Hufflepuff		Slytherin
Caitlin Norwood ☐ Alfie Vaillancourt ☐ Elijah Young ☐		Waverly Roh-Ballentyne ☐ Gracie Slant ☐ Huxley Ward ☐ Georgiana Trishna ☐ Kitty Li ☐ Xavier Tawse ☐ Demitria Strelnikov ☐ Deus Deres ☐

Please assume your character is already in class.

Sit four to a lab table. Excessive off-topic interaction will result in a seat reassignment and a loss of House Points.

---

Thursday, 1PM

Juliette stood in the door of the classroom, handing a pair of earmuffs to each students who filed in. She may as well have been a (very nicely dressed) bouncer: no one got by without taking a pair. She offered a casual, close-mouthed smile at the familiar faces, most which she had not seen for months.

When the last of the Hufflepuff and Slytherin N.E.W.T. students-- who got on as well as a certain pony and his new female coworker-- had taken their seats, headgear in hand, Juliette strode to the front of her desk.

“Today, you will begin brewing the Mandrake Restorative Draught. It will take you precisely one week, assuming you manage your time wisely and are successful in your assignment. You will be expected to check on your cauldrons between classes as your time tables permit... but if I am not here, do not think that gives you license to tamper with your classmates’ cauldrons, however tempting. Any cheating will result in an automatic grade reduction,” she warned. “For the cumulative academic year.” She would not always give such warnings to students this old, who ought to know her rules by now, but it was the first class of the semester.

“After today, there will be no more access to fresh mandrake for this assignment. Please take care to cut and clean what you are allotted with precision.” Once the things were gutted and cut, there would be no more need for the earmuffs. The students would be in no danger when they came around to check on their cauldrons. “I suggest cutting the mandrakes first, but keep your earmuffs on for the entire lesson, as your classmates may not work at the same pace as you. The rest of the ingredients can be found in your potions kits and in the store cupboards.” She waved her wand and the double doors of a tall cabinet swung open. “You should keep notes as you work. You will be expected to hand in a report including the information on the board along with your sample and essay on the uses of the mandragora plant in potioneering.”

Mandrake Restorative Draught
Brewing Instructions - page 203 of your Potions manual

Uses _____________
Properties _________
Raw Ingredients ___________
Preparation ______________
Results Yielded _________
Final Comments _______________

Please tag your sample and hand it into the professor at the end of class on 10 September with your report. Essays will be due in class.

“Put on your earmuffs. Now,” she instructed with a pleasant authoritarian tone, and no room for argument.

She pulled on her own earmuffs, smaller and smarter than the ones she had given the students.  A complete soundproofing charm made it impossible for them to hear each other, let alone the hazardous material she planned to disperse. She was tempted to hex them to their heads, but that was something reserved for second or third years, and any student who could pass the O.W.L. should know better than disregard laboratory protocol. After double-checking that everyone was wearing theirs, eyes roaming the room swiftly, she waved her wand, summoning an airtight lock box of adult mandrakes. The harvesting was left to herbologists; Juliette was concerned with what came next.

She opened the lock box with a combination of charms and dispersed the mandrakes to the lab tables. Immediately, they began to cry. The soundproofing on the magic earmuffs meant that they may as well have been mimes. One particularly vicious little bastard tried to grab Juliette’s hair as it flew by toward a Slytherin. She stepped calmly aside.

Georgiana rather liked Potions. Of course, it was for tragically predictable reasons - they got to make interesting stuff, and when things went bad, they went delightfully bad. The first time a cauldron had exploded all over another student, the subject had won a quiet little place in her heart. And part of her still wanted to learn how to make potions into different types of grenade...

Non-dangerous ones, of course. But a grenade that turned everyone hit with it bright blue was harmless...and hilarious. Or maybe one that made them break out in warts...

She look her earmuffs without question, and held them in her mouth as she quickly pulled her long dark hair behind her and bound it in a ponytail. She might come out of this missing her eyebrows, but she'd rather keep her hair!

She looked around the room as Juliette spoke, mildly surprised at the size of the class. And they had the Hufflepuffs. Lovely. At least it wasn't the Ravenclaws; Merlin knew they'd never mess up. She was kind of disappointed not to see Sellaphix, however. For once.

Without anyone obvious to watch, she kept a quiet eye on members of her own house instead. She wasn't sure what an improperly brewed Mandrake drought did, but was eager to find out....

Earmuffs firmly in place, she leaned back as her mandrake flew to her desk. She reached for it - only to have it latch onto her hand, its puny arms and teeth having far more strength than she'd expected. She yelped, jumping in her seat, and started whacking it on the table. That didn't work, and so she hit it harder, then swung it through the air - hitting the person next to her in the side of the head.

"Sorry," she hissed, inaudibly, and leaned back, trying to hook one of her boots against the mandrake's head so she could pry it off.

Potions was a decent enough class, one that Xavier got good marks in but the surly Slytherin wasn't in it for the same reason many of his male peers were. Unlike most of the boys in the school Xavier didn't find Professor Vallaincourt all that attractive, sure she was pretty and all that but Xavier had always been partial to blondes. Which thankfully meant he had nothing to distract him while he worked with such delicate potions.

When instructed Xavier put his ear muffs on and was thankful for the vacuum of silence it created. He wasn't in a particularly bright mood and didn't really want to listen to the useless prattle his classmates might provide. Though judging by the class itself anything useless was likely to come from the Hufflepuffs rather than his own housemates.

Unfortunately the lack of noise didn't give him any indication about his surroundings and he soon found himself clocked in the side of the head with Trishna's mandrake. Normally he would have cussed her out for it but she wouldn't have been able to hear him anyway. Instead he turned to his fellow Slytherin, with his cutting knife in hand, and helped her separate the Mandrake from her hand, careful not to cut her in the process. When he was sure she was free he turned to his own mandrake and swiftly sliced off it's head then started to dice it up according to the Professor's instructions.

Elijah shifted on his seat, looking around the potions classroom. Being rather nervous, since this class was with only Slytherins and Hufflepuffs, especially because they outnumbered the Huffles, Elijah got a feint red color on his cheeks. How embarrassing. Looking around, inspecting everybody present, Elijah came across a tad frantic. And nervous. Trying to pull himself together Elijah shook his head, trying to focus on the teacher, who was explaining what their task was today. They had to begin to make the Mandrake Restorative Draught. Exciting first task! Especially because those buggers, the Mandrakes, could seriously hurt you with their screams.

Putting on his earmuffs, feeling quite silly, but eh, rather silly than hurt, Elijah prepared to cut down the ferocious plant beings. One of the Mandrakes flew towards him and Elijah awkwardly grabbed it out of the air, hoping all the movement would not shift his earmuffs. Holding down the mysterious creature Elijah lifted his knife. For some reason he felt some resentment cutting down the awful creature, but after a split second the knife already started moving down, reaching the screaming thing. In one cut Elijah had beheaded the creature, which was now laying silently in front of him. Sighing in relief, nothing went wrong, Elijah started cutting the Mandrake in slices, as the professor had told him. After this he would have to focus on the other task they were given: the report they had to make.

It was a rather easy task for Elijah as he had already read the whole potions book, but still, having to read again made his inside bubble a bit with joy.

Juliette's eyes swept the room once more. She allowed the students to adjust to the testy mandrakes, wand ready to intervene-- but that was only if things became particularly dire. For the moment, the mandrakes proved a nasty distraction, an animated ingredient that would need to be stifled and dissected (read: chopped to bits). It was not abnormal for an adult potioneer to have to do such things on a routine basis, nor was it unheard of to have to make a brew in a less controlled environment, at a moment's notice. These were necessary experiences for anyone who hoped for a top mark from the NEWT board. And if they were not, Juliette believed they should be, though she had not yet had the pleasure of poring over bureaucratic regulation with test-makers. She did look forward to the day.

Then a yelp, a jump, echoes of the same, and banging. Someone attempted to use a wand as a lever, only to have it backfire.

Of the half-dozen students now wrestling with or attempting to hex mandrakes into submission/captivity, Juliette zeroed in on the one[1] whose earmuffs were seconds from being tacked onto by a terribly unattractive and not particularly festive bobble in the form of a knobby, sour, banshee-throated root with hands a third the size of an infant’s and equally restless. A mandrake would have a hard time actually removing a pair of earmuffs, to be sure, least of all because they were magical earmuffs, even if they were not presently charmed in place. But the little beasts could cling for dear life; they could tear, bite, scratch, and wail with impressive endurance, and it was not always easy to remember one’s vital defenses when trying to be rid of such a pest.

So much for leaving Sticking Charms to the thirteen-year-olds.

For good measure, she locked the earmuffs into place of each of the students now struggling with a mandrake.

As Georgiana Trishna exhibited impressive nimbleness, heavy boot aiding in her struggle, Xavier Tawse fell into his housemate’s ingredient’s path of destruction. Juliette paused halfway between their table and the one she’d just left, watching with pensive approval and only the mildest doubt as Tawse drew a knife. One would have to get creative if this scenario were not taking place in a school laboratory. Why not let them have a taste?

And when Trishna’s mandrake seemed to be momentarily pried away from human flesh, the boy had the sense to behead his own. In her French heart of hearts, Juliette was pleased.

Other students did the same, including Elijah Young, whose conscientiousness nicely balanced others’ bloodlust. (Not that the students she’d monitored closely so far were hellbent on destruction so much as completing the task at hand, but there were a handful in this dungeon whom she would not put it past to leave imagining their enemies with the hostile little faces of mandrakes.)

Things calmed enough for Juliette to make her rounds with a careful, professorial eye. She lingered here and there, occasionally pointing her wand in the direction of a textbook, tapping its pages to draw the attention of the confused or panicky. The book was not the be-all, end-all of potions-making. In fact, she used much of her lecture time to provide extra or slightly varied information. But this was a practical assignment, not a lecture, and a wayward student’s best hope for a passing mark was to brew a potion that had some semblance of the one described in the pages. There were, of course, those who excelled at the essay-writing, but everyone in this classroom had at least enough of a natural gift or academic discipline to have passed their O.W.L.s.

1.	Assume this is an NPC, unless someone would like to fill the role!

With her earmuffs firmly in place and features composed into a neutral expression, Gracie held down her mandrake and promptly cut off its head.

If the girl was honest with herself, there was something about preparing anything remotely animal-like that both repulsed and. . . pleased her, if she ever bothered to look past the simple pleasure of a job well done; a childhood of watching one too many guttings (and then subsequently performing herself) had done its part in putting her off the entire business. She was skillful enough with a knife that she could impress a veteran, yes, but none too happy to pick one up at all—which wasn’t to say that she was the squeamish type or anything (because she wasn’t), but by no means was she like her grandfather, who had dedicated an entire wall to mounted animal heads of all shapes and sizes; the glassy, accusatory eyes of one reindeer in particular had been the cause of many childhood nightmares.

But, like her grandfather, there was no denying that sense of satisfaction from knowing she could do something and do it well. Craftsman’s pride, he’d called it, and although it wasn’t something Gracie was sure she’d ever apply to Potions, it was nice whenever she got an E. And she was pretty sure it wasn’t due to academic discipline, either.

With her root all cut up as per orders, Gracie took that moment in between to glance at her notes. . . and felt the all-too-heavy weight of something bump into her—classmate, as it turned out, that very same one Professor Vaillancourt had been eying just moments earlier. And he had almost sent her falling face-first into her cauldron.

Green eyes narrowed dangerously, she whirled on him, sorely tempted to boot his rear. But with Juliette as watchful as ever, however, the teenager merely shoved him away a little more roughly than necessary. Scowling, she turned back to her work, this time mindful to keep an eye on similarly struggling peers—like Trishna.

When the boy beside her was about to throw in the wrong ingredient next, Gracie wordlessly stilled his hand. With an amused grin, she moved it to the right one and gave it a pat, before focusing on her own cauldron again.

   

Huck was beat.

The first few days back at school had meant several things- for one, as he was now a prefect, he'd been expected to stalk the halls of the castle at ungodly hours of the night and still go to class the next morning. For another, there had been more than one, uh... less than entirely appropriate festivity which the boy had gladly attended. Upon further consideration, Huck decided that "beat" was less apropos of a term than, say... "halfway between hungover and dead." The beginning of the class had seen the boy slumped onto the surface of his table, leaning towards Gracie in the hopes that she'd pet his hair instead of pinching his ear and telling him to sit up.

He had scowled when Vaillancourt distributed the earmuffs. He knew what it meant. The boy had never quite been able to stomach the appearance of the mandrakes, and that was when he didn't even have to butcher one.

Oh well. The silence imposed by the earmuffs certainly made a quick nap easier to achieve.

His mandrake had smacked into the top of his head, waking him up with a start and causing him to jump out of his seat. The girlish shriek that escaped him was blessedly swallowed into the pervasive silence. Heart thudding wildly against his ribcage, he pried the bastard carefully away from his head- it wasn't much of a fighter, and Huck thanked his lucky stars (_{his Hucky stars?}) before sinking back to his chair.

Catching his breath was more of a challenge than it should have been. Exhausted, dull blue eyes with pitch-dark reddish-black circles growing bigger every day beneath them were squeezed into a fierce glare. "Ugly little shit," he snapped at the squeaming, squirming plant. It was one of the only occasions where he could effectively cuss a blue streak (or, more accurately, be himself) and not be yelled at. And he intended on taking full advantage of it.

He watched Xavier quietly, and felt something akin to either admiration or possibly intimidation. He worked with clinical precision, not even flinching while he severed the head off his mandrake. Looking down at his own unfriendly task, he took a deep breath. Nausea washed through him; his stomach was incredibly sensitive so it was certainly a feeling he was used to, but he had a feeling it had more to do with what he was doing.

Placing one weathered, black-and-blue mottled  and scar-riddled hand over the writhing creature, he tried to picture it with someone else's face. Vulpes Connor flitted across his mind momentarily but then he remembered that he was supposed to want to behead the thing, not smash its face into the floor. Finally he resigned himself to it. He put his hand firmly across the critter's head- it was easier if he didn't have to see its eerily human face- and pressed the tip of his knife to its throat. For someone that worked with ink and paint so often, one would expect Huck's form at this type of thing to be more delicate and precise. Quite the opposite, in fact. His cuts were often clunky and awkward, and everyone in his family dreaded when it was his turn to cook dinner as his soups were often bogged down with huge inedible chunks of vegetable and potato.

Holding the knife like a back-alley mugger, Huck squeezed his eyes tight and tried to pretend he didn't feel the squirming. Eyes shut and world deafened, he brought his knife down hard on the throat of the sad little creature. He didn't like them at all. Hated them, in fact. But for whatever reason, the whole thing horrified him.

Distracted by the nausea that threatened to overtake him, he started to grab whatever was nearby to dump in his potion. What was he doing? He had no idea. It wasn't until Gracie gently stirred his hand that he remembered where he was. He felt ice-cold beads of sweat running down his spine and collecting at his hairline. He mouthed the word 'thanks' to her with a weak smile and a shrug.

Turning back to his almost-botched potion, he took gulping breaths. Usually to settle his stomach he'd breathe through his nose, but he was worried that a whiff of the mandrake would be enough to send his whole digestive system in reverse.

White as a sheet and now sweating considerably more than before, he moved to the ingredient Gracie had directed him towards and tried his best to steady his knife. His hands were less than cooperative and the strength needed to properly grip the handle of the blade seemed to have escaped him.

Vulpes was the last person to enter the potions dungeon and did his best to set himself up on the entire other side of the room, in the back, as far away has he could from the other Slytherins. Especially away from Huxley. The two hadn't really spoken since their little incident on the Express at the end of last term, but it didn't take a genius to figure there was still bad blood between the two. So far none of the Slytherins had bothered him, much, but Vulpes still made it a habit of avoiding them as much as possible. He went to bed last in his dorm and got up first, avoiding everyone and making sure everything he wanted was securely stored in his trunk which he then locked and charmed to be small enough to hide in a small pouch under his mattress.

However, even though he absolutely hated being stuck with the Slytherins, he had to admit something good came from it. And today's specific lesson certainly helped with that. Normally he'd be listening to music, or something, just loud enough for him to hear. Which would distract him just enough to completely ruin his potion or for someone to help him out. How he managed an E on his OWL was astounding. But because of today's earmuffs and the total isolation, Vulpes was actually managing to do his work properly. Even the beheading of the mandrake didn't bother him, which was rather strange and made Vulpes seem rather out of place as nearly everyone else seemed to feel unpleasant at the task. If their faces were any indicator. Strange that he felt nothing. And with all that done he simply continued on carefully with the steps.

Still, he wished Aurora at least was here.