chapter three
Harry was walking to his first lesson of the year, passing many of the enchanted portraits, some of which were still asleep, others happily chatting with each other or with the passing students. His first lesson was to be Potions with professor Snape, something he didn’t look forward to at all. Snape hated Harry and he was sure that the fact he was sorted into Ravenclaw would change nothing about it. The man’s hatred ran far too deep in his being for such a simple change to alter anything.
Down the stairs, he eventually found his way to the dungeons, where the potions classroom was located. A few other first years were already waiting in front of the door, mostly hufflepuffs, since Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws had most lessons with each other. The children had to wait another ten minutes before Professor Snape let them inside, in the time it took for the hook-nosed professor to appear, they were happily chatting with each other. Harry overheard his fellow ravenclaws talking about their families.
“My family is from America”, Terry Boot exclaimed, “we are actually descended from the Ilvermorny Founder’s kids. I always thought that I would be going to Ilvermorny but my parents wanted to move away from America because of the MACUSA’s recent bill passed which forbade the owning of Houselves for any non-purebloods. My parents didn’t want to give up Sinky, so they moved here”
Sue Li smirked, “Didn’t know we had such royalty with us, oh great descendant of the Ilvermorny founders”
The other ravenclaws laughed and even Harry couldn’t help but chuckle a bit.
Right then, Snape opened up the door and motioned for them to follow him.
The inside of the room was dark and stuffy. There were 10 tables with open flames on them already burning, one for each pair of students. Harry went to sit with Terry Boot whilst Sue Li got together with a hufflepuff student, as did the others. When each of them had found a partner, Snape began the roll call, when he got to Harry’s name, he sneered and clicked his tongue, “ah, yes Harry Potter, our new Celebrity”, each word was said with unbelievable venom, “tell me Potter, what would happen if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?”
“The drought of the living dead sir”, Harry answered, already knowing the questions by heart
“And where would you find me a bezoar?”
“In the stomach of a goat, though you would probably have some in your supply closet sir”, Harry greatly enjoyed the look of frustration on Snape’s face.
Professor Snape sneered once again and continued the roll call, visibly annoyed that Harry had gotten the questions right. When he got to the last student for the roll call, a hufflepuff, he asked them the last remaining question, “Tell me, what is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?”
The student evidently didn’t know and Snape took one point from Hufflepuff for ‘not preparing for my class’.
The lesson continued as planned, with them doing theory for the first hour and brewing a simple cure for boils in the second hour of their lesson. Harry’s potion was a bit more yellow than green, which Snape took as an opportunity to take a point from Ravenclaw for ‘not following the recipe’. He didn’t know what he’d done wrong though, he’d followed the recipe, he prepared all the ingredients how they were supposed to be prepared, he even double checked the stirring order twice but for his life, he couldn’t find his mistake, so he decided to ask Professor Snape; “I’m sorry to bother you sir, but I can’t seem to figure out what I did wrong, if you could help me, that would be great, thanks”
“Obviously, you stirred the potion clockwise instead of counter clockwise, now hush before I take any more points from Ravenclaw for dumb questions”, Snape told him.
Looking back at his book, where the recipe was, he found that it didn’t mention which way to stir the potion, only that it ‘has to be stirred twice’. Harry wrote above that part ‘counter clockwise’ in big bold letters. Looking at the other recipes, they didn’t mention the direction either. Something to figure out later.
The class was dismissed and Harry quickly walked over to the greenhouse for their first herbology lesson, which he dreaded already. Harry hated to get dirty, which would almost definitely happen in this class.
Professor sprout was already there, preparing the plants they would look after for the lesson. They were small, plumb things with orange leaves and yellow berries.
Luckily for him, this lesson had little to do with the earth and more to do with how to care for these plants, Wiggen weed as she called them. How to water them, how to properly trim their branches and how to harvest their berries, which she told them were great for curing the flu if ground into a paste and applied to the nose.
After the herbology lesson was over, Harry went into the great Hogwarts library.
He was on the search for potions books to explain the stirring direction thing he had found missing in his textbook. It didn’t take him long at all to find what he needed in ‘Potions and their subtle brewing’. Apparently, most easy potions followed a scheme, if you ingest the potion it has to be stirred clockwise, if you apply it to the skin, it has to be stirred counter clockwise. If a potion recipe doesn’t include the direction then this is the rule to follow. More complex potions had set directions for stirring in their recipe, noted down.
He also learned that different cauldron materials had different limits on how many ingredients could be mixed in them. Pewter, which they needed for the first two school years had a limit of 7 ingredients, whilst copper, which was needed for third till fifth year, could handle 14 ingredients and iron, which was needed for anything past the fifth year could handle up to 21 different ingredients. Silver had a limit of 30 and Gold had a limit of 37. Only the most potent of potions needed a golden cauldron. This often didn’t have to do with their ingredients list but with the fact that gold had special properties, which were needed to achieve these potions. Liquid luck, for example, only had six ingredients but required a golden cauldron to be brewed due to the potent nature of this mixture.
It was all very fascinating.
Harry spent the next hour or so, completing the recipes in his text book with the added stirring directions, so that he wouldn’t forget.