The streamlined bottle was about as long as an index finger, sealed tightly with a golden cap. Inside was a light blue liquid—clear like water but with a viscous texture. This was a small amount of soothing agent that Professor McGonagall had left behind.
Slytherin held it up to his eyes and observed it closely. If he opened the bottle, he could detect a faint sweetness from the liquid. It was unmistakably a Potion from the Magic world.
He reached into his chest with his left hand, and a thick mist emerged as his fingers disappeared inside. When his hand reappeared, it held another bottle. This one was wider at the base and tapered toward the top, sealed with a simple cork. The liquid inside was dark green—almost black—and extremely thick, more like porridge or yogurt than a drinkable fluid. A sharp, pungent odor wafted out the moment it was slightly opened. Slytherin quickly pushed the cork back in, sealing it tightly again.
This was a Potion from the Dream World—one taken from Maleficent's treasury.
Of course, there were countless kinds of Potions, and the two he held couldn't be directly compared. One was a soothing agent, while the other was a curse Potion capable of petrifying a healthy adult with a single drop. Their functions were entirely different.
Still, when Slytherin placed the two bottles side by side, he made a surprising discovery—so surprising that he couldn't believe he'd missed it the last time he drank the soothing agent. His sharp, azure eyes caught sight of something faint: an almost invisible gray thread, no longer than half a fingernail, floating inside the light blue liquid.
This was what he had always believed to be "Magic power"… or at least something he categorized as such.
To be honest, before receiving the Hogwarts acceptance letter, Slytherin hadn't understood what his unique sight meant. The few people he saw with threads inside them had once seemed like hallucinations to him. He never saw such threads in the Dream World, and nothing brought from that world to the waking world carried them either.
But after observing the threads rising from buildings in Diagon Alley, and now noticing one in the Potion, he began to doubt his initial theory.
Perhaps it wasn't "Magic power." Perhaps it was something else entirely.
Still, he lacked enough information to draw a conclusion. He couldn't even define his ability. Threads appeared in living beings—differentiating Muggles from Wizards—but their presence in objects was sporadic and unpredictable. They clung to buildings, especially old ones. Gringotts and Ollivander's Wand Shop had the highest concentration of them. The number of threads in Ollivander's alone accounted for nearly a third of all those he saw in Diagon Alley, which was, frankly, terrifying.
Potions had some threads—though only a little. Broomsticks displayed in the Quidditch boutique had none. Magic books had none either. And there was a particularly strange case: wands.
Slytherin pulled out his wand and placed it flat on the table. At its tip, he saw an incredibly short thread, almost just a dot. He was absolutely sure that before he bought the wand, it hadn't had any thread at all. But after he had used it to cast his first spell, the thread appeared.
In Ollivander's shop, none of the wands had threads while sitting untouched in their boxes. But once in the hands of Wizards in Diagon Alley, the threads became visible. Each one matched the color of its user. For instance, Professor McGonagall's wand had a distinct orange thread.
Slytherin let out a long sigh. He realized he was being too hasty. This wasn't a mystery he could solve so easily—not with his current level of understanding. He hadn't even started at Hogwarts yet.
One day, when he had acquired enough Magical knowledge, he'd return to this question and tackle it properly. For now, he tucked the Dream World Potion back into his chest, returning it to Maleficent's treasury through the swirling mist. He made sure the cork was tight—if it came loose, Maleficent might greet him with a fireball at their next meeting.
He had taken it out only to check if his ability had changed. The result was consistent: items from the Dream World still had no threads in the waking world, though they did appear slightly brighter.
He rummaged through the satchel full of textbooks.
Eventually, he pulled out Magical Drafts and Potions.
Only then did he realize that, in the Magic world, "drafts" and "Potions" were considered different categories. Since the Potion had just sparked his thoughts, he decided to dive into the book to learn a little more about the Magical world. It would also give him a head start on first-year studies.
But after just a few pages, Slytherin's eyebrows began to knit together.
First, you had to heat the liquid until it turned blue. Then add exactly six measures of dried nettles, all of which had to weigh precisely the same. The instructions continued with strict requirements about the direction of stirring and the degree of crushing the snake fangs. Temperature and brewing time had to be exact.
This was the complete opposite of what he knew about Potion brewing.
He remembered watching his Fairy Godmother work in the Dream World—
"First, we need to add a little bit of love~" she would say cheerfully, plucking a random wildflower from her hair and tossing it into the pot.
Slytherin remembered that flower vividly. It was one she had picked off the roadside and had absolutely nothing to do with love.
"Then add a tablespoon of salt. Of course, only apprentices need to measure it. A master like me—oops!" The salt jar's lid fell off and spilled an entire jar into the boiling cauldron.
"Then kick it a couple of times to make sure it heats evenly!" she said, before booting the whole pot off the fire and into the wall with a bang. A wooden board dislodged from the ceiling and dropped into the mix.
"Oh no, I forgot to add water… It should be three tablespoons, three times? I'll just add nine tablespoons now."
She transformed a leaf into a bucket the length of Slytherin's forearm, filled it from the river, and dumped the whole thing in. That wasn't tablespoons—that was a flood.
"Add dragon's teeth," she declared, then pulled a tooth from a poor passing gecko.
"And fire spat out by a Phoenix… Hmm? Why isn't this Phoenix spitting fire? Never mind—adding the whole Phoenix should work."
That poor old hen never knew she died because she was mistaken for a Phoenix.
"Finally! Add the Archmage's blessing!" she concluded with flourish, plucking a strand of her own hair and tossing it in.
Slytherin looked at the resulting "Potion": strands of hair, a dead chicken with feathers still on, a decaying wooden board, and sand from the river water. The salt jar lid bobbed proudly on top. Honestly, it was the only clean object in the entire pot.
And the scariest part? She had given that chaotic concoction to a homeless man, and the next time Slytherin visited the Dream World, that man had become the richest person in the kingdom. He'd stumbled across an ancient treasure the very day he drank it.
From then on, Slytherin had been determined to learn her style of Potion-making.
According to her, the key was intention: she believed her Potion could bring luck, so it did. If she wished, she could mix the two deadliest Potions in the world and brew a panacea instead.
However, such methods clearly wouldn't work in the Magic world.
The instructions here were precise and rigid. If he instinctively tried to spin a cauldron with Magic while brewing a Potion in class, he'd probably be kicked out—assuming the Professor was in a good mood. If not, he might be the one spinning.
Slytherin swallowed hard.
He resolved then and there to train his self-control, and absolutely not rely on muscle memory when it came to Potions class.