Again at the potion making class, with Miss Harmony.
Many students thought there are too many classes like this in the timetable. Why? Maybe because it was the funniest class ... if you were one of those students who liked to sit for hours next to a cauldron simmering so slowly that you sometimes felt like throwing a huge amount of firewood to set fire to everything, including the potion.
However, as for the students who attended Miss Harmony's class and sat next to that cauldron, almost everyone felt like going mad.
"Everything must simmer. Otherwise, ingredients won't mix properly and the potion can have many side effects. More than usual," Miss Harmony smiled.
After a moment she looked at the children.
"It still has to boil exactly fifteen minutes. After that I'll share a Berzelius glass of potion for each of you. You only have to add three ingredients. And so you get a potion that can change, attention: the colour of your clothes.
The professor clapped hands so happily as if she just plotted to master the whole world.
The professor's words came like a breath of fresh air for the students. Most looked like numb. Only the movement of their eyelids proved they were alive, because otherwise the students didn't move at all.
They were like the tiny, breathless creatures floating in liquid in the jars where they were dropped, except that they breathed.
What kind of little creatures? Well green frogs, mice as black as coal, small snakes, but still scary, even moles or bats. And there were plenty of eyes or parts of various small animals in those jars, gathered like sweets in a grocery store, forming piles of eyes, claws or teeth, stuffed to the brim. All of these seemed hypnotic, inducing drowsiness. Along with the potion class, of course.
"Really ... what an enchanting magic," Alexander said, drained of energy to one of his colleagues. "We'd been waiting for almost two hours to change the colour of a blouse?"
Miss Harmony seemed to hear him, as she continued:
"I know you don't quite like it, but don't forget. If you manage to prepare this potion properly, whose last three ingredients can be found on page 32 of the volume Elixirs and Potions, you'll certainly be able to prepare even more interesting potions in the future. I don't teach you here how to make potions that can turn various objects into other objects, or some creatures into other creatures. Or how to increase your power 20 times or breathe for hours through the water, like a fish. I teach you how to make a potion as good as possible. And when you created the potions you like once, when you need them, you can create them without any problems. Because you'll learn what's most important in potions' creation. To know exactly the ingredients and the most accurate dosing ... for the best efficiency."
After a short break as she saw the kids were bored, she went on:
"Now go to your desks and open the book on page 32."
The children began to move so slowly that even a snail could keep up with them. Finally, after too long, all the books opened on page 32. Miss Harmony gave them a minute to read about the three ingredients they had to use, and then she said:
"Let's make it funnier ..."
On hearing these words, the kids seemed to be awakened from a long sleep. Some even smiled. Anything was welcome to change their boredom ... it was much better to leave behind that numbness.
"Let's see who knows how we can fight a vampire," said Miss Harmony. "Let's see what potions we need to fight against a vampire. But most importantly. What ingredients should we use and where can we find them?"
Still pure theory. So all the boys awoken from drowsiness got back to it ... in that bottomless boredom pit. And judging by the boys' faraway look, they probably preferred to really fall into a pit - it would be more interesting.
"Alexander? Do you help us? I am willing to offer an exam point for the best answer." The points, which added up, could help you to become valedictorian couldn't stimulate even Alexander, the biggest hunter of such points, as Miss Harmony hoped.
"A potion based on garlic ... something like that."
"Come on, Alexander, you can do more than that. We discussed less than a month ago. Garlic is good, but there is an even better potion."
"Maybe Elizabeth can tell us," Alexander tried to escape the discussion that could become endless.
But also because he didn't know the answer to the question.
As for the points, he was the second, with only two fewer than Christoph Scott. A short boy with a tiny nose, big ears looking like ladles used by the children to pour soup in plates when they ate.
This Christoph was a student who never managed to answer even the simplest question asked by his professor. No matter what he was asked, he couldn't speak, out of timidity, for sure, because in tests or practical checks no one would beat him. Not once did he excel at making the best potions.
"How did you manage to get the chameleon colour, Christoph?" asked Professor Harmony at one of the Potions and Elixirs classes. "No student got it so perfect at such a young age."
A potion that gave you the power to become one with the environment you were in. If you stood next to a closet, your body skin and clothes would take on the colour of the closet. Only your eyes and lips were different from the rest of your body. And if you stood in front of a tree, you became a tree just like the one behind you, only you were a tree with eyes and mouth.
As usual Christoph's only response was to hand to Miss Harmony his list of deletions and changes in the weights used, so one wondered how come the potion was so good. But the effect was always guaranteed. He knew very well what he did and he always succeeded. It was just hard to get something from his list of ingredients and the quantities used. A list that had a lot of notes made by the boy, barred and, overwritten recalculated countless times, and he hated explaining if asked.
"I hope ... I get what you have written here, Christoph," said Miss Harmony. "Anyway you got the point for the best chameleon colour potion. Just by the book. And indeed, he deserved the point. Even if everything was clear only in his head, not on paper. But not once did they ask to redo the task and it came out at least as well.
As for the other students, no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't finish the potion as quickly as he did.
Some of them, after drinking from the bottle the potion called chameleon colour, made by them, became ... anything but not chameleons.