Mary Brooding-Hawthorne
March 20, 2021 9:28 PM
The antidote to summer break [Intermedites] by Mary Brooding-Hawthorne
Mary greeted her intermediate class for their first class of the new year with her signature beaming smile. Intermediates were always fun (although Mary liked something about each of her classes) because the students who were no longer present weren't all the way gone yet and the students who were joining weren't quite new. Everyone was settled and everyone was familiar with how things worked for the most part. Of course, they were also young teenagers and puberty made everything unsettled and unfamiliar, but that was part of the nature of growing up and Mary loved to watch her sweet students grow up. It made her have way too many emotions though, so she tried not to think too much about it and instead focused on how proud she was of all of them as she greeted them all, exchanging brief pleasantries as they took their seats around the room. Desks were set up for two to three students to comfortably share and although there were tall stools set at each one, they were a reasonable height for most students to stand if they preferred and some students had historically preferred to sit on the desk. That was fine with Mary so long as they took precautions against catching fire or knocking anything over and understood that safety was necessarily the priority."Hello," Mary said simply, beaming at her students when they'd taken their places. She rocked up on her toes, bringing her to almost average height for a moment before she returned to a regular standing position. The whole time, of course, her feet were hidden beneath the hems of her long skirts which were today the color of soft lavender skies. "It is absolutely wonderful to see you all again and I'm excited to get started! As those of you who are returning to intermediate lessons know, these years focus primarily on two things: preparing you to make the decision to pursue potions into your advanced years and possibly your careers, if you want, and preparing you for life after Sonora if you don't continue potions into your advanced years. Beginner years focus on the nature of potions, what potions are, and how they are used. Now, we'll start looking more deeply at their practical application and a more in depth look at the theory behind them."
With that, she waved her wand, floating a recipe page to each student. Each was in English, but additional copies in other languages were available in books around the room, with that information available at the bottom of the page. Students in potions classes kept binders - which were occasionally graded on proper organization - and the recipe pages were punched to allow easy insertion into the binders. At the top of this particular page, the words Antidote to Common Poisons were written in neat lettering. Neatness was, after all, important for the safety and accuracy of potion-making.
"Those of you who were in intermediates last year will be familiar with this potion but there is benefit to starting with a quick refresher and getting us back in the habit of best practice potion-making. Additionally, this is one potion you may find you need to know for domestic and professional life after graduation." Hopefully no one would ever be poisoned or need to save a friend or family member from poisoning, but there was always the possibility. Most people tended to just purchase such remedies but that wasn't always possible either.
Waving her wand again, Mary then floated process sheets to each student, one blank one for each third year and a blank one and used ones for the older students. "Third years, you'll be filling this out the same as you've done in beginner classes, simply taking notes and answering the lab questions as you go so you can do a proper write up for me for next class. Fourth and fifth years, you'll be doing the same thing but part of your homework will also include an analysis of how your work and process has changed or remained the same based on your notes from previous years. You can put those in your bags for now to review later, you won't need them during class. Please note that they are copies so you can keep them for your own learning if you'd like and there's no point in trying to change them; I'll know what your previous work looked like."
Satisfied that she'd laid the groundwork for class, Mary took a breath and smiled at the room again. "Any questions?" she offered, ready to answer any that applied to the class as a whole and letting students know she'd come by their desk or they should come visit her at the front of the room if the question was more individual. "Go ahead and get started! Although your work is individual, I encourage you to talk with whomever is at your desk with you so that you can compare notes and brainstorm ideas together."
Subthreads: Hi, new Intermediate here (tag Freddie) by Philippe Delachene with Freddie Zauberhexen
This seems like a good thing to know [Alexander & Mab] by Valentine Duell with Mab, Alexander Pierce-Beales
A scientific approach by Bertie Jackson with Mara Morales
Hey, stupid. [Stanley] by Bonabelle Row with Stanley O'Malley
Here I am, responsibly sitting on my table. by Anya Delachene with Theo Spurn
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Mary Brooding-Hawthorne
The antidote to summer break [Intermedites]
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Bertie Jackson
March 25, 2021 6:58 AM
A scientific approach by Bertie Jackson
Bertie felt very thoroughly prepared for intermediate classes, and had very little doubt he would cope with them. After all, they were letting all his peers into the class, and he was far more capable than the vast majority of them. He thought he was probably brighter than several of the fourth years too, and likely would have been even if there hadn't been some notable outliers in that group. He probably would have given the fifth years the benefit of the doubt had Anya's reputation not preceded her. Apparently, he was already ahead of the new prefect-by-default simply by walking in and taking a seat. He would have hoped she didn't disrupt anyone's learning but she was already doing so by blocking the view of the board for certain people. Bertie took a seat in the same row but as far from her as possible, so that she was neither blocking him nor out of his sight, as he didn't entirely trust her not to cause accidents.The lesson seemed very straightforward, differentiated for the older students only in that they had to be self-reflective. He wondered what would happen for anyone who had got it right last time? Maybe they would simply note down to carry on being a competent human being. Still, he appreciated Professor Brooding-Hawthorne's focus on proper process and analysis, and that there was a lab sheet to fill out. She was quite good at making potions feel scientific, which was exactly how it ought to feel. Bertie held no truck with people who thought magic was a thing to 'feel' not to understand. Of course, people did that all the time with things they used. You could ride a bike without knowing how it was put together - heck, you could walk around having a body without understanding biology. He wasn't saying it wouldn't work if you didn't understand it (especially given the weight of evidence to the contrary) just that it wasn't nearly so beautiful or exciting.
He began with task one, which was finely crushing his bezoar, which he would test by passing it through a grade 1 sieve, the logical choice of test for any powder described as ‘very fine’ (whilst everyone with basic potions knowledge came to know such things, he really wished the books would dispense with their vague language, and just give an accurate measurement of fineness, like they did every thing else). He noted down that this was how he had quantified ‘very fine’ even though it was standard practise and common sense, at least as far as he was concerned. In terms of reflections and improvements he could make next year, he could only hope to develop some more arm muscle between now and then. Crushing this thing was painful, and he wasn’t sure he would want to note down on his lab report how long it was taking him, because he was pretty sure it was going to be embarrassing.
Still, good preparation was the most essential part of potion making. He was not being slow, he was being well-prepared, which was essential.
He glanced up to see who else was working at his desk. Professor Brooding-Hawthorne had said partners weren’t necessary but comparing notes and ideas was highly encouraged. He currently had his lab report on the side away from the person next to him, and would decide how closely he wanted to follow that instruction dep
OOC: Up to the respondent how 'standard' Bertie's ways of doing things are.
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Bertie Jackson
A scientific approach
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Mara Morales
April 09, 2021 7:11 PM
Excellent idea. by Mara Morales
OOC: Mention of Illicit Non-Food-or-Drink Consumable Things. BIC:
The Antidote to Common Poisons, Mara thought as she got her supplies ready, checking all her gear and laying out everything she would need within easy reach, made a decent summary of everything she liked and disliked about Potions class – assuming, of course, that she was right about how it worked. Which, given that several of the things her book told her it was indicated for were actually common venoms unless one hypothetically got into some Hamlet-style nonsense, she might very well not be, though it was hard to test.
If she ignored the bit where it was indicated for venoms, then she thought she had been able to find some logic to the ingredients, or most of them, anyway. She had never yet gotten around to separating out an entire supply of ‘standard ingredient’ and attempting to identify all the herbs in it, but the others –
Bezoar. Their description in the book was ‘stone from the stomach of a goat which will save you from most poisons’. Looking it up on her own terms, in her own world, she had found that a more precise definition involved ‘tightly packed collection of partially or undigested material.’ She assumed the difference between a standard one and a magical one might have something to do with the nature of the consumed material – a goat which chowed down on magical stuff would, she hypothesized, be more likely to produce a magically useful bezoar than one which just ate grass and paint like an honest goat from Anywhere, USA. Either way, though, for use in a potion, the ‘stone’ was either dissolved or crushed, breaking apart the components, but if the magic was what drew them together somehow, then it was possible they might act something like a dehydrant, only for toxins – or rather, a broad sample of them, given that they would all have different properties – and draw the poison out of the tissue, and then –
Unicorn horn might come into play. She was on shakier ground here than at almost any other point in her theory, since she only had magical sources to work with, and they were…not exactly known for giving proper explications of chemical composition. The best she could reason here was that it might act as a purification agent, perhaps overall (vague thoughts of magic potions from books she’d read in the old days), or perhaps something like the way activated charcoal was used in the outside world, only with a smaller quantity and broader effect, though maybe with the common element of being thrown back up, considering the –
Mistletoe berries. Those had made her want to bash her head into the desk when she first saw them while flipping through pages – mistletoe was a common poison, for goodness’ sake! Looking it up at home, though, she had gathered a few more facts about it. The berries were second only to teas made from the leaves in terms of toxicity, but adults were not – usually – killed by them. Instead, they had a number of unpleasant side effects, including nausea and vomiting. She could only conclude, then, that the mistletoe berries were meant to act as an emetic, forcing the other elements, along with the poison (or venom!), back out of the patient’s system, thus presumably, if the magical ingredients worked with perfect or at least very high efficiency, fixing the situation right up. Not pleasant, but probably significantly less unpleasant than a non-magical stomach pump…assuming, given that the books read as if intubation and I.V. lines were among those concepts wizards just didn’t follow, that the patient didn’t choke to death on the potion being tipped down their throat, anyway….
All that, though, was before she even got started on the economics of the thing, or the quality control issues, especially when it came to the points where those intersected…given how varied a ‘pinch’ could be, that would just be asking for a lawsuit in her world, as no two batches could be guaranteed to be consistent. It was just like a ‘dash’ of something; she remembered screwing up a potion pretty badly in her second year due to overestimating what a ‘dash’ of leech juice might be. Though, that did open up the thought of trying to figure out if it would be economically viable to buy large supplies of common ingredients, create her own standardized measurements, and hand off baggies and vials in exchange for money in a way that would not look right at all back home…It was possible that the amount of the initial investment (bezoars and unicorn horn weren’t cheap) plus the amount of time and labor which would go into preparation wouldn’t stack up well next to potential profit, especially depending on the attitudes of her customer base, and, of course, the risk of being mistaken (either by the staff or anyone else currently in that line of work) for campus’ newest dealer. Mara had yet to actually spot such a creature at Sonora, but she assumed without a second thought that there had to be at least one, even in such a micro-population as this. There were high schoolers in it. The ones who didn’t want escapism surely wanted stimulants to study on, and while Mara was (for reasons both practical and sentimental) not inclined to try to break into that market, there had to be someone bringing in supply to meet that demand.
She focused on her work, but it was difficult not to have one’s eyes drift a bit during the tedious parts, such as the initial stages of grinding things up. Consequently, she caught Bertie’s eye as he presumably did the same thing, and responded with her customary brief smile and “hey.” She gave her mortar another twist, thinking wistfully of machines that could do this in seconds, and then added, “Am I being too nitpicky, or is it annoying that this is called an antidote to poisons that lists at least as many usages for venoms?”
OOC: Pulled the ingredients and bit about it working on stings and bites from some things (generally speaking, if it bites you, that's venom; if you have to ingest something which just passively produces toxic stuff, that's poison) from...one of the HP wikis. Mara's analysis is entirely my own, supplemented by wikipedia, so any flaws there are entirely my own.
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Mara Morales
Excellent idea.
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Bertie Jackson
April 12, 2021 9:09 PM
Thanks by Bertie Jackson
Is it annoying that this is called an antidote to poisons when it lists at least as many usages for venoms?It was sentences like this that made the inherent risk of acknowledging other humans with eye contact (even accidentally) absolutely worthwhile. It added to the greatness that it was Mara saying it, though of course the fact that she said things like that was what made her so interesting to start with.
"Yes!" he answered with perhaps more intense enthusiasm than most people would have thought it warranted. "You-you'd thhhink they could t-tell the difference in a P-p-potions textbook!"
He tipped his bezoar into his sieve, even though he could see that there were several lumps that were definitely still too big to pass through. He would be able to separate out the bits that were already done though, and to watch that pile grow. It was depressingly small after the first pass, and he tipped the remainder back into his mortar, surpressing a sigh. He wished the task he was having to perform in front of Mara wasn't quite so good at highlighting his physical weakness. But then, maybe she didn't care about that. They were both intellectuals, after all. Presumably, she cared more about brains than brawn.
He should think of something smart to say.
"I really hate im-imprecise instructions."
That was basically what she had said. It probably wasn't so cool the second time around.
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Bertie Jackson
Thanks
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Mara Morales
April 17, 2021 5:54 PM
You're welcome. Got anymore? by Mara Morales
On the whole, Mara wasn’t sure that Bertie was exactly the person to confirm or deny if something constituted over-thinking, but she was glad to hear she made sense at least to her peers. She nodded to his follow-up.“I know, right?” she said. “I was just thinking about measurements, and whether it would be economically viable to start a thing selling pre-measured portions. Probably, not, though – it would be a lot of time and effort to put it together, and you’d have to skew low on portions to be safe, I’d guess, which means everyone would probably be closer to mediocre…which it occurs to me is probably part of why the books have such vague directions,” she added thoughtfully, pausing in her mortar work as the thought hit her. “I know people probably make some money off potions for the same reason they make money selling frozen dinners, but in this case, you know that what you buy from the apothecary is probably the best balance you’re going to get between safe and effective, yeah? That would either involve insider trading or some…a single big parent company owning the publishers and the apothecaries, though – do wizards have mega-corps, do you know? I’ve been wondering that. They all look like mom and pop shops, but you know.” Mara shrugged. “Looks can be deceiving.”
Or, of course, she could just be overestimating the consumer again. Dad said her greatest weaknesses, as far as business went, were that she was too forthright and that she didn’t quite grasp just how inclined the average consumer was to just…drift along. The heavy lifting of beating all independent thought out of people had been done by people like her great-grandma, so all they had to do was keep enough people placidly moving in whichever direction they were even vaguely plotted, and over-thinking things could actually make that harder.
“Or maybe I read a scam into too much everything,” she conceded the possibility. “I grew up around too many business types.”
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Mara Morales
You're welcome. Got anymore?
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Bertie Jackson
June 12, 2021 10:39 PM
Depends what you make of my investigative skills by Bertie Jackson
“They have P-P-Pureblood families. I d-don’t know about the b-business side, but politically… You have a certain way off doing things. The old white guy--- way. It ssssays certain ingredients are safe, others aren’t. It dictates what it’s legal to ssssell as an ingredient or p-p-premade remedy. And you mmmake sure to elect other old white guys to keep those rules nnnice and tidy.“History is littered with--- issues. People being fffined for making remedies for their neighbours. Struggles to g-g-get apothecary licenses when you don’t live in the affluent major mmmagical shopping streets. The white-owned ones do well b-b-because they’ve been within the rules by default for the longest.” Admittedly, white and Pureblood privilege existing wasn’t quite the same thing as a megacorp, but it was the area he knew most about, and it seemed to have a similar effect. “Maybe I just grew up around too many a-anthropologists and activists,” he returned the quip.
“Costmmmetics business types?” he asked, when she mentioned growing up around business types. He remembered what she’d said at the feast about chemical formulae of eyeshadow. He wasn’t sure he’d ever asked what her family did, because he was never convinced that families were the most interesting part about a person, but it seemed to have informed a lot about who Mara was.
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Bertie Jackson
Depends what you make of my investigative skills
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Mara Morales
August 03, 2021 12:19 AM
They're quite impressive. by Mara Morales
Pureblood families. Those words still, somehow, mostly struck Mara as comical (seriously, what sort of people referred to themselves with a term used for literal showdogs, at least colloquially?), but she suspected that by the time she got out of here, they were going to have gained the ability to automatically put her teeth on edge whenever she heard them. She nodded shortly."At home, rich white jerks whip up poor white jerks to keep them on top - wear a flannel shirt once and you've got yourself a whole following thinking you'll somehow make it possible for them to be rich someday, too, just by cutting off immigration or something." Mara addressed one of her ingredients with an excess of malice, which was accompanied by a few phrases in rapid Spanish. It was unlikely Bertie understood the words, but a thing Mara had observed was that strong disapproval sounded pretty similar in both languages. It really was, she thought, too bad that she looked like her mother, and worse that she had a name like Morales; if people back home really bought what the governor was selling, then she could have taken his entire constituency for even more money than that actress with the ghost-repelling aerosol cans or whatever those were did.
She was imagining putting Crisco in fancy jars and selling it door-to-door as an ointment that would 'prevent the socialists from brainwashing your children in school' (probably wouldn't work too well in Atlanta itself, but if she could get two or three counties over....) when Bertie asked a question. This question dispelled that pleasant daydream quite abruptly, and her hands stilled on her work.
"Yeah," she said, multiple scenarios crossing her mind in a split second. Almost all of them pointed toward telling some of the truth; she couldn't possibly keep up the lie if she explicitly told it, not in present company. Bertie was a smart, detail-oriented guy. She'd screw up and that would make things worse - assuming, of course, that he wasn't actually messing with her head right now, fully aware of the truth, but she got the impression that he and his sister barely had a relationship at all, certainly not enough of one for Zara to bother being concerned about who he associated with. "Among others. My mom had a really good job when I was born, long story, but I went to a good charter school. There were a lot of business kids there, parents would come and talk about their companies, and we had a lot of mock business activities we did where you chose different industries you pretended you were in and stuff. Plus, my mother's Colombian. Mamá said she thought she was in heaven the first time she realized how cheap a decent face cream is here, though she didn't know then that there's next to no standards for that stuff here, then. Not like Colombia, anyway, apparently. I think it's changed, but when she still lived there, that stuff had to pass the same standards as medicine." Mara shrugged. "It always was crazy to me - my old school, we had these special programs to remind us that yes, girls can do science - and here's practically the girliest stuff there is, running completely on chemistry, you know?"
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Mara Morales
They're quite impressive.
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