Class #3: R&S / 4&5

[Professor Horace Slughorn]

INTRODUCTION[/u]
Group #1: Ravenclaw Fourth & Fifth Years
Group #2: Slytherin Fourth & Fifth Years
Discussion: Strengthening Solution

"In your seats, boys and girls, in your seats!" Professor Slughorn instructed as he lit the last of the candles on his desk in the dungeon room class. Tucking his wand back into his cloak, he stood at the front of his desk and smiled at his students. "Good morning! Today, we will be working on the Strengthening Solution!" Slughorn tucked his thumbs into the pockets of his bulging vest. "On your desks you will find all the ingredients you need to the left, and on the right you will find a glass phial with a spider in it." Slughorn gave his class a stern look of warning. "You will ONLY being using the Strengthening Solution on your SPIDERS!" he said sternly. The last thing he needed were some 4th and 5th years running around lifting full suits of armor with one hand. "Not on yourselves or your partners! If you have brewed the solution right, you should be able to stack the small weights in the middle of your desk upon the spider and they will be able to carry it across your desktop." His cheery grin returned then. "Please begin!"

[/color]

[Imogen Sauveterre]

Imogen generally didn't have a problem with bugs, but the idea of adding Strengthening Solution to a spider didn't greatly appeal to her. Tiny, normal bugs were one thing. Abnormally strong bugs were another. She was sure that Acromantula were a result of a Hogwarts potion lesson gone wrong. For a strange moment, she found herself thinking of Simon's old Muggle comic book collection he'd left at home when he moved out; there was one issue Imogen had vague interest in because of the scientific factor, and of course it had to involve spiders, and she couldn't help but wonder what would happen if she was bitten by a spider under the influence of Strengthening Solution. Deciding to cast these stupid thoughts aside, Imogen opened her textbook to the proper page and checked the instructions. Okay... she needed a Griffin claw, crushed - the claw was on her desk, and she put it into her mortar and began to crush it into a powder with her pestle. It gave off a foul stench and she crinkled her nose, trying not to let her eyes water. The book said not to add it yet, so she set it aside for the next instruction. Two porcupine quills, followed by three counter-clockwise stirs, which made the smoke turn a light green. So far so good. A dash of lavender, which made it smell pleasant - again, good. Now add the crushed Griffin claw... Followed by three drops of salamander blood, okay... Hang on, where was her vial of salamander blood? She looked around her desk, but it wasn't there at all--

“Sorry,” she whispered to the person next to her, “but I think I'm missing my salamander blood; you haven't seen it, have you?”

[Stefan Capper]

Stefan had never been particularly fond of Potions. It wasn't his strong suit by far, and it wasn't exactly unheard of that non-Slytherin students didn't like Potions very much. But lately, it had been worse because someone that did like Potions very much was the reason why he'd been holed up in on himself lately. Because it didn't have much reading. Stefan took a deep breath and looked down at the list of ingredients, pressing his lips together as he focused on what he was supposed to do, and gave the spider in the glass vial a nasty look, wrinkling his nose. Gross. Blowing some air through his lips, he sat up straight and pushed his sleeves up, starting to work on his potion. He worked absentmindedly as he hummed to himself in his mind, not really paying attention to what was going on around him until he heard Imogen next to him start whispering to the person on her other side about salamander blood and stopped, blinking around a little and glancing over at her desk and then back to his, where he was holding a vial of the blood, and he had another one to his left. "Oh," he said quietly, blinking again and setting down the vial, taking the other one and handing it over to Imogen. "Sorry! I must have taken yours thinking it was mine,

[/color]" he apologized quickly, giving her a small smile and glancing over at her potion, which seemed to be much more the right colour than his did. He frowned a little. "I--think I'm not doing something right,[/color]" he whispered, looking back at his potion and back to the instructions.[/blockquote][/blockquote][/color]

[Imogen Sauveterre]

Breathing a small sigh of relief, Imogen took the vial from Stefan and gave him a smile. “Thanks,” she muttered, then opened up the vial. Of course there was no eye dropper, so she'd have to do it all very carefully. Sticking her tongue between her teeth, she had it poised over her potion and was just about to let the first drop in when Stefan's voice distracted her. Lifting the vial away, she looked over at his potion. “Oh,” she said, tilting her head. “I think you missed a stir somewhere. I dunno, ask Professor Slughorn. I'm not the expert, sorry.” She turned back to her own potion, biting her lip in concentration as she poised her vial over top again. There was one drop... two....... thhhhreeeee.... There. Quickly tipping her vial away before a fourth could spill out, Imogen put the stopper in and checked the instructions. Now she had to add half the crushed Griffin claw, and then let the potion simmer for five minutes before adding five mils of Flobberworm mucous. Ugh, such a lovely potion. Imogen carefully measured the Griffin claw before adding half, then turned to Stefan and looked over his potion.

“Okay, let's figure this out. What was your last step?”

[Stefan Capper]

Pursing his lips a little, Stefan kept staring at his potion while Imogen said he'd probably missed a step. Humming in agreement, he watched her go back to her own potion for a while before he picked up the heavy book and skimmed the lines again, trying to make sure he hadn't missed anything or put anything in the wrong order. He wasn't usually bad at potions. It had a method to it, he thought, and if you followed the method, it wasn't that difficult to get the right results. But this stench was definitely not smelling like lavender the way the instructions said it should. Sighing when he couldn't figure out what in the world he'd done wrong, Stefan sat back on his seat and looked up at Professor Slughorn, figuring he'd ask, but he seemed busy with a Slytherin in the first row, so he said nothing. Imogen's voice startled him into looking over again, and his shoulders slumped a little, sending her a grateful smile. "I don't know," he muttered, grabbing the book again and looking at his remaining ingredients, trying to figure out what he'd added last. "The crushed Gryffin claw, I think. Or--no wait, the salamander blood I took from you.

[/color]"
[/blockquote][/blockquote][/color]

[Imogen Sauveterre]

By no means was Imogen a potions savant. She liked the class a lot, and she did well in it because it was easy to do so. All you had to do was read and follow instructions, just like cooking. There was nothing difficult about it. But she wasn't some crazy potions genius who knew exactly what went wrong to make a potion go wonky, and when she stared at Stefan's potion, everything came up blank.

Which was certainly embarrassing.

“Um...” She stared from his book to his cauldron, trying not to look as confused as she felt. “Maybe you didn't add enough blood?”

[Stefan Capper]

They both stared at the potion for a while, trying to figure out what had gone wrong, and Stefan blew air into his cheeks, puffing them out as he stared before giving up and sitting back down onto his stool, slumping a little. "Mm, might've," he muttered, glancing at the salamander blood and trying to recall how much he'd actually poured into his cauldron. "Maybe it'll get better if I pour a little more?

[/color]" He reached over for the blood and uncapped it, pouring it in a dribble into the potion and watching it change colors, turning lighter for a moment before weird chunks started appearing on the surface, bobbing up and down in the gunky liquid. He stepped back cautiously. "Yeah, I don't think that was it.[/color]"
[/blockquote][/blockquote][/color]

[Imogen Sauveterre]

Imogen hated being wrong, especially at the expense of someone else. She looked from Stefan's mess of a potion to her own, which was brewing just like the book said, and gave a sigh. She couldn't let Stefan suffer because she'd led him wrong. Slughorn was currently praising Cody Montague's potion, which could take a while since Cody started talking.

“... Switch seats with me,” she whispered to Stefan. “C'mon, it's fine. I just made you mess up your potion worse. Switch with me.”

[Stefan Capper]

Stefan grabbed the spoon and started poking at the chunks in his potion, wrinkling his nose at the little bubbles that frothed at the surface and glanced at Imogen's potion and then back to her when she started talking to him. He frowned. "What?" he whispered, looking around them and shaking his head. "No, no way.

[/color]" It made him feel guilty, all of a sudden, his stomach churning at more than the gross compound in his cauldron. He hadn't had to drag Imogen down into his mess of a potion and now she was feeling guilty too for something that wasn't her fault. He shook his head again. "It was already messed up before you said anything,[/color]" he added, pushing his cauldron away. "Really. Yours is perfect, don't.[/color]"
[/blockquote][/blockquote][/color]