Archive of Our Own ^beta

There are a lot of things that Adam doesn’t like about the NEWTS level potions class. The way that it relies more on theory than on direction. The way that the fumes can make him nauseous on his bad days. The way the professor always come up on his bad ear to bark instructions, then gives Adam a Look when Adam asks him to repeat it.

But more than anything, Adam hates being partnered with Ronan Lynch. Over the last six years, Ronan has gone from enemy to rival to frustrating ally to something almost like a friend. More than almost, if Adam is being honest. He is rarely honest. Not with himself. Not with the things that matter. Those he holds tight, buried deep under lies and misdirection. He’s starting to think that Ronan matters quite a lot.

The only good thing about NEWT level classes is that they’ve done away with the class segregations that always drove him crazy as a kid. Adam, to put it mildly, did not get on with other Slytherins. He didn’t like them, they didn’t like him, and Adam had gotten a reputation as a troublemaker by this third week at school.

“Counter clockwise.”

Adam shoots a look over to Ronan. Ronan is staring into the potion, watching as Adam slowly adds ingredients. “The directions say clockwise. For thirty stirs.”

Ronan shrugs. “It would work better with twenty counter clockwise, fifteen clockwise.” He has the face on, the one Adam hates. The one that says that Ronan doesn’t give a fuck what Adam does. The one that says nothing matters. The one that Adam, all of eleven and barely over four feet tall, had punched his first year. He’d nearly broken his thumb and he’d landed himself in his third detention that week. It had been a defining moment for him.

Just as nonchalant, he changes the direction he intended to stir. The absolute worst thing about potions is that Ronan is undeniably better than him. Adam wasn’t bad, but he would never have the kind of connection with it that Ronan seemed to. It drives Adam insane, because Ronan didn’t even seem to care.

Adam steals a glance over at the table next to them. He’s pretty sure that Blue was only taking potions because Gansey was, but he wasn’t stupid enough to say it to her. He knew for a fact that was the only reason that Ronan was taking it, but neither Blue or Ronan would appreciate him pointing it out. With his best friends each in a different house, they had very few shared classes.

Somehow, even though Blue’s elbow is in Gansey’s stomach when he looks over, their potion is already wafting sweet smelling smoke, which curls up slow and mesmerising. He gets an elbow to the stomach himself for his troubles.

“You’re on thirteen,” Ronan tells him, and Adam can’t help but notice that his face is flushed. Adam feels a little flushed himself. The smell of the potion is heady, even unfinished. He wants to stop stirring and breathe in. He wants to stop stirring and let it ruin, because he doesn’t want what it will tell him.

“Amortentia,” the Professor says, walking around and glancing into the cauldrons in turn. Adam takes a terrible satisfaction at the way the Professor makes a face when he passes the two Slytherins who Adam shares a room with. “The most powerful love potion in the world.”

He said all this already, at the start of class. He likes the sound of his own voice more than he will ever like teaching.

“Clockwise,” Ronan leans in close enough that Adam can almost feel Ronan’s breath on his ear, and he bites his lip to stop from shivering. Adam obediently changes directions. He fights the urge to relax, to press into the solid heat of Ronan at his back. He doesn’t want that. (That’s a lie.)

“If you’ve brewed it correctly, you should already be feeling some of the mild side effects of the scent,” the Professor says, and Adam straightens to fast that his neck feels almost cold. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Blue jerk in the same way. He wants to exchange a look with her, a moment of shared camaraderie. He could use some of her sensibility at the moment.

Having apparently sensed weakness, the Professor is at his side before Adam has even made one full stir. He says something, just low enough that Adam is starting to think he’s being fucked with. The Professor is head of Slytherin and he looks Adam with the same sort of disdain that the rest of the house regards him with. Adam, the muggleborn. Adam, the mudblood. Adam, the miracle of circumstances, a mistake in snake’s clothing. He tightens his hand on his stirring rod.

Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. He stops stirring. “I’m sorry, Professor, I didn’t catch that.”

The professor glances into the potion. It’s perfect, a light and shimmering gold that makes Adam want to reach in and drink with his bare hands. The ripples seem to form into the shape of hearts.

“Excellent job, Mr. Parrish, Mr. Lynch.”

Ronan bares his teeth in his shark grin and Adam has to duck his head to hide a smile. Across the aisle, Gansey gives him a cheesy thumbs up and Blue rolls her eyes theatrically.

Adam turns back to the potion, just in time to miss the Professor’s next words. Ronan leans in, too close again. “He says that we should all bottle two samples and bring them up. Be careful not to splash it.”

In truth, Adam almost misses the words again, but he can’t blame his hearing for this one. He wants to blame the cloying, too tempting smell of the finished Amortentia, but he knows that the feel of Ronan’s lips almost on the shell of his ear would distract him in any class.

Adam always means to stand on the other side of the desk, with his good ear on the outside. All the better to hear you with, he thinks sardonically. But somehow, each class starts and suddenly Ronan is on his good side. Whether it’s that Ronan always nudges him over with hip and book bag and sharp smile, or that Adam shifts to give him the space, Adam is never sure. (Lie.)

He turns his head and is abruptly closer to Ronan than he intended to be. Their noses almost touch. There is a moment, a pause of plausible deniability when they should both pull back and they both do no such thing. Then the sound of breaking glass makes Adam pull back, so fast he almost upsets their potion.

Blue is standing over her own potion, and there is Amortentia splashed onto the floor and seeping over the top of Gansey’s stupid, stupid shoes. Blue’s eyes are wide over her hands, clasped tight over her mouth.

The truly terrible part is the way that Gansey is suddenly looking at Blue. It’s not his normal look of affection for her, the kind of deep and soul-rending devotion that is hard to look at the best of times. This is so much worse. It’s slavish, mindless. There is nothing of Gansey in it, as if someone scooped all his personality out and put in nothing but love. No, not love. This is something else, something wrong.

Suddenly, the potion smells overwhelmming, cloying, the sweet smell of the potion, the scent of fresh ink and pine trees and something he can’t identify (lie, lie, lie.)

“Blue,” Gansey breathes, and it’s like no one else has ever said that word before, because no one has ever said it like that. He reaches out for her, like reaching for an embrace, and Blue scrambles back so fast she slams into Adam. He barely manages to steady her without going over himself, and he can feel Ronan at his back, steadying.

The Professor is watching them all, like a fascinating project. Like bugs under a microscope.

“Do something!” Ronan snaps at him. Adam puts Blue back on her feet and vanishes to remains of the potion. It’s all he can do.

“Blue, you are so beautiful,” Gansey says. The words are right, all things that Gansey would say, but the tone is wrong. “Blue.” He steps forward, and Blue steps back, moves behind Adam.

“You can’t let him kiss me,” she says, and presses her face into the back of Adam’s sweater. He’s never seen her like this, not in that fateful detention shared by the four of them, not in their many trips to the Forbidden Forest. Monsters, spells, bullies, they mean nothing to Blue Sargent. But a boy she loves, who loves her back. That could be her undoing. Adam knows the feeling.

“Where is the antidote?” he snaps at the Professor. For the first time, the man looks uncertain.

“I have not-”

“You had us prepare an illegal potion without having an antidote prepared?” The words feel torn out of him, but Adam is suddenly seeing red. He hates seeing Blue like this, scared and small. He hates seeing Gansey like this, mindless and out of control.

“Get out!” Ronan roars at the other students. “This isn’t your freak show!”

They scatter, the door to the dungeon classroom swinging closed in their wake. They are all whispering, and this will be all over the school by lunch. Adam can’t make himself care.

“Is there any antidote in the Hospital Wing?” Blue presses the words between his shoulder blades, keeping him between her and Gansey. Between her and the threat of Gansey’s lips, Adam thinks and wants to laugh. But nothing about this is funny.

Adam shakes his head. “Amortentia is illegal.” He looks to Ronan. “Can you make an antidote?”

Ronan is still trying to keep Gansey back without hurting him. “Get Blue out of here. It’s making it worse.”

“What about a bezoar?” Adam asks. It’s his favorite thing he’s learned in potions, something he pressed into his memory the very first week. When he failed to remember why eye of newt made potions more acidic and what long term effects that would have on a potion stored at room temperature, he knew that he would always remember the universal antidote.

Ronan gives him an incredulous look and Gansey dives forward. Blue gives a very unBlue-like shriek and knees him in the balls. Adam winces, watching him curl up on the floor, still trying to crawl closer to Blue.

“You want to use a very rare and powerful antidote to cure a love potion? Those are for life and death situations.”

“This is life and death!” Blue yells, climbing onto the top of the potions table. Her face is pale and her hands are shaking and their potions professor is still standing there like this is the best thing he’s seen all week.

“What the fuck, Sargent?” Ronan demands. “It’s embarrassing, sure, but I can have an antidote ready in like, three hours. Tops.”

“That’s not soon enough,” Blue says. “If he kisses me-” she cuts herself off. Sometimes Adam feels like love is a matter of life and death, but here, now, that feels meaningless. Watching his best friend shake herself to pieces because Gansey is too lost to know not to kiss her. Adam has it easy.

“Ronan,” he says. Not Lynch. Not for this. “Please.”

The look Ronan gives him is thoughtful and a little sad in a way that feels so unfamiliar. Then Ronan spins on the professor, has a hand in his collar before Adam can blink.

“Where is the fucking beazor?”

Someone should stop him, Adam thinks. Gansey should stop him. Gansey can’t stop him.

“In my case,” the Professor coughs it out and Ronan drops him.

“Blue, please. I love you. I need you.” Gansey is getting back to his feet. Adam is so going to hate himself for this tomorrow, but he pulls out his wand.

“Petrificus totalus!” Blue gets there first. Her face is still pale, but her hands are still.

Gansey falls with a cry. It hurts to look at him like this, lost and out of control. Adam thought of love potions as fun, or funny. A joke. How absurd, that they were illegal. Illegal doesn’t seem like enough now. The knowledge of how to create them should be struck out of existence.

“Good thinking,” Adam says. “I was going to stun him.”

“He needs to be awake. For the antidote.” Blue tugs her tie free, red and gold falling loose around her neck.

“Right.” He feels slow and useless and stupid.

Ronan is going to the Professor’s case, and Adam suspects that he would throwing things left and right if most of the things in there didn’t have the potential to explode.

When he comes back, he doesn’t hesitate to shove the entire thing directly down Gansey’s throat. Gansey jerks and twists. He makes a terrible retching noise, but Ronan doesn’t relent. Blue turns away. Adam takes her hand. With her still on the table, he has to reach up, and it’s a novel experience. Blue’s hands are cold.

Slowly, heartbeat by heartbeat, the life comes back into Gansey’s eyes. “Wha?” He blinks, dazed and confused. “What happened?”

“Amortentia.” Blue says shortly, and her eyes are very large. Gansey twist to look up at her, and Ronan backs off.

“Oh. Oh, Blue.” Now Gansey sounds like Gansey, but some of the affection, the devotion is still in his voice. He never calls her Blue. Except, apparently, at times like this. Adam wishes he didn’t know that. “I am so sorry.”

“It was my fault,” she says, and her voice is shaking now. Adam suspects he knows what happened. He suspects they were both to blame. He knows enough about the startle of fingers meeting, the spark and connection. And Blue and Gansey are all careful lines and drawn barriers. Fingers slipping isn’t out of the question. (Last week, Ronan passed Adam is coffee mug and their touches lingered too long. Only magic had gotten the coffee out of his shirt.)

“May I get up?”

With anyone else, Adam would think is was sarcasm, or feigned courtesy. Gansey means it. May I. Not just for her to lift her body bind, but to be comfortable with him standing. With him being close.

Shakily, she lets him free. Adam feels utterly invisible as Gansey slowly stands, raises his arms. Adam lets Blue’s hands drop and steps away. Gansey lifts her from the table, as if she weighs nothing. He lets her down like he can barely stand to do so, and they both press too close. He looks away, and Ronan is looking at him. It feels like a sudden jolt, and his eyes jerk back to Gansey and Blue out of pure reflex. (The same reflex that says don’t look, don’t get caught, don’t touch, don’t linger.)

Gansey and Blue have their cheeks pressed together, hands wound into one another’s hair. It should look stupid. It looks raw and painful and too intimate.

“Let’s get out of here,” Adam says to Ronan. He passes his own perfect potion as he reaches for him, and this time, the scent of Ronan, it’s always been Ronan, is almost overwhelming. He closes his eyes for a brief moment, and leaves the dungeon behind.

“Well.” The Professor straightens his robe. “Now, I don’t want to dock points-”

“Shut the hell up,” Ronan snaps, and tugs Adam away. Adam lets him, and wants to smile