On Friday morning the next day, during Potions Class, Snape kept sarcastically needling Charles, looking quite pleased with himself.
The class passed without incident. After lunch, Charles returned to the Potions classroom to find Snape.
Some things were difficult to say during class. Now that Charles had delivered himself to Snape's door, Snape began mocking him. "Heh heh, you were wrong. Your divination failed."
Charles scratched his head and cautiously asked, "Were you hoping my divination would succeed?"
Snape glared fiercely at him, then continued fiddling with the cauldrons behind the fully laden long table. There were also quite a few tools beside him for processing potion ingredients.
Charles continued, "Professor, do you have a way to purchase Unicorn Explosive Fluid?"
Snape's expression instantly turned serious. Horned Serpents were magical beasts native to Africa, and the liquid secreted from their rhinoceros-like horns would explode. This Exploding Liquid was somewhat dangerous.
At the same time, Exploding Liquid was also a valuable potion ingredient, and it was extremely expensive.
The signboard of Hogwarts' Potions Class professor practically glittered with gold, so plenty of people sought Snape out to brew potions.
Potions made by Snape cost at least twenty percent more than equivalent products on the market. What people were buying was peace of mind. If something went wrong, Snape could run—but Hogwarts could not.
Thus, Charles believed Snape definitely knew the ingredient merchants. Asking him for help could reduce the cut taken by middlemen. More importantly, Snape could run, but Hogwarts could not, so Charles did not have to worry about him absconding with the money.
"What?" Snape demanded. "You want your divination to succeed?"
Charles blinked and quickly understood. Snape thought he intended to rely on those hardworking little hands of his to make his divination come true.
He naturally was not planning to blow up Snape's home. That could wait. There was something more important now, so he explained the matter of helping the Centaurs eliminate the Acromantulas.
Snape knew about this too. Some of the Unicorn tail hair and Acromantula venom that Charles had brought back at the beginning had ended up in his hands.
There were plenty of good things in the Forbidden Forest, and Snape often went gathering there himself. But doing it personally was nowhere near as convenient as having the Centaurs do it.
So he wrote a list on parchment and handed it to Charles. "Go ask the Centaurs whether they have these things. I'll contact someone about the Horned Serpent's Exploding Liquid. How much do you want?"
Charles replied, "I want ten gallons..."
"Idiot!" Snape roared. "Are you trying to blow up Hogwarts?"
Ten gallons was roughly forty-five liters. A bottle of Exploding Liquid about the size of a bottle of medicated oil could blow up a small house. If that much exploded inside the castle, it would be no laughing matter.
Snape had assumed he would need ten ounces at most, roughly three hundred milliliters.
Charles said awkwardly, "But there are too many Acromantulas. A single nest has hundreds of them. To eliminate them, we have to start by destroying the spider nest, and that requires a lot of Exploding Liquid."
Just as Voldemort had said, Charles had no problem fighting an Acromantula one-on-one, and even fighting several at once was manageable. But declaring war on the entire species required outside help.
After hearing this, Snape shook his head and sneered, "Can you brew Exploding Liquid to make it safer? Do you think the headmaster will allow you to store this much Exploding Liquid in the castle?"
Charles was at a loss. This clearly was not something found in a first-year Potions textbook, and the headmaster obviously would not approve storing large quantities of flammable and explosive hazardous materials in the castle.
Setting the hazardous-material issue aside, Charles asked Snape very seriously, "Professor, how much would it cost to hire you to brew Exploding Liquid?"
The classroom door had opened on its own, and Charles had flown out on his own.
After he got back to his feet, the fellow shouted through the closed door, "I can pay more!"
A few seconds later, the door opened.
Just like in Gotham City, not everyone was as wealthy as Wayne. Even the Joker had to buy groceries and go home to cook for his parents after beating up Batman every day.
Of course, all this would have to wait until Dumbledore finished selling the materials. That would probably take a little while.
The two of them talked for a while without reaching an agreement. Snape also finished preparing the equipment on the long table. The cauldron had been filled with water, and the fire was lit. He looked ready to make something.
Snape stopped speaking and began preparing the potion.
Charles said nothing either. Curious, he quietly watched from the side.
Snape did not drive him away, either, silently getting on with his own work.
He placed a small basket of washed Comfrey on the cutting board, picked up a knife, and rapidly chopped it into short sections. Charles watched, somewhat dazed, feeling as though he had somehow ended up at Hogwarts' culinary school.
The chopped Comfrey went into a large distillation flask. Snape added water, sealed the stopper, placed it on the stand, and lit the burner. Steam passed through a tube into a condenser filled with ice and water, then finally flowed into a separatory funnel.
At first, Charles was curious that the equipment used to make Comfrey essential oil was so Muggle-like. But then he remembered that chemistry and alchemy had roots in one another. Perhaps some wizard parent who worked in chemistry had introduced the equipment. It was not impossible for wizards to improve ordinary tools.
What they produced at this stage was still Comfrey essential oil. It had to be purified once more before it became the Comfrey Essence sold on the market for treating injuries.
After connecting the tubes, Snape asked Charles expressionlessly, "Understand?"
Charles immediately replied, "I understand. It's in the textbook."
First-year students would learn how to produce Comfrey Essence, but that was something for the second half of the school year. They would wait until the Comfrey they had grown themselves in the greenhouse had reached a decent size before conducting this joint Potions and Herbology activity.
The troublesome part was that the results of this joint activity counted toward the final grades for both subjects.
So Charles had studied the relevant material particularly carefully. Aside from the final purification step, it did not seem especially difficult.
Snape pointed at several other sets of distillation equipment nearby and handed him a few baskets of ingredients. It looked as though he had decided to use Charles as free labor.
Charles recognized them all. Mandrake's purple flowers had an anesthetic effect. The essence extracted from yellow rue flowers could counteract poison. The third ingredient was fresh nettle leaves; they had used dried nettles during their very first Potions Class.
Just as he began working, Snape took a cage out from beneath the table.
The cage had already been there that morning. There had been some movement inside, but it was covered with cloth, so no one knew what it contained.
Now Charles knew. Inside was a rat about the size of a cat, with a light pink back covered in tentacles.
"Murtlap?" he asked curiously.
But Snape ignored him, fully focused on his own work.
Charles stopped bothering him as well. The juice from the tentacles on a Murtlap's back could be filtered and acid-washed to make a wound-healing potion and relieve pain. If a Murtlap bit you, you would be poisoned—at best, dry-heaving; at worst, shooting fire from your backside.
Snape was highly skilled and daring enough to work without gloves. If something went wrong, Charles felt that although he might witness a rare spectacle, he would definitely be silenced afterward.
In that state of social execution, the Avada Kedavra cast to silence witnesses probably could not be blocked even if Dumbledore, Grindelwald, and Voldemort were tied together.
Snape then cast a Stunning Spell on the Murtlap and gave it a potion for a peaceful death before beginning the next step.
Charles worked with divided attention beside him, making sure the water in the several distillation flasks did not boil dry while carefully watching how Snape extracted the rat's tentacle juice.
At one point, a House-elf delivered lunch, and Charles only then realized that it was already mealtime.
At the end, Snape blended the Murtlap juice with several essential oils, then had Charles fetch some more ingredients to add. The final result was a potion that emitted light with the special effects of an SSR-tier item.
"A common healing potion," Snape said calmly. "St. Mungo's Hospital commissioned me to make it. It can treat wounds caused by certain dark curses."
Charles sighed. "There's nothing common about this!"
Wounds caused by dark curses were difficult to heal because of the magic affecting them. Different dark curses required different counter-curses, so a potion capable of countering several kinds of dark curses at once certainly would not be cheap.
Snape suddenly sneered at him. "There is a reason I charge so much."
The corner of Charles's mouth twitched. He extended his right hand and gave Snape a thumbs-up.
Damn, they were all thousand-year-old foxes.
Now he understood why Snape had not driven him away. Snape had been preparing for their upcoming negotiations over the price—and Charles had foolishly helped him all the while.
Finally, the fever was gone.
Before you continue