Mary Brooding-Hawthorne
November 16, 2021 12:27 AM
One last time, or not. [Advanced] by Mary Brooding-Hawthorne
It wasn't necessarily that things were better, but things were moving in that direction and that was good enough for Mary, who had missed her wife and her life for a long time now. It was good feeling like it was coming back to a sort of equilibrium; the feeling that had left Mary itching to run away from Sonora and start all over yet again was easing and she was settling into her role once again. Of course, that came with the guilt of having felt a bit like she was riding a self-flying broom all of the previous term. As such, she was determined to set back into the new term with a strong kick, although she didn't want to send the students flying off in the wrong direction either.For someone who wasn't even really that into Quidditch, Mary was really riding this metaphor hard. It worked, because even if she didn't love watching the game, she did love supporting her students, and that's precisely what she wanted to do today too.
It wasn't the first advanced potions class since the winter holidays, but it was early enough on still that the renewed brightness in Mary's eyes might still seem odd to students who had paid enough attention to notice her fogginess the last few months. She greeted each student with a smile as they entered the classroom and she passed back their graded homework. The margins were full of comments, which wasn't necessarily unusual but Mary had felt a particular need to make up for any possible lackluster in the fall.
"Hello, class!" she said, beaming at those who were present. Advanced classes were, by nature, the smallest, but she had a good number of students all the same. "Today we are going to be practicing for the presentations you've been assigned in two weeks. Each of you should have already chosen a poison and an antidote to compare and contrast. In pairs or triads, please talk through your work, or brainstorm if you haven't gotten very far. You can also take this opportunity to work on the actual brewing work if necessary so you are ready for the demonstration portion of your presentation. Please let me know if you have any questions. I want to make sure you have plenty of time, so go ahead and get started and I'll be available if you need me!"
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Mary Brooding-Hawthorne
One last time, or not. [Advanced]
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Jeremy Mordue
December 24, 2021 5:36 AM
I certainly hope so by Jeremy Mordue
Dense and pig-headed though he could be, Jeremy was rather aware of a couple of key pieces of information. Namely that he really wasn’t very popular, and that public image was very important for someone of his standing. He blamed stuck up people, and a lack of appropriate options in his class, though why more of his actual peers (in terms of social class rather than just school class) didn’t try harder was beyond him. He would have been perfectly galant to anyone who deserved gallantry. Anyway, that was not the issue at stake so much today, the issue was that classes didn’t like to make it easy. He was well aware RATS were supposed to be challenging academically but they also liked to keep you on your toes socially. Here he was, trying to appear like a reasonable and respectable member of society, and they were asked to pick a favourite poison.He had taken care to avoid any that were commonly used to end unhappy marriages, both to appear less like a psychopath, and also to avoid giving anyone any ideas. His probable future wife was not in this class, but it still wasn’t a cheerful subject. Though he suspected, statistically speaking, he was more likely to murder her, given that she brought more to the table in the way of property. Not that he would, but given that his potential future wife’s inexplicably-not-disowned brother was in the class (he refused to think of Felipe as his potential brother-in-law because it made him throw up in his mouth just a little bit), he didn’t want to sound like it was on his mind.
He had therefore chosen a very common doxycide, and the common antidotes, with potential bonus points for the fact there were multiple variations, depending on whether it was skin contact or ingestion, and on what had come into contact with it. Apparently, dogs, cats, and small children were all equally stupid and likely to rub themselves against or lick sprayed curtains if left unsupervised.
It was a subject he vigorously gave zero crups about, but there was enough material to get him a decent grade, and it made him look like he wasn’t about to go on a killing spree, which were frankly the main things he was attempting to salvage from this wreck of an education. The options for the day were to work in pairs or threes to compare notes and ‘brainstorm’ or to get on with brewing. He already had a perfectly well thought-out idea, and he wasn’t keen to let others profit off his hard work by deciding they’d do the same. Plus he wanted to brew multiple antidotes, which meant that was the better use of his time.
He made his way to the supply cabinet. He suspected chizpurfle carapaces were going to be in hot demand. Professor Brooding-Hawthorne typically seemed to go in for buying whole ingredients and having them prep, but sometimes the cabinet had extras from other lessons—for example, if she’d had the whole intermediate class dissecting endless chizpurfles for practise, the rest of them could expect to benefit from that.
There was another student at the supply cabinet, though he didn’t give them much more than a polite nod (it was one of the few people who was worth a greeting—an honour that extended to those in his social class, minus Feliple, and Hilda) until they reached for the same spot at the same time. It would have been a perfect romance-novel-worthy moment, if he had been in the market, and if they hadn’t both been reaching for the last pre-gutted carapace.
“Ladies first,” he offered, seeing it was a female student, resigning himself to the fact he was now going to have to gut chizpurfles himself.
OOC: Aimed at any Pureblood female student or Hilda.
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Jeremy Mordue
I certainly hope so
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