HA.

Take THAT, Lafay. Jake is gonna prove to you how awesome he is at potions. He'd already done the required essay and stuff he had to do since he hadn't murdered a lobalug was already done. If he had to, he'd hand it over right now, a 20 hours or so before she wanted it.

But as for right now, Jake's main aim was to get a-potioning. He set his bag on a stool and unpacked his potions schtuff, before extracting a list of possible potions he'd written up and perusing it.

Wearing sunglasses, of course. Only this time, the young man had actually forgotten to remove them.

Well... it wasn't like he was in a class or her office, like she'd gone on about, right? Ha.

Hmmmm... the underlined potion at the top seemed about right. Jake pulled out a book and started looking for the ingredients and general recipe. This was one potion he'd never brewed...

Hecate entered the lab and drew her wand, summoning the kid's glasses off his face. "Not in my presence Morgan..." She said placing the glasses on her desk. She then hopped on the desk and sat besides them. "What are you doing here Morgan, I only want kids interested in actually doing the potions in here... not theory only kids." She said narrowing her eyes at him.

Aaaaaaaaaand suddenly it was light...er.

Jake's hand reached out a little late for the glasses, and his eyes were a little slow to adjust so he wasn't sure what he was doing for a second. When the young man saw where his sunglasses had landed, and who had caused them to land, he scowled slightly but said nothing. Instead he went on writing out the instructions and ingredients until he was done.

Looking up again, Jake looked up at the board at the front. "That's not actually in the rules, though, is it? In any case, I'm not 'theory only'."

With that, Jake got up and looked around. Where in the heck was the storeroom? He was so disorientately "I have your essay."

And within the sheaves of parchment was a leeeettle purple booklet Lafay might benefit from reading. Well... when it came to Jake and any other fortunate young student who was like him and would come along. Like his little brother Dale. "Where's the storeroom?"

... maybe his eyes were all funny 'cause of the sunglasses. Heh.

"You aren't? Let me watch you make the Vaxifloo potion then... or can you just describe it?" She smirked, summoned his paper to her hands and pointed to the left of the room in the back. "Don't waste my ingredients if you are going to get self-righteous halfway through the potion." She said as she began reading his essay.

Sigh.

"No. I'm not. However, I will not make that potion," Jake said simply. "If I ever had any intentions of brewing the Vaxifloo potion, I wouldn't have opted out in class. In any case, I'm not a murderer."

He said the last part quietly as he continued to the storeroom, and stopped with his palm on the door, but not looking at Lafay. He feared that if he looked, they would make eye contact. And that was one big fat sack of NO. "I'm here to make the potion I chose, myself. And, seeing that I missed it last year, I've decided to practice brewing a de-aging potion."

So there.

She smirked. "Two problems with that, Morgan. One. The recipe calls for two lacewing flies, and unless killing a bug is not the same as killing a water animal... And two. I have no phoenix tears for you to use."

She had to be kidding.

Meh, the woman was probably having him on. In any case, Jake went back to the table, picked up his book again and flipped through the pages, looking for something without phoenix tears or killing animals. "For crying out loud," he muttered to himself. Trust him to overlook something like that. He rifled through the book and bent low over the pages, staring at each page for a few moments as he worked to decipher the letters. Jake was looking for something with a lot to do.

Yup. Something to PROVE he could create potions well.

"Okay," he finally announced. Time to try again. "I'm not going to brew the Vaxifloor potion; I'm going to make Elixir to Enduce Euphoria... if that's quite alright with you?"

Regardless, he was making that potion, and already heading back to the storeroom.

Gah, he still needed to cure his cauldron and everything.

"It certainly is..." leave it up to him to do something taught by that old coot Kazimeriz, "If it's alright with you to harvest 2 ounces of slime from the belly of a live frog..." She said smiling.

Jake took a deep deeeeeeeeeeeep breath and let it out slowwwwwlllly.

That was just... ugh.

"Vulgar," Jake muttered. Really? Had she not heard of keeping that in stock. "So you don't have any in your storeroom? I get the feeling this place isn't exactly organised."

That was two things he didn't have access too.

Once more, Jake grabbed his potions book and rifled through it.

"Okay. The... Skin-tillah-tion Solution," Jake attempted to say, scowling at the page where Scintillation Solution was listed. "Or are you all out of... Magnesium... glookonat?"

Who in the world thought up these names. What in the world was Magnesium Gluconate?

"I have plenty of frogs... the recipe calls for fresh. Meaning you need to harvest it yourself. And if I did have it, isn't it the same as having someone else get your lobalug for you, which I believe you said no to as well." She shook her head.

Really?

Her storeroom?

Not Organized?

As If!

... She was lucky though... Had she heard what he'd muttered, Hecate would have had some serious explaining to do to the Headmaster...

"Alright, but will you need me to squeeze the bulb off the fireflies?" She said to him. "Do you understand you are not going to find a potion where you are not going to use a creature. It's what we do as potioneers."

"No, actually, Professor. I don't. Because plenty of other times in potions, harm to animals hasn't been needed. I've had five years of potions here... I think I'd have picked up on it if it was happening. You know. Like people tend to do."

Delving back into his bag again, Jake sifted through it and found the book on Diogenes of Sinope that Truebridge had loaned him, a piece of parchment tucked inside the cover.

Well... this was worth a try.

"Would I be allowed to brew a potion I designed myself? I don't know if the same result exists, but I've brewed it before and I know it works, though somehow I imagine you doubt my integrity," Jake added. He figured she'd tell him no, but it was worth a try. "You'd of course be supervising anyway."

It sucked. He, an adult, being supervised by Lafay.

"You've just not realized it Morgan. As long as the ingredients are here in my stores, yes. We will see if it works." She said and laid back in her chair.

"I didn't realise it because I've never had to hurt or kill a creature for potions. For anything. Why would I realise it if it's not been in front of me?"

Deciding not to go to the store room just yet, but unpack his cauldron and utensils and locate his bottle of Mrs. Skower's Cauldron Cure. He used a non-verbal 'Aguamenti' to fill the cauldron with water and rinse it out. Once he'd tipped the water out into the sink in the room, he used a hot-air charm to evaporate the water drips and then found a brand new rag in his own supplies. As he rubbed the Cauldron Cure liberally onto the surface inside the cauldron, he glanced up at Lafay.

"How's the essay?" the young man asked, looking at the essay rather than Lafay's face before focusing on the cauldron again. He was wondering if she had found the booklet yet.

She saw the booklet in the pages and put it aside. She'd read it and give it back to him later. Right now she was concentrating on the essay. "It's enough for you to receive class credit." She said while she was on the last page. "It's not enough for you to say you brewed it." She muttered.

"How's your father..." she asked pretending she was making small talk.

Jake KNEW that it was better than 'enough'. He was ace at essays and it had not been a half-hearted attempt. But whatever, he got his class credit.

And he heard her mutter... but he didn't hear what she'd muttered. So, deciding he probably didn't want to know anyway, Jake responded to her next question. "He's fine. I'm with him over christmas," the young man explained. He'd probably find out then. "I've had all of about 5 hours max. with him since the, err... the divorce."

Ahem.

"It'll be nice to stay there." Why did she care about his dad, anyway? Jake was pretty sure that hating anything about him included his family. "Why?"

Once the cure was on the inside of his potion, Jake lit the fire beneath it and watched it carefully, just like Kazi had shown him in his fourth year. He'd already cleaned it and everything earlier, but the boy decided to either do this before or after a potion... sometimes both. He had been in a rush last time he'd brewed a potion (in the lesson) so curing it couldn't have been done. Now it was time to.

The young man kept an eye on the cauldron, stood over its low flame. He waited until he could see steam and quickly checked the inside of it, noting that the cure had indeed been absorbed by the pewter.

Turning the heat off, Jake waited for his cauldron to cool and immediately started preparing what he need, starting first with utensils, mortar and pestle, knife and a beaker of cold water. Then he glanced at his ingredients list and quickly checked through it. Mhmmm... all seemed to be in order...

"Just wondering..." She said leaving it alone.

"Write out what you are doing on the board please..." She told the boy coldly.

ooc :: I JUST checked the recipe thread before I posted and realised how similar the ingredients are to your de-aging potion. XD Mah bad.
"Sure," Jake nodded, glancing at his cauldron once more as he picked up his sheaf of parchment and went up to the board, locating some chalk and wincing. He hated touching chalk or going near the board, but it had to be done.

And the spell to make things write for him was unusually hard... at least in his opinion. He had his special quill for that usually.

In childish, disjointed handwriting, with the occasional mispelling and back to front letter (it happened when his concentration lapsed), Jake copied his notes onto the board. He had time; the cauldron was still hot.

Once he'd written it up, Jake thought for a moment and went to give Lafay his sheet of parchment with all his annotations and such all over it, as well as observations, descriptions, notes and a LOT of writing about which ingredients he could use and why all on one side, and what he had on the board written on the other side.



"In my year out I had some time to do this... It's kind of scary to take a potion without knowing what it would do, but I learnt that if you know about ingredients and the way they react with other ingredients, most of the risk is taken away. Still, I always had someone with me when I did it, in case anything went wrong, because I of course tested it on myself," Jake explained, going about gathering everything. "The main idea of the potion was to give to someone in their old age to take... have a new lease on life, and new energy. I mean, it has its problems... the surplus population thing and stuff, but I worked out that if you took it, you would still live as long as you would have if you didn't take it. Unfortunately, with its side-affects and the need to keep drinking it, it didn't work out. It needs a lot of work."

He paused, setting his stuff up at his workstation and realising he was probably talking to himself. "I guess... if I'm honest, when I think about it I wanted to make the potion to give kids like... a new start. Like myself. I've always resented the fact that I didn't get my family until I was too old."

Touching the cauldron with the back of his fingers, Jake twisted his mouth slightly. Still kinda warm, but nearly done.

"I have had the theory of an invisibility potion prepared for a while, as well. But this one... took my attention first."

WHY was he talking?

Well... because he didn't LIKE that Lafay hated him these days. Maybe this was... a way of striking up a conversation?

"What do you think?" he asked nervously, nodding at the board.

"I think you ought to shut up and just brew." She said, not looking at him.

Jake only smirked. She blatantly realised he was GOOD at potions, so wanted him to stop talking.

It was obvious... well... Jake thought so anyway.

With a jovial smile on his face, Jake checked the temperature of the cauldron and nodded, placing it over the firepit which did not have a flame and pouring the water in. When that was in he started to dice the first daisy root into rather large pieces, as per the instructions, before dropping the bits in one at a time.

Before lighting the fire, Jake took his silver knife and bent low over the second daisy root and painstakingly chopped it finely and evenly into teeeeeeeeny tiny pieces.

"Incendio," the young man muttered to the fire pit, rotating his wand anti-clockwise to make the flame turn low. It was a neat trick.

Picking up the stirrer with his right hand, Jake cast a quick 'scourgify' over it before stirring anti-clockwise 19 times. After the 19th stir, when he started on the 20th, Jake dropped the finely chopped root into the cauldron and finished the final stir, retracting the stirrer when it was at the 'top' of the cauldron.

Watching the liquid continue to spin, Jake kept an eye on his watch, waiting for 60 seconds to go by.

And while he waited...

"What do you think of Mr. Gevrik, Professor?"

She gave a big dramatic sigh... He was just going to keep talking, wasn't he? "I think he's good at what he does and hopefully will make some sorely needed changes here."

Good at what he does?

"What does he do?" he asked, glancing up again very briefly as he continued brewing. "And we don't need any change."

Change was NOT GOOD.

Sure, Jake wouldn't be around for long to see such change... but his little brother would. And the school would be a much better environment for him as it was now. Word.

To your snake.

Whilst he'd been talking and thinking, Jake had added the leech juice drops with an interval of 60 seconds between each one. He turned up the heat as soon as the last drop was in, and added the skinned shrivelfig carefully, so it didn't splash anything... or him. Picking up the stirrer, Jake rested one hand on the desk and stirred continuously anti-clockwise as he leaned over the potion very slightly, watching for the colour change. Deep purple... deep purple...

It was turning navy right now... a few more turns ought to do it.

She stood and made her way to look at the cauldron. "He's security, he's making changes to make things more secure." She said. "Things will be better..."

"I doubt it," Jake shrugged, still stirring the cauldron and preparing himself to move onto the next step because the blue was slowly changing colour. "Things are quite alright as they are, in my opinion."

Then the potion was purple, and Jake slowed his stirring to watch more closely for the shimmer. He had to go slow because you could totally miss the shimmer and the potion would turn to sludge.

As soon as it was there, Jake stopped stirring and picked up the ginger root, looking at Lafay for a moment as he warmed the root by rapidly rolling it between his palms. The young man flicked his too long blond hair out of his eyes and looked down at the potion again. Moments later, the blue steam was rising and he carefully slid the root in from between his palms.

When the root was in, Jake grabbed the stirrer again and began stirring anti-clockwise...

1, 2, 3... the potion had gone deep red when the root had gone in...

7, 8, 9... it was starting to turn a pink not unlike what the end product would look like...

12, 13, 14... the liquid in the cauldron had turned a kind of muddy yellow and was now verging on orange. As Jake continued to stir he smiled in slight pride as it indeed turned...

18, 19, 20: bright orange.

After adding the scarab beetle he'd already ground, Jake turned the flame up high and began the tedious process of stirring anti-clockwise every two seconds and adding a fluxweed leaf, now focusing completely on what he was doing. He did not want to mess up now.

Good sweet Merlin, he would PROVE himself!

"I don't." She simply said. "I think Ikenna will do great things here..."