Marisol had always found carnivorous plants interesting. They didn't have actual teeth nor a brain, but they ate like creatures. Though the first year rather liked this activity, she was not touching the rats and organs. They reminded her of a particularly nasty boy in elementary school who had once dangled a dead mouse in Mari and her best friend Sara's faces.

She therefore took the bits of steak. Marisol cautiously offered them to the weigela. Mostly because of the native English speakers reactions to the word "chokeberry". The Spaniard guessed it didn't mean anything good. The plant reached toward Mari, who quickly recoiled. Come on, she thought. Don't be a wimp!

It was foolish to place the meat in the palm of her gloves. The girl's hand was nearly bit off, and she shook all over. The steak was gone, so she gave the weigela more. Soon it gobbled it all up. This was quite the experience!

"Huh?" Dima blinked a couple of times, having to look way up to see Miss Dora's boyfriend hovering over him.

And then we was gone. And then he came back. And then he was trying to give him a rat.

"Uh... thanks, but no thanks." He eyed the dead creature in Marcus Orion's hand, pulling a face and averting his eyes. Poor lil' rat. Didn't they know it had a life too? "I don't wanna feed the plant. S'just like potions with the dragon heart, 'cept this is a WHOLE animal instead of just an organ."

The Slytherin went off to get another dead rat and wrinkled her nose when she got near the trunk. Sheesh, it felt like the smell was getting worse as they took out the rats. But even though Agatha was a lady, she was still pretty cool and could easily deal with these things. Sort of. This particular thing she could. Not many more disgusting things, but that wasn't important right now.

Once again, she didn't even consider using magic to feed the Chokeberry. She faced the plant - always standing at a safe distance from it - and stared at it as it moved around a bit before tossing the dead rat at it and watching it eat away.

If only all lessons were as easy as this one. Minus the smell, of course.

Going back to the meat, Lux dug her hand in and - making sure to avoid the rats at all cost - pulled out another helping that she could feed to one of the bushes.

What were the called again? Even though they had just been learning about them, for some reason the names escaped her. Wasn't one called the Chokeberry? And the other one started with a W?

Standing a good distance away from the Chokeberry, she tossed the meat. Curiously she watched as the plant started to dig in. This was so creepy/weird/fascinating all at the same time.

Cris waited for his turn back at the trunk, and when he got to the front of the line, reached in a pulled out another dead rat by the tail. "Sorry Ben. Just know that your honorable sacrifice is for the betterment of Herbology students everywhere," he whispered even though he knew the poor creature was beyond hearing anything right now.

He may have looked thrilled at the thought of feeding these Flesh Eating plants, and he was to a certain point, but he still felt bad that something had to die, in order for him to do so. Unfortunately, Darwin's Theory still applied..even in these greenhouses.

So it was with deep regret, that Cris carried the rat over the plant he helped identify. "Hello Ms. Chokeberry, come and get it," Cris dangled the rat right in front of the bush and then dropped it. Midway down, he watched the bush's branches pounce up and wrap themselves round the rat before dragging the carcass under its foliage at the base of the bush.

Not waiting to see what happened next, Cris walked back to the trunk.

So they were to feed the plants. Brilliant! Watching as professor Bentley did, Beverly withdrew her wand, and underhandedly went over the Levitating Charm. Simple enough, yeah? Levitate some very icky-looking food toward one of the plants -- or toss it -- and that was that, right? She could do that...at a distance. Beverly very much appreciated her limbs intact.

Walking over and daintily picking up a chunk of meat, she wrinkled her nose. Where did Bentley get all of this? Did she...sort it all out herself? Making her way toward the pygmy piranha, Beverly tossed it the piece of meat. The plant snapped, but missed. Oh, come on! Why'd it do that for? Didn't it know how to play catch? Beverly was going to teach it, then.

"Wingardium Leviosa," she cast. The red meat wandered on over back to her, and she grasped it from the air. "At your twelve o'clock." Did plants know that? Directions by time?

SNAP!

Okay...maybe it didn't, maybe it did, but it just snapped at the meat in midair.

At first the sight of it, Cutty couldn't make out what it was. It appeared thick and rubbery, like a partially digested heart or perhaps, some bit of a rather unlucky cephlapod. Following in the example of his teacher, he moved his wand and accio'd a chunk of whatever it was over and caught it with his hand. The scent of it hit him and he smiled broadly. That was disgusting. He squeezed the offal in his palm letting it produce a wet sort of sound before plopping it down in front of him.

The savage sword lillies looked like they could use a good meal and so using the spell that Tempus had taught him, Cutty flippnsnipwitited small chunks of the offal apart from the larger whole. "Flippnsnipwitit.", he casted, then held up the small chunk with a gloved hand to examine it against the maw of the dangerous little flower. But not too closely. Although, Bentley had said it would only be a puncture wound at worse he would err on the side of caution that morning if he erred at all. With his wand in his hand, Cutty levitated the small chunklet of meat toward the plant...slooowly and watched as it reacted to the dead meat as if it were live prey and promptly devoured it whole.

It was hard to keep a fascinated smile from his face.

"I.....What?" Did she lick it?

BLINK.........

Was he crazy? "Of course not. I don't go around and lick raw meat, you know." How unsanitary. "And I don't know whether its yummy or not but I think the plants think its yummy." To prove her point, Candice walked closer to the Chokeberry and tossed it over the plant. The Chokeberry snapped the offal in a second. WICKED! "See the plant think its yummy." Smug face.

Yes! Finally, feeding time! Sadly it wasn't really student feeding time, but he could wait for after the lesson to have a little nibble. Just about. Approaching the trunk with the meat with the other students, Richard pulled his dragonhide gloves further up his hand, so they'd rest nicely and mentally hit himself. This is why he should really learn the incantations to spells by heart. Now he could use the levitation spell, but did he know it by heart?

Hah.

Oh well. Throw it it it would be! Picking a nice piece of steak and holding his breath so he wouldn't have to smell it, he approached a nice looking Chokeberry. There was no way he'd risk his hand, like Professor Bentley had said, so after giving the steak a few shakes to make sure the plant caught its scent, Richard just threeeeeeeeew it over. The Chokeberry caught the food mid-air, and proceeded to quickly be done with it.

Oh yes. So not risking his hands.

Okaaayyyyy... mixed reactions. Half the students seemed disturbed by the feeding activity, and half seemed to ... like it too much? At least there weren't any disasters yet and as far as she could tell most of the students were comfortable enough in the flesh eaters' presence. Some of the newbies looked particularly taken with the task, eyes on you Grayson and Maddison and of course her lioness, Candice.

Still the others were doing well too. If not as enthused by the experience.

Looking up at Bay's question, Seren shook her head. "No, they're easily maintained, anything that moves will generally do the trick, or you know... not move." If they were already dead. It was one of the reasons she loved flesh eaters so much, they were so low maintenance it meant they could be better appreciated.

It didn't surprise her that Kevin might like the activity, the boy was a stereotypical Lion in that sense, and really, who didn't like feeding flesh eaters?

"White lilies, they're long and sharp and just across from the geraniums," she explained, indicating by pointing in their direction.

The yuck barely registered with her, coming from young girls, it wasn't at all surprising. What did surprise her was that Lux compared flesh eaters to pets...

"Companions.... they're not pets, they're companions," she corrected warmly.




And Merlin...... was that an ow she heard? Seren's head span in the direction of the sound, first settling on Lex, but it seemed the Prefect was still in one piece, no... it was Toussaint.

... He didn't look like he was dying. He was fine. A weeeee puncture most likely, a drop or two of blood... the boy would live.




If you couldn't trust a Ravenclaw to ask good questions, then you could certainly expect it from a Professor's son.. or ex-Professor's at that. "Uncooked meat has more nutrients, and typically wild flesh eaters don't have access to cooked meat, so their digestive systems wouldn't appreciate it."

And that...

Was she being accused of murder again?

..

"No," she replied, eyes on Kyroh. "Not yet, but I suppose there's still plenty of time left in the year." She was joking, of course.

And ooooohhh... what did we have here? Not a creatures activist she hoped. Not that she condoned bad things happening to creatures. But food was food.

"We all have to eat somehow, don't we?" she asked, attempting to reason with logic. "Plants have lives, creatures have lives, yet we still claim them in order to satiate ourselves. Does that mean we can't do the same for them?" Flesh eaters had to eat to you know, so it was either feed them animals, or surrender yourself. Or something like that ....



...

But on that note, feeding time was about up, wouldn't want them getting indigestion or anything. Or... mmm... some of them were still not done.

"Alrighty, before we finish up here and move onto our next and last specimen for today, can I have a few of you handing out these last scraps, and could I have... the Ravenclaws and Gryffindors distributing a light sprinkle of dragons dung, the Slytherins and Hufflepuffs watering ... and I ask that those in third year and above, or anyone that is capable, to just immobolise the bigger shrubs whilst dung distribution occurs, thank yooooooop!" While she was giving these instructions, she'd summoned the two buckets of dung from the stores cupboard in the entrance of the greenhouse with a stack of small containers to use as scoops.

OOC: The lesson will continue in 19 hours. Interaction and team work is encouraged.

Jasmine went back to the trunk to retrieve more steak bits. She decided to feed the fanged geraniums this time and walked over to them, but remembered not to get too close. This time she would levitate the food over to the plant rather than throwing it. She could be more accurate that way.

Taking her wand in her meat free hand, Jasmine pointed it and said "Wingardium Leviosa". She slowly directed the meat chunk in the direction of the geranium. Causing it to hover above the plant, she allowed it to drop into the plant's "mouth"? Again she watched as the food quickly disappeared from view. Jasmine repeated the task several times always amazed at how plants could actually eat meat.

Just then, the Professor spoke and assigned the students new tasks to perform. Awwwww, the Ravenclaws had to sprinkle the dragon dung? Great. Jasmine couldn't wait to get started with that task.

Last scraps? Maddie could handle another scrap of meat and she wasn't as bothered as some so she picked one up and focused on one of the Pygmy Piranha Plants. Bentley HAD said they needed smaller portions or SOMETHING and Maddie had a SMALL piece so it was a perfect match. She eyed the plant and showed the meat before tossing it over. Didn't fancy losing a finger, y'know.

Then there were MORE directions! She was a claw so she got to fertilize the plants which was okay, she s'posed. Wandering over, she used one of the small containers to scoop out dung and then she waited. She wanted to see the older kids IMMOBILIZE stuff FIRST! Maybe she'd even pick up the spell and practice it later. MHM!

AJ laughed out loud to Adi's math comment. "You got that right." Math was not fun at all. In fact her and her friends would make fun of it. '"My friends and I say that it stands for mental abuse to humans." That about summed it up in her opinion. "It was definitely a good shock!" she smiled as she thought back to when she got her letter and the man came and spoke with their parents. Such an awesome moment.

"I think so anyway." What else could the sound be? It totally made sense to her. Adi then brought up one of her favorite subjects. "I love sports." You could see the passion in her eyes. "How about you?" She really hoped that he liked them as much as she did. AJ watched as the plants hungrily gobbled up the meat that Adi was throwing them. She was just about to pick a new rat when the professor started talking again. "Yay, I get dragon dung." All Adi had to do was water and that didn't sound very fun at all. She got a bucket of dung and brought it back to where Adi was standing. "I fertilize and you water?" Teamwork was always better right?

Third years and above?! WOOT!

This meant that for the first time, Sophie was being included in 'the older kids'. This excited her, and therefore she found herself with her wand at the ready and seeking out the bigger shrubs Bentley had been talking about. Spotting a Ravenclaw and Gryffindor nearby (TakemetotheBurrow and PhoenixStar), Sophie approached them. "I can immobilize the shrubs," she said to them. "Then you two can do the light sprinkles of dragon dung, since you're in Ravenclaw and Gryffindor, and I can take care of the watering." She gave them a questioning look as if to ask if they were cool with that. She didn't see why they wouldn't be, though, because that was the directions the professor had given them.

Pointing her want to a nearby large shrub, she said, "Immobulus!" Then turning her wand toward the shrub next to it, she did the same. "Immobulus!" Yeah, that was an easy spell, and thank Merlin, too, because Sophie didn't want to get eaten on her first 'older kid' job.

Toby had already selected one last steak from the trunk, and had cut it up into little pieces using 'diffindo'. He was now sat on the floor carefully levitating the pieces of meat towards the fanged geraniums, watching them with great interest as they devoured their meal. There was still a little more steak left to hand out when Bentley gave her next directions.

Figuring it was best to finish up here first, Toby used the hover charm to try and manoeuvre the little steak bites into the 'mouths' of the as yet so far unfed geraniums. It was sort of tricky, because all the plants wanted a bite, but eventually they were all fed over here and the steak was gone.

The fourth year got to his feet and brushed away the small amounts of dirt on his trousers that he'd managed to pick up from sitting on the floor. He eyed the other students for a moment before heading over to one of the shrubs.

"I got this one covered if anyone wants to fertilise or water it," he said to those nearest him who looked like they might be waiting for a chance to do so. Then Toby pointed his wand at the bush. "Immobulus."

It froze.

Agatha listened to the new instructions and absentmindedly went to get the last few bits of food to feed the plants. She tossed them at a random plant nearby - which she wasn't able to work out what it was, but it wasn't like she cared anyway - and pulled out her wand to do the next step.

Third year. Well she was a third year. And she could totally do that spell too. She hoped. Deciding to try it on the smallest plant possible, Agatha chose not to work in a group. She waited for some of the others to start working before she did so herself.

One of her roommates immobilised a plant near her and she took the chance to see if the spell she was thinking of was the right one. It was. Good.

Agatha would smile smugly if she had already done the spell, but she hadn't so she eyed the plant with a serious expression. "Immobulus." She said, pointing her wand to the smallest plant she could find. And it stopped moving. Aha! Smug smile. Did anyone see that?

...Actually, it wouldn't feel that awesome if people had seen it since it wasn't one of the scariest plants there, but well, it was something and her spell had worked for once, which was always good. "Aguamenti." She said, and started watering the immobilised plant. She looked around to see if any Gryffindor or Ravenclaw felt like fertilising it as well. They could if they wanted, of course. The plant bit, Agatha didn't.

Gotcha professor.

Ethan made his way towards one of the fanged geraniums and started with the first step. Immobilize the darling plant before it starts chomping their hands while doing the second task. “Immobulus!” The Slytherin grinned as he looked at the frozen fanged geranium—yawning half way. The third year looked around for a random Gryffindor or Ravenclaw to work with.

Hey. Hi. You.

Ethan tugged the older Ravenclaw’s sleeve and gestured her (Daydreamer11) towards his fanged geranium. “You wanna help me out? The plant needs some dung.” Smiles for you, miss.

Hello, my name is Lucy, I am a first year!
If you want I can to sprinkle the dragon dung!
I'm used to fertilize the plants..I often did this with my father!

Dragon dung was in order and Adi could be the one to water and all that was left was to immobilize the kid eating plants. Oh yeah, she knew that the professor was downplaying the seriousness of it. Not that she really cared or anything. This was fun! She just didn't want to become plant food. AJ was sure that she was more appetizing than rats.

It was as if the older kid was reading her mind. "Cool. Thanks for the help." Technically Adi was old enough to do the zapping, but three heads were better than one right? That way they all had their duties. She watched as the girl did her part. "Wicked! You're good with your magic stick." Now that it was safe she started to sprinkle dragon dung on the plants. AJ took a quick sniff out of morbid curiosity, and didn't think dragon dung smelled any different than any plain ol dung.

Rest of maintenance? So they had to water while Claws...hey wait Jasmine was a Claw. He could work with her! Walking over to his friend, Cris asked.

"Would you like to work with me? Our house is responsible for the watering. If yes, let's first help immobilize the taller bushes first before we get started," Cris eagerly waited Jasmine's response.

While he waited, he began immobilizing the taller bushes. And with two flicks of his wand, he said,"Immobulus," and watched as a blue stream of light shot out from it and immobilized the plant he was aiming at. Ending that spell he switched to the watering one. "Aguamenti" he cast the spell while pointing his wand down at the soil. As water streamed out, Cris kept a close watch to make sure he didn't over water the plant. Ending the spell, in dramatic flair, he bowed to Jasmine.

"This one is ready for you to fertilize, my lady," Cris gestured to the plant he had just immobilized. It was only then did he notice a young Slytherin had approached Jasmine to help work with him.

Awkward!! Smiling over at the boy, Cris said hello to him,"Hello would you like to work with us? We can alternate between watering and immobilizing the plant for Jasmine if you want?"

Yes...three pairs of hands on board would definitely cover more hands.

Angel threw another scrap of food at one of the plants to eat, she was glad that she was feeding them because it would help them get strong and that was something that they needed to get if they were to have a good life. Angel loved making sure that all the plants were feed nicely but she had no idea what she had to do next and it seemed her sister was busy with her friends so she didn't ask her.

Jasmine felt a tug at her sleeve and looked over to see a younger Slytherin boy smiling at her. He was clearly in need of some fertilizer for his plant and Jasmine was more than willing to comply. "Of course I'll help you. My name is Jasmine, what's yours?" Seeing that he had already immobilized the plant, Jasmine needed to hurry and get the dung. "I'll be right back", she told the boy. I just need to go get some dung and we'll be all set.



On her way to retrieve the dung, Cris approached Jasmine and asked her to work with him. Of course she wanted to work with him, but she had committed to work with her new young friend. Yes, I want to work with you, but someone beat you to the punch", Jasmine said smiling. If you both don't mind, why don't we work together? We all have different tasks to perform so that should make the whole process easier.

Jasmine went back over to her Slytherin partner hoping that he would agree to their group of three. "Do you mind if Cris here joins us? He can take care of the watering while you immobilize and I fertilize.". In the meantime, she rushed of to get the dung.

Kace heard the professor's instructions about watering the plants. That was the hufflepuffs job. As he made his way around, he noticed Toby his fellow badger immobilized the shrub. "Here mate i will help ya.." he said coming over with a watering can. He watered the bush and it seemed happier. It seemed like it was thirsty. "Do you think i should go and get the fertilizer too?" he asked him unsure.

Next and last specimen? Was the class nearly OVER? WHAT?!

Nuh uh. They JUST got started feeding the flesh eating plants and nobody had even had a minor accident yet! Lame. Maybe next time. Or maybe while they were working with whatever it was they were going to be working with next. Which, if it was another flesh eating plant, Grayson was all too excited to move on.

Whatever. The woman was saying something about WATERING the plants for the Slytherins and the Huggers and Finders. And she had also mentioned something about immobilising the plant. The fourth year took out his wand and twirled it around his fingers as he listened out to the spell that some of the third years and above were using. Immobulus. Gotcha! Clearing his throat, he pointed his wand over at the nearest shrub and said, "IMMOBULUS!"

There. One immobilised plant ready to be watered and be sprinkled with dragon dung.

What was he meant to do to gather the attention of the smart nutters and the overly brave? Do something dumb? That sounded like it could work but one look over at the Professor told him that she might not appreciate that. MAYBE. "Does anyone want to sprinkle dung on this plant?" Look, he had it all immobilised out already. Lucky bugger who got to work with him.

Angel wanted to do more but she still had a piece of meet left and she wanted to give it to one of the plants that looked like it hadn't eaten much. "You need to eat you know." Angel smiled at the plant in question, she hoped that it was hungry because it was about to get something to eat. "Here you go, enjoy." Angel lobbed the last of the food to the plant and smiled as she watched it eat, that would help it grow, she wondered if the Professor would let her look after one of these plants for her, it was all a new experience for her.