Advanced Lesson I (6th and 7th Years) on Potions

Professor Fawcett

July 28, 2011 1:42 AM

Advanced Lesson I (6th and 7th Years) by Professor Fawcett

The Advanced class was the most difficult to teach as well as to take, but John had a soft spot for it nevertheless. While he had been in education long enough to not be disturbed by whether an individual student liked him or not, there was something to knowing that these students were not with him because they had to be, but because they had, for whatever reason when there were many reasons, chosen to be.

Normally, he greeted them individually, but today he was running slightly late. "Good morning, class," he said, hastily shoving a folder into a stack on one side of his desk and opening another up in front of him. He was going to have to straighten his desk up again soon, before one of the first years set something on fire and they all perished for his love of paper. "I apologize for my slight tardiness. I hope you've all taken the opportunity to begin setting up your work stations, because today is going to be a busy one."

Not a good day for him to be slightly tardy at all, but he normally just checked off this group on his roll sheet as they entered, so now he could put it off until they were working. He could have still cursed himself for being late, though. He had gone back to his office for the papers he needed to look over for this lesson and had ended up reading two chapters of a book he noticed sticking out of his shelf a little further than the others it was in line with before he fully realized what was happening. A pleasant few minutes, but not very professional ones and an annoyance now, and if Allison ever heard about it, he knew he'd never hear the end of it about being senile.

"As you are all aware, poisons are a topic one runs across very often in Potions. Many benign potions utilize the properties of plants and animals which are on their own poisonous, and I'm sure you all remember your prevoius studies of antidotes." A topic which would come back to haunt them, especially in the spring, but he'd spare them that knowledge until closer to midterm. Few people actually liked studying antidotes, even with kind professors like him who didn't sometimes hint at secretly poisoning the entire class.

"Today, you will work with poisons. Each of you - " he pointed his wand at the back cabinet, floating out the small boxes he should have had out before class and depositing them in front of students without regard for who got which one. "You each have several plants in those boxes. Two of each are poisonous. Your first task is to determine which those are, and your second is to determine how they would work together and with the other contents of your kits. At least one kit will produce a potion which is not harmful. You may confer together and begin."

OOC: Posting rules for points as usual, be creative and have fun!

Subthreads:

I don't know if I see this going well... by Andrew Duell

0 Professor Fawcett Advanced Lesson I (6th and 7th Years) 0 Professor Fawcett 1 5

Andrew Duell

July 30, 2011 11:49 AM

I don't know if I see this going well... by Andrew Duell

It was time for potions, again. This was definitely not Andrews favorite class, he had scraped past last year and his CATS were not great. Why was he still taking this class? He sighed to himself, he had to. It was a requirement to get into CalTech's magical department. He wasn't really sure why, and it worried him a bit, but he would make it somehow, probably with a lot of help from Jose. A lot of help.

He entered the classroom and looked around, he must be early there weren't many people here yet. No Jose. Great, well he'd just have to find a seat and hope that Jose came to join him. Or Marissa, that would be good as well, for completely different reasons. He found a seat, dug out his supplies and arranged them for class. Hopefully this wouldn't be terribly difficult, but this was the 'advanced' class.

Once Professor Fawcett went through his opening speech for the class, Andrew's stomach sank. Poisons? He had to make something that would probably end up killing him? This was not going to go well. He stared at the box that landed in front of him, what were the chanced that he got the non-lethal potion? Then he reconsidered the situation. On the positive side, he probably wouldn't get the potion together properly and therefore couldn't possibly kill himself with it, right?

2 Andrew Duell I don't know if I see this going well... 145 Andrew Duell 0 5

Charlotte Abbott

August 11, 2011 3:11 PM

Don't panic by Charlotte Abbott

It was typical that on a day when Charlie seemed to be struggling to stay awake and alert Fawcett would decide to let them handle poisons (although this had, of course, been indicated on the syllabus, so the professor couldn't really be blamed for intentionally scheduling his class on a day when the seventh year wasn't feeling her best, unless he was a particularly gifted Seer, which she doubted). Maybe she'd gone to bed a little too late a few too many nights running, or maybe she was just having one of those days. regardless of the reason, charlie felt lethargic and she would swear a headache was trying to build itself behind her eyes; she fully expected it to make its presence known at any given moment. However, she really had to focus if she didn't want to feel a great deal worse, if Fawcett was telling the truth about the potentially poisonous items that had recently landed themselves on her desk. Trying to pull herself together, Charlie rubbed her eyes, twisted her neck this way and that, and then exhaled a puff of air. She could do this.

First thing's first: Charlie picked up her wand and cast impervius on her hands. If she was dealing with poisonous substances before she even got to the potion making stage then she wanted to be well protected, especially in her current substandard state. Next she looked inside the box that had landed in front of her just moments ago, and saw a bunch of plants, most of which she recognized. Well that was a good start.

Taking out some parchment and her self-inking quill, Charlie took the specimens out the box one by one and laid them on a cutting mat while she made notes on each - properties, uses, and whether or not it was harmful. When she encountered one that wasn't immediately familiar, she held the specimen up and, rather than look it up in her textbook right away, she asked, "Does this look familiar to you?" Charlie didn't know Andrew all that well, but they'd been in classes together on and off for the past six years, so inevitably they'd spoken briefly at some point or other. He was Jose's friend, so was probably decent enough, and certainly adequate to chat with over the course of the lesson.

0 Charlotte Abbott Don't panic 135 Charlotte Abbott 0 5

Andrew

August 14, 2011 7:25 PM

I should be okay, I've got my... crap, where'd my towel go! by Andrew

The girl next to Andrew was asking a question, the poor girl. She should probably know better than to ask him something in potions. Everyone knew Jose or an Aladrin were the ones to go to, not him. He was barely scraping by this class he leaned heavily on Jose as often as he could... and it looked like Jose had found someone else to sit with for this class. Oh well, he couldn't really blame his friend.

Unfortunately the girl's voice was not the angelic chiming of Marissa's voice either. That would have been okay as well. He would have loved to have helped Marissa again, somehow he managed to pull something out of thin air for her whenever he got the opportunity to work with her. You never knew, maybe he could help this 'damsel in mild distress' as well.

He looked up from his 'box of doom' filled with plants, one or two of which he might have recognized, and looked for the source of the question. It was Charlie. He'd been hearing rumors otherwise, but for some reason he always thought of Charlie as 'Daniel's girl'. Those rumors generally indicated that she was now seeing James Anthony. That was generally why he dismissed them; Daniel may have his quirks, but at least he wasn't James Anthony. Honestly Andrew hadn't had a great deal of interaction with James, but the very few, brief encounters he had made him want to keep it that way.

This however, was not the important aspect of Miss Charlotte Abbott, Charlie was a good friend of Marissa, and her Quidditch captain. That made it incredibly important to be nice and helpful and do everything he could for Charlie whenever possible. He knew for a fact that girls talked, and any bad impression he left with Charlie would make its way to Marissa faster than bad news (which everyone knew was the fastest thing in the universe).

So in response to her question he smiled, "Well, it's greenish and has leaves." He had no idea what that plant was, he had no idea what his plants were. Crap... this was not going to go well. What was he going to do? Think, think, think... When you don't have the knowledge you want you either ask someone else or look it up. She already did the first option, so it was up to him to do the second? Yes. Now, do it calmly and coolly. "Actually I think I saw that one while flipping through the plant book the other evening." No he hadn't, but it gave him a good reason to get the book. Now he just hoped and prayed that it was in there.

He flipped through the pages as calmly and collectively as he could, pausing once or twice to make it look like he was considering an option. Why did they all have to look the same!? They're plants! Wait! There it was, it had the same little odd leaf markings, right? Close enough. He shifted the book over for Charlie to see, "Is that the one?"

2 Andrew I should be okay, I've got my... crap, where'd my towel go! 145 Andrew 0 5