Spike looked at his clean cauldron and water simmering, and then to his work bench, scratching his head. Quite how had he managed to not collect his ingredients? Oops. He quickly went to retrieve them, and set about putting them fairly orderly on his desk. Just in time too, since Lafay was now giving them the next instructions.

Blink. Blink.

As soon as she smirked he'd known things were going downhill - but seriously, no recipe? Had the woman taken some kind of insanity potion of her own? Spike had a feeling this was where everything started going terribly wrong.

Oh, it'd be insane alright. Whether it would be quite the essence of insanity Lafay was after, however, was a completely different story.


Spike looked between his ingredients list and vials on his desk, checking everything was there, and trying to get an idea for what he might have to do with them. He assumed it wasn't as simple as dumping everything in and leave it be.

He was just about to start on the ailhosty leaves, when he heard a small burp by his ear. Apparently a pesky Hufflepuff was trying to read his notes. Quite why, Spike wasn't sure - he wasn't exactly well known for his potion skills, except for happily handling even the grossest of ingredients. Squelch and slim? He loved it. Anything else potion wise? He was average. Why someone would choose to copy him out of the whole class was anyone's guess. Spike moved the book away from the Hufflepuff's gaze, with a curt "excuse me" and roll of his eyes.

It didn't end there though. Giggling ensued. What was the guy on? 'Lovage' wasn't that funny, mate.

Okay, no, seriously, what was the Huffie on?

...it sounded like he was calling the Ravenclaw Prefect ugly - so it was probably a good thing that Spike was on the whole fairly forgiving, and hadn't started the stressful process of a potion-without-a-recipe-final. Shaking his head, he simply turned to the Huffie. "I think you should watch what you're saying," he said quietly but with the firm tone he'd recently developed as a Prefect. "I wouldn't want you to get into trouble..."

With that, he turned back to his ailhosty leaves. Counting out five, he scrunched them in his hands to release the juices, before dropping them into the cauldron. And then add some 'insanity' he stirred them into the water in a sort of crazy figure of eight motion. Step one done.

Now for the lovage that Huffie had been so obsessed by. It was a herb, Spike knew, and them probably meant it should be chopped. He carefully took his silver knife from his potions kit, and swiftly chopped it in all directions until it was fine. Or, as fine as he could get it. That got dropped in the cauldron too, with some more random stirring. The water started to tingle a pale green colour - was that a good sign?

Hopefully they wouldn't have to test it...