how it feels to be alive {tom riddle}

thirty-eight: fast fingers

FAST FINGERS

The next day of classes came quicker than Lucia would have liked, as she had to rip herself out of her bed before she missed breakfast again.

She'd really never been a morning person.

Lucia sat with Lysander for a breakfast of apricot jam on toast and a large mug of steaming coffee. She could see Tom on the other side of the room, the same chatty boy seated next to him as the day before who was on another tangent. Tom didn't even pretend to be interested, but the boy didn't slow his mind enough to even realise it.

Their first class of the day was Potions with Professor Slughorn, who the previous night in detention seemed incredibly excited to see Tom's skillset.

Lucia and Tom returned to the dungeon classroom, books in hand that Tom had already read front to back over their time in the hotel.

"Come in, come in. Everyone find a seat." Slughorn greeted, standing at the front of the classroom in a burgundy set of robes that made him look rather like a large dark cherry.

Tom immediately made his way towards the front of the room, and Lucia had to actively stop herself from scoffing. She followed him nonetheless, sitting beside him in front of empty cauldrons.

Once the whole class seemed to have filtered in, Slughorn cleared his throat to stop the chatter resounding inside the stone walls.

"Good morning, Seventh Years." He began, "It's rather hard to believe you're all in your final year, and I'm very pleased to see you've chosen Potions at this advanced level. I'm sure you're all going to do me very proud in your examinations."

Tom was staring rather intently at the Professor, analysing his every movement. Lucia couldn't help but watch the way his eyes seemed to zone into different behaviours and actions. He seemed to be calculating how his Professor had changed over the years and how to best approach conversing with him.

Apparently everyone became a different person after the war.

"Seeing as most of you haven't been engaging in any potion-making over the break, for today's class we'll start by brewing an Elixir to Induce Euphoria to get back into it. It's a rather fiddly one, but I expect it's required precision will do you all good to refresh your skills." Slughorn explained, "You'll find instructions on page 105 of your books. And to make things interesting, the first person to brew it successfully will be allowed to keep their potion, provided it has been brewed perfectly of course."

The sound of pages flicking open filled the classroom as students fumbled through to find the instructions. However, Tom moved straight to the storage cupboard to gather ingredients.

Of course he knew it off by heart.

Lucia snapped out of her observational trance and found the page she needed, scanning her eyes over the ingredients quickly to work out what she had in her potions kit and what she would need to find from the storage cupboard.

The potion had some rather obscure ingredients, so she headed to the storage cupboard to gather them.

She brushed shoulders with Tom, who had a concentrated look on his face as he gathered his ingredients.

"You'd better brew fast darling, Ralph over there has very quick fingers. He'll have the potion done in no time." Lucia chuckled.

Tom's gaze whipped around to Lucia, the intense concentration he'd been sporting before now out the window. "What did you just say?"

"Oh my God, I meant he's fast at chopping ingredients. Get your mind out of the gutter." Lucia scoffed.

"If you wanted to see fast fingers all you had to do was ask." Tom spoke quietly to Lucia before turning to go back to his cauldron with all of his ingredients.

Tom had already skinned his shrivelfig by the time Lucia had gathered all her ingredients. He was now adding the purple juice emitted from the blossoms inside to his cauldron.

Lucia quickly got to skinning hers, frustrated to be behind Tom.

She knew comparing herself academically to him was just asking for disappointment. But the competitive streak in her couldn't help but try.

She made quick work of adding the juice of the fig to her cauldron. Tom was already grinding his porcupine quills, so Lucia quickly moved to catch up.

He was in a sort of trance again, one she expected he got into whenever he was focused on something. Of course this potion was not something he would find particularly difficult. But the competition side of the task meant it was essential for him to win. The speed of brewing necessary to succeed, accompanied by the perfection that Slughorn expected proved a rather challenging task.

Tom added his powdered quills just as Lucia began grinding hers in the mortar and pestle. She gave a cold look towards his cauldron but brought her attention back to the ingredients before her to pick up speed.

Tom stirred his potion four times anti-clockwise, and Lucia put her powdered quills into the cauldron and did the same. She was edging ever so slightly close to him.

He proudly added a sprig of peppermint to his potion to counteract the side effects, obviously not aware that it had been added as a suggestion in the Advanced Potionmaking book.

Lucia got out her own peppermint, taking a moment to admire the smell coming from it. It was a rather fresh contrast to the musty dungeon classroom. However, she didn't have time to waste, so she dropped it into her mixture and moved to the sopophorous beans.

Tom attempted to chop the pearly-white bean, which continually moved each time the blade punctured its skin. He began mumbling a counter curse that made the bean stop its movements and allow him to add the juice to his potion.

Lucia had never seen such a thing. She had been told in sixth year to crush instead of cut the bean due to its unpredictable movements, but never had she seen someone take it upon themselves to fix the issue successfully.

Sometimes she forgot who she was in the presence of.

She crushed her own bean with the blade of her knife, releasing the juice and allowing her to drip it into her cauldron.

"You know, you can cause less damage to the fibres of the bean if you use a paralysing curse on it." Tom explained, measuring out his infusion of wormwood, "Crushing it can ruin the internal structure and flow of the juice, meaning you don't get as much in your potion." He poured in the wormwood to his potion.

"Good to know." Lucia mumbled. Of course he only used the best method.

Tom began stirring his potion six times anti-clockwise as Lucia measure out her wormwood.

Slughorn came to the desk, observing the cauldrons before him.