As the Professor was standing on.the.table, Salander was keeping his mouth nicely sealed shut. Because laughing out loud at the Flying Instructor wasnt always the best course of action. Specially for one who would prefer to keep both feet on the ground.

Oh what did the Professor have for breakfast today eh? Chocolate pancakes with a side of Ogden's finest?

And in the effort of keeping the Flying Man's mood cheerful, he decided to keep 'the sweeper' answer to himself. He is aware that brooms in the magical world does not equate to the ancient form of the Dust Buster.

His attention is caught by the Headmaster dropping in. Trying to pretend like he wasnt eavesdropping, he grinned at the Gryffindor blonde beside him "Hey there pretty lady" he murmured as he reached out and gave Lexi's hand a squeeze.

Wait.... Herbology.... your teaching it.... What?

WHAT????

Vindictus will also be their Herbology Professor?

Whatever happened to the Herb dude whatsisname.... Sage!

Salander was now straaaaaining to listen in. Does this mean they'd be riding flying plants for Herbology?

Do plants fly?

"Mugwort is gone? Did he even show up?" Vindictus asked but he stopped his questioning when Tate mentioned Gevrik. He didn't like the man at all. "Okay. I'll do it until you find a replacement."

"He was at the feast. He... had to..." Tate shook his head. Couldn't discuss it at the moment. "I apologize again for interrupting your class, and I appreciate your willingness to be a team player," Tate grabbed up Max's hand and shook it vigorously.

A moment later, he had disappeared back out the door, heading across the pitch toward the castle in long strides. That was ONE problem resolved.

Did Emily here correctly? Professor Vindictus was going to teach herbology!.... she suddenly felt red in the face, no doubt she was blushing.
This was brilliant news, though Emily wasn't sure how it was going to reflect on her concentration and her grades... she coud already imagine Professor Vindictus wearing overalls and gloves, with dirt smudged on his face...
Broom Mechanics!!! her subconscious yelled at her.

Whaaaat?

The Herbology dude was missing??

Er, who was the Herbology dude again?

Treyen blinked and then looked back and forth between Headmaster Tate and Professor Vindictus before LAUGHING, yes, LAUGHING, at Vindictus' reaction. And you would think that the common choice would've been to ask the Groundskeeper, no? After all, he keeps the ground, and that's were some plants and trees come from, no?

But the boy cleared his throat after realizing they were still in a lesson. "Er, yeah, the wood, the metal, and the twigs," he said, nodding at what his classmates were saying.

Selina tried her hardest not to shout out every answer on the mechanics of a broom. She wanted to allow other students to answer the questions in class that were being presented. But when he brought forth two broom and asked the class to identify different parts of the brooms she got excited.

Her hand shot in the air so fast that her red hair whipped behind her ear on its own.

"Sir, that end of the broom, that's called the tail. It's the tip of the shaft which is the long part of the broom that takes up the majority of space. On these identical brooms they are the wooden part that attaches to the head. The head is the part with the bristles. And the little bit that is jetting out from each side of the broom? Those are the foot rests. It is a feature of modern day racing brooms. Medieval brooms were without that feature."

Now his mind was jumbled with too many things to do. Herbology, greenhouses, broomsticks, rogue Bludger, Ikea Garlic, staff leaving....

Where was I? Oh, yes . . . parts of a broomstick!

"OKAAAAAAYYYY, class!" Vindictus exclaimed and clapped his hands as he turned around moments after Tate left the shed. "Good job in identifying the different parts of a broomstick. Those of you who answered will be receiving points for each part you correctly identified."

He pulled out his wand and the hovering brooms zoomed back to their storage place against the wall.

"It is important that you care for these different parts of a broom or else they can become weak and eventually break . . . which would be dangerous if your broom broke apart while flying. Grab a broomstick servicing kit," he said and with his wand, pointed to the boxes that suddenly appeared on the table.

"I want you to trim the tail twigs, polish the broom handle, and clean the metal foot stand and the metal band that holds the tail twigs in place. Get started!"



OOC: This task should be at least 3 separate posts of you cleaning your broomstick. Points will be rewarded (maximum of 5 points will be rewarded for this task). I'll resume with the next set of instructions tomorrow when I get home from work (around 9pm EST).

Selina could tell her Professor was a little disjointed at the recent development with Herbology. It was not something that she would have particularly wanted thrust upon her if she was in his position. But Truebridge showed him a great complement in choosing him to fill that post. He must have had great respect for the man.

When he instructed them to fix up their brooms Selina looked at her Nimbus- the one she was borrowing at least. It was in need for a little touch-up's here and there. But as a whole broomstick a fine racing broom.

The first instruction was to trim the bristles of the broom. She went to work grabbing a servicing kit to continue out that job. When she reached inside she took out the clippers. When she was younger and her father would always patch up their brooms he would tell her that a broom with short bristles is like a bird with no feathers. It was ingrained in her to keep the bristles at a long length, but clean them up every couple of months like her mother did to her eyebrows.

So she held the clippers in her hand and went to work. She trimmed each bristle to it's proper length. Once they all were healthy again she looked a second time. A healthy length was not all the same for every bristle. They were uneven. Selina went back in and trimmed the bristles for aestetic purposes.

Once she was done the Nimbus bristles were even and healthy again.

So they were going to have Vindictus as Herbology man too until they found a replacement?

That will probably take the whole year, it was common knowledge that whenever a teacher went missing in Hogwarts, then no outsider wanted that post. Common knowledge. That's what history taught him, though. It wasn't until now that he started to wonder what had happened to that other man, the one that left.

But, ooooh, broom servicing kits. He barely took care of his broom. Eh, not really, he took great care of his Firebolt. It was slightly old, since his sister had been the previous owner, but it could pass as a new one. He must be doing something right, no?

And so the boy took a box, and checked that Kurumi was doing the same thing, before taking out those silver clippers that will allow the tail-twigs to be as new as possibly. Or as clean as possible.

So, he took his time with this, clipping one tail-twig at a time (or not that slow, but close enough). Clip, clip, clip. Treyen was focused, alright?

Luin watched the encounter with the headmaster and wondered what had happened to the previous Herbology teacher. It was quite intriguing, to say the least, and unexpected. She took down her notes on everything that had been brought up so far and started on her task. She first grabbed a broomstick servicing kit, and then started on the tail twigs. It took her a few minutes to trim them to what she believed to be as perfect as she could make it and she stopped for a bit, looking about at the other students starting at their tasks to see how her trimming was compared to others.

Professor Vindictus was going to be teaching herbology? Kurumi wracked her brain for a moment trying to think of any plants that she knew that flew, but none came to mind. There were a few that launched projectiles at people. Perhaps they would have a lesson where then road on their brooms and tried to avoid things the plants were hurtling at them?

That didn’t sound like a good idea…especially since Kurumi was having a hard enough time staying on her own two feet. Flying seemed to have that effect on her. She did not suffer from vertigo, but something about flying around on a broom just did not seem natural…Now riding a bike, that was something she could handle!

Kurumi grabbed one of the leather cases and slowly opened it up to see what all was inside. The first thing that caught her attention was a brass-clip on compass. “Professor,” she said holding it up. “Why do these kits contain a compass?” Was there something where you had to point your broom in a certain direction while clipping the tail or else your broom would be cursed and unable to fly?

Setting the compass down, Kurumi picked up a container of Fleetwood's High-Finish Handle Polish and set that down. Was there a particular order in how to do things? She picked up the Tail-Twig Clippers next and snipped the air with them a few times before looking over at Selina. “Selina, which part do I do first?” she asked nervously.

She then looked over at Treyen who had the clippers in his hands. "Do I trim first?"

" flying he sucked at and asking a girl to help was kind of pityful so learning how to fix and matain his broom was going to a big part of his life, so grabbing a wire brush he starts to work on the foot pegs removing bits mud and what look like bug "Sir the rivets on this one look like they are starting to come loose " pointing to the less than 2 milimeter gap that had appeared on 2 of the rivets "can you use Reparo on them or is it another spell used on charmed items" working his way around the metal band until the brushed metal was ready for a light coat of some foul smelling oil.

Emily listened intently to the instructions, making a mental not to trim the tail twigs, then to polish the broom handle and lastly clean the foot stand.

She inspected her brooms tail. Bits off twig were sticking out at odd angles and were different lengths. This might take some time, she thought to herself.

Opening her broom servicing kit, she pulled out the silver clippers then turned her attention back to her broom. Carefully and thoughtfully she went about trimming back the uneven twigs.

Clip..........clip................clip..........cl ip..... clip.

Looking over the broomtail, Emily examined her work... Clip... clip...
Emily placed the clippers down on the table then inspected the tail again. The twigs were neater than they had been before. The broom itself looked a lot sleeker and faster than previously. Emily was pleased with her efforts. She placed the silver clippers back into the broom servicing kit.

Emily found that servicing her broom had a calming effect on her. It was.... relaxing.

Selina was mid fixing her bristles on her broom when she heard Kurumi talk to her. She asked something about an order of how to do things. But Selina was so intune with her broom that she was only half listening. She wanted to ask her to repeat the question, but Kurumi was looking at her awaiting an answer to her question. So she searched for an answer to the question which was unclear to her. After a moment of thinking about the relation of the words she understood what Kurumi was asking.

"Oh, an order? Well I would trim the bristles on the head first. The twig part of the broom. Only because the other steps are more of a cleaning part. If you do that then cut the bristles then the bristles will get all over the shaft and the foot rest and you would have to do it all over again."

Only then did she notice how tense Kurumi was, "Kurumi? Maybe you should, um, watch those clippers. They are a bit sharp. You may cut yourself." Selina knew better than anyone what a little bit of nerves can do in a class of uncertainty. Ask Lafay, Selina was a timebomb in everyone of her classes.

Hearing Selina’s words, Kurumi set the clippers down on the table rather forcefully and looked back and forth nervously between the sliver things and the end of her broom. “Clip the twigs, right,” she said nodding her head and trying to give off a confident aura. Just how much clipping did a broom need? Was there a shape you were supposed to clip the twigs into? Or was it more like trimming your hair to remove split ends?

Looking around at everyone else, Kurumi decide to just trim things a little. Better to not do enough than to do too much and ruin the broom, right?

Picking up the scissors again with her hands trembling a bit, she got ready to trim one of the twigs.

SNIP!

Kurumi’s eyes grew wide. “OH NO!” she shrieked frozen in place. From the look on her face, one probably would have thought that she had cut off a finger or her entire hand. “I accidentally cut into the sleeve of my robes…”

She set the scissors down and looked at her sleeve that now had a definite cut in it. Sighing, she rolled up her sleeves and continued to snip until she had got all the frayed twigs and had a small pile of wood chips on her table. Phew, she still had her hands and she could mend her robe after class.

“So…now I should polish?” she asked looking at the container and wondering if she was supposed to use her fingers or not.

Well, Well this was an interesting turn of events. Professor Vindictus would also be filling in, in Herbology now. For the missing professor. Missing Herbology professor? It was never a good thing for a staff ot student to just go missing espeically at Hogwarts. But hadn't the herbology professor not been here all term?

Caroline thought all of the missing professor stuff for a moment. Her mouth was probably hanging open and looking out in a daze. What was wrong with her? She had been acting weird this whole lesson. lesson? Oh yeah She was in a flying lesson. She shook her head. That was a little better.

She got up and retrieve a broom serivicing kit for herself. She opened it up and looked for the set of clippers. 'There we go', taking the clippers from the kit. Wow this broom really needed a servicing. She stood up, to get a better view of the tail of the broom. She was short and figured that this would be the best way to go about this.

She measured a small section of broom straws and even them out to where the ends looked nice and new. She rotated the broom a little and done the same again, measure the ends even and snip. Pretty soon one side of the broom looked almost brand new. She rotated the broom around clipping some extra un even pieces off. She took one last look turning the broom over, checking for even--ness. Ok, looking good, she said to herself nodding. She was pretty proud of her work.

Selina felt her breath catch in her chest as Kurumi yelled, "Kurumi! Are you okay-?" But she did not need to continue. The false alarm was given and Selina could breath again. Kurumi was going to give her a heart attack in this class, she was sure of it.

Once Kurumi went to work on trimming the bristles of the broom Selina felt much better. Kurumi was becoming more comfortable with the broom, which was good-- for everyone's safety.

When she was done Kurumi asked Selina if she should move on. The bristles on the broom were not aestitically even, but the bristles were healthy and that was all Selina could ask for. No need to stress Kurumi out anymore than she already was. "Looks really good. You can polish if you want, but remember I'm not the teacher. He said for us to get three things done, so if you want to polish go for it." Selina smiled. But Kurumi reached for the container with her fingers and Selina pulled Kurumi's fingers back, "I don't think you want to put her fingers in that." Selina handed her a cloth from the kit and dipped it in the polish. In a circular motion she began to rub on the polish to every spot of the broom handle. Every care in the world was put into the soft and swift motion of the polish.

"Try doing it like this," Selina gestured, but then she caught herself. She was not the teacher. Telling Kurumi what to do was a no-no, "I mean, we need to use the cloth. Not our fingers in the polish."

Luin saw that most of the other students had also done most of the clipping so far and her's looked pretty good compared to their's too. She had been worried because she wasn't all to familiar with how to handle all this broomstick stuff. She had never really been in to flying when she was growing up and so didn't have much experience.

She then looked down at her broom and took out the polish to start on the handle. She surveyed the broom, and then the class for a few seconds and then started on her polishing.

After a few minutes, she had finishing with polishing the handle, at least as far as she could tell. She didn't have much of an idea of how shiny and perfect the handle was supposed to be after the polishing. She had done a decent job, but there were a few tough spots she had been working on that may need a little bit more work before she moved on at all.

"Oh...yeah..." Kurumi murmered running her fingers through her black hair. She hadn't done that in a while...her nerves really must be shot.

Kurumi watched as Selina applied her polish to the broom. Rag, right…that made so much more sense when she thought about it. Why would you use your fingers for polishing? Kurumi blushed at her serious lack of judgment and checked the three things that they needed to do. Cleaning the metal foot stand and the metal band that holds the tail twigs in place seemed like the more logical thing to do next considering she had just clipped the bristles. Kurumi glanced over at Selina’s and blushed even more as the girl had all of them perfectly even and made a nice solid shape instead of her broom that looked very uneven. Still, she had trimmed them, so she supposed that they were healthy, right?

She supposed she would find out if and when they got on brooms.

Kurumi then turned her attention a little more North to check out the metal band holding the twigs together. There was a lot of mud caked on that, so she grabbed a bristle brush and began working on that until there was no more mud. Still, the metal band did not shimmer in the sunlight, so Kurumi grabbed the small towel from the kit and began buffering that until it had a soft sunlit glow about it.

Now, for the foot holds. Now, these really seemed like they had been through the Second Wizarding War and back. They too were caked in mud and it was probably going to take three times as long to give them any sort of shine.

After getting the mud off, Kurumi returned to the rubbing motion with her towel.

…scrub……scrub……scrub……scrub……scrub……scrub……scrub…… scrub……scrub…

Ah! Was that some gold shining through? Oh, no, just a rather shinny rock that had got stuck in the mud on the foot hold.

…scrub……scrub……scrub……scrub……scrub……scrub……scrub…… scrub……scrub…

Emily shuffled through the broom serciving kit until she found what she was looking for. She took out a small round tin, labelled broom polish, and a dirty cleaning cloth....
"HHHhhmmm this wont do", she said, wrinkling her nose at the cloth.
Emily withdrew her wand from an inside pocket of her work robes.
"Scourgify", she said as she tapped the cloth with her wand. Instantly it was as good as new, clean, and fresh. She placed her wand back in her pocket and turned to look at her broom.

Emily had a great appreciation for brooms, and quidditch... and Professor Vindictus... and brooms. Emily looked up every now and then to see what the Professor was doing. He appeared to be deep in thought- no doubt the visit from Professor Tate had made him feel somewhat uncomfortable.

Emily pulled off the tin lid, and dipped her cleaning cloth into the thick balmy, waxy polish. The smell was strong, like a punch in the face, Emily wrinkled her nose again. Hopefully the stench would start to disperse, she only liked the subtle smell of it.

Pulling her broom closer to her, Emily began to rub the cloth up and down the length of the shaft. The oaky wooden handle looked shabby and dull, with a few surface scratched here and there.

She continued to polish the length of the handle in small circular motions and long sweeping motions. The wood began to gleam and shine under the low light of the broom shed.
Emily was pleased at how nicely it was turning out. When she was done she placed the polish tin back into the broom service kit and scourgified the cloth and put that back too.

Selina watched as Kurumi cleaned her broom and made it look beautiful. She wanted to tell her good job and commend her for her good work, but once again that was not her job. It would be awkward if Selina offered up praise for how Kurumi was becoming under the stress of working with broomsticks.

Once Selina felt satisfied that Kurumi was not going to hurt herself Selina went to do her last step of broomstick care- cleaning the metal. It was always the most difficult part. If one was too rough with the metal it would scratch, but if one was too gentile the dirt or rust would never come off.

Very carefully Selina began to scratch away the rust on the metal band on her borrowed Nimbus. She was very careful with the broom. Because she was on the Quidditch team as a first year she could not have her own broom. This fact made her extra careful with the school broom because it was required to be in good shape. She could not fall behind with the old broom, a newer broom would last longer without a tune up. But this older broom always was in need of attention. At that she gently rubbed off the rust from the foot cradle.

As soon as the rust was gone Selina grabbed the polishing cloth to finish out the job.

Before she moved on she looked to Kurumi, "How you holding up?"

Cass was in a normal place for himself, near the back of the room and off to one side, listening and taking notes. He did not own a broom as his family lived in a muggle neighborhood and a flying broom would be rather awkward the even carry around there.

Taking a servicing kit and the broom he had picked at the start of the lesson, he sits down and starts to carefully trim the twigs on the tail of the broom, and when and where he can he straightens them by hand... unfortunately the process is mostly clipping the old and bent twigs.

clip...clip...clip...clip...clip...clip...clip...s traighten...clip...clip...clip...clip...clip...cli p...clip...clip...clip...straighten...clip...clip. ..clip...clip...

After several minutes (about 15 or so) Cass sets the silver tail twig clippers down and checks the tail of the broom to see if there is anything else needed to be done before moving on to the foot rests.

Making a couple more clips and a little straightening of one last smallish twig he is satisfied with his work on the tail and puts the clippers back in the servicing kit and gets ready for the next step in servicing the broom....

Hmm right, caring for the broom...

Salander reached out for a broom care kit and flipped it open. Ok so he wasnt really fond of cleaning or servicing anything but it was certainly preferable to flying. He tapped his feet on the floor to a beat inside his head. Yeah solid surface is good for you.

Taking a peek at some of the more confident students he reached out for the clipper thing and started randomly snipping away at the sweeper bristles. How would he know if he's done? Guess when his hand has gotten tired heh.

"Well, I haven't snapped my broom in half yet," Kurumi giggled sticking her tongue out a little. Then again, she hadn't started polishing the handle part yet...there still was the chance that she could snap it in half...

Kurumi reached for her large bottle of Fleetwood's High-Finish Handle Polish and grabbed the towel and inserted it into the bottle scooping up a tennis ball size glob of it and wrapped the towel around the handle and rubbed it up and down and up and down...

Perhaps she had put a bit too much polish on the handle? The towel was all sticky and gooey and just an utter mess. Not to mention that her broom had globs of polish stuck on it.

Oops...Kurumi really needed to calm down. They weren't even on their brooms yet! They were just cleaning them. This shouldn't be this stressful, right? Maybe she should keep rubbing the polish....yeah, yeah, YEAH! That would make things better.

After inspecting the tail twigs and making sure everything looks ok before reaching for a stiff bristled brush to work off the worst of the dirt and what not off the foot stands/stirrups and metal band on the tail getting them ready to clean then polish...

After just a few minutes work Cass has most of the dirt and such off the metal parts that he starts the cleaning stage using a semi clean cloth to work off any dirt, mud, or what not that was still on the metal parts. Getting into the nooks and crannies that the brush couldn't get to removing every thing that is not part of the broom's metal parts. After a bit the dull silver-gray of the metal is revealed Cass changes the cleaning cloth for a clean one to polish the metal parts to, he hopes, a nice dull shine.

Cass works on the metal parts for a bit and nods at the light shine on the foot stands/stirrups and tail binding band, not as bright as some seem to be getting but still much nicer than the dull dirty and ugly looks it had before he started.

Taking a moment to stretch his arms, shoulders and back; Cass gets ready to clean and polish the handle of the broom.