It was five o'clock on a Friday and a group was gathering in the classroom on the fourth floor where the open Seminar on Modern Potions and the Ancient Arts[1] was meeting for its second week.  New and returning attendees from all years and schools came for the cookies, discussions, and free gift potions that their leading Witch provided.  The cookies were large and soft with icing, baked the same day at Hogsmeade's Magicakery.

The display table had several bottles of all shapes, sizes, and colours resting on it.  All were full of this, that, or another potion, and all labeled with handwritten tags tied around their necks.  Dazmond liked to get along well with children, and nothing worked better than bribing them with goodies, after all.

"Hello everyone," she said brightly to the gathering group.  "Welcome to another session of Modern Potions, Ancient Arts!  We're about to get started, so take your seats, take a cookie... promise they aren't poisoned.  We'll be covering practical alchemy today and thinking about ways we can use potions to improve our daily lives, to profit, and to innovate.  You're all learning potions of course, which is the same but different from alchemy and the ancient arts.  So we'll get into some of the key principles of alchemy today.  For a prize, then - can anyone name the Three Philosophical Principles?"

1.	More information on this Seminar can be found here

Kayla leaned forward over her desk, shoulders bunched up 'round her shoulders and lips spread in a small smile. She jiggled one of her feet impatiently against the cold stone floor; she was very excited. Potions and Kayla did not always get along - or rather, they exceedingly did, or exceedingly didn't. Kayla's adoration of every growing thing meant she knew the plants ingredients forwards and backwards, but it also meant sometimes she looked down at a sad bundle of alihotsy or a handful of shrivelfigs and just wanted them to... keep growing. And so they did. It played merry hell with her measurements and was even worse when she'd already added them to the cauldron. Still, when she could concentrate she was fairly good at the stuff. There weren't a lot of academic subjects Kayla wasn't decent at, when she tried.

She'd tried to get Tracy to come along too - this was right up his alley, and there was free food besides. Kayla had curiously turned over the potions samples and stocked up on sweets. There were two cookies on her desk now, and she broke pieces of them off to push them into her mouth as Dazmond talked. Her eyes, bright and green, didn't move from their speaker.

"Ooh, Ms., um, Professor?" She leaned ever further over her desk. "There are the elements of sulfur, salt, and mercury - is that the same thing?"

Only now that holidays and family time was nearly upon Figaro had he decided to follow up on his promise to his mother that he'd take his education more seriously.  It loomed inevitable that despite any aptitude for it, the family business could fall to him.   The apothecary.   He'd grudgingly read through the bulletin board where all the seminars were posted - special extra classes offered in honor of the Tournament - and he'd seen her name.

Ms Dazmond Weidman.  Modern Potions Making and the Ancient Arts.

He knew her.[1]  In many ways, he might have wanted to avoid anything to do with her, but for the exact same reasons, that was the seminar he picked.

---

There weren't very many people there when Figaro arrived, just as the small, dark-haired witch was starting.  He was still in uniform, mostly, and drug his feet as he made no hurry to find his seat.  He touched each potion on the table as he walked along it, and took a cookie on his way through to an empty seat near the Salem which whose name he'd forgotten was Kayla Austin.

Kayla looked well excited to be there, while Figaro was being deliberately aloof.  A potions class was not his jam, and he couldn't shake the conflict he had about seeing that witch again.  Why was he here?  He dropped his bag on the floor and started eating the cookie - the first question might as well have been in Middle Centaur. 

"We don't have alchemy here," he said, unhelpfully.  Figaro was secretly motivated by prizes of all kinds and for a moment was twinging at the injustice that Salem did have alchemy at their school. 

1.	The wife of the wizard responsible, in part, for sending his dad to Azkaban. link

"Wiedman," said Dazmond, nodding her head at the young, bright eyed witch to accept her answer.  She walked in front of the potions table in anticipation of her giving the correct information; a warm young thing, she seemed to communicate a vibrancy that was made of simple confidence.  When she delivered, Dazmond plucked a small blue phial from the table top and smiled.  She waved her zebra striped bocote wand and all the desks displayed their student's names in glowing font.

"Very good, miss Austin," she said approvingly, setting the phial down with a clink on the corner of her desk.  The tag around the neck of the phial read:

Quick and Nimble ~ Enjoy the nimbleness of a deer, being quick of foot and of an agile mind.  Two to three drops under the tongue, unless you're feeling adventurous in which case four.

Looking up from the phial, her gaze settled on Figaro Sellaphix, much more matured and ganglier in appearance, she thought, than he'd been this time the previous year.  Still, he was unmistakable.  It stirred her in some uncomfortable fashion to see him there, more or less sulking, and she thought of Nathan - the cured Runespoor venom spill, her misadventures the previous Summer, Tawse's dog, Raynor screaming in the street, Nate's job at the apothecary, the burglary, and the two hundred fifty nine days left till his release.  An inexplicable and absurd vision arose in which her husband and the lad's father shared jibes, crouched on the dirty floors in the dark of Azkaban.  She blinked.  Several moments had passed as she stared at Sellaphix and it was with a sudden breath that she remembered herself and her surroundings.

"Sulfur, Mercury, and Salt," she reiterated stiffly, flicking her wand hand at the board where the information recorded itself.  "The three philosophical principles of Western Alchemy.  Useful for looking at the make-up of plant matter, namely their essential oils, alcohol and water solubles, and minerals, respectively.  Alchemy is a system suited to the extraction and processing of these parts.  Philosophically, though, these three components are the building block of our art... if you understand them, you'll understand how to create innovative potions, which of course is the key to being a successful potioneer.  Anyone with a brain and some talent can follow a recipe.  It takes something else to create one."

Having meandered to the front of the room again, she turned to face the class.

"Alchemical Sulfur, Mercury, and Salt have their correspondences in the soul, spirit, and body.  They are the volatile essence, the animating life force, and the physical manifestation.  Salt is most often not included in herbal tinctures and medicines made by neophytes and Muggles," said Dazmond.  "Now that we have that out of the way, perhaps an easier question.  Can anyone tell me anything about the four elements and how they might pertain to potions or alchemy?"

Figaro leaned over to look at Kayla's prize in spite of himself, failing to notice their teacher hesitate upon seeing him.  It would never occur to Figaro, not without prompting, that there were other people going through difficulties, that adults like the Potions Master here could feel what he might be feeling.  She was distinct from him. Separate in every way.

And being in school - that really drove the axe.  His role as student was second nature and hard to shake.  And it was a class, no matter that it was just him and Kayla and on a Saturday.

"The four elements," Figaro said soon as he could.  "Earth, fire, wind and water: we've had them in Potions.  Every potion has each of them, just sometimes one or two will be more important.  Like a bezoar always represents fire because it's from the stomach, but it's also considered earthy.  A thing can't just be one element, including people.  Everyone's all four."

He looked at Kayla, then back at Dazmond Weidman.  "Which one do I get? That big one?"