mother explains, standing in front of a cauldron, “Is the oldest form of magic.  Taking the power of the earth around us and harnessing it in liquid form.”

Caelum stares at the odd ingredients spread across the table in front of him.  There’s an array of knives, all gleaming softly silver in the lowlight of his hidden classroom.  The cauldron sits, centered in the scene, a monolith of pewter and mystery.  Caelum tastes excitement.

“I will teach you of brewing what my mother taught me, and her mother before her.  To brew is to know your roots.  To brew is to know the source of power.”  Caelum feels his mouth fall open in awe.  He longs to get started.

Over the next several hours he practices cuts, and heat adjustment, and ingredient identification.  Caelum goes to bed smiling.

It takes weeks, but finally Caelum is permitted to brew a simply cure for boils.  His tutors are still going over safety equipment.  He has yet to touch a real knife in his official classes.  But in the wee hours of the morning, with his mother by his side, Caelum begins to practice real magic.

He chops and slices and dices, stirs and whirls and lets simmer, raises and lowers the flame.  An hour later he looks down at a blue-ish potion, pink smoke rising from the surface.  His fingers are stained a multitude of colors, his face dripping in sweat.  But before him is real power, power in the bottom of a cauldron.  And Caelum begins to laugh.

___

The mansion is cold when Caelum floos in.  The flickering green flames dying behind him seemed to suck out the last bit of warmth he carried from the alleys.

The curtains were all drawn, and the faint slivers of light which crept through the center gaps was just enough to see by.  Typical.  No need to congratulate him on a job well done.  No need to tell him good work for doing the bare minimum expected of him.

The summer internship, the hours of research, the money poured into his brews.  Caelum expected to shine at the presentations.  When Master Snape asked that singular question, for a brief moment, Caelum’s world had gleamed with promise and pride.

And then Potter presented her findings.

Caelum grew up hearing stories of greatness.  Stories of those wizards who were destined to be the best, the shine in every setting, to bring wonder to the world around them.  In fact, Caelum always assumed he’d been born for greatness himself.  The scion of a powerful pureblood lord, the blood of one of the most feared and powerful women alive.  Circumstance raised him up, and justice said he deserved it.

But Potter shone in a way he’d never seen before.  And then, when he expected to be left alone to wallow in his failures, she’d reached out and offered him a meal.  And he accepted.

Potter doesn’t need his help, doesn’t need his greatness, couldn’t care less about his research.  So what does she want from him?

No matter.

Caelum always knew he’d find greatness in the bottom of a cauldron.  He just needed to keep looking.

___

Home for the summer, Caelum sits down for his first family meal since September.  Durmstrang was far, far enough to make excursions home for the holidays costly and unnecessary.  Caelum had stayed in school through the holidays, home a beacon in his mind, guiding him through hours of study, hard work, and suffering. 

Honestly, he’s relieved to be able to speak English once more.

Still, it’s odd to be home in Dartmoor, to be sitting between his parents at the dinner table.  To eat Yorkshire pudding and pasties instead of the foreign fare he’s grown accustomed to.  Caelum glances to his father, and for the first time notices that the man is getting older.  In his time at school, Rodolphus began to gray.

“Son, tell me,” His father begins, “What was your favorite part of Durmstrang?”

His mother’s face tightens.  She’d fought against his going abroad, argued the foreigners could ruin him.  His father argued no foreigner could be any worse than Dumbledore.

It’s the only time Caelum’s seen his mother actually lose an argument with his father.

“I enjoyed the Dark Arts classes the most, I must admit.  It was interesting to hear opinions so different from those in Britain.”  So similar to those of a Black.

“Good,” His mother’s voice is hoarser than it used to be, more worn-down.  He wonders if she’d missed her only son. “I’m glad your training proved useful in a practical setting.”

“Yes mother.  I must admit though—” here he hesitates, afraid to speak out of turn.

“Yes?”  His father prompts him to continue.

“I was disappointed by the quality of the potions class.”  These words rush out of him faster than normal.  “Most of the children could barely hold a knife, much less properly brew.  Most of the year was wasted on theory and technique when we could have been spending time doing something useful.”

“Potions classes are always a waste,” Rodolphus replies easily, “There’s no real point to forcing mastery on a group of unwilling children when competence does just as well.”

“Yes father,” Caelum replies sullenly.

“Still, for what we’re paying in international fees?  The quality of education should be higher.  I would assume that any pureblooded enough to attend Durmstrang would be taught from a young age.”  His mother, always on his side.  Always there to support him.

“It’s falling out of favor, Bella, you know this.  With the fade there’s no real point to risking your children’s lives when most children end up at approximately the same skill level in the end.”

The table falls silent.  Caelum thinks of the tiny box on the mantle above the Floo.  The little sister he’d missed the chance to meet.  Rodolphus clears his throat, and turns to Caelum once more.

“Have you decided on careers?  Given any though what it is you’d like to do with yourself after graduation?”

“I’d rather like to pursue my potion’s mastery.”  The silence in the room grows oppressive.

“After all the complaining you just did, boy?” His father laughs. “No, I mean for real work.  How you will help the family business, whether you’re interested in the Wizengamot.”  Caelum’s mother scoffs, and for a second he feels real hope.

“Don’t be ridiculous Rodolphus.  He can do more than vote on meaningless legislation.  I’d rather expected him to pursue a more meaningful mastery though.  Something useful to our Lord.  Transfigurations, perhaps, or Defense.”

Caelum can’t stand this.  This attack on real, true, fundamental magic.  How could his mother possibly act like a potion’s mastery isn’t worth it, after all she’d taught him? After their hours brewing together?

“I will get my Potion’s Mastery!” He insists, childish outraged fueling his outburst.

Silence.  And then, his mother sighs, and speaks.

“What a waste.”

___

It takes until Potter no longer speaks to him for Caelum to realize what she’d wanted from him.

Contrary to his own beliefs, he doesn’t think she wanted him for his money.  She has plenty of her own, and had never asked him for a dime.

Nor, when he thinks about it, does it seem likely she’d wanted him for his connections.  She has plenty of her own—And hadn’t he felt stupid, to realize her Leo was Lionel Hurst, Aldermaster’s son!

For a while he contemplates that maybe she’d befriended him for what he represented.  A pathway into the worth of pureblood privilege and power that she could only dream of.  A friend within a society which actively worked to reject her.  Which slammed the door in her face while her cousin danced easily on the other side.

Caelum finally admits that even that doesn’t seem likely.

No, when it came down to it, when Caelum finally fell on the other side of her wand, Caelum realizes that he was not wanted for anything he could give Potter.  She’d dropped him far to easily for that.

Caelum admits that maybe, just maybe, Potter had been the first person to want to be around for him, for his personality, for his caustic jokes, for his value as a person.  And he’d thrown it away.

Caelum misses Harry.

___

Years ago, Caelum found madness in the bottom of a cauldron.  He wonders if he deserves anything more.