I raced down the stairs and barely made it to the potions lab before class started, Marie waved me over to the empty seat next to her. "Got absorbed in your explorations again?" She had a teasing smile on her face and I was about to snark back but Slughorn entered and started his lesson. "So far we have gone over safe measures and all the basic ways to prepare ingredients. So you know that different prep methods will have different effects on the ingredients, same with using different materials to prepare them during each step of the process. During your first year we will only be going over basic potions, so the only tools you need are your pewter cauldron, an iron knife, a granite mortar and pestle, and Hazel wood stirring rod. Each tool has a specific purpose, Pewter cauldrons will extract the magic essence from each ingredient, the dregs will fall to the bottom of the cauldron while the magic will float at the top."
The entire class was paying attention but only a few were writing notes, we had already gone over this so this was more of a review than new information. "An iron knife will cut both the ingredient and the magic itself, iron has always been able to block some magic. It is the reason why magic restraining cuffs are made of iron with runes carved into them to amplify that very effect. Granite has no effect on potion ingredients, it is almost the opposite of iron and will crush the ingredient but leave the magic totally unaffected. In more advanced potions a granite knife can be used to shape magic into certain forms, but more on another time. And last but not least the hazel wood stirrer will reflect the emotions of the brewer, something that has to be taken into account not just in potions as emotions will affect every kind of magic. But today we will be making our first potion a boil cure potion, something that can clean any acne you can have and a potion you will most likely use a lot of during the next couple of years. Like many of the potions you will make during your first year, emotional fluctuations will not have a drastic effect on the quality of potion."
With a wave of his wand the recipe appeared on the board behind him, "Go to the cabinet and grab the ingredients listed. This is a simple potion so the quality of ingredients will not affect the potion too much. When everyone is back at their desks we will start." There was a rush to get ingredients so I started by taking out my tools, after taking out the smaller tools I took out a shrunken cauldron. Something the books didn't tell you was that the cauldrons had a rune carved into it that would change its size when magic was pushed into it. It had a minimum and maximum size so it was very easy to store and carry around. I placed the cauldron down and made it grow back to its original size before walking over to the cabinet, by this time the crowd had thinned out so I had no trouble grabbing what I needed. When I got back to my desk I placed the materials on the desk and waited for the rest of the class to finish getting ready.
Once everyone was ready Slughorn started, "Now the first step in any potion is setting up, if you prep all your ingredients and set them in a specific pattern then you are less likely to make a mistake. It is a good habit to get into, sometimes with more complicated potions you will rush putting one ingredient in the cauldron after another and if you have all the ingredients prepped and lined up in order beforehand." He gave us a look and his captive audience understood, so over the next ten minutes Slughorn walked us through prepping each ingredient and making sure to line them up in order. Some of the ingredients needed to be sliced in specific lengths that correspond with arithmancy, others needed to be cut into specific geometric shapes. As this was our first potion there was lots of waste and some students even had to go grab more ingredients so they could try again. There was even one ingredient that was needed twice, first time it was cut into thin 3cm long slices and the second time that same ingredient needed to be mashed by the mortar and pestle.
"Now that we are all ready let's move on, take your first ingredient and drop it in." Slughorn had a smile on his face as he watched. When I dropped my sliced slugs into the cauldron a yellow/green mist came out of the slugs and hovered around the rim of the cauldron while the slugs became desiccated and fell to the bottom of the cauldron. I stared for a moment and swiped my fingers through the mist, it swirled around my fingers and they tingled slightly, like they had fallen asleep and were in the process of waking up. I lifted my hand out of the cauldron and looked at my hand, there wasn't any residue and the tingling soon faded. "Another reason we choose this potion to make first is the non harmful effect the first ingredient has on a curious witch or wizard when they want to touch either the magic extracted or the desiccated slugs. For future reference most potions will not have such mild effects. Always be cautious near unknown magical effects."
He gave us a stern look and most of the class let out nervous giggles, meanwhile I was thinking about what kind of effects different ingredients could have. Class continued and we continued adding ingredients, while not stirring after every one we did stir quite a lot. And not always counterclockwise or clockwise, sometimes we traced shapes like triangles and even a hexagon. After we finished with the last step on the board Slughorn clapped to catch our attention "Now for the final part of brewing, capturing the potion itself. Take a vial from the rack and place the opening above the swirling mists, the vial will do the rest." The class once again rushed to the rack where the potion vials were held and grabbed one each, none of us were old enough to have acne yet so we only needed one vial so we could receive our grades. When I got back to my desk I placed the vial above my cauldron and without doing anything the mist was sucked into the vial until it was almost full. I put a cork in and looked at the few eddies left over that didn't fit in the vial, there was only enough to fill another quarter of a vial.
As I walked to the front of the classroom I looked at the now blue potion and couldn't believe I had made this. But when I reached the front of the classroom I shook my head and laid the vial in a tray for the completed potions. "Before anyone leaves we now have one final step to complete, cleaning our tools. First take a cloth from the bag hooked on the left of each desk and wipe down your knife and stirring rod, the enchantment woven into the cloth will remove all of the residue attached to your tools. Then walk to the barrel in the back of the classroom and dip your mortar, pestle and cauldron past the lip of the barrel. Make sure your mortar and cauldron are upside down when you do it or you will need to scrub the cauldrons yourselves to clean them. And trust me there is a reason that task is saved for detentions. There is enchantment that will pull the desiccated remains out of the cauldron and clean the residue from your other tools. Luckily you are only in your first year and will not be using any ingredients that will resist those enchantments, at least until your third year."
I looked at the side of my desk and noticed a small bag attached to the corner, when I reached in I wasn't terribly surprised to find it was bigger on the inside. Space expanding charms seemed to be used everywhere in the magical world. I handed a cloth to Marie and grabbed a second one for myself before I started to wipe off my own tools, "So how did you like making your first potion?" I looked over at her in surprise, "Are you saying that wasn't your first time?" She laughed, "My mom had me help with simpler potions while I was growing up." I thought about it for a moment before answering, "Even though I read the book before school started, the text didn't really get across how magical it would be. I thought it would be more like cooking." She gave me a weird look at that, "If it was like cooking then any muggle would be able to do it. Every type of magic we are going to learn has some component that requires magic in order to complete it." I gave a sigh at that, "I get that, I really do. It's just so different from what I'm used to. Definity better but I still miss ordinary sometimes." She didn't know what to say about that so we went back to cleaning our tools.
Once we finished we packed up and left the classroom, "So are you ready to explore the library some more?" I asked her as we had over two hours until our next and final class for the day. She walked ahead of me before twirling around and giving me a smile, "I wonder what we'll find today, the journey is the best part after all." She laughed and we made our way back to the maze of bookshelves. When we arrived I went through the books systematically, reading every spine to see if anything caught my attention while she fluttered around skipping from one row to the next. Some of the books I saw were more advanced than I was ready for like, The Standard Book of Spells Grade 5. Others I wasn't sure if the author was completely sane, for instance, Joffrey Hepcok wrote a book called How To Trade Cheese For a Dragon's Egg. Eventually I found a book that sounded interesting, A Menagerie of Mystical Metals and Magical Minerals. So I took it off its shelf and went to find where Marie had wandered off to.
I found her sitting on the floor curled up with a book about different ways to give life to inanimate objects. "Are you ready to get some lunch?" Her head snapped up at the sound of my voice before giving me a glare, "Don't be mad at me I didn't mean to scare you on purpose. You were just so absorbed in your book you didn't hear me walking up." She huffed and closed her book before standing, "I guess I can forgive you this time, this book was just so interesting. Did you know that even without using the animation charm you can will an object to do certain actions. It's like you can give magic instructions on what you want your spell to do a thousand years after you're gone, apparently as long as there is ambient magic the spell will stay active. The Egyptians were really good at it, that's why we have such a hard time exploring their tombs." As we walked out of the library she rattled off a few more instances where delayed magic was useful and a couple ideas on how she would use it.
As we walked out of the doors I thought about the magic they used to keep track of all the books. When I asked a few days ago the librarian told me it was built into the wards to keep track of who had what book. Useful against theft as even if you asked someone to get a book for you it would still register the person who asked for it, intent was very important with magic. Once we made our way to the Great Hall Marie stopped talking and we piled our plates with food before starting to eat. While I ate, a thought struck me. I had noticed that I ate a lot more now than when I was living in the orphanage. Now don't get me wrong we were never flush with food there, but everyone always had something to eat at every meal, even if sometimes I went to bed hungry. "Hey Marie, Do you know why I'm eating more now?" Her eyes lit up at this and I could tell I had asked a question that she was very interested to explain.
"It's a war class ward placed over Hogwarts." At her words my jaw dropped, "War class!? What could being hungry have to do with war?" She snorted at that but then blushed, "You didn't hear that." I smirked, "Only if you explain more." She grumbled but gave her answer a little more thought now that she had to buy my silence, "War class magic doesn't need to have any connection to any actual war, it's just a classification of a magic's range of effect. This particular ward is geared towards the inhabitants of Hogwarts. Magic is kind of like a muscle but if you try to push it to its limits everyday it will actually have a negative effect and limit your growth. So to combat this the founders put together a ward that would affect the food, instead of the food filling your stomachs it stretches your magical reserves before filling your stomach."
I stared in shock as I gave that some thought, the founders must have wanted the best for their students. In such dangerous times they found a way to give them the best possible conditions they could, so they could not only learn to protect themselves but also make them reach their full potential. "No one really knows how the ward works anymore due to so many of our kind dying during the dark ages but we do know that the ward turns the food into a kind of energy that stretches our reserves and then dissipates slowly so our own magic can take its place." I looked down at the food on my plate, "So I'm so hungry because not all the food I'm eating is actually going to my stomach." She nodded and took another bite, "Yup, when I came here my mom specifically told me to eat until I was full every meal, that way I could get the best out of my time here and it wouldn't make me gain any weight." She looked excited about the last part but I still couldn't get over the sheer ability the wizards and witches that came before us were capable of.
"Wait a second, does that mean the teachers and headmaster are affected by this magic as well?" She paused for a second before shrugging, "Kind of? They are affected by it, but at the same time as you age your reserves can't grow as fast as when you're a teenager. So yes they are but not nearly as much as we are." I wasn't as dismissive as she was about this, even if their reserves didn't grow as fast as ours, every little bit of growth counted and decades of this stacked together would still add a monstrous amount of magic to their own reserves. I knew then and there that someday I was going to teach here, even if it was only for a little while I wanted to see just how much it could increase my magic as well. After we finished eating we decided to go somewhere else to read as the Great Hall was too noisy. So I led Marie to the room I had found with the musical willow tree.
It turns out she loved it as much as I did and declared this was our new reading room before plopping down under the tree so she could get back to her book on animating inanimate objects. I just chuckled and shook my head, I was sure I would find other rooms that would be just as good if not better to read in over my tenure at Hogwarts. But for now it would do, so I sat down next to her and opened my own book. I was interested to see what kind of metals and minerals it contained. I was not disappointed as there were plenty of interesting things listed in the book, like a metal called Ignarite which absorbed heat and when it was placed on a slab of Icefrite the heat would slowly be expelled. Icefrite was a mineral that was only found in Jotunheim and would absorb the cold air there, they would only come together in the workshop of a master. A magical blacksmith, an Artificer, or even an Alchemist would all pay a lot of money for either of the materials.
I spent the rest of our break going through some of the other oddities contained within the book. SomeI had already heard of; vibranium, adamantium, and even mythril. Others I couldn't even pronounce like alfotronazipandafriy, which was a metal of pure chaos that could only be obtained from the realm of Chthon. However they were all useful, and unlike most of the non-school books I had come across(and some of the school books) there was no nonsense. Not even the rock that could record bird song was as ridiculous as some of the other things I'd read. But soon enough it was time to leave for our next class, so I reached over to shake Marie's shoulder "Time for class." She looked up and pouted, "But it's so interesting and I would rather do this than listen to Bins." I stood and reached out my hand, "Come on it's not that bad. I know he's not the most engaging teacher, but how can you not be interested to learn about the amazing things our ancestors were capable of?"
She grabbed my hand and I lifted her to her feet, "It may be interesting to you but I've grown up hearing about all of this so it's just repetition to me." I nodded and I understood, it was different for me because I didn't grow up with magic so this was still very new and exciting for me. My only hope was that I never lost that spirit, that I never got tired of magic. I knew someday most magic would seem normal to me, but at the same time I hoped I would always find something magical to explore. We walked out of our little reading room as we headed to the history of magic classroom, Marie complaining about the boring class ahead of her while I looked forward to hearing about the disappearance of the Aztecs, the sinking of Atlantis, or even the Era of exploration. When our ancestors first discovered the many realms that surrounded us and we went off to explore their many mysteries.