Nigel stopped stirring after a couple minutes and heated up the flame a little more. He looked in and saw that the water changed color a little. It could be that his water was different than the clean water he put into the cauldron. Nigel was not sure though. But he was getting somewhere. Or maybe the knotgrass changed the color. Nigel was guessing at this point.

He was about ready to add another ingredient. The leech would do just fine. Nigel dropped the leech in and watched to see what will happen. Nigel suddenly heard a loud POP and watched as water traveled up and back down into his cauldron. It was pretty awesome with it also changing color and everything. Nigel was lucky none of it hit him in the face.

The potion was now the color of Burgundy. No idea why though.

All the smiling and joking made for a fun homework assignment though Ella wasn't sure Professor Lafay would approve of the fun bit. Ella supposed she knew why, too. Concentration counted for a lot when making a potion, didn't it?

For the greater good? Brows. "You make it sound like he'll be off saving the world soon, y'know." Not that Ella doubted Mordred's abilities. He could totally help save the world if he wanted. The blonde smiled a little at her best friend's laughter and shrugged. "Anytime, Sophie. Just telling the truth!" BEAM!Snort. "You would think that." Sophie being Mordy's girlfriend and all. Missing him kind of went with the territory, didn't it?

"Yeah, I suppose you're right. The cinnamon and lavender are lovely but mixed?" She wasn't so sure they'd mesh well. Somethings just weren't meant to be together, y'know? As for the poisonous ingredients..."Mhm, I hope so too." Ella didn't fancy seeing any of her classmates sick because of a dangerous potion they'd tried brewing on their own. She'd seen firsthand what a potion mishap could do to a person. Frown.

Sophie's point about spicing the potion seemed legit and the blonde nodded, eyeing those two ingredients curiously. "Potions does remind me a lot of cooking, actually. What with the careful measuring of ingredients and the need to get them right if you want the stuff to come out well." Except Ella was never as eager to try a potion as she was to try something she'd baked. That was for sure. "Yeah, I think some now and maybe some at the end could work well." Total agreement there. As for tasting it before it was ready, "I don't think we should. I mean...what if it messes up our testing at the end because we already have some of the ingredients inside of us?" She didn't want that.

"Stop," Ella said after Soph had added the third pinch of salt. That seemed like a good amount to Ella. "Oh, I dunno. It's sort of a bland color right now, huh?" Ella was hoping for something more fun like...purple! The sixteen year old watched Sophie add the first pinch of cinnamon and went ahead and added three more after that. Cinnamon was delicious and it helped boost the immune system so it couldn't do any harm to have a bunch, right? Right.

"How about...pond slime, next?" Ella wrinkled her nose as she eyed the stuff. It didn't look too appetizing at all. Picking up a spoon from the table, the badger then cleaned it so she could scoop some out. "How about a tablespoon? It has lots of nutrients so that's a good thing though I don't think it'll help at all on the taste-front."

Scribble. Scribble. Scribble.

Nigel was sure he only had one more left. So he decided to let his potion shimmer for an amount of time. He did not know yet. But maybe his potion will tell him by bubbling or changing color again. Or it will just die and that is the end of his attempt at a acceptable potion.

Oh well.Nigel started stirring it for a while. He had the time. When it starts ot bubble is when Nigel knows it is time to add the Daisy. Nigel really wanted this potion to work. He did not want to test it though. Knowing that there are bezoars in the room was helpful. But did not easy the anxiety of drinking a possibly deadly potion he made.

While daydreaming and stirring. Nigel lowered the heat of his cauldron and started to remember his one encounter with a bezoar. It was not something he would forget.

Once again Sophie laughed. "He could save the world if he wanted to!" Juuustsayin'. Mordred was brilliant like that, alright. And heheeeehehehehe. Of course she'd think that. It was the truth after all!

Ella had a point there. Cinnamon and lavender might be odd if mixed together... or maybe not! They could try, right? It was sort of alright if they failed, since they were still at school. Also, professor Lafay wasn't there to kill them or anything, so it was all good. For now, at least.

"Yeah, I know what you mean." Sophie chuckled at her friend's comparison. And uuuuugh, that last comment of hers also made sense. "That's true. Maybe it's best if we don't taste it now." Just leave it until it was finished, yes? Yes.

Sophie put the salt container thing down after she finished adding the ingredient. She smiled as her bestie added more cinnamon and pondered about the pond slime. "Yeah, I think that would be enough. It looks disgusting, doesn't it?" So it was kind of good it there wasn't enough of it in the Potion. Hehe. "But maybe we could stir it thoroughly to make sure the nutrients and stuff spread?" Or something.

So the girl waved her wand again and the wooden spoon started to stir the potion faster than it had before, and she made sure it would do it a bit longer this time too. Sophie counted the times it was stirring clockwise and lifted the spell as it did its 14th stir. She didn't know why, it just felt right. "Do you want to take note of that? Stir 14 times clockwise?" She told her blonde friend who was taking notes.

"So now we've got the eagle owl feathers." Sophie said, holding a couple of them up. "I don't have any ideas about these. What do you think?"

She. Had. No. Eyebrows. She had no eyebrows!

Rhodes could not believe it. She had always been told not to play with fire because it could burn her eyebrows right off her face, but she never thought it could actually happen. There were a lot of other things on her face that she thought would be burned off first. Like her nose. Or her chin. Or even her mouth. But her eyebrows!? Michael was just so lucky she would need two hands to strangle him with. She was not about to take them off her forehead and let everyone see her eyebrowless!

At least he seemed to be somewhat concerned about her. Not that she was going to thank him or anything, since he was the one who did it to her. Although, if she would've thanked him, she would've taken it right back once he spoke. Rhodes pushed herself off the floor, as graciously as she could without using her arms, and leaning up against the workstation to catch her balance, she glaaaaared at him. Her foot came out as soon as she was steady enough and she kicked him, as hard as she possibly could in the knee. That was also paybacks for him kicking her in the shin. Which still hurt!

"I am not being a drama queen!" No siree, she was not! "And it did so touch me, I'll show you." But not in the classroom. She draped one arm over her forehead and picking up her wand from off the table, she threw it into her pocket before grabbing Michael by the shirt and dragging him out of the classroom. Hopefully he grabbed his stuff on the way out.

Not that she cared..

"Yeah I did in class..." Theo paused for a moment, then reached for his bag to fumble around for his notebook. It took about a minute but he found his tatty old thing, then opened it up to the page where he had taken his potion notes. Errrrr.. yeah, they were very brief. "Oh, here they are."

"Sooo... the daisy roots are used for shrinking solution... don't you have something for that potion, too?" Theo peeked over to look at West's notes again. Awww yeah, caterpillars. "Should we put those two in first then?" Since they had similar properties and stuff. It sounded like good reasoning to him.

Last minute. Yeah, that was what Kat was doing... again. With a really hectic schedule, what could you expect from the Slytherin? At least she was here in the open classroom, and she was going to brew a random potion. Kat had brought with her some parchments, quills, and her textbook. They were all inside her slingbag with most of her things anyway. She still disliked how they had to pay wherever they went, except during classes. Good thing the loo didn't require a payment of a knut or ten of them unlike the common rooms and the great hall.

Oh there were her potions ingredients. Kat went over there and checked them. All complete and none of them looked like they were touched or anything. That was a good sign.

...

Heck, what was she supposed to do with a jobberknoll feather, gillyweed, lavender, and water? What potion could Kat, like... BREW with these? It would probably just poison her.

"Sure but we're not supposed to be trying to do an existing potion, we're supposed to come up with something new." West pointed out. He took his mate's notes and eyed them, then with a sigh grabbed one of his potions text books and began transferring a few additions to the paper, doing an almost perfect version of Theo's own handwriting.... maybe a LITTLE tidier.

"Too bad you didn't get the whole daisy." West remarked as he finished up adding stuff. On account of the petals and leaves had uses too. He looked between the two sheets of parchment and compared the ingredients.

"We have a bunch that are for health stuff... we could try some kind of healing potion..." He eyed the two lists, "There's also a bunch of stuff thats for energy and courage and fast thinking too, so they'd be good in a healing potion, on account of it would be good for the mind too. What about.... a healing potion that can be taken by Quidditch players to allow them to get back in the game?" How about that? West looked at Theo expectantly and then toward the cauldron. "How much water is in there?" Like...measurement wise? Hmmm?

All Kat did, for now, was staaare at her ingredients. If only she knew that they'd be using them to brew a potion BEFORE collecting them. SIGHS. Lafay was testing them. Sort of, not really... but yes in a way. The Slytherin took out her textbook, parchment, quill and inkwell and placed it on her work station. Then she stared at them while trying to think of something. Just for reasons, mostly because it made her look like she knew what she was doing...

... when in fact she STILL didn't know what to do with her ingredients she collected.

Then it hit her as if it was just hiding somewhere in her brain... why not list down the properties and uses of the ingredients on a parchment while what they did during the first Potions class? Yeah... that could be a good start while she thought of SOMETHING to do with her ingredients. They looked pretty useless at the moment. She knew they had magical properties and uses in potions but eh... they didn't look like a good match. This was a fail.

Ethan looked up from his ingredients suddenly as Alec mentioned an explosion. "Um.. I hope not..," he started as he glanced quickly at the potion, then back at Alec again to see him grinning. Oh, was he joking? He grinned back at the younger boy. "Though an explosion would at least let us know if were doing it wrong." But he didn't really think that would happen. He nodded as he asked about the bruise paste. "Yep, I make that one quite often.." Came in rather handy for Quidditch.

He glanced over at Alec as he began grinding up the nettles and gave him an approving nod. "Yeah, I think that's why we should probably add the leeches in close to last.. then we can gauge how much we need to use," he said as he peered in the tin containing the leeches. It was hard to just guess what they would need.. maybe not all three that he had plucked from the swamp.

He then picked up the chocolate frog and casually examined it as he wondered a bit about how much of that they should use.. the whole thing? Chopped up pieces? Then he glanced over at Alec as he mentioned the non-verbal spells. "Oh, you think?" he began with a small modest smile. He shrugged. "Like I said.. I've only just started doing them and I can only do the two with any success. Takes a lot of concentration.." He obviously needed to work on those.. Ethan didn't think it was at all impressive that a seventh year could only do one non-verbal spell fairly well and another with limited success, but he was a bit flattered that Alec thought so.

Ethan nodded in agreement as the younger boy thought his idea of added ingredients and their order would work. So as soon as Alec dropped in the mucous, he would add some of the plants ingredients, then they'd be almost done. He shrugged when asked about the color. "I'm not really sure.. I think it depends on these ingredients, so we'll just have to wait and see." He didn't think that part mattered too much as long as it worked. Thinking for a minute over the pus question, he said, "Maybe drops, added one at a time.. and then we can better determine how much is needed. Do you want to be in charge of that?" Once they added in the botanical things, he could do that, then Ethan could see how many leeches to put in.

He watched as Alec added the flobberworm mucous and he nodded. "Don't forget to stir after each ingredient," he said, picking up his crystal stirring rod and giving the potion a clockwise stir. At least according to him, he thought that was important to properly blend ingredients. "Okay, daisy root.." He picked up the pile of chopped up daisy root and tossed it into the cauldron and gave it another stir. "And mandrake leaves.." Ethan added those as well, giving the potion a clockwise stir.

"Now, I think the nettles should come next and then the bubotuber pus.." he said turning to the other boy. "Add as many drops as you think.." He jotted a few notes down in his journal then looked up. "How much of the chocolate frog do you think we should add?" Or maybe it would just take the whole thing to offset the petrol smell.. "Oh.. and what do you think we should name our potion?"

Her textbook was opened in front of her and a piece of parchment laid beside it. Yeah, she was totally going to write down the magical properties and its uses in different potions or just... whatever Kat knew that would be helpful in trying to figure out what potion she could brew with such random ingredients. She had the textbook too, so she used it for reference. Sighing, Kat dipped her quill inside the inkwell and began scribbling things on the parchment.
Once that was done, Kat set her quill and inkwell aside then closed her textbook. She tried to sew strings to connect what her ingredients could be useful for. Blank... her mind was blank. Somebody help her? Eh... no. She wasn't going to show weakness. She WILL figure something out eventually.

THINK. PONDER. THINK.

Theo thought absolutely nothing about West taking his notes. He obviously wanted to take a closer look but oh.... was he... scribbling things out and writing all over them? They were his notes, thank you very much. "You're doing my writing wrong." PSSHT... it wasn't that messy. Pssht.... Theo just narrowed his eyes and sat in silence as West wrote more and more and more.

Hi, Mr. Brainbox.

"SOR-RY." He said dramatically about the daisy. You wanna daisy? Go and get a daisy. Theo didn't want a daisy, he wanted the darn roots, okay?

Enough of the grumpiness, because they still had a potion to do, and he wasn't ready to let West get all the credit for it. Even if he still didn't really get it. Since his idea of putting the shrinking solution ingredients in together was totally ignored, Theo nodded along with West's idea. "That sounds good. And.." He paused... "It could shrink the health problems away." Geddit? Geddit? Cos of the shrinking ingredients? It made total sense.

"Ohh... it was just." Err.... "A glass full." Was he supposed to measure it first?

"I think we should use the.... hmm... the butterscotch first. What do you think?" Did it really matter what went in first? Since it wasn't a real potion that they were creating.

"I know, its a little tidier than you usually do it." West agreed, unbothered by Theo's judgement. In the long run it benefited him and besides if he was REALLY bothered he could just erase it couldn't he? West was pretty sure he wouldn't do that, given he could get credit for the extra.

West sucked briefly on the nib of his quill and put it to one side. "Oh its fine... I forgive you." Mhmm. Because Theo was SOR-RY.

Still, he did turn his attention the the task at hand and listen. That sounded good to him. "Mmm... like... temporarily reduce whatever the health junk or injury is for a while? So that you could finish a Quidditch game?" Because Quidditch okay? So yeah, he spun that shrinking comment in another direction.

A glass full? "Yeah it matters. How much does the glass hold?" West started writing out a plan, copying the format from his textbook.

"Yeah we can do the Butterscotch first, it could maybe help the final potion to start to work on the person what takes it faster." West agreed cheerfully. Look, he was in a good mood okay? Even if he didn't really wanna be doing homework at the moment, things were going okay. West wrote that stuff on the plan too.

"But... we need to know how much water that is." So, y'know. Get onto that Kinsley, huh?

Tidier than you usually do it. Theo stared at West for a good few moments, but decided to be a bigger person and ignore it. But that WAS actually very rude.

"Yeah..." He said with a nod. A potion that had anything to do with Quidditch was a good one. Not that it would ever work, he kept reminding himself. He eyed the notes then pulled them away from his bestie. It was his turn, thank you very much.

"ALL RIGHT... nag." He muttered the last bit and then began stroking his chin. He grabbed the glass that he had previously tipped into the cauldron and examined it. "It was filled to about there." He pointed about 4 centimetres down from the top. That would have to do because, hello, he couldn't magic a measurement out of nowhere since he hadn't measured it in the first place. Anyway... to the notes, and in his BEST handwriting.

Perfect.

"What does intent mean?" He asked very seriously. So many words that he didn't understand in West's notes. Theo turned back to the ingredients because they needed something to put in next. And because he was thoughtful, too, he categorized all of the ingredients with healing properties into one neat pile. Because they would probably all have to go in together at some point.

West resisted the urge to fill the glass up to the specified level and then decant it into a measuring jug to check the precise amount... but he'd do that later when Theo wasn't watching.

"Intent means the thing what you want for it to do." He supplied, also very seriously, then he looked at the cauldron. "Lets stick the heat on." And he did that, turning the heat to medium and then watching it for a moment. So the hard candy in there would probably melt soonish.

He started to slice the caterpillars. "What do you think we should do to the spiders?" Given all the junk he'd copied for notes about them, there was a bunch of possible ways. "I think we should pluck the hairs off the nettles before we toss them in, so that the stinging parts are gone." Since it was a healing potion, supposedly.

"Oh." That still didn't mean anything to him but he pretended that it did.

THE HEAT?! Hadn't he already done that? Theo watched blankly as West turned it up and then he felt all embarrassed. "I thought I did that already. Sorry." He had forgotten to do that once in potions class, so this definitely wasn't the first time.

Theo took another look at his re-written notes when West mentioned the spiders. "Well... it would've been better if I got the web, I spose." Since they had healing qualities, apparently. "We could put the spiders in at the end and multiply the potion." He suggested. Not that he had any idea about what he was saying. "I'll pluck 'em." Theo grabbed his small pot of nettles and opened it up, but he stopped.

"Do you have your gloves?" Cos he wasn't touching no nettles without gloves on.

Nigel was now certain his ingredients did nothing as he stirred his potion for a couple more minutes. Maybe he should have picked useful things and went from there. But he was feeling lazy that day and just went a picked random stuff not knowing what they were going to do.

He raised the heat again and put the daisy in. Well that was all his ingredients. He was not sure what to do now. He had a extra bundle of knotgrass he could put in. Yeah that sounded good. Since he basically made a mistake and took water as one of his ingredients. Since they could fill their cauldrons with it anyway. So Nigel felt a could only do one thing right now.

Just keep stirring, Just keep stirring.

"Its better that you waited." West said. No big deal. Obviously Theo had subconsciously known that and that was why he hadn't done it. See? No big.

"Like increase its effects or whatever?" West considered this multiply thing. He guessed that might work. "There might be some silk in the spinnerets, we could add those separately to bind the potion together and all. The silk is the stuff what the web is made of." By the way, in case Theo wasn't following.

Did Theo have no gloves? West eyed him and then took his own off, duplicated them, and slid them over to him before sticking his back on again. Because Dylan taught him how to duplicate things, obviously. They'd be good for an hour or so and that was long enough.

Having a thought West added, "We could crush the peppermint with the spider spinnerets, and add them after the plucked nettles maybe, and then after that the caterpillar and daisy roots together, like what you said before." He went ahead and started chopping the daisy roots as the water heated up.

"Er, sure." We'll go along with that. Theo watched in amazement as West duplicated his gloves. HOW HOW HOW.... but that was a question for later since he had nettles to pluck. Theo grabbed some tweezers and squinted his eyes as he went to pluck each of the stingers. It was a tricky job but he was getting there slowly. "I know." Theo said quietly, still concentrating on the nettles. He didn't but still.

But then West starting talking lots so Theo did look up to focus on that for a while. Because he struggled with multitasking. He looked over at the collection of notes first.

"Cool. What're we using the ice pops for?" Or were they just gonna be used to cool things down at the end of their brewing? Theo didn't even know ice pops could be used as a potions ingredient. He looked back to his nettles until he had removed most of the stingers from them all. "Ooookay, gonna add those in now." He glanced at West, as if he needed his approval. Wait, he needed no one's approval, so he dropped them in there and watched it.

Theo picked up a pot for crushing and added the peppermint in first, but he hesitated at the spider because eww...

This looked impossible.

STARE.

Kat needed to connect her ingredients into something that can be used for the potion. She could make something out of the feather and the lavender because well... relaxing could make things easier in thinking which sort of connects to the jobberknoll feather.

And then we have the gillyweed. Merlin, what was she thinking about collecting that thing?

How about... making things easier underwater? Lame. That would make the jobberknoll feather useless. MEH. BLEK. This was impossible. Swearz. Making thinking easier underwater? Like in Percy Jackson you know? YA KNOW? Since she had like... no better plan than that, she'll just stick with that. SIGHS. It was okay if it didn't work right? Right? Yeah... whatever. Her ingredients were really useless right now. It was worth a try and if it failed then... hah.

With that part, Kat poured the bottle of water in the cauldron and turned the fire on. Pfft... this was not well thought-out. Honestly.

Well good then. West was glad that Theo knew. Yep.

"We could use them as stirrers at the end, and let the ice, what is lemon flavoured, melt into it." He suggested. That would be a good way of adding that ingredient. West nodded when Theo went to put the nettles in and for his part he opened the jar with the spider in it. Hmm. Well might as well... he plucked the spinnerets off with the tweezers and dropped them neatly into the mortar for Theo to crush with the peppermint.

He looked at the potion. "Oh hey, its going green." The nettles? Yeah. Had to be. It was also bubbling gently. LOOKED like a potion. So that was a start. West happily added the daisy roots and caterpillars, alternating the two ingredients and watching as the potion changed color again, the green deepening.

That done, West added notes to the plan.

"Okay." That sounded like a good enough use.

"Cool!" Theo leaned forwards and peeked over the cauldron to see. It actually looked pretty legit, but he still didn't fancy trying it. Once West had added the spider spinnerets to the pot, Theo got his crusher and mushed both of the ingredients together. It didn't work much at first, but he kept at it until they were all in small pieces. "Do you think that's enough?" Or did they need to be more... dusty?

Was that all the ingredients tended to? Apart from the ice pops, that is. Theo took the notes and added a tiny bit to it. This was exciting, professor Lafay would be SO pleased.

They were being awesome no? West was kinda puffed up about it so far even if he didn't know if it would work. Still felt good to be trying and trialing stuff. He picked up an ice pop and pointed his wand at it, casting finite since there was a spell on it to keep it frozen and all.

"That looks crushed enough to me. You wanna add that and then I'll stir it with this? Should we add some of the spider legs or maybe its hairs or you reckon the spinnerets are enough?"

Theo nodded then tipped the pot of crushed peppermint and spider spinnerets into the cauldron. He watched them disappear into the potion, and ooh, it looked... smokey. Maybe it was getting too hot. "Yeah, we should add the hairs." He paused and looked over the notes again, "to make it more sensitive." West would know. He was the one who wrote it.

He picked up the remains of the spider, winced a little, then picked up the tweezers to pull the hairs off.

"I'll just put a few in, yeah?" Because picking out hairs was a little difficult from a teeny tiny spider. Theo picked them off and placed them on a small plate that he dragged into the center. There.

"Yep." West agreed watching the smoke with interest. "You reckon the smoke is from the potion or from the heat?" He put the icepop in and began stirring clockwise. With his other hand he picked up the little plate and tipped the spider hairs in there. "Its bubbling too." He noted, thinking that was cool. As he stirred with the ice pop, the potion began turning a lighter yellow-green.

How long to stir for though? West figured until the ice pop melted would be good.

West tried to focus on what they were doing, hoping the intent would help and all.