*This class is labeled "Lesson One" for my own record-keeping. Let's assume, given the date of this lesson, that they students have met with Juliette a few times before.

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Posted on the Potions Classroom door:

ATTENTION LATECOMERS: We have migrated to Hogsmeade for today's lesson. Please join your peers in the library for a study block and alternative assignment. See the librarian for details.

Having arranged to allow the students without permission slips to complete an alternative writing assignment in the library, Juliette led the rest of the students through the double-oak doors and into the foggy morning. The lawn was slick with melting frost, and the gates creaked in defiance as the groundskeeper unlocked them. Today was anything but routine: that was the way Juliette liked it best.

"Now," she began, not bothering to warn them to settle down, or to beg for quiet. They knew, by now, how to behave in her classroom-- whether it was four stone walls or a cobbled high street. "You'll each be given an identical list of raw ingredients." With a wave of her wand, the papers magicked themselves from the black briefcase at her ankles and zoomed toward the students, one bumping hands with each preteen in the line-up. "Your partners are listed at the top of your assignment sheets."*

She gave one, subtle overturn of her forearm, waiting for them to arrange themselves beside their assigned partners.

"Your task is to hunt around the village apothecaries and other Hogsmeade locales for these ingredients. You are not to merely find them-- you must also take care to measure out the corresponding amounts. I have spoken with business owners, and they're expecting you. You will find scales and measuring glasses at your disposal, but do not ask the adults for help. I have eyes all over this village." She waited a half-second, letting the words soak in for the briefest blink of an eye. "The first group to return with the proper ingredients and rations, and to determine the potion you will brew in the next lesson, will be awarded extra points."


*Please partner with the first available student (in other words, the person who posts directly before or after you).

INGREDIENTS
Armadillo Bile, 1/8th litre
Caterpillars, sliced, 3 x large
Daisy Roots, evenly chopped, 4 grams
Hippogriff Hooves, crushed, 2 grams
Leech, juiced, 4 dashes
Rat Spleen, 2 x standard
Shrivelfig, skinned, 5 grams


*NOTE: Some ingredients are in excess or are not needed for this particular potion. Once you have collected everything, it will be your job to weed out the red herrings.

Erin was so excited.  An excuse to go to hogsmeade.  Though she had been in the magical world all of her life, the novelty of seeing something new and exciting had not yet outgrown her.  Wondering how she should go about this, she did not even bother to look at the list.  She decided to start skipping in a random direction, figuring that whatever she needed, she would probably eventually find.  For now though, she was going to have a little bit of fun in the magical village.  Wondering what sort of things she could get into, she decided to skip over to the first shop.  Though Random Apothecary Supplies sounded...rather dull, she figured she should at least find something on her list there. 

Wondering what sort of things were on the wall, she decided to ask the store clerk, "What is this?" her sweet and melodic voice spoke. 

"Aye?  That is powdered spider dust," the clerk replied.

Taking a closer look at it, she got to close, and inhaled a little bit through her nose. 

"ACHOO!" Erin sneezed.  Unfortunately, the powder made a *pompf* sound and formed a cloud, covering the young witch in a nice shade grey.  Wondering if maybe this trip was not going to be as exciting as she thought, Erin decided to move to the next shop, after scorgfiying herself a few times. 

A scavenger hunt! Now that certainly sounded exciting. Winifred had made sure to dress warmly- adding a heavier cloak to her school uniform, and her favorite hand-knitted Hufflepuff scarf. All of this was topped off by a very warm knitted hat (complete with gigantic fuzzy pom pom on top) and bright yellow gloves. Winnie had hurried along with the class to Hogsmeade, glad for something other than typical classroom work. Perhaps a scavenger hunt would help her out with her grades- it didn't involve any real magical skill, so perhaps she'd do well with it. (Probably not, though, given her short attention span.)

Winifred had been ready to partner up with the first person she could- but Erin Dark had skipped away before Winnie had a chance to ask. And then Winifred realized- or rather, the professor's words sunk in- that there were assigned partners. She glanced down at hers, then up at the faces, hoping to find the right person.


((Since Erin skipped off before finding a partner, I'm going to assume that Winifred's partner is whoever posts next. Feel free to partner up with her- whoever comes into the class next.))

Accepting the list of the ingredients they were to be finding, Ivory smiled as she nodded as she was sure she could find the items and measure them out properly. However when she realized she was to be paired up with Winifred, Ivie looked up at the sky as she muttered in her father's native language, Romanian. ”You surely hate me don't you?”* She was of course talking to the fates and then sighed as she walked over to the Hufflepuff.

“Here you take the list and check off each of the items as I collect them okay? Can you do that?” Without blowing us both up some how She mentally finished. The Third Year Ravenclaw then pulled her potions collecting bag towards her front so she could make sure she had the proper space for the bottles of ingredients they were to collect. She even had her own scales as she didn't really trust anyone else's. Ivie was proud of hers as she was sure that they were always perfectly balanced. It helped to have perfectly balanced scales when it came to cooking and potions. Two things Ivory loved doing.

Happy with the contents of the bag she moved it to her left side and then made sure her cloak with it's dark blue faux fur collar was closed up tight around her more winter appropriate school uniform, Ivory then looked around and headed for the first store that would hopefully have the ingredients at least some of them inside. It was clear either Winnie could keep up or fall behind. Either way Ivie was determined to get all the items in a record time.

Ayla soon decided that the best part of being a third year was the field trips to Hogsmeade. The village was always so fascinating, having only moved to the UK three years prior Ayla hadn't really gotten the chance to explore the magical village outside of the assigned Hogsmeade weekends. She couldn't even begin to explain how excited she was for their next scheduled visit. Spending Valentine's day in Hogsmeade was going to be incredible. The thought of it caused her green gold eyes to flit over to Blake. She wondered if she should be so bold as to ask him to do something with her for Valentines.

As the fabulous and elegant Professor Vaillancourt explained the lesson for today Ayla was practically bouncing on her heels. They were going on a scavenger hunt - awesome, they were working in partners - awesome (another glance towards her favourite Ravenclaw) and they were allowed to go to any shop in the village on their own to collect the ingredients they needed - triple awesome and a half!

Ayla scanned the list of ingredients figuring it would be easy enough to find what they had been told to collect and the portioning wouldn't be too much trouble either, afterall Potion making was a lot like baking and that was the one thing that Ayla absolutely excelled at. However when she checked the top of her sheet to see who her assigned partner was she realized she was supposed to be with Erin. She looked up just in time to see her figure disappear into a nearby apothecary.

"Hey wait up!" Ayla called after her partner before skipping off and into the store behind her. Ayla giggled softly when Erin was covered in a fine silvery dust. She came to the girl's side and drew her wand with a smile. As much as Ayla hated most if not all the Slytherins Erin was actually rather nice (especially considering she was the one Dark sister that Ayla thought didn't hate her)

"Let me help you with that, Torgeo!" She siphoned all of the powder off the girl and deposited back into the barrel where it had puffed out of. She gave the girl another smile, "So were supposed to be working together. You find anything here?"

After her classmate had assisted her, and reminded her what she was supposed to be doing, she actually took a look at the list.  Erin thought she remembered Bella speaking of this girl, but for the life of her she could not remember what she said about her one way or the other.  She'd have to ask her sister later.  Finally taking a look at the list, she decided that it was time to actually work on the assignment.

"Oh- crushed hippogriff hooves.  That was somewhere in here," Erin thought aloud.  Wandering over to a particular isle, she saw a scale near by and weiged out a couple of ounces of them. 

"That was the only thing I can see, do you see anything?" Erin asked.  Whatever Ayla's response was to be, there would be a high probability that Erin would not hear it.  She saw spider silk shimmering out of the corner of her eye, and skipped over there to take a quick look. 

Winifred took the list from Ivory and nodded. She was accustomed to most people in partnerships trying to prevent her from doing any real work. It was most noticeable in potions- especially on brewing days. "Alright, I can do that," she said to Ivory. "If you need me to help with anything else, though, I can do that too," she assured her. Winifred didn't think messing up a scavenger hunt would be that easy.

"Do you want me to carry the ingredients too?" Winnie asked. "They should fit into my school bag fairly easily. It will be easier for you to measure things if you don't have to carry all of the ingredients. I'll be really careful, I promise. I know that potions ingredients can be dangerous sometimes." She gave the Ravenclaw what she hoped was an enthusiastic (and winning) smile.

At least, with this girl as her partner, Winifred stood to get a better grade. Potions was one of the classes for her that was hit or miss depending on her mood of the day. If she felt focused and determined she could often complete potions fairly well- but with the attention span of a goldfish she tended to get distracted in the precise brewing process. But they weren't brewing today, so it shouldn't be too bad.

A scavenger hunt seemed quite juvenile to Baxter. It wasn't hard to figure out that you got potion ingredients from an apothecary, and anyone with a brain could find the others. All it took was common sense and paying attention in Herbology to succeed in potions. For some reason people didn't seem to grasp that concept. But most people in his year didn't seem to have it as easy in classes as Baxter did. It wasn't too hard for him to catch on in all of his lessons, and he always did his homework. But, it did come at a price- his entire existence was pretty much devoted to school and classes. The chance to pursue extra-curricular activities was not a luxury of his. Taking all five electives on top of his standard courses meant he had 12 classes worth of homework to do. That was a lot.

But it was worth it. Baxter's father was consistently impressed with his grades, and that was what mattered most to Baxter. His father's approval was hard to win. Besides, he had yet to decide what he wanted to do after graduating. His dad expected him to be an auror, too- just like dear old dad and just like their grandfather had been, but Baxter wasn't certain it was for him. Either way, though, the elective classes a person chose would determine the rest of their future.

Potions wasn't an elective though- so this wasn't the place for some sort of introductory lesson (in his opinion, which he did not share with anyone else). Instead the Ravenclaw boy inspected his paper, and then looked around for his partner.

Wrapped and bundled in a warm hooded coat brushing past her knees, Naomi marched in her boot-laced feet and onto Hogsmeade with the other students. Once their new professor sent them papers, Naomi clasped her gloved hands around it and previewing the list.

Some ingredients could probably be found in random shops that used them for differing purposes, and others just in the apothecary shop, or the magizoology clinic. She supposed sneaking out to Hogsmeade for various purposes in an animal form helped her notice that sort of thing, although she didn’t see anything particularly challenging about the assignment, or maybe that what the assignment was about?

After the teacher finished speaking Naomi actually looked at the assigned list and saw she was partnered with Baxter. She walked up behind him, lightly pressing her hand on his shoulder to get his attention, “Grey’s Gairden stocked with some of ‘dese, and Divine Tea may have somet’in fresh stored out. Owner makes everyt’ing by hand. “ She let her hand go limp on his shoulder, “Maybe t’ings from ‘di apothecary we should check,” Afterall, they couldn’t store everything perfectly, especially when there were other businesses that would have uses selling similar products. She paused as she turned towards the mazigoology clinic first, “If she wants ‘dem ‘raw’ where we get ‘em might have some affect on th’ potion, so ‘dat can narrow it to somet’in particular,” She dropped her hand, casting a look back at Baxter to see what he thought, although was ready and prepared to go on the hunt rather than sit there and talk about it.

Extra points? Yes they were convenient, but Naomi would just like to complete the exercise to the best of her ability. Not figuring out what the potion was seemed like it was only a half-assed job to her.

Juliette watched the children pair up and ticked off the names of each set of partners as they wound their way up the cobble High Street and into the village. She narrowed her eyes a bit as Erin Dark skipped ahead, but looked pacified-- enough-- as Ayla hurried to catch up with her. The Dark sisters were certainly an animated bunch.

☑ Erin Dark and Ayla Collins
☑ Winifred Oliver and Ivory Razvan
☑ Baxter Fox and Naomi Foley

Though she'd heeded them of pairs of "eyes" all over the village, the students did not know the extent to which she was watching them. Or, rather, having them watched on her behalf. She'd paid a pretty penny (courtesy of the Vaillancourt fortune Gringotts savings from her perfumer days) to have the shopkeepers report back to her at their earliest convenience.

Ivory took a look at the list and almost instantly recognized the ingredients that were there. She had been reading through her potions book the night before and discovered a potion that included all but one of the ingredients.  She smiled as she knew what they would be brewing in the next lesson, and while she wasn't sure why they had been given so much of the items she started to think that maybe the professor was using the students such as herself to restock the potion classroom closet of potion ingredients.

Ivory looked over at Winifred and then looked down at her bag. It was protected against falls and things that might break the bottles with the collected ingredients inside but she was wondering was it Winnie proof? Praying that it was she looked at Winnie and smiled. “Tell you what Winnie you can carry some of the ingredients and I'll carry some that way we both will get the ingredients and we can make sure that we both have the items on the list. Sound good?” Truth was Ivory was going to put the ingredients that she was sure would be the ones they would be needing for the next lesson in her bag while Winnie would get the other ones. She just hope that the girl wouldn't be upset that she was doing that.

“Come on lets hit the apothecary first.” She guided Winnie to the shop and began to gaze around the shop for the ingredients. She then called out to Winnie. “Hey Winnie look for the caterpillars and the rat spleens okay?” Ivory then began to look for the leech juice and the shrivelfigs. She finds the leech juice first so she moves over and takes out a funnel that would allow her to pour the juice into the glass bottle without spilling it. She poured half a teaspoon into the bottle then corked it.

Ivory then looked around for Winnie as she placed the bottle inside her bag. She wanted to make sure the girl was doing okay before she moved on to the next ingredient.