I make my first task for Potion Class with Profesor Sharp in Hogwarts Legacy

Hey gamers, how are you all doing? Hope everyone is doing great! It's been a little while since I posted about Hogwarts Legacy and the reason for that is simple — I got completely stuck on Percival Rackham's first trial. As I mentioned before, that final Pensieve Guardian boss at the end of the trial is no joke. It requires a level and gear quality that I just don't have yet, so the only real option is to step back, grind some side content, level up properly, and go back in when I'm actually ready to compete. So that's exactly what I've been doing. And the first side quest I decided to tackle on this leveling journey was Professor Sharp's Assignment 1, which had been sitting in my quest log patiently waiting for attention. Potions class homework, a trip to Hogsmeade, and a brand new spell as a reward. Let's get into it.

Getting to Hogsmeade Has Never Been Easier

This might sound obvious to anyone who's already been playing for a while, but if you're early in the game and haven't gotten your broom yet, you genuinely don't realize how much that changes everything until you have it. Before the broom, getting to Hogsmeade meant either running the path from Hogwarts on foot or fast traveling to the nearest Floo Flame and still having to navigate the rest of the way yourself. It worked, but it never felt effortless. Now? You pop onto the broom from anywhere on the map, point yourself toward the village, hit the speed boost, and you're there in about thirty seconds. The Scottish highlands rolling past underneath you, the village appearing in the distance and growing as you descend — it honestly never gets old no matter how many times you make the trip.

And it's not just Hogsmeade either. Now that the broom is a proper part of the toolkit, any destination that previously felt like a chore to reach has become genuinely enjoyable to travel to. Long distances across the map that would have meant multiple fast travel hops and a lot of running now just mean a longer broom ride, which is always a good time. The fast travel network is still incredibly useful for places inside buildings or for locations deep inside dungeons where the broom obviously can't go, but for open world travel it's been completely replaced in my regular rotation. The game genuinely opens up once you have it, and Sharp's assignment gave me a great excuse to hop on and enjoy the ride over to Hogsmeade.

Buying the Focus, Maxima, and Edurus Potions at J. Pippin's

So Sharp's assignment lays out the requirements clearly when you receive it — drink a Focus Potion, and drink a Maxima Potion and an Edurus Potion simultaneously. The note is specific enough that you know exactly what's needed, and it points you toward J. Pippin's Potions in Hogsmeade as the place to get everything. Now, you technically have two routes here: buy the potions ready-made directly from the shop, or buy the recipes and brew them yourself back at the Potions Station in the Room of Requirement. If you're a patient person who enjoys the crafting side of things and you want the recipes for future use, brewing is the way to go. But if you just want to complete the assignment efficiently and get to the good part — the new spell — then just buy the finished potions. That's what I did and I have absolutely no regrets about it.

Walking into J. Pippin's is always a pleasure. The shop is crammed with ingredients, potion bottles, recipe scrolls, and all the general chaos of a small but well-stocked magical business. Pippin himself is a solid NPC who actually knows his stock and talks about his products with genuine enthusiasm rather than just being a generic shopkeeper. You grab the three potions you need — the Focus Potion costs 500 galleons, while the Maxima and Edurus are 300 each, so the whole shopping trip runs you a combined 1,100 galleons total. Not cheap by any means, especially at this stage of the game when gold can feel tight. But if you've been looting enemy camps, selling off old gear, and opening every chest you come across throughout the main story quests, you should have enough saved up to cover it without too much pain. While you're there it's also worth selling any old gear sitting in your inventory that you haven't touched in a while — Pippin's shop is just as good a place as any to clear out the dead weight and free up some inventory space.

Testing the Potions and Feeling Their Effects

With all three potions in hand, the next objective is to actually use them and experience what each one does. This is one of those moments where the game rewards you for paying attention rather than just rushing through objectives, because each of these potions has a genuinely distinct effect that you'll want to understand properly before relying on them in tough combat situations.

The Focus Potion is probably the most interesting of the three from a strategic standpoint. You drink the Focus Potion on its own as a separate objective, and what it does is reduce your spell cooldown times significantly while it's active — meaning you can cycle through your equipped spells much faster than normal and chain combinations together without having to wait between casts. In a fight where you're constantly juggling Control spells, Damage spells, and Force spells to deal with different enemy types, having your cooldowns cut down is a serious advantage that completely changes the flow of combat.

Then comes the Maxima and Edurus combo, which you have to drink simultaneously — one immediately after the other while the first is still active. The Maxima Potion boosts the damage output of your spells, making everything you cast hit noticeably harder than it normally would. The Edurus Potion is the defensive one — it encases your character in a layer of rocky armor that reduces incoming damage while it's active, giving you a buffer against hits that would normally chunk a significant portion of your health. Using both together creates this extremely satisfying feeling of being both more dangerous and more durable at the same time, which is exactly what you want going into any challenging encounter. Stacking potions effectively is something the game doesn't always force you to think about in the early going, but Sharp's assignment essentially teaches you the habit deliberately, and it's a habit worth keeping.

Attending Class and Learning Depulso

With all three potion tasks checked off, it's back to Hogwarts and down to the Potions classroom in the Library Annex for the actual class session. One thing worth knowing — the class can only be attended during the day, so if you show up at night the door won't be open and you'll need to wait. You can skip time forward by opening the map and pressing the wait button, which cycles through to the next time of day almost instantly, so it's not a big deal but it's good to know before you make the trip and find yourself locked out.

The class cutscene itself is a good one. Sharp runs a tight session and the energy in the room is completely different from Hecat's Defence Against the Dark Arts classes or Professor Garlick's Herbology lectures. Sharp is blunt, exacting, and has the kind of energy that makes you sit up straight whether you want to or not. Once the cutscene wraps you go up to Sharp directly and that's when the spell learning minigame kicks in for Depulso. Depulso is essentially the opposite of Accio — rather than pulling objects and enemies toward you, it pushes them away with serious force. The wand movement trace for this one is moderately involved but nothing too demanding if you've been paying attention to the pattern by this point in the game.

Once you've got the spell locked in, Sharp has you immediately test it on a floating book hovering above the Potions Station in the classroom. You equip Depulso, lock on, and fire — and the book goes flying across the room. Clean, satisfying, and immediately you start thinking about how to use this in combat. Depulso is useful both for pushing back enemies in fights and for solving environmental puzzles where you need to move objects away from you rather than toward you. It pairs brilliantly with Accio — pull something close, push it away, pull it close again — and in combat it's excellent for sending enemies flying off ledges or into walls for extra impact damage. Another great tool added to the rotation and 150 XP dropped into the level counter as the quest completed.

More Side Quests Ahead Before Returning to Percival

So that's Professor Sharp's Assignment 1 done and dusted, and honestly it was a fun and efficient little side quest that didn't overstay its welcome. New potions tested, new spell learned, a few galleons lighter but a good bit wiser about the potions system. More importantly, the experience gain from completing it is one more step toward having the level I need to take another proper run at Percival Rackham's trial guardian. The grind continues gamers — Sharp has a second assignment further down the line that will teach another new spell, and there are still Hecat's remaining assignments and Professor Garlick's tasks to work through as well. Each one is worth doing not just for the XP but for the spells they unlock, because every spell in this game has its place and the more options you have in a tough fight the better your chances of coming out the other side. See you in the next post!