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Language:
English
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Published:
2024-12-19
Completed:
2025-09-13
Words:
331,260
Chapters:
81/81
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6,875
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A Snake in the Apothecary

Summary:

Harry Potter has always been different, and his strange connection to plants marks him as the freak his Aunt and Uncle always claimed he was. The wizarding world was supposed to be an escape, but even there, he must hide the truth of his abilities. His magic doesn’t fit the rules, and secrets have a way of growing wild.

(If only there was someone who understood...)

 
A re-telling of the books in which Harry has more than one power the Dark Lord knows not.

Notes:

Hello! Thank you for reading! Welcome to what happens when I indulge my love for good smells and questionable morality.

This is a Tomarry fic, but Tom doesn't show up until second year. I have written the entire thing, and the chapter count is accurate, things just need some minor edits.

There will eventually be (skippable, if that's not your cup of tea) smut, but not until year six; the underage tag is for Harry/Tom, both of whom are 16+ at that point. This is a switch Tom/switch Harry fic, and there are some mild D/S undertones.

Note also that there will be angst and dark themes, especially in later years, but I promise a happy ending : )

TW for this chapter: Canon typical Dursley abuse.

Chapter 1: 1.1: Lavender

Chapter Text

Harry was seven years old when the box appeared.

He was in the garden on a sweltering July morning, the air pressing heavy and humid on his thin shoulders. His fingers burned from pulling weeds from the flowerbeds, but it could have been worse. He loved the smell of the sweet roses in the sun and the joy in the color of the peonies. Gardening was his favorite chore, so much better than scrubbing Dudley’s bathroom or dusting shelves he could hardly reach. Gardening was better even than cooking—though he didn’t mind that so much, either, because it smelled nice, and he enjoyed mixing and cutting, and he sometimes got to eat what he made. But in the garden, he was often alone, and it was often quiet, and when the heat was not too bad, it was pleasant.

Around eleven o’clock Harry heard a door slam and sat back on the grass, looking around. The next-door neighbors had dropped a cardboard box at the curb, with a handwritten sign marked “FREE” in black sharpie.

Glancing around nervously and seeing no sign of his aunt, Harry stood and walked casually toward the box. To Harry’s delight, it was stuffed full of books, something Harry had rarely ever had access to. He could read better than anyone in his grade, but Aunt Petunia seemed to think storybooks would make him lazy and never allowed him any of his own.

Harry’s heart flew into his throat. If he could just get one to his cupboard—none of the Dursleys ever looked in the cupboard—he could read to his heart’s content.

He didn’t dare take more than one. One, he could hide under Dudley’s overlarge shirt. Two might be noticed.

But which one?

There was a book on car maintenance—no, not that one. Not the pulpy mysteries, either; he didn’t like the knives and guns on the covers. Not the book on dog training.

At the bottom of the box, he found it: Herbal Remedies, by one A. Z. Fell. It was a small book with a beautifully illustrated cover, like something out of an anatomical drawing he had seen in school, but for plants. His fingers brushed the bruise Dudley had left on his cheek just days earlier; maybe there would be something inside for bruises and sprains. Harry picked the book up reverently. The leather of the cover felt warm under his palms. This was it: the book.

Harry stuffed it under his shirt and walked slowly to the front door of the house, opening it silently and heading straight to his cupboard. He placed the book under his pillow and returned to the hall—only to find his aunt lying in wait. She stared at his grass-stained triple-cuffed jeans with such fury that Harry felt his heart stutter to a halt.

“What are you doing inside?” She snapped.

“I needed to use the bathroom,” Harry said, unable to think of anything else.

“In your cupboard? Hah! Get back outside, and if I see even one weed under the peonies, no lunch for you, boy,” she warned. “And this afternoon, you’ll be scrubbing the tile in the hall, too.”

“Yes, Aunt Petunia,” Harry said, trying to look suitably chastised as he walked back outside into the sweltering heat. Inside, his heart soared, but he didn’t dare be too optimistic yet—if he made it to dinnertime without giving away the presence of the book, he would be in the clear. Until then, he just had to pretend that nothing at all was good in the world. There were no books, and no beautiful ink-drawn flowers, no way to maybe—hopefully—make his body stop aching. None of that; the world was bleak.

Harry Potter knelt under the peonies and very carefully did not smile.

 

 

The hours ticked by like days.

His aunt gave him Dudley’s scraps for lunch, which wasn’t the worst, seeing as Dudley hated crusts, fruits, and anything green, all of which were things Harry liked. She then made him shower and scrub down the hallway, in case he had somehow gotten invisible dirt on it when he had entered the first time. By the time he was done, she set him to cooking dinner, a nice roast with rosemary and sage. Harry wondered if those herbs were in his new book. He hoped so; then he might be able to steal some.

His teachers said stealing was wrong. Harry had never done something like that before. But if stealing could help with his pain, maybe it was worth proving that he was a bad person, just like his aunt said.

When dinner was ready and the pots cleaned, Harry ate in the kitchen while the Dursleys sat at the dining table. Aunt Petunia said he was a messy eater and would get crumbs on the carpet. Harry knew full well that was a blatant lie, but he didn’t particularly like looking at the Dursleys, so he’d never complained.

The night ended as usual: he did more dishes. Uncle Vernon screamed at him and wrenched his arm a little. Harry cleaned up after Dudley spilled chocolate pudding, and Dudley kicked him. He carefully did not say anything about Dudley looking like he needed a diaper. Finally, the Dursleys settled in to watch television, and Harry was allowed to slink off to his cupboard, focusing on the pain in his shoulder and ribs to avoid smiling.

He went to the bathroom, filled his little mug with water, and prepared to read.

The book was everything he thought it would be, and more.

There were so many plants, in such brilliant colors, with such different uses: peppermint for pain and sage for a sore throat, echinacea to kill an infection and burdock for toxins. Every page was filled with detailed illustrations, preparations and guides to foraging or growing each plant. Harry drank them down eagerly, working through the context clues and the book’s convenient glossary for words like perennial that he had never seen before.

Harry had always been smart, but his intelligence had never quite had a place to go before—he’d liked school, sure, but he was always a little more concerned with not being punched or avoiding starvation than learning math. Now, however, he could picture himself mixing a potion like some kind of sorcerer, rubbing it on his aching skin and the pain vanishing like smoke. Maybe he could even fix other people, too.

Maybe he could do more than healing.

An illustration of a brilliantly purple flower caught his eye, one that he already knew on sight: lavender. There was a large bush of it in the back left corner of the Dursley’s yard.

Properties: the sweet scent of the flowers is calming and aids in sleep. Can be quite potent in large doses.

Harry grinned as he turned off the light to get some sleep. It was time for an experiment.

 

 

The next day was watering day, which Harry always enjoyed—he loved the hose, the way the water caught the sunlight and the smell of wet earth. He took his time and finished with the lavender bush, using his fingers to snap a few sprigs when he was done.

Softly, he thanked the plant for its help. The book had told him that he should always be grateful for all the work the herbs had done in growing so that he could use them, and Harry rather appreciated the sentiment. It wasn’t as if the Dursleys were grateful for all of his work. Harry resented that, and Harry certainty didn’t want the plants to resent him.

Harry didn’t know why the Dursleys treated him the way that they did. He’d never done anything odd, as far as he was aware. He supposed the cause must just be some defect in him, some malevolence that had surfaced young. But that didn’t mean that he liked it; no, even if he deserved their treatment, he still wanted out.

He hid the lavender in his pocket and went about the rest of his chores, stopping only to make himself a lunch of cold cuts and mayo from the fridge that his aunt was unlikely to miss. Dudley was out at a friend’s house, his uncle was at work, and his aunt was gossiping the day away with the same woman who had thrown out the herb book (what a fool, Harry privately thought), so it was one of the more pleasant days of his life, all told.

That was, until dinner arrived.

Harry carried mashed potatoes out to the dinner table at seven o’clock sharp. Dudley stuck out one large foot as Harry walked, and Harry—burdened by the massive bowl—was too slow to dodge. He tipped forward and the bowl smashed on the side of the table, sending potatoes and shards of glass all over Petunia’s rug.

Harry’s ears rang over the sounds of his aunt and uncle shouting as he was lifted out of the potatoes by Vernon’s massive hand. He curled in on himself, waiting for the inevitable pain—

Oh, he thought. The lavender.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out one of the sprigs, gripping it in his fist and opening his eyes. He met Vernon’s furious gaze, his ruddy face twisted into a mask of rage, and thought:

Be calm. Be calm. You will be calm.

He felt the words—his will—flow from his mind, through his heart and into the flower, wrapping around it like invisible thread. The lavender vanished in his hand like smoke, filling the room with a sweet scent.

The massive hand released him, and Vernon Dursley’s eyes rolled back into his head as he fell deeply, soundly asleep. And then he just fell—right over onto his back, his feet covered in potatoes.

A second later, two identical splats told Harry that his aunt and cousin had fallen asleep face-first into their food.

A wave of nausea rose as gilt crashed over him, but it was quickly buried in calm, heart-slowing relief. Harry barked out a startled laugh before he could stop himself, replaying the sounds in his head. Reality seemed fuzzy, blurred, as though he had somehow stepped into a dream—but the pain in his hands from the fall and the emotions warring in his chest were very real indeed.

Harry stood shaking with mirth and terror and wonder for more than a minute before he leapt into action. He cleaned up the bowl and the potatoes with a practiced hand, then pulled his aunt and cousin out of their food and wiped their faces—luckily, they stayed fully, completely asleep. Then, when the family appeared to have been having a perfectly normal—albeit potato-free—dinner, he scurried to the kitchen and started stealing herbs.

Sage.

Rosemary.

Ginger.

Peppermint.

Chamomile, from the tea Aunt Petunia had once gotten from a distant cousin and had never drank.

Finally, he made himself a plate and ate as much as he could handle. Then he did the dishes and walked off to his cupboard, listening to his family’s soft snores and feeling the veil of unreality slip away as the guilt returned to his chest. It gnawed at him by millimeters.

He was a sorcerer.

(He was a freak).

It was real.

(Was this why they had hurt him?)

 

 

The next day, Harry organized his herb stash carefully and tucked another sprig of lavender into his pocket, just in case the Dursleys were mad about what had happened the night prior. The jaws of guilt still bit at him—but he still didn’t want the pain.

He needn’t have bothered.

Dudley was asleep in his room when Harry entered the kitchen to make breakfast. Petunia was calmly sipping a cup of coffee; Vernon was at the dining table, reading the paper silently. When he came into the room, Petunia merely glanced at him and said, in a strangely glazed voice:

“Do the dishes from last night, boy.”

“Yes, aunt Petunia,” Harry said. “You all fell asleep quite early.”

“Yes,” his aunt said mechanically. “I had an odd dream—but—”

“Don’t talk about dreams,” Vernon said, sounding half inside of one himself.

So, they don’t even remember the potatoes.

Harry smiled guiltily as he did the dishes, humming tunelessly as he worked. Neither Petunia nor Vernon said a word.