Bubble bubble, Toil and Trouble // OPEN

"Thanks for choosing to attend this weekend potions lesson of mine” Aleksander said said while waving the students through the door he had just finished opening. After walking back to the front of the room and making sure to hide his slight disgust at working in the dungeons Alec started his introduction. “Every year level has been invited to these lectures, so if anything I talk about I haven’t explained enough for you to understand you are welcome to ask questions. These classes will be a way of me determining how skilled you are and therefore exactly how much supervision you will need during my supervised labs. Of course if you don’t come to these lessons I will of course assume that you know everything you need to know in potions and therefore my lab will not be open to you as I’ll assume you have purloined an empty classroom or bathroom to do your brewing in and do not need any help to prevent painful injuries and permanent transformations.”

Drinking some purified water, Alec looked over the students to take note of their expressions before continuing. “Many muggle borns consider potions to be either following a recipe like in cooking, or more like chemistry in which the reactions between everything is known and follows specific rules. Potions is absolutely nothing like those two examples, potions are an art, an art which can do far more diverse things than for example charms or transfiguration.” Taking a moment to breath as he noticed a student in the third row passing a note, he waved his wand to transfigure the note into a bird which flew up to the board behind himself before he added “And that’s 5 points from Gryffindor, and stay behind after this lesson as depending on what that note says I may have to take further action.”

After noticing that most of the students you know paying him more attention and sitting up straight he continued. “While you can point your wand at a person, wave it and say some magical words that causes them to have Bat-Bogeys fly out of their nose, or you can create a potion which solidifies into a candy that causes your eyes to transform into anime style eyes on ingestion. “ Pausing to drink some more water, he waves his wand several times in intricate patterns, and the ingredients cupboard he had prepared in the corner opens with the ingredients inside floating to each student’s desk. “In front of you all are a small sample of Porcupine Quills, Pungous Onions, Flobberworm Mucas, Ground Scarab Beetles, Snake Fangs, Pickled Shakre Spines, Nettles, and Ginger Root. Your first tasks for this lesson are to identify which ingredient is which, which ones commonly require extra preparation before they are used in potions and finally I’ll award some number of points to a student of my choice who can identify which potion that I'll most likely have you make during this lesson.”

If she were to be perfectly honest with herself, Daphne wasn't so sure that she was going to enjoy this Wenlock Tournament lark. Sure, it sounded like the most exciting thing since the Quidditch World Cup (and boy had that been a blast!) but she wasn't so sure about all the fuss that came with the Tournaments. It was bad enough that her father made weekly visits to come see her under the pretense of 'Hogwarts protection business' and embarrassing her by being a total show off (though secretly she loved the admiring looks she received for having such a father when Samuel would do something particularly neat), but now because of all the extra students that now filled the castle, extra teachers had to be hired whose idea of a fun weekend was to organised extra classes.

Sidling in with the rest of the students into the dungeons, Daphne perched on a stool towards the back, blue eyes studying the new teacher in front of her. He looked way too young to be teaching. Daphne wanted Professor Snape back. It was cruel of her but she enjoyed watching him making fun of Potter and Granger. She wouldn't have minded the female know-it-all so much, if she didn't have such a prejudice against Daphne's house. But as it was, Hermione thoroughly annoyed the blonde, especially when she had to be right in every damn class. Daphne suspected that the Gryffindor had a serious inferiority complex.

Stifling a yawn, Daphne's mind wandered as she half-listened to the teacher. She adored Potions, but there were so many other things that she could be doing now. Like practicing on her violin in the Astronomy Tower. She had high hopes of taking up the violin first chair and she wasn't going to get that coveted spot if she spent her weekends going over Potions work that she had learnt in her first year. She hoped that this wouldn't become a constant thing. The first years were already getting on her nerves with their constant whispering and giggling.

She came out of her thoughts just in time to hear a couple of Gryffindor's getting told off. Smirking, her eyebrow raised slightly as the teacher mentioned a type of eyes that she had never heard of. What in Merlin's name are anime eyes? she wondered, looking around to note that she wasn't the only one that looked so confused about the concept. Must be a Muggle thing... Wrinkling her nose at the bad smell that rose from the table as all the mentioned ingredients gently settled down onto it, Daphne  picked up the jar of Flobberworm Mucus, shaking the jar slightly and watching the thick liquid slosh around. The softest of sighs leaving her lips as she realised that she definitely wouldn't be getting out of here any time soon, Daphne pulled out her notebook and began writing the ingredient names down. The faster she got the first part done, the faster she could hopefully get to the fun part - actually brewing.

Alec carefully watched the students with raven eyes, hoping that at least some of them weren’t dunderheads as Severus believed. He wasn’t holding out much hope though as the bulk of the students seemed to have issues identifying the ingredients, he had spent ages finding ingredients which had looked completely different and made some of still need to be prepared to make it easier for them. He was definitely glad he didn’t have them identify ingredients using crushed snake fangs and powdered ginger root.

He was thankful he choose a much simpler task than that of his potions mastery. The first part had him identify different items that all looked relatively the same so he had to test how they reacted in certain potions to narrow it down. While the second hand him into a specific grove which had been prepared to have several growing plants and several magical creatures and he was required to create a potion of his choice, getting extra points for complexity and straying from the standard recipe. Finally he was quizzed extensively, first on why he did what he did at each stage of preparing the potion and then on random potion trivia.

Turning away from the class, he opened a second cupboard one containing the missing ingredients for the potential potions he could get the students to make. Alec had planned on preparing these for the students himself, and doing it now he could give students I big hint to solve his final test, as otherwise most students probably wouldn’t be able to. While efficiently extracting bile from several armadillos, Alec was watching the class while he stewed some horned slugs in front of them. Hopefully some students would identify that with the ingredients he was preparing they now had all the ingredients needed to make the cure for boils (taught in the first potions lesson) and Wit-Sharpening potion (normally covered in forth year). Of course for the students to do these they have to ignore some of the ingredients which they haven’t used before such as the Pungous Onions, Nettles, and Pickled Shakre Spines as well as two ingredients used commonly in other potions such as Flobberworm Mucus often to thicken it.

A small yawn escaped Daphne's lips as she lined up her ingredients in a neat row and began identifying them on her parchment. She was no longer bored, because the prospect of brewing something was exciting, but the dungeon air was beginning to get a bit stuffy thanks to the amount of students crammed in there, and it was beginning to make her a tad sleepy. Never mind, brewing will wake me up...! The  Pungous Onions and ginger were easy enough to distinguish that she doubted even Crabbe would be able to screw identifying those two. Neither did it take her long to work out which were the porcupine quills and which were snake fangs - all she had to do was compare their sizes and the rest was logical deduction. Knowing the actual name of what the ingredients were certainly helped to identify them; it was hard to mistake ground scarab beetle for ground lionfish spine when there was only one to choose from.

Finally, having identified all the ingredients, Daphne got up off her stool, and weaving in an out of the crowd (trying not to glower in disgust at the first year Gryffindors who were busy smearing themselves with Flobberworm Mucus just because "it smells funny") approached the teacher's desk. She watched him stew something that looked suspiciously like horned slugs, before offering up her parchment for the teacher to read. "Excuse me Professor, but I believe I've identified all the ingredients correctly," she told him, tone polite as it usually was around teachers. Her polite way with adults usually meant she got away with a lot of things, since no one could believe that such a well-mannered child could ever be a little hellraiser.

"And I think I can hazard a guess as to what you'll be having us make today. At least the first potion, that is," she added after a moment's thought, watching his cauldron for a long moment before looking up again. "Cure for boils." She wondered if Madame Pomfrey was having yet another boil epidemic, before her mind wandered to how many of the students would find themselves covered in boils at the end of the lesson for not having brewed the potion properly.

TAGGED``: aleksander
OUTFIT``: regular slytherin uniform
NOTES``: ---

Alec noticed the blonde student walking towards the desk but couldn’t greet her as he was busy setting up a self-stirring rod to move slow enough to make sure the slugs were getting stewed properly. After about half a minute he was able to turn from his cauldron and pay attention to the slytherin student. After listening to her answers to the questions he had set, he was disappointed that she didn’t figure out the whole answer, but he was relieved that he at least knew there were other potions that he could assign them to make. “That will be two points to slytherin for being the first to finish. I’ll give everyone else about 5 minutes more to work before I move on, you’re welcome to stay here and help me prepare ingredients or return to your seat and have free time until then.” He said to the 4th year student.

Alec continued preparing the rest of the ingredients, taking note the some of the ingredients would need a touch longer than 5 minutes to be ready so he focused on getting them automated so he could talk to the class. Once everything was running smoothly he attempted to gather attention of the class by using a spell to dim and lighten the room. Unfortunately the first years apparently didn’t notice so he instead charmed one of his cauldron’s to produce a sound like something metal had hit it. “Now that you’ve had enough time to attempt to identify the ingredients I handed out to you. I would like to get started on the practical part of this lesson.” He stated to get the class’s attention.

“The Cure for Boils is a simple potion that happens generally within the first week of practice as it has very minimal parts where you can go wrong if you make a mistake following the recipe provided in your textbooks. The ingredients required for this potion are snake fangs, stewed horned slugs, and porcupine quills.” Taking a small break, Alec sipped some purified water before continuing. “Though their happens to be an alternative recipe which utilises Pungous Onions, Flobberworm Mucas, powdered Ginger Root, Shakre Spines, and nettles as well. The benefit of this second recipe is that it is by far quicker to make, but is more difficult to get a medically approved final product. Today I won’t you to split into groups of no less than 3 students and no more than 5 and make both versions of the potion. If there’s time left after and who have finished can make Wit-Sharpening potion and after bringing it up here to be checked will be allowed to keep their finished potion to help them complete the optional homework which will give you access to my private lab and allow you to brew what you want as long as you receive an acceptable.”

Alec took a break to let some students finish taking notes as he sort of the assignment he was planning to assign, in no more than 3 feet of parchment list how you would go about testing the effectiveness and differences between the two variations of the Cure for Boils potion that you have made. After noticing most of the students still not moving he verbally told them to get a move on.