Nathan Xavier
March 05, 2022 8:27 AM
Beginners: Magical Flower Gardens by Nathan Xavier
Nathan welcomed the beginners into Greenhouse One just inside the door. Autumn had fallen and it was now more comfortable inside the greenhouse than outside, which was a welcome change after some of the Arizona heat in September that even the Irish weather charms hadn’t entirely managed to mitigate. It was cool now, though, and raining. As the incoming students were all first and second years, he included a drying charm with each greeting he offered and then handed back their graded test on mandrakes.Once everyone arrived and took a seat at one of the two long tables running down the center of the greenhouse, he took his customary lecture position between the two tables so he could be easily heard by everyone without using an amplification charm. With the rain pounding on the roof of the greenhouse, though, he did need to raise his voice a bit more than he usually did.
“Hello everyone, I hope you had a chance to look over your exam.” The latest arrivals probably hadn’t gotten to do much more than check their grade, but everyone else could have read his comments while they waited for class to begin. “Overall, I thought you did well, but if anyone has any questions about mandrakes or your grade, please come see me during office hours tomorrow or after class today.” He had thirty minutes between the end of the beginner lesson and the start of the intermediate class, so that should be plenty of time to field questions.
“Today we’re going to start our next unit looking at some magical flowers. We’ll be starting with honking daffodils. As you can guess from the name, these flowers are much louder than their muggle varieties. They otherwise look and grow very much the same, so wizards often plant the two varieties of them together to reduce the amount of noise they make while still having a large number of blooms.
“In front of each of you is a pair of flowerbed tins. Today, you’ll be filling them both with soil and planting a variety of seeds and bulbs. You’ll be able to recognize a honking daffodil bulb by the squeak it makes when you squeeze it. This sheet,” he waved his wand and pages with colorful pictures on them distributed themselves to each student, “has a list of the flowers we will be covering this unit, along with pictures of what their seeds look like and what their blooms look like. You may arrange your flower bed however you like, but you should draw a map of what seeds you place where so you can track how each species grows over the next few weeks. When you are done planting, we will put the tin marked ‘Sun’ in direct sunlight and the one marked ‘Shade’ on a lower shelf and we will also be able to see which species prefer which kind of lighting condition. Also, please remember to put your names on your tins!”
He then pointed out where the large bags of dirt were, and where the extra trowels and gloves were if they needed to borrow either of those. “Go ahead and do that, then we’ll talk more about the daffodils in the second half of the class period.”
OOC: By now, your characters are about halfway through October, so they know Herbology tends to begin with something practical - planting, pruning, examining, etc - which is done individually but you are allowed and even encouraged to chat and consult with your neighbors as you work. The class then concludes with a lecture in the second half, so this is a pretty typical lesson for everyone. Tag me if your character needs help, but otherwise have fun chatting and planting. Feel free to make up your own magical sounding flower names listed on the handout. As always, follow site rules and points are earned based on relevance, realism, quality, and quantity.
Subthreads: Not exactly super exciting. by Fortune Ardovini with Eben Sosna
A time to shine. by Claire Osbrook
1
Nathan Xavier
Beginners: Magical Flower Gardens
28
1
5
Fortune Ardovini
March 08, 2022 8:16 PM
Not exactly super exciting. by Fortune Ardovini
Fortune was glad for the drying charm the Professor offered him when he brought his rain-soaked self into the greenhouse for class. He gave a polite greeting, thanked him for the charm and accepted his test results. Fortune was looking forward to the day when he could cast his own drying charm, along with lots of other ones.He wasn't going to learn it here today though, this was herbology after all. It was not what he considered one of the more interesting classes at school. It wasn't Professor Xavier's fault, the man was a fine professor, he just got stuck teaching a subject that held very little interest for Fortune. That fact showed in his test results.
Fortune found a seat and skimmed over the test. There were a few comments and corrections. He hadn't studied much, there were more interesting things to study than plants. He sighed and slid the paper away as class officially started. He would have to do better before Mom and Dad heard about it.
When the professor was done, Fortune looked at the trays in front of him. This was the problem with the class. It just seemed all too easy. They were planting honking daffodils, no big deal. He'd done this (mostly against his will) with Mom plenty of times. There was nothing really new or exciting about it, so he just kinda stopped paying attention during the lecture part of class and rushed through the homework. He knew in later years they would learn about more exciting/dangerous plants, but these daffodils weren't exactly that.
Still, he set to work collecting dirt, filling his trays and such. Once he was staring at the various plant seeds and bulbs, his mind had already begun to wander again. He shook it to clear things out. He was going to need help to stay focused, so he turned to his neighbor. "How'd you do on that test?" Talking usually helped him somewhat. "I could have done better. Apparently they can be used to treat petrification." Apparently this hadn't seemed like terribly important Information when the Professor said it.
2
Fortune Ardovini
Not exactly super exciting.
1549
0
5
Eben Sosna
March 12, 2022 8:23 PM
Depends on when the daffodils honk, I guess. by Eben Sosna
There were times when Eben wondered what his teachers here thought of his performances in their classes, considering that his grades were...not as consistent as he might have liked. Not least, at times, due to boredom. So much of wizard school seemed to be just...memorizing things, then acting like a flock of parrots with sticks. And they were graded on how well the stick-waving-parrots portion of class went. Which seemed to be something nobody could be totally consistent with....Herbology, at least, didn't have that problem. There were minimal times when he felt like a parrot brandishing a stick. Growing plants was familiar, since Euan had done the same thing with lima beans for the obligatory science fair project every year for...ever, more or less, but these plants were mostly more interesting than lima beans. With a mumbled, "thanks, Professor," after he suddenly no longer felt as if he'd decided to stand under a sprinkler in a bathrobe recently (he missed his mom and her ability to remember to tell him to do stuff like carry an umbrella sometimes....), he started to flip through the test paper as he walked, not paying too much attention to his surroundings or to which seat he took.
The phrase honking daffodils was maybe a totally normal thing for a wizard to hear, but it managed to firmly catch Eben's attention. He frowned slightly, looking at the professor and pushing his glasses up his nose. Were these...like, a natural thing that just existed, or were these things among the things wizards had deliberately bred to be the ways they were? And if the answer was the second one, then he had a follow-up question: why?
Flowers, admittedly, weren't something Eben knew much about, but he'd grown up in a place with what seemed like the ideal traffic-to-lousy-roads ratio for proving that honking was an unpleasant noise. He couldn't imagine someone making something that honked on purpose and wasn't a vehicle. Sure, someone could have gotten bored enough to invent these things just to pull a prank on someone, but...for the daffodils to continue existing and become common enough to get taught about in classes?
He shook his head a little as he started setting up for the practical part of the lesson, hoping he'd remember to look this up later. He doubted it, he always ended the day with the vague feeling there were nineteen thousand questions he wanted to look up, but that they were all just dancing out of his reach so that he couldn't remember them, but....
He glanced away from his work and had to push his glasses up his nose again (one day, he thought wistfully. One day, he would somehow conspire to select his own glasses frames, with his mother's thoughts on what 'looked cute' or was 'in style' to consider, and that day, it would be a wonderful day...) before he nodded. "Yeah, it's a cool, uh, cool fact," he agreed. "Also kind of terrifying, if, you know, getting petrified is really that common, I guess." He looked at the flower bed in development in front of him thoughtfully. "Though I guess if you put it all together, it makes these seem less obnoxious? Being honked at isn't my idea of a good time, but at least there's not any gorgons involved?"
16
Eben Sosna
Depends on when the daffodils honk, I guess.
1538
0
5
Fortune Ardovini
March 13, 2022 5:33 PM
You might be right. by Fortune Ardovini
Fortune nodded to Eben who had agreed with him. That was good, Eben was an Aladrin after all and they were the smart ones. Fortune had never really considered himself a slouch in the brains department, but apparently the sorting potion had thought that Pecari would be a better fit for him. He couldn't really argue so far, he was having fun being a Pecari. While he liked reading and such, doing other stuff was also good."The honking really isn't to bad once you get used to it." Fortune volunteered, "Mom used to plant them at home. The trick apparently is to try and get them planted just right so that they honked in the correct sequence and pitches to make something like music." He paused and grimaced, "Mom wasn't very good at it, but from what she said, few folk are." He could remember the seemingly endless amount of time that she had made him help her out digging up certain ones to move them to a slightly different spot in the flower bed. It had not been fun.
Gorgons however, now those were exciting! "You're probably right," he conceded. "But Gorgons are way cooler. They were a major problem for Wizard-Adventurer Serapion as he tried to unravel the mystery of the Stolen Prophecy in Greece!" Fortune stalled out for just a moment, staring off into the distance before smacking his forehead. "That's why Pele was so insistent on having mandrake root with them!" Now it all made sense, he really should have figured that one out.
2
Fortune Ardovini
You might be right.
1549
0
5
Claire Osbrook
March 16, 2022 11:45 AM
A time to shine. by Claire Osbrook
Some of the other Beginners seemed a little less than enthusiastic about the idea of planting flower beds, but Claire's face lit up with a smile. She loved her Herbology lessons in general - she considered it her best subject, in that she usually found performing at a high level both relatively easy and enjoyable - but this...this was her thing. She'd been following her grandmother around the glass house at the workshop for as long as she could remember; since Graham had gone to school, she thought she might have spent more time doing that than she had with her parents. She'd thought before of asking Verdillia if she could keep a plant or two in their room, only refraining from doing so out of fear of looking like -Well, she didn't actually know what. Just that she really didn't want Verdillia to think of her that way, though she couldn't exactly explain why it mattered even to herself. But here, in Herbology, she could and did openly enjoy the idea of this assignment, even though there was some possibility that it could get challenging. She didn't know every seed in the world by sight, after all (and switching some up to see if the kids were paying attention was the kind of thing she thought she would have done if she'd been the teacher) or what colors might be produced in some of the more varied flower varieties, which made planting everything at proper distances and in an aesthetically pleasing arrangement a bit of a gamble.
At least, she thought, most things she could think of at least didn't look bad with daffodil yellow. Claire couldn't wear the color to save her life, at least not while she had blonde hair (if it never darkened on its own, she was so going to change it herself the second she could learn human Transfiguration), but she liked it. Honking daffodils themselves...well, she preferred singing carnations, despite the fact they were so often a somewhat insufferable shade of pale pink which she also couldn't pull off if her life depended on it, but they were pretty enough to look at and offered interesting possibilities. She had no idea if it was even possible - the fact she'd never seen it done suggested it was not - but it had occurred to her more than once that the dyes they used for inks often came from magical plants and had magical properties, so why weren't there at least temporarily musical inks?
"Daffodils have such a great color, don't they?" she bubbled with a smile to her neighbor as they got to work. "It's so hard to extract or replicate, and if when you make something out of it, it's really hard to get it so that it's not completely transparent on paper, but it's really pretty."
16
Claire Osbrook
A time to shine.
1540
0
5
Eben Sosna
March 16, 2022 11:57 AM
I am wise and knowledgeable...sometimes. by Eben Sosna
Honking wasn't so bad once you got used to it. Eben had his doubts, but then, sometimes he apparently drove his brother to distraction by clicking pens while he read and thought about things too hard. He, on the other hand, barely noticed that he clicked them at all, but could jump a foot in the air (he was pretty sure he'd done that literally at least once, probably one of those accidental magic things that had helped keep him persuaded that the world really was more interesting than his parents and teachers and the other kids at school all insisted it was) at an unexpected loud noise, like a car honking.There was, however, something more interesting than how people reacted to different sounds to think about right now. "Huh," he said when told how people used honking daffodils in the real world. "Wouldn't have, uh, thought of that. So you're from a family with magic, then?" It seemed pretty obvious - how else would Fortune (weird name, and he said that as someone who had spent his whole life poked fun at for having a name that sounded like a cross between Ebenezer Scrooge and, according to playground consensus, a sneeze) know about them already? - but he liked to confirm things. Making assumptions was what people who didn't notice things did, and since it had turned out that there was a whole secret world out here that nobody else he knew had ever even noticed the slightest trace of, he really didn't think it was a good idea to take something for granted whenever he noticed he was in danger of doing so.
He caught himself before he could do that again when Fortune started talking about what sounded like a story. Wizard-Adventure Serapion. Stolen Prophecy in Greece. None of this sounded at all familiar, but after a year and change here, he was used to hearing people say things in a 'this is totally normal' way while he was clueless about them. Probably helped that that had sometimes happened back home, too, but.... "Sounds like it was a good idea," he agreed. "Is that a book? A fiction book, I mean? Or is it something from history?" He shrugged with an awkward half-smile and added, "if it's not obvious, I'm the only wizard at home, as far as we know the only one there's ever been in the family."
Not that that meant much, really. He knew who his grandparents were, and a little bit about a couple of his great-grandparents - not even all of his great-grandparents. And the ones he did know about were still people he'd never met, and so he didn't know what stories they might have told about their grandparents and great-grandparents. It seemed like magic was usually a pretty direct genetic inheritance, but you never knew, because genetics were weird and what looked like a random mutation might actually be something which had been recessive for a few generations, or at least that was what he'd sort of pieced together from various novels read at various times.
16
Eben Sosna
I am wise and knowledgeable...sometimes.
1538
0
5
Fortune Ardovini
March 16, 2022 5:58 PM
I can see that. by Fortune Ardovini
"Yup," Fortune replied to Eben's question. The obvious reason for that question was that Eben must not be. He must be muggle born, cool! The other boy went on to confirm it after asking about Serapion. He was honestly a bit astonished, muggles didn't know about him? Well, actually that probably made sense now that he thought about it. What with the whole secrecy thing and all."I dunno if it's a book or not," Fortune responded, "I listen to it on the wireless. It's an adventure show that started last year." He grinned excitedly as he explained the basic premise, "Serapion is an amazingly smart and resourceful wizard, people from all around the world hire him to solve bizarre problems." Than almost as an afterthought he added, "Pele is his assistant. Annika thinks that she is the real brains behind the operation, but I don't think so."
Fortune had questions burning up inside him and they fought to get out. He just wasn't quite sure how 'proper' of questions they were. "What was it like growing up in the muggle world?" He blurted out, "Sorry, I just can't quite imagine growing up without magic. How did you do..." he cast about for the right words, "...stuff? What kinds of stuff do you do for fun?" No magic meant no Quidditch or broom flying. Ugh.
2
Fortune Ardovini
I can see that.
1549
0
5
Eben Sosna
March 17, 2022 3:48 PM
There are, however, vast gaps in my knowledge still. by Eben Sosna
'The wireless.' Eben wondered what was so special about this one thing that it was the wireless, when...basically everything, actually, around here was wireless. 'Listen,' though, was something he knew wizards did pretty much the same way that everyone else did. So it was...like an audio book or something? Or a TV show without visuals?"Huh. Sounds like a good story," he said. "Like Sherlock Holmes, except with more countries and more girls and...you know, wizards and stuff." Which, admittedly, were a lot of differences, but...whatever, close enough.
What was it like growing up in the Muggle world?
That, Eben thought, was a really, really broad kind of question. So broad that he wasn't sure how to even start any answer except 'okay, I guess,' which wasn't a very good answer. He hated it when people gave answers like that. Luckily, Fortune quickly narrowed it down a little, though it was still a huge topic.
"I mean, lots of different things," he said. "Depending on what you like. I read a lot, and watch TV...uh, that's short for 'television.' A television is a...box, kind of, where you can...it's kind of like you're watching a play from the other side of a sheet of glass, except it's inside the box and the real people aren't, and it's in your house instead of in a theater or something, and if it's not live TV, then you can watch it again whenever you want - at least as long as nobody else is using the TV. It does kinda suck when nobody else in your family likes the same TV shows and movies that you do," he acknowledged. "And we play games, and people do sports and play outside, or have music or stuff. I think you guys do that kind of stuff, too? But our pieces don't - jump around and make noises as much as the ones here do, and never on their own. If you want it to do that, you have to either make something or just imagine it. My brother's really good at that kind of stuff," he added. "People at home think that I am, too, but I'm really not. It's just that everybody always said that because they thought I was making up all the weird stuff I saw, or because I watched and read stuff about weird stuff to see if anybody else was really like me."
He thought he sounded a little bitter as he got to the end, and he hoped that wasn't obvious to Fortune. "So, what's it like growing up in this world?" he asked, with a slight smile to acknowledge the pass-the-ball-back nature of the question. "What do wizard kids do for fun?"
16
Eben Sosna
There are, however, vast gaps in my knowledge still.
1538
0
5
Fortune Ardovini
March 20, 2022 6:28 PM
That's what school is for, right? by Fortune Ardovini
"Oh yeah," Fortune agreed with Eben with a grin, "Who's Sherlock Holmes? Does he wage a never-ending battle against the forces of the Dark Arts?" No wait, if he was a muggle story he probably wouldn't. That did make him wonder what muggles did fight against in their stories, boredom? That probably wouldn't be terribly exciting, would it? What sort of evil was out there in the muggle world?Reading Fortune understood, he did a fair amount of that himself, so he nodded along at that point. After that he got a bit lost. Muggles had boxes in their houses with a stage for plays, separated from the house by a sheet of glass, and they could summon actors to it whenever they wanted to watch a play. That sounded really kinda strange, but must just be a muggle thing. He kinda wondered what muggle houses looked like now... did all of these boxes connect together so the actors can easily get from one box to the next?
The rest of what Eben said made a bit more sense. Games and sports, sure, music yeah some kids did that. "I guess you don't have Quidditch, do you? What sorts of sports do you have? We've got games and some kids learn music. Mom had me try an instrument or two, but I really wasn't any good and it didn't seem like much fun." He shrugged. "You play anything?"
"Quidditch." Fortune answered Eben's question quickly, then he chuckled. "Other than the books and games?" He paused to think, what else had he done to keep entertained? When he was much, much younger there had been toys. He shrugged, "Hanging out with friends? All wondering when we'd get to start doing magic like our parents. Mom would spend a good bit of time doing some lessons with me, but I wouldn't exactly call that 'fun'."
2
Fortune Ardovini
That's what school is for, right?
1549
0
5
Eben Sosna
March 25, 2022 5:33 PM
In theory, anyway. by Eben Sosna
"Uh...not...I mean, sometimes, kinda, I guess? But not the kind we learn about here," Eben said when asked about Sherlock's evil-fighting capacities, trying to remember specifics. "Dr. Moriarty is supposed to be the Napoleon of Crime, so I guess some of the stuff he puts out would count as evil, and Holmes solves crimes by analysis. He...notices stuff, like, what kind of clay is on your shoes and whether that matches where your alibi says you were, or how a dog that always barks at strangers didn't bark the night of the murder or something, so that narrows down the suspects, then you just trick the right guy into confessing, right? So fewer bad people end up on the loose, anyway."He shook his head in confirmation when asked about Quidditch. "Nah, no instruments," he also confirmed when asked about that. Even if he or Euan had had the patience to learn an instrument, he suspected that his parents would have shot the idea down o the ground of expense anyway. "Sports...there's football and soccer - where you kick things more than you do in football for some reason - and baseball and ice hockey, volleyball, dodgeball, basketball...me and my brother can kind of play baseball and basketball with just the two of us, and kiiinda dodgeball, but yeah. We're not on any teams or anything, except in gym class I guess." There was a distinct lack of enthusiasm in his pronouncement of the words 'gym class.' "Your mom did lessons with you? So you were homeschooled?"
16
Eben Sosna
In theory, anyway.
1538
0
5