[herbology] an old man knows how a year it goes [all years]

"Avoid the roots, if you can," Neville replied to the young witch who had had rightfully questioned his direction; rather, stretched it. The academic venture was one that he both appreciated and respected in equal measure. He was glad to see that kids still possessed it (as if somehow after the war they would have miraculously lost the appetite— he had, briefly).

"Stick to the stems," He added over his shoulder, distracted by the multitude of movements around him.

The greenhouse had positively come alive with the students digging into their tasks. It had a uniquely calming effect.

Neville smiled, tapping his knuckles on a table as he passed by and visibly more confident in himself. His shoulders were back and he was standing up straight. The nerves, always, were there, but they felt less tangible. It took him a moment for the Professor call out to register, but eventually, he realized that it was him the student was speaking to.

"Oh, yes," He floated over on cloud nine, squatting down so that he was eye level with the plants and the pupils. "Clockwise," His eyes were focused on the plant, his fingertips moving subtly over the soil. "Though—" He stood up. "—rarely, they grow counter-clockwise," He animated. "Try both," He whispered after a moment, an almost nonexistent wink following. It was his opinion that trial and error was the best way to learn.

There was more hesitancy than he would have thought there should be in the assembling of partnerships, this late in the year. Benedick made a mental note to ask Nazreen about it when she returned from... wherever the bloody hell she had gone. He stared at a lily stamen for a moment, white fuzzy brows furrowed in thought, before digging out his notebook and scribbling the question down within. Better to be safe than sorry, what with his memory the way it was. There were all sorts of things scribbled in here, in various permutations of his own hand. Bancroft stared them down a moment, making sure none were notes for this class, before snapping the notebook shut and tucking it back into the breast pocket of his robes.

He walked the room, jotting down seats and totalling points for houses – had it always been this warm, the students this spread out? Benedick pointed students back on the correct track when he could. "Close," he told a young dark-skinned man in Slytherin robes. "Moon, yes, but when the sun rises, the moon gone to slumber and the cool air rises away, what is left on the leaves?" Cryptic hint delivered, Bancroft gave the young man and his partner, a dark-haired Gryffindor girl (they must have cracked it, finally, how to make interhouse friendships work, good on Minerva!) a small nod before sweeping on down the aisle. 

He wouldn't give us Devil's Snare, would he? whispered a light, feminine voice. Bancroft passed that pair next, declaring "I would, but I haven't," into the open air above the blond Hufflepuff's head. Also working with a Slytherin – goodness, get Severus (may he rest peacefully) out of a house and within a generation the green-robes had begun to mix easily with the others. Bancroft was impressed.

ooc: I will be closing this thread in ONE WEEK you do not have to complete by then but just For Everyone's Information! get ur points
house points to be tallied at the end but basically 5 points to every person who ids a plant ICly in ur post, assume Bancroft can overhear.

The fifth year grabbed the rim of the Higginsbloom pot and twisted it around so he could take a look from all angles, hoping something else would jump out at him or trigger a memory. This was exactly the reason why he needed to organize his notes better. He wouldn't have to spend so much time guessing if only he had his notes from earlier in the year. Annoyed at himself, but curious about what Pixie was doing, he glanced over at her diagram, nodding. "It's a good idea," he said simply as she explained.

Getting out his wand, he mimed the corkscrew movement, going counter clockwise and then clockwise, but neither felt obviously right. He shrugged at her. "I can't remember either," he said with a frown. "But yeah, let's just find the other differences and then maybe we'll ask--" But she was already doing so and Jae prickled, shifting in his seat, not liking the idea of drawing the 'professor's' attention so soon before they even had time to find some other differences. He didn't want it to look like they were complete idiots.

But as the younger substitute answered her question and then moved away with a wink (really?), Jae rolled his eyes. "'Try both?'" he repeated with a scoff. "Real helpful." No wonder he was only a sub for one lesson. "Let's just do the other differences first and then we can try the spell," he decided as he nodded at her suggestion about the leaves and wrote it down.

"We can add that the bark is used in Potions, usually.. healing potions, I think," he said as he scribbled that down too. "Oh and here, look," Jae added as he pulled two of the leaves closer together carefully without breaking them off. "I guess we can add that the shapes are similar but the Higginsbloom usually has 6.. points and the ordinary has 5? What do you think?" he asked with a glance in Pixie's direction.

The tendril had started to gently wrap around Shelby’s finger as she’d reached out to touch it, and Bren grinned – it was like the plant was giving her finger a hug or something.
But Professor Longbottom put two new plants in front of them, then, and Bren quickly glanced over at Shelby to gauge her reaction. He’d supposed this was a good thing, the fact that they’d been given another pair – certainly it meant that they’d done well, and were ready for the next level up?

In the interim, he was already overthinking his decision to bring up inviting her to Alderney. Would she think it was dumb, or weird? Had she only said something about the guidebook just to be nice? Did she— oh, phew. Apparently his suggestion sounded ‘lovely’, and she’d even suggested a time! Brendan flashed her a goofy grin, almost visibly relieved.
“Cool! Uh… mid-April is usually still on the… cooler side, but reasonably sunny so it’s not too bad.” He felt kind of dumb for saying ‘cool’ twice in the span of about three seconds, but it was too late now. Also it was Shelby, who was much less likely to poke fun at him for it than, say, Tomie.

Bren nodded sagely as Shelby voiced her thoughts on one of the plants in the new pairing. ‘Flitterbloom’… that one sounded familiar. He was fairly certain they had a few in hanging baskets at home. He remembered, thanks to a multitude of warnings in that section of the textbook (they’d caught his eye as Aimée was studying over Christmas break) that a common magical look-alike to that was Devil’s Snare – but Great-uncle Benedick wouldn’t have given them that, would he? One could never be too sure. He was rather… eccentric.
He also remembered that several non-magical species (‘snake plants’ was the overarching common name, Merlin knew he had no clue what their more specific or proper names were) could look similar.

This one didn’t look much like a snake plant, though. It had rather plump, serrated-looking leaves…
“Oh, aloe! I think,” he remarked suddenly, a flash of memory coming to him. Aimée had neglected her sunblock when they’d spent a day on the beach a few years ago – she’d gotten burned on the tops of her shoulders, and Mum had put a sort of tincture on it. Afterwards, when Bren had asked about it, she’d unearthed her old Études Médicales textbook to show him, explaining that a plant called ‘aloe’ was the primary ingredient. There was a picture of the plant in the textbook, too, and Bren saw it as clearly now as he had then: thick, tapered, stiff-looking leaves with what looked like tiny spikes bordering the flatter edges.

“It can help with sunburn,” he offered. “Looks like Flitterbloom doesn’t have these spiky-looking edges…”

Clockwise. Okay, that was fine...wait what? Pixie did a double take, for a moment imagining that the young substitute had actually winked at her. Now she was more confused than ever, but on the other hand...he had basically just said that it was okay to just try the uprooting spell either way. If she took that quasi-instruction to it's logical limit - and Pixie quite often took things to their limits, both logical and illogical - then that pretty much meant that they were allowed to do whatever they needed to figure out the differences, so long as they didn't actually damage the plant.

She giggled at Jae's reaction. "Yeah, we'll just leave it til...oh!" something had just occurred to her "Wait! He wouldn't have said that if it wasn't the right spell, and the right plant...so it's got to be right!" she exclaimed excitedly. If she'd been suggesting something completely mad, any sensible professor would have just told her it wasn't the right spell or to take another look or something. Okay, so these guys didn't exactly look sensible, but she was going to go with her hunch anyway. Now all they had to do was figure out the other seven - or was it eight - differences.

Healing potions - she hadn't known that one, but it sounded reasonable so she nodded and made an affirmative noise as she leaned forward and counted the leaf points "Yeah, that's got to be one of the differences..." She added a note to her diagam and then gently squeezed a leaf and sniffed her fingers, testing out her other theory. "Coconut! here, smell this" she added, holding her hand out to her partner in undoubtedly the worst invitation he'd had all day.

[ooc: yup, pixie did just say 'here, smell my finger'. i'm sorry jae. really.  ]

Jae glanced up from his notes as he tried to remember what he had previously studied on the Higginsbloom, a frown wrinkling his forehead. They really should have been given a heads up about this and then he would have been more prepared. But as Pixie came to some conclusion, he shrugged in response. She seemed excited, but Jae still didn't trust the tall, lanky intern. He eyes the old professor and wondered if he would have given them a different answer.

Then again, it's not like they were real professors anyway. What would be the harm in going with Pixie's educated guess? "Want to try it to see?" he asked her, giving her deference since she was the one that had 'worked out' the 'helpful hint' they had been given.

But what other differences could there be. They had a few solid ones already and Jae wrote the leaf points down as Pixie agreed and then was leaning away sharply as she shoved her hand toward him. "Wait, what--" he muttered as he put up a hand in front of his face to fend her off. There was a beat of awkward as Jae made it very clear that he was not going to smell her fingers. "I'll trust you on that one," Jae coughed and then jotted it down.

"Was this the one that the leaves turned a different color in water too? Red? That's why it turns potions red when its used?" he asked, remembering something vague, but not sure. He murmured an excuse as he left their table and then returned a few moments later with a small cup and then filled it with the water charm and nudged it toward her. Maybe keeping her busy would stop her from any more urges to smell her fingers.

"Yeah! But lets leave it til last like you said, in case the plant explodes or something" she said agreeably, drawing differently-pointed leaves on opposite sides of her diagram as she added that note to it.

Belatedly she realised that "smell my fingers" was never a good thing to say, but Pixie being Pixie felt no embarrassment. Instead she just shrugged and sniffed them herself once again to confirm that it definitely was coconut she was smelling. "Definitely coconut" she said unnecessarily, then added a note to her diagram, happily oblivious to the fact she'd put one too many 'co's in coconut. It was a particularly nice smell though, she thought as she sniffed once again.

"What? Oh...maybe" she agreed, coming back to the present. Actually Pixie couldn't remember anything about something turning red in water but she was willing to go with it. She mentally went through what they'd figured out so far. If the turning red thing was right they'd found five of the ten possible differences, but already she was running out of ideas. She stared into space, trying to remembr everything she knew about maple trees, which wasn't much. In fact, the only other thing they hadn't already mentioned was...

"Oh! Do you think we should just pull off a leaf?" she asked, but then decided that if they were practically being encouraged to uproot the sapling that breaking off a single leaf was hardly going to be a problem. Carefully she broke one off and squeezed it before dropping it into the water, which immediately turned a rich, deep shade of scarlet.

"Awesome! So that's five differences, and I thought of this other one. It's probably stupid, but muggles use regular maple tree sap to make maple syrup? I don't think they can do that with the Higginbloom though" she suggested hopefully. They'd been told to find differences after all, not necessarily magical ones.

The lesson moved smoothly, in Benedick's opinion. No explosion or screams from someone stroking the moly along the roots, not a single girl passing out when cross-sectioning the leaf was suggested. No thrown mud or soil or, Merlin forbid, plants. Nazreen's bunch of hooligans was well behaved. Bancroft was bored, almost. He missed his own students -- not the air of fear that permeated every day at the castle, back then, but he did miss the recklessness of certain students. The way they ignored his instructions to form groups of four, or more, because what the hell did a detention mean, anyway?

Bancroft did one more round, tallying house points as he went, enchanting the totals into the vines that once bore his and Neville's names. Neville, young lad, did well. Bancroft found himself just watching Neville several times, marveling at the ease he spoke to the students with. Maybe he would be another Nazreen -- Sprout had clearly taught him well, and Benedick hadn't failed the young man yet.

The hour ended -- "Ach, off with you all, then," Bancroft said, the vines nudging the keeners out of their stools. "There's a lovely day outside -- go look at some grass, or something."

-fin-
and that's a wrap! I'll put in final point totals.... sometime during may playtime. feel free to close out your convos have a great fpp reset xoxo

Bren grinned at her, and Shelby smiled a small smile back. She liked Brendan. She had known that when she had asked him to be her boyfriend, of course, had thought he was a fabulous friend, but everything felt so comfortable and easy with him now that they were, you know, actually going out together. He didn't make her feel stupid, or slow, or not enough of a Quidditch person, or not Asian enough, or not British enough, or not cool enough.

And he didn't make her feel confused or sad. That was the best. The way he smiled at her made her feel wanted, important, smart. Confident.

She brushed the feather end of her quill over the back of his hand with a small giggle. "Cool," she said. "I'll see what my parents say."

Being boyfriend-girlfriend with Brendan was easy.

And he was smart, too -- he knew all the muggle plants, knew that this was 'alow' and that it had healing properties. "I didn't realize non-magical plants could do that," Shelby said out loud, running her fingers over the edge of the leaves. "Is it in the leaves, then?" She jotted down the thing about the edges, pulled a leaf off of each plant and held them up to the light. "The Flitterbloom is.... a little more transluscent? What do you think?" She passed the leaves to Bren for his confirmation.

--

Shelby felt pretty good about how that class went, despite the change in professors. They had come up with twenty differences between the two plants, all written neatly in her notes, and that young professor had been nice.

When she slipped off the stool, Shelby brushed the back of her hand against Bren's, then, with a rush of bravery, grabbed his hand.

[out]

Pixie's head jerked up in surprise. It was the end of the lesson already? It had only seemed to her like they'd been studying the saplings for a few minutes and, for once she didn't really want class to end, because she kind of wanted to continue and find the rest of the differences. She went ahead and drew a bottle of maple syrup onto her diagram, making a note that it only came from the non-magical variety of sapling even as she frantically tried to think of any other differences. Today Pixie actually wanted to win those house points!

"Did you want to try the corkscrew root spell?" she asked Jae, though in all honestly she wasn't sure they had time to try the spell and repot the sapling decently unless they wanted to be the last ones to leave the class. And naturally, Pixie absolutely did NOT want to be the last one to leave the class.

There was no request to see their notes from either of the substitute professors, and no homework either (yay!) so Pixie rolled up her parchment and stuffed it into her bag, immediately pulling it out and putting her textbook in first so the diagram wouldn't get crushed. She grinned as she did it, amused to find she actually cared about her work even if it wasn't going to be handed in.

She paused, not wanting to just run straight out of the room like she so often did (though she certainly wasn't planning to go look at some grass). "It was good working with you" she said to Jae. He was still finishing up a final note by the looks of things, so she decided it was okay to leave at that point. On her way out she passed the younger of the two substitutes. "Thanks" she mumbled, not quite managing to meet his eyes, her cheeks reddening for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

[out]

It was a good thing he was sitting down, he thought, because his arms and legs felt an awful lot like jelly when Shelby smiled at him and tickled his hand with the feather of her quill.
“Okay, yeah, great,” he managed to reply with another smile (that was the other thing, too… it was hard not to smile around her), pulling his notebook towards him with his other hand. “Just let me know.”

Once they were back on the topic of the lesson, he nodded enthusiastically at her comment.
“Yeah! Well, some of them, and usually not nearly as well as the magical ones. For aloe it’s the gooey stuff in the middle.” He extended a hand, then, wordlessly asking for the piece of the plant she’d broken off rather than break off another piece. It was probably silly (which is why he’d never say it aloud), but Bren felt a little sad about taking off a piece of a living plant.

When she’d handed them both over, he showed her the cross-section of the aloe and squeezed it gently to express the clear gel-like substance.
“Yeah I think you’re right,” he agreed, regarding her observation on the leaves. “They seem more rounded and more flexible, too.”

They spent the rest of the lesson finding plenty of differences between the plants and smiling at each other, mostly, and Bren thought it had been a good lesson; he told his great-uncle so as he was waiting for Shelby to pack up her things.
Then she grabbed his hand – his eyes widened briefly with surprise as a strange tingling sensation zinged up his arm, but instinctively he tightened his hand around hers without even realizing he’d done it. With a sheepish smile and a half-wave to Great-uncle Benedick, he and his girlfriend left the Greenhouses; and Bren desperately hoped his hand didn’t feel too sweaty.


[[ Bean out! ]]

It was more than confusion about why Winifred would choose to help him that plagued Andronicus now. The more she spoke, the less he worried about the past, and the more his anxiety over the future consumed him. He had to stand out on the application just to get to the interview? It made sense, in retrospect, and the teenager felt stupid for not considering that earlier. Andy knew how to work hard, and he was ambitious, but a great many things had just been handed to him during his short lifetime, so his thoughts on how to get a job were less than realistic. “Oh, yeah, yeah, that makes sense….” He commented, but mostly he was just interested in listening to Winifred’s sagely wisdom now.

They headed for the plants to get started on the assignment, but Andronicus’s thoughts remained at their workstation on the application. Thankful Winifred was taking the lead; Andy picked up the pot she had indicated and reached for hers so that he could carry them both. A slight smile gracing his features, he hoped she would take it as a kindness because that was how he meant it, and he followed her back to the table. Setting them both down just before the tentacled one could brush against his forearm, he stared at it suspiciously. “I wouldn’t doubt it, actually,” He answered before sliding around the table and back into his seat.

“This one seems far more sentient,” Andronicus offered, pointing to the pot with a far more curious-looking plant inside. Both had thick, strong stems, but only one of them seemed to follow him around the table and reach out. It was unnerving, and Andy didn’t care for how it appeared to be reaching for them. “So, how do I stand out on the application? Like should I include that I’m the Slytherin Quidditch captain?” Andy hadn’t said it to boast but was still bragging in a way.

"Yeah, you too," Jae said with his best attempt at a smile as he shuffled his books and notes into his bag. He hadn't worked closely with Pixie before this and had really only faced off against her on the pitch when Gryffindor and Hufflepuff faced off and now that he thought about, Jae was pleasantly surprised by Pixie's work ethic. He glanced over his paper, idly wondering why they had been assigned this task if the professor wasn't even collection their work, and realized that Pixie had come up with more differences than he had. He fought against the inclination to stay a bit longer just so he could evenly contribute.

"See you around," he found himself adding before she left their table and Jae reached out a hand to the sapling, turning the pot on the table with a glance, his curiosity getting the better of him. Perhaps he would come back on his free hour and see if the corkscrew spell really did work. Or maybe he would just find his notes on this the last time they covered it.

Either way, he was still thinking about it as he slid past the professors, his bag over his shoulder, stepping around a pair of younger students who rushed out of the greenhouse cutting him off which he just sighed at before he started the trek back to the castle.

/out

Wini's eyes widened at the professor as he mentioned he might have given them Devil's Snare, but didn't for this lesson. She wondered and hoped Professor Ajay would be back next lesson and glanced at Andy to see his reaction before she tentatively grabbed her parchment and quill to start the assignment on identifying the differences.

"I think this is Flitterbloom," Wini murmured as she touched one of the swaying vines and gently flipped it upside down so she could see the underside. "Oh yep, see? The blue veins?" she said turning it so he could see before the vine pulled back out of her hand and gave her fingers a slap as if it didn't like being disturbed. "Sorry," Wini said, hearing herself apologize to a plant before she glanced at the Slytherin and hoped the wouldn't take a 180 back to the days where he probably would've made fun of her for that.

Wini made a note of the difference and a few others that were easily identifiable, pushing the paper between them so Andy could add his ideas if he wanted to. His question about the application, however, made her give him a look. "Of course, you need to mention that you're the Quidditch caption," Wini told him in a very obvious way before she blinked and hoped that wasn't rude. It was .. weird to say the least trying to be nice to your childhood bully. She wasn't sure how to act with him, but Wini sighed and focused on the facts that she did know. "You should mention all your achievements, yes, but you also have to talk about the why of it, you know? Make them understand why this is important to you. Share some little detail that shows who you are as a person." Wini shrugged. She didn't know him well enough to give him an example, or at least didn't know enough of the good stuff about him that would work well on an application. She didn't think Bullying 101 Techniques that he probably studied back in the day would work too well in his favor.

(( Before I forget again, these are the two plants: flitterbloom and Kenya Hyacinth ))

Andronicus tried not to look as lost as he felt as Winifred picked up the potted plant and turned it over. "Yeah, blue veins, right," And even though he tried, the Slytherin had the feeling he wasn't as convincing as he'd wanted to be. Some things came easy to Andy, but Herbology had never been one of them. The plant snapped at her, and the teenager first wondered if it'd try to hurt him too if he picked it up and then if she was alright. Winifred seemed fine, though, and Andronicus didn't mention it.

Instead, he read her notes as she wrote them. And when she pushed the parchment toward him, he reread them for good measure before adding a few of his own. He'd made a couple of observations, but he felt like his additions were useless compared to what she had put. And he didn't like the feeling. Winifred's reaction to his question had him sitting upright again as he turned to look at her. She told him like she knew it was one hundred percent the answer, and he nodded slowly. A silent "oh" forming on his lips because he knew she was right, and he felt more overwhelmed by the second.

Who was he as a person? How could he ever explain that in an application? And more importantly, why would anyone care? He licked his lips to buy time before replying to what she had said, and then his eyes slid back to the plant as he spoke. "Yeah, but, like what kind of stuff?" His hesitation was partly because Andronicus hoped who he was before would have nothing to do with who he became after graduation. There were many things about his time at Hogwarts that Andronicus was very much looking forward to leaving at Hogwarts. "Like hobbies or something?"

He sighed a little and leaned forward. Placing his elbow on the table and his chin in his hand, Andronicus watched the two plants on the table as they swayed along. "I don't really have any like... community service type things or other accomplishments... Guess I should have been thinking about this stuff before." Andronicus couldn't shake the feeling like he hadn't been paying enough attention to school stuff back then. That, and for the better part of his Hogwarts career he'd assumed his future was already planned out by his father and ironclad.

"What are we supposed to be doing again? Just listing the differences?" the wizard asked as he moved to prod the snappy plant a little with the end of his quill, barely realizing what he was doing until a vine wrapped around the tip and yanked the feather from his hand.