bubble bubble

[metamorphmaga]

Jenny has nightmares all night. Everything from she vanished all of her clothing by accident to she can't do anything except change form and everyone laughs at the stupid Muggle, and every other version of mucking up her first class that her sleepy brain can manufacture. She wakes up looking like she's been run over by a very sleep-deprived train, and her hair is curling in panicked ringlets of pure white.

But now she has Potions class to go to. She should probably get up and do that. Not going to class counts as mucking up, so she makes herself get up and get dressed. Can't muck up. If you do, you can't be a witch.

That thought turns the rest of her hair white.

Comments

[chanuphis]

"Not everything magical is out to get you. There are plenty of harmless spells and creatures and stuff. This potion is totally harmless, for example."

[metamorphmaga]

"There is a smoking burner somewhere behind us which disagrees!"

[parental_guidance]

"That's not the potion's fault!"

[chanuphis]

"Yeah, that would happen if you dropped food on a Muggle stove just the same."

[metamorphmaga]

"I am a very good cook," Jenny says loftily. "Stoves are safe near me! Buuuut no comment on the MiniMearas."

[pleating]

"On the who?" asks Karen, starting to stir their potion clockwise.

[parental_guidance]

"Sisters and brothers?" Emma guesses.

[metamorphmaga]

"Yup! Mini O'Mearas was just so condensable. And 'unruly misbehaving hooligans' was too long."

[chanuphis]

"Well, at any rate, magic things are mostly not out to get you, but you're already used to the ways Muggle things are dangerous so the magic ones are surprising and different."

[metamorphmaga]

"I guess. It's just sorta sad. All I knew before was fun magic!" The ends of her hair all turn a particularly vivid shade of purple as emphasis.

[pleating]

"Sorry to disappoint."

[metamorphmaga]

"Not your fault! I'll live. (I hope!)"

[chanuphis]

"Please do, I'm sure the Headmistress would rather not preside over any deaths."

[parental_guidance]

"Uh, all things considered- we should probably not joke about that?" Emma says quietly.

[chanuphis]

"Okay."

[parental_guidance]

Awkward silence abounds!





"I, um. Sorry. I didn't mean to kill the conversation," Emma mumbles.

[chanuphis]

"Professor Slughorn would probably have told us off for talking about things beside the potion eventually anyway," says Miranda, though Slughorn is across the room helping a pair of Hufflepuffs understand the book's described difference between chopping and mincing. Miranda minces the things that need mincing.

[metamorphmaga]

"I don't know how I feel about that. That might make this like a normal class. It's supposed to just be Awesome Magic!"

[pleating]

"Uh, this is a normal class. First Year Potions is a - a pretty normal class."

[metamorphmaga]

"Er, normal for a Muggleborn?"

[chanuphis]

"Normal doesn't mean nonmagical, Jenny."

[metamorphmaga]

"I know, I didn't mean it like that! Really, I didn't. But- it's normal to me, and I wasn't thinking about it, so I said normal!"

[pleating]

"What would Muggles be learning instead of Potions, anyway?" wonders Karen. "Is it just like more primary school, forever?"

[chanuphis]

"Well, they learn different things even in primary school, but I think it's more like that than Hogwarts, anyway." Miranda powders something that needs powdering and sprinkles it into her and Emma's potion, then looks up other uses of the powder in the index.

[metamorphmaga]

"It's more like primary school," Jenny agrees. "But with calculators instead of cauldrons."

Cauldrons are definitely better.