“Finally finished!” I stared at my new plan for the first lesson and was satisfied. It would work perfectly. I was sure about that, but I was also aware that the real challenge would be the second lesson. After really knowing if I was right with my assumptions about their abilities and weaknesses, I would need to create a plan to beat those weaknesses out of them and push them on the true path of potions.

I went to breakfast and saw my three students sitting near Uncle. They looked still a little tired, but I was hopeful that they would feel better after breakfast.

I didn’t see Will, but I wasn’t expecting him to be here today. I was sure that he really needed at least this day for a full recovery. It pained me to admit that I was struggling with not simply preparing him a plate for breakfast to see him, but I wanted to slow down a little. BUT WHY DID I DO THAT? I wanted to see him. I wanted to cuddle him; I wanted to kiss him. Preparing the lesson had distracted me quite well from thinking about him, but now my thoughts were simply straying away. Focus, Charlotte, focus. You have a lesson to hold after breakfast.

“And, are you nervous?” My uncle asked, probably to make sure I didn’t forget it or maybe just because he wanted to wish me luck.

“Just a little. I worked so much, and I think I should be fine. How do you prepare so many lessons? I took ages just for the first.”

“Haha. I know what you mean. It needs a lot of practice, but the main reason is that we don’t need to really prepare so many lessons. We prepared them once after the founding, and by now, most lessons are just slight variations of the old ones. We naturally try to optimize the old ones, but good planning can only get you so far. What I mean to say is that you need to learn to be a little flexible, as no plan will survive contact with a class full of teenagers. But it will all become manageable if you learn that not every lesson can be perfect. So don’t worry too much; learn from your mistakes and try to find your way of teaching.” That wasn’t calming me at all. What if I ruin everything at the first lesson and they don’t want to be taught by me again? I can’t just say, “Don’t worry, next time will be better."

“I can see in your face that you have doubts, but I can guarantee you, even if your first lesson is the worst lesson ever taught, which I really doubt, the worst that could happen is that they would lose two hours. So stop worrying now and start eating.” Somehow, uncle managed that I was more worried now than I was before our talk, but realizing that I couldn’t change my plan anyway calmed me down again.

After breakfast, my three students stared at me with full expectations and curiosity. I took a deep breath before commanding them to follow me.

“Uncle, why are you coming too?” I was a bit confused that Uncle seemed to follow us down into the dungeons. I knew he should teach dark arts now instead of following us.

“Did you expect me to just give you my three personal students and not at least watch one or two lessons?” Okey, that seemed fair in a way, but it would have been nice if he had said that beforehand. Or maybe it was better that he didn’t. I would have been really nervous then.

We entered the potion classroom, and I immediately noticed that Morgana sat in the first of three rows while Augustus and Merlin sat in the last row. I was immediately a little annoyed that I would need to waste time to make them move, but I thought I needed to make it clear that hiding wasn’t an option in my class.

“Before I start my class and formally introduce myself, I would like to ask you all to sit down in the first row.“ They moved without saying anything, but they were so slow. Was it too much to ask for them to move a little faster? At least Uncle was sensible enough to not move with them and stayed in the last row.

“Good. Now that we are all here, I want to introduce myself again. I’m Charlotte Elenore Humblehill, and you are allowed to call me Charlotte. I’m 18 years old and, technically, a seventh year student at Toadwitz. As you might or might not have heard, I can’t use magic, which makes me unable to graduate normally, but my inability to use magic will be your boon as I spent quite a considerable time learning potions and all associated crafts. As this is my first lesson with you, I would like to spend this lesson getting to know you to create customized lessons that are adjusted to your individual abilities. But first of all, I want you to introduce yourself, as besides your names and the grades from your past years, I know nothing about most of you. So I want you to tell me what you think you will need potions for in the future.

“Yes, Miss Charlotte. I’m Augustus Black, 16 years old, and currently single. I think the main use I have for potions is that they are an easy way to make a considerable amount of money, but honestly, I need personal power more than money, so it’s not so far up my priority list.” Was it really necessary for him to mention that he is single?

“And what do you need personal power for?” It annoyed me a little that he thought that potions wouldn’t be able to increase his personal strength, but I guess if that’s what he thought, he wouldn’t have invested the necessary time to learn about a few more complicated potions.

“To return my family to their rightful place on the throne on the mainland.” So he really was from that Black family. But his goal was far too ambiguous. As far as I knew, the Roman empire crumbled around three generations ago, and even before that, they had been out of power for a hundred years. I mean, sure, their family, together with the Whites, had ruled the empire even during the time it was still a republic, but claiming any type of right to a throne from an empire that was torn into dozens of pieces was blinded nepotism at its finest. I mean, sure, the eastern Roman part was still united, but it was in the firm hands of Anastasius White, and I don’t believe that the blacks will be able to convince him to help them back into power. Still, who am I to judge? Maybe he will surprise me and succeed.

“That is quite an ambiguous goal. But I think you underestimate the usefulness of potions. While potions fail to give you a significant, permanent increase in personal power, they can surely assist you in your growth. That growth is not only limited to the more commonly known physical growth enhancements but also potions that increase your perception of magic for a limited time, which would help you understand any magic faster than you otherwise would. So maybe potions might become more than just a tool for you to make some money.” That worked better than expected. I wanted him to have a reason to study earnestly. I was honestly the most worried about him. His attitude towards potions was reflected quite well in his grades, so an additional motivation might work wonders.

“Merlin, for what reasons do you need potions in the future?” Please don’t say that it will help you grow a beard, or I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from laughing out loud.

“I’m Merlin Smith, 16-years old, and … and single too. I think I want to learn to brew potions because they are so versatile. You can use them in almost every situation, be it combat, training, healing, or even increasing your lifespan.” I think Augustus set a precedent here. Who needs to know if they are single or not? Anyway, his goal is a bit too untangible to be a real motivation, but considering his grades so far, it should be enough.

“That is right, potions can be used everywhere if you are skilled and creative enough. And yes, potions are able to increase your lifespan, but they are unable to make you really have eternal life. So if that is your goal, you would need to invest a lot of effort, and maybe with a bit of luck, you might succeed in brewing the first potion that might be able to do that.” The discussions with mother about my tears made me realize how enticing eternal life could be to some, so maybe if he has that hope, he will work even harder than before.

“I’m Morgana Fay, and also 16 years old. I study potions and enhancements to become independent from my family. Financially and otherwise.” Nothing surprising considering that her family would like to marry her off. I think that is enough motivation.

“Good. Now that we know each other, I have a task prepared for each of you. If I’m right, these tasks will be quite challenging for all of you. But even if they are not, they will show me what you are capable of, which is necessary for me to prepare something for you so that you all will be able to take a step towards achieving your goals. Augustus, you need to brew the following recipe. It’s a recipe for a sleeping potion, and you need to follow each step to the letter, or either the potion might be nothing more than slightly herbal water or the person drinking it might possibly never wake up again. So be careful. Morgana, I want you to brew a simple pesticide, but instead of killing all kinds of pests, I want it to only kill insects, and only the pests of those, not the beneficial ones. You can use your schoolbooks and notes from previous lessons as references. Merlin, you need to wait for two more minutes before you get your task.” Okay, so far, I’m almost perfectly on time. I just hope the tasks will produce the desired results.

“Why do I need to wait?” because I want you to feel pressured because you don’t have enough time. But I guess I can’t tell you that now.

“Quite impatient for someone aiming for immortality. But fine, you need to brew a potion that increases beard growth with the following recipe. You have time until ten minutes before the lesson ends.” I definitely didn’t choose a beard growth potion to tell him he should grow a beard to cover his butty chin. Definitely not. The reason was purely academical. I mean, there were a few other potions that would have required him to do many different things in quick succession, but why not kill two birds with one stone?

The moment everyone had their tasks, they hurriedly set up their cauldrons with a bit of water and set up a magical fire under them with their wands, before they rushed off to the old but perfectly cleaned shelves on the side of the room to get the ingredients they needed. If I were honest, I was really envious of that. I mean, I could regulate the heat as well or even better with the enchanted stove Seraphine made for me, but it was just something different to rely on your own power to do it.

As I was keeping them all busy doing what I wanted them to do, I saw my uncle mildly smiling at the back of the class. It calmed me to see that he didn’t show me his judgy frown.

I refocused my attention on my busy students. Augustus seemed to be the most relaxed. His potion was by far the easiest, but it required him to stay focused for the whole brewing process, even though some of the things he had to do were a bit simple or even boring. Merlin was, as I had planned, hastily weighing the ingredients before preparing them for the potion, and I could see him turning around multiple times on the spot because he was unsure if he remembered the recipe right before realizing that he didn’t have the time to look at it every time he was unsure. The reason I put him through that was because I realized that the only potions he failed to get a good grade in were the ones that had a few more stressful brewing phases in them. He was excellent when he had the time to think about each step twice, but he seemed to struggle when pressured even a little.

Morgana, the girl who got the highest grade in every potion, was surprisingly struggling the most. What I wanted her to do was simply take a basic insecticide and replace a single ingredient to reduce its toxity so that it only kills a selected few insect types. I wanted to see if she really understood the potions or if she was just good at cooking after a recipe. Apparently, it was the latter. It was really a shame, if you ask me, but something that I had hope of fixing. I was just wondering why Uncle never noticed or commented on it in his notes, but I guess it was different if you had thirty people to teach instead of three.

Oh noo, she looks like she is about to cry. What do I do now? Do I help her? But that would make the exercise pointless. But I also couldn’t let her cry just because she was about to fail a simple assessment test.

“Hey, Morgana. Where are you struggling? What is your problem?” Please don’t cry, please.

“I…I just can’t find the right recipe in my notes. I have looked through everything, but I only found something to kill everything.” Good, she was at least able to speak. I didn’t make it worse.

“Don’t worry. I know that you didn’t learn that specific recipe. But you have everything in your notes to brew what I asked you to. You just need to slightly modify an existing recipe. It’s not something really special, trust me. Think about it a little more logically. What did I ask you to brew?”

“A selective insecticide.” She answered, and I was glad that at least the goal was clear.

“Yes, and if you don’t have a recipe for that, what kind of recipe is the one that most likely helps you create what you want?” Okey, that was a basic hint; the real challenge was identifying the ingredient that needed to be substituted.

“The normal insecticide?” Why is that a question, girl? That should have been the obvious answer.

“Yes, right. A broad spectrum insecticide. Now you need to find out what in that recipe is responsible for killing the insects, and then substitute it with some other toxin. Where would you look for a weaker toxin?” Don’t look at me like that, girl. You have spent the whole third year studying poisons and antidotes; you should be able to answer that easily.

I have the feeling that I might have expected too much. This is transforming into a staring battle.

Damned, I think she is really a little clueless, but maybe she is just overwhelmed because she didn’t even know where to start.

“Okey, Morgana, I know that there might be thousands of things flying through your head right now, but you should calm down a little. In your third year, you had a guide to toxins that classified toxins into five different classes of toxity, with 1 being the most toxic and 5 being completely harmless. The broad spectrum insecticide uses a class 3 poison that is moderately toxic, and to lessen the toxity, you should substitute the poison with a class 4 one that is as close to the previous poison in its exact function as possible. So just look through the recipe to identify what needs to be replaced, and then look through the class 4 poisons.” Okey, any more help, and I would need to brew the potion myself. Damned girl, you disappointed me a little. But from what I’m smelling right now, you are not the only one.

“Augustus, I think you put in the magnolia oil too early. Do you smell that aromatic smell? It should be much fainter if you waited for the alcohol to vaporize completely. Use your wand to vanquish the smell and increase the heat by ten percent for two minutes.” That was just a minor setback, so I wasn’t really that worried. I mean, he shouldn’t drink the potion afterwards, but theoretically, it shouldn’t be too bad.

Surprisingly, Merlin was the only one to do well so far, even though it didn’t look like he would be able to finish the potion. That was probably on me, as I gave him too little time. He was generally working much slower than me, so I might have calculated the time wrong.

I watched the three of them for an hour and had to say that I was disappointed. I hoped they were better at dark magic or rituals, or my uncle should really rethink his choice of personal students.

“I think that is enough for today. Please stop the fire.” The relief in their faces that it was over hurt me a little, but I guess they were at their limits. At least if one looked at their frustration level.

“Before you all leave, I want to talk about what we learned today and I want to discuss how we will proceed in the future. So first of all, I want to say that you all did great today. I know it doesn’t feel that way right now because you didn’t have a successfully brewed potion in hand at the end, but that was not the goal of this lesson. I wanted to see if I was right about your weaknesses, and I wanted you to see how you could overcome them. Augustus, you were a little casual about handling your ingredients, and you were a little hasty at times, but your heat control was amazing. Still, your main problem was judging if a step like cooking the alcohol out was already completed or not. But that is something we can work on. If you understand exactly what each step does, you will be able to better judge if it is completed. In this case, for example, after the alcohol is vaporized completely, it takes some time to heat the solution up to the point where it boils again. If you watch out for things like that, you should realize when to cut corners and when not to. Merlin, I think I need to apologize to you. The task was maybe a bit too much to manage in that time, but until that point, you didn’t make a single error. I noticed that you failed a few potions where time was of essence, so I thought you had problems working under pressure, but apparently, even if you sometimes lack a bit of decisiveness and doubt yourself too often, this leads you to make fewer errors down the line. I think you should be ready to start modifying basic potions as well. Morgana, I know that your basics are excellent because of your previous grades. The task I gave you was something that normally comes at the end of the year, so you don’t need to worry if you don’t manage to get it immediately. And before you all start to worry about your grades because of a little failure, I want to tell you that you won’t get any grades in my class unless I specifically tell you that you are tested. I want you to learn, to ask questions, to make errors, and to learn from them. That won’t happen if you are always worried about your grade, so feel free to ask me anything at any time, even if you think it is stupid. If there are no further questions, you can go after you have cleaned up.” Okey, that sounded more professionally than I expected but less than I had hoped. I just hope Uncle is satisfied.

As soon as the trio left the door, I could hear them talk about the lesson. I would need to lie if I said that they were complimenting my lesson, but I guess I said worse things about aunt Seraphina’s lessons, so it should be fine, or at least not too terrible.

“Charlotte, I have to say, that I’m impressed. While you were a bit too ambitious with your goals, it isn’t something bad. They need to be challenged. The only thing you might want to reconsider is letting them call you Charlotte in class. A bit of distance to your students can’t hurt. Especially if you want to give them grades. A too personal relationship can be problematic for that. Another thing is that maybe it would be better, if you ever teach another class, to start with something more positive than showing them weaknesses or testing their limits. I know you grew through failure, but try to see it from their perspective. If they don’t like potions, they can just focus on something else. A privilege that you didn’t have, and it caused you to not give up, even if it was depressing. So enough of the critique, let me hug you; you did well.” I hugged uncle and was happy that he was satisfied, but that didn’t stop me from thinking about what he said. Maybe he was right, and the lesson might have been a bit demotivating. Maybe I should try to make up for it in the next, which was on Friday after lunch. So I didn’t have too much time to prepare. I already fear for my precious bath time. No, I earned it today. I will have my bath!