Professor Mary Brooding
July 13, 2019 1:47 AM
Boil, boil, toil, and trouble. [Advanced, VI-VII] by Professor Mary Brooding
Mary wondered whether she'd ever get tired of the way a new school year tasted. It was the beginning of September - school had only begun a few days previously - and the earliest signs of fall were revealing themselves in the way the morning's first breath lingered a little longer in the air than it had the day before. Little things, it turned out, were usually the most important. This was often the case with potion making and was apparently the case in baby making. Or adopting. Or ignoring.The conversations that were bred in the earliest signs of change were much less charming, but Mary was glad for them all the same. She'd been thinking a lot about her conversation with Tabitha on precisely that topic when she'd gotten dressed that morning, layering her autumn themed yellow gown over her stomach with some musing at the thought that it was a mostly flat stomach. It would remain so.
The whole thing made her think of Michelle with a bit more grace than she'd given the woman before, but it was not a topic she cared to brood on (whatever her ancestors had thought of themselves in choosing such a terrible last name was an issue all its own). Instead, she was going to focus on the only children who did matter: The students of Sonora.
She greeted them all with her usual smile. These were her Advanced students, here because they wanted to be. They were used to the multilingual potion bottles and books, the way the whole room looked every bit as though a witch lived there (in the very superstitious muggle sense of the word), and the fact that the witch who did live there was as keen to love on her kneazle as she was to siphon a student's potion away and delegate them to observations for the day after some particularly unsafe decision.
"Good morning," she said once they'd all found a desk. She'd made sure that there were only enough desks for everyone if they shared to ensure that they all had at least one partner to work with. "As you all know, I like to start each new year with some precautionary measures. Today we're going to be brewing an antiseptic potion for injuries."
She waved her wand and scrolls with the ingredients and directions in English floated to each student. A piece of chalk took notes at the front of the classroom while she spoke; it was a trick she'd picked up both from Tabitha and from Selina, both of whom were a bit smarter about the hands-off sorts of magic than Mary was.
"This is also going to allow us to discuss the wand magic that goes into potions. As you know, there are certain wand movements and spells associated with brewing potions. However, this potion requires magical activation once it is applied as well. In class, you'll be working on brewing the potion. For homework, I want you to practice your wand work. The information for that is on page 577 of the second edition of the English textbook. If you're using a different one, just let me know and I'll find that for you."
Mary turned to a children of bubbling potion at the front of the room. It was purple and steaming away happily. She inhaled as she approached, checking the scent out of habit. Nodding, satisfied, she turned back to her students. "You can see what the finished product should look like here. Whether yours does or not, I also want you to write a half scroll essay on the properties of your potion in comparison to the one I have brewed. I have vials of it for you to each take with you for comparison this week.
I want to remind those of you who know this already and introduce the topic for those of you who do not that I do accept one to two Advanced students as Potions Assistants. Many of you are looking forward to careers in education or healing and this is an excellent opportunity for that. We can tailor your work to your goals and you can speak with Mr. Row about that as well. Students who held the position previously are encouraged but not required to continue. If you're interested, please let me know after class.
Does anyone have any questions before we begin?"
Mary lingered to answer student questions about their in-class or out-of-class assignments, as well as the assistantship, before setting her students off on their work. She sat at her desk for a few minutes, allowing them time to settle in and begin before walking around the room to observe.
OOC - Welcome back to Sonora! You all know how to do this by now so have at! If you're interested in the Potions Assistantship position, you can tag Mary here or in a separate thread in the Potions classroom. This is not the first day of class, but maybe the first week, so please keep that in mind for sake of plotting. Enjoy!
Subthreads: I can do toil, but preferably not trouble. by Amelia Layne, Aladren
Kettle boil, cauldron bubble. by Simon Mordue, Crotalus
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Professor Mary Brooding
Boil, boil, toil, and trouble. [Advanced, VI-VII]
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Professor Mary Brooding
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Amelia Layne, Aladren
July 19, 2019 3:03 PM
I can do toil, but preferably not trouble. by Amelia Layne, Aladren
Amelia wasn't sure if anyone else agreed, but she thought her golden-brown hair looked better twisted up on the back of her head, held in place with a lobster clip, than she did with it down. When she wore her hair down, it was just a sort of frizzy cloud around her neck and shoulders. Up, it was...not so much in the way, anyway.Unfortunately, she thought that this hairstyle also made it look more like she had a double chin. Therefore, she wore her hair up in Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts and Herbology, but wore it down in Transfiguration and Charms, hoping to split the difference, even though she was aware it didn't really matter. There was no Ball this year, and therefore no Prefect dance, and goodness knew she didn't think any of the boys of the Advanced class were going to take an interest in her for any other reason.
Overall, this was fine. Really it was. Beauty was fleeting and not useful for getting her life started over the next year or two. However, there were days when she couldn't not think about it, and times when she saw Professor Brooding were among these. Professor Brooding was perhaps the best-looking of all the staff members, and Amelia said that as someone who was fairly confident that she was not gay. Her ability to look like she did and still do the messy work of potion-making made her look like a living example of other women's (including Amelia's) inferiority.
However, she was almost painfully nice, which made it rather hard not to like her, and in any case, Amelia had one more year where Professor Brooding was an important person in her life. She listened to the address, nodding unconsciously at the points - antiseptic, compare to the professors, double activation with wandwork. Amelia was decent enough at wandwork that it had never yet prevented her from completing a spell, and scraping or burning herself somehow or another within the next few days was very likely, so the homework practicing should work well, especially since she'd have at least one vial of potion she knew was going to work properly from the professor's stock. She expected she could execute this one well enough, but at this point, Brooding was the mistress and Amelia was the student, which meant the odds were always excellent that the professor's potions would prove more effective than her own.
"Hi," she said to her neighbor with a smile as they started setting up for the day. "What do you think about this assistant thing she's talking about?"
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Amelia Layne, Aladren
I can do toil, but preferably not trouble.
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Amelia Layne, Aladren
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Simon Mordue, Crotalus
July 19, 2019 10:41 PM
Kettle boil, cauldron bubble. by Simon Mordue, Crotalus
Potions, frankly, was not something Simon foresaw himself missing once he left his last year here at Sonora. Potions had its good points as a subject - it was predictable, meticulous, and it looked good on his resume - but he disliked getting his hands dirty and sometimes found the smells, in particular, that went on in this room a tad nauseating. The sights could be viscerally unpleasant, too, but most of those couldn't even touch the smells....He would not, however, willingly admit this. He could hardly imagine the look on his father's face if he admitted something like that. Simon thought Nathaniel sounded as though he were going a little mad when he talked about how they had to be strong and put the family first and always keep their faces on because they were men or whatnot, but Father seemed to approve of that rhetoric, which meant Simon formally condoned it as well. He would not be outdone in his father's eyes by his moody, moping cousin. Even if it meant keeping a straight face when he'd really rather complain and find companionship. Or would rather just plain vomit, on a really bad day.
He was not sure whether he felt optimistic about his stomach's odds of staying in line when he heard what today's potion was about or not. On one hand, 'antiseptic' implied it at least probably involved substances that often had...maybe somewhat astringent smells, but not as many rank ones as some areas of Potions. On the other, however, medical things could stink horribly in their own right - Simon had always had trouble taking medicine when he was younger, and didn't find the various creams that Quidditch sometimes created a necessity for exactly pleasant, either.
He was not exactly keen to become a Healer or an educator, and didn't see the necessity of becoming either, and so dismissed the notion of becoming one of the Potions assistants out of hand. Under some circumstances he might have felt he ought to at least try for clout, but he was a seventh year. He practically had one foot out the door. He no longer really needed to grub and grovel and scrap for prestige. He was as high as he was going to get - admittedly, not very high, given that their year was apparently run by mad people, but even so. He just needed to do his work and that was that.
Accordingly, he got on with the task as soon as they were released to it, opening his book and skimming the directions for anything he knew to be particularly unpleasant to deal with, so he could brace himself for it and maybe deal with it early on so he could move along. The final product Professor Brooding had shown them hadn't seemed too bad, but he knew that wasn't a guarantee that brewing would be a totally pleasant experience....
"Hm?" he asked, hearing a voice next to him as he read. He looked up. "Sorry, I was woolgathering," he apologized.
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Simon Mordue, Crotalus
Kettle boil, cauldron bubble.
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