Page 9 of With the Potion in the Courtyard

She seemed to bounce on her tiny feet, her short blonde hair moving with the motion. "Yeah, because we’ll probably use voice-altering potions a lot when we’re out in the world, helping people." There was a touch of sarcasm laced with her quick words.

I grinned. "All the time."

Marcus looked back at me from beside Alicia, running his fingers through his dark hair. "We should probably focus on the potion…"

I almost stuck my tongue out at him. The man had all the charm and grace of an angry snake. I kind of hoped, if there was another problem at the fairy godmother academy, he was caught square in the middle of it, so I could be a giant turd about him.

Ms. Ingow’s soft voice cut through the classroom chatter, quieting the students. "As you can see, today you’ll be creating a voice-altering potion. We’re doing this because this spell is actually the basis for many transformation spells. If you can get it down, it’ll make the more complicated spells easier to follow." She moved between theaisles, looking at each of us as she spoke. "Not only are the ingredients on the board, but the steps are written out too. Remember to do everything exactly as the board says, and be careful, the potion is really strong."

With that, she returned to her desk and sat down. She pulled out a bowl, and a pile of papers, and seemed to completely forget that we existed. Great, so we wouldn’t be getting a lot of help from that direction. We’d have to figure things out on our own.

"Dragon scales, fairy needles, fox fur..." I read from the list of ingredients scrawled in chalk. We set to work, me measuring out the ground eye of newt while Robbie carefully plucked a maple leaf from our supplies.

"Maple leaves in fall colors." He held up a leaf that seemed to shift from red to gold as he turned it in his hands. "Just like your hair in the sunlight."

I grinned, even if the rest of the room might as well have been an ice cave. "You're laying it on thick, aren't you?"

"I can't help it." He smiled back at me. "Life's pretty dull without you. All that investigating we did. It gave my days some excitement."

"Miss me, did you?" I said, dropping the newt's eye into our cauldron with a little plop.

"More than I expected," he admitted, then added more seriously, "It was too quiet back home."

My heart swelled. He missed me. I don’t know if I’ve ever had someone truly miss me before, besides my daughter. It was a nice feeling.

"Quiet can be good." I stirred the potion and watched as it bubbled a vibrant blue. "But I get it. This place, it's something else."

"Something else indeed." Robbie glanced around. "Though, I could do without the cold shoulders."

"Let's just focus on not turning our voices permanently into chipmunk ones." We shared a laugh that gave a small spark to the chilly room.

"Wouldn't be the worst thing," Robbie said. "It might lighten the mood around here."

"Or get us kicked out of class," I said, but his easygoing nature was infectious, and for a moment, the chill from the others didn't seem to matter.

"If your potion is now bright blue, and you followed the steps correctly, your potionshould be ready. With extreme care, put one drop on your palm, everyone," Ms. Ingow said over the chatter.

I glanced at Robbie, who nodded, and we both let a single drop of our potion fall onto our hands.

"Go on then, say something," she said.

"Something," I said, and out came a squeak that could have belonged to a cartoon mouse.

Robbie snorted next to me, his own voice sounding like he'd inhaled a balloon's worth of helium.

"Ridiculous," he gasped out before both of us burst into laughter. The voices lasted mere seconds, but it was enough to set off a chain reaction of giggles throughout the room.

"Enough," Ms. Ingow said as she marched over to us, her long blonde hair swishing around her shoulders. "This is serious. You need to pay attention. Potions are delicate, you can't be?—"

Her lecture cut off when her hand came down hard next to our cauldron, causing a big splash of liquid to fly onto her arm. Her eyes widened, and when she opened her mouth again, a high-pitched tirade spilled out.

Robbie bit his lip, trying not to laugh, and I covered my mouth with my hand, my shoulders shaking. Ms. Ingow seemed to inflate with rage, her face turning the color of boiled beets.

"Class dismissed," Mr. Bently suddenly said from the doorway, and the room erupted as students scrambled to leave and try to contain their laughter.

"I’m sorry, Ms. Ingow," I said once I managed to compose myself. This was probably the worst time ever to ask her a question, but I wanted to keep going with our investigation. "Could we talk to you for a second?" I asked, my voice still wobbling back to normal as she glowered.

She fixed us with a look that could sour milk, her voice still a few octaves too high from the potion mishap. "What is it?"