Herbology was one of Lydia's favorite classes. When she'd learned that sweet Professor Myers would no longer be their teacher it had depressed her greatly. He'd been a great professor. She would miss him dearly, though she'd only known him for one year. So far nothing this year had gone according to plan, and because of that Lydia had fallen into a very melancholy, depressed state of mind.

Not even the sight of the venomous tentaculas could cheer her up, although she'd been looking forward to working with them. Sitting at the table with her dragon-hide gloves securely in place, she gave her tentacula respectful birth. Others had not been quite so wise, and she noticed several students dealing with troublesome vines that yearned greedily for their flesh...

Lydia gave a deep sigh. Not even the sight of fellow students in some degree of peril could move her today. She raised her hand to answer the professor's question though. Even in the midst of depression, she still desired to gain as many house points as possible. Nothing could slake her ambition at least.

"This should be obvious, but you don't want to ingest anything from a poisonous plant...not unless it's been safely prepared in a potion that is," said Lydia, with another sigh. "Unless you want to die a horrible, agonizing death I suppose."

Lydia stared glumly at her tentacula.

Keep in mind....aha!
Skyler raised her hand a bit, just to get the professor's attention.
"You should know what poisonous plants exactly look like cos' I know this mundane plante calle belladonna that looks like berries. "

"Ew," was her only contribution to this discussion.

The juice was what made it so big and over grown? Sounded like a pus-filled pimple if you asked her. Guhrooooooohhhhss!

There was no way she'd be getting anywhere near that thing. Instead, she looked around the room for someone she could team up with who would be willing to do all the work for her. A true teammate. Perhaps Derf?

Like no offense or anything, but she was not in the mood to get drenched in plant juice today. Or any day really. Previous cargo, Professor. Think again. That and she was STILL angry about this early morning thing. First the stupid alarms, then the obnoxious laps, and now HERBOLOGY FIRST BLOCK?

Zoryn Spinnet literally preferred the inferi.

...........

Uh.

Lucas didn't care if his answer was right or not. Not right now. Not when something else was happening that distracted him, even from the notes he hadn't even started was trying to make.

O_O

Lucas stared as ropes - ROPES! - flew out of that boy's wand over there and.... okay, it took him a while to figure out what happened because he had ducked, with his notebook held over his head, even if he was nowhere near whatever had just happened. But, peeking over the top of the table, it looked like Mark had been.

Sucks. That doesn't look fun. Nope.

As for the question, he didn't answer. Didn't even hear what it was the Professor was talking about. He just sat back up again and pretended as though nothing had happened by, uh, casually writing 'JUICE' in big letters in his notebook. That was what people kept mentioning, yeah?

Nothing to see here.

Well. It certainly looked like Derf was having a bit of a nightmare of a situation. Um. ... Abra was just going to... not call any more attention to what had just transpired. Act natural, and focus on the lesson. Um. Yes.

Right. What? How to obtain the, uh... Tentacula juice?

At the risk of sounding incredibly misinformed, Abra raised his hand and ventured a guess - which was a brave move for him in and of itself. "Do you... squeeze it?" You know, like how you harvested Bubotuber pus. "I don't suppose asking it nicely will accomplish much," he added, more to himself than anything as he eyed the plant at his own workspace.

Natasha slowly raised her hand again after she finished taking down the notes. She knew very little about the plants, but her classmate had given her an idea. "Snakes have venom sacks to store their venom until it's needed. Do these plants have something similar that we could extract the venom from? If these other liquids are different from the venom, would pruning the plant and squeezing the liquid from the cut vines work?" She asks timidly, hoping to not make a fool of herself. "As for precautions, it's always good to protect your hands with a material that the venom cannot eat through, as well as wearing additional protection in the event any venom is spilled or splashed." She said, not sure if the plants would fight the venom collection. In the brief moment she took her eyes off the vine to give her answer, it had tried to sneak up on her, nearly getting a hold of her hand. Not knowing how to perform the spells, she gave the vine a little whack with her wand. She didn't want to harm or damage it, just make it back off a bit.

Squeezing out the juice... Gross.

Natalie was eyeing the tentacles of the plants warily, making sure none of them touched her while she listened to the lesson. Obviously they were poisonous, except for these ones, thankfully.

But now they had to figure out how to extract the juice from the plants. Merlin the word "juice" was really putting her off today. She looked at the plant warily and reminded herself that she needed to get into Herbology more if she wanted to study healing after Hogwarts.

Sigh.

Natalie raised her hand. "I think this is where Immobulus comes in. Because if we tried to... juice it... without immobilizing it, we'd probably get eaten." Because if somebody tried to juice HER without her permission, she'd likely get mad too.

Offering the Ravenclaw another apologetic look - making a mental note to slip him a chocolate frog after class - Derf quickly returned to his seat and would...well...deal with that final thrashing vine in a bit then. STARING at it, unwilling to take his eyes off of it even for a second should it attempt to attack. But at least now he was half paying attention to what the professor was asking, even if he had NO idea what the answer was. Unfortunately, he reckoned this was something he would have to know for the future since Herbology and Potions were a necessity with what he wanted to do with a degree in magizoology.

"Uh...professor? Since these guys have been...you know...had all their venom removed and stuff...does that also mean that the juice no longer acts as a poison?" he found himself asking. He didn't know much about how the vascular system in plants worked PER SAY, but he did know a fair bit about the circulatory system in animals ... and what happened when you turned one into a venomoid.

Which was what was meant by the venom being removed...right? Or had that too been more of a...milking definition?

Okay, he half lied. He still was mostly not paying attention.

But yes, Zoryn, he would be more than happy to work with you should you ask.

His previous comment had earned a couple of hidden snorts and chuckles which made the Lion more confident in himself. He felt as if he, apparently, had a good judge of character and was very glad that he wasn't the only one that felt a similar manner towards their new Headmaster. If only the Headmaster showed more compassion then perhaps he would be received better after overthrowing Hawthorne. Now Chase didn't know Hawthorne well but she was an authority figure and one that just seemed to keep all of Hogwarts together. In Hawthorne's calming absence, he decided that he, too, must be a calming presence so, that unfortunately meant that, he'd have to stop joking.

Le S I G H.

As for the Professor's question THIS time around, Chase swore that he would take it way more seriously. How were they going to extract the juice that the Prof had just mentioned from inside them? And what we should keep in mind when dealing with poisonous plants even if these have been devenomed?

This lion was unsure and distracted. So he raised his hand and offered answers. "Professor, like many other students, I believe that squeezing it will unleash the juice... Though perhaps crushing it could work too..." He paused as his mind wondered to what that would even look like. As for the second question.... "I believe that we should be careful with how close we get to Venomous tentaculas. Despite it not having its poisonous capabilities, it could still strangle us...."

like their new Headmaster

Stella was still giggling slightly at Chase comment about the headmaster, she couldn't help it. It was funny although it was also true as well. Clearly she wasn't the only one who thought it was funny and true but the snorts and laughter going around the greenhouse. Although she never met the Headmistress but by the looks of it she was nice and friendly and cared about them, as for Mr Beady Eye Stone Face. She wished one of these days, the Headmistress would knock him right off his high horse that'll be a sight to see! Until now... they were at Hogwarts Military school for young witches and wizards.

After deep thought of the question she raised her hand. "I would presume you squeezed it out as well just like everyone else does." she said. She thought about professors second question. " We don't want the juice to get on us, doesn't it turn our skin purple and there's no reversal to the changing of skin color from this plant right Professor?" she asked not really sure.

One of the vines... it was like it was staring him right in the face... inching closer and closer...

Ah, but Daehyun didn't want to stun the plant or severe its vines off. Wouldn't it hurt the little fella? He was sure it was just overly eager to become his friend - right, that was it. Biting his lips to contain a smile, pushed the vine away from his face with a gloved hand, before raising the other hand to answer the professor's question.

He wasn't sure about extracting the juice - he only hoped it wouldn't be some medieval torture method for the poor plants... But for the second question, he said, "Even if they're devenomed, I would still be cautious. Doesn't hurt to wear gloves at all times. Also," feeling something crawl up his arm, his eyes moved downwards to his arm, where a sneaky vine was circling it like a snake, "they have other ways to harm you. They could strangle you, cut off your air supply." Like the sneaky one he tried to pry off his arm.

Beth was just watching the vine inch closer to Daniel…”it’s a good thing its de-venomed that vine is giving you a come hither wave” Beth said without fully knowing what come hither meant in the grand scheme of things.

Raising her hand Beth just furrowed her eyebrows ”Professor wouldn’t Venomous Tentacula be classified as Venemous and not poisonous?...i mean Venemous tentacula’s vines inject their victims whereas say some spiders and even a basilisk bites you” she paused before adding ”like the adage if you bite it and you die its poisonous and if …if you bite it – no not that if it bites you and you die its venemous” she paused for a moment as she bit her lip.

”that’s a thing right?” she asked chewing the edge of her lip nervously, turning to look at dusty-auntie she just smiled. Raising her hand again Beth nearly blurted out "would using an athame to punture and milk the plant work? Kind of like how muggle scientists and zoologists milk spider and snake venom?"

Okaaaaaay, so Madison had been a little distracted by Derf (or at least she was sure that was what his name was???) and now she had missed a little of what the professor was telling them. Though she DID hear something about squeezing out juice???

Gross.

And as far as the next question? There wasn't really anything that she felt like adding, so instead she focused on writing down notes. Maybe that would help keep her awake until they got to the practical part of the lesson.

She was listening......mostly.....a little......kinda.

Something about sqeezing and asking nicely with venomous snakes and sacks. Yeah. All the words were there, just don’t ask her what order they went in or what they all meant. Were it not for the vines trying to grab at her loosely tied bun, Jessa might have comepletely zoned on the day’s topic. Granted, were the situation a more normal one, Jessa may still have been zoning out but it was to a more noticeable degree.

She could literally feel her mild pulling away, floating off to other places and engaging itself with things it found more intriguing. Had the plants been left fully venomous, the Ravenclaw would’ve been more inclined to force her attention span to sit still.

From the spot where her head laid on the table, the 6th year glanced around the greenhouse. She managed to get a grasp on where the lesson was going but there was only one question that came to mind so ignoring the Professor’s, she asked her own. “What good are the juices if you’ve already removed the venom?” What was the point and should she have been trying harder to pay attention? By the sounds of it, these plants were now almost mundane.

Juni was still amused by the whole, ’I don't like swearing in my classroom, but today I'll make an exception’ warning they got as the headed into the greenhouse. Normally Juni never swore but she did still find it hilarious for some reason. Professor Wishart was already growing on her.

So… venomous tentacula, yeah Juni didn’t know her, which that was a lie. But it was all good everyone was answering and the sixth year was just sitting there quietly taking notes. Though she looked up from time tot time to watch the venomous tentacula vines swirl and swish around.

”Use gloves and cut it open to extract the juices.” Even though she thought that squeezing it would work out the best, but why not throw that idea out there. What if it was too hard to squeeze or something.

Seriously..... the professor wanted them to get closer and 'juice' this plant. Everything about this plant was dangerous Bernie stood up ... he was just going to leave ... but then as he moved one of those plants moved toward him .... "AHHHHHH" Bernie screeched!!! He was terrified.

He scooted out of reaching distance of that plant ... and turned back toward the Professor ... "Umm.... Can this just be a hands of activity?" He asked ... praying the professor wouldn't make him actually touch it. "I'm not sure how to get the 'juice' out but I really don't want to." Bernie said ... "Maybe you have to distract it somehow ... with 'bait'" He added thinking again he really didn't want to be the bait!

Magnolia was good at two things, 1; making wands and 2; multitasking. She was listening and sorting the information coming in from her peers and professor. In with the relevant info and out with whatever mess was happening that did not pertain to her or venomous tentaculas.

At the same time, the sixth year Claw kept her eyes on the once venomous plants. They might not be deadly anymore but she was not keen on being bitten either.

She poked at the the vines with her dragon gloved finger and watched as it squirmed. As she tilted her head from side to side to inspect the plant, she noticed that the plants were a bit cute...if you squinted a bit.

Shame they were about to juice these little suckas.

There was noway Rylee had missed Reese's rather loud entrance. Did he know he was late? Shaking her head and letting out a slow breath, she lifted her gaze from her note taking and meet her brothers eyes for a brief second. Nothing was said just a look to show she acknowledged his arrival.

As if that mild disruption hadn't been enough to make her lose focus there was Derf and his wayward spell or whatever he had cast hitting a younger student.

Something tapping her arm had her snapping back to attention. Blue eyes widened in surprise as she quickly tapped the offending vine with her wand. No need to cast spells at it right away, right? "Back... get back..." she muttered giving the vine another light tap or two as well as inching her chair back a bit further from the table.

Did she miss the second question. Yes, yes she did. Dealing with a potentially problematic plant had to come first you know.

Nettie just blinked as she listened to her classmates talk about MILKING the plant. How did they know so much about extracting liquid from various...things? She knew NOTHING of the sort. Still, she raised her hand to throw her two cents in to the conversation and answer the question.

"Well, you should keep your gloves on at all time. You don't know if the venom is...erm...what's the word..." Why was she blanking right now? Thanks bilingual brain..."Where it burns your skin? ACIDIC! That's it!" she exclaimed when she remembered the word she had been looking for.

"I think it likes you," Dizzy giggled as she watched her neighbor's plant try to snatch her. Looking back at her own venomous tentacular or whatever, Dizzy frowned. Her plant was just sitting there, lethargic. Maybe it sense the veela in her and knew she was extremely good at fire magic! Or maybe it was just ate a huge meal and was sleepy! "Hey!" Dizzy prodded hers with the end of her wand. "Wake up." The plant's vines moved like it was stretching after a long nap, then returned to their lethargic state.

Well that was no fun.

Sighing Dizzy, turned her attention to Professor Wiseart. "Phlebotomy? Like how muggles draw blood and stuff! But after you have to give the venomous tentaculas a juice box and cookie, in case they have low venom sugar and might pass out."

After answering the previous question, Tessa rested her chin on folded arms once again. She didn't take proper notes, but had her textbook propped open in front of her. If he told them anything that wasn't already in the textbook, she would scribble it in the margins. After telling them more about the plants, Professor Wishart asked a couple more questions. She would let other students have cracks at them first. She was busy following the movements of the venomous tentaculas' vines with her eyes.

After a minute or so, Tessa sat up and raised her hand. Her fellow students had already offered up similar answers, but she put her thoughts out there anyway. "Would you have to immobilise them??? So you can squeeze the juice out? And so the vines don't try and strangle us." That would be a pretty rubbish way to go, wouldn't it? Oh, but he had asked about poisonous plants in general, hadn't he? Not just venomous tentaculas. "Gloves should always be worn as a precaution, right?? And just because they aren't venomous, doesn't mean they're not dangerous in other ways."

She also thought that not eating them - just in case - was a good idea, too, but she didn't say it.

"Very interesting, many of you have suggested way’s to extract juice that I hadn’t even considered like boiling the leaves or crushing them to name two. However Abra and Bettie has offered up the way that is what we will be trying our hands at a little later on in the lesson. We are going to squeeze the tentacula tight enough over a container so that it spits out it’s juice." Yes, they were, whether they liked it or not going to get very close to their tentaculas. "But that will come after they’ve been fed of course."

As the words appeard on the blackboard Joshua spoke to the students "What you all need to keep in mind when dealing with this very poisonous plant is to wear your protective dragonhide gloves during and handling/care of posonous plant and to always wear work robes. When you arr done you should always clean you hands very throughly and change into new robes in case they’ve been splashed with venom. Do not eat or drink any of the seeds, leaves, juice or spores or berries for that matter that you’ll encounter in the greenhouses or outside Hogwars unless you really know that it’s safe to do that.. If you get bitten by your tentacula today it’s not deadly since these plants are still very young and have been devenomed."

With the use of his wand prof wishart accioed forth a large lidded barrel from the storage rom that he sat down next to his desk. Raising his head to smile broadly and excitedly at the students he said "Now it’s time to get practical! I bet you all are just waiting to get closer and more personal with the tentaculas on your work stations isn’t that so?" Here he paused shortly. "Every good plant carer needs to be able to ssess the needs of its like if it needs a good trim, is short on water or needs some fertilizer etc and that is part of what you are going to do now. The other part is that I highly suggest you do first is to feed your tentaculas with with chizpurfles since on a ful stomach they become drowsy and less willing to move their vines. The dead chizpurfles can be found in the barrel so get to work everyone you have an hour to finish your activity and to write down your plants assessing observations on parchments!"

OOC: Mini activity is up! In one or more posts your students needs to feed their tentaculas with dead chizpurfles and also assess if their tentaculas lack water, needs a trim, some fretilizer to promote growth and also write down their observations on parchment listing what they see.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Parchment Naotes

Name:
House:
Year:

Plant observation notes:

You have 4 days until Monday night @ roughly 7pm GMT+2 to finish the activity. Be creative and most of all have fun! Any questions don't hesitate to vm/pm or label the title of your post with professor and i'll answer as soon as i can.

Individ replies for Question 2 will come during the weekend.

She didn’t notice it at first, because she’d been busy watching Derf shoot spells at a kid and loosely follow along with the points her classmates made like being venomous vs. poisonous, and comments about their new Headmaster but after a moment, the realisation slipped in and caused the Ravenclaw’s gaze to shift quite suddenly over to the man who was now by his desk. It wasn’t the barrel that had her staring at him but rather the fact he’d chosen to completely ignore her question.

To be fair, she’d also ignored his but in her defence, not only was she failing to think straight but several others had already given the answer. No one else had offered an answer to her question and he didn’t seem like he was going to either.

Quite put off about it, Jessa remained with her head down on her table for several silent moments after all the instructions had been given. She may have asked where he got all the chizpurfles from but then she realised, she didn’t care a terrible deal what the answer was—and doubted he’d answer this if he wouldn’t even answer her other question. The Professor reminded her of the giant squid, though to the squid’s credit, he’d acknowledged the fact a question had been asked at all and let her know he was refusing to answer.

Jessa tilted her head to look over at her plant, it was still tugging at her bun but she had little motivation to make it stop. It wouldn’t kill her. She would need to feed it then care it but without any real use to the juices....she couldn’t understand why. It prompted—against her better judgement—another question. “Why have the plants had their venom removed, Professor? Seems shoddy to change their very nature, their defence mechanism and their means of feeding just so we don’t die.” It was different if the plant had been specifically bred without venom in the first place, but these had it and it was removed. “It’s like removing the fire, fangs and ferocity from a dragon so we can pet it at the zoo.”

With the right precautions, she was sure they could’ve dealt with these things with the venom IN them, then the juices would be worth something......unless they still did have useful properties despite the lack of venom. She wouldn’t know. Her question hadn’t been answered.

Also, she wanted a dead chizpurfle. It would make a lovely addition to her undead collection.

Well... hey. Look at that. His guess turned out to be right.

Abra looked visibly surprised that his own answer had turned out to be correct, and subconsciously sat up a little straighter in his seat as he listened to Professor Wishart go on... and slapped away a vine that was creeping towards his wrist.

Oh... feeding the Tentaculas. With dead chizpurfles. Delightful. Even though chizpurfles were really nothing more than parasites - pests - he cast a furtive look around the room to see if there were any particularly negative reactions to that instruction. Meanwhile, Abra himself was lowkey despairing over the need to actually take actual notes. Yes it was a lesson and no he hadn't seriously expected to get through a lesson without having to do some writing, but still.

As tempted as he was to ignore his blank parchment until absolutely necessary, the more sensible side of Abra (the side he rarely listened to) told him it would be better if he got all the note-taking out of the way as soon as possible. So, with this in mind, Abra pulled his parchment and spell-checking quill towards him, observed the plant at his workspace for a few minutes, and started making some very brief notes.

SPOILER!!: Notes

Name: Abra Botros
House: Gryffindor
Year: Sixth

Plant observation notes: My Tentacula looks kind of sad in terms of size and is slightly wilting. I don't know if this means it needs water or fertiliser but it might help to give it both. No need to give it a trim, I think.

Daisy moved closer towards her plant as she observed the soil it was in and the quality of the vines. She decided to fetch a dead chizpurfle to provide the Tentacula with some needed nutrition. Daisy carefully fed the Tentacula and noticed that it had become a bit more docile which made it even easier to inspect it.