Harry Potter and the Great Old Ones

Chapter 575 Brewing
“Hmm… then very well…” Horace Slughorn said, “Since I’ve taken out a small bottle, I’ll leave it here…”

As he spoke, Horace Slughorn gently placed the Felix Felicis potion on the metal potion holder on the podium.

"You must be wondering how you can win this incredible reward," Horace Slughorn said, returning to his lecture-like tone. "Well... turn to page ten of 'Advanced Potion Making.' We have a little over an hour left, and you need to use that time to concoct the Hellfire Potion with the correct dosage. It's a potion of suspended animation, and I know it's more complicated than anything you've done before. I don't expect to get a perfect one from anyone... but the best one will receive this small vial of Felix Felicis. So, let's begin."

As soon as Horace Lugghorn finished speaking, everyone rushed back to their workbenches and began pulling the cauldrons closer to them. This created a cacophony of screeching sounds throughout the Potions classroom, along with the muffled clinking of weights being added to the scales. However, not many people spoke.

This seems a bit incredible, because everyone in this classroom is completely focused on the work at hand.

Even the investigator, Tierra, was writing something with her head down.

Harry immediately bent down to look at the tattered old book that Slug had lent him.

He was annoyed to discover that the book's previous owner had filled every page with illegible handwriting, and now the blank spaces of the book were covered with writing, just like the printing marks.

"Hmm... Tyella, do you have a book?" Harry, annoyed by the words, turned to Tyella.

“No,” Tiera replied briefly, then casually pointed to the cauldron in front of him with his finger.

The raging flames at the bottom of the crucible instantly subsided, turning into clusters of small flames emitting a pale blue light.

The liquid inside the crucible stopped its violent boiling, with one large bubble after another, and instead became increasingly calm.

At this moment, Tiera raised her hand, picked up a blade of grass, and gently tossed it upwards—

The grass root floated in mid-air, and then Tiera gently tapped it. The grass root turned into fragments, some of which fell into the crucible, while the rest fell back onto the table.

Clearly, Tierra did not use a balance or scale to accurately determine the correct dosage of herbs for brewing the Hellfire Elixir.

As Tierra added the grass roots, the liquid in the crucible took on a... "smooth, blackcurrant-colored liquid," just as the book described the correct semi-finished product.

“I don’t need the book anymore.” With that, Tiera picked up the hypnotic beans with three hands, held them above the cauldron, and then squeezed them with three fingers—

The hypnotic bean, which was as hard as a block of clay, was as fragile as cardboard in Tiera's hands. It looked as if Tiera only squeezed it lightly, and drops of dark black liquid dripped out of the hypnotic bean.

The black liquid passed through the pale blue steam and fell into the crucible.

The liquid in the crucible instantly thickened, turning into a bright, pale purple liquid.

Seeing Tyrell's smooth and skillful actions, Harry had no choice but to move closer to the old book to find the medicine recipe. The book was even covered with annotations by its former owner, who had crossed out the original contents. After quickly scanning through the dense notes, Harry had to run to the locker to select the materials he needed.

When he rushed back to his cauldron, he found that Tiera had already made the potion inside gradually clearer—

According to the book, this phenomenon should only occur when the potion is almost finished.

Everyone kept glancing up at the progress of the others in the classroom. This was the good and bad side of potion-making; you couldn't keep your work a secret. Countless anxious eyes were cast at Tiera, then quickly dartd back to the potions on their own desks.

After carefully chopping the grass roots, Harry bent down to look at the book again, trying to discern the true contents of the textbook from the book's original owner's foolish and scribbled handwriting.

This was no easy task. The basement where the Potions classroom was located was already dimly lit, and now the overhead lights were being blocked by puffs of dark smoke, making Harry, who was already in a flurry of activity, even more frustrated.

For some reason, the guy wrote an alternative preparation procedure at the step where the hypnotic beans should be sliced: "Use the side of a silver knife to crush and squeeze out, rather than cut, the juice."

The hypnotic pods were difficult to cut, so Harry turned to Tyella and asked, "Can I borrow your silver knife?"

Halfway through the questioning, Harry was surprised to find that Tyella's table was completely empty except for a cauldron.

Tyella didn't speak. While stirring the potion in the cauldron with a glass rod, she reached out and picked up a Sleeping Bean from Harry's workbench, squeezing it hard—

A large amount of juice was squeezed out of the Sleep Bean and dripped into Harry's cauldron.

The medicine in Harry's cauldron instantly turned a bright pale purple, just as described in the textbook.

"What are you doing?" Hermione's face was flushed, her hair stood on end, making her look like a giant broom. She was frantically stirring her pot of deep purple-red potion while glancing into Harry and Tyella's pot.

"We're going to do it ourselves!" Hermione's tone was a bit urgent and harsh because the potion-making process wasn't going well. "And your methods are very unprofessional!"

“Strictly speaking… everyone’s procedures weren’t very standardized,” Tiera said nonchalantly. “None of us were wearing gloves, masks, or goggles. What if we end up like Simofie…”

"Bam—"

Before Tiera could finish speaking, a small mushroom cloud rose from the crucible of Simofenegan, three seats away from them, and the scorching heat directly singed off his eyebrows.

Without a doubt, Simofignan's crucible also shattered into pieces with a crisp sound, mixing with the viscous, clay-like liquid inside his pot.

"..." Tiera looked at Simofinigan in silence for a moment, then quickly looked away and continued to concentrate on stirring the liquid in her pot.

He was really just joking...

I didn't expect Simo to be so accommodating...

Horace Slughorn was clearly startled by the scene and hesitated for a moment before jogging over to deal with Simofenegan's experimental table.

"Alright, alright!" Horace Slughorn waved his wand a few times, and after finishing with the lab table in Simfernigan, he looked up, sweating profusely, and announced to the entire classroom, "Time's up, students, please stop stirring!"

(End of this chapter)