Cue the existential crisis on Potions

Professor Sophie O'Malley

March 31, 2017 3:35 PM

Who are you? [Years VI-VII] by Professor Sophie O'Malley

With the school year fully back in swing, Sophie felt it was time to pull out one of her favorite lessons. She’d run it a few years ago with a different batch of Advanced students, and while she wasn’t entirely sure how much they’d enjoyed it, she’d had quite a blast, so here they were again.

She had started the students with it about a month ago, setting up the groundwork by brewing a Polyjuice potion in one of the earliest practical lessons for the year. Now, a month later, she had good news for them. “Your Polyjuice potions are done brewing!” she smiled, enthused by the scent of the completed brews that filled her classroom. It was usually an end-of-the-day thing, not an 8:00am thing as it was now, but given the set up for the lesson, the hard work was already done, leaving the room smelling like science.

Sophie had not given a complete instruction at the prior class, giving only her usual background information on the potion and its function, with instructions to be found on a given page of their textbooks, in this case 643. But now she could elaborate. “Before each of you is a small flask containing a sample of your brew, including a hair of whomever you partnered with a month ago. You may want to check the label, though, to make sure I correctly remembered who sits where.” Regardless it would turn them into someone else, but she wanted to be certain to give them the correct potions so they could at least know who they would turn into and prepare accordingly mentally.

“You definitely don’t need to drink the whole thing, though. One sip should do it, and when you taste it, believe me, you won’t feel inclined to keep going. Ideally you’ll be back to yourselves by the time this class ends, but just in case it doesn’t, I’ve warned your other professors that taking attendance may be a bit screwy.” Potions was followed immediately by Defense Against the Dark Arts, so as with the previous time the lesson was taught, she’d been the most concerned about informing Alfie Pye.

“Once you’ve become each other,” she went on, “I’d like two things to happen. One, have your partner look you over to confirm the results. It should feel like looking into a mirror, but depending on the strength and quality of your brew, some of your own traits may poke through. Two, get out a pen and parchment and write a little about the experience. How does it feel? What are your thoughts? How did you do? How did your partner do? That type of thing. I don’t need an essay; bullet points are fine.” Sophie glanced about the room, her crooked smile unaffected by the nervous and/or resistant expressions she anticipated seeing. “That’s all I got for you. Bottoms up!”

OOC: Because it’s a human-human change, there should be no dramatic side-effects. As mentioned, if your potion is somehow flawed, the worst that should happen is an incomplete transformation. This is a very likely possibility, as polyjuice can be challenging for even adult witches and wizards to brew. Keep that in mind. Further information about the potion can be found here. Do your best to be creative, follow the rules, and above all else, have fun!

Subthreads:

Wow, way to start the day off with an easy question.... by John Umland

Cue the existential crisis by Lauren Song - Teppenpaw

12 Professor Sophie O'Malley Who are you? [Years VI-VII] 34 Professor Sophie O'Malley 1 5

John Umland

April 06, 2017 8:03 PM

Wow, way to start the day off with an easy question.... by John Umland

The charms of Transfiguration had ensured that Potions had never been his favorite subject, but John had always been fond of his Potions lessons. They were, after all, the thing he pretty much directly attributed his having made a friend at Sonora to: he and Clark had been amicable acquaintances since John’s first year, but John had several amicable acquaintances and the phrase could use be used to describe Clark and almost everyone Clark had ever met. It was in Potions class where they had, by chance, had the ‘what? You too? I thought I was the only one…’ moment of realizing that someone else shared a narrow interest, in their case refining potion directions just to see what would happen.

As Clark, his favorite person after Joe at Sonora, was now gone and Professor O’Malley, who had never been his favorite teacher, was still present, he had expected Potions to be something of an irritant this year. His grandpa, however, had a saying: man plans, God laughs. Potions was still not exactly a barrel of laughs for him for the reasons he had known would keep it from being so from the start, but it was a class where he was still at the same level he had been at when he’d left in June. He had, accordingly, come to enjoy his hours in the laboratory more than he had ever expected and had thrown himself into the subject from the second week of school, focusing on perfection rather than entertaining himself in the hopes that between O’Malley and Taransay, there might not be too many whispers in the staff room that John Umland had lost the edge, or worse: contracted senioritis.

Better, John firmly believed, to tell the whole staff the whole tale than to be accused of senioritis. He barely felt like himself more than half the time now, but the fact that he could still muster up a fair amount of contempt for anyone who engaged in sloth and an even greater determination not to fall into such ways himself was reassuring.

Unfortunately, he was less patient with people than ever and not always totally in control of all his work. John thought he would have had a good time with the Polyjuice Potion on his own, but with help, it had been an exhausting trial to finish. It was much more difficult than it had been to remind himself that he still had to at least try to do the Right thing when he knew what it was, but he still knew he could not in all honesty argue himself into believing he was wrong about it being Right to be as polite and respectful to others as he knew how to be no matter how much he wanted to snap at them to shut up, or even just ignore them altogether. Nor was it Right to shirk his duties. He had to go out of his way for people; it was what was Right, and it didn’t matter that knowing this no longer helped him do it. Everyone had to have a code, and that was his.

He wondered, as he turned the flask in front of him in his hand, what his partner’s was and if he would know anything about it after turning into that person. He felt no great insight into Liac Reinhardt’s mind after turning into him a few years ago, but at the time, he hadn’t been thinking along these lines. He had instead been worried about the fact he was stuck in the body of someone attractive to the female of the species – something he had later discovered the person he had been speaking with was not really, but he was reasonably sure he and Clark had a silent agreement to never speak of that ever again, as recognizing each other as the potion wore off had been weird.

John clutched at the edges of his lab table as the potion took effect, his entire digestive system appearing to make a valiant attempt to eject itself through his mouth and everything else dredging up unpleasant memories of the hospital as it was affected by either burning or stabbing pain. He tried to wipe his face with his sleeve when it was over, but missed because neither his head nor his arm were in their customary positions. He muttered a curse and then began looking for his doppelganger. This did not take long, and he looked over the other John with a critical eye.

“Not bad,” he said, then immediately covered his ears as he was startled by the sound of the wrong voice coming out. “Maybe work on the expression a little,” he added as he lowered the other person’s hands back to his sides.

Curiosity stirred and he reached for a notebook he didn’t have. He’d have to remember any questions and answers he got, then. What he wanted to know was what would have happened if he’d taken a dose of this potion immediately after that unpleasantness at home – would he still have had a gunshot wound after he turned back into himself? If so, would he have been okay until that point, giving him more time to figure out what to do about it? If not, would the body his turned into have had a gunshot wound, too? He knew scars carried over, but what about actual, in-that-moment wounds? What would have happened had he consumed a potion with one of his own, pre-injury, hairs in it? – but he suspected he was the only person in the room who’d be okay with him taking a knife to his partner just to see what would happen and further suspected he’d be packed off to the loony bin if he stabbed himself while he was in someone else’s body just to see what would happen. Maybe he’d replicate the potion, Summon some hairs from other people, and try it sometime when he lacked an audience; with his roommate mysteriously gone, he had the luxury of doing that kind of thing again, he supposed, and it would help pass a few nights. He just wished he was up to figuring out a rat formulation to test the consuming-own-potion variation on before he tried that one on himself….

Irrelevant. Relevant things were the questions he could ask without getting expelled or committed. “What’s it like, being me?” he asked, and found himself more interested in the answer than he had meant to be. What’s it like for someone else, being me? Do you still understand other people? Does all the data feel different when you process it? What is it that’s not right, me or that heap of cells you currently inhabit?

16 John Umland Wow, way to start the day off with an easy question.... 285 John Umland 0 5

Lauren Song - Teppenpaw

April 18, 2017 5:11 PM

Cue the existential crisis by Lauren Song - Teppenpaw

All year long--or at least since her birthday--Lauren had been throwing around the big question: who am I? She walked into the same old classroom for the same old class at the same old school and just wanted to do something crazy. Lauren slumped into her seat and rested her chin on her hand. All her life she had been the goody-two shoes, supportive of her two amazing best friends and roommates, supportive of her mom and her siblings, supportive of her dad who lived overseas, and she was tired of it. Lauren wanted to do something crazy, something wild. She was sixteen year old and she hadn't even gone on a date with a boy or gone skinny dipping in her own pool.

Lauren sighed deeply. Here she was in class, doing the same old thing and living the same old life. She would do her homework, get good grades, and move on to university while watching her two best friends get married and live happily ever after. But what did she care about the future; Lauren wanted to do something crazy, but she just didn't know what. All she knew was that she wasn't happy with where she was right at this moment, and she didn't mean Potions class.

Professor O'Malley was enthusiastic about their Polyjuice potions being finished, and normally Lauren would've felt pleased with herself knowing she'd done her best. But instead she shrugged her shoulders, feeling unenthused by the whole thing. So what, they were going to try the potion? Big deal. Turning into someone else was kind of cool, but it wasn't the toe-curling, heart-pumping kind of excitement she was yearning for.

Lauren picked up her flask and turned it over in her hand. Maybe if she just refused and stormed out of class in some kind of dramatic fashion Professor O'Malley would fail her or kick her out of class. Then Lauren would have to explain to her mom why she wasn't taking potions anymore, and then tell her brother not to follow in her footsteps and yada yada. She knew she wouldn't do it; it was too important to her to be a good role model for her siblings and to make her mom proud.

Lauren popped open the flask. "Cheers?" she asked her partner, smiling at them as if nothing was wrong. She was getting pretty good at that. Lauren clinked her flask against her partner's before taking a small sip. The taste was horrific, and though the transformation wasn't painful, it was definitely not a walk in the park either. Lauren forgot all about her cramps and angst as her body morphed into someone else.

"Ugh, that was horrible. Why would anyone want to do that voluntarily?" Lauren shivered and rubbed her arms--but they weren't her arms or her hands. "Ahhh." She looked at her hands and feet, wishing she had a mirror. "Um, okay." She took a good look at her clone and smiled. The slightly wavy dark brown hair was flawless, the large brown almond eyes, the nicely trimmed eyebrows, and her pale skin were all there.

"Not bad." She leaned forward to peer at herself some more. "This is so weird. Does it feel weird being in my body? It sure feels strange being in yours."

19 Lauren Song - Teppenpaw Cue the existential crisis 303 Lauren Song - Teppenpaw 0 5