#13 - Brewing a Potion

Arthur was excited to get down to the student laboratory and brew his own potion. He hoped Autumn didn't mind the dungeons too much, and he was sure to give her lots of pats while they were on the way down. She likely wasn't going to help too much, but it was nice to have some company in the lab.

He let her down and went about making sure that his workspace was nice and clean, and then pulled out all of his ingredients as well as his pestle and mortar, double checking the recipe. Though he was pretty sure he wasn't going to be needing any Bone Mend potion any time soon, it was nice at least to know that he could make it. Maybe he could offer it to Madam Pomfrey for extra house points. They'd recently fallen behind Gryffindor, and Arthur dreaded the smug remarks if Hufflepuff lost by only a few points.

He started off by filling his pewter cauldron with water. He took some time to powder the horn to his satisfaction, singing to Autumn quietly while he did so. He wondered if the people in Hogsmeade were having a fun time like he was. After making sure the horn was powdered properly, Arthur put in fluxygrass first and then the powdered horn into the cauldron.

Making sure the heat was 'gentle' was something Arthur focused on for all five minutes. It was after those five minutes that he relaxed and allowed the beginnings of the potion to cool, crushing the beetles while doing so. He would've felt worse about it if they had given him an easier time of collecting them. When he considered the potion to be cool enough, he added the feather and the crushed beetles.

Arthur set up his kitchen timer, an hourglass he'd brought from home. It was getting a bit old, but it still worked and properly measured out one minute for Arthur so he knew when to stir the potion counter-clockwise, and so once every minute for fourteen minutes, he did exactly that. He'd heard some people say that Potion making could be tedious, but for him, it certainly wasn't. He used the time in between stirrings to chop up his mud toadstool, and talk to Autumn about her day, though as expected she did not suddenly learn to speak like a human.

Once the fourteen minutes were up, Arthur poured in the sap from the jar and added the chopped mud toadstool, and then turned up the heat to high. He set his minute hourglass, and then he stirred clockwise nine times during that minute, and then turned the heat off when the minute was over.

After he did that, Arthur pulled out his wand and waved it over the cauldron. He'd been trying to come up with his own motion, and ended up just waving it in an 'A' shape over the cauldron.