Chapter 15: Ch:15 The potions guild
Orion woke up ln the next day, quickly completed his morning workout and entered the great hall.
He sat down right next to Mordred.
"Yo what got you all smiling and shit?" Mordred asked as soon as he saw him and grinned "you got a girl?"
"What? Noooo" Orion just said "like hell a girl would make me this happy".
He filled his plate with food and put his arm around Mordred's shoulder.
"No my brother, see today your brother will do something amazing" Orion just smiled mysteriously.
"What the hell are you up to now?" Mordred said having a very bad feeling about this.
Orion just smiled and said nothing while Mordred next to him wanted to kill him for torturing him with his secrets.
"Just read this week's daily prophet" Orion said started to devour his food in record time.
"Don't search for me, I'm out of Hogwarts for today" he said to Mordred and dissapeared before his brother could ask more questions.
He would find out the news soon enough.
He quickly went to the dormitory and changed into an tight fitting suit that showed his trained physique.
The suit was decorated with artful stitchings of a black and golden dragon.
He also styled his white hair and rolled up his sleeves.
When he looked into the mirror, even he himself was blinded by his own handsomeness. Yes, this would do.
At point 8am he knocked at professor Snape's office who immediately orened as if he had waited behind the door.
"About time" he grumbled "at least you look good. Comme on we'll take the floo"
Orion followed Snape to the big open fireplace with a pot of flo-powder besides it.
"You know how it works?" Snape asked and Orion just nodded.
"Good then go ahead" Snape said and geastured for him to go first "just say potions guild"
Orion just took a hand full of floo powder, stepped into the fireplace and said loud and clear "potions guild" before he threw the powder to the ground and was swept away in green flames.
He reappeared in a building that looked akin to the ministry of magic with a few differences here and there but the layout of the building was the same.
There were also rows of floo fireplaces at the side of the hall and there then were a few places were you could buy most common potions. Then there were a few places that took special custom orders or only some for ingridient shopping althrough, depending on the rarity, the prices reached astronomical amounts.
Snape followed immediately after him and tapped him on the shoulder.
"This is the general market. We need to go this way" he said and pointed to the other end of the hall were two aurors stood guard.
Orion just followed professor Snape and looked at the hustle and bustle of the market in fascination.
They then reached the door with the guards and were stopped "Name, papers and reason to enter"
"Severus Snape, potions grandmaster and I am here to accompany my student Orion Green to his master assesment" Snape said and gave them an important looking paper.
"Severus Snape? The Severus Snape?" One of the guards said and punched the other one who was inspecting the dokument "let them pass you fool he is a big shot"
The other one just nodded dumbly and gave Snape the dokument back "sorry Sir, I didn't recognise you. You can enter" the Auror said and stepped to the side to let them pass.
Snape and Orion entered another long hallway and entered room 104.
"Why didn't they recognise you? Aren't you a celebrety here?" Orion asked.
"I am but I don't come here often. I can brew potions myself and the black market is cheaper althrough the quality of the ingredients is a bit lacking" Snape said bluntly.
The room they entered was structured like a courtroom. On the sides of tbe room the shelfs were stuffed full with all kinds of ingredients, in the middle there was a table with small fireplace and in the corner there were several different cauldrons all top quality. They ranged from a normal tin cauldron to one out of pure silver. This was because the material of the cauldron can also effect the potion.
On the end of the room there was a podest with four seats.
Orion suspected that this will be the seat for the judges.
So he took his seat in the middle of the room and professor Snape went to a specifically reserved spectator seat.
The judges soon arrived one after another. They were one very old woman, two equally old men and one man who was younger propably somewhere in his 60s.
Orion recognised the younger one as Horace Slughorn the past potions teacher and head of Slytherin at Hogwarts.
Seeing the child in front of them they all turned to Severus.
"I swear If I wasted my time over a funny prank of yours I am going to kill you" a bald old man said and waved his walking stick in the air.
"Do I look like I am joking?" Snape just said with a blank face.
"Antony calm down, let's just do our work" the old woman said.
"Yes you are being very unprofessional right now" the other old man said.
"I give you unprofessional up your arse" Antony cursed "I came because some arrogant kid thinks he is hot shit"
"Antony everything is in order with his application for the certification exam so let's just follow the normal procedure " Slughorn said.
"Hmpf alright alright but if he is utter trash this old man will personally kick this kid out. This is no playground for little children" Antony grumbled and sat down on one of the judges seat.
The woman looked kindly at Orion "don't mind him, he is just a bit grumpy. I am Verona Kaiser, nice to meet you" the old woman said.
"Rudolph Winston" the other old man just stated bluntly.
"I am Horace Slughorn, it's always nice to meet young students of Hogwarts...You know, I was the potions teacher at Hogwarts before Snape took over" he introduced himself and ethusiastically shook Orion's hand.
"Alright stop chit-chatting and let's get started right away" the grumpy Antony said from the judges seat "just for the formality, I am Antony Carrow now let's get this farce over with!"
Sighing the other judges took their places and Antony said "good, today you will have to brew the wolfsbane potion to pass your exam within 2 hours. Time starts now" Antony sternly said and set the timer to 2 hours.