 Which came first, the phoenix or the flame?
The potion turned a navy blue color. Thankfully, Ash knew what color 'navy' meant. It was an actual color, as opposed to 'dark purple' which was about a million billion colors.
Step thirteen... Ash turned seven times counterclockwise with a metal stirrer. That was a simple instruction. Much easier than baking. In baking, the instructions were like 'stir until combined'. WHAT DID THAT MEAN??? They never said how many times to stir, or in which direction, or with what kind of utensil. That's why Ash got high grades in potions, but was incapable of making normal looking cupcakes.
Step fourteen... she added the runespoor egg, extremely grateful that it had been whisked already for her. Wasn't a runespoor like, a three headed snake thing? That sounded cool. But it must be super hard to collect runespoor eggs. Hm.
Step fifteen... waiting again. More note-taking, her notes now covering most of her forearm. That was the number seven again. Why did she have to wait for so LONG? She admired the color of the potion. She thought about her next steps. She thought about her pretend big brother. She thought about how seven minutes and seven seconds was a long time to be dead, but a short time to die in. She held her wand at the ready. Seven... six... five... four... three... two... one... zero.
Step sixteen... Ash cast Recordo, which was about the easiest part of this entire thing. It was just a spell. She was great at spells. She was good at potions, too, but she had to work harder for that. The only spell that she had consistently failed to cast was Expecto patronum. She had messed up many potions over and over again for months until she got them right.
Step seventeen... Ash added the aconite roots very very very very VERY carefully. She did not want to die, no thank you. She knew the professor said drinking the potion wouldn't kill them(what about eating the ingredients?), but, y'know, she was Ash. She was very good at almost dying and she knew from experience and obrservation that 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger' was at best oversimplified and at worst a flat-out lie. Accidentally ingesting aconite was not going to make her stronger.
Step eighteen... Was that... yes, it was a faint blue smoke. She squinted at it to make sure her eyes weren't playing tricks on her. Was that the right shade of blue? Ash had to remind herself that the instructions didn't specify cerulean or cobalt or baby blue or royal blue or sky blue or any kind of blue at all. It just said 'blue'. Well... it was definitely blue.
So... she thought she did it right, seeing as she followed the instructions and the smoke was blue. It irritated her that she didn't know exactly how the smoke was supposed to look, but she was relieved. This had gone pretty well, in her opinion. Stressful but good. |