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Class Roster

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Kella Carmody

+1

+4

Roland Dylanis

+1

+3

Wynter Frost

Sophia Knight

+1

+2

Paetyn Harper

+1

+1

Alice Hunter

Eilionoir McEachern

Violet Ostrander

+1

+4

Annette Lotusorder

Aoife Moffett

Thales Rivers

Frank Sellaphix

+1

+1 / -2

John Windell

+1

+1 / -5

Margita Gajos

Lucas Trumble

Noah Archer

Chaya Weismann

Antonia Carbonell

Sybil Lee

"Come now!  Stay together!  No.  No, I wouldn't touch that."  Deaglan waved a hand absently at the first year, just as the lad started reaching for the seemingly dormant stem.  The young man was bound to learn his lesson, one way or the other.  Either he'd listen or, despite appearing unassuming for the season, the nettle would teach the lad to listen. 

"You all remembered your notes, yes?"

Since the start of the term, the class had been focusing on their local, regional flora.  Those (relatively) low risk plants, fungi and herbs that could be found both inside the greenhouses and out on the lawns and in the forests.  The first couple weeks they'd concentrated on the book knowledge of the care of these plants: watering instructions, thinning and weeding recommendations and harvesting protocols. 

Today, they were off on a scavenger hunt.  With leaves and roots dormant for the winter, it was an optimal time to find specimens for transplanting into the greenhouses. 

"Don't forget those notes on pests.  These are not clean, pristine little plants that have known nothing but glass ceilings and consistent temperatures.  Their wild.  Remember!  If just one of you sneaks a larvae-laying fanged aphid in on their transplant, all of your new leafy friends will be mere sticks by midterm!" 

Deaglan came to a stop and surveyed his collection of charges.  Bergin, the lurcher, stopped a short distance from the group and flopped against the base of a tree, seemingly uninterested in the whole affair.  "Now, first on the list.  With your partner, find a thistle.  Remember, it won't have it's characteristic spikey leaves.  Keep an eye out for the old, dried flower bulb.  Once you find it, use your trowels to dig around it until you've freed the whole root ball.  Then, bring your specimen back for your next assignment."

He smirked at the group.  "Did I mention, there's a prize for the pair that gets through the list first?  Without mangled roots!"   

Exploring the Spear Thistle's natural habitat, are we, Roland Dylanis thought for a moment as he fanned out from the class on his own after the professor gave instruction to search. The boy kept mainly to himself, as he knew he could operate faster on his own, plus the reward would be all his if he could complete this short hunt by his lonesome! With his curved steel-and-silver dagger in one hand and his cherrywood wand in the other, Rou knew that correctly identifying the plant would take a bit of doing considering that they were hunting for these plants in the dead of a British winter. At the very least, in any case, there wasn't much snow on the ground to complicate his search further.

Having pulled a dragonhide glove onto his right hand, holding his wand, while his bare left hand held the dagger, Rou kept an eye out for that characteristic flower bulb that thistles had, even after they'd died in the frost due to hibernation. A decent-sized specimen of thistle eventually caught Rou's eye after he spotted a small flock of ten goldfinches, one of the groups that did not migrate, pass overhead and attempt to dig what seeds remained from the plant. When the birds found none and passed on, Rou moved in and immediately began to probe the plant just to make sure, scraping a bit of the remaining leaf stubs from the plant using his dagger and then checking the texture by rolling the small plant matter in his gloved hand to avoid irritation on his bare skin. Sticking his wand and dagger into the closed flower bulb to open it up and check the inside for the textbook's identifying characteristics, Rou eventually put both of them away and took out his gardening trowel after pulling his other dragonhide glove onto his left hand.

Roland briefly probed the earth around the plant in order to get a feel for the size and shape of the root bulb and then began sifting the dirt in order to expose the top. Once that was done, Roland began to dig into the earth around the roots in order to guarantee the least amount of damage to the plant. Hibernating plants could be as sensitive as hibernating animals, in some cases.

Seeing nice,green plants in the winter was so...unusual. It didn't make sense in Jack's eyes. During spring and summer, plants grew and did what they felt like doing. During the fall they obviously go into hibernation then in winter they DIE.

After casting his dilemma aside, Jack heard something about a prize for finishing first. He had no idea what it meant until after seeing the list in the professors hand. Then Jack heard pairs as in partners. Before completely embarrassing himself Jack raised his voice a little from all the chatter fluttering around,"Do we choose our partners or are they assigned?"

Frank loved Herbology.  Much of it was due to feeling like he'd come in a bit ahead, seeing as his mum was a Herbologist and his dad an Apothecary.  He felt very confident indeed around plants and planty things.  That and while he missed Professor Longbottom, he'd become fascinated by the new Professor MacDonough and his strange, slow way of talking, and his seemingly infinite flow of trivia and tidbits of interesting information not found in books.  Frank wanted little else than to impress him.

The prospect of a prize was even more a motivation.  With his dragon hide gloves on, his hat pulled down over his ears, and his notes and tools bundled up in his arms, Frank hurried forward to a little ditch nearby a wall.  He'd seen thistle there last spring.

"Jack! C'mon!"  Frank shouted at the Hufflepuff to follow him - he wasn't moving nearly fast enough if they were going to win.  Frank crept along the low wall, looking for a sign of a sleeping thistle among the brown grasses and sticky bushes and twigs.  Without the bright purple flower and big spiky leaves, it would be tricky to spot a thistle.

"Found one!" he shouted, forgetting he might do better if he kept the information to himself.  He dropped to his knees, and set his things on the ground.  With his gloved hands, he began to push aside the dead leaves around the plant to expose the cold cold ground.  A giant fat cricket hopped away when its hiding place was exposed, and a worm sucked itself back into the ground.

Where Frank might have loved Herbology, Sophia did not. She passed the class, did well enough to get a high mark, but when it came to tromping around through the tall weeds to find the plants for their potions she failed miserably. Hiking was one thing, on a path, collected and easy, the beaten path already carved out for them. Sometimes she could even stand to do a bit of gardening, and it wasn't that she didn't mind her hands getting dirty or even her hem. No, Sophia Knight wasn't such a girl that she dare never set foot outside, she simply hated the critters that had more than four legs.

The giant fat cricket, unsettled by Frank Sellaphix had Sophia squealing as she swore it came for her. With the cricket hot on her trail, she lifted her skirts and ran behind the Professor.

Kella had grown up with so called “plant people,” but that didn't make her any kind of plant whisperer. In fact, she was far more likely to get caught accidentally treading on top of a garden plot than kneeling down to smell the flowers themselves. Her father thought it was great that she was developing a foundation of botanical knowledge, seeing as her father taught plants himself, but to students a handful of years older than Kella. Plants had always fallen into that vague category of “boring grownup stuff that parents bond over,” so she hadn't started the school year with much special knowledge, or even a piqued interest. More often than not, plants made her sneeze. Any class that didn't require time behind a desk was definitely the hufflepuff girl's cup of tea, however, and she was perfectly happy to take a romp on the grounds on this chilly day.

Her notes were a mess. Kella's notes were always a mess, though, so that should not have been surprising. They were a sloppy, incomplete jumble of words and splotches that didn't even make sense to her. She'd brought them along anyway, since she'd been told to, though referencing them was likely to do more harm than good. She held her whole notebook in one hand at her side while she scanned the ground, which just looked like the ground to her. “Everything just looks dead!” she exclaimed to nobody in particular as she kicked a rock aside with the side of her foot. It would take her a while to really zero in on the task at hand – first she had to get used to the blessed freedom of the world beyond the classroom! The novelty had not yet worn off.

When Frank called out that he'd already found a thistle, the girl couldn't help but to make her way over to where he was crouched, kicking her rock along as she went. It couldn't hurt to get a little hint by just taking a peek at what his looked like – all she was supposed to do was find one, right? They were lucky they had this class with the Ravenclaws, she thought. They knew everything. She stuck her head down by Frank's shoulder, right where it didn't belong, trying to figure out what made his dead plant special when compared to the million other dead plants they were all stepping on top of. She glanced at Sophia mildly, shrugged, and went back to the plant. “Make sure it has no bugs on it. That's what he said,” she reminded the boys. That had seemed like a far easier task before she realized how easy it was to wake up a million nasty insects every time they went digging.

Rou came back the small, gathered group of Kella, Frank, and the others with his meticulously-unearthed thistle in both gloved hands. As an extra precaution, the boy wrapped the bulb-root in parchment so as to avoid any further loss of soil and harm to the roots, as a good, unharmed root was part of the scavenger hunt. Briefly observing his classmates, he saw Kella explicitly avoiding doing any of the hard work while seemingly taking credit for Frank's efforts. A small smirk played on the young Hufflepuff's face as he snarked a bit to himself.

"Taking the credit with none of the effort, eh?" Roland sardonically muttered to himself, though it was definitely a bit louder than his normal muttering tone. If she heard it or not, Rou wasn't concerned. Brits, he thought to himself.

 The boy made his way over to Professor McDonough nearby and held out the wrapped thistle he'd dug up, the small smile on his face conferring his thoughts.

”Taking the credit with none of the effort, eh?”

“What?” Kella asked, straightening up and turning to face Roland, her eyes squinted in purest confusion. What was she taking credit for, exactly? Did he think she was taking credit for telling Frank to check his plant for bugs? She wasn't taking credit for that! She was just saying it – because of,well, the bug! The teacher had said to make sure there weren't bugs, hadn't he? When she found her thistle she'd check it for bugs, too, because they were supposed to!

She stared at the other Hufflepuff for a moment, blinking, but he didn't stick around to explain himself. He just walked away, just like that! She took a few brash steps toward him, but she didn't really know what she intended to do if she reached him, so she paused, looking a touch cross. “What are you talking about?” she called to him, not really expecting an answer.

What was he doing... heading for the teacher? Was he going to tattle on her? For what? Grumpily, Kella trudged back over to where the other boys were huddled, with the thistle and the bugs. “Do you know what? He's trying to get me in trouble,” she confided in them, whether they wanted to be confided in or not. She bent down to pick up the rock she'd been kicking and jammed it into the palm of the hand that was holding her notebook. “If the professor asks, can you tell him I didn't do anything?” she asked as she began searching for a thistle that looked something like the one the boys had found. She didn't care much for tattletales, but she didn't particularly want to get in trouble for no reason, either. That was just common sense! 

Despite minding the Professor's instructions about dressing for the weather, wearing her heaviest wool tights and a warm shirt under, and a wool cloak over her school robes, Violet was cold, and her nose was running.  She'd become rather used to California winters, and their first year back, she'd remained sensibly indoors.  But learning was learning, and winter was the best time to dig up plants for transplanting - since they weren't growing they had a much better chance even if you nicked a few roots.

As was her habit whenever a Professor gave them a task for pairs or groups without actually assigning them, she just went ahead and started doing the assignment.  As often as not a slacker-type would glom onto her, but she didn't mind one way or another.  Violet gamely tromped off in a direction no one had chosen yet; there was no sense fighting over thistles, they where everywhere out here.  Sure enough she saw one, though she carefully double-checked its appearance against the drawing in her notes to be sure.

The Ravenclaw knelt down, but before reaching for her trowel, extracted a small ruler from her bag and measured the width of the stem.  Her eyes tipped skyward for a moment as she did some mental math, then carefully measured out the proportional distance away from the stem in several directions - plus ten percent for caution - so as to avoid cutting any roots, marking it with her trowel.  Finally, she removed one of the small woven bags from the transplant kit they'd been told to bring and rolled it open until it sat flat next to her, waiting to receive the plant.  Violet went over the steps once more in her head, then nodded to herself and only then began to dig where she'd marked levering the trowel carefully to lightly compress the earth towards the plant to hold the root ball together.

Roland rolled by with a suave remark, as usual, and it sent Kella into a fit.  Frank's response to Kella was only, "He's weird." 

Frank was usually pretty sensitive about others cheating off him in school, but Kella'd just been watching, so he hadn't been bothered.  In fact, he had enough good will to point out that Violet Ostrander didn't yet have a partner and had already found a thistle.

"Oh hey - go be in Violet's group."

With Jack at his side, Frank and him were able to get their thistle bundled up more or less how Professor McDonough wanted.  He trotted up after Roland to deliver the sleeping thistle.

"What's next?" he asked, breathless for some reason.

Were all boys this annoying, or just the ones she knew? When they weren't busy making nonsense remarks about cheating it seemed like they were brushing her off! Kella shrugged her shoulders and, with a clipped but generally positive “Okay!” she skipped off in search of the aforementioned Ravenclaw. On a scale of One to Smart, Frank was maybe an eight, but Violet topped off somewhere around infinity, and she was a bit surprised to learn that nobody had wanted to be partners with her. Granted, Kella probably wouldn't want to be partners with her in flying class, but Herbology was fine.

“Hey!” she called out as she trotted over to join her ginger haired classmate, the pages of her notebook flapping carelessly as she dashed along. “Hey, Violet?” she asked once she reached her, “Hey, he said you don't have a partner, so do you want to be my partner? I didn't find one yet,” she explained, shifting her weight from foot to foot. “A thistle or a partner,” she added, to clarify. She didn't have either one yet, but she seemed to have them both in the bag, as she wasn't really giving Violet much of a choice in the matter.  Why would she want to work alone anyway?

Kella squinted at her. “We're supposed to measure them?” she asked, noticing her ruler. She turned her head and looked back toward the professor, then whipped it back around again, unconvinced. “I thought we were supposed to just dig them up...” she suggested cautiously, taking a step closer. She bent over at the waist to stick her head where she could see what her classmate was doing. Eh. She seemed to have a method, at least! That was good enough for her!

Paetyn’s gloved hand snapped back quickly at the reprimand from their professor. What was he thinking letting them around plants that could eat you?!? The magical world was so dangerous. People wanted him to fly and cut open his body and now they wanted him to get eaten by wizard eating plants?!? NOT cool. The smile that had been plastered to the Hufflepuff’s face slid off and left a rather dour frown there instead.

Of course, the frown couldn’t possibly last long, even with the shivers that wracked Paetyn’s tiny frame. Class was outside today, and goodness knows that they’d been cooped up in the castle for way too long. A day on the grounds was exactly what the healer ordered! And even though Paetyn was freezing his little buns off, he just couldn’t help but be excited.

As Old Man McDonough started chatting about notes and partners and plants, Paetyn tuned out, much as he always did. Talking was just so booooooooooring unless Paetyn was the one doing the talking (duh!), which could be why all his notes consisted of letters to the queen, asking her if he could come be a prince, and doodles of Paetyn wearing a crown. Granted, Paetyn’s artistic talents ended with stick figures, so there wasn’t much to work with.

Of all his classes, however, Herbology was one of Paetyn’s favorites. Getting to play in the dirt was just awesome, and even though they were only looking for a thistle – it could still be fun… right? What was a thistle, again? Paetyn couldn’t remember what a dormant one of those thingies looked like, so he sidled up next to a Ravenclaw that seemed to know what they were doing, and when he figured out that said Ravenclaw actually had no clue what they were doing… Paetyn moved on, with an excuse of being allergic to the Ravenclaw’s shoelaces.

A fake sneeze or two later, and Paetyn found himself right up next to Kella and Violet. “Hey, Carmody, be careful, if you sneeze you might blow the thistle to pieces! This little eagle looks like she’s smart. She’s already found a thistle! Want me to help dig it up? I’m a good digger. What’s that ruler for? You need to make sure you got a bigger one than the other people? I don’t think the professor said anything about having the biggest, but it couldn’t help… right? Want me to go measure the other people’s ones? I can do it real secret like. I’m a good sneaker. Hey, can I be your partner too?” Paetyn smiled his little smiley smile and looked at Violet and Kella in his most pouty face – the one that always got the Hufflepuff extra dessert back home.

Violet looked up as Kella - from the 'mysterious package mystery of mysteriousness' affair on Monday - came bouncing over with spirited hails.

"Hello, Kella," she said calmly, after the Hufflepuff had given her an opening.  She'd decided a while ago that the thing to do with Kella was be as calm as possible, as a counterbalance.  Violet noted that the girl had used a pronoun without a referent ('he'), but decided it wouldn't be productive in this case to point it out and simply answered her questions politely.  "No, I don't have a partner yet.  And sure, you may be my partner."

When Kella asked about the ruler, Violet shrugged.  "Not exactly.  The Professor gave us a good distance for thistles in his lecture, but there's actually a gener-"  She was interrupted as another Hufflepuff sidled up to them and fired off a barrage of questions.  Violet looked at the boy.  Hair so teased it looks like it's trying to escape his scalp...pate...Paetyn.

"Hello, Paetyn," she said, even more calmly.  If any more Hufflepuffs joined in, she'd have to get so Zen to balance the enthusiasm that she might actually start levitating and radiating Inner Peace.  The fact that, given where she was, this wasn't as much of a joke as it ought to have been made the Ravenclaw sigh mentally.  "I've actually just agreed to be Kella's partner, though if there are an odd number of students, I'm sure the Professor would rather we work as a group of three than have someone work alone."  She tilted her head.  "Though we'd have to disqualify ourselves for the prize, since that wouldn't be fair.  In any case, yes, you may help dig - carefully - like this."  Violet briefly demonstrated her technique to Paetyn.

"About the measuring, there's a general procedure for transplanting.  The larger a plant is, the more - and longer, and deeper - roots it needs to get enough water and nutrients.  So a small plant will have shorter roots, and a larger plant will have roots further out," she explained, spreading her hands back and forth, illustrating the concept.  "So, that turns out to be a linear relationship that holds across most hard-stemmed species-"  Violet paused, peering at the faces of her little class of two, and wondered if these two were ready for the concept of ratios and proportions.  She thought Paetyn was muggleborn like her, and vaguely recalled hearing that Kella had been muggle-raised, which left them better off than most students, but she had only a fuzzy idea of what age muggle children normally learned those concepts - Violet had been three, herself.

"It's 'Arithmancy'," she said, simplifying her explanation with a shrug.  "If you measure the width of the stem - or trunk - and multiply that by a certain number, you'll how how far out and down the roots have probably spread."

“Good!” Kella said brightly once Violet had officially agreed to be her partner, learning in a little closer toward the other girl's thistle – which was now her thistle, too! “Hey, I'll find the next one, if you want,” she offered, now that they were officially in cahoots. It was only fair, since she'd been kind of slow with the whole thistle thing, and wasn't really much help now. She really wasn't completely hopeless when it came to plants, but dormant ones were definitely trickier, and she wasn't yet in a remotely academic mindset, which made this whole exercise doubly challenging for the scatterbrained Hufflepuff.

The sudden appearance of Paetyn at her back didn't make focusing on schoolwork any easier. “I usually only sneeze in the greenhouse, so don't worry,” she informed him, skipping the greeting all together. She was used to Paetyn's brand of exuberance which was, if possible, even more severe than her own, and seemed to perk up at his very presence. Meanwhile, Violet seemed unaffected. How did she manage to stay so focused? Kella herself had already mostly forgotten the majority of what Paetyn had said since he'd arrived, so it was good that the other girl was around to address his chaotic deluge of words in her very measured way. “You can be our partner anyway. I don't care if I win, do you?” she asked, shrugging. Of all of the contests in the world she might have wanted to win, a herbology contest was pretty far down at the bottom of the list, even if Violet's big old brain was enough to potentially put them in the running. She wouldn't have had a prayer on her own.

Meanwhile, Violet was demonstrating her brilliance in the form of a lecture, which had Kella staring at her hypnotically with her big, buggy blue eyes. She was able to follow most of what she'd said, believe it or not, but she wasn't entirely sure why the girl was saying it, since all Paetyn had asked was whether she was trying to find the biggest one. She could have just said no! “Big plants have big roots, right?” she asked, condensing her entire speech into a five word utterance. “It's like how tall people have bigger feet. It's the same thing. I know that, trust me. I have older brothers,” she confided with a chuckle, still not doing anything but parroting back the lecture and watching as her other two partners took care of their task.

”It's 'Arithmancy'. If you measure the width of the stem - or trunk - and multiply that by a certain number, you'll how how far out and down the roots have probably spread.”

“Arithmancy is about plants?” she asked, pausing in her snooping to look up perplexedly. “I never knew that. All of the electives here are a bit daft, aren't they?” she asked, wrinkling her nose, but once her nose had unwrinkled she seemed to have already let it go. Maybe she'd care more about electives once she was old enough to take them, but currently she was dreading having to pick any of them. It was like being asked if she'd rather eat a rock or a stick, or when the doctor asked which arm she wanted stuck with a needle. It didn't matter, did it? There were no good choices!

Feeling extra useless, Kella came to sit on the ground, watching Paetyn go to work on their specimen. She sniffled, her pink nose having gone mostly numb from the cold. “Remember, we have to check for bugs,” she reminded him, repeating the one bit of wisdom she'd actually managed to pick up since class had begun. “Maybe I can do that part.”

Most of the students split off into pairs with noses to the ground in search of the humble and currently dormant thistle.  As the youngsters set about to their business, Deaglan wandered between them, watching their progress and their individual approaches to the assignment.  Some dived straight in while others seemed unsure about the prospects of getting their hands dirty.  Deaglan couldn't help a hint of sympathy for the youngsters that could be counted amongst the second group.  They were going to have a long five years in his class before they could opt out.  And their hands were only going to get messier. 

"You can choose your own partners," Deaglan reassured Windell moments before Sellaphix called him to join.  "And, I can see some of you are choosing to work alone.  You're welcome to do so and it won't affect your marks for the class.  But, the rules are the rules.  The prize only goes to the pair that finishes first."  Collaboration brought many benefits that couldn't be achieved alone and Deaglan firmly believed learning those skills would only help these kids.  Efficiency, though, was very often not one of those benefits. 

Both Dylanis and Sellaphix, it seemed, had spotted specimens of the plant.  "Good lads!"  Deaglan praised as he started towards them.  He was eager to watch how the young fellows tackled extracting the plants but he hadn't taken two strides before Knight screamed and ducked behind it. 

"Now, goodness.  What's all this about?"  Deaglan turned towards the Ravenclaw and crouched down to her level.  From his vantage, he hadn't spotted the offending cricket but the girl's shriek had had that characteristic eww-creepy-crawly ring to it. 

Deaglan spared a quick glance at the other students, just in case this was a diversion for mischief-making.  Two Hufflepuffs were over towards one side, watching a Ravenclaw at their work.  He turned to Dylanis and Sellaphix and surveyed their finds.  "Very good.  Nice preservation of the roots.  As long as your gentle with them, most will transplant quite nicely. The next one will be a bit more challenging.  There are whortleberry plants in these forests though, remember, they tend to prefer the sun.  Look for clear patches and be sure to find a specimen small enough to transplant."

Having sent the lads off on their next task, Deaglan turned back to Knight.  "Now.  Let's see what we can find, yes?  We'll start with the first step.  Let's find a thistle."