He was almost done, and no, nothing had gone wrong so far which meant he was still doing good. Of course, Professor Lafay was going to decide that but he did not see anything wrong with his potion. He had followed the instructions carefully, after all, and had seen all the supposed colour changes properly. Now there was just two more steps left. He was supposed to heat it again so he turned the burner again to make the fire stronger to heat the potion and then he was supposed to add the ingredient of his own choice.

As he waited for the potion to get heated properly and and turn green as it was instructed, Richard started to think over which extra ingredient he was going to use. He had many in his mind but...which one to choose? That was almost impossible to choose among so many choices. He tapped a finger to his chin as he thought while watching the potion change colour. Finally the potion turned green. He had to decide quickly.

Well...this potion was supposed to increase strength and endurance, right? Then maybe if he added an ingredient that supports this effect would make the potion work even better. Strength was good, more of it was better so...

Re'em Blood...

Yes...he supposed Re'em blood would make the effect even better. Quickly leaving his working station for the shelves with many different ingredients, he found the blood after the search of a minute or so and took a certain amount of it. Just a small vial. Not too much. And once he added the small vial of Re'em blood into the potion, he turned off the burner. Yep...he was officially done now.

It went pink pretty quick and West started counting out dragonfly thoraxes, only getting to eighteen before the potion shifted from pink to red, and West thoughtfully turned the burner down just a little bit, so it didn't heat too quickly. Then he went ahead to the next step... more heating.

It was a good opportunity to think about his secret ingredient. The trouble was that West had no idea. He couldn't think of anything he himself needed or wanted anyways. But what could be girded? That was the thing he had to work out.

The potion began turning blue and West frowned to himself. He REALLY wanted to do good. It was going fine so far but he had to choose the final ingredient and didn't have much time to do it.

Lex gave what the Professor said a moment's thought. What did she want it to do...? She went on thinking. This potion was good for that endurance stuff, yes? There had to be something that she wanted to make stronger...

Ah hah!

Alexa grabbed her textbook that had been laying idly by her cauldron since the start of the brewing and began flipping through like she'd just gotten the most brilliant idea ever! It was actually very brilliant if she did say so herself and it would come in handy this summer. If she had thought of it early it could have saved her a lot of fuss at the New Years party at the start of the year...wow, the things she could come up with when she was forced to think.

She continued flipping through until her eyes caught sight of what she was looking for.

Antillergen Potion.

She'd need an ingredient from this to build her tolerance for strawberries, that way she could have all the strawberries she wanted for her birthday! That's how this worked...right????

Lex hopped off her stool once more and hurried over to the ingredients cupboards. Let's see...which ingredient to add...?

The potion went blue and West went ahead and counted in more Dragonfly thoraxes, the toasted ones. This time he got to nineteen before it started changing colours, going a nice Slytherin silver. He adjusted the heat on the burner again and let it heat up so that it went red.

What sorts of things were other people adding? Or more importantly, what sort of effects were they hoping for? West was still searching for possibilities in his head, even as he double checked the base ingredients. Just sort of absently making sure he had the right amount of everything.

He had three more measures of doxy eggs that he was ready to add as soon as the potion was the right colour from heating. Just a little longer.

Pink was a positively horrifying color, Alice decided as she sorted out 20 of the toasted dragonfly thoraxes. Because the number could vary, she would add them slowly, as so not to put any unneeded ones in there. First she dropped in seven and checked the color. Nothing. She needed more than that, then, yeah? So she dropped in another seven.. and.. anddddd.. still nothing. How long, exactly, was this supposed to take?

"We learned shield charms in Defense of the Dark Arts," she told Dylan, grabbing for another thorax. "So if any more girls try to attack you, use one of those. Or you could borrow my bat, if y'want." Because Alice liked Dylan, so he could maybe possibly use her bat. For reasons. And another thorax was dropped in. How many was that, 15? The potion was still a very pink shade of pink. She dropped three more in, before adding a nineteenth thorax and watching the potion turn a bright red.

"That looks right, yeah?" she looked to Dylan for confirmation before proceeding again. "You're doing nicely, too." His potion looked hideous, though. Pink.

Were there, West wondered, any ingredients which would nullify the potion entirely? Because if you were gonna go ahead and add something so that it'd influence the 'girding' there had to be a limit, right? There had to be ingredients which sounded like a good idea, but actually? Not so much.

The potion was red again so West dropped in the last of the doxy eggs, nine of them of course, and one at a time, careful not to splash stuff. Those in, he started counting out the last ten dragonfly thoraxes, the ones what weren't toasted, and not including the ones that hadn't been needed at the earlier stages.

1...

2...

3...

4...

5...

6...

Slumping down on her stool, Peyton kept a keen watch on the potion. She was almost done and that excited her lots. It meant several things. First, she had done the potion on her own. Second, it would be food time soon.

Her eyes were glued to the cauldron, her bottom lip between her teeth. She beamed when the potion began to change color. IT WAS GREEN. She sprung up from her stool and hovered over the cauldron. But she stood back in seconds. Now, she needed to add her own ingredient. Though it didn't seem so, Peyton had been thinking about it in the waaaaay back of her head. And she knew what it was.

Snake fang, of course. It was used in Strength Potion and in Wideye Potion. It would do wonders for her. Really, it was too bad she couldn't use it during Quidditch. Meeeeh. She stood up and went to retrieve said fang and when she returned to her work area, she added the snake fang into her cauldron and waited for further instructions from Lafay.

There she was.... waiting for the Potion to heat again... it took a little while for it to change colours this time, so Sophie almost started playing with the ingredients that were laying right next to her cauldron.

Almost. She was pretty sure professor Lafay wouldn't have enjoyed that one bit, so she didn't. Instead she looked around, not really paying attention to anything. She did perk up a bit, though, when she heard Alice saying something about Shield Charms. Not because she liked Shield Charms specifically, but welp, they were Charms after all! And Charms were cool.

But Sophie wasn't going to join the conversation for a couple of reasons. One of them being that her Potion had finally turned blue! The girl smiled at the prettiness once more. It was time to do something else, apparently.

"Oh." She said after checking the next step on the board. It was the exact same thing she had just done. Oh, okay! Easy enough.

So there she went, adding the toasted dragonfly thoraxes, one at a time. The mixture gradually changed colours again, this time, getting lighter and lighter. Merlin, that was beautiful! Sophie wondered if there was some sort of spell that would change the colour of liquids. She was sure there was... and she would definitely go to the library after this lesson to check it out!

16.... 17..... 18....

Sophie blinked after adding the 18th dragonfly thorax. The Potion was pretty much almost silver, in her opinion. The badger took a quick glance around to see if her classmates' Potion looked sort of like hers did. The silve in some of their's were a lot stronger and even shinier than hers, so she decided to add one more toasted dragonfly thorax.

Ooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhh!! Prettyyyyyy!!!! And yep! That was most certainly it! So no need to add the 20th one, she supposed.

Time to let it heat again.

Not more did a few minutes go by then his potion turned a mellow shade of turquoise. Ok, good.. now what? The Ravenclaw turned to his notes again. A measure of the Doxy eggs. Ethan dumped three of the eggs into the potion and waited till it slowly turned from turquoise to pink.

Once he thought the potion couldn't be more pink, Ethan checked his notes again. This time he was supposed to add the dragonfly thoraxes. The toasted ones.. He dropped them in one at a time, checking after each one to see if it changed in color at all. One, two, three, four, five.. no change. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten.. Ethan could have sworn that his potion was slowly getting a darker pink. Not red yet, though. Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.. darker still, almost there.

Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen.. that was the least amount in his notes. Ethan stopped and looked inside his cauldron. It was almost a color he would consider red. He decided to add one more. Definitely red now. He would stop there. Now it was supposed to turn blue? This constant watching for color changes was starting to get a bit tedious...

She rummaged through the ingredients present, only half knowing what she was looking for. There was a whole bunch of stuff that went into that one potion. How was she supposed to know just which one to choose? When she realized that blindly rummaging wasn't getting her anywhere she stopped. After taking a little breather to clear her head she looked to the ingredients again and grabbed for the Valerian roots.

This would be good.

She took ten of them then walked back to her cauldron. These didn't need crushing or anything but she couldn't help but wonder...would it still work...with the other potion it was supposed to be dropped in alternately with salamander blood...but the Professor only said to add one extra ingredient...

The Valerian Roots remained suspended above her cauldron while she tried to reason it out. This potion, it took time...a lot of time and she didn't want to go ruining it just because she picked an ingredient that needed a pair. That would have been an epic waste of her time and a pretty good potion too might she add. Her brows crinkled in concentration as she tried to do some further reasoning. Now she wasn't so sure anymore...

...

Well...she'd already gotten them from the cupboard...and she couldn't think of anything else...so...

One by one she dropped the 10 Valerian Roots into the mixture and braced herself for a big BOOM. When that didn't happen she eyed it curiously. Had it worked? How would she know? Could she poke the cauldron now?

7....

8....

9....

10...

That was all the untoasted Dragonfly thoraxes. West adjusted the heat on the burner again and let the cauldron heat up, taking the time to glance around and see if he could recognise some of the ingredients people that were ahead of him had decided to toss into their potions, and figure out what the purpose of it might be in their heads.

He did have one idea. One more about a mental girding than a physical one. How could he manage that with one ingredient though? West continued to think about it as he watched his potion begin to turn blue again as it heated through once more.

The potion turned a vibrant turquoise rather quickly and Elise took that to mean that she'd done it right so far. Quickly pulling out her wand, she put out the fire beneath her cauldron. Didn't need that one overheating, she didn't. This might very well be their final and Elise definitely needed to do well. OWLs year came with a lot of pressure, especially on a Ravenclaw.

Picking up three doxy eggs with her metal spoon, she dropped them carefully into her cauldron. They didn't make much of a splash at all, actually. Sinking with a slight plop and making Elise wonder if they were supposed to do that at all but considering nothing had gone wring yet, it didn't hurt to be optimistic.

Relighting the fire under her cauldron, Elise waited. The potion should turn a shade of pink soon. Hopefully not a violent shade cause Elise was getting a small headache from all the fumes. Probably from that explosion earlier.

It was a nice blue he thought, but that wasn't helping his decision making all that much. West really wanted to do a good job on this potion, for Lafay, and for his own personal interest, and that was why he hadn't just decided on grabbing the first ingredient that came to mind or whatever was closest at hand. Her flying example was interesting but West didn't need help with that anyways, even if you could use a potion before a match, which you couldn't. West turned the heat on the burner down.

He dropped in the first flying seahorse and watched it sink into the liquid.

It had to be something that wasn't too expensive either. West wasn't about to grab something that cost a bazillion galleons a measure, just for a first attempt at a girding potion. He wasn't that cocky, and he valued his own galleons too much to risk it coming out of his own pockets if he messed up, which he was sure Professor Lafay would insist on. She didn't like failure, he knew it because neither did he.

He dropped the second flying seahorse in and frowned at it thoughtfully.

Oh! That was faster than the other time! Cool! But Sophie had really liked that silver colour... but this red was also nice.

Anyway, onto work.

Hmm... oh yeah, doxy eggs. After checking the board again, Sophie took some of the remaining doxy eggs and started adding them carefully into the cauldron. She mentally counted them all and stopped when she put the 9th one. It was the last one she had there at her work station, but still. Just making sure.

She didn't want to get the rainbowy pretty Potion wrong, so being extra careful was always good.

And now... the not-toasted dragonfly thoraxes. Righty right! Sophie added each of them like she had done with the toasted ones. The Potion didn't gradually change colours, though, but according to professor Lafay's notes, that wasn't supposed to happen. Good! So her Potion was doing well. Grin!

Some more waiting was in order...

The third flying seahorse went into the potion too, and West hadn't yet looked up at the board again, or written his own copy down yet, but he still turned the heat of the burner up and watched, waiting for the next colour change, knowing it was green. The good thing about potions that got all colour changey was that it was a lot easier to know where you were up to, presuming you paid enough attention. When it went green it'd be the last step. It'd be time to add the ingredient he wanted.

He had, by this time discarded thoughts of some kind of mental girding, though he wanted to come back to that idea later, instead West thought why not endurance against bad weather? Most particularly the cold? The weather was starting to get better now but that flying mention that Lafay had said before had given him a bit of an idea. Because if it was windy and you were flying? It could get kind of cold. Your nose and ears at least. There kind of was always good reason to protect against that. Even at this time of year, if an endurance potion meant you could go without an extra layer or a sweater or whatever, that was good, right?

His potion went green and he turned the heat off before collecting the ingredient he wanted to add.

Which was...

Well, it was as Elise had expected and not as she hoped. The potion was a bright pink color and was totally making her headache worse. Extinguishing the flame, she gripped the counter for support. Her head really really hurt and it was getting rather hard to focus but she could do this. Lafay would be proud.

Dropping the toasted dragonfly thoraxes into the pink liquid, she watched as the pink dulled and slowly turned a nice rich red shade. Well, that made her headache a little less violent.

16.

17.

18.

Oh, look. It was all red already. Lighting the fire beneath her cauldron, Elise tried to find a headache potion in her bag. It probably wasn't there, though. She was on to her last few vials and they were fast running out thanks to her late nights with her books.

She was done with the basic part of her Girding Potion. All that's left was the extra and final ingredient of your choice. This was kind of hard for Kat at first, because she didn't know what ingredient to pick out of a hundred of them inside Lafay's cupboard.

After much deliberation with herself, she settled with another ingredient from the Strengthening Solution. Not salamander blood, that seemed a bit tame. She chose a powdered griffin claw. Why? It sounded cool and even looked cool. Not to mention it seems like a joint between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw. Oh well, it was good so Kat added that to her potion.

...

Even no explosion! Brilliant. Kat waited for more instructions from Lafay. Her powdered griffin claw thing did a good job by not exploding in her cauldron. Lafay wasn't their mother (as she stated in her rules) to clean the mess up. And no detention or loss of points. Yay? She was done with her potion. But for now, she'll just be patient and wait.

And wait, she did.

While waiting for the Potion to get blue again, Sophie looked at the board and took note of the following step. Flying seahorses. Oh! She had read about these little creatures while studying Charms back in the library!

Random fact right there. Still made Sophie smile, though!

Oh! OH! The Potion was almost ready and she still wasn't sure of what ingredient to use. She didn't know about a lot of them, which complicated things a bit. Meep!

Once her Potion was blue, she slowly added each one of the three flying seahorses. Sophie was doing everything quite slowly because she still wasn't sure about the last ingredient she would add!

What if she didn't add anything else? Would the Potion still work? ...Maybe it would, but just not the way professor Lafay wanted? Hm... but... the professor would probably question them about this last ingredient, so Sophie had to pick one! But WHICH one???

Merliiin, that was making Sophie nervous. She was having such a great time brewing that colourful Potion, but when she added the third and final flying seahorse, she stared blankly at the board...

What ingredient noowwww????? Gaaahhh!!

Okay, so where was she?

Oh. Right. The potion had turned pink. Between the turquoise and pink, Sierra got the funny feeling she was brewing an Easter egg. Not really, but it looked that way.

She reached for the toasted dragonfly thoraxes and began dropping them in one at a time. Why only one at at time? ...because she only needed to wait until the potion turned red, which could be anywhere between eighteen to twenty thoraxes. With that, she began dropping.

One, two ... ... ten, eleven ... ... eighteen...

She peered into the cauldron and studied the color. It was darker, but no, it was not red yet.

Nineteen... Still not red, though.

Twenty...and with that, the potion turned the red color it should have.

... wolf's-foot clubmoss.

He had considered chilli powder, pepper, frozen ashwinder eggs, dried salamanders, and maybe something exothermic, but in the end he'd decided something a little more explosively warm. Pretty much. If that Carter girl's potion had somehow blown up with peppermint added, West's choice had a very real risk of explosion, if he handled it wrong.

It was Lycopodium powder, which was a kind of odorless and tasteless flash powder, though it wouldn't cause anything on its own, just if he spilled it on... you know, an open flame or something. It wasn't so dangerous in a clump of powder but if it got in the air then it could ignite easily. So he'd have to be careful.

The paleish yellow dust looked harmless enough, but West still took his cauldron completely off he heat before bringing any over. Lycopodium powder was also used as a remedy for low body heat, among other things. And West thought it was cool on account of it was known to float on cool water but would sink in boiling water. Pretty neat.

He carefully measured some out, going with a level teaspoon and being sure not to stir the powder up, and then he had the bright idea to use the potion itself as a carrier for it, adding a spoon of the liquid and then stirring it all carefully into a paste, which he then added to the potion itself.There. Done!

Pleased with himself, and glad he hadn't caused any sort of explosions due to the care he had taken, West tidied up his work area a bit and returned all the leftover and untouched ingredients to the store cupboard.

If only she could use spells... she knew more about those! She didn't know much about Potions ingredients and their properties... Merlin, that was difficult!

Nooooooooo!! Her Potion was slowly turning green! Though the change didn't look that slow to Sophie, since she wanted more time to think about the additional ingredient! Gaahh!!

She tried her best to stop and think. She looked at the storage area and read as many labels as possible from where she was sitting. She had only heard of most of those things, but didn't really know what they could do... until she saw it.

Boom berries!! Oh! She knew about those! Her mother was always telling her how it had these... what did she call it? Restorative properties? Or something. Well, it helped making people healthier and stuff.

Sophie was not sick, but... that was one ingredient she knew of and she was certain it wouldn't make her Potion blow up and kill anyone. Sooooo boom berries would do! And she could sort of explain why she chose them too, which was good. Phew! There! A plan! Yay!

The Hufflepuff went to retrieve some boom berries and when she got back to her work station, a light green Potion awaited for her. Sophie used the clean knife to squeeze the few boom berries and make their juice come out a little before she dropped them in the cauldron. Then she just watched and... stared at her green Potion. And hoped it was right.

Leaning over, Dylan took a look in her cauldron and nodded. "It's supposed to be red...and that's red." Shrugging, he went about separating his thoraxes, toasted from untoasted...all the while glancing at his notes. "Are you suggesting...I beat them off with a bat?...Isn't that abuse?" His tone was distracted as he said this...because he was focusing on dividing up the dragonfly thoraxes.

One pile of twenty for now...and then another twenty for later...and the 10 unheated ones for next to last step...

Taking the first pile of toasted thoraxes, Dylan carefully started slipping them into the potion...and this took several moments since it was twenty of them in one go.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen....

After the eighteenth one, the Slytherin noticed that the potion's color was beginning to darken from the pink color...but it wasn't totally red. Professor Lafay had said something about maybe only needing one or two less that twenty...but that clearly wasn't the case here.

....nineteen, twenty...

When he added the last one in, the color turned into a rich red, satisfying the directions. Rereading them just to see what he needed to do next, he settled back...playing the waiting game. It needed to be blue, now...

It was definitely strange...He'd never seen one potion turn so many didn't colors throughout the course of brewing it.

Finally...it slowly shifted into the blue it was supposed to...SUCCESS thus far.

What was next?

A quick scan of his journal told him that the next step was... adding in the flying seahorses.

Slightly confused about these creatures, Alec picked them up and examined them a little. The potion was still blue... so that was fine. His eyes travelled back to the winged creatures and he tilted his head slightly. How did they even get wings in the first place? Because... the normal type of seahorses didn't have wings and... yeah. And were the wings needed for their underwater travels? Do seahorses even go for underwater adventures?

... So many... questions.

The fifteen year old shook his head and then added the three seahorses into his cauldron. And now it was time for the waiting game. The waiting and humming game. Right... Wait and wait and hum ad hum and wait and wait and... try not to think about the fact that the next step was the last and the most nerve-wrecking. Nope. This was all calm and he was calm and-

HIS POTION WAS GREEN! GRIN.

SPOILER!!: Journal thingymabob

Ingredients:
--> Water to fill the cauldron
--> 50 Dragonfly thoraxes (40 toasted/10 unheated)
--> One set of Fairy wings (2)
--> 3 Flying Seahorses
--> 12 Doxy eggs (Divided in 4 measures of 3)
--> Extra ingredient!

Instructions:
--> Add the set of fairy wings
--> Heat until the potion turns turquoise.
--> Add one measure of doxy eggs. (That's 3)
--> Heat until the potion turns pink.
--> Add 20 of the toasted dragonfly thoraxes or until the potion turns red (sometimes it takes only 18 or 19, but never more than 20)
--> Heat until the potion turns blue.
--> Add 20 of the toasted dragonfly thoraxes until the potion turns silver(sometimes it takes only 18 or 19, but never more than 20)
--> Heat the potion until it turns red again.
--> Add three measures of doxy eggs. (That's the remaining 9)
--> Add the 10 not-toaster dragonfly thoraxes.
--> Heat the potion until it turns blue again.
--> Add three flying seahorses.
--> Heat until the potion turns green.
--> Add in extra ingredient

Text Cut: instructions + ingredients

Ingredients

• Water to fill the cauldron
• 50 Dragonfly thoraxes (40 toasted/10 unheated)
• One set of Fairy wings (2)
• 3 Flying Seahorses
• 12 Doxy eggs (Divided in 4 measures of 3)

Instructions:

• Add the set of fairy wings
• Heat until the potion turns turquoise.
• Add one measure of doxy eggs. (That's 3)
• Heat until the potion turns pink.
• Add 20 of the toasted dragonfly thoraxes or until the potion turns red (sometimes it takes only 18 or 19, but never more than 20)
• Heat until the potion turns blue.
• Add 20 of the toasted dragonfly thoraxes until the potion turns silver (sometimes it takes only 18 or 19, but never more than 20)
• Heat the potion until it turns red again.
• Add three measures of doxy eggs. (That's the remaining 9)
• Add the 10 not-toaster dragonfly thoraxes.
• Heat the potion until it turns blue again.
• Add three flying seahorses.
• Heat until the potion turns green.

It felt like the potion was taking forever to turn a proper blue. It was gradually changing shade, but Penelope was kinda anxious to be done with it by now. Making a potion was kinda tiring. She might go take a nap once the class was over. Meh...

Oh look! It was blue now! Thank Merlin. Okay, next step...

Add the flying seahorses. Easy enough.

Penelope grabbed them and dropped them in one at a time. One. Two. Three. Done!

Oh wait. Now it needed to turn green. Okay...

Waiting...heating...waiting...heating...waiting...

There! Green! Good, okay, now...that was it?

Oh no, she still had another ingredient left. The random mystery one. Right, time to see what it was she had grabbed. She picked up the little vial and looked at the label on it...

Salamander blood. Er, okay. That sounded good, she supposed. Salamanders were...strong and endured things well, right? They lived in fire and stuff, if she remembered correctly, and it took a lot to endure that, right? So yeah, maybe this would work. Or if nothing else, it at least wouldn't explode. Hopefully.

Penelope poured the contents of the small vial into the cauldron and then set it down. So...she was done, yeah? Nothing else to do? And no explosions...?

Phew.

SPOILER!!: Potions

Ingredients:

Water to fill the cauldron
50 Dragonfly thoraxes (40 toasted/10 unheated)
One set of Fairy wings (2)
3 Flying Seahorses
12 Doxy eggs (Divided in 4 measures of 3)




Instructions:

Add the set of fairy wings
Heat until the potion turns turquoise.
Add one measure of doxy eggs. (That's 3)
Heat until the potion turns pink.
Add 20 of the toasted dragonfly thoraxes or until the potion turns red (sometimes it takes only 18 or 19, but never more than 20)
Heat until the potion turns blue.
Add 20 of the toasted dragonfly thoraxes until the potion turns silver (sometimes it takes only 18 or 19, but never more than 20)
Heat the potion until it turns red again.
Add three measures of doxy eggs. (That's the remaining 9)
Add the 10 not-toaster dragonfly thoraxes.
Heat the potion until it turns blue again.
Add three flying seahorses.
Heat until the potion turns green.

Amelia sighed and ran her hand through her hair as she thought what to do next. Before she could ad the next bit of Doxy eggs she would have to heat the potion up once more. Taking her wand in hand she pointed it under the cauldron.

"Incendio" she smiled as the flame heated the bellows of the cauldron. As she heated it she waited until the potion turned from its previous silvery color to a nice vibrantly red color.