Looking at her card, Janelle saw that she needed to prepare an infusion of wahoo bark. She put on her gloves, grabbed one stem of the bark and began to shred it carefully. Next she got a clean bowl and her measuring cup. Taking her wand again, she said, "Aguamenti". Janelle measured out one cup of water and poured it into the bowl. Then she added her shredded bark into the cold water. Infusion time. As instructed, the Ravenclaw got her dropper and proceeded to add 6 drops of Fluxweed oil to her water.

Checking her notes again, Janelle knew that it was time to get messy. Glad that she had organized her ingredients and equipment, she retrieved her three bloodroot stems. With her knife, Janelle split the stems one by one. Then she used the side of her knife to get all of the gooey insides out from the stems. The goo was scraped into Janelle's mortar and prepared for mashing. Taking her pestle, she crushed, mashed and smashed the stem insides until she had a nice paste. Annnnd into the cauldron all of that went.

Janelle found her stirring spoon and placed it into her cauldron. She began to slowly stir, round and round. Clockwise, counterclockwise. Clockwise, counterclockwise. On and on she went until finally, the ingredients in the cauldron started to heat. Janelle saw steam rising from the mixture and knew that she was ready to move on. Sooo, she got her scale and measured three drams of calendula pollen. Easy peasy. Then the pollen was poured into the cauldron......slowly. Being that the spoon was still in the cauldron, Janelle stirred in a clockwise direction until everything was well mixed.

Janelle removed the spoon and set it aside. Then she cleaned her mortar and pestle. It was time for more crushing. But wait, the ingredients list said 1 finely minced vervain root. The procedure said to crush it. Janelle was confused as to which direction was correct. She was about to raise her hand, but knew that her time was running out. She was going to have to make an executive decision, and fast. If she was wrong, her potion would be ruined and she would fail her final. No pressure. Finally Janelle decided to go with option B. She put the root in her mortar and began to crush it. When she had finished, she poured the crushed vervain root into a clean bowl. Since the vervain and asphodel root were going to be mixed together anyway, Janelle thought it safe to place the asphodel directly into the mortar. The asphodel root was then crushed and added to the vervain root. One, two, three, four, five, six drops of fluxweed oil was added to the powder mixture and a tiny spoon was used to mix everything together until it was a pastey mix.

Janelle checked her watch and tried not to panic. Hurrying, but not too much, she added the paste to her cauldron. Then she held her breath. There were so many things she could have done wrong so far. She hoped against hope that her potion was right. Still unsure, she was happy to see that her potion turned pink for a brief moment. Was she on the right track. There was no time to linger on that thought. Time was of the essence. Next in line was the hyacinth flower and Janelle dropped the whole thing into the pot. Patience and waiting were not Janelle's strong suit. Fortunately it did not take long for the potion to boil. Then she picked up her lovage leaf and added that to the potion too. Standing back, the fifth year watched in amazement. Her potion was quickly changing from one color to another. It was actually pretty cool. She just hoped that the colors that flashed by were the right ones.

Back to Potions card. Janelle was supposed to leave her potion to boil. In the meantime, she found her bouncing bulb, cleaned her knife and began to shred it. When that was completed, she added the shredded pieces to the cauldron and resumed stirring. She kept at it until she could see no more little bulb pieces in the liquid. The rainbow thing was still going on with her potion and it was definitely still bubbling. However, Janelle had to wait a bit for the bouncing droplets to happen. They finally did........sort of.

Was this potion ever going to be finished? There was an end in sight and Janelle hoped that she would make it to the finish line. If this was the final, Janelle didn't want to think about what the Potions OWL might be like. Getting her mind back in focus, she got back to work. She picked up her sprig of peppermint and into the cauldron it went. Janelle placed the top on her cauldron, to seal in all of the goodness. She extinguished the fire and stepped away from the cauldron. There was more to do and she wasted no time in getting to it.

Now Janelle was not the squeamish type, but this next step was going to be nasty. Janelle got her live frog and resisted the urge to name him and play with him..........'cause, you know..........animals were her thing. Anyway, she grabbed her measuring spoon and began to gently scrape slime from her frog's belly. When she had one tablespoon, she dropped the glop in a bowl and repeated the task until she had a second tablespoon. She removed the cover from her cauldron and added the second tablespoon of slime to the mixture. With a spoon she stirred clockwise three times. After checking her notes, Janelle added the billywig sting and scraped the first tablespoon of slime from the bowl into the cauldron.

The next step required speed and perfect timing. Preparation would be needed so Janelle had her glumbumble fluid ready in advance. She added her alihotsy leaf to the potion and without missing a beat, squeezed one drop of the glumbumble fluid in right after that. She quickly relit her flame, got her watch ready and waited. When the potion began to boil, Janelle timed sixty seconds. At the end of that time, she turned the flame off again. She quickly Scourgified her dropper and then added three drops of her whahoo bark infusion one at a time.

When Janelle looked at her directions once more, she realized that she was finished. She peeked into her cauldron and saw that her potion was in fact stil changing shimmery colors. It did seem to have some bubbles in it and she hoped that this was the desired effect. Now that she was done, she refused to dwell on her potion. She started cleaning all of her dirty equipment and her work station. When everything was cleaned and put away, Janelle allowed herself to breathe. She felt relief that she was finished, but worried about whether or not she had done everything right. There was nothing she could do about it now though. Once the potion was cool, Janelle placed a sample of it in a vial and labeled it with her identifying information. Then she took it to the professor's desk and left it with him. "That was a very challenging potion Professor", Janelle said. But she was done now. Free at last.