Hello! First time in 2017 :D

Uh, it's been a while! Hope you all are still with me! Enjoy the new chapter!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

A big THANKS to my betas Dramione84 and Lady Evora!

Kia

Part 11: Firewhiskey

All three young men exchanged a look but then nodded to Lucius, who cleared his throat.

"Back when the... during the first war, Voldemort gave Narcissa the task to create a potion with the same effect as the Imperius curse. I'm sure Draco's told you about the original purpose of the curse?" As Harry and Ron both nodded Lucius continued.

"It is quite draining to cast an Imperius every single day for years, especially if the cursed person is strong-willed. A potion would be far easier because while the brewing process might be intensive, the only concern would be to ensure the victim consumes it. His goal was to control multiple people at once over an extended period of time. As you know, Draco, your mother is particularly gifted at potions and so Voldemort ordered her and Severus to work together to create such a potion."

"But she didn't right? That's impossible." Draco said but his father's look made him crumble.

"They did find the solution but they never told Voldemort. I know for a fact that neither of them expected to succeed, so when they did, it came as a shock to both of them. I didn't know of it. Your mother had kept it a secret until a few years ago. The war was already over when she finally confided in me."

Draco paled. "But why would she agree to do that? She always told me that she despised Voldemort."

Lucius nodded. "She did but when Voldemort asked her to do it she was pregnant with you. He threatened to hurt her in a way that would cause her to lose you, and well... you already know it was hard for her to conceive in the first place, so when she finally was sure that she was pregnant, she of course protected you with everything she had. And standing in a potion lab doing research for something that seemed impossible to achieve in the first place seemed safe to her."

"This potion. Voldemort never got it?" Harry interrupted.

"No." Lucius shook his head. "After his first downfall, Narcissa and Severus stopped trying to find a way but when he came back they pretended that they were still searching. It was in your Fifth Year, I think, that they actually stumbled upon the solution. It wasn't the Imperius per se, not as strong and instant as the curse but over time it would bring the same result. If someone consumed it often enough, their mind and body would be disconnected forever and they could be completely controlled. The potion could even be personalised."

"Now what does that mean?" Harry asked.

"It means that the one who wants to be in control can add some of their skin and the one who drinks the potion is forced to obey that person, no matter what."

"Who knows of this potion?" Ron asked.

"You three, myself, my wife and Severus. Narcissa kept it a secret and never revealed to anyone that they had a breakthrough. Voldemort and every other Death Eater always assumed that they were still searching for all these years. Voldemort even called it determination that they still hadn't given up on his request. He was quite the fool in the end." Lucius explained. He then reached for his tumbler of firewhiskey, conjuring some ice in his glass.

"Then how is it possible that Hermione is currently drinking it?"

Lucius shrugged. "I don't know how to brew it, never wanted to know. Only Narcissa and Severus know the exact recipe."

"She freaked out before, when she smelled the clover, saying something about how no one is supposed to know that clover is an ingredient, that she rewrote the recipe or something like that," Draco added.

"During the probation she started to work in her lab and after a while she developed a potion that could help with the symptoms of an Imperius. If it is cast improperly then in some cases a person's mind could suffer serious damage. She used the Imperius Potion to create a painkiller of some sort. Something that helped, not cured. She submitted it to St. Mungo's and they asked for her notes. She never told them the real reason why she was able to create it, just that she had spent a year researching and stumbled upon it accidentally. They accepted it gratefully but that was it."

"When did she submit it?" Harry wanted to know.

"About a year and a half after the war." Lucius answered.

"By then Hermione had already left the Wizarding World. So that wouldn't be it." Harry surmised. "Where was the recipe kept?"

"I burned it. At least the version I found." Lucius said. "I don't know if there is another around somewhere.

"What about research notes?"

Lucius shrugged. "You would have to ask Narcissa that."

As if by command, the door of the study unlocked and Narcissa entered looking pale but a little better. Draco got up instantly to walk over to her, taking her arm and leading her to the armchair he had been occupying.

She smiled tightly. "Mr Weasley, Mr Potter, I assume you are here because of the potion."

They both nodded. "Your husband already told us most of it and from what I heard, I have to assume that someone did manage to steal it somehow. Do you have any ideas how?"

"I submitted a potion to St. Mungo's about three and a half years ago. It's not similar to the original potion at all but someone might have found out through that."

Harry shook his head. "We- and I am sure you will agree- believe that Hermione has been under this potion for over five years now. It must have been stolen long before that."

"It takes about two months to develop," Narcissa said. "Severus and I found the solution when Draco was in his Fifth year; during Christmas break I remember. We never got to test the potion beyond the first few days of taking it, obviously, but if you are right about Ms Granger, then I'm afraid that my assumptions about its effects are true, correct?"

Draco nodded. "She is being controlled by someone. She can't break free from it anymore and was told to stay away from Harry and Ron and anyone else who could help her. Besides that, she cannot ask for help or tell that she's controlled. She fakes a happy life and is ordered to drink that potion daily."

Narcissa bit her lower lip. "I never wanted it to get out. I knew as soon as we developed it that we must destroy all the papers but every now and then Voldemort wanted to see our research. We couldn't risk destroying them otherwise he might have sensed that something wasn't right and then he would have tried to find out what we were hiding from him. We withheld most of the notes and we locked the actual recipe away. I wanted to destroy them all when Lucius was arrested in the Department of Mysteries but then the Aurors showed up to search the Manor and I was more concerned about Draco than caring about some potion notes. When I checked later, nothing was amiss anyway."

"A raid?" Harry furrowed his brows. "Ron, can you go and check, who was part of it? That was when again? Summer of '96."

"On it." Ron jumped up and rushed over to the fireplace, flooing to the Ministry without another word.

Harry sighed and rubbed his face frustratedly. "This just got much more complicated. Was there any point when the potion instructions could have been accessed openly?" he asked Narcissa.

"Well, I know I'd been going through them the night of the Department of Mysteries incident. Aurors suddenly showed up at the Manor telling me that Lucius was arrested for Death Eater activities, showing me a parchment that allowed them to search the Manor. Some Aurors were already in the study and they told me to stay in the entrance hall and not to move. I was able to call an elf and tell him to go to the lab and lock all the notes away. After they left, I checked on them but nothing was missing." Narcissa told Harry honestly.

The dark-haired wizard nodded. "But during that time where you left for the entrance hall until you told the elf, someone could have managed to go into the potions lab, right?"

"Technically, yes." Narcissa admitted. "But this is a big house, Mr Potter. I still get lost to this day. If one of the Aurors was in the lab, he only would have had a few minutes and he must have known where to look and what to look for. That's nearly impossible. Trippy assured me that no one had been in the lab and that she locked away all the parchment with the notes. The safe in the potions lab can only be unlocked with Malfoy blood. A drop of fresh blood and it opens. Once the papers were inside, no one but Lucius, Draco or myself could have gotten to the notes."

"Well, a few minutes are already a few too many." Harry declared. "Take it from me that too little time hasn't stopped anyone yet."

At that moment, Ron came back through the floo, a file in this hand. "I got it. Took awhile to find but I got it. There were three Aurors, right?" The redhead asked and Narcissa nodded. "Two of them are dead, though. One at the battle of Hogwarts and one got his wand taken from him by Umbridge because he was a Muggleborn. He later was killed by a Death Eater in his house. The last one was Robert Dawson." Ron pointedly stated.

"Robert Dawson, as in our Head of Department Robert Dawson?" Harry asked unbelieving.

Ron nodded. "He wasn't Head back then, just a normal Auror. I don't think he was even at the Battle of Hogwarts but after the Ministry was rebuilding itself he was named Head Auror because he was the only one alive that wasn't either corrupt, or arrested. The rest had been killed. And after that, he did a decent job, so Kingsley kept him in the position."

"Didn't you say that he turned all your requests involving Granger down?" Draco suddenly asked and Harry looked up.

"Yes." Harry frowned. "He never granted us a full investigation. Even after I went to Kingsley directly; he did some half-arsed attempt to find her but after two weeks of not really looking he just declared that she didn't want to be found and that she...,"

"And that she probably returned to the world where she belonged to in the first place." Draco finished, staring at Harry. "That's what you told me he had said."

"Yes, why?"

"Because the world she belongs to means the Muggle world and it is not meant in a nice way." Lucius interrupted. "Trust me." He added.

Ron's face clouded darkly. "So, what? Our boss manipulated the investigation and didn't grant us permission to look into the case because he apparently stole the instructions for an Imperius Potion."

"It seems like it. I mean, we tried, Ron. We gave him memories from when Hermione hexed us, all the signs were there that something was wrong. If she really would have left our world, then she would have made it clear to us. Crystal." Harry stated with a pointed look at the redhead.

"And when we tried to ask someone else for help, he followed us to those Departments, telling them to not listen to us because we were supposed to deal with more important stuff. And most of them listened. We should have done this so much earlier. We should have got some of the DA members to help and not some ministry workers." Harry buried his face in his hands and groaned while Ron bit his lower lip angrily while he nodded along.

"Snap out of it, Mr Potter." Narcissa hissed then and the dark-haired wizard looked up with wide eyes. "If Ms Granger is under the influence of my potion and she was ordered to stay away from you and any of your friends, then she would have done everything in her powers to follow that order. And if achieving that lead to her death then the potion would have insured that. Be glad that you haven't found her more often. Her attempts to make you stay away could have become much more drastic. If she was ordered to never speak to you again, then this could easily be achieved not by staying away from each other but by insuring one of you is dead. Makes speaking obviously impossible. The Imperius works this way, I'm afraid. Do not despair; going after her more aggressively could have led to far more damage." The blond women explained and Harry paled slightly.

"And be aware that her controller had only ordered her to stay away from you and Mr Weasley. If he would have ordered her to kill the both of you, she would have no other option than to comply. You were hardly a threat to him; if he had known that you are after him he probably would have acted differently. Always remember that the person who controls her needs to think a lot of things through."

"There are loopholes, right?" Draco suddenly asked. "That's why she was able to come to me."

"There are always loopholes, son." Lucius said as he took a drink from his glass. He then filled it up again and gave it to Narcissa who paused before shrugging, accepting it.

"When it comes to the Imperius curse, or any other controlling spell or potion, the actual orders are everything. And their knowledge of the victim is important as well. Let's say the order is to stay away from everyone with blond hair. Now, the cursed person will do exactly that but what if they meet someone with dark hair which is actually glamoured? Unless the cursed person knows it's a glamour or knows the other person's real hair colour they won't have the urge to stay away because the fact is that there is someone with dark hair. The Imperius is not a truth-detecting curse, it cannot sense things which might be hidden. Only once the hidden feature is revealed, the curse can compel the recipient to stay away. In the case of Ms Granger, Draco said that she asked him if he was a friend or someone who loved her or if he hates her. Those could be the main groups she needs to stay away from. Without having spoken to Draco in five years, her last impression of him was that he despised her for her blood status but she didn't know this had changed." Lucius explained while fixing another glass for himself. He took a sip before continuing.

"I guess this boyfriend of hers knows of the two of you, so his direct orders could be 'stay away from Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley'. If he only ordered her to 'stay away from your friends', that would be rather a vague description, considering the term friend is relative. She could see everyone from her Hogwarts house as a friend or even believe that someone is a friend while they actually are far from that. You said that she was working and leaving the house. Back when the Imperius was used to create slaves those people were just locked away for years with no human contact, barely food, no wands. It was easy to just Imperius them everyday without worrying but Ms Granger's case is different. She's out there living a life. Working as you told me. Speaking to her family. It takes quite the familiarity to pull something like this of. And you are sure that boyfriend of hers is a Muggle? Maybe he's not the one behind it."

"How can he not be behind it?" Draco scoffed. "Besides, he visited me at the café; sized me up and all. Even after that, Granger still was able to talk to me."

"So she wasn't told to stay away from any magical person. Maybe there is a purpose behind it." Lucius theorised and Draco raised an eyebrow at his father.

Draco frowned, "A purpose? Behind letting her befriend me?"

"Maybe it's not about you." Harry injected. "But what you stand for? She did ask you where your loyalties lie."

"No, she asked me if I was still rich and a brat." Draco replied.

"So it's about money?" Ron asked confused and Harry shrugged. "Maybe."

"Oh, and there is something else I forgot." The young Malfoy suddenly said, then looked over pityingly in Harry and Ron's direction. "When I met her in the park, she was quite depressed and also, uhm well, engaged."

"What?" Harry jumped up, starting to pace through Lucius' study while Ron just sat there with his mouth open.

"She's engaged?" Narcissa finally asked and Draco nodded, sipping from his own glass.

"She had a ring and all but didn't look exactly thrilled."

"So, they have come back to England, openly approached you and then got engaged within a few weeks?" Lucius summarised and Draco looked at him surprised.

The blond shook his head. "Quite the coincidence, right?"

"No." Harry stopped pacing. "This was planned. And they had to wait five years for the potion to work effectively on Hermione. And now that they came back, that means one thing."

"The potion will soon finalise the process of gaining full control. If you say that Ms Granger has taken the potion for five years already without being completely completely at the mercy of its influence yet, then she must have a strong mind. But it also means that it will be over soon and she will break, probably in a few weeks, if not days. A marriage could be the next step, as was coming back here. They are obviously confident enough to assume that Ms Granger is so far gone that she cannot be brought back now." Narcissa said. "But if she was able to stay strong until now, then maybe it's not too late yet."

"So we need an antidote. As fast as possible." Draco said while looking at his mother, who raised her hands in surrender.

"I don't have an antidote. I never thought I would need it. I could work on one but it would take months probably."

"So, we improvise." Draco stated then, looking up to meet Harry's eyes. "Potter, that's your speciality. How about you tap into that apparently endless luck of yours to save your friend?"