A Badly Brewed Potion, Revised on Sandbox

Diana Yu

June 26, 2014 6:54 AM

Sample Class by Diana Yu

OOC - this class has been copied to the sandbox in order to give authors practise in writing for Sonora. Please enjoy and stick to site rules. Other authors will give you IN CHARACTER responses, as well as OUT OF CHARACTER feedback.

IC
Diana Yu had already introduced herself to the students and expressed that she understood that it was hard to acclimate to a new teacher-- as it was, she only had one semester with the 7th years so she didn’t expect them to warm up to her too quickly or even that much. She knew they were probably used to their previous professor and after a weird semester of no teachers they were probably feeling rather rowdy. On top of that she was still a young teacher- closer to them in age than their last professor most likely had been. Her hair was still a rich ebony and her youthful skin pale with a slight rosy tint to it. Some of her Muggle-born university classmates had called her an Asian Snow White and Diana had needed to ask them what that meant before being shown some sweet looking illustrations of a fairytale maiden in the woods surrounded with wildlife. She decided to take it as a compliment even though dwarfs tended to give her the creeps as Snow White was pretty and seemed to enjoy the wilderness like herself.

That aside, she was a lot more comfortable with the first and second years and it showed too. It was probably because she had the advanced students for two hours first thing after breakfast and the beginners and intermediates after lunch giving her time to prepare. Besides, a class of 11 year olds was far less intimidating if they followed a class of 17 year olds.

She had looked at some of her parents’ lesson plans from when she and her brothers were 11 and 12 and had copied quite a few that pertained to the textbook the students at Sonora were using. They were a little over a month into the term now and Diana had already used the cure for boils lesson and forgetfulness potion and had started on the twelve uses of dragon blood but she was in a weird mood today after helping prep the 7th years with tips for successfully taking the Potions R.A.T. exam. She wanted to create a fun lesson, one to wake the students up from the “one-month into school” drowzies and she knew exactly what she wanted to start the class off with.

“Good afternoon, class!” Diana announced once it was 1 o’clock promptly. Tardiness was not tolerated without a valid excuse and by now all her classes knew that she would start with or without them but never before 1 o’clock. “If everyone could put their books away and take out a quill and parchment that would be lovely, please. I have a short pop quiz that should be very easy if you all did your homework and read Chapter Five of your Potions textbooks. If you could all write your name, house and year at the top of your parchment we can begin.” She smiled at the class and waited for them to clear their desks before continuing. “For this pop quiz I want you to list the twelve uses of dragon’s blood*. No more, no less. Exactly twelve-- if you’re not sure put it down anyway. If you cannot remember a use, make one up. I want everyone to use their brains here.” She was looking forward to reading the lists as when her parents had given her and her brothers the same assignment many years ago some of the answers (Stephen’s in particular) had been quite creative, absurd, and altogether wrong. “Remember,” she said, smiling. “I will give half points for creativity.”

Diana stood back and watched as the students began to work on their pop quizzes. She trusted them all enough not to cast an anti-cheating spell on the classroom as well as to turn her back on them to set up the day’s lesson. She carefully raised her hand to the chalkboard and wrote in clear letters Antidote to Common Potions. Even though she could use magic to do so she preferred handwriting it as her parents had stressed legible calligraphy strongly in their lessons and she had learned both simplified and traditional Chinese lettering during her homeschooled lessons in addition to all the regular magical classes. Diana underlined the name of the lesson and divided the board up into four parts and numbered them. Then she turned around and waited for the last of the class to bring forth their quiz papers.

“Thank you,” she said. “Now, for today’s lesson we are going to learn about the Antidote to Common Potions. This is very important and useful for the future so I will allow you to bottle a small sample of your final product to add to your potions kit if I believe it to be brewed well enough so that should be incentive to do well.”

Honestly, she didn’t expect many of them to fully succeed and make a perfect antidote but it was a good incentive to have them all work as hard as they could. “Before we begin crafting this potion though, we need to go over what goes in the potion because as we all know,” and here she knew some of the students were probably reciting along with her in their heads because she said this so many times “a potion is only as strong as what goes in it.” Diana smiled and pointed to the four categories on the board. “These are the four different ingredients that we need; bezoars, unicorn horn, and mistletoe berries are the three standard ingredients while dittany is one that is sometimes substituted out for a more diluted mix of herbs.” As she named each ingredient she wrote them up on the board.

“Now, who can tell me what the uses of each of these ingredients are?” The class was two hours long and the antidote only took 30-40 minutes to brew once the ingredients had been prepared so she was confident that there was time for a discussion on top of the pop quiz. Once the board was filled with the class’s answers Diana set them free to pair up as they pleased and work on the potion. “It should be on page 37 of your books,” she reminded them and wrote a large 37 in the top right hand corner of the blackboard for anyone who wasn’t listening. “Please start making your potion now and worry about taking down the notes on the blackboard later as you will have time once your potion has begun to brew.”

OOC:
*There is no formal list of all twelve uses of dragon's blood as J.K. Rowling never released such a list, so go ahead and put down as many as you would like so long as you make it clear your character wrote down twelve ideas.
-The ingredient list and brewing instructions can be found here.
-Please remember posts must be kept as realistic as possible and be a minimum of 200 words. Feel free to tag Professor Yu if assistance is needed. Also, do remember that Beginner’s Potions starts at 1 o’clock so this shouldn’t be anyone’s first class (unless, of course, they missed the other classes for some reason or another). Otherwise have fun— points are awarded for creativity and grammar.

10 Diana Yu Sample Class 29 Diana Yu 1 5

Kayla Taaffe

June 26, 2014 7:19 AM

Potions by Kayla Taaffe

Kayla was excited for potions class. she added 1 Bezoar to the mortar & crushed it into a very fine powder using the pestle. she then added 4 measures of the crushed Bezoar to her cauldron & added 2 measures of Standard Ingredient to her cauldron. she heated to a medium temperature for 5 seconds & waved her wand. she left it to brew & returned in 40 minutes with a Pewter Cauldron.

she added 1 pinch of Unicorn Horns to her cauldron & stirred it 2 times, clockwise. she added 2 Mistletoe Berries to her cauldron & she stirred it 2 times, anti-clockwise. she waved her wand to complete the potion.

0 Kayla Taaffe Potions 0 Kayla Taaffe 0 5

Jamie Park

June 26, 2014 7:32 AM

Re: Potions by Jamie Park

OOC:
Hey Kayla, thanks for joining us. This is the sandbox page where you can practise the way we write at Sonora. Here are three tips to improve the post you submitted:
1). We aim for good standards of spelling and grammar at the site – for example, using capital letters at the start of sentences.
2). Make the content your own. This is a creative writing site, and house points are earnt based on the quality of the writing. Your entry appears to be the instructions from the wikipedia article with your character's name inserted. The wiki is there for guidelines only on how particular spells or charms are performed.
3). Your post does not need to cover the entire period of the lesson, and it can be helpful to end a post with your character getting the attention of someone else, so that they can interact.

Read the post below, by one of your classmates and then have a go at writing a response in character as Kayla. You can start again from the beginning of class if that makes it easier.

In character:
Jamie slouched into Potions. The fact that his parents were obsessed with the subject, and were constantly ramming it down his neck, made it his least favourite class. He almost wanted to excel in everything else and let his grade in this lag behind, just to annoy them. But he knew that not bringing top grades home in everything was more than his life was worth. He wasn't too keen on the new teacher either. Professor Fawcett had been a dull and dried up old fossil, so he wasn't sad to see him go, but... well, an Asian witch nagging him to do better as Potions.... He really needed another one of those in his life!

The fact she began class with a pop quiz did not endear her to him any further, although his ears pricked up at the mention of half points for creativity. So, it was a pop quiz where he didn't even have to get the answers right, so long as he got something? That was an interesting twist. He'd meant to do the reading, he really had. Well, sort of. Ok, he hadn't really cared and had just planned to memorise everything to pass his end of term tests, so he wasn't really sure about any of the real answers. It wasn't like it was an ingredient his mother let a twelve year old mess with. Dragon blood was highly revered in their house, practically sacred.

Traditional Korean medicine he wrote, mostly cos it was bound to be true for at least one of the bonkers remedies his mother insisted on and Professor Yu probably wouldn't be in a position to call him out on it.
Sacred Korean rituals, he added, for much the same reason. He then considered what kind of Potions it might really be used for. It didn't exactly sound like a nice, wholesome ingredient, so he added vengeance potions, to the list. He figured his best bet was then to get creative, and so wrote in quick succession scaring your enemies by painting threatening symbols on their doors, playing pranks, faking murders. He continued in this fashion, alternating with the few actually realistic ideas that occurred to him, until he had 12. It was kind of challenging towards the end to keep coming up with things, and he almost wondered what the twelve real uses could be, unless they were just all different potions.

He handed his test in and stretched, slouching down whilst Yu ran a question and answer session. When she was finished, he set to work without much enthusiasm. You could buy this antidote cheaply enough and, in an emergency, that was probably quicker than the prep time plus the forty minutes it took to brew. He didn't really see the point. As he rummaged for the ingredients, he realised he'd forgotten to stock up on a few Western basics. His mother, for all she knew that they learnt Western recipes at school (and for all she insisted on doing Korean Potions with them in the holidays) still packed them off to school with every Asian herb on the planet. It would clearly serve no functional good but it was part of her weird obsession with making sure they understood their heritage. Like a trunk of funky plants was going to do that.

“Reckon it'll explode if I use this instead?” he asked his neighbour, holding up a small packet of crushed green leaves.

13 Jamie Park Re: Potions 284 Jamie Park 0 5

Anita Tippet

July 30, 2014 2:14 PM

Re: Potions by Anita Tippet

OOC:
Hello. I'm still new to the message. How does one use bold, italic, and underline here?

IC:
Anita could hear Jamie talking to his neighbor. She sat at a table across the way, and already she was having mixed feelings about the class. She was just a beginner after all. So how could she prove she would excel as her brother Samson had done before her? Only Samson was in his fifth year and still had two more years to go.

Okay, time to get focused. Anita wrote down as much as she could about the twelve uses of dragon blood. Oh, what were they? "One: Use dragon blood with doxy venom. Two:..." Oh, what was two? She had a clear idea in her head, but she was freezing up. After some hard thinking, Anita made it past her writer's block and worked on the list until she came to 12.

"All right. That's done," said Anita to herself, happy with her results. Now it was onto the potion.

0 Anita Tippet Re: Potions 0 Anita Tippet 0 5

Jamie Park

July 31, 2014 8:41 AM

Let's get things going by Jamie Park

OOC - You can use html tags. is for bold, is for italics, is for underline (all without the spaces, which I just put in so they'd show up rather than activating). To end the bold/italics/underline just do the pointy brackets with / and the letter. For example, if I want these words to be bold, I would write those tags, minus the spaces.

One quick note, Anita's brother can't be a fifth year here, unless you want to send an application for him too and have him 'transfer in' from another school. As we already have a fifth year of students who are all role-played and all know each other, it would make reality a bit melty if someone then claims their brother is in the year when he.... kind of clearly isn't.

IC
Jamie shrugged to himself and tipped the powdered leaves into his cauldron. Professor Yu had said that the dittany could be substituted. Maybe not for this but it clearly wasn't that sensitive which herb went in. He knew he'd be in a heap of trouble if his Potion did any serious damage, not just with Professor Yu but if she wrote home about it... Messing up any class was a sin, but to screw up in Potions... Well, that was cardinal. The little Devil-may-care part of him almost wished it would, although he guessed he wouldn't be at home to see the look on his mother's face, and that was really where all the fun was... He'd just be here to be on the receiving end of a Howler, which probably wouldn't be so pleasant.

Still, it was too late to go back on it now, his mystery brew was simmering away. It seemed to be working out well enough too, until he got to the part where he had to wave his wand over the cauldron. After he did so, a rather unpleasant, cabbagey sort of smell reached his nostrils. His Potion wasn't giving off any kind of smoke, or any other indication that it was the cause of the odor, so he didn't immediately make the connection. However, when the smell didn't fade away, he leant over, and found himself very quickly leaning back again.

"Excuse you," he called jokingly at a student a few seats down, wafting at his nose. As there weren't any visible signs that his cauldron was the cause of the unpleasant smell, it seemed like an easy enough joke to play.

13 Jamie Park Let's get things going 284 Jamie Park 0 5

Anita Tippet

August 01, 2014 12:25 PM

A Badly Brewed Potion by Anita Tippet

OOC:
Sorry about that, with Anita's brother. I've changed it on her character sheet I drew up, so that way her brother is attending a different school.

Thanks for the tip about the html tags.

IC:
Anita could smell the unpleasantness of the potion a few seats down. Then other cauldrons started getting a mixture of strange smells. Well, she did the first part correctly; that was all she was concerned about for now. Now she had to wait forty minutes until the brew was ready for Part 2. Oh boy. She had to get the potion right this time, or have it blow up in her face like her classmates.

She remembered what Professor Yu said very clearly to the class, "a potion is only as strong as what goes in it". Anita couldn't help but feel that Professor Yu was right. As the time passed, Anita smelt something funny... it had to be the potion. She did everything right: crushed the Bezoar and added four measures to the cauldron, mixed in the dittany. It was the dittany; it had to be.

Anita would have to ask for help. She looked around and eventually saw Professor Yu wandering around the classroom. Other cauldrons were changing colors.

"Was this how it was done?" asked Anita.

Then she noticed her potion was changing into a yellowish tea color. Was that good or bad? She did not know which it was.

0 Anita Tippet A Badly Brewed Potion 0 Anita Tippet 0 5

Anita Tippet

August 01, 2014 1:14 PM

A Mistake by Anita Tippet

OOC:
I realize I did something against the roleplaying rules in my last reply. I am sorry.

0 Anita Tippet A Mistake 0 Anita Tippet 0 5

Anita Tippet

August 01, 2014 1:47 PM

A Badly Brewed Potion, Revised by Anita Tippet

OOC:
I realized I hadn't been looking at the Roleplaying Rules before I posted the last reply. Here's my revision. Hopefully, I don't make anymore mistakes like that.

IC:
Anita could smell the unpleasantness of the potion a few seats down. Then other cauldrons started getting a mixture of strange smells. Well, she did the first part correctly; that was all she was concerned about for now. Now she had to wait until the brew was ready for Part 2. Oh boy. She had to get the potion right this time.

She remembered what Professor Yu said very clearly to the class, "a potion is only as strong as what goes in it". Anita couldn't help but feel that Professor Yu was right. As the time passed, Anita smelt something funny... it had to be the potion. She did everything right: crushed the Bezoar and added four measures to the cauldron, mixed in the dittany. It was the dittany; it had to be.

Anita would have to ask for help. She looked around and eventually saw Professor Yu wandering around the classroom. She had no idea how everyone else was doing, but from the grimaced looks, she had a feeling they messed up as well.

"Was this how it was done?" asked Anita.

Then she noticed her potion was changing into a yellowish tea color. Was that good or bad? She did not know which it was.

0 Anita Tippet A Badly Brewed Potion, Revised 0 Anita Tippet 0 5

Jamie Park

August 02, 2014 7:19 AM

Re: A Badly Brewed Potion, Revised by Jamie Park

OOC - Good job, both on the post and on catching your own mistake.

As Jamie had called out to another student 'a few seats along' you could have chosen for this to be Anita, and to have responded to what he said, in order to get some interaction going between them. Authors will often end their posts with little 'hooks' like this to help it link in with someone else - as you did for Professor Yu in yours (who I don't write and thus can't reply as!)

Other than that, it seems like you're doing a great job and really getting the hang of this, so hopefully see you around for real as of tomorrow!

Just remember, this page is for practise only, so your character hasn't actually been to Potions or interacted with Jamie yet. She'll be fresh off the wagon and starting her first day tomorrow.

See you about!

0 Jamie Park Re: A Badly Brewed Potion, Revised 0 Jamie Park 0 5

Anita Tippet

August 02, 2014 12:37 PM

Re: A Badly Brewed Potion, Revised by Anita Tippet

OOC:
Thanks. Yeah, I didn't think about that. I know this is for practice, but at least it's giving me the feel for what will happen for real.

So, I guess classes start September 1st for the IC. Then Anita will see Jamie tomorrow then.

0 Anita Tippet Re: A Badly Brewed Potion, Revised 0 Anita Tippet 0 5