White Heather for Protection

Worn Out

It is imperative that the natural flow of magic in a potion be considered in the application of Stasis. The Boil Cure is a simple widdershins swirl while the Veritaserum is a complex network of interlocking figure eights...

"Heather, could you help me with this?"

Heather's head snapped up towards Anthony Pucey. "Sure," she said, putting her book aside, "what don't you get?"

"Why can't ashwinder blood be used instead of salamander blood in Strengthening Solution? Their properties are mostly the same."

"That's because there is a certain substance in ashwinder blood that has a negative reaction with scorpion tails," she replied immediately.

Frowning in confusion, Anthony looked down at his own book then back up again. "But there aren't any scorpion tails used in the potion."

"Huh?" Heather shook her head to clear it. "Oh, sorry, I meant scorpion claws." She stifled a yawn and pointed towards the library shelves. "You can read more about it in Brouer's potion guide. Ignore Foulle's, it's rubbish."

"Okay, thanks!" The younger boy paused as he stood to get the suggested book and narrowed his eyes at her. "Are you alright Heather?"

"Heather," someone called out, "I don't understand this."

Waving the boy's concerns away, she said, "Yeah, fine." She then turned to address the other person's queries.

Several more students had questions to ask her after that, so she had no chance to get back to her own book. Well, that was fine. She could just stay up later to finish it up.

She was near a breakthrough in her research into the spellballs. She had recently thought about applying the concept of stasis spells used for potions. They weren't often used as they were difficult to cast properly. Simple potions were easy enough, but they hardly required the spell anyway, seeing as they were quick to brew. Most delicate potions, on the other hand, had such complex flow of magic that applying the stasis properly would take considerable skill and experience. The caster needed to know where to apply the magic 'blocks' to freeze the potion at a certain state.

If she could just fine-tune her magic sensing to accurately detect the pattern of magic in spells, she was pretty sure she could use a modified stasis spell to suspend the spell in action and store it in an orb.

Besides this, she also had to keep up with her runic potions thesis, read more into mental links for Hadrian and reverse engineer the Marauder's Map on top of her regular NEWTs work for 8 subjects. (She had dropped Divinations, Astronomy and History of Magic after her OWLs.)

Sure, she was feeling a tad tired, but it wasn't anything she couldn't handle. Three hours of sleep per night was perfectly sufficient. She just made sure to only brew during the morning or afternoon so that her drowsiness didn't affect her. Potions accidents weren't anything to laugh at, especially at the level she was brewing.

Heather just wished that she had more hours in a day. It just seemed like there was so much she needed to do in so little time. Voldemort was clearly moving forward with whatever plans he had, as shown by the recent prison breakout. Yet, it seemed like the Order of the Phoenix was just reactionary; trying to block whenever Voldemort made a move and not advancing on their own.

It was abundantly clear that if she wanted Hadrian safe from that mad man, the DA was her only recourse. This was why she was so manic about the research for the DA. The members were very skilled for students, but they were only precisely that - students. There was no guarantee that in a duel against actual Deatheaters, they would win. Hence the spellball and Maruader's Map projects. She and FredGeorge had other nifty ideas in the works too.