"It's really not that difficult, Harry," Hermione tried to reassure him as they left Flitwick's class - she had been making objects zoom across the room to her all lesson, as though she were some sort of weird magnet for board dusters, wastepaper baskets, and lunascopes. "You just weren't concentrating properly -" "Wonder why that was," said Harry darkly as Cedric Diggory walked past, surrounded by a large group of simpering girls, all of whom looked at Harry as though he were a particularly large Blast-Ended Skrewt. "Still - never mind, eh? Double Potions to look forward to this afternoon. . ."
[The Potter Stinks badges are revealed, an impromtu duel is had, Hermione is grievously insulted by a member of staff in front of her peers while she is hurting physically and mentally (must be unresolved sexual tension), and Harry is assaulted and harrased by a member of the press during an ill considered photo-op while the adults do nothing, as usual]
More to take his mind off things than anything, Harry opens his potions textbook and flips through to find the section on antidotes, since he missed the practical due to the wand weighting ceremony, and doesn't put it past Snape to give him a surprise test the next class or detention with him and make Harry test his antidote on himself, as retaliation.
His eyes, however, catch onto the description for the Wit-Sharpening Potion.
The Wit-Sharpening Potion allows the drinker to think more clearly. Due to this, it acts to counter the Confundus Charm. it is banned in all tests and examinations.
His mind is brought back to the conversation he had with Hermione after charms. He thinks about going to madam Pomfrey and pretending to be confounded, and quickly discards the idea. Then he looks at the recipe. It doesn't look that difficult, and it can be brewed in under and hour. He checks his potion kit, seems like he has all the ingredients. Dried mint leaves, too. The instructions say they are not added to the potion, but holding one in the mouth while drinking it will make it taste less foul.
Throwing caution to the wind, he heads to an out of the way abandoned classroom, and brews the potion there. Without Snape breathing down his neck and making snide comments, or having to stay alert for and swat away unwelcome aditions to his potion by bored Slytherins, it's not that hard, really, just follow the instructions, like a cookbook. The well ventilated, well iluminated classroom helps, too. When the potion calls for a long simmer time, he doesn't let himself get too distracted, and checks his wristwatch, an old one of Dudley's with a cracked face he'd nicked from the piles of broken toys, even counting down the last seconds. After waiting the requisite 8 minutes of cooldown, he pours a portion, sucks the mint leaf until he tastes strongly of menthol, and imbibes it.
At first, he doesn't feel any different, other than a minty rot taste in his mouth. It must take a while to act. Or maybe he brewed it wrong sommehow, even if the color is almost correct, just a shade too dark from what the book calls for, enought to earn an ''EE' from a fair teacher. Maybe the dried scarab bettles were too old? Well, let's take it to the test. He pulls out his schoolbooks, parchment, and homework assignments that he had been putting off, and starts working. As he reads the reference book for his first asignment, he feels a fog he didn't know was there lift. Gradually the theory starts making more intuitive sense, and after a couple rereads he no longer struggles with the overly complicated and obtuse words the author seems to favour. There's still plenty of light pouring in from the windows when he puts the quill down, all finished.
He rereads the theory for the summoning charm, takes the potions textbook, places it on the other end of the room, walks back to the desk he's been using, and summons it succesfuly on the first try. It flies fas and true, and he grabs it putting his honed reflexes to use. Sitting down, he once again looks for the section on antivenoms. Stray instructions catch his eye, and he starts wondering about the weird exactness of it all. What do the ingredients care if he stirs seven ties or eight? Why do some portions call for a counterclockwise stir to be added in between every few clockwise, and others don't? The book doesn't explain, and as far as he remembers, neither does Snape. Instructions are on the board, you have an hour. Ask questions if you want to be put down verbally, insist for a detention. Any questions the Slytherins have, are answered in a whisper.
He tries to see the pattern in different potions, and it seems to him like some could also use the ccw stir that others do. Maybe it depends on the ingredients? But these two share the same ingredient, and only one calls for anti clockwise stirs! As the light begins to dim considerably, he looks at his watch again. How time flies. He bottles up the three remaining portions of the potion, scourgifies the cauldron, packs everything and heads to the library on the way to Griffindor tower. This close to curfew, it's fairly empty in the corridors, which suits him. Still, he wishes he had thought to carry the cloak. He hides from the few students he hears approaching, as to no be bothered.
Finaly, he asks mme Pince for books that explain the whys of potions. Unhelpfuly, she points in the general direction of the potions collection. He quickly browses the shelves, minding the time left until curfew, but finds nothing promising. There's a variety of different school textbooks, old and new, and collections of potion recipes matchin a certain theme or profession. 'Potions for Tanners' and 'Potions for Masons' rubs shoulders with 'Healing Potions - A Field Guide'. He grabs those, a few of the textbooks, and 'The First Stirings: A History of the Subtle Science and Exact Art of Potion Making', written by an H.B. Prince. Heh, so that's where Snape cribbed his little first class speech from.
Before going to bed, he packs the invisibility cloak at the bottom of his schoolbag, neatly folded, and the marauder's map on the inside breast pocket of his blazer vest, which he places at the top of the contents of his trunk, with the rest of next morning's clothes. He does it to force himself to remember to take the map and cloak, and decides at the last moment to set out the rest of his clothes also. Come next morning, he could hit himself for not thinking years earlier of preparing his change of clothes in the night, instead of fumbling around half asleep after waking up. A real quality of life improvement, and it costs him nothing.
The next day he takes another dose of the potion after breakfast, in the bathroom, to avoid more questions by Hermione, which is a bit miffed he disapppeared all evening the day before, and doesn't accept "I just wanted to be alone" as an answer. While having a clear head instantly helps take out some of the sting from the way the school has turned against him, again, he mostly notices the huge difference it makes in class.
He no longer gets distracted, hanging on the teacher's every word, but he tries to be discreet and doesn't so much as raise his hand to ask a question, or lean foward even once. He also considers Hermione, which really should have grown out such things by now. It seemed like she hard after the troll, but she relapsed hard in second year with Lockhart. He wonders where her craving for authority approval comes from. Her parents? Given his own history with the Dursleys and the awful teachers at his primary, that's one can of worms he doesn't want to open.
After each class is over, while walking to the next, he can recall the previous lectures, almost word by word. If this hyperfocus also helps him ignore the barbs his classmates direct at him in class and the corridors until he manages to get under the cloak, all the better.
As soon as his last class is over, Hermione is off to Ancient Runes, and he near runs out of the classroom, earning him a dirty look from McGonagall. He ducks into the first empty classroom he finds, puts on the cloak, takes out the map under the cloak, and goes to the same abandoned classroom from before. He takes out the homework for the day, and after a couple minutes drinks another dose of the potion, noticing the fog has come back.
The essays are pitifully easy, as all the details needed were covered in class, so he barly has to refence the books, and that to double check that he remembers correctly. After the day's homework is out of the way, he dives into the potions books. The First Stirrings, while informative, is what it says in the extened title; a history, and skimming through it, it contains few clues as to how to brew, other than for the mosr exotic ingredients you are better off buying them in a reputable apothecary than gathering them in the wild, risking life an limb, or a misidentification, which often can result on the former when it comes time to brew the potion. He sets that one aside for later.
Comparing the textbooks, he hits the jackpot. They cover more or less the same set of basic recipes, give and take a few. And, for the most part, THEY ARE ALL DIFFERENT! And indeed, some of the books call for counterclockwise stirs where others don't. The same ingredients are prepared in different ways, which sometimes also changes how long a step takes and the heat used, often shortening the times at the cost of extra and exacting stirring, and sometimes adding an extra ingredient or two.
He theorises that higher heat, thinner slices or grinding releases more unwanted substances than simmering for a longer time, bigger, more abundant chunks or crushed ingredients, and the extra stirring and ingredients work to counter those.
Eyeing his last dose of the potion that has made the last day bearable, not to mention freeing him from the nagging worry of pending homework and getting lectured for substandard work, he opens all the books on its recipe, and taking a large sheet of clean parchment, he starts putting down a table with all the differences and similarities. He then considers them, and starts writing down on a new sheet what seems to be the 'averaged' recipe, neatly, copying the formatting of the books. He skips the extra steps that cut down on time but add complexity.
One of the textbooks, which is for NEWT level potions, has a short section describing each ingredient with an ilustration. Just basic information on what it looks like and which kind of potions it is used on. To not add this or that one while the cauldron is on the heat. All but one, which has a useful tidbit of information: Powder made from dried octopus flesh increases the strenght of potions. No information is given as to how much to add, or when. To Harry, it makes the most sense that you would add it to the completed potion, before it cools off. Obviously you'd have to stir it in. How much, and in which direction? He looks at the recipes that use other powdered components. They seem to agree, with different times and stirs being common for each category of ingredient: vegetable, animal and mineral. Octopus fall under animal.
Funnily enough there's some powdered octopus in his potions kit, even if no recipe in his assigned schoolbook calls for it. Best guess is that the apothecary wanted to get rid of it and used it to bulk out the first year's potion kits. It would make far more sense for NEWT level students to buy it the year before, so that it's fresher and doesn't go to waste.
He brews a batch of his 'improved' recipe, and the color is the exact shade it should be. On an impulse, he adds a goodly amount of octopus powder and stirs it in in the way he determined before. While it's cooling, he cleans up and puts the books away.
He then bottles up the potion, four aliquots as before.
Then he hurries back to Griffindor tower, taking off the cloak on the near the portrait entrance, after checking the map to make sure there's no one behind the portrait, or behind him. After putting away the map and the cloak, he speaks the password to the Fat Lady, enters and goes straight to the table Hermione is using.
He greets her, and sets down his bag. She huffs at him. That's not good.
"I thought you wanted to be alone today, too."
"Yeah, sorry about that. It's just that with the tournament, and Ron and everyone else turning their back on me again... I needed some quiet and peace to work it out on my own. And it worked! I feel much better now, and I even got caught up on my homework!" He smiles, a real one. He won't tell her about self-medicating with a home brewed potion, the Firebolt Incident is fresh on his mind, but the gist of what he's telling her is the truth.
"That's alright, I just don't want you to dissapear on me again all day."
"I understand, it was a spur of the moment thing, and it ended up dragging on until curfew."
"As long as you don't make an habit of it. Now, let me see that homework, I need a break from this translation."
He hands over his completed homework to her, then looks at her work on the table. On the left of the sheet are the runes, and or the right is her in-progress translation. There's notes on both magins. He notices some runes are repeated often, and they seem to match up with related but different terms in English. Are these like the root of the word, and the surrounding ones act as modifiers? He asks to borrow heer runes work, and she nods without taking her eyes from his transfiguration essay.
He looks up the individual runes and starts working on his own translation in his head. It seems his hypothesis is correct. When he's done, he checks against the part Hermione's already done. He notices what appears to be a small mistake. He's about to speak up about it when Hermione looks up at him and starts talking herself.
"This is much better than your usual, Harry! If I didn't know better I'd say you were copying someone else's!"
"Really? I found them pretty straightforward."
Hermione takes her own essay out, and holds them for him to read, side by side.
"See? They are almost identical."
And, other than her neater calligraphy and his being a bit shorter, as he did not include all the extra information she did, prefering to keep it to what was asked for, they are near identical, aping the teacher's wording.
"I see it now. Working without distractions really makes it easier. I will rewrite them, dumb them down a bit, better not give the teachers any excuse to tear on me, the way they have been behaving lately. Brings me back to the Dursleys" He adds the last in a near whisper.
"What have the Dursleys got to do with yur homework?"
Realising he's spoken the quiet part out loud, he fesses up.
"They didn't want me to do better than Dudley at school, and made their displasure known if I 'cheated'." Finger quotes belied the truth of that statement. "Neither did Dudley himself like to be shown up by his nerd cousin. So I learned to not do as good."
"Oh, Harry, that's terrible!"
Trying to distract her from the uncomfortable topic, and noticing his housemates listening in, he seizes upon his earlier discovery.
"What's terrible is that you mistook ehwaz for eiwaz. It means defense, not partnership. Which makes more sense, as this is a vassalage contract."
She quickly takes the book from his hands and double checks.
"Good catch, Harry! I was translating from memory without referencing the book, to test myself. Looks like this is a flashcard that needs to go back to the top of the stack."
They spend the rest of the evening in companionable silence, he reworking his asignments quickly then reading the healing potions book, she finishing her translation.
Many of the potions treat rather gruesome injuries and conditions, others deal with convalescing and eldery people, to help them build up their streght. Wit-Sharpening Potion is one of many recommended for elderly people after each meal.
But what really catches his eye is a potion to correct vision. It is not drunk, but a few drops are dispensed on each eye to be corrected. Among the ingredients are the eyes of multiple creatures, but they are listed as possible choices, ranked from best to worst. It seems the best are also the most expensive. The eyes of magical creatures with vision based magic powers are not to be used. Imagining what would happen if one used basilisk eyes or the like, it's not hard to see why.
Magical creature eyes also can result in the eye color or shape changing, which can result in an statute of secrecy violation. But the main issue with it is that it causes enought pain to make one want to tear his eyes out to make it stop, and painkillers stop the potion from working, and may even have adverse effects beyond that. The pain would wake anyone from being stunned, so that option is also out. The pain is compared unfavourably to skele-gro. It seems that it is not very popular for that reason. Wizards would rather use glasses than go through the pain. He puts a piee of parchment as a page marker and looks to Hermione.
"All done? It's almost dinnertime."
"What? Oh, I'm famished. You know how I get, I don't notice until I finish what I am doing. What book is that?"
"A book on healing potions. I figured I should become familiar with these, given the death toll of the tournament. Maybe we can brew some for me to carry with to the arena."
She hugs a pillow to her stomach. "Oh, Harry, I don't know that they will let you do that. For the first task it's traditional to only allow you your wand and your school uniform, according to what I have read."
"But I can place them near the arena, then summon them to me."
"It's good motivation to master that spell, at least."
He whips out his wand, summons the pillow and throws it back at her.
"No need, I already have. You were right, I was lacking concentration. Being alone for a while really helped to get in the right frame of mind. Speaking of which, let's skip the great hall and ask for a plate in the kitchens."
He starts waking towards the entrance.
"You can't hide from everyone forever, Harry"
"No, only until the first task. It won't matter then"
"That's not funny, Harry."
"Didn't meant it to be, Hermione, I am serious. Either I win and I am back to being a hero, or I lose and it's over. Either way it's not worth worrying about. Prepare for it, yes, but don't let it eat me up, that's counter-productive."
As they are going out of the portrait, Hermione turns to Harry.
"Do you know where the kitchens are?"
"No, I thought you did, you found the laundry in second year."
"Only because I saw the clotheslines in an interior patio through a window."
"Fred and George must know, they get food and drinks from there when they set up a party."
"Let's find them."
With the Marauder's map it's easy work, and they helpfully point out the room labeled "Kitchens" under the great hall, and how if you tap it with your wand it reveals the instructions on how to get in. It looks like it's empty, however. Glancing at Hermione, one of the twins smiles and says the workers don't show up in the map, never have. When she asks if they know why, he smiles and waves her away. "You'll see." He says the last with an apologetic look to Harry.
