Chapter 75: 6th September 1991, Friday: Part 4

After an entire afternoon of failed potion-making, George had lost his confidence in his ability to brew the Calming Draught without more information. He was currently eating a large loaf of bread he had retrieved from the Great Hall, he was using this time to contemplate his options. George had spent six hours the previous day and seven hours today attempting to brew a batch of the Calming Draught but it was to no avail. He had been following the instructions to the letter, he'd carefully measured out and timed every single step in the brewing process and yet it failed on every attempt.

The multiple recipes George tried took on average one hour and thirty minutes to complete and ironically required absolute patients. In essence, the potion brewer had to slowly introduce small portions of each ingredient over time whilst stirring it systematically. At no point during the one hour and thirty minutes could you afford to get distracted. Surprisingly, it wasn't Myrtle who made this potion impossible to brew, he had adapted to her nagging within the first half an hour. She got bored very quickly after the first attempt and would wander off, leaving George to himself. It had to be something else, he just didn't know what.

George felt like he was going insane repeating the same process over and over again with minor changes and hoping for a different result. That being said, the end product did vary on occasion depending on how well he had managed his time. The liquid would change to many different colours and clarities. He didn't even consider drinking any of them since the terrible side effects of ingesting a failed potion were well documented, unlike the instructions. He had even been teased with success on his most recent trial, he had produced a small bowl of light blue liquid that looked just like the potion Pomfrey had provided him. George took the risk and tried taking a sip. He was uncontrollably sobbing for thirty minutes and, more importantly, his emotions hadn't been repressed.

After dozens of attempts and half of his overall ingredients being sacrificed, George couldn't see how he could improve his technique any further. It couldn't be a matter of human error, he doubted that any student could be any more accurate than him even if they were in the sixth year. All George could do was modify the instructions little by little until he found some success, he was being reduced to rinsing and repeating with no evidence of progress. Unfortunately, he only had another day before he ran out of his potion supply and his ingredient resources were starting to dwindle. The trial and error strategy wasn't feasible anymore, plan B had to take over.

George had been pacing around in the corridor whilst surfing through his memories for some sort of solution that wouldn't draw any more attention to him from the professors. Conducting plan B by himself wasn't a solution, it was just delaying the inevitable. Everything was moving too fast for him, four days just wasn't enough time to process everything he needed to do. He would be having a mental breakdown if it wasn't for the Calming Draught, he was surrounded by people and yet felt so alone with his impossible task.

Sensing that he was getting distracted, George slapped himself across the face which echoed down the corridor as a punishment to himself for getting feeling self pitty, he had no one to blame other than himself. It was his problem to fix and he would never give in, he just had to be brave enough to make the hard choices no matter the cost. George had been lying to himself for the past five minutes. He already knew what he had to do, he just wasn't looking forward to it.

He had to acquire Snape's copy of the advanced potion book, it was just a matter of how. That door wasn't going to be easy to knock down, his strength alone wouldn't be enough. George finished wolfing down the loaf of bread and noticed that his hands were shaking as if he was freezing, the veins on the back of his palms were bulging like they were about to burst. He pressed his arm against his chest and could feel his heart rate speeding up freakishly fast, he needed to take his medicine.

Over the past week, George had taken five vials of Calming Draught and had learnt to notice the signs of the potion wearing off. His body would have a mild panic attack just before his emotions started to flare, the shaking meant he only had around ten seconds before the emotions would return. He checked the time on his watch and noticed that he wasn't due to have another one of his calming drought vials yet, his last dosage was meant to last for another two hours. He found yet another way the world was trying to make his life harder, clearly, he was building up an immunity. George had read that almost every person who takes large quantities of potions will start to notice the effects becoming milder and wearing off in a shorter period of time. Just like with poison, the body adapts to the foreign substance and fights back.

Of course, George wasn't stupid enough not to think this wouldn't happen to him, but his body wasn't meant to adapt so fast. He had only consumed a few small vials containing no more than a tablespoon each of Calming Draught. The big problem was if his potion resistance kept growing exponentially, the potion would have to be drunk in shorter and shorter intervals. He would have to drink massive volumes daily just to cope. The nightmare possibility would be if he built up a complete immunity, there was no solution to that problem. George felt it was best to keep his thoughts in the present as it was pointless to think about things that might happen that he couldn't control. He currently needed to have another Calming Draught enter his system before he lost his sensibilities.

After wiping the crumbs off his hands, George briefly looked around and saw that there was no one watching him. He felt now was a good time to pull out his vial pouch. He was currently standing in an empty side corridor between the Great Hall and the moving staircases, very few people came down this passage during lunch and break for some unknown reason. He would have kept on going outside to eat, but Filch spotted him in the gardens yesterday at half six in the afternoon eating a rack of ribs. The caretaker told George to get back inside or he would report him to Snape. George did what he was told, hence why he had to find a new spot in this dingy corridor until Filch found him again.

Even though things were looking pretty horrific, all George had planned for the rest of today was to drink his potion and go back to bed so that he could wake up early tomorrow morning. He was getting tired and there was no point trying to solve anything without a good night's sleep. George pulled out the pouch but at that moment he heard students running from behind him, the footsteps suggested there were multiple people and they were coming towards him fast. Before George could formulate a response, he was pushed to the ground by one of the larger members of the group that ran past him.

The forceful push was targeted at him and was not accidental, George hit the ground hard. Shielding his face with his arms was the only thing he could do on the way down. This movement was completely instinctive as he would come to regret it later. He looked up to see Draco, Goyle and Crabb standing a few feet ahead of him, they were murmuring to each other with smiles on their faces. They seemed very happy with their little act of bullying. Draco appeared to be particularly smug, he had most likely been the architect of this assault.

Draco turned back towards George and looked down at him with a face of disgust, "you better stay out of our way you filthy mud-blood, or, you'll get what's coming to you."

Then Draco turned around and left with his goons following behind, George could hear them laughing as they disappeared around the dark corner. George wouldn't have just taken that lying down but he was currently stunned by the stinging sensation coming from his right hand that had been clutching the pouch. He could feel shards of glass sticking into his hand and a cold liquid dripping down his wrist, he was dreading looking down at the catastrophe between his fingers.

Whilst turning over onto his back, George saw that the pouch was soaked with liquid and was covered in tears from small pieces of glass sticking out, some of which were stabbing into his hand. Both a blue and red liquid were merging as they poured down his forearm. One or more of the vials must have smashed into pieces upon hitting the ground, it was just as bad as George had imagined. He didn't hesitate to desperately start licking all of the liquid dripping down his arm like a lunatic, he had to save every last drop. George could taste the iron mixed with peppermint travel down his throat, he nervously waited to see if the potion had become compromised by his blood polluting it.

Luckily, George felt his riling emotions disappear as the cool air left his mouth. It wasn't the end of the world yet, he still had some time to salvage this mess. He opened the pouch and pulled out all of the vials, shattered or not. The two remaining vials were broken into pieces, his reserves had officially been exhausted. He then grabbed the pouch with both hands and ringed it over his mouth, this forced all of the soaked blood and Calming Draught to drip down his throat. A few shards of glass that had been stuck inside of the pouch fell into George's open mouth and sliced open his tongue. He simply had to spit them out once he had finished drinking every last drop.

George was relieved to find the potions still worked, but he had only managed to drink probably less than half of the broken vials. The other half was splattered on the floor and the liquid had already changed colour from a shining blue to a dull brown, this meant that the potion was useless even if he was to lick it off the ground. George dragged himself up against the wall and squeezed his lacerated hand to help stop the bleeding, the wounds were deep but clean so they should only take a few seconds to clot. He held his head tightly with his good hand, he needed a minute to reflect on what just happened.

As one could expect from Slytherin, George had anticipated being bullied and he knew Draco would be one of the first in line. But, he hadn't considered it would happen at such a terrible time. Now his deadline had been shortened by over twelve hours. He only had tonight left to find a way to brew the potion, he would need to pull off some metaphorical magic to acquire that book today without transforming and kicking the classroom's door down. George could only think of one way that he could get guaranteed access to Snape's book with such a tight deadline, he was going to have to call in a really big favour.

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