Professor Fawcett
July 03, 2010 11:03 PM
Beginner Potions II (1st and 2nd Years) by Professor Fawcett
As much as it irritated his wife that a domestic life could not have the same effect, John found that there was nothing quite like the day-to-day madness of running a classroom to keep his brain operational. He still winced at the memories of his "retirement," a ten-year period marked by, he was on the brink of being sure, permanent damage to his intellect. Sitting around playing at writing a book without some other commitments to distract him was no good for keeping on top.If he sometimes wondered if mental function was worth the occasional near miss with an explosion, well, no one ever said that there was a perfect job, and quick reflexes had been noted as useful by several trusted sources.
Still blinking a little at the now-vanished aftermath of that incident, John adjusted his glasses and attempted to brush off a dark spot on his sleeve that turned out to be ink before he turned his full attention to the beginners. Lovely group, the beginners. A bit dull, since the nature of the class was to give them the least dangerous work to do, but there were times when that was a welcome evil.
Today was such a time, which was why he was changing the schedule a little. They were supposed to be working on a Forgetfulness Potion, but he had decided to put that off until next lesson. Boil cures could have complications - John himself had melted a cauldron when his roommate Ben had been foolish enough to talk about how his father had sent the new Peavler biography through the post that day when it was John's afternoon to contribute and therefore handle most of their supplies - but the one in the books this class used was relatively safe.
"Good afternoon, everyone," he said as the last of the ones he expected for this class settled in. "Good day...Time for roll call, you all know the drill..."
Once he had the attendance properly marked, he put away the sheet. "As I'm sure you're all aware, we've been moving far more quickly since midterm than we did before it. Today's lesson will be a little simpler, though, to compensate, I will be requiring you to write in much more detail about the theory involved in this potion for your homework essay. If you will refer to next time's entry on your syllabus - we will come back to the Forgetfulness Potion later - you will find the pages of your text containing the ingredients and instructions for your potion today."
He gave them time to flip through the pages, then, once the sound died away, recalled their attention. "Take care not to add the porcupine quills until after you have removed the potion from the flame, or you will melt your cauldron and likely draw the ire of your classmates when your potion burns holes in their shoes. You will also, if it splashes you, suffer unpleasant blisters that will require medical attention. Far from the worst thing that can happen to you inside this lab, but painful enough to be avoided. Due to the simplicity of the potion, you may work together or separately, and may spend any leftover class time discussing your homework. Begin."
OOC: Just a reminder of the standard posting rules - at least two paragraphs, averaging five sentences each, around 200 words in length. Have fun!
Subthreads: Oh no... by Dorian Talsky with Brad Hayman [Aladren]
Bubbling and brewing. (tag: Neal) by Mariana with Neal Padrig, Pecari
*sigh* by Kirstenna Melcher with Jane Carey, Jane
Getting to work. by Raines Bradley with Sam Bauer, Raines
Conspiracy theories. by Rachel Bauer
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Professor Fawcett
Beginner Potions II (1st and 2nd Years)
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Professor Fawcett
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Raines Bradley
July 13, 2010 10:08 PM
Getting to work. by Raines Bradley
Professor Fawcett was not, as far as Raines or his mother could determine, a pureblood, but he was punctual, and it had never been the Raines Family way to advocate the eradication of the lower orders. Someone had to do the low work of the society, and so long as he continued to show up on time (and, in doing so, giving Raines an excuse to put off working on yet another grammar exercise for a while) and did not try to turn pureblood children into Muggle-lovers, Fawcett and people like him had Raines' blessing to continue on doing things like teaching the general population enough to get by on. In fact, he would not have minded if they had taught a little more; if he had all of Uncle Charles' money, the first thing he would do would be to pay the school off to institute mandatory training in modern languages, to spare the heirs among them the mess of learning them sporadically and largely on their own. Raines couldn't imagine anyone else liked it any more than he did.The only lesson he was going to get this hour, though, was that everything had a price. An easy potion meant a really long essay. A longer-than-usual essay, when he had always had to struggle to write well. Not that he couldn't - with enough discipline, anyone could learn the right way, and Raines had spent most of his life developing that sort of discipline - but it took more effort than most of the magic in his classes did. He was actually fairly good at magic, by normal standards, and while his father would say those were no standards at all, it was better than nothing.
Once the lecture was over, he very precisely laid out all of his knives, his ingredients, his stirring and cutting and measuring implements, his textbook, and his cauldron, half hoping the time he took to do this would make the class uneven so he could get on with it in peace. He was not innovative in his approach to Potions, so he would never do well in the professions associated with it, but he was perfectly capable of following the directions given to the letter, giving him a consistently high grade. Most of his classmates, on the other hand, were sloppy. Imprecise. Inattentive. They would let the world burn while they chatted about their little interests and what was for lunch and....
....And someone was beside him. Oh, well. It had always been a forlorn hope. He looked up to check that it was no one he wanted to hex and then, cheering himself slightly with the thought that at least it might not be a complete disaster, asked, as politely as possible, "Would you like to work with me?"
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Raines Bradley
Getting to work.
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Raines Bradley
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Sam Bauer
July 21, 2010 5:57 PM
But we both seem so unenthusiastic. by Sam Bauer
Normally, Sam arrived a few minutes early to class. Not too many, like some of the kids did, because he was too easily distracted and bored by a long wait, but never pushing the bell so closely that he didn’t have time to get his textbook out before Professor Fawcett called roll. That meant having to hurry to get set up, which frazzled his nerves just enough that it threw him off for the lesson, and that was a dangerous thing in Potions especially. They quite literally played with fire in Potions.Maybe it was different for others – he wouldn’t know – but Sam had grown up living in small apartments, where fire was something to be deeply concerned about. Or at least something he was deeply concerned about. His mother could put out a small stove fire herself, if she was there and had her wand, but if the building went up, the only advantage they’d have over anyone else would be her ability to Apparate and bring him along. Everything they had, though, would be a lost cause, and that would suck. He liked his stuff.
He also liked being on time, because it made it safer to work with fire, but it didn’t always happen. Today was a time when it didn’t, and he had to rush to make it to the room before the bell, and feeling jumpier than usually wasn’t the only consequence. The only seat available was next to a red-haired second year who Sam didn’t know, but understood to be one of the least palatable individuals in the Beginner class. Dude had a funny name, too, like his parents were meteorologists with a sense of humor, though Sam doubted that was actually the case. No child of meteorologists could pull off that look of consummate arrogance.
When the time came to split into partners, Sam briefly considered splitting away from his seatmate and seeking out someone less likely to be hostile, but Fawcett seemed to like the room to remain as orderly and movement-free as possible. Drawing the teacher’s attention to himself a second time was not something he wanted to do. So he fiddled with his ingredients in concert with his apparent partner, half-hoping they’d just get by and ignore each other for the rest of the lesson and that Fawcett would understand the reluctance of a Sam Bauer to knowingly engage with a snotty pureblood.
Nothing doing, though; he was noticed. “Sure,” he said, deciding to be gracious about it. “I’m Sam. First year.” He decided, considering Weather Boy’s situation relative to his cousin’s, to leave his surname and House out of it. Rachel was kind of…uncool now, but she was still family, and they had been friends once. He owed her something, and it wasn’t like he couldn’t understand the appeal of being someone else sometimes. Being a half-blood wasn’t as bad as being Muggleborn, but nor was it a condition he saw anyone ever jumping for joy to be in. He looked self-consciously over his own secondhand materials. “If we use your cauldron, we can use my ingredients.”
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Sam Bauer
But we both seem so unenthusiastic.
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Sam Bauer
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Raines
July 24, 2010 9:00 PM
Our childhood traumas make us incompatible. by Raines
He wasn’t quite sure why – a combination of factors, he supposed, was the most likely answer for the irregularity – but Raines felt something snap inside him at the casual introduction he was offered from someone he, if only vaguely, recognized as a fellow Crotalus and thus someone who should have learned better by now no matter where he came from.“Is it utterly beyond,” he snapped, “the capabilities of every person here to offer a proper introduction? Are you so monumentally stupid that, even if your mother was too much of an ill-bred nobody to teach you proper manners, you can’t learn from the bare handful of respectable individuals at this school?”
Somewhere, in the back of his mind, it registered with him that insulting a new person’s mother and intelligence and social standing in one sentence might not have been the wisest course of action he could have taken. Mostly, though, he was preoccupied with his own irritation. “It is not a difficult formula,” he ranted. “My name is Raines Bradley, of the Louisiana Bradleys. You’re a Crotalus. You had to have heard the formula. Is it so very difficult to imitate a formula? Observe my – alleged – housemate Miss Bauer. If she can observe a minimum of proprieties, then I feel it safe to assume that anyone can. Well? What’s your surname?”
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Raines
Our childhood traumas make us incompatible.
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Raines
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Sam
July 25, 2010 7:09 PM
They surely do. by Sam
To say that Sam hadn’t expected to be embraced as a brother by Weather Boy was to make an understatement. He had foreseen a lot of looks down an aristocratic, if not actually that high off the ground, nose. Snide comments on his wardrobe and secondhand supplies. Maybe even a few references to how his year, in more polite terms, made him a moron by default.He did not, however, expect it to get personal. Twice. He had only just processed the insult to his mother and gone very still when Weather Boy – excuse him, Raines Bradley of the Louisiana Bradleys - decided to bring Rachel into it, too, implying that she either wasn’t a lady – which she wasn’t, in the way he meant it, but that didn’t matter – or that she was really stupid.
He didn’t know, given how small and interconnected the school was, if the dude knew she was his cousin or not. Nor did he care. Bringing his mother’s parenting skills into this discussion with no provocation whatsoever had been enough to make it personal.
Weather Boy was going down.
“It’s Bauer,” Sam said flatly when he was asked for his surname. He could not try to hit him. That would be stupid. As short and scrawny as Weather Boy was, Sam was still shorter and scrawnier. Plus, there was the Fawcett factor, and the ‘pureblood families have lots of thugs to hire’ factor. He could, however, dump in the porcupine quills before Weather Boy had a chance to get their potion off the fire. Teach the guy to watch his mouth. “You going to put water in your cauldron or not?”
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Sam
They surely do.
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Sam
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