Mary Brooding-Hawthorne
December 20, 2019 11:18 AM
First Things First [Beginners, I-II] by Mary Brooding-Hawthorne
Beginners potions. Mary loved teaching beginners potions. To be fair, she loved teaching every level, and for very different reasons, but there was something about Fall term beginners classes that were particularly special. She loved being there to witness schema shifts in her students, particularly in those who had not experienced much magic prior to Sonora. Also, first and second year students were super easy to impress.With her new, cropped hair left down - it was too short to put up now! - Mary was feeling confident about the new day. She had also selected today's lesson very carefully. She'd selected everything about today very carefully.
Today was the first day of classes.
She chose something lighter than her usual velvet outfits, as it was still quite warm outside, and she was afraid her more buttoned look might frighten new students. Today, she wore a simple blue linen dress, with her buttoned sleeves loosely rolled up to her elbows, and a green hat to match the green embroidered flowers and things around the hem of her dress, where it brushed the floor and tops of her feet. It was comfortable, but it was also light. Today, she was determined to be light.
As the first and second year students made their way into class, Mary thought of everything else she'd been so careful about. Bookshelves lined one wall, with labels indicating what the subject was, but also what language the book was in. Most books were in English, but there were others - particularly copies of the textbooks - which were in Spanish, Russian, Chinese, French, German, and various other languages. She always said a silent word of gratitude for Dorian having sorted them all a few years previously.
The rest of her classroom was intended to be welcoming as well, with ingredients in neat cupboards and shelves, mostly locked away in the ingredient closet where they could not be accessed without her being there to allow it, and sturdy desks set around the room with tall stools so students could sit or stand as they preferred. A large window let in natural light, but overhead lanterns could be lit if students needed more light to see by as well. Also, magic.
"Welcome to Sonora," Mary smiled, once her students had selected places around the room. "And welcome to potions class. I am Professor Brooding-Hawthorne, although Professor Brooding is perfectly fine, and we will be working together over the next several years to explore the theory and practice of potion-making, ingredient collection and maintenance, and various other topics. I am very excited to work with all of you."
As she did with every beginning class, Mary began with a brief overview of what potions were, what was defined as a potion, how it was different from a solution or mixture, etc. These were all things to be found in their textbooks as well, but sometimes it helped to go over them together. Then, finally, the part she knew many students were waiting for.
"Today we are going to be working on the Antidote to Common Poisons," she said, waving her wand to encourage a bit of chalk to take notes for her on the board. She also sent around a stack of scrolls, each marked with the language that they were in so students could choose, and each with the recipe they would be using on it. "However, this potion takes much longer than we have in class today, so we will be working in pieces. First year students, I would like you to complete the first half of this recipe. Second year students, since you have made this before, I would like you to complete the second half. I have potions for you to work with that have finished their time in different types of cauldrons. I want you to take particular care on your wand work. For homework, first year students will write about bezoars, the first ingredient you'll be using, and their various applications. Second year students will write about the use for different types of cauldrons and why it's important, what they do, etc. We'll talk more about these topics this week as well, and that'll be due the beginning of next week."
Mary had selected this potion because it was helpful - many beginning students worried about how dangerous potions were and she liked to remind them that it could also be lifesaving - and because it didn't have anything sticky or slimy in the ingredients, particularly the first half. Bezoars were a little gross feeling, but she hoped powdering it wouldn't cause problems for anyone. Plus, the point was for first year students to get used to the classroom, where to find ingredients they didn't already have, how to measure and prepare ingredients, etc., not to really dig into potion-making just yet. That would come.
"As always, students with concerns about using animal byproducts, students with allergies, or students with other concerns about the ingredients or work can let me know and we will work together to figure out appropriate accommodations for you. Feel free to work in pairs, but not more than two please. You don't have to be in the same year group, though. If you have any questions, let me know! Second years, let me know where you're sitting and I'll get your cauldrons to you. Go ahead and begin."
OOC (Out of Character) - Welcome to Sonora and welcome to potions! Today's potion is from this site: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Antidote_to_Common_Poisons. Feel free to assume that the halfblood prince version and the original textbook version are both offered as alternatives to this potion, and talk about whichever ingredients you prefer.
Classes at Sonora are graded based on the writing, not the student's performance. Posts with more realism, creativity, and engagement will earn more points than posts that are less realistic, less creative, or do not provide opportunities for classmates to engage. If a student has a question from Professor Brooding or does something that she may interrupt because it would be dangerous, feel free to tag her, just like I tagged beginner students in the title of the post. If you have any questions as an author, feel free to ask in an OOC message like this, or in the student chatzy, or on the OOC board.
Have lots of fun!
Subthreads: ...This is a change from the chemistry I'm used to. by Mara Morales with Alexander Pierce-Beales
It's all so poetical. by Morgan Garrett with Ellie Alperton
Always a step ahead... kind of by Joanna Rose-Turner with Leonor De Matteo
For all kinds of poisons? by Jezebel Reed-Fischer with Josephine Clyde
22
Mary Brooding-Hawthorne
First Things First [Beginners, I-II]
1424
1
5
Mara Morales
December 21, 2019 12:01 PM
...This is a change from the chemistry I'm used to. by Mara Morales
Mara was trying to reserve judgment on the fantastical classes she was now enrolled in, but if she had had to give a judgment, she would have said that Potions sounded the most promising. On one hand, sure, there was the possibility of chopping up baby corpses and stuff like that, but on the other hand, Jessica had not died yet, which made it sound like the beginners, at least, might have more innocuous material to work with. In that case, it was really just chemistry, of a sorts, and chemistry was something Mara could wrap her head around.Walking in the room, she looked around, taking it in, and stopped to blink in surprise when Spanish abruptly jumped out at her from a bookshelf. Going over, she noticed there were several books in Spanish, plus some in what she thought looked kind of like French, and other languages she couldn't guess at. German was probably a decent guess, she thought, remembering her first Sonora dinner companion, but her first guess for one was that it was Greek and some of them had scripts that barely looked like writing to her = something from east Asia, she guessed. She knew Jessica's old school had offered Mandarin classes, but had gathered that Japanese and Korean were fashionable at the moment, so she couldn't begin to guess any further there.
She could, though, half-smile at a memory: herself and Jessica and their dad in the living room of the apartment at home, talking about trends. Dad thought the Korean skincare craze was, well, crazy - that for one thing, Americans were never going to buy into such large-scale and packaging-waste-heavy programs long term, and for another thing, that it didn't even sound good for skin anyway - that all the double-cleansing and exfoliation stood a decent chance, in many cases, of stripping the skin so thoroughly of its own protective barriers that it would make it easier for infections and congestion to occur.
"Yeah, but they do have really good complexions, Dad," said Mara. "And isn't that part of the world, like, the most polluted place on the planet?"
"That would be India, if I recall correctly," said her father. "Beijing's a disaster too. Seoul's not bad compared to them, but it's still pretty bad."
"See? It must be doing something right," said Mara.
"Yeah, but our air quality here is different," said Jessica. "Maybe - the amount of stuff you need to do in worse air quality is different than what you need here? Plus, Daddy's right that most people here aren't going to put that kind of time in it."
"Why do you put in time to draw your eyebrows on every day?" said Mara, jumping at a chance to argue, even though Jessica's point was decent.
"Because I look like a rabbit without them," said Jessica. "What's your point?"
"I looked at our website - you know that link to the history of beauty website?" Jessica and Dad nodded. "In the middle ages people took their eyebrows off on purpose. People will buy whatever you convince them to buy." Mara took a sip of her hot chocolate. "Though they'll buy more if it works," she conceded.
"Oh! There's skin types, too," said Jessica. "Just because something works on me doesn't mean it's going to work on Em, or Mommy, or anyone else."
She had always enjoyed it when they did that. Mara knew all too well that she was only giving back mostly lines that she got from reading, but Dad approved even of that. He had been so pleased when Mara had sold out of homemade lip glosses at her school's Market Day activity - a week-long thing that involved developing a fake 'business plan' and advertising to their classmates before they all tried to sell each other stuff - that Mara had been briefly afraid and/or hopeful that he would try to hang up the certificate of achievement in his office, the way he used to with some of Jessica's awards. It was a thing where she knew she had had a major advantage over her classmates, having a father who worked in business to provide her advice from behind the scenes, but she had ultimately done the work herself, aside from Jessica writing a two-line advertising slogan for her. She'd been kind of proud of it even before Dad had been so pleased with it, so when he had made such a fuss over it...well, she'd been embarrassed with herself with just how pleased she was about that, honestly.
Whether the books were in Japanese, Korean, or Mandarin, however, was largely irrelevant to her, as she couldn't read any of them. Market Day was also in her past, along with cozy business chats with her father and sister. Instead, she had potions to contemplate.
She was sort of comforted by how very similar, in a lot of ways, the room looked to any other science classroom. If she paid attention, she could see things that deviated pretty sharply from the laboratories in the middle school she was supposed to have attended, but...easy enough to tune those things out. For now.
Her dark eyes watched the pretty lady in the almost-too-witchy clothes intently as the lady - Professor Brooding; what a name - spoke. She took a few notes here and there, usually with a slight nod as she did. It was only when they got to the lesson of the day, however, that she stopped, her eyes widening in disbelief.
Antidote to common poisons? What kind of place was this, where the first thing you needed to learn was how to get un-poisoned?!
Shaking her head slightly, now, sending her black braid swaying against her back, she tried to look at it rationally. People did poison themselves by accident all the time, after all - that was why they had television announcements about calling Poison Control at home. Just because she was dealing with witchy people didn't mean that 'poison' had to mean something like it would in an old book, or in a new book about witches and wizards. Poison could just mean anything you consumed that you should not have consumed. That line of reasoning, however, did not answer the first question, which was why they were doing this themselves...
Okay, so she had made lip balm, and a couple of people who'd done Market Day when she had had done stuff like dipping marshmallows in chocolate fountains or mixing up milkshakes. Those were things they were all, more or less directly, feeding people. It was why Dad had made sure to remind Mara, when she was looking for recipes, to check for common allergens, to use several formulas, and to label everything clearly. Still, though - this sounded like far more specialized stuff than that. Except that, well, apparently it wasn't, as here they were, doing it...
She shook her head slightly again and decided that since there was nothing she could do about it right now, and no reason for her to do anything about it right now, that she would simply shelve this question for later. She glanced up at her nearest neighbor. "Want to pair up?" she asked.
16
Mara Morales
...This is a change from the chemistry I'm used to.
1472
0
5
Morgan Garrett
December 21, 2019 12:33 PM
It's all so poetical. by Morgan Garrett
If Morgan's family had been in the slightest habit of paying attention to details, they would have known that she had never had any intention of heeding their admonishments that she try to act normal at Sonora. Since, as far as she could tell, they had no such habit, however, she had not hesitated to slip her jewelry box into her trunk when nobody was looking, no more than she had hesitated to dip into it today, to show off her new House pride as she went to her first day of classes.She had decided, after some deliberation, to go pure Jackie for today. Around her neck, she had the four-strand blue sodalite necklace, turned backward on her because she thought it just made her look like the Pillsbury Doughgirl from the front and that it looked better with the silver filigree flower clasp at the front. On her right wrist she had two of her fake Schlumberger bracelets - the ivory-colored one set with blue crystals and the navy blue one just decorated with gold dots. Her ears were adorned with the matching navy blue clip-on thick hoop earrings.
She couldn't, she knew, ever wear it as well as Jackie had, at least not while she was still this short, but she still felt far more like herself with all that on than with none of it. Even boring people said that you were supposed to dress for the job you wanted, not the job you had. The job Morgan wanted was one where she was glamorous, elegant, apart from the place she had come from, and so she dressed to that standard, or as close to it as she could mimic in her inherited repro jewelry and - as always - awful shoes. The quilted grey slip-on sneakers she had on under her green robes today weren't as bad as the clunky lace-ups she had been sent to school in, but they still were a far cry from anything she really wished to be seen in, especially while effectively wearing a dress, even if it was a kinda ugly and unflattering dress. If they just could have not had that wide white band all around the bottom advertising that they were sneakers....
Alas! The world just wouldn't do right. She strolled into Potions, thinking that at least the robes mostly concealed her sneakers, and grinned and waved when she saw Mab, her bracelets clinking loudly together.
She looked admiringly over the professor's outfit, coveting that dress as hard as she had ever coveted anything in her life, and then smiled in delight at the woman's name. Professor Brooding-Hawthorne. That had to be one of the best names ever. Brooding-Hawthorne. It was so poetical, and that was even before she considered the very Englishness of it, and the hyphen - oh! The sort of people who had hyphens were the sort Anna would drawl were most likely to understand the art of living - though somehow, Morgan couldn't imagine that rechristening herself Miss Garrett-Wilkes would actually improve her situation. It just didn't have the same ring to it at all.
With an effort, she took her mind away from Professor Brooding-Hawthorne's attire and name and paid attention instead to what she was saying. The nice thing about boarding school was that she could be almost anyone she wanted, here, where nobody knew her, but she would ruin it before she could even enjoy it if she sat around being the same old dreamy Morgan who missed the plot in class.
An antidote to poisons - how very 'Gothic novel' to start the year with! Morgan approved of Professor Brooding-Hawthorne more at every moment. The practical applications of such a thing never occurred to her, because that kind of thing didn't happen very often in real life. Her brow creased in concentration as she tried to make sense of the directions. The first...half of the recipe. Was it an even number of lines? She flipped in her book, started to count, the noticed it was labelled "Part 1" and "Part 2." That made sense, she supposed. Even if it did look as though first years might have more to do than the second years, which hardly seemed fair to her at all.
Looking over it, she became acutely aware of how much she did not know as she saw ingredient after ingredient whose name was utterly foreign to her. She squared her shoulders slightly as they were set to work. If she could learn all of La Audrey's lines from the dressing and car scenes in Breakfast at Tiffany's, then she could learn what a bezoar and a honeywater were (assuming the last one wasn't exactly what it said on the tin.).
"Here we go," she remarked cheerfully to her neighbor. "Have you ever brewed a potion before? I haven't," she admitted at once, figuring it was best to be up front about that before the possibility of partnership was broached.
16
Morgan Garrett
It's all so poetical.
1470
0
5
Alexander Pierce-Beales
December 21, 2019 10:02 PM
Same though. by Alexander Pierce-Beales
Alexander would never have come up with any of the things that were happening around him at Sonora, which was definitely the only reason he was sure he wasn't comatose someplace. He might have believed he was in a car accident or something if not for the fact that this stuff was just too crazy to make up. Plus he had Barnabus with him and he never had Barnabus in his bad dreams. The little horse had seen better days, as the trip to from Seattle to Sonora and the proceeding time stuffed into the pocket of Alexander's dress thing - robes were what fancy people wore after they got out of the shower, and he just couldn't call this thing a robe - but he was still Alexander's best friend. That meant he was really awake and really alive and really experiencing this place.Some of that was good. Alexandra seemed nice, and he really liked having his own bed and stuff, and this class seemed like it might not be horrendous, but also poison. Maybe she meant potion? It was potions class. Antidote to common potions? The teacher seemed like something he might makeup if he were asked to draw a picture of what a witch looked like without ever having seen one, so it was a little bittersweet to find that it was an accurate mental image. She seemed nice though, and while Alexander only spoke English, he was pretty used to being around kids who didn't know English as well, and who weren't always accommodated for. So this was good. It was good.
He stuck his hand in his pocket to give Barnabus a scratch, trying to convince himself that it was good, and tried to think about how he'd draw it all.
Alexander would draw the potions room in grey scale, and the contents in brighter splashes of colors. They'd be clashing, just like the jar of bugs next to one of feathers, and the . . . were those eyeballs? . . . those gross things next to some sparkly stuff. It was a room that made questions come to mind, and the teacher seemed like she could have popped out of a storybook, hidden among the texts on the shelves. Everything was organized. Everything was in its place. But this was a room for making things - terrible things and beautiful things - and there was something sort of amazing about that.
He was just debating whether to begin sketching his ideas when the girl next to him spoke up, reminding him that this was not the right time to be sketching. Still, maybe he could get a few concept drawings done.
He recognized her as a first year though, so at least they'd be working on the same task. He didn't really know what that task was, but it had some cool names for stuff on the little flying papers. Confusion in the midst of order, chaos in the midst of fantasy. If he really wasn't imagining it all, this was a beautiful world.
"Sure," Alexander agreed. His voice was light enough, but he didn't smile. Alexander didn't smile very often, and certainly not before he knew whether he could trust somebody or not. So far, he hadn't met anyone he could trust for very long. "I think we have some of these ingredients in our kits, but probably not all of them. Should we start there?"
22
Alexander Pierce-Beales
Same though.
1475
0
5
Ellie Alperton
December 22, 2019 5:18 AM
And princessical by Ellie Alperton
Ellie was not the youngest, most inexperienced witch in the whole wide world any more. Perhaps that had been a bit of an exaggeration even last year. People were born witches, after all, and after a couple of weeks in school, she had probably had more of a grasp on this whole ‘witch thing’ than an infant born to an entirely magical family, owing to basic things like being able to process visual and linguistic information. And like… stand up. And hold a wand. And wave it. Still, she had been new to the school, new to being a witch and relatively new to being herself full time. It had felt fantastical, but it had also been easy to feel a little clueless.She took a seat in potions, noting with some sadness that Professor Brooding had cut her hair. She still looked like a complete fairy princess, but the hair had really set that off. Ellie was never going to have her hair any shorter than her shoulders. She had it in a ponytail for today’s class, but she brought the end of it over her shoulder, stroking it fondly. Touching her hair always made her feel so much calmer.
She tried not to do a double take when the teacher, who she was sure had introduced herself last year as Professor Brooding added another part to her name. A part that was the name of another of their teachers… They were married? Ellie tried not to look surprised, although she doubted any of the teachers would mistake the look for homophobia given whose face it was on. It was just that she’d had no idea. That was so cute! And it was nice to know. She hadn’t talked to any of her teachers about being Ellie last year. It had just… been something she’d got on with being. And she had her specialists back home if she had questions about what she was going through. She knew the staff knew about her though. It was nice to think there was someone who was more concretely and obviously a safe person to talk to though, if she needed it.
The class topic was vaguely familiar, but she wondered whether she would have remembered it if she hadn’t been told that she ought to. She was generally attentive and a good student, it was just there had been an awful lot to process during first year. She opened her textbook, looking over the directions. The second half was actually very short, and she reviewed Professor Brooding-Hawthorne’s directions. They had to focus on wandwork, so she supposed she should look into making sure that was really perfect. Before she could properly begin though, the first year next to her spoke up. Ellie had sat next to her rather deliberately, as they were - as of the sorting ceremony - housemates, and she thought it might be nice to have some girly friends her own age. Jasmine was wonderful, but not her age. Anya was wonderful, but not girly. Freddie was lovely, and had even written her a very cute letter that read slightly more like a homework assignment than anything else, but had nonetheless been very sweet. He was not, to her knowledge, in any way a girl or girly. This girl was decked out in what Ellie could only hope was a raft of costume jewellery because otherwise she suspected she was out of her league, friendship-wise. Though Jasmine and Anya owned multiple horses and still liked her. Ellie was solidly middle class, but one other thing she’d learnt in her first year was that that did not put her within touching distance of some of the people here. Ellie’s own jewellery for the day was limited to the allegedly-peridot-but-possibly-just-green-glass studs in her ears, celebrating September and the birth of a new school year, and conveniently matching well with Sonora’s uniform.
The girl’s first question though was whether Ellie had ever brewed a potion before, and it felt surprising but exciting that she would be able to answer that in the affirmative, and maybe be the ‘helpful older student’ here, and not totally out of her depth.
“Yes. The ones we did in class last year - I’m a second year,” she explained. “Before that I hadn’t though,” she added, hoping to reassure the new girl. “Do you need any help getting started?” she asked.
13
Ellie Alperton
And princessical
1456
0
5
Morgan Garrett
December 22, 2019 10:20 AM
It’s fabulous. by Morgan Garrett
The girl in the next seat was the sort of person Morgan couldn’t help feeling a twinge of jealousy toward - dainty, light blonde hair. Morgan couldn’t help feeling exceptionally clunky beside her. Square and lumpy and heavy and too too loud, too brassy. Not at all like a future princess.Her companion was accomplished, too, though in context that was more of a relief than something to be jealous of. Morgan smiled. “Sure,” she said. “Because this is the first time I’ve ever done any potions.” She was not entirely sure she had ever even seen one prepared, come to that, despite two-thirds of her parents being magical. She noticed something. “Hey, you’re in Aladren too! I’m Morgan, one of the neighbors,” she introduced herself.
She was kind of encouraged to see so many girls in her group of Aladrens, she thought. Dad had made it sound like it had been a bit of a boys’ club back in his day, and Morgan has never wanted to feel like she had to drab herself down just to be taken seriously. Mara seemed a little serious, but had been wearing a seriously cute dress at Orientation, and Ellie also had long hair and earrings, so hopefully that wouldn’t be too much of a problem when it came to convincing her classmates not to think she was an idiot. Of course, there was still the Kentucky accent to grapple with, but she thought Mara also sounded at least a little Southern too....
“But yeah, I don’t even know how to say some of these words,” she admitted a little self-consciously, aware she was not helping her pursuit of being taken seriously. “What’s a - bee-zo-war?”
16
Morgan Garrett
It’s fabulous.
1470
0
5
Mara Morales
December 22, 2019 10:53 AM
Guess we’ll just have to adapt as we go. by Mara Morales
“Seems like a smart place to start,” agreed Mara when her partner suggested beginning with figuring out what was and what was not inside the kits of ingredients. She did not think too much of his failure to smile; with new people, her smiles tended to be brief and businesslike, born mainly of being chided for not being nice when she didn’t smile at all. Niceness was all-important at home, after all; even dudes were expected to smile some, but girls were expected to be extra nice, and Dad laughed when Mara talked about stuff she saw online about how one shouldn’t ask women to smile so much.”That’s some Yankee talk there, Emmy-Lou-Who,” he’d say. ”Yankee and out west. Nothing to do with us here.”
That was stupid, of course. They were not hicks from the depths of Mississippi or anything like that. They were from Atlanta. Atlanta was at the front of all change in the South, and while that was still often kinda behind the curve generally, it was still not...Mississippi or Alabama or Kentucky or somewhere like that. Jessica and Mrs. H. were part of a dying breed; one day, there probably wouldn’t be Southern ladies at all. Dad had to see that on some level - why else would he want Jezi to know how to not be a lady when she did business? Mara couldn’t understand, in light of that, why he seemed to want to cling to the old ways so much of the time.
“I’ve got everything that was on the list of things to get, and some extras,” she said, hoisting the kit onto the desk and opening it, looking over the many little labelled compartments. “I don’t know how many of those will be any good, though - my parents are what people here call Muggles, so they could have totally ripped my dad off when he just asked them to recommend any other kits that might be useful,” she said, unperturbed. She preferred that people do business honestly, especially with her family, but she had grown up just close enough to the world of business to know how things went. “I’m Mara, by the way,” she added.
16
Mara Morales
Guess we’ll just have to adapt as we go.
1472
0
5
Alexander Pierce-Beales
December 26, 2019 9:40 PM
If there's anything I'm good at... by Alexander Pierce-Beales
Alexander didn't stare. If anything, his expression became more neutral. He was torn on a number of things, and neutrality was safer. On one hand, this girl was clearly well off. His own potions kit had been provided by the school since he couldn't afford it, or anything else for that matter. He certainly didn't have any extra ingredients. That was both frustrating and helpful to know. Some weird sense of pride sort of made him feel a little better about all this, because at least he was meeting cool people so far. Or helpful people. Or both.On the other hand, this girl was also from a Muggle (ugh, what a gross word) background. He didn't know whether his parents were Muggles or not, but he himself hadn't known about magic until this all happened. Now he was here, and maybe - just maybe - he and Mara were equally alone. At least, he liked to think so.
When he was younger, he'd played a lot of pretend. He had pretended his parents were a prince and princess who had been lost at sea somewhere wonderful. He had pretended Barnabus was alive and talking. He had pretended the other boys and girls in state care were getting homes before he was because some cosmic force knew he was stronger and braver and could tough it out, when they really needed homes. Then he got older and kept playing. He pretended his parents had ever loved him. He pretended Barnabus was enough. He had pretended he was worth getting a home anyway.
But then he had gotten a letter, and a magic person who told him all the things he'd wanted to believe. It was hard to accept, but what choice did he have? He didn't want to stay where he'd always been, and it wasn't like he was missing out on any placement opportunities by going to boarding school out of state; he didn't have any placement opportunities anyway. For the most part, he'd given up on making friends as a result. He was going to be too far away to keep up friendships with any of the people at the house, and none of them had ever wanted to be his friend anyway. In some ways, Barnabus was enough because Barnabus was all he had anyway.
Maybe, just maybe, he could have Alexandra, and Nathaniel, and maybe a few others if he was lucky. Maybe Mara.
"I'm Alexander," he said. "Good to meet you. I don't have all those ingredients, but I've got the ones on the list I think." He bit the inside of his cheek as he considered his next words carefully. They seemed paramountly important. "I didn't know about magic until I was told to come to school," he said quietly. "I guess that means I came from Muggles too."
22
Alexander Pierce-Beales
If there's anything I'm good at...
1475
0
5
Joanna Rose-Turner
December 27, 2019 8:26 AM
Always a step ahead... kind of by Joanna Rose-Turner
Jo liked learning, but she had never been that good at school. It was just so easy to get distracted, start daydreaming, and poof, the whole class would be over. Not to mention she had also learned how to keep her eyes open while she slept, making her a master at sleeping through class. This was not a skill she shared with others often, but she felt a certain amount of pride for it.Despite this, Jo quite looked forward to Potions class. Potions seemed pretty nifty. There definitely was plenty of performances that could be played using what potions Jo could imagine. If they were anything like the ones found in the fantastical fairytales she loved reading about, there was plenty of fun to be had.
One potion she knew of for sure was from one of her dad’s stories. Her dad had been a pretty good kid, but he had one or two friends that loved to pull trick just like she did. His friend Paul was especially troublesome. One time her dad had studied all night for an Herbology exam, only getting to bed at 6am. He was woken up by his own Herbology professor, telling him he’d slept through the exam. After some begging and pleading, Paul revealed it was actually him, and he’d been able to do the trick after taking some sort of identity stealing potion that just made him look like the professor.
Today, Jo decided she’d follow the lesson best she could. After all, she’d only be able to get to the fun stuff once she knew some of the basics. Poison curing potion sounded pretty lame though. Useful to some people, she was sure, but still lame. When would she be able to make an exploding potion?
Already a little impatient, Jo took a look at the list and just started gathering everything, looking over the part 1 and part 2 aspect of the assignment. Some things were actually more familiar than she expected. Unicorn horn at least she’d definitely heard of from plenty of mythical beast books, but she couldn’t quite place where she’d heard of the rest. Maybe some names she’d just heard in passing from her family members without knowing what they meant.
After finding everything, she looked around to see who of the class was still left unpaired.
43
Joanna Rose-Turner
Always a step ahead... kind of
1478
0
5
Mara Morales
December 27, 2019 5:49 PM
Then we should be good to go. by Mara Morales
"I guess so," said Mara when Alexander, fairly logically, concluded that not knowing about this magic stuff until he got his letter meant he was probably also of Muggle origin. "Fun club to be in, isn't it?" she joked, thinking of how her parents had both freaked out when Jessica had turned out magical, and how Mamá had freaked out when Mara had. "I think my folks thought they were losing their minds. I wondered if I was a few times, but Dad - man did his college minor in chemistry," she said, as this was absolutely true. Business was Dad's main focus, but he thought it was important to know a bit about what the company made as well as how to run the company, which made sense to Mara as well. "He had no idea what to even do with all this," she added, gesturing at the room but meaning the whole magical world.The chemistry, after all, just did not work, at least not on any model that Arvale Cosmetics used. Matter could change, that was true - growth and decay and transformation - but not to the point of turning something organic, like wood, into something inorganic, like a sewing needle. People could not just appear in and out of thin air, not without tearing holes in the fabric of the universe or weird stuff like that. It just wasn't possible. Except that it was.
She opened her book and looked over the list. "Okay, so we only have two ingredients we have to work with," she said. "Bezoars and...standard ingredient?" She shook her head. "I'm pretty sure from the name that we can assume we have the second one," she added, completely deadpan. "Whoever named that was a genius, clearly. I think that's the one that looks like potpourri." A look into her kit proved that yes, the stuff in the container with the ambiguous label was the stuff that looked like potpourri. "Bezoar...I know I've seen that word before. It was in a story. It was like a hairball from a goat's stomach or something. Wow, I hope nobody ever gives me any common poisons, because I do not want to drink potpourri and goat hairballs," she said.
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Mara Morales
Then we should be good to go.
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Leonor De Matteo
December 28, 2019 10:46 PM
Well of course. by Leonor De Matteo
Leonor felt certain that everything was going to be just fine. Sure, her brother was a stuck-up weirdo who was nicer than she gave him credit for and not as nice as everyone else seemed to give him credit for, and her possible new best friend was the illegitimate younger sister of her stuck-up brother's ex-best friend, who he and his now best friend hated because of said sister, but that was fine. That was the stuff that made life interesting, and if Leonor wanted anything out of life, it was for it to be interesting, exciting, and full of intrigue.Which made today's Potions lesson sort of exciting in a way. The need for a cure for poisons suggested that there would be the possibility of poisons. Leonor wasn't particularly keen on being poisoned herself, or indeed even poisoning anyone else, but it did mean there was some possible drama bound to happen at some point. Felipe had said that there was one girl in another House who would happily talk about how exciting it was to poison people.
At the same time, today's lesson for her, as a first year, was to look into the possibility of starting a possible cure to some poisons. That made it significantly less exciting than alternatives, although she didn't exactly mind, either. She was still getting to know her classmates, and this was the perfect opportunity to do so. One of her fellow first years, a girl that Leonor had not caught the name of but she recognized, was looking around, apparently interested in working with someone. Or else trying to make sure no one was coming near her. Leonor noticed the Teppenpaw badge on the girl's robes and decided the former was more likely.
Gathering her equipment, including both the Spanish, English, French, and Italian versions of the potion recipe - one could never be too sure when it would be helpful to have materials in another language, or when it would become helpful to cross-reference a translation for accuracy - Leonor joined the girl at her table. She looked the girl up and down and decided she was already either impatient or eager. Either of those could be interesting, and it meant that she had begun collecting ingredients already which was great for Leonor.
"Hola," Leonor said, greeting her classmate in Spanish. Language be darned; she'd use her preferred language until she died. "Do you want to work with me?" Leonor's English was flawless and she knew it. She had developed a basic, standard American accent, and she was indistinguishable from her peers on that front. It made her proud, even if she hated the language.
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Leonor De Matteo
Well of course.
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Alexander Pierce-Beales
December 28, 2019 10:53 PM
I'm not holding my breath. by Alexander Pierce-Beales
Alexander didn't comment on Mara's information about her family. He had thought he was going insane as well - and still wasn't totally convinced otherwise, despite what he'd tried to believe at the start of class - but that wasn't something he was going to share with basically a stranger. Why on earth would she share that with him? Did she really live such a cushy life that such things weren't dangerous to share? One wrong word and he was out of the chance to ever have a home; he wasn't going to risk that, no matter how low his odds were anyway.The topic turned to the potion at hand and Alexander relaxed. He wanted to get along with his classmates, he really did, but it was just too risky right now. He would need to be good at something, to have something to offer, before he'd really feel comfortable approaching his peers in any meaningful way. Sort of a bummer since there was a Ball this year. He'd like to go, but he didn't think he would want to go with a girl.
"I think you're right," Alexander agreed, watching as Mara confirmed her own hypothesis. He wrinkled his nose at her recollection about a bezoar though. "I've never heard of that. Maybe we should . . . " He flipped his textbook open to the index and searched for bezoar, flipped to that page, and then scanned the text until he found it. "You're right," he told her, making a disgusted face. "That's nasty. I don't want to drink this either."
He looked up at his classmate. They were both in the same boat when it came to magic experience. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to share about that? To commiserate? Barnabus would certainly want him to make a friend. Or at least a co-sufferer. "Do you think the magic makes it taste okay? The bit they do with their wands in the second part?"
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Alexander Pierce-Beales
I'm not holding my breath.
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Mara Morales
December 29, 2019 9:21 AM
You might want to, at least for the next minute.... by Mara Morales
"I hope so," said Mara, wrinkling her nose at the very thought of, if the magic didn't make the potion taste better, what this literal witch's brew must be like...Her stomach was, she thought, pretty strong, but apparently she now knew where its limit was, because it twisted and lurched just at the thought of what consuming that would be like if the magic didn't make it taste better. "I don't know how anyone could get that stuff down otherwise."She thought back, trying to remember anything about this class' products which Jessica had ever told her. She couldn't come up with any details about that topic, though, and shook her head.
"I know one of the older students here from home," she said, and then hesitated a moment, remembering that she was supposedly allowed to tell the truth here, and weighed pros and cons, before adding, "She's, uh, my half-sister, actually. I thought knowing her was going to be a lot more useful when I was still at home," she admitted. "She never said anything about what potions taste like, though. My guess is that she never had the nerve to try any," she concluded.
She shook her head again. "I don't even know how you grind up something made of hair, but I guess we have to do it," she said grimly. "Want me to go get some for us? It doesn't look like those are parts of our standard kit. You can get the potpourri measured out."
Volunteering to do the grosser of the two tasks was second nature to her, growing up with Jessica. Jezi really did not have any nerves. Mara had nerves, but she nevertheless got out the gloves which had also been part of the school supply list before she made any further moves and put them on. They felt like far too nice a pair of gloves to wear for this kind of thing, but it was apparently their entire purpose, and she was now wary enough of the whole class to be grateful for the thickness and sturdiness of the gloves. "Now I see why they wanted us to get these," she remarked.
That, however, was the last of the stalling. Jaw set, she approached the supply area. At first, she was confused by the abundance of labels, but then some words leapt out at her in Spanish and she realized that the ingredients, too, were labelled in multiple languages. They were, she thought, all the same languages that were represented in the bookshelves. She managed to put off actually touching bezoars a moment longer by checking the label to see if the word was different in Spanish (it seemed they were the same word) but then came the moment of truth: touching the weird little rock things and holding them far, far away from her face as she marched back to Alexander.
"Ugh," she remarked. "I don't know if they really stink or if I'm just imagining it, but...ugh." She dropped one into a bowl and picked up a pestle. "Guess we're going to find out for sure now. How's the...not-potpourri?"
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Mara Morales
You might want to, at least for the next minute....
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Ellie Alperton
December 30, 2019 2:28 AM
... except for the icky bits by Ellie Alperton
“I’m Ellie,” she smiled, nodding at the description of herself as ‘one of the neighbours.’ “There’s three of you, right?” she smiled. “Next door, I mean,” she added. There were four new Aladrens total - she had spoken to the boy at the feast, after all.She flipped open her potions kit to better answer Morgan’s question. There were a lot of ingredients to get your head around. And, as Morgan pointed out, a lot of funny words too.
The box had been purchased at the start of her first year, and she was still, in some ways, trying to work it, or work out what she wanted it to be. It was a wooden set of trays, divided into many smaller segments. The layers opened up a little like the old-fashioned sewing box she had seen at her grandmother’s, so that they formed a shape like a set of stairs, allowing you to see what was in each one. It worked well, but it did not feel very her. It was too plain to be strange and witchy, and not pink or sparkly enough to be Ellie-y. It was just a very functional box. One with an admittedly neat slideyness. She thought she ought to customise it a little, but she wasn’t sure which direction to take it in... Full on witch or sparkly and girly. Hence its current rather boringness when compared to the Merida notebook and matching pen that she was using for potions (chosen for their irony).
“At least the ingredients don’t get angry if you mispronounce them,” she offered, “To my knowledge,” she added, casting a wary eye over the box of strange plants trying to detect any signs of hurt feelings. It definitely didn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility. “They’re always telling us how we need to take care with our pronunciation in wandwork classes,” she added for clarity. “Except… we all talk a little differently. I think how we pronounce stuff must vary just a little. I haven’t worked out how big that margin is allowed to be yet, but it’s got to exist, right?
“Uh, anyway, I do not seem to have a bezoar,” she admitted, having looked through the boxes. “I guess that one comes from the cupboard?” she shrugged. Some of the less common ingredients were supplied by school, and she supposed that maybe bezoars were rare. Or they were so common that she’d just used all hers up and not got around to replacing it, but it wasn’t ringing a bell as something they’d used time and time again last year. In fact it was ringing a vague bell as being something super gross that came from a goat, but she wasn’t sure if she was mixing it up with something else or not, so decided to err on the side of not supplying Morgan with that detail, in case it was the wrong one. “Something weird,” she answered instead as to what the heck it was. Admittedly, that did not narrow it down much…
13
Ellie Alperton
... except for the icky bits
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Morgan Garrett
December 30, 2019 8:21 AM
...yeah, I prefer to not think too much about those. by Morgan Garrett
"Yep," said Morgan about the number of neighbors her neighbor - Ellie - had. "It's me and Josie and Mara," she said. "It's kind of weird - my dad told me that when he was here, practically everybody in Aladren was a guy and from up north, but now there's three of us and we're all from the South. Well, or at least born there, anyway. Josie's family moved, and sometimes I stay with my dad in Washington state, but Mara's from Atlanta and I'm mostly still from Kentucky," she chattered. "But yeah. Drop by any time you need a cup of...um...beetle eyes I guess?" she said, looking over the potions kit and finding it devoid of sugar or anything that, offhand, looked much like sugar.She looked over her kit, too, when Ellie remarked that it probably didn't hurt the ingredients' feelings to be mispronounced. "I hope not," she said, then listened to the context. Pronunciation. That was a thing....
"I sure hope so," she said fervently about the margin of error. "I've tried to talk like my stepmom, but it...doesn't really work," she admitted. "I don't know how Dad does it, but you have to really listen to even tell he's from the South, at least when he's not at home." When Dad visited Industry - rare as that still was - the twangs and cranky rs and y'alls came right back to him, but when he wasn't at home, he sounded almost like Sage. He didn't even seem to realize he did it and became flustered when the quirk was pointed out to him, including when Morgan had just asked how he did it. Anna had been almost the same way, she recalled, except that Anna had never had that many cranky rs (Morgan had no idea what the linguistic term for them was, but they sounded cranky to her, so she called them cranky rs) in her speech - she could do newscaster English from her stint as a journalist before she'd gotten sick, but most of the rest of the time, she had sounded like one of those Southern belles from TV - Blanche from the Golden Girls, or Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind, or the ladies in Steel Magnolias. She hadn't seemed to notice when she moved from one to the other, either. Morgan could only assume it involved a lot more practice than she had put into trying to ape Sage's northern accent. "I don't know. Maybe Dad learned it here. He got through school without dyin', though, so I'm not too worried about it."
She grinned when Ellie summed up a bezoar as 'something weird.' "That don't narrow it down too much, from where I'm sitting," she said with a chuckle. "My aunt told me I was a witch, and that there were other witches, when I was four or five, but I never met any other wizards until I was seven," she explained. "So all this still looks pretty weird to me. What's your family like?" she asked, realizing she had talked far too much about herself in this conversation, and figuring they could chat about Ellie while they went to to the cupboard to look for bezoars.
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Morgan Garrett
...yeah, I prefer to not think too much about those.
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Jezebel Reed-Fischer
January 02, 2020 2:38 AM
For all kinds of poisons? by Jezebel Reed-Fischer
Returning to Sonora felt particularly odd when there was magic at home now, too. Augustine couldn't control his and it didn't really come out that much, but it didn't matter. Just the fact that he had any magic at all made Jezebel feel worlds better about herself. She felt a little more normal. She also felt a little more distant from Marcus, though. The two oldest siblings had always been relatively close and Jezebel liked to think it was the two of them against the world. In some ways, she still did. Boy and girl, brother and sister, son and daughter, muggle and . . . and what? Whatever this whole thing was. But now it seemed like she had more in common with everyone else. She and Augustine were both magic. She and Patience were both girls. She and Marcus were . . . well they had been friends at one point.Part of the problem was everything that Augustine's revelation had brought up since Christmas, culminating in higher tensions over the summer months. She stood by her initial assessment of having had a boring summer, complete with trying to talk to Augustine about things he had very little interest in yet, but there was more to it than that. Patience had not yet shown any signs of magical ability, so how the genetic chips fell was still unclear, but some things couldn't be ignored.
Dathan was magical - Jezebel resisted the urge to turn around to find him in class, to see whether there were any telltale markings they shared - and she was magical, and Augustine was magical. Patience might be magical. But Marcus definitely wasn't. While neither Jezebel's father nor her uncle were magical either, there did seem to be something in the family line that had sprung up in this generation. Unfortunately, Marcus was not part of that family line.
Part of the family? Absolutely. Part of the family line . . . well, he didn't share the Fischer blood that apparently made a difference. He was Ekene's son from before she'd married Anthony Fischer. Marcus Reed. He was a big part of the reason that Jezebel and the other children of Anthony and Ekene had hyphenated names. Dathan was just Dathan Fischer, but Jezebel had the all important little "Reed" in the middle. Because Marcus Reed was important, too. Marcus was family. Just . . . not the same family line.
Jezebel had tried really hard to understand genetics. She knew a little about what the word meant and what they were but she didn't really get it. Fifth grade science classes hadn't gotten there yet and there was only so much she could understand from reading science books over breaks. She wasn't emerged in that curriculum anymore. That only served to make things worse because Marcus was. In fact, Marcus was particularly interested in genetics, and more so since learning about the little differences that made very big differences in life. The gap between them seemed insurmountable now, written in blood and another man's name on a birth certificate.
With all this in mind, potions had become particularly interesting to Jezebel. It was the closest thing to muggle science she could get - Care of Magical Creatures was close, but inherently different, and Herbology had the same issues - and that made her feel closer to Marcus, even if she suspected they'd never really be close again. Today's lesson even sounded like a muggle class though. There were common poisons in the Muggle world. She wondered whether this potion could serve as an antidote for asbestos, or cyanide. What would happen if a Muggle drank the potion? Could a Muggle brew the potion?
Jezebel got her answer to one of these questions when second year students were tasked with focusing on wandwork. She really should have known, as it wasn't the first time she'd seen wandwork in potions class, but she hadn't thought about it. For a moment, she had thought she'd found a way to connect with her brother. Maybe if she could just take a sample home, they could use one of his chemistry kits to analyse it . . . That was a thought for another day. Or at least another time - what time were Professor Brooding's office hours again?
Lost as she was in her own thoughts, Jezebel hardly noticed when the class broke for activities. The end of the lecture also marked the end of Jezebel's focus on herself, as she really strove to do well in classes. If she was going to be representing both sides of the Reed-Fischer family tree, then she needed to be the best she could be. That was the most important thing. That was more important than a bloodline.
Turning to the first person she saw, Jezebel offered a smile and some desk space. "Do you want to work with me?" she asked, getting right to the point and hoping desperately to make herself believe that if she just kept doing that, she would be okay. She had to be okay. "I'm excited to do this potion again."
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Jezebel Reed-Fischer
For all kinds of poisons?
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Alexander Pierce-Beales
January 02, 2020 10:46 PM
Ugh. You might be right. by Alexander Pierce-Beales
"I guess maybe if you'd been poisoned, you wouldn't mind so much," he offered with a shrug, not entirely believing it. "Although dying of poison might be better than this." Another thought struck him and he looked at Mara with wide, horrified eyes. "If this is what good potions are like, can you imagine how awful the poisons must be? Ugh."Oh. Mara had family here. A sister. Half-sister was still fifty percent more sister than Alexander had, as far as he knew. Wouldn't that be rich? Come to magical school and discover family? His mind reeled back to square one, where Mara was a source and a network and couldn't be his friend because they were too different. She wouldn't want to be his friend because he'd never had a friend and wouldn't be any good at it. But she really was nice and maybe he could just keep trying?
She offered to get the bezoar and even made a joke, which earned a small, flat smile from Alexander. He was surprised by the offer and watched her walk away with a sense of fear; hope, he knew, was much more dangerous than any poison they'd learn about in this class.
Following directions was second nature to Alexander and he carefully measured out the requisite scoops of 'potpurri'. It seemed odd to just dump stuff in what was essentially a giant bowl and expect a liquid out of it, but everything seemed odd and Alexander didn't have a lot to lose, so he went on with his task until Mara returned.
He wrinkled his nose, both at her comment and at the horrifying little hairy thing she was holding. "Yeah, I'm glad you wore the gloves. I can smush that up if you want to figure out how to heat something to 'medium' for 'five seconds'. And then . . ." He ran his finger down the recipe and stopped at the step they were on, stumped. "Why on earth would you need to switch out the cauldrons in forty minutes? Do they do different things?"
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Alexander Pierce-Beales
Ugh. You might be right.
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Josephine Clyde
January 03, 2020 7:52 AM
BBKAWK by Josephine Clyde
She would not be late for the first day of magic class. She. Around the corner! Would. That door! Not! Josie just about crashed into the Potions classroom with all the subtlety of an elephant. Sliding into the first open seat she saw Josie took a moment to calm down. Sleep was beautiful and the home of dreams; it was not the home of being on time.There was some beautiful lady giving out instructions, but the flying scrolls really stole the show. When a little stack settled on her desk she fished out the one in English and gave it a quick read. It looked like a recipe! This was definitely something she could do and definitely do well. But then she looked at the ingredients more closely. Be…zoar? Standard Ingredient? Part two’s recipe had Unicorn Horns ? Josie felt her heart sink a little as she followed the recipe’s instructions. This was nothing like baking!
Lost in more questions than answers she almost missed her seatmate’s question. Work together? That’s right; the beautiful lady had said they would need to work together with second years. Josie turned to give her new partner more attention. Wow, this girl’s hair was almost as beautiful as Mara’s was. The crest on her robes was a red and silver snake. It wasn’t the brown and gold Pecari pig, so she could definitely be polite and friendly.
“Sure,” Josie nodded with a big smile, “I’d love to, but I don’t think I’ll be very helpful.” She hesitated, “I didn’t really grow up with a magical childhood, so I’m a little lost. What’s a…bezoar?”
Josie whipped the recipe paper back out and peered at it again before continuing with her questions.
“I have to make it into a powder using a mortar. Is that this thingy?” Josie gestured towards the stone bowl, “And Unicorn Horn? Is that from a real unicorn? Are they…um…like chickens in the,” Josie paused, she’d been about to say real world, but this was the real world too, “Back home we buy chicken from the grocery store. So are unicorns kind of like the chickens of the magical world?”
Josie paused again, letting the stupidity of her words sink in. Her face flushed and she wanted to crawl into the big cauldron in front of them and die. Were unicorns chickens? Really? She could only pray that the other girl from the mystery house would be nice.
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Josephine Clyde
BBKAWK
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Joanna Rose-Turner
January 03, 2020 9:47 PM
Language is pretty interesting by Joanna Rose-Turner
Jo looked around and saw a girl with a bunch of extra potion recipes, giving her a pang of anxiety. Did she miss those when gathering the other supplies?Thankfully it seemed like she was walking over towards her. Thank goodness, she thought.
For a minute, Jo was really worried she might have to wait and ask the teacher to help her find a partner. There’d been many school projects and group assignments in her past where she was the last to be paired up. It was a symptom both of her own shyness and her lack of good friends in her classes. These were the types of things about herself she never thought would change, but once in a while she could get lucky.
“Yeah sure!” Jo replied enthusiastically.
“I’m Jo, what’s your name?”
Jo looked over the recipes the girl had brought over and noticed each was in a different language. Jo had always thought being able to speak another language would be so cool, but in school she’d only learned a few words in French.
She looked at the girl in a bit of awe.
“Can you speak all these different languages?”
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Joanna Rose-Turner
Language is pretty interesting
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Leonor De Matteo
January 04, 2020 12:23 AM
*I* am pretty interesting. by Leonor De Matteo
"Leonor De Matteo," Leonor replied, nodding politely. She knew that Jo wouldn't know who she was because why would anyone know who she was unless they were one of her family's subjects? But it still felt appropriate to introduce herself with all the formality and pride of her status. "Pleasure to meet you, Jo."Then the topic turned to the scrolls in Leonor's hands. Perfect. Leonor wasn't necessarily one to expect people to fawn over her, but she certainly wouldn't turn it down, and it was always nice to have people who would do just that. Besides, Jo was a really great, modern name. This was exactly the sort of person that Leonor had been trying to find and now she'd done it. Brava, Leonor.
"Yes, fluently," she said, her tone more matter-of-fact than arrogant. "But I prefer to speak Spanish. English is my least favorite, but what can you do?" Leonor shrugged. She was nothing if not honest, whether or not anyone else agreed with her version of the truth. "It's nice to have the different versions of the recipe because you can see the differences in translation," she added, pointing at an example in the French and Italian recipes. Jo was a Teppenpaw, not an Aladren, so Leonor was fully prepared to accept that it had been a polite question and not one born of real interest, but Leonor thought it was interesting so she decided to share anyway. "Do you know any languages other than English?"
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Leonor De Matteo
*I* am pretty interesting.
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Jezebel Reed-Fischer
January 04, 2020 12:37 AM
Say what now? by Jezebel Reed-Fischer
Jezebel hadn't really expected to have a partner who was paying even less attention than she was, so there was some advantage to working together, even if the junior girl had come in a little late. She'd noticed Professor Brooding give a curt nod and a raised eyebrow in her direction but she hadn't said anything. Jezebel sort of wondered what the potions professor would look like angry. Probably a little bit like a Venus flytrap.Either way, the first year had probably been paying attention since her arrival and that was one step up on Jezebel. When the girl spoke, Jezebel's head spun a little bit. Since when was she the one people looked to for answers? Jezebel didn't grow up with this stuff either, and just because her family was-- well, her new partner didn't know any of that. Maybe Jezebel's hard work had paid off and she looked a little like she knew what she was doing. Except this new student was an Aladren, so Jezebel probably wouldn't seem impressive for very long. Awesome.
"I didn't grow up with a magical childhood either," Jezebel smiled lightly. Maybe she'd found someone she could get along with because of this, and not just someone to remind her of the mess that was her household right now. "You'll learn fast. I'm Jezebel by the way. I'm a second year, in Crotalus."
The girl asked about bezoars and Jezebel leaned over to show her where she could find that information in her book. "They come from the stomach of a goat. They're weird little hairy rock things. They cure most poisons and are in a lot of antidotes. But if you're dying of some poison, you could probably just chew on a bezoar too I think." Jezebel was surprised at the information that found its way out of her mouth and was proud of herself for having retained so much. Maybe she did sort of know what she was doing.
She nodded, agreeing that the thing on the table was a mortar and pestle set. She started to nod to confirm that unicorn horn was in fact from a real unicorn - and hopefully commiserate on how horrific that seemed - when the girl asked about the similarity to chickens on the market in the Muggle world. Breaking out into a grin, Jezebel shook her head at that one. "Yes, real unicorn. But they're super rare I think." She wrinkled her nose. "I don't think I'd want to eat unicorn. My family gets chicken from the grocery store, too. We've got a big family so chicken is a good option. Do you have any siblings?"
OOC - I also write Professor Brooding-Hawthorne so her reaction to Josephine coming in wasn't godmodding.
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Jezebel Reed-Fischer
Say what now?
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Ellie Alperton
January 04, 2020 7:18 AM
That sadly may not be a viable option by Ellie Alperton
“Definitely,” Ellie said with a giggle as Morgan talked about stopping by for a cup of beetle eyes. She’d heard good things about Southern hospitality, and the witchy twist just made it sound so funny. “It’s me and Emily in our room. So, I guess Southern ladies in room one, E’s in room two. I wonder if all the rooms have a theme?” she queried, “And stop by if you need… um… anything, I guess?” she offered, not really sure what she was in a position to offer - not really sure that, as a second year, she had vast banks of any kind of asset - but it would be nice to just hang out, maybe.So, Morgan’s dad was magical. She didn’t comment at first, both because she was never sure whether asking about the magical-ness of people’s families was rude or not and because Morgan had mentioned ‘when he comes back’ and ‘step-mom’ so it seemed like maybe she didn’t see him loads. Ellie was just a little surprised because Morgan seemed out of her depth and unfamiliar with everything, like Ellie had felt last year. She guessed a magical parent who wasn’t around much could work out kind of the same, in terms of prior knowledge. Though she would have guessed Morgan knew at least something about this world before this summer. That definitely seemed rude to ask though.
“You’re not wrong,” she added, when Morgan stated it all looked weird, as well as clarifying the situation somewhat - Ellie stacked the two bits of information together that Morgan’s dad was magical but that Morgan had met no other wizards until she was seven. She seemed pretty open and relaxed about these details but it definitely wasn’t Ellie’s place to push. “My parents aren’t magical. Or are Muggles,” she added, “I know those mean the same - I just, I hear people using both words,” she clarified. She hadn’t decided which word she was comfortable with. On the one hand, Muggle sounded like such a silly, clunky word, and she’d heard some people say it disdainfully. On the other hand… non-magical. It sounded more neutral, but defining people with a ‘non-’ prefix, by what they weren’t, was rarely positive. Non-white. Non-straight. The implication of ‘non-’ words was that you were not the default. People deserved labels about what they were, words they could be proud of and celebrate, not just to be defined by what they weren’t. But then, she didn’t know if she was projecting her own issues onto that. After all, who was the majority here? From her point of view, she was the outsider and the different one for being magical, and it certainly seemed like magical people were in shorter supply than non-magical ones/Muggles. But the way Purebloods talked about it… Being Non was definitely seen as an abnormality or an inferiority.
“Bezoar,” she gestured with a nod, when they’d reached the cupboard. “Or, in Spanish, Bezoar. Or in German, Bezoar,” she noted. “Guess proper nouns don’t translate much. I wonder if it’s pronounced the same in those,” she nodded at the two alphabets that she couldn’t read.
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Ellie Alperton
That sadly may not be a viable option
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Josephine Clyde
January 05, 2020 6:24 AM
My name is! by Josephine Clyde
Crotalus. What had her father said about them? Aladrens were bookworms, Teppenpaws were pushovers, Pecari was awesome and the Crotalus were somewhere in the middle. Nice, not terribly boring, but a little strict. Then her father’s eyes got a little distant and she knew what he’d say before he said it. Her mother would have been in Crotalus. Because of that little tidbit Josie felt an automatic closeness with the other girl, but held herself back. They’d only just met after all, but Jezebel was so kind. The second year nodded along and answered all of her questions and hadn’t even been rude about the chicken comment! The closeness felt justified now, but she’d still wait since it was only polite to figure out what the other person wanted.“I do,” Josie nodded as she began preparing the ingredients, “Two step-brothers. My family isn’t big, but Daniel and Samuel eat a lot, so my step-mother is always going to the grocery store with them.”
Did it matter to them that Josie’s mom had died in a car accident on the way back from the grocery store? Nope, but lots of things about her didn’t matter to them. Did the mortar need that much force to grind it into a powder? Nope, but at least she wasn’t bursting into tears at the memory of her mother anymore.
She was glad that Jezebel had said she didn’t have a magical childhood either. Everyone else she’d met so far had been fellow first years and even if they came from the same minimal magic background as she did they were all still first years. She wanted to talk to someone who had some experience in both worlds. They’d probably be more patient with her questions.
“Our homework is writing something about this potion, right? Are classes usually like this? Where we work in pairs with older students? And is our homework something we need to work on together too? If you’re not busy later could you help me find more information in the library? I remember what you said about bezoars earlier, but I want to do well.”
Josie was about to look back at her fake recipe when it occurred to her that she’d forgotten to introduce herself.
“Oh!” That was a bit loud, she ducked down and hoped no one noticed, “I’m Josie, it’s probably a good thing if you know my name before answering all of my questions.”
44
Josephine Clyde
My name is!
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Morgan Garrett
January 18, 2020 7:41 PM
I'm afraid you may be right. by Morgan Garrett
Morgan laughed when Ellie extended the offer to drop in if she needed something back to her. “Will do,” she promised. “I don’t know if the other rooms have themes...two out of seven, that’s...is that enough to make a hypothesis with?” she asked, more or less joking, just glad she hadn’t stumbled over the word ‘hypothesis’ too badly. She had learned about the scientific method in fourth grade, she thought, and they had used it against last year, but it was just a really long and difficult word. She hated it when she had to spell it in writing, because she was sure to miss something. Greek roots were hard.She nodded when Ellie explained that her parents were Muggles – or non-magical – and that she didn’t know what word to use. “Know how that is,” she confirmed. “Dad makes all these jokes about mugs – you know, like what you drink from, or people’s faces. He thinks he’s a comedian,” she explained, her tone one of indulgent affection. “It doesn’t make sense in context though, even if you’re talking about faces,” she added. “Though you probably know that,” she acknowledged. “With your parents. Mom and my stepmom, they don’t look much alike, but they’re both...like, nothing I can tell that makes me think ‘oh, Sage is obviously a witch and Mom obviously isn’t’,” she concluded.
She looked over the labels, which did indeed repeatedly say ‘bezoar.’ “It sounds like you’d think they would be,” she said about the two unreadable alphabets. “But I don’t know much about any other languages, or how they’re written.” She stood on her toes to look in the box. “It looks kinda like a rock,” she said. “Maybe it’s not too bad? I don’t know why we’d drink something that has a rock in it, but....maybe it’s like the wizard version of iron pills or something,” she hazarded a guess. Iron supplements were a thing people had to take sometimes, iron was metal, iron was found in rocks, therefore it made a degree of sense to her.
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Morgan Garrett
I'm afraid you may be right.
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Mara Morales
January 18, 2020 8:51 PM
For whatever it's worth, I wish I wasn't. by Mara Morales
Mara’s expression twisted with disgust when Alexander made a very logical statement about the poisons. “Ugh,” she echoed. “Nasty. Though I guess it’s...if they’re as nasty as all of this, maybe we would know if we had poison in something? I’m pretty sure that I’d know if something any worse than all this was in something I was eating,” she said, and grimaced again.She returned with the bezoar and was relieved when Alexander offered to smush it up. She did not want to smush it up. It was nauseating enough like this. “Sounds like a deal,” she said gratefully. She was slightly concerned by the imprecise language being used in a chemistry context – she would have felt a lot more comfortable if they had had temperature in degrees to work with; it was a lot harder to mess up this kind of thing when there were precise measurements to check before she did anything – but figuring it out as she went along sounded far, far better than the...smushing.
Plus, well, it was good practice for entrepreneurial endeavors, she guessed. According to the family history on the Arvale website, Ariana Hayles had had no real training in chemistry, much less precise equipment. She had figured it out as she’d gone along, and look how well that had worked out for her. Mara was not mentioned in that family history, did not have her picture anywhere near any of Ariana’s faded sepia remainders, but Mara was as much Ariana’s great-granddaughter as Jessica was. If such traits could be passed along genetically – which Mara doubted on the whole, but whatever – then Mara had as much claim to them as anyone.
“I have no idea,” said Mara, shaking her head. “I mean...I know there’s...in regular chemistry? You have to clean vats for mixing things in certain ways, and there’s some materials that are more reactive than others – usually you want to use something that doesn’t react to whatever you put in it, so you’re totally in control of exactly what’s in the product, and how much of each thing. So I’d think you would have to be careful with metals, though...oh. Oh! I think I’ve got it,” she said, excitement entering her voice. “I think different metals would conduct heat differently. So maybe it’s easier to keep one at the right temperature longer than another, and it needs different temperatures at different times for the ingredients to...fix together?”
She shrugged. “I’m just guessing,” she added. “Trying to make it make sense. I’m not sure that’s really the thing around here, but I tried,” she joked.
She flipped open her book to find the page she remembered seeing with diagrams about how to work the heat source. “This looks pretty much like a Bunsen burner,” she said, more or less musing out loud. “And there’s this...I’m assuming it controls how much exposure the flame has to the bowl, and how hot it is?” she theorized. “Ah, sorry – thinking out loud,” she apologized to Alexander, who had enough problems with dealing with the bezoar. She decided to just go for it and try to turn the burner on. She held her breath the whole time, but managed to get a flame going. “Whew. Now to get it hot enough and keep it there for five seconds.” She shook her head. “Five seconds. That’s a heck of a reaction time. Do you think we heat everything together, or get the cauldron and the water hot and then add everything all at once for five seconds?”
16
Mara Morales
For whatever it's worth, I wish I wasn't.
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0
5