Serena nervously walked into the Potions class and smile sheepishly as Hubert. She was glad to get started on her finals, but a little bit anxious as well. She chose a desk near the front of class and took out her notes. Next she set her cauldron out and started to gather the ingredients she would need to brew the Shrinking Potion.

Kali slowly walked into the potions classroom. Finals have begun and she was both relieved and nervous about each of them. She gave a small smile to Hubert and chose a desk that was near the enterance of the room. She then took out certain things, including her cauldron and the other ingredients that were a necessity for the potion.

Stacy walked in and sat down at a desk near the front... she had been practicing all week on this potion so she could do it prefectly for the exam... afterall potions is NOT her strong suit. She pulls out her potions kit and realizes that she does not have any more rat spleen or leech juice... she walks up to the front and smiles at Hubert and picks up the ingredients she needs.

Stacy set up everything just the way she did when she was practicing so that she could try and do her best. She placed her cauldron on her left and the ingredients by order of use on her right...

"Okay... I can do this" Stacy said to herself and got up one last time to get water for her cauldron. Finally it is time to start...

Stacy starts be chopping her daisy roots... her hands were shaking and she chops were uneven and smaller then she remebered seeing Prof. Airlia's in class ("I hope this doesn't affect my outcome?") then she skins her shrivelfig and slices her caterpillar. She waits for her water to boil and when it does adds the daisy roots, shrivelfig and caterpillar slices. Stirring with shaken hands for 2 minutes she then adds one rat spleen. She grabbed vile of leech juice and started to pour it in. Because she was so nervous and her hands were sweaty she accidently poured in way too much leech juice. Hoping that nobody saw her mistake she waits and almost crying says, "Well I guess I have to wait and see what color if it... if its green then maybe I will be okay.. hopefully it wont be orange!"

Stacy waits for a half hour and finally looks at her final potion... and to her horror it wasn't an acid green at all. The potion was somewhere in between a bright green and a tan color.

Carefully she walks up to the front of the class and asks Hubert very quietly so the other students do hear, "Can you attempt to make another potion if our first didn't turn out exactly how we wanted it? I have all the ingredients, but I want to pass it by you first?"

Serena looked carefully at her ingredients list and instructions from her previous class.

She started by gathering together her daisy roots, shrivelfig and nettles. She realized she had used her last caterpillar during the previous class. She raised her hand to get Huberts attention. "I need a caterpillar. It seems I have run out." Hubert showed her where to get a caterpillar. After she picked one from the jar, she also turned to get her leech juice while whe was there. On her way back to her desk, she could see Stacy was using a rat spleen in her potion. She looked again at the board to make sure she was making the right potion.... 'Shrinking Potion'... yes this is the right one. Next she looked to see if she had all the ingredients and noticed she had forgotten to check for ginger roots. Luckily, she still had a good supply, and added them to her selection. She began to chop her daisy roots, and her hands trembled slightly. 'Oh, that's not too even' she said to herself and tried to be more uniform as she continued chopping taking deep breaths to steady her hands. 'You can do this' she said again to herself.

Nadia is sitting by the side of the door, her mind drifting over so often with the many things in her head. It took twice as long for her to get ready, with shaky fingers to try calm herself. Taking her utensils from a quite large brown bag, Nadia recounted on her head everything needed, plus a vial of already berwed Shrinking Potion to compare once she was over -she guessed there was no rule that said she couldn't. She cursed under her breath when one of her vials fell and crashed on the floor, her powered dried nettle powder spilling all over. She had to lean to take them up again when realizing and picking them up with levitation instead. Seemed all of the training in hovering charms weren't all in vain. Sighing, she finally had all of the ingredients on her table.

8 grams of daisy roots (which she soon chopped, though not that evenly out of nerves), one shrivelfig (to be skinned) as key ingredient just in the center, the caterpillar (to be sliced) just behind. The glass filled with leech juice was at the very end of the table alond with the 8 grams of nettles (dried and already crushed) and in the front-right was the ginger root, to be chopped and meassured.

Nadia took one look at her notes again, just in case:

* daisy roots (chopped)- 8 grams --> stunt growth
* shrivelfig (skinned)- one --> key ingredient, using the inner part
* caterpillar (sliced)- one --> tranform/transmogrification
* nettles (dried and crushed)- 8 grams --> to shrink and cure boils
* leech juice- a dash --> extract volume
* ginger root (chopped)- 4 grams --> power boost

Definitelly not the Shrinking Solution but the Shrinking Potion, she noticed with relief and set to finish the setting of the ingredients. She started with teh ginger roots firsts, and fr soem reason the first chops were all mutilated and uneven different from the last which were more even - meassuring them she decided using the last chops. Once done with the catterpillar, quite more confident this time, Nadia started and finished the skinning in record time again, and then was ready... until she uninitentionally crashed the glass of leech juice on the floor, again.

Jaren gathered the ingredents for the potion in front of him while he kept a poker face on, when in reality this day was not going for him. It did not help that he had managed to misplace his notes on the potion, nor did the fact that he was suffering a very sudden brain fade over the proper brewing of the potion. Apparently the lack of rest in the past few days had begun to take its toll on his brain, which was already too busy as it was. He put the water in his cauldron on boil while he attempted to piece together the amounts and proceedure.

Daisy roots and ginger...chopped evenly, shirvelfig x1 skinned, caterpillar x1, same as roots...now what? Not rat spleen...nettles. Crushed...how crushed again? And how much of each root?

Jaren set to work on the shrivelfig and caterpillar first, considering he knew those quantities. His mind scrambled for the missing information. He knew he needed more of one root than the other, and that the amount of nettles equalled the amount of one of the roots. Which one though? It had to be more daisy roots...and if so then the same amount of nettles...what was the exact amount? He couldn't just dump it all into his cauldron and hope it worked out, that was not an option.

Ratio...ratio of daisy roots to ginger. 3:1? 2:1? Hn. Closer to 2:1. Number...remember the number...

Rather annoyed at himself for not commiting his notes to memory, the Slytherin fourth year continued to meticulously slice the caterpillar, while keeping one eye on the heating water.

-SHauna gathers her ingridients and sets her cauldron up-right. She takes out her notes and looks over them carefully, not wanting to make any mistakes this time. After she looks over the ingredients she gathers them together and starts concoting the potion. When she reaches the sliced caterpillar she accidently slips and makes a small cut on her finger. Her reaction to this was to fling her arm-which she did- and knocked over her freshly cut daisy roots. - Oh dear... -quickly she begins picking them up and then gets out some new ones and starts re-chopping-

Stacy walked back to her desk... she knew that she hadn't made the correct potion, but that didn't really surprise her... she was never very good at potions.... shepoured some of her wierd looking potion into her bottle and as she did...

***BOOM***

It exploded into her face... "Great," she thought. Now she had ashed all over her face and the other students were staring...

"Oh well!" She just gave a cheesy smile at everyone else and poured wehat was left of her potion into her ashes bottle, handed it in and walked out of class....

"I guess I need to practice more"

The glass vial fell over so slowly, the leech juice one she had to clumsily knocked over, Nadia followed it with her eyes as it crashed into pieces, and for a minute guessing it had blasted before reaching the ground... which would be small wonder.

Nadia cursed and cursed and cursed as the leech juice, all of the blood, 's glass crashed on the floor with an audible "crash", and watched as the content spilled to the floor creating quite a mess, a ever-so growing path of human blood and leech fluids. Nadia took her wand and whipped the floor using "Evannesco!" before finally realizing what she was doing. The floor sparking clean, maybe with this little hint of metallic blood smell left behind, but Nadia had no juice to work with now. Resisting the ever-so-needed impulse to punch the nearest wall, she contented with clenching her teeth together and muttering some barely audible cursing under her breath (something that sounded like "blast the bloody blasted thing", "bugger, buggery buggered bugger" and "son of a Dead Easter") and sitting back again with her head on her hands. She sighed and got startled once more when this Hufflepuff managed to blast its own potion. And Nadia sighed even more audibly and tiredly, almost ironically.

Rubbing her temples, Nadia looked at her companions work and maybe got to relax - she had been worried for a moment that her MBD would start crashing all of the other students' vials (Nadia silenced those thoughts feeling the shivers at the idea and her heart starting to pound exitedly, and not in a good way). But then again, there were worst things and she surely shouldn't be worrying about a silly exam, not really, right?

Yeah, sure... and what was she doing here talking to her own head anyway?

Finally using "Reparo" on the broken pieces of crystal, Nadia stood and went to the front desk, looking at the watch (muggle one) once every so often. Then still trying not to scream, addressed Professor Airlia's house elf.

"Excuse me, I will take some -" she stooped seeing and sizing one flask with a leech there, "a leech."

She was too embarrassed and worried to add more and immediately sat back, once again realizing her errors. Just before her, at the front desk, were this already made leech juice, and here she went for the dead whole leech! Mortified and yet too ashamed to go back and switch flasks, Nadia took the one in her hands and opened, taking the slimmy oh so repugnant creature. And squeezed.

Eurg...

She squeezed all she could and still it wasn't enough to make a "dash". Both hands - against her leg - against the desk. She tried harder, and harder, as in whipping an old cloth or raw meat when you tried eating it forcefully (bitting the leech did crossed Nadia's mind). Nothing would come, she didn't have the strenght. Frustrated she punched the leech against the desk is hopes of making it softer. That only earned her funny looks. A shippish smile and she was back with this impulse to punch something, maybe her own head.

'Well, Airlia said they could use their notes, never said which notes,' Nadia's Slytherin side kicked in. Snorting at her own suggestion a voice said 'why not?' while taking her charms book and looking though it quickly. She was looking for something that would cause some pressure. She knew no weight spells, only enlargening, or well, shrinking, and on the other hand pressure did work here. Oh the irony. Nadia took her wand and casted over the leech a shrinking spell only on the skin, the rest was, finally, easy.

After all of that jass, the cauldron wasn't even heated and she had wasted valuable time! Why was it that even if she had great memory EVERY time she was the last one to hand in? For some reason that thought didn't put her worst but added to the humor of 'Let us at least try' and started with the actual brewing. Honest. If she took into consideration what had just happened...

500mL of boiling water, Nadia checked on her notes and heated the water, pointing her wand at the cauldron and a not so small flame appeared, pushing a waft of hot air againt her face, letting the water boil. Jus then added the skinned shrivelfig, the 8grams of daisy roots and slized caterpillar, cautiontly meassuring them before proceeding. Only when adding the nettle, she realized, she had it powdered. (*gasp*) At full speed: levitated one dried nettle from the professor's desk, used the moltar and pestle and crushed them some, not completely, and throw it. And Merlin helps her.

Sighing, Nadia tried to find her timer, failed (...What else could get worst...) and had to meassure the time with her muggle watch instead. 2 minutes of stirring, then added the leech juice on the jar - got the levitated dried leech smack her forehead while looking for the timer and finally erased it with "Evanesco as well." - which wasn't much but Nadia thought it would sufice.

Finally relaxing for this stage and stretching, Nadia placed her -pained- sight on the surrounding... Jaren seemed to be having some troubles... A thought crossed her mind and in a movement half-intentioned her potion notes fell from the desk and she had to retrieve it back from the floor, near Jaren's desk. Then sat back. She well knew what a racket this would cause if Jaren noticed it had been intentional, leaving it second only. Yawning as she finally see the 30 minutes completed, some stirring here and there, she thought she was going to compensate the hours she lacked of sleep there and then.

OK, so what was now? A, yes, the Ginger wasn't it? Another two minutes, her eyes ached from watching at the small numbers on her wrist so much, then removed the cauldron from the fire and with her bare hands. She must have been really sleepy, to allow have that one right index finger burned by the potion as she set it down rather clumsily, and even more surprised to see it was shrinking!

Oh, this surely had to be one of her most difficult days!!!

Standing and kind of relieved it only got her finger, feeling it particularly weird and, rather, not feeling it, Nadia run to the front desk and asked Hubert for a antidote potion quick, her face showing this expression of horror as she thought her index was about to disappear!

0_0

Terry quietly walked into class hoping to see Professor Airlia's smiling face. She was disappointed to see Hubert sitting at the professor's desk with a sad expression on his face. She hurriedly found a seat and listen to the instructions Hubert gave. The sad look on his face let her know the rumors going around the school were true. Professor Airlia was indeed in serious condition in the Intensive Care Ward of the Hospital Wing. This upset Terry very much. Professor Airlia is one of her favorite teachers, and she was hoping she would come through the ceremony in perfect health. Having helped Professor Lainey rescue Professor Rae, Terry had hoped Professor Airlia would be in the same shape as Professor Lainey, but she guessed the difference in the women's ages had played a factor.

When Hubert finished his speech, Terry went into her bag and pulled out her notes from her previous classes. She found the recipe for the Medicamentum Contraho: the Shrinking Potion. She read the list of ingredients carefully. Terry then got out her cauldron and carried it to the front of the class. She gathered the ingredients she would need from the ones provided and headed back to her seat. She had a lot of work to do if she was the get the potion brewed in time.

Birdy began taking out her ingridients for the potion. She was confident she could pull off a passing grade in this class. When she had them all prepared and neatly lined up on her desk she began brewing the potion.

She started by setting 500mL of water to boil then she pulled out her notes from previous classes. Birdy read her list of instructions and ingridient notes and began by adding daisy roots, shrivelfig, caterpillar slices, and nettle to now boiling water and promply began stiring. Everything was going right so far, Birdy noted admirably. She added a dash of leech juice and set the potion to cool.

While packing up her things, Birdy noticed her potion had begun to hiss dangerously and turn bright blue. Snatching up her notes, she realized in horror, she had forgotten to add the chopped ginger roots. Pouncing on her bag, she began to tear through it searching for at least 4 grams of roots for her potion, which had now engulfed her tabletop with whispy, black smoke. She siezed her ginger roots, and cut them as neatly as she could through her painc and thickening smoke. In a few moments, she tipped her root into the cauldron, re-lit the fire, and began stirring vigirously. Birdy sighed with relief when her potion slowly began to change into a greenish-hue and stopped issing smoke. Wafting the smoke off her table, she hoped this exam wouldn't be a total loss for her.

Hubert left his stool to clean up the mess from the girl who made her potion explode. He shook his head as he walked until he passed by Mrs. Weasley. His ears turned red and he gave a sheepish smile as he hurried by. A quick snap of his fingers had everything cleared up and then, he wiped the desk down with a cloth before heading back up to his stool, risking a small wave to Mrs. Weasley as he walked past.

Ally checked the Shrinking potion ingrediants, hurridly. She chopped the daisy roots, her hands were shaking.
'I need to work quicker.' she thought.
She then moved onto skinning a shrivelfig and sliced a caterpilla.
'Yuck.' she whispered.
She silently turned her neck and looked around at the other students, who all seemed to be doing fine. Remembering that she was in the middle of exam, she focused back on getting the ingredients done, and eventually finished preparing them. She massaged her head, and took a deep breath. She didnt know why she was getting so worked up.
Ally hurried to the front desk to recieve some leech juice from the teacher. As she turned around, she knocked into someone...

Doing his best to ignore the various noises of destruction as people around him fumbled various potion equipment and blew up their cauldron, Jaren cast a quick glance around him, eyes falling briefly on Nadia "accidentally" dropping her notes close by, and immediately became more annoyed. Did she think he couldn't brew this himself?! Was it that apparent he was having trouble? Turning his back to her he then engaged in a random and foolhardy way of determining exactly how much roots and nettles he needed. He counted the main ingredients--six, plus the water, seven. He needed a 2:1 ratio, which would mean the number should have been an even number, so he bumped the calculated digit up to eight. Hoping this was about right, he quickly set to work on the rest of the ingredients, since the water in the cauldron was already beginning to boil.

He chopped up the daisy roots, forcing himself to slow down so the slices would be even. The ginger could wait a while. He then pounded the nettles until they were crushed, though, as he expected it with a frown, some of it had already begun to powder. Nothing he could do about that now. He dumped the prepared ingredients into the cauldron and started stirring with the appropriate ladel.

Next problem...for how long? Jaren was sure it wasn't for very long--he had mentally timed the person in front of him stirring and adding the leech juice, no more than two minutes. He was sure that after the leech juice, the next step was to wait half an hour--ample time to chop the ginger roots. Jaren looked at his watch--an old, battered Muggle watch, thankfully not digital or it would have malfuctioned--and ticked off the seconds, stirring the potion. After about two minutes (it was difficult to be any more precise, he thought to himself) he added the leech juice, taking pains to make sure he didn't add too much, stirred a few more times, then let it sit.

Oh wait, it was supposed to simmer at this point, wasn't it? Jaren cut back the fire under the cauldron a good minute into the supposed stewing, mentally cursing himself for forgetting that part. Nothing to be done now, he went and worked on the ginger roots, making sure that this part did not go wrong. The more parts of the preparation that were messed up, the worse the potion would be.

After half and hour, which Jaren spent fussing over the ginger roots and glancing about the class--Nadia seemed to have a bad case of nerves--he added the ginger roots, stirred again (two minutes? Three? Two then.) Then turned off the heat. Realizing he had nothing to protect his hands with, he levitated the cauldron with his wand and moved it onto an empty spot on his desk to cool, then rummaged through his potion kit for empty vials and glass stoppers.

While waiting for the potion to cool sufficiently, Jaren let his mind fall back into the chain of thoughts that was keeping it so busy. Professor Rae looked like she would make it, as well as Riddle and Lainley. Professor Airlia...that was the danger with meddling with the natural law of things. He would not draw a conclusive judgement over the staff's decision to do what it did, only to comment that they had been reckless, to put it kindly, about what they did. But as a student, he was powerless to do anything about it. He hated that feeling of being able to accomplish nothing...even rescuing Professor Rae after her long fight with the new Dark Lord was not exactly any action that changed the course of history. And he couldn't take complete credit...Nadia's healing potion did most of the work. He would have to thank her later...

Jaren snapped out of his reverie to check on his potion, which had cooled. He ladeled it into the vial, nothing that it was at least green, if not lime green, jammed the glass stopper on it and wrote his name and house on the label before handing it in to Hubert. With that done, he began to clean up his work area in preparation to leave the classroom.

With practically no finger, Nadia hurried forwards and though before asking Hubbert for a potion, he seemed pretty busy clearing the mess so Nadia tried doing the thing herself. She rumaged though the various glasses containing ingredients and such at the professor's desk, a handchief over the index finger (or lack thereof) and until finding that particularly familiar potion. It was labelled so it better be it, "Antidote for the Medicamentum Contraho". Slowly using the same handchief, which got somewhat wrinkled and shrank, Nadia wetted it and pressed over the finger and rubbed to adminitrate the potion correctly. Sure enough the finger soon returned to its original state but Nadia applied more of the antidote just in case. By the time she was going back to her seat, she crossed Hubert and gave him this shippish smile trying not to call attention.

More awake now this thing was over, Nadia quickly wrote down "Medicamentum Contraho: Shrinking Potion - Nadia Chantalona-Rey, Slytherin, 4th year" and sticked it on the vial she was going to use, and now more careful, levitated some of teh content of the cauldron inside the vial and into the glass supporters she conjured.

Going forwards to the Professor's desk once more, Nadia placed the vial there, smiling nervously at Hubert and shaking so she was sure she was going break the vial if she didn't stop.

She went back to her seat, determined if not to coward to move, waiting for the final veredict from the professor once she got there. Meanwhile started with the Written Part of the exam. She waited several seconds to calm down, her heart beating wildly. Then started...

'Sorry!' said Ally . The leechjuice dropped like a stone, and the container it was in, smashed as it interacted with the floor.
Nice one she thought.
'Oh no... Sorry Hubert.' she said with a sad look on her face.
She cleaned it up and took another sample, then returned to getting the Shrinking potion done.
She collected the daisy roots, shrivelfig, caterpilla slices and nettles to 500ml boiled water, and stirred it for around 2 minutes. Then, Allly added a bit of the leech juice, and spent the next...
30minutes.. wait... was it 30 minutes? or 15 minutes? ahh crap.. where are my notes?
The notes were in her jeans pocket. She eventually found the correct amount of time and spent it stirring the potion, every now and again.

The final ingrediants were added, and she stirred it for a couple of minutes.
After it had cooled, Ally wrote her name and house on 2 vials, and poured the potion into them.

Phew. The potion doenst look too bad, it is green... did i stir it the right way though? ****.. its too late now!
Ally took the vial up to the desk, and handed it to Hubert.

Drusilla sees she´s running out of time, as she has been in her thoughts, but you cannot turn back, once you´ve got this far. She hastily runs to get the leech juice and wonders where the Professor is. She wouldn´t dare to run if Professor Airlia was around, because she thinks it would be most unpolite, and might cost her some house-points as well, but Hubert seems to be so nervous himself that she doubts he would notice if she flew with her broom. However, she is very careful to walk back to her desk with the leech-juice.

"What do I need, let me see..." she mutters to herself.
* daisy roots (chopped)- 8 grams
* shrivelfig (skinned)- one
* caterpillar (sliced)- one
* nettles (dried and crushed)- 8 grams
* leech juice- a dash
* ginger root (chopped)- 4 grams

She almost cries as she sees the caterpillar she´s supposed to chop. It reminds her of her pet snake back home. "I just cannot do this" she thinks, but then decides to close her eyes and try. All went well, except that now she had chopped the daisy-roots as well, and she hadn´t weighed them yet. And the caterpillar was supposed to be sliced, not chopped... Tries to separate them as well as she can. "This will have to do!" She couldn´t possibly handle this caterpillar anymore. Tries to weigh the chopped daisy-roots, and is very careful not to touch the caterpillar pieces with her bare hands... To slice it, she simply couldn´t. Relieved there were no more animal parts in the potion, she prepares the rest of the ingredients.

She measures 500 mL of water into the cauldron, and follows the instructions for preparing the potion. Did she succeed brewing the potion, she couldn´t tell, still feeling sick about chopping that caterpillar...

"Spike!" she cries, almost aloud.

[OOC! Very original, err...? Couldn´t think of any other name to be given to Drusilla´s pet, though *lol*. Suits a snake perfectly well, because it stings. At least her Spike does, since it is venomous.]

Labels the vial and hands it to Hubert with an unsure smile. Then realizes what her mother would say seeing her smiling to a house-elf like an idiot...

"Isn´t it bad enough you have muggle-born friends! Do you have to smile to a house-elf as well?" she hears her mother´s icy voice echoing in her head.

The smile dies almost as soon as it had appeared.

While carefully cleaning her hands, she thinks how happy she was to get back home for Chritmas holidays to see her Spike, but mother she could honestly do without... Maybe she´s caught cold, she thinks hopefully, then she couldn´t nag. Drusilla was also happy for staying out of trouble, but that really wasn´t anything to brag about, since almost nobody seemed to talk to her, except the Professors. These people really seemed to have some prejudices against people from Durmstrang... Even the Slytherins... She was a little disappointed.

Maybe she should smile more, she tought desperately, but then shivered with disgust. She wasn´t the one to be smiling for nothing! Leaves the room with an arrogant expression on her face.

Cordelia carefully lines the ingrediants on the table in the orders that she remembers.
daisy roots, shivelfig, caterpillar, nettles and...er, she gets confused between leech juice and ginger roots.Which one comes before the other?
She tries to remember the song she and her friends made to help memorize this.
"daisy ms. fig lost her skin in the caterpillar's celler. Nettles visits the celler for a goblet of juice then the hears the root hoot!"
So it was a corny song but it really helped her in preparation for the exam.
daisy roots, shivelfig, caterpillar, nettles, leech juice and ginger root.

Cordelia measures the size of how small the daisy roots should be chopped. She marks each point with her quill and does the same with ginger roots, since they should be evenly chopped. After chopping, she measures 8 grams of daisy roots and 4 grams of ginger roots. She separates them into separate labled containers then puts them aside.
"I suppose I should have the cutting done first."
She decides and starts to work on slicing the caterpillar. She again measures the size to even the pieces out before cutting. She stores the sliced caterpillar into another labled jar so they would not dry out.
Cordelia checks her watch. Not much time to prepare all ingredients before start boiling the water. She sets her cauldron over the fire and pours 50 ml of water inside.
"It should start boiling by the time I'm done with shivelfig."
She gets to work right away and the water starts to boil when she is just finished peeling off the skin of shivelfig completely. Cordelia allows the water to keep boiling for another couple of minute while crushing the dried nettles.
Then she adds all the ingredients into the water except for leech juice and ginger roots. She takes her spoon and starts stiring them to the right for a minute then switches hand to stir to the left for another minute.
"thats should be 2 minutes, I hope. Now with the leech juice. A dash...er...that should be about right."
She checks her watch again. Remaining time minus half an hour should giver her only about 5 minutes before the time ends.
"Oh no..."
Cordelia paniks abit but manages to calm herself down by stirring the potion in slow circular motion.
"10...9...8...7...6...5...4...3...2...ginger roots!"
She dumps the whole load from the container labeled ginger roots into the cauldron and stirs them quickly.
"30 seconds...minute and 20....45...51...52...53...54...55..56..57..58..59. .."
Cordelia takes out her wand to extinguish the fire and sets the cauldron down carefully for it to cool. Only 3 minutes remaining.
She holds up her quill and scribbles,
Cordelia Carwin, Gryffindor onto the two vials. A minute left!
Cordelia feels the cauldron. It's touchable so the potion should be cool enough. She carefully pours the potion into two vials, spilling bit of drops onto the table. Piece of peeled off Shivelfig skin shrinks immediately; barely macroscopic. She sighs in relief. This means that the potion works! She looks up at Hubert, he didn't see this, did he? No, he seems to be looking to other direction. Cordelia wipes the mess with some napkins then walks upto the front of the class room. After handing the vials to Hubert, she leaves the dungeon very much light footed.

Terry waves back at Hubert as he walks back to the front of the classroom. She then takes her cauldron and follows him to the professor's desk. She needs to gather the ingredients to brew the final exam potion. Terry notices Hubert sitting at Professor Airlia's desk. He looks like a crushed flower. She walks over and gives him a hug. "I was in the intensive care ward with Professor Rae. Nurse Lotus is taking very good care of Professor Airlia and the other professors. I'm sure she will be back teaching potions by the start of next term," Terry says. Hubert gives her a weak smile and quietly squeaks. Terry then get her ingredients and walks back to her table.

She proceeds to prepare her dry ingredients. First, she crushes the nettles, then she evenly chops the ginger and daisy roots. Terry then starts slicing her catapillar when her mind starts to wander. She remembers the events of the last few days. Jenn being stunned by her friend, Ari. Professor Rae lying in the spirit room looking white as a ghost. Sir Spot disappearing forever. Terry is brought back to the present by a sharp pain in her left index finger. She looks down and discovers she has sliced her finger evenly in two places. Hubert helps her put a bandage on the cuts. It should take care of the problem until she can go to the hospital wing. Having finished preparing the dry ingredients, Terry pours 500mL of water into her cauldron and brings it to a boil. She then adds the daisy roots, shrivelfug, catapillar slices, and nettles to the boiling water. Following the instructions, she stirs the potion and lets it boil for two minutes. The potion should now be a mint green color. Unfortunately, her potion is still the color of clear water. She continues stirring the potion trying to figure out what she has done wrong. Terry discover the problem is she forgot to peel her shrivelfig. She removes the fig, cools it with a freezing charm, and peels it. Then she puts it back into the potion and tries to add the leech juice. Unfortunately her hands are greasy from the catapillar, and the bottle slips out of her hand landing into her potion. Using her laddle, she manages to get the bottle out, but there is nothing she can do about the extra leech juice. Hoping for the best, Terry allows the potion to stew for half an hour stirring it occasionally. When the time is up, her potion is now a bright orange instead of the traditional green color. With time running out, Terry decides to add her ginger root and hopes maybe that will solve the probem. She removes the potion from the flame and stirs it for two minutes. Before the time is up. the potion starts bubbling up and covers the table causing it to shrink. Embarassed, Terry does the best she can to clean the potion up and restore the table to its normal size. She then distributes what is left of her potion into two glass vial making sure she caps them with the glass caps provided. Terry then labels the vials and carries them to to Hubert. He looks at them carefully shaking his head. Terry smiles and proceeds to head to her dorm. She needs a hot shower and some much needed rest.

Nadia stood on her seat doing nothing. She didn't know why she wasn't leaving -other than her legs refusing to move. Sighing, she thought she might as well stay there until Professor Airlia came back and gave the grades. OK, maybe she was agoing a little too far. Airlia was probably not coming back any minute soon and she was just being, well, silly. Partly her fears did have to do with the professor's condition - not seeing her there brought back the remembering of what just happened, it still sent chills though Nadia's spine. And now, even when it was over, the professors were in such states, especially Airlia from what Jaren recounts... If only there was a way to help...

Something in Nadia's head made her eyes pop open and just as immediately stand and dive for the stool with ingredients and took a couple of ingredients she lacked because of using it for the other potion. Feeling far more awake, Nadia returned to her table without an explanation to poor confused Hubert and placed the ingredients over it. It was probably not that much a great idea but it was worth a try. She started brewing another potion, Nadia did, messuring and pouring 500mL of water on teh cauldron after having erased every remaining of the other potion, and then, while letting it boil, Nadia chopped the daisy roots, sliced the caterpillar and skinned the abyssinian shivelfig. She was careful to do everything evenly even thuogh she was running out of time (well, she wasn't doing the assigment anyway so...) and added all of it on the now boiling water. Minutes or stirring, two to be exact, and then added (oh yes!) rat spleen on the potion. Not much later was the dash of leech juice, this time from the already extracted recipient, and stirred again, allowing it to stew, for 30 minutes, all teh time checking her notes again. Maybe by now some already were looking at her funny, she thought as she counted the minutes and watched the clock with impatience and precision (much more than that which she had in her test - it would be small wonder that this potion was correcter than hers, which is fact was... if you considered this small detail...). Once done and the potion being cool enough for Nadia to take the cauldron and pour the content on her vials, Nadia finally stood, put away all of her stuff, returned teh ingredients she didn't use, and then took the vials (3) she had filled with Shrinking Solution. But instead of handing them in to Hubbert, Nadia kept walking out of the place and to some new destiny, her mind set up.

Serena chopped her ginger roots next and found herself relaxing. After all, this was much like cooking, and she always loved spending time with her mother in the kitchen at home. After she finished chopping, she took her time to make sure she removed all of the peel from the shrivelfig. Then she worked on her caterpillar, making the slices as thin as possible.

She forgot how much preparation there was as she pulled out her mortar and pestle to crush her nettles.... saying to herself...."crushed, not powdered". She finally set up her cauldron with 500 ml of water and set the fire to boil. She gathered her daisy roots, shrivelfig, caterpillar slices, and nettles and when the water started to boil she added them and began to stir. After 2 minutes passed she added a dash of leech juice, stirring it to mix and then stirring her potion every so often for the next half hour. She noticed while waiting that several students had already finished. "I hope I finish this in time" she said to herself while kicking her legs as she impatiently sat waiting for the time to pass. She thought again to herself, "A watched pot never boils.... at least my potion is boiling, but time sure seems to be standing still." Finally, her watch showed it was time to add the ginger root. She stirred for 2 minutes and then carefully removed her cauldron from the fire.

As the potion cooled she checked her vial label again to see that she had the information correct. She dipped in the special ladel to use with this potion, and noticed her potion seemed a bit 'gloppy'. "I wonder if I timed this wrong?" she questioned herself. The color looked the same as it did during class, but her potion was clearly thicker then before. She wondered if this would affect her grade... or the potion itself. She took out a broken quill she had meant to throw out to test the Potion on. She placed one drop on the quill, and it immediately shrank in size. "Well, it seems to work" she said with hope that the Professor would give her a passing grade.

She cleaned up her work area after taking the vial up to Hubert. "Thanks for your help" she said. "Please give the Professor best wishes from us all. We hope to see her soon!" As she excited the class, she threw the shrunken quill into the trash can, and turned and waved goodbye to Hubert.