Intermediates: Screechsnap on Herbology

Nathan Xavier

May 30, 2020 12:27 PM

Intermediates: Screechsnap by Nathan Xavier

"Hello, class," Professor Nathan Xavier greeted the intermediates. It was the second week of classes, and they were now done with the two class periods of reviewing the important concepts that the new third years should remember from their two years of beginner classes (and refreshing the memories of those points for the fifth years, who would be facing questions on those topics during their CATS this year). "I'm sure you will all be glad to hear that we'll be starting new material today as we open up the unit on semi-sentient but non-harmful plants. Semi-sentient means that these plants are capable of feeling pain and pleasure, so do be careful with the samples you have in front of you."

The long work table down the center of Greenhouse One had a small ceramic pot in front of each student's stool, with a young seedling popping up in the center of it.

"Does anyone know what plant that is?" he asked, giving the students a chance to identify the sprout.

"Very good," he approved when one of them correctly answered 'Screechsnap'. "You all have a Screechsnap seedling in front of you. In addition to being about to feel pain and pleasure, they can also make noise. When they are distressed, they can make a very loud and unpleasant screech. When mildly annoyed, they can squeak irritably. When happy, they can chirp pleasantly. I do not want to hear any screeching today, but your practical assignment for today is to add some fertilizer to their pots and give them some water. If you do it wrong, they will squeak at you. If you do it right, and they are pleased, you will be rewarded with chirping. Some of them enjoy being tickled under their leaves as well, while others prefer to be stroked gently along the stem, so once you are done with the fertilizing and watering, you can see if you can find a way to encourage yours to react positively. Happy screechsnaps grow better than irritated screechsnaps."

"We'll talk more about their life cycle and needs for sunlight, water, and nutrients later. For now, you can just acquaint yourself with your plant. As a three week assignment, you will each be taking your screechsnap pot back to your room to care for it, and we'll see how much they have grown and flourished in that time. You should all know where the fertilizer is," he finished up, gesturing toward it anyway, "and feel free to take notes about what it looks like now, and talk amongst yourselves." He did not feel the need to recommend donning gloving. It was up to them whether they felt handling the fertilizer required that or not. It wasn't a notably nasty formulation today, but, as with most fertilizers, it did not smell particularly wonderful.

Ooc: some information about screechsnaps was found on the Harry Potter wiki, others parts were made up as the entry was pretty limited.

Subthreads:

Ich verstehe!! by Johana Leonie Zauberhexen

1 Nathan Xavier Intermediates: Screechsnap 28 Nathan Xavier 1 5

Johana Leonie Zauberhexen

June 08, 2020 9:54 PM

Ich verstehe!! by Johana Leonie Zauberhexen

The great thing about classes like herbology, potions, and care of magical creatures, were that if Johana Leonie did something wrong, she knew right away in most cases. Sure, there were instructions in English and a short response time was important sometimes, but it did her well to be able to get basic words down and she was good. In today's case, the sound that was awful was bad, and the sound that was cute was good. That was easy to remember and she didn't need to know English to get that far. Plus words like 'fertilizer' and 'water' came up often enough in herbology that she knew them really well by now, and she could learn advancing material without some of the pressures to advice her vocabulary at the same rate. That being said, she had started to pick up more and more of Hilda's permanently anti-English attitude, and she wasn't at all disappointed when she got the chance to speak German. Unfortunately, although the number of German speakers in her class had remained the same, the number of approachable German speakers had been reduced by the value of one boy and that was not a happy feeling. The blonde girl that was learning German and was friends (or maybe not friends? Hilda seemed to think otherwise) with Hilda's brother was there, and Jessica was there, but Johana Leonie didn't feel comfortable forcing either of them to use broken German to get by when she was the one who was supposed to be learning a language.

All that aside, the screechsnaps were pretty cute. She found quickly that the one in front. Her particularly appreciated absent strokes along its leaves, and she actually managed to grin at it when she found out chortling softly at her. "I'll be right back," she told it in German. "You need the food," she added, preferring that to trying to pronounce 'fertilizer'. Some words were easy enough to understand but not particularly easy to pronounce. Or just too accented when she tried and really, fertilizer was basically just food. Or poop. Or both!

She made her way to wear the food/poop was kept and collected enough to use for her little baby plant, returning to her table in time to find someone else had placed their screechsnap near hers. She wondered whether it was on purpose. "Hallo," she said, smiling a bit more tensely than she might've a year previously. "Want you that we work together?"

22 Johana Leonie Zauberhexen Ich verstehe!! 1432 0 5