HP: The Dream

'Who needs that traitor, I can do this alone, and better. It is actually good that the distraction got out of the way.'

Though looking at the books in front of me, I am getting second thoughts.

"Well, no use in delaying it. Let's get this done."

I start flipping through the books in front of me and the time passes with me taking notes, jotting down ideas, cutting them out and repeating the process.

...........

"FINALYYYY!!!!! Finally it's done. It's the perfect recipe."

"Mr. Patil, it would seem that you don't care about the library rules anymore." Came from behind me.

"Ah, Madam Pince, it's not like that. I was just, you know, relived, relaxed, or exite-"

"Enough, I understand the feeling. What were you working on? I hardly see a first year so engrossed in a mountain of books in the first week." She asks with a tinge of curiosity.

"Oh, I was working on an improved version of cure for boils potion. Professor Snape gave me the assignment."

"Ok, but what are all the books for?"

"For, the potion, of course. You see I first searched the basic potion books for an improved version of the potion, but couldn't find it. So, I thought, why not make my own version? So I searched the ingredients books and found the ingredients that can be replaced and, theoretically, improve the potion."

"So, you are saying you found a whole other set of ingredients?" I can hear the doubt in her voice.

"Well...not really. I just found better versions of the existing ones."

"Oh? Show me, I'll be the judge if they really are better." She asks with a smile.

"Yes, yes, here. You see, the potion had 4 ingredients-

750 mL of water

6 snake fangs

4 horned slugs

2 porcupine quills

3 measures of Flobberworm mucus.

So first we take water, that was the easiest. Water is used as a medium to concoct the potion and mix other ingredients. So, we only need one property, how easily it dissolves stuff, anything else like salts or minerals in it is useless. So, we just use distilled water so that other useless things don't interfere with the potion.

Next snake fangs. You see I had an idea after seeing the recipe that- how does it work? So, I came up with the hypothesis that the snake fangs are used to puncture into the wound; the porcupine quills have anti-bacterial properties, and boils are just a bacterial infection, so they are used to remove the infection; after that, the slugs heal the wound."

"And you thought of all this yourself?" She asks.

"Well, I originally thought that snake fangs were for the healing part, so a traitor might have helped in that regard."

"Ok, go on. You were explaining the changes you made."

"Right, so snake fangs yes. I thought that just snake fangs was a pretty general term. Like, there are hundreds of different snakes, so their fangs can't be the same either. So I read about snake fangs and found that not just any snake fang, but especially the fangs of opisthoglyphous snakes are better. The reason is that they have solid, grooved teeth and are not poisonous at all.

Then comes the slugs for healing. Now that one was a shocker, I mean, who thinks that slugs can help you heal? And, turns out, I was right. Well, kinda, sorta... Look I found that it's not the slugs that have healing properties, but its slime. Had to go to read an entire book on slugs for that. But the point being, I thought if it's just the slime that the healing properties, why not just use that part? Instead of the whole creature, the rest is useless to us.

So my new recipe looks like this-

500 ml of distilled water

6 fangs of opisthoglyphous snake

10 gm slime of horned slug

2 porcupine quills

2 measures of Flobberworm mucus.

The water was reduced since the number of things to dissolve decreased and I couldn't do anything for the mucus since all that does is make the potion thicker." Man, that was long.

"And you only took 10gm of slime since…"

"Well, I read that one slime has around 2-4 grams of slime so taking something in between I took 10 grams."

"Ok, reduce snake fangs to 5 and try the recipe."

"Why?"

"Just do it. Try the potion now and let's see if it works."

"Wait, now?"

"Yes, why delay it? Are you not interested in seeing the results of your work?"

 "Ok, but the potions lab would be closed right now." After last time, I'm not sure I want to break in there again.

"Leave that to me. You just gather your stuff, we leave in 5 minutes."