The long walk from the dungeons to the top of Ravenclaw Tower was a masterclass in controlled composure. Jake kept his back straight, his pace measured, and his expression a carefully constructed mask of neutrality. He nodded politely to the portraits he passed and sidestepped a gaggle of first-year Gryffindors without a second glance. To any observer, he was just another student heading back to his common room after a long day.
But the moment the bronze eagle knocker granted him entry and he stepped into the familiar, airy space of the Ravenclaw common room, the mask crumbled. He bypassed the comfortable armchairs by the fire and the students working on their homework, heading straight for the spiral staircase to the boys' dormitory. He pulled the hangings of his four-poster bed shut, sealing himself in a cocoon of dark blue velvet, and finally allowed himself to breathe.
His heart was still hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. Snape's final, sibilant threat echoed in his mind, as clear and chilling as if the man were standing right beside him. He had been comprehensively, utterly shut down.
He lay there for a long time, staring up at the dark canopy of the bed, his mind replaying the conversation on a loop. He analysed every word, every sneer, every calculated pause. A younger, more emotional mind would have been crushed by the encounter, seeing only the failure, the hostility, the dead ends. But Jake's adult mind, tempered by years of setbacks and the quiet discipline of a university education, saw something else entirely.
He had gone into that dungeon with a set of questions, and he had gotten answers to all of them.
Are there permanent enhancement potions? Yes, but they are the territory of Masters.Are there powerful recovery potions? Yes, but they are N.E.W.T.-level.Can I get the ingredients for private study from Snape? Absolutely not, on pain of expulsion.
Snape thought he had issued a threat. What he had actually done was provide a detailed and accurate map of the mountain Jake now had to climb. The goal was no longer a vague, theoretical fantasy; it was a concrete, albeit terrifyingly distant, reality.
He sat up, the sense of urgency overriding his lingering fear. He pulled his trunk from under his bed and took out the leather-bound notebook that contained his life's work. He turned to a fresh page and, with a clear, steady hand, wrote a new title: The Alchemical Advancement Project. The Aegis Project had been about defence, a reaction to an external threat. This was different. This was about growth, about building something from the very foundation.
Underneath the title, he began to deconstruct the problem, his mind falling into the familiar, comforting rhythm of academic research. Snape had dismissed him as a novice who could only follow instructions. Fine. The solution, then, was to cease being a novice. He couldn't just learn the recipes; he had to understand the art.
He broke it down into its core, measurable components:
Ingredient Preparation: Knife skills, grinding techniques, peeling methodologies. The physical craft.Thermodynamic Management: The precise application and regulation of heat. When to simmer, when to boil, when to let a potion steep in its own residual warmth.Kinetic Agitation: The art of stirring. Clockwise, anti-clockwise, the figure-eight pattern. Understanding why a certain motion catalysed a reaction.Theoretical Foundations: This was the biggest part. He needed to go beyond the first-year textbook. He needed to study magical herbology, the alchemical properties of metals and minerals, the theory of magical liquid transference. He needed to understand the 'why' behind every 'what'.
He looked at his list, a feeling of grim determination settling over him. It was the work of a lifetime, a pursuit that would require a level of dedication that made his previous training regimen look like a holiday. And he had to do it all under the nose of a man who now viewed him with active suspicion, using only the limited time and resources of his weekly Potions class.
His new, more balanced schedule, with its enforced rest days, was no longer just about recovery. It was now essential for his new project. The library became his second home. He wasn't in the Charms section anymore. He was in the dusty, forgotten corners, pulling down books that looked like they hadn't been touched in decades. Gethsemane's Guide to Magical Fungi, The Alchemical Properties of Common Stones, A Brewer's Compendium of Heat and Reaction Times. The texts were dry, dense, and utterly fascinating.
This shift in focus had an unexpected side effect: he was more present in the common room. He was still studying obsessively, but he was no longer a ghost who only appeared for meals. It was during one of these quiet evenings of study, a few days after his encounter with Snape, that he was approached by a fellow first-year Ravenclaw.
Her name was Penelope Clearwater. She was a bright, clever girl with long, curly brown hair and a perpetually worried expression. She hovered by his armchair for a moment, clutching her Potions textbook, before finally working up the courage to speak.
"Excuse me, Jake?" she asked, her voice a little hesitant. "I saw your Cure for Boils in class the other day. It was... perfect. The colour was exactly right."
Jake looked up from a complex diagram detailing the cellular structure of a Flobberworm. "Thank you," he said, blinking as his mind shifted from theory to reality.
"It's just," she continued, wringing her hands slightly, "I'm having the most awful time. My potions are always a bit... sludgy. Anyway, I was just wondering... It's a shame you missed the Halloween feast; the food was amazing."
The abrupt change of topic caught him completely off guard. He just stared at her, his brow furrowed in genuine confusion. "The Halloween feast?" he repeated slowly, the words sounding foreign. "When was that?"
Penelope's eyes widened in surprise. "Um, last week? On Halloween? There were hundreds of jack-o'-lanterns, and bats, and a whole mountain of treacle tart."
Jake's mind went blank. He tried to access the memory, to recall the feast, but there was nothing there. He cast his mind back to that night. It had been a Saturday. His weekly self-diagnosis. He remembered the faint shimmer of his first successful, plate-sized Protego. He remembered the crippling exhaustion afterwards, the detailed notes he'd taken, and collapsing into bed. He had completely and utterly forgotten that a major holiday had even happened.
"Oh," he said, the single word carrying the full weight of his realisation. "Right. I was... busy."
Penelope just stared at him, a mixture of awe and pity on her face. Anyone who was so focused on their work that they forgot about the Halloween feast was clearly on another level of dedication.
"Right," she said, seeming to understand. "Well, that's sort of why I wanted to ask. It's the shrivelfigs. I can never get a clean cut. They always end up bruised and my potion goes a sort of murky brown. How do you do it?"
Jake's analytical mind, a tool he rarely used for social interaction, immediately latched onto the practical problem. He closed his book. "It's the juice," he said, his tone shifting from baffled student to quiet lecturer. "It's sticky, so it clings to the blade and makes the next cut drag, which bruises the skin. You have to keep the blade of your knife wet. Just dip it in a little water between every few slices. It creates a barrier and allows for a cleaner cut."
He looked at her. She was staring at him, her mouth slightly agape, as if he had just revealed one of the great secrets of the universe.
"Oh," she said, a slow smile spreading across her face. "That's... that's brilliant. Thank you!"
"You're welcome," he said, a little awkwardly, and reopened his book. But as she walked away, looking much happier, he felt a strange, unfamiliar warmth. It was a pleasant feeling, a quiet satisfaction that had nothing to do with his stats or his training. It was the simple, clean feeling of helping someone.
The next Potions lesson felt different. It was no longer just a class; it was his laboratory, his training ground, his entire world for ninety minutes. While the other students grumbled their way through a simple Forgetfulness Potion, Jake was in a state of intense, meditative focus.
He didn't rush. He spent a full ten minutes meticulously preparing his valerian sprigs, his knife-work a model of clean, efficient precision. He added his Lethe River Water drop by drop, watching for the faintest change in the potion's viscosity. He stirred exactly twice clockwise, then three times anti-clockwise, feeling the subtle shift in resistance as the ingredients began to catalyse.
Snape swept past his table, his black eyes lingering on Jake's cauldron for a fraction of a second longer than anyone else's. Jake felt the weight of that suspicious gaze but didn't look up, his entire being focused on the task at hand. He was no longer just following instructions. He was starting to understand them.
At the end of the lesson, he bottled a sample of his potion. It was a clear, shimmering silver, exactly as the textbook described. It wasn't a powerful, world-altering draught. It was a simple, first-year potion, brewed to absolute perfection.
He looked at the finished product, a profound sense of accomplishment settling over him. This was the true path. It wasn't about the dramatic leaps and bounds of his initial training. It was about this: the slow, painstaking, and deeply satisfying process of mastering a craft, one perfectly sliced shrivelfig, one precise stir, one flawless potion at a time. The sprint was over; the marathon had begun.
Later that night, long after his roommates' soft breathing had filled the dormitory, Jake lay awake in his bed. The day's events replayed in his mind, but it wasn't Snape's glare or the perfect shimmer of his potion that held his attention. It was Penelope Clearwater's baffled face; her reaction to him, to be more precise.
The Halloween feast? When was that?
He thought of the warmth he'd felt after helping Penelope. That feeling wasn't quantifiable; it couldn't be logged in his notebook as "+1 Social Interaction." It was just... human. And it threw his singular focus into sharp relief. He had traded the floating pumpkins and live bats of the Halloween feast—a piece of pure, unadulterated magic—for a few more data points in a notebook. He was treating this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity as a problem to be solved, not a life to be lived.
A new resolution settled over him, as firm and clear as any of his academic goals. The marathon wasn't just about mastering potions or spells. It was about finding a balance. This would slow his progress, he knew, but some things couldn't be learnt from a book. It was about learning to lift his head from his notes to actually look at the enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall, and remembering that sometimes, the most important lessons weren't the ones you sought out, but the ones you simply allowed yourself to experience.