An active, character-driven Hogwarts experience set in the early 2000s. Unique items, plots, and features. Non-canon; this isn't Harry Potter's story, it's ours.
Post by Lindsey Bryce on Aug 2, 2022 22:31:53 GMT 10
Lindsey arrived in the Student's Laboratory after she went by her dorm to get the needed supplies. She had brought the needed supplies with her to make the Ginger Tonic. It was good practice for her to make though. She placed everything at a table and went to fetch the needed cauldron before filling it with water.
It was quiet in the room, which made things easier for her to concentrate on. She had placed the recipe on one of the corners and she placed the cauldron over a gentle heat while she sliced the peppers. She made sure the slices were even and nice before she added them to the cauldron and stirred counter-clockwise.
It was amazing watching as the water began to turn a vivid purple and she smiled once it had. She sliced up one of the apples she had brought with her, again, taking care to make sure the slices were even and nice before she added them to the cauldron and stirred clockwise once.
Lindsey took care in chopping the ginger into the appropriate size and then added it into the cauldron. Turning the head to medium, she had twelve minutes and used that time to clean up. She had a clock there to watch the time and continually glanced at it to check it.
Everything was going well and as intended. The scent was rather unusual, with a mix of sweet and peppery ingredients. Before long, the twelve minutes were up and she could proceed.
Post by Reena Ashworth on Aug 5, 2022 22:43:32 GMT 10
Having hurried to the Student Laboratory, Reena was surprised to find Lindsey of all people already inside. Not that this would be an unusual sight, yet it felt like she had seen her friend literally just a second ago.
Reena gave her a warm smile, yet did not speak, as to not disturb her concentration.
She then choose a work space further down from her friend and laid out her ingredients. Nuts, next to her pestle and mortar, Fluxygrass, her jar of Sap, a Wild Primpear next to her knife, Wintercress, and lastly her freshly harvested Monurk Berries.
After she laid out her notebook with her notes on the Freeze Potion, she walked around the room to get herself a timer.
Her glance darted towards the door, as she expected Ezra’s arrival any time now. Unless of course he had gotten held up or forgotten because he was out, spreading love and kindness.
Post by Lindsey Bryce on Aug 6, 2022 8:21:22 GMT 10
As she threw away the last of the mess, she saw the clock counting down on the last fifteen seconds and walked over, preparing to reduce the heat. As it came to the last moment, she turned the heat down and began the stirring process, going clockwise, watching as the red-fumes began to evaporate from the cauldron. The sound of someone else walking in did catch her attention, but she was focused on the work at hand. It was important to keep working, even if she was tempted to see who it might be.
The red-fumes were gone, so she finished and allowed the tonic to cool. This allowed her to pull her wand out and a vial for the tonic to be placed in. Looking up finally, she saw that it was Reena Ashworth who had come in. Maybe her friend would allow her to sit and watch her brew her own potion? It would be nice, though she was sure she could find some more ingredients to do another potion or tonic.
Checking on her tonic, she realized it had cooled enough and she waved her wand over the cauldron with an elegant movement before smiling at the finished brew. She placed the tonic into the vial for storage and inspected it carefully before looking over at Reena.
"What are ye brewin', Reena?" Lindsey asked as she put her potion's book away and walked over with her fresh-brewed tonic and bag.
Last Edit: Aug 7, 2022 23:54:16 GMT 10 by Lindsey Bryce
Post by Ezra Ashworth on Aug 6, 2022 11:02:08 GMT 10
Even though he still had his map out when he finally reached the Student Laboratory, Ezra poked his head around the door first just to double check that Reena was still there before he entered.
He was very happy to see that she was. And a bonus, it looked like she had not started yet! That meant that he had not missed anything! He was curious to see that someone else did look like they had just finished making something though, and could not help but wonder what that was.
Ezra might have been curious, but greeting his sibling still took precedence over anything else to him, so his focus was soon back on her.
"Found you," he grinned at Reena as he entered the lab and made his way over to her. "Hi!"
His hello said to her at least, Ezra found his eyes wandering over what she already had laid out. He easily recognised the Fluxygrass and Wintercress, having collected some of those already himself. And those were berries of some kind, and some nuts... He wondered what she was planning to make because he had not memorised any recipes well enough to even guess.
"What're you making, Ree?" he asked, his head tilted as he eyed ingredients that he was not sure of - was that a fruit of some kind? "Is it gonna make a bang like things in class do?"
Ezra glanced over at the other student - was she Reena's friend? - and smiled at her in greeting too. "Hi! Did you just make that?" he asked, looking impressed at her vial.
Post by Reena Ashworth on Aug 6, 2022 17:16:05 GMT 10
Noting the pleasant smell from Lindsey's potion, Reena turned towards her friend just as she filled it into a vial. It took Reena a moment to place the scent into a category and decided that it smelled a lot like tonic.
Before she could answer the question however, her little brother made his entrance and she returned his grin with one of her own. She was happy he had decided to come, as spending some quality time with Ezra almost made up for the dread of having a 'date' with a beast later.
"I am making a Freeze Potion," she explained and pointed at the open pages in her recipe book. Then she frowned.
"It should not.. make a bang."
His question left her wondering what kind of potions Ezra did in class. She just hoped he didn't experiment around the strict recipes too much and caused trouble and danger for his whole class.
"Ezra, this is my friend Lindsey," she remembered to introduce the two. "What did you brew, Linds?", she added curiously to find out if her guess had been correct. She then smiled at her awkwardly, having hoped to spend some time with just Ezra. But she quickly got over it, this was a public space after all and if anyone was about to intrude, she was happy it was her friend of all people.
As a sign that she would now begin she filled her cauldron with the appropriate amount of water and put the nuts into her mortar.
"Would you read me the recipe again, Ezzie?", she asked as she started to turn her nuts into a fine powder. "I like to have my ingredients prepared beforehand so that I don't miss any time markers. It is crucial to add the right ingredient at the right time after all. Do you know why?"
Reena hoped he didn't mind her quizzing him lightly. But she wanted to make sure he understood the dangers of potions, now, that he had access to this lab and all the ingredients found in and around the castle, it was more important than ever. She did not want him to accidentally poison himself or - make a dangerous bang where there wasn't supposed to be a bang.
"Hey by the way, did you write mum yet?", she asked casually.
Post by Ezra Ashworth on Aug 7, 2022 8:49:59 GMT 10
Ezra was quite happy to get to have a nosy at her recipe book. His bag was absently shoved under the table as his eyes stayed glued to the page.
It was a bit disappointing that there were not supposed to be any bangs, but he supposed that made sense with a Freeze Potion. It did sound a bit too.. well, frozen, to be meant for explosions.
Half of his mind busy wondering what a Freeze Potion might look like in action, Ezra absently waved at Lindsey as Reena introduced them.
Oh! She was starting it! He quickly focused back on the book.
"Okay," he agreed, eager to be the best helper that he could be.
"It says.. 'Add first moonurk berries and stir clockwise once.'" he said, trailing his finger under the words to make sure he read the right part. "'Add powdered nuts and fluxygrass. Stir counter-clockwise.. five times.'"
Ezra peeked over at the nuts that she was already preparing. That made sense, he supposed, and was probably the right thing to do if Reena was doing it. It did sound like it took some of the fun out of things, but maybe making what a recipe said had to be different to experimenting.
He made a mental note to follow Reena's advice next time he made a potion, to see if it helped.
"There's a girl in my class who made a 'splosion when we weren't supposed to last lesson," he said to her question. "I think Professor Snape mentioned badly timed ingredients as one of the reasons."
As cool as he thought the explosion had been, he had to admit that if he wanted to figure out how to make an actual explosive potion one day, that maybe that was not the path to take. It had not exactly been a controlled explosion after all.
"Uh huh," he nodded his head at the mention of writing home. "She wrote back too! Did you know she has friends?"
He paused as he went to pull it out of his pocket, glancing over at Lindsey, before he lowered his voice to speak again. "It was weird though. She talked about them," he hesitated, peeking up at Reena before he clarified. "Uncle Marcus and.. Dad?"
He bit his lip and finished pulling the letter out. He set it down next to the recipe book. That way she could read it if she wanted to when she was not busy with her potion.
"There's two more steps," he said, looking back at the recipe and managing to sound slightly less enthusiastic than he had done previously. "Do you want them now too?"
Post by Reena Ashworth on Aug 7, 2022 17:33:06 GMT 10
Reena really leaned into powdering the nuts, wanting to get these done by the time Ezra had finished reading to her. It did take her a little longer to be satisfied with the result and she set the pestle and mortar with the powdered nuts down to separate her monurk berries into three viable portions.
"An explosion in class," she echoed. "I hope you weren't doing anything poisonous."
She nodded as he recalled Snape saying bad timing had lead to it. Some students wrote Snape off to being unfairly harsh but the thing they did not seem to understand was that potions was a dangerous subject that needed precision and perfection in order to be safe and successful. There was a reason potions required such a high mark in O.W.L.S in order to be able to take it in N.E.W.T.S years.
"That's right. Each ingredient has an effect. Some release their effect after a specific time in a potion. And if we look at recipes, those aren't randomly mixed ingredients, as one ingredient can enhance or cancel out the effects of another. So as a potioneer you have to be aware of those effects and counter-effects to find the perfect balance of quantity, quality and time to get the result you want to get out of your potion."
Reena had almost forgotten about Lindsey's presence but was reminded of it when Ezra lowered his voice and talked about the letter he had received. She put down the knife she had just grabbed to chop the primpear and instead placed her hand onto his shoulder in what she hoped was a comforting or encouraging manner.
She glanced over the letter, grateful that he wanted to share it with her, and fought hard to keep a neutral expression in front of her friend.
"I knew our parents had friends when we were little," she matched the low volume of her brother's voice.
The look Ezra had given her when he had said 'Dad' was tearing at her heart strings, as she knew that look all too well. The unspeakable yearning to know about him, for it to be safe to ask about him and never wanting people to shut up when they brought up the slightest mention of him.
This look made her want to tell him everything she knew. About the memories Jax and her had seen at Gringotts, about Antoninus, about what he had said about it being murder. About not knowing who those friends were and that Jax was wary of them and that she did not quite know what to make of their sudden appearance.
But she couldn't.
Not with Lindsey here, and not without checking with Jaxen first.
And not without knowing for certain that Conrad had in fact not been bad, just like she had seen her own dad reassure her four year old self in that vault with the red book.
"But isn't it nice her old friends reached out and keep her company now that we're all away from home?", Reena forced a smile onto her face as she looked at him again. "What do you think Grandpa is planning for summer?", she added in an effort to distract Ezra from the empty the mention of his dad may have caused.
She went on to chop her wild primpear and then she started on the potion as he had read it to her: She added the first monurk berries to the water and stirred them clockwise once. Then she quickly picked up the powedered nuts and the fluxygrass to add them to the swirling potion. Reena then countered the direction of the swirl by stirring the other way around, using her fingers to count the five rounds.
"Please read me the next steps. If I remember correctly, there's a timed task in one of those. Would you be my time keeper?", she asked him and gestured towards the timer she had placed next to her recipe book earlier.
The Ginger Tonic was brewed correctly and was ready to be ladled into a vial.
If she then cleaned her workspace and cauldron, Lindsey was either free to leave or brew something else.
It's mandatory to await confirmation before bottling a potion, in case it wasn't brewed correctly. This was overlooked this time, as the thread continued to progress, but all members please keep this in mind. Failing to await confirmation may result in a voided potion.
Post by Ezra Ashworth on Aug 8, 2022 13:00:42 GMT 10
"Just to plants," he shrugged. Since the potions laboratory was not where plants were grown, that did not seem like a pressing detail.
When Reena started to lecture him about ingredients and potions, Ezra gazed up at her in wonder. Wow, his sister was smart! He kind of wished he had thought to take notes of what she share with him though.
"So, if you want to make a potion without a recipe then you have to know all the possible reactions?" he asked, his head titled as he tried to figure out how many that would be. He finally settled on 'a lot'.
He wondered how long it would take to learn them all. Was that even possible or did people write them all down? That would have to be a very long scroll.
"Yeah! It means she's not all alone," he nodded. Being alone was not fun, so he was glad that his determination to finally go to school had apparently not left her like that. Though, it did make him question where they were in previous years. Maybe her friends just did not like them? That was sad.
Grandpa's possible plans sounded like a much better topic than anything else the letter may have brought up, so it was probably good for his feelings that he took the distraction as easily as he did. He didn't even notice that her smile looked odd.
"I don't know," he admitted with a shake of his head. "But it has to be really cool, right? It's Grandpa!" He didn't see how it could be any other way with their Grandpa planning it.
Then again, Ezra would think it cool if the plans were as simple as their Grandparents coming to stay for a while.
"Step two," he said as he turned his attention from peering curiously at the cauldron and back to the book. "Add chopped wild primpear. Add sap and second moonurk berries, then gently heat for two minutes!"
He grew excited at that last bit, pulling the timer closer. There, he was ready to watch the time for her.
"Allow to cool, the mixture should be pale." Ezra peeked at the cauldron again, even though he knew it was not there yet.
"Step three," he carried on after a moment, eager to get it all out to see if there would be any more timer uses. "Add third moonurk berries and chopped wintercress. That's a lot of berries," he said, double checking what he had read throughout the recipe.
A lot, but it was apparently right, so he shrugged and went on reading.
"Stir counter-clockwise twelve times, then clockwise twice," he read. "Mixture should be pale blue, with white at the surface." He was curious what that would actually look like in the cauldron.
"Wave your wand and that's it!" He looked up at Reena with a grin, confident in her ability to do the whole thing right.
Post by Reena Ashworth on Aug 8, 2022 15:22:49 GMT 10
Reena raised an eyebrow when he waved the Herbicide of so casually and shook her head.
“What‘s harmful to one life form can be harmful to any other,“ she mumbled as she added the chopped wild primpear to her potion.
She laid down the cutting board and knife to get the sap. She struggled slightly to open the jar and had to wrap the lid with the hems of her shirt but in the end she could feel and hear it pop.
She added it to the potion, using her knife to scrape out as much of the sticky mass as possible to form the right amount for a viable ingredient. The second monurk berries were easier to add.
After she started the heating process she gave Ezra the sign to take the time.
Now that she had two minutes she used that time to clean off any residue sap and primpear juice of the knife and cutting board, unsure what would happen if it came into contact with the wintercress.
“I hope Grandpa plans a trip,“ she said. “Somewhere nice.“ Her thoughts briefly drifted towards the picture of their dads as children by the seaside and she imagined what that would feel like. Probably not as relaxing as she would like it to be, having to herd her siblings away from deep water. Although - weren’t they old enough to know better by now?
With the two minutes up, she removed the cauldron from the heat to allow it to cool while she chopped the wintercress.
“To come back to your earlier question: It sure helps to know all ingredients‘ effects by heart. And I‘m certain people like Professor Snape do. Not just anyone can become potions professor after all.“
Reena, having chopped the wintercress, briefly checked the temperature of her potion.
“But for us as students it is important to keep note of all our findings, observe the more skilled and do our research. So that if we want to brew without recipe we are prepared for all possible outcomes and take necessary precautions.“
His question had worried her and she hoped her lecture would nudge him towards an understanding of the very real danger a wrongly brewed potion proved.
“It‘s actually best to stick to tested recipes until you are 1,000 percent certain you understand it all perfectly.“
Checking the temperature again, she was satisfied it had cooled down enough. She also liked its pale colour so she went ahead and added the third set of monurk berries and the wintercress.
She agreed with him that this sure was a lot of berries as she stirred the potion counter-clockwise. She once again used her fingers to keep count.
…“Eleven, twelve - - and one, two“, she finished with the clockwise stirring, as the recipe instructed.
She checked her potions colour, then the recipe again, just to be sure before she waved her wand to finish it.
Last Edit: Aug 8, 2022 18:09:20 GMT 10 by Reena Ashworth: not a me post if not edited at least once
The FREEZE potion was brewed correctly, and ready to be ladled into a vial.
If she then cleaned her workspace and cauldron, Reena was either free to leave or brew something else. Lunch was about to begin, but that won't affect her progress as the only available class this afternoon is for 5th years, and no events are scheduled to occur.
Post by Reena Ashworth on Aug 8, 2022 20:49:40 GMT 10
Smiling, as she was now certain that she had done all the steps correctly she unstoppered an empty vial and ladled the Freeze Potion into it.
“Look at the pale blue colour!“, she included Lindsey as well as she stoppered the potion.
“It looks so cold already, makes me want to test it out.“, she shook her head as she put it away safely. She might need to test it sooner rather than later, depending on how well that Ancient Sapling in her garden pot grew and on how well the Ancient Fruit actually worked on the beast.
She felt a whole lot more prepared now.
Reena started to clean up her workplace, telling Ezra about the importance of cleaning by hand rather than using a magical short cut and how it was only respectful to leave everything clean for the next person to use.
“Thank you for assisting me so well, Ezzie“, she smiled at her little brother. She had enjoyed his company and being able to teach about her favorite subject.
“I‘d be happy to assist you too, any time.“
She disliked scrubbing the cauldron but she had learned from earlier mistakes and used proper tools to protect her skin from any residue potion. Reena was not keen on frozen fingers after all. Once she was done cleaning and had put her belongings back into her bag she turned towards her brother and friend.
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