Plunging into the part of the castle that required constant illumination from white everlasting candles, class two C went deeper than they ever were required to, until an opened door labeled with the number of their Potions classroom led them to a huge square room filled with working stations: high rectangular tables empty in one half, the second one occupied by cauldrons over what looked like a gas stove, but lines of runes on it betrayed the use of magic in the manufacturing process, vials of different sizes, mortar and a pestle, a small weighing scale, a knife, and a ladle. Cabinets lined the walls, letters of alphabet on the glass surface of their doors, a blackboard in front of the students detailing their lesson content in big, clearly visible letters, one half of it occupied by the ingredients needed, the second half by the process of making a Boil-Cure Potion. Teacher standing behind her own station was the dean of Pukwudgie house, Luca remembered her name to be Akeno Yuzuriha, a Japanese older woman, her dress black yukata patterned in white bottles of potion, from huge jars to tiny containers for at most a child’s sip. Sixty students found their places after a brief commotion and stood by them, Professor Yuzuriha overlooked the room when her sight crossed Luca’s, a tinge of scorn painted her face.
“Look who’s here, our acclaimed celebrity.” she ridiculed in a cold tone and started wandering the class, her hands folded in the back, making her disproportionately huge breasts more prominent. “Are you ignorant kids gathered here really able to comprehend glory that comes from surpassing the limitations of vulgar wand-waving, watching as the crystalization of wisdom and knowledge passed through the ages takes form right in front of your eyes, made possible by countless sleepless nights and an overwhelming desire of past geniuses that strived to make a flawless liquid, capable of bewitching minds, halting certain death, healing all kinds of conditions and malaises, expanding on what seems realistically achievable all the way to a complete resurrection? Or will you end up as the mediocre, condemned to buying said miraculous mixtures from Master Potioneers, wiping out the savings accumulated by generations of your families?” she walked near Luca, the boy an inch higher than her, the Professor had to look up into his eyes. “How long should Felix Felicis be boiled?” the abrupt question made the boy rise his brows, but he did know the answer.
“Six months, Professor.” he said calmly right into her aggressive face.
“How would you describe the smell of a Polyjuice Potion ready to add hair into it?” the Professor asked again, this time the boy didn’t know the answer outright, but he did read that the potion changed aroma, colour, and consistency depending on the person it was supposed to imitate, so he reached a logical conclusion in less than five seconds.
“It’s odorless, Professor.” the woman’s breasts almost touched his arm as she stared at him closely, opening her pursed in displeasure mouth for the third time.
“What would be the dose of Draught of The Living Death to induce an hour-long coma in a three-hundred-pounds man?” now the query wasn’t even about potions but involved how to apply them, Luca’s mind spun, and he answered with a smirk.
“Thirty-five of a thousandth milliliter, Professor.” the boy knew because Healer Quentin Forges carefully drew the potion into a micro syringe to make him sleep for half an hour, double it once because of the extended length, approximate the difference between his weight back then and three hundred pounds making it possible to come to the solution.
“...the ingredients needed for your first potion are as follows: a handful of dried nettles, six snake fangs, four horned slugs, two porcupine quills. Take them off the shelves by yourselves, familiarize yourself with the alphabet inventory system, clean your hands, and fill the cauldrons in three-quarters with water back in the stone basins on both sides of the door.” the Professor barked instructions as she went to retrieve her own, Luca exchanged looks with Bryce and stuck his tongue out, making face to the woman’s back as he received an impressed thumbs-up from his buddy. As everyone was back at their stations after a good fifteen minutes, some girls with disgusted expressions holding boxes they transfigured and asked the boys to put the slugs in, the Professor started her demonstration.
“Put the stove on middle heat, that’s the boiling temperature, and prepare the ingredients first.” she pointed behind her, where the steps were conspicuously written, grabbed the snake fangs, mortar and pestle, and started grinding with practiced forceful moves, the class following the example. “Add nettles and crushed fangs, stir clockwise five times starting from the north. Take off the stove, add quills, put back on the stove. Stir five times again in the same fashion. Wave your wand to add unrefined magic into the mixture, remember to empty your minds as you do, don’t cast a spell inadvertently, touch the surface with a light tap, like this.” she went through the procedure plainly so that perhaps even a troll could make a successful Boil-Cure Potion. Sadly, Luca was no troll, the boy stopped right in his tracks when he heard about adding magic to it.
“Dude, come lend me some magic.” he whispered and pushed the cauldron as far as he could for Bryce to be able to extend his hand and tap on it, discovered by the Professor that observed him for any signs of an error from the beginning.
“Here, Granger thinks himself so above the masses he orders his lackey to do labour for him?” she mocked aloud, students turning to see what was going on.
“Can I not add magic to it, Professor?” Luca probed knowing that his request didn’t have a large chance of being allowed as the teacher seemed to dislike him, right to his expectations, she made a grimace of repulsion and further denounced him.
“This isn’t a joint exercise, Granger, you either can make potions or not. Want a dozen people helping every time there is something wrong? Go ahead, let us see how brilliant you are.” Luca could only speechlessly agree to that with a nod, the tentacle taken out, students nearest to him recalled the terror he sometimes wrought in classrooms and run for cover as the boy took a deep breath and tried to control the magic before sending it out, running occlumency for an empty brain as instructed. Professor Yuzuriha walked up to him, staring intently at the place where his hand connected to the wand, attempting to glean an insight into Luca’s well-known extraordinary power. The tip of the tentacle shone pale white, Luca stabbed it into the cauldron. His inclination to have Bryce complete the potion turned out to be prophetic as the brass cauldron melted into a puddle, the table and stone floors following shortly. Luca stepped back to see the pond of silently dissolving mass stop spreading only after a minute, now occupying a good third of the room, his classmates managed to move their tables out of the way in a hurried race against time.
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“Get out, you are too incompetent of a dunderhead to be allowed entry into the subtle art of brewing desires in a simmering cauldron!” the Professor impassionedly yelled, kicking him out of her lectures, as she cast a bubblehead curse on herself, even the master potioneer not capable of withstanding the horrid stench of the substance Luca managed to produce, part of the class crowding the stone basins as they vomited bent over the edge in a row of sticking out buttocks.
“Yeah, I can’t do it. Bye, bye.” Luca shrugged and gave up the impossible for him activity, thinking already what to do with free four hours a week he gained this year, and fled the biohazard area as fast as he could, leaving his friends to suffer. Fetor spread on the entire basement level, hardly abating as he climbed up. A while later, he waited in the slightly putrid dining hall for the beginning of lunch, Bryce and his roommates surrounded him angrily.
“Guys, you stink. Go take a shower. Also, don’t try to hit me.” Luca held his nose and flaunted the protection ring smugly. Something wrong occurred to him with the morning wake-up as he remembered the ring. “How did you cast that charm on me?” the boy wondered facing Winnetou, his roommate's angry eyes lit up.
“I put the wand slowly up your nostril.” the six boys united in one goal took out their wands and in comically slow motion tried to place them on Luca’s skin. Amazed by their great idea, Luca turned to shove Bennet out of the way and walked out of the encirclement.
“Better pray that I can do something non-lethal at Artifact Making we have later.” the boy mentioned a possible second accident in a day, to observe a visible downturn in their mood. “Hey, I can do it!” the lack of confidence in his ability hurt Luca’s feelings, his friends shook their heads in disbelief and went to scrub themselves under hot water as the rest of their class had to do.
Inside the classroom with their previous teacher of Crafting, an elderly wizard dressed in gold and silver, sitting above the crowd on a podium of seven steps overlooking the class prepared with fifty-nine identical stations, one on the side reserved for an unusual young man named Luca Granger, two assistant ghosts floating near him, their glasses and countenance hinting at them having blood ties to the teacher and each other before they died, he started explaining.
“Year ago, we learned the existence of all kinds of trinkets, useless or useful, made by wizards seriously striving to protect their community or looking for a cheap thrill out of boredom. First on the road of uncovering your talents and temperament needed to confirm the type you would be inclined to construct, we will enchant candy to make you levitate with a simple charm-inscribing method of instilling magic into an object.” teacher stopped to take a breath, a ghost cut him to tell his story.
“Dedication, spirit of innovation, meticulous precision, and unwavering focus, are what a true Alchemist needs. Me and my brother didn’t move forward after death for the same reason, our goal in life and afterlife is to explore alchemy, climb the mountain at which peak sits Nicolas Flamel and dethrone him, be able to tell that our creations exceed his Stone, this ethereal form a minor obstacle, as we are still capable of thinking and contributing to the advancement of the sacred craft in America. Current Grandest Alchemist consults us frequently, while alive we had a hand in forging five artifacts.” the ghost spoke with fervor and pride, his sight involuntarily drifting to look at Luca.
“Yes, my esteemed predecessors were considered the pinnacle of American alchemy, I’m merely an apprentice.” the teacher sighed sadly for his inability and continued. “But to start the lesson, we need to be able to sense if an item is already filled with magic. There are glasses on your desks, pick them up and look here.” the teacher wearing gold-rimmed glasses himself, ordered the class as he took a lemon drop out of his pocket, dozens of which were distributed on each student’s desk in a pile. “Charm to make your naked eyes see magic is quite strenuous for them, easy to go wrong messing with your body, we just use glasses, wizards of acute and trained perception can tell even without them if something is enchanted or contains magic. They are yours now, take them upon leaving, also strengthened to not break, shatter, self-cleaning, remember to not wear them all the time, no trigger to toggle on and off, still harm eyesight somehow.” Luca realized his innate sensitivity to clouds of magic wasn’t common, he could feel the extraordinary sweet containing a sliver of magic with his eyes closed, not to mention through the lens of his newly acquired glasses.
“Alright, the basic enchanting charm is Praescribo with a movement of wand like this.” the teacher took out his wand and demonstrated an outline of a complicated shape forward. “Add a Wingardium Leviosa with the standard pronunciation and continue moving the wand as you would casting it. Then touch the object you want to send the spell into, time the magic will stay inside dependent on materials…” teacher had a tendency to go off track, interrupted by the silent so far ghost that floated to hover beside students.
“Complicated theories for later, now just try, we only have an hour and a half left. Repeat the Praescribo movement, and listen to our instructions correcting the mistakes.” he organized the class, but contrary to the ghost’s expectation, they all ogled at Luca, the boy stared back unblinkingly at the fifty-nine classmates until the part-hostile gazes turned to try the spell themselves. He saw the students have problems, nobody seemed to get it right after dozens of tries.
“Why are you not waving that black dildo?” the previously glancing at him ghost floated beside the boy and touched his hair curiously, they did make contact with the ghost’s skin as he frowned in thought.
“It’s a tentacle, those spectacles really make people blind!” upset Luca retorted in a hushed exclamation as he elbowed the ghost away into the wall.
“I’ve made enough high-end enchanted phalluses for the ladies to know when I see one, but whatever… You got any insight as to why we can touch you?” yet he came again to the boy’s exasperation.
“No!” Luca replied, deciding to ignore the deceased and focus on the lesson, he looked at the massive red cotton candy in front of him, the stick on which it stood up the radius of his finger. He emptied his mind and readied the ‘wand’, chanting first in his mind, then for real. “Praescribo Wingardium Leviosa!” the connection to magic established, he poked the object prepared for him, it lit up briefly and went unchanged from the outside, entire class could see magic power trapped inside of it.
“Work, be normal, work, be normal…” Luca chanted under his nose, trying to bend reality to his will as he neared his lips to the cloud of red, to a tragic howl of Nathaniel.
“Don’t do it, you are still young! Throw it away, just throw it away! I can’t loooook!” he despaired as Luca took a bite out of the sweet he supposedly just enchanted. As the cotton melted on his tongue, the boy floated up, feeling as the astronauts on the space station did, his weightless body swimming in the air.
“Amazing, ten points for Wampus! Ah, we got rid of that... Well, good job, you have the look of a Grandest Alchemist in the making!” the teacher applauded in joy along with the rest of the class, by the end of lesson, the people that didn’t manage to enchant their lemon drops took a bite of Luca’s cotton candy and floated up the ceiling briefly, playing happily in simulated zero-gravity, the teacher had to shoot the counterspell to get them down until he grew tired and chased them outside. The next lesson Charms, Mrs. Fieldstein introduced a new spell to them, nothing changed year-to-year, that one Luca managed to cast flawlessly too.
“Are classes harder this year, or is it my imagination?” downtrodden Miranda joined them to share a dinner made by professional chefs delivered to Luca and started a complaining session among the students sitting at the second-year table lasting a whole time of meal and extending until late at night to dormitories of four houses and both genders.