VIOLET (A Harry Potter Universe Fanfiction)

12.

"So, how are things going?" asked Alora.

It was Caiti's second meeting with her and she had been dreading it. She had nothing to report. No news. No updates. No discoveries and no ideas.

She didn't want to admit this, but she didn't know what else to say. If she lied and said things were going well, she would have to back it up with examples of what she'd been doing, but Caiti hadn't been doing anything except wasting her time on books that weren't helping at all.

"I feel like a fraud," she said. "I don't know what I'm doing."

Alora just smiled. "Potion making really sucks sometimes, doesn't it?"

She looked, as always, so put together. Her hair was back in a french twist, all sleek and shiny, and she wore these very dark green, almost black robes with a slight sheen to them. Caiti hadn't worn robes once since her last day at Hogwarts.

Caiti couldn't even answer her. She was afraid she would start crying again. She had been crying a lot lately, usually when she was on her own, but also that one time in front of Marlowe when the frustration had really been getting to her.

"Are there specific things you're struggling with? Anywhere I can offer advice?"

Caiti didn't even know where to begin. "How am I supposed to know," she said, "if something is even going to work? How do I know I'm not just a little kid making mud potions in the backyard?"

"Well," said Alora, "that depends largely on what you're trying to accomplish. You can't test every potion the same way."

"I tried something once," Caiti said. "I thought if I poured a mixture on something and then tried to transfigure it and it didn't work maybe that would mean the ingredient has the right properties, but it didn't work and I just got so confused about how to know what works together."

"That's a smart idea," Alora said. She folded her hands and thought for a while. "Have you considered making the wolfsbane potion and just adding one thing?"

"I just feel like it can't be that simple."

"It probably isn't. But sometimes simple is worth a shot."

This was how Caiti ended up brewing the wolfsbane potion when the full moon had passed a week and a half earlier. She'd had to run to the apothecary, because usually the ingredients she used were provided by the ministry and while she had a few things on hand, most of the key ingredients were rare and awfully expensive so she didn't have a large supply on hand.

It felt so wasteful to make it and not use it, even though this was exactly what she had done, over and over and over again, when she'd been learning to make it.

When the potion was finished, Caiti hurried into the greenhouse to retrieve a petal from one of her plants and then she sped back into the office, crossed her fingers, and dropped the petal in the potion.

The usual shade of green morphed into a sickly, snot colored green, and then the potion started to froth at the surface. Caiti did not feel at all confident about these results, but she grabbed a twig from the other day off the table and spooned a bit of the potion on top.

The twig sizzled underneath the hot liquid.

Caiti pulled out her wand. She inhaled, which was probably a mistake because the fumes coming off the potion were fairly toxic, and then she pointed the wand at the twig and tried, just as she had before, to turn it into a spoon.

And just as it had before, the twig went all shiny and silvery and one end rounded into a spoon.

But the handle, though it had gone silver, remained rough and twig-like.