Placing the bunch of deep blue bell-flowers into her basket gently, she stood up and started her finding journey once again. This time maybe she could look for some carnations or the purple or pink 'version' of the bellflowers. As she was walking along the path, she kind of having a clearer image of whom she was going to delivering this bunch of beautiful flowers to. Her grin widened as she thought of him. Maybe she could just send them to Jonathan as...he is her be-loved brother right? She could simply write a letter to him, asking him about his uni's life and stuff like that and send him those flowers. Yeah, that would be great.

The lioness was so happy that she had almost forgotten her purpose of being here, in the greenhouse. Luckily the sight of the purple bellflowers didn't go unnoticed. She knelt onto the ground and obtained some of them from the mud, cutting from their stems carefully and put them into her basket. It would be great with a combination of blue and purple bells. They matched with one another perfectly. Tiffany beamed as she cleared the mud on the leaves.

Tiffany Pevensie, keep them clean and pretty till he receives it, okay?

"Hmm," Sierra said, nodding along. She almost had the temptation to motivate her right here and now, just to see what would happen. How did this girl have every flower's meaning memorized, because she so obviously did. She was glancing at each one as if studying how it'd best fall into place with the other flowers.

Sierra looked at the blotting paper, following along as Vivi instructed her on how to use it. "Makes sense then," she said. "Thanks." She accepted the paper then went to work, using it to help her in getting the flowers ready to be placed in between the plastic. "Middle petals, ...right," she said, then she began plucking those out, too. "How do you know so much about flowers anyway?"

So she had the flowers ready to make a pink bookmark, and she really should make one more. Which ones were for friendship again?

Cardigan had joined the Herbology Task Force for a reason: to get more experience in her favorite subject, and just for the fun of it! She planned on going to college for it, and then working in the ministry in the Enviromental Protection department. It was what she wanted to do with her life!! Plants calmed her, and made her feel whole. They, some, smelled great too!!

She was here at the gardens to pick out flowers, for her floral arrangment. She was planning on making some sort of crown, that would double as a necklace, almost like a daisy chain! But, of course, she would be using a different flower. It needed to be extravagant as possible!!

Though, yet, she hadn't decided what flower she would use for the crown. Cardigan hoped that she would be able to pick out one of the prettiest ones for her crown. She had brought along a basket, to hold everything. In it currently was all her supplies she would need for obtaining the flowers. She took out the gloves, and slipped them onto her hands. It's showtime!

The best thing to do, first, would be to decide who she was going to give it to. That would affect the choice of flower, ultimately. Well, there weren't that many candidates, for that matter. For starters, Ariana Logan would NOT be getting a flower crown. Nu-uh!! She didn't have much close friends, or that much friends, for starters... How about Lafay?! Her conscience was an odd thing... Why would anyone wanna make something for her??? She was kinda mean... Then again, she was horribly ill, so it would probably cheer her up and make her feel a lot better, and maybe even warm her heart up a bit! So, it's settled! She would be giving her flower crown to prfessor Lafay!

Since she was the Slytherin Head of House, green would be a good color for the flowers. There weren't that many Green flowers, limiting her options, which was a good and a bad thing. Cardigan wouldn't have to worry too much on which flower to choose, and she might not find the right flower. Well, here goes nothing!

She began her journey through the gardens, searching for the perfect green flower, basket in one hand and pliers in the other. The muggle way would be much easier, and safer. Didn't want to risk making Lafau angry by accidentally getting her poked buy a thorn, or it being completely messy. Cardigan had brought her wand though, just for the finishing touches.

Her walking had taken her towards the back of the garden, not seeing much green flowers over there. To her surprise, she found the most beautiful patch of green flowers back here!! They were called....Zinnias! What an interesting name. She "pliered" 10 of them, setting them all neatly in her basket. She pliered some vine from a nearby plant, which she figured would be good for the crown/necklace. Not too stiff, not too bendy.

Now that she was done with that, it was time to make the final product!!!! Cardigan walked out of the garden, a hop in her step as she headed back to the castle. She couldn't wait to see how it turned out!!!

Viv touched a few plants before selecting the blossom from one and cutting it as well, although this one went carefully into her satchel without comment. No comment required or necessary.

Sierra worked quietly beside her, and Vivi occasionally glanced at the Slytherin girl to see how she was faring. This was so very easy that it was hard to believe the girl would need any help... and it turned out she didn't. Vivi was able to turn her attention back to the giant book she had secreted her blotting paper inside, tucking it tightly between two other books in her satchel.

"My mother gardens. She says that the language of flowers has been around for centuries now, and for those who are clever enough and pay attention, you can have entire conversations with the right plants." Now she just needed a frame.

Yellow.

That was the color that meant friendship, Sierra remembered. It was hard to believe she was looking for a symbol for friendship, but yes, she was. She also had no idea who'd she'd give it, too--maybe vivi--but that was beside the point. "Oh," she said. "My mom deals with plants, too, but...she just makes potions with them."

She got a few clippings of the yellow roses then went through the whole deal with blotting paper once again. With that done, she removed the petals in the middle like Vivi had taught her to do, and then pressed them. "I'm done gathering my materials," she finally said, "and I think I might just write the message inside. It'd probably be better coming from me anyway."

Now all she had to do was create her bookmarks then she'd be able to deliver them.

"I thought you were avoiding your mom," Vivi asked, her voice lifting up in a question at the end. How in the world would she know that her mother worked with plants?

It was too bizarre to her, a girl with an overly perfect mother, to run into these girls who had horrible mothers who attempted to ruin their children in one way or another.

"And I believe that's your way of telling me that you're done with me," Vivi stood with a grin, brushing herself clean of any dirt. "It was good to have a partner for this."

Sierra paused. "Avoiding my mom?" she asked, her face wrinkling in confusion. "Why would I avoid her?" Sure, her mother was ill. Deathly ill. It pained Sierra to see her that way, but she'd never leave her during the time she needed her the most.

She held her flowers carefully in her hand, not wanting to damage them, and then shifted her bag from one shoulder to the other. "Done with you?" Sierra asked with a laugh. "Just letting you know I'm ready to move on to the next step, which I was actually going to do here, too. If you have to go, though, that's cool."

She thought she could make it just fine without the girl with the gardening mother.

"Because she's a kidnapper, Sierra," Vivi gave the girl a sharp look. "Don't tell me you'd be foolish enough to forget that. I sincerely doubt you can come back from being a kidnapper." Not that she'd test it. Leiden was gone, but Vivi wasn't going to up and forgive the woman.

"I can stay. I need to make a frame, but I thought I'd just transfigure something from loose sticks, which are just as easy to find here as anywhere else." Case in point... sticks. Vivi picked one up and flashed it for Sierra's approval.

Realization dawned on Sierra. "Ohhh," she said, "you mean Bella, not my mom." She actually half-laughed. It'd been so easy for them both to get confused. Vivi wouldn't know this either, would she?

Sierra sat down on a nearby bench and pulled out a piece of parchment. On it, she began to write a short message of thanks to go along with the pink roses.

"Oh, no, Vivi. I got away from my birth mother years ago," she continued. "She and my dad let me choose which parent I wanted to stay with, and since I've always been closer to my dad, I chose him. That's why she kidnapped me in the first place." She could talk about this now. Three years ago, though, it would have eaten away at her. "I'm legally adopted, but...we try not to think about it that way."

She got out a second piece of parchment and wrote on it a short letter about friendship. Yes, Sierra Greingoth actually knew the meaning of friendship.

Vivi gave Sierra a long look before turning back to her task. She totally understood the bond between an adopted parent and child, what with her sort-of-sisters. Alena and Natalya hadn't been formally adopted, but they were under the guardianship of her parents and Vivi had grown up having them around. They were family.

But it did feel sort of cold to pretend as if her real mother had never even existed. Maybe it was defense against the kidnapping thing. "It's... good you have a positive female role model, considering your mother isn't exactly a good one," she finally offered, rather awkwardly.

Yes, let's just pay attention to the task at hand. Vivi found another stick of a similar length and resumed her search through the shrubbery. Just two more. Or... she could duplicate what she had. Yes.

Sierra just looked at Vivi for a moment, considered a variety of different responses, and then finally looked away. Why did the girl insist on labeling Bella was her mother when Sierra had so clearly said she didn't want that? ...and she was adopted, which meant that the woman who adopted her wasn't just a positive female role model. She was a mom. It wasn't worth getting into talk about that, though. It hurt Sierra a little, but in the end, she knew who mom truly was, and that was all that mattered.

By this point and time, Sierra was already arranging the pink roses onto the parchment. When she got them positioned just as she liked them, which was in a way that framed the words just so, she did the same with the yellow roses. "There," she said, standing back and looking at what she'd done. "Does that look alright to you?" You know, before she sealed it and all.

Vivi raised an eyebrow, clearly unapologetic for whatever pebble she'd placed in Sierra's shoe with her comments. She'd tried to be nice, and if that didn't work... well. She'd tried. Good intentions and all that. If she was a bit nicer, she'd offer up that her own father was a Potions Master, so he had something in common with her step-mother. Perhaps one of them could come to Hogwarts and teach in place of the rather ineffective Lafay, who could curl up and die for all Vivi cared.

"Looks nice, actually. I wonder if there's a drying spell so this won't take a full week before we can finish the project." She'd go look it up in the library after they finished here.

Vivi duplicated her sticks and made a square with them. Frame. Frame-esque. It needed some spellwork to make it a bit prettier.

Upon reading over the assignment for the Herbology Task Force, Gideon tried to think of what he could do for the project. There were after all several things to consider like who he would be cheering up, what he would be using and what he would be doing with the flowers he would choose to use in his endevour.

Cheering up...that might best be Selina.

She was still down from her missing bat and the first quidditch game of the season was right around the corner so stressed out was putting in mildly. Okay so he had one of his choices down, now he just had to pick out the what and the how as in what types of flowers and how they would be used or displayed. As he walked down from the Gryffindor tower, he thought over possible options when the idea finally hit him.

DAISYS!

Gideon remembered them being her birth flower and responding favorable when he gave them to her for her birthday a couple of years ago. So he was off to the student gardens for the first part. He spotted Vivi and Sierra already there seemingly working on their own project. "Hey," he greeted offering a polite smile to the two as he made his way towards the storage area. Searching for a small pot he could use the prefect soon came upon just right and took it over to a nearby area of the garden where he remembered a patch of the cheery white flowers were. He'd just need to section off a bunch of the plant and repot it...easy enough when they were taught how to repot stuff plenty of times. And daisies were pretty tame.

Sierra shrugged. "I don't know, but I'm using a heating spell to piece the plastic pieces of my bookmark together," she said. She nodded as Vivi said her bookmarks, or what she had of them so far, looked nice. They did, she agreed.

Sierra enclosed the bookmarks in the plastic and then used the heating charm to heat the two pieces of plastic together. She poked at it, trying to test if it was indeed pieced together. Yeah. looked good to her.

She raised her wand toward the plastic. "Diffindo," she said, cutting off the pieces she didn't need. When she was done, she held up two rectangular-shaped bookmark, both enclosed in plastic, with encourages messages and flowers inside.

"All done," she said, showing them to Vivi.

Oh yes. Non-Ravenclaws lacked intellectual curiosity. Vivi should have realized that positing a query like that would be wasted on a non-Claw. She shrugged in response. "I thought you were drying flowers. You don't have to heat them or dry them out if you're just pressing them and going."

Although not drying them out meant that they'd wilt and rot in that plastic, but Sierra knew what she wanted and it wasn't Vivi's place to tell her otherwise. Vivi rose and showed Sierra her frame before sticking it in her satchel too.

She offered a wave to Gideon as he passed on his way to the potting shed, before turning back to Sierra. "Pretty. It's nice how fresh flowers retain color so much better than dried ones. Mine won't be nearly so sharp unless I can find a preservation spell. But I"m done as well."

So like... bye? Thanks? Could she leave now or was there some other social protocol required?

Gideon returned the wave sent his way by his fellow seventh year. Parsing out a spot in the flower garden he could transplant, the prefect realized as he slipped on his gloves that he had forgotten one crucial item....something to dig it out with other than his wand or his hands. Time for trip two. He set his pot down on the ground beside his quarry before turning and returning to storage to borrow a hand shovel. With it in hand he was ready to finish up the task at hand.

The Gryffindor kneeled down on the ground when he was back at the spot he had momentarily left and upon finding the small clump of daisies once more, slowly began digging it out. Gideon was careful not to disturb the main area and treat the plant he was handling with respect. Once he had moved the daisies, he gave them a light sprinkle of water from his wand with a quick "Aguamenti."

There...the basis of one potted plant. The boy getting up to his feet and brushing off his gloved hands before picking up the transplanted daisy pot.

Orr skipped into the student greenhouse. She loved coming here and taking care of her own plants and flowers. She skipped up to her little patch of earth in the corner and one by one she watered and talked to each of her plants.

Taking out the piece of paper that had the first mission of the task force written down, she read through the instructions again.

What plants would make someone's day more happy She thought to herself. Well, her favorite "happy" flowers were daisies, poppies and daffodils. So Orr started collecting them in the various colours that she had planted such as the usual reds, yellows, and white colours but she also had planted ones with more pinks and blues in them.

Herbology Task Force time! Kat had already done her first task, so she's ready for the second one. Kat walked to the Student Garden during her free time to begin her work. Now, she had to apply the Minsecticide they made to some of the plants in the Gardens. She'll start off here then she'll then move on to the Greenhouses.

Kat took out her Minsecticide. She applied it on a herb that she recognized as... what is this? Ok, nevermind, Kat didn't recognize it but she applied Minsecticide on it anyway.

Apply. Apply. Apply. Lalalalalalala~

Tadaa! First plant done, moving on to the next one.

Ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun! Vivi and Kurumi were ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuunning away from the greenhouses and, hopefully, the army of Blast-Faced Skrebeetles that did not seem too pleased that their home in the flutterby bushes was being disturbed by the spraying of minsecticide.

Hunched over slightly with her hands on her knees, Kurumi glanced anxiously towards the entrance to the student garden and then back at Vivi. "You think...they followed us here?" she asked while eyeing some of the plants here.

Because Vivi ran the grounds when she could, she was thankfully not out of breath... and she'd escaped with good speed from the greenhouse. The downside? She'd just run away from bugs. Not boding well for a future Auror. Vivi glared back at the greenhouse, wondering if they'd left any underclassmen behind in their haste to exit.

Merlin. Worst. Auror-candidate. Ever.

"I hope they do follow us. We're failing at this project. We're supposed to get rid of those things, and instead we ran away like ickle first years with broken wands. It's unacceptable." And for good measure, she sprayed her minsecticide willy-nilly back at the greenhouse... and generally at a healthy rhododendron that stood between her and the bugs inside.

The Ravenclaw strode quietly into the garden, his book bag slung over his shoulder. He made his way straight to the other end of the entrance, where the swing trellis he and Louisa made stood quietly around its flower patch. He pauses for a moment to stare at the structure before turning to lift his book bag open, bringing out his gloves then the spray bottle from the previous Herbology class. With is free hand he took his glasses out of his pocket and slipped them on. Important given that this was a kind of task that requires paying close attention to details.

After pulling his gloves over his hands he neared the pillars of the trellis, the wood still peeking through wherever the vines and the leaves doesnt cover. The pillar still looked pretty solid but he wasnt about to wait till he can see holes where the magical bugs have eaten through it.

Raising his arm up he started pressing the trigger on the spray bottle, doing broad strokes that covers the pillar of the trellis and the flora crawling around it. With his gloved hand he shook the residue from the lower flowers and leaves so they can reach the grass below it. Gotta maximize this stuff mmhmm.

After applying Minsecticide to the first plant, Kat placed her attention on the plant beside the plant she previously put the stuff on. This herb looked like... Kat smelled it... Is that parsley? Weird. Kat initially thought Hogwarts was a place for exclusively magical things. Kat was wrong with her first wild guess. Hmmph. Whatever.

Apply. Apply. Apply. Apply.

DING! Katrina Hudson has saved a plant from further infestation. She scores for Slytherin House! Ok, it's not yet the game. Next plant, bring it on. Time to taste Kat's saving powers.

"Prevent," Kurumi corrected as she raised her index finger towards the blonde. "We are supposed to prevent these sorts of infestations from happening. Clearly those Blast-Faced Skrebeetles were already there when we got there and this minsectiside isn't going to do much against them."

Kurumi joined Vivi for a moment in the willy-nilly spraying, aiming towards the areas that the Ravenclaw wasn't spraying to sort of create a mist shield around the pair of them. Well, a shield that lasted only a few moments as the spray vanished into the air and, hopefully, on some of the nearby plants.

"So, technically, we are not failing the assignment," she added for good measure. Was Kurumi being a bit technical and literal? Yes, yes she was. But the word failure was one that Treyen told her she wasn't allowed to use anymore.

Kurumi stepped up to a random bush and gave it a few sprays before stepping back to observe it. No strange movements that she could see...which meant that there were no scary looking bugs here. Not even a single hole in the leaves. THANK MERLIN.

"You know...we CAN go back to the greenhouses...try to catch all those things and maybe give them to Professor Newlin."

Vickers makes his way around the swing and his eye catches the carving at the back....


2077
Louisa Vickers
Ravenclaws

A grin tugs at the corner of his lips. Who would've thought, nearly one year later, that the engraving would signify something much more than marking a legacy for a Herbology project?

Peering closely at the back of the swing he can already see little holes where the bugs have started taking a sampling their wonderful creation. Those Vulcan eyebrows furrows deeply in disgust. He is not about to have these bugs ruin a structure so deeply meaningful to him if he could help it.

He raises his arm and starts spraying the back of the swing, once again in broad strokes, covering every inch of it. He waited for a few minutes to let the minsecticide soak into the wood before reapplying a second coat. There. Hopefully that would keep the bugs away and strengthen the wood of the swing. Last thing he wanted was to have someone sit on it and end up with a pile full of wood and sawdust because the seat disintegrated from right under them.

Today was a little chilly due to the Winter weather so Orr was glad when she entered the overly warm greenhouse. She stripped off her outer layers and grabbed her bottle of Minsectiside.

As she looked at the plants one by one- she noticed that quite a few plants had already been sprayed so she continued to walk until she came to a small plant that hadn't been sprayed just yet. She gently sprayed the plant and continued to do the same with the other small plants nearby.