The Shopkeeper of All Worlds in the British Wizarding World

Chapter 638: Brewing
"This exam was too rushed. At least the quality of the questions is not as exciting as the exams in previous years." During lunch, Hermione began to express her views on this exam. "For example, in terms of the coverage of knowledge points, some points were mentioned repeatedly, while some points were basically not touched upon. I even found that question 27 was exactly the same as the NEWT exam question in 1943."

"In short," Hermione concluded after listing all the things she found in the test questions. "At least from the written part, the difficulty of this test is indeed lower than the normal test, and theoretically it is easier to pass the test."

"You mean this exam is easier than the regular exam?" Ron opened his mouth slightly and widened his eyes. "I don't think so. I had only finished writing more than half of the paper when the exam bell rang, and I don't think all my answers were correct. This exam is simply too difficult, and there is a lot of knowledge in it that I haven't even learned yet."

Harry nodded with lingering fear beside him. He spent an hour and a half writing down all the questions he could answer, and then spent the remaining half an hour in a daze. Because he either couldn't understand nearly half of the remaining questions at all, or had no idea what to do.

"Don't you guys do any pre-study?" Hermione asked directly. Harry and Ron looked at her blankly. "That means you haven't even looked at the seventh grade textbook."

"It's just the beginning of the seventh grade," Ron said defensively. "It's just that I didn't expect there would be so much seventh grade content in this exam. That's why I didn't get so many questions right."

After hearing Ron's answer, Hermione had nothing to say, so she simply shrugged her shoulders and continued eating her vegetable salad.

After a short break after lunch, the practical exam began. Since there were not many students and professors taking the exam, the auditorium was simply divided into several parts by a series of wooden walls, with the content of Transfiguration and Charms being tested respectively.

Ryan felt that he had done well, and he had perfectly completed all the magic required by the professor. But it was not so smooth for others. The unprepared students created a lot of strange-colored smoke, unpleasant smells, and even several crows. The worst was Seamus, who used the vanishing spell to directly blow up the mouse that was the target, all over the table.

"I think I'm doomed to fail this exam, and maybe even the next one. Did you see the rat's tail get blown onto the professor's hair?" After returning to the common room after the exam, Seamus kept muttering there.

"The professor who will invigilate the next exam may not be the same one." Dean Thomas comforted Seamus while patting his back. "Besides, each of these professors is over 90 years old. I don't think they will remember your face by the end of the semester."

Harry and Ron were sitting by the fireplace, looking listlessly at the dancing flames in the fireplace. They could be sure that they had completely failed the exam today.

"Do you think I can get 50 points in this Transfiguration test?" Ron asked after poking the charcoal in the fireplace with tongs. "I think I did a pretty good job in the actual operation. I succeeded in transforming the glasses case into a gecko that the professor assigned in the exam."

"Yeah, but you need to convince the professor that the thing with legs at least as long as yours is a gecko." Harry raised his eyebrows, but when he saw Ron was about to cry, he comforted him. "But at least it's better than me, my gecko is missing four legs."

When many people are unlucky, they will feel less sad when they find that others are unlucky like them. Ron is the same. After hearing Harry's example, he seemed much more energetic. "It's still too difficult to take the exam at this time. I think I really need to study for another year before I can face such an exam. There are many knowledge points that I haven't learned yet."

"If you ask me, I think only Ryan and Hermione can pass this exam among all the Gryffindor students." Harry said as he looked at several students who stood up and prepared to take the astronomy exam with dejected faces. "But even if they don't do well in the exam this time, it's a good thing. At least it will let us know what level of performance is needed to pass the exam."

"Now we should work hard to prepare for the final exam. At least we can't fail the final exam again." Ron said as he took out a textbook from his bag and prepared to review. "By the way, Harry. Do you know where Ryan and the others are?" "I don't know." Harry also shook his head. "I haven't seen them since dinner. It seems that they went to the alchemy laboratory to do something. They are much busier than all the students here. In addition to their studies, they have a lot of things to do. I guess they are now working on something that the Order of the Phoenix or the Ministry of Magic here need."

"We can do something like them someday." Ron sighed and opened the textbook. "But for now, let's just read the textbook and do what we should do first."

Just as Harry and Ron began to study hard, Ryan was making a vital potion in the alchemy laboratory. As his gestures changed, a ball of glass-like pink flame burned in the air above the laboratory. Above the flame, a bronze helmet was suspended with its mouth facing upwards, rotating constantly, surrounded by a large number of mysterious symbols of various colors.

The helmet was filled with golden liquid, which was swirling like molten gold. At the same time, wisps of golden steam slowly rose from the surface of the liquid, and then slowly floated out from the mouth of the helmet and filled the entire laboratory.

"Why do you use a helmet to make medicine?" Looking at the helmet that kept spewing out golden mist, Hermione felt a little confused. They had a lot of crucibles, from tin to gold. They even had a complete set of traditional Chinese pottery crucibles. It was definitely not that they couldn't find a crucible that could be used.

"I don't want to either!" The muscles at the corners of Lion's mouth twitched. "But this spell requires the container for brewing the potion to be as old as possible. The older the history, the better the effect of the brewed potion. I think this helmet left by the elves of the Two Trees Age that I got from King Thranduil should be the oldest container that can be found."

"What you want is a container, but it's a helmet!" Hermione pointed out a problem.

"That's right, but in the past, soldiers' helmets were also used as containers for cooking, drinking water, and even washing clothes. So this helmet can be considered a container. Anyway, when I cast magic now, I can feel that this is something that meets the requirements."

At this point, the golden liquid in the helmet suddenly sprayed up more than half a meter high like a fountain and then fell back into the helmet. Ryan immediately stopped talking, picked up a bottle of black liquid from the table and walked towards the helmet.

The bottle of black liquid seemed to be alive, constantly sending out tentacles from the surface of the liquid to hit the bottle wall. But every time the black liquid tentacles touched the bottle, a dozen golden runes would appear on the bottle to block it.

"The cycle of life and death, endless reincarnation." Ryan chanted the spell silently, and at the same time poured the potion in his hand, which was made with the black water in the mummy and the undead orcs in the Lord of the Rings, into the helmet.

In an instant, the liquid in the helmet calmed down. In the eyes of Ryan and the others, the color of the liquid in the helmet quickly faded and turned into a dark silver. A perfect mirror surface appeared in front of the two people.

After waiting for a while, the liquid in the helmet changed again. It began to swirl in the helmet and formed a small vortex.

"Ha, it's done!" Ryan said as he gestured to the glass-colored flame under his helmet, and the flame immediately transformed into the original form of the Madonna of the Rose and flew into Ryan's hand. "We just need to leave it there for a whole day. We can come back tomorrow after the exam to complete the last step."

(End of this chapter)