The Maple Witches (Worst Witch Spin-Off)

Chapter Five

Sephy stared down at the first page of questions. She was pretty sure that not all of the answers were covered by the introductory potions leaflet the academy had sent out over the summer in an attempt to make sure that everyone was on the same page. Fortunately for Sephy, although she only knew three traditional chants and had apparently missed out quite a bit of witching geography and history, potions was by far her best subject.

1) Which utensil(s) should be used to correctly prepare powdered mandrake root?

That had been in the booklet that had been sent out, and she had prepared mandrake for a healing poultice just a week ago.

Use a knife with a sharp blade to dice the root, reduce to powder with a pestle and mortar.

2) Name 3 ingredients used in a sneezing potion.

Dragon warts
Feather of crow
Sap of a honeysuckle

As she continued through the test paper, she realised that it was all surprisingly familiar to her. She'd either learnt it from time spent helping her parents at the apothecary or from the extensive collection of potion books that filled their house.

When she reached the final question and checked her watch to see how much time she had left, she saw it was glowing orange and not red. She had 10 minutes left.

The final question was by far the toughest on the paper.

30) Describe the expected changes in colour during the process of brewing a sleeping potion.

Sleeping potions. She had only ever seen them made by someone else - she was not allowed to prepare them as magical law and the Witches' Code dictated that they could only be prepared by those with the proper qualifications. Preparing sleeping potions was dangerous - to get it even slightly wrong could have fatal consequences. It seemed strange that Miss Hardbroom would expect them to know about the brewing process at this stage, but maybe identifying the colour changes could indicate whether it had been brewed correctly.

For the first time on the test, Sephy knew she was stabbing in the dark. She was pretty sure the finished potion was red, the colour of the sky as the sun set. And it used a lot of pondweed, so maybe it went green at some point? She racked her brains, trying to visualise a page from a book she had read about a month ago. The problem was that it hadn't been committed to memory very well, seeing as she had never actually made it.

Suddenly something popped into her head. The first step was to mix morning mist with blueberries - so maybe it went grey and blue?

Sephy scribbled down: Grey to blue to green to red.  It was still a bit of a guess, but with any luck she could get a mark or so out of the three available.

She was finished, and with just over 5 minutes left to go. She glanced around, attempting to be inconspicuous, to see that other people were still writing. She returned to the front of the paper and proceeded to check her answers. She propped her elbow on the desk and rested her head on one hand hand whilst leafing through the answer booklet with the other. When she was satisfied, she found herself staring at the grains of fine sand raining into the lower orb of the hourglass on Miss Hardbroom's desk.

Somehow, watching the specks of gold carefully amass as they fell made her realise just how tired she was. She stifled a yawn as the weight of her eyelids became impossible to ignore.

She was shocked back into reality when she suddenly noticed the icy glare of her potions teacher. It took her a moment to realise that Miss Hardbroom had been watching her intently for the past 20 seconds. HB looked beyond irritated, and Sephy had already made a bad impression during the broomstick crash fiasco. Carefully returning her eyes to her paper, Sephy checked through her answers yet again, knowing that the only way she could recover from the situation was if she had actually completed the test paper accurately.

Soon the hourglass ran dry and their tests were collected by Freya, who volunteered to do so. Miss Hardbroom set homework on laughter potions and the first years then hastily exited the potions lab for chanting class, chatter commencing the second they had passed through the door.

Cassandra's evaluation was short and to the point. "Well, I failed that."

"You don't know that," Ana replied.

"Yes, I do. I put eye of newt down for almost every single question."

"I could only remember two of the ingredients for a forgetting potion!" Ana exclaimed.

"Ironic, right?" Hazel joked with a friendly smile. "Don't worry, I didn't have a clue."

"My mother is going to have a fit," Ana grumbled. "I bet HB will wait until after she's marked the tests to write to her about my many failings."

"You crashed a broom and you forgot a couple of ingredients to potions that we haven't really studied yet. Your mum will cope," Sephy replied.

"Trust me. She'll go spare," Ana countered, then changed the subject. "I'm really looking forward to chanting though."

"I'm not," Hazel said. "I'm pretty sure there are toads that can sing better than me."

Laughing, they made their way to their next lesson.