The theory behind it all. [Advanced.] on Potions

Professor Brooding

April 06, 2019 11:02 AM

The theory behind it all. [Advanced.] by Professor Brooding

Mary's break had consisted of getting married, so there was that. She didn't think there was probably much of anything that could spoil her mood, and she practically floated through the halls of Sonora. Indeed, even the realization that her Advanced Students would soon be graduating (well, half of them), and testing was coming up couldn't quite make her sour. Instead, she decided to help her students along with it all.

"I know some of you are taking this class purely for the practical use of potions," she acknowledge at the start of class during the first week. "That is generally my focus as well. However, with tests coming up soon and graduation on the other side for some of you, I want to make sure we've developed a strong theoretical foundation as well."

She knew her words were scary, but she had no intention of leaving it there. Instead, she smiled around the room at her students. "And I'm proud to say that I don't doubt you've all accomplished that. Today's work will be helpful for you practically and theoretically, but especially if you plan to pursue any sort of career or higher education ambitions that will include potions work. Cursebreaking, healing, research, and more, all involve the theory of potions."

Mary waved her wand and selected books from the shelves around the room floated over to land softly on her desk. She'd chosen them all beforehand but hadn't seen the need to carry them all around the room by hand, nor to make a mess of the room before she was ready. She gestured to the books and to the ingredient stores as she magicked another motion: rolls of parchment moved about to land in front of each student.

"In the real world, you rarely will work in isolation unless you choose to. In groups of two or three-" Although there weren't many more than that. "-I want you to work through the theory of the potions and ingredients on your scrolls. There's questions, diagrams, recipes, etc. You can use a hands-on approach and work with items from the stores, or you can do text research instead. You should be able to answer questions about chemistry, the muggle science, versus potions; the use of potions versus poultices and things in healing arts; and the different applications of spells or charms versus potions in curses, cursebreaking, defensive magic, etc. I really want you to dig into this."

Mary smiled around the room at them. "Please let me know if you have any questions."

OOC - Welcome back! Feel free to play with this. Whatever you think fits the lesson probably does. I know that Advanced Lessons are often more about student interactions than the class itself, and I wanted to make it pretty open for that. Mary is happy to interact and discuss anything, so if you want to post and don't have anyone to post with, feel free to chat with Mary.

Subthreads:

Feel better by Kir McLeod, Teppenpaw

Shall we work together? (tag Emerald) by Winston Pierce, Crotalus with Emerald Brockert, Aladren

22 Professor Brooding The theory behind it all. [Advanced.] 1424 Professor Brooding 1 5

Kir McLeod, Teppenpaw

April 12, 2019 9:53 PM

Feel better by Kir McLeod, Teppenpaw

Kir took a seat in Potions, his mood quickly plummeting as Professor Brooding mentioned graduation. Now that they were this side of Midterm, that was constantly on the teachers’ lips, for them counting down the weeks until the RATS and the grades their seventh year students would receive. For him, it meant something quite different. As a sixth year he, of course, would not be sitting major tests, would not be leaving to pursue a life outside these walls come summer… His eyes shifted to a certain blonde head in the row in front of him. He would not be. She would. Every time a teacher mentioned the fact that the seventh years would be graduating, it hit him like a punch in the chest.

The format of the day’s class seemed fairly open. And interesting. Kir assumed that they were supposed to be selective - find a potion, and get into detail about it - rather than answer all those questions about all potions. After all, he wasn’t sure many potions were useful to both the healing arts and curse breaking, and the phrase ‘dig deep’ implied getting into a few things in depth rather than giving a brief overview of everything. He rummaged through the available scrolls, finding the first one he laid his hands on to be ‘Draught of Peace’ - this was a Potion that he had some familiarity with, anecdotally more than personally, as it was kept in stock at the McLeods’ refuge centre. Obviously, the people who came to them tended to have issues, and the ways of treating said issues were a topic that he wasn’t exactly a stranger to. Whilst his parents did not discuss individual cases, as that would be a breach of confidentiality, subjects such as mental health, and approaches to treating it, were familiar enough subjects.

The Draught of Peace opened up a nice starting point for comparisons with other mood-altering magics, such as cheering charms. It also enabled comparison with non-magical drug therapies. Those were… a thing that Kir knew existed. Anti-depressants made more happy things… either appear inside you or stay circulating in you for longer. Or something. There were also elements to treatment that spanned both worlds - talking therapies, lifestyle changes. Things like exercise could help people with depression because it made your brain release good things. Maybe the same good things that the drugs did. He couldn’t remember… Were those same things produced or triggered by cheering charms? Non-magical science broke down how and why its drugs worked in order to improve them. He wondered whether magical people had looked into whether cheering charms worked the same way. And then he needed to tie that back to Potions…. The Draught of Peace was more anti-anxiety, or to relieve acute episodes of heightened emotions… So, that meant he needed to know about anxiety meds. He… did not. Even less than he knew about anti-depressants.

He supposed he would jot down all the thoughts and questions that were barrelling through his mind as a starting point, even if most of them were going to be accompanied by several pointed question marks for now. And then he would start with the ingredients in the Draught of Peace, looking each one up in his ingredients index to see what else they were used in to try to identify elements which had particularly calming effects.

He was also supposed to be working with other people. He knew what direction he wanted to take with this, and he had no desire to be drawn into a long discussion about what potion to study or what angle to come at it from. He had questions. Many, many questions which he wanted to find the answers to. And, whilst perhaps Professor Brooding could fail him on this particular class for failing to engage as well as he could in group work, he would overall be better off and better informed for both answering an essay question and for situations he was likely to come across in his real life if he researched this. Not that he was against working companionably on this, but he very much specifically wanted to work on this. Therefore, rather than seeking out a partner, he simply waved his wand, causing shining letters to appear above his own head reading ‘Draught of Peace/Mental Health’ (and, with a second flick of his wand, made it so that the words would let off a loud wail if anyone else tried to tamper with them because he was fairly sure that some of his classmates would find it amusing to remove all but the penultimate one and have it serve as a description of him) and bent his head over his parchment, beginning to scribble out everything that was currently buzzing around his brain.

13 Kir McLeod, Teppenpaw Feel better 366 Kir McLeod, Teppenpaw 0 5

Winston Pierce, Crotalus

May 01, 2019 2:08 PM

Shall we work together? (tag Emerald) by Winston Pierce, Crotalus

Winston had a pretty normal midterm break. There were parties, and Christmas with his family - the Anns had announced a plan to start running a ladies’ boarding house, which Father frowned at, partly because single young ladies should be getting married rather than renting rooms while pursuing education or careers (this disapproval extended toward both the Anns themselves as well as their potential boarders), but mostly because Thaddeus fully supported the idea. The whole thing had caused some tension over the holiday, but it was just the same tensions as were always there, just with a new topic to argue over. Winston had noticed Bettina - the Anns’ mother - had not been as solidly on the conservative side as she normally was, but he wasn’t sure if this was merely in support of her youngest daughters (something she was not exactly in the habit of doing though it wasn’t entirely unheard of) or if she actually approved of their current business venture.

Winston himself was mostly of the opinion that the Anns were too weird to ever be more than old maids (and they used to play Quidditch so they might even be secretly lesbians), so if they could bring in some extra money to the family, while still coming across as mostly respectable, it was all to the good. However, he didn’t dare voice this opinion in front of his father in case it came across as dissent, so he’d mostly stayed quiet on the point and tried to spend most of the Christmas day with Caitlin, who he trusted not to draw him into an argument he didn’t want to have.

Fortunately, nothing much came of the whole thing and the Anns left to go set up their new boarding house and life returned to its normal holiday activities, which in turn concluded and resulted in Winston and Caitlin returning to Sonora.

Specifically, at this moment, it was Potions for Winston, which was one of his more favored classes, mostly because Professor Wright had a tendency to drone on and on, which put Charms put of the running, and with the new professor in Care of Magical Creatures, he wasn’t quite sure what to expect from that one anymore. But Potions could be counted on to be pretty much the same without getting boring, and while he wasn’t a potions genius or anything, his work was consistently good, and excellent grades certainly helped to foster a good opinion of a class.

The day’s assignment wasn’t too terrible, aside from the part where they were supposed to compare their potion to muggle chemistry, but he thought he could probably just ignore that part without risking so many points that his grade would be in danger of dropping down to merely Acceptable. He figured his E was guaranteed so long as the rest of it was well researched and deeply detailed. If he did especially well on it, maybe he’d even get an O, but he probably shouldn’t expect that if he was going to intentionally ignore part of the instructions.

As they were allowed to work in small groups for the project, he naturally turned toward Emerald, who was easily the most pleasant person to work with in the entire class.

“Would you like to work together?” he asked formally, because it would be rude to assume his welcome. “Is there any potion you find especially interesting?” he added, which he hoped would be taken as collaboration in choosing a topic if she did want to work together, or simple interest in her opinions if she didn’t.

1 Winston Pierce, Crotalus Shall we work together? (tag Emerald) 370 Winston Pierce, Crotalus 0 5

Emerald Brockert, Aladren

May 08, 2019 6:14 PM

Of course by Emerald Brockert, Aladren

It always seemed that professors were trying to guess why students took their class. Emerald personally was taking the ones she was taking because she found them interesting and more practical than the ones she hadn't selected. Though the sixth year had decided to continue with Defense mostly because she had Topaz for a sister.

And she probably would have continued COMC and Herbology but to take every class offered was insane, even for an Aladren. Surely, if one over extended themselves, their overall grades would suffer. Emerald would rather have quality over quantity in this case and she liked to have some downtime so she could read for pleasure. Plus, she had prefect duties, which this year also included being part of the school concert, something she never would have done had she had a choice in the matter.

It also came across as a bit arrogant and show-offy to her to take every single class. Like you were saying Look at me, look how smart I am! . She fully expected Topaz to do exactly this. The younger Aladren already pretty much enjoyed rubbing the fact that she'd won Biggest Brain and Emerald hadn't in the sixth year's face every chance she got.

Then again, this was the least of Topaz's faults.

Anyway, Emerald really didn't mind a theory lesson. True, she was probably never going to need it-and she was never ever going to need to have anything to do with Muggle chemistry, honestly she couldn't understand why professors wasted time on Muggle stuff outside of Muggle Studies which was an elective for a reason, since it wasn't all that useful-but she enjoyed learning and she found theory fairly interesting.

She received her scroll and Winston turned to her. "Certainly." Working with the Crotalus was always an enjoyable experience.

11 Emerald Brockert, Aladren Of course 358 Emerald Brockert, Aladren 0 5

Winston

May 20, 2019 9:25 PM

Excellent by Winston

Winston smiled as Emerald accepted his offer to work together. "Thank you, it is always a pleasure working with you, Emerald," he said formally, not quite flirting - he didn't want to be too forward - but he didn't think it would hurt to express his appreciation for her company.

He nodded toward her scroll. "What did you get assigned to research?"

Picking up his own, he unrolled it and glanced over its contents, grimacing slightly. It wasn't in itself a bad potion to study, but it was hardly a pleasant one (not that Winston could really think of any pleasant potions, come to that, other than Felix Felicis) to discuss with a girl he was all but formally courting. It was reportedly foul tasting (he'd been lucky enough to never need to experience it first hand) and just thinking about broken or missing bones was hardly romantic. "I got Skele-Gro," he told her reluctantly. He sighed then put on a more positive face. "It could be a lot worse. It's Healing, so we can get into some Healing Charms, compare them." He had no intention of looking into similar muggle medical techniques, and he seriously doubted muggles could regrow bones without magic anyway. "And it will be interesting to look into the theory of how it identifies if it needs to just mend one or more bones or actually regrow them."

He looked at the recipe and noted, "It has Chinese Chomping Cabbage, Pufferfish, and Scarab Beetles for ingredients. They shouldn't be too hard to learn about, none of those are particularly rare. Is there any overlap with what we need to study from your scroll?"

1 Winston Excellent 370 Winston 0 5

Emerald

May 23, 2019 1:17 AM

Indeed by Emerald

Emerald felt her cheeks go warm at Winston's words. She smiled."Thanks, I'm always happy to work with you too." The Aladren had always very much enjoyed the other sixth year's company. Which she guessed made him sort of special since she actually liked being around him as opposed to others who really got on her nerves.

Or maybe it was just small children she objected to. Or possibly just younger siblings and when there was a huge mass of them. Ruby was lovely but Topaz was a little monster. Or she had been, now she was growing into a big monster. Emerald would not put it past the second year to kill someone some day. The younger three were just an irritating mass that weren't probably so bad individually. She generally didn't have an issue with her cousins though. In small doses.

"Oh that's not so bad." Emerald replied. She looked at her scroll."I have Wit Sharpening Potion which isn't exactly healing but it does act as an antidote to the Confundus Charm." As far the Aladren was concerned, this was a very valuable potion to keep around.With a sister like Topaz one needed to keep their wits about them. Plus, it helped one when studying. "And it has scarab beetles."

11 Emerald Indeed 358 Emerald 0 5