Professor Mary Brooding
September 07, 2018 3:08 AM
Identifying Your Opportunities [Advanced: VI, VII] by Professor Mary Brooding
Mary was writing Golpalott’s Third Law on the chalkboard before students came in. She was happier than usual today, but also exhausted. After receiving approval from Deputy Headmistress Skies to begin a new program for Advanced and Intermediate students, Mary had been eager to begin. She must’ve been terrible company at dinner when she brought a number of papers to work on and left quickly, kissing Tabitha a swift goodnight before withdrawing to her quarters to iron out the details of what was sure to be a massive undertaking. Her handwriting now, as a result, suffered, and she attempted to the write the law in its entirety three times before giving up, erasing it all, and waving her wand to get magic to do what her tired hands would not.
Today was not the day to be tired, unfortunately, and she took a steadying breath hoping the extra oxygen to her brain would wake her up. As the students made their way into the classroom and to their desks, they each found a small scroll with details of the new program. She was hesitant to call it a proper assistantship or apprenticeship, although that’s largely what it was in practice. She was also hesitant to guarantee any extra credit. However, all of those were possible outcomes for interested students, and Mary began the lecture with this in mind.
“Good morning, everyone,” Mary greeted, her tone more subdued than normal despite the smile on her face. She hoped it wasn’t too obvious that she’d hardly slept the night before. “I have some exciting news for you. Sonora is going to be doing a trial run of a new academic program available to Advanced and Intermediate students. The Intermediate version will be a bit different so please note that the information in each of your scrolls pertains only to your class.” She always tried to make eye contact with as many of her students as she could and today was no different.
“Advanced students can expect to work with me to prepare ingredients and potions for upcoming classes and those interested in teaching Potions can help with grading papers and preparing lectures as well,” she tried to keep her description vague in case any additional opportunities arose later or in case some things turned out to be impossible. “Students who are interested can talk with me after class or during my office hours. I am currently anticipating taking on just one Advanced student but am open to taking on two if they are in different years, so this could turn into a two year opportunity for those of you who are in your sixth year now. If you’re not sure whether you are interested, feel free to ask me questions after class as well.”
Mary couldn’t help perking up as she spoke. This was the sort of thing she would’ve killed for when she was in school and she hoped to find some hint of excitement in the faces looking back at her now. She tried not to look too close in case all she found was the 8:00am blues instead.
“Now let’s get into our lesson for the day!” she said, gesturing at the chalk board. “I think we’ve discussed Golpalott’s Third Law before in the context of poisons, as Golpalott himself discussed, but I want to also touch on another area where this Law applies. Does anybody have any ideas? Very good!” she said when one student gave a close enough approximation to her point.
“While Golpalott was speaking about actual poisons, this Law also applies to mixed potions of other varieties. If someone has been given an Elixir to Enduce Euphoria and a Love Potion, it stands to reason that a Love Potion antidote won’t remove all the affects they’re suffering. Or enjoying, maybe. However, this can cause particular issues for healers. While a Love Potion antidote might cure the Love Potion itself, leaving behind the Elixir to Enduce Euphoria effects could have a number of serious consequences. In some cases, patients have overdosed on antidotes when their remaining Euphoria has been misidentified as Love Potion symptoms and antidotes were continually applied.” She shuddered, thinking of the patients who were now unable to feel any infatuation without Love Potion treatments now. “In other cases, the leftover effects of Elixir to Enduce Euphoria have been massively beneficial, helping ease the heartbreak of getting over a Love Potion. However, this treatment is best applied separately and in a controlled manner.”
Mary looked around the room. She herself was enjoying the throes of love in her personal life and she wondered, in this room full of fifteen to eighteen year olds, how many of them were thinking of their own partners and romantic interests. Perhaps she should’ve chosen a different example.
“There are numerous potion pairs where these sorts of issues arise. Consider Volubilis Potion and Polyjuice Potion, Hiccoughing Solution and Pepperup Potion, et cetera.”
Mary moved to stand beside a row of cauldrons on a table at the front of the room. “We’ve been practicing bottling and labeling potions throughout this term, so you should all have systems to do that now but I can help if you need it,” she started, glancing around to see if anyone looked particularly confused. “You’ll be working alone for this activity but you can discuss your work with your neighbors. I’d like each person to take a vial of each potion, label it, and take it back to your own desk for analysis. You’ll be trying to identify which two potions are combined in each using some of the methods in your book and that we’ve discussed: testing them against other ingredients for color changes, testing their effects on plant matter, smelling them, heating them or cooling them, various spells, and more. Feel free to experiment but please don’t taste any of them.” One of the potions was indeed a mix with Polyjuice Potion, her own hair used for the recipe, and another had Shrinking Solution. Neither of these were particularly dangerous but would certainly cause issues and there were only five potion mixes altogether so two out of five causing effects like that were not good odds. She’d shied away from Love Potion just in case.
“Your homework will be to write up a list of antidote combinations for each of the potion mixes you identify.”
Mary nodded, trying to remember whether she’d covered everything. “I’ll be walking around so if anyone has any questions about this or about the opportunity I mentioned at the start of class, please just let me know. Go ahead and begin!”
(OOC – Presumably this is something they’re all capable of, so feel free to play around with whatever you think might be a way to test a potion, just make it clear whether your character is doing so because they learned it, because they’re making an educated guess, or because they have no idea what they’re doing. If you choose to have your character drink one of the potions, play around with the effects but tag Mary and she’ll come help.
Golpalott’s Third Law was from the Harry Potter wikia and I made the rest up. But it sounds like it makes sense, right?
Enjoy!)
Subthreads: The missing Spark by Jozua Sparks, Teppenpaw with Lily Spencer, Pecari, Professor Mary Brooding
Of Fairs, Foreign Boys and Family Dysfunction by Tasha DuBois, Aladren
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Professor Mary Brooding
Identifying Your Opportunities [Advanced: VI, VII]
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Professor Mary Brooding
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Jozua Sparks, Teppenpaw
September 13, 2018 11:49 AM
The missing Spark by Jozua Sparks, Teppenpaw
Potions was Jozua’s best class. It wasn’t his favorite - that was DADA, which was a close second place in terms of being his best class. Nor was potions even the one class he had always scored the highest grades in, at least not until last year when he stopped blowing up his cauldron on purpose (while making it seem an accident). But it was the one he understood the best, the one he had put in the most effort to learn. After all, to be a safe and responsible firebug, one had to have a very good grasp of exactly how the ingredients worked together if one wanted to create an alarming amount of smoke or induce explosions without actually endangering anybody.Now that he was Being A Good Wizard, though, a lot of the appeal of the class had been lost. He had no interest in pursuing the subject professionally, except in as much as it might apply to curse breaking. As potions was one of the prerequisites for the college program he wanted to attend, he figured that amount of application was closer to ‘some’ than ‘none’ but potions for its own sake just wasn’t for him.
So while he briefly considered the offer of the assistantship Professor Brooding was making available, he just as swiftly rejected it. Maybe if Professor Hawthorne made a similar opportunity, he could go for that, but now that he couldn’t blow things up, potions just didn’t have the spark (heh) and shine it used to have for him.
When Professor O’Malley had still been teaching, he spent most of the first half of fifth year keeping his head down, and hoping she was too busy staying on top of the other accident magic disasters from the rest of the class to get too suspicious about why the usual disasters from him had so abruptly stopped. Then after she was stuck outside the school during the Quarantine, he spent the rest of the year more concerned about (a) the realization that he’d been the one to infect the whole school with a plague, and (b) his upcoming CATS to really dwell too much on what he was missing in the class.
Now though, with the new teacher, he was less concerned about discovery since she didn’t have a low bar baseline to compare him against. And his RATS were still too far off to be be a distraction. So he wondered sometimes, what she thought of him, with his fine technique and excellent grasp of how ingredients reacted together, and the sad, longing looks he gave to his fire seeds every time he left them in his ingredient kit instead of dropping them on the sly into a potion where they had no business being.
At least today’s lesson wasn’t one that he would have been inclined to mess with. With unknown potions, the risk of a bad reaction would have been too high. He
As he copied down Golpalot’s Law, he wondered briefly if it applied to poison combinations that had the same antidote. Like if Poison A and Poison B were both neutralized by a bezoar, would a bezoar cure a poison made of A and B mixed together? Professor Brooding’s example did not clarify the issue, but it did not seem pertinent to the day’s lesson so he tabled the thought and made a note to ask later. He might have time during class today if he sorted out what the blends were quickly enough, otherwise it could wait until their next theory lesson on the topic.
He filled a vial from each of the cauldrons provided, and labeled each one with his name, the date, and the appropriate potion identifier.
Bringing the five vials back to his desk, he started by examining color and consistency. He noted down the ingredients that could be eliminated or indicated based on those factors. As he was unused to working with blends, he obviously could not recognize specific potions based on that, but any potion with fire seeds in it had to be a little cloudy, and usually smoked a bit, so he could eliminate any potion that used those from a clear translucent or even a uniformly opaque blend.
He still did not have any solid leads on what any of the blends could be when he finished that step. Mostly that had been an exercise in elimination, rather than positive identification. But it was a good place to start and gave him a few clues on how to proceed.
The next least intrusive step would be smelling them. Heating, cooling, and introducing new ingredients would upset the current balance and might turn the potion inert or alter its effects. Smelling would not risk the integrity and might give him a solid positive on some ingredients.
He uncorked one and took a good sniff. He frowned, trying to identify any one individual scent. He took another whiff, and frowned again. Then he held the vial out to his neighbor and asked, “Does that smell like its got fluxweed in it to you?”
1
Jozua Sparks, Teppenpaw
The missing Spark
348
Jozua Sparks, Teppenpaw
0
5
Lily Spencer, Pecari
September 16, 2018 7:24 PM
I can substitute. by Lily Spencer, Pecari
Potions was one class Lily hadn’t planned on taking as an Advanced class, but her course load had been too little this year, so she’d taken it on. It didn’t seem too terrible so far, and they had a new professor. Lily hoped she wouldn’t be as strict, but with a surname like ‘Brooding,’ she couldn’t be sure what to expect.As always, she entered and took a seat next to her best friend. “Hi,” she said before unpacking her bag. Since she’d become a Prefect, Lily had been working very hard to become a better student. The Advanced courses made her feel like she were drowning, but she didn’t want to ask for a tutor just yet. Advanced students were supposed to be the tutors, after all. It all went by so quickly, but at least Potions class was concrete and the ingredients stayed the same. With other courses like Transfiguration and Charms, all the theoretical work went straight over her head. It was the reason why, for a brief moment, she fancied taking on an assistantship with Professor Brooding, but she quickly dismissed it. She wasn’t that interested in Potions and she especially didn’t want to do more work than she needed to on a school subject. Homework and projects were enough.
Lily went forward and filled her phials with the different potions. The activity today seemed both simple and exponentially difficult. She couldn’t decide whether to be filled with dread or excitement. Maybe a bit of both.
Despite all of her worries about coursework and the future, she’d sat down next to Jozua with a purpose. They hadn’t spoken about their ‘date’ last term since leaving Sonora for the summer, but after a few months of thinking about it here and there, she was tired of waiting for both of them to get over their fears. She wasn’t sure what she was even afraid of, it wasn’t as though he was going to eat her. It was clear nothing was going to happen if Lily didn’t do something about it. Before class, Lily’d been nervous, but now she just wanted to get it over with. It seemed as though their difficult conversations always took place in Potions class.
Jozua asked her a question and held out a phial to her. She leant over and sniffed. “Yes, I think there’s a bit. Could be mixed with Polyjuice Potion.” That fluxweed was an ingredient in a Polyjuice Potion was one fact, at least, she knew. Lily looked around to see if there was a plant she could borrow in the room, and quickly went to retrieve a decorative potted plant with large green leaves from a shelf. “Don’t think she’ll mind, do you? She did say we could test potions on plant matter.” Lily uncorked her own phial and took a whiff. “There’s definitely a hint of wormwood. It’s potent.” Lily rubbed her nose. “But wormwood is a popular ingredient."
As she prepared to test a few drops on the plant's leaf, Lily calmly asked, “So, when are we going on another date?”
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Lily Spencer, Pecari
I can substitute.
357
Lily Spencer, Pecari
0
5
Jozua
October 03, 2018 3:26 PM
Learning to substitute ingredients is important- Professor! by Jozua
Jozua sniffed again after Lily gave her assessment. Yes, quite potentially polyjuice in there. That had fluxweed and wormwood and he could just barely detect both by scent in his phial. He wasn’t sure what else had both of those ingredients, though it was possible, since it was a mix, that one potion had the fluxweed and the other the wormwood. As Lily had already noted, the later was fairly common.“Yeah, probably,” Jozua agreed when his best friend returned with a potted plant. Professor Brooding did say that was a method they could use and he wasn’t sure where else they were expected to find plants to test on if not from the room itself. He certainly didn’t make a habit of carrying around vegetation with him wherever he went, and he doubted anyone else did either.
Well, he wouldn’t entirely put it past Professor Xavier, but he was the Herbology professor so that kind of went with the territory.
Jozua was still sniffing at his last vial, trying to pick out distinctive scents, when Lily asked another question, making him startle badly enough as he jolted upright to stare at her in disbelief that he spilled the concoction all over himself.
He wasn’t sure which to panic about first - the unknown potion seeping through his robes toward his skin, or Lily’s question.
The former was slightly more time sensitive, and was part of a unit on antidotes so he went with that one. “Eek! Professor! Help!” Already his robe was turning blue and he really didn’t want to give the Aladrens in the room flashbacks to their sorting. Besides, he was a Teppenpaw; turning blue felt disloyal.
He didn’t have his wand out to clean it up himself, and reaching for it would both take too long and require the use of at least one of his hands which he was currently using to hold the school robe and his underlying shirt out away from his skin. He was panicking a little, but not so bad he couldn’t take some self protective and damage control measures.
And part of him was glad that this distraction was giving him time to figure out how to answer Lily, because he didn’t really think ‘Hey, not dating was your idea!’ was really the best tact to take.
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Jozua
Learning to substitute ingredients is important- Professor!
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Jozua
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Professor Mary Brooding
October 04, 2018 12:05 AM
As is learning to breathe. by Professor Mary Brooding
"Hold your breath, Mr. Sparks," Mary smiled, approaching the student at the sound of breaking glass. At least students wore shoes to class, a benefit to more formal potion-making settings. She waved her wand once to clear the glass and the rest of the spilled potion from the floor and the front of Mr. Sparks' robes. "Funny effect, isn't it?" she said, examining the blue. "Good call on keeping it away from your skin, this has... well I won't tell you what's in it, but it wouldn't have been pleasant. Five points to Teppenpaw for your quick thinking and lack of panicking. I'm guessing you particularly don't want to turn blue?"Finite," she added, tapping the front of his robes and reaching into one of the pockets of her dress. Producing a bottle of Restoration Potion first, she dropped some of it onto his robes."If you'd ingested it, it wouldn't be that easy," she added in a soft, warning voice. She wasn't out to scare students but hated to think how Mr. Sparks would've reacted if she'd forced bottles of antidote down his throat while he panicked about what was going to happen. "Are you alright?"
A smile found its way to her face and she chuckled quietly. "I did say that testing these on various materials would be adequate," she said. "Let me know if you need anything else."
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Professor Mary Brooding
As is learning to breathe.
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Professor Mary Brooding
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Jozua Sparks
October 04, 2018 9:52 AM
How about learning to play it cool? by Jozua Sparks
He hadn’t thought to hold his breath. He had, after all, just been sniffing at the potion, but at the professor’s instruction, he did so immediately and without question. When covered with an unknown magical elixir, and the lady who knew what it was told you to hold your breath, you held your breath. Maybe some combination of the potion with fabric? Clearly there was an interaction going on there, what with it turning blue and all.Professor Brooding sorted it all out and Jozua let out his breath and drew in a fresh one in relief. “Yes, fine, thank you,” he confirmed his continued good health after the near miss. He smiled up at her guilelessly, and crossed his finger over his heart, “I promise not to ingest anything,” he vowed.
As she left, he leaned into Lily and whispered, “First time I ever earned points for spilling a potion and breaking the glass. She must be new at this.”
Sitting back, he reviewed his work station and declared, “I need a new sample of that one, be right back!”
Before Lily could object, he was on his feet, and moving to the large cauldrons at the front again. He took his time dipping a new vial in for another sample and labeling it, making a show of being super careful not to spill or drop it again, but mostly using to time to compose an answer to Lily’s question that had started this whole mess.
When he got back, he offered the one he deemed the most casual and least weird of all the options that had occurred to him, “How does Saturday afternoon work for you? MARS water room at four?”
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Jozua Sparks
How about learning to play it cool?
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Jozua Sparks
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Lily
October 04, 2018 9:19 PM
I'm cool. We're cool. Everything's cool. by Lily
Startled by Jozua's reaction, Lily dropped more than enough of the potion she was holding on the leafy plant in front of her, and the entire thing shrunk - pot and all. She would have written down her observation if Jozua's current situation hadn't been a pressing concern. Panicked, she didn't know what to do, but called out for the professor as well. These were poisonous mixtures, after all. Luckily, Professor Brooding was quick and even gave them a little hint of what to expect as she cleaned him up. Maybe there was some sort of itching potion in it that only reacted to human skin.Lily grinned at his remark. "And wants to win us over," she whispered back. She imagined someone else like Professor Skies taking off points and making them clean up the mess themselves.
Feeling relieved now that their little fiasco was over, Lily wrote down her observations of each potion whilst Jozua ran off to retrieve more.
Potion #1:
- mixed with colour-changing potion
- potentially polyjuice? smells of fluxweed and wormwood
- contains something harmful(?) to human skin
Potion #2:
- potent wormwood
- shrinking solution mixed in - perhaps incorrectly brewed to be poisonous?
Lily was unsure how to return the plant to its original size. She pointed her wand and said, "Finite," but nothing happened. It was most likely because she was trying to reverse the effects of a potion rather than a spell. Sighing, she lifted the wee pot and examined it to see if the potion had caused any other effects as Jozua returned.
"For what?" she asked immediately, and then remembered what she'd asked him earlier. "Oh." She suddenly felt embarrassed, caught somewhat off-guard. "Yeah, that works. What should we do then?"
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Lily
I'm cool. We're cool. Everything's cool.
357
Lily
0
5
Tasha DuBois, Aladren
October 09, 2018 6:33 AM
Of Fairs, Foreign Boys and Family Dysfunction by Tasha DuBois, Aladren
Tasha fairly bounced into Potions. She was super looking forward to midterm and it put her in a pretty good mood.Not that she wasn't normally in one though the whole Juniper-Finn-Gwen thing did put a damper on her spirits a tiny bit. However, Tasha and her parents-Father was taking time off work to go too because it was her school break-were going to Israel over midterm and only dropping by the gathering with Mother's family breifly. In all honesty, it wasn't that bad for Tasha as nobody was ever nasty to her or ignored her and she still got cool presents from everyone.Well ok, Mrs. Royce tended to look at her as if she was some sort of insect but other than that, everyone was cool to her. Even Aunt Tawny who generally only paid attention to her husband and children and Fletcher who was Step-Grandma's dad and married to Mrs. Royce but much much nicer. Not that that was saying a lot but anyway, because Step-Great-Grandfather was a huge awkward mouthful, he let Tasha call him by his first name. He even bought Tasha and her parents Yule presents despite his wife not wanting him to.
Still, the Aladren-and her mother-preferred to travel to far off locations to times with the family. Because there was still drama and Mother didn't want any part of it.
So they were still going to the locations that had been represented in the international fair that they'd had at Sonora for years ago. Which reminded Tasha that the Midsummer event this year was going to be the fair again. She wondered what they were going to do this time. Hopefully something fun. And hopefully Finn would hang out with Juniper and make up for last year. As for the Aladren, maybe she could hang out with Joe. That would be awfully fun and she would enjoy spending time with the other seventh year. After all, as much she didn't like thinking it, realistically they probably wouldn't see each other after graduation. Tasha would be going places all over the world, eventually probably meeting some foreign guy- not part of the noblesse because she didn't want to be cheated on and anyway, she didn't consider French people foreign when she herself was half-French-and marrying him. Maybe her children could have triple citizenship. America, France, and....wherever her husband was from. That would be super awesome.
Anyway, now she had to go to Potions. Tasha had been conflicted about which classes to take because she wanted to be there for Juniper but at the same time she wanted to take the classes that were most practical. She had chosen the latter and now she only shared Transfig with her cousin. Sometimes, Tasha wondered if she'd made the right choice.
Right now though, she needed to listen to Professor Brooding's lesson so she put all thoughts of her cousin and Israel and foreign guys and fairs and and not seeing Joe anymore and family dysfunction aside. Fortunately, Potions was an extremely interesting class. In fact, Tasha found all classes interesting-which had also made picking classes hard. She was a true Aladren who loved to learn.
She went up to the cauldrons and filled up her five vials. Then she took them back to her seat. Tasha turned to the person next to her. "So what do you think? Does that one look like Shrinking Solution to you? Because I think it is."
11
Tasha DuBois, Aladren
Of Fairs, Foreign Boys and Family Dysfunction
323
Tasha DuBois, Aladren
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5