[Potions] T2: Lesson I: Return to Potions

[Helia Ollivander]

Helia jumped when she heard an explosion and noticed the tower of smoke rising from a young slytherins cauldron. She shrugged. 'It will certainly be interesting to see what she's making,' she thought as she herself headed to the supply closet. There was a potion she'd been wanting to try for a while, but she wasn't sure how well it would work. She'd thought through what ingredients she'd need, but seeing as their was no recipe for it there could still be drawbacks.

She looked through the shelves, picking up a jar of lacewing flies and a few stalks of fluxweed, a daisy root, a sprig of peppermint, two scarab beetles, a cutting from a flutterby bush, a bag of pufferfish quills, a puffapod and a bottle of pomegranate juice. She set them down on her desk and looked over them curiously, "Now how am I going to start?" She bit her bottom lip, deep in thought, before grabbing hold of her little silver knife and slicing the daisy root width-wise so that the slices looked like semi-symmetrical circles. She threw these into the cauldron, along with a handful of lacewing flies, then began pondering what to do next.

[Girty Hubbles]

Girty looked around when she heard an explosion behind her and rolled her eyes. She did not know what to do. She sat down at her desk and flicked through the pages of her book and groaned. She was no good at potions. She then stumbled across one that caught her eye.
She stood up and walked over to the store cupboard getting some Sneezewort, Scurvy-grass and lovage. As she carried the back to her desk she placed them down and looked over the book on how to make a confusing and Befuddlement draft.
Girty then greated a fire and started to heat up some water in her caldron whiel she ground up the sneezewort. A sweet smell filled her nose. Maybe this was going to be fun.

[Mozess Mirari]

As the cocotion in her cauldron continued to stew she returned to the cupboard for an ashwinder egg shell, a bottle of salamander blood and some hellebore. Returning to her cauldron the liquid inside was an extremly dark navy blue. She then poured in a capful of the salamander blood, stirring the cauldron in a continuous and even clockwise motion before dropping in seven hellebore leaves and one hellebore blossom.

She pulled her ladle closer to the center of the cauldron, making much quicker strokes as the liquid turned a misty blue-green color and a thin stream of blue steam began swirling up from it. Then it was time for the final ingredient; the ashwinder shell. It's brilliant red color was dulled slightly due to the layer of frost covering it, but it was still beautiful. She crushed it in her still gloved hand and then gently shook it into the quick moving potion.

The cauldron hissed angrily and sparks began jumping inside it as the color changed once again, from turquoise to a dark silver. It wasn't exactly the outcome she had been hoping for, she had been trying for a brighter, pearly shade, but she supposed it was the erumpent fluid that tainted it. Hopefully it would still work.

[Girty Hubbles]

Girty turned around again to see what was happening with the Slytherin girl and her potion, smoke seemed to be coming from it. Girty’s caldron just had steams as the water had been boiling for so long. She put out some of the flames so a slow boil could happen as she finished turning the sneezewort into a fine powder.
After deciding it had been ground down enough she tipped it carefully into the water and watched it as the water turned a lime green. She quickly went and looked back at the book.
“Stir slowly 30 times then add the scurvy-grass petals. Hum…”

She slowly stirred the potion 30 times and picked up the white floured plant picking off its four petals and watched it float into the caldron.

[Helia Ollivander]

She looked about anxiously. The slytherin girl seemed to be finished, if not almost, with her potion and Girty was making quite a bit of headway as she continued to try and decide what to do next. She looked in at her cauldron, it hadn't changed color at all yet, the daisy root slices were just floating on top of the water, but the lacewing flies had sunk. She shrugged, Might as well make a note of it' she thought as she pulled her notebook and quick quote quill out of her book bag. She looked at the feathered pen and said, "After adding the sliced daisy root and lacewing flies the roots should float while the flies drop to the bottom of the cauldron." The pen hurried across the page writing down her words. She smiled then looked back at her ingredients. She picked up the fluxweed and pulled off three of the purple blooms, watching them fall airily into the cauldron and dance on the boiling water with the daisy roots. She stirred the cauldron three times left, and then three times right and watched as the daisy root slices sunk. She shrugged and told her quill pen the effects before pouring in a few pufferfish spines and throwing in the puffa pod which sprung to bloom on impact. She continued stirring, three times left, three times right until the micture in her cauldron finally turned a yellow color with a purple irridecence to it. The bloomed puffapod and fluxweed blooms still had not mixed with the rest of the potion, preferring to float on top of the water, swirling unusually on the liquid with each stir she made. She continued speaking to her quill, making sure it notated everythign that happened as she attempted to create this potion, including the curious nature of the floral ingredients, acting very much similar to a troupe of synchronized swimmers as it were.