Olly had been thinking about what he wanted to do for this potions extra credit assignment. He could do anything, really. So he might as well do something fun. And something sort of hard, so he could challenge himself. In the end he decided on a love potion. He did know that he was going to have to try it out as part of the assignment, but that would probably end up being really entertaining actually so he didn’t mind.

When Olly arrived in the Potions lab he began by setting up all of his stuff. He cleaned and set out his cauldron and all the tools he needed, and then he gathered the necessary ingredients. For this potion there were a few things he definitely needed to prepare ahead of time so he made sure to do that too. He had eight sneezewort flower heads whose petals needed to be separated, eight leaves of alihotsy to be chopped, and eight teaspoons of moonstone to powder. Olly took care of all of those and then he was ready to begin brewing.

He filled his cauldron and dropped in the sneezewort petals. Then he grabbed his wand to light the fire under the cauldron and made sure it was set to the maximum setting. The petals were already in the cauldron, but he added the heads of the sneezeworts after lighting the fire. He wasn’t really sure why it was necessary to do it in that order, or why the petals couldn’t have stayed on the heads, but if that’s what the instructions said then that’s what he would do. Olly grabbed the metal stick and began to stir. Eight times clockwise. Eight petals, eight heads, and then eight clockwise stirs. He found that numbers repeated a lot in potion making. Something that set the magical task apart from mundane cooking. There had to be some sort of magical property in the repeated numbers. Olly found the whole thing fascinating, even if he didn’t completely understand the why.

When he was done stirring it was time to add the next ingredient. He had eight berries of atropa belladonna that needed to be added. He dropped them in one after the other until all eight had been added to the cauldron. Then it was time for the alihotsy leaves he’d chopped. Sprinkle the leaves in a clockwise direction. He wondered why it even mattered, which was something he wondered a lot, but did what it said nonetheless. When that was done he waved his wand over the cauldron. The potion turned a deep red color. According to the instructions that was exactly how it was supposed to look and Olly was pretty proud of himself for doing so well so far. Not that he hadn’t expected to be doing well. Potions was one of his favorite - and best - subjects.

Now he had to wait. Olly’s cauldron was brass so he had to wait thirteen minutes. He kept an eye on the clock as he read ahead so he was ready and would know what to do next. He also worked on breaking his frozen ashwinder egg into eight parts. It was hard to break, and did not like breaking evenly. The first time he tried he just smashed it against the counter and ended up with twelve parts. So he got a new egg and tried again. He was onto his fourth egg before he managed to get the correct number of parts. By that time the thirteen minutes was nearly up and he didn’t have to wait long before adding the eight egg pieces into his cauldron. He grabbed his metal stir stick and stirred the potion vigorously. So vigorous, in fact, that before too long his arm was starting to hurt. He willed the potion to change color faster. By the time it became the correct shade of deep purple he was sure his arm was going to fall off.

Olly picked up the moonstone that he had powdered before starting and sprinkled it in the middle of the cauldron. As soon as he was done with that he threw in the rose thorns. There sure were a lot of eights in this recipe. Was eight a particularly romantic number, or something? In any case, now he required eight drops of salamander blood. He dropped them in one by one. By the time he was done the potion had changed color again.

He was almost done. Olly added eight tablespoons of peppermint before stirring clockwise again until it had all dissolved into the potion. He set the stir stick to the side and picked up his wand to wave it over the potion. He watched, waiting for the steam to spiral. When it did he turned off the forward and leaned forward to get a good whiff of the potion. Olly recognized the smell at once. It was like he was standing right next to him. He quickly pulled back and bottled up the potion, trying not to think about the spell and instead remind himself that it was time to brew the antidote.