Absolutely everything.
"I think I'll just go see how well this shampoo does," he said, hiding his smile as he headed toward the bedroom.
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Once he was alone in the bathroom, the door securely closed behind him, he sat down on the loo and tilted the bottle back and forth, watching as the amber liquid inside slowly flowed from one side to another. So far, so good. The stuff looked like shampoo, just as he'd specified in his order letter. When he pulled the stopper out of the bottle and gave the contents a good sniff, it smelled soapy, too. To the casual observer, the potion would appear to be fancy shampoo, just as he'd intended.
But of course, the scent was coming from a spell, not from the potion itself. Draco didn't know if the colour and the viscosity were equally artificial, but he didn't care. All that mattered was that his directions had been followed. To the letter.
So far it seemed like he'd got exactly what he'd ordered, but Draco didn't count that for much. You couldn't be too careful when dealing with the likes of the Weasley twins. Their products had a habit of containing surprises, and not always benign ones.
On the other hand, they were businessmen these days, and the vault draft Draco had sent with his letter had been very generous, indeed. Not to mention the Galleons he'd included as an additional incentive. I'd appreciate it if the requested potion included only the qualities specified, he'd written. These few coins shall serve as a partial payment-in-advance to that end. Deal well with me, and I assure you, I shall deal well with you.
For all Draco knew, though, this was nothing but shampoo. Well, one way to find out if he'd got what he'd paid for. Fishing in the box, Draco drew out a slip of parchment and scanned it. For the most part, it looked like a bill of sale. For moisturizing shampoo, provided by a French wizarding firm doing business in Wales, but there at the bottom of the slip was an additional note.
Instructions for use: one drop to restore each day of damage.
Draco would have preferred the directions to be clearer, but given that they had to look like they were intended for shampoo, he supposed that Fred and George had done the best they could. He took them to mean take one drop for each day older you would like to be. That made sense; he'd explained in his letter that he didn't even need to be months or years older. He just needed enough potion to put him over the age of seventeen.
Normally, of course, an aging potion wouldn't be of any use at all to someone in his position. The Ministry monitoring spells couldn't be fooled by such simple means. But Draco's life in the past year had been anything but simple. The wand he was accustomed to using, these days, wasn't one he'd started using when he was young. It had belonged for years and years to someone old enough to be Severus' grandfather. And then it had belonged, unregistered, to Severus.
True, that same wand had been recently registered to Draco, but that didn't mean much. This particular wand had spent most of its existence with other owners. It didn't know Draco well at all. Draco could tell that much, every time he cast a spell.
Of course, if he were eleven trying to masquerade as seventeen, the wand would realise that something was drastically wrong. But it wouldn't notice if Draco suddenly aged three or four weeks.
It was used to older owners, after all.
He couldn't have played this trick with a wand he'd used for years, and it wouldn't have worked on a brand-new wand, either. But circumstances had aligned themselves in his favour, for once. He had in his possession just the sort of wand that this potion could work to fool. One that had been owned before. One that longed for its other owners, actually. One that would be glad to be out of the hands of an underage wizard.
Draco mentally reviewed the calendar and decided that twenty-eight drops should do it. Four complete weeks. It was more than he needed by a few days, but that was all right. He'd take a little too much, just to be safe.
He began to wave his wand to conjure a clean tumbler, but realised just in time that Severus might somehow notice the surge of magic, and wonder over it. That wouldn't do. He wasn't going to have to answer questions about what he was up to. Not that Severus would probably inquire. Draco wasn't going to take the chance.
Draco rinsed out the glass that Harry kept by the sink--so Mugglish to reuse the same one, over and over, but would Harry listen? Of course not. No matter, not now. Draco carefully dripped twenty-eight drops into the glass, counting out loud to make sure he didn't lose track, and then with a silent plea to Merlin, upended the glass and let the potion slide into his mouth and down his throat.
It didn't leave a trace behind, but Draco rinsed the glass out afterwards, anyway.
Then he looked at himself in the mirror. No difference in his appearance, really, but there shouldn't be, not if he'd only aged a month. He didn't even feel different, but he should, surely? Well, there was a low tingle of magic in his belly; the potion was evidently doing something. But what?
He had a sudden, horrifying premonition that he might be about to sprout antlers or some such nonsense. And if he did, those twins would rue the day . . .
But no, nothing strange appeared to be happening.
Which wasn't to say that he was now permanently a month older. There was no way to tell if he was or not, save brandishing a spell outside the wards and waiting to see if doom descended in the form of a warning letter from the Ministry, or in his case, more likely, Aurors come to drag him in to face justice.
No way to tell . . .
Or was there?
His birth date was written on his adoption certificate, wasn't it? Draco hadn't paid it much mind at the time; he'd been too worried about Harry's reaction to his Draco's new surname. He was almost certain, though, that the date had been included somewhere on it.
When he went out to the bedroom, Harry wasn't in there. Moving quickly, Draco fetched his copy from the drawer where he kept it.
He held his breath as he unrolled it. Good thing. When he saw what the certificate said now, he could have whooped for joy, undignified as that would be. Draco Snape, the certificate said in large letters, but the line below, written in a smaller hand, had changed: a minor child born the 8th of July . . .
The year hadn't changed, of course, but his birthday had been moved back exactly twenty-eight days. He was more than old enough to do magic unsupervised from now on. In fact, he was now older than Harry!
Permanently.
Which was as it should be. This wasn't a case of only needing to be older for the few seconds it took to cross an age line, after all. Draco needed his wand to recognise him as older all through the magic show he intended to perform for Rhiannon. And since he'd be able to explain everything to Rhiannon directly afterwards--just as soon as she realised she was in truth a witch--he needed his wand to continue to think of him as over seventeen. He wanted to teach Rhiannon to do the magic she'd always longed for, and for that, he had to be able to demonstrate spells, right?
Spells he wouldn't have to pretend were part of some ludicrous magic "act."
Draco grinned just thinking of it. Who would have thought he'd ever be beholden to a Weasley for anything? And now he was beholden to two of them.
Right up until the moment when he'd looked at his adoption certificate, Draco hadn't been sure that the twins could do as he'd asked. It wasn't as though their own foray into aging potions had gone so well, was it? But they'd been students then, and trying to defeat an age line drawn by Albus Dumbledore himself. No great wonder they hadn't been up to the task.