Exactly one month had passed since the second Potions class. Violet had been busy with schoolwork and extra credit projects and gobstones and quidditch and avoiding crazy people trying to hug her, and in the process she had gotten what she considered to be three really excellent photos! Now all she had to do was successfully develop them, and her second Potions assignment would be done. She entered the darkroom to find it dark and bathed in red light. After taking a few minutes for her eyes to adjust, she looked around and found her cauldron right away--she recognized the cover she had put over it to protect her potion.

When she lifted the cover, she found the burgundy-coloured brew still moving round and round under its own speed--good! The potion was ready! She looked around the room and found the developing trays over on a counter.


She chose herself a white one and a dark green one (or was it black? It was hard to tell in the dark. She wasn't getting a red one, anyway, that was too Gryffindor for her taste). First she scourgified both trays to make sure they were clean (because you don't know where something you find in a lab has been!) She carefully ladled some of her potion into the dark tray. When she had enough, she got out the small hourglass her governess had given her for her birthday last October--it was just like a regular hourglass, but was only about 5 in. high and it had a charm on it that caused it to make a little ringing sound when the sand had run out. You used your wand to spell it to measure any length of time you wanted, up to 60 minutes--you just tapped the top of it and said the time you wanted. Then you tapped it again when you were ready for it to start. Violet set it for one minute exactly.

Next she pulled the camera out of a large outer pocket in her robe. She had to fiddle for a minute with the catch (she had never opened this camera before), but finally managed to open the door to where the film was and carefully pulled it out. Next she pulled on her dragon-hide gloves, and then, taking the strip of film, carefully laid it in the tray of developing potion, and tapped the top of her hourglass with her wand to start the timer.

Exactly one minute later, the small hourglass gave out a tiny bell-like sound; it would continue to ring every quarter-minute or so until Violet turned it off with another tap. But first, she took the film out of the potion tray, quickly laid it in the white tray, and pointed her wand into the white tray, saying, "Aguamenti!". Violet watched as the water cascaded over the film and began to fill up the tray. When she thought she had enough, she ended the spell and quickly tapped the pesky hourglass, which had been dinging all the while she worked and was getting rather annoying (she was glad she couldn't see the faces of any of the other students who happened to be in the lab, because they were probably scowling at her!)

Now for the good part--Violet peered into the white tray and sure enough, there was her photo of the great hourglasses that stood in the entryway to Hogwarts, with the Slytherin hourglass showing that the best House in the school was ahead!

She took it out and hung it to dry on a small clothesline she found near the developing table she was working at, then turned to look at her next shot--the busy floor of Greenhouse 3, full of student volunteers pushing wheelbarrows and sweeping and carrying pails back and forth:

She took that photo out to hang up to dry as well. Now she turned to look at the shot that had almost caused her to fall off her broom and plummet to her death (or at least her great embarassment) and which looked something like this:


Violet smiled in satisfaction as she hung that one up to dry as well. One of these was bound to get her good marks! And they all turned out, too! She stood a minute, admiring the emeralds sliding down into the bottom of the Slytherin hourglass, the students moving back and forth in Greenhouse 3 as they worked, and the giant floating gumdrops from her flying lesson. Then she began to clean up her workstation while they continued to dry. She used the Evanesco charm (which she was very glad to have learned) to empty the remaining potion and water from the trays, used her old standby favourite, Scourgify to clean them out (and used it on her gloves for good measure, after she had removed them), scourgified her cauldron and her table area, and finally packed all her supplied neatly in her schoolbag. The developing trays she returned to the counter where she had gotten them.

Finally, she turned to her row of photographs, which were now dry but still moving, unpinned them one by one, labelled everything the way Professor Lafay had asked them to do homework, and prepared to leave the lab and turn her homework in.