Magical Hogwarts

 He had been waiting for his chance to get back to Beauxbatons and now he was back at the castle he realised that it wasn’t easy to get to know his children. The students only saw an elderly professor in him and didn’t seem too eager to spend time with him away from class.

It hadn’t taken him long to come to the conclusion that what he needed to do was to get them all to his place, Manoir Vertneuf, which was a smaller, more intimate place and where he could set at least some of the rules. The only issue was that he could hardly just voice an invitation and everyone would follow along. Madame Maxime was not going to let her students wander off to a far away place without reason.

Therefore, professeur Arsène Dutour was working on giving her enough of a reason to take this step. It was going comparably well. The only downside was that a horse had got killed in the process and a first student had got hurt. Fortunately it wasn’t one of the students that mattered most to him, it wasn’t one of his children (at least as far as he was aware, it wasn’t easy to keep track of everything, after all). His colleague and the head of his former house had been sat on probation because of the incidents as Madame Maxime suspected him to have caused the whole chaos. That was good in Arsène’s opinion. If there was a different suspect he was right on track.

Arsène liked to teach. It felt right to share his knowledge on the subjects he knew most about. Botanique was just one of the classes he had taught over the years as a substitute professor. Surely that was part of why he was always asked to come back to fill in - he could cover at least three different classes, Botanique, Soins aux Créatures Magiques and Études Médicales.

Given the danger with all the spiders in the grounds, Arsène met his group of students in front of the castle and led them down to a greenhouse he had checked before. There were no spider webs and none of the huge spiders either. Just plants and even more plants. However, quite in the centre of the greenhouse there was a large table with similar looking plants. They had big leaves with fine lines in light, medium and dark green, dark red and light rose colour. As the group stepped in there was the sound of leaves moving and the skilled observers might have noticed that the plants seemed to turn their leaves towards the people who joined them.

“Here we are,” Arsène announced brightly, “please come closer but… not too close to these plants. They are all hybrids that I’ve bred. I call them the Calathea Carnivora. They are the product of many years of farming these plants.” He smiled proudly and then turned to his students again, “Can any of you make an assumption what they are like? Just by looking at them? By their name?”

[OOC: Imagine the plants look similar to these.]

 Botanique was not one of Aristide’s best classes. He just didn’t care much about plants. He liked the looks of them outside but he didn’t need to know what they did and how to take care of them. He was not going to become a gardener, herbologist, or even a potioneer who needed to identify different kinds of plants.

However, being a third year, Ari was unfortunate enough to have to take the class despite his severe lack of interest. While it had been nice to the greenhouses between the classes in the past - it gave them a little bit of a free moment - this was now over already. They weren’t supposed to go their unaccompanied anymore.

Professeur Dutour collected them at the castle and walked them down to the greenhouse in old-man-speed. Ari rolled his eyes as he followed the man who was not only comparably slow but also emitted the odour of someone old who was wearing almost equally old (and unwashed) clothes.

Aristide’s mood was bad and his motivation low when they arrived at the greenhouse. Although he knew little about plants, the second part about the name that professeur Dutour mentioned made him a little curious after all. “This plant eats insects?” he asked curiously, taking a step closer to the table. The plants were rather big, maybe it could also eat birds or other animals? His interest was piqued.
 

 Although things had changed at Beauxbatons and they were now escorted to the greenhouses by their professor because it was too dangerous for them to go there on their own, Mathilde couldn’t help but smile at the prospect of Botanique. She loved plants!

Professeur Dutour was a weird old man, though. He was creepy in a way but at the same time really kind - at least to Mathilde. She had run into him after dinner once and he had initiated a conversation about plants and had offered her to get an offshoot of a rare plant to take care of. She wasn’t sure why he had done this but she could not possibly say no to such a generous offer.

Now they were facing plants that they were not supposed to approach and Mathilde stood on her toes to get a better view over her classmate’s shoulder. Ari answered professeur Dutour’s question by asking a question himself and Mathilde nodded to herself. These were plants that could digest insects and arachnids. The girl wondered if they could also catch the spiders but they probably weren’t growing as fast as the dangerous arachnids and thus too small to be a really useful weapon to fight them.

"How big do they get?"
 

 “Maybe they eat wizard boys, too…” Renata whispered to Ari as he took a half step closer to the carnivora plants. She smiled brightly, wickedly, and followed her friend toward the table. Renata took an additional step, one further than Ari had gone, and possibly one further than the professor might have liked them to. Renata imagined Professor Dutour would hardly notice; she assumed his eyesight probably wasn’t so good anymore, but she still liked him. He was sort of bizarre, and clearly far older than most professors, and that meant closer to death. And closer to death made him inherently more interesting to the little witch.

Not to mention he’d brought them outside – where the spiders were!

Of course, he’d kept them safe on the path all the way to the greenhouses. And much to her dismay, there were no monsters on the path. And the greenhouse seemed clear too, safe and sound, and utterly dull. Renata wasn’t a reckless adventurer, but she loved creepy, scary things, and the idea of seeing a giant spider had hung in her dreams for days now. Ever since she’d heard about what happened to the horse and the first year. Mathilde, from Bellefeuille, asked the next question, and Renata smiled again. She wondered if Mathilde was thinking about the spiders, or if the Belle girl had seen them in person. Renata hoped she would one day be so lucky.

The Ombrelune witch was far from gifted when it came to herbology. She didn't care for the subject (unless they learned about dangerous things) and she had very little to add to the current conversation. Of course, that had never stopped her before.

"Are they poisonous, professor?"

As they made the trek down to the Greenhouses, Julien couldn’t help but cast an occasional cautionary glance over his shoulder. A First Year was attacked by one of the giant spiders less than a week ago (badly enough to be sent to L’Hôpital), and the entire castle was still on-edge. Julien most definitely still was especially because, just a few days before that, he and Honoré had roamed as far as the beach to take photos for the Arts Initiative. And a Granian had died after being bitten last month…

The relative warmth of the Greenhouse felt nice, at first – but an unrelated chill rippled down his spine as he warily eyed the flora occupying the space. Magical plants were not to be trifled with any more than magical creatures, after all.

As it turned out, the topic of today’s lesson were something that Professeur Dutor himself had actually created.
‘Great… even more margin for uncertainty.’

He gave the plants a wide berth and tried to pay attention, for Professeur Dutor had asked a question. But the more he thought about it, the more unsettled he felt. Carnivora sounded an awful lot like—

“Surely they don’t eat meat, do they?” he blurted out, unable to stop himself, at almost the exact same time Renata asked a question of her own. He sincerely hoped that insects were the extent of it… but the cryptic warning issued just a few moments ago not to get ‘too close’ most certainly did not help his overactive imagination.

Arsène couldn’t deny that he was enjoying himself, his enthusiasm was clearly sketched onto his lined face. He loved what he was doing and he was excited to see that his students showed interest. They filled the greenhouse with their liveliness, their youthfulness and it felt like a spark of their energy went straight to the old man.

Four students in a row asked questions about the plants and Arsène proudly glanced from one to the other and then smiled fondly at the plants on the table. It had taken him a long time to breed these plants and they were surely helpful for households even if not entirely innocuous.

“Bravo,” he said after the Papillonlisse mousquetaire had finished speaking. “You’ve all asked very good questions. These plants do indeed feed on insects and even small mammals or birds. They can get about as tall as a human being but the ones you’re facing here are not fully grown yet and thus the largest being they’ve eaten so far is probably a rat. I hope they develop a taste for the spiders, though.” That was only half true, of course. The spiders were part of his plan. However, how great would it be to be the hero who’d get rid of the dangerous creatures (even if he was the one who had set them loose in the first place).

He paused to think about the questions that the students had asked, eager to answer each and every one of them.

“The plants are not highly poisonous. You should not eat them, though. While they are not lethal, they would probably give you symptoms of food poisoning.” That was something he had to examine and work on further. They would be even more useful if he could get poison from them.

“The bigger they grow, the larger will be the prey they go for, of course. The ones you see here need to be repotted into larger pots with some fresh soil. For that I want you to wear your protective gloves and be careful. They might try to chew off a finger if they get a chance.” He grinned, not making it clear whether he was serious or not.

“Larger pots are over there,” he pointed at the side of the greenhouse, “and right next to them is a huge box with fresh soil. Should any of you have forgotten to bring their protective gardening gloves, come to me and I’ll help you out. If you have any more questions to ask, feel free to do so. The plant you choose to repot will be under your watch for the next few weeks. I want you to watch the plant, tend to it, and make a plan of your plant’s needs.”

Julien’s eyes widened progressively with each sentence, liking the sound of these plants less and less.
They fed on non-insects – small mammals and birds now, at this size, and could get as tall as a human?! And with increasing size came increasingly larger prey… And a concluding warning to watch their fingers.
Delightful.

The Mousquetaire tried very hard to keep his expression carefully neutral throughout all of this, so as not to seem rude, but he was not enthused. If these plants had kept their taste to creatures like insects and spiders then that was one thing, but personally he felt the last thing they needed was more potential threats. And Professeur Dutor had created them?

Wordlessly he retrieved and arranged the necessary supplies for repotting, pulled on his gloves, took a deep breath… and turned to face the hybrids. He did his best to think calming thoughts – in case they, like horses, could sense his trepidation (Merlin, he hoped not) – as he perused his options, ultimately selecting one of the smaller specimens.

Bringing the plant back to his workstation, he glanced furtively around to gauge how his peers were faring.

“Cool,” Ari said under his breath. He liked the idea of dangerous plants. They were fascinating and as long as they didn’t grow legs to actually go after their prey they were not too bad. In fact, he was tempted to try and feed the plants something just to observe how they really ate.

These plants could probably guard some kind of treasure and, as far as Ari knew, they didn’t need much more than a little water and some light. Easy to keep compared to some beast. Then again… was it possible to vanish such plants with a flick of a wand? He frowned but didn’t feel like asking the question. It felt silly. His whole house of cards was crumbling down already.

He listened to the instructions and turned to Renata. “Do you think someone will forget to put on gloves?” he grinned. Surely it wouldn’t be a big deal if someone lost a finger. Professeur Bellantoni could probably regrow that easily.

Ari put on his gloves, tugging on them so they covered half of his arm, too. Then he looked at the plants, choosing one with big oval shaped leaves and a pretty pattern in several shades of green. He looked around, watching what the others were doing. He wasn’t dumb, he wouldn’t be the first to touch such a plant.

Amandine was very fond of botanique, but she wasn't at all sure she was comfortable today. There was something a bit...creepy about the new professor. It wasn't just that he was old enough to be her grandfather (probably her great grandfather, she thought uncharitably), but he seemed to look at her for slightly too long and his smile didn't seem to reach his eyes. She hadn't repeated these thoughts to anyone of course, it seemed a bit unfair to judge someone based solely on a feeling, but all the same she couldn't help wishing that they still had the same professor as last year.

That sense of unease increased as the lesson progressed. She'd heard of carnivorous plants before, even seen some on a trip to London when Mama had taken her to a huge muggle place called Kew Gardens two years ago, but poisonous meat-eating plants which could grow as tall as a human really didn't feel like something students should be nurturing. It would make more sense to keep them small so they couldn't eat anything bigger than - and here she suppressed a slight shudder - a rat. Ugh.

Alright, then. Amandine completed the safe part of the task first, selecting a large pot and filling it with fresh soil, stamping it down firmly so the roots would have a safe bed, though even as she did so she wondered if it might be better to deliberately do a poor job so the plant didn't grow any larger at all. She returned to the table just in time to hear Ari joking about gloves. Raising her eyebrows, Amandine pulled hers on and smiled coldly. It was a foolish comment to make and something like that would likely interrupt the entire lesson. How annoying.

Unfortunately, while she had logically collected her pot of soil first, a lot of students had already selected their plants, so the only ones left were unsurprisingly the largest. Amandine felt a rare and fleeting sense of relief that she was tall as she selected one with vivid green leaves streaked with pink. It may have been quite dangerous, but it was certainly pretty, she thought as she quickly extracted it from the smaller pot and transferred it into it's new home. As she did so, a leaf wrapped around her gloved finger and she felt a slight pulling sensation.

"None of that!" she told it, slapping the leaf firmly and making it unfurl.

The plants, as pretty as they looked, were definitely not going to become Mathilde’s favourite plants. They could eat birds and small mammals? The girl briefly wondered how the digestion of plants worked, but before she could bring herself to ask, professeur Dutour spoke about the plants being slightly poisonous, too. The girl frowned. Learning about this kind of plant was surely worthwhile, but did they habe to actually repot them?

Putting on her gardening gloves, Mathilde looked around. Nobody looked overly eager as far as she could tell. Ari was probably hoping for a bitten off finger. How typical for a boy. She caught Amandine's gaze and rolled her eyes. "Boys…" she said as she followed the taller girl to pick a new pot.

She looked at the remaining plants, searching for a harmless looking one, but the few plants that hadn’t been picked yet were rather big and intimidating. Mathilde found one with dark green leaves and thin pink lines on them. At least that looked pretty. The leaves shuffled as the girl tentatively lifted the plant out of its old pot with outstretched arms.

Carefully she put the plant down on the table, freed the roots from some old soil, put new soil on the bottom of the new pot and took a deep breath as she reached for the plant again to lift it into its new home.
 
"Don't you dare try to hurt me when I'm just doing something nice for you," the girl muttered as the plant moved its leaves down to her fingers. Quickly she dropped it into the new pot. "You’re going to lean to one side if you don't behave!" She hastily put some soil between the rootball and the sides of the pot so that the plant was relatively steady.

He was mildly relieved to note that the majority of the class seemed to share his general sentiment, though that wasn’t actually reassuring. And some of the younger witches, it seemed, were faring quite a bit better than he (and with larger plants, eliciting a ripple of guilt within him) – which was both impressive and embarrassing.

He should probably take a leaf out of their book, he thought, as he carefully extricated his gloved fingers from his plant’s tendrils for perhaps the fifth time in the past minute. Ever the pacifist, Julien didn’t much like the idea of slapping at another living creature but, all things considered… it was likely this plant wouldn’t hesitate to take a bite out of him if it thought it could get away with it. Perhaps gentle redirection would work like it did for magical creatures. Perhaps. How sentient were these plants, after all?!

… On second thought, he decided he’d rather not know.

Not ten seconds later, the plant began to ensnare one of his gloved hands at the same time it snaked out a different tendril to knock over its new pot, which clattered loudly as it rolled several feet down the table and dumped what (thankfully) little soil he had begun to fill it with along the way.
“Well that wasn’t very nice,” he admonished with a sigh, reaching for the pot with his other hand – at which point the plant tried to trap his other hand. Strangely, though, the tension was less than it had been previously… almost like it was messing with him.

“Hey, ah,” he glanced briefly at his tablemate seated on his right, wary of looking away from the troublemaking plant for too long as he once again extracted himself from its tendrils. “Would you grab my pot, please?”

Arsène watched his students with eagle eyes start their repotting endeavour and smiled fondly at some of them. His plant creations were getting repotted by some of his own children. It felt like he was bonding with his kids even though they were still in the dark about them being related. Soon enough, though, he hoped, he’d reveal the big news to them.

His theme was that he wanted to be a family now that he was getting older. He knew his thread of thought might be hard to accept for these children, he knew he’d turn their lives upside down for sure, but he hoped that it was worth it in the end.

The man felt that he had made so many wondrous creations and he firmly believed that he ought to have special connection to them. Maybe he should post a letter to them. He felt that, maybe, he needed to breach the subject that way. It was out-of-character for him to be too forward and maybe it was wise to give his children the time to digest what he had to tell them.

He had missed their early years when they had still wet their sheets and played in the sandbox, but there was still time to get to know each other. He could only hope that they wouldn’t hate him. He did not even consider that his children might not only be mad at him but also at their parents who had come to him for help to get children and likely never told their kids. That was simply none of Arsène’s business.

He thought that he was the sole driver in this. He had had the idea, had put it into action. After all, the parents were left in the dark about the real biological father of their children.

A loud bang followed a scream pulled Arsène out of his reverie. He scuttled over to the student that had dropped the pot and was staring at the plant that, too, had fallen down.

“Are you alright, dear? Let me see what happened.” He asked, relieved that it was not one of his children that had been attacked by the plant. Thankfully the kid didn’t seem injured at all. It looked like the second year was mostly frightened because the plant had suddenly moved and tried to take a bite off the boy.

“Please, make sure you all wear your protective gloves and you’ll be fine. The plants cannot do you any harm then.” Arsène told the whole class before looking at the boy again. “Now get a new pot and we’ll put the plant in there together.”

Ari had picked a plant with leaves formed like blades to repot, thinking that smaller leaves were less intimidating but once he actually dealt with the plant he wasn’t sure if his reasoning had been quite so good.

Glad for the distraction he hurried to help out the Papillonlisse mousequetaire with his pot. “Here you are,” he said, keeping a safe distance to the table. “Imagine if these plants could move across the room…” he said, but, truth be told, he didn’t really want to imagine this himself.

Turning back to his own plant, Ari checked his protective gloves the very same moment when another pot fell on the ground and a younger student screamed. He spun around to find out what had happened but, when he saw that there were no bitten off limbs to admire, he decided to focus on his plant again.

It was probably better to deal with it sooner rather than later. “If you try to bite me I’ll rip off your leaves,” he whispered to the plant and carefully pulled it out of its old pot to drop it into a new one. Now he just needed to put some soil in so it would be steady and he was done.

Amandine rolled her eyes and sighed. Maybe she'd just got lucky and picked a plant that didn't want to try and eat her, but it looked like a lot of the other students were having more difficulties than she was. Certainly hers was giving her a lot less trouble since she'd slapped it, which was a bit unsettling when she thought about it. That implied it was intelligent, and she wasn't at all sure creating such a plant was a good idea. She'd read about carnivorous plants that ate flies and other insects, but as far as she understood, they simply sat around with their leaves open waiting for something to wander past. These ones that actually sought out a food source...what if they learned to move more than just their leaves? What if they managed to move their roots and move aobut like mandrakes? She shuddered.

It was at that point that someone actually screamed, and naturally Amandine's head whipped around to see what had happened. Weird though he was, Professor Dutour was already at the other student's side, offering assistance and not telling them they'd done anything wrong. Not many professors would behave like that and yet...she still found him somehow creepy.

Of course, while she had been observing this, her plant once againn took advantage of the situation and took hold of her fingers once again, and she could feel the pressure through her gloves. "I told you once already!" she said, this time slapping it with the trowel she had been using. The impact smacked her own fingers as well, but it had the desired effect, and once the plant had withdrawn she took advantage of it's response to pack soil in around it's roots more firmly.

"I think I'm done, professor" she said, quietly.

Mathilde was just about to put soil into the pot when she felt that someone looked at her. A shy glance over her shoulder proved her suspicion - professeur Dutour was watching her with a smile that felt somewhat creepy. Why was the man looking at her like that? Mathilde did well in Botanique but she wasn’t outstanding. Did he look at her because he liked young girls? The thought was disturbing and, quite frankly, unlikely. Why would Dutour fancy her out of all people? Still, Mathilde felt uncomfortable and was just about to go on with her task when a noise startled her.

Spinning around, Mathilde soon realised that nothing too grave had happened. It hadn’t been the first pot that had been dropped but someone screaming was always a reason to worry. Professeur Dutour’s attention was on the younger student now, too, which was a relief. It seemed like the boy had mostly been surprised by the movement of the plant and wasn’t injured. Mathilde let out a sigh of relief and was about to resume her task of putting soil into the pot when not far from her Amandine announced that she was already done with repotting her plant.

Mathilde shot her smile before dedicating her whole attention to her plant again. The leaves were moving in sync with her hands and the girl was hesitant to actually get close enough to drop the soil into the pot. “Please,” she whispered, “I’m helping you here. Don’t try to hurt me.”

Quite quickly the girl dropped soil into the pot and tentatively tried to push it in so the plant was standing firmly upright. “Okay, “ she said, letting out a sigh of relief. “I think I’m done as well,” she said, but her voice barely carried through the room. Were they supposed to do more than this? Mathilde faintly remembered that professeur Dutour had announced that they’d have to tend to their plants for the next few weeks and her heart sank. If she was entirely honest, the girl would have preferred to leave the greenhouse after class today and never see this plant again.