Charlotte Weasley

Chapter 18 - Flying Lessons

The first day passed without a hitch, as did the second. We had History of Magic with Professor Binns, the ghost who taught history. His class was pretty boring and after the initial shock of his being a ghost wore off, the drone of his voice was enough to make the studious Britt yawn. We had also had Charms on tuesday and were taught a basic spell, the Levitating spell. Few actually succeeded in that endeavor and the rest, including myself, were assigned extra homework to practice. The only ones in our class that weren't assigned extra was Britt, Arnold and a few Ravenclaws (no surprises there). 

But when wednesday dawned, the entire first year crowd was excited. They would be having flying lessons later that day. I had grown up flying so I assumed it would be relatively easy. Before we could go flying, however, we had potions. 

Due to our first expirience in the dungeons with Professor Grifiths, I was none to psyched about returning. 

The first years found their spots in the dark potions classroom and took out our books. Professor Grifiths had kept each of their potions in a temperature controlled room in the back that we were not allowed in. 

He passed out our phials and we poured them back into our cauldrons, the contents immediately filling up the inside. The phials were no doubt under some sort of size spell, because they were much to small to hold all of it. 

I looked at the directions once more, this time glancing at number 7, as Professor Grifiths had done number 6, which was heating  up the potion for an hour, for us:

7. Add 2 measures of standard ingrediant into mortar

8. Add 4 mistletoe berries to the mortar

9. Crush into a medium-fine powder with the pestle

10. Add two pinches of crushed mixture into cauldron

11.Stir 5 times, anti-clockwise

12. Wave your wand to complete the potion

I finished reading, it appeared to be simple enough. I took the large bag of standard ingrediant out of my ingrediant case and took out two measures. I emptied the herb-like ingrediant into the mortar and added the mistletoe. 

I crushed it into a very fine powder and then I immediatly heard footsteps behind me. It was the professor. 

"It says medium-fine not super-fine Weasley! Re-do at once unless you want your potion to end up like Miss Fogg's here," He gestured at Lacey's gooey and yellow mix. 

I redid the crushing, angrily pressing the pestle into the mortar. I finished and dropped two pinches into my cauldron. The contents sizzled and I stirred it five times. Finally, I waved my wand and the potion turned a hazy orange. 

I looked around the classroom, over at the Slytherin table, Mycroft had finished and Edmund was having difficulty stirring his and over at the Gryffindor boy's table, Arnold sat up primly and proudly with his completed potion bubbling away in front of him. The other boys were having a great deal of trouble which wasn't helped by Professor Grifiths snide remarks over their shoulders. 

Britt was also finished and Valery was near completion while Lacey sat struggling, pouring over every last detail in her book, beads of sweat forming at her temples. 

The bell rang and we all leaped up to race out of the stuffy classroom to lunch. 

"Not so fast!" Professor Grifiths called, "I want you each to extract a phial and place it at my desk before you leave!"

We did then rushed out into the hallway. 

"Eh Fogg! Saw you couldn't even make a forgetfulness potion!" Mycroft sneered at Lacey.