Lesson I for Advanced (6th and 7th Years) on Potions

Professor Fawcett

October 09, 2012 7:22 PM

Lesson I for Advanced (6th and 7th Years) by Professor Fawcett

The school’s magically-influenced weather had turned cold, but though John was planning to serve hot chocolate with the midterm exam the students would take during the final class meeting of the calendar year, the Potions room was usually kept toasty enough just by the fires going under a number of cauldrons all at once. The Advanced class, of course, was often the group which benefited the least from this, as it was smaller than the others, but the room was warm enough for no one to worry about freezing in any case, and he liked to think that the work they did was interesting enough to at least the majority of his sixth and seventh year students to make up for this among those who, unlike himself, saw the room becoming stuffier when large groups were working on potions at the same time as a good thing.

“Good afternoon, class,” he said, ending any conversations going on as he approached his desk, the roster checked off for everyone who was on time as he’d watched them enter and spoken a word of welcome to each. “If, by some chance, you forgot your Handbook of Herblore, you may wish to relocate to a seat beside someone who has theirs. We’re going to be looking at the mugwort plant today.”

A flick of his wand caused an example of the plant to rise from his desk and hover in the air before it for the class to see. “Mugwort, as many of you know, is a common component in antidotes,” he said, “but it is also considered a protective plant in some traditions, associated with defense against the dark arts, specifically possession.” Never a pleasant topic, and not common, but this was the Advanced class. They were not occupied with the common at this stage in their training, at least not overly.

“The potion you will work with today involves extensive use of essence of mugwort, along with mistletoe, which has similar associations and properties. In our last class, you were each instructed to pack mistletoe berries in toadflax seeds; you will each need to use one of those berries for this potion, along with portions of the leaf and root. After boiling those in one cauldron and the mugwort in the other, you will need to cool them completely with salamander blood and toadflax juice, then combine them gradually, stirring each time and raising the heat slightly each time, until you return to a boil. Finish with the eye of newt and chickweed, and we shall see what you come up with. For our next class, I would like your opinions on whether you feel mugwort is most effacious as an antidote herb or as a protective one, with sources cited, of course.”

He decided to pretend that he was not being roundly cursed at that very moment by at least half the class for assigning more homework just now. It was ever so much better for his disposition, he thought.

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David Wilkes, Aladren

October 17, 2012 4:29 PM

Paranoia and grumbles (WotW). by David Wilkes, Aladren

The shift in the weather had put the holidays in David’s mind, and after almost half a year of some of the toughest classes he’d ever taken in his life, somewhere between all the advanced theory work and nonverbal spells and hazardous activities and all that, there were times when he almost thought he could already hear the tintinnabulations of nonexistent Christmas bells. They would stay as nonexistent when it really was Christmastime as they were now, of course – at home, now that his sisters were too old to wear socks with bells on them in December, the only Christmas bells to be heard were in a handful of his least-favorite carols, and he didn’t really have a choice about going home – but it was, he guessed, the thought that counted, as long as the same idea was reached in the end, which it was. He was more than ready for a break, even if he had to see his family during a lot of it. They, at least, didn’t make him feel like too much of an irredeemable moron every so often; like he was going to end up in the funny farm before he got away from them, yes, but not like he was unintelligent. If anything, spending more than five minutes around anyone other than his mother and sisters actually made him feel smarter.

Professor Fawcett did not, in general, do much to make David feel smarter, but neither did any of his other teachers, so he didn’t think he was going to hold it against his Head of House. As long as he got back to the idea that he was at least smarter than the average Joe by the end of next year, he wouldn’t, anyway. If not, well…it was a hard thing, permanently messing with a man’s self-concept. He didn’t think he would be unusual in being a little irked if that happened to him. There was still a year and a half left, though, before he had to think of it, so he began copying down notes about mugwort numbly as most of his mind stayed on the Charms essay he still had to finish and why he’d thought taking so many classes was a good idea, only stopping dead on the word possession.

Possession. Well. There was a pleasant concept. And to think that he’d never really cared one way or the other about the Church not generally going in for exorcisms anymore. Not for the first time, he thought of how much less paranoia-inducing the planet had been before he signed on for this class and Advanced Defense. Possession by what, exactly?

He looked over the mugwort in his potions kit and wondered if he could get away with eating the stuff on a daily basis. The world had been far less paranoia-inducing last year, that was for sure. They had learned a lot, over the years, about stuff that could attack them from the outside, but this year, it was all about things that could attack their insides, and that was, in his mind, a lot scarier than even the nastiest of body-damaging curses. Less painful, probably, but still scarier. There were different kinds of scary.

Becoming one of the people in the class roundly cursing Professor Fawcett for giving them more homework was a welcome distraction from those thoughts. Grumbling to himself, he went to get his packaged-up mistletoe berries, bringing them back to the table. “If I get carpal tunnel from all these essays, do you think I could sue?” he asked his neighbor as he began to get his cauldron in order.

16 David Wilkes, Aladren Paranoia and grumbles (WotW). 169 David Wilkes, Aladren 0 5