–– Clara POV ––
As the deal with Lupin did not work out in the slightest, I had no access to his mastery class, though that was probably a blessing in disguise, as it started daily at three AM. Slavedriver was the nicest insult I had heard last year.
All aside, I did the same boring routine since a few months now and was elated, that we finally did something new in Lupin's class. Martial arts, more like the principles behind them and before the lesson even ended, my previous enthusiasm was already lost, most already imprinted into my very instincts, only the muscles and flexibility missing to execute them, at which I worked since at least eight months. And so, I tested out of Lupin's class, though Lupin did not seem overly happy about it and threw me dozens of inquisitive looks over the next months, surprised by my knowledge of martial arts if you ask me. Necessity is a good teacher I guess, not to forget ample time.
My current daily routine, well almost, was a mix around stretches, rotating on a day to day basis, to martial art stances and basic stuff like sit-ups, planks, jumping jacks, pushups and more. The current problem was, that these exercises did no longer yield satisfying results, diminishing the stronger I got. I was not yet on Lupins level, probably will not be for a while, but I also did not want to stagnate. My solution to this was enchantments to weight down my clothes, together with a gravity ward, amplifying gravity, air resistance, pressure, oxygen intake and more to the absolute limit my body could handle while still being able to move and not bottoming out my mana reserves in seconds, as I currently needed to power them with my own mana, which meant a lot of complex arithmetic calculations.
I added the resulting wardstone to my staff, activating it after getting ready, near instantly regretting it. But I held on. It was not pleasant, Mr. second skin not helping that fact, as he joined in with his own simulated sensation of gravity multiplying, though it was still not the real thing. I would probably regret doing this, but I decided to not deactivate the ward, except under dire circumstances or if I fall unconscious, safe guards implemented for everything I could think of, which was not a lot. I could still turn it off at any moment, but it was good training to resist temptation.
It malfunctioned multiple times over the next few weeks, each time getting either repaired or replaced with a hopefully better version. And Luna joined me in my suffering, though at a lesser intensity for now, as she is not as durable as me, both physically and mentally.
Nothing else really happened. The whole mastery potions class tested out of normal potion on Slughorn's insistence. What followed were grueling hours of brewing most days, the duration of the mastery classes being increased by up to five hours, though were was no attendance policy anymore, as Slughorn said, that we were already good enough to try most things alone. We now had one lesson with attendance requirement, Slughorn explaining the goal of the week and anything else we might need to now for the week. He also readily answered any questions asked. For the fresh batch, who joined this year, this obviously did not apply.
Harry Potter had taken a mastery test over the summer, succeeding though out of some reason no one bugged him about it, only murmurs flitting through the hallways. Right, Mr. Black was a scary deterrent I heard
My proficiency continued to accumulate, with a much slower speed than before though. I abused the heck out of the new allowance to use the mastery potions room whenever I wanted, trying my hand at multiple potions who needed days to manufacture, leaving the experimenting part to shorter potions, most needing only one hour to brew, through which I had perfected the previous freebrewing potion, having found a ratio to pill perfection, now being able to create ten perfectly working pills in one brewing process, publishing it with Slughorn's help. There were naturally already thousands of potions with a similar effect, but it would not do to just forget it after the work and heart that I put into it.
I also tried myself at „stocks" for the first time, pre brewing things like honey water. Stock means, that I basically finished a recipe as far as possible for the unfinished product to be stable, making as much as possible per single brewing process and then bottling it, s I can use this to test multiple theories at once without needing to brew the whole potion from the very start again. It naturally did not work with all potions, quite the contrary, most potions being unable to be brewed this way, freeing up a bit more time to experiment instead of brew. Especially to see the reaction between different ingredients at differing stages of the potion it is very helpful, having the exact same stock, basis of the potion to work from.
Stocks were in the end just a side project, but they inspired another idea of mine. Not really my idea, but that I should try it. Changing a potion in a way, so that brewing stock is possible and saves a lot of time. Some days Slughorn needed to physically drag me out of the potion mastery room, not having left it in over seventy two hours. It was all worth it in the end though. Well for me and out of a learning experience point. I restarted all the way at cure to boils, using Harry's enhanced recipe, with his permission of course. And then I tried, tried and tried, modifying the steps slowly. I started at the first, slowly working myself up from there.
Getting the first one stable was the hardest, but I did it after some time. Then I tried to build up from that step, until I realized, that that was the wrong approach, as the second step would disrupt everything I had worked for.
In the end I now had a compendium of nine recipes for the cure of boils potion, all building up to their respective step, most without too many changes, mostly just needing a bit more care, specific brewing techniques and minimal longer waiting times. Instead of brewing the recipe one hundred times to any specific point, you could just brew one of my new recipes and do it in less time and even minimal less ingredients. Only ranging in the milligrams range but it was still something.
Slughorn for once was not enthusiastic about my project, thinking it a waste of time. He was wrong, as I learned unbelievable much through this, mainly concerning the balance of potions. Together with all my senses, I could now vaguely pinpoint if a brew is stable or unstable, though I would still need to polish my understanding by a lot for it to be viable. Of course, I published it, though without Slughorn's help, so it would need a bit to be approved if no mistakes were found.
Afterwards I went back to more normal thematics, sometimes trying out an idea for a stock if I stumbled upon it. I found a lot, most already published by someone, only a rare few not published yet. I decided to just add them into a new book specifically bought for that, slowly accumulating them before publishing them in one fell swoop, as they were not that revolutionary.
And then, sometime in November I had a crazy, ridiculous idea. Mixing different brews, treating them as separate ingredients. It worked, somewhat at least. Nothing exploded in my first few tries, I later learned I was lucky, but the effects were unpredictable. But I fixated on it, pouring more and more time into it, even testing out of all my remaining classes in a mad dash, though only for the rest of this term.
At some point Slughorn even gave Harry Potter, who was even crazier with his experiments than me, only stopped by other lessons, and me our own laboratories, though absolutely rigged with alarm and monitoring wards. And I slowly got even better. My understanding of potions deepening to a fascinating degree, my mind already knowing some outcomes before I even tried it. Getting better at making stocks and finding new ones, even overhauling my first few, improving them by a relatively large margin, though this still meant being in the seconds and milligram range, my compendium slowly filling up, until the need for a second book snapped me out of my brewing craze, having filled a book with thousands of pages with hundreds of stock recipes, some only differing in small details. It was a compendium of my progress, so I kept it securely stored away, before starting another book.
But I lost my goal somewhere in between, having no success on that front at all. So I tried again, went back to the cure of boils, which I could brew in my sleep. I tried and tried, until I botched something, using the wrong amount of water due to sleepiness, though it turned out remarkably. I separated the first and second step, brewing both steps as single new steps with half the water, before mixing them again. And it worked. Shaky, still ending in failure, as the potion showed side effects, but it worked. My first step into the right direction. But then I hit a roadblock, until I finally ignored my misplaced pride and asked Slughorn, who did not appreciate me meddling with compartmentalized potions so soon, though he could not deny the overall progress I had made through that, still being the second best brewer in his mastery class.
And that is how my third year finished. No fanfare, nothing grand, only normal school life, the only change being a NEWT grade dueling mastery class taught by Mad-Eye for this one year, as he had an eye on some of the graduating students who wanted to become hit wizards and aurors.
The only real thing I did apart from potions, was teaching my mastery class and fitness. I choose not to take in anyone else, setting the future standard to at least third grade with a requirement on occlumency progress, as all four of them were sorely lacking occlumency right now, not being able to advance their legilimency any more, together with a few other guidelines written for Henry, so he could take over for me next year. It was fun, but I was not cut out for teaching currently, having too little time. And too high standards.
I approached them, offering to teach them something else and they agreed, though their enthusiasm died pretty fast, as I went into passive legilimency sensing, which was headache inducing in this castle for anyone untrained.
I also taught them how to read body language and sign language for good measure and because I was bored, sending anything they would need to know as a sorted and filtered memory package. They could not speak it fluently yet, but they could understand it pretty good, which was enough.
Another part was mental health basics, which could help with both legilimency and occlumency, though their enthusiasm was questionable at best for that.
And then they practiced and practiced, though I left them to their own devices at some point near the end of the year.
For the last and disbanding lesson of my mastery class I had planned something special. So, international portkey in hand, I waited until Hermione, Daphne, Luna and Draco arrived, telling them to hold on, activating it promptly. The goal? The guild of mind arts in MACUSA. Once there, I just said: „For each one door, good luck", before practically pushing them into the doors. Not even twelve hours later, Hogwarts had four new masters of the mind arts, all thoroughly perplexed and certainly not amused. I had already cleared my room of everything, so after we had come back, I called for one last meeting: „So, it was nice teaching all of you. Next years mastery class will be taught by Henry, though you will not need to attend, but he lets me send his congratulations and his invitation if you are still interested. I did get you presents though, to commemorate your successful passing of the mastery certification", I said with a wide grin, before giving each of them pink earmuffs to wear, this time taking a merry little moving photograph. Afterwards, after a bit of muffled thanks and a little bit of not teary eyes, we all left the room, the castle rearranging itself, my room vanishing. I was skipping ahead, before I dropped one big last bombshell, having held back for seven months: „Draco, Luna is your soulmate. Bye!", I said, running away, leaving a gaping Draco Malfoy and a beet red Luna Lovegood behind, the other two taking to their heels shortly after.
Luna had at some point in time learned to sense it, her being the only one having her passive legilimency sensing always activated. She confided in me, asking what: „That strange purple connection", meant, after which I had a very exhausting talk with her, leaving her beet red in the end.
Her cultivation had advanced to common breathing, still consolidating her rank currently, while mine had regrettably stayed at common entry, barely making any progress at all.