 Teapot Occamy| gryphons&giraffes&goats,OH MY | chaser of the truth | flutiful❧
Wow, she had asked a question that even Professor Myers didn’t know the answer to, and she wasn’t even sure if anyone knew the answer to it. By Isa’s standards that made it a good question. Professor Myers had said this was a recent discovery, so maybe nobody had researched the tear producing mechanism in the tree yet. She would have to talk to Professor Myers later to see if he found out where they were produced from. If he couldn’t find out, she was going to find a way to find out for herself. There was still a lot to be studied about this tree, so Isa was making it her goal to research this tree. Maybe she would discover new magical properties of the tears or something. That would be so cool!
Yeah, the tears probably weren’t the same stuff as human tears. Human tears did not share the same magical properties, and trees had their own ways of producing things. It definitely wasn’t just water either. Normal water also did not have special magical properties. The tears were clear, like water, but a lot of non-water substances looked deceivingly like water. It was dangerous to assume that a clear liquid was water. For all you knew it could be poisonous or otherwise harmful. In the case of the tears they probably weren’t poison, but they weren’t pure water either.
Even after casting Maeroro six times, Isa only had two tears in her vial. The young hufflepuff was determined to prove her herbology skills by filling her vial to 3/4 of the way full like Professor Myers had asked them to. This was a difficult task, but Isa believed that it was achievable; Professor Myers wouldn’t have asked them to do something impossible. She could do this. You can do this, Isa. The mental pep talk encouraged her to keep trying. ”Maeroro. Maeroro. Maeroro. Maeroro. Maeroro. Maeroro. Maeroro.” Isa repeated the spell several times to get a few more tears in her vial. This might take a while. Making a tree cry was actually more difficult than it sounded. Then again, most people would have thought it was impossible to make a tree cry, so making the weeping willow cry at all was an astounding accomplishment. Collecting only two tears sounded a lot more impressive when you thought about it that way. Fortunately, a few more tears had dripped from the branch into the vial as Isa cast the sadness charm on the tree a few more times. Eventually after what seemed like a hundred times casting the spell, Isa had filled her vial to about 3/4 of the way full.
When she was done collecting weeping willow tears in her vial, Isa put the cork back in the vial. She put her free hand on the trunk of the tree, leaned in closer to the tree to the point that she was almost touching the tree with her forehead, closed her eyes, and whispered to the tree. ”I’m sorry we had to make you sad. Thank you for your tears. I hope you can feel happy later when we’re done collecting the tears.” Yes, Isa Wright was talking to a tree and she didn’t think there was anything weird about that. Just your usual conversation with a tree that you made feel sad so it could cry. Nothing at all unusual to see here.
Oooh, now was the interesting part where they got to learn all about the tears! Her questions might finally be answered! Isa listened intently as Professor Myer explained what was known about the tears. A deep loss in your heart if you ingested the tears? That was so sad. Isa tried to imagine what it would feel like if someone in her family died. The feeling was so heartbreaking that Isa couldn’t imagine what it would be like, but she felt sad and her eyes were getting all red and watery. Thankfully she hadn’t tried to taste any of the tears, because she didn’t want the depressing heartache that the tears could induce. Isa knew better than to go around sticking things in her mouth without knowing what they were. There were a lot of plants and parts of plants that weren’t safe to eat. ”Do the tears have any effect on you if you touch them?” Like, what would happen if she got some on her fingers? For the first time Isa started to think about how potentially dangerous these tears could be if not used properly. Ingesting pure tears could seriously mess up your mental health, and mental health was important. The wrong use of the tears could have grave consequences. ”If the tears could make people so heartbroken if they aren’t used in the right way, is it ethical to be experimenting with them?” Isa was curious about finding new uses for the tears, but she didn’t want to accidentally make people feel depressed either.
So, what use for the tears would she try to come up with? Suggesting using it in a potion to make people feel sad seemed unoriginal given that Professor Myers had just said that the tears could be used in mood-altering potions, so Isa thought about what other applications the tears might have. ”Maybe other plants might respond to the tears, like a sort of way to communicate with other plants.” She wasn’t quite sure what the implications of that would be if that were true or if that would even be significant, but it was an interesting idea to think about. Was the grass under weeping willow trees always sad? ”I think I would want to research more about what conditions naturally make the weeping willow weep, to better understand more about the function of the tears and how people might be able to find new uses for the tears based off of what they do in nature.” Really this topic seemed like something that needed more research. Maybe one day Isa would get a chance to do more work with the weeping willow. If she knew more about what the weeping willow used its tears for, she would have a better understanding of how people could use them. The tears must serve some purpose to the tree, because trees didn’t develop some way of being sad and crying just for fun. There was always an evolutionary advantageous reason for plants developing in a certain way. ”Is it known why the weeping willow cries or how that might be an advantage for the willow? Maybe it defends itself by making everything that wants to hurt it sad or something?” Like how thorns on a rosebush deterred animals from eating the roses? Or maybe something entirely different that she hadn’t thought of yet? This was turning out to be a very interesting lesson indeed. Isa’s attention was completely focused on her thoughts about why the tree cried, why that was important, and how she might find a use for the tears based off of that.
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