It began with a potion. A Boil Cure potion, to be precise - a little question of stirring it in the right direction. Just a little bit of help, from one older and wiser to one young and alone. It became routine. A little warmth and something that almost looked like friendship was born.
Almost.
A hook, a bait, the trap was set and sprung and a heart was lost. A new ingredient was added to this friendship, what most would call tenderness; the soft brush of hands while brewing an undetectable poison. But tenderness, that was something other people did. Not boys who brewed potions together. It was meaningless, of course, purely academic. There would come a time when they would go their separate ways and they would each forget that the other had ever existed. And they might even have gotten away with it too if time, that churlish villain, had not intervened and if certain whisperings had not made themselves so very clear to the youngest Black; made him sure that this was indeed, the Real Thing.
1978, that was an interesting year for potions. It was the height of the first war, everyone in their ranks swiftly inventing one new weapon after another. This one was fairy dust, mixed with memories of death and torture and pain - the kind of cocktail that hammers brains out and makes grown men cry. And grown men did cry. So did eighteen year old Snape, as he dosed himself again and again, honing and perfecting it with each new brew until it was fully weaponized. So did seventeen year old Regulus, rifling through Severus’ stock of potions, looking for a new high to carry him through the tomb-like silence of the halls of the home of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.
It ended too, with a potion. Two boys sitting side by side, a tribute to their generation, dosing on love potions. None of the restlessness of obsession. Just the still and comfortable warmth of love. Love for all the people - mudbloods, muggle filth and house elves, purebloods and half-bloods and squibs. The kind of love that makes the heart swell with something deep and ineffable, that sets the heart on fire. For all of a sudden, everything that is wrong with the world - all the pain and the darkness and all its many varied horrors - is swept away and replaced by the right - the tendernesses, the soft brushing of hands and kindnesses and people living, breathing and being: the greatest miracle of them all. The kind of love that intoxicates, sweet and strong and heady like wine on a war summer afternoon mingling with the wild ecstasies and visions of the strongest shamanic drugs. The kind of love that burns and drowns and draws all of humankind in, in a vast embrace.
The kind of love that just is. Love, just love. Nothing more, nothing less.
And in that moment everything seemed possible and none of the present, its dark grim days glowering on the horizon seemed to matter anymore, just them sitting by each other and an unending horizon, the world at their feet. The sweet promise of youth and the future and an infinite million possibilities, burning bright; one last hurrah as the sun sets forever on a dark eternity of longing and ships that sail at night, blundering around in darkness. In that moment Regulus looked at this boy with his greasy hair and his hooked nose, in his ill-fitting black robes and knew that all the wishing, for all the good it would ever do him, would never draw Severus any closer.
So he slipped his hand into Severus’ and squeezed it gently as the sun set forever and their hearts closed again - the song of a generation. Their generation.
It ended with a potion and the sea and regrets, far too many regrets.
(Image Source.)
(Submitted by the ever wonderful thepostmodernpottercompendium. For reference this is following this theory of Love Potions, that, when without a target, they make one feel full of love.)
