Gettin' wiggy with it [Years III, IV, and V] on Potions

Professor Sophie O'Malley

July 16, 2017 12:08 AM

Gettin' wiggy with it [Years III, IV, and V] by Professor Sophie O'Malley

Typically, one would not consider 3:00 in the afternoon to be “morning”, but as Sophie had learned when pregnant with her boys, the title of “morning sickness” was incredibly misleading. Randomly being ill hadn’t been too terrible at first - it was in fact the first indication that maybe she ought to take a pregnancy test again - but now, Sophie was finding her recently-discovered pregnancy off to a bit of a rocky start. And boy, howdy, did this baby not like anything Sophie put in her body.

She had been fine for the length of the Beginners class, which was immediately after lunch, so she had foolishly let her guard down. But in the half-hour reprieve she had between that and the Intermediate class, the sickness came at her with its full force, sending her running for a more appropriate location to be ill. She was away for longer than expected, as when she returned to the classroom, most if not all of the intermediate students had already arrived. She glanced at the clock: 3:40pm. A full ten minutes after the class was scheduled to begin. Damn it.

“Sorry about that, guys,” she said sheepishly to the pairs of thirteen-, fourteen-, fifteen-, and potentially sixteen-year-old eyes she felt on her. Sophie moved slowly behind her desk, one hand on her stomach; she was no longer in any extreme state of nausea or discomfort, but it lingered there nonetheless. “Today we’re working on….” she trailed off, turning pages in her notes to find the day’s plan. She really had not expected to be out of the room for this long. “The Wiggenweld potion,” she said at last.

Normally Sophie posed questions to her students - does anyone know what this potion does? Etc. - but she was thrown off her game by the lingering taste of vomit in her mouth, so she mostly just wanted to get the kids brewing as soon as possible so she could sink into her desk chair and dig out a mint from the drawers. “Instructions are on page 413 of your books. Go ahead and get started.” And then she did as she aspired to, what with the sinking and digging. She also did some mental math, trying to figure out exactly when this baby would come and when she should, like, make an announcement to people other than her husband.

OOC: Instructions are:
Add salamander blood until the potion turns red.
Stir until the potion turns orange.
Add more salamander blood, this time until it turns yellow.
Stir until the potion turns green.
Add more salamander blood, until the potion turns turquoise.
Heat until it turns indigo.
Add more salamander blood until the potion turns pink.
Heat until the potion turns red.
Add five lionfish spines.
Heat until the potion turns yellow.
Add five more lionfish spines.
Add flobberworm mucus, until the potion turns purple.
Stir until it turns red.
Add more flobberworm mucus, this time until it turns orange.
Stir till it turns yellow.
Shake and add until it turns orange again.
Add honeywater until it turns turquoise.
Heat until it turns pink.
Add salamander blood until it turns green.

12 Professor Sophie O'Malley Gettin' wiggy with it [Years III, IV, and V] 34 Professor Sophie O'Malley 1 5

Louis Valois, Aladren

July 21, 2017 3:18 PM

Join the club by Louis Valois, Aladren

Professor O’Malley was late. Ten minutes late. Normally, Louis would either be chatting and enjoying the reprieve, or getting mildly annoyed that they couldn’t just start the lesson already, but today he wasn’t in the mood to do either. Flopped over his desk, he just sat there and stared into space, unsuccessfully trying not to think about anything, and especially not the summer.

He’d received two letters that morning. The first had been from his cousin Juliette, a response to his somewhat dramatically written plea. It had been full of sympathy and kindness, telling him not to make any rash decisions, but assuring him that he could stay with her, in Britain, over the summer if he really didn’t want to go home. Having already been disowned from the family, she understood some of the moral dilemmas he was facing. The other letter had been from his grandmother.

Normally, Louis loved hearing from his grandmother. She was the family member he was closest to. They shared similar ideas, and she was always the one person in his family who understood him (other than Juliette, of course, but officially she was no longer a Valois). Louis’s grandmother was the main spanner in the works, the person who he would miss if he really did run away. And, somehow, she seemed to know all about his plans.

My dear, do what you want afterwards, but please come home this summer. If my advice means anything to you, come back to Paris after term ends, before you make any decisions. That is all I ask of you.

He couldn’t really say no to his grandmother, not when she asked him like that. It was rare of her to give him direct orders. Normally she gave him advice, helped him talk things through, and she must have had a good reason to write like that. He wasn’t sure how she knew that he’d been planning to stay away from home this summer, but now he was torn. Should he go back, this one last time, or should he ignore his grandmother and cut ties completely? What would he regret more: going back to his father, his family, and his old life, based on all the values he hated; or turning his back on his grandmother, who had always been there for him?

Professor O’Malley finally arrived, interrupting his musings. He was relieved when she gave them their instructions for the lessons without asking questions. He usually liked the opportunity to answer the questions, but today he felt that getting on and immersing himself in potion-making could be the distraction from his thoughts that he needed.

He prepared his cauldron, still not managing to divert his thoughts from the summer. He absent-mindedly reached for the salamander blood, only to clumsily miss it, knocking over the bottle. Thanks to Quidditch, his reflexes were quick enough to prevent much spillage, but there was still salamander blood both on his desk and the desk next to him.

“F**k, sorry about that,” he apologised to the desk owner, grimacing at his unusual clumsiness as he reached for his wand to clear up the mess. Great. He just couldn’t catch a break these days.

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