Prof. Isis Carter
June 13, 2015 5:14 PM
Fortify! [Years III-V] by Prof. Isis Carter
Such a shame, really. She had rather liked Diana Yu. While the woman had always seemed a bit edgy, Isis had never really expected her to actually snap. It had been a few days since the woman packed up and left, so she imagined the students had taken notice by now, although Isis intended to refrain from spelling out the apparent reasons. Still, such a shame.She tried to shake off the lingering knot in her stomach from the whole thing as she began setting up for today’s lesson. Admittedly, she was going to miss covering Defense Against the Dark Arts, but Potions had always agreed with her, at least. She just hoped Professor Pye, now a permanent staff member, would be less harsh on the young kids than he had been as a substitute. After all, they were just kids.
The class currently pouring into the Potions classroom were a bit older than that; Intermediates were, Isis found, always a decent bunch to have around. They were too old for childhood’s naivety but too young to worry too terribly about the future, an excellent balance, she felt. At least, they could be relatively worry free here at Sonora, unlike the pressure many of them may have faced at home, either from wealthy society or impoverished circumstance, the latter of which more reminiscent of her own childhood.
“Welcome,” the woman smiled once everyone was seated and her typical five-minute grace period had passed. “Today, we’ll be making the Girding Potion, which is designed to boost the endurance of the drinker. You’ll need dragonfly thoraxes, fairy wings, flying seahorses, and doxy eggs. Anything you lack will be available on the shelf.” The ingredients she listed appeared on the chalkboard behind her, along with the thirteen-step* instructional process. “Feel free to work in pairs, and be sure to note the color changes--if it isn’t hitting those particular markers, you haven’t heated it enough. It should be a greenish gold when you’re done. Unless anyone has any questions, go ahead and get to it. You’ve got the class period.”
OOC: Mentions of Diana Yu approved by her author. I’d like to see 250 or more words, if possible, although 200 is the technical minimum. Please follow all guidelines for godmodding, but if your character needs Isis for any reason, feel free to call her over and assume she came to them fairly promptly. Be creative, and have fun!
Your instructions are:
Add one set of fairy wings.
Heat until the potion turns turquoise.
Add one measure of doxy eggs.
Heat until the potion turns pink.
Add the toasted dragonfly thoraxes until the potion turns red.
Heat until the potion turns blue.
Add toasted dragonfly thoraxes until the potion turns silver.
Heat the potion until it turns red.
Add three measures of doxy eggs.
Add some dragonfly thoraxes.
Heat the potion until it turns blue.
Add three flying seahorses.
Heat until the potion turns green.
Subthreads: Trying to be a good intermediate student by Araceli Arbon with Tobi Reinhardt, Teppenpaw
Looking for personal supervision. by Joella Curtis, Pecari with Liliana Bannister, Pecari
An offer you can't refuse. by John Umland, Aladren with Clark Dill, Aladren
I wish I could. by Isaac Douglas, Crotalus
Just what I need (Tag Liac) by Chaslyn Brockert,Crotalus
Measure twice, brew once by Theodore Wolseithcrafte, Aladren
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Prof. Isis Carter
Fortify! [Years III-V]
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Prof. Isis Carter
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Araceli Arbon
June 14, 2015 6:25 AM
Trying to be a good intermediate student by Araceli Arbon
Classes were going to be more challenging this term, she felt. Last year she had been top of her age bracket, so no one had batted an eyelid if she’d been successful, so long as she didn’t get things too ridiculously quickly. This year though, she would have to be much more careful. She wanted decent enough grades to not shame her family but she didn’t want to be some conspicuous shining academic star. She wanted to be in the middle somewhere. She wanted to not be noticed. She breathed a sigh of relief as she entered Potions. This was by far the easiest class for her. Potions was steady, time consuming work and, for the most part, no one was surprised when you got it right. If she felt she was breezing through too easily and attracting too much attention, she just had to cut her ingredients a little sloppily or let her timings slide a little and her work was appropriately mediocre.She got her supplies out, wishing that Professor Carter wasn’t so generous with her timings. She tried to leave her quill on the table but waiting made her edgy and she kept finding it in her hands. She turned it over, tapped it… anything to occupy her fingers. The urge to doodle down the side of her parchment nagged at her but she thought of the way mother had tutted at her whenever she had done that. Finally, the class started. Relieved at having something to do, she wrote down every one of Professor Carter’s inane and irrelevant words.
She skimmed the recipe, deciding that missing the colour changes and over or under-doing the doxy eggs would be the best way to come up with a result that passed but didn’t warrant comment.
“Hello,” she smiled at the person next to her, “Would you like to work together?” If they were sloppy, so be it. If they were fastidious, they could happily correct her, and no one would be surprised when their work was perfect because so-and-so had a reputation - it would be credited to them and not to her. Really, Potions was child’s play.
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Araceli Arbon
Trying to be a good intermediate student
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Araceli Arbon
0
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Joella Curtis, Pecari
June 14, 2015 5:15 PM
Looking for personal supervision. by Joella Curtis, Pecari
Joella was beginning to understand that Potions was never going to be her favourite class, and neither would it ever be her best class. But her father always said he was happy so long as she tried her best. And with the start-of-term and brand-new-class feeling of self-motivation, Joella thought she would do just that and try to be positive about the challenges that would be laid before her. Hopefully the outcome would be a good one but with Potions she really couldn’t vouch for it.It was a subject that Joella really didn’t know why she found so hard but just did. Usually she would be given instructions so surely all she needed to do was follow them and all would be fine. Yet it never seemed to work like that. In Potions classes there were those boring minutes of waiting around for the concoction in her cauldron to actually do something and then there were suddenly the frantic and stressful moments when they did do something and she realised she needed to respond to the bubbling liquid in some way and couldn’t find the page she thought she had left her book open on. Needless to say, she really couldn’t find it in herself to find a truly fun side to the lessons.
Intermediate Potions was far more intimidating than Beginner Potions, simply because Joella was among the youngest again and that meant there was much more chance of her being bottom of the class. Not that she ever had been bottom of any class, as far as she was aware, but it was still a fear because no matter how understanding and relaxed her father could be, the third year knew that Ivan Curtis would not appreciate her having the 'class dunce' status and do everything it took to make sure she was maintaining at least passable grades in her worst subject.
Joella listened closely as Professor Carter spoke, wondering if Girding Potion would be useful to her if Pecari ever had to battle a particularly long Quidditch match against Aladren. But then it crossed her mind that consuming performance enhancing potions would be against the rules and she quite proudly thought she had good enough endurance to face off the enemy on the Pitch as it were. The majority of potions made in class, Joella couldn’t think of a personal use she would have for them but she supposed they had to be important in some way else they wouldn’t bother learning them. Then again, surely just practising making potions was good for her anyway, irrelevant of whether or not she would actually find use for it at some point.
Today’s potion did seem friendlier than past assignments since it was based on colour judgement rather than specific terms like 'simmering', although the thirteen year old Pecari still didn’t feel greatly filled with confidence. On gathering all the ingredients that Professor Carter had listed on the board, Joella turned to the classmate nearest her without stopping to check who it was. When their teacher had permitted them to pair up, she had been immediately keen at the idea of working with someone else so they could stop her making all the mistakes that prevented her from getting the correct result so much of the time. “Would you like to pair up?” she asked, eager to snatch up another student who didn’t mind working with someone else before she was forced to fail alone.
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Joella Curtis, Pecari
Looking for personal supervision.
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Joella Curtis, Pecari
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Liliana Bannister, Pecari
June 14, 2015 8:16 PM
I'll do my best. by Liliana Bannister, Pecari
The switch from Professor Yu to Professor Carter in potions had been hard for Liliana. Potions was not one of her better subjects though, surprisingly, it was not her worst. Coming to Sonora in her first year she had been sure that Potions would have been her worst as she lacked the attention span to be able to patiently wait and put things in the correct order.However, after starting she soon realized that potions wasn’t as difficult as she thought it would be because the books gave her step by step instructions. In fact, it had become almost therapeutic as following the detailed instructions in the book allowed her to relax a little bit and do other things in between steps. This was especially welcome as intermediate potions was the last class of the day and came right after a forty-five minute break so by the time she got to the class she was in a pretty lethargic mood.
Today, when she walked in to the classroom she sat down next to her Quidditch teammate, Joella Curtis who was now in her third year. Liliana was excited because it would be the first and only year she would be in class with the younger girl who she really wanted to get to know better.
“Hi Joella,” she said as she put her bag down on the table. “How are you doing?” Though they had been on the team together for two going on three years, Liliana realized that she and Joella had never really talked a lot and that kind of sucked. Pecari was unique, she thought, in that the team was pretty evenly distributed between witches and wizards but there were still more wizards who played Quidditch than witches at Sonora and she felt as though Quidditch playing witches really ought to stick together.
So, when Joella asked her to partner up she was happy that the other witch seemed to like her just as well. “Of course,” she said, taking out her potions kit. “Shall we go through the ingredients and see what we need to get from the storage cupboard?”
One of the other things she had noticed as she got older was that she had become more patient—though she had once loved to just get things done as quickly as possible, being careful and putting things to order before doing them (at least when it came to school work) always seemed to pay off. This tactic had especially done so in her transfiguration classes where Liliana had begun to make progress—though there still were a few hiccups, taking her time with potions had greatly improved her concentration in all areas of school.
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Liliana Bannister, Pecari
I'll do my best.
274
Liliana Bannister, Pecari
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Tobi Reinhardt, Teppenpaw
June 16, 2015 12:19 AM
Well, if you put one foot in front of the other... by Tobi Reinhardt, Teppenpaw
While Tobi and Liac generally tried to sit next to each other in classes, the switch from beginner’s to intermediate’s had slightly thrown off their schedule and as such, they occasionally ended up sitting next to different people especially when the class they were in came after a break. Today was one of those days where Tobi found himself in the classroom with a couple minutes of difference than Liac and as a result discovered that he was seated next to Araceli Arbon, a pretty, quiet girl with whom he had conversed with a couple times before but who he had enjoyed talking to because she seemed to realize that chattering aimlessly wasn’t always 100% necessary.Araceli’s offer to work with him was one Tobi could deal with though he normally preferred to either work alone or with Liac. It would be nice, he thought, to spend more time with the shy girl who seemed to have blossomed since their first conversation in the MARS room back when they were first years. This time around, she didn’t appear to be as skittish, and Tobi was happy for her that she seemed to be getting more comfortable in her surroundings.
“Yeah,” he said, his curt way of speaking had always amused his mother because he had a low, gentle voice and a rather deer-like manner—if he could, he liked to go by unnoticed by people since he had always found that time spent outdoors by himself were the most productive and good for his thinking processes. He opened his potions kit, having slipped it out of his bag while Araceli was talking to him, and counted out the ingredients that he had in his kit.
“We can use my ingredients,” he offered. “You save yours for another time.” The quick smile which displayed straight, white teeth, was meant encouragingly. Though his family wasn’t as well off as some of the other pureblood families, they were amply middle class craftsmen and he felt that it was his duty to be gentlemanly when he inevitably found himself partnered up with girls in class and being gentlemanly meant letting girls go first when they had to practice spells, and letting girls save their ingredients so they didn’t have to replenish their kits as often. It was just the way he had grown up so it wasn’t a duty that he had really given much thought to.
Sometimes, though, he wondered if that was just something that was unique to his own family. His little sister would be coming to Sonora in a few short years and he hoped that when she got there she would be treated well, that the school would be filled with kind students who would take it easy on his bubbly little sister. She was so impressionable, it seemed, and though she was only seven, Tobi didn’t want the more intolerant purebloods pulling her over to their side. His hand hesitated as it reached for the fairy wings, surprised at the vicious voice that had suddenly taken over his thoughts.
“Or would you like to do the first step?” he offered, covering up the moment of hesitation, realizing that the polite thing to do was to let Araceli chose which steps she wanted to do.
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Tobi Reinhardt, Teppenpaw
Well, if you put one foot in front of the other...
289
Tobi Reinhardt, Teppenpaw
0
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John Umland, Aladren
June 16, 2015 2:37 PM
An offer you can't refuse. by John Umland, Aladren
Professor Carter, John had decided, was his kind of person: clearly both intelligent and magically skilled, not limited to one field of knowledge and skill, and someone who could adjust to circumstances without looking too fazed by them. Whenever other teachers disappeared, she showed up and kept things moving. He thought that might be harder than really teaching on one specialty and so really did respect Professor Carter for that.Her views on punctuality were less agreeable to him. In second year, John had been bored often enough that he’d had no objection to wasted class time, seeing that as time he could use to peruse his notes and make new ones, but this year, he was excited by the prospect of more interesting assignments and wanted to get on with them. He had read his sister’s old textbooks and seen her homework assignments when they studied together in the library, and intermediates got to play with more complex theories and perform more complex magic. John didn’t agree with the teachers who locked the tardy out, but nor did he consider said classmates’ inability to get their acts together the rest of the class’ fault.
When they finally did get started, though, he wasn’t disappointed with the assignment. This was definitely not something they would let the Beginners make. He couldn’t, off the top of his head, think of a really obvious way to kill someone with it, which he often had been able to do with Beginner potions, but he could imagine some equally-disreputable uses for it and some of them were even relevant to the lives of average students. It sounded like a good way to cheat at Quidditch and might also have some applications in the field of last-minute binge study sessions.
Endurance could be mental, but emotions are all chemistry and electricity, too, or whatever it is with us - but whatever does it, mental and physical condition go together - I can do so much more when I’m awake and – but sometimes, admittedly, when you’re tired but keep going, you’re proud of yourself for making yourself go more, so….
He shook his head, clearing it of generalized thoughts and looking at the evidence in front of him, the details of this specific potion. All the ingredients were animal-derived, and he didn't recognize any of them as mood-affecting, though he knew he really shouldn't include that when he knew he had never really made an effort to memorize everything that was. Then there was the potion name - girding. The first thing that came to mind was armor and the second was the magic girdle from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. John was reasonably sure that this potion would not give the drinker the power to endure decapitation with no ill effects, but an increase in physical endurance was still the most likely answer to the question of what the potion did.
Lots of flying things, he noticed as he looked over the ingredients. He wasn’t going to be the only one who thought of Quidditch, though he wasn't particularly tempted - he had heard Sir Gawain and the other stories often enough to know that honesty (and not being the guy who walked into what had to either be a trap or the designs of a crazy person) usually really was the best policy, and he did well enough on his own now to make it a matter of pride anyway. Flying seahorses he didn't know much about, but doxy eggs were toxic. He guessed the heat’s effect on them and their combination with other compounds could address that, but maybe the potion was also at least mildly toxic, at least in large quantities - that could be the 'deal with the devil' aspect of it. His best guess was that it affected proteins, either fiddling with metabolism or doing something with the ones that influenced cell structure or musculature to make them temporarily stronger. The affected polypeptides would eventually degrade, and without more of the potion, the body would just be left with its original resources, assuming the original dose was properly removed from the body and didn’t…accumulate or something, mess with the balance of protein turnover....
He took out a fresh sheet of paper and wrote down first the name of the potion and two short notes of things he wanted to research further when he had a chance. Then, content, he put that aside and opened up his potions kit before turning to a neighbor. Another thought, one he could actually do something with right now if he could find a partner in crime, had just occurred to him.
“Hey,” he said. “Er – we can work together or we can not, I don’t care, but do you mind if I look at your supplies? The seahorses and dragonflies and stuff.” He started talking faster in the hopes of finishing before he was interrupted. “Entomology’s not really my thing, but I know there’s a lot of species under most common names – like dragonfly – and I bought mine in Canada, so we might have different types and it’ll be interesting to see if that makes the potion better or worse in the end. If we do, anyway. Have different - " he waved toward his kit -"these, I mean.” Some products were basically the same on both sides of the border, but others weren’t, and he had no idea if there were any business connections between the Edmonton potions shop he’d visited this summer and any suppliers in the States.
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John Umland, Aladren
An offer you can't refuse.
285
John Umland, Aladren
0
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Isaac Douglas, Crotalus
June 16, 2015 9:34 PM
I wish I could. by Isaac Douglas, Crotalus
For most of his life, Isaac had thought his family overrated the importance of a prefect’s badge. Yes, the school staff singling one out as someone who could handle a little authority was a good indicator that one might have potential, it looked good on the CV, but essentially regarding it as the only thing standing between him and each of his siblings and adult status had just seemed like a little…much. They were still legally children, which meant they were still really powerless pawns of those around them, and the only difference a badge made was drawing unfavorable attention to themselves as they tried to enforce the edicts of their overlords. If he had not known that not getting it would have cemented his status as the Least Accomplished Child beyond any shadow of a doubt, Isaac doubted he would have even wanted the badge.Since he did not want to be the Least Accomplished Child, though, he had spent all summer afraid that a fourth year would become prefect instead of him, and he had been relieved when that didn’t happen. Since then, as he’d become better acquainted with the requirements of the position and considered his CATS, he had started to have a greater respect for his parents’ point of view. He still felt they thought too much of the position, but not as much too much as he had before. It had been a person entirely too Aladren in mindset who had decided that the badges should be handed out in their first major exam year.
He could do it all, though. All three of his half-sisters had done at least as much, one way or another, and if Kate could do it, Isaac could do it better. He could not be defeated by Kate. Kate liked her biological father more than she did his father, her stepfather, even though Dad had given her opportunities in life, and the career path she had chosen was going to leave her voluntarily middle class. If she did better in school than he did….
Accordingly, he had set his mind to doing it right. One year. He had no idea how he was supposed to find time to be nice to random first years and study for his CATS, but everyone else who’d worn the badge had done it, and that meant he could do it, too. He was at least as good as his sisters. In Potions, he went out of his way to sit beside one of the younger students, and to smile in friendly greeting as he did so, unnatural though the expression felt. He had never been outgoing, had never been prodded to be the way Rachel and Alicia had, but, well, they had done it. It couldn’t be that hard.
The potion of the day caught his attention as Professor Carter began talking about it. There were times when he thought the Potions curriculum had been selected specifically to tempt them all to try self-medicating, but that the prairie elves were secretly spying on them and would report anyone who did so. He had never trusted the prairie elves, as elves of all kinds, as far as he knew, were loyal to places and families and that meant the staff and school code of conduct probably commanded far more of their loyalty than the students did. Alicia had made a lot of moves that he had thought were ill-advised, things she’d only gotten away with through dumb luck, but one of her habits he had always approved of was being polite to the creatures when she encountered them. He wasn’t as presumptuous or as much of a night owl or morning bird as his sister, so he didn’t see them as much as she had, but Isaac made sure not to do anything he thought stood a good chance of putting him on the elves' bad sides, either. The beings who cooked his food and went through his laundry every night but did not belong to him were not beings to antagonize.
Given the option of partnering or not partnering when it came time to make the potion, it was hard to endanger his work by entrusting part of it to a younger student, but he smiled again and did it because of the badge. “Good afternoon,” he said, hoping it was not his unlucky day and that he was not about to spend two hours with a really annoying or really incompetent or really annoying and incompetent person. “Would you like to work together?”
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Isaac Douglas, Crotalus
I wish I could.
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Isaac Douglas, Crotalus
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Araceli Arbon
June 18, 2015 8:36 AM
There was some similar advice in first year by Araceli Arbon
It was the Reinhardt boy. He was the first person Araceli had spoken to, they had bonded over their mutual interest in playing an instrument, and thus he held a special place in her affections much higher than his status really deserved. Dealing with him was going to be complicated… She needed not to encourage any particular closeness whilst still treating the boy with a level of warmth that fitted. However, from what she knew of him, and from his brief responses, his own temperament was going to make that slightly easier. He didn’t seem one to seek much warmth, much validation from others.“Thank you,” she smiled, as he offered to share his ingredients. It wasn’t really necessary but she was sure he meant it kindly. He was a Teppenpaw - consideration of others was, after all, his main raison d'être. He continued to show similar kindness in offering her choices as to which steps she wished to do, and she began to see why there was that fondness for him. He wasn’t as suitable for Araceli as someone like Duncan Brockert, but he was a nice person. For friends, those sorts of rules were less important here. He just wasn’t allowed to be more than that.
“Alright,” she smiled, when he invited her to do the first step, deciding to treat him kindly as a partner. It was the easiest way to stay on his good side without involving real warmth of feelings - to help with the Potion, to do it well and for them both to be pleased with the result. He seemed like a precise sort of person anyway, so she suspected a good result wouldn’t look out of place on the two of them. She carefully separated out a set of the delicate fairy wings, careful not to tear them, and dropped them deftly into the cauldron.
“Now we wait… Though it might behove us to prepare the dragonfly thoraces, unless you managed to acquire some that are pre-toasted,” she noted.
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Araceli Arbon
There was some similar advice in first year
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Araceli Arbon
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Tobi
June 18, 2015 7:45 PM
Words to live by. by Tobi
Araceli accepted his offer to put in the fairy wings, going on to suggest that they next toast the dragonfly thoraxes. He simply nodded in agreement, and prepped an area on which they could carry through with that step. He didn't like the idea of using animals as ingredients, even if they were just bugs. It was just a creepy thought, Tobi believed, taking apart defenseless creatures for a witch or wizard's own beneficial use. For this particular potion he didn't know what bothered him more--the idea that someone had plucked wings off a fairy to stock his potions kit, or that he was actually engaging in using said stolen body part. He imagined a poor fairy wandering around the wood without wings, suddenly flightless and without the means to escape predators.Tobi fully understood that the circle of life meant some animals had to die in order for others to survive, which is why he didn't mind eating meat (roast salmon was probably his favorite meal, especially when his mother prepared it on a cedar plank), but he didn't think that killing just for the sake of killing was very fair. It was the sport aspect of it that he didn't like, and as Muggles were perfectly able to get by without using various creatures in potions, he didn't think witches or wizards necessarily needed said potions to survive. Granted, Muggles had a completely different issue with the killing for sport, but Tobi didn't really feel like thinking about that today. Just the mere image of a severed moose's head posted up on a placard over someone's fire place freaked him out.
This particular potion, with it's fairy wings, dragonfly thoraxes, doxy eggs, and flying seahorses, was the worst. With Liac it was easy for him to display his discomfort with the situation. With other students it was more difficult, and as he put the thoraxes on sticks to toast them he was almost certain his normally placid face betrayed his less-than-pleased thoughts. However, it would have been ungentlemanly like to force his partner to further maim an already dead creature, so Tobi shouldered the responsibility, sending the dragonfly's spirit (wherever it was now) a silent prayer of thanks, asking for forgiveness.
"This potion takes so much," he commented as he took the thoraxes off the fire. How can one potion cost so many lives? he further wondered, not voicing these concerns as it sort of fell into the category of opening things up for discussion and Tobi didn't really want to have to debate with anyone who might have overheard his displeasure. He looked over the ingredients and the steps again. They were to add thoraxes on three separate occasions and doxy eggs on two. The thoraxes didn't even seem to have a measurement, just to add them until the potion turned a different color. They would have no way of knowing how many dragonflies had died for their class assignment to be possible.
But maybe that was a good thing, he thought now as he laid out one and then three measures of doxy eggs so that when the time came the ingredients would already be ready to add to the potion. At least this way he would't have a number of things he had contributed to the killing of to think about.
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Tobi
Words to live by.
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Tobi
0
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Joella Curtis
June 20, 2015 12:46 PM
That would be much appreciated. by Joella Curtis
Joella was pleasantly surprised when her teammate, Liliana Bannister, sat down beside her. Although the fifth year seemed very friendly, she had not thought that the Pecari prefect would even think to sit with a third year in class when she clearly had enough more knowledgeable friends in her own year. “Oh hi!” grinned Joella cheerfully. “I’m actually managing to remain fairly optimistic about Potions so I’d say I’m doing good, thank you. And yourself?”She was glad that her fellow Pecari accepted her suggestion of pairing up. Not only was Joella keen to get to know Liliana better but working with the older girl in class would likely be a useful way of seeing how someone more experienced did things.
Even in her first year, Joella had felt very much part of a family on the Pecari Quidditch team and there hadn’t been a single member she had felt any reason to dislike. But even so, she still felt as though she didn’t know her some of her teammates a great deal off the Pitch. Rupert, the Anns and Adam had always seemed so much older than herself but Liliana and Atlas were close enough to her own age that they were both going to be in her classes for the whole year, yet they were the two she’d had the least interactions with. Joella thought, and hoped, that this was likely to change. She was now going among the more experienced players on the Pecari team and maybe even be giving advice to the new recruits. It was strange to think that soon Quidditch practices would start up and she would have at least three new players to get to know.
“Yes, that’s a good place to start,” Joella agreed, thinking that she was already learning something new about the best method to use in Potions. Checking that she had all the ingredients was an easy part to the lesson but one she had failed to do on more than one occasion in the past, only to find that she was lacking a crucial ingredient and a crucial moment and therefore adding to her potion stresses. It was perhaps due to Joella’s eagerness to get whatever potion-making task over and done with that she had often missed important components.
She took a moment to look over the ingredients. “I haven’t got any fairy wings. And probably not enough dragonfly thoraxes for that matter.” Joella looked to Liliana in case her class partner had either or whether they would need to visit the store cupboard.
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Joella Curtis
That would be much appreciated.
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Joella Curtis
0
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Liliana
June 25, 2015 6:39 PM
*curtsies like a proper lady* by Liliana
Liliana laughed. She really liked Joella, she thought the younger girl was spunky and just the right mixture of cheerful and realism. "Pretty well, thank you," she replied. "Though I am loathe to even think about the upcoming CATs..." The tests the fifth years had to take at the end of their year was slightly different from the ones the fifth years at Hogwarts needed to take--or so Liliana gathered from her cousins' horror stories of potentially being unable to continue certain classes if their OWL score was too low. "I'm assuming intermediates are treating you rather fairly then?"Now that she was in her last year of intermediates, Liliana was feeling kind of nostalgic. She wanted to be a beginner again and start all over, perhaps pay more attention to transfiguration earlier on, ask Isaac and Atlas for help from the get-go, take Zacharias' advice when it came to Potions. But she hadn't, and there was nothing short of a time-turner that could fix that particular problem and even then Liliana didn't think she wanted to mess with that particular type of magic. Overall she liked how things in her life were turning out.
"I've neither of the two," Liliana replied to Joella's inventory count. Though Liliana's family had enough money that a potions kit running low in stores wasn't something that should have been a problem for the fifth year, she wasn't exactly the sort of person to pay attention to that kind of detail. Whether or not she had enough dragon's blood wasn't something Liliana cared about. What she cared about was Quidditch and dancing by herself and defense class and eating ice cream with Vetil and teasing Atlas. Her potions kit was quite literally one of the last things on her mind and thus, her potions kit quite usually ran on the lower end. "I've really got to write home or put in an order to top off my kit but..."
Liliana trailed off, thinking of the beautiful broom waxing kit she had seen in Diagon Alley whilst with Isaac and Joseph. "I'm saving my money for something extra special." There had also been an interesting book on inferi that she had spotted when Joseph had forced her and Isaac to go into Flourish & Botts with him, but she had decided that to spend her money on that sort of book over a broom waxing kit was such a Joseph thing to do she just couldn't pull it off. Besides, she was certain that her cousin had seen the eyes she'd made at the gorgeous, leather bound manuscript and that sooner or later it would find it's way to her--that was just the sort of person that Joseph was.
"Shall we?" she stood and began to walk over to the area in which the potions ingredients were kept. "Does it weird you out that we use actually body parts in our potions?" she asked as she spotted a jar of newt's eyes. Though she had grown up around magic, as she got older and spent more time with Muggleborn Atlas she had noticed that there were quite a few things that witches and wizards did that were kind of...gruesome.
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Liliana
*curtsies like a proper lady*
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Liliana
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Araceli Arbon
June 27, 2015 1:38 AM
But it's so slow by Araceli Arbon
The boy seemed to agree with prepping, and took it upon himself to do so. She watched the Potion, looking out for the colour change. She wouldn’t have minded doing the thoraces, as she wasn’t particularly squeamish when it came to animal parts. This was part of being a witch, and she was expected not to be shown up by a Muggleborn of any gender being able to handle what she could not. Still, her eyes were fixed on watching the Potion, so she missed the possible look of distaste on Tobi’s face, and any chance to infer that he had done this out of a sense of valour rather than simply not minding either.“I suppose it’s to be expected, now that we’re intermediates,” she responded to his comment about ‘how much,’ the Potion took, assuming it to be a reference to the number of steps. “Still, colour changes are fairly distinctive signs at least, compared to ‘a medium consistency’ or ‘gently steaming,’” she mused, in something that might even have counted as idle chit-chat. The response was certainly not the bare minimum required to convey her point - or, as Araceli had been prone to, even less than.
“And look, we’ve reached the first one already,” she smiled, tipping in one of his measures of doxy eggs and giving it a stir.
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Araceli Arbon
But it's so slow
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Chaslyn Brockert,Crotalus
June 29, 2015 2:06 PM
Just what I need (Tag Liac) by Chaslyn Brockert,Crotalus
Already Chaslyn was tired. She'd been sacrificing sleep in order to get everything in. There was just no other way to do things. The Crotalus needed to practice and study and attend clubs and help out in the library. If she didn't do everything right, everything perfect, she'd be in trouble. Big trouble. Mother had a terrible temper and even if she wasn't yelling over something Chaslyn-or before, and much more often, Amity-had done wrong, she would get all cold and quiet, like she didn't love Chaslyn when she was a disappointment. The fourth year could not be a disappointment.Besides, there were some things she did want for herself. She really did want to be a better dancer, for example. The Crotalus could still the comments Miss Annie and Addison had made at the competition last summer. They hurt. A lot. Not that either had ever been especially nice to her.
And aside from that, who wanted to do poorly in classes and on CATS? Chaslyn wouldn't be at all surprised if the Aladrens, at least, started studying for them after midterm. Most of them weren't like her sister.
There was,however, one very positive thing about this year, and that was that Liac was back in her classes. She gave her friend a smile as she took a seat in the front row, where Chaslyn felt compelled to sit no matter what. Even though she felt uneasy being where everyone could see her. Mother said that was where one must sit to take full advantage of learning.
Despite her exhaustion, the Crotalus paid strict attention to what Professor Carter was saying. It was important to listen to one's elders and when one was teaching you something, blood status was not taken into account. They knew what she had to learn and how could she do things exactly right if she didn't listen.
She felt a slight thrill when she heard what the potion was. Endurance potion. If there was something that Chaslyn needed, it was more endurance. She wasn't talking about cheating at competitions but with all she had to do, she needed all the help she could get, needed to study and practice dance....and gymnastics....and music....and more.
The Crotalus got up, and approached Liac. It didn't matter who was sitting next to her, she wanted to work with her friend. "Hi, would you like to work together on this?"
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Chaslyn Brockert,Crotalus
Just what I need (Tag Liac)
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Theodore Wolseithcrafte, Aladren
July 01, 2015 6:01 AM
Measure twice, brew once by Theodore Wolseithcrafte, Aladren
Professor Carter was an interesting person. She was most definitely the sort that he would never have encountered were it not for school. Sometimes, Theodore tried to guess at what her life, her upbringing were like. He had assumed the majority of his Professors to be middle class or better but he doubted that with Professor Carter. It was certainly a curious subject but one he was unlikely to uncover any real information about. Also of interest, was the fact that she seemed capable of turning her hand to more or less anything - Defence last year, Potions this year - which made him feel that he ought to admire her. That, or he was receiving a patchy and substandard education. However, he doubted that, as he trusted Headmaster Brockert’s judgement. He seemed like a man who would not compromise easily and who ran a tight ship. In fact, the woman’s no doubt less than perfect background almost spoke more highly of her qualifications - Headmaster Brockert was not going to employ someone of her class unless she had proved herself most thoroughly.Today’s potion at least sounded interesting, and relatively complex. Though he supposed knowing what Potions to set was not really the mark of a good Professor, seeing as she could just read that from a syllabus. Endurance and physical strength were things Theodore prided himself on having. Things he worked hard for, through exercising. This potion represented the opportunity for others to cheat that system and take a short cut. Of course there were rules in place in competition to stop that happening. It was the most obvious use, but there were others. When man was pitted against nature, against forces that he couldn’t control… In the wake of natural disasters, shipping batches of potion was often cheaper than shipping batches of food. Boosting the survivors’ resilience, their ability to subsist on what was available… He wasn’t sure that this was the most relevant Potion for that cause, there had to be nutrition and hunger-based remedies, and perhaps this was more purely related to physical exertion, but there had to be some sort of situation akin to that where it would be the thing… Slightly closer to home, he was sure all manner of similar things were used when politicians were blazing the campaign trail, a lengthy and exhausting process by all accounts.
He began assembling his ingredients, noting that Professor Carter had given them the option to work in pairs rather than making it a requirement. He had just measured out two separate heaps of doxy eggs - one of a single scoop, one of three - when he remembered his resolution to make more friends this year, before Francesca left.
“Would you like to work together?” he asked the person next to him. He was sitting in the front row, so unless there was anyone seriously myopic in their class, he reasoned he was in a spot that was quite likely to secure him a good, responsible partner. “I was just preparing all the necessary supplies before beginning - measure twice, brew once, as they say.”
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Theodore Wolseithcrafte, Aladren
Measure twice, brew once
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Theodore Wolseithcrafte, Aladren
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Clark Dill, Aladren
July 04, 2015 10:43 AM
I could, but I'd miss an amazing opportunity by Clark Dill, Aladren
One of the things Clark liked best about Professor Carter was that she didn't bog down her classes by tediously going over things that were spelled out perfectly well in the book. Everyone could read, and intermediates didn’t need their hands held to follow a straightforward potions recipe anymore. Plus, it felt pretty good to be trusted to get through the process on his own.He was checking his potions kits against the ingredient list to see if he needed to get anything from the school stock when John addressed him. At first, Clark was a bit confused by the request - had it been Oliver he might have suspected him of wanting to mock the inferiority of Clark’s kit, but John, he’d gathered, was from a similar economic class to Clark’s. Then John explained and Clark shared his ingredients with genuine interest. He wasn’t exactly sure of the exact species his vials contained, but they were from the East Coast of the US, so it did sound reasonable that they might differ from what was available in Canada. “I got mine on the east coast, in Maryland,” he offered to give John an idea of where he came from in case he didn’t know already. “So I’ve almost certainly got seahorses native to the Atlantic. I’ve probably just got whatever the most common kind of dragonfly in my area is; I got one of the cheaper kits,” he admitted. Not the cheapest because he figured that was just asking for poor quality ingredients and therefore poor quality potions, but he certainly hadn’t shelled out the big galleons for the best stuff out there.
He normally liked working in pairs, mostly for the social aspect, but he could work alone, too, and occasionally did just to get practice for his exams which wouldn’t be cooperative, and if John was working in parallel to him so they could compare the species’ effect on the outcome, that would surely satisfy Clark’s need for social interaction. “If they are different, I’d be up for seeing whether or not it affects the outcome. What do yours look like?” he asked, opening his up and taking out a few samples for comparison.
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Clark Dill, Aladren
I could, but I'd miss an amazing opportunity
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Clark Dill, Aladren
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John Umland
July 08, 2015 12:35 AM
Okay, I can work with that. by John Umland
If there was anyone at Sonora who was likely to prove a willing and able accomplice to one of John’s class experiments, it was Clark, but John still smiled in momentary relief when his proposition got a positive response. His expression only became gleeful, though, when Clark told him Maryland was on the east coast. John was sure he had committed this information to memory at some point during his education, but American political geography was not a subject he had a lot of regular use for and so he was not sure if he could have recalled much about its location without the prompt, especially since he thought he remembered it as one of the tiny little middle ones he’d found difficult to place when Mom made him do all those tedious North American maps.“Me, too, so yours should be different from mine,” he said cheerily. “I’m pretty sure I don’t have much that’s Atlantic – I mean, the mountains and B.C. are between us – in Alberta – and the Pacific, but there’s four big provinces between us and the nearest bit of the Atlantic.” Newfoundland was sort of in there, too, as was New Brunswick, but the Gulf of St. Lawrence allowed him to feel comfortable ignoring them and the islands for purposes of talking to Clark. There was a time and place for stuff like making a show of Canadian knowledge or claiming that he supported his family by hunting moose with a hockey stick while wearing nothing but flannel underwear and consuming nothing but maple syrup as he hiked through the endless year-round snow and went slowly insane in the face of the vast emptiness of the plains, but now wasn’t one of them. Not least because he liked Clark well enough not to subject him to the no doubt painful mental image that would go along with a description of John traipsing around anywhere in any kind of underwear not, along with the rest of him, safely concealed by the rest of a proper set of clothes. “And like I said, I haven’t made a big study of dragonflies, but I’d expect our climates to be kind of different, since even my east coast is further south than where I live and Maryland’s not particularly close to the border, is it? That might make a difference. Do you have any mountains?"
He also took out some representative samples and put a blank piece of paper down so they could compare everything side-by-side. All the dried insects they had looked the worse for being dried and disassembled, but even looking at what they had, there were some visual differences that supported his theory. Some of the thoraxes, the larger ones in the samples, looked about the same, but some of the other Maryland ones were more colorful than almost all of his even in their dried-up forms.
“It looks like they might be mixed species,” he said, disappointment coloring his tone. “Still, some of them are different, so I guess we can roughly compare east versus west for now, maybe try to get some better samples another time if there isn’t any good information in the library.” He could write home for detailed information on dragonflies if he couldn’t find an appropriate book in the library; someone must have studied this before, but the book or paper might not be in a high school library or be about North American insects, so he might have to cobble the information together on his own. “Hypothesis, if there is a difference - if these aren't like blended tea - then yours will work a little better than mine – coastal means more water, dragonflies like water….Huh,” he said, a thought occurring to him. “I saw that everything had wings, but it’s – the component list is half-aquatic, too, flying seahorses and dragonflies. Hydration's a big factor in endurance, but I don’t know if that’s related.” He started taking out more things for the potion as he speculated, speaking and moving more smoothly and confidently than he usually did outside the classroom. “I don't know that much about the mechanics of water animals, either....It could influence how the drinker’s body processes water, depending on the interactions with the fairy wings and the doxy eggs. I'll have to get my brothers to look for stuff about how fish breathe and all, probably. The library's great, but it's not that great with biology, honestly.” The Care of Magical Creatures textbook made him want to bang his head against a table, or better yet, bang the author's head against the heaviest taxonomy textbook he could find. He beamed at the delicate set of fairy wings in his hand. “We should probably compare these, too,” he added, putting the wings above the thorax samples. “I’ll take some notes on what these look like, then do that with the other samples while they heat up.”
OOC: Dragonfly descriptions courtesy of Google searches for “dragonflies Maryland” and “dragonflies Alberta.” Apparently, as Google never lies, they’re more common in Maryland than Alberta generally, and while the two political units do share some species of darner, they don’t seem to have much other overlap within the broader dragon- and damselfly category.
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John Umland
Okay, I can work with that.
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John Umland
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Clark Dill
July 22, 2015 10:35 PM
Great! by Clark Dill
Clark nodded in agreement as John theorized their ingredients would have some differences, making a mental note along the way that John was from Alberta. He wasn't sure he'd be able to place Alberta on a map, but even before John explained its relative position to the oceans, he would have figured it for a Western Province simply because he was moderately more familiar with the Eastern Provinces and it wasn't one of those."Maryland is kind of in the middle," Clark explained when asked for clarification on its latitudinal location. "We're the northmost of the Southern states," he added, "with our North border being the Mason Dixon Line." He wasn't sure John, being Canadian, knew the significance of that, so he added, "which was the political divide in our civil war. And I think western Maryland has mountains, but I'm only about half an hour from the coast, er, the Chesapeake Bay coast that is. The ocean's a little further off. But either way, we're relatively flat and close to sea level. Is your area high altitude?"
Clark looked between his dragon flies and John's and returned the ones which looked like they might have some species overlap in his own pile to their jar. Clark's selection seemed to have more variety so it made sense for him to take his matching samples out rather than have John do so. This left them with distinctly different sets of dragonfly thoraxes, at least as well as he could tell by visual inspection and knowing very little about the differences between dragonfly species. "Ideally, we should probably brew a bunch of potions using single species for a more thorough comparison and eliminate a greater number of variables," he remarked off-handedly, "but this will do for a base test to see if there's any difference at all. Though if the instructions aren't specific, and the overall effects are minimal in the finished potion regardless of the species of the ingredients, it may be that some of the variations cancel each other out so it doesn't matter so much."
"That's a good point," Clark remarked, impressed, as John made the connection between aquatic ingredients and hydration for endurance. He made a note of it on the sidebar of his text book. "And flying creatures are generally lighter than land creatures and especially sea creatures which have the water to help support their weight, so that may help with the endurance as well since less mass means less energy is needed to reach the desired goal so, magically speaking, they would contribute to a lower energy consumption and therefore what energy you do have lasts longer."
At John's request to compare fairy wings, Clark took out some of his as well. As fairies were magical creatures, Clark's ability to differentiate them was even poorer than it was with the dragonflies, which he had at least seen a lot of growing up, but there did seem to be some differences there as well. "Looks like my area generally likes colors more than your area," he observed, then expounded it into a hypothesis he'd have to check later. "I bet tropical fairy wings are even more vibrant than mine."
Then a more immediately applicable idea occurred to him, and he said, "Hypothesis: Maryland fairy wings will turn the potion turquoise faster than Alberta fairy wings."
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Clark Dill
Great!
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Clark Dill
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John
July 31, 2015 8:55 AM
We'll have fun, fun, fun 'til they take our cauldrons away. by John
John nodded as Clark filled him in on a few details of American geography, including historical politics. Who Mason Dixon had been escaped him at the moment, but he remembered that their civil war was one of the few things the Americans had ever done that Mom (the descendant of U.E.L.s on her mother’s side, though she didn’t make a big deal of it) seemed to find genuinely interesting. She used that war as a major example in the advanced nineteenth century history curriculum, the one Paul and Steve referred to as “Why To Never Become A World Leader 101” because of the Socratic ethics lessons. Julian, asked to pick first one side and then another from contemporary arguments and then defend it as Mom pointed out every possible objection, had been driven to frustrated tears at one point when it was her turn because there was no safe position, not when each position was taken to its logical extreme. Paul’s attempt to claim each situation had to be viewed individually and without reference to general principles had gone over just as badly as Steve's more rule-abiding answers and Julian's several attempts to change her story had. John suspected this was the point, and also that he was going to fail to find the ‘right’ answer just as spectacularly as his siblings had when it was his turn, though he had carefully taken notes over Julian’s lessons so he at least wouldn’t make the same mistakes his sister had.“We’re...not at a low elevation,” he said of his home altitude. “I don’t remember the exact numbers off the top of my head, but we’re a good bit higher than Edmonton, a lot closer to the mountains.”
John tried to estimate the number of tests that could be performed to find the combination that produced maximum efficiency, provided they didn’t already have it. It was possible that some combinations, using single varietals and such, could do their jobs too well or something like that, making the melange of dragonfly and fairy wings the best solution – he didn’t know enough to know. “Yeah, you could probably use this as the basis for an Advanced research project,” he said. “The example potion, use that to illustrate a principle of component selection. I look at what my sister’s doing sometimes,” he added to explain why he was thinking about Advanced class research projects. “Though we could probably do most of the work now if we had the time and resources,” he added matter-of-factly.
He tried not to feel too ridiculously pleased with himself when Clark said he had a good point. “Also a good point,” he said when Clark extrapolated about the magical effects of flying creatures. “Hold on a moment – “ he wrote down lighter mass – less ener. expnd. “That one might be relatively easy to test,” he said. “More or less, anyway, for the magic side. Eat identical meals before performing identical tasks for a few days, then try the same routine with the potion...except for how hard it is to do the same thing even two days in a row." One day he got along fine with his sister, the next they were arguing and he didn't even know why. Different clubs met on different days. The kitchens didn't serve the same things consistently. Plus all the other things that made science really hard when it was off the books, without financial backers and a budget that allowed for ignoring the rest of the world for a while.
“Noted,” he said when Clark proposed a second hypothesis. “Yeah, Alberta’s not really your place for bright colors – landlocked, prairie provinces, that picture.” John added his fairy wings and began to heat the potion. “I read somewhere that your Texas is similar. Oil, steel, cattle...musical traditions of arguable quality. My mom thinks it's a shame that we've got one of the best universities in the world - " he said this, he noticed with mild irritation, with pride in his tone; he never believed people who sounded like that really had the data to back up their affection for their homes, so he wished he could have been more matter-of-fact about it - "in our city but we're better-known for a rodeo." His dad didn't mind so much, but he was from Saskatchewan and didn't only move west because of the universities in the first place. "I think this is starting to look faintly bluish," he added of the beginnings of his potion. He peered at his cauldron, looking for pieces of wing to see if they disintegrated or if they just infused something into the water. "The wizard who invents decent wizard lighting and gets us out of the candle age will never want for gold again," he joked.
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John
We'll have fun, fun, fun 'til they take our cauldrons away.
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John
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