Loki looked at the desk with panic, 'What do I do?'
'I have to make a batch of healing potions?'
'How do I even make them? What's the recipe I have to follow?'
'Calm down Loki, Calm down.'
Taking deep breaths Loki stabilised his mind and forced his body to calm down as he scanned the ingredients on the table.
"Wormwood, Bubotuber pus, the liver of some animal, Ditany and the tail hair of some creature, all of them are powerful body-altering agents."
"Wormwood is a hallucinogenic plant, Bubotuber pus is good to cleanse the cells, the liver probably gives diarrhea whose strength depends on which creature it was pulled out from while the Ditany heals wounds and the tail hair looks like it's from a Unicorn so it's meant to be a sanitising agent?"
"But how much of each goes into the potion?"
"And how do I use them?"
"Alright let's think, Professor Snape made around twenty bottles of the potion so that means he used about twenty bottles of Bubotuber pus because it is the only liquid in all of this? While he probably used very little ditany because it is very potent, something like five stalks with four leaves each should do to heal a grave injury too."
Loki separated the required amount of Ditany leaves but when he went to separate the Bubotuber pus he found that there was only a little bit of it left in the bottle.
"Huh, if there is only this much left, I should get more."
Loki began to walk to the cabinet to get more Bubotuber pus but then he paused as his gaze fell on an empty flash on the table, something he'd been ignoring till now since it was empty.
"An empty flask? What was it used for? To mix ingredients? No it's too clean for that." Loki picked up the flask and smelt its contents after pulling open the cork keeping it closed.
"It smells like nothing, water? Oh! Did he use Distilled Pure Water!?" Loki realised and theorised at the same time, "So did he dilute the Bubotuber pus with water? Is that why the Potion that professor Snape made was much less thicker than the pus in consistency?"
Loki ran to the ingredients cupboard and pulled out another flask of Pure Distilled Water.
Arriving back at his potion making station Loki looked at the other ingredients, "The Hair couldn't have been put in first because it will burn and shrink under heat, so it's probably put in after the Distilled water so that its components can be easily absorbed."
"And since the potion was a healing potion it means that after the liver was added the potion was stirred in the anti clockwise direction to negate its diariah properties and make it induce vomit so that no contaminants remain inside the body for long."
"While the wormwood was added to reduce the pain by drugging the patient."
Loki pulled out his pocket watch and looked at the time he had left, "Ten minutes."
"Although I don't know the order these ingredients were added I can try something and see if it works, better to fail after trying something than not even make an attempt."
Loki started the fire under the cauldron and poured slightly more than a bottles worth of Pure Distlled water so that he would still have a bottle's worth left after some of it evaporated.
As the water came to a boil, Loki added into the cauldron Bubotuber pus and began to stir it clockwise to give the potion a consistent thickness while also enhancing the effect of the ingredient.
After which he added the leaves of ditany while continuing to stir the potion in the clockwise direciton.
When the leaves had lost their colour and dissolved into the potion he added in a few wormwood stalks and a few Unicorn hair strands whose count Loki left entirely on luck, and once they vanished in the potion, Loki finally added a few chopped slices of the liver.
After he added liver Loki began to stir the ingredients counter clockwise so that the liver would reverse its affects.
The time on Loki's watch struck half past ten and Snape opened his office door at the same time.
'Was he waiting behind the door?' Loki imagined and cursed at Snape in his mind.
Snape came in without a sound, swooping in like a bat as he looked at Loki's potion with furrowed brows.
Loki's potion was not the blood red colour Snape's potion had been, it was more a deep shade of pink and Snape definitely noticed that since he immediately rolled up a newspaper he pulled out of under his robes and smashed it on Loki's head.
"Why did you put the ditany before the wormwood stalks? Do you want to heal the patient or give him a high?"
"Oh damn!" Loki cursed since he realised that by putting the Ditany in before the wormwood stalks he had reduced the effectiveness of the Ditany since it was heated for longer.
Meaning some of it was wasted in the form of a gas that probably boiled away while the wormwood stalks probably just mixed well with the potion giving it a strong halucinatory property.
"And if you figured out that you needed to counter the liver's effects why didn't you put it in as the first ingredient? You could've saved the trouble of making the effects of the other ingredients weaker when you stirred it counter clockwise!" Snape scolded after hiting Loki a second time.
After storing a vial worth of potion from Loki's cauldron, Snape pulled out a few Ditany leaves and added it to the potion and stirred it in a clockwise fashion for a little bit, after which he added a spoonful more Bubotuber pus causing it to turn the exact shade Snape's original potions had been.
"Wow! How did you know to do that!?" Loki asked with admiration while Snape poured the potion that he had just fixed into new bottles which Loki corked.
"Hmpf." And Snape ignored him as he usually did while handing over the vial filled with Loki's potion and asked him a question, "Do you know the levitation charm?"
"Yes!" Loki nodded.
"Then carry all these to the Hospital Wing."
"Erm.. professor, where's the hospital wing if I may ask?"
Snape looked at Loki like he was looking at vermin and then turned around and tapped the boxes of potions with his own wand and began to walk out.
Loki followed and Snape locked the door behind him after which they strode off into the dark night corridors of the castle.
They walked through a hall containing a giant fifty feet tall pendulum and Loki felt slightly curious about it, but he ignored it since Snape was with him.
The walk was a silent one until Snape finally reached in front of a tall set of doors that were made out of marble and filled with carvings of various plants, animals and magics that Loki realised were all something related to healing and medicines.
*Knock* *Knock*
Snape knocked on the door using the knocker that was fixed on it and waited patiently with Loki and the floating crates of potions.