Professor Taransay
March 18, 2017 6:40 AM
Feeling glum? by Professor Taransay
It had been a little over a year since Rory had started working at Sonora, and in that time his life had changed quite a lot. Meeting Amelle had, at the time, been one of the best things that had happened to him. Their relationship had quickly become serious, with Rory thinking it was definitely long-term, if not forever. Spending the summer mostly apart, with Rory doing research for a book in East Africa, had been hard for him. In fact, he had been planning on proposing to Amelle, when she had announced that she was leaving Sonora for another job. He wasn’t quite sure where that left them. Obviously, he was still in love with her, but how could they make a marriage work when they didn’t live together? All Rory’s dreams of a family, of a future with Amelle and their children, seemed to be more out of reach than ever, just after he had realised quite how badly he wanted it.Problems in his love life meant Rory had thrown himself into preparation for the new term with even more enthusiasm than usual. After sending out various owls, he’d managed to make arrangements to start off the academic year with a practical lesson for his intermediates class. After all, who wanted to sit in a classroom when they could have hands-on interactions with a magical creature?
“Hi all, welcome back!” he greeted his class, perhaps slightly less cheerfully than had been his standard last year. Still, Rory was capable of mostly hiding his feelings, not wanting his students to suffer a miserable lesson. They had been told to meet him outside. “Today we’re going to meet one of the creatures that we’re going to be studying: the glumbumble.” How appropriate, his brain thought, but he shut that part up for now.
“So, can anybody tell me what glumbumble treacle is used for?” he asked, not expecting the third years to know, but hoping a fourth or fifth year would remember from their extra reading the year before. He picked the first raised hand he saw, and moved on to the next question once he had the correct answer.
“And can anyone tell me the dangers of the treacle?” he asked, choosing a different person to answer this time, and awarding points for the two answers as appropriate.
“So, in each of the hutches we have here are a couple of glumbumbles. Working in pairs or threes, I’d like you to ensure that they have enough food, and to start collecting the treacle that they have produced. Remember, glumbumbles can fly, so make sure you don’t give them the chance to escape.”
The hutches were reasonably large, with small patches of wire mesh to allow a little light in. However, they were still fairly dark, so as to provide a more natural habitat for the glumbumbles. Rory had provided tools and buckets, for use in removing the treacle, and was ready in case there were any glumbumbles that decided to make a run for it. He had also prepared a large pile of nettles, for the students to feed the creatures. This would largely distract them whilst the treacle was being removed, and Rory also suspected that the animals would keep to the corners of the hutches, away from the noisy students.
“Oh, and don’t forget to wear gloves when handling the nettles!” he reminded them. Nettle stings were easily cured, but it was always easier to just wear gloves in the first place, and he didn’t trust all his students to remember.
OOC: Normal class rules apply. Anyone mistreating the animals will find Professor Taransay there immediately, as would be the case with any potential escapes. Have fun, and ask me if you have any questions (I’m usually in chatzy as Louis Valois).
Glumbumble information can be found here: http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Glumbumble
Subthreads: Not really by Fabian Brockert, Pecari with Ingrid Wolseithcrafte, Pecari
I've had cheerier days. by Joe Umland, Teppenpaw with Nevaeh Reed [Aladren]
You have no idea... by Georgia Kirkly, Teppenpaw with Tess Whittaker, Pecari
Actually, no. (Tag Finn) by Juniper Brockert, Teppenpaw with Finn Scott, Teppenpaw
Not today by Artemis Leithan
On the contrary by Arthur Leithan
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Professor Taransay
Feeling glum?
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Professor Taransay
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Fabian Brockert, Pecari
March 19, 2017 7:12 PM
Not really by Fabian Brockert, Pecari
So it was his fifth year. Fabian couldn't help but feel a bit of an icky feeling in his stomach. This meant CATS. CATS meant going to advanced classes and then RATS. And after that there was having to get a job and be an adult. Yuck.Plus, he was still not sure what he wanted to take for his other two classes. Transfiguration was a definite yes and Potions was a definite no. He was super undecided on everything else. Charms was basically a class everyone continued and while Fabian didn't have to be like everyone else, nobody could deny the importance of Charms. On the other hand, he genuinely enjoyed DADA, Herbology and COMC more. If the Pecari was going to be an adult and work, he wanted to do something outdoorsy. Just because one had a prestigious last name didn't mean they had to do a prestigious job. Fabian was poorly suited to the business world, mostly because the thought of working in business or academia or something was truly sickening to him.
At least he had a....potential betrothal so that was one less thing to worry about. Well, okay, calling it that might have been a little much, but over the summer, he seemingly officially became "on the market". No announcement was made as such, but girls suddenly recognized Fabian as an "eligible bachelor" and tried to impress him. Granted, a fair amount of these had to be attracted to his last name. A male Brockert was available and this was his to deal with on his own, as the other Brockert male around his age was very very taken. Not in an official capacity, but more taken than anyone who was.
Part of him enjoyed it, part of him felt uncomfortable and a part of him felt uncomfortable about enjoying it. Of course, if they were just after his last name, then he felt less bad about it. Anyway, there was one girl,a Miss Alicia Stark, who seemed possibly genuinely interested. She seemed to follow him around an awful lot at the very least, apparently staking her claim. However, Fabian supposed he enjoyed her company enough. She didn't spend most of her time bragging about all her own wonderful qualities like some girls did. He logically got why people did that in these situations but his overall instinct was to find it as distasteful as he did normally.
Plus, the basic first words he'd said to her "Excuse me" as he'd belched and looked up to find her. So Alicia-first name basis and everything, good sign, a lot of these girls had been less than forthcoming with permission for that-had seen, er rather heard, him burp and not ran away in horror or lecture him in bad manners because of a normal bodily function when he'd assumed he'd been alone anyway.
He listened to Professor Tansary talk about the glumbumbles. Fabian knew the answer to the first question, but didn't raise his hand. He'd never previously stood out as a student and wasn't going to start now. He didn't, however, know the dangers of the treacle and had assumed it was that it didn't taste good. Thank Merlin he hadn't been called on.
The lesson itself was sort of...well, not terrible as it was hands on but he didn't know how it would be useful later. Plus, glumbumbles weren't a terribly exciting creature. And this was important to think about, as Fabian had to choose two classes to keep other than Transfiguration so basically his teachers had to impress him just like the girls who wanted to marry him did. Not that he was going to inform them of this fact, as it would just sound...bad to go up to a teacher and tell them he was judging them and their lessons and that if he was to choose their class to continue, they had to impress him. Fabian wasn't that self important and he doubted that they cared enough about him continuing their classes anyway. After all, he didn't really stand out as a student.
Anyway, it was time to get to the lesson. He walked up to the closest available person and asked. "Do you want to work together?"
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Fabian Brockert, Pecari
Not really
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Fabian Brockert, Pecari
0
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Ingrid Wolseithcrafte, Pecari
March 21, 2017 7:35 AM
A little by Ingrid Wolseithcrafte, Pecari
Ew. CATS year. This was going to be one never ending headache, she was sure of it. Not that Ingrid found much of the material difficult, per se. She was a well-educated girl from the kind of family that had its own library, and where being ignorant was deemed worse than being rude (although both were frowned on in such severe degrees that it was a little hard to tell). She got her work done by dint of habit. Not doing it, even though she was relatively unsupervised at school, or doing it badly simply didn’t occur to her. But she didn’t live for it, the way her Aladren siblings did. She lived for Quidditch, and time spent on homework was time that she could have been flying. And the teachers were bound to go on about the exams and give them heaps extra work to do. It was just going to be miserable.Speaking of which, their subject matter for the day was apparently the Glumbumble, a rather sad sounding animal. When Professor Taransay called on students, she raised her hand. Again, it was a habit drilled home hard by tutors and parents who cared a lot about these things - when adults asked you questions, you gave answers. Plus it was an easy way to pick up house points and she liked Pecari to win things.
“It’s used in treating hysteria,” she replied, “Especially from eating magical plants.” She couldn’t remember the specific name of the plant in question, and she wasn’t sure whether it could be used to treat non-magical hysteria as well, so she hedged her bets with the ‘especially.’ She kept her hand down for the next question, even though she knew the answer to that too, because Professor Taransay wasn’t going to pick the same person twice in a row and she didn’t want to look like a swot or a show off.
With a sigh, she set to work. She was definitely keeping Care of Magical Creatures on next year, it was easily her favourite subject, and - although some rational criticism of the idea (in that it would be difficult to achieve, not because it was dangerous) was creeping in as she got older - she still really thought she would like to be a dragon handler. She definitely wanted to work with cool and interesting creatures (and/or be a Pro Quidditch player - their careers didn’t last forever, so she could do both) and this was why this was simultaneously her favourite class and the one with the most capacity to disappoint her. She went into Potions on a daily basis expecting to be bored, and it mostly delivered. She went into Care of Magical Creatures every day knowing it could, potentially be the most awesome thing ever. And sometimes it was. Like when they got unicorns or hippogriffs. Even nifflers and kneazles were pretty fun. But some days, it just didn’t live up to her expectations. She wasn’t sure how anyone could have expected a creature with ‘glum’ in the name to sound appealing, and she didn’t particularly want to work with hysterical people, or be around them in any way, shape or form, so it wasn’t like it had some property of great value to her. Well, she guessed it reduced the number of hysterics she would have to deal with, so that was good, but even then she couldn’t quite sell it to herself.
“Sure,” she nodded, when Fabian asked if she wanted to work together. She found it weird how little she knew him even though they were housemates. He seemed… ok. She didn’t really know what else she could think about him. He was in Pecari, which suggested they had stuff in common.
She pulled on neatly fitting grey dragon hide gloves. Overkill for stinging nettles but the only kind she had, and began feeding a few through the mesh of the hutch.
“So… time to gather some goo… How much do you reckon a dose is? Like, are we stocking several hospitals with our efforts? With each person’s effort? Or do you have to have spoonfuls of the stuff? And is it the same amount needed to get depressed, or does that work differently?” Just because she wasn’t very interested didn’t mean she didn’t have thoughts or further questions. Probably another family habit - everything needed to be speculated on.
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Ingrid Wolseithcrafte, Pecari
A little
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Ingrid Wolseithcrafte, Pecari
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Fabian
April 05, 2017 10:04 AM
Sorry to hear that by Fabian
Fabian blinked at Ingrid's barrage of questions. Okay, yes, he knew sort of what her family was like, what her two oldest siblings had been like-or what he assumed they were like being that they were both Aladren which meant he assumed they were pompous know-it-alls, which was the case with most Aladrens not closely related to him minus Louis and Leo Bennett who he found slightly more tolerable, and in the case of the latter had to tolerate based on him being Arabella's brother-in-law-and the fact that Owen's boggart last year had turned into Ingrid's older brother Theodore berating him as not good enough for Jemima apparently based on his lack of athleticism and the fact that he had asthma had given him some clues. The Wolfseithcraftes were big on sports and academics. However, while Fabian knew Ingrid was a skilled Chaser-not her fault Clark Dill had been a better Seeker than Jamie Park had been overall-and certainly didn't see her as stupid he'd never realized how...much she liked to ask questions.Of course, Pecaris could be curious but he'd always thought of their curiosity as being displayed quite differently. Like his twin cousins were both rather curious people. Savannah-although she was a Teppenpaw, not an Aladren-was academically minded and he felt smarter than a lot of even the Aladrens but too nice a person to be Sorted there-not that Amity, his only Aladren cousin was a bad person and she was highly sensitive about being thought of as such but as Savannah had been Sorted into Teppenpaw it meant kindness overrode academic curiosity in her-and Scarlett who was a Pecari was more the sort to go stick her nose into things.
He decided to do the only thing he could in this situation. Attempt to answer her the best he could. "I very much doubt we're stocking hospitals, I mean, would you give that responsibility to a bunch of teenagers who aren't even in Advanced classes yet? That seems like an awful lot to put on us, especially considering that some of us are only third years. Plus, like, I don't think just our glumbumbles would produce enough for that. I'm not sure those of the entire class would. I think in addition to learning about a creature that's easy enough for the third years this early in the year, it's kind of busy work. Like, the goo just has to be removed and we're the labor to do so. What Professor Tansary is going to do with it later, I have no idea. Maybe we are stocking the school's Hospital Wing, though I'm not sure how we'd eat the Alihotsy leaves by mistake while at school, since I'm pretty sure that if we were studying them in Herbology, the professor would explicitly tell us not to eat them. " That was the usefulness of that class, especially for the outdoorsy types like himself. "And I'm not really sure about how much it takes to get depressed. As I don't want to be depressed, I wouldn't try and find out. I'd rather just not eat an Alihotsy leaf in the first place."
His thoughts about Herbology brought him back to his thoughts from earlier in the class. "Hey, Ingrid, um do you know what you want to take next year? Because I'm not sure..."
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Fabian
Sorry to hear that
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Fabian
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Ingrid
May 14, 2017 1:25 AM
Eh, it'll be fine by Ingrid
“It’s not like it’s a difficult process though,” Ingrid argued back, “Sure, I wouldn’t trust the most of the potions we make, but this is putting goo in a jar. The only way to mess up is if we accidentally let the glumbumble loose, and then that doesn’t affect the end product, just our grade for this class. And given that we don’t know how much a dose is, you have no idea what scale our efforts represent - could be a useless, trivial amount, could be enough to stock a mental ward for a year. Besides, whoever owns these animals keeps them for a reason - presumably this, as they’re not good for much else - it stands to reason that they’d want this stuff back.” Perhaps, if the amount they were collecting was miniscule, or there was a high risk they were going to contaminate it somehow, in a way that wouldn’t be obvious from inspection, then it was just busy work, but that seemed illogical and deeply unsatisfying. And anyway, Professor Taransay hadn’t warned them of any pitfalls that would render the goo unusable - even if it was just busy work, they would be expected to do it properly. Ingrid smiled at Fabian. Debating was a standard family hobby. Ingrid didn’t like Fabian any less for disagreeing with her, in fact she probably liked him more, and it didn’t occur to her that he might not think the same way, or find her confrontational or to be a know-it-all for arguing a case against him.She shrugged at his point of how they’d come to eat alihotsy leaves at school. There were definitely some things that, if told not to do, it would make her instantly want to try. If she was told a plant would make her float around the ceiling, for example. But being hysterical wasn’t on that list, and she couldn’t imagine it was on many people’s.
“This,” she responded, when he asked about classes for next year, “Probably Defence, and one other wandwork class. What are you considering?”she asked, as he’d said he wasn’t sure. Whilst they’d been talking, she had donned her gloves and gathered some nettles, plus the tools they would need for collecting the goo.
“Guess we distract him with food,” she mused, opening the hutch and hurling the nettles down to the opposite end. “Let’s get scraping.”
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Ingrid
Eh, it'll be fine
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Ingrid
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