Intermission: Brewing
Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter!
Intermission: Brewing
Three hippogriff feathers, shredded into three parts each.
Cut and cut and cut, and the hippogriff feathers existed. Toss them into the potion. Watch them float, drift across the surface, while a red stone cut into his palm and he forced all the thoughts of what he wanted done into it. The stone grew warm with magic, and he had to concentrate to stop it from exploding.
Impart the stone with your magical essence.
Done, and toss, and the potion spat steam the color of lava and foamed and danced against the cauldron. Put up a ward around the cauldron, just in case it spilled. It could not spill, not now. Contain it. Brew it. Remember the discipline Snape had taught him, embedded in breaths and body.
The chips of stone must be identical.
They were. Oh, they were. Twin stones for twins. Cradle it tight, think of what he wanted to do, and watch the bubbles leap.
Leap, and the potion ate of the stone, and settled back into place as if thinking. Its bubbles floated above the surface now. Where was the largest one? There, and it tasted of him and fell back into the cauldron with a faint pop when he punctured it with one finger.
The potion must have the breath of the body.
Lean in. Blow. The potion singing to him, singing like a little boy finding frogs in a pond on a spring morning. Changing color, silver now, smug silver, languid silver, silver of light that defended one Horcrux from another.
Watch for the maelstrom. It must have one of the brewer’s hairs.
Pluck it forth, the smallest pain he had endured that day. Watch. There was the whirlpool! And in the hair went, and the potion appeared to turn upside-down, a smooth silver turtle shell extending above the rim of the cauldron.
The potion must taste one more time of skin and sweat.
A finger in. The dome trembled, and buckled, and then slid apart, halving itself, petals reaching out like a flower’s. Then it settled, and he could move it into the vial waiting for it. Couldn’t have two; they would suspect something. But he could, and did, place a red line of magic inside the vial, invisible unless one looked closely, dividing exactly half from exactly half.
Done.