Being a wizard wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

There was nothing glamorous about it, apart from the sequined hat, mostly it was a grind, constant orders and expectations about which Warren the Wizard was highly sceptical.

But life was what it was, and as he came from a long line of wizards, there was an expectation within the family that Warren would carry on the family tradition.

Today had been like so many other days. From dawn, he had been inundated with requests for one thing or another. What surprised him was the unhappiness people put on him.

They wanted potions to deal with height, shortness, too fat, too thin, unhappiness, hair falling out and in recent times requests from men wanting something to give them either a bigger penis or a longer-lasting erection. Warren thought Viagra had taken care of that but apparently not.

Love potions were as much in demand as they had been two hundred years ago when he began learning the wizarding craft from his father.

He had a shelf in his workshop just dedicated to love potions as it was never a case of ‘one sip fits all.’

Today he was working on a new potion, one intended to make one less narcissistic. He had received a letter from a woman who pleaded with him to make a potion that would quell her husband’s narcissistic tendencies. Her life was a misery she said, her children walked in fear of him, and he saw nothing wrong in the way he behaved. This was a worthy challenge he decided.

It required some research, he poured over his books, he went back into his father’s notes, they being very extensive, and concluded he needed to mix one very common herb with one very rare one. The common herb he had bucket loads of, the rare one he found one dried up miserable-looking example.

He mixed them together and waited to see what happened when the two herbs interacted.

There was some very complicated bubbling, a lot of steam, several very loud rude burps and finally, the mixture turned an attractive red. He left it for a day before returning to find the mixture had separated, a red base and a clear upper layer. Most disturbing was a set of eyes staring at him through the glass on the jar, they had that ‘I’m not happy’ look and that look suggested they’d probably strangle him given half a chance.

He gave the jar a shake and the red and clear mixed together producing a scream which caused him to droop the jar. It hit the ground but did not break. He watched as the liquid swirled inside the jar, then eventually settled.

It was rare for a potion to present a danger to life in the manner this potion did. He consulted his father’s notes again and found a reference that a sprig of mint would settle the rare herb’s reaction.

Doing so, he noticed the eyes now clearly visible had lost their look of maleficence. They all most smiled at him, in the way that only eyes can.

A week later, he received a letter from the woman to say her husband was now a loving and caring man and happy to change the baby’s nappies, cook and wash up every night.

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2020/02/06/tale-weaver-261-tale-weaver-fairy-tale-wizard-6th-february/