Professor Connell
April 12, 2006 1:03 PM
Lesson I- First and Second Years by Professor Connell
Being a staff member at Sonora seems to be a rather hazardous position, Marian thought to herself as she sat at her desk grading papers in the last few minutes before her first new class of the new term. Phil had resigned his position for one reason or another, and his new replacement had not seemed like a very amiable person. On another note, Lucinda had returned, bringing Tony with her, and so the final remnants of the problematic term last year were finally gone, with the exception of the staff members who couldn't brave the elements.As she had been thinking, her first and second year students had begun to enter the classroom, some looking much happier than others to be back in class. After a few minutes went by without anyone new coming in, Marian stood up, handed the stack of graded papers to one of the students sitting in the front row with instructions to hand them out, and returned to her desk.
She waited a few more moments, hands clasped behind her back, until the general hubbub of chatter died down. "Welcome back from what was hopefully a good winter break," she began as soon as she deemed the room quiet enough. "Today, as usual, you will be working in pairs. While I would prefer you to have one person from both years in each pair, so that the older students can more easily help the younger ones if need be, it is by no means required."
She had learned her lesson about trying to tell the children who they could and could not pair with back in her first year teaching. She was still slightly worried whenever the Cravens entered the room, just because of that.
"The potion you will be making today is called the wit sharpening potion. You should find it on page 45 in your textbook. The ingredients are ground scarab beetles, cut up daisy roots, armadillo bile, and essence of belladonna. All of those should be in your potion supplies, but there are more of each on the first shelf in the black cabinet over there.
"I have one last note to make about this potion," she concluded seriously. "While there are some potions you will make that it is...acceptable to take outside of the class and keep for personal use, like the color-changing potion you made first semester, this is not one of them. It is against school policy to use this potion for any sort of academic gain, and it is also extremely dangerous when consumed in large amounts or too rapidly."
Her announcements about the potion having been said, she waved her hand in the general direction of the ingredients cabinet to indicate that the students could began, and sat down once more. Hopefully, these student at least would listen when she gave them warnings, rather than attempt to create the very thing she had warned against. One could only hope.
OOC: Standard posting rules apply. At least 2 decent sized paragraphs, which should be around 8-10 lines altogether at the bare minimum. Also, this is a potions classroom. Minor explosions, spills, and the like are welcome. Just don't blow up my entire classroom.
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Subthreads: Back to work... by Dalila Bastet with Geoffrey Layne, Dalila
Seeking a partner by Saul Pierce with Anne Wright
Sorry, I've been gone for a while! by Melanie Rose with Guenther Heindrich
<i>Migraine</i> ought to be a synonym for <i>misery.</i> by The Careys
This thread is now over (nm) by Professor Connell
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Professor Connell
Lesson I- First and Second Years
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Dalila Bastet
April 12, 2006 9:44 PM
Back to work... by Dalila Bastet
Potions, while not Dalila's favorite class, had it's merits. You have to like a class where there's a possibility of something exploding (which is actually the case for most classes here).Dalila was pushed along with the crowd of first and second years and finally found a seat in the front. She pulled a piece of parchment from her bookbag and set it on her desk along with the new quill she had gotten for Christmas and her signature bottle of dark orange ink.
Professor Connell handed Dalila a stack of papers. Dalila stared at it for a moment before realizing that she was to hand them back. She just hoped she could remember who was who in this class. Names were one thing she had a horrible memory for. Always the trooper, Dalila gave her potions teacher an over-eggagerated salute and began her job.
The first paper was for...someone she didn't know. Oh well, next paper! The same...ummm...this was going to be hard. Dalila stood a bit off the the side rustling through the papers tryinjg to find a name that she could match with a face.
"Oh, Merlin, I need some help!" Dalila muttered aloud.\n\n
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Dalila Bastet
Back to work...
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Geoffrey Layne
April 14, 2006 10:53 PM
Gallantly offering my assistance by Geoffrey Layne
Geoffrey sat near the front of the classroom, idly twirling his quill and resisting the urge to go over his notes one last time. This was his best class, and it would look flat-out freakish besides. If he looked over his shoulder and two tables back, he would be able to see Anne muttering about a million miles a minute, her notebook propped open in front of her. She could get away with that sort of thing by virtue of being a social class into and of herself. His status, however, was much better defined, and frantically going over notes from before Christmas didn't feel right in association with it.He straightened, putting the quill down, as Professor Connell handed a stack of papers to a second-year girl he vaguely recognized as a Teppenpaw. She stopped near his desk, rifling through the papers. Geoffrey caught sight of his own handwriting on the top paper and Anne's directly beneath it. The girl muttered something about needing help.
"That's mine," he said, then deadpanned. "And my...sister's. I'll just take them both off your hands." Before she could offer assent or protest to this plan, Geoffrey had leaned over and swiped both from the pile. A grin crossed his face briefly when he observed that Anne's grade was a point lower than his. It didn't make up for how humiliatingly much better she'd done on the last Transfiguration practical, but it helped. The success put him in a generous mood. He glanced at the next paper. "Here, I think this one goes to that brunette over there...and you're working with me, because I'm avoiding Wright until she gets over her aunt issues. See that blonde in the corner? That next one's hers."
The only bit he thought he'd told a lie about was having a sister here. Anne had come back from holiday in a temper as pleasant as that of a kicked-nest hornet, and she had no problem whatsoever with taking it out on him. He wasn't sure if he should be flattered or not. She tried to keep up her front and immerse herself in work with everyone else, but he got the..privilege...of playing shrink until she was through her midyear crisis. In a class where everything had to be just so, he'd prefer to avoid being too close when Anne threw something into the cauldron at random in a fit of temper and blew the mansion up. \n\n
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Geoffrey Layne
Gallantly offering my assistance
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Dalila Bastet
April 16, 2006 12:10 AM
Gallantly accepting your offer by Dalila Bastet
A voice startled Dalila from her paper trance as a hand grabbed the two top papers of the pile. Dalila looked up at the boy. She knew his face from around school, but couldn't remember if they had ever spoken to each other."Uh, yeah. Okay," she said, a little confused at meeting someone more forward than she. Dalila quickly got over it and stared back down at her pile of papers and then at the brunette the boy had mentioned. Dalila quickly pulled her wand from her pocket and sent the paper flying to its owner. The next paper followed suit to the blonde in the corner.
"Thanks a million. I have the worst time with names. Id forget my own if my grams hadn't sewn it into my robes." Dalila grinned and pushed her red glasses up her nose before putting out her hand.
"Dalila Bastet at your service."
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Dalila Bastet
Gallantly accepting your offer
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Geoffrey Layne
April 23, 2006 6:33 PM
Good, now we can begin. by Geoffrey Layne
Geoffrey nodded politely when the girl introduced herself. He didn't know her, and he'd never heard Anne mention her. She'd do. "Geoffrey Layne, at yours," he returned, shaking hands loosely. Old man Kirke, the music teacher he'd taken violin lessons from in South Carolina, had marked him out as impossible early on, but he had managed to hammer the importance of taking care not to let anyone get too much of a grip on one's hand into his pupil. Straightfaced, he added, "I'll remind you of both our names if the need arises." She was stirring. Moving a wooden object around in circles required very little memory, after all, especially when the potion wasn't an overly fiddly one.The papers didn't take too long to sort out. Geoffrey thought his memory of names and faces rather good, and in the event that he didn't know a person, he'd simply pass their paper over his shoulder and assume the other students would be charitable enough to get it to its owner instead of stealing it for blackmail purposes. Once the last one was with its owner, he gave Dalila a distant smile. "Why don't you set up the cauldron while I sort out the ingredients?" Surely she couldn't make a mess of that.
It wasn't Dalila herself who caused the thought; anyone he was working with would have inspired the same ideas in him, though Dalila's assertion that she had a poor memory didn't help. Delegation wasn't one of his skills. He'd spend every second anyone else was doing anything worrying that a calamity was going to occur to ruin his grade for no reason other than he hadn't done the job himself. If he was the party in power, at least he knew he couldn't improve upon the job. That, and a simple liking of control that he'd never bothered to question or worry about the morality of. He tried - no more than half-successfully - to ignore it and go on about transferring the correct items from the main part of his supply kit and to the empty tray above it. His father had had a little too much fun making the thing out of a Muggle fishing tools box, but it worked.
Flipping to page 45 in his book, Geoffrey's eyes narrowed slightly as he read over the directions. It was downright cruel of Connell to teach them this and then say they couldn't use it. It was just asking someone to try brewing it illegally before finals, though the anti-cheating spells supposedly on everything might pick up on it if someone did...that wasn't the point..."This isn't too difficult, I don't think," he said, glancing up at Dalila. "I'll work with these - " he gestured towards the ingredients - "and you can stir. Just be careful to keep the pace steady, eh?" If he was bossing her around, he didn't know it and wouldn't have cared if he did. Pulling out his knife, he began to chop the daisy roots.\n\n
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Geoffrey Layne
Good, now we can begin.
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Geoffrey Layne
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Dalila
April 24, 2006 8:23 PM
I could use some wit sharpening potion... by Dalila
Dalila happily set up the black cauldron between herself and Geoffrey and began poking her wand beneath the pot until the words came to her and a small flame appeared where her wand had been.Rather than taking out her own book which was covered in little orange ink drawings done during boring lectures, Dalila glanced over the pot at her partner's figuring he wouldn't mind.
When geoffrey told her she's stir, Dalila just shrugged. She really didn't care. As long as they didn't make anything explode and he wasn't mean about it, he could boss her around in potions. She was good at stirring anyways.
"My grams used to make me help her with her potions. I'd always have to stir. I'm an expert in this now," Dalila grinned.
"Is that a tackle box?" Dalila asked after eyeing the clunky metal thing Geoffrey was removing his ingredients from.\n\n
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Dalila
I could use some wit sharpening potion...
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Dalila
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Layne
April 25, 2006 9:45 PM
Who couldn't? by Layne
Geoffrey nodded, not really giving her his full attention, when Dalila claimed to be an expert at stirring. "Good," he said vaguely, sliding the edge of his knife over a few millimeters in the hopes of keeping the root pieces as close to equal as possible. There wasn't enough time to take as much care as he wanted to, but some attention to detail was necessary. He'd never agreed with the idea that the structure was what made something what it was. Details mattered. What if, say, a surgeon didn't pay attention to detail? What if Mozart hadn't?Taking the roots in carefully aligned groups at a time rather than individually made the job easier, and so was adopted as Geoffrey's method of cutting. Though he was too preoccupied to know it, he was as close to content as he was ever likely to be. He'd almost forgotten that he had Transfiguration later in the day. Everything seemed to simplify itself when he was making something, with working out the problem of the moment coming first while everything else remained shrouded in a fog of vagueness he didn't particularly care what hid. It was what he did well, and so was by default what he enjoyed.
It took him a moment, longer than would have been comfortable if he'd been aware of it, to register Dalila's question enough to answer it. He blinked, coming out of the trance equalizing the root portions had put him into, and examined the water in the cauldron to see how close it was to a boil before finally speaking. "That's what it's called?" He looked at his supply kit. "My father's idea. He gets a kick out of taking one thing and turning it into something else." Geoffrey shrugged and, deciding the water was in fact boiling, added the chopped roots to it. "He likes fishing. Me, I'm either working on some project or playing Quidditch." He had an idea that he was supposed to carry on the conversation as he worked. Some people, it seemed, liked talking as they worked. "Play any yourself?"\n\n
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Layne
Who couldn't?
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Layne
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Dalila
April 28, 2006 8:32 PM
Good point... by Dalila
"Play any yourself?"It almost made Dalila laugh if she hadn't realized that this was only a first year. Anyone who Dalila knew that se loved Quidditch though her grandmother was adamently against girls playing, which was strange because her mother was fine with it.
"I loved Quidditch! I'm a chaser for Teppenpaw." Dalila stopped to stare at the pot of water, which was bubbling merrily in front of her. Geoffrey added some of the ingredients. Dalila looked over again at everything her parner was slicing. Everything was perfect. Her grandmother cut like that. It was one thing Dalila had a hard time doing...making all the cuts even. She sighed, somehow missing the ministrations of her very traditional grandmother.
"I think your tackle box potions holder is cool. Very original.\n\n
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Dalila
Good point...
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Dalila
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Layne
April 29, 2006 9:07 PM
I do enjoy making them. by Layne
The enthusiasm of Dalila's reply was enough to pull Geoffrey out of his scarab-grinding reverie. "This won't be the last time we meet, then," he said, his voice neutral and his eyes sharp. "I'm a Beater for Aladren." Anne had talked before, usually when she thought he wasn't paying attention, about how she was at least a little nervous about playing Teppenpaw. It turned out that virtually half the Aladren team was blood kin to one or another member of the opposition. He gave the girl beside him a sideways look, considering. The glasses were a weak point. Would they count as part of the anatomy?For a moment, he could almost see Anne glaring at him, hear her snapping something about not taking fool chances that something wouldn't be a foul. She was different than she had been, it was true, but some semblance of her fear of academically-endorsed authority still lingered. He would have thought living around-the-clock with her teachers would have done something for it, but...Anne was Anne, and Anne would make him or anyone else on the team think twice about moving without permission if they pulled a stunt that endangered the game. Since she did have a legitimate reason to want to prove herself, he let it go. Glasses were enough of a weak point in Quidditch even if they did stay on.
He blinked when she went back to his box. "Er - thank you. The original idea was probably Mum's. She's the creative one - Dad's just economical." It was always a good thing to find a nicer way of saying cheap, though Geoffrey could understand - even admire - why his father was so. Mark Layne wasn't a man like his brothers, to be content with what he already had. Every spare Knut stored in a pickle jar for hard times or opportunity was at least an attempt to rise above their place in the world. Besides, it was better to be tight-fisted than to be like Uncle Henry, who hadn't been out of debt since he left Sonora and whose wife, the long-suffering Aunt Elizabeth, compulsively confiscated and hid every bit of money she laid eyes on just so they could get by without begging the family for help. Most of the time.
Geoffrey's take on it all was that it was a good thing for him that thinking one's family stupid wasn't grounds for disownment, because the only adult members of the clan he'd ever seen show much sense were his father and Aunt Melissa.
"Start stirring," he told Dalila, shifting his sore hand on the pestle to get a new grip. "Medium pace. It'll help the roots dissolve properly." The beetles wouldn't take much more pounding, he didn't think, but he wanted to grind them as fine as possible before adding them. There was only so much time in the class period, and the speed at which the particles would dissolve was related directly to their size. Knowing what was in the potion made it somewhat unpleasant to think of stomaching, but if it worked...well, one of the most popular and effective Muggle medicines of all time was derived from bread mold and didn't taste to swell, either, but it did what it was meant to do.
"Belladonna's poisonous, you know," he said, more voicing his thoughts than trying to start a conversation. "I think that might be why this is dangerous in quantity, though overconfidence could have something to do with it." He hesitated for a moment. "I can't remember if the essence is poison or not..." He'd have to look that up before he went into the common room this evening. There were almost too many advantages to be counted of having a commons connected directly to the library. \n\n
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Layne
I do enjoy making them.
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Dalila
May 04, 2006 7:12 PM
You should always enjoy what you do. by Dalila
So, Geoffrey was a beater for Aladren? This would end up being rather intersting come Quidditch season. At least he wasn't keeper or another chaser, or they'd really be testing the limits of friendship.Dalila raised an eyebrow at Geoffrey's use of the word 'economical'. But he was in Aladren and they tended to be very smart - always a plus in Dalila's book. If someone wasn't at least as smart as Dalila (which was only about average) then you weren't worth getting to know. She began to wonder just how smart Geoffrey was compared to the other Aladrens when sais boy's voice interupted her.
Start stiring.
Dalila looked down. The potion was smoking slightly. Dalila stirred at the med=ium pace and the smoke slowly disappeared revaing a bubbling liquid.
She nodded abesently to Geoffrey's small talk, still staring at the bubbles; the heat was fogging her glasses so when she finally picked up her head to look at her partner, Geoffrey was just a fuzzy blur in a cloud, but instead of taking off her glasses and wiping them clean, she left them on and imagined she was on a cloud.
"I think they are poisonous," she said in a breathy voice, still sirring the potion. I'm sure it says in the book somewhere. Check the glossary."
The fog faded from Dalila's glasses, and brought her mind to the task at hand, stirring with added fervor.
"You gunna ad dthose beetles or are you planning to sprinkle that dust on your dinner?" she asked with a playful grin.\n\n
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Dalila
You should always enjoy what you do.
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Dalila
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Layne
May 06, 2006 2:14 AM
It's way too early in the morning to think of a title. by Layne
'A Merry Maid' most likely wasn't a normal timekeeping song, and Geoffrey only knew the choruses and a handful of the words, but he liked the beat. It was paced so that by the time he reached the third refrain, whatever he was grinding on would be sufficiently ground up. Dalila's question kept him from reaching that point, and the look he gave her now was bordering on holding annoyance. No one could dissemble forever under all conditions, and his reality point involved doing things right and getting good marks for them."No," he said dryly. "I was planning to dump it on yours." He gave the beetles a last, energetic grind and carefully tipped the powder into the cauldron. "Start stirring the other way, but don't speed up." He began measuring out the armadillo bile, squinting at the measuring cup and raising it to the light. He wanted it as precise as possible. "Goes in last," he muttered, more to himself than to her once more. He'd been tinkering in his bedroom for almost a year, whenever he thought he could get away with it, and had gotten into the habit of talking to himself as he worked. It helped him remember what he had and hadn't done and so forth.
He'd known perfectly well that the armadillo bile went in last, but he'd measured it out before the essense of belladonna. Good memory aside, he had wanted to make sure he had it on-hand before he began fiddling with poisons. He'd never acutally worked with them before - not even Uncle Henry was stupid enough to leave arsenic or belladonna or what-have-you lying around for anyone to pick up and toss in a cauldron - but he'd read about them. There was something oddly intriguing about it, and he knew himself well enough to know that his mind sometimes drifted when he was interested in something. If he saw the measuring cup square in front of him, though, there was a significantly lower chance of that happening.
"I think it is poisonous," he said absently. "It's logical for it to be, don't you think? The essense of a poisonous plant and all...but that could be strictly in grammar and literary applications. I'll look while this is brewing." Geoffrey dimly registered that this was the point Helena would have started teasing him about sounding just like a book. Lena was pretty smart, but she could be as annoying as all get-out...she was going to have his hide off when she found out all the rubbish he'd told her about Sonora over the break had been a hoax...he added the essense to the cauldron more carefully than he had anything previously, banging elbows with Dalila on the way back.
"Sorry," he said. "Not much more to go, now." When he estimated that enough time had passed, he added the armadillo bile to the concoction in the cauldron, barely sparing it a glance as he went back to the directions in the book. "I'm thinking we have to let it cook at this point, more or less," he said. "Yeah, that's it. Er - good job, I suppose. In case it slips my mind at the end of class. Been known to do that." \n\n
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Layne
It's way too early in the morning to think of a title.
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Dalila
May 07, 2006 12:51 AM
Mornings suck... by Dalila
Dalila gave a hesitated chuckled to Geoffrey's retort. It might have been really funny, but his tone somehow made him seem aggitated and annoyed at her trying to continue to start up conversations.And there was the orders! Dalila knew how to brew potions, and Dalila knew how to take orders, but her grandmother had always done it in a way that said "Thank you" while her partner's stated more of a "Do it my way or I'll curse you", which Dalia really didn't take to.
But she did everything anyways - not because she hated confrontation (which was part of the fun in life) but that Geoffrey was doing everything right, and their graded counted on everything being right.
So she stirred in the opposite direction in silence and watch Geoffrey measure out the armadillo bile, and then mutter about looking up whether essence of belladona was poisonous or not.
Dalila gasped in surprise and pain when he hit her elbow (hard). 'At least he apologized' Dalila thought to herself.
"S'ok," she replied and then stopped stirring when Geoffrey told her to.
"Umm...thanks," Dalila added when noted her work. It didn't sound too sincere, but you have to take what you can get, so Dalila gave a small smile to her partner.
"So I guess this means I can do whatever," she said more to herself thatn to him. Then she pulled out a book her mother had sent her from Cairo: Magic of the Nile. It was badly translated from an unknown language to English by her mother and her assistant.
Then she stuck her face in the book and pretended to be in Egypt with her mother rather than in her potions class at Sonora with annoyingly smart boys and an odd acrid smell in the air.\n\n
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Dalila
Mornings suck...
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Dalila
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