How strong are you? [Intermediates, III-V] on Potions

Professor Mary Brooding-Hawthorne

August 30, 2019 11:04 PM

How strong are you? [Intermediates, III-V] by Professor Mary Brooding-Hawthorne

With the end of term in sight, Mary was feeling bittersweet about the whole thing. On one hand, she was coming up on a her first anniversary. On the other hand, she was coming up on an enforced separation from her students, essentially her second love. She was always pretty sure she could teach for twelve months straight and never tire of it until she actually went on a break and was reminded how nice it was to sleep in and not have anyone do something dangerous in her immediate presence for more than a day. Of course, with Tabitha around, the latter was hardly guaranteed.

Mary was dressed in a lighter garment than usual, and for good reason. With the greater flexibility of softer materials, she would be better able to demonstrate today's potion.

The class had been working on a strengthening solution for the past week, and she passed back their homework - an essay about the effects of strengthen solution, as well as the dangers, and a written note on the quality of their work on the first half of the brew - with a smile to each student. When they all had gotten back their grades and chosen a place to stand in the room - for their desks had been replaced with crates and barrels interspersed around the room with empty spaces every so often - Mary took her place at the front of the room.

"Overall, I'm very pleased with how you've all been doing. Fourth and fifth years, I was pleased to see that you're thinking very broadly about this and applying it to your other coursework; I know we've talked about strengthening solution in lecture before, so you're all pretty familiar with it even if you haven't made it. Third years, I was pleased by how well you're all doing in developing your observational skills. It's important to use your senses and your wits both to brew potions adequately."

Satisfied that she'd said what she wanted to on that front, she moved on. "Today, you'll be getting back vials of completed potions. You've been working on yours for long enough and they finished since the last class, so you'll start today's lesson by grabbing the vial with your name on it from the front of the room." She gestured at a table to her right, where battles with each of the students' names were lined up. "Please be assured that I have tested all of your potions myself. If your potion was sufficient and safe, you'll be getting back some of your own mixture in your vial. If it was not sufficient or not safe, you'll be getting some of mine. Notes about that are on the feedback I handed back when you came in, and you can ask me questions in office hours if you have any." She always offered, but this was standard procedure for days when they were going to be imbibing potions, and she wasn't expecting questions.

"Today you're going to be considering the effects of the strengthening solution first hand. From your research for your essays, you know that one of the side effects of increased, super-human strength is often a declension of fine motor abilities." A piece of chalk took notes for her on the board as she spoke, leaving her own hands free to demonstrate.

She took a vial with her own name and drank it in one quick swig. Feeling the effects immediately, she consequently lifted her desk up to waist level. "Gross motor skills are typically unaffected though." Setting the desk down, she moved to the chalk board and demonstrated her inability to write clearly. Her usual looping handwriting was sharp and jagged, and much larger than normal. She erased it by hand, not trusting her wand work.

"It's important to understand the implications of this for wandwork. While this sort of concoction might prove useful in some situations, it can also prove very dangerous for a magical person who now cannot perform magic adequately. As such, today's exercise will be about testing that for yourselves, and comparing the effort it requires."

She took a quick antidote before waving her wand at the floor. "Spongify," she said, making the floor a bit less dangerous. "I want you to work in pairs and compare the difference in effort it takes to lift an item by hand or to fumble through your wandwaving and lift them magically. Third years, you'll be using the crates. Fourth years, the barrels. Fifth years, the empty vials from your potions. Do be sure to cast as best you can; I can tell the difference between foolishness and clumsiness and I will not tolerate the former. Any questions? You may begin!"

22 Professor Mary Brooding-Hawthorne How strong are you? [Intermediates, III-V] 1424 Professor Mary Brooding-Hawthorne 1 5

Dorian Montoir

September 05, 2019 12:20 AM

I have my weaknesses by Dorian Montoir

The fact that Professor Brooding was an accomplished legilimens was something that Dorian tried not to let bother him. He trusted her ethics, after all. He just wasn't sure whether it made her better at reading people, or whether being good at reading people was why she was good at it, but either way, there were occasions where it felt like she'd been reading his mind even if he was aware that, rationally, she had not been - no more so than anyone reasonably astute who knew him well was typically capable of doing so, anyway.

The spare potion from the challenges was still sitting in his trunk. She knew full well what he'd made, because she had inspected it for safety, and that it wasn't all gone because she had been observing how they tackled each obstacle. And then, practically the very next lesson, they had been set an essay on the dangers of taking it. Logically, it could have just been the next thing on the curriculum but he couldn't help but feel it was personal. It wasn't like he was planning on taking it, outside of any reasonable context, such as the next challenge. Not really. It just made him feel... curious. What would it be like, not to be small and pathetic and hopeless? Half the time, he felt scared by its presence, sure that use of any such thing had Bad Idea written all over it. And yet, they'd let him make it for the challenges. And any time he thought about getting rid of it, he found himself making excuses. He wasn't sure what he would really gain by trying the potion. He just wanted to know what it was like not to be weak.

You're not weak. You're not weak because you haven't let him change who you are.

Those words, spoken to him by Jehan, were one of the principle things staying his hand. There were different types of strength, after all. Keeping the moral highground in his ongoing battle with Matthieu was all he had, but the fact that someone he cared about so much thought it was worthwhile helped a lot. And it wasn't that Jehan didn't mind how Dorian was, it was that he genuinely seemed to think there was nothing wrong with him.

Still though... wasn't there space for both? Was there anything wrong with just... seeing how it felt? He could still keep his moral highground. He could not give in to what Matthieu wanted him to do, which had been Jehan's whole point, and it would be a lot easier to do that if he could just be left alone. He had no revenge fantasies about pounding his brother to a bloody pulp to pay him back - the thought just made him feel sick. He didn't want to stoop to Matthieu's level or become like him. He just wanted to be left alone.

His research for the essay had confirmed that it was probably not a great idea. Firstly, the section about its uses cast some doubt on whether it would really do what he wanted it to do. Essentially, it was best used for increasing physical strength but this could also provide some enhancement of endurance, where use of muscle was the predominant factor that affected performance. If your muscles were stronger, it took more to make them ache. Dorian wasn't sure where getting beaten up factored in to that. It didn't sound like the ideal tool, but he could still just imagine Matthieu trying to push him back, trying to push him down, and not being able to - as if Dorian was made of stone. It was a seductive image. The risks had been more informative. There was the clumsiness that Professor Brooding seemed to be focussed on right now, but also it could result in insensitivity to pain (Dorian had been unconvinced as to why that was a bad thing) and mood changes, such as aggression. Essentially, it turned you into Matthieu, so much so that Dorian had to wonder whether he was dosing himself. Except Matthieu seemed to manage fine with a wand, if his trip jinxes were anything to go by.

It felt a little odd to have their teacher make them write out why a potion was bad and they shouldn't take it, followed by having them take it. However, he was rather pleased by this turn of events. If Professor Brooding was saying they could, then it presumably wouldn't hurt to do it just once. He could satisfy his curiosity about it, and then be done with it.

It was his own vial that was returned to him, which he had already suspected it would be, seeing as he had brewed it just fine for the challenges. He turned it over in his hand for a moment, watching the contents swirl. Well, this was it then. This was what it would be like not to be at the bottom of the foodchain. He uncorked it, and took a sip, hushing the voice in his head that said this wasn't something he really wanted to find out.

He knew from his research that it wasn't going to bulk out his muscles - the potion didn't physically change you but it made your muscles hyper efficient. Like an ant. Typically, Dorian thought about ants as being victims of getting squashed, but he got the metaphor - proportional to their size, ants were ridiculously strong, and it made sense that formic acid was an ingredient in the potion.

He put the vial back down on the desk, thumping it rather harder than he'd meant to. Luckily, it didn't break, though it did wind up on its side rather than neatly on its end. Hm. Professor Brooding had given the fifth years the task of picking up their vials, presumably on account of that being harder to achieve with magic because they were small and fiddly. However, the same issue applied to picking them up by hand. Unless... Dorian slid his hands under the desk, pushing up with his fingertips against the underside. He felt it shift, and easily lifted the heavy wooden table up a few inches.

"Technically, I'm moving my vial," he grinned at his neighbour, "This is fun!"

13 Dorian Montoir I have my weaknesses 1401 Dorian Montoir 0 5