Mary Brooding-Hawthorne
May 22, 2020 12:44 PM
Let's get cracking! [Intermediates] by Mary Brooding-Hawthorne
So far, the start of the new year hadn't killed Mary. It certainly seemed to be trying, but classes had been going well, students were being student-y, and life was looking a bit more normal. If nothing else, it was becoming its own new normal. Mary was not under any delusion that her life would ever look the way it had six months before, but she'd almost given up on wishing it would. Now, she was just taking one day at a time and trying to make class interesting enough to make sure neither she nor her students fell asleep during the lecture.When the intermediate students arrived - which always required a period of adjustment at the start of new years, when second years were third years and fifth years were gone off to be sixth years - they were greeted by a room that was decidedly warmer than usual, with dim lights and a quiet, subdued sort of environment. The last of these traits was due to the rather large amount of substrate that lined large crates where student desks usually were, mounds of shining eggs visible in each. Today, the desks had been pushed aside and cushions were set up around the crates, indicating unambiguously where students were meant to be sitting for today's lesson. If any of the students had been into a muggle pet store before, or a farm, they might recognize the classroom for its similarities to where lizards and chicken eggs might be kept.
Mary greeted students in a low, soft voice, setting the tone for a class day that was going to be a bit hushed. Perhaps she wasn't doing a very good job keeping everyone awake, but she was exhausted and the best she could do was make her classroom as much like a big warm blanket as she could manage. She reminded a few of the long-haired students to put their hair up as they took their seats, and when everyone was finally sat down, Mary took a seat on her own cushion. She sat on the floor as well, her legs folded neatly underneath her dress - one of the reasons long skirts were so helpful - and scooted close to her own crate.
Since everyone's box was the same as Mary's, she didn't tip it forward so much as gestured to the partitions that separated the box into three equal-sized squares. "Doxy eggs," she said softly, pointing to a pile of shining black eggs in a nest on the left, "ashwinder eggs," she pointed to the dull orange and red eggs in the middle, frozen in time to prevent them from catching everything in the vicinity on fire, "and occamy eggs," she pointed to the gleaming silver eggs in the right-most nest. "These are viable eggs. Anyone caught intentionally harming any of the eggs or baby creatures inside will be put in detention as long as I am allowed to keep you there. We treat animals as humanely as possible in potions, particularly since the nature of our work means it is not always possible to keep them alive."
This was, she knew, a controversial topic and one she was the least proud of her field for. Someday, she did sincerely hope that vegan and vegetarian potions could be figured out that were as effective as the ones with animal products and byproducts, but that day was not this one. She paused long enough to let that sink in and then continued.
"Part of our work in brewing potions means selecting ingredients responsibly, with as little waste or cruelty as possible. While you can usually find out enough about your ingredient sources to find trusted suppliers, particularly if you buy in as large a bulk as I usually do," she added with a wry smile, "other times, you must learn to tell for yourself. Today, we will be assessing the health and quality of each of these three types of eggs. Please remember what we've been talking about and your reading as far as how dangerous doxy eggs are, and the fact that ashwinder eggs have been frozen.
Beside each crate is a set of tools. You'll find a scale, calipers, and various other items. You and a partner or two partners will be writing notes to turn in, indicating to the best of your ability the weight, size, density, surface structure, and health of the eggs in your crate. Not every crate has eggs with the same properties." She knew for a fact that there were some not-so-healthy eggs that she had been very upset to receive in some of the boxes. "Remember that we can gently scratch the surface of an egg and feel it with our hands to consider texture and structure, and we can gently tap the egg with various instruments to measure apportionment shell density, quality of yolk and albumen, etc."
Satisfied she had covered the gist of what she wanted to, Mary waved her wand at the chalkboard to reveal bullet-pointed directions of what she'd discussed. A copy of these in German had been available on Mary's desk when Hilda came in, up to the girl to take them or not as she saw fit based on their previous discussion. She wasn't about to float them over to her in front of everyone when she might not prefer that sort of attention.
"Please let me know if you have any questions. Otherwise, go ahead and get started. The rest of today's class period will be used for this activity."
Subthreads: I'm being good! by Felipe De Matteo with Lyssa Fitzgerald
I am not good with fragile things (tag Johana-Leonie) by Malikhi Hill with Johana Leonie Zauberhexen
I hate everything about this. by Jessica Hayles with Evelyn Stones
I refuse to crack. by Jezebel Reed-Fischer
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Mary Brooding-Hawthorne
Let's get cracking! [Intermediates]
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Jessica Hayles
May 26, 2020 9:24 PM
I hate everything about this. by Jessica Hayles
One of the things which had surprised Jessica as a first year was how very almost-normal the classrooms had general looked here. The slightest examination, of course, rapidly revealed all the ways in which they were far, far from normal, but on the surface...desks in rows. Blackboards (a little old-fashioned, sure, but not outrageously so). In science class, burners and lab tables and stools. The details were all wrong, but at a glance, the classrooms almost looked normal. Most of the time, anyway.Today, it seemed, was one of the times which were exceptions to the rule.
Jessica skirted around the crates of wrong eggs warily, her mouth twisting and her nails digging hard into her left forearm at the sight of the many, many heaped, shining black eggs in one-third of each crate. No, she was not touching that, she'd take a bad grade first. If she was expected to touch that, she thought she would actually lose her composure, or at least have to excuse herself so she could go puke a lot and also meticulously remove every single bit of skin from her hands and arms afterward. As vomiting was revolting and self-mutilation wasn't really her thing, she thought it was best that people just get out of her way and let her go to eggs that were less wrong....
Unfortunately, every crate seemed to have some in it, so the best she could do was find a cushion where neither side was adjacent to a clutch (the word made bile rise in her throat; she had not wanted to look at pictures when they had discussed what doxy eggs were in a previous lesson, but the reality was so, so much worse) of the black masses. She was so anxious to avoid the doxy eggs that she sat down with a crate so fortunately position without even looking to see who else was there, and swore under her breath in Spanish when she realized her error. Once scooting her cushion as far away as it could reasonably go, she deliberately fixed her attention on removing her notebook from her bag, not looking at anyone, now, because moving on account of anyone else - whether that person was someone who had simply ceased to exist about a year ago, or whether that person was such a smug, manipulative, lying, two-faced lump of foot fungus on the least-washed toe of humanity that Jessica wouldn't spit on her if she was on fire, never mind move one inch to accommodate her in any way - was no more than option than public vomit was.
Her face twisted up completely with disgust as the professor tipped one of the loathsome crates toward them, and without her noticing it, her right hand went back to digging its nails into the side of her left forearm, heedless of the pen now trapped between her palm and the top of her arm. She only became aware of what she was doing when Professor Brooding-Hawthorne said something so infernally stupid that she only just managed to turn an involuntary scoff into a throat-clearing in time. Okay, so ashwinder eggs were enough like human embryos that they could survive being frozen, whatever - if they were in this room, they were kinda living on borrowed time anyway, because they were almost certainly going to end up in cauldrons for one of the other classes (Please God, she prayed, with long-unaccustomed fervor, let it be for one of the other classes) by the end of the week. Literally all the teacher cared about was her supplies budget, and while surely anyone who wasn't actually literally brain dead would realize this, the frou-frou hoity-toity moralizing tone still felt like a cheese grater being drawn across Jessica's already irritated nerves. Not that listening to someone admit out loud that they would kiss Skies' feet for an extra buck to buy those hideous things with was exactly tasteful, but....
It was just all so freaking stupid! she thought angrily. Anyone with two functioning brain cells knew that the baby animals, as B-H here was sick enough in the head to refer to them, were gonna be chopped up and boiled soon. The professor even admitted it - in the abstract, of course, but what the heck were they supposed to think? Did she legitimately think that everyone in here wouldn't notice this?
She did not want to do this at all, but desperate times called for desperate measures. As they were set to work, she said, "I will literally do all the rest of the work if I just don't have to touch...those," she said, with a jerk of one hand toward the doxy eggs.
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Jessica Hayles
I hate everything about this.
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Evelyn Stones
May 31, 2020 1:26 PM
It's awful for sure. by Evelyn Stones
On the whole, Evelyn was glad when the potions professor covered ethics and her lessons. It was important, and having a best friend who didn't eat meat made Evelyn all the more aware of the lives lost for the sake of a good brew. Still, discussing it and fixing it were different things and Evelyn was not at all sure how to do the latter. She supposed the best she could probably do was "do the least harm possible" instead of "do no harm," and try to help promote ethical potion-making in the future. She wasn't even sort of sure how to go about doing that.Luckily, today's lesson was primarily about the sort of thing that Evelyn could do, practically, to make things a little bit better, so that made her happy. That was about all she could hope for these days. Humans were not powerless, far from it, but she'd been feeling a bit like she was and it was nice to have something to distract her hands with. Unfortunately, she might've been one of the few who felt that way. Jessica, the living breathing reason Evelyn wore a bit more "normal" colored makeup most days, looked like she was about ready to scream, cry, or leave. Evelyn couldn't really blame her. The eggs were a bit gross, although she generally liked potions and didn't mind as much as Jessica seemed to.
"Okay," Evelyn said, surprised by her offer. "We can work together, and I'll do those ones," she said, smiling gently. Everyone, she figured, had their thing. Everyone had something. Evelyn wasn't really sure what hers was but she was sure she had one. Lucky for her, it didn't seem to have come up in a classroom yet. "Are you feeling alright? Do you want me to turn the box so those ones aren't near you?"
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Evelyn Stones
It's awful for sure.
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Jessica Hayles
June 03, 2020 3:16 PM
Must we really, then? by Jessica Hayles
"I'm fine, aside from wanting to claw my skin off whenever I look at that," said Jessica, starting to glare at the eggs but quickly averting her eyes again. "Ugh. I don't know why they are like that with me. I didn't like the pictures in the book when we were talking about them before, but - ugh!"She shuddered, but could already feel her face heating up with embarrassment over this gratuitous display of weakness. Nobody took women with weak stomachs seriously, everyone knew that. She was supposed to be better than this. Her anatomy gave her no choice other than being better than this, or so she had been taught all her life. It hardly mattered now, of course, just as nothing in particular really did now, but it was still hard-wired into her brain that she was not supposed to behave like this.
"Sorry," she said, a bit more calmly, collecting herself. "Believe me, I know I sound kind of stupid. I don't know why those are bothering me so much, I'm not normally like this." She squared her shoulders. "But it's fine," she said, as firmly as she could. "As long as nothing starts hatching, it's fine." And so long as she didn't have to touch the black masses, tumbling over each other, touching each other, straight out of something's....
She had to stop thinking like that. If she didn't, she was actually going to claw at her skin, and that was not a good look. Her parents and nanny had not spent so much time wrestling her into hats and sun lotion when she was small just to have her go and ruin her skin now that she was old enough to know the importance of maintaining it properly.
"Kind of weird that we're doing this in this class, don't you think?" she asked. "It seems more like a Care of Magical Creatures thing, if they're viable eggs, since I'm pretty sure everything's kind of...dead by the time we use it to make any of our potions." She examined a silvery occamy egg. "At least, as far as I know. I hope I'm right about that," she added with a nervous chuckle.
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Jessica Hayles
Must we really, then?
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