Professor Marsh

September 22, 2019 1:56 PM

An Easy Lesson To Ease You Back In [Beginner] by Professor Marsh

He couldn’t believe he had to teach this stuff. Lawrence had looked at the previous teachers notes and the intro book, lovelingly titled Fantastic Beasts, which was better than the book the mid and upper levels used “The Monster Book of Monsters.” At least Fantastic Beasts didn’t try to eat the students (or take a chunk out of their hands). Still, he couldn’t quite believe that it was necessary for anyone to really learn about this animal. That was his thought, until he found some in the gardens during winter break.

So he’d begrudgingly picked up the slugs, or worms, or whatever they were, and brought them to his classroom, made sure they were fed, but not overfed, and ready for the lesson. At least it would be an easy lesson after the holidays for everyone.

As the students walked in, he tried to smile at each of them and welcome them by name, but he knew this lesson might not actually make them all that excited to be around animals or creatures. That saddened Lawrence. He knew even the hint of a boring animal could turn someone off from animals (or loving them). Still, if any of these students wanted to go on with testing in Care of Magical Creatures, they had to know about Flobberworms, Newt had seen to that all those years ago.

So after all the students had arrived, or at least, the ones who were on time, he began. Those who were late could easily pick up what was happening today.

“Good morning class. Welcome back from break. In part to give you something easy to get you back in the academic mood and in part because we must cover this at some point, today we will be covering the Flobberworm.” Lawerence barreled ahead, not wanting to hear any of the groaning he was sure would be omitted from the older students in the class and some of the more knowledgeable young ones. “Though they are not beauties to behold, nor dangerous, they do have some special physical features. Can anyone tell me the most important one?” He called on the second hand he saw shoot up. “Correct. Thank you. Now, besides that they also emit a goo that is used for thickening potions.”

As the chalk board came to life behind him with a chalk drawing of the Flobberworm, Lawrence waved his wand and boxes floated from the front of the room to each table.

“Your activity for today, or homework if you do not finish, is to extract a vile of the goo for each table. There are tools and protective wear upfront, as well as aprons or more full body coverings for those of you who might find this a bit too gross. As always, I’ll be walking around to answer any questions you might have so give a shout if you need me.”

Lawrence hoped this class would be easy enough and cover everything that would be necessary so they could get onto something more exciting. Still, he hoped the potions teacher would like the Flobberworm mucus for their class, if not, he could always sell it to his dealer he was sure.

OOC: Find out more about the lovely Flobberworm here: https://harry-potter-compendium.fandom.com/wiki/Flobberworm or here: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Flobberworm
41 Professor Marsh An Easy Lesson To Ease You Back In [Beginner] 1462 Professor Marsh 1 5

Jezebel Reed-Fischer

September 29, 2019 3:26 AM

Easy for you. by Jezebel Reed-Fischer

Part of Jezebel's problem was that she could never quite tell if she'd lost her mind. Sometimes she was convinced that she must be in a coma someplace, hooked up to a machine that was keeping her alive with electricity, and that was what she saw when she thought she was seeing magic. Other times, she was pretty sure she just couldn't come up with this stuff on her own. For all the help it was to know she wasn't the only one in her family to be having this "problem," between Dathan and now Augustine, she couldn't quite decide whether it was for the best that she was too boring to have come up with most of what occurred at Sonora.

Today's lesson was the cure, as she was fairly certain she was more exciting than it would take to come up with Flobberworms. The thought did make her feel a little guilty because her mother would certainly call it blasphemy if she were calling God boring for inventing such things, but Jezebel still wasn't sure whether God was the one behind all this anyway. At least not in the magical world.

Jezebel did her best to listen to Professor Lawrence, in part because she was actually interested in these topics. While she didn't particularly care one way or the other for Care of Magical Creatures, she was interested in the "academic mood" the professor was aiming for, and so it would do well to pay attention. Unfortunately, she found very little about flobberworms to make her feel any such way. Anything that excreted something professors and experts called "goo" just wasn't going to cut it for her. She would rather add cornstarch to a potion than this nastiness.

When it was time for the practical part of their lesson, Jezebel made her way to the front to collect her gear and supplies and then quickly chose a place. She always preferred to choose an empty spot and get there as fast as possible because it meant she could jump right into the work and was ready; she didn't have to try to decide who to stand with and they would just come to her or not. With that in mind, she chose a place near the middle of the setup, where she was closest to the professor's spot and would best be able to hear any extra comments he made from around the room.
22 Jezebel Reed-Fischer Easy for you. 1454 Jezebel Reed-Fischer 0 5

Ellie Alperton, Aladren

October 01, 2019 8:37 AM

Ew by Ellie Alperton, Aladren

Care of Magical Creatures was a class title that held so much promise. That promise was mostly unicorns, but there were probably all kinds of adorable creatures she hadn’t even considered yet. Flicking through her textbooks, for example, had revealed kneazles and puffskeins, both of which looked like they were going to be fuzzy and fun to pet. Unfortunately, there were also a bunch of really gross creatures, and today’s lesson was about Flobberworms. Ellie had seen those in her textbook and skipped hurriedly past them. She did not need to look at wriggling phallus-shaped things that exuded goop. Apparently now though, she was going to spend an hour doing just that. These were the kind of creatures that fuelled hideously weird nightmares, and her brain was perfectly capable of producing those all by itself.

She grabbed as much protective equipment as she could from the front but did not yet put it on. The Professor had given them limited directions on how to extract/collect the goo. Presumably, part one of their task was working out how. Ellie was very much a book learner, not a hands on type, especially when there was something so thoroughly yucky involved. Her first instinct was, therefore, to hang back from the boxes, and open her textbooks. She pulled out both her Care of Magical Creatures book and her Charms book, figuring either of them might be a useful source of information. She was a witch. Surely there were ways to get goop in a vial without getting too close.

“Ew,” she mumbled as she opened the book and saw it wiggling on the page. It had seemed so cool at first when pictures moved but that really, really depended what it was a picture of. There wasn’t much to go by in the first textbook. The advice it offered was to leave the creatures alone, for the most part. She was so, so willing to take that… She put the book down, switching to Charms instead, though she paused to observe her neighbour, who seemed to be getting stuck right in.

“How’s it going?” she asked, wondering if her classmate had found any good ways of working with the creatures yet.
13 Ellie Alperton, Aladren Ew 1456 Ellie Alperton, Aladren 0 5

Jezebel Reed-Fischer

October 03, 2019 7:45 PM

You can say that again. by Jezebel Reed-Fischer

"Not awesome," Jezebel frowned, moving her stuff to make more room for the girl. They'd been around each other because they were in the same year but hadn't actually spent that much time together. She eyed her classmate, wondering what she thought of the bulky robes they wore. She didn't mind them herself, although she did feel a bit like she was wearing an old lady dress. It was sort of nice not to have to worry about clothes, and robes were a bit like pajamas. However, she'd seen Ellie wearing a lot more fun things than robes.

Looking back at the creature in front of her, Jezebel grimaced. "They're gross little wormies, aren't they? They make me think of caterpies gone wrong. Sorry . . . like Pokemon. It's a muggle thing." She didn't mind that word so much anymore. She was starting to think that maybe it wasn't so bad to be part of two worlds. There was something special about it in a way. "I didn't know I was a witch until sort of recent." She shrugged and cocked her head at the worm that was not a Caterpie but kind of sort of was.

"Do you have any ideas for getting the 'goo' out? It's real nasty."
22 Jezebel Reed-Fischer You can say that again. 1454 Jezebel Reed-Fischer 0 5

Ellie

October 04, 2019 3:45 AM

Ew. by Ellie

“I know Pokemon,” Ellie assured the other girl as she sat down. “My brother is super into it.” She thought it was kind of fun too. It was more Seth’s thing than hers, but the monsters were cute enough, and enough girls at their school liked it that she didn’t mind playing it with him. It was definitely better than soccer, as far as she was concerned, and much better than princesses as far as he was concerned, so it had been a good activity for them to share when Uno just wasn’t cutting it. They mostly stuck to the card game because Seth insisted that making different evolutions of the same Pokemon into family units was not a good way to play with the models but Ellie didn’t like making them smash each other to pieces. He would occasionally get involved in having a Charizard attack a princess in a tower but then there was usually an argument over whether the princess could and did puncture his heart with her stiletto or whether he burnt her into a tasty little chargrilled snack.

“I’m from a non-magical family too,” she explained, feeling like that might be a little unnecessary, but she knew there were also families with one parent from each or something like that. And it felt good to express solidarity. “So’s my roommate. I think there’s quite a few of us really. And Freddie’s family’s magical but he’s not mean or anything,” she added, the idea of sign-posting safe and friendly people coming naturally to her. It was going to be interesting to work out where Jezebel fell on that, in terms of issues other than blood. Ellie had noticed her around. Her name was very noticeable, and it had made Ellie curious and cautious because she wasn’t sure what it said about a person that they were called that. Very traditional churches weren’t usually that nice to Jezebel, which maybe suggested this girl went to not traditional church, which would be good. Ellie had also considered the possibility that she went to no church at all, and the name just lacked those connotations in the wizarding world, but that theory had been out since she’d noticed the rosary the other girl wore. That spoke of being very traditional. It was a tricky balance to find, hoping someone was just the right amount of religious but not too strict.

“I figure there’s got to be a charm or something,” she added, holding up her textbook, as the subject returned to classwork, “Like… a siphoning spell or something. We’re witches now. And what’s the point of that if it doesn’t mean saving ourselves from touching something seriously ooky?” As far as it went ‘hey, let’s use magic?’ was probably not the most fully formed theory, but it was currently all she had.
13 Ellie Ew. 1456 Ellie 0 5