Potions Class; NEWT Level, Lesson 1

Apollo had always been a fan of potions, but he had never really liked teamwork. Still, the Gryffindor had sat next to him, and he was clearly meant to work with her on the task at hand. So he pulled out his potions book, if only because he was at the back of the room and if the instructions were written, it would be easier to keep track of the list with it right in front of him. He had caught the amused laugh and two-finger salute from his twin, directed at Ducky, but didn't fully pay attention to that. Whatever the prize was, Apollo was interested.

Turning to the seventh year, he pushed the book between them so they wouldn't need to have open two copies. "Gather the ingredients first?" he suggested, hoping that, if he were lucky, their attempted partnership would be one of ease and not fighting.

If nothing else, he had given her the chance to take the lead, and that was probably going to be his best bet. Despite his willingness to be the one 'in charge,' Apollo wasn't really in the mood for a battle that day.

Frank was late. Actually, late didn’t even begin to cover it. Late was like … waltzing in five minutes after class was meant to start and apologising meekly, not really meaning it, and taking a seat with a friend. This was half-baked and stupid – that was how late he was. If he got much later, he might as well have not turned up. He’d missed the introduction, he had no idea what he was supposed to do and he was barely dressed but he half threw himself down the stairs from the Gryffindor tower and burst into the dungeons, exclaiming his apologies.

A Ravenclaw down the front, the Malfoy – he blanched at the sight of her – glared at him and he took a hesitant breath, trying to compose himself. Frank dropped his arms down from the door frame where he’d managed to catch himself having burst in and he picked up the bag he’d lost in the process, swinging it forlornly onto his shoulder. He pushed up the front of his hair, anxiety showing in his cheeks. Already it was flyaway and useless. It couldn’t get much worse. His shirt was untucked, his tie was loose. Merlin, he was a nightmare.

The problem now, though, was that Frank didn’t know which table was worse – the one with the irate Malfoy, the grinning Duck and one of the Zabini twins or Lily Potter, the other twin and someone who he didn’t recognise but immediately registered a certain level of attraction towards. That last bit he buried – in a trunk, in a trunk, in a trunk, in a box, in a trunk. At least he knew Lily. Mind, he knew Ducky, too, but he didn’t want to get into that cauldron. He would’ve rather fallen off of his broom than be within the vicinity of the Malfoy when she finally lost her rag with him.

So, the Longbottom ambled gracelessly over to Lily’s table. It was a better call, he decided.

Frank took a place on the corner, putting his bag down ashamedly. He pulled off his outer robes and dropped them on the back of his chair, absent-mindedly putting his shirt in his trousers as he read the board. None of it really made sense. But then again, Frank didn’t really understand Potions. He felt as though he was a damn sight better than his father had been, though. At least he could make a potion. This, though, he couldn’t make head nor tail of. He sufficed with getting out his kit. Now, he couldn’t muck that up.

Ducky loved knowing he had an effect on people, regardless of whether or not this effect was positive or negative. Sometimes, the negative was even better because it was more evident and more entertaining. He didn't think Malfoy had much reason to dislike him so much - he had only ever flirted with her, poorly, and been a ruffian. Hardly enough reason to hate someone.

Still, she had been trained to be polite, so she could not be too mean to him. And this was what he was banking on, because there was no way he could get this right. She offered to work together and a smile unfurled on his face. "Right-o, madam. Away I go!"

He opened the vial of flour and overturned all of it on the pestle and mortar, causing a puff of powder to fill the air.

It seemed Lily was a popular girl, despite being the reigning pariah of Hogwarts. A Ravenclaw she knew as Vinewood took the empty seat to her left, and soon Frank was taking up the last empty seat at her table on the other side of the Vinewood boy. She glanced at them, offering the smallest of grimaces towards the Longbottom boy, the boy she had grown up with and then lost contact with as soon as they had attended school and been forced into different social realms.

Golly, school was great.

The Zabini twin, she was pretty sure it was Apollo, pulled out his book and she nodded at his suggestion. She pulled out her potions kit, which was always stocked to the fullest - mostly as preventive measures for the full moon, but because she actually liked Potions too. And she was good at it. Casey had often claimed that Lily could do any potion backwards. It was an exaggeration, of course, but she could probably do this one backwards - good thing considered that's what she was going to be doing.

Still, she was not much of a talker. So, as she began to set out the ingredients, she said, crisp and to the point, "Get the cauldron ready."

Smoke was already engulfing the potions classroom as the students began their attempt at the potion. The draught of living death was not an easy potion to make, and its antidote even more difficult. So Vincent doubted that he would have to part with the potion he promised as a prize.

“I will be coming around to you one by one and asking you a question, to test your competency, or lack thereof, in this subject. Continue to work on your antidotes until I come to you,” Vincent announced, after some time had passed. Doing this, he found, was a good way of identifying the skills and knowledge of each student. Other teachers would probably not focus so much on each individual student, but Vincent thought it was important. Children were quite easy to use and manipulate, and the brilliant minds among them would be useful one day, the less brilliant would not be worth the effort. This would allow him to identify who would be worth keeping a good student-professor relationship with.

Vincent started with the pair closest to the front, Isadora Malfoy and Ducky Baker. He had noticed Isadora had been hanging on to every word, and seemed to have been one of the few who had actually understood the concept. The boy next to her clearly hadn’t. He was a good looking student, and from what Vincent could tell, a popular one too. He already disliked him. “Miss Malfoy, if it so happens that your friends pumpkin juice is spiked with poison instead of the Draught of Living Death, what would be the quickest, and easiest, way to cure him?” (Hint! Sixth book!)

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This just gives me something to do!
Good job so far, keep it up.

Was an Azakaban sentence worth brutally injuring Ducky Baker? Isadora was in dire need of rethinking her priorities because she was half-considering it, especially when the puff of powder began to rise around them. She closed her eyes, begging herself to keep her cool. She didn’t want to point out that she’d been looking after that asphodel in order to transplant it and its brothers into her plot in the Herbology greenhouses. Thankfully she still had the others but she attached a certain amount of worth to it and she was reluctant to watch him squander any of the ingredients.

Deciding to ignore him and deal with the beans, Isadora removed the vial from her kit and took her knife out from the pocket of the case. She unsheathed it, letting her finger travel down the blade briefly, recalling that this was the one she had thrown at Alexander. She opened up her book again and looked at her notes carefully. She then took a pair of tweezers. She held the clasps at either end of the bean she had put on her board and tightened the tweezers around it, keeping it in place. She then cut a line with the knife point deeply into the flesh of the bean, watching as the juice began to ooze out.

She caught it with a small dish and then disposed of the bean, setting the dish down on the side. She set down her knife and returned to her book, about to move on to get herself a sloth brain from the store cupboard when the professor came over to the table. She found herself being addressed and for a second Isadora was star-struck. She gathered herself, schooling her features to chase away any surprise and discontent that she felt within her.

What would cure a poison? She half hated him because he didn’t specify but that meant that he was looking for a generic answer. So, what cured most poisons? She felt herself lift a little bit as confidence flashed through her, though she tried to temper it so that it didn’t show on her face.

“A bezoar, professor,” she replied somewhat hesitantly before asking, “but what if it isn’t a common poison? Would the appropriate course of action still be to administer the bezoar?”

Vincent was surprised and, he had to admit, a little bit annoyed. The Malfoy girl had not only answered correctly, but had also pointed out the flaw in his question. However, Vincent was more impressed than anything else, and the expression he wore as he looked down at her was one of appreciation. “Correct,” he said slowly. “And yes, a bezoar can only be used for common poisons. More complex poisons require equally complex antidotes. Some poisons can be made such as they have virtually no antidote… In any case, you would have to identify what poison your friend had swallowed, and then you would have to find or brew its antidote, by which point your friend would almost certainly be dead. So unless it’s a slow acting poison, yes, a bezoar would almost always be the appropriate course of action...”

“Five points for Ravenclaw,” Vincent added, as he turned towards Ducky Baker. From looking at his potion, Vincent could tell that the boy seemed to have been taking tips from Isadora. “Well Mr Baker, tell me, what is the world’s most powerful Love Potion?” Vincent asked, not looking at Baker but at the student at the table behind him, who’s cauldron had just melted.

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Oh her surname's not Malfoy, it's Nott! My mistake, kind of odd imagining married 15 year olds.

He must have been doing it right, despite all of the excess powder hanging in the air, because Isadora had not snatched it away from him and given him an even more menial, arbitrary task. Unless, of course, she had given him the easiest job and he was screwing that up. Which, knowing him, was a completely valid point. It was very likely that this was the issue.

The professor approached and Ducky looked up, nearly dropping everything. He managed to hang on and gave a winning smile, rubbing powder into the mortar and pestle as the professor asked Isadora a question. Woo - better her than him.

Sh answered correctly and he mouthed "yeah!" at her, happy for his partner. But then the professor was looking at him.

Oh, shit. He knew this... He... could not remember the name.

Ducky grinned. "Easy. It's this." He indicated himself, shaking his hips a bit. The grin smoothed out and he said. "Nah, I'm just teasin'. Love potion? That'd be really strong, authentic Russian vodka, wouldn't it?"

He wasn't even joking. He figured that answer could work.

((new charrie, let's pretend she was on time))

It seemed Jenna was one of the few people who felt confident enough to brew the antidote without Lily Potter's help. She supposed it made sense to the masses; Lily already had an extra year's worth of study up on everyone else, but a moment's more thought would also suggest that she was probably repeating because she'd failed abysmally in that study.

At least the crowd around the Gryffindor would prevent anyone from bothering Jenna.

As usual, the professor had spent an overly long time explaining a relatively simple concept, mostly by using different words to say the same thing several times. Jenna never understood why professors did that, but it had given her time to familiarise herself with the ingredients of the Draught. Galpalott’s First Law was something she had been familiar with since she was eight. She was the daughter of a healer, after all.

She half-filled her cauldron with water for the potion's base and listened to the pop quiz the professor was conducting, doubtless to disrupt everyone's concentration.