Sometimes, a scoop's a scoop. on Sandbox

Event Moderator

April 11, 2020 7:01 AM

Prompt 1 - Potions by Event Moderator

1). “Please add one scoop - and one scoop only - of powdered acacia root,” Professor Brooding instructed the first years firmly. “If you add any more, your potion will be ruined, and you will end up with a very poor grade for today’s class.” Hopefully that would be enough incentive to keep many of them on track. And ‘ruined’ sounded suitably boring. The results could be dull, simply curdling the potion. Or they could be dramatic. It depended how much over one scoop they went. But she was definitely, definitely not going to be telling them that.

[Out of Character notes: this is a class/scenario prompt. Your character is in this class and just heard these instructions. How do they react? If you’ve just arrived at this post via a direct link and aren’t sure what you’ve stumbled into, you can read our event guide here. You can also come get help, or simply come say hi to your fellow authors in our chatzy.]

Subthreads:

I am a good person. by Philippe Delachene with Allyn Alderwin, Philippe

Sometimes, a scoop's a scoop. by Graham Osbrook with Coral Hodges, Graham

13 Event Moderator Prompt 1 - Potions 0 Event Moderator 1 5

Philippe Delachene

April 11, 2020 8:47 AM

I am a good person. by Philippe Delachene

Philippe readied his potion. He got the water in, he set the fire to the right level beneath it, he waited for it to boil, all exactly as he was supposed to do. He carefully measured exactly one scoop of powdered acacia root, and then dropped it into his potion at precisely the right time, and stirred twice counter clockwise. He checked his pocket watch. Next they were supposed to wait exactly five minutes before adding the next ingredient. He made sure his was ready, then looked over at the student working next to him.

"Do you know what acacia is?" he asked curiously, because he still had four minutes to kill. "I mean, it's powdered root, so probably a plant, but is it like a shrub or a flower?"

1 Philippe Delachene I am a good person. 0 Philippe Delachene 0 5

Allyn Alderwin

April 11, 2020 9:15 AM

Today's tinkering by Allyn Alderwin

"It's a tree, and a spiky one at that!" said Allyn, who had distinctly sharp memories of catching herself on the one in her garden when she was younger. The family's garden had been expansive and well labelled, so at least she knew what had done the damage to both her and her shirt. She’d been distracted following a small creature she hadn't recognised, and was frustrated for the rest of the day after loosing track of it after the acacia had caused her to shout out.

Her potion-making was tolerable, having had the extensive family garden to choose ingredients, so what she was actually doing was purposefully adding a little too much to her potion, but keeping a note of which particular ingredient she was messing around with today. She could brew it properly when the exams came, and in the meantime she'd either learn whether this potion could actually be tinkered with, but more likely and equally useful was that she'd build up an idea of just how the potion would spoil, so in future she'd be able to diagnose any problems she might come across.

It looked like her generous spoonful had been noticed however, so raised an eyebrow at the onlooking face and waited for the inevitable discussion...

0 Allyn Alderwin Today's tinkering 0 Allyn Alderwin 0 5

Philippe Delachene

April 11, 2020 9:25 AM

Tinkering can get you in trouble, you know. by Philippe Delachene

"Ah," Philippe said as his neighbor explained about acacia trees. "We mostly have joshua trees near us," he admitted. "They're spiky, too." He settled his mental picture of an acacia to be a bigger version of a joshua tree. Joshua trees were pretty small by tree standards, so it was reasonable to assume the acacias were bigger.

His eyes widened in alarm as she dropped in a heaping scoop instead of a flat scoop of the ingredient in question, noticing just a little too late for him to object and tell her she was putting in too much. He winced a little as it all dropped into her boiling cauldron. "That might have been too much," he told her regretfully.

1 Philippe Delachene Tinkering can get you in trouble, you know. 0 Philippe Delachene 0 5

Graham Osbrook

April 11, 2020 9:52 AM

Sometimes, a scoop's a scoop. by Graham Osbrook

The trouble, Graham thought, with having very successful parents was that everyone assumed he would be successful, too. Therefore, if he was successful, it would be taken as a matter of course, but if he was not....

Truthfully, he didn't even know. Dad had just told him to do his best. Mom had reminded him a lot about strategies for coping with stress and keeping perspective when evaluating himself. They had both acted like it was no big deal. His little sister Claire had told him to try not to disgrace the family name, but she had been joking - their parents were both professional people, only a couple of generations removed from Muggle ancestors on either side. They were not really the sort of family that dealt in that kind of language.

He thought he wanted to be successful anyway, though, if only to prove to Mom that he didn't need coping strategies from her. He loved his mom, but there were times when having a psychologist for a parent could be kind of annoying.

In the interests of establishing that he didn't need Mom's pamphlets, then, he very carefully took notes on what Professor Brooding was saying about acacia root...and then saw a problem right off. He had a whole ring of scoops in his potions kit, of different sizes. Tablespoon sized one? Teaspoon?

He glanced at his neighbor. "Which of these do you think looks more like her scoop?" he asked, holding up the two candidates for inspection.

16 Graham Osbrook Sometimes, a scoop's a scoop. 0 Graham Osbrook 0 5

Allyn Alderwin

April 11, 2020 10:16 AM

Friends share, right? by Allyn Alderwin

"Well, we'll just have to cross our fingers then won't we?" said Allyn, opting for a happy-go-lucky tone today. Things were definitely progressing differently in her cauldron, with the contents ever so slightly more viscous than her neighbour's concoction. She wasn't great at predicting where things might go, and part of the fun was being surprised by the results, rather than getting caught up in imagining every possibility available. She was pretty sure that magic had infinite ways to take you by surprise, so she'd just try and get her head around it step by step, and always keep a notebook at hand.

She planned to follow every other instruction perfectly, and hoped that this diligence would be enough to keep this slim thread of camaraderie intact. She did her best to look him in the eye, and said: "And anyway, if it does turn out weird, you'd let me share yours wouldn't you Phil? Can I call you Phil?"

0 Allyn Alderwin Friends share, right? 0 Allyn Alderwin 0 5

Philippe

April 11, 2020 10:45 AM

Yup, sharing is a good thing by Philippe

Allyn had a disturbingly Anya like approach to her potion making. His older sister was a third year now, so it apparently hadn’t held her back too badly, though she did not have the perfect grades Philippe was hoping to see on his own report card. “I can share,” he promised. He was the youngest of three. Sharing was a thing he was very well accustomed to.

He did blink when she shortened his name, taken aback by the very American nickname. He was Philippe, not Phillip. His French accent was basically negligible, as his California bred mom didn’t speak a word of it and English had therefore been his first language, but he was one half French. He had been very clearly named Philippe to be French. Mom had wanted to name him Phillip (Prince Phillip being the eventual husband of Aurora, which would have been his name if he’d been the girl she been expecting) and had been persuaded to make it more French by his very French dad.

Nobody called him Phillip and nobody called him Phil.

“I, I guess so,” he said. Because he was a pushover who had never been able to say no to the Anyas in his life.

1 Philippe Yup, sharing is a good thing 0 Philippe 0 5

Coral Hodges

April 11, 2020 2:00 PM

Sometimes, it's not by Coral Hodges

"I think those are spoons," Coral Hodges told him. She'd helped her father bake often enough to know that measuring spoons were not called scoops. Scoops were... well, they didn't actually use scoops in their baking, but they were like little shovels. Or like ice cream scoops. She frowned at her instruments, and then glared at the recipe. This must be another one of those weird wizarding things her parents had forgotten to tell her about... which meant, whatever made the least amount of sense was probably correct. "I'm going to use this. But it's not a scoop either. It's, maybe... 3/4 cup?"

Being wrong probably didn't matter, anyway. Both Coral's parents were squibs, and she'd already been to more squib rights advocacy meetings, rallies, and support groups than most eleven-year-olds even knew existed. She had made signs for them and smiled with her mommy and daddy, Merida and Brett Hodges, for professional portraits. And read lots and lots of books--those events were boring. She'd been eager to get away from it and even more eager to meet some wizard kids who were not as weird as Uncle Echo's kids.

Her potion was doomed long before she scooped the acacia root. "Are you magic, muggle, or squib born?"

0 Coral Hodges Sometimes, it's not 0 Coral Hodges 0 5

Graham

April 11, 2020 2:33 PM

And sometimes it’s hard to tell. by Graham

The girl had a point, he supposed, about spoons. It had never occurred to Graham that a scoop could be an independent unit of measure. When they talked about ‘another scoop’ at home, it usually meant piling another tablespoon as high as one could with ice cream, creating something that was definitely not what anyone would mean by ‘tablespoon’, but which did not have any other object associated with it, either.

“This ought to be interesting then,” he said when she confessed an equal lack of knowledge. “I’m Graham, by the way - seems like we should know names before we risk blowing stuff up at the same lab table.”

She was going with ¾ cup. He decided to heap a couple of tablespoons and check against the directions in his potions book once he saw the results. “Magic,” he said when she asked about his parentage, surprised she had mentioned Squibs as an option. Squibs were not something he thought most people talked about; his mother could get really animated about the subject of their treatment being disgraceful at home, which - coupled with the sort of families she wasn’t allowed to discuss her work with - made him wonder how smart it would have been to tell the truth even if his parents had been. “Dad owns a few stationery shops. What about you?”

16 Graham And sometimes it’s hard to tell. 0 Graham 0 5

Coral Hodges

April 11, 2020 3:23 PM

That’s the scoop by Coral Hodges

Graham seemed nice. She tried to imagine him at a stationary shop, twiddling away the hours while his parents worked. It sounded just as boring as support groups and speaker-heavy events. But quieter. Depending on the quills, of course. Some magic quills could be very annoying.

“I’m Coral. Squib-born, so I’m familiar with both magic and muggle stuff, but I’ve been going to muggle school, and we don’t keep a lot of magic stuff around, so... I kind of feel like it’s its own category, you know?”

She stirred her own cauldron. The colors were starting to change as the ingredients mixed together. It was like brownies, when the cocoa powder got wet and suddenly became this dark, rich smoothness. Except that this was purple and smelled like pom-poms (not that she could remember pom-poms having a smell, but if they did, this was it—it was a get up and cheer sort of smell, and it made her feel happy all over).

“I’m not sure the teacher’s looked like this,” she confided in her new friend. “I’m actually really sure it didn’t. But I kind of like it!”

0 Coral Hodges That’s the scoop 0 Coral Hodges 0 5

Graham Osbrook

April 11, 2020 4:30 PM

Stop the presses! We have the scoop! by Graham Osbrook

"I guess," said Graham politely when Coral said that magic stuff seemed like its own category. "I don't really know. I don't know a lot about Muggle things, so I usually think of wizard things as just...things." He shrugged slightly. "I guess it's all in what you're used to, right?"

He looked at her purple potion with some interest, as his had not changed nearly so dramatically. "It does look pretty cool," he said. "Mine is..." He tilted his head at it. "Right now sort of teal. And slow-looking." He was not sure exactly what he meant by slow-looking, and was not inclined to do one of Mom's word association games to figure it out, but it was just what popped into his head. "I guess the question is, did you not add enough yet, or did you add too much?" he asked, more rhetorically than not.

16 Graham Osbrook Stop the presses! We have the scoop! 0 Graham Osbrook 0 5