Oh Merlin. She was already behind.

Trying to work faster, Renesmee grabbed her ingredients and started chucking them in. Problem was rushing was not the greatest idea. Barely noticing her mistake, the captain added only half a cup of the valerian root instead of a full one. She then began reaching out for her Kava Kava when she realized her silly mistake. Whoops. At least it could be fix. Hopefully Lafay never saw though. Taking another half of Valerian root, she added it into the potion.

Phew. Good thing she hadn't added more, because that would have been much more chaotic.

Before looking up again, Nessie took half a cup of Kava Kava and added it too. She then fixed up her notes and was almost caught up with the rest of the class as she listened to the next step.

Toxic? That..that Belladonna was toxic? *stare*

Um...she wasn't trying to kill them right? This was a liiiiitle nerv-racking.

Taking a deep breathe, the fifth year searched through her kit till she found her gold needle. 18 carrot gold was it? Yep it was. Gulp. She carefully picked the berry up in her hand and then ever so gentley pushed the needle inside it. She then retrieved the gold needle and moved her hand over to her cauldron.

Drip. Drop.

The drop of berry juice went in safely and soundly. Not wanting to have any reason to panick, Ness immediately burned the berry and any excess juice on her hand, over the burner. Good thing this magical fire was. No injuiries were needed nor wanted in a class like this.

Aha! Caught up she was and now ready to see what was next.

See, so it was a good thing that she hadn't mentioned treacle fudge as an answer. The woman probably would have breathed fire at her or something.

Kurumi was afraid to blink her eyes as Professor Lafay demonstrated the next steps - the ones that involved the deadly nightshade berry. A berry whose juices were used historically as a hallucinogenic and torture device...and was now in the classroom. In the hands of students. Yep, this woman really was trying to kill them all. Shouldn't they wear gloves or something for this step? Kurumi ended up slipping her dragonhide gloves on just to be safe - easier to clean gloves than skin, right? - and grabbed a gold needle, running it through the fire of her burner first to sterilize it before casting Scourgify on it to clean. She then carefully picked up the berry and ran the needle into its flesh veeeeeeeeeeeeeery slowly and pulled it out. Seeing that she had one drop on the tip she held that over the cauldron while she held the berry in one of her gloved hands. When the drop fell in she stabbed the needle into the berry again and burned it in the fire of her burner.

It was sort of alarming at how sweet the aroma was of this death berry in the flames...

When the berry and burned away, Kurumi kept the needle in the flame to burn off the rest of the juice and then cast Scourgify on it once more. No excess juice anywhere, Kurumi leaned back in her seat and wiped her brow. One deadly ingredient down...a few more to go, right?

Elijah had noticed a number of things about Lafay this particular lesson. I present you with a list for your own convenience:

• She seemed to be looking REALLY haggard as of late. He'd read about this once in the Quibbler. Apparently over excessive use and addiction to beautifying potions did this to some people. How horrible it must be to not be naturally gorgeous and depend on elixirs and the like to TRY and help you out... because Merlin knew it wasn't doing Lafay any favours.
• She knew how to handle house elves. They were servants after all and servants should not be SEEN nor HEARD unless asked to. Whats more they just arrived as if they OWNED the place. Not even a knock. Elijah probably would've helped Lafay chop up a few limbs for her to store in jars for future potions.

Anyway, Elijah had done all that was asked of him. He'd boiled the water, he'd added in those other ingredient things and he'd just been in the process of attempting to do the juice thing. Apparently it was extremely toxic and for some reason Elijah was tempted to lick it to test it out. Perhaps his new vampire status would save him from death?

He did find the needle method to be quite footery, so when Lafay didn't have her ugly, dark, wrinkly, sunken eyes on him, he just quickly squeezed a bit of juice from the berry and did the whole 'set it on fire thing'. The fire was cool.

Realising that he may have made a dog's dinner out of his potion now, he had to try and better it. And what better way to do that than to sabotage the potion of the person standing next to you so yours looked superior to theirs?

Unfortunately for Renesmee, she was the one who was nearest to him. Have some more berries to spruce up your potion, gurrrrl.

One. Two. Three. Each making a small plopping sound as it dissolved into her potion.

Elijah had tried to make sure she wasn't looking when he had done it, but subtlety wasn't his best. Maybe if she hadn't seen, and he was better than he thought, he'd have the opportunity to sabotage it some more. Maybe Lafay would try it and collapse from all the toxicness? By the looks of her face nowadays it looked as if that was the way she was going and Elijah would only be speeding up the process.

Laura looked at Professor Meany-Pants and grabbed up her bag and belonging, she was going to leave the ingredience out for the Professor to clean up, she walked towards the door before stopping and saying something. "I'm going straight to Professor Hadley because this isn't fair." Laura said to Professor Lafay, she hadn't even given her time to explain why she didn't have a wand and why she was wandless, it wasn't her fault that she didn't have one someone had broken it, she quickly then left the room

Scrible. Scrible.

Finishing off some more notes, Ness hadn't noticed Elijah messing about with her potion. That was untill she caught him adding one last berry and letting it just plonk inside. How many of those had he already put in her potion? And did he realize that those berries could have been highly fatal if she consumed them? Obviously he did!

ARGHHHH! WHY? WHY DID PEOPLE LIKE HIM HAVE TO COME MESS HER POTION UP?WHYYY?

She was mad alright! So mad that her Lochnessie started coming out. She let out a huge banshee screech and then glared at Elijah not taking her eyes off him for one second. "YOU!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Maybe she was over reacting, but really there were a lot of things bothering her lately and this just seemed to be the situation that made her break.

Screaming was not even enough for and she wanted to do more. Which she did. With shaking hands the red head took a step forward and pushed Elijah as hard as she could.

Hah! Served him right!

Okay so valerian root and kava kava are sedatives. Interesting. But how will it make you forget your dream or remember it if you're alseep? She pondered over it. Maybe you drift off, your brain goes to work, then you come back out of it...

She gulped as the professor taunted danger with the juice of the berry. I can't believe we're even allowed to touch those things. Shouldn't we have gloves or something? She took some deep breaths and tried to keep a level head. It's just a class. She'll help us if something goes wrong, I'm sure.

She picked up a nightshade berry, carefully. She did not want to squeeze the thing open by accident. She pointed her wand at the golden needle on her desk and said, "Scourgify!" Confident it was clean, she picked it up. Her hand was shaking slightly so she paused to steady it. You can do this, she told herself. She deliberately and precisely pierced the skin of the berry with her needle. She held her berry and needle over the cauldron, pulled the needle out and held very still. With her other hand she tossed the berry into the flame beneath the cauldron and watched it burn. She checked her skin for juice residue and finding none, looked back to the needle as the tiny drop of death wobbled on the tip. After what seemed like ages it finally dropped into the cauldron, so small that it didn't even make a sound.

She let out a sigh of relief, moved her needle hand back over the desk and cast, "Scourgify." She placed the needle back where she'd gotten it and awaited further instruction. Or impending doom, she wasn't really sure which.

Moving to the next step, Gary added the valerian first to his cauldron, then next he put the Kava kava. The blonde guy just knew about the valerian root was commonly used in Draught of Living Death but not about the Kava kava. Meh.. Somehow he thought that he's just lucky to get O in Potions OWL. Then he listened to the Professor Lafay very carefully as she explained about the next step, where they would use the highly toxic berry.

Okay, move to next step!

He took the gold needle and cleaned it first. Then carefully he took the berry and pierced it with the needle. Actually he didn't have any idea why they must use the 18 carat gold needle just to pierce the berry. Whether the gold could decrease the toxic level or something.. maybe. After he pierced it, then he carefully added a drop of it juice to his cauldron. He burned the berry and the leftover juice on the needle. Okay, he admitted that it wasn't easy.

For the next step she simply had to follow instructions and not die. Right. Simple enough. Still she didn't think it was very wise to let some of the students handle this berry. *eyes puffers* Luckily for her she wasn't sitting anywhere near any of them so hopefully if anything did go down they would kill off each other.

She watched Lafay as she showed them the proper way to get the deadly juice. It seemed simple enough. She picked up her gold needle and cleaned it off. She picked up her berry cautiously and stuck her needle into it. She moved the needle with the juice on it over the cauldron and watched as it dropped in there. She then staked the berrt again and burned it in the fire.

There that was simple enough. She cleaned the needle once more and waited for further instruction.

Elise stared at the crazy Professor as she spoke. Only going to do it once? Okay. Staring very carefully, Elise made sure to notice everything Lafay did so that she could copy it later and scribbled it onto a piece of parchment. She'd organize her notes later. Maybe at night.

Poisonous. Obviously. Was the woman trying to kill them all? Shuddering, Elise picked up the gold needle, checking the label to make sure it was 18 carat. It hadn't been used yet, so it was obviously dirty. Cleaning the needle on a piece of cloth before taking her wand out to scourgify it, Elise made sure to clean thoroughly. Which meant scourgifying it about three times.

Elise picked up the nightshade berry gingerly, holding it securely but not too tight between her fingers. Needle in her left hand, she guided it slowly towards the berry and pierced it. Pulling out slowly and noticing the juice on the tip, Elise froze. Okay, she could do this.

Moving very carefully so as not to drip the juice onto herself or the floor, she made her way towards her cauldron. Holding the needle over her cauldron, she pointed the tip down until the juice finally dripped off it and into the cauldron.

Dropping her berry into the fire beneath her cauldron, Elise watched as it burned and was no more. Then, it was time to clean the needle as well. Holding it at the end, she held it towards the fire and burned all the remains of the juice on it. Scorgifying it once for good measure, Elise finally put it back into the kit.

She wasn't going to try that potion. No. She didn't want to die yet.

Slow and steady. Yeah, that was what she had to do. And focus. Focus on the potion instead of elsewhere. Ira carefully listened to Professor Lafay's instructions and watched attentively.

Ira first quickly updated her notes:


Ira handled the nightshade berry carefully. It must be really poisonous, seeing how cautious Lafay had been. But no need for panic!

Ira set to work. First she removed the gold needle and cleaned it properly. Then, with the needle in right hand, she pricked the berry lightly, so as to not let the juice squirt out. Now that the needle had enough juice for one drop, she pulled it out and held it over the boiling potion. Into the potion the drop fell.

Her first part of work done, Ira proceeded to the next. Burn the berry, burn its juice. Check. Quickly and efficiently, the fourth year burned the berry until there was nothing left. Then, she burned off whatever juice that was left on the gold needle. And following Lafay, re-cleaned the gold needle again.

Done!

Minerva listened to the next direction. WOW this seemed really dangerous, but if that's what they were going to do, it's what they were going to do. Looking at her kit she picked up the gold needle and looked it over before pointing her wand ""Scourgify" to make sure it was clean.

Then she took the berry and looked at it feeling her nervous jump just a little. Poking the better she waited for a drop to come onto the needle. When it did she quickly moved the berry putting it in the burner to set it on fire. Then turning she let the drop fall into the potion. Placing the needle in the burner to burn off any unwanted juice she let it sit for a few moments. The pointed her wand at the needle cleaning it again. Placing it back into the kit she looked up for the next instructions.

Just as the third PLOP sounded and the last of the three berries joined the rest of the Hufflepuff girl's concoction, a rather ANGRY sound could be heard that only deaf people would have been immune to. Elijah slowly turned his head to the shrieks of a clearly distressed girl and... Yep. He'd been caught.

Quick to use his defenses, his cutest smile took form on his face hoping that his good looks alone would be enough to simmer her down, but NOPE! She stormed her way across to him and he tried his hardest to think of SOME excuse and was about to spout something about it being an accident of some kind when she SHOVED him.

Most un-ladylike.

His balance being something flamingos would guffaw at if the pink birds did, indeed, guffaw, meant that Elijah was shoved quite forcibly back and collided right into his work bench, causing a rather horrific pain to travel up his back. "OW! -insert some colourful language here-"

Picking up the spoon that was covered in whatever was brewing in his cauldron, he FLUNG it at the girl in anger, aiming directly for the middle of her forehead. How RUDE of her to maim his back!? What on Earth had HE done? Nothing, I tell you!

The goody-two shoes girl answered a load of questions and Seri sighed. Why was potions so boring? She would come up with a list of excuses why she couldn't do it, was it like swimming? Muggles would take any excuse for that. What was up with this weird child? Apparently he wasn't enjoying her company? Maybe Seri would annoy her more?

"Mmhmm" Seri nodded to pretend she was intrested, though she was bored. Something about Kennedy and smooshy-lovey-dovey stuff. La, la, la. How boring. Seri got out some muggle pencils and thouroughly absorbed herself in drumming on the side of the kid's cauldron. Slowly at first, but gettin a little louder now and again. Seri liked music. Why didn't they have music lessons here?



Lalalalalalalallalaal. This person/professor was terribly boring. Seri was completely unintrested in whatver she had to say. Seri considered just skiving this lesson next time round. Boring and useless huh? Seri continued er drumming.

Cassia nodded at the description of the materials .She reached for a parchment to write them down but after writing a couple of words she changed her mind. This is probably already written in the book. Why waste a parchment that'll probably be thrown away after class.

And anyway she hoped that she won’t forget this. As those two substances seemed to be related to sleeping, dreams and memory. That should sum everything up. Yup!

The second year watched the following procedure closely. Because when dealing with something that happens to be named deadly something, well you tend to pay extra attention. And while watching so alertly ,the Slytherin student felt that everything was in slow motion. Especially when waiting for that tiny drop to fell into the cauldron. Cassia would swear that she heard a DRIP sound. Or that actually could be her active imagination.

So now it was her turn. Like Lafay she reached for the pin and cleaned it before piercing the berry with it. and so fast she burned the berry because it was toxic! And Cassia didn’t want to die in HERE and now! Then she held the pin above the cauldron and squinted her eyes at it hoping that somehow this will make the drop to fell faster….no? Well, she hoped so.

And after a minute or so the drop DID fell. Cassia grinned at that and cleaned the pin before putting it back to its place.

What next?!

Nothing like the prospect of death to make sure students performed well, ehh? Elliot smirked....eyeing all of the unfortunate people in her class..*cough Minnie cough* and glanced Beezu's way..."Don't die," she muttered to her fellow claw...because then Elliot would be stuck cleaning up the mess. Elliot didn't like messes, much.

The Ravenclaw sighed as she picked up the berry...her hand trembled just a bit as she picked up the needle...a golden needle. They were sooo preeetttyyy...shiiiiiiiny...GOOOOOLLD--

ELLIOT!

The blonde shook her head, getting her thoughts back to actual...potion making. She carefully pierced the berry, and she let the needle stay in for just a second before pulling it out slowly...she held the needle over the brewing potion..wait for it...waaaaaiit for iiiiitt..

PLUNK.

The tiny drop fell in, and Elliot breathed a sigh of relief...Merlin! That had been tense...she glanced at Beezus..."Please, please try not to kill yourself," she said, once again..."or else I'll make sure your funeral is lace themed." PAHAHAH XD

She quickly burned the berry, and her hands to get the juice off. OKAY. Next step, Lafaaay?!

Hmm. Pretty cool way of doing things, if you asked Sierra. She grinned in her mother's general direction. Leave it to her to figure out how to do something like that. Sierra reached for her own gold needle and used her wand to scourgify the needle clean. Once she was sure it was sanitized, she reached for the berry she'd collected.

She pushed the needle through the berry the quickly pulled it back out. She stared at the drop on the needle. She carefully moved it over the burner and set her own berry on fire, as well. When that was done, she moved the gold needle over the cauldron and added in the single drop from the needle. She followed Lafay's lead and burned the excess off the needle, cleaned the needle, then put it away.

Hint: This little guy has forgotten to do one thing using a spell, and does not know two vital spells that he will need in order to start his potion. Happy hunting, and no Professor Lafay cant help he is kind of scared of her. Sorry , VM me if you do help him out



Dylan listened as everyone told their dreams, there was no way he was telling his. Besides he didn't remember a bit of it so it would have sounded stupid and made people laugh at him so he was going to keep quiet. Then there was an elf in the room? COOL!! That was just awesome!! he was going to say that out loud when the professor made him jump as she yelled at the elf, ok so this was a scary professor! He watched as the professor threatened the elf and yelled at some of the students, ok so this was one professor that he was not to annoy. But he had this plan to do something to this professor, he would just have to make a flawless plan to do what he had wanted to do since Lex had told him about this professor and another! Both would not escape him! he just needed to know the right spells to make it possible!

He then listened as they were to fill their cauldrons with water, well he knew how to do that. But he did not know how to light a fire under his cauldron, he decided to do the water filling and try and see if he could sneak a peek at someone lighting a fire so that he could copy them. No he was not going to ask that professor for help, and he was not going to ask for help. He didn't want to show everyone that he didn't know what he was doing, so he decided to just listen out for any spells that came out of people's mouths so that he could do them as well. Well he knew that he knew how to fill the cauldron so he started with that "Aguamenti" he watched as his cauldron filled with water, but he couldn't stop the flow and his cauldron just kept filling and filling. Uhoh what was he going to do soon this cauldron was going to overflow and there was no way he was going to the professor for help! Not after what he saw her say to students and an elf!

He heard professor instruct them on getting some juice he glanced from his cauldron to the professor as she showed the juice extraction, so he knew how to do that as soon as he could stop this and light that fire! If he didn't ask for help now he was going to end up with an overflowing cauldron and a mean professor to deal with, now if someone could just stop this and light that fire for him he could move on and carry on with the potion. He would be able to get that berry and burn it with the new spell that he would learn if someone was willing to teach him. He just watched his cauldron fill up and up after he had watched the juice fall into the cauldron, cause that would be one step of many that he had to take in finishing this potion.

Yes...Gideon was aware of the dangerous, poisonous ingrediants that had been included on the list for this particular potion. His father had made sure that he was aware of those just as much as the safe, non-hazardous ones for more common use. Even if he wasn't allowed to personally handle them...just watch. And now he was watching Professor Lafay properly handle the belladonna berry carefully to make sure he could duplicate it exactly.

First things first...the needle.

With it in one hand, he took up his wand once more. "Scourgify," he cast making extra sure it was clean. Then Gideon exchanged wand for berry, pausing to take a deep breath before he stick the needle within the fruit. Slowly extracting the needle for the drop to gather upon the golden surface. Slowly...slowly...there. He had it where he needed before letting it drop into the brewing potion.

A soft sigh of relief was let out as the prefect held the rest of the berry out for the fire beneath to burn it up and any juice off of him.

While Kurumi added some things to her notes and checked to make sure that her potion was the same consistency as Lewis', Kurumi noticed out of the corner of her eye that one of her little lions had missed a rather crucial step in his brewing process. One that could earn his cauldron being turned upside down like her's had been her first term. "Psst...Dylan. You are going to need to start over," she whispered. "You have to clean your cauldron first..." She took a piece of parchment from her stack and wrote something on it before handing it to him. "Write this down on all your potion notes so you remember, the 5 C's of potion making are cleanliness, content, color, care, and concentration. ALWAYS clean your cauldron and all your utensils before you use them."

So...he was going to have to start completely over. Better her tell him than Dragon Lady, right?
Kurumi was about to return her attention to her own cauldron when she heard someone screech. Wait...she knew that screech...

Head snapping back around, Kurumi's eyes widened when it was confirmed that the sound had belonged to Nessie...WHO WAS STANDING UP NOW AND PUSHING ELIJAH!!??!!

Kurumi's jaw dropped and she was about to say something when...

o_________________O

DID HE REALIZE WHAT WAS IN THIS POTION?! YOU CAN'T JUST FLING THIS STUFF AT PEOPLE!!

"Elijah! Nessie! Stop!" Kurumi exclaimed, glancing up towards the front of the classroom briefly to check on the vein in Dragon Lady's forehead. "This potion is dangerous! You can't just go flinging it at people or pushing each other around all this open cauldrons!"

Had the spoonful of stuff hit Nessie!? What if it made her go blind!? They had just been told not to leave any of the juice on their skin

Oh Merlin this was going to be bad...

Wow, Laura looked really mad at Lafay. Even though it was not her fault her wand got broken. But, he had other thins to worry about right now. Like not dying from this berry.

He followed Lafay's instructions perfectly watching to see if he could stay away from getting the berry juice on his skin. He did not want Lafay's help nay more than he need. He still had nightmares about the bezoar.

Once he was finished. He watched Elijah fling something at another hufflepuff. Man Lafay might lose her sanity this lesson. With the house-elf and now Elijah. Plus she was not feeling well anyway. Nigel watch quietly waiting to see what Lafay would do

Dylan was wondering what to do next when he heard someone call to him, looking round he saw it was Kurumi. He frowned "Start over? why?" he whispered back, well he might need to start over seeing as his cauldron had more water in it than necessary. He rolled his eyes and shook his head, it seemed everything needed to be cleaned! Why couldn't they just be provided with things that would be clean already so that he wouldn't have to do it! He watched as she wrote something down on a piece of parchment "The 5 C's" he repeated as he watched her right each word down very carefully. He was leaning on the table watching her write. He looked up at her and nodded "Ok I got it, clean the stuff before I use it. Thanks Kurumi" he smiled at her before he turned back to his cauldron. "Though I wish I didn't have to, wish they were clean already!" he mumbled as he put the parchment on top of his.

Well time to clean the cauldron, now what was the spell for that? scorgify? scorjify? nope that was not it either. He was about to ask Kurumi when he saw that her eyes were glued to something, he looked over and saw a girl push an older boy. Woah! that was the first time he had seen a boy lose a shoving match! must be a weakling! its all those yoga poses that he told Minnie about, didn't he tell her they weakened you. Look at this guy cant even stand against a shove without being in pain. He had to surpress a chuckle behind his hand as the boy blasted the girl with the potion. Thats when he heard Kurumi yell out, sheesh any louder and Dylan would be jumping out of his socks! Oh yeah the professor had said something like that! well back to his cleaning, he pointed his wand at his cauldron as he remembered how the spell went so no need to ask Kurumi, he was a big boy he could do this himself. If there was a disaster then Kurumi could come over but he was fine for now "Scourgify" just as he said it his cauldron was clean, but the force of the spell threw him back a bit and he ended up hitting his cauldron onto the floor with a big

BANG!!

Now THAT made him jump!! The moment he had his balance back he quickly picked up his cauldron and put it back onto the table. Well the cauldron was clean now, so time to fill it with water yes? right.. that was.. "Aguamenti" he watched as the cauldron filled up with water once again at least this time no more starting over.

Belle gulped as the professor asked them to do the task. She was quite nervous but she took 3 deep breaths. I can do this! She told herself.

As she got the berry from the professor, she went back to her seat with her 18 carat gold needle from her potions kit. She used the spell, "Scourgify!" and cleaned the needle of dust. After she cleaned it, she decided to do it and pierced the berry. EEP! Belle was nervous but her hands were steady.

She saw the juice come off of it and let it linger on the needle. That is what they needed to do! As she got the juice she needed, she went to the burner and burned the berry. It dissolved instantly! Then she waited till the drop fell into the potion. After it fell in, she burned the berry in the burner.It burned like the professor said it would. Then Belle burned the excess juice off the needle. It burned magically off. Then she said "Scourgify!" and cleaned her needle and but it back in her potions kit.

PHEW! Another dangerous task done. Belle wondered if there were any more ahead...

Somebody was working without a wand? Vickers shifted a bit at is area as he had spotted the young girl that posed the question. But without a wand how is such a student even able to attend any classes at Hogwarts? Kinda hard to wrap one's mind around that given that their wands were essentially and extension of themselves.

Anyway highly poisonous berry-- definitely need to concentrate on this one....

Firstly, he slipped on a protective glove as an extra precaution from any poisonous juices that could spill out from the Belladonna after puncturing. Then he took out his wand and the gold needle and scourgified it, then carefully took the dark colored berry and slowly pressed the needle deep into the fruit. He then took the needle out and hovered it, tip down, close to the mouth of the cauldron, then allowed the juice to drip out of the needle. When that was completed he tossed whats left of the Belladonna into the fire from the burner and scourgified and disinfected the gold needle as well.

And safe and sound right? Worked right through the ruckus from somewhere in the classroom-- of which Vickers realized it was from none other than Elijah.... and dragged Captain Nessie along with him.

Well at least he still has his shirt on.

Vivi wrinkled her forehead as first the professor and then her classmates wasted perfectly good poison!berries. One drop and then they burn the rest? Why not juice the whole bunch and save the juice in a golden phial, if it had to be gold? Vivi picked up her berry with a gloved hand and peered closely at it.

Probably wouldn't be able to steal this either. SIGH.

From her kit, Vivi withdrew the gold pin and gave her berry a gentle jab, drawing the juice out on the length of the pin. It caused her some pain to let the remaining berry and precious juice get burned up in the fire, so Viv closed her eyes before dropping it. Couldn't stand to watch that lovely thing burn up like that.

Once it seemed safe, Vivi opened her eyes and let her drop of juice fall into her cauldron. The pin was quickly thrust in and out of the fire before she cleaned it and put it away, and then Vivi went up on her toes to peer into her cauldron to gauge how her potion was progressing.

"Professor, what color should our potion be at this stage?"

Milton looked up when the professor began the next set of instructions. Deadly nightshade? Hmm. Sounded intriguing. Maybe he could slip it into the Slytherin Captain's food when he wasn't looking. Not a bad idea, Shacklebolt...

Getting back into focus, Milton watched as Lafay pricked the berry with the gold needle and dropped the juice into her cauldron. Seemed simple enough, right? As long as he didn't get any of the juice on himself.

Taking his own needle and berry very carefully, Milton pierced the berry and carefully moved the needle to hover over the cauldron. He waited a few seconds until the juice fell into the beginnings of the potion and then burned the berry and the juice off the needle before putting it away.