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]

"Maybe. My other one has a phoenix feather core. Pine and phoenix, eleven inches, hazel and who knows what, eleven and a quarter."

[metamorphmaga]

"Soooo, what do they mean?"

[pleating]

"The woods or the cores?"

[metamorphmaga]

"Either? Both?"

[pleating]

"Um, walnut is supposed to mean intelligence and innovation - I'm not just complimenting myself, they all mean things like that - and hazel means self-control and understanding your own feelings, and pine means independence and introversion and being going to live a really long time, and rowan is for being pure of heart and supposedly rowan wand owners never go Dark, and willow means potential. And I don't know what chimaera or whatever Miranda has would mean, but unicorn hair is supposed to be consistent and hard to turn Dark and doesn't like to change owners, and phoenix feather is the least common of the Ollivander kinds and it sometimes does useful things on its own, and dragon heartstring is powerful and quick to learn how you do magic and of the Ollivander kinds it's easiest to turn Dark."

[metamorphmaga]

"So I'll never go Dark, but I'm also the easiest to turn Dark!"

[parental_guidance]

"Potential and reliability, I guess? Huh. I'll take it," she says with a smile. "Do wand lengths mean anything?"

[pleating]

"People think longer wands might mean stronger personalities? I'm not sure if there's anything to it and anyway it's not consistent, if you break a wand you can get one of a really different length that likes you just fine. I think it's a coincidence Miranda's are both almost the same."

[metamorphmaga]

"I have more personality than yooooou," Jenny beams at Emma.

[parental_guidance]

"Uh. You spontaneously grow glittery pink unicorn horns. I lose by default."

[chanuphis]

"Potions is the weirdest class to be having this conversation in," observes Miranda. "How do we want to pair? I think we're supposed to pair. I wonder where Professor Slughorn is."

[metamorphmaga]

"What makes it weird?"

[parental_guidance]

"Potions doesn't use wands. So, uh, strange place to talk about wands. For pairs... I dunno, mix up the houses, maybe? Miranda, want to pair?"

Jenny seems to have perked up while talking, and Emma's hoping having a new person to chat with will distract her, but she's hardly going to say that out loud, in front of Jenny.

(Why no, Emma's shyness around New Person is not at all a factor. Nope.)

[chanuphis]

"Works for me."

[pleating]

"Sure. Hi, partner, remind me which one you are."

[metamorphmaga]

"Hi partner! Karen, right? I'm Jenny."

[parental_guidance]

"Cool. Um, I got the time right, right? Professor Slughorn should be here soon? Now? Ish?"

[pleating]

"Yeah, Karen - and I don't think we were early? -"

And with that, Professor Slughorn appears with a sunny smile on his walrusy face. They will be making a simple potion today, which does nothing but smell very different from any of its ingredients, as an introduction to some basic potions principles. He makes no issue about inter-House pairing.

[parental_guidance]

Emma quietly begins assembling ingredients per instructions. They're not the most thorough instructions she's ever seen, but it's not exactly a complicated recipe.

[metamorphmaga]

Jenny makes a couple piles, but starts to panic rather quickly. She looks at Karen with a meek, for her, expression. "Er, am I doing this right?"

[pleating]

"It's my first day too! Let's just - go slow," says Karen, and she starts narrating what she's doing, reading aloud the labels on things and the instructions on the board and assembling more piles and starting to chop up the lily petals.

[chanuphis]

Miranda, meanwhile, helps Emma some, but seems more interested in reading their textbook about the theories they're illustrating than actually making the potion. It's not like it's going to do anything useful.

[metamorphmaga]

"Thanks," Jenny says weakly. She starts measuring out Standard Ingredient into a phial. "Sorry, I'm sorta new to magic. Like, all of it."

[parental_guidance]

Emma's unbothered by this. Potions is just following directions. She is very good at that. As she grinds up some mistletoe, she peers over Miranda's shoulder. "Anything interesting?"

[chanuphis]

"Yeah, actually. There's an entire little appendix about potion smells and why they smell like things. Apparently most potions don't smell like their ingredients, which... is good, because some of them you have to drink and most potions ingredients aren't that tasty."