Past Glories Are but Passing Clouds

"You'll, you'll get a very powerful sleeping potion called the Draught of Living Death." Harry shot a grateful glance at Tierra beside him, then quickly looked away.

"Very good." An indescribable emotion flickered in Snape's eyes.

"Now then, where would you find a bezoar?" Snape asked again.

"In a cow's stomach, sir," Harry answered.

"What is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?"

"Um... th-there isn't one, sir." Harry answered uncertainly. He seemed to remember that both were names for aconite. "They're both called aconite."

Snape stared into Harry's emerald-green eyes for a long while.

At last, his expression seemed to soften slightly.

"Five points to Gryffindor."

With that, Snape turned and returned to the front of the classroom, tapping the desk with his wand to silence the slightly noisy young wizards below.

Potions continued, but the Gryffindors' situation did not improve. Snape quickly deducted the points he had just awarded Harry.

Snape divided them into pairs and instructed them to brew a simple potion for treating boils.

Snape stalked around the classroom in his long black robes, watching them weigh dried nettles and crush snake fangs. Nearly every student was criticized, except Tierra and Harry.

Harry felt that his escape was entirely thanks to Tierra. Tierra casually grabbed a handful of dried nettles, lightly rubbed them between his fingers, and placed them on the scales.

Exactly 5 grams!

Then Tierra selected several small venomous snake fangs and gently placed them on the scales.

3.1 grams!

Harry stared at the markings on the scales. They needed 3 grams of snake fangs, they only had to...

But Tierra did not weigh the fangs down to precisely 3 grams. Instead, he directly used a pestle to crush them, carefully pounding the fangs into fragments before grinding them clockwise, slowly at first and then faster, into powder. Before grinding, Tierra had already lit the alcohol burner and taken out a larger Cauldron, filling it halfway with water. He placed the small Cauldron required by Hogwarts into the water, then chopped up the slug tentacles and stinging nettles and poured them, along with the five liters of water Harry had measured, into his own small Cauldron.

Once the water in the larger Cauldron came to a boil, Tierra used a small brush to sweep the powdered snake fangs from the mortar into the Cauldron.

Harry's eyes went wide. Tierra's movements flowed as smoothly as running water. While the other young wizards were still adding and removing dried nettles from their scales, Tierra had already put the potion on to brew.

Everything in the pot reacted normally. The potion gradually changed from mottled brown to pale yellow. Tierra stirred it clockwise three times at an unhurried pace, and the potion stopped boiling, becoming a pot of pale yellow liquid.

At that moment, Tierra swiftly put on heat-resistant gloves, lifted the small Cauldron from the water bath, and added the already-chopped porcupine quills and raven saliva in order.

The pale yellow potion eventually turned light green. No especially violent reaction occurred during the process; everything seemed calm.

Thus, Tierra became the first student in the class to finish brewing his potion.

Even those from wizarding families, such as Malfoy, were still stuck on grinding snake fangs.

"Have you studied Potions before?" Snape asked, staring hard at Tierra after inspecting his potion.

"No, sir," Tierra answered. "I used to work in a Traditional Chinese Medicine shop in Chinatown. Muggles use this sort of water-bath heating method to brew medicines. They don't have magic to control the temperature."

This brewing method was not difficult. The challenge lay in controlling the temperature and timing the addition of the porcupine quills and raven saliva.

But for Tierra, who had received formal training at a chemical engineering university and passed General Chemistry Laboratory I through III, Organic Chemistry Laboratory, Biochemistry Laboratory, and Biochemical Separation Laboratory with an A-, it was child's play.

Snape looked at him, then silently nodded, accepting the explanation.

Muggles did indeed have many rather ingenious methods for brewing medicinal soups. Snape himself had seen plenty of them, and it did not seem entirely impossible that a wandering orphan from the Muggle World might have encountered such things while working.

Moreover, this refined method was indeed useful for low-level young wizards. Since they could not precisely control the temperature of flames with magic, water-bath heating could effectively improve their success rate in brewing potions.

However, the method was unnecessary for Snape. A Potions master like him did not even need to wave his wand; with a single thought, he could make the flames reach whatever temperature he wanted.

Using a water bath instead would be rather superfluous.

Just as he was showing everyone how perfectly Tierra had brewed his potion, a cloud of acidic green smoke suddenly rose from the Underground Classroom, accompanied by a loud hissing sound. Somehow, Neville had managed to melt Seamus's Cauldron into a crooked lump. The potion inside spilled onto the stone floor, burning holes through everyone's shoes. Within seconds, the entire class was standing on their stools. When the Cauldron overturned, Neville was drenched in potion, and now angry red boils were erupting all over his arms and legs. He howled in pain.

"Idiot!" Snape roared, sweeping away the spilled potion with a flick of his wand.

"I suppose you added the porcupine quills before taking the Cauldron off the fire, didn't you?"

Neville began to sob, and a mass of boils suddenly broke out even across his nose.

"Take him up to the hospital wing," Snape snapped at Seamus.

After that little incident, Snape seemed to be in an even worse mood and deducted another ten points from Gryffindor in quick succession.

He also conveniently forgot to reward Tierra for being the first to finish brewing his potion.

Even so, the little lions were still greatly encouraged.

Because Harry was the first Gryffindor Snape had ever voluntarily awarded points to since he began teaching Potions!

No wonder he was the one who had defeated Voldemort!

Almost every Gryffindor young wizard mentally added another achievement to Harry's name.

After all, compared to Voldemort, the terrifying figure from childhood stories, Snape was the real shadow of deducted points hanging over their heads.

This made Harry even more popular. Wherever he went, Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs, and Ravenclaws who had heard about it came to congratulate him.

This treatment, like being held aloft by everyone, delighted Harry but also made him uneasy.

Almost everyone thought it was Harry's achievement.

Even Ron and Hermione came to congratulate him.

But only Harry himself knew it was not.

If not for Tierra's notes...

I stole Tierra's credit, Harry thought in alarm. It gave him the guilty feeling that he had stolen something belonging to someone else.

Harry anxiously sought out Tierra, wanting to explain himself.

He was afraid that he would lose this friend because of it. After all, he had taken credit that belonged to Tierra. That was stealing! Harry thought.

"What? Oh, you mean that." Tierra said indifferently. Having lifted his head from his book, he wore that faint, breeze-like smile again.

"Study hard, Harry." Tierra rubbed his brow with some helplessness. He had underestimated how much wizards at this age valued glory and credit. He had merely helped make Harry's Savior halo shine a little brighter so that no one would notice Tierra, the somewhat strange boy always following behind Harry.

In other words, hiding in plain sight.

But he had not expected Harry to take such a thing so seriously.

"Compared with true knowledge, everything we possess now is nothing but passing clouds." Unsure how else to put it, Tierra could only offer this earnest advice.