The Farland Files

The Art of Innocence in the Face of Death

A/N: 😈 Read the title 😈 It's going down!!!!! The toad must die! (I've had wayyyy too much sugar, but like, Happy Holidays everyone!)

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It seemed like a few hours had passed when her name was called, though logically she knew that most of the time it was only minutes before someone was being escorted out of the testing rooms in either tears or rage.

Lena entered a small room with a table on one side of thirteen wizards and one witch, a chair on the other side next to a single-person potion station that looked quite unused.

"Good morning, Miss Farland." A man in the center looked to be reading off a sheet. "We will ask you increasingly hard questions and should you answer at least thirteen out of the fourteen correct then you will be allowed to try to brew a potion that has never been-" The man paused as he looked up at her, raising an eyebrow and then continuing, slower as he did. "-done before... am I clear?"

"Yes, sir."

The woman on the end leaned forward. "How old are you, sweetheart?"

"Fifteen. And that counts as your first question."

The table seemed to blink, straightening, and the man next to the woman narrowed his eyes. "In which phase of the moon does the Fluxweed need to be picked in order to properly brew Polyjuice Potion?"

Lena thought about it for only half a second. "Full moon."

The third man looked bored, though his eyes said differently. "What are the ingredients of Skele-Gro?"

"One Chinese chomping cabbage, three puffer-fish, an ounce of knotgrass, three hairs from a puffskein, and five scarab beetles."

This went on, listing conditions or ingredients and the exact order of things until it got to the man at the end hidden in shadow. Leaning forward into the light, Nicolas Flamel grinned at her and she knew that he was going to throw her for a loop, as she was determined to get all the questions correct.

"If you were to guess... what is the one thing the Elixir of Life cannot treat?"

Eyeing Nicolas, she frowned slightly and decided to just guess based on the amount of time she'd spent watching Perry and Nick make eyes at each other. "A broken heart."

The people at the table all looked to Nicolas, whose grin split into a wide smile. "Indeed."

"Well done!" The woman at the end smiled widely, the table clapping hesitantly.

Standing, the man that had read her the instructions waved to the potions bench. "You have four hours, starting now, to make a potion that has never been made before and submit it to the Department of Mysteries for testing. Anything you do or put into the cauldron will be automatically recorded and any ingredients can be fetched by a house-elf and will be refunded by the ministry if the potion is validated."

Bowing her head, she moved to cast cleaning charms on all the equipment, before looking to the bench. "I need Horseradish, Wormwood, moonstones, Sage, Alihotsy leaves, an Ashwinder egg... and a bar of chocolate, if you don't mind."

With a small 'pop' the ingredients appeared.

First, she started about setting water to flame so it would boil then she got to powdering the horseradish, moonstones, sage, and ashwinder eggshell. Carefully chopping up the Alihotsy leaves and wormwood, before pouring water she'd boiled over the chopped pieces in a jar, she caped it tightly and set it aside so it would infuse the water.

Lena stirred in moonstone powder and the ashwinder eggshell powder into half a cauldron of water before slowly melting the chocolate into the shimmering silver liquid until it turned the water a sparkly maroon color, before adding in the sage powder, only stopping when the potion started to bubble.