Eccentric Wizard

Chapter 10: Late night walk.

Beta read by Shigiya and DOOMRAIDER.

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-Main Hall-

"You're joking."

It was dinnertime. I finished telling Hermione what had happened after I went to pay a visit to Marcus Flint at the Slytherin Quidditch team clubroom. 

I could see Draco paying close attention to the conversation as well, his fork playing with the piece of broccoli on his plate.

"Seeker?" She said, "But first years never get to join the quidditch team so early on, the minimum requirement is to have a distinction in flying class and receive a letter of recommendation from a Hogwarts teacher… how did you get ANY of these requirements?"

"Money," I said nonchalantly while taking another bite of my plate of strawberry shortcake. "And I promised Snape to no longer disturb him for more potions." 

Surprisingly, he accepted to write me a recommendation letter and didn't mind my continuous presence. Though the only condition was for me to take his class and after-class lessons seriously, any moment of 'juvenile misbehavior' would be met with him putting an end to our little remedial classes. 

I didn't fear such a condition, because I did take my time with him learning about potion making seriously. There was a time for fun and a time for seriousness, I needed to balance these two out before getting too caught up on either side.

As for the Draught of Peace potion, I successfully brewed a single bottle all on my own… on my seventh attempt in the span of a week. Now, this was not because the process of brewing such a potion was time-consuming or anything, it barely took half an hour to make one. But the problem came from Snape imposing that I try each of my attempts. 

If there was one thing one must know about the Draught of Peace, was that, ironically, it was a difficult potion to brew, requiring that the brewer follow the directions carefully, because making a mistake can have drastic consequences. Adding too many of the ingredients, for instance, will put the drinker of the potion into a deep—and possibly irreversible—sleep. 

That wasn't such a big deal for Snape as he had antidotes prepared for such cases. So basically, for nearly a week, I would wake up every morning in a daze. Too weak to even talk, walk or even keep my head straight during classes. Fortunately, Hermione was there to help me out, passing me the notes I missed and becoming my tutor for subjects and topics that I was too tired to listen to back in class. It saved me on more than one occasion with Professor McGonagall asking random questions and targeting me twice after she saw me nearly pass out during class.

I managed to have the potion done after Snape only taught me the instructions once. The directions for making the potion were very detailed though, I even wrote it in my notebook; 'Ingredients must be added in the exact order and amounts specified, and the potion needs to be stirred 7 times, both clockwise and anti-clockwise. Before the addition of the final ingredient, hellebore, the temperature of the flames needed to be lowered, and the potion was allowed to simmer for seven minutes. Its ingredients were powdered moonstone, syrup of hellebore, powdered porcupine quills, and powdered unicorn horn. It should be a turquoise blue when finished and simmered before being drunk.'

It was after I successfully managed to brew my first authentic Draught of Peace potion, that Snape actually congratulated me! In his own words, "Hm, at least you are slightly at the same level as those fifth-year dunderheads for this potion." 

That counted as an enormous win in my book!

As to test whether the potion worked or not, I decided to try out its effects and walked towards 'The Great Lake' the next day. Still having half a bottle left, silvery vapor came out of the bottle as I opened the cork. I gorged the content and walked up to the water till I was knee-deep. Usually, my thalassophobia would act up just like it did when I sat on the boat to Hogwarts; but it didn't. My hands didn't shake or swear, I wasn't having vivid hallucinations of some underwater monsters and sharks coming at me. I felt relaxed… but only for an hour, as slowly the uncomfortable feeling came back gradually and I ran back to shore.