Аннотация: Naruto helps to cook rowan broth. A forearm injury and an angry Severus.
August 16, 1988
England, Cokworth, Spinners' Cul-de-sac, Severus Snape's house
On Tuesday morning, I was entrusted with stirring the potion. Snape-sensei boiled it in a small copper pot. A wound-healing agent, which for some reason was called "Rowan broth" and was acid-green in color. However, besides the very bark of the mountain ash, and also some kind of its magical variety, there were seventeen ingredients in it.
I was promised a vial of this potion if I didn't mess up. So I was as focused as possible. The motivation is very serious.
When Snape-sensei showed me some of the effects of his potions, I told him that it was incredibly cool. Potions are very useful. Especially when you consider that, in principle, most of them do not require any kind of super-skill, a special gift of blood, dojutsu, hijutsu, or the ability, like iryenin's, to split their chakra into pure components.
For intermediate-level potions, which does not cross the line of mastery, like Sensei's, attentiveness, accuracy and clarity of following recipes are rather needed. And most of the ingredients, as I immediately clarified, did not necessarily need to be prepared myself - you could buy them in special shops.
However, Sensei did not buy everything, only what he could not prepare or exchange himself. But this is understandable - something depends on money, and some components are also extremely rare. I remember looking for unique herbs for the same Teuchi-san as a seasoning, so that he could cook the coolest ramen in the world, or to make medicine for Hinata to recover.... Rare - it also grows in "weird" places or runs in "weird" corners, somewhere on the wrong side of the world. But I've always been "lucky" to accidentally pick up something "mythical": a virus, a furry creature on my back, or a super bug....
Waving a wand is, of course, also useful in life, but potions... It seems that the wizards didn't understand even half of what could be done with them and how to use them. Judging by the potions handbook that sensei allowed me to look through, most of them were aimed simply at jokes and minor dirty tricks to others. But there were also extremely useful ones, like the same "Rowan broth". You can instantly heal small cuts, abrasions and scratches when applied to the skin, and if you are severely injured, and even in a vital organ, drinking a vial can save a life.
"Bright green. As expected," Sensei looked into the cauldron, from which I had moved away after completing a series of final stirrings. Not bad. Give me the vials number three. We need to pour it before it gets cold.
I darted to a special cabinet in which various potion jars were laid out. As far as I understood, all the phials had their own shape, and they were also divided into types according to it. The number three was for various medicinal potions and looked ordinary - dark brown glass with smooth, pot-bellied walls, with a volume of about thirty-five milliliters*. Special pieces of paper were attached to them: it was written down completely independently what kind of brew was inside and the name of the master manufacturer. However, most of the potions had quite distinct smells, and over the past few days I have memorized about forty of those that could either be useful or they can be poisoned. (Most likely, the volume of these potion bottles is 10 English "liquid drachmas", equal to 35.5163 ml.)
The potion was brewed in cauldron number two, which is two pints, a local unit of measurement equal to about five hundred and seventy milliliters. The boiler is a little less than two-thirds full, plus the density and residue on the walls, which means... I took twenty vials, put them in a box, and presented them to Sensei.
Almost no magic is used in potions, as it destabilizes many of them, so everything from cutting ingredients to bottling and washing the cauldron must be done manually. No levitation, charms, or other magical tricks.
And yet, as delicately as possible, without wasting a drop, Sensei poured the contents of the cauldron, which was enough for just twenty vials. One of them is mine! The walls can no longer be assembled into a bottle, but I had another idea.
"Tell me, sir, and if the remains from the cauldron are mixed, say, with fat, then the potion, like an ointment, will lose its properties, or can it be used at least for external wounds that are not fatal?"
"There are several medical spells for treating scratches and abrasions," Snape-sensei chuckled, but thought for a moment. "However, if the fat is goose fat, then most likely the wound healing effect will remain, but for shallow wounds, bruises... We can try," he squinted at me, "in any case, there's a little bit of the potion left on the walls and throw it away anyway. You can take a spoonful of fat for an experiment in the kitchen. And I'm wondering, did you accidentally take exactly twenty vials or not?"
"No, not by chance," I replied, heading out of the laboratory. "I counted it by volume."
Sensei's skeptical grunt came from behind me. But what kind of a trivial task is it if at the Academy we were forced to calculate the flight paths of several kunai from traps for a while, adjusted for wind and the force of their launch? Not to say that I was a genius and, like Sakura or Sasuke, I easily clicked such puzzles in class, they always knocked me down, but in the end, when it came time for "combat practice", several situations on the verge of life and death hammered into me the skills of high-speed calculation of my own and others' actions. Like it or not, as they say, but life will force you.
Since last Friday, when I was allowed into the "holy of holies," I've grown from "just look and don't touch anything" to "stir clockwise eighteen times, then counterclockwise forty seconds later, and so on for fifteen cycles." In general, I did everything to appease Sensei, and he taught and tolerated me. Compared to the same stingy Kakashi and godfather Jiraiya, who were very reluctant to share techniques, Snape-sensei was just a miracle, what a good mentor. I didn't really need anyone's smiles, praises, or lisping, only knowledge and information were important. Especially from a teacher who was practically forced on me in the middle of his vacation by a bunch of kids. He calmly explained some points that I didn't understand or gave me a book in which I could find the answer. And his trust in stirring such a valuable potion speaks volumes.
I took the fat and returned to the boiler. I also have to wash it. There was already a flat dark jar nearby, into which, with sensei's tacit approval, I placed the fat and used a special "potion-neutral" spatula to scrape the leftovers from the walls. I mixed everything until it was a smooth pale green creamy mass that looked like pistachio ice cream.
"Can I try?" I asked Sensei. He nodded. And I rolled up the sleeve of the special test that I was given for the laboratory, ran a knife for cutting ingredients along my forearm, cutting through the skin.
For some reason, Sensei stared at me and, as it seemed to me, barely held back a cry. Is something wrong? But I'm not a masochist to hurt large vessels, and the forearm is always used for self-defense, as a relatively injury-free area.
"It stings a little," I shared my feelings, watching the skin come together again under the influence of the magic ointment. The wound, six centimeters long and about five millimeters deep, healed in four seconds. Excellent result. There was no trace, no pain.
"The next time you decide to self-harm, be sure to warn, Mr. Potter!" Sensei hissed angrily, his eyes flashing. It was the first time he called me by my last name, however, I was also rarely called by my first name here.
"I'm sorry, sir!" it's necessary to get so fucked up! He's a civilian anyway, and to see an eight-year-old, in his understanding, a child, calmly and without wincing, inflicts a cut on himself... What a sight. Which can also raise a lot of questions. That's how they get pierced!
"How often have you been injured that you can safely run a knife through your skin and not be afraid of pain?" Sensei asked coldly. Yes, here are the questions.
"Um... I didn't have any wounds to check, and it would be too much to involve you for experiments, sir.... I knew that everything would heal, so I wasn't afraid", I turned on the naive charmer, batting my eyelashes. There aren't any veins to make me bleed, and I had ointment handy. And you said there was a charm for healing wounds, if it hadn't worked. I just really wanted to try how it works, sir! I'm sorry, I got carried away and didn't think about it...."
"Get out of the lab," he said softly, and I, strenuously making the most guilty face I could, quickly retreated. The Master needs to cool down and calm down, and it will be easier to do this without my presence. Damn, it's necessary to make such a mistake! As long as he doesn't hand me back to my relatives for my "self-harming" antics.
Hmm... he asked how many times I got hurt. Three times "ha"! Is it possible to count? But I think a thousand damages would have been accumulated for sure. There were no scars left on my body due to the Heat and increased regeneration. But sometimes, after missions and fights, there was no living place on the skin. Burns, cuts, abrasions, lacerations, dislodged tenketsu, shattered bones, dislocated arms, torn nails, body pierced in all places... Once, there was even a dissection of the heart muscle. That was painful. It's good that Grandma Tsunade was there and pulled her out of the Clean World.
The body here didn't have my recovery ability, so ointment and any healing potions wouldn't hurt. I lay down and started doing abs exercises, lifting my body off the floor. Nothing, and we'll make a real Shinobi out of Harry Potter, the main thing is to choose training based on local realities. I also complicated the exercise by levitating over the feet of matchboxes. So, I noticed that magic is beginning to circulate inside, so it's possible that during the simultaneous processes of magical and physical activity, some local chakra channels will be pumped.
If Sensei sends me home, that's what a fool should do - don't relax. Besides, technically, I probably went through the same magical control training. As soon as it became a little clear how it all worked, the spontaneous twists of magic stopped. And especially after I practice this magic for several hours a day and "drain" the magical tension, wherever it may be. Eh... and so everything started well with training, and there are still two whole weeks until September.