The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 4) Further Lessons
by Howlin
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)
Sloth and I parted ways, and I found my way through the school to the astronomy tower. It was a subject that had never particularly interested me. When I was following Leto, the sun was a god to be worshiped, and when I studied alchemy, it was a mass of burning hydrogen too distant to do anything with. It still wasn't particularly interesting, but I'd managed to study actually objectionable material before, so I could get through unstimulating. Besides which, I still wasn't sure how much I'd need wandless classes like this to bolster my grade average once things got more serious in Charms, Transfiguration, and Defense.
The next day was charms and transfiguration again. This time Flitwick had the whole class practice wand grips and motions. In transfiguration, I got the chance to see what a partially successful transfiguration looked like. Between the two classes, it became very clear that I couldn't afford to make mistakes. Partially successful results would be just as difficult to emulate with alchemy as successful ones, and the teachers would notice if my wand movement or pronunciation were off but the effect still happened. Assimilating the textbooks with a red stone didn't seem like such a cheat once it became clear I'd have to do twice the work, both working out the alchemy and knowing the right words and wand movements anyway.
The following day, after Herbology, was the class I'd been looking forward to the most, potions. Firstly, because it was a joint session with the Hufflepuffs, meaning Sloth and I would be in class together. Secondly, because it was a wandless subject that still produced magical results.
Potions was held in the dungeons, and the classroom was filled with equipment. Each desk had a heating element for the cauldron and various strange ingredients were on display on the walls. Sloth and I found each other quickly and took a seat together. I caught sight of a couple of the Hufflepuff girls pointing at me and whispering, while my housemate who'd been giving me trouble pointedly looked away.
"What's that about?" I asked Sloth, indicating the Hufflepuff girls.
"Oh, it's nothing," said Sloth. "I've just been telling them all how smart, brave, and handsome my boyfriend is, and now they get to see some of that for themselves."
Our conversation was cut short as Professor Snape swept into the room. His greasy black hair hung, framing his face. He regarded the class with a perceptive eye and a vague disdain, as though being in the room with us was an annoying inconvenience. He reminded me of my former commanding officer, the Swarm Alchemist, not in appearance, but certainly in attitude. He took attendance, not seeming interested in whether we were there, but more looking for an excuse to not have to deal with our presence in the future.
"You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion making," said Professor Snape when attendance was taken. His voice was low, as though he didn't particularly care whether we heard him or not. This speech was more for him than for us. "As there is little foolish wand waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses. I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death. If you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."
I'd already been looking forward to this subject, and I found it impossible not to be swept up in Snape's obvious reverence for his subject. The class was dead silent, hanging on his every word. Only the last remark contained a hint of his previously obvious contempt for us. That contempt was back in full force when his gaze suddenly snapped toward me.
"Oren!" he said sharply. "What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"
The potions textbook mentioned an advanced potion called the draught of living death. Supposed to be very difficult to brew, those were the ingredients mentioned in connection with it. "Either a sleeping potion or a poison, depending on how much of each ingredient and how they're mixed," I replied.
Snape's eyes narrowed as he regarded me. "Those two ingredients for the base of a sleeping potion so powerful it is known as the draught of living death." He regarded me for a long moment before snapping, "Abbot! Where would you look if I asked you to find me a beozar?"
Hannah Abott, one of the Hufflepuff girls, froze like a cornered animal. As Snape's disapproving gaze pressed on her, she eventually managed to squeak out, "I don't know."
"For your information," said Snape to the class, "a beozar is a stone taken from the stomach of a goat, and it will save you from most poisons. Corner! What is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?"
The Ravenclaw boy who'd been giving me trouble squirmed under Snape's gaze. "I don't know, Professor," he said.
"Thought getting sorted into Ravenclaw meant you were already so clever you didn't need to open your book? Monkshood and wolfsbane are the same plant, which also goes by the name aconite. Why aren't you all copying this down?"
There was a flurry of quills scratching against parchment as the class noted down what Professor Snape had been saying. Next he put a recipe on the board for a potion to cure boils and set us to work brewing it in teams of two. As it was slightly different from the recipe om the textbook, I copied it down in my notes before getting started.
It was like my first attempt at alchemy all over again. I took care to follow the directions precisely, crushing snake fangs, stewing slugs in the bubbling cauldron, and carefully measuring out the dried nettles and porcupine quills. If this worked, a whole new world of possibilities would open up for me.
Snape breathed down everyone's neck as they attempted the potion, offering a string of criticisms. Sloth and I took things slow, looking up each time the professor spoke correcting a student and making sure we weren't making the same mistakes. Finally, the brew was completed and I stared at the finished liquid.
Snape walked down the isles, looking over our potions and pronouncing them successes or failures. He waived his wand over the cauldrons as he graded them, causing their contents to vanish. I got the impression he was giving my cauldron extra scrutiny, but eventually he pronounced my attempt a success, flicked his wand, and my first potion disappeared.
"I wish I'd gotten to see it working," I said to Sloth as we walked together toward Dumbledore's office. I'd secured directions from a prefect that morning.
"That wasn't really a fair question he asked you at the start of class," Sloth noted. "We aren't supposed to be doing that potion until sixth year."
"Maybe not," I agreed, "but I'm not going to let him spoil this class for me. I think I'll brew another one back in the common room, give myself some boils, and see if it works."
We stopped in front of a stone gargoyle guarding the passage to the headmaster's office. Retrieving the letter Dumbledore had sent me from my potions book, I read the password, "Gum drop," to the gargoyle who animated and stepped aside. Sloth and I stepped through the passage and on to a rotating spiral staircase that brought us up to the door at the top. Sloth knocked and it swung open.
"How have you been enjoying your first week at Hogwarts?" asked Dumbledore from behind his desk. The room was decorated by portraits of witches and wizards who were all snoozing in their chairs. Small devices of unknown function were set on tables around the room. Dumbledore himself was dressed in purple robes and rose to greet us. I recognized the Sorting Hat on a rack. A strange red plumed bird rested on a perch on Dumbledore's desk.
"I've already learned a lot," I said. "I hope we'll be able to stay longer."
"What exactly is occlumency?" asked Sloth. "You mentioned we'd need lessons, but that was all."
"Ah, to the point, then. Pity," said Dumbledore. "Occlumency is a branch of magic concerned with protecting the mind from external penetration and attack. I've made arrangements to teach you this skill to prevent others from gaining the knowledge to create a Philosopher's Stone from your minds."
"What's involved in that?" I asked, nervously fingering my false wand.
Dumbledore sighed and said, "Regretably, the training process can get rather intimate. I will make use of legilimency to penetrate your mental defenses repeatedly, both to help you learn to recognize an attack and to test the success of your defenses. Because of the nature of the training, your defenses will be weaker than they are now during the training, until the defenses can be built up. I would advise you avoid direct eye contact with anyone until you're past that phase, as that makes legilimency easier still to perform against you."
"So, you'll be reading our minds," I said.
"Legilimency is somewhat more complex than that," said Dumbledore, "but in essence, yes. It can also be used to sort through your memories, or even influence your actions, but the methods of defense are the same in any case."
"You used it when we met," noted Sloth.
"To verify your story," admitted Dumbledore. "I intruded on your privacy no deeper than was necessary. You do recall my surprise at your shape shifting and when you mentioned you knew how to make the Stone."
"And we can expect similar respect for our privacy while we're training?" I asked.
"Of course," said Dumbledore seriously. "The point of these lessons is to enable you to keep your secrets. I have no desire to pry them from you. Some intrusion is necessary, but I am a skilled legilimense, if I may say so, and should be able to notice if a thought or memory should be private before examining it further."
"What do we have to do?" I asked, gripping my wand.
"Occlumency is a purely mental skill," replied Dumbledore. "It wouldn't be much use if you needed a wand at the ready to use it. The simplest technique involves blanking your mind, silencing your thoughts in response to an intrusion. I'd like both of you to practice emptying your minds before you go to bed each evening. Once you've mastered this skill, we will move on to more advanced techniques like projecting false thoughts."
"We can do that," I said to Sloth, who nodded.
"While the actual lessons are something of a one on one affair," noted Dumbledore, "I thought it best if you were both here to offer a measure of support and security to one another, since as I said the process can be difficult. Who would like to start?"
"I will," Sloth volunteered. "I've had some bad experiences with mental intrusions, and if something goes badly, I want Greed at 100% to help."
I squeezed Sloth's hand reassuringly as Dumbledore locked eyes with Sloth and she began to squirm uncomfortably.
"Regrettably, for you to learn what an intrusion feels like, these initial experiences can be neither subtle nor gentle," said Dumbledore as he broke eye contact.
"How are you?" I asked Sloth.
"I'm okay," she said after a moment's self-assessment.
"Remember, try to clear your mind when you feel the intrusion," instructed Dumbledore. "Think of nothing and don't allow emotions to come to the surface."
After half a dozen attempts, Dumbledore called a halt. Sloth looked shaky and tired. Our nature preserved us from physical fatigue, but we were still people when you get down to it, and just as susceptible to emotional exhaustion.
"My turn to watch over you," said Sloth. She squeezed my hand and I locked eyes with Dumbledore.
The experience of having another consciousness rifling through my mind was vaguely similar to being exposed to the Gate. Images flashed before my mind's eye and information came unbidden. The first difference was that none of what I was seeing was new, all of it being dredged up from my memory. The second was how slow and gentle the process was. Dumbledore said he wouldn't be able to be gentle with these early attempts, but his legilimency was like butterfly wings gently caressing the skin compared with the sledge hammer that was seeing the Gate.
I tried to clear my mind, shut out the images, and expel Dumbledore, but I wasn't at all practiced at controlling my thoughts. The skills I'd developed so I'd still be able to act within the Gate helped a little, but it wasn't enough. The second time Dumbledore intruded, the memories were accompanied by thoughts of fear and hopelessness. I saw myself a useless pile of misshapen organs again. I saw Sloth lying motionless on the ground with empty eyes.
Again and again, the intrusions came, and each time it got harder to even try to block it out. Eventually, Dumbledore called a halt.
"We will hold these sessions once a week," said Dumbledore. "That should give you time to practice and recover."
I felt as shaky as Sloth looked, but I managed to nod my assent.
"Now that that's settled, there is another matter I'd like your assistance with. I am preparing a safe location for your Philosopher's Stone. As it is your property, I thought you might want to look over the security."
"Aren't we supposed to be vulnerable to legilimency until we actually master some of the occlumency lessons?" asked Sloth. "Why would you want to tell us details about the security now?"
"Because only a handful of those details have been finalized," responded Dumbledore. "It is my intention that no one involved with protecting the Stone knows everything that will be protecting it."
Dumbledore led Sloth, Loki, and I to the forbidden third floor corridor and opened the door with a wave of his wand.
"A guardian will be placed in this room, which I've asked our groundskeeper to remove while I show you the hall."
"Fluffy," I said, nodding.
If Dumbledore was surprised I knew the name, he didn't show it. He merely led us to a trap door.
"A thief will next need to drop down blindly into the next chamber, where additional protections can restrain, incapacitate, or kill."
We jumped down together and Dumbledore used a spell to slow our descent. Then he led us through a series of rooms, each of which would be guarded by a different set of spells worked by a different member of the faculty. We stopped in the final room where the Stones themselves would be kept.
"Do you have any thoughts?" asked Dumbledore.
"One," said Sloth. "How will you make the thief go through all that instead of going this way?" She stepped through the back wall and then back into the final chamber.
"Or if the thief can't duplicate Sloth's abilities," I added, "stop him from doing this?" I kicked the wall Sloth had just passed through and opened an archway leading to the unguarded hallway beyond using the transmutation circle on the bottom of my shoe.
"What do you recommend?" asked Dumbledore.
"I can set up some alchemy arrays that'll reinforce and repair the walls," I suggested. When Dumbledore nodded, I clapped and touched a wall. Just below the surface, I scribed alchemic diagrams throughout hte protected halls similar to those I'd used in my lab. These were hidden, didn't need to worry about freshening the air, but were otherwise identical. Sloth dropped a red stone in the container in the corner of the final room, and the alchemy activated, closing the arch I'd opened up in a wave of blue light.
"This will be a welcome addition to our defenses," acknowledged Dumbledore cheerfully.
"You do have something to keep whoever it is from just teleporting in and out, right?" asked Sloth.
"No witch or wizard can apparate or disapparate on Hogwarts grounds. The wards are lowered in a specific area to facilitate apparition lessons, but even those are restored after the classes are concluded."
"The stone powering my protections will run out of power eventually," I mentioned. "I can make more, but I need certain ingredients."
Dumbledore helped me address an owl to a suitable supplier after leading us out of the corridor. With luck, the red water precursors would arrive sometime next week.
The door knocker for the Ravenclaw common room asked, "What always drinks and wears a mail that doesn't clink?" I still hadn't fully recovered mentally from the occlumency lessons, and I ended up drawing a blank. I just wanted to get in, brew my potion, and test its results.
While I sat on the steps trying to get my exhausted mind to focus on the riddle, a group of first year Ravenclaw boys came up the stairs. They saw me waiting there and laughed.
"What's the matter, Oren?" sneered the one who'd been giving me trouble since the start of term. "Can't use your brain if there isn't a teacher to show off to?"
"The name's Greed, Corner," I shot back, annoyed at having remembered his last name from Snape's class. "And it isn't my fault you don't know what wolfsbane is."
He pointedly turned his back on me and approached the door. On hearing the riddle, he laughed harder. "A fish," he told the door, which swung open at his answer. I went to go in when the group of boys interposed their bodies into my path and closed the door behind them.
They clearly assumed I'd answered wrong already and would stay locked out. Instead, I just gave the door the correct answer and it opened for me. Ignoring their group, I crossed the common room and set up my potions equipment.
I decided to brew two potions, one using Snape's recipe and one using the recipe from the book. Loki curled up beside my chair as I worked, his constant companionship made it easier to ignore the snide comments about being a teacher's pet while I brewed my potions. Loki wouldn't let them sneak up behind me and cause problems while I was brewing. At length, I had two bottled potions that, if potion making didn't somehow require the same kind of magical power that made wands work, would cure boils.
"Hey, Corner," I called across the common room when I was done, "you want to give me a hand with something?"
He and his friends consulted, then he swaggered over toward me, the others hanging back to watch. "Why would I help you?" he asked loudly.
"How often do you think you'll get the chance to jinx me with no consequences?" I replied. "I've got two boil curing potions I want to test out. What do you say we both jinx each other with boils and get it out of our system, then drink the potions together like friends? I'll even let you pick which potion."
"What sort of trick are you trying to pull?" he asked.
"If you're scared about how much the boils'll hurt, I'm sure I can find someone else who can take it."
That did the job. He whipped out his wand and called out, "Furnunculus!" I made no move to dodge and took the curse in the face. A handful of inflamed pustules broke out on my face.
"That's the spirit, Furnunculus!" I said, my wand glowing blue for an instant as I transmuted a few patches of skin on his face, and caused boils to appear roughly in proportion to what he'd done to me. Then I turned my back and snatched up my two potion bottles. "This one uses the recipe we learned in potions today," I told him as he tried not to wince from the painful pustules on his face. "This one uses the recipe from the textbook. Which one do you want?"
"I don't care," he said.
I shrugged and handed him the potion brewed by the textbook's instructions. We both drank at the same time. I felt relief the instant I swallowed, the boils vanishing almost as quickly as they would have if I'd used my regeneration. His boils vanished more slowly, but vanish they did as I watched.
"It looks like Professor Snape's recipe is better," I said, then extended my and. "Are we good, Corner?"
After a moment's hesitation, he took my hand and said, "It's Michael."
It was Tuesday when the red water supplies arrived. Sloth and I wasted no time transporting it to our lab, getting it mixed, and putting the toxic cocktail into feeders for our crop of philosopher's flowers. I hadn't needed to replace the red stone on my wand yet, but it was a comfort to know we could replenish our stock.
In anticipation of Professor Flitwick's charms class, I'd prepared a handful of methods to levitate an object using alchemy. Those preparations were somewhat premature, since we had more theory and practice in charms before we'd be doing the actual levitation. Transfiguration continued to involve blatant violations of equivalent exchange. Fortunately, we were working with small items, so my red stone wasn't being taxed too badly.
Thursday, the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs had a joint class. Flying. Madam Hooch, the instructor, had us line up and broomsticks were set on the ground next to each of us. At her instruction, we extended our right hands and commanded the broomsticks, "Up!"
Some people's broomsticks hopped off the ground toward their hand. Some people's rolled away. Sloth and I were the only ones who's broomsticks didn't move at all. While Madam Hooch went down the line, correcting everyone's hand positions and posture, Sloth got a red stone out of her pocket and cupped it in her palm, flashing it to me so I'd see and hopefully understand. I got a stone from my pocket and showed her in reply.
The next time we said, "Up!" I stomped my foot, and the broomsticks meant for Sloth and I sprang into our hands. We both watched the other students carefully, holding our red stones in our palms against the wood of the broomstick. Just like with the wands, we'd need to duplicate the effects with alchemy.
The first instruction once everyone had their brooms was to mount, kick off, fly a few feet forward, and land. Red glowing lines became fully visible on Sloth's broom as she prepared to launch. I had to focus on my alchemy, so I didn't get a good look at her array. In principle, this shouldn't be too different from what Psiren did to launch her weaponized playing cards.
I kicked off the ground, my broom glowed blue, then shot out from between my legs like a rocket, partially embedding itself into a tree. I ended up flat on my back at the starting position. Sloth had stayed with her broom, but had launched straight up in the air and was spinning as she fell to earth. She hit head first, her neck cracking sideways. She'd regenerated the injury before Madam Hooch rushed over to check on her.
"Don't kick off so hard," she instructed Sloth. "You could've broken your neck."
Michael Corner meanwhile helped me pull my broomstick out of the tree, saying, "So, there is a subject you aren't a natural in."
"I'm not a natural in any of them," I retorted as the broom finally came loose. "I'm just putting in a lot of effort."
"Sure," he said, rolling his eyes as Madam Hooch came over to correct my grip.
Disastrous as that was, I was amazed no one suspected anything more than incompetence. Other people had problems and accidents too, but Sloth and I were clearly at the bottom of the class. While Madam Hooch adjusted our posture and grip, I was busy adjusting my alchemy. By the end of the lesson, I still hadn't managed that short flight, but I was getting better at calibrating the forces involved.
Author's comments:
I'm trying not to contradict anything established in the books. I am ignoring some of the material that was never in the books themselves, in this case, the mention Rowling made in an interview that potions requires the use of a wand. Likewise, I'm adding details where things are ambiguous in order for them to fit with my story, like the details we see about the brooms both here and in later chapters.