Yellow (George Weasley)

13 - Peaceful Potions

"Some of you will benefit from today's assignment—Wit-Sharpening Potion." Snape strode slowly around the room before pausing in front of me, cocking a brow as he looked down at the doodles in my journal. "Perhaps you should begin immediately."

I rolled my eyes and made quick work of gathering ingredients before bringing them back to the table. Though he and I have had a few discrepancies, Snape knew I was one of the most gifted students in his class this year. For some reason his crude teaching style worked for me too, though he would certainly never stop criticizing me for my closeness to his least favorite fifth years.

I could feel Cedric's eyes on me as I chopped up the ginger, making sure not to cut it too finely. "What?" I laughed and looked up at him.

His cheeks reddened slightly as he quickly turned to prepare some ingredients himself. "Did you do anything fun for the holiday?" Cedric looked up from the mortar and pestle he was now using to grind down the scarab beetle shells.

I slowed my movements with the knife for a minute and tried to think of at least one thing interesting, but there really wasn't anything. It was nice to just spend some uninterrupted time with my dad. "Not really, honestly. We visited my Nan and the rest of my family Christmas Day. That gets a little interesting because my aunts, uncles, and cousins don't have a clue about the Wizard World." I giggled at the thought. "They think I'm at some fancy private boarding school. It gets a little hard when I'm trying to tell stories about my friends though."

"Like the one where your Potion's partner was electrocuted because he was flying up in the clouds on a broomstick?" Cedric grinned, watching as I added the ginger and stirred until the liquid turned a lime green color.

"Rather bold of you to assume I talk about you to my family, Diggory." I smirked, taking in his flustered reaction before continuing. "But yes—I just said you were carrying an umbrella. They seem to be more concerned about my friends who are overly into pyrotechnics though."

He was smiling to himself when I reached across him for the vial of Armadillo bile. The cork pulled off with a pop and I added a small amount until the potion had turned a royal blue color. Cedric slowly poured the finely ground scarab beetles into our cauldron, the color gradually transitioning from blue to red.

"It's supposed to be purple right?" Cedric furrowed his brows and fingered through the pages where he had written the instructions.

"Yeah but we're not quite done yet." I grabbed the vial of Armadillo bile and the mortar filled with scarab beetles. "Keep stirring while I alternate between the two okay?"

He nodded and obeyed. As I added in the final touches, we watched the potion turn from yellow, then back to lime green, until it finally was a bright purple. I grinned down at the completed potion, exchanging a high five with my partner.

Poof!

My attention was drawn back to where a dark gray cloud of smoke had formed. It eventually cleared as the two redheads waved the air in front of them. Laughter erupted through the room but was quickly snuffed by our professor.

"They're not patient enough to slowly add ingredients like this potion calls for." I spoke to Cedric with my eyes locked on the two boys. I grinned at them and jokingly tutted, earning two identical middle fingers.

"They do have quite a few explosions in this class." Cedric jotted down a couple additional notes.

"At least it's better than the Erumpent Potion incident." I bit back the laughter that threatened to bubble out. Only a month or so ago, Cedric had accidentally dropped his pencil into our cauldron of freshly brewed Erumpent Potion—which is highly explosive—and nearly caught both of our hair on fire. It really could have been a lot worse, but luckily for us it wasn't very potent.