Class Roster
►Gibbon, Gloria √
►Pepper, Ambrose √ (D) (Ø) -5
►Taylor, Lua

►Lemon, Angie
►McBoid, Moira
►Oliver, Winifred
►Pepper, Zeta

►Hayes, Luca √ +2
►Norling, Alvis √
►Rockwell, Addison √ +5
►Todd, Connor √ (D) -17
►Trishna, Cyhirae √ (Ø) -10
►Watkins, Kelvin √ (Ø) -10

►Báthory, Amara √ (D) +5
►Dark, Erin √
►Morrell, Esther √ +23
►O'Doherty, Casey √
►Stone, Lovella √ +10
(D): detention; (Ø): zero mark; +/-: points

It was Lucrezia's first meeting with the fourth years and to say that she was highly suspicious of the bunch was a mild thing to say. She had no idea what they've been taught so far and fourteen year old teenagers were a rather obnoxious concept in theory, so she wanted to make sure they wouldn't get off on the wrong foot. By which, she meant she'd be making their first lesson together truly memorable.

Which is why, out of her entire syllabus[1] she chose none other than Draught of Peace. It was a ridiculously difficult potion to make and the consequences of failing to brew it correctly could be catastrophic, but it wasn't as if she expected more than three or four successful batches. It would do the students well to realize as soon as possible, that Potions, from hereon, was not going to be walk in the park.

Leaning on the desk with arms crossed, Lucrezia was overseeing the cluster of small round tables scattered across the classroom with a perfectly disinterested face. Each table was positioned so she could see each student working from all corners of the room, but especially from her desk. Once the students started pouring in through the open doors, she got up and started pacing the front of the class with small, determined steps.

--

"Assume your places. Three or four to a table, one per each cauldron" she started in a firm tone, eyes passing swiftly from a table to another. "My name is Lucrezia Agnese Di Luca. Starting today, you will be studying Potions under my tutelage" she continued in a clipped voice, turning to walk around the tables, eyes going over each student with a displeased expression. "You will address me as Professor Di Luca or, simply, Professor." Merlin forbid she ever heard a m'am or madam out of anybody, student or otherwise.

"Class starts ten minutes after the hour or half hour; if you are not in class by that time, you best remain outside. Tardiness will not be tolerated" she said the last words slowly and with an almost annoyed tone. "Side-conversation is strictly forbidden and engaging in such activities will have consequences. Disruptive behavior and insolence will result in immediate detention." She took the time to smile to herself, thinking of the many creative detentions she was just waiting to impart.

She changed direction again and walked straight to the desk, seating herself on the corner with her hands clutching the edge. "As you may see on the board, today's lesson is Draught of Peace. However, while you brew, I will also address questions of a general nature as to asses your potions knowledge so far" she pointed her words with a small satisfied smile. "Please state your name when you are answering a question" she quickly added with a frown. The amount of names she'd have to memorize was useless occupation of her mind space. "Directions can be found on the board or in your textbooks. While this assignment is individual, any potentially dangerous accidents will have consequences on the entire table. An accomplished potioneer must pay attention to all possible outside reactive factors."

"One student from each table will enter the storeroom and retrieve the ingredients necessary for your table colleagues. You are not entitled to a second trip and any waste will result in point loss."  She thought it a good lesson in frugality and it would also serve to get the students familiar with the storeroom for their term projects. "Ingredients are organized alphabetically, by state of matter and rarity. I must warn you, if you attempt to remove anything else from the storeroom, I will be notified" she advised dangerously. "Take your scales and get to work" she pointed to a door at the left of the classroom.

"Now," she turned to look at the rest of the class, disinterestedly checking her manicure "what are the ingredients for Wiggenweld Potion?"

Draught of Peace

Ingredients
Water 250ml
Powdered moonstone 1.7oz
Powdered porcupine quills 3.5oz
Powdered unicorn horn 2.6oz
Syrup of hellebore 2.5oz

Preparation
1. Set your water-filled cauldron over a medium flame and wait until it reaches boiling point.
2. While you wait, prepare your perishable ingredients. Using mortar and pestle, grind the moonstone, porcupine quills and unicorn horn into a fine powder.
3. Once the water is boiling, lower the flame and add your powdered moonstone by sprinkling it over the cauldron in circular motions. Leave untouched for five minutes, until the content of your cauldron turns a light blue.
4. When the moonstone has settled, add powdered porcupine quills repeating the circular motion above. Stir two times clockwise and leave to react for fifteen minutes. Color should deepen.
5. Turn your flame to the highest point and immediately add in the powdered unicorn horn in one swift motion.
6. Carefully stir the potion seven times clockwise and seven times counter-clockwise, making sure your potion does not boil over. Lower the temperature to a minimum and leave to simmer for seven minutes.
7. Add the syrup of hellebore by carefully ladling it in. When your brew is finished, it will turn a turquoise color and start emitting a silvery vapor.

---

* Assume your character is on time and present. If the character has reasons for being late, please notify me via PM.
* If you are a new student or if your character is not on the roster, please go ahead with posting and notify me via PM to modify the roster.
* The potion instructions[2] have been adapted for realism and to avoid conflicting information with canon information from the books.

1.	General information on how the class will be conducted under Lucrezia may be found here.
2.	As found on the Draught of Peace wiki page

Ambrose smelled of animals, he'd just jogged from COMC, where he tended to linger, staring at things, and had just met Professor Locksley. He'd almost forgotten the hubbub from the other students about a new Potions professor until he skittered into his lesson and took a first look at the woman.

She was thin, with dark hair, dark eyes and didn't look like she was welcoming them all with the grin of Locksley but looked like she had attended the Storm and Austerlitz school of teaching. Ambrose considered climbing under the desk on arrival.

"One student from each table will enter the storeroom and retrieve the ingredients necessary for your table colleagues. You are not entitled to a second trip and any waste will result in point loss."

Ambrose and his counterparts on the same table exchanged looks and all mutually decided that Pepper was not their elected party to enter the storeroom. They wanted to actually pass this lesson with a decent mark.

Ingredients for Wiggenweld Potion? Ambrose bit his lip and tried to recall anything about that at all from the chasms of his memory. Instead it was mostly filled with things about kelpies and whatnot from the previous lesson.

Under his desk he slid his potions text book out of his bag and leafed through to the index between his knees, looking down ever so unsubtly to try and find which chapter it was in, let alone what it did. His tongue poked out the corner of his mouth as his fingers clumsily grasped the book cover, and just as he leafed through to a possible page it slipped through his fingers and hit the ground on its side with a loud kerflap.

Ambrose froze, shoulders hunched, hands still between his knees, and the words "Ambrose Pepper, Gryffindor," were in his throat, almost ready to shriek them before the words "Detention, Pepper, eleven years," fell from the new professor's lips - at least in Pepper's imagination, they were.

Potion's Mistress. That title alone always made Alvis nervous, to say nothing of feeling out the new occupant of the position. Why was it that the Potions instructors were never simply Professor or Madam, they were always Master and Mistress? It added a whole new level of stress to their classes, as though failure would invoke corporal punishment alongside a poor letter grade.

Not that Alvis had to worry overly about failure in this particular field. It wasn't one of his passions, but he remained at his core a craftsman, which meant steady hands, a trained attention to detail and a healthy sense for measurements. His own dabbling in concoctions of exceptional volatility ensured the utmost care in his potion work, netting him a respectable E on the average day of work.

He snagged a spot towards the end of one table, right against the wall where it would be trickier to get out, but also meant he'd only have to share elbow room with one classmate. Leaving someone with more access to gather the supplies, he pulled out his book and tools, focusing on what the Professor was saying rather than anything around him. In the silence after the question, someone dropped their book with a noisy clatter. He didn't look up. The various ingredients for the requested potion bubbled up in his mind. He raised his hand.

"Alvis Norling, ma'am." Not realizing the title could offend, he licked his lips and stared intently at the table. "There are a-approximately fourteen ingredients in the Wiggenweld Potion, including horklump juice, chizpurfle fangs, salamander blood, wolfsbane, and a bit of mint. Some adjustments in the ingredient ratio and the addition of octopus powder creates a Grand Wiggenweld, increasing the potion's effectiveness by an average of forty-eight per cent."

Uncovering the Drought of Peace recipe in his book, he double-checked to make sure the recipes matched -- they did -- before dropping his gaze again, keeping his head down and his eyes on his work. The more he blocked out what was going on around him and focused on the potion, the better his results were liable to be.

Potions with a new Professor. The classes always seemed to change hands so fast. A new Professor meant having to learn how him or her wanted the class to run. It was never strictly the way the curriculum was set. No. Each Professor had a different set of rules and expectations of them. Addison liked Potions. It was just that the class became harder when trying to balance and change from the different expectations.

Taking a seat in the middle of the room, off to the side, Addison quietly paid attention as Professor Di Luca started rambling off. Apparently, she was going to ask them questions about other things while brewing their Potions. Was this meant to trick them up? Only time would tell, and a careful mind not to trip up. First impressions were always important, and this Professor was taking that notion to a different extreme.

Looking over at her peers sitting at the table with her, Addison quietly decided to obtain the necessary ingredients for the table. That meant she would only be allowed one trip. Any sort of waste meant house point loss.

Quietly, she quickly entered the vast storeroom for the supplies. Diverting her eyes, Addison made any simple calculations in her mind. She gathered the supplies just as quickly as she thought about how much was needed. Within a few minutes, she walked out of the storeroom carefully with the supplies for her table.

Setting the ingredients down on her table, she quickly divided up the ingredients for the peers that she sitting with accurately. Addison didn't mind the measurements, considering how much it reminded her of muggle math. Taking her own equal share, she sat back down at her cauldron. Quietly, she prepared the cauldron and turned on a medium flame. Her mortar was out, and already starting to pestle the moonstone.

As far as first impressions went Di Luca could be summed up thusly: hardened taskmaster. Not that this would make Casey complain. At least strict professors had standards and thus predictability. Soft teachers may be easy to impress but sometimes they just did weird things (just about any moment with Professor Gale or Professor Jowd's pensieve pool came to mind). Although Potions was not going to be easy for Casey, stuck in a clammy dungeon with the fumes and substances of various things lining up to play havoc with his stamina.

Casey didn't even care about the Draught of Peace that much. Calmed down someone suffering agitation and anxiety. Casey never got that anxious, plus a small degree of stress ensured you were acting at your best focus. And even if someone was agitated you had to get them to drink it. It was also incredibly complex to make, requiring perfectly timed steps as the potion covered every color of the spectrum, making it a challenge as close to identifying the a troll as Mountain, Forest, or River dwelling by the color of its blood sample.

That was why it was important to know someone whose mind space was dedicated to these categories of detail you yourself didn't know all that well, such as Alvis next to Casey's shoulder listing of several ingredients of Wiggenweld potion. Casey also reexamined Di Luca's teaching style by this point, predicting that a majority of her lessons took notes from mental stress evaluations the Auror Office might use.

"Casey O'Doherty. And Wiggentree bark, obviously." With the minimal vocal effort for the class began the arduous process of the potion preparation. A task further slowed by the state of his hands which looked like they had been manicured soaked in Swelling Solution on account of the layers of gloves.  With his sleeves tucked into the bottom pair, Casey required two kinds of gloves before he could even put on Dragonhide gloves, as both the ingredients of the potion and the method of protection could give him aggravating skin conditions amongst other things. And not the kind of aggravation Draught of Peace was going to soothe.

A girl from Ravenclaw was the first to walk to the storeroom, and Lucrezia made a mental note to find out her name by the end of the class. It took a certain type of courage and belief in your own skills to put yourself out there in such a way. For a moment, just a moment, the Potions Mistress was going to nod satisfied to herself, thinking this class wouldn't be so bad after all. Obviously, her dreams were soon shattered.

Lucrezia's gaze swiftly fell on the book sprawled open on the floor, and with a swish of her wand the book floated into the air, closed itself and settled back on the desk of its owner. If she'd wanted an oral delivery from the textbook, the books on her desk could've offered the information in a matter of minutes. She could tell immediately the boy would be a nuisance, but, nonetheless her eyebrow arched in time with the corner of her lips, forming a displeased, if interested expression. "It seems, ladies and gentlemen, we have our first detention" she drawled in a cold voice, falsely dipped in honey. "And who might be the lucky winner, hmm?" she asked with a forced smile, tilting her head sideways.

"Present yourself to my office. Eight o'clock sharp, this evening" she added quickly, all pretenses of sweetness gone from her voice. "The rest of you, let this be a lesson on cheating" she continued, still glaring at the boy, with all the contempt she could muster. "Dishonestly obtaining or attempting to obtain a benefit or advantage for any person is otherwise known as attempted fraud or fraud, which happens to be castigated by point deduction" Ezia explained in a completely flat voice looking over the classroom. "Consider yourself lucky" she sneered, looking at the perpetrator this time. "Oh, and Mr. Pepper? Wiggenweld Potion is on the second year syllabus, found in Potion Opuscule by Arsenius Jigger." Good luck finding the answer in the fourth year textbook, she added mentally, but refrained from voicing it.

It wasn't long before a hand darted in the air and Lucrezia nodded as permission to speak. She'd been hoping for something terrible, but being called m'am had her staring suspiciously at the child for a moment. It was immediately after that her lips formed a tight line and her nostrils barely visibly, flared. "Incomplete answer, Mister Norling and if I wanted information on the Grand Wiggenweld Potion, I would've formulated the question as such" she said derisively. Know-it-alls, always the most irritating of the bunch. "Also, I seem to remember specifying, just a few moments ago, that you are to address me as Professor or Professor Di Luca." She glared at the Ravenclaw for a couple more seconds and turned to address the rest of the class.

But just as she was opening her mouth to speak, another voice quipped a stunted answer from the same table. She stared with her mouth open at the blonde little Slytherin with bewilderment in her eyes for a couple of seconds as if not actually believing what was going on. What was this? Quidditch? Everyone pitching in a little for the good of the entire team? Ezia eventually closed her mouth, sighed deeply and shook her head tiredly. "Yes, Mister O'Doherty... obviously" she said exhaling loudly and two seconds short from rolling her eyes out of her skull. She wasn't even going to bother anymore.

"Plants most often used in Confusing and Befuddlement Draughts? A thorough answer this time, if you please." She smiled forcefully again, tapping her fingers against the wood of the desk. Elixir to Induce Euphoria before fourth year classes was this close to becoming a grand idea.

Scratch strict, the new professor was now upped to grade A hag in Cyhirae’s opinion.  What a horrible woman, giving Ambrose a detention just for dropping a textbook. And the conceit the new professor displayed towards her boyfriend was infuriating. Even though Cy desperately wanted to protest the new professor’s nasty behavior, she gritted her teeth and kept her mouth shut. She would be doing Ambrose no favors if she mouthed off, especially since she had a good chance of making things worse if she did. Silently she hoped her father would be happy with her for keeping her temper in check.

 “I’ll go get the ingredients,” she volunteered to her group and slipped of her chair just in time to hear the ‘professor’ snipe at Alvis. Alvis of all people! Fists clenched she stormed off to the ingredients closet before she lost her temper and tried something like hexing the professor which was extremely tempting at this point. As soon as she could Cy was going to tell her father all about this new professor’s behavior and maybe even Professor Storm. There were a few benefits to being the daughter of the Head of Ravenclaw and the sort of granddaughter of the Deputy Headmaster and she was going to take full advantage of this one.

Grumbling under her breath, she hurriedly, but carefully, she selected all of the ingredients for their potion and in the correct amounts.  Walking back to her group, she set down the ingredients carefully. In the meanwhile Cyhirae would give no reason for the new lady to complain about her behavior, or give her the obvious satisfaction that the woman derived from being nasty to those who displeased her.

Luca wasn’t terrible at potions, but he wasn’t fantastic either. He knew how to follow the instructions on the page and took care in his measurements and preparation of the ingredients, he just got distracted. He could be in the middle of an important step in the process of brewing a potion and something someone said or did would catch his attention and the next thing he knew, he’d be rushing to save the mixture. If he was stayed on task, he most likely wouldn’t stuff up.

He was sitting on a table with another Ravenclaw, Addison, who he got along with quite well. Luca glanced to the front of the room where the new Potions professor was. If he was to be honest, Luca thought she looked quite terrifying. Not in the ‘I’m going to eat you’ kind of terrifying, more like that she wouldn’t be someone that would put up with any bad behaviour or spoiled potions.

When she mentioned that they would be working on a Draught of Peace potion, Luca looked up at the board where the process and ingredients were written out. It seemed like quite the difficult concoction for their first lesson with the new professor.

The class had barely started, yet the new professor had already given out a detention. By the rate of how it was going, every student present would probably have detention or be reprimanded in some way before the class was over. Luca felt bad for Ambrose, earning himself a detention so early on in the class, but made sure to remind himself not to even glance in the direction of his textbook when asked or answering a question.

Addison went off to retrieve the ingredients and when she returned, Luca prepared his cauldron and put it on the flame which was set to medium. Professor Di Luca went on to ask them about Confusing and Befuddlement Draughts. He knew he had read up on them before, and though the names of some plants popped into his head, Luca wondered if he should just stay quiet or speak up. Deciding on the latter, Luca raised his hand. “Luca Hayes. Lovage, Sneezewort and Scurvy grass are used in Confusing and Befuddlement Draughts due to their effectiveness in causing the inflaming of the brain.” He said quickly, hoping the answer would suffice for the new professor. He couldn’t remember much else about it, just the different plants used in the Draught.

Amara heard through the grapevine about a new Potions Master, but with the many staff changes at Hogwarts lately, and her general disinterest in all new developments she hadn't given it much thought. However, the second Professor Di Luca had started her introductory speech, the fourth year Slytherin found herself staring in awe and horror at the same time. The woman was ruthless, and one hand Amara appreciated a professor with a firm hand, but on the other hand, she was reminded of her family and their penchant for pushing until breaking point. Regardless, Draught of Peace was something she was needing in handfuls, whenever the day-terrors came about...

She quickly charmed her hair into a tight braid and put on her dragon-hide gloves, with the purpose of going after the ingredients if only to avoid any of the verbal onslaught Pepper was sure to receive. But just as she was pushing herself up to her feet, Rockwell stood up and walked towards the storeroom. Amara sat back down, and frowned at the table for just a second, before starting to set up her utensils and turn up her flame under the cauldron. She turned to look at Norling, and the second she heard the first stutter, the silver haired witch cringed subtly. That wouldn't go down well. And just moments after she was proven right. If Di Luca was reprimanding the star-pupil, Amara decided she won't be doing much talking in this class. The last thing she needed was to get on any professor's radar, what with all the imbalances she was currently going through.

She silently thanked Rockwell when she returned with the ingredients and set about quickly and efficiently grinding down her ingredients and placing them in little bowls. The Unicorn horn needed quite a bit of strength and Amara huffed while applying more pressure. Right as she finishing with the mortar, the cauldron had started to bubble up and her hand quickly darted forward to lower the heat under the cauldron. She grabbed the bowl with the moonstone and raised on her tiptoes to sprinkle it over the water in sure circular motions.

Her eyes darted across the table to Hayes as he was answering the question and she wondered briefly what would Di Luca find wrong this time. Potions was going to be quite entertaining and Amara took the time to smirk tightly to herself.

Gloria Gibbon was firmly keeping her mouth zipped in the presence of this professor. During the laying of the law and heavy questions her eyes passed between her friend Addison before and after she had returned with ingredients, the ever mysterious Amara and Luca right before he answered another of her questions. If even answers from Ravenclaws were not going to cut it from Professor Lucrezia Di Luca the whole class was going to stink like dragon dung. If it had been possible for her table mates to read Gloria's eyes to her inner thinking the phrase "take a B add a witch and subtract the w" was the thought behind her gaze. Childish, of course, but if she ever said it out loud or wrote it down Professor Di Luca would no doubt give her months of detentions that would make a term in Azkaban seem like a picnic. No doubt if that's the trouble Ambrose was getting at the other table.

The best thing for Gloria to do was to look busy. She started pulverizing her share of ingredients as the crinkle of motor and pestle came from their table. When she had a chance after Luca had answered the question she whispered "Hey Luca, she's got the same last name as your first name."

Once she had her water boiling and the moonstone powder ready she was about to sprinkle it in when she paused. "Hey," she whispered amongst her table mates again, "is it a clockwise or counter-clockwise circle we have to shake the moonstone in with? And how are we supposed to know how much to add if we have to wait five minutes for it to turn blue?"

"Ambrose Pepper, Professor." The Gryffindor replied grimly. Bother, just his luck.

His cheeks flushed and his head lowered further, chin seeking out his ribs, or better still, his navel. Detention, and they were what, less than fifteen minutes into the lesson. Ambrose sighed.

Luckily the Professor had moved on and was berating someone else soon enough.

Cyhirae was anything less than impressed, which made Ambrose feel worse, that he'd shown her up by association of being her boyfriend. She would have known the answer. He nodded sullenly as she headed off to get the ingredients.

Suddenly it seemed as if nobody was forthcoming in an answer to Plants most often used in Confusing and Befuddlement Draughts? until Hayes spoke up, but even he seemed doubtful that his answer would be as thorough as their new professor demanded.

Many of his classmates were already boiling their water as Ambrose was all fingers and thumbs setting up the cauldron with water and setting it alight.

Gibbon's question to her tablemates nearby only made him more anxious, and an ill-timed casting of the ignition beneath his cauldron resulted in it tipping and slopping water out of his cauldron so he had to measure it again.

"Damn." Ambrose muttered, reaching for his wand to clear up the mess. He didn't dare look up in case the Professor was nearby, already marking him down for a second detention, or point loss, or failing mark.

"Sorry." He uttered to the rest of the group at his table, refilling his cauldron.

As he got down to grinding it seemed altogether safer, until..

"Ah - Ah CHOO!"

he sneezed, fumbling to put down the pestle and mortar, resulting a cloud of unicorn horn flying up into the air around him as he fumbled for a handkerchief.

"That is correct, Mister Hayes" Lucrezia said with a skeptical frown, drawing the words out almost reluctantly. That was how an answer should sound like, a thorough one, and she wasn't quite believing it had taken that little to get one out of them. And as much as she loved the punishment in punishment and reward, for the system to work, its counterpart had to show itself once in a while. "Two points for Ravenclaw" she said still eying the child suspiciously, squinting her eyes as if she could see the inner workings of his mind and figure out what made him tick, as opposed to his classmates.

She pushed herself off the desk and crossed her arms, walking slowly though the cluster of tables, taking a peek into a cauldron once in a while, without letting any outward impression of her thoughts on the contents. Years of hunting for ingredients and her preference for solitude and quiet had made Lucrezia's hearing quite astute, and while she would've ignored the first attempt at conversation, the girl continued to disrupt the rest of her table. "Miss" she said turning around to look at Hayes' table "is there anything you'd like to share with the rest of the class" she asked the Gryffindor girl with a positively glacial smile. What was it with children and their inability to follow a few simple rules? No tardiness, no talking and no impudence, it wasn't so difficult, surely?

She wasn't allowed to continue her jab at the girl, because just in that moment there was a sneeze reverberating loudly through the room, and it didn't take a genius to make the connection between a sneeze, fine powdered ingredients and open flames. The professor tensed immediately and she could already feel the hairs at the back of her neck raising and a vein at her temple starting a steady throb. She slowly moved her gaze sideways where—why, of course it was none other than Mr. Pepper. Somebody needed to save that boy from himself...

She let her body relax, seeing as nothing had caught on fire and stalked towards their table to asses the damage. Her lips curled into a scowl and she shook her head. Hopeless is what that boy was, absolutely hopeless. She raised her wand and flicked it once, a pristine white silk handkerchief darting into the air from the vicinity of her desk. She levitated it towards her and stopped it midair in front of Pepper with an irritated expression. "Unless you can find a way to gather all the powdered unicorn horn you have just wasted, and without a second trip to the storeroom, you will be given a zero for today's lesson, seeing as you cannot complete the potion without the specified quantities" she said almost conversationally, eyes raking over the table attempting to figure how far the powder had spread. Ah, but why should she spoil this for herself? Lucrezia lifted her eyes to look at the the rest of Pepper's table with the hint of amusement on her face, "The rest of you should better pray none of the powder has ended up in your cauldrons."

And with that she returned to pacing around the tables, stopping to glower over a cauldron or two. "What are the properties of Wormwood and in which potions is it used" she continued her evaluation of the class.

Almost preemptively at this point, because Casey had gotten a sense of how Norling's mind could wander at this point, he went to discussion about prepping their potions. "It's just those counts on the board in multiple, isn't it? I suppose I can go fetch them." He went off with his scales before Alvis could make any comment about that being dangerous because of his allergies. Casey didn't much like it himself going into allergen central, the storeroom being at best like a damp apothecary but he supposed he had volunteered himself now.

When Casey entered the storeroom his eyes watered at the dour smells. He gritted his teeth and then cast a Bubblehead Charm so as to not breath this air. He identified what ingredients were needed, the larger bottle of hellborne syrup, the boxes of moonstones, unicorn horns and porcupine quills. Though with the limited dexterity through the layers of gloves and having to measure precise amounts, Casey was slow to emerge from the storeroom.

Just it time to see Pepper sneeze his powders everywhere. You know what, the Bubble Head charm was going to stay on for the rest of the class.

As the professor lashed out at Ambrose again (thrice more disruptions from him in one class and it would be a new record) Casey returned to the workspace with Alvis, head in a  wobbly bubble like a diver's helmet. No irritating particle or gust of the dungeon ecosystem was going to find a way into Casey's bubble of airspace.

This was not Erin's favorite class to begin with.  Lots of concentration, very little room for distraction, coupled with her indefatigable hyperactive mind maid Erin's potions class more prone to failures than most.  The only reason she had gotten by as long as she had was because she knew how to stay away from cauldrons, and chop ingriedients while someone else did the actual work.  Erin had the distinct feeling that this professor needed some form of stress relief.  Erin would have offered her chocolate, but she did not have much to begin with, and her agent had managed to confiscate her secret stash.  Erin would need a new hiding place for it. 

Erin somehow managed to find a bench near Ambrose.  Seeing that no one had yet to get any ingriedients at her station yet,Erin walked over to the cupboard to grab them.  Measuring out each of the ingriedients, she did it quickly enough to not let her ADD accidently mix any of the ingriedients together. 

"ACHOO"

Erin blinked.  That wasn't her.  She saw a fine cloud of dust cover her perfectly measured ingredients.

"Professor?  What's the best way to remove ground unicorn horn from these ingredients?" Erin asked, figuring that her grade for this lesson was probably lost anyways.  She might as well ask for help and not blow up the lab.  Given the way this professor acted, Erin thought she should try to blow up the lab anyways.  Erin felt that it would be welcomed.  Her train of thought stopped at that point, and jumped on the previous track it had been on.  Looking at the ingredients, Erin realized that most of these looked like they would be easily enough to remove via physical separation, but she did not know of a way to separate syrup and fine powder.  Or water and fine powder for that matter.

"Incomplete answer, Mister Norling..."

Alvis nearly swallowed his tongue. He risked a glance up from the table, over the top of his glasses, which had slid to the tip of his nose. The world above the metal frames went as soft as peach-fuzz, but there was no hiding the instructor's venomous glare.

"Yes, Professor," he squeaked, and swallowed hard to force the lump away from his vocal cords. "I'm sorry."

He nodded gratefully when Casey went to collect their supplies, though Professor Di Luca's insistence on "waste not" felt needlessly controlling. Aunt Niamh always compared potions to cooking -- if you skimped on everything, you'd only come up short. Besides, it wasn't like unused potions ingredients couldn't be set aside or re-jarred for later use. Most of today's weren't even perishables. But for all the bite and aggression Professor Di Luca had shown, he probably shouldn't be surprised that she demanded control as well.

While he waited for supplies he read over the recipe in his book again, prioritizing the steps and ingredients in his mind. On the other side of the room, Ambrose sneezed and Alvis winced in sympathy, partially for him but mostly for those at his table, whose efforts were now doomed. Casey returned with their supplies and a bubble-head charm in place. Alvis made a mental note to see if his mother couldn't send him some surgical masks -- they were bound to be more comfortable and wouldn't disrupt his field of vision.

Once the supplies were laid out on the table Alvis quickly organized them where they wouldn't clutter the work-space and put the water on to boil while he measured out the moonstone, quills, and unicorn horn each in turn. He moved quickly while the Professor's attention was on Gibbon and Pepper, laying out two measures of each: one for himself and one for Casey. It wasn't that Casey couldn't do it himself, it was just that the gloves got in the way of his precision and it was simply safer for Alvis to handle it if they wanted to work efficiently.  Hopefully the presumption of such wouldn't offend.

"Sometimes I think these textbook writers are trying to screw students over," he mumbled under his breath. "Step two makes it sound like you're supposed to combine the three ingredients into one powder. It's completely irresponsible."

With the water boiling at his elbow he dumped the powdered horn into his palm and flipped his pocket watch open on the desk. At the top of the minute he added the powder in circular motions as instructed. He counted seconds in his head. By the time he hit three hundred, the potion had gone powder blue. So far so good.