Love & Potions: A Tom Riddle X Reader Story | Fifth year part 1

Chapter 9: The Potions exam and the first quidditch match of the year

As the potions exam begins you look down at all of your available ingredients. You look at the jars and notice there are many there that are nothing to do with the potion you're making. A part of the test to make sure you know what ingredients you need to choose.

You remember Tom's advice about preparing all of your ingredients first before even starting the potion. It's a way of working you've never used before but you trust him. You pull all the jars filled with the ingredients you need towards you, lining them up in the order you need to add them into the cauldron. 

You pull out your knife, cutting board, mortar and pestle and your scales. You feel the slight pressure in your chest but you swallow it down and begin. Singing the song to yourself that you made up to remember the potion recipe in your head.

You cut, chop, grind, pour and weigh out every single ingredient, laying them in little dishes or vials in a line next to your cauldron. As you reach the boom berries jar, you smile to yourself as you remember the explosion you caused a couple of weeks before, that had made Tom lose his temper with you for not paying enough attention.

Only four, you think to yourself and gently pull them out of the jar with your tongs and put them in their small dish. You pour out the six sopophorous beans you need, and squash them flat with the blade of the knife, watching as their juice squeezes out. You lift your chopping board and let it drip into a small bowl. 

Once you have all your ingredients, you pull your cauldron towards you and onto the stove sloshing in the Black Lake water to begin the potion. It soon begins to bubble and before you start following the rest of the recipe, reciting each line of the recipe in your mind as you go. You refuse to let yourself mess this up.

The half way point comes and you're pleased to see it looking exactly as it should and when you finally let it simmer for the ten final minutes needed, you tidy your workstation. You give the potion its final stir and have to stop yourself from clapping at yourself as it turns silver and shimmery like moonlight.

It is perfect.

Five minutes later, Professor Snape warns you all that you have ten minutes remaining of your practical exam. You look at him and even though his face is always bleak and drawn you can't help but smile at him as you've already finished. 

Even in yesterday's practice with Tom, you had cut it close to the exam time limit but now, following his advice, you were finished with nearly twenty minutes to spare. It had taken far less time when you were focused and militant about it rather than worrying if you knew what you were doing at each step and distracting yourself with chatter.

Snape wanders around checking on people's work and when he passes your cauldron, he looks at it and then you as the other people on your tables are still waiting to perform the final stir. His eyebrow raises in perplexed disbelief at the fact you, you of all students, have finished already. You look up from the potion mix to his face and smile and he nods for you to sit down. You sit and look around the classroom at the others. 

The only others who have finished are Hermione, Draco, Theo and Mattheo. You look over at Mattheo and he grins at you and nods a silent well done to you and it makes you smile more. Draco sees this reaction from Mattheo and turns and gives you a slightly impressed if not disbelieving look as you sit and wait.

The practical exam ends and your cauldron's immediately float their way over to the Professors desk and homework area, slotting themselves into the slot with your name on it. As soon as they are all in their places, an invisible charm comes over the cabinet, locking the cauldrons away so that no one can cheat by trying to fix their potion after time and before Snape has finished marking them all.