Cassandra looked at her hands, her fingers were twidling. She dared not look up to the professor. "Last year, we discussed amortesia..." Cassandra started, "I was wondering, does its effects intensify is mixed with something else... say... coffee?" Cassandra asked shyly.

"Thank you professor," Anita said as she pulled out her textbook and turned to the Shrinking Solution. She quickly read through the pages and found what was needed to change the color of her potion to the acid green color desired. She quickly found and added the ingredients, which included a bit more salt. She happily saw that the color changed from the dark greenish-blue to the correct color rather quickly. Smiling to herself, she placed some in a phial and placed it on the professor's desk for grading. Then she went and grabbed a frog in order to test her potion. She placed a small drop of her potion on the frog and waited. Then she noticed that the frog seemed to be getting smaller. It continued to shrink until all that was left on the table was a tadpole wiggling around. She quickly grabbed the tadpole and placed in the cauldron with the water with the other tadpoles. She then cleaned up her work area, packed her bag and, with a smile on her face, left the class room to go work on more homework.

Claudian entered the potions lab. He took long, strong, surely placed steps, looking like a well-fed soldier off to war, except for the fact that the expression he wore was much too sedated. As if he'd had a good nights rest and never knew the feeling of discomfort. Trailing him were a dark-haired 5th year Slytherin girl and a Hufflepuff boy.
Claudian spotted an empty space for the three of them and headed straight to it, ruining the effect of his strength as he leaned against the workspace surface.

Quote:

Claudian entered the potions lab. He took long, strong, surely placed steps, looking like a well-fed soldier off to war, except for the fact that the expression he wore was much too sedated. As if he'd had a good nights rest and never knew the feeling of discomfort. Trailing him were a dark-haired 5th year Slytherin girl and a Hufflepuff boy.
Claudian spotted an empty space for the three of them and headed straight to it, ruining the effect of his strength as he leaned against the workspace surface.

Julian was a step behind Claudian. When he entered, he looked around & saw there were many students practicing various potions.
He followed Claudian to an empty space at the work table.
"Which potion do you want us to work on?" he asked Claudian.

"That one." He said pointing to the Shrinking Solution written on the blackboard. He'd almost fell into one of his indecisiveness fits at the fact that Julian left the choice up to him.




He gestured towards the cauldron. "Why don't you heat this thing up and get the daisy roots. I'll handle the spleens." He said with no particular expression. He hated having to take the initiative.

Taika Ai entered the Potions Laboratory and found a space to work. She searched her bag for her potions text book, quill, parchment and ink and glanced up at the board.

Sighing, she searched her own potions stores for the necessary ingrediants. She had the Daisy Roots and the salt, but was missing shrivelfig and rat spleen. She glanced back at the board.

"Caterpillar..." she murmured, searching her stores. She found it, but unfortunately it was her last one. "And... leech juice?" She definitly did not have leech juice.

She quickly headed the potions stores and grabbed the necessary ingrediants. Sitting back down, she lit a small fire and used her wand to fill her cauldron with fourteen litters of water. She leaned over the cauldron, watching it, waiting for it to boil.

While she waited, she began chopping the Diasy Roots, skinning the shrivelfig, and slice the caterpillar and rat's spleen.

"Amortentia is a bad word at the moment" Adam said, thinking of the students in his office who had managed to get their hands on some. He made a mental note to order more Bezoars.

"It's strong enough as it is, adding it to anything like water or coffee would just dilute it's effects".

So that was why Erikson wasn't visibly head over heel smitten over Professor DeLuca! This would allow DeLuca a way of getting Erikson, without it looking as if he'd been drugged. She was beginning to admire DeLuca for her cunning...

"Thank you professor, you've been most helpful." She said she took her belongings and left the lab.

"And what about me?" Natalie asked, crossing her arms and pouting.

"You have a special task for...the main ingredient, the shrivelfig. It must be skinned." He said taking one, holding it up and handing it to her. He then turned his attentions towards a caterpillar.

ooc:

Oh. My. God. Natalie thought. She raised her eyebrows at Claudian. "You're going to give the klutz the job of skinning the shrivelfig? I just want you to know that I avoid cooking at all costs; it's not worth risking injuries."

"But whatever you say," Natalie concluded with a dramatic sigh. Carefully and extremely slowly, she started to skin the shrivelfig. This was going to take all day at the rate she was going.

"Ack! Isn't there some kind of charm I can use?" Natalie exclaimed as she accidentally pricked her finger and sent the shrivelfig rolling across the counter.

ooc: I'm back!

Pauline watched as Whende finally left the room and then looked at the potion of Shrinking solution. She took a vial and poured some solution in it and put a stopper at the top.

She wrote her name and not Whende's. She didn't deserve the extra credit. Then taking the vial she put it ina box for all her finished potions. She wiped her hands, emptied the rest of the potion, and then looked at the board.

She saw she needed a textbook and went to the back of the room and got on. Going back to her lab table she sat on the stool and flipped through her book. Skelo-Gro, Skelo-Gro, Skelo-Gro.

Claudian put one of his large hands over the partially skinned shrivelfig to stop it from rolling any further across the counter.
"I trust you. What can I say?" He was trying not to laugh at her. How could she be so graceful on a broom, flying through the air like a ballerina dances on the land...Yet, once on her feet, hardly miss the opportunity of tripping, skidding, dropping, or accidentally elbowing someone in the eye. He hadn't seen her do everyone of these things, but he doubted that last one was an impossible feat from what he'd seen of Natalie.
"Yes." He answered her question, placing the shrivel fig in a bowl, and pointed his wand at the shrivelfig. "Aquamenti-thermae." A shower of warm water spouted out of his wand and onto the shrivelfig. It made the fig very warm and loosened the skin. Claudian picked up the shrivelfig, blew on it and handed it back to Natalie.

ooc: omg! r u really back? or just a mirage here to mock my dangerous level of dehydration?

Natalie carefully took the shrivelfig from Claudian, trying not to accidently elbow him in the eye or do something equally painful and clumsy. She held the delicate shrivelfig in her palm, and removed the skin without barely any difficulty.

"Wow, I'm so proud of myself," Natalie declared. "Okay, so what's next?" she asked as she quickly read the next set of directions.

"Uh oh," Natalie said. "I have to throw this thing over my shoulder?" she asked in disbelief. Her eyebrows were raised, her was mouth hanging open. "But that's going to require coordination, and that's something I do not possess. Here, you do it, Claudian." She quickly held out the shrivelfig to him, as if desperate to get it away from her.

"Hold that thought."
Claudian bobbed and weaved from ingredients to cauldron somewhat resembling a chef, at home in his kitchen. To the boiling water in the cauldron, he added the Daisy roots, once Julian was done chopping them and stirred 15 times anticlockwise, following up with the salt. He had forgotten to prepared the rest of the potion while he was handling the spleens and helping Natalie with the shrivelfig. He then returned back to Natalie.
"Okay, Natalie." He took the skinless, and totally nekkid shrivelfig off of her hands and tossed it over his shoulder into the solution. She acted like it was hot diamonds and that caused him to raise a worried and suspicious brow.
Finally, he could not hide his curiosity any longer.
"Are you really that uncoordinated?? But you play Quidditch??" He asked while stirring the solution 4 times anticlockwise and preparing to add the spleens.

Natalie didn't realise she had been holding her breath until Claudian took away the shrivelfig and a big whoosh of air left her.

"I am extremely uncoordinated," she admitted. "As in, I can't walk across a flat, stable surface without tripping over my feet. But with Quidditch, it's different. Maybe because it seems like I've probably spent more time in the air than on the ground I'm so balanced and graceful when I'm flying. I dunno," Natalie shrugged and watched him stirring the potion. "But I think I can at least handle stirring."

Claudian stepped away after stirring the solution 4 times in an anticlockwise motion and looked concerned... at Natalie. He tried to entertain how many ways stirring could go wrong. He couldn't really think of any, but if she was really as clumsy as she said she was.... .

"Alright." He sighed and said as convincingly as he could as he handed her the stirring spoon. "14 times, in a counter-clockwise motion...very quickly."
He took the spleens and added them into the solution and stood back wiping some of the spleen mess off of his finger tips.
"You're sure you've got it?" He hated doubting her, but they were working with fire and all the hazard that presents alone was saying nothing of the fact that there was also shrinking solution to be thought of.

Natalie didn't like the way Claudian was looking at her. It was making her start to doubt herself.

She took the stirring spoon from Claudian. "I got it," she said as confidently as she could. Now that she actually had the spoon in her hand, it seemed more likely a bad outcome would come from this.

"Very quickly?" Natalie asked. "That could cause a possible spill potential."

Okay, stop stalling, she told herself. "Alright, here I go!"

And there she went. Sending part of the potion flying through mid-air across the room.

ooc: Sorry. But something just had to go wrong! Don't worry, Natalie will fix it.

Seeing Natalie with that spoon in her hand made Claudian hold his breath. But it was too late to do anything. He couldn't have said 'No, Natalie, let me handle it.' now. It would be rude and she would resist and the two of them would wrestle over the spoon and someone would lose an eye...or an elbow. He was starting to believe anything a possibility with Natalie.

When the loose bits of the solution flew mid-air, Claudian's normally sleepy looking green eyes flew open and he moved much to fast for a boy his size out of the way, causing him to bump into a small cabinet behind him carrying glass phials. As one phial, perched on top of the cabinet, wobbled onto it's side, it was sent spilling over the end. With an audible gasp, Claudian dove down and reached out his hand and caught the phial before it landed on the ground and shattered.

Claudian seriously pondered the notion that his life might end in the Potions lab of Professor Dresden. He stood back up and turned back toward Natalie. It was just a drop of shrinking solution, and though it wasn't finished, he figured had potential to do more than simply make a mess. And, he wasn't willing to take the risk that it might not have some kind of adverse effect upon contact with the flesh.

"Natalie? If I don't make it out of here in tact, I...well, I want you to have my wizard trading cards collection." He was only half-joking. "We'd better put the gloves on before adding the leech juice." They probably should've had them on from the get-go, but he was too concerned introducing Julian to Natalie.


The trauma of the incident over, he noticed another member of Slytherins Quidditch team. He smiled at her and gave a subtle wave. "Pauline. How are you? I Haven't seen you since our last game." There was a little question in his tone. As if he weren't sure he had the right to be speaking to her.
He remembered what he'd said to his comment at the Slytherin 101 class. '...I do not believe it's every Slytherin for themselves. That's absurd." He had felt bad for making such a comment. It wasn't, in fact how it felt it should be, only how he'd percieved it had been. And, he hoped she didn't think him some hopeless cynic.

Pauline had just flipped through and realized this was going to be harder then she thought. The couldn't have just put the ingredients next to the title like any sensible school book would, no they had to make you look for them like hide and go seek.

she went back to the front to see the table of contents and was looking at the chapter titles when a slight gesture with a hand caught her attention. A.D.D. freak. She looked up and saw a fellow Slytherin.

She tried to remember his name. This is why she needed to get out more, to get to know people and remember their names. She smiled and replied "Hey," she would have inserted a name after hey but of course she didn't know his. "I'm pretty good. Busy. Trying to find the stupid ingrediants for the Skelo-Gro. I swear these people like to make things more difficult then it needs to me." she added.

Flipping a page she asked not looking up, but obviosuly talking to him. "How about you?" she asked and then looked up an added kind of embarassed. "Sorrry I don't remember your name." she said.

Claudian laughed a bit at the truth in that statement.

"Curse them! Trying to make us think and do work." He had an expression of offense, but it seemed more playful than serious. His tone, also, a little dry.
"That's alright. It's Claudian. Claudian Slughorn. I had to sub-captain for Marco that time he'd gotten detention...the first time he'd gotten it, not this last recent time. I recalled your name from the roster. You were our Chaser that day and you did very well, if I remember correctly." He gestured toward the dark-haired 5th year Slytherin girl behind him who'd been creating a potion with him. "Have you met Natalie? She is also on our team. Natalie De Clerq, this is Pauline Sssklenar?" He said, struggling to remember Pauline's last name and hoping he'd pronounced it correctly. "Pauline, this is Natalie."

"Well, if you'd like, Natalie and I are almost done with the shrinking solution. Maybe we could help each other out. Three minds being better than one 'n all?" The behemouth 6th year boy suggested to both ladies, but more to Pauline.

"Awesome! Your whole wizarding trading cards collection? Suhh-weet," Natalie joked as she pulled on some protective gloves. She was considering an apron, too. And goggles.

Just to be safe, she took a few steps away from anything potentially harmful before greeting the newcomer. "Hi, Pauline." She recognized her but hadn't ever talked to her before. "You're welcome to join us, but if you're wise, you'll stay far from me... and my elbows." Realising she probably sounded like a complete idiot, she added, "They have a habit of gouging out eyes. Basically, I'm clumsy as hell."

She looked down at her gloves, slightly worried that their size might affect her ability to pick things up or pour things in... or stir.

"Yes, Natalie. The whole thing." He suppressed laughter at this point. He wondered if she knew how funny she was. He supposed not. If she had it would probably rob her of a certain sense of comedic delivery.

At Natalie's comment to Pauline, he felt the need to add, "It's only a matter of time before she'll send me to the Hospital Wing."

As Natalie looked down at her gloves Claudian followed her gaze and felt a well of panic building. "Natalie? Do you want me to do it?" He said, referring to the adding of the leech juice.

Xana entered the potions lab for the first time and looked around, impressed at the quality of the facilities... far superior to anything at her previous school, and the thought excited her. 'Not bad... I could grow to like this place.' she thought.

She slipped over to an empty table at the back of the room and unpacked her equipment with a sharp flick of the wand... admiring her cauldron as it set itself up;it was one of her cherished posessions. She gathered the necessary ingredients, rolled back her sleeves and pulled her hair into a casual, messy knot so she could work.

Xana read over the potion instructions carefully twice, and delved into the work. She worked methodically, exactly as instructed, slicing and dicing ingredients as needed, grimacing a little when working with the caterpillar and spleen. 'I'm sorry, little guy" she whispered to the caterpillar, even though it was quite dead and therefore not likely to have a response. SHer heart always sank when using components of creatures in potions, though she knew it was necessary.

In what felt like no time at all, her potion was complete, and she removed it from the heat. She tested her results, dropping a sample of the solution onto one of the extra daisies she had taken for the potion. She didn't want to shrink one of the poor frogs if she could help it.

The flower shrank satisfactorily, and seemed to shrink the same percentage as the other students' test frogs had. Satisfied, she stoppered her sample vial. She cleaned up her workspace and set up her equipment to do the potion again, this time gathering a few variations on the ingredients listed, and pulling out her grimoire to take notes... She looked around for the professor, who was occupied at the moment... however, she did see one familiar face.

"Claudian...?" she said. "It's Xana; we met yesterday...? I was just wondering... are the posted potions the *only* thing we're allowed to do in here, or is it more of an open studio environment?"

Slughorn looked up at the familiar bell-like voice. "Xana! Yes! I recall!" His voice boomed with just enough joviality. "I would ask the Professor. Dresden might like the show of initiative, but he's got to share with us from his own storage cabinet. He's quite good at potion invention himself. You weren't here for what would've been our fifth term, but he introduced us to 'The Dresden Draught' that year. You should ask him. What are you planning on making?"
He was glancing a bit nervously to and fro from the leech juice to Xana as he spoke.

"Xana, I'd like you to meet Pauline and Natalie. Pauline and Natalie, this is Xana Venefica. She's just transfered...from...?" He couldn't remember, but maybe she hadn't told him.