Don't let white people be in charge on Potions

Mary Brooding-Hawthorne

February 20, 2020 8:38 PM

Ethical and sustainable [Intermediates, III-V] by Mary Brooding-Hawthorne

Winter break had been . . . taxing. There were pros and cons, but it was clear that spending time in Greece with Darius and Evangeline, and their twins Louis and Calliope, had not helped Tabitha. Whatever it was that was bothering the Defense professor, it clearly wasn't just her workload, as Mary had suspected. It also wasn't just family, or just adventure, or anything else. Mary almost wondered if it was just being married. But she suspected that was not the case. Instead, she thought that it was probably a combination of things. That did little to help a conversation about it go any smoother and it was bittersweet that no such conversation had occurred anyway. Mary had kept busy, playing with the twins and trying not to look too happy about it when Tabitha was looking. It was exhausting, and that was one word she had never expected to use to describe her relationship with Tabitha.

It had, however, inspired the first week of intermediate potions lessons of the new term. There was a concept that had been coming to mind that she couldn't quite remember where she'd heard it, but it struck a chord with her: work towards sustainable relationships. That meant non-toxic, healthy, loving, intimate relationships. As a potions professor, though, she couldn't help applying the idea to her own work.

"Today, we are going to be discussing ethical sourcing and waste-free potion-making," Mary told her class when they had taken their seats. "That means making sure we don't harvest ingredients in a way that is harmful to the environment or to the creature or plant the ingredient came from, and it can also mean making sure we don't use ingredients from unethical suppliers. Waste-free potion-making is important because it means getting the most out of whatever we're working with, and being aware of how other fields might use parts of the product that we don't. Perhaps you only need a lizard spleen, but there is a local, ethical shoe boutique who can also take advantage of the animal's skin." She was standing in front of her desk and leaned back so she was sitting part way on it, looking at her class with frank resignation on her face.

"Truth be told, there's not any ways that wizardkind has yet discovered to make potions without any animal products. Not that work the same way or are as safe or accessible. Some, sure. But many have not yet been done this way. That means that if we need these potions, we need to do our best to make sure the damage we're doing is minimal. Can anyone give me some ideas of what sort of damage might occur, or what we can do to minimize it?"

Mary accepted several raised hands, hoping that the buy-in from student participation now would pay off when she told them about the practical part of the lesson. Chalk danced across the board, jotting down the ideas as students said them and organizing them into two columns: the damages and the minimizations.

"Very good," she smiled. "For the practical portion of today's class, we are going to do an exercise related to waste-free potion making. For homework, you'll be doing research about ethical sourcing. I'll give you the prompt for that as you leave today. Expect to be assigned an ingredient; I expect you to research the region it comes from, the process for harvesting it for mass use, and ways it could be done more sustainably." Homework aside, Mary gestured towards the side of the room, where two crates were standing on their own pedestals.

"Each student - or pair of students, I don't mind whether you do one together or work on your own but discuss it - will select a product from one crate or the other. Your task will be to separate the pieces of it into as many usable ingredients as possible - think carapace, and eyes, and spleen, or stem, and stamen, and pollen, and petals - while preserving non-ingredient parts for other uses."

She looked around, taking a moment to answer any questions that came up right away. When the topic turned towards what the ingredients were, Mary nodded. She was careful to keep the gravitas out of her tone - solemnity had no place in this discussion when the inevitable was what she made her living on - whilst maintaining the seriousness of it.

"I want you to choose your ingredient carefully and thoughtfully, because whatever you think of the task itself, they are both very important. In the crate on the left, there are newts. In the crate on the right, there are mandrakes. If you need any help or any equipment, please let me know. Go ahead and begin! I'll come around to see if anyone has questions or needs help as well."

Subthreads:

Don't let white people be in charge by Zara Jackson with Hilda Hexenmeister

We must respect the dead. by Evelyn Stones with Heinrich Hexenmeister

We have two whole sections of our website devoted to those ideals. by Jessica Hayles

It's a nice ideal by Ness McLeod with Felipe De Matteo

What is this ethical you speak of? by Topaz Brockert

22 Mary Brooding-Hawthorne Ethical and sustainable [Intermediates, III-V] 1424 1 5

Zara Jackson

February 26, 2020 3:43 AM

Don't let white people be in charge by Zara Jackson

Zara took a seat in potions, actually hoping for a theory class. She’d had a really nice day with her aunt and her cousins just before the end of the holidays, getting her hair back on track. It wasn’t that she didn’t take care of it when she was at Sonora. She did. She just didn’t lavish attention on it when there was so much else to do, and when proper moisturising took so long. Still, when there were other people who had to do the same – when it was joining in rather than being left out – it became much easier to really go to town. And her curls were thanking her. They still sided towards the fuzzy, but they were like… neat fuzzy right now. There was a hint more spiralling. And all in all, it was just happy, bouncy hair. She was kind of hoping for a theory lesson as a result, because she wanted to keep it out. To be fair, that was possibly a possibility, even if they were brewing. The hair rules were probably more for people like Jessica, whose long locks were a safety hazard. Zara’s hair was never going to dip into a cauldron, as that would involve going straight down, and that was one thing it decidedly did not do.

Apart from hair parties, the holidays had been… holidayesque. Christmas with her Dad’s side, with magical decorations, fun happy church and oh so much food, and New Year with her mom’s side, including all the non-magical wonders of things like spray in glitter, and chips and dip. Okay, magical people had chips and dips too, but what was not to like about that? The one tension running through the whole thing was Bertie. Apparently, he had this new thing where he kicked people at school. He only did it if they made fun of his stammer, which he said was fair (Zara could see his point) but school were talking about suspending him. None of this was helping said stammer, which meant that their parents were even more on the fence than before about whether Sonora would be the right fit for him or whether he’d be better off at CASMA, which specialised in treating speech problems alongside teaching magic. Also, whether Sonora would even take him if he was kicking people.

The lesson started off pretty theoretical. Both in the fact that the word ‘discussing’ had been used, but also because Professor Brooding had mentioned something that really only existed hypothetically; ethical potion making. Zara half expected an airy fairy lecture about how they could all save the world by growing their own knotgrass and recycling. She was therefore pleasantly impressed when the core components of the discussion were acknowledging the kinds of damage that could be done. Oh boy, did Zara have a whole list… Her hand only hesitated long enough for her to pick her poison and think how exactly to phrase before it was up in the air.

“Exploitation of people – for example, forcing people off their heritage lands because they’re suitable for crop growing, or outsourcing ingredient production to factories in countries with fewer labour laws to make it cheaper, so that there is also a human cost to ingredient production,” she explained when called on “– one that disproportionately affects ethnic minorities within this country, and non-white populations worldwide,” she finished, her tone sharp and fierce, just daring any rich white boy to roll their eyes at her for saying it. “Additionally, there were numerous sustainable cultivation practises employed by native peoples of colonised countries which were then wiped out. Where they weren’t lost completely, employing these practises is often the best way to minimise damage.” Giving people control over their own lands and their economies was, potentially, a good start, or at least listening to them. Although some things couldn’t be brought back because the knowledge was lost of the land was scarred.

Where those procedures had survived though, there was also a lot to say on the sustainability side, but Zara didn’t want to monologue too much. There were several cultures that promoted either seasonal ingredients, and had different seasonal variations for the same thing or which focused on long term potion preservation methods. Another approach was around the underlying attitude in the invention of new potions - seeing balanced potion making as using ingredients that naturally occur together or using multiple parts of the same organism efficiently. Waste-free production was, essentially, not a new idea. It was just that a lot of those processes were trampled over by consumerist and colonising cultures, and now white people wanted to reinvent the wheel and get credit for it – after being the primary agents in creating the problem in the first place. Zara was almost looking forward to this homework assignment, and really hoped that whatever she got was going to let her bring a lot of this in.

It was one of the big problems with potions, but it wasn’t fair to make it only a potions issue – it was an issue with consuming anything, from cosmetics to clothing to food. Whilst there were efforts to improve things, there was no such thing as a one hundred percent ethical and verifiable chain of production, whatever was promised by the cheerful green ticks, frogs, bunnies and whatever else they put on packaging to assure you that you were doing a good job. Make up that wasn’t tested on animals still needed mineral compounds that might be mined who knew where and who knew how. Half the promises that a company ‘didn’t believe in sweatshop labour’ were either carefully worded so as to sound good but be meaningless, or be well intentioned but impossible to follow up.

It didn’t mean you were absolved from trying, of course. It was better to do some good than none, but it was a lie to believe that you could do anything without risking that exploitation, or damage to the world around you was happening somewhere along the way. Not unless you cut yourself off totally, skipped through the woods collecting mushrooms and grew your own shoes. And no one real had time for that.

Then there was a practical. Boo. Also, potentially ick. On the plus side, she might not need to tie her hair back, but on the other hand, depending on what they were ‘separating parts’ of… Potentially ick. Spleens had been mentioned. Zara liked to think she wasn’t squeamish, but you had to draw the line somewhere. And that line was definitely before ‘pick your own spleen’ became an activity. Whilst she was in favour of sustainable practise, it did not mean she wanted to do that. That was the sort of thing that mushroom-gathering, shoe ladies did, and she had already ruled that out as a lifestyle. Ideally, someone else would gather spleens as ethically as one was ever able to do that, and then she would purchase said ethical spleens, happily paying a little more for a) it being ethically gathered and b) not having been gathered by her. Luckily, there was also a plant option.

She was pretty sure there was going to be a scrum for mandrakes, and also made a mental note to see which people picked newt, on the grounds that they were either gross or disturbed and she would avoid them if possible.

“You wanna pair up?” she asked someone else who was gathering around the mandrake barrel, quickly swiping one as she got a chance, “I think this might be the more popular option.”

13 Zara Jackson Don't let white people be in charge 1444 0 5

Hilda Hexenmeister

February 26, 2020 9:18 AM

Du könntest Recht haben by Hilda Hexenmeister

To be entirely truthful, Hilda had become lazy with Heinrich around for her classes this year. She didn’t really even try to pay attention to the Professors’ English lectures and just listened to Heinrich whispering the German translations. On the one hand, her grades had skyrocketed this year, being able to understand everything the teachers were teaching perfectly (in addition to translating, Heinrich also explained things in different ways if she obviously wasn’t getting it the first time through, and he was surprisingly good at that so she did grasp even the most complex concepts and theories, if not perfectly then at least well enough to stumble her way through passing essays in a language that gave her more trouble than the ideas she was writing about). On the other hand, well, next year was gonna suck with Heinrich moving up to Advanced classes.

She offered no part into the class discussion. She never did. Writing English was hard enough. Speaking was worse. There was neither time to look up words nor opportunity to scratch out bad drafts and start over. So she didn’t talk in class discussion. She just listened to Heinrich quietly translate everything everyone else said. Including himself.

Somehow, to Hilda, in a lesson on ethical potion ingredient preparation, she felt there was going to be some judgement, or even a failure of some hidden character test, if you went for the dead newt instead of the plant thing. She didn’t really have much problem with chopping up dead newts (they were dead, they didn’t care anymore, and they were presumably already prepped for potion ingredient harvesting and use by thirteen year olds so they probably wouldn’t still have any blood left to spill all over the place and be all gross and unsanitary) but the phrases ‘ethical use’ and ‘chopping up dead newts’ didn’t work together well in her brain, so she headed over for the barrel of mandrakes.

Besides, it was doubtless going to be easier to separate plant bits than animal bits, and her fine motor control just wasn’t super dexterous. Picking out little newt organs was going to be all kinds of fiddly and that was not her strength.

Strength was more her strength. Which wasn’t going to be useful here. It would probably count against her handling a frail and tiny dead newt. She’d probably squish important bits just carrying it back to her seat.

So Mandrakes. She went to get one.

Before she could grab one another girl asked if she wanted to work together. Zara. She wasn’t a German Tent Girl, but she was Johana Leonie’s roommate, so Hilda knew her by sight and a bit by anecdote.

“Yes,” she agreed, nodding. “Partners. Good.” She looked over and saw Heinrich grabbing a newt and grimaced slightly. Wasn’t he the one who was always worried they’d be mistaken for assassins too if people knew who their parents were? And now he was grabbing a dead newt for an ethics class like a psychopath? She would never understand her brother.

“I follow you,” she told Zara. “You sit not near him.” She was already a Beater. Her not-a-psychopath credentials were already at risk. She did not need to compound that risk by appearing to condone Heinrich’s lack of common sense.

1 Hilda Hexenmeister Du könntest Recht haben 1433 0 5

Evelyn Stones

February 26, 2020 10:19 AM

We must respect the dead. by Evelyn Stones

Today's lecture was the sort that made Evelyn think she wanted to do something with potions for a living someday. This stuff really mattered and it could be done better. That's all she could ask for in her lifelong legacy, was to do something that mattered and do it well. Unfortunately, she couldn't help thinking of all the ways it was not done well, particularly as someone with a reputation for makeup wearing. She wasn't sure what to make of the idea that she was probably wearing animal cruelty in Tuscany Rose on her lips, and Naval Kiss on her eyes. Each eyelash was coated with death, like so many beetle legs fluttering when she blinked. Awesome.

Evelyn's first instinct was a great big 'no thank you' in terms of dissecting newts for class. She'd worked with them enough times in potions class to know she wasn't very squeamish, but she'd also seen enough of them in the forests near home that they were labeled as cute little things in her mind. However, with makeup and cruelty in mind, she couldn't help also sort of relating to the newts. Or at least understanding them in some way.

They were already dead. They were already going to be used. She thought that if she was dead and going to be used, donating her body to magic or science would be good. It would be nice to help people. Plus, Evelyn didn't know how the newts had died. Had they suffered? She doubted Professor Brooding would get murdered lizards for a class project but what was the difference, really?

With that in mind, Evelyn felt some amount of responsibility. She owed it to these tiny lost lives to be grateful and to be respectful. If she was going to do better, if magickind was going to do better, they had to start small.

So Evelyn made her way to the front of the class and frowned into the box of newts, selecting one of the smaller ones as she thought it was probably the more difficult to work with and most likely to be disrespected in death. She wanted to be a good thing in this little guy's death. As good as she could be.

Carrying the newt back to her desk, she looked at it for what felt like a long time. She wondered if it had a family or what its tiny life had been like. Did it have a favorite food? Maybe she'd find out when she cut it open. That was a horrifying thought.

Before she could proceed, an approaching student interrupted her and she looked up to see who it was.

22 Evelyn Stones We must respect the dead. 1422 0 5

Jessica Hayles

February 26, 2020 8:35 PM

We have two whole sections of our website devoted to those ideals. by Jessica Hayles

Jessica didn’t mean to laugh. There was absolutely no benefit to laughing in this situation, which was a marked contrast to the number of potential drawbacks. In the moment, though, taken off-guard, she could not completely restrain herself, and had to clear her throat and fake a cough to cover for the sound she only half-strangled after Professor Brooding, apparently in all sincerity, talked about harvesting their ingredients without harming the environment or the creature the ingredient came from.

She knew, of course, what the professor meant. There were multiple ways to do almost everything. ‘Harvesting’ organs from lizards had, in most cases, the same inevitable end result – lizard death – no matter how that operation was conducted, but there was death and then there was death. Jessica had to admit that one of her concerns about coming to a magic school had been that lessons might involve conducting sacrificial rituals to make spells work. She had not been at all comfortable with the thought of that. Quite aside from the optics issue – ethical sourcing was a huge issue in cosmetics; her father had had to go overseas several times just to be photographed looking like he was doing jobs which properly belonged to the sourcing, quality control, and legal departments – it was also just, like…morally wrong, doing stuff like that.

Except that, of course, they…kinda did that whenever they made potions at all. And her mother’s beloved collection of Louboutins did not come from thin air. So, did that actually mean it was more ethical to commit weird sacrifices to make spells work (or just use lizard guts collected in a humane manner by someone else to make potions work, though that didn’t work as well as a philosophical point here as the weird sacrifices did) than it was for her mother to obsessively collect high heels?

She was distracted from this musing, though, by the distinctly annoying voice of a distinctly annoying person answering Professor Brooding’s question. Upon paying attention to the response, Jessica gave into the temptation to roll her eyes, albeit with them directed toward her desk because of the approving look on Brooding’s face.

On one level, of course, Zara was right, much as it pained Jessica to say that her class’ most self-righteous little twit could be right about so much as the exact color of the sky. Labor exportation was a major part of why the country was going to hell in a handbasket and other countries were stuck there, why income disparity kept getting greater and greater – which was a problem for Jessica’s social class as much as anyone else’s, in the longer term, according to Daddy, because while lipstick sales might go up as people’s general purchasing power went down, the sales of everything would start to fall over time, which meant that Jessica’s great-grandchildren might not do as well as Ariana’s had. With climate change and everything, it was also within the realm of possibility that Jessica herself could live long enough to see some solid waste hit the cooling devices, which gave her personal as well as philosophical motivation to support sustainability. Plus, it was good for PR these days, which affected her bottom line right now too. Working toward sustainability and treating employees well allowed Arvale to play to multiple markets at once; only an increasingly small number of ultra-idiots actively disliked both those things, and Jessica was reasonably sure that the number of women who actually, really thought that looking pretty was bad was also quite small. All around, as Daddy said – it was possible that he could make more money than he did, but in the bigger picture (including, to a point, some scenario where the proletariat woke up enough to get violent), everyone won when they pursued these goals.

The way Zara said it and framed it, though, annoyed her. It struck her as manipulative, not to mention incredibly similar to the crap that Felipe spewed to justify keeping serfs. It was this idealization of primitivism. Jessica would have bet half her trust fund that, if pushed, both Felipe and Zara would be forced to concede that no, they didn’t actually want to live the way Felipe’s “people” lived, or in a village of stick huts practicing ancient agriculture by hand themselves. She would also bet her entire trust fund (despite knowing that she really needed it now that she didn’t have a future in business; theirs was not a culture which paid poets a living wage, much less one that could keep her in the manner to which she was accustomed, so she was in for a long haul of living off what her parents gave her) that if they tried to bluff after she offered them a space to go actually try it out and all the resources to plan their attempt from in advance, they’d last maybe a fortnight before deciding that there were definite advantages to modern methods. If she did not let them make plans beforehand, or they were too stupid to take her up on that part of the offer, she wouldn’t give them the length of a good old-fashioned Ford-devised five-day workweek.

Plus, Jessica could point out many, many points where Zara’s idea that the solution was going back to 1491 wouldn’t work at all – at least for the real world. Maybe all that was the best way to sustain all the resources, but when those techniques had been used, the population practicing it had been tiny and given to early deaths from preventable or easily treated conditions. Reverting to that would leave millions of people starving, besides those who already were now. So did Zara (oh, how Jessica wished she could actually throw this point in Zara’s face in debate and see her expression!) think they ought to condemn millions of old people and small children to starvation just in the name of sticking it to Columbus, when there was a lot of potential to move forward and find new ways to do things better than they had ever been done? Like those science fair girls who had developed the nitrogen-fixing thing to increase cereal yields and invented the water retention thing from orange peels to further the fight against drought. It was extreme politicians on both sides, left and right, who got in the way of that stuff, reacting to each other and impeding research and innovation, and on whose heads it now (she could just see herself concluding her argument on a stage, in a nice little suit) would be if everything went to pieces.

Besides, she thought mutinously, back in the real world, who the heck was Zara to judge anyone, after the way she had so casually dismissed everything her family had worked for? By her own account and judgments, her parents were working toward good goals, and she didn’t feel obliged to help. She had no right to sit there with that smug look on her face as though she were better than all of them.

Jessica wanted, intensely, to stick her own hand up and start a debate right then and there. She wanted to knock Zara off her pedestal, and then she wanted Felipe to try to come to Zara’s aid so she could then let him have it too. Last year, when the subject of serfs came up, she had backed off when he started getting upset and defensive because at the time she had thought they were friends. This year, given just half a chance, she’d push him into the wall until he either conceded or took a swing at her, in either case losing the argument –

But she was a lady, and ladies didn’t lower themselves to starting even verbal brawls in classes. Or, more to the point, to showing emotions which their teachers didn’t like. So she looked politely forward, digging her light pink fingernails into her arm under the table until the emotion passed away. She still, though, went for the dead lizards over the dead mandrakes when they were forced to choose. For one thing, mandrakes might technically be plants, but what she had learned about them meant she might throw up if she tried to dissect one – aside from having the ability to produce sound on purpose, they apparently moved into each other’s pots if they lived long enough and got ‘secretive’ and ‘moody’ – implying they had a capacity for emotion – and also, they looked like people. Chopping up lizards wasn’t her idea of a good time, but at least it didn’t have such close optics to actual human sacrifice. And then, for another, simpler, thing, Zara was over near the mandrakes, and Jessica didn’t want to walk into temptation.

She held the sad little corpse as far from her robes as possible as she walked back to her desk with it, glad she had had the sense to pack dishwashing gloves with her school supplies after realizing the kinds of things she might ask to deal with at this school. Putting it down with a grimace, she removed one glove so she could get out the green clothbound Clairefontaine 1951 notebook she used for Potions and her Potions pen – a green aluminium Platinum Plaisir, steel-nibbed, lightweight but sturdy enough to survive school use – and then grimaced again as she contemplated the logistics of trying to dissect something with her left hand.

“This ought to be fun,” she remarked under her breath, and relegated that problem to later. She opened her notebook to the nearest clean page, pausing to run her hand over the satin-smooth surface of the paper before she uncapped and posted her pen and began to write in her green Potions ink. Sometimes, with the way she gripped her pens, she ended up with ink spots on her fingers here or there, but that was a normal enough phenomenon at Sonora and it made her feel wonderfully poetic, as though she were Charlotte Bronte in Brussels, or Edith Wharton in New York. In this context, though, she decided to try to imagine she was Madame Curie in Paris, ignoring that this was bio-chemistry instead of physics and that Madame Curie's work had killed her. She put in the date on one side of the top of the very top line and then wrote her name on the other side before adding below,

Subject: a deceased newt.

Objective: Discover how many things can I make out of this newt.

Notes: I don’t know where the newt came from. I don’t know how the newt died. It is possible I am using an unethically sourced or inhumanely killed newt. I also do not know how long the newt has been dead or how much it has decomposed, which compromises the safety of every ingredient taken from it – I could not use these for any real potions because it is unethical to poison people with rotten newt.

She felt facetious when she started writing, but by the end, the side of her mouth twisted slightly upward in a grim little smile. Goodness, she hoped that Professor Brooding took their notes up at the end of class. She couldn’t lower herself to verbal brawls, and there was nothing to gain from showing an emotion Professor Brooding didn’t like, but if she was simply too concerned about ethics….

It was, however, a valid consideration, now that she thought about it. It was a floppy dead thing on the table. She was not a lizard expert who knew anything about the process by which lizards rotted after they died, but it didn’t look particularly rotten. Had Professor Brooding just sailed around the room killing newts this morning, or were these things full of formaldehyde?

She glanced up to her neighbor. “Do you think these things are preserved at all?” she asked, actually genuinely curious now. “I don’t think I’d want to use anything from it in something I’m supposed to drink if it is, but it’s just as bad if it’s just sitting here…decomposing,” she added, the last word carrying a touch of distaste.

16 Jessica Hayles We have two whole sections of our website devoted to those ideals. 1442 0 5

Zara Jackson

February 26, 2020 9:07 PM

I.... contest? Right? I have the right contest? by Zara Jackson

For two people who were in the same, rather small year group, Zara and Hilda had never done a lot of interacting. It was interesting how it was possible to move with ‘different crowds’ even when there were such a small number of them. She guessed it was maybe down to being in different houses, or having different interests. Perhaps, in a weird way, the fact that Hilda was best friends with Zara’s room-mate was the reason – when Hilda and Johana-Leonie hung out, Zara tended to regard that as their friend time and their time to speak their home language, and it wasn’t something Zara was going to gate crash. And then, if Hilda wasn’t hanging out with Johana-Leonie, that meant Zara felt free to. It meant the combination of Zara and Hilda just didn’t come up.

There was also the fact that Jessica seemed to have decided to get her claws into the German group. Zara wasn’t sure whether this was deliberately to get at her – the first time she’d sat with Johana-Leonie, it had been undeniably pointed – or whether just having to adjust for the language barrier meant that there was a limit to what she could convey, and as she was sticking to such simple subjects as ‘I like make up,’ it was harder for her more repellent ideas and implications to become apparent.

Zara was glad for this chance to get to know Hilda, seeing as she hadn’t really before. She tried to tell herself she didn’t hope it bothered or worried Jessica, because that was as disingenuous as Jessica’s own motivations for befriending Johana-Leonie in the first place. But it would be lying to say that wasn’t a nice little bit of icing on the cake.

She followed Hilda’s gesture, when she requested not to sit next to someone in particular, finding she was gesturing to her own brother. Huh. She had pegged the siblings as close, given that they were almost always together in class. But, as she’d seen Heinrich constantly whispering out of the side of his mouth, she wondered whether that was more necessity than choice. Or, if it was a choice, whose it had been. Or maybe Hilda was just grossed out by the fact he was currently toting a dead newt. Zara was equally inclined to find that an undesirable quality in a person too.

“Sure,” she smiled, “My stuff’s over here,” she nodded to where she’d left her books and her bag, which seemed a safe distance away from Heinrich. “I have a brother too,” she added, her smile shifting to one that was more of sympathy, of shared understanding that that could be a problem. “And an older sister,” she added, wondering whether it was the boy-ness or the being-an-older-bossy-boots that the was the problem with Heinrich. She could definitely understand not wanting to constantly be in your sibling’s space, however much you loved or even liked them.

“So… where do we start?” she gestured to the mandrake in front of her. It for sure felt like this was the right choice – after all, the anatomy of plants was something they were pretty familiar with from herbology. Just because they took Care of Magical Creatures didn’t mean they knew the inner workings of animals. Care of Magical Creatures tended to be about trying to keep them out of the potions barrel, after all, and knowing how they worked on the outside. There were certain things you wouldn’t be able to gather from one plant at the same time – flowers developed into fruits, after all, so if you wanted both, you’d have to harvest carefully. Still, not all plants produced fruit, and as she’d never heard of a mandrake fruit (and doubted it would be good to eat it even if she had) it wasn’t really an issue here. Plus, they had what they had – the mandrake had been picked and dried when it had, and it wasn’t going to be doing much changing now. It did have some attached flowers, which went with the list of things Professor Brooding had mentioned – most of them having been internal flower parts – though Zara suspected the root was where the really money was with these. Still, waste not, want not. That was the motto of the lesson, after all.

13 Zara Jackson I.... contest? Right? I have the right contest? 1444 0 5

Heinrich Hexenmeister

February 27, 2020 9:45 AM

100 percent behind this lesson by Heinrich Hexenmeister

Heinrich, with the unthinking force of habit, took his seat next to Hilda, and began repeating everything he heard in English into German. Once he got his English a bit more refined, he had a good shot at a career as a translator, if he wanted to go that route. He was not sure he did, particularly since that would put him in the path of people who spoke German, who had a good shot of being Germans, who would definitely recognize his surname, but he didn’t have any better ideas so far, so he wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand until he did.

The class began, and one part of him was listening, and one part was talking, and he wondered sometimes if being able to do that was entirely healthy. The good thing though was that it meant his brain was to busy trying to convert the English coming in to the German going out that he couldn’t think too hard about anything else. There had been some lessons early on where the German coming out was less what the professors were saying and more of his not-so-internal commentary on both the lesson and his personal worries. And there were an unusually large number of third year girls who seemed able to follow at least some of it. He fixed that problem by just not thinking any commentary. He couldn’t pay attention to both himself and the professor, so he just had to trust that if he was only thinking about the professors’ words, he was only saying the professors’ words. As best as he could tell, this was working.

So as Professor Brooding talked, Heinrich translated, stumbling only a little as he ran into English concepts he was only loosely familiar with. The word ‘sourcing’ was a new form of ‘source’ he hadn’t run across before, but context helped even out his uncertainty. He wasn’t completely sure he was repeating things correctly when he told Hilda about ethical lizard skin shoes, but he simply did not have the time or the brainpower right then to question it too hard.

He translated the open discussion question, not expecting Hilda to participate. He had offered a few times that if she wanted to answer in German, he’d translate the other way for her, too, but she was determined enough to Do This Stupid English Thing that she wouldn’t take him up on it.

He translated Zara’s long treatise, and when she was done, he finally had a moment to think while Professor Brooding looked for who to call on next.

Mostly he thought about Uncle Karl’s snake ranch. He was pretty sure Uncle Karl was an ethical source for snake bits. Well, in as much as being a purveyor of snake venoms can be an ethical business. But the snakes were well treated, sometimes too well treated, it seemed to him sometimes. Both Karl and now Hans, too, talked about the creatures like they were real people they regularly had conversations with instead of animals they were cultivating for parts. He was pretty certain both of them spent far too much of their time isolated out there in the desert.

When Karl had chaperoned the trip to visit the Zauberhexens in Germany and Heinrich had run the ranch more or less on his own (Karl had hired one fellow - a Spanish speaking guy, he admitted now that Zara had pointed it out, though Heinrich thought Karl paid a fair wage, and they seemed to be kind of friends, inasmuch as Karl seemed to have any friends at all - to help with some of the harder and more dangerous chores), but the books showed most of his business seemed to be in selling venom - and sometimes already brewed anti-venom - to various hospitals all over the world rather than the ingredients that would result in actual killing the snakes.

Still, there were orders for snake organs and eyes and such, and Heinrich didn’t think he was imagining it that Karl seemed much happier after Heinrich demanded a responsibility that did not involve interaction with live snakes and he ended up teaching Heinrich how to do that kind of harvesting. (“It’s not too much different from what what you do for that potions mistress at your school, boy. Here, look.”) Since then, that had been Heinrich’s job whenever he was in Utah. Professor Brooding would be pleased to know Karl was very fastidious in making sure there was almost no waste from each snake that was put down, and what little was left was carefully burned and the ashes scattered like a departed family pet. Heinrich was still kind of scandalized that every last one of Karl’s snakes had a name. Moreover, he wished Karl didn’t tell him the snakes’ names before he had to cut them up into their component parts.

He really wasn’t sure which way that went on the ethical scale. Was it a good wolf thing that the snakes were treated well as individuals who deserved respect and acknowledgement of their personal sacrifice, or was it bad wolf to chop up something with a name to sell its fangs to people who wanted to brew a potion to cure boils? But boil cures were medicine, so making that had to be good wolf, right? And the recipe called for snake fangs. Six of them. That’s three dead snakes for one boil cure.

Heinrich’s head hurt.

Hilda nudged him, and he realized another answer was being given and he translated that.

Okay. So what was the damage?

The damage was people getting attached to the animals they raise. The damage was people living out in the desert without contact with other humans and becoming a bit delusional.

The damage was that he was eleven years old before he even knew he had an uncle.

But that was maybe not entirely Karl’s fault and certainly outside the bounds of this class discussion.

He raised his hand. “One thing we can do to minimize the damage is to have an awareness of these damages. If you know your pimple cure kills three snakes in its making, maybe you will do a better job of using preventative soaps, or maybe choose a different treatment that maybe is not so effective but has a lower ethical cost.”

Uncle Karl had been right. What he asked Heinrich to do was exactly the same thing Professor Brooding was asking of them now.

Newts seemed more snake like than mandrakes, so he went to that crate. Besides which, newts were classified as beasts. Mandrakes were classified as sentient.

He brought a newt back to his seat, mildly baffled by the look Hilda had sent him, but he’d given up trying to understand every expression his sister made a long time ago. It probably wasn’t important. If it was important, she’d say something. Firstly, because Hilda was outspoken like that. Secondly, because she understood about and was sympathetic to his lack of fluency in Emotional Nonverbal Cues.

He sat down next to Evelyn and set the dead newt down in front of him. He cursed himself for wondering what the newt’s name was. It had not been raised by Karl. It probably didn’t have one.

What a sad existence that must be, never having a name.

He shook his head to shake off the thought and smiled at Evelyn. “I see you picked a newt, too,” he observed. “I have done this with snakes before. My uncle owns a snake ranch.” He thought he had probably mentioned that before, but the extreme relevance to the current assignment seemed to demand a revisit to the topic as chopping up snakes definitely had not come up before. “He sells snake ingredients for a living.”

Heinrich grimaced down at the nameless newt. “He names all of his snakes.” He poked at the newt with his potions knife, not enough to puncture the delicate skin but to adjust its position so he could get the knife under the spine and flip it over so it was belly side up. It looked nothing like a snake’s underside. He felt vaguely uncomfortable. “I used to think that was weird and terrible, but now it feels disrespectful, cutting into a newt without even knowing its name.” And it’s legs were a problem. He wasn’t sure how to skin something with legs.

At least there wouldn’t be blood. Blood would have been drained first. That was always the first job and it took a long enough time that there was no chance it was part of today’s assignment. Plus it smelled bad and people would vomit and contaminate their work. Snake blood was one of the more lucrative ingredients Karl sold, though. But Heinrich refused to do that part and Karl didn’t make him.

1 Heinrich Hexenmeister 100 percent behind this lesson 1414 0 5

Evelyn Stones

February 27, 2020 1:56 PM

That's because you're good wolf, through and through. by Evelyn Stones

Heinrich speaking up in class made Evelyn smile, and she had tucked her head to take notes and to keep from making a fool of herself or drawing undue attention to Heinrich. She was so proud of how far they'd both come since they had first met, and Heinrich speaking up in class was just one beautiful example of that. Also, he made a great point and Buddha knew acne was a topic a room full of teenagers could understand. Of course, it might also be something worth sacrificing lizards for, if anything was going to be.

She was happy to see that he was the student sitting next to her and she returned his smile, feeling honored - as usual - to see him offering one. She gaped a little at his explanation of his uncle's business, pretty sure she knew some of it but not all of it already. "That's so cool!" she said. "I wonder if Professor Brooding ever gets ingredients from him, directly or indirectly?"

It amused her to think of Professor Brooding in all her pointy-hatted, tiny, sickly-sweet glory swooping into a snake ranch run by someone Evelyn could only assume was similar to Heinrich himself. Of course, Heinrich was one of her assistants, so she would be probably get on just fine with his uncle, too. She wondered what Heinrich's uncle would think if she got to meet him sometime. It was a very intimidating thought, but one that was less intimidating than she thought it ought to be. She knew enough about the Hexenmeisters to know that that she thought of Uncle Hexenmeister very much as a hero in his own right. Anyone who talk on three small children at the drop of a hat and was a halfway decent guardian to them was a hero. She knew as well as anyone that biological parents couldn't even say that much most of the time. She also knew that Hilda had largely grown up in Utah, and so there was something about Uncle Hexenmeister that encouraged, or at least allowed, the development of such wonderful people as Hilda and Heinrich.

Evelyn nodded understandingly about the nameless newts. She'd been wondering similar things before Heinrich had sat down, so it wasn't hard to relate. "What if we name them?" she suggested. She peered at her little tiny newt, sitting on the table like a smushy pile of lizard pieces rather than a lively newt like she had seen in Oregon. "This could be Melissa," she said with a decisive nod.

She looked up at Heinrich again with a smirk, her eyes shining, and decided to let him in on what she'd been thinking. "We've come a long way since we met. We were . . . what, thirteen?" She cocked her head, realizing she didn't actually know how old Heinrich was. She assumed he was older than she was because he was a Sonora year above her, but that actually meant very little considering her own age. The idea also brought the realization that Heinrich might not knew if she'd been held back. That was getting dangerously close to a topic she didn't want to discuss, but one she suspected he'd understand, even if not in so many words. "Actually... how old are you?"

22 Evelyn Stones That's because you're good wolf, through and through. 1422 0 5

Ness McLeod

March 04, 2020 3:37 AM

It's a nice ideal by Ness McLeod

Ness took a seat in potions. It was probably the absolute hands down worst class for the Aladren. Not in terms of grades or anything, which were always fine, but just… content. Potions was so horrible. There was always eye of this or part of that, and Ness was vegetarian. It had been a real crisis of conscience when starting Sonora, but unfortunately there just wasn’t any way around the requirement that Potions was a core subject - and pretty darn useful. Ness hated doing it, but the academic side won out - it was just a sacrifice that had to be made.

Today, class seemed to be tackling that full on. Well, sort of. Maybe at like a thirty degree angle. Tackling it full on would have been looking at vegan potion making, which Ness seriously hoped they did at some point because it was evolving all the time, and Professor Brooding-Hawthorne, for all that she seemed excessively frilly, did seem pretty cool and obviously gay. The former point made it seem like the subject might be one she’d be willing to tackle, and the latter had helped Ness forgive the sheer over-femininity and believe that there might be a little more bite to her than all the dresses let on.

Ness’ hand rose immediately when they were asked for problems with potion making.

“Battery farming - intensive rearing of particular animals whose parts are necessary, in inhumane conditions designed to maximise profit at the expense of the animals’ well-being. As much as anything can be said to have well-being when it is being raised for slaughter. Ways to minimise this are to buy free-range or use vegan alternatives when possible.” Admittedly, Professor Brooding had said those were limited but they did exist, and how many of the students, she wondered, even knew what options were out there?

The discussion went on for a while, because the world was a messed up place and there were a lot of answers to ‘What are the problems?’ People. Cruelty. Everything. Sometimes the world sucked.

Ness was less convinced when it came to the practical. Most people here did not know the most effective way to dissect a newt. Ness might have said it was unlikely that any intermediate was an expert in that particular field but three years and counting in a room with Topaz and the variety of stuffed horrors she liked to exhibit were enough to make Ness’ revise that. She would probably be overly good at cutting something up. And, even though the horrid Pureblood girl would undoubtedly take it as one, Ness did not mean it as a compliment. Still, the rest of them didn’t seem like the most effective newt-slicers, and thus what use were the things they harvested going to be? Was this exercise in sustainability going to, in fact, result in a lot of wasted newt bits? That seemed somewhat counter-effective.

Ness tried to put all ‘newt bits’ out of mind though because ick, and went for the mandrake root instead. The first step would probably be to work out all the bits that you could harvest, so that you could make careful and appropriate incisions and do things in a logical order. The flowey-leafy bits would probably need to be first as they were most delicate, so getting them off there before you started banging it around to hack up the root was logical. But making a list first was even more so. Ness had just started this, when someone approached.

13 Ness McLeod It's a nice ideal 1419 0 5

Topaz Brockert

March 10, 2020 2:54 PM

What is this ethical you speak of? by Topaz Brockert

As a subject, Topaz loved potions. However, she did not really care for Professor Brooding-Hawthorne. The woman was soo....chirpy. Saccharine. Peace and love and all that goody-two-shoes Teppenpaw crap. The Aladren wanted to learn about poisons and potions with fun negative affects on the victims. And not how to cure people from them but how to make them.

She wondered if she could maybe take a separate independent study on Potions after CATS. Professor Brooding would probably have to monitor it but what Topaz wanted to learn was radically different than what they'd probably learn in class. She figured she would probably be able to arrange to do this. After all, there were advantages to one's grandfather being the Headmaster.

And Professor Brooding-Hawthorne couldn't really say to much negative about Topaz doing an independent study either. The fourth year's grades were impeccable and she usually didn't show her...true self to her professors. From their perspective, Topaz was an impressive, incredible student. Which was her true self, she just didn't show the......torturing people side. Because she wanted good grades, she even told teachers what they wanted to hear on papers and stuff. Even if she totally disagreed with it. Topaz was not about to sacrifice her grades because her teachers thought the way about her that her siblings and cousins did. Grades were more important to her than being honest. Okay, sometimes she did things she wanted to do, like with the Herbology assignment where they entered their plants in the fair, but usually, grades were more important.

Topaz rolled her eyes as Professor Brooding-Hawthorne began her lesson. Really, this was what the Aladren meant about the professor being sappy. Ethical and sustainable? Gag. Though she had to admit the latter was a good thing. After all, nobody wanted to run out of potions ingredients. After all, there were a number of potions that actually did help people, not that Topaz gave a crap about doing so. However, for example Sapphire was on potions for her epilepsy. If the ingredients for that potion ran out, her sister could have a seizure and die and admittedly, the fourth year wasn't actively wishing for people to die. Well, aside from her roommate, of course. Sapphire was dumb and useless but Topaz didn't actively wish for her death.

Besides, if people died, Topaz couldn't torment or experiment on them. And Sapphire was one of her favorite victims!

But ethical? First of all, nobody in the business world was ethical . That would prevent their success. Plus, ethics got in the way of the intellectual and magical development of the human race. And that was important too.

Topaz rolled her eyes at some of the answers as well. Zara Jackson seemed dedicated to making white people out to be inherently evil. In a class full of them. And if Topaz remembered correctly from the concert, wasn't Zara's mother white? Congrats on alienating most of your classmates and implying your own mother is evil , she thought. Never mind that Topaz routinely called her mother stupid. But that was true .

And of course she rolled her eyes at Snotti-Ness. Vegan alternatives? No, just no. Honestly, the other Aladren was such a hypocrite . She tried to portray herself as this uber-nice person who cared about everyone the way Ruby and Owen genuinely did, (even though they ate meat) when in truth, she wasn't nice and had it in for purebloods and anyone traditionally feminine. True, Topaz often wrote off girly-girls such as Ruby and Angelique as useless and silly and frivolous too, but she wasn't pretending to care about everyone's well being and being accepting of others no matter what. She was honest about who she was, even if she told people what they wanted to hear on papers.

As soon as people stopped being so sanctimonious and it was time to do the practical, Topaz walked over to the crate of newts. Obviously, she was going for the newts. She was pretty much an expert on cutting up dead animals. She grabbed one and walked back to her desk. Topaz was just about to start working when someone approached her. "Can I help you?" She asked.

11 Topaz Brockert What is this ethical you speak of? 1427 0 5

Felipe De Matteo

March 18, 2020 2:10 PM

Which means it's nonsense. by Felipe De Matteo

Felipe was tired, but it was the first time he could ever remember being tired from all the emotional side effects of winter break rather than the business ones. He had still had his role to play over Christmas and in the other De Matteo service projects, but he was, on the whole, excused from entire parts of his former life now. He had made plans to meet Zara soon, but since that hadn't happened, he still felt anxious about everything. Literally everything. He doubted he'd feel much better until he was able to talk with Zara more holistically, but for now there were potions to make and eye contact to avoid.

It was an interesting lesson, and one that he might've taken a very different set of notes for had he still been set to inherit literally anything, but he could still enjoy it for himself. The idea of chopping up a newt seemed like something that pragmatics said would be useful and his stomach said was not worth it. He was feeling better but he didn't feel like doing more awful things right now. And he liked plants; mandrakes were plants and a little sad to chop up, but at least he would be learning something that would apply a little more directly to his interests. Besides, the best way to learn how one's actions impacted the environment was to take a real close look at the environment. Then, they could get better. A class full of chopped up mandrakes and newts would mean the rest of their lives doing a little better than they might have otherwise, and that made these things worth it. Even if they almost undoubtedly wouldn't go well.

Felipe made his way to the box with the mandrakes and collected one for himself, frowning a little at it as he carried it back to . . . not his desk. He didn't have a desk yet. He'd been at one, but he had picked up his book bag and now he hadn't saved a seat anywhere. But it wasn't like the classroom was full, so he went to the next open seat. A student he recognized from the year ahead of him and from Aladren was working on a list or something. He wasn't sure if he actually recognized her from Aladren or if the list-making gave it away.

Come to think of it, he really wasn't sure what he knew about the student. His mind went first to "a girl from Aladren," but she didn't really look like a girl in the way his family would expect. He'd made a point of putting those thoughts behind himself, particularly when there were people like Professor Brooding-Hawthorne around, but he wasn't sure what else to do. He simply didn't have the language to call the Aladren anything but "he" or "she" and he was pretty confident that she was a she. Probably?

Deciding that wasn't the sort of question to ask someone, he simply walked up beside her. "Is it alright if I work with you? I have a mandrake, too." He held the sad little plant aloft and grimaced at it. Lowering it, he turned his attention back to his classmate. "I'm Felipe D-- I'm Felipe." He supposed he was still Felipe De Matteo, but it felt wrong to use his name like that now.

22 Felipe De Matteo Which means it's nonsense. 1434 0 5

Heinrich Hexenmeister

March 21, 2020 8:33 AM

I hope so by Heinrich Hexenmeister

"Indirectly, maybe?" he guessed at Evelyn's suggestion that Professor Brooding got her snake parts from Uncle Karl. He'd remember if Professor Brooding's name or Sonora's showed up in the invoice log. But he did sell to general potion ingredient suppliers, so it wasn't impossible that some of Uncle Karl's snakes were in the potions cabinet right now. He didn't know how he felt about that.

Fortunately, Evelyn changed the subject and he didn't need to think on it too hard. Snake bits were still snake bits, and it wasn't like Heinrich was the one who got attached the slithery serpents.

He bit his lip a little as he tried to remember exactly when it was he'd met Evelyn. "Twelve?" he ventured uncertainly, "If we start at the Strudel?" That had been the end of his second year, right? In some ways, it felt like he'd known Evelyn forever, but he also distinctly remembered not really having friends throughout his Beginner years. "But I was thirteen when I found you in MARS," he agreed, assuming she meant his age rather than hers, as they were in different years so their ages would be different, and he didn't know when her birthday was other than a very general 'summer' - and even that was assumed based on the fact that she had never mentioned it being her birthday during the school year last year.

Her last question was more straightforward. "I am still fifteen," he said, with only a little self-consciousness, knowing many fifth years had turned sixteen already, but Evelyn was a fourth year, so the admission came easier than it might have had he been asked by someone in his own year group. An August birthday made him the baby of his year group, and it was not a position he was entirely happy occupying. As the oldest of three siblings, he liked being the oldest. He wondered if that was why his only close friend was a fourth year. "I have a summer birthday," he explained, though his given ages for the Strudel and MARS encounters made that fairly easily deduced.

1 Heinrich Hexenmeister I hope so 1414 0 5

Evelyn Stones

March 21, 2020 1:04 PM

I know so. by Evelyn Stones

It had been a long time since Evelyn had cared much about her age. Thanks to Professor Wright and Skies especially, her magic was getting ever better, and she was much less worried about her ability to use it these days. She still preferred classes like today's, even if the subject was a little macabre, because there would be less wandwork required, but she wasn't so embarrassed about the fact that she'd once feared herself to be a squib. Plus, she was happy to be in Ness' year, even if time of birth should have put her in Heinrich's. She was glad she and Heinrich had met,regardless, and she was honestly more upset about not being in Aladren than not being in her fifth year at Sonora. But this year had been harder, because she'd finally told someone - a couple of someones - why she had been held back. In fact, she'd told Kir the day after her fifteenth birthday. It wasn't something she wanted to explain to Heinrich, nor one she thought he probably wanted to hear about, but then, she also hadn't expected them to be within a few months of each other's ages.

But Evelyn's birthday was one of the last days of the summer, so she wasn't too worried. She was probably still younger than Heinrich and at least now she knew about when to send him a birthday present. Still, she couldn't help worrying if it would bother him. Would he think she was dumb, and that's why she was held back? Or would he think she was not so . . . whatever . . . if she was his age. What if she was older than he was?

"I'm fifteen, too," she said a little softly, focusing on the newt in front of her. It felt rude not to look at Heinrich while she was talking though, especially since he was nice to look at. Uh, it was nice looking at people when talking to them. "We must be pretty close then; my birthday is August twenty-eighth. I started here late, when I was twelve." That definitely required explanation. But what sort of explanation? 'Family stuff' would probably suffice, but it would also risk opening a can of worms. At the same time, if Evelyn ever had to tell anyone else, she thought it might be Heinrich. "Some stuff happened at home and my dad decided I should wait one more year before starting." She shrugged as nonchalantly as she could, but she also had no doubt that Heinrich would at least be able to guess a in the ballpark of what was happening at home. People weren't being nice to her, and that much was clear from her tone.

22 Evelyn Stones I know so. 1422 0 5

Heinrich Hexenmeister

March 21, 2020 3:04 PM

I am glad of your confidence in me by Heinrich Hexenmeister

When Evelyn turned her eyes toward her newt, he turned his toward his own unnamed-as-yet newt as well. He wasn't convinced giving it a name after it was already dead would solve the sadness of its nameless state, but it was probably better than not having a name at all ever, right? Before he could think of one though, Evelyn told him they were the same age, and in fact . . .

He looked up, staring at her for a long moment in his shock.

Not because she'd been held back. That part he only distantly registered. That part he could understand. That part, he almost envied her. If he'd been allowed a year off after his life had turned upside down, it would have made his first year at Sonora so much easier. Yes, there would have been the angst over the conviction yet, the fear of a whole additional year of publicity in Europe with his surname attached to it, but the sheer shock of everything would have worn down a little, he'd have had time to get to know Uncle Karl a little before getting shipped off to Arizona, and he'd have had more than a few weeks to work on his English and get it to a point where he could understand the things going around him when he went to an English-speaking school instead of going from casual study to total immersion with almost no warning. He could only wish he'd been so lucky as to have been held back a year. He wondered why nobody had suggested it.

It was just that he'd been eleven. Eleven year olds were supposed to start magic school. So he had started magic school, whether he had been ready for it or not. And he hadn't been ready.

No, the part had him gape mouthed and staring at her came before that.

"August twenty-eighth?" he repeated after far too long of a pause. "That is my birthday, too."

1 Heinrich Hexenmeister I am glad of your confidence in me 1414 0 5

Hilda Hexenmeister

March 21, 2020 6:51 PM

Nein. Ich sagte . . . You could right have. . . You be right maybe? by Hilda Hexenmeister

The problem with leaving Heinrich was that then Heinrich wasn't around to help her understand the things other people said. She wasn't quite sure what 'stuff' was but 'over here' had been covered in the unit for Location Words, and the accompanying gesture was consistent with where they were walking. So that was fine. The unit on Family Words let her grasp that Zara was telling her that she also had a brother and a sister. Possibly older sister. Hilda was less certain of that word, but it sounded close to älter so it was probably older. "I have one more brother," she was slow and careful on this word, copying how Zara had said it as best she could, because she was never quite sure how different Brother and Bruder were supposed to be. "He is eight Jahrs alt." She wasn't entirely sure why they were sharing this information on their number of siblings, but reciprocation was usually the safest approach to English conversation, because then she didn't need to remember new words, just repeat the ones she'd just heard.

They reached Zara's desk and settled in with their mandrakes there. She understood that Zara was asking where to start. Despite the rough start, she was totally rocking English today after all. Who needed Heinrich?

She looked at her mandrake. She needed Heinrich, that's who. He would know both where to start and how to verbalize it. Hilda knew neither. She pointed at the leafy bits, guessing they'd take less abuse than the root part. "Here?" she guessed with audible uncertainty.

1 Hilda Hexenmeister Nein. Ich sagte . . . You could right have. . . You be right maybe? 1433 0 5

Evelyn Stones

March 21, 2020 6:56 PM

Now if I could find some for myself. by Evelyn Stones

A number of things went through Evelyn's mind very quickly. One of them was that Heinrich didn't seem to look upset or disappointed, just surprised, which was great. That being said, he looked very surprised. Between the extended pause and his big round eyes looking down at her - or up since they'd been previously looking at the desk, the whole thing was almost comical. And that was the second thought that went through Evelyn's mind: of course. A cosmic joke. Of course they had the same birthday. Of course they were exactly the same again. At first, she thought that there must have been some bad luck with August 28th fifteen years previously, but she thought that maybe that wasn't so true. She felt like she'd won the lottery with Ness and Heinrich.

It was odd to think of her mother and Heinrich's mother - two women Evelyn supposed might have looked alike in some ways, given how many features she and Heinrich had in common - pregnant at the same time. Heinrich's mom was probably happier about it than Evelyn's was. Were the Hexenmeisters already... working? By that point? Did assassin-for-hire jobs have a good benefits package, with maternity leave and everything? Although wizard assassination was probably less strenuous than Muggle or manual assassination. It also meant that sixteen years ago at this time, both of their mothers were pregnant. That suddenly seemed like a very long time. For Evelyn, and apparently Heinrich, quite literally everything had happened since then.

Then, Evelyn thought of her previous birthday. She'd been with the McLeods of course, and she'd almost thought to write to Heinrich to tell him about her birthday then, but it seemed odd to do. Hi, it's my birthday, talk to me. Also, why don't you want me to visit? That would have been weird. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, she was glad she hadn't done that. But it also meant that Heinrich was sitting at home at the same time. If the entirety of his summer was as boring as he'd said, that was a bummer.

"Well, I won't forget your birthday then," Evelyn said, bursting out with a soft laugh. She hadn't really expected to laugh, but something about this moment happening at all, let alone several years into their friendship, was just too funny not to laugh at. One more thought did cross Evelyn's mind, and it was one that could be really good or really bad. Hoping to Eutykhia it was the former, she raised an eyebrow and let Heinrich in on it: "And hey, we'll have our sweet sixteens at the same time."

22 Evelyn Stones Now if I could find some for myself. 1422 0 5

Ness McLeod

March 21, 2020 9:05 PM

Not at all by Ness McLeod

“Hi Felipe D’Im Felipe. So good they named you twice, huh?” Ness quipped, in a broadly good natured tone, though given that the reference didn’t transcend magical boundaries it might have been somewhat lost. “I’m Ness. Mind if I call you Felipe for short?” His introduction smacked of having had a Pureblood upbringing but trying not to be jackass about that, so Ness was actually reasonably willing to entertain his company. It was just that sarcasm was a fairly common communication mode for the Aladren.

Crotali were sometimes people Ness could get on okay with. Weirdly, on paper, better than Pecaris, which was odd considering Ness’ best friend (there were always exceptions). It depended whether they fell into the ‘view themselves as respectable members of society’ camp or the ‘down to earth and follow rules’ one. Ness thought that all the best people were disreputable reprobates who wanted to screw the system, but tended to follow rules that made sense, like ‘wash your hands after using the bathroom’ or ‘do your homework.’ Ness was not a fan of anarchy or being in trouble, it was just that rules and expectations needed a more solid reason than ‘this is how we’ve always done it’.

“Sure,” Ness nodded, in response to the request to work ‘together.’ This really seemed like a more solo endeavour, unless you were hacking at the same plant, but working companionably was usually pretty nice. So long as ‘together’ didn’t mean ‘copying shamelessly.’ “Make yourself at home. I was just drafting a plan,” the Aladren explained, nodding to the paper but not making a move to share it at this stage.

13 Ness McLeod Not at all 1419 0 5

Felipe De Matteo

March 27, 2020 1:43 PM

My experience begs to differ. by Felipe De Matteo

"Uhhh... Yes." What else was one to say when asked if their given name was an okay way to refer to them? Also, who just called people out for stumbling through introductions? Zara probably would, too though. It was the sort of lighthearted teasing that seemed affectionate when she did it and intimidating when someone else did.

When his classmate revealed a list she'd been working on, Felipe decided he had made the right choice, even if she was kind of weird. At least he knew they could focus on the task at hand. There was, of course, the risk that he was now going to drag this smart person down into his brain-fog, but he doubted someone as snarky as her would give in to that. So he could work in companionable near-silence with her; just enough conversation to keep intruding thoughts at bay, and just enough silence to be able to focus on the work.

"A plan sounds good," Felipe said, the sentiment resonating with him in more ways than one. He retrieved his own paper and did a quick sketch of the mandrake, labeling it with the names of various things he wanted to collect from it and making small notes about how best to do that. "It's sort of weird seeing one like this. It's much less dangerous than when it's alive." Wasn't that true of most things? "I know American mandrakes - the Muggle kind - are poisonous, so I guess those are dangerous whether they're alive or not." Was it really dead though? Like, if the root part was no longer a screaming humanoid, did that mean the plant couldn't grow anymore? He hated very much that he felt like he had anything in common with the ugly plant on the table in front of him.

22 Felipe De Matteo My experience begs to differ. 1434 0 5