My mom's ex-husband's wife is a caterer; can she help? on Potions

Professor Fawcett

February 12, 2011 8:36 PM

Iron Chef Sonora (Advanced Lesson I, Sixth Years) by Professor Fawcett

For the second time, now, Sadi’s decision to have the group who should have now been their seventh year class skip fifth year was proving, in John's opinion, to be to the Advanced class' benefit. He liked to give students preparing for the major exams as much attention as possible, and while it had been a bit better when he had the seventh years to themselves for a year, having just the sixth years to focus on and build up, without having to divide his focus between what they were capable of and what those who’d already had a year of the course were up to, was still not a bad bargain.

“Good morning, tortured souls,” he greeted the tiny class once their bell rang, as close to cheerfully as he did anything. John liked having the Advanced class in the mornings, and maneuvered for an early time slot for them as often as possible. Education was inherently a political occupation, though getting an hour and a half he liked for his Advanced students this year was not one of the more complicated plans he’d ever had to come up with and execute; in fact, compared to what it took to get grants and make the red tape for a research project disappear, it really hadn’t been difficult at all. His wife had begun to joke that he ought to become Headmaster before the reduced stress level extended his lifespan and she had to kill him to get rid of him. At least, John assumed Allison was joking about that. “I assume you’ve all completed the assignments I owled you, so we’ll forego the roll call in favor of passing those over to the left.”

He’d made it a practice for several years, now, to send out an assignment to the Advanced students on the first morning of term, which they were to complete before they came to class for the first time. It was not a very difficult one – “list fifteen potions which you would like to attempt this year, with rationale and a brief summary of each potion’s uses” – but it gave him an idea of what they were expecting and what they could do, and, if his understanding of psychology was at all accurate, also helped give them the subconscious idea that not being in the classroom and under his direct supervision, or just working on a specific potion, did not mean there was nothing to do for class at the level they were now at. Even if it wasn’t his class. Most of the students who voluntarily took courses, either here or partially independent studies in history or the social sciences, with him would already know that, but it couldn’t hurt anything.

Once he had all the papers, he took the syllabi from his desk and put them in front of the seat furthest to the left in the front tables, which he’d designated as the only ones they’d use by putting the stools on top of the ones further back. In a small class, he liked for the students to be where he could see them all easily, closer to the front. “Take one and pass them along,” he said, and kept talking as they did that. “I’m sure you all know the purpose and use of the syllabus by now, so keep it in a safe place and refer to it regularly.”

That piece of business taken care of, he pulled out a smallish, flat-bottomed bottle with long, rounded sides. The glass was dark green, as was the stopper, and the label was clear: Mulgrave’s Essence of Dittany. This he put on the edge of his own desk, where everyone could see it clearly.

“Dittany is an herb used primarily for medicinal purposes,” he informed them. It was, in many ways, a pity that Sonora did not have herbology classes, requiring as it did the Potions professor to teach mini-lessons in the subject on a regular basis. “There are at least four known variants, three of which are known to Muggles; the one you see here is a restorative used to close wounds and regenerate skin in desperate situations, which full healing is either beyond the capabilities of the acting medic or the patient must be stabilized before such an attempt can be made. This is closely related to the anti-inflammatory Muggle variant known as white dittany, and some believe ancient wizards deliberately modified this plant to produce the more potent version used in magical medicine. All are believed to be good for ailments of the stomach, and also for problems concerning the head, including seizures.”

He levitated three trays onto the desk, one of white dittany, one of dittany of Crete, and one of wizard’s dittany. “These are the three forms we will work with today. Your challenge is to prepare a potion, by the end of our class period, is to either perform an extraction of the useful oils in these plants – be especially careful if attempting this with the white dittany; it’s highly flammable – or prepare a potion, which you may select or attempt to create if you are feeling especially ambitious, which utilizes at least one form of dittany as its central ingredient. You may work together or separately to achieve these aims, and you may begin when ready. Helpful information may be found in chapter seven of your textbook.”

OOC: You all know the rules – meet the length and mechanics minimums, tag Fawcett if you need him, mistakes are permissible, etc. Have fun!

Subthreads:

My mom's ex-husband's wife is a caterer; can she help? by Daniel Nash II, Aladren (and Head Boy) with Alison Sinclair

Hopefully not going down in flames by Charlotte Abbott (no additional info supplied)

0 Professor Fawcett Iron Chef Sonora (Advanced Lesson I, Sixth Years) 0 Professor Fawcett 1 5

Daniel Nash II, Aladren (and Head Boy)

February 14, 2011 1:49 PM

My mom's ex-husband's wife is a caterer; can she help? by Daniel Nash II, Aladren (and Head Boy)

Because Holly had dropped potions like a hot potato at the first opportunity, and Daniel had been under the impression that most of Thomas's complaints about Fawcett's work load were because he was taking his RATS at the end of the year and because he'd piled on a bunch of independent studies, Daniel was kind of surprised to find an owl waiting for him with a potions assignment before he even began the class.

It wasn't anything too difficult, but it did require some research and independent thinking rather than just regurgitation of requested facts, and Daniel already had a bad feeling that this was going to be one of those classes that made him earn his Aladren grades. In fact, upon receiving the owl, he feared all of his classes were going to make him work for it.

Daniel was not, as he liked to pretend, a genius. He was by no means stupid, but he wasn't naturally brilliant like James and Quentin and possibly even Juri. He'd gotten good grades so far at Sonora because he was an Aladren and that was what Aladrens were supposed to do. That was his role here. It was fortunate that he had a good head for memorization or he'd have been completely hopeless at keeping up with James and Quentin.

This idea that Charlie seemed to have that he should try relaxing and 'having fun' (whatever that meant) seemed doomed from the beginning. But she would be pleased to know that he had another thing to add to the list of things he was not. After his talk with Charlie he was even starting to try to find things that he was and things that he actually liked because he enjoyed them rather than because he was supposed to.

As it turned out, as he went through his list of fifteen potions he would like to attempt, he'd found a few of each. He was focused and detail oriented. He'd had to consider these traits carefully since they were very Daniel but not as obviously Danny, but he'd decided that he actually was focused and detail oriented and not just pretending. He'd also decided that he actually liked making potions. He'd always liked the class before because it was easier than his other classes and he could pull better grades with less effort than, say, in Transfiguration or DADA, but now he was starting to figure out that these things had happened because his brain just worked like that and he found it fun.

Somehow, he didn't think 'potions homework' was what Charlie had in mind when she talked about 'having fun' though. But that was probably why he was in Aladren and she wasn't.

Potions just made sense. You add this and do this and add that and you get something predictable every time, if you do it just precisely right. Daniel reveled in precision (not as much as Quentin, obviously, at least in his language, but precision was good), he had an excellent sense of timing, he was something of a perfectionist (that was the first thing he'd added to his list of Things I AM) and he actually enjoyed the pressure of If-You-Do-This-Wrong-Even-A-Little-You-Could-Die (he feared this may also be why Quidditch still appealed to him now that he already had the Head Boy badge), and overall it just made him well suited to potion-making.

It was the He-Could-Die point that made him fairly sure he should not go into potions professionally. He recognized that nobody could control all of the factors all of the time to avoid an accident indefinitely. He liked to think he was good at recognizing when he lost control of some of the factors, but that very belief meant he was dangerously susceptible to believing he had full control when he did not. He liked living and not being horribly maimed or disfigured far too much to risk a career in potions.

He'd already discarded the potential professions of auror, spy, and criminal for the same reason. He was also in the process of trying to figure out his risk level for assassination if he went into politics, to determine if that should also be added to the list of "Careers To Avoid Because They Will Kill Me."

In the meantime, potion class with Professor Fawcett, even at the RATS level, was probably still safe. He turned in his list of fifteen potions, and looked over the syllabus (while wondering what was the point of suggesting potions to brew when the syllabus was already made up). He was somewhat pleased to find a couple on his list were already there anyway and other class periods were dedicated to a topic but not a specific potion. Today's was one of those, and it turned out they could pick a potion as long as it used Dittany as a central ingredient. Maybe that was how they could work in the rest of their listed potions.

He turned to chapter seven and scanned through some of the information there, enough to know he could probably handle distilling or potion-making, and turned to his nearest neighbor. "Have you a partner or a preference for what you want do yet?"

1 Daniel Nash II, Aladren (and Head Boy) My mom's ex-husband's wife is a caterer; can she help? 130 Daniel Nash II, Aladren (and Head Boy) 0 5

Charlotte Abbott (no additional info supplied)

February 16, 2011 6:36 AM

Hopefully not going down in flames by Charlotte Abbott (no additional info supplied)

Here she was, a RATS level potions student. It was the closest thing to destiny Charlie had ever really experienced. In her pre-Sonora days she'd had dreams of being a ballerina, but once she'd made the decision to learn magic her dancer dreams had somehow turned themselves into more of a hobby than a career choice. It turned out that she just wasn't dedicated enough to be a professional dancer anyway; she danced everyday and dieted ten months of the year, but even this level of dedication wasn't sufficent, yet it was all Charlotte was prepared to offer. Attending Sonora, on the other hand, had been easy. All she had to do was argue with her parents for a good long summer, and she pretty much did that anyway. She'd come originally with an air of determination that dancing couldn't muster: she was going to prove to her parents and the world that she could be a good witch, and she was in no way going to be remembered as Oliver Abbott's little sister. Yet, despite her original intentions, Charlie didn only as much work as she was content to do, never pushing herself harder than was strictly necessary. She had somehow still accomplished sufficient to satisfy most people's understadnings of 'a good witch', but as for being known as Oliver's sister? She couldn't be sure - she had joined the Quidditch team at his request, been named captain after he graduated from the position, and was now continuing with potions partly because that was Oliver's field of profession. Charlie was good at potions, and she liked it, but Oliver was brilliant, so she didn't feel like she could claim it as her own. It had the annoying effect of making her want to live up to someone's expectations, and that wasn't a feeling she sufferred from a great deal.

Regardless, Charlie knew she had been one of the better students in this class before CATS, and her E grade agreed with her. Of course now those who weren't good at the subject, or who had no interest, had dropped potions, leaving the class very small and making it far more obvious who knew what they were doing and who didn't. In front of Fawcett, it felt practically imperative to at least look like you knew what you were doing. Unfortunately, as they hadn't received their syllabi until now, it had been impossible for Charlie to read up on the class before it happened. Therefore when they were told the subject, she made it her business to read the relevant material in the textbook before making a decision about what she would be doing for the class. For the reason, the majority of her classmates seemed to have already begun to work by the time Charlie had decided what she wanted to do. She read breifly about the uses of each sort of Dittany, and how one would go about making the extractions. She then looked up potions with Dittany as an ingredient, and felt inexplicably drawn to the option that Fawcett had singled out as being dangerous. She didn't know of it was because she wanted to prove a point, or if the uses of White Dittany sounded most useful on a daily basis, or if she felt it was the least likely option to be chosen by others and therfore least likely to be repetetive for the professor to grade, or for some other reason. Looking over her textbook again, Charlie thought she could probably successfully extract the flammable coating, and grind the root, and set the leaves to dry during one class. Providing, of course, she didn't accidentally set alight to any of it.

Turning to the person sharing her desk space, she said, "I'm going to try extracting the White Dittany, I think, so I just wanted to check you're not planning on lighting that," she gestured to the place one would usually start a fire when brewing potions. "Setting myself on fire is not on my agenda for today."

0 Charlotte Abbott (no additional info supplied) Hopefully not going down in flames 0 Charlotte Abbott (no additional info supplied) 0 5

Alison Sinclair

February 18, 2011 4:38 PM

Think you're stuck with the staff of the show, sorry. by Alison Sinclair

Potions wasn’t Alison’s best subject ever, not least because she tended to get a little bored with it when there was a lag between steps and it didn’t take nearly as long to prepare for the rest of the steps in the thing as it did to wait for something to stew. She got distracted too easily for that kind of thing, and then something went wrong, even if it was just that whatever it was got a little overstewed and the potion ended up the wrong color. There was also the issue of Fawcett just being a hard teacher, who occasionally made them think creatively and stuff with the discussions and the essays.

All of these were, of course, perfectly sensible reasons to continue taking Potions at the RATS level. Far more sensible than things like ‘it’s a useful subject in general, unless you want to spend an arm and both legs instead of just one at the apothecary’s’ or ‘it fits in with more than half the considered future careers.’ She’d thought of those things, too, but really, Alison’s main reason for taking Potions was that she’d scraped the required entrance grade on her CATS and wanted to prove she could.

Getting an assignment to do before the class even met for the first time had done nothing to quiet her feeling, present from the moment she signed up, that doing that was a really bad idea, but it had been too late from the minute she submitted her course selections. She was committed, now, and that was that. She’d just have to make the best of it.

Still, though, she had to wince when she heard the course description. She had thought she was through with those teachers who worried about Developing The Whole Person when she manifested magical talent and dropped out of first grade, so long ago that she didn’t even really remember that teachers were like that and had picked it up from, before they graduated and went on to college, reading her older brothers’ school agendas whenever she needed a reminder of what she got in exchange for the tradeoff of being politely half-estranged from Michael and Anthony and her parents. It seemed she had been wrong. Alison had read a snapshot biography of the guy when she was surprised to see his name on the spine of a book in the store once, but from this course description alone, she thought that she would have been able to peg Fawcett as a total liberal arts junkie from a mile off even if she hadn’t.

Not that she had any objection to the arts in themselves, just as they applied to progressive theory as it applied to her. Her whole person was perfectly fine just the way it was, and if it needed development, she’d develop it on her own time. She was in school to learn how to function in the real world. If she was too dumb to think, that was her problem, and she really didn’t need it displayed to the entire class.

To her relief, though, he didn’t insist on beginning the class with anything like that. They had options, but she could live with that. Once they were given the go-ahead to find something to do, she flipped to the index of her textbook, then to the entry on dittany, hoping it would include suggestions for a potion, and looked up when Daniel Nash spoke to her, trying not to tilt her head at his word order. She knew the guy was formal, but have you a partner? Really?

“No, and not really,” she said. In going on three years at this school, she had learned that Nash was a little uptight, but also very smart, and the badges suggested someone had to think that he was pretty good at the responsible, focused, working-under-pressure thing. He could prevent something from going wrong on the first day. That would be a good thing. “I was thinking of trying a potion, but I can work with whatever.”

16 Alison Sinclair Think you're stuck with the staff of the show, sorry. 140 Alison Sinclair 0 5

Daniel Nash II

February 22, 2011 10:34 AM

So there's no 'Phone a Friend' help on this one? by Daniel Nash II

He'd known there was a problem with his partner request the moment it left his mouth. It was fine for Quentin - it was because of Quentin that he talked like that sometimes - but it was not nearly so well suited for anyone outside of Aladren House (who were also used to dealing with Quentin and would therefore find nothing wrong with the question). He was grateful Alison didn't say anything and was willing to pretend he could actually talk like a normal person.

"A potion is fine," he agreed readily when she offered her preference, and though he'd thought about casualizing his vocabulary and saying 'Potion's good' instead, the grammar Nazi in his head didn't let him. He did decide against 'A potion is my preference as well,' and managed to deformalize it to: "I'm probably better at that anyway." He gave her a small, almost self-deprecating crooked smile, and did not joke that the reason he was good at it was because he verged on obsessive compulsive.

Mild case, only. No need to see a shrink. Besides, in Aladren, that was almost a requirement, not a detriment. Though he was pretty sure he was the only one of his roommates who showered and shaved at least twice a day. But there were pimples in his family. Good hygiene could prevent those. He'd sworn when he was seven years old that his face would never look like Luke's if all that was required to avoid it was a little extra soap and some preventative lotions. Almost ten years later, and he was still pimple-free. Take that, heredity.

"So what kind of potion do we want to make? The skin regeneration one? A seizure treatment? Magical Pepto Bismol - er," he stopped, not certain whether or not Alison had a muggle background or not, and added in explanation just in case, "stomach relief. Something else?"

1 Daniel Nash II So there's no 'Phone a Friend' help on this one? 130 Daniel Nash II 0 5

Alison

March 10, 2011 1:12 PM

Not on Redemption Island, but we're not there yet. by Alison

“Good times,” Alison said when Daniel said he was probably also better at potions than at making the ingredients for them, returning the smile.

She considered the choices he’d given her. “Skin regeneration and seizure treatment look the most complicated,” she said, then realized that, coming from a lot of people, that would have been considered a point against them. She didn’t think it would be with an Aladren, but she was a Pecari, so it might be assumed that she saw it that way. Yeah, Houses were confusing, and one of the great things about homeschooling had been that she’d just been Alison, without really any further associations to contend with. Mellie was as close to a little sister as she had, but they were far enough apart that Mel reflected more on Russ and Topher and Lucy and the Rush girls and that lot than she did on Alison. “Which would be good for impressing Fawcett and not getting bored,” she added to clarify. “I’m a lot better at this when it keeps me busy.”

Something else he’d said caught up with her, and she wasn’t sure of its meaning. “Wait – Pepto-Bismol?” True, her contact with the Muggle world, much less Muggle medicine, had been very limited since she was six years old and dropped out of first grade to go basically live with her witch aunt and the wizard she’d married to make the whole transition process easier, but she had always gone home occasionally, she watched way more television than was probably healthy when she did, and those stupid commercials were the kinds of things that stuck. She looked at Daniel in something like confusion. “You know Muggle stuff?”

16 Alison Not on Redemption Island, but we're not there yet. 140 Alison 0 5

Daniel Nash II

March 21, 2011 1:57 PM

That sounds ominous, can we avoid going there? by Daniel Nash II

At first, Daniel though she was rejecting the regeneration and seizure treatment potions, but when she explained that she liked to be kept busy and wanted to impress Fawcett, Daniel gave her his best crooked smile. Before he could agree and suggest the regeneration one, though, she asked about the Pepto.

He winced a little, because most days he could make people forget he was a muggleborn and that he didn't grow up with all of this stuff around him. Not that he was trying to hide it; even Holly hadn't attempted that; but people just tended to expect people with some childhood familiarity to pick up on magic concepts faster, and being an Aladren meant picking up magic concepts quickly so if anybody just assumed based on that that he had a magical background . . . he wouldn't correct them. That stereotype fit the persona he was projecting better than 'muggleborn' did.

But since he was the one who broke character and Alison called him on it, he didn't try to lie. "Yeah," he admitted, shrugging. "Born and raised muggle. The pink stuff is still the best way to sort out an upset stomach. It tastes so much better than potions, too." He grinned and shrugged. "Just as well we're not going to try to replace it."

He glanced back down at the book, "So, skin regeneration?" Of the two she had put up as options, it seemed like the one more likely to prove useful in daily life unless or until someone he knew developed some kind of seizure disorder. Burns and scrapes just had a far higher probably of happening near him at this point in his life.

"I mean, you'd probably go to a hospital rather than make either yourself, but I'd feel better about applying a skin salve I made to somebody, if only as first aid until we could get them to a trained professional, than dosing someone having a seizure."

1 Daniel Nash II That sounds ominous, can we avoid going there? 130 Daniel Nash II 0 5

Alison

March 24, 2011 3:39 PM

If we're good enough at Diplomacy. by Alison

“Huh,” Alison said when Daniel said he was actually Muggleborn. She’d been more expecting liberal half-blood. “Me, too.” She paused. “Sort of. There was a Muggleborn aunt involved.”

She’d heard there was some debate about whether or not her mother’s sister being a witch meant she – or really, Muggleborns with magical relatives other than children in general; no one, as far as she knew, had ever talked about her specifically – shouldn’t properly be classed as a Muggleborn, but must have had some magical ancestry pretty recently. The chance of a random quirk of genetics happening twice in as many generations was supposed to be kind of remote. Alison’s math wasn’t good enough to calculate that, though, and she doubted the really uptight variety of pureblood would care about anything except her direct parents not having superpowers, so the debate didn’t hold her interest very far.

“Just as well,” she agreed, though she didn’t in fact know much about the comparative tastes of the two medicines. She’d never gotten sick or bothered much, or if she did, not enough to think of getting medicine for it. “Yeah, skin regeneration sounds fine.”

A thought occurred to her, and she glanced at Fawcett warily before adding, “And don’t say that so loud, he’ll have us do a research project on the ethics of home potions or something, if he isn’t planning on it already.” It was about half a joke. About.

She looked over the ingredients list and procedures. “Mmkay, I can stew the horned slugs and get the sunflower seed extract.” She frowned at the page. “Which I think is also an ingredient in my shampoo,” she added without changing tone at all. “Interesting. Do you want chopping, adding, or stirring?”

16 Alison If we're good enough at Diplomacy. 140 Alison 0 5