Advanced Potions (Years VI & VII) on Potions

Professor Yu

April 01, 2015 11:11 PM

Advanced Potions (Years VI & VII) by Professor Yu

Diana arrived to her advanced potions class fifteen minutes early. She was back from her “extended break” and feeling a whole a lot better. Diana had gone home for the break & though being around her parents was usually stressful, her mother’s maternal instincts must have kicked in because Anne spent the first two weeks brewing teas and traditional medicines to try and take the load off Diana. When that hadn’t produced any results, Diana’s grandfather had reluctantly enrolled her in a special program. She stayed there the rest of break, a few days into the term and then a few weeks into the term. By the time she was feeling better; she had been away for a month and a half and couldn’t wait to get back to school. Upon her return to Sonora she sent the substitute professor, Isis, a lengthy thank you note accompanied with a large bouquet of flowers and a fruit basket. Today, as the students filtered in, Diana was in the backroom restoring potion ingredients to their rightful places. No more Pye, no more ticks, no more squirreling. She was back and feeling better than ever.

When her pocket watch chirped 8 o’ clock, she used her wand to close the door to the classroom, the feeling of finally using magic again causing a large smile to break out on her face. “I apologize for my absence,” she said once she was in front of the class. “I hope Professor Carter was good to you all. Now that I’m back why don’t you fill me in on what you’ve done and then we can move on to some potions you might want to use in your portfolios.” Opening the class up for discussion was a great way for Diana to not only see how far in the syllabus they had gotten but also how much of it they had retained and how well they understood that.

After the class had gone over the things Isis had covered with them Diana opened up her lesson plan. They still had over an hour of class left but it wasn’t long enough to do the potion she had wanted to go over. She didn’t want to bug the students into coming back later to finish the potions. While that was something easy to have the Intermediates do since Potions was their last class of the day three days out of the week, having Potions first made it a little difficult for her to assign more time consuming potions to the older students without committing herself to make sure they were taken off the fire when dictated. Furthermore, since it was her first day back, she didn’t want to push herself too hard—something the doctors had warned her against. “Let’s take it easy today,” she said. “Let’s play an identification game. I will bring out a selection of ingredients and put them up at the front of the room. Each person is to pick one ingredient and go over it carefully by themselves—no two students should have the same ingredient. After you are certain you know what your ingredient is, write it down and bring it up to the front of the class for a new one. After an hour you will bring your ingredients and papers up to me—any ingredients you got right will count as bonus points but you will not be penalized for wrong answers. After I’ve collected all the papers we’ll go over the correct answers. Are there any questions?’

After answering any questions, Diana went to the back of the room and took a bit from the first thirty jars she saw and brought them out to put on her desk. If the students spent an average of two minutes on each ingredient she was confident they would be able to get through them all.

OOC: Creative, realistic posts are worth more points. If Diana is needed, please tag Professor Yu in the subject line. Posting rules apply. Please remember to add your house after your name so your points can go to the right place Have fun!

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Well, I've already guessed some things right... by Henry Carey, Crotalus

10 Professor Yu Advanced Potions (Years VI & VII) 0 Professor Yu 1 5

Henry Carey, Crotalus

April 03, 2015 9:18 PM

Well, I've already guessed some things right... by Henry Carey, Crotalus

Henry was no good at figuring out the tiny nuances of people’s expressions, reading meaning into every lift of an eyebrow or twitch of a muscle, which was one reason he knew he wouldn’t be let out much after this year, but he didn’t think he was wrong to blink in surprise over the smile Professor Yu led her return with. Plenty of teachers smiled, of course, but she seemed a lot happier than he thought most were when they did – or happy in a different way – or something. It was striking enough that Henry smiled back – a small smile, and a hesitant one, but more than he usually changed his expression for teachers, who he usually regarded the same way he did owls. Usually, owls and teachers alike came, delivered something, sometimes got something in return, and then weren’t looked at again until the next day.

Professor Yu got a reaction today, but it stopped with the smile. Henry didn’t feel like trying to muscle into the discussion of what they had been doing. For one thing, talking over others was not something he did – even when he felt like talking, he only did so when there were clear openings, and he didn’t know how to keep people from talking over him. It made him angry when people did, and shouting at his classmates the way he would at his siblings for doing it was against the rules. Besides, she was the teacher, she was supposed to know what was happening without any help from him, and he did not think his failure to speak would be noticed. Through a massive effort, he did middle-of-the-road work, and when the quality of his work was combined with his personality, he became a student that the eyes of the even the most dedicated teacher, busy sweeping between the brilliant, the forceful, and the worst, often slid right over.

As the rest of the class talked, then, Henry watched, his brown eyes thoughtful behind his wire-rimmed glasses. In a few months, he would go home, and it would be done; he wondered how many of them he would see again, besides Anthony and maybe Malcolm. Arbon and Wolseithcrafte, with their ties to Anthony and Jay, seemed the most likely, which was good, since they were the two he liked best, but he had gotten used to the others, too, in a way. He was one way with people and another with family, and it would be a little strange to hardly ever be the people way now that he was used to being that way more often than not.

The assignment, when the conversation was done, got a tiny frown in response. He had been in Advanced classes long enough to assume it wasn’t going to be as easy as it sounded at first, but then, Professor Yu had been…away. Maybe she was unwell.

He received a vial of something red. Blood, probably, but was it dragon or salamander or something else? A lot of blood was red, he had noticed; some magical creatures had blood that wasn’t, but most of it was. He wondered why.

“Knew this would be harder than it sounded,” he said quietly to one of his neighbors as the sudden desire, maybe brought on by what he had been thinking about, to even briefly speak to one of his classmates hit him. Henry almost always spoke quietly, but this time veered a little from his usual monotone, a little amused. Teachers were tricky, whenever they didn’t just deliver a lesson and leave with a paper; he thought many teachers would make good Careys, though he didn’t know if it followed that many Careys would make good teachers. Not many, as far as he knew, had ever tried.

0 Henry Carey, Crotalus Well, I've already guessed some things right... 0 Henry Carey, Crotalus 0 5