Chapter 16: The potions diagnosis

"I've been thinking," Harry started. He, Cedric and Penny were hanging out in the common room before potions class and Harry had a plan.

"Don't hurt yourself," Cedric quipped, causing Penny to roll her eyes from her position on a black and yellow arm-chair.

"If Harry was prone to hurting himself by thinking too hard he would have died by now," she said. "It's rather you who should be worried. You haven't left the quidditch field since you figured out that you could borrow the school brooms." Was the retort from the blonde, causing Harry to wince at the brutality. Cedric puffed up his chest, before deflating and awkwardly scratching the back of his head.

"Well, I have been having a bit of a harder time in class. But quidditch with the other first-years is so fun!" he said, causing Penny to raise a doubtful eyebrow.

"Let him have his moment. It's only in the first year that he can have games like these before everyone else starts bringing their own brooms and joining house teams," Harry interjected in the little spat.

Cedric immediately brightened up. "Why don't you come to play with us, Harry. Didn't you say something about how your project with Flitwick is almost over?" the boy said while waving his arms excitedly. Harry backed off warily from where he was sitting next to him. It wouldn't do to get a blue eye.

"I have a different set of priorities, to be honest," he muttered, before switching the topic. "I was thinking about Potions actually and how I haven't been having much luck with them," he said, but Penny seemed to be on a warpath and directed her ire at him next.

"What luck, you don't practise or study. Do you expect to get any better without putting in any effort?" Penny bit out while glaring at him.

"I have actually read the book, you know. I just don't seem to have an affinity for the subject," Harry retorted. "What I was going to suggest was that maybe if I can get my hands on some advanced material, I could read up and see if something changes at some point if there's something I can do to not suck so much."

Penny tilted her head at him. "Wouldn't the library have something like that?" she asked.

Harry shook his head. "Actually I was thinking of maybe nabbing the sixth and seven year books from Slughorn during class. I'd just need a distraction so I could take them out of the cabinet. You know he has a whole bunch of them. The books that teachers assign for us are always borrowed at the library and I don't want to spend money on a class I might not even end up taking for the NEWTS," he said. All of this, of course, just being a cover for him getting the potion's book of the half-blood prince. He remembered that there was supposed to be a sound-muffling spell inside there somewhere, along with a bunch of useful additions and notes on the potion-making process.

Other than teaching him the other spell that he needed to fearlessly haunt the castle at night, it might actually teach him something that would allow him to keep up with the class that he seemed to have absolutely no talent for.

"That makes sense," Penny said naively, but then added a clause to her sentence which made Harry feel like a complete dumbass, "but couldn't you just ask him to have a look?"

Harry paused, tilted his head and involuntarily slapped himself on the cheek for his stupidity.

Wasn't the point of Flitwick's whole spiel that the professors now knew him to be a good student, and were more predisposed to helping him.

"That's a good point," he said with a sigh, looking at Penny's deep-blue eyes and trying to find where the mental acuity was stored that he was so clearly lacking. Penny blushed and looked away, covering her face with blonde hair.

"I feel like such a dumb-ass sometimes," Harry lamented, thinking back on how he'd stupidly followed Twix to the forest and how he'd been stressing about getting to the half-blood prince book for a few days now in-between rigorous experiments of his spell with Flitwick.

Was he maybe devoting too much time to academic pursuits and was thus functioning with much too little mental energy at other times?

"You know what Cedric. I'll take you up on that offer of a quidditch match. I need a break. All this school is frying my mind," he eventually said, extending his fist to give Cedric a fist-bump, his friend throwing a victorious smile at Penny who only rolled her eyes.

"And thanks for the suggestion Penny, I don't know what I was thinking. Maybe some flying will clear my head," he told the blonde girl, who simply smiled.

"You know what, maybe I'll join you. It's been a while and I think I'm starting to smell the potions I make in my hair, maybe a breeze will get it out."

Cedric jumped up from the couch and whooped with his arms raised. "Hufflepuff trio!" he shouted.

Anyway, that was the story of how Cedric insisted the three of them play chaser together, and seeing as both Penny and Harry sucked quite hard at flying, they lost miserably.

-/-

Harry sighed as he added porcupine quills to the draught of furiously sleeping green dreams, only for the colour and consistency to turn a viscous red instead of a frothy purple. Penny, who had already finished her own, perfect potion several minutes ago could only frown sadly.

"It really sucks, you know," she said, causing Harry to shrug and sigh.

"I'll tell my hypothesis to Slughorn after class, maybe there's a solution," he muttered, as he capped a small sample vial to bring it to the front desk, a little slip of paper with his name attached to it. A Slytherin student who'd finished at the same time as him snickered openly as he deposited his own potion, which at least had the colour right.

Going back to sit down Harry decided to stare at the grey ceiling until class fully ended, not reacting to anything others said to him until it was only him and Slughorn in the room. Harry was sick of potions, and whatever curiosity that had initially existed for the subject had evaporated by now.

"Mr. Evans, is there something you want to discuss?" Slughorn asked once he finished cleaning the room and putting the samples away.

Harry nodded, stood up and went to where the portly man had sat down behind his desk. "Am I disturbing you, professor? If now isn't the time for a longer discussion I could also visit you during your office hours," he said politely, at which Slughorn hummed non-committedly and leaned back in his chair, resting his hands on his big stomach.

"I'm interested to hear what such a bright student might want to discuss," Slughorn said. The, 'no matter which subject this student might be bright in,' being left unsaid.

Harry nodded. "I'm glad not to be disturbing you then," he said before rifling through his leather satchel and pulling out a vial filled with a clear blue liquid dotted with little specks of light and putting it on the table. Slughorn looked at it curiously for a second.

"A boil-cure potion," he stated frankly and Harry nodded.

"Professor, I will now arrogantly claim that I'm smart enough to follow instructions to the letter. A good potions-master this does not make. But seeing as the recipes in our course book have been adapted for the lowest common denominator, eleven-year-old children, then following instructions should at least make me capable of making the potions," Harry said.

"Not many know that you're working with simplified recipes."

Harry shook his head. "It makes perfect sense that they are simplified. More complex techniques and timing restrictions would lead to an improvement in the potency of the potion, or a faster potion-making process, however, by using a complex version students, especially first years, would make more mistakes. Explosive mistakes…"

"Causing explosions, yes, I remember that that was often the result back when I was a student. They hadn't caught on to the fact that perhaps intentionally worsening the potion effect or the efficacy of its creation to make it simpler would be a smart idea," Slughorn chortled. "Utter chaos, I tell you, sometimes I'm surprised the entirety of my class even survived until graduation. But where exactly are you going with this?"

Harry smiled bitterly. "I follow the instructions perfectly, professor. You know this."

"Unfortunately; I kept an eye out in the beginning and was never able to find an error. Making the mishaps your potions tend to experience quite unexplainable," the man admitted.

Harry pointed to the boil-cure potion on the table, a perfect creation. "I made that," he said, causing Slughorn to raise an eyebrow. "I know it's hard to believe, but I was trying to isolate why I, excuse my French, am so shit at Potions. Anyway, since we already established that I can follow instructions, something that my Penny can attest to, we can clearly say that following the recipe isn't a problem."

"Yes, Miss Hayworth, a fine potions mistress in the making. Already making modifications. But if you truly made this potion, then I have to ask." Slughorn paused. "How did you do it? Most magical disciplines can be likened to an art form, potions included. One can't really gain talent, by the common consensus."

Harry spread his arms. "There is no secret. I just kept doing it, again and again and again. One potion only. Until it turned out like this."

"So this was a lucky case?" Slughorn asked.

"Exactly not," Harry retorted. "You see, professor, from the protocols I kept I was able to create a graph that clearly shows that rather than each potion being a singular instance with a specific failure ratio, and that I essentially just need to get lucky… I was able to draw a clear line of improvement correlating to the amount of attempts. If every potion attempt, of which there were 21, is one single data point, then there was on average an improvement ratio of about 5% in potion quality all the way to the end, where it jumped straight from acceptable to the best one can get with the recipe. Essentially just a bit worse than Penny's own attempt, without modifications for the sake of comparison."

Slughorn raised his hands from his stomach and scratched his chin. He pulled out a wand and silently summoned a sheaf of parchment from somewhere behind himself. "Do you have the graph with you?" he asked and Harry quickly handed over a few stapled-together pieces of paper. Protocols from the potions #2 - #21 and then the summary of the data. The professor flipped through the papers quickly, before landing on the last page and tracking the graph upwards with a fat finger adorned by a thick ruby ring. "I understand why Flitwick seems so taken with you, an extremely presentable summary of your project. How long have you been working on this?"

Harry smiled at the compliment. "Two weeks, ever since the experiments for my charm have slowed down. We're trying to cover all eventualities before deciding that the project is concluded for the moment."

"Impressive," Slughorn muttered. "Going by the textbook method this should have taken you around 24 hours, more work that I assume most students spend on all their classes in a month, let alone two weeks."

"One potion a day on the weekdays and four per day on the weekends," Harry said, somewhat proudly. It wasn't really the best use of his time, but the sooner he figured out what was wrong with his potion-making capabilities, the earlier he could do something about it.

"Do you mind if I make a copy?" Slughorn asked, pointing at Harry's data.

"Go ahead, I made it partially for you, professor, anyway. I wanted to show you that I'm not bad at potions because of any fault of my own," he said, perhaps a tad proudly. He was not ever going to fall behind literal eleven-year-olds in anything if he didn't have a good reason.

"I never believed that. Your mother was brilliant. Potions and Charms were where her talents lay. I just assumed that you'd inherited four times her talent in charms and one-fourth in potions. As I said previously, we can't always achieve what we want. Different circumstances stand in our way," Slughorn said softly.

"Perhaps my father was pants at Potions. Whoever he was," Harry mused, causing the professor to wince and smile weakly.

"Maybe, my boy, maybe," he said before taking Harry's approval of him making a copy literally and pushing his wand down onto Harry's papers. "Effingo," the man said, before repeating the process on his own sheet of parchment. Two flashes of blue light and the man had the entirety of Harry's efforts over the last two weeks for himself. Harry's eyes involuntarily widened and he nearly asked for the spell, before remembering that he could do so later and that that would perhaps be smarter. "But just as much as your project is fascinating, I don't quite see the, uh, core of the issue."

"Well, I did all this to get to the surrounding context of my persistent failure. Being able to eliminate fluctuations based on luck, faulty ingredients, instructions, the following of instructions, a bad cauldron, spoon or anything of the like," Harry said. "The only issue remaining that could possibly be holding me back is my own magic."

Slughorn raised an eyebrow. "That's an interesting point and something I've thought about as well. Just like some take to transfiguration like grindylow to water, some might struggle with even the most basic charms. As you likely know potions can be made by squib, but not by muggle, so despite its formulaic process the magic of the poitoneer clearly affects the outcome," he apologetically spread his hands. "The only problem with that being…"

"That we can't just change the nature of our magic. Also, who knows, even if we succeeded, I might lose some talent for Charms, the question being, is it even desirable to make such a trade," Harry said.

Slughorn nodded. "I do have some good news. Extrapolating from what you've brought me… You've proven by making 21 iterations of the same potion that your unsuitability for potions is surmountable. Since a potioneers magic follows a similar pattern in each step of the potion-making processes - cutting, crushing, stirring - and there are so many motions to go through in the entirety of the subject, you should acclimatise to all potions eventually. The more potions you make the more used your magic might become into falling into the necessary patterns."

"And so, perhaps next year I will only need 15 attempts at creating a perfect potion, not 22," Harry said bitterly.

"Potions is an incredibly important subject, historically and practically, that's why it's mandatory." Was the reply.

"I understand, professor." Harry sighed. "I would have a request then if you do not mind me asking."

"Ask away my boy."

"Could I perhaps, from the cabinet of used potions textbooks, borrow an example from every year. Maybe studying the recipes and their order can help me create a practice schedule that will help me make the most out of this year. Try to pass my exams and all," Harry said.

"Go on my boy, but don't go practising over the summer. The trace might not be able to track potion making," Slughorn winked suggestively, "but it's a dangerous discipline to commit to alone. I'd only trust a very brilliant, dedicated and mature student to ever brew me a potion without my supervision in the muggle world before their fourth year."

"It shouldn't be too much of a worry professor," Harry chuckled. "It's not like I would even have enough wizarding money to buy ingredients to try making anything," he said as he walked over to the cupboard with the old textbooks and opened it, quickly scanning for the one assigned in the sixth year. He found Snape's copy of "Advanced potion-making", not hard, since it had more notes than actual text. He slipped the copy into his satchel before more leisurely selecting the other texts, noting that the sixth-year one seemed to be the only one that had Snape's handwriting in its margins.

"That is unfortunate," Slughorn said as he stood up from his chair and ambled over to where Harry was rifling through books. "At the end of the year, I always have storage left over, it would definitely go bad if I left over the summer. If only a student would be kind enough to come help me throw it all away. Maybe they could even keep some to practise, after all, Students leave one week after exams. Plenty of time to go through the last of the materials."

"I'll volunteer for the task, professor, it's the least I can do considering how you took time from your busy schedule to show me around Diagon Alley last year," Harry said solemnly, as he stuck the last of the six books he was here to borrow into his now, very heavy satchel. He stood up and made to go for the door, before pausing. "What was that copying spell you used earlier, if I may ask?" he asked innocently. "Perhaps I could use it on the textbooks and thus bring them back earlier."

"Effigo, the copying charm. A bit advanced, but I guess so are you," Slughorn said as they ambled over to exit the classroom. "I'll send you the spell instructions by owl tomorrow, you can break your head on the thing. It's a real time-saver though, perhaps if you master it by next year you'll have enough time to come to a small Halloween gathering I'll be hosting."

"I would very much like that, professor," Harry demurred. "I've heard that it was great fun last time from the invitees," he complimented and they exited the room, only to both pause once outside. Harry narrowed his eyes and looked at the three Slytherin first years loitering around, one of them Montague, the boy who'd shoved him before the sorting. They all also froze when they saw Harry and Slughorn together.

"What are you all doing here?" Slughorn tsked. "Why are you hanging about in this horribly cold dungeon, you'll catch a cold." He ushered the still first-years off, causing them all to leave in a singular direction after a few seconds of confusion. "Until next time my boy," Slughorn said to Harry, causing one of the Slytherins, a short blonde, to throw a glare at Harry over his shoulder.

Harry watched them leave dispassionately once Slughorn had retreated back into the classroom, like a bear into its cave. "Annoying," he muttered, before casting the levitation charm on his heavy bag and beginning his walk to the Hufflepuff common room. "Thankfully there won't be much reason to not walk around invisibly and silenced soon enough," he sighed, imagining himself doing something childish, like perhaps taking a hat off a Slytherin student and throwing it out of a window. He chuckled at how unfunny bullying children was and made his way to where he and Penny had been making potions together over the last half a month.