Chapter 9 – Miss Harmony
Again at the potion making class, with Miss Harmony.
Many students thought there are too many classes like this in the timetable. Why? Maybe because it was the funniest class ... if you were one of those students who liked to sit for hours next to a cauldron simmering so slowly that you sometimes felt like throwing a huge amount of firewood to set fire to everything, including the potion.
However, as for the students who attended Miss Harmony's class and sat next to that cauldron, almost everyone felt like going mad.
"Everything must simmer. Otherwise, ingredients won’t mix properly and the potion can have many side effects. More than usual," Miss Harmony smiled.
After a moment she looked at the children.
"It still has to boil exactly fifteen minutes. After that I’ll share a Berzelius glass of potion for each of you. You only have to add three ingredients. And so you get a potion that can change, attention: the colour of your clothes.
The professor clapped hands so happily as if she just plotted to master the whole world.
The professor's words came like a breath of fresh air for the students. Most looked like numb. Only the movement of their eyelids proved they were alive, because otherwise the students didn’t move at all.
They were like the tiny, breathless creatures floating in liquid in the jars where they were dropped, except that they breathed.
What kind of little creatures? Well green frogs, mice as black as coal, small snakes, but still scary, even moles or bats. And there were plenty of eyes or parts of various small animals in those jars, gathered like sweets in a grocery store, forming piles of eyes, claws or teeth, stuffed to the brim. All of these seemed hypnotic, inducing drowsiness. Along with the potion class, of course.
"Really ... what an enchanting magic," Alexander said, drained of energy to one of his colleagues. "We’d been waiting for almost two hours to change the colour of a blouse?"
Miss Harmony seemed to hear him, as she continued:
"I know you don't quite like it, but don't forget. If you manage to prepare this potion properly, whose last three ingredients can be found on page 32 of the volume Elixirs and Potions, you’ll certainly be able to prepare even more interesting potions in the future. I don’t teach you here how to make potions that can turn various objects into other objects, or some creatures into other creatures. Or how to increase your power 20 times or breathe for hours through the water, like a fish. I teach you how to make a potion as good as possible. And when you created the potions you like once, when you need them, you can create them without any problems. Because you’ll learn what’s most important in potions' creation. To know exactly the ingredients and the most accurate dosing ... for the best efficiency.”
After a short break as she saw the kids were bored, she went on:
"Now go to your desks and open the book on page 32."
The children began to move so slowly that even a snail could keep up with them. Finally, after too long, all the books opened on page 32. Miss Harmony gave them a minute to read about the three ingredients they had to use, and then she said:
"Let's make it funnier ..."
On hearing these words, the kids seemed to be awakened from a long sleep. Some even smiled. Anything was welcome to change their boredom ... it was much better to leave behind that numbness.
"Let's see who knows how we can fight a vampire," said Miss Harmony. "Let's see what potions we need to fight against a vampire. But most importantly. What ingredients should we use and where can we find them?"
Still pure theory. So all the boys awoken from drowsiness got back to it ... in that bottomless boredom pit. And judging by the boys' faraway look, they probably preferred to really fall into a pit - it would be more interesting.
"Alexander? Do you help us? I am willing to offer an exam point for the best answer." The points, which added up, could help you to become valedictorian couldn't stimulate even Alexander, the biggest hunter of such points, as Miss Harmony hoped.
"A potion based on garlic ... something like that."
"Come on, Alexander, you can do more than that. We discussed less than a month ago. Garlic is good, but there is an even better potion."
"Maybe Elizabeth can tell us," Alexander tried to escape the discussion that could become endless.
But also because he didn't know the answer to the question.
As for the points, he was the second, with only two fewer than Christoph Scott. A short boy with a tiny nose, big ears looking like ladles used by the children to pour soup in plates when they ate.
This Christoph was a student who never managed to answer even the simplest question asked by his professor. No matter what he was asked, he couldn’t speak, out of timidity, for sure, because in tests or practical checks no one would beat him. Not once did he excel at making the best potions.
"How did you manage to get the chameleon colour, Christoph?" asked Professor Harmony at one of the Potions and Elixirs classes. "No student got it so perfect at such a young age."
A potion that gave you the power to become one with the environment you were in. If you stood next to a closet, your body skin and clothes would take on the colour of the closet. Only your eyes and lips were different from the rest of your body. And if you stood in front of a tree, you became a tree just like the one behind you, only you were a tree with eyes and mouth.
As usual Christoph's only response was to hand to Miss Harmony his list of deletions and changes in the weights used, so one wondered how come the potion was so good. But the effect was always guaranteed. He knew very well what he did and he always succeeded. It was just hard to get something from his list of ingredients and the quantities used. A list that had a lot of notes made by the boy, barred and, overwritten recalculated countless times, and he hated explaining if asked.
"I hope ... I get what you have written here, Christoph," said Miss Harmony. "Anyway you got the point for the best chameleon colour potion. Just by the book. And indeed, he deserved the point. Even if everything was clear only in his head, not on paper. But not once did they ask to redo the task and it came out at least as well.
As for the other students, no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't finish the potion as quickly as he did.
Some of them, after drinking from the bottle the potion called chameleon colour, made by them, became ... anything but not chameleons.
Johnny, when he finished the potion and drank it, turned from the waist down into a skeleton, only the rest of his body was a closet. Only the right side of Elizabeth's body was right, a closet with one eye and one half mouth, the other half was ... Elizabeth. As for Alexander ... A hand and the head were not under the influence of the elixir.
Of course others were even more horrible ... or terrible. A little girl remained the same, except for the tongue which was 5 times longer, and Pepplyn Hallow's five fingers had become three hooked anatomical structures, like those of a chameleon.
So this shy little boy, Christoph, was often the fastest and the best at most of those practical tests. But even the second in the class, which was not in line with the tradition of the Soimestis, not even the talkative Alexander did want to enter Professor Harmony's quiz. Because even if you didn't know an answer, Miss Harmony still helped you with clues, so many that she got you close to the answer ... only that it could last an eternity or even two eternities until you found it.
She asked you a lot of questions that you had to answer. And many of them had nothing to do with the subject of the class. They were questions about other elixirs and magic potions, which had only something insignificant in common, the most insignificant connection with what they were discussing.
"Elizabeth, are you helping us?" smiled Mrs. Harmony. "You like to get the answer using the clues."
Alexander had got a sickening smile on his face. He was so happy that he pushed Elizabeth into that trap of questions.
"You know, my dear, I once met a man who was part of the sceptics. Kind of a guide. A man of justice ... just not a judge," Miss Harmony tried to help the girl, with those clues too far from the subject.
What does a guide have to do with a potion against a vampire?
Elizabeth didn’t look for this hint like the other students.
“As far as I know, more powerful than garlic is the potion called ‘burning silver’ or ‘silver flames’, as some call it. Unlike potions that contain garlic and keep the vampire away from the person who got such a potion, ‘silver flames’ can hurt it very badly. They burn the vampire.”
Professor Harmony was delighted by what the child told her. She was proud that she was able to instil in a child so much desire for knowledge. Even though she knew it wasn’t just her merit, she was proud to have participated in this child’s preparation who learned so many lessons and magic secrets, including many details of the subject taught by her.
“As usual, Elizabeth Edwards, you show me you like my subject and you know any answer. You got the two points from me. But, you can still tell us the recipe, if you know it.”
The girl started:
“Eight large doses of clear water from the cold Spring ... 2 pinches of basil.”
“Wait, dear. I’d like you to write down this recipe. Maybe we'll prepare it someday ... and maybe we'll use it.”
“Against a vampire!” said Johnny excitedly.
The children all laughed. Harmony smiled, trying not to make the boy feel offended.
“Johnny, there have been no vampires for centuries. Not even in Western Transylvania. Some say they were exterminated... by werewolves. They also disappeared for more than four hundred years. But let's listen to Miss Edwards's recipe,” said Harmony, with the same beautiful smile.
Elizabeth slightly cleared her throat and then continued:
“The potion ‘burning silver’ contains:
8 large doses of clear water from the cold Spring
2 pinches of basil
1 small dose of pure silver
2 small doses of wormwood
3 seeds from Akebi fruit
3 sprouts of ginseng root ... ”
But the girl was interrupted by the deafening noise of a clock used by all grandmas when they cooked something extremely tasty in the oven.
“Excuse me Elizabeth, Miss Harmony interrupted. I’ll ask you to finish dictating the recipe after we solve the potion. We only have five minutes to put the other ingredients, because otherwise the potion instead of changing the colour will change the texture of the clothes.”
The professor went to prepare a large pile of bottles in which she put exactly the required amount of mixture. After that, she signalled to the children to come and take their share.
“Add the three ingredients and then I want you to sprinkle your colleague coat. Let's see the outcome. But you still have ..., ” she quickly looked at the clock. “Just one minute and 30 seconds.”
All children prepared the ingredients in their bottle. Some trembled and shed some of the potion received, others hurried without reading the book and added as they considered, just looking at what the colleague did next to them, others weighing carefully and gently placing everything it had to be poured into a bottle.
Others, like Johnny and Pepplyn Hallow, weren’t in a hurry and poured the ingredients at the very last moment, even when Miss Harmony got close to them.
“I hope you are ready.”
Johnny and Pepplyn shook hands as they gave up the utensils to put the ingredients in their bottle, sprinkling them by hand.
“Let's see what we did. What you did …”
Miss Harmony had the students in turn spray on their colleague next to them.
Elizabeth sprayed her colleague's blouse, and the blouse turned yellow like a lemon, as opposed to the bright red it was before.
"Very nice," said Professor Harmony excitedly, as if the fact that the girl poured some liqueur on her colleague's blouse was the biggest crime ever committed. “But you put a little more sulphur than you should”
Afterwards she asked other kids too. Most of the clothes were now coloured yellow, a sign that the conscientious students put the ingredients according to the special recipe. But there were also clothes that became somewhat green, blue or slightly multicoloured. Miss Harmony gently told them everything they did wrong.
Eventually she came to Johnny and Pepplyn.
“Johnny…. Let's colour Pepplyn's cape in yellow.”
But when Johnny sprayed the cape, it turned into a thick coat, with woven leaves and twigs.
Pepplyn Hallow was so frightened when he saw he sprayed Johnny with the potion on his hair and his eyebrows. Immediately the hair from Johnny's head and, of course, his eyebrows, grew like the coat of the woolliest sheep that ever lived on Earth.
His hair became finer than silk and longer even than the hair that Merlin was proud of in the paintings in which his portrait was presented. As for the eyebrows, their hair grew so long that it was impossible for Johnny to see anything because of them.
He had to part his eyebrows so he could see the others, which he did, causing loud laughter. Moreover, he ended up with his eyebrows in his mouth, so he couldn't say anything in his defence - because who can talk with a pile of hair in his mouth?
The whole class laughed with tears. Even Miss Harmony had a hard time not letting her usual smile turn into laughter. Eventually, with her wand, she freed poor Johnny from the surplus of hair, so he looked now as before, and gave Pepplyn back the beautiful cape.
“I told you it’s no joke with potions and elixirs. The slightest mistake can cost you dearly. It could be much worse than what Johnny and Pepplyn suffered.”
They laughed so loud that it was impossible to continue that class of Potions and Elixir, as it should be.
“Potions are as difficult as magic. You can you make a mistake when you want to throw a beam of light in the sky and instead of saying Lux Trabem you say Lux Tribem or worse ... One letter and you can be ... lost.”
Professor Harmony looked at the children, but as she saw no reaction from them, she finished the class:
“Come on, today's class is over. We're talking about Elizabeth's recipe next time. See you next time.”
And the students left the classroom one by one, still laughing loud, while Professor Harmony with her wand cleaned the place after them, tidying and placing the bottles cleaned with the help of the "wizard's weapon" back on the shelves.