An American at Hogwarts

Chapter Twenty-Six

The first step to brewing the Draught of Peace was to add powdered moonstone until the potion turned green. Lee, Peter, Shuri, and I kept going until we got a nice, bright orange.

"Good start guys," I said, letting a mischievous grin break out across my face. "I'm proud of us."

Shuri and I high-fived as Lee began stirring the potion. We were supposed to keep going until it turned blue, but I didn't even know if that was possible after our first mistake.

"So how long are we stirring it this time?" asked Peter, leaning forward to get a good look in the cauldron.

"As long as we feel like it," I said. After a short pause, I decided it probably wasn't safe for Peter to have his face right over the potion, so I pulled him back into his seat. "Sorry, that just seemed like an accident waiting to happen."

"Yeah, you're probably right," agreed Peter, grinning sheepishly. After a few more minutes, the potion turned a shade of bright pink that matched the color of my dad's hair when I first found out about the wizarding world. I decided that must be a good sign.

"Okay, that looks good to me," I said, glancing at the potion while trying not to get too close. "Let's add some more moonstone."

Fred and George leaned over to look at our potion, and their mouths dropped open at the exact same time.

"What the hell is that?" asked Fred, wrinkling his nose.

"It's the Draught of Peace," I said simply. "What does it look like?"

"Anything but the Draught of Peace," said George.

Loki, the master of prank timing, chose that moment to do his first pass of our tables.

"Stark, Jordan... excellent work," he drawled. He casually looked over to the twins' potion and wrinkled his nose when he saw it. "Weasleys... work harder."

With that, he turned on his heel and went to look at some other students' potions. Fred and George looked at me with a dumbfounded expression on their faces, and I just shrugged.

"You heard the man, boys. Get back to it." I turned around without another word because I couldn't hide my laughter anymore. It took everything I had to keep my shoulders from shaking, but that would've given us away. After a minute I was able to glance at the twins out of the corner of my eye, and I could see them squinting at the chalk board like they'd read it wrong.

"So far so good," mumbled Lee. He was also having a hard time hiding a smile, but so far we'd been able to duck behind Peter and Shuri when we really needed to.

We went through the next eleven steps the same way we did the first three, trying to mess up as much as possible. At one point our cauldron started smoking and shooting off sparks. I honestly thought might explode, but thankfully Emily, one of my other dorm mates, was a potions prodigy and she managed to bring things back under control.

She gave us the dirtiest look I've ever seen when we told her to stop fixing it as soon as the immediate danger had passed.

After arriving at a potion that was bright yellow when it should have been gray, we relaxed in our seats to let it simmer. We were supposed to wait until it turned orange, so now we would just wait until it got to a color we liked. Or until we got bored.

By now, all the other students in class were staring at us. After our near-disaster earlier, everyone was expecting a blow-up from "Snape", but of course he said nothing.

Cassius Warrington had been staring daggers at me for the last half an hour, and honestly it was just fueling my pranking energy.

"Alright, let's finish this beauty up," I said as the potion turned a beautiful midnight blue. I started adding porcupine quills, one of the last ingredients, and a few minutes later we were completely done.