Mary Brooding-Hawthorne
April 12, 2021 8:48 AM
Hey, make way for the old bezoar. [Beginners.] by Mary Brooding-Hawthorne
The professor waited until all her students had taken their places around the room, set up in its most usual (as much as the potions classroom or professor herself were ever 'usual') configuration of desks and stools, before speaking. When she did, she clasped her hands together as if she were about to tell them the most exciting news. This wasn't entirely wrong in her mind, although there were, arguably, other things more exciting than today's lesson. It was definitely towards the top for her, but there were about a hundred and fifty lessons that tied for first place, so it was a low bar to be in the top ten for Professor Brooding-Hawthorne. Still, she knew already that many students did not feel the same way she did about such things, so she tried to maintain some reasonable sense of composure about the whole thing."Hello, class," she finally said, smiling at them with an expression that was only barely not a full grin. "We've been studying the properties of bezoars now for awhile and your homework was to identify the different ways bezoars were used in at least three different potions--" she gestured at the stack of papers on her desk, evidence that at least most students had dropped off their work on their way in "--and today we will be finishing this unit by being intentional about the handling and preparation of the bezoar itself. Working with whomever is at your table, you'll be taking the bezoars and preparing them several ways: diced, ground, boiled, sliced, and fileted. You will also be taking one bezoar and taking it apart, removing the outer material of the stone and separating the contents as much as you can. Since it's mostly mush, I don't expect you to have a lot to find there, but it is important to understand the whole of the product we work with. When you're done, please leave these items in piles at your desks and I'll come around after you're dismissed to grade your work. You should have piles for each student at your desk, although you can choose whether to split the work or simply work together to discuss the approach and then do the work individually. As always, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. You have the rest of the class period to work on this and I expect it will take a good chunk of that time, so let's get started!"
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Mary Brooding-Hawthorne
Hey, make way for the old bezoar. [Beginners.]
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Iris Cobb
April 12, 2021 6:56 PM
This sounds... fun? by Iris Cobb
Iris entered the class with her homework ready to turn in. It hadn't been to challenging of an assignment, just some reading through the book and transferring some of that information. She found that she was quite liking potions class, it reminded her a lot of helping Ma with her tonics at home. She was still pretty sure Herbology was her favorite class so far, but Potions was a close second. Unlike some of the classes, potions seemed to follow some set of rules, even if she hadn't figured them all out yet. The fact that Professor Brooding-Hawthorne was a very good teacher helped as well. So she smiled politely as she placed her homework on the pile upon the professor's desk and then went to find a seat.She got her class materials out while waiting for class to begin. Once Professor Brooding-Hawthorne began talking she began taking notes on their task for the class. Diced, ground and sliced shouldn't be to difficult. Boiled may take a little bit, and she may have to figure out how to filet one. Dismantling a mushy thing didn't sound all that pleasant, but that was fine. It wasn't like she'd never gotten her hands dirty before. She just hoped Billy didn't decide to throw any bezoar at her today.
Turning to her partner, Iris smiled politely. "How would you like to work on this?" She finished getting out her supplies that they would need; knife, mortar and pestle, and cauldron. All if it was perfectly serviceable and well cared for, but not fancy or expensive by any stretch of the imagination.
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Iris Cobb
This sounds... fun?
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Xavier Lundstrom
April 13, 2021 7:30 PM
No, but it sounds do-able by Xavier Lundstrom
OOC: CW mild intellectual snobbery/ableism BIC:
Xavier made his way to potions. It was rapidly becoming one of his favourite classes. Charms and Transfiguration were still going virtually nowhere for him. It was frustrating, watching as his classmates made things soar around their heads whilst his only twitched like they were in their death throes. Was he a bad wizard? He certainly felt like it, and having never struggled in school before, it was both foreign and embarrassing. He felt like other people noticed too. How could they not? Just like they had to have noticed his absence from flying. He was that weird boy with the headaches who was bad at magic. That wasn't the kind of rep he wanted.
Potions involved minimal wand work, though whenever there was the instruction of 'wave your wand' he left it up to a partner if he could. It still felt like proper magic though. COMC and Herbology were fine but they felt a bit remedial. If your favourite and best class was repotting, you weren't exactly a high flyer. Potions was fiddly and complicated and gave you something that could weild properly magical results on your behalf. He often found he had a headache by the end of class, which wasn't great but obviously he'd dealt with worse. At first, he had been afraid that he was getting more migraines, except they never happened this close together. He had even bothered Miss Katey with one of the false starts, it had felt so similar. But he thought he was starting to tell the difference. He assumed it was something to do with the weird fug that hung in the air here, the way the onset of a thunder storm gave some people headaches.
Today was not a brewing day. He had not been able to establish an exact pattern to his headaches yet, but he thought that might help? He should probably have been journaling his symptoms or something but as they weren't becoming migraines, it didn't seem like it mattered much. And what would anyone be able to do about it anyway?
The lesson was sadly also not that exciting, so he was more than happy when his neighbour spoke up.
"Together?" he suggested, then realising that had been all the options, added, "I mean, share the work load - that makes more sense than doubling up, right?" Of course, if either of them was terrible, the other one's grade would suffer, but Xavier was thinking less in those terms and more in terms of how to make slicing up a lump go faster.
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Xavier Lundstrom
No, but it sounds do-able
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Iris Cobb
April 14, 2021 6:18 PM
Absolutely. by Iris Cobb
Iris was going to be working with Xavier today. That was fine, she didn't mind him to much, for a city boy anyway. To be fair though, it seemed like almost everyone other than Billy was cityfolk at the school. Well... maybe not Hansel so much, she hadn't spent a lot of time with the boy, but he didn't quite seem like one of the cityfolk. Anyway Hansel was sitting somewhere else in class, Xavier was here, and that was alright. He wasn't Billy."Sure does," She replied back once he clarified his thoughts. "Do you have a preference on how you prefer t' take apart your bezoar?" Personally she didn't really have a preference, although she hated to waste perfectly good ingredients. Learning about them wasn't really a waste, but still, she hoped that Professor Brooding-Hawthorne had a bunch of potions to brew up once class was done and the bezoars wouldn't just get chucked out on the slop pile out back after they left.
"I suppose," She began thoughtfully, "We should probably start with gettin' the water boilin' for the boiled version. We can work on the others while the water heats up." That was generally the rule, get things started that took time but didn't need much attention. The rest of these tasks sounded like they would need a lot of attention.
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Iris Cobb
Absolutely.
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