Professor Sophie O'Malley
June 17, 2017 10:34 PM
Let's talk about <em>amore</em> [Years VI and VII] by Professor Sophie O'Malley
“Gather ‘round, everyone,” Sophie called the Advanced students, gesturing for them to approach her desk, where a calming concoction in a cauldron stewed, the bubbles fading as it had just been taken off the final heat before they arrived.“Can anyone tell me what potion this is?” If the sixth and seventh years had done their readings, the answer would have been obvious, the mother-of-pearl sheen and spiraling steam a dead giveaway. When the correct answer - Amortentia - was secured, Sophie posed another question. “Excellent. Now can someone tell me what Amortentia is?” Once again, she waited for responses.
“It’s a love potion,” she said at last, her response planned before any student commented, therefore either reaffirming a correct answer or providing one if no student spoke up. “As you should know from your textbooks, Amortentia is the strongest love potion known to man. It has a particularly interesting quirk, which is its scent. The perceived smell of this potion varies from person to person. So basically, to you, it will smell like whatever most attracts you. Funny little thing, isn’t it?”
Sophie glanced at her students. “You’ve got an easy assignment today while we familiarize ourselves with this potion. Next week we’ll be brewing it, but for today, you’ll mostly be writing. I’d like you all to jot down what it smells like to you in your Potions journals, and then we’ll go around and share. I know it can be a bit personal sometimes, and if there’s anything you specifically don’t want to share, you don’t have to. Try to isolate at least two scents you feel like sharing, though. To make it easier, I’ll break the ice and tell you all mine first.” The small professor took a deep breath in through her nose, although she was familiar enough with the potion and its scent to render this fairly redundant. It was good for effect, though.
“For me, it’s the smell of pine, potion stock, butterbeer, and…” Sophie grinned. “Dog fur. Anyway, get a whiff and then get writing. Your Potions journals are as private as you like, so please feel free to also explore why you think certain scents stand out to you. When we’re done going around the room discussing this, you’re welcome to get started on your homework, which will be an informal essay on the ingredients in love potions and their roles and symbols in modern culture.” Once more, she looked around the room, seeing who, if anyone, looked most eager to step up to the cauldron. “So who wants to take a sniff first?”
OOC: The concept of a Potions journal should be something your character recognizes, and it’s something Sophie does every so often when the topic is so subjective. Regarding the homework assignment, the HP wiki page for love potions states:
“Ashwinder eggs are a common ingredient in many varieties of love potions,[3] as are rose thorns, peppermint, and Moonstone. Since there are many different types of love potions, therefore there are many different methods in which to brew them. Pearl Dust was an ingredient in all love potions.”
That should be a good jumping off point if you’d like to get into any sort of detail about the assignment. An informal essay with Sophie is a loose term she uses without much specifications in length or formality. Your student would likely know by now that as long as the sentences make sense and all parts of a question is addressed, she will not be much of a stickler.
Happy posting!
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Professor Sophie O'Malley
Let's talk about <em>amore</em> [Years VI and VII]
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Professor Sophie O'Malley
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Ginger Pierce
June 22, 2017 4:41 PM
Smell the rainbow! by Ginger Pierce
Ginger had no answer for the identity of the shimmery potion or what it did. She frowned at it when she learned it was a very strong love potion. It looked pretty and smelled happy (she was standing too far away to pick out any specific smells but even from here it made her feel more cheerful than she had previously) but she objected to the very idea of love potions. Even in the stories, or perhaps especially in the stories since 'love potion' was a fairly overused plot device, they always seemed to cause more problems than they solved, and even when they did solve problems, Ginger never thought it felt quite right and they left her feeling uneasy about how everything resolved.Some of her relatives did sell what they marketed as 'love potions' - mostly the same ones that marketed themselves as 'fortune-tellers' - but the potions weren't so much potions as sugar water laced with cheering charms. They did make the drinker happier, and perhaps slightly more amenable to agreeing to go on a date given their good mood, but the person's ability to make sound choices and judgments was not hindered, which she didn't really think was the case for most love potions.
Though, she supposed, love wasn't generally known for its ability to be rational and make good choices either, but it seemed worse somehow when it was created artificially and on purpose. It just wasn't right.
Of course, it still smelled fantastic as she got closer when it was her turn to approach.
Ginger took a good whiff, and tried to sort out the individual scents she was getting. Cotton candy. Camp fires. Fresh rain. Something else she couldn't quite put her finger on. Another deep breath in through her nose. Was that sweat? Yes, it was man sweat. Specifically, it was Jake after Quidditch man sweat. That was what it was. She thought maybe she wouldn't mention that one to the class.
"For me," she said aloud, "The smell makes me think I'm at a fair, just after it stops raining, eating cotton candy, and someone nearby is toasting marshmallows over a fire. There's a rainbow in the sky." Okay, technically, rainbows didn't have smells, but she was pretty sure this potion somehow pulled it off anyway. There was definitely a rainbow in there.
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Ginger Pierce
Smell the rainbow!
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Ginger Pierce
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John Umland, Aladren
July 02, 2017 2:53 PM
I'd really rather not. by John Umland, Aladren
Love potions were a subject John found intensely objectionable, but since they had been in the reading, he recognized the telltale signs which indicated the substance on Professor O’Malley’s desk was Amortentia. He did not bother to answer that question, considering it too easy, but he did put his bit in when the professor asked if any of them knew what Amortentia was“It’s a potion which makes one person obsessed with another,” he said.
Professor O’Malley seemed to prefer the slightly more romantic wording, which annoyed John. It was true that someone sufficiently dosed up on that stuff might behave as though in love, but that was Wrong. Love was making the free choice to behave in a certain way which put another's interests ahead of their own, and someone whose judgment was impaired was not capable of doing that, even if the behavior looked the same on the surface. Just the vapors from this thing were clouding his head a bit, trying to persuade him he ought to relax a bit and be less irritable than was his norm. He didn’t wish to do that, though, so it was Wrong.
He was reluctant to deliberately inhale more of said vapors for that reason, so he decided to go ahead and get it over with when Professor O’Malley asked for a volunteer. “I’ll do it,” he said shortly, and did so. He stepped back from the cauldron almost immediately, blinking and rubbing his nose, trying to sort out the jumble of impressions his nose was trying to tell him it registered.
“It’s…mostly vanillin,” he said. “Books, in other words.” He was willing to bet that none of the audience found this surprising. “There’s…something I think is India ink, too, and – I’m not stealing from you – “ he added to the professor – “a little pine, or cedar - something evergreen.”
That wasn’t all, though. There was an undertone he couldn’t decide if he thought was more like jasmine or candle smoke, another which seemed to be a mix of the carpets and incense at church, plus things he could only identify as ‘like plastic, but good plastic’ and ‘like the sun at home if you stripped out all the petroleum notes’, both of which he thought would sound kind of stupid to say out loud. There was something else, too, that he couldn’t quite identify, a sort of light yet not quite sweet smell; his brain was trying to make some kind of connection to sunflowers, but he suspected random neurons with no real basis for firing simultaneously, as he did not even know if sunflowers had a fragrance as such or why he would find them attractive.
That task done, he stared through the page of his notebook which lay open before him. All of this, aside from the inexplicable sunflowers, reminded him of home. He was not sexually obsessed with his house. He really, really wanted to go home - it disturbed him to the point of irrationality when he thought about it; he wanted to yell and throw things because he couldn't go there, and he wasted time thinking about how much he wished things hadn't happened - but there was a difference, he thought, in that and sexual obsession - wasn't there? Or was his contempt for and, now that he had some basis for an opinion, frank dislike of sex such that the potion was merely focusing on the kinds of love he did experience? Most people, he knew, assumed everyone over a certain age wanted to have sex pretty much twenty-four seven, but John absolutely did not and also had to wonder what happened if small children smelled this abomination of a brew....
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John Umland, Aladren
I'd really rather not.
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John Umland, Aladren
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